WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today addressed the Latina Summit, a gathering of leaders and activists from across the Hispanic community organized by Senate Democrats in Washington. Senator Clinton stressed the need to work together to make progress on a range of issues important to Latina women, including health care, housing, immigration, and economic empowerment.

“I am proud to join so many amazing leaders from across the Hispanic community to put front and center the issues that matter most to Latina women in our country. I will continue to stand proudly with these wonderful trailblazers and encourage more Latinas to join us in fighting for these important issues,” Senator Clinton said.

Latina leaders and activists from 26 states attended the event. Participants included Elena Alvarado, President of the National Latina Health Network; Aida Alvarez, former Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration; Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch, President of EAS, Inc. and formerly the highest-ranking Hispanic woman in the Combat Support Field of the U.S. Army; Susan Castillo, Oregon State Superintendent of Public Instruction; Antonia Hernandez, President of the California Community Foundation and former President of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Cristina López, President of the National Hispana Leadership Institute; Mónica Lozano, Publisher and CEO of La Opinión newspaper; Janet Murguía, President/CEO, National Council of La Raza; and Rosa Rosales, President/CEO, League of United Latin American Citizens.

A transcript of Senator Clinton’s remarks follows.

Senator Clinton: Well I had to come by and, just, see all of you and tell you how grateful I am to see the level of involvement and participation across our country by Latinas and Latinos—don’t want to forget the men—in this election, because from New York to California, from Texas to Puerto Rico, from Rhode Island to Carolina, to Pennsylvania, to Michigan to Ohio, across our country, we had such record levels of turnout and participation. And it is long overdue because this is about the common future we all are trying to make for ourselves, our children, and for our children’s children.

It is for me the work of a lifetime to make it possible for people to live up to their own God-given potential. And there is no group of Americans who have lived that American Dream more than the Latino community. And you have done so much already to break down barriers, to remove obstacles, but we have work yet to do. There is still unfinished business. And that’s why it’s so important that we work as hard as we can to make sure that we have leadership in this country that will listen, and learn, and pay attention and act, and produce results, and solve our problems.

I am thrilled to be part of what I see as a great movement sweeping America. Some of you know that my first job in politics was in South Texas registering voters, and I went from door to door and, in fact, when I went back campaigning this past spring, from El Paso to Corpus Christi up to San Antonio, I met people who I had registered to vote all those years ago. I was going door to door in San Antonio in a neighborhood, and one of the men I worked with, actually, came to meet me and to reminisce, and we were standing there, and a big crowd had gathered in the middle of the street, and there were some young kids that had just come home from school, and one young girl was listening to us talk about the stories of what we did in 1972, and she goes, “You are old.” I said, “No, we’re experienced.”

We’ve lived through a lot of change, because when I think about where we were those years ago and where we are today, it just is such a great achievement, accomplished by the millions and millions of personal decisions to stay in school, to work hard, to start that small business, to be that first lawyer at that firm, to break that barrier in that medical school class, to be on the front lines of the community standing up for what is good and right for the children.

So I am excited by what I see that we can do together. But the agenda ahead of us is going to require every single one of us to remain committed, and it will be challenging, but it is something we must do. We’ve got to make sure this economy works for hardworking people. And for me it’s the people who get up every day and work as hard as they can and are falling behind.

Some of us are fortunate beyond the dreams of our parents or grandparents. A lot of people are working hard for that opportunity and they’re seeing the American Dream recede. So we’ve got to get this economy producing good jobs and creating shared prosperity again.

I am not going to rest until we have quality affordable health care for every single American.

This is an issue for everyone in America, but it’s particularly an issue for the Hispanic community, when one thinks about healthcare disparities and disparate treatment and unequal access and the number of the uninsured. So the mission to achieve quality affordable healthcare is one of the great moral and economic challenges that we must, must address.

We need comprehensive immigration reform in this country.

I am committed to that and I believe that it’s imperative that we work toward it. Right now people are really worried about what’s happening to their friends, their neighbors, people that they even read about in the papers. There’s so much that is just not right.

I was honored to have been endorsed by the United Farm Workers, and I was out there speaking to their convention about two weeks ago and, you know, I’ve worked on behalf of farm workers many years ago when I was working for the Children’s Defense Fund. And we need to recognize that a lot of people got their start in America, you know, picking the food that we all like to eat. And we need to make sure that we have a system that makes that possible.

Education remains one of the highest priorities in the Latino community. I hear it everywhere I go. I was introduced in Florida on Monday by a Latina from Puerto Rico now living in Central Florida, and she was so proud of her ten-year-old son who is doing so well in school. But she is already worried about whether she’ll be able to afford to send him to college.

How do we make sure we have preschool programs to get kids off to a good start? How do we make sure we have equal resources so that children are going to be given the same opportunities? How do we cut the dropout rate, which is still 50 percent in Latino America? And how do we make college affordable for the people willing to work hard to achieve that?

This is what people ask me all the time, and this is what we must work on together. And we have big issues like energy independence and the environment. We have all kinds of challenges in the housing market. Many Hispanic families, as I traveled from California to Arizona to Nevada to New Mexico to Texas to Florida were the victims of predatory lending and subprime loans, and worked all their life to afford a house and now are losing it because of the way they were abused.

So we’ve got lots and lots of work to do here at home, and we have so much work to do around the world.

And not only do we have to repair and restore our relations around the world, and rebuild the American military so that we don’t abuse the young men and women who sign up to serve our country, and keep them away from home year after year after year destroying their family life, and refuse to give our veterans the health care and the other services they need. We’ve got to once again stand for the best of American values as we pursue our interests in the word.

And I particularly want us to pay more attention to Latin America again. We have turned our backs on our neighbors to the south. And we’re going to pay a big price for it. We see that price being paid from some of the problems that we have with some of the current regimes. It’s because we have abandoned the effort to create those better relationships and partnerships. So there’s a lot to be done. But in order to change the direction of our country, we have to be committed to the goal of having leaders that will actually work with us.

And I know this is not the time or place for a political speech in that sense, but I’m going to be travelling across the country on behalf of our ticket, on behalf of Senator Obama and Senator Biden, and making the case as to why we need Democrats back in the White House.

I know there are some of my strong supporters in this crowd, people who worked so hard for me. I know there are some delegates who got themselves elected to come to the Democratic Convention and I thank you one and all.

And I have to say, as hard as the campaign was, it was also a lot of fun. We had so much fun in so many places and, you know, whether it was a rally or a walk through the community in Los Angeles and eating some of the greatest tacos and enchiladas and tamales that anybody’s ever had. Or going along the valley in South Texas seeing so many of my longtime friends, having rallies, being in places that were so beautiful—I was in Brownsville one night and the crowd was so big I couldn’t see the end of it, and it was one of those beautiful South Texas nights, and you could smell the spring flowers in the air. And it was just a moment that transcended politics, and it also was another way for me to be able to make my case because when I later learned that the Bush Administration wanted to run the wall through the Brownsville University of Texas campus, I said, “Wait a minute. I was there. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Or whether it was being in the caravan in Puerto Rico, which, if you’ve never done, there’s never been an experience like it. And of course working in day-in and day-out with my friends in New York and New Jersey and all of the surrounding areas on behalf of all the issues that we care about. And I’m particularly grateful to my friends from New York because they have been stalwart advocates for the changes that we need.

So I mostly came to say “thank you.” Thank you for what you do every day in your personal and professional, public and political capacity. And to ask you to be part of making the change that America needs.

Today you’ve heard from Democrats here in the Senate as to why we must have a President we can work with. Everything we want to do will just amount to nothing if we don’t have a partner in the White House. You know, Aida Alvarez, who was part of my husband’s administration, knows so well that what has happened to the Small Business Administration under this President is tragic. Nobody’s being helped. Women, minorities, nobody is giving—being given the support, because there’s not any support coming from the White House. It’s not a priority.

So for our veterans, are we going to be able to take care of them or not? It depends on who our President happens to be.

So I thank you so much for everything you have done, are doing and will do. And I pledge that I will remain your partner and your advocate and your champion as we make America what we know it must be. Thank you all.

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