Michelle Obama: The First Lady’s Speech

Michelle Obama: The First Lady’s Speech

First Lady Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (Michelle Obama) is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th and current President, Barack Obama. She is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Through her four main initiatives, she has become a role model for women and an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls education.

When people ask First Lady Michelle Obama to describe herself, she doesn’t hesitate to say that first and foremost, she is Malia and Sasha’s mom.

But before she was a mother — or a wife, lawyer, or public servant — Michelle Obama was Fraser and Marian Robinson’s daughter.

The Robinsons lived in a brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago. Fraser was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department, and despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at a young age, he hardly ever missed a day of work. Marian stayed home to raise Michelle and her older brother Craig, skillfully managing a busy household filled with love, laughter, and important life lessons.

“One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. “ Michelle Obama

A product of Chicago public schools, Michelle Obama studied sociology and African-American studies at Princeton University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, she joined the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she later met Barack Obama, the man who would become the love of her life.

After a few years, Michelle Obama decided her true calling was working with people to serve their communities and their neighbors. She served as assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago’s City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares youth for public service. In 1996, Mrs. Obama joined the University of Chicago with a vision of bringing campus and community together.

As Associate Dean of Student Services, Michelle Obama developed the university’s first community service program, and under her leadership as Vice-President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center, volunteerism skyrocketed.

Michelle Obama has continued her efforts to support and inspire young people during her time as First Lady.

We are living in very strange times no doubt. The current Political scenario sure can be stranger than fiction, especially when we refer to Women’s role in our society. 2016 seems to be the year of contradictions, where true American values are being questioned in their core, and obsolete perspectives are brought back to the Homefront, almost like they had never left. The disrespect for Women has been a widespread practice not only in the political arena, here at home but several segments of our society worldwide. The wave of neo-conservative perspective is effecting a deliberate distortion on the progressive beacon we have been as a nation, many times as a role Model to the rest of the world.

During the 2016 year, we saw cases such as the one with Brock Turner, a young athlete that raped an unconscious girl on campus being supported by a corrupt system that protects wealthy abusers and sexual predators on College Campus. We watched in dismay the crumbling of the network of Women health clinics that catered for the Health of low-income women across the country in the name of manipulation and government control. We witness the increase of disrespectful rhetoric that lessen our conquered territory on equality, casting a shadow on our roles as active part of the society.

The divisive rhetoric evokes taints of shame and humiliation to many of us, about our looks, about how do we should control our health, or what are our rights as global citizens. Empowering Women and Girls have been a signature of Michelle Obama’s groundbreaking work as the nation’s First Lady for the past eight years. Her impeccable style, her fearless ways, and her inspiring speeches brought back the certainty that there is a standard underline thread running through our veins that unite the women of this country: A sisterhood of mothers, daughters, sisters and best friends. Michelle understood that when you empower women, you empower communities.

Michelle Obama recently delivered an unforgettable speech in which she talked about what it means to be a woman in a society dominated by men. “I feel it so personally,” she said. “The shameful comments about our bodies, the disrespect of our ambitions and our intellect, the belief you can do anything you want to a woman? It’s cruel; it’s frightening. And the truth is that it hurts — It hurts.” Her campaign speeches have a historical quality about them, and they’ll go down in history just as she will.

Michelle Obama’s Speech On Donald Trump’s Alleged Treatment Of Women

“…On Tuesday, at the White House, we celebrated the International Day of the Girl and Let Girls Learn, and it was a wonderful celebration. It was the last event that I’m going to be doing as First Lady for Let Girls Learn. And I had the pleasure of spending hours talking to some of the most amazing young women you will ever meet, young girls here in the U.S. and all around the world. And we talked about their hopes and their dreams. We talked about their aspirations. See, because many of these girls have faced unthinkable obstacles just to attend school, jeopardizing their personal safety, their freedom, risking the rejection of their families and communities.

So I thought it would be important to remind these young women how valuable and precious they are. I wanted them to understand that the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls. And I told them that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them and that they should make their voices heard in the world. And I walked away feeling so inspired, just like I’m inspired by all the young people here — and these girls so uplifted me. That was Tuesday.

And now, here I am, out on the campaign trail in an election where we have consistently been hearing hurtful, hateful language about women — language that has been painful for so many of us, not just as women, but as parents trying to protect our children and raise them to be caring, respectful adults, and as citizens who think that our nation’s leaders should meet basic standards of human decency.

The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for President of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted. So while I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.

This is not something that we can ignore. It’s not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season. Because this was not just a “lewd conversation.” This wasn’t just locker-room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.

And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life. And I have to tell you that I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I’m sure that many of you do too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman.