[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 129 (Tuesday, September 4, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10046-H10047]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000
   IN MEMORY OF LEON SHULL, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICANS FOR 
                           DEMOCRATIC ACTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, during the recess recently, 
one of the men from whom I learned a great deal, I hope with some 
impact about how to be a successful advocate for a better and fairer 
world, died.
  Leon Shull had been, for many years, the executive director of 
Americans for Democratic Action. He had a passion for social justice 
which he combined with a clear-headedness about how to get there that 
was extraordinary.
  Too often in our politics, we see a divide between the people with 
passion, the people with reason, people who feel very, very deeply 
about the need to correct injustice, and people who are able to 
calculate in a cool manner what types of political activity will be 
effective. Leon Shull was one of those rare people who combined both of 
them in a way that made each of those qualities more important. There 
wasn't any trade-off with Leon between his pragmatic and clear-headed 
political analysis and his strong idealism. His idealism and his 
pragmatism worked together. They strengthened each other.
  He was determined to be effective because he felt that he had a moral 
obligation not simply to will a fairer world, a world with fewer poor 
children, a world with less discrimination based on race or gender or 
sexual orientation or religion, a world with less widespread killing 
for unjustified reasons; he felt the moral obligation to diminish those 
things to the extent that any one human being could. And because he 
felt morally obligated to do it, he knew he was morally obligated to be 
effective.
  He worked with many people who would give in from time to time to 
that wonderful feeling of just lashing out, of just letting your 
emotions run. But he knew the work to which he was committed was too 
important for that, that he owed the children and the victims of racism 
and poor, elderly people and working people thrown out of jobs, people 
in other parts of this world living in dire poverty, he knew that he 
owed them not just goodwill, but a commitment to making their lives 
better.
  He was for many years the leader of Americans for Democratic Action.

[[Page H10047]]

Americans for Democratic Action immediately after World War II under 
the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt and John Kenneth Galbraith and 
Walter Reuther and others was a very important organization in which 
liberals fought a two-front ideologic war against conservatives who 
wanted to retreat from the New Deal on the one side and from Communists 
who were anti-democratic on the other.
  As time went on, the Americans for Democratic Action, ADA as it is 
known, became less important, probably because the Democratic Party, I 
believe, moved more in that direction. But it was still important to 
have that organization then as it is now as an independent force, and 
Leon Shull kept that organization vibrant.
  There is an expression used about boxers who are fighting in a weight 
class heavier than their own, that they are able to punch above their 
weight, that they have a strength and a physical ability that allows 
them to be competitive with people bigger and theoretically beyond 
their reach.
  Leon Shull punched above his weight, and ADA under him punched above 
its weight. He was in this city for many years a beacon for those of us 
who believed that the liberal tenets of Franklin Roosevelt were still 
very relevant, that a wealthy society in the United States had both the 
obligation and the resources to diminish inequality, not to dispose of 
it altogether in a capitalistic system, but to diminish it.
  Leon Shull was an ally of people fighting racism, of people fighting 
poverty, of people fighting unjust wars, of people fighting for 
rational environmental policy, of people fighting for free speech and 
fairness. And with all that, he was a gentle man. He was a fierce 
advocate of these policies, but in personal demeanor a man of 
gentleness, a man who inspired the love and affection of those who 
worked with him. In later years he retired and he moved away from 
Washington, and I saw much less of him.
  Mr. Speaker, when I read of his death, I realized as I thought about 
it all that he is one of the people from whom I learned a great deal. 
To his wife, Anne, to his daughters and others who have lost this great 
man, I send my deepest sympathy; and to his memory I express my 
gratitude for being the model of an effective liberal.

                          ____________________