BARACK OBAMA: Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Well, I’m so grateful to be a recipient this award, to be keeping such

extraordinary company.

I, first of all, want to thank all of you who were involved in making this
possible. But the main thing that I want to do here is to just say how I’m
inspired by the young people who are represented here. Because I think
that’s the purpose ultimately of this foundation.

And I want to tell just a brief story, because Archbishop Tutu is here —
one of my heroes — and let you know where I was when I was about your
age.
I’m really dating myself now. Although I’m also betting Archbishop, because
back in 1979, I was a freshman in college at Occidental College in
California.
And I had had a somewhat rocky youth and teenage years. My father wasn’t
at home. I was growing up partly with my grandparents in high school. I’d
gotten into trouble occasionally, was what my mother called a good time
Charlie – meaning I wasn’t really serious in terms of my studies, in terms
my work.
Had some awareness of the world around me. Had some sense of injustice
and unfairness. But it wasn’t finally home, it wasn’t well developed.

And I remember in 1979, arriving as a freshman and doing what freshmen

do — trying to figure out what courses are and trying to change your study
habits and trying to identify about food in the cafeteria, what it is.

And we were visited on campus by a couple of gentlemen from South Africa,

who were representatives of the ANC, in 1979-1980. And they spoke about
their efforts to overcome apartheid.
And for about an hour, myself and a group of students listened to these
young men who were not much older than we were — described the
extraordinary struggles they were going through; the sacrifices that were
being made. People who were enduring jail and torture and beatings,
because they had a sense that somehow, some way, justice would prevail.

And that brief meeting, I think, in some ways changed my life, because what
it told me first of all was that ordinary people can do extraordinary things
when they’re given an opportunity.

We sometimes think that our leaders have to be — have fancy degrees, or

well educated, or some public office somewhere. These young men had none
of those things.

But what they possessed was an anger over injustice that they were able to
channel in a constructive positive way. And I thought to myself that they
gave me some sense of the direction that my life might go.

And so I became active in the anti-apartheid movement on campuses. And

I’m not sure we were particularly effective as I recall Occidental College
continued to refuse to divest, despite the various protests that we organized.
The students — I transferred to Columbia and there was similar resistance
on Columbia’s campus.

But over time I’d like to think that I was part of that mosaic that applied
pressure and ultimately helped those in South Africa achieve the
extraordinary liberation, that I would witness almost ten years later as a
lawsuit. And I remember the image of Nelson Mandela walking out of prison
and understanding that a seminal moment in history had occurred.
And that Mandela’s long march towards freedom was not his alone but was
part of thousands of footsteps, of millions of footsteps of people around the
world.

And I trace back me getting involved in politics to that moment, because as

a consequence of that organizing on a college campus, I became a
community organizer. As a consequence of community organizer, I, after
going back to law school, became a civil rights attorney.

As consequence of being a civil rights attorney, I entered the state

legislature and I now stand before you as a United States Senator and as a
candidate for president.

And so the primary message I guess I have in receiving this award is that all
of you represent enormous potential, enormous possibility for change,
because we all know that injustice still exists. It just exists here in the
United States in every four-neighborhood and every inner city and every
rural community, all across the country.

There is quiet desperation. Young people’s lives are filled with sadness and
desperation, and anarchy and chaos. And obviously all around the world, we
see those same symptoms of hopelessness made manifest, in places
like Darfur, places like the Middle East, in places that too often are
forgotten about and not written about until they flare-up in tragedy.
So I hope that all of you who are on the brink of doing extraordinary things
decided to channel that talent and that energy, and that imagination to
figuring out how do you move the process along for better history; you
know, how do you put your shoulder against the wheel and move that
boulder up the hill?

And I’m absolutely confident that if all of you take up that challenge, the
world is waiting for you, ready to be changed. Because I think we live in this
moment in history right now where the hunger for change, the hunger for
something new, the desire to break out of the ordinary, the self-interest of
the pedi, the trivial is everywhere. And they are waiting for you.

And so I hope that as you see the recipients of this award, you recognize
that it’s actually more of tool to give you a little spark and drive you in the
wonderful directions that I hope your lives take in the years to come.

So thank you very much.