Tim Ryan

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for putting this together. You can see that Ohio and Michigan can periodically get along with each other.

I am honored to rise for a few minutes here, Mr. Speaker, to address this House for the final time as a sitting Member of Congress. I think it is appropriate to begin with the preamble to the United States Constitution.

``We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.''

``We the people.'' This is the people's House. There have been 12,421 Members of Congress who have sat here in this Capitol. Of almost 700 million people, who at one point or another were citizens of the United States, 700 million, and a little over 12,000 were sent here to govern this country, to meet the obligations that the Founding Fathers put in the preamble of the United States Constitution.

I will tell you, there have been some great Americans, some of the best, who have served in this Chamber. But there also have been scoundrels, crooks, and liars. This is the people's House. This is the people's House, so it has reflected over, in a few years, 250 years, the world's oldest republic.

If there is one thing I hope that all Members and all citizens can grasp and touch, it is gratitude. I know I feel tremendously grateful to come from a working-class family in Ohio and end up here for 20 years serving the communities that I grew up in, that I played sports in, that I raised my family in. It is an honor to be a citizen of the United States.

This country has fed more people, clothed more people, cured more people, and liberated more people than all the other countries in the world combined.

I think to get out of this mess that we are in, the polarization, the hate, the anger, the fear, the first step out of that is with gratitude. If we all start from a place of gratitude, we will have a much different opinion of the country, of each other, and of what is possible for us, because this country has always done great things. But we do great things when we are together, when we embrace normalcy, when we embrace decency, when we embrace compassion.

When you walk through these doors, you are a leader, and you are charged with making the tough decisions, the hard decisions, not the easy decisions, not the ones that are going to make your next election a little easier. But the challenge today is to be called to lead and lead vigorously, lead boldly, because that is what the world needs us to do right now.

This country has always been innovative. We need to enter an era of reform, of reconciliation, and of innovation across the board.

The systems are all broken. The economic system is broken, the immigration system is broken, the welfare system is broken, the education system is broken, and we are not going to fix these if we are not decent to each other, if we don't talk to each other.

Some of the solutions will be conservative, some will be liberal and progressive, but it is through that conflict, those arguments and debates that this very Chamber was set up to do that we come to the best possible solution, and that, ultimately, is what we are talking about.

We the people have got to come together. As we approach the 250th anniversary of this country, let us renew our commitment to each other so that we can meet President Lincoln's charge ``that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.''

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Staughton Lynd, who passed away on Thursday, November 17, 2022. He was 92 years old.

Staughton was born in 1929, the son of Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd. Staughton grew up in New York City, during the Great Depression and World War II. He went through the schools of the Ethical Culture Society, where he took to heart the words in the auditorium, ``The place where men meet to seek the highest is holy ground.'' As a senior at Fieldston, he was elected class president and captain of the baseball team. Staughton received a Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard, Master of Arts and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees in history from Columbia and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Chicago.

Staughton Lynd and Alice Lee Niles met in Cambridge, Mass., in the summer of 1950, shortly after the beginning of the Korean war. They were married a year later, at the Stony Run Friends Meetinghouse in Baltimore, where Alice's parents were members.

During the mid-1950s, they lived in an ecumenical religious community in northeast Georgia. Several years later, they joined the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.

Eager to participate in the Southern civil rights movement, in 1961, Staughton accepted an offer to teach history at Spelman College in Atlanta.

In 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) recruited him to be coordinator of the ``Freedom Schools'' for black teenagers as part of the interracial ``Mississippi Summer Project.'' At a time when whites were becoming less welcome in the civil rights movement in the South, in 1964, Staughton accepted a position teaching history at Yale University and the Lynds moved to New Haven, Connecticut.

Staughton chaired the first march against the war in Vietnam in Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1965. On August 9, 1965, he was arrested together with Bob Moses and David Dellinger at the Assembly of Unrepresented People in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators sought to declare peace with the people of Vietnam on the steps of the Capitol. In December 1965 through January 1966, Staughton, along with Tom Hayden and Herbert Aptheker made a controversial trip to Hanoi in hopes of clarifying the peace terms that might be acceptable to the North Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Because of his notoriety and controversy over his advocacy

and practice of civil disobedience, he was denied tenure at Yale and was blacklisted as an historian.

In order to respond to the needs of workers whose problems were not being addressed, Staughton went to law school in 1973. Following his graduation in 1976, the Lynds moved to the Youngstown area, shortly before the steel mill closings began. While employed by Northeast Ohio Legal Services, an office that represented clients who could not afford to pay a lawyer, Staughton served as attorney for the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley in its unsuccessful efforts to implement a plan for worker/community ownership of the area steel mills: Local 1330 vs. U.S. Steel.

After retirement in 1996, the Lynds became deeply involved in advocacy for prisoners. They served as co-counsel in a class action on placement and retention of prisoners in solitary confinement at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. A favorable decision in Austin vs. Wilkinson (N.D. Ohio, 2002), was affirmed in part by the U.S. Supreme Court in Wilkinson vs. Austin (2005).

Among many books and articles by Staughton Lynd, some of which were co-authored with Alice Lynd, the following titles reflect their many concerns over the years: Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism with Alice Lynd; Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History with Alice Lynd; Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers; The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings; Living Inside Our Hope: A Steadfast Radical's Thoughts on Rebuilding the Movement; Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E. P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below; ``We Are All Leaders'': The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930 with Andrej Grubacic, Wobblies and Zapatistas; Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History with Daniel Gross; Labor Law for the Rank and Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law with Sam Bahour and Alice Lynd; Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians; Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising with Alice Lynd; Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together; Moral Injury and Nonviolent Resistance: Breaking the Cycle of Violence in the Military and Behind Bars, forthcoming from Haymarket Press, 2023, edited by Luke Stewart; and My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd's Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam War.

Staughton Lynd is survived by Alice Lynd, his wife of 71 years; their daughter, Barbara L. Bond; their son, Lee Rybeck Lynd; their daughter, Marta Lynd-Altan; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of John Elliker, who passed Monday, November 28, 2022. He was 100 years old.

John was born on April 7, 1922, in Decatur, Indiana. The son of the late Reverend Reuben and Marth C. Elliker. He was raised in Galion, Ohio while his father pastored over First United Church of Christ (formerly known as First Reformed Church) for 29 years. After graduating from high school, John would travel down to Oxford to continue his education at Miami University, where he would major in Economics and History. He would take a break during his studies to serve in the United

States Navy during World War II, and return after the end of the war. After graduating, John would go on to our nation's capital and complete his graduate studies from Georgetown; he would major in International Law while there. Later on, he would attend the Army War College and complete his studies in International Relations.

In 1948, John married his beloved wife, Janet (Carpenter) Elliker of Detroit, Michigan who also attended Miami University and preceded John in death in 2014 and was known in Washington, D.C. and in Ohio as a dedicated Bible Study leader and as a sportswoman. They were married 66 years.

John subsequently served with the National Security Agency (NSA). During his years with NSA, he undertook assignments across the world, with specific ties to Asia and Europe, and at the National Headquarters and Processing Center in the Washington, D.C. area. His journey would take him to the highest executive levels of the agency. His senior positions included Director of Foreign Relations, Director of Field Activity, and Assistant NSA Deputy Director for Policy. Following retirement, John and Jan moved to New Philadelphia in 1988.

John was active in community affairs in various capacities. He served with the Tuscarawas County Chamber of Commerce, the Tuscarawas Philharmonic, and the local Kiwanis Club. He was active as a member of the Dover Alliance Church serving over the years in several positions such as elder, church governing board and board secretary as well as musical activities. John frequently lectured on foreign affairs for local organizations. He was a member of the Union Country Club where both he and Jan were ardent golfers.

John is survived by four children, John Jr. (Susan) of Virginia Beach, VA, James (Roula) of Fleetwood, PA, Jody (Bill) Weisgarber of New Philadelphia, OH, and Jeffry (Marcia) of Durham, NC, 15 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren. In addition to his parents and wife, John is preceded in death by two brothers, Richard of Cable, WI, and Bernard of Ellicott City, MD.