Al Franken Weeps While Speaking In Support Of Violence Against Women Act (VIDEO)

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) broke into tears on Thursday while giving a speech about the Violence Against Women Act.

Franken was on the Senate floor advocating for the renewal of the landmark bill when he choked up while recalling the domestic violence work of Sheila Wellstone. Wellstone was the wife of the late senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone. The couple died in a plane crash in 2002.

Franken struggled to keep back tears while repeating Sheila Wellstone's words on violence and peace.

From his floor speech:

Madam President, Sheila Wellstone isn't with us today. Sheila, Paul and their daughter Marcia were tragically taken from us too soon, but Sheila's example is with us. Her legacy is with us and her words are with us.

I'd like to close with those. Here's what Sheila said: We really have to look at the values that guide us. We have to work toward an ethic that respects every individual, to be physically and emotionally safe. No one, regardless of age, color, gender, background, any other factor, deserves to be physically or emotionally unsafe. In a just society, we pledge to act together to ensure that each individual is safe from harm. In a just society -- I think we have to say this over and over and over -- we are not going to tolerate the violence.

Madam President, the VAWA reauthorization bill is another step toward a more just society as Sheila described it. And I look forward to it becoming law.

Comments

[Chris Carlen]

09:57 PM on 05/24/2012

MAN UP.

[IGNSTHMD]

03:40 AM on 07/20/2012

what makes a person a man?

[Chris Carlen]

05:50 AM on 07/20/2012

If you need to ask,you must be one.

[Harbinger08]

12:02 PM on 05/21/2012

Al Franken is going to be the senator from Minnesota for many, many years. You did good, Minnesotans. This helps make up for Michelle Bachmann.

[Joan Brooks]

11:55 AM on 05/21/2012

This is such an important and emotional issue. The constant advertisements make it seem like a circus! I understand the need to make money, but this is ridiculous. Please, please put one advertisement at the beginning. You are diluting the message!

[LGgillespie]

10:53 AM on 05/21/2012

I am proud to say the more I follow of our Senator the more I like him as a senator and a person. Before I didn't really was paying attention to going on of our nation nor our state. Now I am proud of him. So far, I am not so sure of Governor Dayton.

[Puzzlr]

10:48 AM on 05/21/2012

I hope they pass the un-watered down version. The watered down version was written with the help of a guy who runs a mail order bride company. The law has provisions to help women who come here and are abused by their husbands. The law will allow them to get visas and green cards without being married to an American (as long as there is abuse). He wants that provision removed so that the women are even more beholden to their abusers.

[jozie1958]

10:32 AM on 05/21/2012

Happy birthday, Sen. Franken! Keep up the good work!

[pulledhammy]

11:09 AM on 05/05/2012

Pa-thetic on so many levels from this ACTOR...could you get much lower than this

[ChaiKat]

09:27 AM on 05/21/2012

I guess when your wife and daughter get the tar beaten out of them and nobody cares about it you might remember his words. Go crawl back under your rock with your friends.

[florenzfan]

01:26 PM on 05/21/2012

pulledprick.

[pulledhammy]

06:59 PM on 05/26/2012

no thanks, I'm not your kind.

[Ivan Liedto]

06:07 PM on 04/29/2012

Oh boo hoo hoo.

How about Al providing some comic relief to the thousands of fathers who have been unjustly denied access to their kids due to vengeful ex wives manipulating the system with their false allegations of abuse.

Perhaps he could donate some of his salary to pay for an attorney for some poor person who was falsely charged?

How about an amendment that would provide funding to local prosecutors to do their jobs and convict those who knowingly file false allegations of abuse?

Perhaps an amendment that would make the name of this gender neutral?

[zogimperator]

09:35 PM on 04/30/2012

I see that you're very angry. However, that doesn't invalidate the very real problem of violence against women.

I got hammered absolutely senseless in a divorce by a conniving woman who got my son away from me and turned him against me quite deliberately.

And you know what? I don't say "oh boo hoo hoo" when someone advocates for women's safety. Because all women didn't do that to me. Just one did. Maybe you should man up.

[Mary-Lee Lutz]

09:17 AM on 05/21/2012

Thank you!

[barbarahoward49]

09:55 AM on 05/21/2012

zog, the woman who "hammered" you was a fool. You are a real man.

[rsicorp]

02:38 PM on 04/29/2012

I'm sure he is all for not having to identify yourself in order to vote too. When I ask myself why on Earth would ANY American want to allow anyone who happens to be in the country on voting day to cast a vote is beyond comprehension. But then again, the liberal mind also defies comprehension.

[zogimperator]

09:36 PM on 04/30/2012

Do you have anything to say on the topic at hand, or are you working out some issues and it doesn't really matter to you if anybody else knows what you're talking about?

[marpel]

07:28 AM on 04/29/2012

Senator Al Franken weeping over the loss of old friends and asking the Senate to up-hold a bill to protect women from domestic violence, and then we have Gov. DICK Scott of FL saying "na we don't need not stinking $1.5 million (only 0.000025% of their current fiscal budget) for women's shelters." "The over 350 women on the waiting list for a current shelter can continue to stay in their present dangerous living situations and wait for a spot."

Kinda makes you wanna give Al a big kiss doesn't it.

We miss you Paul and Sheila. Peace be with you.

[dawlishgal]

08:32 AM on 04/29/2012

f and f

[chughes]

06:37 PM on 04/30/2012

In some areas, there is a two year waiting list for affordable housing. It can take a victim up to a year or more to find sufficient employment in today's economy (in some instances abusers will not allow victims to work/or sabotage their employment). Victims and their children rely on support services for emergency housing, advocacy, legal services, counseling, food, and additional support services. Not all victims are women.

[John Rice JR]

08:49 PM on 04/28/2012

No press is bad press. Dude has been very lackluster, and some would even say lazy. His focus groups told him to do something dramatic to garner attention, and he did.
He has zero chance to be reelected as Coleman will clean his clock this time around...as there won't be a third party candidate to take away his votes (same affect Perot had on Bush 1).

[marpel]

07:08 AM on 04/29/2012

Rice you are delusional.

[rsicorp]

02:29 PM on 04/29/2012

These hardcore liberals in our government can do the worst job possible and yet their supporters think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[Puzzlr]

10:40 AM on 05/21/2012

Link please. I'd really like to the focus group documentation.

[Sam Bark]

07:34 PM on 04/28/2012

Woooooooooooooow, the crocodile is weeping.......LoL

[dawlishgal]

08:37 AM on 04/29/2012

Woooooooo. the trolls have been summoned out from under their bridges to come here and gloat at the tears of a guy who lost 3 good friends in a plane crash, and is trying to honor the memory of one by advocating a cause that she was unable to see through to fruition. Very funny situation, right. One much funnier TO SOME PEOPLE than a guy weeping because somebody gave him a shiny new gavel, and we didn't hear much mocking of THAT from either side.

[SharonDoc]

06:42 PM on 04/28/2012

He learned that talent on SNL- a big phony

[TomDi]

08:12 PM on 04/28/2012

My thoughts exactly.

[barbarahoward49]

10:14 AM on 05/21/2012

You wouldn't recognize passion if it came up and smacked you in the face.

[Middle Class Majority]

02:01 PM on 04/28/2012

It almost makes me weep to think that this clown is a Senator!

[dawlishgal]

07:46 AM on 04/29/2012

it makes me weep to think that the speaker of the house bursts into tears at the sight of a shiny new gavel, and still the trolls come here to make fun of a man who is still grieving for three friends who were killed in a plane crash nd who is trying to take up a cause of the dead man, a former US senator. . One of the trolls even admitted that he had attended the Wellstone memorial, taking up a place that could have been used by a friend or admirer. Clearly , from the tone of his remarks, he was there it find some smidgen of removed-from-context remark or another, anything that could be used to smear the party and to smear Mondale (who came in at the last minute to replace Wellstone) and make the election of Coleman more likely. This is so typical of the karlrovean/rushlimbaughian ends-justify-the-means ethic, infiltrating a memorial service in order to find something/anything to discredit the political party of 3 dead people that it almost makes me weep. But I did my weeping when this same political party set about to destroy the reputations of men who served honorably in combat. Why would any decent person do this? None would, but it was necessary to wallpaper over the cowardice of their own candidates.

[rsicorp]

02:33 PM on 04/29/2012

Defending Franken is a waste of words. You wasted a LOT of words.

[Kevin Arthus]

01:45 AM on 05/01/2012

The article is about Franken speaking on the senate floor, not at a memorial. And, although sad, his friends died 10 years ago, not last month. His grieving should be over now.

[blogger521]

01:45 PM on 04/28/2012

Cry babies, all of them. Romney 2012!

[dawlishgal]

08:38 AM on 04/29/2012

Are you advocating that we remove Boehner too? Just asking.

[Chris Carlen]

06:00 AM on 07/20/2012

Yes we should and all the rest of them that make spectacles of themselves while working for us.Including the song and dance teams.