Tim Walz celebrates Shepard family in HRC National Dinner speech
In a speech Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner, Minnesota governor and 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz discussed how he came to know the Shepard family when working in Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act. “When the final vote was coming up in the House, it was going to be close,” he said. “I walked through the House floor, through the tunnels, from the Longworth House Office Building over to the Capitol, and I made that walk with Matthew’s mom, Judy Shepard, and the sheriff who found Matthew’s body tied to that fence post in Wyoming, and I remember walking with a mother who lost her son and hearing the sheriff tell me the only place he wasn’t bloody was where the tears ran down Matthew’s eyes.” “I watched a mother and the unbelievable pain that I couldn’t even fathom, to lose a child this way, walk with her head held high to make sure that none of the rest of us ever have to get a call from someone,” Walz said.
The governor invited the crowd to applaud for Judy and Dennis Shepard, who were in attendance, adding that the room was full of “heroes” like them who had, in ways both big and small, endeavored “to make people’s lives a little bit easier.” Walz began his speech by highlighting the many ways in which Vice President Kamala Harris has fought “every single day on the side of the American people,” relentlessly working to expand rights and protections for the LGBTQ community throughout her career and promising to build on this legacy if she is elected president in November. “As the DA of San Francisco, Vice President Harris took one of the toughest stances in the nation against hate crimes,” he said. “She led the fight against the hateful gay and transgender panic defense.” Walz continued, “she went on to become the attorney general of the largest state in the country, and the moment it arrived, to defend marriage equality.
