- August 27, 2020 -
President Trump's Republican Nomination Acceptance Remarks
*As Prepared for Delivery*
Friends, delegates, and distinguished guests: I stand before you tonight honored by your support; proud of the extraordinary progress we have made together over the last four years; and brimming with confidence in the bright future we will build for America over the NEXT four years!
As we begin this evening, our thoughts are with the wonderful people who have just come through the wrath of Hurricane Laura. We are working closely with state and local officials in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, sparing no effort to save lives. While the hurricane was fierce, one of the strongest to make landfall in 150 years, the casualties and damage were far less than thought possible only 24 hours ago. This is due to the great work of FEMA, law enforcement, and the individual states. I will be going this weekend. We are one national family, and we will always protect, love and care for each other.
Here tonight are the people who have made my journey possible, and filled my life with so much joy.
For her incredible service to our nation and its children, I want to thank our magnificent First Lady. I also want to thank my amazing daughter Ivanka for that introduction, and to all of my children and grandchildren – I love you more than words can express. I know my brother Robert is looking down on us right now from Heaven. He was a great brother and was very proud of the job we are doing. Let us also take a moment to show our profound appreciation for a man who has always fought by our side, and stood up for our values – a man of deep faith and steadfast conviction: Vice President Mike Pence. Mike is joined by his beloved wife, a teacher and military mom, Karen Pence.
My fellow Americans, tonight, with a heart full of gratitude and boundless optimism, I proudly accept this nomination for President of the United States.
The Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, goes forward united, determined, and ready to welcome millions of Democrats, Independents, and anyone who believes in the GREATNESS of America and the righteous heart of the American People.
In a new term as President, we will again build the greatest economy in history – quickly returning to full employment, soaring incomes, and RECORD prosperity! We will DEFEND AMERICA against all threats, and protect America against all dangers. We will LEAD AMERICA into new frontiers of ambition and discovery, and we will reach for new heights of national achievement. We will rekindle new faith in our values, new pride in our history, and a new spirit of unity that can ONLY be realized through love for our country. Because we understand that America is NOT a land cloaked in darkness, America is the torch that enlightens the entire world.
Gathered here at our beautiful and majestic White House – known all over the world as the People's House – we cannot help but marvel at the miracle that is our Great American Story. This has been the home of larger-than-life figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson who rallied Americans to bold visions of a bigger and brighter future. Within these walls lived tenacious generals like Presidents Grant and Eisenhower who led our soldiers in the cause of freedom. From these grounds, Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on a daring expedition to cross a wild and uncharted continent. In the depths of a bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln looked out these very windows upon a half-completed Washington Monument – and asked God, in His Providence, to save our union. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt welcomed Winston Churchill, and just inside, they set our people on a course to victory in the Second World War.
In recent months, our nation, and the entire planet, has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy. Like those brave Americans before us, we are meeting this challenge. We are delivering lifesaving therapies, and will produce a vaccine BEFORE the end of the year, or maybe even sooner! We will defeat THE VIRUS, end the pandemic, and emerge stronger than ever before.
What united generations past was an unshakable confidence in America's destiny, and an unbreakable faith in the American People. They knew that our country is blessed by God, and has a special purpose in this world. It is that conviction that inspired the formation of our union, our westward expansion, the abolition of slavery, the passage of civil rights, the space program, and the overthrow of fascism, tyranny and communism.
This towering American spirit has prevailed over every challenge, and lifted us to the summit of human endeavor.
And yet, despite all of our greatness as a nation, everything we have achieved is now endangered. This is the most important election in the history of our country. At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas.
This election will decide whether we SAVE the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to DEMOLISH our cherished destiny.
It will decide whether we rapidly create millions of high paying jobs, or whether we crush our industries and send millions of these jobs overseas, as has foolishly been done for many decades.
Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.
And this election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.
At the Democrat National Convention, Joe Biden and his party repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic, and social injustice. So tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?
In the left’s backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just, and exceptional nation on earth. Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins.
Our opponents say that redemption for YOU can only come from giving power to THEM. This is a tired anthem spoken by every repressive movement throughout history.
But in this country, we don't look to career politicians for salvation. In America, we don't turn to government to restore our souls – we put our faith in Almighty God.
Joe Biden is not the savior of America's soul – he is the destroyer of America's Jobs, and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American Greatness.
For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses, and told them he felt their pain – and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship their jobs to China and many other distant lands. Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing the dreams of American Workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders, and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars.
Four years ago, I ran for President because I could not watch this betrayal of our country any longer. I could not sit by as career politicians let other countries take advantage of us on trade, borders, foreign policy and national defense. Our NATO partners, as an example, were far behind in their defense payments. But at my strong urging, they agreed to pay $130 billion more a year. This will ultimately go to $400 billion. Secretary General Stoltenberg, who heads NATO, was amazed, and said that President Trump did what no one else was able to do.
From the moment I left my former life behind, and a good life it was, I have done nothing but fight for YOU.
I did what our political establishment never expected and could never forgive, breaking the cardinal rule of Washington Politics.
I KEPT MY PROMISES.
Together, we have ended the rule of the failed political class – and they are desperate to get their power back by any means necessary. They are angry at me because instead of putting THEM FIRST, I put AMERICA FIRST!
Days after taking office, we shocked the Washington Establishment and withdrew from the last Administration's job-killing Trans Pacific Partnership. I then approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, ended the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord, and secured, for the first time, American Energy Independence. We passed record-setting tax and regulation cuts, at a rate nobody had ever seen before. Within three short years, we built the strongest economy in the history of the world.
Washington insiders asked me NOT to stand up to China – they pleaded with me to let China continue stealing our jobs, ripping us off, and robbing our country blind. But I kept my word to the American People. We took the toughest, boldest, strongest, and hardest hitting action against China in American History.
They said that it would be impossible to terminate and replace NAFTA – but again, they were wrong. Earlier this year, I ended the NAFTA nightmare and signed the brand new U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement into law. Now auto companies and others are building their plants and factories in America, not firing their employees and deserting us.
In perhaps no area did the Washington special interests try harder to stop us than on my policy of pro-American immigration. But I refused to back down – and today America's borders are more secure than EVER before. We ENDED catch-and-release, stopped asylum fraud, took down human traffickers who prey on women and children, and we have deported 20,000 Gang Members and 500,000 Criminal Aliens. We have already built 300 miles of Border Wall – and we are adding 10 new miles every single week. The Wall will soon be complete, and it is working beyond our wildest expectations.
We are joined this evening by members of the Border Patrol union, representing our country's courageous border agents. Thank you all.
When I learned that the Tennessee Valley Authority laid off hundreds of American Workers and forced them to train their lower-paid foreign replacements, I promptly removed the Chairman of the Board. And now, those talented American Workers have been RE-HIRED and are back providing power to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. They have their old jobs back, and some are here with us this evening. Please stand.
Last month, I took on Big Pharma and signed orders that will massively lower the cost of your prescription drugs, and to give critically ill patients access to lifesaving cures, we passed the decades long-awaited RIGHT TO TRY legislation. We also passed VA Accountability and VA Choice.
By the end of my first term, we will have approved more than 300 federal judges, including two great new Supreme Court Justices. To bring prosperity to our forgotten inner cities, we worked hard to pass historic criminal justice reform, prison reform, opportunity zones, the long-term funding of historically black colleges and universities, and, before the China Virus came in, produced the best unemployment numbers for African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans ever recorded. I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president. I have done more in three years for the black community than Joe Biden has done in 47 years—and when I’m reelected, the best is yet to come!
When I took office, the Middle East was in total chaos. ISIS was rampaging, Iran was on the rise, and the war in Afghanistan had no end in sight. I withdrew from the terrible, one-sided Iran Nuclear Deal. Unlike many presidents before me, I kept my promise, recognized Israel's true capital and moved our Embassy to Jerusalem. But not only did we talk about it as a future site, we got it built. Rather than spending $1 billion on a new building as planned, we took an already owned existing building in a better location, and opened it at a cost of less than $500,000. We also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and this month we achieved the first Middle East peace deal in 25 years. In addition, we obliterated 100 percent of the ISIS Caliphate, and killed its founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Then, in a separate operation, we eliminated the world's number one terrorist, Qasem Soleimani.
Unlike previous administrations, I have kept America OUT of new wars – and our troops are coming home. We have spent nearly $2.5 trillion on completely rebuilding our military, which was very badly depleted when I took office. This includes three separate pay raises for our great warriors. We also launched the Space Force, the first new branch of the United States military since the Air Force was created almost 75 years ago.
We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years.
Biden’s record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime. He has spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. Biden voted for the NAFTA disaster, the single worst trade deal ever enacted; he supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization, one of the greatest economic disasters of all time. After those Biden calamities, the United States lost 1 in 4 manufacturing jobs. The laid off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and many other states didn't want Joe Biden's hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back!
As Vice President, he supported the Trans Pacific Partnership which would have been a death sentence for the U.S. Auto Industry; he backed the horrendous South Korea trade deal, which took many jobs from our country. He repeatedly supported mass amnesty for illegal immigrants. He voted FOR the Iraq War; he opposed the mission to take out Osama bin Laden; he opposed killing Soleimani; he oversaw the rise of ISIS, and cheered the rise of China as "a positive development" for America and the world. That's why China supports Joe Biden and desperately wants him to win.
China would own our country if Joe Biden got elected. Unlike Biden, I will hold them fully accountable for the tragedy they caused.
In recent months, our nation, and the rest of the world, has been hit with a once-in-a-century pandemic that China allowed to spread around the globe. We are grateful to be joined tonight by several of our incredible nurses and first responders – please stand and accept our profound thanks. Many Americans have sadly lost friends and cherished loved ones to this horrible disease. As one nation, we mourn, we grieve, and we hold in our hearts forever the memories of all of those lives so tragically taken. In their honor, we will unite. In their memory, we will overcome.
When the China Virus hit, we launched the largest national mobilization since World War II. Invoking the Defense Production Act, we produced the world's largest supply of ventilators. Not a single American who has needed a ventilator has been denied a ventilator. We shipped hundreds of millions of masks, gloves and gowns to our front line healthcare workers. To protect our nation’s seniors, we rushed supplies, testing kits, and personnel to nursing homes and long term care facilities. The Army Corps of Engineers built field hospitals, and the Navy deployed our great hospital ships.
We developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world. America has tested more than every country in Europe put together, and more than every nation in the Western Hemisphere COMBINED. We have conducted 40 million more tests than the next closest nation.
We developed a wide array of effective treatments, including a powerful anti-body treatment known as Convalescent Plasma that will save thousands of lives. Thanks to advances we have pioneered, the fatality rate has been reduced by 80 percent since April.
The United States has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country in the world. The European Union's case fatality rate is nearly three times higher than ours. Altogether, the nations of Europe have experienced a 30 percent greater increase in excess mortality than the United States.
We enacted the largest package of financial relief in American history. Thanks to our Paycheck Protection Program, we have saved or supported more than 50 million American jobs. As a result, we have seen the smallest economic contraction of any major western nation, and we are recovering much faster. Over the past three months, we have gained over 9 million jobs, a new record.
Unfortunately, from the beginning, our opponents have shown themselves capable of nothing but a partisan ability to criticize. When I took bold action to issue a travel ban on China, Joe Biden called it hysterical and xenophobic. If we had listened to Joe, hundreds of thousands more Americans would have died.
Instead of following the science, Joe Biden wants to inflict a painful shutdown on the entire country. His shutdown would inflict unthinkable and lasting harm on our nation's children, families, and citizens of all backgrounds.
The cost of the Biden shutdown would be measured in increased drug overdoses, depression, alcohol addiction, suicides, heart attacks, economic devastation and more. Joe Biden's plan is not a solution to the virus, but rather a surrender.
My Administration has a different approach. To save as many lives as possible, we are focusing on the science, the facts and the data. We are aggressively sheltering those at highest risk – especially the elderly – while allowing lower-risk Americans to safely return to work and school.
Most importantly, we are marshalling America's scientific genius to produce a vaccine in RECORD TIME. Under Operation Warp Speed, we have three different vaccines in the final stage of trials right now, years ahead of what has been achieved before. We are producing them in advance, so that hundreds of millions of doses will be quickly available.
We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together we will crush the virus.
At the Democrat convention, you barely heard a word about their agenda. But that's not because they don't have one. It's because their agenda is the most extreme set of proposals ever put forward by a major party nominee. Joe Biden may claim he is an "ally of the Light," but when it comes to his agenda, Biden wants to keep you completely in the dark.
He has pledged a $4 trillion tax hike on almost all American families, which will totally collapse our rapidly improving economy and once again record stock markets. On the other hand, just as I did in my first term, I will cut taxes even further for hardworking moms and dads, not raise them. We will also provide tax credits to bring jobs out of China BACK to America – and we will impose tariffs on any company that leaves America to produce jobs overseas. We'll make sure our companies and jobs stay in our country, as I've already been doing. Joe Biden's agenda is Made in China. My agenda is MADE IN THE USA.
Biden has promised to abolish the production of American oil, coal, shale, and natural gas – laying waste to the economies of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. Millions of jobs will be lost, and energy prices will soar. These same policies led to crippling power outages in California just last week. How can Joe Biden claim to be an "ally of the Light" when his own party can't even keep the lights on?
Joe Biden's campaign has even published a 110-page policy platform co-authored with Far-Left Senator Bernie Sanders. The Biden-Bernie Manifesto calls for suspending ALL removals of illegal aliens, implementing nationwide Catch-and-Release; and providing illegal aliens with free taxpayer-funded lawyers. Joe Biden recently raised his hand on the debate stage and promised to give away YOUR healthcare dollars to illegal immigrants. He also supports deadly Sanctuary Cities that protect criminal aliens. He promised to end national security travel bans from Jihadist nations, and he pledged to increase refugee admissions by 700 percent. The Biden Plan would eliminate America's borders in the middle of a global pandemic.
Biden also vowed to oppose School Choice and close down Charter Schools, ripping away the ladder of opportunity for Black and Hispanic children.
In a second term, I will EXPAND charter schools and provide SCHOOL CHOICE to every family in America. And we will always treat our teachers with the tremendous respect they deserve.
Joe Biden claims he has empathy for the vulnerable – yet the party he leads supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of BIRTH. Democrat leaders talk about moral decency, but they have no problem with stopping a baby's beating heart in the 9th month of pregnancy.
Democrat politicians refuse to protect innocent life, and then they lecture us about morality and saving America's soul? Tonight, we proudly declare that all children, born and unborn, have a GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO LIFE.
During the Democrat Convention, the words "Under God" were removed from the Pledge of Allegiance – not once, but twice. The fact is, this is where they are coming from.
If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.
Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism. If Joe Biden doesn't have the strength to stand up to wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders and his fellow radicals, then how is he ever going to stand up FOR you?
The most dangerous aspect of the Biden Platform is the attack on public safety. The Biden-Bernie Manifesto calls for Abolishing cash bail, immediately releasing 400,000 criminals onto your streets and into your neighborhoods.
When asked if he supports cutting police funding, Joe Biden replied, "Yes, absolutely." When Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the Minneapolis police department a cancer that is "rotten to the root," Biden wouldn't disavow her support and reject her endorsement – he proudly displayed it on his website.
Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will Defund Police Departments all across America. They will pass federal legislation to reduce law enforcement nationwide. They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland, Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden's America.
My administration will always stand with the men and women of law enforcement. Every day, police officers risk their lives to keep us safe, and every year, many sacrifice their lives in the line of duty.
One of these incredible Americans was Detective Miosotis Familia. She was part of a team of American Heroes called the NYPD or New York's Finest. Three years ago on Fourth of July weekend, Detective Familia was on duty in her vehicle when she was ambushed just after midnight and murdered by a monster who hated her purely for wearing the badge.
Detective Familia was a single mom – she'd recently asked for the night shift so she could spend more time with her kids. Two years ago, I stood in front of the U.S. Capitol alongside those children, and held their Grandmother's hand as they mourned their terrible loss and we honored Detective Familia's extraordinary life.
Detective Familia's three children are with us this evening. Genesis, Peter, and Delilah, we are so grateful to have you here tonight. I promise you that we will treasure your mom in our memories forever.
We must remember that the overwhelming majority of police officers in this country are noble, courageous and honorable. We have to give law enforcement, our police, back their power. They are afraid to act. They are afraid to lose their pension. They are afraid to lose their jobs, and by being afraid they are not able to do their jobs. And those who suffer most are the great people who they want so desperately to protect.
When there is police misconduct, the justice system must hold wrongdoers fully and completely accountable, and it will. But what we can never have in America – and must never allow – is MOB RULE. In the strongest possible terms, the Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and New York.
There is violence and danger in the streets of many Democrat-run cities throughout America. This problem could easily be fixed if they wanted to. We must always have law and order. All federal crimes are being investigated, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
When the anarchists started ripping down our statues and monuments, I signed an order, ten years in prison, and it all stopped.
During their convention, Joe Biden and his supporters remained completely silent about the rioters and criminals spreading mayhem in Democrat-Run Cities. In the face of left-wing anarchy and mayhem in Minneapolis, Chicago, and other cities, Joe Biden's campaign did not condemn it – they DONATED to it. At least 13 members of Joe Biden's campaign staff donated to a fund to bail out vandals, arsonists, looters, and rioters from jail.
Here tonight is the grieving family of retired police Captain David Dorn, a 38-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department. In June, Captain Dorn was shot and killed as he tried to protect a store from rioters and looters. We are honored to be joined tonight by his wife Ann and beloved family members: Brian and Kielen. To each of you: we will never forget the heroic legacy of Captain David Dorn.
As long as I am President, I will defend the absolute right of every American citizen to live in security, dignity, and peace.
If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them, but I, as your President, will not be a part of it. The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America Safe.
Last year, over 1,000 African-Americans were murdered as result of violent crime in just four Democrat-run cities. The top 10 most dangerous cities in the country are run by Democrats, and have been for decades. Thousands more African-Americans are victims of violent crime in these communities Joe Biden and the left ignore these American Victims. I NEVER WILL.
If the Radical Left takes power, they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America.
Just imagine if the so-called peaceful demonstrators in the streets were in charge of every lever of power in the U.S. Government.
Liberal politicians claim to be concerned about the strength of American institutions. But who, exactly, is attacking them? Who is hiring the radical professors, judges, and prosecutors? Who is trying to abolish immigration enforcement, and establish speech codes designed to muzzle dissent? In every case, the attacks on American institutions are being waged by the radical left.
Always Remember: they are coming after ME, because I am fighting for YOU.
We must reclaim our independence from the left’s repressive mandates. Americans are exhausted trying to keep up with the latest list of approved words and phrases, and the ever-more restrictive political decrees. Many things have a different name now, and the rules are constantly changing. The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it. The far-left wants to coerce you into saying what you know to be FALSE, and scare you out of saying what you know to be TRUE.
But on November 3rd, you can send them a thundering message they will never forget!
Joe Biden is weak. He takes his marching orders from liberal hypocrites who drive their cities into the ground while fleeing far from the scene of the wreckage. These same liberals want to eliminate school choice, while they enroll their children in the finest private schools in the land. They want to open our borders while living in walled-off compounds and communities. They want to defund the police, while they have armed guards for themselves.
This November, we must turn the page FOREVER on this failed political class. The fact is, I'm here, and they're not – and that's because of YOU. Together, we will write the next chapter of the Great American Story.
Over the next four years, we will make America into the Manufacturing Superpower of the World. We will expand Opportunity Zones, bring home our medical supply chains, and we will end our reliance on China once and for all.
We will continue to reduce taxes and regulations at levels not seen before.
We will create 10 million jobs in the next 10 months.
We will hire MORE police, increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and surge federal prosecutors into high-crime communities.
We will BAN deadly Sanctuary Cities, and ensure that federal healthcare is protected for American Citizens – not illegal aliens.
We will have strong borders, strike down terrorists who threaten our people, and keep America OUT of endless and costly foreign wars.
We will appoint prosecutors, judges, and justices who believe in enforcing the LAW – not their own political agenda.
We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.
We will uphold your religious liberty, and defend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
We will protect Medicare and Social Security.
We will always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.
We will END surprise medical billing, require price transparency, and further reduce the cost of prescription drugs and health insurance premiums.
We will greatly expand energy development, continuing to remain number one in the world, and keep America Energy Independent.
We will win the race to 5G, and build the world's best cyber and missile defense.
We will fully restore patriotic education to our schools, and always protect free speech on college campuses.
We will launch a new age of American Ambition in Space. America will land the first WOMAN on the moon – and the United States will be the first nation to plant its flag on Mars.
This is the unifying national agenda that will bring our country TOGETHER.
So tonight, I say again to all Americans: This is the most important election in the history of our country. There has never been such a difference between two parties, or two individuals, in ideology, philosophy, or vision than there is right now.
Our opponents believe that America is a depraved nation.
We want our sons and daughters to know the truth: America is the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world!
Our country wasn’t built by cancel culture, speech codes, and soul-crushing conformity. We are NOT a nation of timid spirits. We are a nation of fierce, proud, and independent American Patriots.
We are a nation of pilgrims, pioneers, adventurers, explorers and trailblazers who refused to be tied down, held back, or reined in. Americans have steel in their spines, grit in their souls, and fire in their hearts. There is no one like us on earth.
I want every child in America to know that you are part of the most exciting and incredible adventure in human history. No matter where your family comes from, no matter your background, in America, ANYONE CAN RISE. With hard work, devotion, and drive, you can reach any goal and achieve every ambition.
Our American Ancestors sailed across the perilous ocean to build a new life on a new continent. They braved the freezing winters, crossed the raging rivers, scaled the rocky peaks, trekked the dangerous forests, and worked from dawn till dusk. These pioneers didn’t have money, they didn’t have fame– but they had each other. They loved their families, they loved their country, and they loved their God!
When opportunity beckoned, they picked up their Bibles, packed up their belongings, climbed into covered wagons, and set out West for the next adventure. Ranchers and miners, cowboys and sheriffs, farmers and settlers – they pressed on past the Mississippi to stake a claim in the Wild Frontier.
Legends were born – Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill.
Americans built their beautiful homesteads on the Open Range. Soon they had churches and communities, then towns, and with time, great centers of industry and commerce. That is who they were. Americans build the future, we don’t tear down the past!
We are the nation that won a revolution, toppled tyranny and fascism, and delivered millions into freedom. We laid down the railroads, built the great ships, raised up the skyscrapers, revolutionized industry, and sparked a new age of scientific discovery. We set the trends in art and music, radio and film, sport and literature – and we did it all with style, confidence and flair. Because THAT is who we are.
Whenever our way of life was threatened, our heroes answered the call.
From Yorktown to Gettysburg, from Normandy to Iwo Jima, American Patriots raced into cannon blasts, bullets and bayonets to rescue American Liberty.
But America didn’t stop there. We looked into the sky and kept pressing onward. We built a 6 million pound rocket, and launched it thousands of miles into space. We did it so that two brave patriots could stand tall and salute our wondrous American flag planted on the face of the Moon.
For America, nothing is impossible.
Over the next four years, we will prove worthy of this magnificent legacy. We will reach stunning new heights. And we will show the world that, for America, no dream is beyond our reach.
Together, we are unstoppable. Together, we are unbeatable. Because together, we are the proud CITIZENS of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. And on November 3rd, we will make America safer, we will make America stronger, we will make America prouder, and we will make America GREATER than ever before! Thank you, God Bless You. God Bless America — GOODNIGHT!
Source: Donald Trump for President
Presidential Nominee Joe Biden's Full Remarks at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
MILWAUKEE—Below are Presidential Nominee Joe Biden's full remarks as prepared for delivery from night four of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
The Honorable Joe Biden
Democratic Nominee for President of the United States
Democratic National Convention
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Good evening.
Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way.
Give people light.
Those are words for our time.
The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.
Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness.
It's time for us, for We the People, to come together.
For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.
I am a proud Democrat and I will be proud to carry the banner of our party into the general election. So, it is with great honor and humility that I accept this nomination for President of the United States of America.
But while I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn't support me as I will for those who did.
That's the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.
It's a moment that calls for hope and light and love. Hope for our futures, light to see our way forward, and love for one another.
America isn't just a collection of clashing interests of Red States or Blue States.
We're so much bigger than that.
We're so much better than that.
Nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt pledged a New Deal in a time of massive unemployment, uncertainty, and fear.
Stricken by disease, stricken by a virus, FDR insisted that he would recover and prevail and he believed America could as well.
And he did.
And so can we.
This campaign isn't just about winning votes.
It's about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.
Winning it for the generous among us, not the selfish. Winning it for the workers who keep this country going, not just the privileged few at the top. Winning it for those communities who have known the injustice of the "knee on the neck". For all the young people who have known only an America of rising inequity and shrinking opportunity.
They deserve to experience America's promise in full.
No generation ever knows what history will ask of it. All we can ever know is whether we'll be ready when that moment arrives.
And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced.
Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm.
The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60's. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.
So, the question for us is simple: Are we ready?
I believe we are.
We must be.
All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.
America is at an inflection point. A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities.
We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided.
A path of shadow and suspicion.
Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.
This is a life-changing election that will determine America's future for a very long time.
Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy.
They are all on the ballot.
Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be.
That’s all on the ballot.
And the choice could not be clearer.
No rhetoric is needed.
Just judge this president on the facts.
5 million Americans infected with COVID-19.
More than 170,000 Americans have died.
By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.
More than 50 million people have filed for unemployment this year.
More than 10 million people are going to lose their health insurance this year.
Nearly one in 6 small businesses have closed this year.
If this president is re-elected we know what will happen.
Cases and deaths will remain far too high.
More mom and pop businesses will close their doors for good.
Working families will struggle to get by, and yet, the wealthiest one percent will get tens of billions of dollars in new tax breaks.
And the assault on the Affordable Care Act will continue until its destroyed, taking insurance away from more than 20 million people – including more than 15 million people on Medicaid – and getting rid of the protections that President Obama and I passed for people who suffer from a pre-existing condition.
And speaking of President Obama, a man I was honored to serve alongside for 8 years as Vice President. Let me take this moment to say something we don't say nearly enough.
Thank you, Mr. President. You were a great president. A president our children could – and did – look up to.
No one will say that about the current occupant of the office.
What we know about this president is if he's given four more years he will be what he's been the last four years.
A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up to dictators, and fans the flames of hate and division.
He will wake up every day believing the job is all about him. Never about you.
Is that the America you want for you, your family, your children?
I see a different America.
One that is generous and strong.
Selfless and humble.
It’s an America we can rebuild together.
As president, the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that's ruined so many lives.
Because I understand something this president doesn't.
We will never get our economy back on track, we will never get our kids safely back to school, we will never have our lives back, until we deal with this virus.
The tragedy of where we are today is it didn't have to be this bad.
Just look around.
It's not this bad in Canada. Or Europe. Or Japan. Or almost anywhere else in the world.
The President keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear. He keeps waiting for a miracle. Well, I have news for him, no miracle is coming.
We lead the world in confirmed cases. We lead the world in deaths.
Our economy is in tatters, with Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American communities bearing the brunt of it.
And after all this time, the president still does not have a plan.
Well, I do.
If I'm president on day one we'll implement the national strategy I've been laying out since March.
We'll develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately.
We'll make the medical supplies and protective equipment our country needs. And we'll make them here in America. So we will never again be at the mercy of China and other foreign countries in order to protect our own people.
We'll make sure our schools have the resources they need to be open, safe, and effective.
We'll put the politics aside and take the muzzle off our experts so the public gets the information they need and deserve. The honest, unvarnished truth. They can deal with that.
We'll have a national mandate to wear a mask-not as a burden, but to protect each other.
It's a patriotic duty.
In short, I will do what we should have done from the very beginning.
Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation.
He failed to protect us.
He failed to protect America.
And, my fellow Americans, that is unforgivable.
As president, I will make you this promise: I will protect America. I will defend us from every attack. Seen. And unseen. Always. Without exception. Every time.
Look, I understand it's hard to have hope right now.
On this summer night, let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the most.
I know how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.
But I've learned two things.
First, your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart. They will always be with you.
And second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose.
As God's children each of us have a purpose in our lives.
And we have a great purpose as a nation: To open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. To save our democracy. To be a light to the world once again.
To finally live up to and make real the words written in the sacred documents that founded this nation that all men and women are created equal. Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You know, my Dad was an honorable, decent man.
He got knocked down a few times pretty hard, but always got up.
He worked hard and built a great middle-class life for our family.
He used to say, "Joey, I don't expect the government to solve my problems, but I expect it to understand them."
And then he would say: "Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect. It's about your place in your community. It’s about looking your kids in the eye and say, honey, it’s going to be okay."
I've never forgotten those lessons.
That's why my economic plan is all about jobs, dignity, respect, and community. Together, we can, and we will, rebuild our economy. And when we do, we'll not only build it back, we'll build it back better.
With modern roads, bridges, highways, broadband, ports and airports as a new foundation for economic growth. With pipes that transport clean water to every community. With 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in America.
With a health care system that lowers premiums, deductibles, and drug prices by building on the Affordable Care Act he’s trying to rip away.
With an education system that trains our people for the best jobs of the 21st century, where cost doesn't prevent young people from going to college, and student debt doesn't crush them when they get out.
With child care and elder care that make it possible for parents to go to work and for the elderly to stay in their homes with dignity. With an immigration system that powers our economy and reflects our values. With newly empowered labor unions. With equal pay for women. With rising wages you can raise a family on. Yes, we're going to do more than praise our essential workers. We're finally going to pay them.
We can, and we will, deal with climate change. It's not only a crisis, it's an enormous opportunity. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.
And we can pay for these investments by ending loopholes and the president's $1.3 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent and the biggest, most profitable corporations, some of which pay no tax at all.
Because we don't need a tax code that rewards wealth more than it rewards work. I'm not looking to punish anyone. Far from it. But it's long past time the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this country paid their fair share.
For our seniors, Social Security is a sacred obligation, a sacred promise made. The current president is threatening to break that promise. He's proposing to eliminate the tax that pays for almost half of Social Security without any way of making up for that lost revenue.
I will not let it happen. If I'm your president, we're going to protect Social Security and Medicare. You have my word.
One of the most powerful voices we hear in the country today is from our young people. They're speaking to the inequity and injustice that has grown up in America. Economic injustice. Racial injustice. Environmental injustice.
I hear their voices and if you listen, you can hear them too. And whether it's the existential threat posed by climate change, the daily fear of being gunned down in school, or the inability to get started in their first job — it will be the work of the next president to restore the promise of America to everyone.
I won't have to do it alone. Because I will have a great Vice President at my side. Senator Kamala Harris. She is a powerful voice for this nation. Her story is the American story. She knows about all the obstacles thrown in the way of so many in our country. Women, Black women, Black Americans, South Asian Americans, immigrants, the left-out and left-behind.
But she's overcome every obstacle she's ever faced. No one's been tougher on the big banks or the gun lobby. No one's been tougher in calling out this current administration for its extremism, its failure to follow the law, and its failure to simply tell the truth.
Kamala and I both draw strength from our families. For Kamala, it’s Doug and their families.
For me, it’s Jill and ours.
No man deserves one great love in his life. But I've known two. After losing my first wife in a car accident, Jill came into my life and put our family back together.
She's an educator. A mom. A military Mom. And an unstoppable force. If she puts her mind to it, just get out of the way. Because she's going to get it done. She was a great Second Lady and she will make a great First Lady for this nation, she loves this country so much.
And I will have the strength that can only come from family. Hunter, Ashley and all our grandchildren, my brothers, my sister. They give me courage and lift me up.
And while he is no longer with us, Beau inspires me every day.
Beau served our nation in uniform. A decorated Iraq war veteran.
So I take very personally the profound responsibility of serving as Commander in Chief.
I will be a president who will stand with our allies and friends. I will make it clear to our adversaries the days of cozying up to dictators are over.
Under President Biden, America will not turn a blind eye to Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers. Nor will I put up with foreign interference in our most sacred democratic exercise – voting.
I will stand always for our values of human rights and dignity. And I will work in common purpose for a more secure, peaceful, and prosperous world.
History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes the stain of racism from our national character?
I believe we're up to it.
I believe we're ready.
Just a week ago yesterday was the third anniversary of the events in Charlottesville.
Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists coming out of the fields with lighted torches? Veins bulging? Spewing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the '30s?
Remember the violent clash that ensued between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it?
Remember what the president said?
There were quote, "very fine people on both sides."
It was a wake-up call for us as a country.
And for me, a call to action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run. My father taught us that silence was complicity. And I could not remain silent or complicit.
At the time, I said we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.
And we are.
One of the most important conversations I've had this entire campaign is with someone who is too young to vote.
I met with six-year old Gianna Floyd, a day before her Daddy George Floyd was laid to rest.
She is incredibly brave.
I’ll never forget.
When I leaned down to speak with her, she looked into my eyes and said "Daddy, changed the world."
Her words burrowed deep into my heart.
Maybe George Floyd's murder was the breaking point.
Maybe John Lewis' passing the inspiration.
However it has come to be, America is ready to in John's words, to lay down "the heavy burdens of hate at last" and to do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.
America's history tells us that it has been in our darkest moments that we've made our greatest progress. That we've found the light. And in this dark moment, I believe we are poised to make great progress again. That we can find the light once more.
I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities.
That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them.
We can never lose that. In times as challenging as these, I believe there is only one way forward. As a united America. United in our pursuit of a more perfect Union. United in our dreams of a better future for us and for our children. United in our determination to make the coming years bright.
Are we ready?
I believe we are.
This is a great nation.
And we are a good and decent people.
This is the United States of America.
And there has never been anything we’ve been unable to accomplish when we've done it together.
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney once wrote:
"History says,
Don't hope on this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme"
This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.
With passion and purpose, let us begin – you and I together, one nation, under God – united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.
For love is more powerful than hate.
Hope is more powerful than fear.
Light is more powerful than dark.
This is our moment.
This is our mission.
May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.
And this is a battle that we, together, will win.
I promise you.
Thank you.
And may God bless you.
And may God protect our troops.
Source: Biden for President
Mike Bloomberg Announces 2020 Democratic Presidential Campaign
NEW YORK, NY – Today, Michael R. Bloomberg announced that he will pursue the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, saying “I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America. We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage. The stakes could not be higher. We must win this election. And we must begin rebuilding America. I believe my unique set of experiences in business, government, and philanthropy will enable me to win and lead.”
From the moment that President Trump emerged as the Republican nominee in 2016, Mike has been singularly focused on defeating him and stopping his dangerous ideas. Mike spoke out against Trump as a candidate at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and helped win 21 Democratic Congressional seats in the 2018 midterm election to win back the House. Just last cycle, Mike helped Democrats flip the Virginia House and Senate, giving them full control of state government for the first time in a generation.
An entrepreneur, mayor, and philanthropist, Mike has built a career following data, bringing people together, and putting progress over partisanship. He’s a proven leader with an unbeatable track record in creating jobs and implementing progressive policies that make a difference in people’s lives. Mike is currently leading multiple national efforts to tackle the biggest challenges facing America, including gun safety, climate change, and public health. He founded Everytown for Gun Safety, the broadest and most impactful coalition of Americans fighting for common-sense gun laws, and recently launched Beyond Carbon, the most comprehensive climate change initiative in United States history. Mike has given away $10 billion to charitable causes, and Bloomberg Philanthropies works in 510 cities and 129 countries across the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people.
Mike will not accept donations and will self-fund his campaign, as he did for all three of his successful mayoral runs.
I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America.
We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.
The stakes could not be higher. We must win this election. And we must begin rebuilding America.
I believe my unique set of experiences in business, government, and philanthropy will enable me to win and lead.
As a candidate, I’ll rally a broad and diverse coalition of Americans to win. And as president, I have the skills to fix what is broken in our great nation. And there is a lot broken.
We have an economy that is tilted against most Americans.
We have a health care system that costs too much and doesn’t cover everyone.
We have communities ravaged by gun violence.
We have schools that aren’t preparing our children for success in an increasingly high-tech world.
We have an immigration system that is cruel and dysfunctional.
We have a climate crisis that is growing worse by the day.
We have special interests that corrupt Washington and block progress on all of these issues.
As a child and a Boy Scout, I was taught to believe in the promise and potential of America, and I have never been more worried about its future than I am today.
America is at its best when we work together to find meaningful and lasting solutions to the big challenges that we face.
We need a president who understands that truth – and who can do it, rather than just make promises.
I offer myself as a doer and a problem solver – not a talker. And as someone who is ready to take on the tough fights – and win.
I took on Trump on gun violence – and won stronger gun laws in states across the country.
I took on Trump the climate denier – and have led an effort that has closed more than half the nation’s dirty coal plants.
Trump right now is carrying water for Big Tobacco. I’ve taken on the dangers of e-cigarettes to protect our kids.
I know what it takes to beat Trump, because I already have. And I will do it again.
I’ve never shied away from a tough fight.
Defeating Trump – and rebuilding America – is the most urgent and important fight of our lives. And I’m going all in.
My resolve to stand up to his bigotry and hatred and wrong-headed policies is anchored in who I am and my belief in government as a force for good.
I’ve spent my career bringing people together to tackle big problems – and fix them. It has worked well in business – and in running the country’s largest, most progressive city.
I know it can work in Washington, too – and I have the leadership skills and experience to make it happen.
I’ve been very lucky in life. Growing up, my father never earned more than $6,000 in a year. But my mother and father worked very hard to help my sister and me get an education. I managed to work my way through college and get an entry-level job in New York.
And then, when I was 39, I got laid off. I didn’t know what I’d do next. But I had an idea to start a company – so I took a chance.
Today our company employs 20,000 people and generates large profits, almost all of which go to helping people across the country and around the world. I’ve always believed in investing in our employees and treating them well. We pay employees very well and provide the best health care benefits money can buy. And if someone has a baby, they get six months of paid leave.
I’ve run my company according to my values: honesty, integrity, fairness, inclusion – and that’s the same approach I brought to city government.
I was elected mayor of America’s most diverse city just weeks after the attacks of 9/11. It was a frightening time for our city and country. But we rebuilt the economy with new jobs and opportunity – for people on all rungs of the economic ladder.
We gave our teachers the largest raise in America, and we improved graduation rates by 42 percent. We cut murders in half while reducing incarceration by nearly 40 percent. We cut the city’s carbon footprint by 14 percent and created new programs to combat poverty. And we expanded health care and strengthened immigrant communities.
As mayor, my priority was helping the millions of New Yorkers who needed it most.
And the issues I am most passionate about focus on righting wrongs that have fallen heaviest on the most vulnerable communities. I know government can improve people’s lives – because when I ran New York City, that’s exactly what we did.
Since leaving City Hall, I founded the largest gun safety group in history. I created a campaign to take on the biggest polluters and climate threats. As mayor, I banned smoking in restaurants and bars and cut teen smoking by 50 percent – and today, we continue to win battles against the tobacco industry and their sleazy attempts to hook young kids on e-cigarettes.
I know how to take on the powerful special interests that corrupt Washington. And I know how to win – because I’ve done it, time and again. I will be the only candidate in this race who isn’t going to take a penny from anyone and will work for a dollar a year.
Over the course of this campaign, I’ll tell you what I will do as president, and how I’ll do it. I’ll outline plans for:
Creating good-paying jobs
Providing quality health care for every American
Stopping gun violence
Fighting climate change
Fixing our broken immigration system
Raising taxes on wealthy individuals like me
Protecting women’s and LGBTQ rights
Supporting our veterans
Reestablishing America’s place in the world as a force for peace and stability
But more than plans, I offer the leadership to turn plans into reality. To roll up my sleeves, to motivate a country to unite and rebuild America – and make it fairer and better.
And I’m ready to get working.
- Mike Bloomberg
Source: Mike Bloomberg 2020
Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick Announces His Candidacy for President of the United States
Boston, MA - Today, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States, committing to build a better, more inclusive American Dream for the next generation. In an announcement video, Patrick shared his campaign goals: to meet people where they are and find common cause and common purpose to achieve meaningful progress for our country.
Patrick has devoted his life to lifting the voices of others. Born on the South Side of Chicago, he lived with his grandparents, his mother, and his sister in their grandparents’ two bedroom tenement, much of that time on welfare. Through the love and support of family, great teachers, and adults in the neighborhood and in church, Patrick became the first in his family to attend college and law school.
After law school, he joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and led the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. As the Assistant Attorney General, Patrick coordinated the investigation of arson at black churches across the South.
Patrick has always been called to service, but that service has not always been in the public sector. He led reforms at Texaco, where a court appointed him to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace, and at Coca-Cola, where he stood up for employees and unions.
In 2006, completing one of the most extraordinary political journeys the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had ever seen, Patrick won a landslide victory to become Massachusetts’ first black governor. Serving from 2007-2015, Patrick used his time in the State House to pull together disparate factions to achieve lasting reform. By the end of his second term, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in energy efficiency, first in health care coverage, and first in student achievement. After ranking 47th in the nation for job creation, Massachusetts grew to a 25-year employment high. It became a global center for life sciences, biotech, clean tech, and advanced manufacturing.
After he left office, Patrick joined Bain Capital to launch an impact investing fund. This new fund, Bain Capital Double Impact, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into mission-driven companies that target both social and environmental good. Patrick’s life has always been about rejecting false choices, and his new fund was meant to show that private companies can be a force for public good.
Throughout his time in public office and in the private sector, Patrick has been a leader in developing solutions to the challenges we continue to face as a country: climate change, health care, the future of work and innovation.
Together with his wife of 34 years, Diane, Patrick looks forward to building a campaign that is grounded in his commitment to service. After having the opportunity to personally live the American Dream, Patrick will fight to ensure the path to that dream is open to everyone, everywhere.
Over the next several days, Patrick will travel the country meeting voters, listening to their stories and sharing his vision for the country. After filing to run for president in New Hampshire, Patrick will travel to California, Nevada, Iowa and South Carolina over the weekend and into next week.
Source: Deval For All
Tom Steyer "Fundamental Change" 2020 Presidential Campaign Announcement Video
Voice: "Tom Steyer, one of the most influential activists in Democratic Party politics. He was the founder and president of NextGen America."
Tom Steyer: I think what people believe is that the system has left them.
I think people believe that the corporations have bought the democracy.
That the politicians don't care about or respect them.
Don't put them first, are not working for them, but are actually working for the people who have rigged the system.
Really what we're doing is trying to make democracy work by pushing power down to the people.
Voice: "California voters are getting a chance to do what California lawmakers failed to do."
"Prop 56 got a lot of support at the polls."
"The oil company sponsored a new ballot initiative to halt California's new law."
Tom Steyer: I was born in 1957. I grew up right in the middle of the civil rights revolution and the Vietnam War.
The underlying injustice in America was coming under attack.
My father graduated from Yale Law School at 21. Started being a lawyer, then he went into the Navy because of Pearl Harbor.
And then at the end of the war, they sent him over to be assistant to the chief prosecutor at Nuremburg.
I think my father looked at being in the service, or being at Nuremburg, is like you have your duty - you do it.
My parents were very uncompromising about doing the right thing.
Voice: "Steyer and his wife worth an estimated billion and a half dollars; they pledged to give half of their fortune to charity."
Tom Steyer: We signed the Giving Pledge, which is a promise to give away half of your wealth while you're alive to good causes.
We have a society that's very unequal. And it's really important for people to understand that this society is connected.
If this is a banana republic, with a few very, very rich people and everybody else living in misery, that's a failure.
The lawyers have basically gotten the Supreme Court to say that corporations are people, and therefore they have all the rights in the Constitution given to people.
Now, obviously, corporations don't have hearts, or souls, or futures. They don't have children.
They have a short time frame. And they really care about just making money.
If you give them the unlimited ability to participate in politics, it will skew everything because they only care about profits.
You know, you look at climate change, that is people who are saying we'd rather make money than save the world.
That's an amazing statement and it's happening today.
And there are politicians supporting that.
I mean, I think 82,000 people died last year of drug overdoses.
If you think about the drug companies. The banks, screwing people on their mortgages. It's thousands of people doing what they're paid to do.
Almost every single major intractable problem, at the back of it, you see a big money interest for whom stopping progress, stopping justice is really important to their bottom line.
Americans are deeply disappointed and hurt by the way they're treated by what they think is the power elite in Washington, D.C. and that goes across party lines and it goes across geography.
We've got to take the corporate control out of our politics.
All these issues go away when you take away the paid opposition from corporations who make trillions of extra dollars by controlling our political system.
What do we care about?
Do we care about improving the world and handing it on to the next generation in a way so that they can lead better lives than we've had, in a way that safer, more prosperous and more beautiful and creative.
And if we don't do those two things, then shame on us.
If you think that there's something absolutely critical, try as hard as you can and let the chips fall where they may.
And that's exactly what I'm doing.
My name's Tom Steyer and I'm running for President.
Source: Mike Dec 4President Transcript
Joe’s In: Former Congressman, 3-Star Admiral Sestak announces campaign for President.
June 22, 2019
Thank you for taking the time to see why I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States of America.
What Americans most want today is someone who is accountable to them, above self, above party, above any special interest … a President who has the depth of global experience to restore America’s leadership in the world to protect our American Dream at home … and one who is trusted to restructure policies where too many see only the growth of inequity not of the economy.
I want to be that President who serves the American people the way they deserve to be served.
And while my announcement may be later than others for the honor of seeking the Presidency, the decision to delay was so I would be there with Alex, our daughter, as the brain cancer she had courageously beaten at four years old returned this past year. But with her same team of medical heroes, she has again overcome the single digit odds.
I had worn the cloth of our nation for over 31 years in peace and war, but after Alex’s first high-grade brain tumor, I needed to answer to you, the American people, who provided the military healthcare coverage that saved our daughter’s life. I served our nation as a U.S. Congressman for two terms from a Republican District in order to work for all Americans to have the healthcare coverage we fortunately had had for Alex.
Now, the hour has become late to restore U.S. global leadership that convenes the world for two primary objectives that serve our collective well-being here at home: putting a brake on climate change and putting an end to an illiberal world order’s injustices, from China’s control of the 5G network to Russian interference in democratic elections.
However, we cannot meet the defining challenges of our time without a united America. This is our Hobson’s Choice: not just to win this Presidential election, but to heal our nation’s soul by regaining the trust of Americans – all Americans – by a President who the people know will remain accountable to them alone, no matter the cost to him.
I ask that you would take a moment and watch the video(s) below. The first is my announcement summarizing why our next President must have a unique understanding of all the elements of our nation’s power: our economy and diplomacy, our military – including its limitations – and the power of our ideals. The other videos describe the foreign and domestic challenges we face, and the policies I will pursue as President, particularly accountability to America.
Video: Presidential Announcement
Hello, and thank you for joining me as I explain why I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States of America.
I’m Joe Sestak, and I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold war eras … to Afghanistan and Iraq … and the emergence of China. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, I grew up in this global canvas of service in the United States Navy.
My commitment to service came from my parents. My father emigrated from Czechoslovakia as a young boy with his parents. He served throughout World War II and continued his naval service as he raised eight children with my Mom, who also served her country as a high school math teacher — because education is our real homeland defense.
I learned integrity’s values by my parents living them: service to country, to others … above self … with accountability, in answering for oneself.
It’s how the Navy prepared me for increasing responsibility and command at sea and ashore, sending me for a doctorate at Harvard University. I was sent to work for General Colin Powell when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; then, for President Clinton at the White House.
As the three star Admiral in charge of the Navy’s Warfare Requirements, my proposed controversial reduction in ship-levels from 375 to 260 proved unnerving to the military-industrial-congressional complex, but I saw a future owned by whoever best harnessed cyberspace, at less cost – and still do.
On 9/11, I had walked out of the Pentagon when shortly after the plane dove into the building. I was told to establish the Navy’s strategic anti-terrorism unit. It took me to Afghanistan for a very brief period as the war started.
Later, as Commander of an aircraft carrier battle group, we arrived in the Arabian Sea. Waiting there for us to become part of our American battle group was an international armada. Nations had sent ships from around the globe. As the Italian Minister of Defense said, “We are coming because America has been attacked, and we will be there for them.”
We had the world with us … united against evil … because America’s greatest power is its power to convene, to bring the peoples and nations of the world together for a common cause that serves us all.
That is what America had been doing ever since the world’s greatest generation had returned home from having defeated the horrors of fascism and imperialism in the second of the world wars. And they swore it wouldn’t happen again, to us.
They kept their promise by building the liberal world order based upon the rules of individual and human rights, open and fair markets, fair and just governments. By bringing together those that shared these values in multilateral organizations and agreements, we all became stronger, safer, healthier and more prosperous in our freedoms. And that – that – is what really makes “America First.”
And that is why America’s retreat from the world today is so dangerous and damaging to our American Dream.
First, there is nothing we can do just by ourselves – absolutely nothing — to protect America from the most destructive threat to mankind: climate change. If America were to emit zero greenhouse emissions – even within a decade, as the Green New Deal calls for – it achieves only 15% of the required reduction to disarm this catastrophic threat before it explodes on all of us. It cannot be done without all of the world doing it – led by us – together.
But America is withdrawing from the world behind walls, telling bruised allies left behind, “It’s a Wrap.” Meanwhile, China is knocking down the barriers to its emerging global order to impose its illiberal values of “might makes right.” Through China’s worldwide Belt and Road Initiative of predatory loans and infrastructure investments with already 70 nations and international organizations, cash-hungry countries now find themselves enslaved by massive debt to China.
Simultaneously, China is exploiting the international commons of corporations who outsourced not just our jobs but our national security, because China now has a virtual monopoly in manufacturing the supply chains that make these corporations’ hi-tech products, embedded for hacking.
Chinese corporations are now connecting at least two-thirds of the world’s population to the transformational speed of the 5G network. This is arguably the greatest threat of all. China’s ownership will give it a police-state capability to surveil everything on the network, both for commercial and intelligence purposes.
It now is truly one world, where destruction by climate change; contraction of our way of life by China; and damage to our national security by corporations will happen no matter what we do, just by ourselves.
We must convene the world for two primary objectives: Putting a brake on climate change and putting an end to an illiberal world order’s injustices.
The hour has become late to restore U.S. leadership to this liberal world order, but Iraq is our lesson to remember. Democrats and Republicans alike who cast their votes for the tragic misadventure in Iraq showed little understanding that while militaries can stop a problem, they can never fix a problem.
Our country desperately needs a President with a depth of global experience and an understanding of all the elements of our nation’s power, from our economy and our diplomacy to the power of our ideals and our military, including its limitations. So that, when faced with the decision on whether to use our military, our Commander-in-Chief will know how it will end before deciding if it is wise to begin.
Today, we must have a President who knows how to serve us abroad – but also at home. Which is why I ran my first congressional campaign under the refrain, “I’m a former Navy Admiral, running on national security … that begins at home, in health security.”
This was due to the awful day when my wife, Susan, and I watched as Alex, our then-four year old daughter was wheeled out of surgery with her saddened doctors beside her. We couldn’t get the brain cancer, they told us, and “she has perhaps nine months.”
But our little warrior fought on, with the best medical specialists our nation could provide. With her courage, Alex beat that demon. I knew then that I needed to answer to you, the American people. Because you had kept your word by providing the military healthcare coverage that saved our daughter’s life.
Returning home to Pennsylvania to run for Congress, it was a nearly 2 to 1 Republican District where I had been raised, bringing a sign my daughter had painted, “Joe Sestak is walking in your shoes.”
I was fortunate to be the highest-ranking military officer ever elected to the U.S.
Congress when I entered it just as the Great Recession began. The staff helped save from foreclosure over 800 homes; overturned denials of treatment for diseases by health insurance companies; reversed rejection of services for those on the autism spectrum; and assisted over 4,000 veterans across Pennsylvania and also the country.
Our congressional office handled four times the constituency cases of the average congressional office, ending up passing 19 pieces of bi-partisan legislation and my Republican District re-hired me by 20 points without my having to air a single campaign ad.
But the constant refrain in the thousands of constituency cases we handled was: why isn’t a government of the people, more accountable to the people?
The official Commission on the cause of the Great Recession said that it was the “breakdown in ethics and accountability” by government officials who lacked the ‘”political will” to say “no” to the wealth and lobbying power of the financial industry.
Corporate taxes, once half of government annual revenues, are now less than 10%; Facebook lets a third party put a program on it that captures our personal information that is sold to enable Russian hackers; and 165,000 opioid overdose deaths after pharmaceutical lobbying brought a halt to the clampdown of illegal pill mills by the Drug Enforcement Agency because, as a DEA supervisor said, “Everyone was making a lot of money.”
At least some people – such as former politicians – are making a lot of money; in the last twenty years, 450 Senators and congressmen have become lobbyists.
We must end our government’s capitulation to corporate power and moneyed influence, with its revolving door for corporate lobbying jobs. Government must reassert itself as the honest force of accountability for the people. U.S. businesses should not be doing the business of China, and then lobbying us to do so.
The president is not the problem; he is the symptom of the problem people see
in a system that is not fair and accountable to the people.
Take Iraq. It was justified as a preventive war by our leaders at the time, then embroiling us in its expanding conflict throughout the Middle East, into Africa and beyond as it created the more brutal terror of ISIS. That tragic mistake left Americans with a loss of faith in U.S. leadership and, unfortunately, also our engagement in the world.
Then this trust deficit cratered completely after political leaders stripped away the oversight and dismantled the safeguards of the one place in America where a wall is definitely needed – to keep greed out, and accountability in. And so the inaptly named Wall Street was left unfettered to shatter our economy and, with it, millions of Americans’ lives in the Great Recession.
And not one political leader has ever answered for themselves to be accountable for the carnage of either that great recession or that tragic war.
It is this unaccountable leadership that is responsible for the lack of trust in America today that undermines our sense of national unity, of who we are and what we stand for.
This is our Hobson’s Choice – not just to win this Presidential election, but to heal our nation’s soul. We need a leader who is trusted by the people because he is willing to be accountable to them — above self, above party, above any special interest – no matter the cost to him.
That is why I originally ran for the U.S. Senate, despite the opposition of our party’s Washington establishment. I disagreed that a Senator should be our party’s nominee who had humiliated Anita Hill, allowed to do so by members of our party as she testified about her sexual harassment by now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There was no pleasure in opposing every member of my party’s elite to defeat Senator Arlen Spector who defected his Republican party, but there would have been less in not standing up to demand accountability for the thirty years of his damaging votes as a Senator, including against Ms. Hill.
In my second race, I walked 422 miles across Pennsylvania, and held a town hall each day. During my walk I had two calls. One came as a gentleman called out to me, “Admiral, I’m a Republican, but I love what you’re doing!”
The second was a mandate from the Democratic Senate leadership to “stop walking and just fundraise.” But if one had any feel for how Americans felt that 2016 election year, you would have sided with the Republican, as I did. Our Senate leadership then sought a primary opponent, funneling over $6 million into false opposition ads in order to win the primary. Pennsylvania was then lost as the Republican ads pointed out that Washington’s chosen democratic candidate was one of its own, a revolving door lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry.
If the establishment had joined me on my walk in Pennsylvania, it would have learned that the biggest deficit we have in America today is not the debt, but the trust deficit.
Come aboard an aircraft carrier with me for a moment and see what the American people most want and most need, where 5,000 American sailors live, work and go to war together. At an average age of 19 ½, they run the ship’s nuclear reactor, fix a pilot’s plane before he or she takes off in it – without the pilot even questioning them. It’s just a professional salute before the plane is catapulted into the dark of the night
But sometimes, the Air Boss calls out to stop the launch, to change out planes, then you see what America most wants today.
A young sailor unhooks the plane from the catapult and, since no pilot will turn off his or her engines until they know that they have first been unhooked from that powerful sling, the sailor then walks in front of the aircraft and gives a very simple signal that says it all: “I’m willing to be accountable by standing right here until you turn off your engines and are safely on deck. And if I made a mistake, and you start heading overboard to your death while still in the plane, I am going to go with you to my own.”
No one in America believes that anyone in Washington DC is willing to stand in front of that plane, accountable to them. As your President, I want to – for all Americans, so we can accomplish our agenda together, before the hour is too late.
And while my announcement may be later than others for the honor of seeking the Presidency, the decision to delay was so I would be there with our daughter after her brain cancer had returned. Throughout this past year, Alex again showed she is stronger than me, heroically beating the single digit odds once more, drawing on the fortitude of her Mom.
Most important, Americans know that we have more in common than we do differences. I know. I served with all of you in the global canvas of our Navy and served all of you as a Congressman. And now, as President, I will need all of you to help answer the call for America’s leadership to restore a just world order so it serves us by raising our collective good, here at home – done by my gaining your trust that I will always remain accountable to you alone.
Thank you!
Source: Joe Sestak for President
TRUMP CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCES MAGA RALLY TUESDAY, JUNE 18 - ORLANDO, FL
New York, NY – President Donald J. Trump will announce his second term presidential run with First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Second Lady Karen Pence on June 18th in Orlando, Florida, at the 20,000 seat Amway Center. Join us for this historic rally!
Tuesday, June 18, 8:00 PM (EDT): Orlando, FL
President Trump will hold an event at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida.
Amway Center
400 W Church Street #200
Orlando, FL 32801
General Admission
Doors open at 5:00 PM (EDT) for General Admission.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN HOSTS 45 FEST JUNE 18
New York, NY – Today, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. announced the inaugural "45 Fest" at the site of the Make America Great Again rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, June 18, where President Trump will announce his second term presidential run along with First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Second Lady Karen Pence.
The campaign's 45 Fest will take place beginning at 10:00 am EDT and will feature food trucks, live music courtesy of "The Guzzlers", big screens to see President Trump’s speech, and more.
“The President’s historic announcement of his second term presidential run has already generated tens of thousands of ticketing requests and will draw an enormous crowd,” said Michael Glassner, Chief Operating Officer of Donald J, Trump for President, Inc. “That’s why we’ve organized our first 45 Fest outside the Amway Center. We’ll have delicious food, live music, big screens, and a great time for all of our guests. Inside and out, the excitement at this Trump rally will be something to remember as President Trump makes history."
Source: Donald Trump for President
Biden Announces Candidacy for President with Multi-Week Rollout Highlighting Core Values of Campaign
Vice President Joe Biden announced his candidacy for President of the United States this morning and announced a multi-week rollout underscoring the core values of his campaign: reclaiming the soul of the nation; rebuilding the middle class, the backbone of America; and uniting Americans.
Moments ago he released a video laying out the first of these pillars, Biden’s belief that the core values of this nation—our standing in the world, our very democracy and everything that has made us who we are—are at stake. We are in a battle for the very soul of this nation.
Over the coming weeks, Biden will travel to key cities and states across the country to make his case to voters and listen to the concerns of the American people.
On Monday, April 29, Biden will travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to lay out his vision for rebuilding America’s middle class. The middle class has always been the greatest source of stability in our country and for far too long it has been under attack. Biden’s remarks will lay out his vision for making sure when we rebuild the middle class, this time everyone - regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability - is in on the deal.
After these remarks, Biden will travel through early voting states to hear directly from voters about their concerns and the issues affecting their everyday lives.
On May 18, he will hold a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - the birthplace of our democracy. In Philadelphia, Biden will lay out his vision for unifying America with respected leadership on the world stage—and dignified leadership at home. Joe Biden will be a president who will stand up for all of us, demanding equal opportunity, equal rights, and equal justice for all.
Joe Biden knows that when you give ordinary Americans a fighting chance, they do extraordinary things. That’s the campaign we’re building.
He believes our best days are still ahead. That’s the future we’re fighting for.
Source: Biden for President
Bill de Blasio "Working People First" Video Announcement
Bill de Blasio: There's plenty of money in this world. There's plenty of money in this country. It's just in the wrong hands.
Here in New York City, a place that is legendarily tough and big and complicated—
Good thing about New Yorkers is they look the same whether they're really pissed off at you or they like you.
We build an agenda that puts working families first.
We had to fight all over the city, all over the state, to make sure that people got a decent wage. We are raising the wage to $15 an hour.
Waitresses and dishwashers and store clerks and people who work in small manufacturing firms, the backbone of New York City, you will have the legal guarantee for the first time of paid sick leave.
This has never existed anywhere else in this country. Fully comprehensive guaranteed health care. My wife Chirlane and I believe health care is a human right. It has to be available for all, it has to be affordable, and it has to include mental health services.
Chirlane: Everything begins with being healthly and there's no health without mental health.
Bill de Blasio: Today, we announced free full day, high quality pre K.
Chirlane: People come up to Bill every day and thank him for making that possible. It makes a real difference in the child's life; it makes real difference in the family's life.
de Blasio: Doesn't matter if you live in a city or a rural area, a big state, a small state; doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. People in every part of this country feel stuck or even like they're going backwards. But the rich got richer.
I'm a New Yorker. I've known Trump's a bully for a long time. This is not news to me or anyone else here, and I know how to take him on.
When Donald Trump started separating families —
de Blasio clip: Our message to the federal government is simple. Stop this broken inhumane policy right now.
— we sent lawyers to the border to help protect those families.
When he told us he was going to cut off our security funding, we took him to court and we beat him.
When we saw our national government walk away from the Paris Agreement, we doubled down.
Bill de Blasio: This battle to save our earth will be won or lost in our lifetime. There's no second chance.
Don't back down in the face of the bully; confront him, take him on.
As president I will take on the wealthy, I will take on the big corporations, I will not rest until this government serves working people. As mayor of the largest city in America, I've done just that.
Woman: de Blasio for president, guys.
Bill de Blasio: Donald Trump must be stopped. I've beaten him before and I will do it again.
I'm Bill de Blasio and I'm running for president because it's time we put working people first.
Source:
Michael Bennet "7,591 Words" Video Announcement
Bennet: There's 7,591 words in the Constitution of the United States.
The word politics is not among them.
That's because our nation's founders knew that politics and governing aren't the same thing. When campaigning never stops, governing never begins.
I'm Michael Bennett, and for the past 10 years, I've been a senator from the great state of Colorado. You probably don't know me because I don't go on cable news every night. I didn't set out to be a politician. My last job was Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, And I didn't go to Washington to get attention; I went to pay attention to what would help the people who sent me there make their lives better.
I spent a lot of time on farms and ranches, town halls and living rooms, listening and learning.
So you may not know me, but over the years, I've learned a lot about what Americans struggle with.
They work hard, but healthcare and prescription drugs keep costing more. For the last 40 years, 90% of Americans haven't received a decent pay raise. This is not sustainable for our families or democracy.
Since 2001, we spent more than $10 trillion on tax cuts for the wealthy and wars in the Middle East.
What would our country look like today, if we spent that money investing in our own future,
We could have saved Social Security forever. Fixed the VA. Raised the pay of every teacher by 50%. We could have led the world in solving climate change. We could have fixed our crumbling bridges and dams, but we did none of it.
So we need to start now by investing in things Americans need the most. We need to fix health care and make good on what Obamacare promised: affordable, high quality health insurance with a public option that will guarantee competition in every county in America and lower drug prices.
And that's not Medicare for all, because I don't think 180 million Americans want to give up the insurance they already have through their work or their union.
Let's enact my plan to give families a tax cut they can use to support their children. It would cut child poverty by 40%.
We need to invest in education from preschool through college and job training as well.
But I'm not going to pretend free college is the answer. I'm not going to say there's a simple solution to a problem if I don't believe there is one.
In politics, they try to label you. Okay. Call me an idealist. A pragmatic idealist.
You can't fix a broken Washington if you don't level with the American people.
It's time for a new era of progress to reform our political system.
We need to reverse Citizens United and pass my proposals to end partisan gerrymandering and place a lifetime ban on members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists.
We're at a crossroads. We either build a future we want, or one we don't want will be thrust upon us. That's what our founders faced 243 years ago, and I think it's time for us to think of ourselves as them.
Frederick Douglass was a founder, Abraham Lincoln, the suffragettes, our parents and grandparents who stood up to tyranny in World War II, my mom and her parents who survived that tyranny, and rebuilt their shattered lives in the only country they could. The United States of America.
It's our job now to create a future that works for all America.
Because it's not enough just to win the next election. We need to win the next century.
So join me if you want to get to work. It's time to build the future.
Source: Michael Bennet for America
Seth Moulton Announces Candidacy for President
New York, NY - Today, during an exclusive interview on Good Morning America, Seth Moulton (D-MA) announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The transcript to the official Seth Moulton for America launch video can be found below.
Transcript:
Seth Moulton, Moral Compass
Seth: I was first called to service in my college church by a minister who's the greatest mentor I ever had. He talked a lot about the importance of service, about how it's not enough just to believe in service. You gotta find a way to give back yourself. You couldn't help but sit in this church and be hit by the names on these walls. And I had so much respect for them that I wanted to do my part, too. So I joined the marines. My parents weren't exactly thrilled.
Seth’s Mom: I was really scared for him.
Seth: Even in a war I disagreed with, there's nothing I'm more proud of than being a grunt, being on the ground, serving with those Marines. Before I knew it, I was commanding a platoon in the
first company of Marines into Baghdad.
Seth’s Mom: As an American. I was proud to have him representing me. As his mother. I spent four tours being terrified.
Seth: But it turned out that the war was based on a lie about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. And we lost great, brave Americans. I returned home and decided to run for Congress because I realized that a lot of Americans are feeling betrayed by Washington the same way that we did in Iraq. Ask anyone who's lost their job to a changing economy, or a child to opioids, or has to choose between heat and food in the winter, they're feeling forgotten.
Liz: He was 54 points down...
Dad: ...to an 18 year incumbent.
Liz: His campaign manager, his pollster, told him to quit. And you don't tell Seth to quit.
Seth: I am proud that our race has been held up in recent days as a model for how races should be run. And how politics should be conducted.
Liz: He is the sweetest, kindest man. He's extremely devoted. Seth would bend himself into a pretzel to take care of somebody.
Sister: Seth is the kind of person that if he sees something wrong, he is going to try to fix it.
Veteran You got that spirit for our country. And that's what we need... An honest politician that has a heart for this country, that’s not going to put up with the stuff of division.
Liz: The person that takes on Donald Trump needs to be a tank. They need to be a tank that no matter what is thrown their way, what fire, what lies, what vitriol, the tank just keeps moving, and that’s
Seth: Seth When the president tweeted that this is the greatest political witch hunt in American history, I just said, as the representative of Salem, Massachusetts, I can assert this is false.
Liz: There's nothing that sways him to do anything else other than what he believes is right.
Seth: Decades of division and corruption have broken our democracy, and robbed Americans of their voice. It's all led to an administration that's turned away from our values and is shredding or moral authority. The greatest generation saved our country from tyranny. It’s time for our generation to step up and do the same. There are already Americans across this country with the moral courage to get it done. Women marching for respect. Teachers walking out for fair pay, kids fighting for safe schools. I spent years of my life carrying guns every single day as a Marine, but weapons of war have no place on our streets or in our schools. While our country marches forward, Washington is anchored to the past. It starts with growing our economy, with the new jobs, the green jobs, the tech jobs, the advanced manufacturing jobs that are going to make us the world leader in the next century. It starts with tackling climate change and making sure that we have a planet without an expiration date. As a veteran of combat and of the Armed Services Committee in Washington, I will cut the massive weapons programs we don't need so that we have the money to invest in the future. We should build a cyber wall to stop Russia from hacking our elections. And most important, we need to restore our moral authority in everything we do. Whether it's appointing a cabinet member, negotiating a treaty, or signing an executive order, I will always uphold America's values. I'm running because we have to beat Donald Trump, and I want us to beat Donald Trump because I love this country. We've never been a country that gets everything right. But we're a country that, at our best, thinks that we might. I'd be honored if you'd join me in this mission.
Source: Seth Moulton for America
Bill Weld Announces Candidacy For President Of The United States of America
“It is time for patriotic women and men across our great nation to stand and plant a flag.”
Boston, MA (April 15, 2019) Today Governor Bill Weld announced his candidacy to run for President of the United States of America in the Republican Primary.
“Ours is a nation built on courage, resilience, and independence. In these times of great political strife, when both major parties are entrenched in their “win at all cost” battles, the voices of the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.
It is time for patriotic men and women across our great nation to stand and plant a flag. It is time to return to the principles of Lincoln – equality, dignity, and opportunity for all. There is no greater cause on earth than to preserve what truly makes America great. I am ready to lead that fight,” said Weld.
In the months ahead Bill Weld will go directly to the American people to talk about their concerns, priorities, and dreams – both for themselves and for their children. He will share his vision of an America that lifts up all people, that unlocks the potential of every student, every small business owner, and every American worker.
A Reagan Republican who was appointed US Attorney by President Ronald Reagan, Bill Weld knows that America can still be that “shining city on a hill.”
Bill Weld believes that we must preserve the democratic institutions of our Republic: the rule of law, a free and open press, and America’s global leadership in maintaining a freer, safer world.
He believes that transparency is the cornerstone of accountability, that freedom dies in darkness, and that government must serve the people, not the politicians.
Bill Weld is uniquely qualified to serve the American people as President. He has an unblemished record of service and leadership. In addition to seven years in the Department of Justice, he served two terms as Governor in Massachusetts, where he was reelected by the largest margin in state history. He cut taxes 21 times, never raised them, balanced the budget, and oversaw six upgrades in the state’s bond rating. He signed landmark welfare reform, established public education standards, and was a trailblazer as an early proponent for LGBT civil rights.
He was ranked the most fiscally conservative Governor in the country by the Cato Institute and the Wall Street Journal.
Governor Weld was born in Smithtown, NY. He is a graduate of Harvard College summa cum laude, studied international economics at University College, Oxford, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School cum laude. Bill is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the InterAction Council, an organization of former heads of state who meet around the world and issue annual reports on international issues of transcendent importance such as nuclear proliferation, religious sectarianism, and food and water. Bill served by Presidential appointment on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
He and his wife, Leslie, live in Canton, MA. Between them, they have eight children and eight grandchildren.
Source: Weld 2020
Transcript: Eric Swalwell Hometown Rally in Dublin, CA on Sunday, April 14, 2019
Thank you. Thank you very much. First I want to thank Congressman Ruben Gallego, and I want you
to be the first to know that I have asked and he has accepted to serve as our campaign chairman.
Thank you Ruben.
I also want to thank our district attorney, the first women elected as district attorney in Alameda County, Nancy O'Malley. Thank you Nancy.
Thank you to Mr. Chin's Hot Sauce for performing, thank you to Noah Mac for warming up the crowd, thank you Ann Lucetta [phon.] for the National Anthem, and Ahmed Parvez for that reading, and our Alameda County fire fighters and sheriffs officers keeping us safe. Thank you guys so much.
Today, I've come home to Dublin, I've come home to Dublin to tell you a story about America.
It's my story, but it's your story too. It's a story that belongs to all of us. It's about going big, being bold and doing good.
Now looking out, I see many familiar faces today.
I see my parents—my Mom and Dad; my brothers, Josh, Jacob and Chase and their wives and kids, my wife Brittany, our son Nelson and our daughter Cricket.
And I do see a few very surprised former teachers of mine, who did not expect to see me here today.
But I'm reminded of some of the lessons that I've learned growing up here and places just like here, like Algona, Iowa, Newport, Oregon, and Pittburg, California. Pittsburg, California is where I had my first job, a paper route, at the age nine.
Now you can learn a lot about America riding your bicycle through towns like that at six in the morning.
On my route, I saw big houses, and I saw small ones. I saw houses with two new cars. And I saw houses with none.
And I saw houses being built, and houses with signs out front, bearing a word that I didn't quite yet understand—foreclosure.
I saw people coming home from the midnight shift, just as I was starting my work day.
And those are often the homes that I pedaled my little bicycle past, that couldn't afford to receive the newspaper at all. But on their faces I saw a lot of pride, and I saw a lot of despair too.
These folks were not quitting. They would never quit. They didn't know how to quit. But they were beginning to wonder what had happened to the promise of the American Dream.
Traveling our country for the last few months, going to town halls and coffee shops, school assemblies and college campuses and fish fries, I've been seeing the exact same thing.
Which is why I've come back here to Dublin, backed by my neighbors who have always been in my corner to declare my candidacy for President of the United States of America.
And I need you. I need you. I need you. I need you. Boy, do I ever need you.
And we need each other. Only in a country as generous as ours could a moment like this even be possible.
I was born in Sac City, Iowa. My dad was a cop, my mom, she sold wedding cakes and handmade dollhouses out of our garage. And we had a very large but probably unlicensed daycare facility right there in the living room.
They worked hard and they dreamed big, in search of better jobs and better schools. They moved us all over. They moved me and my three younger brothers around a lot.
Before I was 12, we had lived in three states and eight different cities. I hated moving that much.
Sometimes I would even take the newspapers from my route and I'd circle all the available homes in the real estate section and I'd leave it right there on the breakfast table for my parents to see.
They never got the hint.
By the time I had hit ninth grade, I'd already gone to nine different schools.
But I came to realize they were not punishing me by moving us around so much. Although anyone here today who knew me as a kid knows there were really good reasons at that time to punish me.
They were just chasing those better schools, those better jobs and a better future for me and my little brothers. And I learned a lot along the way about hard work.
After leaving the journalism business, that paper route, I was a babysitter. I was an assistant to a wedding DJ, a construction worker, a soccer referee, and a baseball umpire.
Then I turned 16.
After that, I was a window frame sander and I folded sweaters at Aero Postale at the Stone Ridge Mall.
I was just as bad folding clothes there is I was at home. So that job did not last too long.
Doing all of these jobs, meeting all of those people, I saw a ton of struggle and I saw a lot of sacrifice.
I saw firsthand how powerful but yet elusive the American Dream could feel.
Our pursuit of it fabulous finally landed us here in Dublin.
To be fair, where we lived was not Mar a Lago. And in fact, some of you may remember that people in the neighboring cities had a nickname for us. They call the Scrublin.
But we live right smack in the middle of the middle class. And those were, those were during the good times.
And I found people who were just like my parents; they were made of grit, steel, and determination.
You see Dublin represented for me the end of our nomadic search for prosperity. We put our roots down right here in Dublin.
Dublin became my home.
My parents dreams for me and the result of all that moving and sacrificing, were realized when I earned a soccer scholarship to a college back in the South, making me the first person in my family to ever go on to college.
And I know so many of you fight for that too. And that was a privilege and a responsibility that I carried every single day.
During college I interned on Capitol Hill.
In the morning I worked my way through serving gym towels to members of Congress at the local gym, and burritos at night in a Mexican restaurant.
So every morning at six in the morning, towels to the members of Congress, at night memorizing their faces so I could get better tips and serving them burritos.
And after law school, I was at a crossroads. Stay back east, or come back home to Dublin. And one of my high school teachers, Tim Sobani [phon.] told me I didn't have a choice. Thank you, Tim.
You see, Tim told me that our hometown was turning around; with the right leaders, good things were ahead. And he wanted me to be a part of it. So I came back home. And we all went to work.
I spent my days inside Alameda County courtrooms as a deputy district attorney, and my free time giving back to a city that gave so much to me and my parents.
I served on the arts commission, the planning commission, founded the Dublin High School Alumni Association and was elected to the City Council.
And there on the City Council, I worked with people of all backgrounds all across the political spectrum to achieve common goals.
And despite what was going on in Washington, is still going on in Washington, here in Dublin we always balance our budget. And we should expect that in Washington too.
But we always invested in the future. When I graduated from this campus in 1999, only about a third of its graduates went on to college. But together as a community, we voted to invest in a new school.
This is not the Dublin High School that I graduated from.
Today, 20 years later, after I left this place, 98% of the graduates will go on to college. 98%,
Working together in Dublin, we brought new employers, new investments and new hope to the community that we love. Hell, we even brought in a Whole Foods. Which means now that my hometown has a market that I can barely afford to shop at. Which I guess is a sign that we've made it.
So I tell you here today, if those types of investments, if that type of belief, if our types of coming together can turn Dublin from going from Scrublin to the Dublin we know today, we can do that anywhere in America.
Now I know that the mountain that I face is steep. You may have heard, there are a few other Democrats interested in the job.
Most of them have more name recognition right now than I do, at least outside this city.
That probably should discourage me. It may discourage you. It doesn't. I've got you. We've got each other and we can do this.
And this will be a different kind of campaign. I'll be a different kind of candidate.
I come from a generation that's used to starting from scratch and innovating.
We begin with a great idea. We build it in our garage and we light up the world.
So that's the plan. I am not wealthy and I don't pick my friends by how much money they can put in my pockets. I'm not beholden, this is not a campaign that will be beholden to special interests. We will accept no corporate PAC money and we're not going to be driven by the polls.
And I will address with your support the issues that matter to this country—honestly, apolitically, like the former prosecutor that I am.
Starting with guns.
Representing you as a prosecutor in our court rooms, I learned a lot about law and order and mercy and the futility of trying to keep criminals from recidivism without providing them some kind of job training and addiction treatment.
But I also saw firsthand the ungodly and permanent damage wreaked by weapons in the hands of irresponsible people.
On one case that I prosecuted, I met a woman whose son had been killed by a round from an AK47.
His name was Gary Jackson.
A gunman fired 40 times at Gary. Hit him just once, in the back of his thigh.
I can still hear his mom asking me in the witness waiting room. "Isn't that where you want to be hit if you had to get shot?"
Not with an assault weapon.
The autopsy doctor testified that the sheer energy from one round was enough to kill him.
Gun violence defined my first days in Congress.
In 2013, I and 80 others were just emerging from our freshman class orientation, when the news of the Sandy Hook massacre flattened us.
Just like you, I was horrified, I was horrified by the suffering and the loss—the beautiful babies who were taken and had their futures stolen from them and the communities.
But I also thought, I am so glad to be here at the Capitol to be a part of the first Congress to actually do something about these senseless slaughters.
But I don't have to tell you this. Congress did nothing.
Just as we did nothing after Charleston, nothing after San Bernardino. Pulse. Vegas. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Moments of silence when all our country needed were moments of action.
So when Parkland happened, and they joined the far too long list of American towns and cities devastated by a madman with unrestricted weaponry, I expected the same ritual to unfold: shock, anger, accusations, and nothing happening in Washington.
Thoughts and prayers used as an alibi for inaction.
But the students there and their families decided not to allow that. You decided not to allow that. They instead took a stand to lead, and they knew they would be attacked for it. They knew they would be exposing themselves to ridicule and hate. Purely political targets in a different kind of crossfire.
But they did the right thing anyway. You supported them, righteously, fearlessly.
With the nation behind them, they picked themselves up from unimaginable grief. They organized, you organized, they marched, you marched, on their town squares, on our town squares.
We made our voices heard, in campaigns that removed 17 NRA endorsed incumbents from office. We did that. We did that.
They reminded us that life itself means more than the bottom line of a gun and ammo manufacturer or the cynical politicians they support and control.
A year ago, hope died at Parkland, but in a uniquely American way, owing to the courage and strength of children, hope was reborn at Parkland. Hope has been reborn here in America too.
That's why I started my campaign at Parkland. I pledged to that community, what I pledge to you. I will be the first campaign to make ending gun violence the top priority in my campaign.
And I thank the Moms Demand Action leaders who are here and will help us do that.
And the students who are here with them.
My wife Brittany and I have two children. Nelson's almost two years old. Cricket, she's about five months. My wife, she has a job that she loves, and she excels at it. It would be easy for us to wait for a better time to do this. It'd be easy to wait for a better time to take on this fight.
But Brittany wants me to run, to win, to make a difference.
Because like me, she wants to make sure that Nelson and Cricket can go to school, come back home again and again in safety and in peace.
In 2017, Republicans took control of the House, the Senate and the presidency. Sorry to remind you.
The very first piece of legislation that they passed, the act that would tell the world these are the values we espouse above all others, was a bill that made it easier for the mentally ill to purchase guns. Yes, yes, that happened. They called it House Joint Resolution 40.
But I know what you know, you're here for the same reason I'm here. We're in this together, because we believe that every child has a right to learn without fear. That every parent.
That's right— Every parent has a right to hug their beautiful little babies when they come home from school and that all of us, we have a right to dance at a concert, laugh at the theater, pray in a synagogue, at a church and in a mosque.
Our rights to live and to love each other, those rights are greater than any other right in the Constitution, period.
That's the greatest right.
That's the greatest right.
To live and to love.
And you know what the greatest threat to the Second Amendment is?
For us to keep doing nothing.
That's the greatest threat to the Second Amendment is to do nothing.
Remember, no amendment protects an absolute right.
You have the right to free speech, but you can't shout fire in a crowded theater or lie about a product that you're selling.
And although there is a right to bear arms, you cannot own a tank or a bazooka or a machine gun.
Everyone agrees on that. Left, right and center.
But I think a few other limits makes sense as well.
I believe no one in America should be allowed to purchase a gun without first undergoing a violent history check. So do 92% of Americans. 73% of all NRA members do too.
Because female victims of domestic violence are five times more likely to die if a gun is present. In Congress I authored the No Guns for Abusers Act. It would let us do more to get guns out of the dangerous hands of domestic abusers.
And when I'm president, no American ever again will be able to own the kinds of assault weapons that only belong on battlefields.
I'm the only candidate, the only candidate proposing that we ban and buy back every single assault weapon in America.
That's what I mean when I say go big. That's what I mean when I say be bold. And that's what I mean when I say do good.
Now, that is not a popular idea with everyone.
It's going to cost some money.
But it will cost a lot less than loss to a grieving community. And no matter who attacks me, or threatens me for proposing it, I'm not going to back down because I've got you. And you've got my back. And you've got my back.
So that's for my kids. And that's for your kids too.
[Audience member: Thank you.]
Thank you.
Your concern, your concern for them and for their future extends to other issues, the giant challenges facing our nation.
And you have the right to ask me, today, how I would solve them.
On a paper route, from a courthouse in Oakland, out on the tour with Congressman Gallego with our Future Forum colleagues, I have seen that the promise of America is not reaching all Americans.
Hard work has to add up to doing better and dreaming bigger, to being a part of a country that rewards the simple dignity of hard work with things that we can count and measure.
Like homeownership, wages that allow you to save something, healthcare that can meet your needs, enough freedom to take that long overdue vacation, and something to set aside for your golden years of retirement.
But it also means the things you can't quantify so easily. It should add up to those too. The things I'm not seeing across America no matter where I go, or how hard I look.
Peace, stability, security, comfort, joy, and the pride that comes from knowing that you provided all of that.
That promise is broken for too many of us today.
Now, you hear the President will tell you the economy is roaring, and you should be grateful for that. They'll tell you that the stock market is at an all time high, and the GDP is growing.
Heck, that may be the only time has ever told two truths in a row.
But here's what I've learned from you.
If only 50% of us are invested in the stock market, that's not the economy.
The GDP, that's not the economy.
The economy's you. Are you doing better? Saving more? Dreaming bigger?
And you don't need a congressional report to tell you economic insecurity has become a chronic condition in our country. You just feel it.
Many of you know all too well, that you're just one layoff, or bad diagnosis away from financial catastrophe.
And that tax cut you were promised, here on the eve of tax day, where 83% of the benefits went to 1% of the richest Americans, I gotta ask. How many of you woke up this morning and said to yourself, gosh, I wish we could just find a way in this country to help the wealthiest 1% of Americans. They're having such a hard time.
We are living in an economy designed to help only those in the executive suites, not those on the factory floors. And we don't want and we don't need a top floor economy.
I want the kind of prosperity that reaches all Americans who work hard on every floor.
That's the promise of America.
So here's what I've learned.
80% of you are living paycheck to paycheck, 80% of us living paycheck to paycheck. That's untenable. So let's start there. On taxes, I will end the corporate immunity for those companies sending jobs overseas.
But I want every business in America to know I will offer you this deal. I will give you a lower tax rate than the Republicans if you share your profits with your employees.
That means every employee's not just the ones on the top floor.
Let's give new small businesses and disadvantaged areas a leg up by letting them to defer their payroll taxes for the first few years to pay them back later.
Let's raise the minimum wage so no American has to work two or three jobs just to get by.
And it's time that we once and for all address your family's health care and the high cost of prescription drugs.
For too many Americans, their health care plan is a GoFundMe account.
Recently in western Iowa, I was at a gas station and I saw a hollowed out candy jar with a flyer of a picture of someone in the community who had just gotten sick.
That person's health care plan in the wealthiest nation, the most generous nation on Earth, is the charity of a stranger at a checkout stand.
That can't happen here.
With your help, those days are coming to an end.
I will put forward and sign into law a coverage for all plan, a public option that forces down prices for everyone so that Americans have a health care guarantee. If you are sick, you will be seen and if you're seen you won't go broke.
But let's not stop there. Let's not make this debate only about coverage. In the spirit of going big, being bold and doing good, let's not miss an opportunity to do what we do best as Americans. We find the unfindable, we solve the unsolvable and together we will cure the incurable.
We've stopped doing that in America.
I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine named Brian. I've known him for 15 years; he's 38 years old, has two beautiful little girls. He was a former prosecutor.
Last year he called me and told me he been diagnosed with ALS.
Brian could ask anything of me. I'm his friend in Congress.
Instead, on his own, he started a foundation to help reimagine his fight against ALS.
Brian represents an entire generation that has decided it can no longer wait for Washington to solve the big problems facing our country.
Sadly, in Brian's case, he's facing a terminal illness that will likely kill him within five years.
This generation is shouldering the burden of solving these problems now, not 20 years from now. That used to be something that we could look to and count on our president and Congress to do.
I will be a president that challenges us to do big things again and be a partner to people like Brian is they battle disease.
I will challenge us to invest, seek and find cures in our lifetime, an initiative to publicly invest in genomics, targeted therapies and data sharing will drive down the cost of care, extend the quality of life, and put a new generation of scientists to work in the life sciences.
Go big. Be bold. Do good.
There are a lot of teachers here today. Thank you to our teachers. There are a lot of parents too, because we care about our schools.
My congressional district boasts some of the richest schools in the country, but also some of the poorest.
As president, we will build modern schools in every community and renovate those that are crumbling.
No longer. No longer in America should a child's destiny depend on his or her zip code.
And it's time that we start valuing the teachers who prepare our kids. We love our teachers.
For too many Americans, especially young Americans, but also today many in middle age, they've found themselves in the financial quicksand of student loan debt.
I'm one of them.
Many of these people, your neighbors, who only wanted to dream are now unable to launch their own businesses, start families or buy their first home.
Look, the memories of college should last a lifetime; the interest payments should not.
So here's what we're going do. The federal government should not be making money off college students.
We must have zero interest federal student loans, more money in more pockets to realize more dreams, and debt free college for public university students who do work study and commit to community volunteerism after graduation.
When our systems for health and education fail, everything else fails. Let's fix them.
Go big. Be bold. Do good.
Let's not stop there. Let's not stop there.
Let's write laws to protect unions instead of tearing them apart.
Union hands built Dublin. They helped build this high school; they build America.
And I'm proud to announce my campaign headquarters is inside a Dublin Union Hall, the IBEW 595.
And my campaign staff has organized as teamsters.
We're all in.
You know unions, they once represented 40% of all Americans. Today, it's just 7%. And as they have vanished, the middle class dream of America has become more and more elusive. These things are connected.
Climate chaos is the existential threat facing our planet and our very lives.
But here's the good news, fixing it will let us seize upon a massive economic opportunity. Because clean renewables and wind, solar and fusion—just like we do at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—those are the keys to the new economy.
And for the first time in history, businesses can now make more profit from the solution than they can make from deepening the problem.
So let's invest in those, set high labor standards, and make sure that climate change and climate chaos no longer starts an argument. It just starts a lot of people's work days.
Just have to go big, just have to be bold, just have to do good.
We can win real and meaningful victories on all those fronts right now.
We can address immigration reform, not with showmanship, but with leadership, with technology, not a wall; not a wall.
Fairness for our dreamers and humanitarian policies that address the real humanitarian crisis to protect those fleeing violence and despair.
Traveling our country I have seen first hand how frustrated people are with Washington and it's broken politics.
All we're asking is for a Washington that works in a bipartisan way and gets things done. You want innovation. Instead, you see a Washington beset by smack downs, put downs and shut downs.
It's a government that just careens crisis to crisis. Nothing gets done. But to fix this, to empower your voices, to restore a more collaborative Washington, we must scrub it of its dirty maps and dirty money. We're going to get rid of gerrymandered math and outside dirty money. We're going to strip down to the studs the Citizens United ruling.
But our safety is careening now too, threatened by enemies abroad, like the dictators of Russia and North Korea and by politicians within, who have the arrogance to lead America without understanding America, who mock the very ideas that make our country great.
Equal justice for all, the independence of our institutions, freedom of the press, and the proposition that all of us, even presidents, especially presidents, are not above the law.
Now being president also means being Commander in Chief. That means knowing who our enemies are, and protecting us from them. It also means respecting and never abusing the men and women who toil every day on our behalf, standing guard in the most dangerous places in the world.
To the men and women in our military, our intelligence community, and every veteran who has served and made us safer: thank you. We say thank you.
As your Commander in Chief, I will always honor your service and give you the resources you need to defend our country.
On the Intelligence Committee, I've helped defend our democracy as it's been on the ropes these last few years. Got the scars to prove it.
I've been in hundreds of classified briefings. I've traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, the DMZ line between South and North Korea. I know who our friends are in the world and I know the cost of not having friends. Namely, it forces all of us to spend our hard earned money on military and less money on things we really need, like schools and healthcare.
Being president means believing the word of our intelligence agencies over the word of Vladimir Putin.
It means standing up to a Saudi prince that authorized the murder of a U.S. resident.
It means calling out a ruthless North Korean dictator who has tortured and killed an American student and not being as best pal.
It also means standing up to this country's home grown enemies.
That means denouncing white nationalists. Even.
That's right, denouncing white nationalists, even when they praise you. Honoring the rights of a free press, even when they criticize you, or, or the sanctity of the Department of Justice, even when they investigate you.
Hugging a flag. That's easy.
But embracing the values that flag represents is what truly makes someone worthy of being president.
So how do we fix all this?
It's not by fighting one another, or by mean tweeting, or constantly demonizing those who disagree with us.
We'll fix it the hard way by coming together, by coming together, like we are here right now.
I'm the son of two Republicans.
I married a Hoosier from Southern Indiana, who grew up in Pence Country.
I've worked with Republicans my whole life, reaching across the dinner table and reaching across the aisle.
I go on Fox News just so most of my family can see me on TV.
We must unite our deeply divided country. So I pledge to lead our country with a team of rivals, a blended cabinet of Republicans and Democrats.
Not because it'll be easy.
And we may have to send out a search party to find more Republicans who can put country over party. But they're out there. I'll work with them. And I'll challenge them to make our democracy work for all of you, not just the well off and the well connected.
A great Republican named Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, elected from Illinois once said, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present... As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew... The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."
America, this is our fiery trial.
I am asking you for the honor of leading us through it. As someone who has benefited so profoundly from the promise of America, as someone who owes this country, this city, everything, I'm asking you to help me create a country that fulfills that promise for all Americans, No matter who you are, what you look like, where you worship, or where you're from, including every little girl who rode her bike this morning, freezing her little face off to deliver the big Sunday paper and gaze at the biggest house on the block and believe that this is a country where her hard work could add up to living in that house one day. That's the promise of America.
Now, let's bring that promise to all Americans.
Thank you, Dublin. Thank you, America. Thank you for always being my home. I will never, never forget the values I learned here. I'll never forget the values I learned here, of hard work, devotion to community and love of the greatest nation on Earth. I'm proud to begin this journey here.
Now, it's time to go big, to be bold, and do good.
God Bless you. God Bless the United States of Anerica.
Thank you.
Source: Swalwell for America
Mayor Pete Buttigieg Announces His Run for the Presidency
SOUTH BEND, IN — Today, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is announcing his run for the presidency.
His remarks as prepared for delivery are below:
Remarks of Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Announcing His Run for the Presidency
April 14, 2019
Hello South Bend!
It means so much to be here with all of you.
I want to thank everyone who was part of our program today: Father Brian for your guidance and your prayers, Bishop Miller for your spiritual and civic leadership, Janet Hines-Norris for that wonderful performance.
I want to thank our Fire Department honor guard for today’s service and thank all our first responders for everything you do to keep us safe.
Thank you Renee Ferguson for your mentorship and passion for justice. And Mrs. Chismar—everyone should have at least one person who believes in them the way you believe in your students.
Thank you to my fellow mayors, Mayor Cabaldon, Mayor Whaley, and Mayor Adler, and all of the current and former mayors here today, for your friendship and your service at a moment when local leadership has never mattered more.
I want to ask everyone here to help thank my unbelievably talented staff and volunteers, each doing the work of ten people, living out the values of this project from day one and making today possible.
Thanks to my Mom who is here physically and my Dad who is here in more way than he could have imagined. And Chasten, my love, for giving me the strength to do this and the grounding to be myself as we go.
For the people from around South Bend who are joining us today—thank you for giving me the chance to be “Mayor Pete.”
And for everyone who came here from far and wide—welcome to South Bend. It’s a deep source of pleasure to share our hometown with you.
I’m glad you can see this for yourself, because this city’s story is a big part of why I am doing this.
I grew up here in South Bend—in the same neighborhood where Chasten and I live today with our two dogs, Buddy and Truman.
My father immigrated to this country because he knew it was the best place in the world to get an advanced education. He became an American citizen and he met my mother, a young professor who was the daughter of an Army colonel and a piano teacher. They moved here for work, settled into a house on the West Side, and pretty soon after that, I came on the scene.
The South Bend I grew up in was still recovering from economic disasters that played out before I was even born.
Once in this city, we housed companies that helped power America into the twentieth century.
Think of the forces that built the building we’re standing in now, and countless others like it now long gone. Think of the wealth created here. Think of the thousands of workers who came here every day, and the thousands of families they provided for.
And think of what it must have been like in 1963 when the great Studebaker auto company collapsed and the shock brought this city to its knees.
Buildings like this one fell quiet, and acres of land around us slowly became a rust-scape of industrial decline, collapsing factories everywhere.
Houses, once full with life and love and hope, stood crumbling and vacant.
For the next half-century it took heroic efforts just to keep our city running, while our population shrank, and young people like me grew up believing the only way to a good life was to get out.
Many of us did. But then some of us came back. We wanted things to change around here. And when the national press called us a dying city at the beginning of this decade, we took it as a call to arms.
I ran for mayor in 2011 knowing that nothing like Studebaker would ever come back—but believing that we would, our city would, if we had the courage to reimagine our future.
And now, I can confidently say that South Bend is back.
More people are moving into South Bend than we’ve seen in a generation. Thousands of new jobs have been added in our area, and billions in investment.
There’s a long way for us to go. Life here is far from perfect. But we’ve changed our trajectory, and shown a path forward for communities like ours.
And that’s why I’m here today. To tell a different story than “Make America Great Again.”
Because there is a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities: the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back.
It comes from people who think the only way to reach communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia, selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised to begin with.
The problem is, they’re telling us to look for greatness in all the wrong places.
Because if there is one thing the city of South Bend has shown, it’s that there is no such thing as an honest politics that revolves around the word “again.”
It’s time to walk away from the politics of the past, and toward something totally different.
So that’s why I’m here today, joining you to make a little news:
My name is Pete Buttigieg. They call me Mayor Pete. I am a proud son of South Bend, Indiana. And I am running for President of the United States.
I recognize the audacity of doing this as a Midwestern millennial mayor. More than a little bold—at age 37—to seek the highest office in the land.
Up until recently, this was not exactly what I had in mind either, for how to spend my eighth year as mayor and my thirty-eighth year in this world. But the moment we live in compels us to act.
The forces of change in our country today are tectonic. Forces that help to explain what made this current presidency even possible. That’s why, this time, it’s not just about winning an election—it’s about winning an era.
Not just about the next four years—it’s about preparing our country for a better life in 2030, in 2040, and in the year 2054, when, God willing, I will come to be the same age as our current President.
I take the long view because I have to. I come from the generation that grew up with school shootings as the norm, the generation that produced the bulk of the troops in the post-9/11 conflicts, the generation that is going to be on the business end of climate change for as long as we live.
A generation that stands to be the first ever in America to come out worse off economically than our parents if we don't do something truly different.
This is one of those rare moments between whole eras in the life of our nation.
I was born in another such moment, in the early 1980s, when a half-century of New Deal liberalism gave way to forty years of Reagan supply-side conservatism that created the terms for how Democrats as well as Republicans made policy. And that era, too, is now over.
If America today feels like a confusing place to be, it’s because we’re on one of those blank pages in between chapters.
Change is coming, ready or not. The question of our time is whether families and workers will be defeated by the changes beneath us or whether we will master them and make them work toward a better everyday life for us all.
Such a moment calls for hopeful and audacious voices from communities like ours. And yes, it calls for a new generation of leadership.
Freedom/Democracy/Security
The principles that will guide my campaign are simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker: freedom, security, and democracy.
First comes freedom: something that our conservative friends have come to think of as their own… let me tell you freedom doesn't belong to one political party.
Freedom has been Democratic bedrock ever since the New Deal. Freedom from want, freedom from fear.
Our conservative friends care about freedom, but only make it part of the journey. They only see “freedom from.”
Freedom from taxes, freedom from regulation…as though government were the only thing that can make you unfree.
But that’s not true. Your neighbor can make you unfree. Your cable company can make you unfree. There’s a lot more to your freedom than the size of your government.
Health care is freedom, because you’re not free if you can’t start a small business because leaving your job would mean losing your health care.
Consumer protection is freedom, because you’re not free if you can’t sue your credit card company even after they get caught ripping you off.
Racial justice is freedom, because you’re not free if there is a veil of mistrust between a person of color and the officers who are sworn to keep us safe.
Empowering teachers means freedom, because you’re not free in your own classroom if your ability to do your job is reduced to a test score.
Women’s equality is freedom, because you’re not free if your reproductive health choices are dictated by male politicians or bosses.
Organized labor sows freedom, because you’re not free if you can’t organize for a fair day’s pay for a good day’s work.
And take it from Chasten and me, you are certainly not free if a county clerk gets to tell you who you ought to marry based on their political beliefs.
The chance to live a life of your choosing, in keeping with your values: that is freedom in its richest sense.
And we know that good government can secure such freedom just as much as bad government can deny it.
Now let's talk about security. The idea that security and patriotism belong to one political party needs to end now.
We are here to say there's a lot more to security than putting up a wall from sea to shining sea.
And to those in charge of our border policy, I want to make this clear: the greatest nation in the world should have nothing to fear from children fleeing violence.
More importantly, children fleeing violence ought to have nothing to fear from the greatest country in the world.
Security means cyber security. It means election security. It means keeping us safe in the face of violent white nationalism rearing its ugly head around our country and the world.
And let's pick our heads up to face what might be the great security issue of our time, climate change and disruption.
No region of this country is immune to that threat.
We’ve seen it in the floods in Nebraska, the tornados in Alabama, the Hurricane in Puerto Rico and the fires in California.
We’ve seen it right here in this city, where as mayor, I had to fire up the emergency operations center of our city twice in two years.
First came a 1,000 year rainfall and then came a 500 year river flood. Eighteen months apart. By my math, the chances of that happening is 125,000 to one.
So either we should all be going down to Four Winds Casino tonight and try to recreate those odds on the slots to see if the rules of arithmetic have changed, or something else is changing around us.
And we're not even having a contest over whose climate plan is better, because only one side has brought forth any plans at all. You don’t like our plan? Fine. Show us yours!
Our economy is on the line. Our future is on the line. Lives are on the line. So let's call this what it is, climate security, a life and death issue for our generation.
Freedom. Security. And now let’s talk about democracy. Because no issue we care about, from gun safety to immigration, from climate to education to paid family leave, will be handled well unless our democracy is in better shape.
Our democratic republic is an elegant system but lately it hasn't been quite democratic enough.
It's not democratic enough if legitimate voters are denied the opportunity to exercise their rights because one side thinks as a matter of political strategy that they're better off if fewer citizens are able to vote.
It’s hardly a democracy if “Citizens United” means dollars can drown out the will of the people.
It’s not much of a republic if our districts our drawn so that politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around.
It’s nowhere near the democracy I swore to protect, when U.S. citizens from Washington, D.C. to Puerto Rico don’t even have the same political representation as the rest of us.
And we can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime, the Electoral College has overruled the American people.
Why should our vote in Indiana count just once or twice a century? Or your vote in Wyoming or New York?
So let’s make it easier to register and to vote; let’s make our districts fairer, our courts less political, our structures more inclusive; and yes let’s pick our president by counting up all the ballots and giving it to the woman or man who got the most votes!
I like talking about systems and structures. But nothing about politics is theoretical to me. Someone said all politics is local—I’d say all politics is personal.
Time and time again, moments in my life have forced me to realize what politics really means. I learned it when I went overseas on the orders of a commander-in-chief. When you write a letter and put it in an envelope marked “Just in case,” and set it where your folks can find it, you never again lose sight of the stakes.
By the way, when I was overseas, each one of the 119 trips I took outside the wire driving or guarding a vehicle, we learned what it is to trust one another with our lives.
The men and women who got in my vehicle, they didn’t care if I was a Democrat or a Republican.
They cared about whether I had selected the route with the fewest IED threats, not whether my father was documented or undocumented when he immigrated here.
They cared about whether my M-4 was locked and loaded, not whether I was going home to a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
They just wanted to get home safe, like I did. They wanted what we all want—to do a good job and to live well. Making sure that happens is what politics is for. Politics matters because it hits home.
It hits home at our most vulnerable moments, like the day last fall when I left my mother’s hospital bedside to go find my Dad across town in the middle of his chemotherapy treatment to let him know she was going to need immediate heart surgery. Not the kind of thing you put in a text message. So I had to go find him.
By the way, mom is fine. She’s right over there!
I had a few things going for me even at that incredibly difficult moment in my life.
I had Father Brian, who gave the invocation today, who lifted us up by faith and companionship.
And I had my husband, Chasten. He was right there at the hospital. Where he belonged. Because in the eyes of the hospital, and the state, and the law, not just in my heart, he was a member of this family, my lawfully married spouse.
Our marriage exists by the grace of a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nine men and women sat down in a room and took a vote and they brought me the most important freedom in my life.
Mom started getting better right away. Dad started getting worse. We lost him earlier this year. And as I watched things go from him caring for her to her caring for him, with us trying to care for both of them, once again we found our lives shaped by the decisions of those with power over us. Decisions that made us better off. Because some people in Washington made the decision to bring us something called Medicare.
It meant that, as we navigated the toughest of family decisions, all we had to think about was what was medically right for Mom and Dad both. Not whether our family would go bankrupt.
That’s how government touches our lives. It’s how policies bring us freedom. And when it comes to health care, I want every American to have that same benefit.
This is why Washington matters. Not the political ups and downs, the daily drama of who looked good in a committee meeting. But the way a chain of events that begins in one of those stately white buildings reaches into our lives, into our homes. Our paychecks. Our doctors’ offices. Our marriages.
That is why this country was invented in the first place, and that is what’s at stake today.
The horror show in Washington is mesmerizing, all-consuming. But starting today, we are going to change the channel.
Sometimes a dark moment brings out the best in us. What is good in us. Dare I say, what is great in us.
I believe in American greatness. I believe in American values. And I believe that we can guide this country and one another to a better place.
After all, running for office is an act of hope. You don’t do it unless you think the pulleys and levers of our government can be used and if necessary redesigned to make the life of this nation better for us all.
You don’t do it unless you believe in the power of a law, a decision, sometimes even a speech, to make the right kind of difference, to change our lives for the better, to call us to our highest values.
Things get better if we make them better.
After all, you and I stand now in a building that used to be a symbol of our city’s decline, where new jobs are now being created in industries that didn’t even exist when they poured this concrete and laid this brick.
You and I now stand in a city that formally incorporated in 1865, the last year of a war that nearly destroyed this whole country. What an act of hope that must have been.
We stand on the shoulders of optimistic women and men. Women and men who knew that optimism is not a lack of knowledge, but a source of courage.
It takes courage to move on from the past.
If I could go back into the past, it wouldn’t be out of a desire to live there. No, if I went into the past, it would be just twenty years back, to find a teenage boy in the basement of his parents’ brick house, thinking long thoughts as he played the same guitar lick over and over again, wondering how he could belong in this world.
Wondering if his intellectual curiosity means he’ll never fit in. Wondering if his last name will be a stumbling block for the rest of his life. Wondering what it means when he sometimes feels a certain way about young men he sees in the hall at school—if it means he’ll never wear the uniform, never be accepted, never know love.
If I found him, and told him what was ahead, would he believe me? If could tell him that he would see the world and serve his country. That he would not only find belonging in his hometown but be entrusted by its citizens with the duty of leading it and shaping it. That he would have a hand in fixing the neighborhoods he knew as a boy, and that he would help lights come back on in that giant factory whose broken windows loomed like the face of a ghost over the ballpark he used to go to with his dad, wondering if this city was his own.
To tell him he’ll be all right. More than all right. To tell him that one rainy April day, before he even turns forty, he’ll wake up to headlines about whether he’s rising too quickly as he becomes a top-tier contender for the American presidency. And to tell him that on that day he announces his campaign for president, he’ll do it with his husband looking on.
How can you live that story and not believe that America deserves our optimism, deserves our courage, deserves our hope.
After all, running for office, itself, is an act of hope.
This afternoon, are you not hopeful?
Don’t we live in a country that can overcome the bleakness of this moment?
Are you ready to turn the page and write a new chapter in the American story?
If you and I rise together to meet this moment, one day they will write histories, not just about one campaign or one presidency but about the era that began here today in this building where past, present, and future meet, right here this chilly day in South Bend.
It’s cold out, but we’ve had it with winter. You and I have the chance to usher in a new American spring.
So with hope in our hearts and fire in our bellies, let’s get to work and let’s make history!
Source: Pete for America
CORY 2020 HOMETOWN KICKOFF
APRIL 13, 2019
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
Thank you Mom --
I am here today because of your example of grace, courage and service. I wish Dad could be here.
We’re here today to seek justice. We’re here today because we are impatient for that justice.
And our sense of urgency, our impatience, comes from the most demanding of values,
it comes from love. Love of our families. Love of our communities. Love of country. Love for each other.
Newark, Brick City, taught me about that love. It’s not feel-good, easy-going love. It’s a strong, courageous love. A defiant love. The kind of love that serves, the kind of love that sacrifices. The kind of love that is essential to achieving justice.
I learned here that you can’t make progress dividing people, stoking fear, or setting us one against another. I learned that the only way to overcome the tough challenges is by extending grace, finding common ground, and working together.
And today, so many of us are hurting, so many of us are understandably angry and afraid.
Too many people believe the forces that are tearing us apart are stronger than the bonds that hold us together.
I don’t believe that.
I believe we will bring our country together. I believe we will achieve things that other people say are impossible. I believe we will make justice real for all.
And that is why I am running for President of the United States of America.
And to many people across the country who don’t speak English, I want to say: Yo voy a ser un presidente para toda nuestra gente. I will be a president for all people.
When I arrived here in Newark over twenty years ago to work as a tenant rights lawyer, I found a city with challenges that some said were intractable, but we refused to believe that any problem is too hard to solve if we tackle it together.
We were a community impatient for justice. Newark has always been a community impatient for justice.
A community that knew that, in the words of Dr. King, “‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’” And in communities like ours -- and across this country -- “wait” still too frequently means “never.”
Wait for clean water. Wait for decent-paying jobs. Wait for better schools. Wait your turn. Wait.
Well here in Newark, we refused to wait. When this city took a chance on me as their mayor, the Chief Executive of this city, I didn’t wait to bring people together.
We didn’t just talk about the injustice of families not having heat in the coldest months of the year – we took on the slumlords and doubled the rate of affordable housing production.
We didn’t just talk about the injustice of people not being able to buy fresh fruits and vegetables – we opened grocery stores in food deserts.
We got people to invest here. We opened new businesses, created thousands of new jobs and after 60 years of decline, Newark is growing again.
And New Jersey, when you sent me to Washington as your senator, I brought those lessons with me. Politics in DC are broken, but we still found ways to bring people together to get things done.
After decades of our criminal justice system moving in the wrong direction, I led a bipartisan effort to write and pass the first meaningful reform in a generation. And I worked with Republicans and Democrats to write and then pass a law that is bringing billions of dollars in investment to low-income urban and rural communities that have for too long been left out and left behind.
There are so many places like that across America. Not just cities like this one – farm communities and factory towns that, like us here in Newark, have been given up on and talked down to… counted out and underestimated.
And they can’t wait for change. None of us can.
We are here today to say we can’t wait.
We can’t wait when powerful forces are turning their prejudice into policy and rolling back the rights that generations of Americans fought for and heroes died for.
We can’t wait when this Administration is throwing children fleeing violence into cages, banning Muslims from entering the nation founded on religious liberty, and preventing brave transgender Americans from serving the country they love.
And we can’t wait because many of our most serious challenges as a nation were with us long before Donald Trump entered the White House.
We can’t wait, because we have a criminal justice system, that in the words of my friend Bryan Stevenson, treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. A system so deeply baked with bias that it ruthlessly discriminates against Black people, Brown people, low-income people, and people with mental illness and addiction.
We can’t wait when we have an economy where people who work two or three jobs, pick up extra shifts, and still can’t pay their bills.
Profits are soaring, while wages for most have barely budged. Massive corporations have taken over entire industries -- killing off competition, driving out innovation, squeezing out small businesses. And American family farms are disappearing at a disturbing rate. Decades of unjust policies have destroyed our economy, extracted money from our common wealth and plowed it into tax cuts for the wealthy and wars overseas we didn’t have to fight; instead of investing in the things we all know grow our economy and create more opportunity for all.
And that’s why, when I am President of the United States, we won’t wait.
We won’t wait for criminal justice. We will end the system of mass incarceration in America. We will invest in people -- their education, their mental health, and treating addiction. We will end the school to prison pipeline. And we will empower the formerly incarcerated with jobs and opportunity, not a slippery slope back to jail and prison.
We won’t wait to legalize marijuana at the federal level -- but that is not enough. We will push states to do the same, invest in the communities that have been devastated by the decades-long failed war on drugs, and expunge the records of those who have already been convicted.
We won’t wait for more thoughts and prayers for the communities that have been shattered by gun violence-- from Pittsburgh to Parkland to Charleston to communities where kids fear fireworks on the Fourth of July because they sound like gunshots.
We will pass universal background checks, ban assault weapons, and close the loopholes that allow people who should never have a gun to get one. We will bring a fight to the NRA like they’ve never seen before. And we will win.
We won’t wait to meet the crisis of climate change -- because we have no other choice. We will build a clean energy economy. We will hold polluters accountable and ensure that every child can drink the water from their sink and breathe the air in their neighborhood without getting sick.
We won’t wait for real, inclusive economic justice. We will fight against the onslaught of attacks on workers’ rights. It was my grandfather’s union job that helped move my family from poverty into the middle class, and we will protect that pathway for workers who are now seeing their rights eroded.
We will build an opportunity economy where there are good-paying jobs and fair wages in every neighborhood and where the dignity of work is respected. Where benefits are secure and portable, so you can change jobs or start a new business with confidence. And where small businesses can be, as they always have been, the main engines of growth in America.
And we will close the racial wealth gap, because we can’t be blind to the impact of generations of racism and white supremacy that were written into our laws over centuries. That's why we will create a federally funded savings account for every child that starts at birth and grows as they grow up -- up to almost $50,000 to pay for college, put a down payment on a home, or jump-start a small business.
We won’t wait to deliver a great education to every child. We will fully fund public schools, including special needs education. And we will ensure that our public school teachers get the pay increases they deserve, the resources they need, and that their student loan debt is forgiven.
We won’t wait to expand pathways to opportunity for all young people. We will make college more affordable, we will invest in and strengthen our HBCU's, and we will create the world’s greatest system of apprenticeships and training programs here in America.
We won’t wait to fix our broken healthcare system. Because in America, healthcare is a right. I will fight for Medicare for All and I will start with lowering the age of Medicare eligibility and giving Americans a real public option. I will use the government’s bargaining power to bring down the cost of drugs. And I will once and for all end the sabotage of the Affordable Care Act.
We won’t wait to fix our broken immigration system, because immigration is a source of strength. We will pass comprehensive immigration reform. We will create a pathway to citizenship for those already living in the United States. We will protect our DREAMERs. And we will end the moral vandalism of family separation.
We won’t wait to stop the dangerous assault on women’s rights. Women will have reproductive justice, because women must have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and economic futures. And as President, I will appoint Supreme Court justices who will defend Roe.
And we will take on the systemic challenges that disproportionately affect women and hold our entire country back. We will fight for equal pay, affordable child care, and establish national paid family and medical leave.
We will build a culture where men respect women, sexual assault and harassment are no longer swept under the rug, and future generations don’t have to raise their hands to say “me too.”
We won’t wait any longer for equal justice under the law. We will pass the Equality Act and ensure that LGBTQ Americans are protected under federal civil rights law.
We will pursue a new Voting Rights Act, end gerrymandering, and get dark money out of politics once and for all.
And unlike this President, I won’t ignore or give license to white supremacy, I will put more resources towards protecting our country from it.
And we will no longer wait for America to stand up for justice around the world. We will strengthen our alliances and defend human rights, not coddle dictators or squander America’s moral authority. As commander-in-chief, there’s nothing I will take more seriously than the responsibility to protect our nation and keep faith with the people who wear our uniform.
We call ourselves the home of the brave, but when our brave veterans come home, we need to make sure they have a home. We will end veteran homelessness. Veterans deserve everything they have fought so bravely for -- health care, education and good-paying jobs.
The only way we build a nation of liberty and justice for all is by doing it together.
We have to decide whether we will choose division and blame -- or if we will do the hard work of conquering fear with faith, apathy with action, and hatred with love.
We know there are forces at work at home and abroad trying to get us to fight the wrong way and on their terms. From 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the Kremlin -- we know what their strategy is.
It’s to pit us against each other for their own gain; to make us suspicious of one another. To make us fear each other, dislike each other, and hate each other. That’s how they win.
Critics will tell us that a campaign powered by grace and love and a deep faith in each other can’t beat that. But I say it’s the only way we win. The President wants a race to the gutter and to fight us in the gutter. To win, we have to fight from higher ground in order to bring this country to higher ground.
So we cannot allow them to divide us, and we also must resist the urge to divide ourselves. Because the people on my block, the people gathered here, people across this country can’t wait.
They cannot afford a politics of division that sacrifices progress for purity.
They can’t afford to allow this election to become an exercise in political posturing or a box-checking competition that is completely divorced from the realities of so many people who are struggling and hurting.
As the only senator who comes home to a low-income, inner-city community, I know -- and you know -- that we don’t have the privilege to wait for what fits into someone else’s narrow view of what it means to be a progressive.
Our first priority must be to make people’s lives better. Now. To move the ball forward, how best we can, as fast as we can. And to ensure that those closest to the pain and closest to the struggle have an active hand in defining how we confront it.
A real progressive movement refuses to stall out in righteous indignation. It channels that indignation into the work that actually improves people's lives.
A real progressive movement does not hold progress for communities like mine hostage today for promises that perfection will come tomorrow.
We are the inheritors of those kinds of movements-- movements of committed Americans who came together, gathering just like we are now.
This has been the truth of generations of people in our country, who in moments of great moral crisis and great moral challenge summoned great moral imagination. They did not surrender to the seduction of hatred -- they fought with a defiant love, and when they rose, our nation rose.
I am here today because of those kinds of movements.
As many of you know, I wasn’t born here in Newark.When I was a baby, my parents tried to move into a neighborhood in Harrington Park -- about 20 miles from here -- because it had great public schools. But real estate agents refused to sell us a home because of the color of our skin.
And that would have been that -- except a group of activists came together to help my family. A young Black activist who was the head of the Fair Housing Council and a group of white volunteers and lawyers who had watched the courage of Civil Rights marchers and were inspired to help Black families in their own community came together. They stood up against the illegal housing discrimination that my parents faced -- and they won.
And they changed the course of my entire life.
My parents never wanted my brother and me to forget what it took to get us to where we are. They said that we could never pay back what had been done for us. But we could -- and we had to -- pay it forward.
They wanted us to understand the urgency of the work left to do in America. They wanted us to understand that in the face of injustice-- there is no “wait,”-- there must be work. There is no wait, there must be struggle. There is no wait because we stand on the shoulders of giants -- generations before us who did not wait.
56 years ago this very morning, a young preacher woke up in a jail cell in Alabama because he and so many other young people had joined together to take on the toughest challenge of their day, a fight others called impossible to win.
They joined with local activists to confront a city where injustice and division were literally written into the law. He was arrested on Good Friday while demonstrating against segregation, and on this very date, Saturday, April 13th in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. woke up in that jail cell in Birmingham.
The same jail cell where he wrote on the margins of a newspaper that had been smuggled in to him, this letter, these words:
"For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see...that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"
He spoke to the possibility of what we can achieve when we realize our own power and refuse to wait. The children of Birmingham and a man named King showed what was possible when they refused to wait for justice and confronted dogs and fire hoses -- when they defeated Bull Connor and brought down segregation in the city.
America we know our history-- it is perpetual testimony to impatient, demanding, unrelenting people who in every generation stand up for justice.
Generations of Americans have shown us what was possible when they refused to wait. Now it’s our turn. And we have work to do.
America-- we can’t wait.
America-- we will not wait.
Together, we will run at the tough challenges.
Together, we will do the things that other people tell us are impossible.
Together, we will fulfill our pledge to be a nation of liberty and justice for all.
Together, we will win.
And together, America, we will rise.
Source: Cory 2020
Democratic Presidential Candidate Rep. Tim Ryan’s First Presidential Rally in Youngstown
YOUNGSTOWN, OH – On Saturday, Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) announced his candidacy for president of the United States to represent the working people of Steel Country. During his remarks, Ryan pledged to restore dignity, respect and unity in the United States and to fighting for the access to affordable health care, strong retirement security and education opportunities for every American. The following is an edited transcription of his remarks:
“I'm Tim Ryan, and I'm running for president of the United States of America. You know at the end of the day, I'm a kid from Niles, Ohio. And the beautiful thing about Ohio is that you don't just get raised by your parents. You get raised by the community. And so, I'm here because of the coaches in Niles Little League, the teachers at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the teachers at Kennedy High School.
“It was a community effort to raise a kid. And I believe that that's what we need to get back to in the United States of America. Where it's OK for us to say, ‘I care about you, I love you, and I want to help you and I'm gonna do everything in my power to help you do what you have to do.’
“We stand here today on April 6, 2019, a divided country. And we've been divided for a long time. And that division has prevented us from being able to be the best that we could possibly be.
“And we can go back to the stories of Black Monday in Youngstown, that many people in this audience remember much better than I do. And I do think of my father-in-law who lost his job that day, or days after that, years after that, because of what happened on Black Monday. And I can go back 20 years and remember my cousin, Donnie Guerra, calling me on the phone saying, ‘You're never gonna believe what I had to do today. It was my last day at Delphi. I had to unbolt the machine from the factory floor. I had to put it in a box and I had to ship it to China.’ Or we can go back just a few weeks ago and talk about what happened at Lordstown.
“Things go up and things go down, but if we're not united we are not gonna be able to fix these structural problems that we have in the United States. And I'm running for president, to first and foremost try to bring this country back together. Because a divided country is a weak country, and we have politicians and leaders in America today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other.
“You can't be for business and for labor, you can't be for border security and immigration reform, you can't be for cities and rural America, you can't be for the North and the South, you can't be for men and women. I'm tired of having to choose. I want us to come together as a country. I want us to seize the future of this country. We are a great country. And we can do it, we can do it if we come together.
“And I just want you to know this one thing: The competition that we are in to today is fierce, and we don't need a super star, and we don't need a savior. We need to come together and we need grit and determination and the ability for us to work together for a better future, not just for us, but for our kids. That's what this is all about.
“And I will say that I will pledge to you every time I walk downstairs and into the Oval Office that you, and your needs, and your concerns, and your worries will be my worries. They'll be my worries. And I will work every single day – every single day – to make your life better. I'm gonna ask you to work hard every single day too to make your life better. But the problem today is so many people work hard and play by the rules and just still can't get ahead. They still can't get health care, they still can't get the job they need, they still can't move into the neighborhood or the school district that they want to be in. That's our problem. That's our concern together. And that's what this campaign is all about.
“We have three kids and two dogs, so you can imagine how much energy is flyin' through the house at any one moment, especially first thing in the morning. But a few years back now, something happened in the house where I actually got control of the TV remote. And what do you do if you're an old quarterback from around Youngstown, Ohio? You start flippin' through the TV stations to try and find some sports.
“So, I don't find sports but I find a sports documentary. And the documentary was on Jimmy Valvano. Remember Jimmy V? So, I'm half Italian, so this is my guy, right? So, I'm watchin' Jimmy V. And he said something that I'll never forget. He said, ‘Every day, in so many different ways, ordinary people do extraordinary things.’
“Ordinary people do extraordinary things. And I will tell you that if there is one value that I will bring to the highest office in the land, when I wake up, it's gonna be: How today, can I use every ounce of power that this office has to help ordinary people do something extraordinary today in America. That's my pledge to you.
“Why do we want to fix the education system? So we can give an ordinary kid from a place like Niles, or Campbell or Struthers to do something extraordinary. Why do we want everyone to have health care in the United States? It's a value, it's a right, it's important, it's something that we should all be able to agree upon. But if you're not healthy, you cannot do anything extraordinary to contribute to what we need to contribute to in the United States of America. That's why everyone deserves health care in the United States of America.
“And when you talk about reinvesting in communities like ours, which I have spent the last 19 years of my public life trying to do. Trying to make sure that communities like ours aren't forgotten. The fly over states are my states, the fly over states are your states, and the fly over states are gonna start governing in the United States of America again.
“We have so much work to do. We have so much work to do. We have broken systems in our country that we've failed to fix because we're divided.
“And I want you to know that our enemies come into our social media and they intentionally try to divide us. If there is an incident in America that's controversial – about kneeling for the national anthem, or there's a school shooting, or there's an incident between a cop and a kid – you know who comes on to our social media? The Russians.
“They come in to our social media and they spin things to get us into these divided camps so that we're fighting with each other. That's what they want. And meanwhile we can't get our economy going. Meanwhile, we can't get a health care system that works.
Meanwhile, we can't reform an old outdated government that needs reform. Or education, or anything else because we have not come together.
“The most patriotic thing we could do today is to respect each other. To care about each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. That maybe somebody else has something to offer that you hadn't thought of. And I want to build a government in the United States that allows us to pull Democrats and Independents and Republicans together.
“I will be sitting down with the business community in the United States and the workers and the labor unions in the United States. We all have to get better. We all have to get better if we're gonna solve these big problems. We all have to. And it's gonna take all of us. White, black, brown, gay, straight, North, South. We're all Americans in this great experiment in democracy. Each generation has the duty to grab the mantel and do something great with it.
“There's an old saying that politicians and presidents, they don't have power – they hold power. They hold the power that the people of the United States give them. And I want to hold that power for four years. And I want to bring the experiences that I've had in this community, from the schools that I went to, to the coaches that I had, to the teachers that I had, to the family that I had. And just maybe, just maybe, the person that can help heal these wounds is a working-class kid from a working-class family from a working-class community, that will go work his rear end off for the American people.
“Let me just say, in closing, to all of you. I thank you, I love you. And I don't say that gratuitously. I love you. I'm not standing here without you loving me and me loving you, and I have loved the opportunity that you have given me and I will tell you, I will go to work every single day and we're gonna get this country squared away. OK?
“We are not – and I want you to agree with this – we are not gonna let fear determine how we move into the future in the United States anymore. We're not gonna allow leaders to pit us against each other and while we're fightin' we can't get anything done and none of us move forward. Tell me you're gonna join together with me to do that.
“There's a great story about the champ Mohammed Ali that I want to end with. So, somebody went to see the Champ and bumped into him as he was walkin' down the street in Kentucky. It was a little kid and he said, ‘Champ, champ, I saw one of your fights!’ And he says, ‘Oh, that's great. No kidding.’ He said, ‘My dad took me to watch you fight!’ He said, ‘No kidding.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you got knocked down!’ Champ looked at him and said, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ He said, ‘No, my dad – it was one of the great moments of my life. He took – he's my dad – we went, but you got knocked down. I think the third or fourth round, you got knocked down.’ He goes, ‘It wasn't my fight.’ Ali looked at this kid and he said, ‘I've never been knocked down. I'm either up, or I'm gettin' up, OK?’
“The Mahoning Valley is either up, or we're gettin' up. Northeast Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. Ohio is either up, or we're gettin' up. And the United States of America, we're either up or we're gettin' up.
“Help me do this. I need your help. I need your support. I need your love. I need your voice. Let's go take back the White House.”
Source: Tim Ryan for America
TRANSCRIPT: Beto O’Rourke Officially Launches Presidential Campaign with over 6,000 Grassroots Supporters in El Paso
EL PASO, TEXAS -- Beto O’Rourke officially kicked off his campaign for President of the United States this morning at a public grassroots rally with more than 6,000 suppoerters in his hometown of El Paso. During the speech, O’Rourke shared his positive, unifying vision for bridging divides and bringing together Americans from all walks of life to overcome the greatest set of challenges this country has ever faced. His remarks focused on the urgent need to take on powerful special interests to address the most profound issues facing the nation including climate change, criminal justice reform, access to universal, guaranteed, high-quality health care, immigration laws that reflect our values and ensuring that this economy works for all Americans.
O'Rourke is continuing the day with a 5:00 p.m. CT rally in Houston at Texas Southern University and a 9:00 p.m. CT rally in Austin at the Texas state Capitol. The full remarks from this morning are below.
***As Delivered***
Thank you. Thank you all for being here. So grateful to everyone who is here today, so grateful to this community of El Paso, and I'm very grateful to each one of you who made the trip to come here and join us in our hometown in this community. It was really important for Amy and me to launch this campaign from El Paso.
This is a city where I was born. It's the city where Melissa and Pat O'Rourke raised me, my sisters Erin and Charlotte. It's the same city where Amy and I are raising our three kids, and perhaps most importantly, El Paso to me represents America and its very best. For more than a hundred years this community has welcomed generations of immigrants from across the Rio Grande, some having traveled hundreds of miles, some having traveled thousands of miles trying to escape brutality, violence, and crushing poverty to find a better life in this country for themselves and for their kids, that's for sure, but also because they were called to contribute to our shared success and to this country's greatness, and they have.
El Paso has been home to leaders in the struggles of civil rights and workers' rights, the Mexican-Americans who led the Chicano Movement, the women in this town who organized the Farah strike, and black El Pasoans like Dr. Lawrence Nixon, like Thelma White, who not only secured voting rights in this state, but they ensured that El Paso would be among the first cities of the former confederacy to desegregate our public places and integrate our education.
With Ciudad Juarez we formed the largest binational community in this hemisphere. And for 20 years running, we've been one of the safest cities in the United States of America. We are safe, not despite the fact that we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers. We are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers. We have learned, we have learned not to fear our differences, but to respect and embrace them. We see the languages spoken in this community, the traditions, the cultures, as a strength for El Paso. We understand, we understand that we are, in the words of Dr. King, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny.
This community has offered me my inspiration in life and every single opportunity that I've had, to the world-class public school teachers at Mesita Elementary who believed in me and sought to bring out the very best in me, to the small business community who allowed me to work for them as we were starting our own small business here in this community, and those who joined that business creating high skill, high wage, high-valued jobs in a community that had so much talent, but was just looking for a way to express itself, and to those community leaders, Border Network for Human Rights, Annunciation House, the Women's March, you have shown me what leadership is.
You elected me in 2005 to serve this community on the city council, not as a democrat, not as a republican, but as an El Pasoan, working with our fellow El Pasoans to improve this community, to turn around our mass transit system, to invest in neighborhoods and people, to protect our public spaces, and to never shy away from the fights in front of us, like extending healthcare benefits to the same-sex partners of city employees regardless of the consequences, regardless of the recall elections that would follow. And in 2012, we won a race against the odds and against the establishment to represent El Paso in the United States Congress.
We ran by talking and listening to you about tough issues like the veteran suicides that followed the fact that we had the longest wait times for mental healthcare access at a VA in the country. We talked about a war on drugs that had become a war on people. And thanks to you, once in office, we were able to deliver. We helped to turn around the VA in El Paso, expand mental healthcare for veterans nationally, expand our protected public spaces, improve our security and our connections with Mexico by investing in our ports of entry, and having the backs of every single service member and their families stationed at Fort Bliss or deployed around the world. You found, or you helped me to find those republican colleagues with whom I could walk across the aisle or drive across the country to get the job done for El Paso and for the United States, and we did.
In El Paso, it was your story that I told all over Texas in every single one of these 254 counties, all people, no PACs, all the time. Everyone counts, everyone matters, so we showed up everywhere to listen to everyone. Didn't matter how red or how rural, how blue, or how urban, we showed up both with the courage of our convictions and a willingness to listen and learn from those who we sought to serve in the senate. And though we did not win that race, although we came awfully close, we all, we all got to be part of something absolutely transformational in our lives and in the democracy of this state.
We were able to win votes from republicans and independents, expand the number of democrats who voted in an election, and this state, this state, which before 2018 had ranked 50th in voter turnout, this state saw voter turnout approaching presidential year election levels. This state, this state saw young voter turnout up 500 percent over the last midterm election. This state and its 38 electoral votes count like they've never counted before. All of us have a seat at the table. All of us matter.
In the United States House of Representatives, two new members of Congress from Texas, both democrats, elected into what we thought, what we were told to believe were safe republican seats. The composition of the state legislature has changed. And in Houston, Texas, 17 African-American women winning judicial positions literally changing the face of criminal justice in this country's most diverse city, you did that. You did that. Your votes, your willingness to volunteer, the pop-up offices that you hosted in your home, that's how we made this happen. And that's why I am so glad to be here with you today in my hometown, in my home state, to announce that I'm running to serve you as the next president of the United States of America. Thank you.
This, this is a campaign for America, for everyone in America. Like so many of you here, like so many more across the country, at this defining moment, Amy and I want to know that we've done everything within our power for this country. And though we know it comes at some sacrifice to our family, especially to our kids, we also know that our children and that your children and the generations that follow them are depending on us now at this moment. This is our moment of truth. This is our moment of truth, and we cannot be found wanting.
The challenges before us are the greatest of our lifetimes. An economy that works too well for too few and not at all for too many more. A healthcare system where millions are unable to see a doctor or be well enough to live to their full potential, and the last best hope of averting the catastrophe that will follow additional climate change fading before our very inaction. We must overcome these challenges, but we must first ask ourselves how this, the wealthiest, the most powerful country on the face of the planet, the most powerful country that world history has ever known, has found itself in such a perilous position.
For too long in this country, the powerful have maintained their privilege at the expense of the powerless. They have used, they have used fear and division in the same way that our current president uses fear and division. Based on the differences between us of race, of ethnicity, of geography, or religion to keep us apart, to make us angry, to make us afraid of ourselves and of one another, unrestrained money and influence has warped the priorities of this country. It has corrupted our democracy. It has invited the citicism and the distrust and the disengagement of millions of our fellow Americans who see their very own government enthralled to those who can pay for access and for outcomes.
A vigorous democracy, both political and economic, is the only check against this inertia of power, the only way to free our institutions of their capture and corruption, and the only means by which we can lift the voices and the lives of our fellow Americans. But when, but when the safeguards of this democracy are manipulated by those in power, when members of Congress can choose their own voters, when the Supreme Court decides that corporations are people and money is speech, when PACs and special interests can buy the outcomes of elections and legislation, and when voting rights are not expanded, they are functionally withdrawn, then we run the risk of becoming a democracy in name only. And the idea that we are founded on the principle that we are all created equal, to equal opportunity, is justifiably seen as a lie to those who have experienced gross differences in opportunity and outcome when it comes to education or healthcare or economic advancement or justice. So whatever our differences, where you live, who you love, to whom you pray, for whom you voted in the last election, let those differences not define us or divide us at this moment. Let's agree going forward before we are anything else, we are Americans first. We are Americans first, and we will put the business of this country before us.
So if you believe in guaranteed high-quality universal healthcare, because you have seen the cost and the consequence of millions of our fellow Americans who have no healthcare or do not have enough healthcare, then let us come together around a policy that begins by prioritizing affordability in prescription medications that ensures that we bring down the cost of our premiums and our deductibles. And in a country, and in a country where too many of our fellow Americans are dying of diabetes in the year 2019, dying of the flu, dying of curable cancers, in a community, in a state, in a country where one of the largest providers of mental healthcare services is the county jail system, and in a nation that is in the midst of a maternal mortality crisis three times as deadly for women of color, then let us ensure that universal healthcare means all of us can see a primary care provider, all of us can get mental healthcare help, and that universal care means every woman makes her own decisions about her own body. We can give every American, every business in this country the choice to enroll in Medicare without eliminating plans that many Americans like for their families because those plans work for their families. Everyone able to see a doctor. Everyone able to afford their prescription. Everyone able to take their child to a therapist. No one left behind. No one priced out.
We must get to universal guaranteed high-quality healthcare as soon as surely as we possibly can.
If we believe in an economy that works for all, we want to make sure that everyone has the chance to advance, then let's begin with the very youngest among us and invest in a world-class public school system pre-K to 12 everywhere in every community, and then let's do this. Let's pay our teachers what they are worth a living wage. There is no reason that any educator, any teacher should be working two or three jobs when they have the most important job in front of them, unlocking that lifelong love of learning within every single child. Once we do that, there's no stopping those kids. There's no stopping this country. And when they graduate from high school, let's make sure that they are both college ready and career ready, ready to go on to debt-free higher education, and ready to go to a job that provides purpose and pays a real paycheck.
Speaking of that, let's also insist that we will not continue to diminish the power of unions. We will strengthen unions in this country. Unions who insist that one job should be enough for every single American, unions who will help us to provide apprenticeships, not just for that young woman or young man graduating from high school, but for that parent who has finished raising their kids, for that worker whose job has been automated out of existence, apprenticeships ensure that we have the skills and the trades that command a living salary for the rest of your life, so let's strengthen those unions going forward.
And in rural America, if we want to lift up rural America, let's begin by listening to rural America. Let's partner with them in investing in hospitals, in schools, in infrastructure like broadband internet, and then let's ensure that every farmer, every rancher, every grower, every producer can make a profit as they grow, what feeds and clothes not just America, but so much of the rest of the world. And those farmers, like anyone else, wants to make sure that we are meeting the challenge of climate change before it is too late, let's open up technologies and markets to them that provide an incentive for capturing the carbon that we're currently emitting in the air.
I want to make sure that your gender, that your race, that your family does not prevent you from advancing in this economy, so let's do a few things. Let's pay women equal to what men make in this country. Let's sign into law paid family leave for every single family in this country. Let's ban workplace discrimination, and let's do this. Let's make sure that there's access to capital for communities who have effectively been shut out of access to capital, home loans, and the ability to build wealth in this country for generations.
And if we believe in justice for all in the face of the largest prison population per capita on this planet, one disproportionately comprised of people of color, then we must do the following; not only end the federal prohibition on marijuana, not only expunge the arrest records of everyone arrested for possession of something that is legal in more than half the country, we must not only end cash bail and for-profit prisons in the United States of America, but we must also confront the legacy of certain communities who have been criminalized and cut down based on the color of their skin, confronting, confronting the legacy and the consequences of slavery and segregation, and the continuing suppression of our fellow Americans is the only way that we will begin to repair the damage and keep ourselves from committing the same injustices.
And if we truly believe that we are a country of immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees, and they are the very premise of our strength, of our success, and yes, our security, then let us free every single dreamer from any fear of deportation. Let's bring millions more out of the shadows and onto a path to contribute to their maximum potential to the success of this country. Let's not only, let's not only follow this country's asylum laws, but let's make sure that we never take another child from another mother at their most desperate and vulnerable moment. Let us, let us reunite every single one of those families that are still separated today. And let's remember that every single one of us, including those who are just three or four blocks from here, detained under the International Bridge that connects us with Mexico behind chain-linked fence and barbed wire, that they are our fellow human beings and deserved to be treated like our fellow human beings.
We will find security not through walls, not through militarization. We will find security by focusing on our ports of entry that connect us to the rest of the world so we have a better idea of who and what is coming in here, and we facilitate the trade and travel connected to millions of jobs around this country.
We will support our CBP officers, our Border Patrol Agents. We will treat every single American with the dignity and respect that they are owed as Americans and as human beings. And if, if we are really serious about security, we have a golden opportunity, republicans, independents, democrats alike, to work on comprehensive immigration reform, to rewrite this country's immigration laws in our own image with our own values and in the best traditions of the United States of America.
For all, for all of the veterans here in El Paso, a community that has distinguished itself in service to country going back to Marcelino Serna in World War I, an undocumented immigrant who went over to France with the US Army and came back the most highly decorated veteran from the state of Texas, to the Milanos brothers in Vietnam, to every man and every woman who right now has their life on the line for this country, if we truly appreciate your service, not only will we make sure that we make the investments in the VA to care for you when you return from having borne the battle, especially for those conditions connected to service and combat, posttraumatic stress order, traumatic brain injury, military sexual trauma, we will also ensure that there is a roof over the head of every single veteran who's sleeping on the streets tonight. And then if we really mean it, if we really mean it, we will ensure that this country does not start yet another war before every peaceful, diplomatic, nonviolent alternative is explored and pursued, and those wars that we ask our fellow Americans, these service members to fight on our behalf, 17 years and counting in Afghanistan, 27 years and counting in Iraq, let's bring these wars to a close and bring these service members back home to their families, to their communities, and to their country.
If, after 300 years, after the enlightenment we can still listen to and believe the scientists, and I for one do, who tell us that thanks to our own emissions, our own excesses, and our own inaction, this planet has warmed one degree Celsius just since 1980. And the fires and the floods and the droughts and the manmade natural disasters will only get worse if this planet warms another degree Celsius, and this is our moment with little more than 10 years to spare to do everything in our power to free this economy from a dependence on fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, and to ensure, as we make the investment in new technologies and renewable energy, that everyone has the chance to benefit from this new economy, especially those communities, lower income and too often of color, that have borne the brunt of climate change so far.
This country has shown that we can do it. When the Western world faced the existential threat of Nazi Germany more than 80 years ago, this country harnessed the political will of hundreds of millions here of the Western democracy, not only to win that war for the following 80 years to make this world safe for democracy and to lift millions in this country into the middle class, this is our opportunity right now to do something for a far greater existential threat, to do more not just for those here with us today, but for the people of the future, our kids, and grandkids, and every generation that succeeds them.
We have to once again reassert our role on the world stage in order to do this. But if we're going to do that, we've got to strengthen these historic friendships and alliances, so many of them forged in sacrifice. The service of men and women who put their lives on the line and lost their lives to this country, let's make sure that that sacrifice was not squandered. Let's make sure that we strengthen those alliances. Let's end these love affairs with dictators and strong men all over the world. Let's earn, let's earn the respect of the people around the world, not just by how we treat those in other countries, but how we treat those within our country, and how we treat those who are at the border of our country.
If we do that, we can make sure that we once again become the indispensable nation convening the other nations of this planet around some of our shared challenges like climate change, like nuclear disarmament, like ending all of these wars that we are currently engaged in, we can do for ourselves what no other country can, and we have an opportunity at this moment to reprioritize this hemisphere those countries and people who are literally connected to us by land.
We can try to solve the problems of Central America here at our front door at the Texas-Mexico border, or we can invest in the opportunities to help the people of Central America where they are at home. It is our choice. But to do any of this, we've got to understand that our country's success depends on the success of this democracy. It is a single greatest mechanism that human kind has ever devised to call forth the power, the potential, and the genius of a people around their challenges and their opportunities. And so every single citizen must be able to vote, and every vote must count.
As president, I will sign into law a new Voting Rights Act. Together we will end gerrymandering, we will get big money out of our politics, and all across this country, we will have automatic and same-day voter registration. That's how we're going to do it.
But a full political democracy is only possible if we vigorously pursue a true economic democracy. Every child, every man, every woman in this country must be able to see a future for themselves in this country, otherwise this country will have no future as a democracy. That means that this extraordinary, unprecedented concentration of wealth and power and privilege must be broken apart. An opportunity must be shared with all.
(Spanish spoken)
We will not allow ourselves to be defined by our fears or our differences. Instead, we shall be known forever after by our ambitions, our aspirations, the resolve, the creativity, the service and the sacrifice that we brought to bear in order to achieve them. Our ability to campaign in this way with people, not corporations or PACs, but people who come together not only to ensure that we win the nomination, not only to ensure that we defeat Donald Trump in November of 2020, but people in every state, in every territory, from every walk of life coming together to show that the power of people is what is necessary for us to accomplish our priorities.
I am so grateful to be able to run to serve you as the next president of the United States of America, and I am so grateful for every one of you who has joined or will join this campaign and sacrifice some part of your life towards the success of this great country. Together, together we can make sure that America fulfills its promise for ourselves, for each other, and for every generation that succeeds us. Thank you, El Paso. Thank you, everyone. God bless you, and God bless America.
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Source: Beto for America
TRANSCRIPT: GILLIBRAND DELIVERS "BRAVE WINS" SPEECH AT TRUMP INTERNATIONAL
Today, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand delivered her first major speech as a candidate for president, called "Brave Wins." She stood in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City and offered her positive and brave vision for our country.
Remarks as prepared for delivery:
It's a gorgeous day, and looking around at this diverse and beautiful crowd … there's no doubt that America is great.
Our Declaration of Independence was the start of a conversation about how to achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every citizen. Our Constitution was always intended to grow and adapt as we formed a more perfect union, established justice, and ensured peace, security, and the blessings of liberty.
Even our national anthem ends in a question: “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, over the land of the free and the home of the brave?”
That open-ended question is what defines us: not just who we are or were, but who we will be. It challenges us to choose to take the next step, to fight that next fight, to answer that fundamental question: will brave win?
And the truth is, brave hasn't always won. And brave isn't winning right now.
Brave doesn't spread hate or bully the vulnerable. Brave doesn't put greed and self-interest over millions of lives. Brave doesn't cower behind lies and walls. Brave doesn't pit people against one another… That's what fear does.
This President has tried to reduce America to its smallest self. By attacking the values and institutions of our democracy, and turning our most cherished principles inside-out. Rooting for bigotry and discrimination and violence, closing our doors to immigrants and refugees, taking from the many to line the pockets of a few.
President Trump is tearing apart the moral fabric of this country.
He demonizes the vulnerable and he punches down. He puts his name in bold on every building. He does all of this because he wants us to believe he is strong. He is not. Our President is a coward.
That's not what we deserve – not what you deserve. We deserve a president who is brave; a president who will walk through fire to do what is right.
We deserve a president who inspires us to stand for something greater than ourselves. Look up at that tower – a shrine to greed, division and vanity. And now look around you. The greater strength, by far, is ours.
We are here to reject the politics of fear and hate – to listen to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Because the ideals of this country – opportunity, equality, compassion and justice – are worth fighting for.
We are here to embrace our shared humanity and rise above our differences. We don't build walls that are emblems of racism and fear. We build bridges, communities and hope. Because our unity of purpose lifts us higher than any tower.
We are here today because we know that when we join together and fight for our values, brave wins.
Americans prove this with their own bravery, every single day. You've already heard from some of them today. But there are countless more examples all around us.
The high school students who responded to unimaginable tragedy by organizing, marching and inspiring millions to end the epidemic of gun violence. That is brave.
The DREAMers who defiantly tell their stories and stand up for their right to call this country home. That is brave.
The sexual assault survivors who raise their voices against the powerful that tell them to stay silent. That is brave.
The millions of Americans who are speaking out against this Administration's cruelty toward women, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and children at our border. That is brave.
And of course, the formerly well-behaved women who organized, ran for office, voted in record numbers and won in 2018. That too, is brave.
Day in and day out, Americans are making a choice to resist the backward pull of this Administration and pushing us toward a better future.
And it's brave choices like yours that have inspired me to take on the fights that others won't. It's because of you that I've chosen to be brave too.
Because the people of this country deserve a president worthy of your bravery. A president who not only sets an example, but follows yours.
Your bravery inspires me every day. And that is why I'm running for President of the United States.
By coming here today, we are sending a powerful message: We will not let anything or anyone divide us. We will not cede control of our country to corruption, greed and the powerful interests. We will keep showing up and we will keep fighting back.
The fight ahead may seem daunting, but there is hope when we look down at our feet and see whose shoulders we stand on. We all have our heroes who inspire us in this struggle.
My grandmother, Polly Noonan, was one of mine. She would be proud of us standing here today. She was larger than life. She was a firebrand and a Democratic organizer, who cursed like a sailor. She spent her life fighting for women to have a seat at the table.
She never let anyone tell her that she couldn't or that she didn't belong. And she instilled that in me.
But more than anything else, my grandmother taught me that being brave doesn't just mean standing up for yourself, it means standing up for other people who need you and raising your voice on behalf of others who aren't being heard.
It's that core principle from my grandmother that has driven my life in public service. Over the years, I have learned that bravery means standing up to the powerful, and summoning the courage to confront them head on.
That's what I did when I first ran for Congress in a red red red district that nobody thought I could win. Except for my mother – which tells you a lot about her. People told me: “It has more cows than Democrats – you just can't win!”
But, I took those long odds, and I won. And the next election, I won again - that time by a 24-point margin.
Why? Because I never forgot who I served.
That's why I stood up to greed and voted against the bank bailout that would leave taxpayers holding the bag. Even though I was warned, it would end my career.
It's why I stood up to corruption by making insider trading illegal for members of Congress. No one in our government should be lining their pockets as a public servant.
It's why I stood up to callousness by demanding the 9/11 heroes be given the respect, compensation and healthcare they deserved.
And why I stood up to indifference and lies in the Pentagon, Congress, and Colleges on behalf of survivors of sexual assault and harassment.
And it's why I stood up to bigotry and demanded the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which was a corrosive and harmful policy that undermined our character and our national security.
And it's why I'm proud to have stood up to Donald Trump more than anyone else in the U.S. Senate.
I will go toe-to-toe with anyone to do the right thing. Whether it's powerful institutions, the President, or even my own party.
But I'm not running for President because of who I'm fighting against. I'm running for President because of who I'm fighting for.
I'm fighting for an America where power truly belongs to the people.
Where our leaders care about everyone in this country, and lead not from weakness of ego, but from strength of character.
Where compassion and integrity define our government, not self-interest and corruption.
Where we don't just care about the profits we make today, but the future we're leaving to our grandchildren.
I know we can be that America. But it means starting at the root of our problems. Greed.
Right now, special interests are displacing the voices of the people of this country. Find me a so-called unsolvable problem, and I will point you to the greed and corruption in the way.
Polluter profits take precedence over drinking water.
Opioid manufacturers get a pass instead of indictments they deserve, while our neighbors are sold more addictive drugs on purpose.
The NRA stops popular, common sense gun reform, while stray bullets kill children in our communities.
Dark, unaccountable money is at the heart of this outrageous inaction. We need to crack open our government, flip the switch, and let the light flood in.
That's exactly what I did when I came to Washington and challenged Congress by making my meetings, finances and taxes public. I wanted my constituents to know that I was working for them, not the powerful.
I will keep leading on transparency within my own office and campaigns. That's why I am not taking any corporate PAC money in this campaign, no federal lobbyist money and no individual Super PACs.
As president, I will fight for publicly-funded elections. It would change the way Washington works overnight. Imagine your voice was just as loud as the Koch Brother's. What a concept!
By leveling the playing field, our democracy will thrive and we will protect against the dysfunction that's poisoning Washington now.
As your president, I will be answerable to you alone, elevating the concerns that you would raise at a town hall or at your kitchen table. I will govern based on the principle that our democracy only works when elected leaders hear directly from you.
Only then can we finally start making progress on the problems we face. Our goals are ambitious, but the truth is, they're not controversial. Americans across party lines support these common-sense ideas.
It is time for this country to make quality, affordable healthcare a right and not a privilege, by passing Medicare for All.
I've fought for this since my very first House race in 2006. We have a plan to get from our current system to single-payer and I know, because I helped write it. We will create competition, get costs down, and eliminate greed.
On education, it's time to guarantee universal pre-K, affordable daycare and a high-quality public education for every kid, no matter what block they grow up on.
We must make higher education affordable and accessible for everyone, and reduce the crush of student debt. The federal government should not be making money off the backs of our students. In my administration, we would refinance all federal student debt to the lowest available rate.
And here's a big idea! Let's improve and expand the GI bill to make college free for anyone who agrees to do national public service. That way our young people can pursue their dreams debt-free, while also helping others.
To grow the middle class, we need to start rewarding work again. We must make “full employment” a national priority, by investing in free job training through apprenticeships, not for profits, community colleges and state schools. We will work with employers to connect underemployed and unemployed workers with the training, skills and jobs that are available in their communities and in their fields of interest.
With workers' rights under attack more than ever, we need to protect the right to collectively bargain and form unions, fighting right to work and supporting card check. And let's do right by our workers and raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour nationwide.
We have to transform the infrastructure of work by finally making national paid leave a reality. It's outrageous that we are the only industrialized country in the world without it. You should never have to risk your job and income to take care of a new baby, a sick family member, or your own medical issues. I refuse to accept the false choice between your paycheck and your family.
I've led this fight in Congress since 2013, when it was not part of our national conversation. And hear me when I say this: Paid leave, equal pay and affordable daycare are not just “women's issues.” These are economic issues, ones that will determine whether or not our country succeeds.
At the same time, we need to dismantle the institutional racism that pervades our society and holds back millions of families. It's in our health care, education, economic and criminal justice systems.
It's in the growing crisis of black women's maternal mortality. It's in the sentencing disparities that keep black men in prison for years while white-collar criminals go home on bail. It's in the wealth gap between communities of color and white communities that only widens from generation to generation.
These challenges call for solutions both targeted and broad, like higher standards for maternity care, a national commitment to full employment, postal banking, ending cash bail, and legalizing marijuana.
We need to restore our moral leadership in the world. We must secure our borders effectively and fight terrorism relentlessly, but let's be very clear: Racism and fear are not a national security strategy.
Building a wall, ripping apart families, banning Muslims and turning our backs on refugees and asylum seekers isn't just wrong – it makes us LESS safe.
We need to repair our relationship with allies and stop fawning over our adversaries. We need to leverage our diplomatic tools to make Americans more prosperous and more secure, and always treat military force as the last resort. We must bring an end to our endless wars. America's commander in chief is not a dictator, and the decision to deploy our troops can never be made lightly or unilaterally without Congress.
And we need to protect the integrity of our elections, by holding accountable any threats to our democracy, from abroad or right here at home.
The stakes on this just got higher on Friday. The Mueller report MUST be made public. All of it. Nobody in this country - not even the president - is above the law or immune from accountability.
It's not often that I agree with Richard Nixon, but he was right to say that the American people have a right to know whether or not their President is a crook.
And finally, we need to treat climate change like the existential threat it is, and pass a Green New Deal. Let's make this our generation's moonshot. Addressing a global challenge of this urgency will take massive effort and transformative vision which is exactly why we should do it.
Let's invest in our crumbling infrastructure, create sustainable green jobs, and protect clean air and clean water as a universal human right. And I'd go further than others who support this plan. I'd also put a price on carbon to use market forces to steer companies away from fossil fuels and towards clean and renewable energy.
We can't afford not to do this. And we don't have time to waste.
John F. Kennedy said he wanted to put a man on the moon in the next ten years, “not because [it's] easy, but because [it's] hard”. I believe we should look at climate change in the exact same way. We should aspire to net zero carbon emissions in the next ten years, not because it's easy but because it's hard and “it's a challenge that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one that we intend to win.”
None of these big fights and equally big goals will be easy. Nothing worth fighting for ever is. But I've never backed down from a fight for what's right... and I'm not about to start now.
My faith tells me to care for the least among us, feed and clothe the poor, help the stranger, the sick and the incarcerated. I believe we are called to be the Light of the World, to defeat the darkness, and to treat others the way we want to be treated.
I am running for President to fix what's been broken, to repair our moral fabric, and to rebuild the common bonds between us as Americans. This fight is so much bigger than any one election. It's about making a choice and deciding who we are, and who we are going to be.
After all, America is, and will always be, the “home of the brave.” No matter how difficult the course before us, no matter how dark the hour, the lesson of our history is that justice, fairness and truth are possible but only if we are willing to put everything we have on the line to achieve it.
So, each one of us has a choice today: Will we defend this democracy? Will we speak out for what we believe in? Will we reject hate and fear, greed and corruption? Will we fight, with every fiber of our being, because everything we care about is at stake?
Will we be brave?
You've already answered that question just by being here today. And if you're with me - if you're ready to take on this fight - join my campaign by going to KIRSTENGILLIBRAND.COM and contribute to help power this movement forward.
I believe, in my bones, that we can do this. And I know that years from now, we will look back on this moment in our history, and we'll be able to say that we did something about it.
We stood up, locked arms, and proved to America, and the world, that when people come together to drive out darkness...
Hope rises.
Fear loses.
And, Brave wins.
Thank you. God Bless you all. And God bless America.
Source: Gillibrand 2020
Remarks: Wayne Messam Launches Presidential Campaign, Proposal to Eliminate $1.5 Trillion in Student Debt
Miramar, Fla. — Today, Mayor Wayne Messam formally launches his campaign for President at Florida Memorial University, the only HBCU in South Florida, and rolls out his plan to resolve the student debt crisis.
Remarks — as Prepared for Delivery:
"Good afternoon, America!
"To my wife, Angela, my twin daughters, and my namesake...
"As many of you may now know...
"I’m the son a former contract sugar cane cutter. My immigrant father cut sugar cane in the Glades for over a decade, at times for only 75 cents a row of cane. My mother used to feed the workers in the migrant camp and later became a domestic worker.
"I was born in Pahokee, FL and grew up in South Bay. The area in South Florida affectionately known as the Muck. The lessons of hard work and self-confidence was instilled in me since I was a boy. My parents didn’t make it an option about whether or not I would get an education. Because they knew, I could have a shot at achieving the American Dream.
"You know, The American Dream isn’t ficticious to me, it’s real. Here’s my story.
"National football championship with Bobby Bowden playing amazing teammates like NFL hall of famer Derrick Brooks, & Warrick Dunn. I even had a shot at the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals.
"After my NFL career was cut short, my wife and I started a construction business during the Great Recession
"Let me tell you about my first campaign...(city commission won by 30 votes - you can’t tell me 1 vote doesn’t matter - especially here in Florida).
"I then took on a new challenge, defeating a 16 year incumbent, then won reelection with 86% of the vote
"Now I know the national pundits and the status quo in Washington are asking “why would a mayor run for President?” and “is he qualified?”
"The real question should be what does Washington experience have to do with meeting the needs of the American people?
"There’s a good reason that 2020 will be “the year of the Mayor”. Mayors are on the frontlines of cleaning up Washington's mess.
"As Mayor I have:
"Beat out China to bring jobs to our city.
"Helped city recover from Hurricane Irma.
"Led the fight against oil drilling to protect the environment.
"Helped pass a living wage increase.
"Sued the state of Florida to fight for the right to reform our gun laws.
"During the recent government shutdown, I passed water bill relief for federal workers, to clean up Washington’s mess.
"Recruited high paying jobs to put Floridians to work.
"Declared Miramar a safe place for immigrants.
"I'll put that record against any Washington politician on the left or right.
"That’s why I stand before you today…
"The son of an immigrant sugar cane cutter and a cook.
"A concerned citizen, sick and tired of being concerned.
"The mayor of a city with one of the nation’s fastest growing economies, too morally disturbed by the state of our nation to wait my turn, too disgusted by the reckless and irresponsible behavior in the White House to turn a blind eye, too impatient with the pace of change, to sit idle while crisis after crisis piles up on the horizon...
"Today, I wanted you to hear first - I am running for President of the United States of America.
"I’m running because as Dr. King said “this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”.
"I’m running for President so that my twin daughters and my son can grow up in a world where we face our challenges as Americans and spend our energy trying to solve them.
"No longer can we…
"Turn a blind eye to the student loan debt crisis.
"Accept anything but a short timeline to take action on climate change.
"Blindly accept that our country has a mass shooting nearly every single day.
"Fail to plan for the changing economy and the impacts of artificial intelligence.
"We are one nation.
"The American people are not ammunition to win a political battle.
"They are our only hope.
"Because of them that’s why change cannot wait.
"I'm running for President because our politics has become too small, our public morale, too decayed.
"It is time America leads the world again, and the only way we can do this is to go big. We must be bold and our foreign policy must reflect our values if we are to truly lead.
"We are capable of transformational change when we decide to work together as a human family.
"When we place the pursuit of happiness for every American as a priority, not just the ones we personally prefer.
"Americans may be the most blessed, but we have always risked that blessing for the greater good.
"Regardless of whether you worship God in South Carolina or remain in awe of the universe in Southern California, we all share the same heartbeat, the same need for clean air and water. The same desire to raise our children to be better than we were.
"We are inextricably linked and unable to detach from our greater humanity.
"Before they tell you that this is not possible and is all pie in the sky, let me tell you about the construction business my wife and I founded.
" I started a construction business from scratch with wife, scraping together our savings.
"Helped build green and climate-conscious projects, including the greenest school in the Southeastern United States, achieving LEED Platinum certification.
"I have overseen nearly half a billion in contracts, including working on the FLL airport.
"People in Washington talk endlessly about the need to rebuild our infrastructure and plan for a sustainable future, but have little to show for it.
"Well, I’ve done it and am ready to lead a nationwide rebuilding effort. I’m asking you to stand with me and together we can rebuild this great nation we love, from the ground up.
"My wife and I have been blessed to have the opportunity to create a successful business.
"We are eternally grateful for the opportunities available in America, and we want to make sure those opportunities remain available for all Americans.
"But as an American, it is my duty to keep it real and speak truth to power.
"Let’s start first by addressing the elephant in the room that our country has not confronted head on: the student loan debt crisis.
"For many of you beginning your career, you carry a burden unlike any other burden faced by students of my generation.
"We’re asking those in college today, those heading into college, and even those parents and grandparents who paid for their children and grandchildren to get a good college education, to pay off massive student debt as the price for the American Dream.
"This student loan debt crisis is not being addressed in at all Washington.
"I was lucky enough to get an athletic scholarship to Florida State University, but you should not have to be an athlete to get the opportunity of a quality college education in this country.
"On June 1, 1875, an article in the New York Times ran under the headline “The Expense of College Education”.
"Apparently, the writer was beside themselves because parents back then were paying more in one year for their kids than four years of their own college education costs.
"Folks – it’s 2019. More than 140 years later, we still have not solved the problem.
"We are still hitting our heads on the same issue and building towards an avoidable crisis that will negatively impact our economy.
"It is immoral for this country to require our citizens to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to achieve the American Dream.
"Here are the facts:
"Our education system is a “debt trap” for young Americans that will keep them struggling through their senior years.
"Over 45 million Americans owe more than $1.5 trillion in private and public debt - an amount that doubled in just ten years.
“The average loan for a four-year degree is nearly $30,000.
"Over 2.7 million Americans carry $100,000 in student loan debt.
"This is the second largest pool of consumer debt – second only to housing.
"This isn’t just a young person’s issue. It’s devastating even the young at heart.
"Student loan borrowers over 50 saw their debt increase by $28 billion in just one year.
"These are the facts.
"Now, let’s discuss how we got here.
"The old truth remains that a quality education remains the best path into the middle class and beyond.
"The cost of a college degree has skyrocketed out of control.
"Mostly working class and middle class Americans are in need of student loans due to the lack of family capacity to support continuing their education.
“Many entry level jobs historically require a college degree, barring entry to the job market.
"Many students who take out student loans often have to get a second job and struggle to make ends meet well into their senior years.
"Here’s my plan:
"I believe that Americans deserve a second chance to reach the American Dream.
"Before we can make college affordable for the next generation, we must provide relief to the one-in-four adult Americans now struggling with student loan debt.
"As president, I will push for national student loan debt forgiveness, paid for by repealing the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest in this country.
"It is time for the federal government to cancel all federal and private student loans.
"The government would purchase student loans held by the private sector or assume responsibility for making payments on these loans.
"The goal is to zero out all student loan debt – regardless of the source.
"For student borrowers, either approach would provide immediate financial relief, freeing up an average $400 a month to spend, save or invest; and allow borrowers to begin building wealth at the same pace as their peers not burdened with student debt.
"Now I know, $1.5 trillion sounds like a daunting amount, but as the research shows, the benefits are significant and would benefit all Americans far more than the Trump tax cuts. It is clear the Trump tax cuts have fallen short, with slowing growth, rising deficits and most of the benefits going to corporations. Repealing this malignant tax cut and using the money to get rid of student debt would help all Americans.
"My plan would:
"Create 1.2 million to 1.5 million jobs over the first few years.
"Reduce the unemployment rate in a meaningful way.
"Add between $800 billion to $1 trillion to the Gross Domestic Product over 10 years time.
"It’s time we boost our economy and give Americans a second chance at the American Dream.
"To be clear, my plan would not only directly boost the economy, it would also help Americans rise across the board:
"Increase the number of new small business formed each year.
"Raise the number of degrees achieved.
"Bring more first-time buyers into the housing market.
"With your help we can put our country on stronger footing and immediately give Americans a second chance at the American Dream.
"Change cannot wait any longer.
"This is not the only crisis on the horizon…
"No issue hits closer to home here in South Florida than gun violence.
"30 minutes from where I stand we have had two mass shootings - Parkland and Fort Lauderdale Airport - within the last two years.
"I have had my own run-in with this new American norm of the threat of gun violence...
"In 2017 [Aventura mall mass shooting scare]...
"Christmas shopping and crowds began to scream and run for cover, police with weapons drawn...
" [I] Took cover in the back with a few store employees, police cleared...
"As a result of Washington’s refusal to address gun violence, here is our new norm:
"58 precious lives taken from us in Las Vegas, 49 lives destroyed at Pulse in Orlando, the 9 brave souls murdered trying to pray in Charleston, the tragedy at the University of Iowa’s Van Halen Hall, and the countless number of victims of gun violence in American streets every day - many whose names we may never know.
"The trauma of this epidemic doesn’t go away when the shooting is over. One student in California survived one mass shooting only to be killed in another one. Here at home, survivor’s remorse claimed the lives of two Parkland shooting survivors, and snatched the life of a father whose daughter was brutally murdered in Sandy Hook.
"How bad could it possibly get?
"When you have 96 people die from gun violence every day in America, and today, as I stand before you, there is no gun reform bill on the President’s desk.
"Washington is broken.
"When you can’t take your family to a movie or drop your child off at school without wondering whether or not it will be the last time that you see them.
"Washington is broken.
"I’m running for President of the United States to change that.
"Here’s my plan:
"When I’m President, it will be the number one priority for my administration to prevent mass shootings.
"I believe law enforcement should remove mass shooting weaponry from the hands of those suffering from mental illness, those who have a history of domestic abuse, and anyone on the terrorist watch list.
"It’s time to stop playing games with American lives.
"We cannot wait to have safe communities and schools.
"It will be my goal as your President to cut gun deaths in half by the end of my first term, with the goal to eliminate this threat entirely by the end of my presidency.
"No half-measures, no tiptoeing in the water.
"If anyone, Republican or Democrat has a plan that would cut gun deaths in half and bring this threat to an end, I urge them to bring that forward and I will support it.
"We’ve been here before.
"In 1985, CEOs of major car companies opposed seat belt laws.
"Why should we expect anything different from big gun manufacturers?
"It’s time we demand action from our government to keep us safe from gun violence and replace politicians if they won’t get to work to make it happen.
"One more child lost to gun violence is one - too - many.
"Change cannot wait to protect our people.
"Of course, we have yet another big challenge on the horizon.
"Today, in 21st Century America, the leaders of the political party in power do not believe in science.
"How bad could it possibly get?
"When you have hurricanes all across this state intensifying and Miami Beach floods when the sun is out due to rising sea levels.
"Washington is broken.
"By the end of this American century, as many as one million Floridians could lose their homes due to climate change and cost the country $120 billion dollars per year in property damages.
"The largest wildfires we have ever seen engulf the state of California in flames and snatched moms and dads, babies and grandparents from their families.
"Yet, all we hear out of Washington are attacks on proponents of the Green New Deal and silence from those with the political power to save lives.Washington is broken.
"I’m running for President of the United States to take direct climate action to change that.
"This is not just a coastal issue.
"Sections of the Midwest would see their ability to produce corn drop by 75% and 25% of soybean crop production could be at risk.
"Even this administration’s own reports say we if we don’t act now, we could have irreversible damage to the air we breathe and the water we drink.
"Change can’t wait.
"I’ve built a construction business overseeing nearly a half a billion dollars in projects and I helped build the greenest school in Florida, so I know how to create jobs taking action to prevent climate change.
"Here’s my plan:
"When I’m President, my administration will make it a priority to lead the world and take bold, direct, climate action that will rival the New Deal in scope, rise to the scale of this challenge, apply the urgency required to get the job done in ten years.
"It’s time we level with the American people.
"We can build the economy and solve the threat of climate change.
"Climate change is not a hoax. It is the premier danger to our very existence and the future of our children and grandchildren.
"We share this planet with every human in the world.
"It is time we live up to being good stewards of our environment.
"We cannot wait to lead the world.
"Change can’t wait.
"Now some of you all may have seen me on Thursday debating with our friends on Fox News about the economy.
"The host of the show repeatedly asked me to pat Trump on the back for the economy
"I refused to do so.
"Here’s why:
"When you have Americans working two and three jobs to make ends meet…Washington is broken.
"When senior citizens can’t afford life saving medicine...
"Washington is broken.
"When big corporations take large tax cuts and refuse to provide a living wage for their workers...
"Washington is broken.
"Let me tell you about my record as a Mayor.
"There is a company headquarted in my city of Miramar called JL Audio...[They] manufacture speakers.
"They had a manufacturing site in China, and wanted to expand marine division. They had a choice to create more jobs in China or my city.
"As Mayor, I worked with Republicans and Democrats to fought get those jobs back into the United States.
"In just 2 short years, they doubled their workforce in my city.
"This story is proof that not only can we beat out China to create jobs here in America, but we can do this all over the nation.
"And if you give me the opportunity to serve as your President, we will.
"The challenge is larger than just the fight to create American jobs.
"Recently, The Chinese Communist Party published a manifesto of ambition on the front page of a daily newspaper. It read - and I quote:
"The world needs China, as all humans are living in a community with a shared future ... That creates broad strategic room for our efforts to uphold peace and development - and gain an advantage.”
"Meanwhile, we never know if the United States government is shutdown or open for business.
"I’m running for President, because the time to live up to our potential is now, not tomorrow.
"The future is happening every day and we are ill-prepared.
"It should be illegal to shut down the government and hurt American workers and families.
"Under my administration we would bring unnecessary uncertainty for American workers and businesses to an end.
"Four years ago, the president inherited the Obama economy with historic growth from the depths of a recession.
"Nearly years later, this administration has done next to nothing to prepare us for the future.
"All the while, reports surface that scientists in China created the first gene-edited babies, a process that challenges the moral and ethical leadership of the world.
"Instead of preparing us for the future, they decided to give millions in tax breaks to big corporations, who then turned around and cut jobs and laid off workers.
"When I’m President, repealing the Trump tax breaks for the wealthy will be on the top of my agenda.
"I’ve built a small business, and as Mayor, overseen one of the fastest growing economies in the nation. I know how to create jobs.
"It’s time we had a President who invests in training the entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow.
"The future holds an economy where every American is able to take his or her talent directly to market.
"We have seen the rise of ride sharing and home sharing, cryptocurrency and digital collectibles, yet we still train our workforce for jobs that will be replaced by artificial intelligence.
"When I’m President, we will establish an economic plan to soften the blow of the coming tech advancements on working and middle class Americans.
"And we will encourage young people to start their own businesses as a pathway to success and alternative to college.
"We should not just stand by while manufacturing jobs leave this country, leaving Americans holding empty promises.
"I have helped pass a living wage for workers, fought to attract high paying jobs for Floridians, and created jobs myself.
"Democrats don’t need to be lectured on the economy when Democratic presidents oversee stronger job growth than Republican presidents.
"Here’s my plan:
"When I’m President, any American who wants a job will be able to get it and it will be a federal priority to put Americans to work in high paying jobs, with flexible benefits so they can spend more time with their family and friends.
"Success in the future means encouraging “smart work”.
"Let’s bring back the creative American spirit.
"Now, we have discussed some of our domestic challenges, but my most important role as your President would be to protect our standing in the world and keep Americans safe.
"I’m running for President, because our role as an honest broker on the world stage has been damaged.
"President Trump befriends our enemies and makes enemies of our friends"
"On that basic principle, the Trump administration is failing to pass the smell test.
"The lack of long term peace and stability in the Middle East, so central to our nation’s security, threatens the safety and security of our men and women around the world, our allies and partners in fighting terror, and our strategic economic interests.
"A major piece of this instability is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Every day this conflict persists is a more dangerous day for American national security.
"Our current failure to play a meaningful role in ending conflicts there is dangerously threatening our moral authority and standing in the world.
"I just recently returned from an independent fact-finding mission to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, and Tel-Aviv, meeting with top leaders from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I met with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, a mayor of one of the largest settlements, and the executive director of B’Tselem - a leading human rights organization.
"I also met with the top negotiator on the Palestinian side who negotiated the Oslo Accords and the first woman elected to the Palestinian National Council.
"After hearing from the stakeholders who would be a part of achieving a two-state solution, I came away convinced that America’s standing is suffering under President Trump.
"The negative impact of this situation can not be overstated.
"We are witnessing the decline of America’s ability to lead in the Middle East.
"When I’m President, we will reverse this decline and restore true American leadership, one that’s rooted in both our values AND our national security interest.
"For the last two years, the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian policy has been led by ideological actors who have taken actions detrimental to American interests in resolving this conflict.
"Based on conversations I held with a wide-ranging and diverse group of Israelis and Palestinians on the breakdown in talks, it became clear that the Trump administration is failing both sides.
"This is not a new conflict, but the moment now is acute. And the Trump Administration is making the situation much worse.
"Instead of rallying our allies to take shared responsibility in resolving the conflict, President Trump’s team has pushed them away by inserting its own hard right radicalism into a conflict fraught with the potential for a religious war.
"This counterproductive approach not only harms the Israelis and Palestinians who both want peace, but it also serves to strengthen murderous extremists, like ISIS, who recruit off our role in this crisis and directly threaten American interests around the world.
"Over and over again, Israeli and Palestinian leaders made clear to me their desire to negotiate directly for peace.
"And it's not just high-profile figures like the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset or the top negotiator for the PLO. It’s also the everyday Israeli and Palestinians - the people I met in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv - who quietly shared their hopes for a two-state resolution and fears of what would happen if the region were to disintegrate into an all-out religious war.
"There was the Israeli cab driver, so overcome with emotion that he had to pull over, swearing his love for his Palestinian neighbors and describing how their families care for each other.
"Then there was the Palestinian shopkeeper, who despite living under harsh conditions in the occupied territories, displayed both compassion and understanding towards Israelis.
"Regular people are suffering and deserve American leadership, not misguided ideology and partisan talking points.
"The actions of the United States in resolving this conflict should not just reflect the interests of a small minority of right-wing, ideological voices.
"As a result of President Trump’s short-sighted thinking, our standing in the world has become diminished.
"Because of the current approach, the Palestinian side has entirely withdrawn from talks and quietly, Israeli officials scoff at the chances for success of the Trump administration's ham-handed approach.
"The next American president must change course and instead serve as an honest broker and a true chief of our national security interests.
"We are not truly secure when our long-time friend and dear ally, Israel, feels threatened to the point of occupying and securing land as a permanent solution, instead of peace.
"We are not secure when the Palestinians - have been fully disenfranchised, undermining effective diplomacy, yet this is what happens when a real estate developer leads an insular negotiations process that prioritizes right-wing voices over all others.
"It is time for America to lead a serious negotiation, not the one we currently have.
"We are not secure when 53 percent of Palestinians live in poverty, including over 400,000 children.
"Unlike President Trump, I have walked the streets of Hebron with a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces and visited Ramallah. I have also enjoyed a beautiful meal in Tel Aviv and explored the ancient glory of Jerusalem. The Israeli and Palestinian people still look to us to help them resolve their conflict.
"A restoration of American global leadership will require a restoration of American respect for all people and all faiths.
"We cannot disrespect the humanity of people and expect to be welcomed with open arms due to our military might alone.
"Our true power has always been our tolerance and ability to find alignment with the broader brotherhood and sisterhood of our fellow human beings.
"As your President, I will never lose sight of that fact.
"Every generation gets one moment.
"One moment that defines who we become for centuries.
"This election is our moment.
"What happens in this election will provide a clear window into the soul of our nation.
"Will we fall prey to those who stoke our anger for their political gain?
"Or will we rise to our better angels and restore sanity, empathy, and real American toughness.
"As your President, I will champion change and opportunity for all people, not just the wealthy or well-connected.
"My message to the American people is simple - If you believe change cannot wait another election or another year - I want to be our champion.
"If you believe we should finally forgive student loan debt, if you believe we can take action on climate change on Day One, if you believe that healthcare should be a right, if you believe that military-style weapons have no place on our streets or in our schools, if you are tired of the old ways of doing things, help me take this call for change to the national debate stage right here in Miami in June.
"I’m not backed by big corporate PACs. We won’t have the most big donors, but your $5, your $10, your $20 can change this country for the better.
"Go to wayneforamerica.com and give what you can and I pledge to never give up in this fight.
"Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America."
Source: Wayne for America
JOHN HICKENLOOPER ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH
DENVER, CO - On Thursday, Governor Hickenlooper will lead a hometown send-off event in Denver, alongside Colorado leaders, friends, and musicians, featuring a performance by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats.
The event will take place at Civic Center Park, which is situated between Denver’s City Hall where Hickenlooper served as Mayor for eight years, and the Colorado State Capitol where he served as Governor for eight years. It is blocks away from the brewpub that helped launch Hickenlooper’s successful career as an entrepreneur and community advocate.
Since announcing his candidacy on Monday, Hickenlooper raised over $1 million in less than 24 hours.
Below is a copy of Governor Hickenlooper’s prepared remarks.
We meet this afternoon against the backdrop of the great Colorado Rockies in this state we love, in the heart of the American West – a place that Wallace Stegner, one of the great writers of the West, described as the “home of hope.”
As Americans, we all deserve to feel that hope. We’re a young country in a wondrous, bountiful land, teeming with possibility.
We’re innovative, filled with the strength that dwells in the toughest alloys – the magic you get from combining all origins and outlooks into something resilient and wonderful.
We have every right to live in a land that’s the home of hope.
But these days, that’s not how it feels in America. It feels like we’re living in a heaving crisis - years in the making - spawned by dysfunctional politics - and defined above all by this president.
Donald Trump is alienating our allies, ripping away our health care, endangering our planet, and destroying our democracy.
The daily insults he hurls range from shocking to unconscionable.
But it’s more than his tweet storms. Real people are being hurt: he’s closed down the government. Hate crimes are up. He’s forcibly taking kids from their parents.
Most people would call that kidnapping.
He measures progress by the number of enemies he creates.
He believes that by tearing others down he raises himself up.
These are not the metrics of America’s greatness.
We are a nation that tracks our progress by the number of working families who end the day feeling more secure about their future.
We tally our wins by the number of children who have enough to eat, who feel safe in their homes and in their schools, who have access to the skills for a changing economy.
We broadcast America’s values by celebrating those who may not have been born in America - but America was born in them.
We define our gains by the number of us who look at a fellow American, of a different race or sexual orientation and feel in our heart, “neighbor, you belong here.”
We gauge our standing in the world by the number of allies who trust us and stand with us through the worst of times.
We record America’s greatness by our ability to come together and despite differences achieve bold things for our children and our country.
This isn’t about unity for unity’s sake. America stops working when we work against each other. Our country stops making progress when we hunker down on opposite sides of continental divides – Blue and Red; rich and poor; urban and rural.
It’s time to end this American crisis of division. It’s time to bring all Americans together. And that’s why I’m running to be President of the United States of America!
Now, I understand I’m not the first person in this race or the most well known person in this race. But let me tell you: at 4 syllables and 12 letters, “Hickenlooper” is now the biggest name in the race!
Let me tell you something else: growing up as a skinny kid with coke bottle glasses and a funny last name, I’ve dealt with my fair share of bullies.
I’m running for president because the only way to end the Trump crisis of division is with a leader who knows how to bring people together and get things done.
It’s a strength unique to America, required to solve America’s unique challenges to build a future that every American feels part of.
This isn’t just my vision; it’s my record.
As Mayor and Governor, I got people to put down their weapons, sit down together, and listen to each other. Really listen - to establish trust, which is always the starting point for collaboration.
For those who don’t know Colorado’s recent history, it may seem like our current prosperity was inevitable.
But let me tell you, when I took over as Governor, things were upside down.
We had just ended the worst year for job seekers in a generation.
We were bitterly divided. We couldn’t solve so many of our biggest challenges.
But things got worse: the most destructive fires in Colorado history - a mass shooting in Aurora.
And then: biblical floods. So many lives lost.
I went to 32 funerals those first four years.
But in the aftermath of the devastation, the roads and bridges broken, we saw the good was not broken. Instead of resignation, we saw community. Instead of anger, we saw kindness.
Instead of despair, we saw neighbors finding ways to reach one another. Lending a hand. Lending a truck. Listening. Helping.
That’s how we rebuilt, better than before.
That’s how we went on to chart an entirely new course for our state.
And that’s how we overcame the recession.
We expanded medicaid with bipartisan support … built one of the most innovative healthcare exchanges in the country. And as a result … nearly ninety-five percent of our people now have healthcare coverage.
After Aurora, we stood up to the NRA … and we passed universal background checks and limits on high capacity magazines … in a Western state.
We brought environmentalists and industry into the same room to sit down and craft the toughest methane regulations in America … the equivalent of taking 320,000 cars off the road every year.
More than a year of negotiation … but in the end oil and gas agreed to pay for it.
We brought cities and suburbs and rural counties together and created a progressive water plan that made sense for everyone.
We invested in high-quality pre-K ... scholarships for young adults who couldn’t afford college … apprenticeships … light rail … and so much more.
And in just eight years moved from 40th in job growth to the number one economy in America.
That’s what you can do when you bring people together.
And there was another secret ingredient: sheer persistence.
I learned persistence the hard way. I lost my dad when I was eight.
My mom said to us, “you can’t control the bad things that life throws at you, but you can control whether they make you stronger.”
Shortly after moving to Colorado in the 1980s, I lost my job and my career as a geologist during the recession. A whole profession disappeared for almost a whole generation.
I was unemployed for two years. And when you’re unemployed for that long, you see a different person in the mirror.
With two friends, we got a library book on how to write a business plan.
And 34 investors and 3 loans later, we started a brewpub in an abandoned, forgotten part of Denver.
Our persistence paid off, and the brewery took off. An entire neighborhood grew around it.
Along the way, I learned something that Donald Trump never figured out: it isn’t how many times you yell “you’re fired,” but instead, how many times you say “you’re hired.”
And in our first ten years opening breweries across the midwest we said “you’re hired” more than 1,000 times.
The best part of this story? It’s not unique. Our small businesses spawned others, and, in turn, helped create vibrant communities.
We succeeded because we worked hard and built alliances with other businesses. We played a part in revitalizing communities.
And now it’s time to do that for all of America.
Defeating Trump is absolutely essential.
But it’s not sufficient. We need to walk out of this canyon of division to a higher plane of progress. America is ready.
And I know I’m ready.
When I’m President, we will declare as a country that healthcare is a right.
This means universal, affordable coverage … where everyone has a doctor who knows them and knows their family. Where everyone can get a checkup. A real medical home.
We will declare as a country that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of being an American.
To get there, everyone has to pay their fair share: we will close the loopholes, end tax cuts for the wealthy, and we will ensure every profitable corporation is carrying their weight.
We’ll bring the same relentless innovation we used to land on the moon to save our planet.
We’ll reclaim our global leadership.
And the first thing we’re going to do is rejoin the Paris climate accord and exceed its goals.
And we will build a green economy that creates jobs that can’t be shipped overseas, while combating generations of climate change.
We’ll create a whole new understanding about the future of work. The majority of today’s young adults who want tomorrow’s skills will be able to shape a 21st-century economy with better jobs.
By bringing unions, good corporate citizens and schools together we’ll invest in the largest expansion of skills training and community colleges in our country’s history.
In the next two years Colorado will have broadband connecting every single school, hospital and town across the state. Universal broadband will instantly become national policy when I’m elected.
We’ll renew our commitment to the fundamental strength behind American success. It’s right there in the Great Seal of our country: Out of many one. This promise is predicated on the fact that we are all created equal in the eyes of God.
And that equality demands social justice for everyone of us.
And we’ll renew our commitment to a reformed justice system that addresses our long history of slavery, segregation and racial bias.
We’ll undo years of efforts to disenfranchise African American voters and Latino voters and even young voters. And end this assault on the foundations of our democracy.
We’ll make it easier for every qualified voter to register and vote because the ultimate power in America should reside in the hands of the people – all the people.
At the end of my presidency, I want Americans to say: it feels like the cloud has lifted, we feel closer to our neighbors and we’ve gotten big things done. And we feel hope.
Another Westerner, John Muir, said, “the power of imagination makes us infinite.”
Just imagine how different our country will feel when we start moving toward each other again.
Imagine, a country where families go to bed knowing a serious illness won’t hurtle them into bankruptcy.
Imagine, a world where our young people are part of a new “greatest generation” – the one that helps save our planet.
Imagine, a new American economy where anyone can be whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want.
Are these big dreams? Sure.
But my story is proof that big dreams can be made real.
It’s one of America’s great talents building dreams tomorrow we didn’t know were possible today.
I’m proud to be part of a political party that over decades has rallied to the call of so many dreams and dreamers - like King’s vision of a country where children are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I’m also proud to be in the party that not only dared to dream big dreams but had the persistence to get them done - from creating Social Security and Medicare to enacting civil rights and putting a man on the moon.
That’s the other half of my DNA: I am a dreamer and a do-er. And we need both to make real progress. Not just big ideas but making them happen - finding common ground when it seems like there’s nothing there but mountains between us.
Being a pragmatist doesn’t mean saying ‘no’ to bold ideas; it means knowing how to make them happen.
That’s my record.
And that will be my promise as President.
No one person can heal the fractures in America today. But if enough of us accept the challenge, if we work hard enough, we can make the impossible, possible.
Together, we can turn this winter of division into a season of hope.
# # #
Source: Hickenlooper 2020
Bernie Sanders to Run for President on Promise to Transform the Country
Vermont Senator calls for a million-person grassroots movement to defeat Trump and create a government that works for all people
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on Americans from all over the nation to join him in building a massive grassroots movement to win the Democratic nomination, defeat Donald Trump and enact an agenda that serves all people, not just the few.
In an email to supporters, Sanders said he is more optimistic than ever that the country is poised to take on powerful special interests, guarantee health care as a right, raise workers’ wages, make public colleges and universities tuition free, address the crises facing rural America, transform our energy system to combat climate change, lower prescription drug prices and defeat the forces of racism, sexism and xenophobia.
“Three years ago, when we talked about these and other ideas, we were told that they were ‘radical’ and ‘extreme,’" Sanders wrote in the email. "Well, three years have come and gone. And, as result of millions of Americans standing up and fighting back, all of these policies are now supported by a majority of Americans.
"Together, you and I and our 2016 campaign began the political revolution. Now, it is time to complete that revolution and implement the vision that we fought for."
Sanders added, "If we want to make our progressive vision a reality, we need an unprecedented grassroots movement from coast to coast -- a movement which has the courage to take on the powerful special interests that dominate the economic and political life of our country.”
In the next few weeks, Sanders will a launch multi-state tour to share his vision to transform the country for the many, not the few.
###
Full email below:
Brothers and sisters--
I am writing to let you know I have decided to run for president of the United States. I am asking you to join me today as part of an unprecedented and historic grassroots campaign that will begin with at least a million people from across the country.
Please join our campaign for president on day one and commit to doing what it takes to win this election.
Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. It is not only about winning the Democratic nomination and the general election.
Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.
Our campaign is about taking on the powerful special interests that dominate our economic and political life. I'm talking about Wall Street, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry and the large multinational corporations that exert such an enormous influence over our lives.
Our campaign is about redoubling our efforts to end racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry and all forms of discrimination.
Our campaign is about creating a vibrant democracy with the highest voter turnout of any major country while we end voter suppression, Citizens United and outrageous levels of gerrymandering.
Our campaign is about creating a government and economy that work for the many, not just the few. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. We should not have grotesque levels of wealth inequality in which three billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of the country.
We should not have 30 million Americans without any health insurance, even more who are underinsured and a nation in which life expectancy is actually in decline.
We should not have an economy in which tens of millions of workers earn starvation wages and half of older workers have no savings as they face retirement.
We should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth and a dysfunctional childcare system which is unfair to both working parents and their children.
We should not have a regressive tax system in which large, profitable corporations like Amazon pay nothing in federal income taxes.
Make no mistake about it. The powerful special interests in this country have unbelievable power and they want to maintain the status quo. They have unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns and lobbying and have huge influence over the media and political parties.
The only way we will win this election and create a government and economy that work for all is with a grassroots movement – the likes of which has never been seen in American history.
They may have the money and power. We have the people. That is why we need one million Americans who will commit themselves to this campaign.
Stand with me as we fight to win the Democratic nomination and the general election. Add your name to join this campaign and say you are willing to do the hard work necessary to transform our country.
You know as well as I do that we are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history. We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.
I’m running for president because, now more than ever, we need leadership that brings us together – not divides us up. Women and men, black, white, Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight, young and old, native born and immigrant. Now is the time for us to stand together.
I’m running for president because we need leadership that will fight for working families and the shrinking middle class, not just the 1 percent. We need a president who understands that we can create millions of good-paying jobs, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and construct the affordable housing we desperately need.
I'm running for president because we need trade policies that reflect the interests of workers and not multi-national corporations. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, provide pay equity for women and guarantee all workers paid family and medical leave.
I'm running for president because we need to understand that artificial intelligence and robotics must benefit the needs of workers, not just corporate America and those who own that technology.
I'm running for president because a great nation is judged not by how many billionaires and nuclear weapons it has, but by how it treats the most vulnerable – the elderly, the children, our veterans, the sick and the poor.
I’m running for president because we need to make policy decisions based on science, not politics. We need a president who understands that climate change is real, is an existential threat to our country and the entire planet, and that we can generate massive job creation by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
I’m running for president because the time is long overdue for the United States to join every other major country on Earth and guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare-for-all program.
I’m running for president because we need to take on the outrageous level of greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower prescription drug prices in this country.
I'm running for president because we need to have the best educated workforce in the world. It is totally counterproductive for our future that millions of Americans are carrying outrageous levels of student debt, while many others cannot afford the high cost of higher education. That is why we need to make public colleges and universities tuition free and lower student debt.
I’m running for president because we must defend a woman’s right to control her own body against massive political attacks taking place at the local, state and federal level.
I'm running for president because we need real criminal justice reform. We need to invest in jobs and education for our kids, not more jails and incarceration. We need to end the destructive "war on drugs," eliminate private prisons and cash bail and bring about major police department reform.
I'm running for president because we need to end the demonization of undocumented immigrants in this country and move to comprehensive immigration reform. We need to provide immediate legal status for the young people eligible for the DACA program and develop a humane policy for those at the border who seek asylum.
I'm running for president because we must end the epidemic of gun violence in this country. We need to take on the NRA, expand background checks, end the gun show loophole and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons.
I'm running for president because we need a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and world peace. The United States must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism and global wealth inequality.
That is why we need at least a million people to join our campaign and help lead the movement that can accomplish these goals. Add your name to say we’re in this together.
Needless to say, there is a lot of frightening and bad news in this world. Now, let me give you some very good news.
Three years ago, during our 2016 campaign, when we brought forth our progressive agenda we were told that our ideas were "radical" and "extreme." We were told that Medicare for All, a $15 an hour minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, aggressively combating climate change, demanding that the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes, were all concepts that the American people would never accept.
Well, three years have come and gone. And, as result of millions of Americans standing up and fighting back, all of these policies and more are now supported by a majority of Americans.
Together, you and I and our 2016 campaign began the political revolution. Now, it is time to complete that revolution and implement the vision that we fought for.
So here is my question for you:
Will you stand with me as part of a million person grassroots movement which can not only win the Democratic primary, not only win the general election, but most importantly help transform this country so that, finally, we have a government that works for all of us and not just the few? Add your name to say you will.
Together we can create a nation that leads the world in the struggle for peace and for economic, racial, social and environmental justice.
And together we can defeat Donald Trump and repair the damage he has done to our country.
Brothers and sisters, if we stand together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.
I hope you will join me.
Thank you very much.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders 2020 Presidential Campaign Announcement Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Bernie Sanders. I'm running for president and I'm asking you today to be part of an unprecedented grassroots campaign of 1 million active volunteers in every state in our country.
Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous President in modern American history. It is not only about winning the Democratic nomination and the general election.
Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.
Our campaign is about taking on the powerful special interests that dominate our economic and political life. I'm talking about Wall Street, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, and the large multi-national corporations that exert such an enormous influence over our lives.
Our campaign is about redoubling our efforts to end racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry, and all forms of discrimination.
Our campaign is about creating a vibrant democracy with the highest voter turnout of any major country on Earth, while we end voter suppression, Citizens United and outrageous levels of gerrymandering.
Our campaign is about creating a government and the economy that works for the many not just a few. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. We should not have a grotesque level of wealth inequality in which three billionaires now own more wealth than the bottom half of the country.
We should not have 30 million Americans without any health insurance, even more who are underinsured and in a nation in which life expectancy is actually in decline.
We should not have an economy in which tens of millions of workers earn starvation wages and half of older workers have no savings as they face retirement.
We should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and a dysfunctional child care system, which is unfair to both working parents and their children.
We should not have a regressive tax system in which large profitable corporations like Amazon pay nothing in federal income taxes.
Make no mistake about it. The powerful special interests in this country have unbelievable power and they want to maintain the status quo. They have unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns and lobbying and have huge influence over the media and political parties.
The only way we will win this election and create a government and an economy that works for all is with a grassroots movement the likes of which has never been seen in American history.
They may have the money and the power. We have the people. That is why we need 1 million Americans who will commit themselves to this campaign.
You know, as well as I do, that we are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history. We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and someone who was undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.
I am running for president because now more than ever, we need leadership that brings us together, not divides us up. Women and men, black, white, Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight, young and old, native born and immigrant—now is the time for us to stand together.
I'm running for president because we need leadership that will fight for working families and the shrinking middle class, not just the 1%.
We need a president who understands that we can create millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and constructing the affordable housing we desperately need.
I am running for president because we need trade policies that reflect the interest of workers and not multinational corporations.
We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, provide pay equity for women and guarantee all workers paid family and medical leave.
I'm running for president because we need to understand that artificial intelligence and robotics must benefit the needs of workers, not just corporate America and those who own that technology.
I'm running for president because a great nation is judged not by how many billionaires and nuclear weapons it has, but by how it treats the most vulnerable, the elderly, the children, our veterans, the sick and the poor.
I'm running for president because we need to make policy decisions based on science, not politics.
We need a president who understands that climate change is real, is an existential threat to our country and the entire planet, and that we can generate massive job creation by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy
I'm running for President because the time is long overdue for the United States to join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege through a Medicare for all single payer program.
I am running for president because we need to take on the outrageous level of greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower prescription drug prices in this country.
I'm running for president because we need to have the best educated workforce in the world. It is totally counterproductive for our future that millions of Americans are carrying outrageous levels of student debt while many others cannot afford the high cost of higher education. That is why we need to make public colleges and universities tuition free and lower student debt.
I am running for president because we need real criminal justice reform. We need to invest in jobs and education for our kids, not more jails and incarceration. We need to end the destructive war on drugs, private prisons and cash bail and bring about major police department reform.
I'm running for president because we need to end the demonization of undocumented immigrants in this country and move the comprehensive immigration reform. We need to provide immediate legal status for the young people eligible for the DACA program and develop a humane policy for those at the border who seek asylum.
I’m running for president because we must end the epidemic of gun violence in this country. We need to take on the NRA, expand background checks, end the gun show loophole and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons.
I am running for president because we need a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and world peace. The United States must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change. militarism, authoritarianism and global wealth inequality.
That is why we need 1 million people to join our campaign and help lead the movement that can accomplish all of these goals.
Needless to say, there is a lot of frightening and bad news in this world.
Now, let me give you some very good news that we should all be very proud of.
Three years ago, during our 2016 campaign, when we brought forth our progressive agenda, we were told that our ideas were "radical," and they were "extreme."
We were told that Medicare for all, a $15 an hour minimum wage, free tuition in public colleges and universities, aggressively combating climate change, demanding that the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes—we were told that all of these concepts were ideas that the American people would never accept.
Well, three years have come and gone. And as a result of millions of Americans standing up and fighting back, all of these policies and more are now supported by a majority of Americans.
Together, you and I, and our 2016 campaign began the political revolution.
Now it is time to complete that revolution and implement the vision that we fought for.
So here is my question for you. Will you stand with me as part of a million-person grassroots movement which cannot only win the Democratic nomination, not only win the general election, but most mportantly, help transform this country so that finally we have a government that works for all of us and not just a few.
Together, we can create a nation that leads the world in the struggle for peace and for economic, racial, social and environmental justice.
And together we can defeat Donald Trump and repair the damage he has done to our country.
Brothers and sisters. If we stand together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.
I hope you'll join me.
Thank you very much.
Source: Bernie 2020
Jay Inslee 2020 Presidential Campaign Announcement Speech
A&R Solar
Seattle, Washington
March 1, 2019
Good morning!
It really is a good morning. We have the sun raining down on us at a solar facility in Seattle, Washington.
So it is pretty hard not to be optimistic on a date like this. And it is great to be here with our beloved Trudy, my wife of 46 years, and my three sons and daughter in laws. And I see so many friends today, including Jim Whittaker right here, the first American to climb Mount Everest.
Jim knows that we can do big, challenging things. And I want to thank you, Jim, for now being involved in a great climb for the next couple years.
But I have to tell you that my grandkids can't be here today, and they told me it's because today is Dr. Seuss day at Wilkes Elementary. We Inslees know how to prioritize.
And now it is time for our nation to set a new priority. So I am announcing today that I'm a candidate to become the next President of United States. Thank you.
I do so because this is truly our moment. It is our moment to solve America's most daunting challenge and make it the first, foremost and paramount duty the United States, and that is to defeat climate change.
This is our moment to put the greatest threat to our existence, to our economy, to our health at the very top of the nation's agenda. This is our moment to reinvent our economy, creating millions of jobs in every state, in every community, urban and rural, across America.
This is our moment together to create not just a transition, but a just transition to bring justice to all communities, especially frontline communities, communities of color, who have borne the brunt of climate change.
I am running for president because unlike the man in the White House, I believe in all the people who make up America. Because I believe in our spirit of innovation and optimism, and because I believe our ability to rise to any challenge.
This we know. We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.
The science on this is abundantly clear. We have a very short period of time to act. And whether we shrink from this challenge or rise to it is the vital question of our time. And we know it is the eleventh hour.
But as we have shown time and time again throughout our nation's history, this is our nation's hour to shine, and I believe we will because of the urgency of the moment, the scope of the challenge; because the economic growth opportunities inherent in clean energy are clear; and because no other issue touches so much of what we as a nation care most deeply about. And I am confident that we can do it.
Climate change, climate change is no longer just a chart or a graph. It is right now, not in some distant future.
I stood in the middle of Paradise, California a few months ago, a town of about 25,000 people. And we drove for over an hour in the dark. And you can hardly find a house standing after those devastating fires.
Because of the massive fires here last summer, our kids were told they had to stay indoors because the air was so unhealthy. Think about this, the air quality in Washington State was the worst in the world last year—not Beijing, not New Delhi, but here in Washington State.
We have one chance to defeat climate change, and it is right now. And it is my belief that you when you have one chance in life, you take it.
And I know, now I know this as well. Climate change is a matter of great peril, but it is also one of great promise. Yes, we can pioneer the industries of the future, we can create millions of good paying jobs and build the clean energy economy of the future.
I know, I know, I know this is possible. I co-authored a book 12 years ago. It was called Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy. And in that book, we laid out a vision of economic growth around clean energy. It was based on the central premise that we can all have a role to play this revolution; we can all be heroes in this adventure. And we are already getting started.
Think about this. Jobs in the clean energy economy are growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. The fastest growing job in the nation is a solar installer. Number two, number two, wind turbine technician.
So climate change is not more important than the economy. It is the economy.
Look, look this is pretty simple. Climate change is already damaging our economy, and fighting climate change will build a new economy. The most expensive path is the path of inaction. And that is unacceptable to us In America.
In Washington State, in Washington State I remember walking into a room and Seattle in 2006, and we were a group of community and and business, forward looking business leaders. And we were debating whether we should put a renewable portfolio energy standard on the ballot. And we knew that battle was going to be tough against the most powerful special interests. But we moved forward; we were undaunted. And out of that initiative, we created an entirely new wind energy industry from scratch; from zero, from zero dollars to $6 billion dollars in industry in 12 years. That's the speed we need.
We now have a solar installation industry right here in A&R Solar. This company started as a two employee shop that was just a dream in 2007. They're now employing over 70 workers installing clean energy. This is the future of America.
We know, we know it is time for a new national vision to reinvent our economy. And I know we can do it because we are an optimistic America that can do big things. We put a man on the moon. We created the digital economy. Now I am calling on America to engage in a new national mission—a mission to fight climate change. And let's commit to put every American, in their ingenuity, in their innovation, in their creativity, and just their plain hard work, into an all-out effort to solve this problem.
But I believe... Americans are calling for this. I've heard them. Folks are mobilizing across the country for a Green New Deal. This is our moment, and—
So our new national mission will have four specific goals.
Number one, we will power our economy with 100% clean, renewable and carbon-free energy and achieve net zero greenhouse gas pollution in the United States.
Number two, number two we are going to create millions of good paying jobs in every community, investing in clean energy. We are going to build electric cars in Michigan, we are going to build an install wind turbines in Iowa, and we are going to install solar right here in Washington State. That's what we're going to do.
And while we do this we will focus on justice and inclusion as a centerpiece of this economic transformation to ensure that no group is left to bear the cost of transition and everyone benefits from new jobs and investment.
And finally, we need to end the giveaways and billions in subsidies to fossil fuel industries.
Now these are, these are ambitious goals, and some may doubt our ability to build this new future or say that our workers aren't up to this challenge. Well, they are wrong. Don't believe them.
We know something about our laborers, our electrical workers, our machinists, our scientists, our inventors, our dreamers, our entrepreneurs. We have led the world through the Industrial Revolution; we have led the world through the Information Age, and we can do it again starting in 2020. This is what we should do.
Now, we must do this because there is no other issue that touches so much of what we care about. We know climate change is as much a matter of equity as is it is a matter of ecology. It is the communities of color that suffer from climate change first and worse. They live closer to pollution spewing industrial plants. They suffer the lack of commitment to reimburse and rebuild after natural disasters that increase because of climate change, like Puerto Rico. So let's come together and build a future with clean air, clean water and economic opportunity for all regardless of zip code income, or the color of your skin.
Change is about health. Temperature extremes will make infectious diseases and allergies more widespread and respiratory problems like asthma with kids more rampant.
Climate change is about national security. Wars for oil have cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars. I'm proud to have voted against the war in Iraq, and wars for oil must be over.
So let's apply those energies towards building a domestic energy supply that is clean, renewable and American made.
We must take on climate change to help level the playing field as well. Our economy's reliance on polluting fossil fuels and our political system's reliance on fossil fuel money is holding us back. So I remember for the oil, coal and gas special interests. That gravy train is over.
So as a candidate I will not take one dime from fossil fuel companies, and when I am president not one nickel of taxpayer dollars will go to subsidize oil and gas.
If the task we face now feels monumental, it is. If it feels difficult, it will be. The most powerful special interests in the world won't just give away their power or their profits. But we know we can do hard things. I know we can do this because what we have done in Washington State.
Here in Washington, here in Washington we've invested in companies that are building our renewable future. We are electrifying our transportation system. We're growing clean energy jobs by the bushel full. And economic innovation and leadership for the future ee know starts in our schools. That's why I've led our state to invest billions in our schools, expanded early childhood education, made college more affordable, and finally give, have given educators the deserved raise they deserve.
In Washington State, in Washington State we passed the best paid family medical leave law in the United States. Let's secure this same right for every family in this country.
We've raised the minimum wage.
We've invested in transportation infrastructure when they can't build a birdhouse in Washington, DC.
We were the first state to protect net neutrality when Donald Trump tried to shut it down.
We've legalized marijuana. And it's about time we do it nationwide.
We've taken on the NRA. We expanded background checks, we protected victims of abuse, we banned bump stocks, and we're not done. Let's ban assault weapons and take weapons of war off our streets.
We believe fundamentally in justice and inclusion in our state. It is a Washington, and I believe American value. So I'm proud to have been the first governor to have stood up to Donald Trump's Muslim ban.
I am pleased that we are ending the death penalty in the state of Washington.
And that is why I have offered to pardon thousands of citizens with marijuana convictions so we can start ending the racial disparity in our criminal justice system.
Because Republican voter suppression and denying folks the right to vote is a downright evil, we have strengthened our voting laws to some of the most expansive in the nation. And we need new federal protections that guarantees every American has the right to vote. We need the federal government to stand up.
So if you look at our state, and you ask, you know, why we've done so well. We have succeeded here in Washington because we've grown our economy from the middle out, not suffered from trickle down. That's why Washington State has been named at the same time, the best place to do business and the best place to work. And we ought to be proud of that.
We've made, we've made these progressive advances and many more while building the top economy in the nation. And this has offered a glimpse for the nation of what is possible in all 50 states. So if America wants to see a Washington that actually works, look west to Washington State.
Now I know we are all angry and outraged by this President. I am too. But, rather than let that anger divide us, as the president and is wont to do, let's unite Americans in this moment by solving our most pressing urgent and existential problem.
And we are going to win this because I know something about the American people and their character. We are optimists. We are can do people. We invent, we create, we build. Defeating climate change is just a much a matter of character as it is a matter of science.
Americans. Here's what we know. Americans do not fear the world, we lead it.
We do not fear a challenge, we embrace it.
We do not fear the future, we build it.
So we know, we know that fighting climate change can't be somewhere down long down the page on a laundry list of our national things to do. It requires building a national mandate for bold and audacious action right now. It requires spending our political capital to get this job done.
So I will put this simply, if climate change isn't priority number one, it's not going to get done. So I am saying this I am pledging today that if I am given this high honor, I will make fighting climate change the number one priority of the United States of America.
You know and there's something about this mission, this new national mission statement that is heartening to me and encouraging to me and inspiring to me, and that is we can all be heroes here. You don't have to be President of the United States to be president—to be a hero in this effort. You just have to join, because we can all be heroes, joining in a grand mission.
We are now involved in one of history's greatest endeavors, to save those living on this little blue planet from the dangers and massive threat of climate change.
So early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize. This is our moment. This is our mission. Let's get this job done. Let's go... Thanks a lot.
Source: Inslee for America
Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Remarks, As Prepared for Delivery:
Hello everyone! Welcome to Boom Island. Where are we? We don’t let a little cold stop us, do we? Like are you guys even cold?
When I said that elected leaders should go not just where it’s comfortable, but also where it’s uncomfortable, I meant it!
John and Abigail and I want to thank our amazing and hard-working team who put this event together, the City of Minneapolis parks, and all the incredible people who are here.
My friends Senator Tina Smith and Governor Walz. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who is the highest ranking Native American state official in our nation. Our congressional delegation from all over the state. And thank you, mayors and commissioners and legislators.
Thank you Dudley D., who traveled with Prince for many years, Sounds of Blackness, Rabbi Zimmerman... Thank you friends from around the country, from greater Minnesota, the suburbs, and yes the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
We are gathered here today on the Mississippi River—America’s great river, running straight through the middle of our country, through the heartland. It takes its name from a Native American word for “The Father of Waters.”
It starts small up north. And like many of you, as a kid, I got a thrill out of saying that I had gone up to Lake Itasca and jumped clear across the Mississippi River.
It then gets wider as it flows down here to the Twin Cities, then into Wisconsin where my mom was born.
And then down to Iowa...a place where we in Minnesota like to go south for the winter. At least I do.
And then to Illinois, a state that boasts a lot of extraordinary presidents, from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama.
Then the river meanders down to St. Louis, where you’ll find a big arch, a gateway that honors our country’s pioneers.
Onwards to Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee. Where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went one April day to join sanitation workers fighting for their dignity. Where he preached about the mountaintop and how he’d seen the Promised Land.
And then to Arkansas and Mississippi. All the way down to New Orleans where the spirit of resilience abounds.
The Mississippi River… all our rivers connect us… to one another. To our shared story.
For that is how this country was founded, with patriots who saw more that united them than divided them.
And that is how this city—the Mill City—and our country prospered, right along this river and our nation’s railways and roads, grounded in the common belief that prosperity shared leads to better lives for all. And this is how we became the world’s beacon of democracy, one in which everyone matters.
We start in this place where about a mile downriver, on a beautiful summer day, a big bridge collapsed into this river. I said on that day, that a bridge just shouldn’t fall down in the middle of America. Not one of the busiest bridges in our state. Not a bridge just a few blocks from our house that John and Abigail and I drove over nearly every day. But it happened.
And suddenly the eyes of the nation were on our state. And that day America saw in a very visceral way that everyone matters. Everyone.
They saw it in the off-duty firefighter who dove into the murky water, over and over again, looking for survivors among dozens of trucks and cars.
They saw it in the story of Paul Eickstadt, the semi-truck driver, who sacrificed his own life by veering off the road to save a school bus full of kids.
They saw it in the school staff member, Jeremy Hernandez, who rescued each and every kid on that miracle school bus as it hung precariously next to a guardrail after plummeting thirty feet.
Later, we worked across the aisle to get the federal funding and we rebuilt that I-35W bridge—in just over a year.
That’s community. That’s a shared story. That’s ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
But that sense of community is fracturing across our nation right now, worn down by the petty and vicious nature of our politics. We are all tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, the gridlock and the grandstanding.
Today we say enough is enough.
Our nation must be governed not from chaos but from opportunity. Not by wallowing over what’s wrong, but by marching inexorably toward what’s right. That’s got to start with all of us.
My family’s story is like many of yours. On both my mom and my dad’s side, they arrived in this country with nothing but a suitcase. But they made a home here.
It was cold. (O.K. maybe not as cold as this).
They didn’t know anyone. But like so many immigrants, they wanted a better life for their families.
My grandpa worked 1,500 feet underground in the mines up North on the Iron Range. He never graduated from high school. He saved money in a coffee can in the basement and sent my dad to college.
My dad, whose here with us today at age 90, got a two-year degree from Vermillion Junior College, and then finished up at the University of Minnesota. He became a journalist.
As a young Associated Press reporter he called the 1960 presidential race for John F. Kennedy. He covered the 1968 conventions. He interviewed everyone from Mike Ditka to Hubert Humphrey to Ronald Reagan to Ginger Rogers. Freedom of the press wasn’t some abstract idea to dad. He embraced it. He lived it.
My mom, a proud union member, taught second grade in the suburbs until she was 70 years old. Her students, now grown, still come up to me on the street and tell me she was their favorite teacher.
So today, on an island in the middle of the mighty Mississippi, in our nation’s heartland, at a time when we must heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good, I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner, the daughter of a teacher and a newspaperman, the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the State of Minnesota, to announce my candidacy for President of the United States.
I’m running for this job for every person who wants their work recognized and rewarded.
I’m running for every parent who wants a better world for their kids.
I’m running for every student who wants a good education.
For every senior who wants affordable prescription drugs.
For every worker, farmer, dreamer, builder.
For every American
I’m running for you.
And I promise you this: As your President, I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That’s what I’ve done my whole life.
And no matter what, I’ll lead from the heart.
Let me be blunt: for too long leaders in Washington have sat on the sidelines while others try to figure out what to do about our changing economy and its impact on our lives, what to do about the disruptive nature of new technologies, income inequality, the political and geographic divides, the changing climate, the tumult in our world.
For a moment, let’s stop seeing those obstacles as obstacles on our path. Let’s see those obstacles as our path.
This is what I mean.
There are insidious forces every day that are trying to make it harder for people to vote, trying to drown out our voices with big money.
It’s time to organize. Time to galvanize. Time to take back our democracy. It’s time, America!
kTime to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and get the dark money out of our politics.
It’s time to stop discriminatory actions by restoring the Voting Rights Act.
Time to pass my bill to automatically register every young person to vote when they turn 18.
You see the obstacles they’re throwing at us with big money and limits on voting, they’re obstacles but they’re also our path.
Here’s another one: climate change.
The people are on our side when it comes to climate change. Why? Because like you and I, they believe in science.
That’s why in the first 100 days of my administration I will reinstate the clean power rules and gas mileage standards and put forth sweeping legislation to invest in green jobs and infrastructure.
And on day one, our country will rejoin the international climate agreement.
The obstacles? They are our path.
Here’s another challenge: Way too many politicians have their heads stuck in the sand when it comes to the digital revolution.
Hey guys it’s not just coming, it’s here. And if you don’t know the difference between a hack and Slack, it’s time to pull off the digital highway.
What would I do as President?
We need to put some digital rules of the road into law when it comes to privacy.
For too long the big tech companies have been telling you “Don’t worry! We’ve got your back!” while your identities are being stolen and your data is mined.
Our laws need to be as sophisticated as the people who are breaking them. We must revamp our nation’s cybersecurity and guarantee net neutrality.
And we need to end the digital divide by pledging to connect every household to the internet by 2022, and that means you rural America. Hey, if they can do it in Iceland, we can do it here.
We need to train our workers today for the jobs of tomorrow and strengthen our economy by planning ahead. That means respecting and recognizing educational certifications and two-year degrees and making it easier for people to get them.
And yes, that means comprehensive immigration reform. It’s time, America!
And by the way we should close those tax loopholes designed by and for the wealthy and bring down our debt and make it easier for workers to afford child care, housing and education. That’s what I mean by shared prosperity.
But we won’t get there if people can’t afford their health care and that means getting to universal health care and bringing down the costs of prescription drugs.
Last week my guest to the State of the Union, who is here again with me today, was Nicole Smith-Holt.
Nicole’s son Alec, a 26-year-old restaurant manager from the southern suburbs, aged off his parents’ health insurance.
Three days short of his payday, Alec, a diabetic, wasn’t able to afford his insulin. He tried rationing it to save money. Tragically it didn’t work. He died. This disgrace should never have happened in the United States of America. Not with a simple drug that’s been around for nearly a century.
The obstacle to change? The big pharma companies think they own Washington. Well they don’t own me. And they don’t own Nicole.
We are teaming up to pass meaningful legislation to bring in competitive safe drugs from other countries. To stop big pharma’s practice of paying off generic companies to keep their products off the market. We’re going to harness the negotiating power of 43 million seniors... that’s a lot of negotiating power... and lift the ban on negotiating cheaper drug prices under Medicare.
I always believe in doing my job without fear or favor. That’s what I do as a Senator and that’s what I did as a prosecutor. And that means not only convicting the guilty but protecting the innocent.
That’s why I have and why I will always continue to advocate for criminal justice reform.
That’s why, in a state where we all value hunting and fishing and the great outdoors, I’m not afraid to join the vast majority of Americans, including many gun owners, to stand up to the gun lobby and put universal background checks and commonsense gun legislation into law. It’s time, America!
And a safer world is not just about what we do here at home. Even if you want to isolate yourself from the rest of the world, the rest of the world won’t let you.
International problems come banging on our door, just as opportunities come knocking.
We need to stand strong — and consistently — with our allies. We need to be clear in our purpose. We must respect our front line troops, diplomats and intelligence officers... who are out there every day risking their lives for us...they deserve better than foreign policy by Tweet.
And one last obstacle which we must overcome to move forward together. Stop the fear-mongering and stop the hate. We may come from different places. We may pray in different ways. We may look different. And love different. But all live in the same country of shared dreams.
In Minnesota we have the biggest Somali population in the country. And we’re very proud of that community. A few years ago at the height of the angry rhetoric, a Somali-American family of four went out to dinner. This guy walked by, looked down at them and said “you four go home. Go home to where you came from.”
And the little girl looks up at her mom and says “Mom, I don’t want to go home. You said we could eat out tonight. I don’t want to eat dinner at home.” Think of the innocence of that little girl. She didn’t even know what he was talking about. Because she only knows one home. And that home is our state. She only knows one home, and that home, that home is the United States of America.
Walt Whitman, the great American poet, once wrote these words: “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.” For Whitman those were the songs of the mechanics, the carpenters, the masons and the shoemakers.
And those carols are still being sung today. They are now also the songs of our sisters and brothers, a chorus of different faiths, races, creeds and ways of life.
E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. It is more than a motto. It is the North Star of our democracy. It is the North Star of this effort.
I’m asking you to join us on this campaign. It’s a homegrown one. I don’t have a political machine. I don’t come from money. But what I do have is this: I have grit.
I have family. I have friends. I have neighbors.
I have all of you who are willing to come out in the middle of the winter, all of you who took the time to watch us today, all of you who are willing to stand up and say people matter.
I’m asking you to not look down and not look away. I’m asking you to look up. To look at each other. To look to the future before us. Let us rise to the occasion and meet the challenges of our day.
Let us cross the river of our divides and walk across our sturdy bridge to higher ground.
As one faith leader reminded me this week, to pursue the good, we must believe that good will prevail. I do believe it and so do you.
So let’s join together, as one nation, indivisible, under God, and pursue the good.
Thank you and God bless the United States of America.
Source: Amy for America
Elizabeth Warren Announces Presidential Run in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Lawrence, MA - Today, Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy to be the next President of the United States at the Everett Mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1912 - on the steps of the Everett Mill - workers held the Bread and Roses Strike, one of our country's most important labor strikes.
Below are Warren’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
I want to tell you a story.
A little over 100 years ago, textile mills in Lawrence like the ones behind us today employed tens of thousands of people, and immigrants flocked here from more than 50 countries for a chance to work at the looms.
Lawrence was one of the centers of American industry.
Business was booming. The guys at the top were doing great, but workers made so little money that families were forced to crowd together in dangerous tenements and live on beans and scraps of bread.
Inside the mills, working conditions were horrible.
Children were forced to operate dangerous equipment.
Workers lost hands, arms and legs in the gears of machines.
One out of every three adult mill workers died by the time they were 25.
Then, on January 11, 1912, a group of women who worked right here at the Everett Mill discovered that the bosses had cut their pay.
And that was it — the women said “enough is enough.” They shut down their looms and walked out.
Soon workers walked out at another mill in town.
Then another. Then another — until 20,000 textile workers across Lawrence were on strike. These workers — led by women– didn’t have much. Not even a common language.
Nevertheless… they persisted!
They organized. They embraced common goals. They translated the minutes of their meetings into 25 different languages, so that the English and Irish workers who had been here for years and the Slavic and Syrian workers new to America could stand together.
They hammered out their demands:
Fair wages
Overtime pay
and the right to join a union.
Big business at the time called those demands a threat to the very survival of America — and the bosses tried to shut it down.
They spread rumors and fear about the strikers.
One factory owner even paid a guy to plant sticks of dynamite around town so he could frame the workers as a violent mob.
The mill owners also owned city government, which declared martial law and called in the militia. Some strikers died in violent clashes with the police.
It was a hard fight. Families that were already going to bed hungry had to make do with even less.
They were cold.
They were under attack. But they stuck together — and they won!
Higher wages. Overtime. Everybody back at work.
And those workers did more than improve their own lives. They changed America.
Within weeks, more than a quarter of a million textile workers throughout New England got raises.
Within months, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to pass a minimum wage law.
And today, there are no children working in factories. We have a national minimum wage. And worker safety laws.
Workers get paid overtime and we have a forty-hour work week. That’s right, because of workers here in Lawrence — and all across the country — we have weekends!
The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America.
It’s a story about power — our power — when we fight together.
Today, millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected.
Hard working people are up against a small group that holds far too much power, not just in our economy, but also in our democracy.
Like the women of Lawrence, we are here to say enough is enough!
We are here to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our children’s lives and our grandchildren’s lives, just as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago.
Because the man in the White House is not the cause of what’s broken, he’s just the latest — and most extreme — symptom of what’s gone wrong in America.
A product of a rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else.
And so, once he’s gone, we can’t pretend that all of this never happened.
It won’t be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration.
We can’t afford to just tinker around the edges — a tax credit here, a regulation there.
This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone.
I am in that fight all the way.
And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
The truth is, I’ve been in this fight for a long time.
I grew up in Oklahoma, on the ragged edge of the middle class.
When my daddy had a heart attack, my family nearly tumbled over the financial cliff.
But we didn’t. My mother, who was 50 years old and had never worked outside the home, walked to Sears and got a minimum-wage job answering phones.
That job saved our house, and saved our family.
I ended up at a commuter college that cost $50 a semester. And that is how the daughter of a janitor managed to become a public school teacher, a law professor, and a United States Senator.
I believe in an America of opportunity!
I’ve spent most of my life studying what happens to families like mine, families caught in the squeeze, families that go broke.
And what I found was that year after year, the path to economic security had gotten tougher and rockier for working families, and even tougher and even rockier for people of color.
I also found that this wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t inevitable. No.
Over the years, America’s middle class had been deliberately hollowed out.
And families of color had been systematically discriminated against and denied their chance to build some security.
It started very quietly. The richest and most powerful people in America were rich, really rich, but they wanted to be even richer — regardless of who got hurt.
So, every year, bit by bit, they lobbied Washington and paid off politicians to tilt the system just a little more in their direction.
And year by year, bit by bit, more of the wealth and opportunity went to the people at the very top.
That’s how, today, in the richest country in the history of the world, tens of millions of people are struggling just to get by.
Since the early 1970s — adjusted for inflation — wages in America have barely budged. But the cost of housing has shot up nearly two-thirds.
The cost of college has more than tripled.
And 40% of Americans can’t find $400 to cover an emergency.
That’s millions of hard-working people in this country whose lives would be turned upside down if the transmission fell out of the car or if somebody got sick and missed a week at work.
The middle-class squeeze is real, and millions of families can barely breathe.
It’s not right.
This disaster has touched every community in America.
And for communities of color that have stared down structural racism for generations, the disaster has hit even harder.
Take home-ownership — the number-one way middle class families build wealth in our country.
Back in 1960, it was legal to discriminate against families of color, and the gap between white homeownership rates and black homeownership rates was 27 percentage points. That’s a lot.
Over time we finally changed the law to prohibit that kind of discrimination, and the gap began to close.
But today the home-ownership gap between black and white families is 30 percentage points — bigger than it was back in 1960 when housing discrimination was actually legal.
Race matters — and we need to say so.
And we can’t be blind to the fact that the rules in our country have been rigged against other people for a long time — women, LGBTQ Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants, people with disabilities — and we need to call it out.
But over the course of a generation, the rules of our economy have gotten rigged so far in favor of the rich and powerful that everyone else is at risk of being left behind.
In 1940, 90% of kids were destined to do better than their parents did. By the 1980s, the odds had slipped to 50/50.
And now we could be the first generation in American history where more kids do worse than their parents.
Meanwhile, the rich and powerful seem to break the rules and pay no price.
No matter what they do, they grow richer and more powerful.
Bailouts for the bankers that cheat. Tax cuts for the companies that scam. Subsidies for the corporations that pollute.
That’s what a rigged system looks like: too little accountability for the rich, and too little opportunity for everyone else.
When I talk about this, some rich guys scream “class warfare!”
Well, let me tell you something, these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard-working people for decades — I say it’s time to fight back!
To protect their economic advantages, the rich and powerful have rigged our political system as well.
They’ve bought off or bullied politicians in both parties to make sure Washington is always on their side.
Some of them have even tried to buy their way into public office.
So today, our government works just great for oil companies and defense contractors, great for private prisons, great for Wall Street banks and hedge funds, it’s just not working for anyone else.
When it comes to climate change, our very existence is at stake. But Washington refuses to lift a finger without permission from the fossil fuel companies.
That’s dangerous and it’s wrong.
And it isn’t just climate change. Look at any other major issue in America. Gun violence. Student loan debt. The crushing cost of healthcare. Mistreatment of our veterans. A broken criminal justice system.
An immigration system that lacks common sense, and under this administration — lacks a conscience.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans want action.
Huge crowds march on Washington demanding change. Letters. Phone calls. Protests.
But nothing happens. Nothing. Why? Because if you don’t have money and you don’t have connections, Washington doesn’t want to hear from you.
When government works only for the wealthy and well-connected, that is corruption — plain and simple. It’s time to fight back.
Corruption is a cancer on our democracy. And we will get rid of it only with strong medicine — with real, structural reform.
Our fight is to change the rules so that our government, our economy, and our democracy work for everyone.
And I want to be crystal-clear about exactly what I mean when I say that.
First: We need to change the rules to clean up Washington. End the corruption.
We all know the Trump Administration is the most corrupt in living memory.
But even after Trump is gone, it won’t be enough to do a better job of running a broken system.
We need to take power in Washington away from the wealthy and well-connected and put it back in the hands of the people where it belongs!
That’s why I’ve proposed the strongest and most comprehensive anti-corruption law since Watergate.
Some examples:
Shut down the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington.
End lobbying as we know it.
And while we’re at it, ban foreign governments from hiring lobbyists in Washington.
Make justices of the United States Supreme Court follow a basic Code of Ethics.
Ban Members of Congress from trading stocks– how is that not already illegal?
And, one more, make every single candidate for federal office put their taxes online; I’ve done it, everyone should do it.
That’s One — root out corruption in Washington.
Now, two — change the rules to put more economic power in the hands of the American people — workers and small businesses.
Middle-class families and people of color who have been shut out of their chance to build wealth for generations.
Again, that requires real, structural change.
Right now, giant corporations in America have too much power — and they roll right over everyone else.
We need to put power back in the hands of workers.
Make it quick and easy to join a union. Unions built America’s middle class, and unions will rebuild America’s middle class.
Make American companies accountable for their actions and raise wages by putting workers in those corporate boardrooms where the real decisions are made.
Break up monopolies when they choke off competition.
Take on Wall Street so that the big banks can never again threaten the security of our economy.
And when giant corporations — and their leaders — cheat their customers, stomp out their competitors, or rob their workers, let’s prosecute them.
And one more thing. I’m tired of hearing that we can’t afford to make real investments in child care, college, and Medicare for All.
Can’t afford things that help create economic opportunity for families.
I’m tired of hearing that we can’t afford to make investments in things like housing and opioid treatment.
Can’t afford things that address rural neglect or the legacy of racial discrimination.
I’m tired of hearing what we can’t afford because it is just not true.
We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world — of course we can afford these investments.
But we need a government that makes different choices, choices that reflect our values.
Stop handing out enormous tax giveaways to rich people and giant corporations.
Stop refusing to invest in our children.
Stop stalling on spending money — real money — on infrastructure and clean energy and a Green New Deal.
And start asking the people who have gained the most from our country to pay their fair share.
That includes real tax reform in this country — reforms that close loopholes and giveaways to the people at the top, and an Ultra-Millionaire Tax to make sure rich people start doing their part for the country that helped make them rich.
So, that’s one — clean up Washington. That’s two — change the rules in our economy.
Now, three: change the rules to strengthen our democracy.
That starts with a constitutional amendment to protect the right of every American citizen to vote and to have that vote counted.
And that’s just the beginning.
Overturn every single voter suppression rule that racist politicians use to steal votes from people of color.
Outlaw partisan gerrymandering — by Democrats and Republicans.
And overturn Citizens United. Our democracy is not for sale.
By the way, if we truly believe that, then we also need to end the unwritten rule of politics that says anyone who wants to run for office has to start by sucking up to rich donors on Wall Street and powerful insiders in Washington.
I’m opting out of that rule. I’m not taking a dime of PAC money in this campaign. I’m not taking a single check from a federal lobbyist.
I’m not taking applications from billionaires who want to run a Super PAC on my behalf.
And I challenge every other candidate who asks for your vote in this primary to say exactly the same thing.
It’s not just our elections. Real democracy requires equal justice under law.
It’s not equal justice when a kid with an ounce of pot can get thrown in jail while a bank executive who launders money for a drug cartel can get a bonus. We need real reform!
It’s not equal justice when, for the exact same crimes, African Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be sentenced.
Yes, we need criminal justice reform and we need it now!
And one more thing we must do to strengthen our democracy: We must not allow those with power to weaponize hatred and bigotry to divide us.
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Montgomery and warned us about the danger of division.
He talked about how bigotry and race-baiting are used to keep black Americans divided from white Americans so that rich Americans can keep picking all their pockets.
That playbook has been around forever.
Whether it’s white people against black people, straight people against gay people, middle-class families against new immigrant families — the story is the same. The rich and powerful use fear to divide us.
We’re done with that. Bigotry has no place in the Oval Office.
This is who we are.
We come from different backgrounds. Different religions. Different languages. Different experiences. We have different dreams.
We are passionate about different issues and we feel the urgency of this moment in different ways.
But, today, we come together — ready to raise our voices together until this fight is won.
Our movement won’t be divided by our differences. It will be united by the values we share.
We all want a country where everyone — not just the wealthy — everyone can take care of their families.
We all want a country where every American — not just the ones who hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers — everyone can participate in democracy.
Where every child can dream big and reach for opportunity.
And we’re all in the fight to build an America that works for everyone.
This won’t be easy. There are a lot of people out there with money and power and armies of lobbyists and lawyers.
People who are prepared to spend more money than you and I could ever dream of, trying to stop us from making any of these solutions a reality.
People who will say it’s “extreme” or “radical” to demand an America where every family has some economic security and every kid has a real opportunity to succeed.
I say to them, “Get ready, because change is coming faster than you think.”
Yeah, this kind of fundamental change will be hard. A lot of people — even some of our friends — will tell us it isn’t even worth trying. But we will not give up.
Let me tell you one last story.
When I was home with my first baby, I got this notion that I would go to law school.
It was a crazy idea, but I persisted.
Eventually, I figured out the admissions tests and applications, worked out how to pay my tuition, and mapped out the 45-minute commute to campus.
Weeks out, I had one last thing on my checklist: child care. My daughter Amelia was nearly two years old, and I looked everywhere. I struck out over and over.
We were down to the weekend before law school was supposed to start, when I finally found a small place with a cheerful teacher, nice little play area, no funny smells, in my price range.
But the place would only take children who were “hmm dependably potty trained.”
I looked over at Amelia. She was happily pulling toys off the shelf, her diaper barely covered by her pink stretchy pants. Hmmm. Dependably potty trained.
I now had five days to potty-train an almost two-year-old.
All I can say is, I stand before you today courtesy of three bags of M&Ms and a cooperative toddler.
Since that day, I’ve never let anyone tell me that anything is “too hard.”
But oh how they’ve tried.
People said it would be “too hard” to build an agency that would stop big banks from cheating Americans on mortgages and credit cards.
But we got organized, we fought back, we persisted, and now that consumer agency has forced these banks to refund nearly $12 billion directly to people they cheated.
When Republicans tried to sabotage the agency, I came back to Massachusetts and then ran against one of them. No woman had ever won a Senate seat in Massachusetts, and people said it would be “too hard” for me to get elected.
But we got organized, we fought back, we persisted, and now I am the senior Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
So, no, I am not afraid of a fight. Not even a hard fight.
When the women of Everett Mill walked away from their machines and out into the cold January air all those years ago, they knew it wouldn’t be easy.
But they also knew what was at stake for themselves and their families. And they weren’t going to let anyone tell them it was “too hard.”
Doubters told the abolitionists “it’s too hard.” Skeptics told the suffragettes “it’s too hard.” Cynics told the trust-busters “it’s too hard.”
Naysayers told the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement “it’s just too hard.” But they all kept right on going and they changed the history of America.
Sure, there will be plenty of doubters and cowards and armchair critics this time around.
But we learned a long time ago that you don’t get what you don’t fight for. We are in this fight for our lives, for our children, for our planet, for our futures — and we will not turn back.
My daddy ended up as a janitor, but his little girl got the chance to be a public school teacher, a college professor, a United States Senator — and a candidate for President of the United States.
I am grateful, all the way to my bones. Grateful — and determined.
So here is the promise I make to you today: I will fight my heart out so that every kid in America can have the same opportunity I had — a fighting chance to build something real.
I will never give up on you and your future. I will never give up on your children and their future. I am in this fight all the way.
It’s a long way to election day. But our fight starts here. And it starts with you.
It starts with your decision to get involved, right now. Join us on Elizabeth Warren.com. Help us organize. Volunteer. Pitch in five bucks. We need everyone in this fight.
The textile workers here in Lawrence more than 100 years ago won their fight because they refused to be divided.
Today, we gather on those same streets, ready to stand united again.
This is our moment in history, the moment we are called to.
This is our moment to dream big, fight hard, and WIN!
###
Source: Elizabeth Warren for President
Tulsi Gabbard's Full Speech - Presidential Campaign Launch
February 2nd, 2019
Aloha.
Thank you so much.
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Growing up here in Hawaii, I loved swimming, surfing, and having fun in this paradise we are lucky to call home.
But I gradually realized that I was actually happiest when I was doing things for other people, doing things to protect our water, oceans, and beaches.
This was a different kind of happiness than what I experienced when just thinking of myself. It was a deeper happiness, that stayed with me.
I knew that no matter what path I chose in life, I wanted service to be the foundation.
I am proud to serve our country as a soldier. I’m a Major in the Army National Guard where I’ve served for the last 15 years.
I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to serve the people of Hawaii and our country in so many ways over the years --, in the state house where I was elected at 21, serving 100,000 people as a member of the Honolulu City Council, and now for over 6 years in Congress.
Thank you for your trust and your aloha.
---
I’m a Major in the Army National Guard, where I’ve served for the last 15 years. a Major in the National Guard and proud to serve as a soldier, a Major in the National Guard, proud to serve our country as a soldier. I enlisted nearly 15 years ago in the Army National Guard, and deployed twice to the Middle East.
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Our nation was founded on the principle that our government should be of the people, by the people, and for the people -- where all people are treated equally, and with respect, in these UNITED states of America.
But today that vision seems like a far off dream.
Hatred and divisiveness have cast a dark shadow across our country.
We are being torn apart by powerful, self-serving politicians and greedy corporations, inciting hatred, fear, and conflict between us because of the color of our skin, the way we worship, or our political party. This corruption of spirit driven by greed and selfishness is eroding the very fabric of our society … and democracy itself.
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This is not who we are, America.
The best of our nation is exemplified by our nation’s veterans who embody what it means to put service above self. Who have sacrificed their own personal interests out of a greater love for our people and our country.
Love is not just a feeling. It is a powerful force that drives us to act, to put service above self.
Our men and women in uniform, generation after generation, motivated by love for one another and for our country have been willing to sacrifice everything … for us.
They don’t raise their hand and volunteer to serve just to fight for one religion but not another; people of one race but not another; people of one political party but not another.
No.
When we raise our right hand and volunteer to serve, we set aside our own interests -- to serve our country and to fight for ALL Americans.
We serve as one -- Indivisible and unbreakable, united by this bond of love for each other and love for our country.
It is this principle of putting service above self, that is at the heart of every soldier, every service member.
And it is in this spirit that today I announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America.
I will bring a soldier's principles to the White House -- restoring the values of dignity, honor and respect to the presidency.
And above all, love for our people and love of country.
I ask you to join me, in this spirit of putting service before self, to stand up against the forces of greed and corruption.
The road ahead will not be easy.
The battle will be tough, the obstacles great.
But I know that when we stand united, by our love for our people and our country, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome, there is no battle we cannot win.
John F. Kennedy once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
We must heed his call to action today, at this critical time in our history.
We must stand up, and fight for the soul of our country.
Stand up against bought and paid-for politicians, kowtowing to special interests, selling their votes to the highest bidder
Instead of draining the swamp, our president has turned it into a cesspool of corruption.
We must stand up against big pharma and insurance companies who extort those who are sick, who put their profits above the health of our people. We must fight to ensure that every American gets the quality healthcare they need, through Medicare for All.
Stand up against big Wall Street banks who gamble with our money and our future.
Stand up against overreaching intel agencies and big tech companies who take away our civil liberties and freedoms in the name of national security and corporate greed.
Stand up against those who pollute our land, our water, and our oceans.
We must stand up against corporate private prisons profiting off the backs of those caught up in a broken criminal justice system. A system that puts people in prison for smoking marijuana while allowing corporations like Purdue Pharma, responsible for opioid-related deaths of thousands, to walk away scot-free and coffers full. This so-called criminal justice system which favors the rich and powerful and punishes the poor CANNOT stand.
Stand up against those who perpetuate bigotry, hatred and violence against our brothers and sisters because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation.
Stand up against this Administration who claims to believe in America First but who sells our troops, our weapons and our interests to whichever foreign country is the highest bidder.
Stand up against those who dishonor our troops, treating them as political pawns, and mercenaries-for-hire in wars around the world.
Stand against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage and new places for people to die. Wasting trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, undermining our economy and security, and destroying our middle class.
Trump campaigned against regime change wars when he ran for President, but now bows to the wishes of the neocons around him, clamoring for the regime change wars he claimed to oppose, this time in Venezuela and Iran.
These powerful politicians dishonor the sacrifices made by every one of our service members, and their families - they are the ones who pay the price for these wars.
In fact, all Americans pay the price for these wars that have cost us trillions of dollars since 9/11.
Every dollar that we spend on regime change wars or the new cold war and nuclear arms race is a dollar coming from our pockets … dollars that should be used to meet the needs of our people and our communities here at home.
We must stand united and stand strong against those in both parties who never tire of war -- neolibs and neocons dragging us from one regime change war to the next, exacerbating the New Cold War, and pushing us to the brink of a nuclear war.
We deserve better. Our country deserves better.
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Just over a year ago, the people of Hawaii and our country thought we were under nuclear attack.
College students frantically ran across campus trying to find shelter.
A father lowered his little girl into a man-hole to try to keep her safe
Families piled their kids into the car, driving to the mountains, looking for a cave to shelter in.
A mother, in her bathtub, cowering in fear with her child.
A father having to choose which of his children to spend the last minutes of his life with.
There was no shelter. There was nowhere to hide.
Those of us who serve in uniform made a choice – to put our lives on the line to serve our country, willing to pay the ultimate price – we volunteered for that. We chose that.
But my 6-year-old nephew Malu didn’t make that choice.
You didn't make that choice.
Our families didn’t make that choice.
Our troops volunteer to serve our country, to go to battle to defeat those who threaten us, to keep the American people safe. To make it so that while they’re fighting on the front lines, your children can sleep soundly here at home.
But as powerful politicians beat the drums of war and ratchet up tensions between the United States and nuclear-armed countries like Russia and China, the front lines have come to our doorstep, as we sit on the precipice of nuclear war.
Right now there are around 14,000 nuclear weapons in the world – many of them far more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- enough to destroy the world many times over.
Throughout the 20th century, during a Cold War with the Soviet Union, we were told we had no choice but to live with the fear that at any moment, we could be annihilated by nuclear war. Children in schools practiced reacting to a nuclear alert, hiding under their desks. People who could afford it, built bomb shelters. The rest wondered if they would survive.
With the dissolving of the Soviet Union, that danger was supposed to have disappeared.
But our leaders failed us. In fact, today, we face greater risk of nuclear catastrophe than ever before in history.
This situation is unacceptable.
---
The President’s most important responsibility is serving as Commander-in-Chief.
I will do so as a soldier who understands the seriousness of this responsibility.
I want to take a moment here to recognize and express my appreciation for our fellow veterans who have joined us here today.
Those of us who have experienced firsthand the cost of war, fight hardest for peace.
I served in Iraq in a medical unit, where every single day I was confronted with the high cost of war, and who pays the price.
I take seriously the responsibility of securing our nation.
I know that weakness invites aggression and that our men and women in uniform stand ready to take on and defeat those who threaten the safety and security of our people.
I also know that our current foreign policy is undermining our national security, depleting our resources, and exhausting our military.
As your commander-in-chief, I will work to end the new cold war, and lead us away from the abyss of a nuclear war that could destroy our world in mere minutes.
I will build partnerships with other nations based on shared interests, leading with a foreign policy based not on conflict but on cooperation.
I will end the regime change wars that have taken far too many lives, cost trillions of dollars, and and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
I will have the courage to meet with both adversaries and friends in the pursuit of peace and our national security. If we lack the courage to meet with those we disagree with, the only alternative is war.
Bending the arc of history away from war and toward peace … will require every one of us to stand up against the military industrial complex and powerful, self-serving politicians who have a vested interest in perpetual war.
---
When I was deployed to Iraq in 2005, there was a big sign at one of the main gates to our camp that read: IS TODAY THE DAY.
It was a stark reminder. From the time I woke up, to the time I went to sleep, I knew that any day could be my last. It made me reflect -- How am I making the most of the time that I have?
This is the same reality that faces us today. We have no time to waste. There is too much at stake.
---
The choice is ours. In order to make this change, every one of us must answer the call … to put service above self, putting the interests of our country before our own.
Motivated by love for each other and for our country, we will stand up, we will take action, and we will overcome.
Love should not be mistaken for weakness. There is no force more powerful than love.
It is love that causes firefighters to run into burning buildings to save the lives of total strangers.
… that drives a mother to run in front of a speeding car to save her child’s life.
… that inspires a soldier lay down their life to save the lives of others.
Love inspires us to care for each other, fight for each other, for our freedom, for our country.
WHAT OUR COUNTRY NEEDS NOW MORE THAN EVER IS THE SPIRIT OF ALOHA
What our country needs now more than ever is the spirit of aloha – the spirit of respect and love for one another and love for our country.
And this is the the most precious gift that Hawaii has to offer to our country and the world - aloha.
Aloha is so much more than just hello or goodbye.
Aloha means that I come to you with an open heart, I respect you, I have love for you and care about you. Whether a friend or a stranger, I come to you with aloha -- regardless of the color of your skin, where you come from, how you worship God, who you love, or what political party you belong.
Dr. Martin Luther King saw the power of aloha when he first visited our Islands and addressed the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1959:
He said: “…we look to you for inspiration and as a noble example, where you have already accomplished in the area of racial harmony and racial justice, what we are struggling to accomplish in other sections of the country, and you can never know what it means to those of us caught for the moment in the tragic and often dark midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, to come to a place where we see the glowing daybreak of freedom and dignity and racial justice.”
After returning to the mainland, Dr. King said of his visit:
“As I looked at all of these various faces and various colors mingled together like the waters of the sea, I could see only one face-- the face of the future!” (“Dr. King Reports on Trip to Hawaii,” Dexter Echo, 4 November 1959).
President John F. Kennedy recognized the same when he visited Hawaii in 1963:
“We are proud of this city and this state and what it stands for… these islands represent all that we are, and all that we hope to be.”
This change must begin with the White House
The White House should be a beacon of aloha -- respect, love and compassion for every American…
Our nation was founded on the values and principles of putting service above self -- rejecting the rule of kings who prospered from the sacrifices of the people, and forming a new nation founded on the premise that leaders should be motivated not by serving their own selfish interests --but by a desire to be of service to the people.
Deep inside the heart of every American is the love, honor, courage, and ideals that formed the foundation of this country … ideals that still shine in each and every one of us.
Each of us and all of us must rise again now and come together for each other, our country, and the world.
Our cause is to create a new and different path that reclaims our destiny and restores the uniquely American ideal: to seek a higher purpose greater than ourselves, to put service before self.
That is the cause that is calling to every American today.
So I’m asking you to stand with me, to build a movement for peace at home and abroad … that will fulfill the promise of America, of freedom, justice, equality and opportunity for all.
Thank you—mahalo and aloha!
###
Source: Tulsi Now
Best-selling author, entrepreneur and activist announces bid for Democratic Party Nomination in 2020
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Joined by tens of thousands of supporters, Marianne Williamson today announced her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic Party Nomination at the Saban Theater in Los Angeles.
"I want to engage voters in a more meaningful conversation about America," states Williamson. "About our history, about how each of us fit into it, and how to create a sustainable future. Our national challenges are deep, but our political conversation is shallow. My campaign is for people who want to dig deeper into the questions we face as a nation, and deeper into finding the answers."
Two months after launching an exploratory campaign to determine the viability of a presidential campaign, Williamson, who published a book on American's political system titled Healing the Soul of America in 1997 and re-issued the book in an updated edition last year, has already travelled to Iowa six times this year and spent early January visiting New Hampshire.
"All Americans know they have an important part to play in determining the conversation that will dominate our politics over the next two years, and they take it very seriously. I'm honored to be part of the process and feel very grateful that they're showing up to engage me in this conversation."
Williamson's run comes after a 35-year-career spent teaching universal spiritual values, non-profit activism and a commitment to social justice. She is an internationally acclaimed lecturer, and has been one of America's most well-known public voices for more than three decades. Seven of her twelve published books have been New York Times best sellers.
Today, she cites, "our economy as a veiled aristocracy, a crisis among America's children, systemic racism, and reframing national security," among the nation's greatest issues. "We need more than a better version of the same old same old. We need a fundamental disruption of a sociopathic economic order, and an alignment of our politics with our deepest democratic and human values."
In the 1980s, she founded the Los Angeles and Manhattan Centers for Living, which provided non-medical support services to people with AIDS and other life-challenging illnesses. In 1990, she founded Project Angel Food, a meal-delivery service to homebound people suffering from AIDS. She also co-founded The Peace Alliance, promoting legislation to establish a United States Department of Peace.
Source: Marianne 2020
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by the Honorable Julián Castro for 2020 Presidential Announcement
The Honorable Julián Castro
Remarks at Julián Castro 2020 Presidential Announcement
San Antonio, Texas
Saturday, January 12th, 2019
As Prepared
Good morning! And buenos dias! Thank you, Mom. I'm guessing some of you are here more for her than for me. So many journeys for me and for my family began right here, and today we begin another one. I'm lucky in this journey, to have an incredible partner with me – my wife Erica. And I have amazing inspiration: our daughter, Carina, and our little boy, Cristián.
I want to thank each and every one of you for joining us. What a great crowd! This place—the west side of San Antonio—is a special place for me.
This is the place my grandmother, Victoria, came to in 1922 when she immigrated from Mexico as a seven-year-old orphan. It’s where she grew up, where she worked for years as a maid, a cook and a babysitter while raising my mother as a single parent. It’s where my mother became an activist, working to improve the quality of life for her community. It’s where she raised my brother, Joaquin, and me as a single parent. Joaquin and I were baptized just over there (pointing)
and so were my children. It's here that I got a good public school education, and I had the honor of serving these neighborhoods as mayor of San Antonio.
This morning, I rode the number 68 bus with my brother down Guadalupe Street as we did so many times as kids. And this time I brought my daughter Carina. That was the same bus route that we used to take with my mother to get to school or to her work during the summer.
Look around, there are no frontrunners born here, but I've always believed that with big dreams and hard work, anything is possible. This is a community like so many other communities in our country. A community of good people. Humble people. People who show up for work early and stay late—oftentimes at more than one job—so they can provide for their family.
When they go to bed at night they say hopeful prayers—they want their children to do well, they want good health, they want the dignity that comes from a good job and the peace of mind that comes from being able to retire on their own terms.
This is a community built by immigrants—families from Mexico, yes. But also, from Germany and other countries. Families who came here to build a future. Who came here to serve our country at Fort Sam Houston, and Lackland Air Force Base, and Randolph.
Today, this community represents America’s future—diverse, fast-growing, optimistic, a place where people of different backgrounds have come together to create something truly special. And I am proud to call myself a son of San Antonio.
Six years ago, I had the honor of standing before the Democratic National Convention. I said then that the American Dream is not a sprint or a marathon but a relay. My story wouldn’t be possible without the strong women who came before me and passed me the baton. Because of their hard work, I have the opportunity to stand here today.
My family’s story wouldn’t be possible without a country that challenged itself to live up to the promise of America. That was the point of the American Dream: It wasn’t supposed to be just a dream. America was the place where dreams could become real. But right now, the relay isn’t working.
Today we’re falling backwards instead of moving forward. And the opportunities that made America, America are reaching fewer and fewer people.
Today, we're at risk of dropping the baton. And that’s why we are here today. Because we’re going to make sure that the promise of America is there for everyone.
You see, the lesson I learned from my mother so many years ago in this community is that when we want to see change in our community, we don’t wait for it. We work for it.
When my grandmother got here almost a hundred years ago, I’m sure she never could have imagined that just two generations later, one of her grandsons would be serving as a member of the United States Congress and the other would be standing with you here today to say these words: I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
Cuando mi abuela llegó aquí, hace ya casi cien años, estoy seguro de que nunca se imaginó que solo dos generaciones después, uno de sus nietos formaría parte del Congreso de los Estados Unidos, y que el otro estaría ante ustedes hoy diciendo las siguientes palabras: Yo soy candidato para Presidente de los Estados Unidos.
I’m running for president because it’s time for new leadership. Because it’s time for new energy. And it’s time for a new commitment to make sure that the opportunities I’ve had are available for every American.
In the years to come, we must go forward as one nation, working toward one destiny. And that destiny is to be the smartest, the healthiest, the fairest, and the most prosperous nation on earth. Again, we must be the smartest, the healthiest, the fairest, and the most prosperous nation on earth. Demanding anything less is a failure of vision. Achieving anything less is a failure of leadership.
To be the smartest nation requires an early investment in our children's education.
As mayor of this city, I challenged the voters to raise the sales tax to expand high quality, full day pre-k for thousands of San Antonio four year olds.
At the time, some said it was unrealistic. Even impossible. Education wasn’t my job, they said. And who’s going to vote for a tax increase in Texas, anyway? But the future of this community was my job. So I put my faith in the people.
We called our initiative PrekSA, and we brought together business leaders with educators, parents and students to make the case. And in November of 2012 the voters of this city said, “Yes! We believe in investing in early childhood education.”
So the next fall I found myself standing outside a Prek4SA early childhood center as the first group of young students arrived for their first day of school. They had their little backpacks on. A lot of them were excited. And some were crying. Truth be told, a lot more of the parents were crying.
Sure, there were tears of sadness—of seeing their little ones walking into school for the first time. But there also tears of joy—the joy of knowing a great pre-k education was the first step on the road to a brighter future.
Today, we live in a world in which brainpower is the new currency of success. If we want to compete—and we’d better—we need everyone’s talent. We don’t have a single person to waste.
Here in San Antonio, I made PreK4SA happen. As President, we’ll make Prek 4 the USA happen—universal pre-kindergarten for all children whose parents want it, so that all of our nation’s students can get a strong start. And we won’t stop there.
We’ll work to make the first two years of college, a certification program or an apprenticeship accessible and affordable, so millions more young people and people who are returning to school later in life can get the skills they need to get a good job without drowning in debt.
Now, to be the healthiest nation, we need a better health care system.
Not a health care system that bends to the will of Big Pharma and the big insurers, but a health care system built for the people who need it.
For as long as I knew her, my grandmother was diabetic. As she grew older and her condition got worse, she needed more and more treatment. Thank God there was Medicare there for her. It should be there for everybody. It’s time for Medicare for All--universal health care for every American.
To be the fairest nation, we have to reform and reimagine our justice system. All over this nation, for far too many people of color, any interaction with the police can become fatal.
If police in Charleston can arrest Dylann Roof after he murdered nine people worshipping at Bible study without hurting him, then don’t tell me that Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, and Aiyana Jones, and Eric Garner, and Jason Pero, and Stephon Clark, and Sandra Bland shouldn’t still be alive today too.
We’re going to keep saying their names and those of too many others just like them who were victims of state violence. We’re going to keep saying that Black Lives Matter, while working toward a justice system where it’s true.
You know what else is true? For far too many poor people who can’t afford bail, an accusation alone can swiftly turn into a jail sentence. In our country, “innocent until proven guilty” shouldn’t just be reserved for the wealthy few who can afford high priced lawyers. It should apply to every American.
We must also reform our immigration system, so that keeping families together – instead of tearing them apart – is our policy. Just a couple days ago, President Trump visited McAllen Texas—just south of here—after claiming that we’re facing an ‘invasion’ at our border. He called it a national security crisis.
Well, there is a crisis today – it’s a crisis of leadership. Donald Trump has failed to uphold the values of our great nation.
Yes, there are serious issues that need to be addressed in our broken immigration system—but seeking asylum is a legal right.
And the cruel policies of this administration are doing real and lasting harm. One of the things that I remember most about my grandmother is how she would talk to me about how she came to this country as a child separated from her dying mother. Even as a seventy-year-old woman, when she remembered those moments, she would cry like the seven-year-old girl she was when it happened, sobbing that she never got to say goodbye.
Yes, we must have border security, but there is a smart and humane way to do it. And there is no way in hell that caging children is keeping us safe. We say no to building a wall and say yes to building community. We say no to scapegoating immigrants, and yes to Dreamers, yes to keeping families together, and yes to finally passing comprehensive immigration reform
If we all work together, we can build a nation more prosperous not only for those already doing well, but for everyone.
We can raise the minimum wage, so people don’t have to work two or three jobs to support a family.
We can protect a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body, because for women, access to reproductive healthcare is an economic issue.
We can protect the right of workers to organize in an economy that is quickly changing and leaving too many families behind.
We can protect people from discrimination no matter who they love or how they identify.
And we’ll work to make sure every American has a decent, safe, affordable place to live.
As housing secretary, I visited 100 different communities—big and small—across our country, from downtown Los Angeles to rural Wisconsin and the Pine Ridge Reservation. This much is clear: we have a housing crisis in this country.
Today, too many families are spending more than half of their income on rent. And that means more families are doubling up, sleeping on the couches of relatives or even on the streets. But you know what? You hardly ever hear about it. That’s going to change. We will invest in housing that’s affordable to the middle class and to the poor. And I know we can turn things around.
In the Obama administration we made ending homelessness a priority—starting with veteran homelessness. By the time we were done, we’d cut veteran homelessness almost in half. In the years to come, we can do that and more.
The biggest threat to our prosperity in the 21st century is climate change.
Don’t let anybody tell you that we have to choose between growing our economy and protecting our planet. We can fight climate change and create great jobs —and we don’t have a moment to waste. Scientists tell us that, if we don’t get serious right now, the consequences will be tragic.
So we won’t wait. As President, my first executive order will recommit the United States to the Paris Climate Accord. We're gonna say no to subsidizing big oil and say yes to passing a Green New Deal.
So, those are just some of the ways we’re going to become the smartest, healthiest, fairest, and most prosperous nation on earth—it is our blueprint for 21st century opportunity.
And so you know that this is always—and only—about you: I won’t be accepting a dime of PAC money in this campaign. And as President, we will work to overturn Citizens United—to get big money out of politics.
That’s why I’m running. And that’s what I’m running for. And I’ll have a lot more to say about my plans in the days to come.
Throughout our nation's history, even in its darkest days, there have always been patriots who came together to do the hard work to get us closer to our nation’s highest ideals—those who fought to abolish slavery, suffragists who organized for a woman’s right to vote, a generation that sat in at lunch counters and marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge, the activists at Stonewall, and this generation that is Marching for Our Lives—people who have challenged us to perfect our union.
You and I, we stand on their shoulders, generations of men and women who made beds and made sacrifices, who fought in wars and fought discrimination, who picked crops and stood in picket lines.
They didn’t wait. They made our nation what it is today. And now it’s our turn to take that baton and to make our nation better than ever. I’m asking you to join me.
You give me your support, and I give you my word: I will spend every day working hard to make sure you can get a good job, find a decent place to live, have good health care when you get sick and that your children and grandchildren can reach their dreams, no matter who you are or where you come from.
We have always been at our best when we're united by something bigger. And in this journey, in the days to come, together we will show that hope can be bigger than fear. That light can be bigger than darkness, and that truth can be bigger than lies.
And as long as we work for it, tomorrow will always be better than today.
So, let's get to work. Vamonos!
###
Source: Julián for the Future
KAMALA HARRIS IN OAKLAND: “I’m running to be President of the people, by the people, and for all people.”
Today, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris formally launched her campaign for President of the United States at rally of more than 20,000 in her hometown of Oakland, California.
Harris laid out her belief that the time is now for us all to defend the American values of equality, decency, justice, and democracy, and that her candidacy will be animated by her life’s work of fighting “for the people.”
Key excerpts from Harris’s remarks:
• We are at an inflection point in in the history of our nation. We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before. We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question. Who are we? Who are we as Americans? So, let’s answer that question. To the world. And each other. Right here. Right now. America, we are better than this.
• I stand before you today clear-eyed about the fight ahead and what has to be done—with faith in God, with fidelity to country, and with that fighting spirit I got from my mother. I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States. I’m running for president because I love my country. I’m running to be President of the people, by the people, and for all people.
• It’s up to each and every one of us. So let's remember in this fight we have the power of the people. We can achieve the dreams of our parents and grandparents. We can heal this nation. We can give our children the future they deserve. We can reclaim the American Dream for every single person in our country. We can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet. So let’s do this. And let’s do it together. And let's start now.
A full transcript of the remarks is included below.
I am so proud to be a daughter of Oakland, California. And as most of you know, I was born just up the road at Kaiser Hospital. And it was just a few miles away my parents first met as graduate students at UC Berkeley where they were active in the civil rights movement.
They were born half a world apart from each other. My father, Donald, came from Jamaica to study economics. My mother, Shyamala, came from India to study the science of fighting disease.
They came here in pursuit of more than just knowledge. Like so many others, they came in pursuit of a dream. And that dream was a dream for themselves, for me and for my sister Maya.
As children growing up here in the East Bay, we were raised by a community with a deep belief in the promise of our country – and, a deep understanding of the parts of that promise that still remain unfulfilled.
We were raised in a community where we were taught to see a world, beyond just ourselves. To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people.
We were raised to believe public service is a noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility.
In fact, my mother used to say "don't sit around and complain about things, do something.” Basically I think she was saying. You’ve got to get up and stand up and don’t give up the fight!
And it is this deep-rooted belief that inspired me to become a lawyer and a prosecutor.
It was just a couple blocks from this very spot that nearly 30 years ago as a young district attorney I walked into the courtroom for the very first time and said the five words that would guide my life’s work:
“Kamala Harris, for the people.”
Now, I knew our criminal justice system was deeply flawed.
But I also knew the profound impact law enforcement has on people’s lives, and it's responsibility to give them safety and dignity.
I knew I wanted to protect people.
And I knew that the people in our society who are most often targeted by predators are also most often the voiceless and vulnerable.
And I believed then as I do now, that no one should be left to fight alone.
You see, in our system of justice, we believe that a harm against any one of us is a har against all of us. That’s why when we file a case, it’s not filed in the name of the victim. It reads, “The People.”
This is a point I have often explained to console and counsel survivors of crime, people who faced great harm. Often at the hands of someone they trust – be it a relative or a bank or a big corporation.
I would remind them. You are not invisible. We all stand together.
That’s the power of the people.
My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people.
Fighting for the people meant fighting on behalf of survivors of sexual assault - a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma.
For the people meant fighting for a more fair criminal justice system.
At a time when prevention and redemption were not in the vocabulary or mindset of most district attorneys, we created an initiative to get skills and job training instead of jail time for young people arrested for drugs.
For the people meant fighting for middle class families who had been defrauded by banks and were losing their homes by the millions in the Great Recession.
And I'll tell you, sitting across the table from the big banks, I witnessed the arrogance of power. Wealthy bankers accusing innocent homeowners of fault, as if Wall Street’s mess was of the people’s making.
So we went after the five biggest banks in the United States. We won 20 billion dollars for California homeowners and together we passed the strongest anti-foreclosure law in the United States of America. We did that together.
For the people meant fighting transnational gangs who traffic in drugs and guns and human beings. And I saw their sophistication, their persistence and their ruthlessness.
And folks, on the subject of transnational gangs, let’s be perfectly clear: the President's medieval vanity project is not going to stop them.
And in the fight for the people to hold this administration accountable, I have seen the amazing spirit of the American people.
During the health care fight, I saw parents and children with grave illnesses walk the halls of the United States Congress, families who had travelled across the country at incredible sacrifice.
They came to our nation’s capital believing that if their stories were heard, and if they were seen, their leaders would do the right thing.
I saw the same thing with our Dreamers. They came by the thousands. By plane, train and automobile. I’m sure they were sleeping ten-deep on someone’s living room floor.
They came because they believe in our democracy and the only country they’ve ever known as home.
I met survivors who shared their deepest, most painful personal experiences – who told stories they had never before revealed, even to their closest loved ones – because they believed that if they were seen, that their leaders would do the right thing and protect the highest court in our land.
Together we took on these battles.
To be sure we’ve won and we’ve lost, but we’ve never stopped fighting.
And that’s why we are here today.
We are here because we have another battle ahead.
We are here knowing that we are at an inflection point in the history of our world.
We are at an inflection point in in the history of our nation.
We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before.
We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question.
Who are we? Who are we as Americans?
So, let’s answer that question. To the world. And each other. Right here. And, right now.
America, we are better than this.
When we have leaders who lie and bully and attack a free press and undermine our democratic institutions that’s not our America.
When white supremacists march and murder in Charlottesville or massacre innocent worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue that’s not our America.
When we have children in cages crying for their mothers and fathers, don't you dare call it border security, that’s a human rights abuse and that’s not our America.
When we have leaders who attack public schools and vilify public school teachers that’s not our America.
When bankers who crashed our economy get bonuses but workers who brought our country back can't even get a raise that’s not our America.
And when American families are barely living paycheck to paycheck, what is this administration’s response?
Their response is to try to take away health care from millions of families.
Their response is to give away a trillion dollars to the biggest corporations in this country.
And their response is to blame immigrants as the source of all our problems.
And guys lets understand what is happening here: People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other.
But that is not our story. That is not who we are. That’s not our America.
Our United States of America is not about us versus them. It’s about We the people!
And in this moment, we must all speak truth about what’s happening.
Seek truth, speak truth and fight for the truth.
So let's speak some truth. Shall we?
Let’s speak truth about our economy. Our economy today is not working for working people.
The cost of living is going up, but paychecks aren't keeping up.
For so many Americans, a decent retirement feels out of reach and the American Dream feels out of touch.
The truth, is our people are drowning in debt.
Record student loan debt. Car loan debt. Credit card debt. Resorting to payday lenders because you can’t keep up with the bills.
People are drowning in America.
We have a whole generation of Americans living with the sinking fear that they won't do as well as their parents.
Let’s speak another truth about our economy. Women are paid on average 80 cents on the dollar. Black women, 63 cents. Latinas, 53 cents.
And here’s the thing. When we lift up the women of our country, we lift up the children of our country. We lift up the families of our country. And the whole of society benefits.
Let's speak another truth. Big pharmaceutical companies have unleashed an opioid crisis from the California coast to the mountains of West Virginia. And people once and for all we have got to call drug addiction for what it is: a national public health emergency. And we don't need another War on Drugs.
Let’s speak truth. Climate change is real and it is happening now. From wildfires In the west to hurricanes in the east, to floods and droughts in the heartland, we're not gonna buy the lie. We're gonna act, based on science fact, not science fiction.
And let’s speak an uncomfortable but honest truth with one another: racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia are real in this country. They are age-old forms of hate with new fuel. And we need to speak that truth so we can deal with it.
Let’s speak the truth that too many unarmed black men and women are killed in America. Too many black and brown Americans are locked up. From mass incarceration to cash bail to policing, our criminal justice system needs drastic repair. Let’s speak that truth.
Let’s speak truth. Under this administration, America’s position in the world has never been weaker. Democratic values are under attack around the globe. When authoritarianism is on the march. When nuclear proliferation is on the rise. We have foreign powers infecting the White House like malware. Let us speak truth about these clear and present dangers.
And let’s speak the biggest truth, the biggest truth of all: In the face of powerful forces trying to sow hate and division among us, the truth is that as Americans we have much more in common than what separates us. Let’s speak that truth.
So, let's not buy into that stuff that they are trying to peddle. Let's never forget, that on the fundamental issues, we all have so much more in common than what separates us.
You know, some say we need to search to find that common ground. Here’s what I say, I say we need to recognize that we are already standing on common ground.
I say we will rise together or we will fall together as one nation, indivisible.
And I want to be perfectly clear: I'm not talking about unity for the sake of unity. Hear me out. I'm not talking about unity for the sake of unity.
I'm not talking about some façade of unity.
And I believe we must acknowledge that the word unity has often been used to shut people up or to preserve the status quo.
After all let’s remember: when women fought for suffrage, those in power said they were dividing the sexes and disturbing the peace.
Let’s remember: when abolitionists spoke out and civil rights workers marched, their oppressors said they were dividing the races and violating the word of God.
But Fredrick Douglass said it best and Harriet Tubman and Dr. King knew.
To love the religion of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master.
When we have true unity, no one will be subjugated for others. It’s about fighting for a country with equal treatment, collective purpose and freedom for all.
That’s who we are.
And so, I stand before you today, clear-eyed about the fight ahead and what has to be done—with faith in God, with fidelity to country, and with the fighting spirit I got from my mother. I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States.
I’m running for president because I love my country. I love my country.
I’m running to be president, of the people, by the people, and for all people.
I’m running to fight for an America where the economy works for working people.
For an America where you only have to work one job to pay the bills, where hard work is rewarded and where any worker can join a union.
I am running to declare, once and for all, that health care is a fundamental right, and we will deliver that right with Medicare for All!
I am running to declare education is a fundamental right, and we will guarantee that right with universal pre-k and debt free college!
I am running to guarantee working and middle class families an overdue pay increase. We will deliver the largest working and middle-class tax cut in a generation. Up to $500 a month to help America's families make ends meet.
And we’ll pay for it by reversing this administration’s give aways to big corporations and the top one percent.
I’m running to fight for an America where our democracy and its institutions are protected against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Which is why I will defend this nation against all threats to our cybersecurity.
We will secure our elections and our critical infrastructure to protect our democracy.
And we will honor our service members and veterans – so no one who has served this country has to wait in line for weeks and months to get what they are owed when they return home on first day.
I’m running to fight for an America where no mother or father has to teach their young son that people may stop him, arrest him, chase him, or kill him, because of his race.
An America where every parent can send their children to school without being haunted by the horror of another killing spree.
Where we treat attacks on voting rights and civil rights and women’s rights and immigrant rights as attacks on our country itself.
An America where we welcome refugees and bring people out of the shadows, and provide a pathway to citizenship.
An America where our daughters, where our sisters, where our mothers and grandmothers are respected where they live and where they work.
Where reproductive rights are not just protected by the Constitution of the United States but guaranteed in every state.
I’ll fight for an America where we keep our word and where we honor our promises.
Because that’s our America.
That’s the America I believe in.
That’s the America I know we believe in.
And as we embark on this campaign, I will tell you this: I am not perfect. Lord knows, I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. And I will speak the truth.
And of course, we know this is not going to be easy guys. It’s not going to be easy.
We know what the doubters will say.
It’s the same thing they've always said.
They’ll say it’s not your time. They’ll say wait your turn. They’ll say the odds are long. They’ll say it can’t be done.
But America’s story has always been written by people who can see what can be unburdened by what has been. That is our story. That is our story.
As Robert Kennedy many years ago said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
He also said, “I do not lightly dismiss the dangers and the difficulties of challenging an incumbent President, but these are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election.” He said, "At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country. It is our right to moral leadership of this planet.”
So today I say to you my friends, these are not ordinary times. And this will not be an ordinary election. But this is our America.
And here’s the thing. It’s up to us.
It’s up to us. Each and every one of us.
So let's remember in this fight we have the power of the people.
We can achieve the dreams of our parents and grandparents.
We can heal our nation.
We can give our children the future they deserve.
We can reclaim the American Dream for every single person in our country.
We can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet.
So let’s do this.
And let’s do it together.
And let's start now.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
Source: Kamala Harris for the People
Andrew Yang Keynote at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire (Full Text)
Speaking at his alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy, Presidential Candidate Yang discusses his time in high school, how the school helped his career as an entrepreneur, and how he made the decision to run for President.
Exeter, New Hampshire; February 8th, 2019: Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang will deliver a keynote address to the student body of his alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy, today at 9:50 AM EST. He will also take questions about his presidential run, the future of work and his plan for a Universal Basic Income of $1,000 per month for all American adults.
The full text of his formal speech can be found below.
Text from Andrew’s Speech:
Hello everyone. It’s a privilege and an honor to be back here at Phillips Exeter. This place shaped me in fundamental ways. I learned so much here. I can honestly say I would never be running for President if not for my time at Exeter.
That said, I didn’t really enjoy my time here. This is my first time back in 27 years.
Most of that was on me. I arrived here as an Upper and you all know that’s a difficult transition. I didn’t really fit in. There was, however, something here that may still be true today. This place was very competitive. And we somehow knew things about each other that we’re going to determine where we went to school. “This kid has quadruple legacy to Harvard. That guy’s family literally built Brown University. That guy has a set of restaurant guides named after his family. That guy was going to get an athletic scholarship to Yale.” The subtext was always that our value and stature was going to be determined by where we got into college.
I did well here. I got into Stanford and Brown and decided to go to Brown. That too was a minor source of controversy. People here were like, “Stanford is better than Brown. Why would you go to Brown?” I visited Stanford and thought it was too nice a place to go to school. Their acceptance brochure had been a picture of a football crowd saying “Yes Stanford!” and I didn’t like football. But I mainly went to Brown because my brother was going to school nearby at Wesleyan.
Brown allowed me to grow up. I felt things very strongly throughout my adolescence, probably one reason I didn’t enjoy it here. I had a serious college relationship that, when it ended I took it hard. But it helped me mature. I was pretty depressed and Brown let me get away with that.
After Brown, I still didn’t know what to do. So I went to law school. I spent 5 months as an unhappy lawyer at Davis Polk. And I said, this is a terrible job. My quote at the time was, “This firm is like a temple to the squandering of human potential.” So I quit and started a dot-com.
I’m now thought of as a successful entrepreneur. Some of you read my book ‘Smart People Should Build Things.’ And I’m going to share the secret to entrepreneurship:
Tell everyone you know that you’re going to do something. That way, you don’t have a choice but to do it.
I started Stargiving.com, but it unfortunately flopped. Everyone I knew was aware that I had failed. That hurt too. I worked at another startup that ran out of money and then a healthcare software company. I spent my twenties working at startups that didn’t work out.
Meanwhile, most of my friends at Exeter were bankers, consultants, and lawyers living in very nice apartments in Manhattan. I was living with a roommate, teaching classes and throwing parties on the side. It was hard to stay positive.
During this time, a friend from Exeter, Fiona Smith, called me up and asked me if I would meet with a friend of hers. That meeting changed my life.
Her friend, Zeke had started an education company, Manhattan Prep, and asked if I could help. I later became CEO of that company when I was 31 and Zeke stepped away. The company eventually became number one in the country and was acquired by the Washington Post in 2009.
This is one reason why I know that Exeter shaped my career. If Fiona hadn’t introduced me to Zeke, I never would have wound up running that company.
I was still haunted by the sense that we had so many of our talented people doing one of six things in six places: finance, consulting, tech, law, medicine or academia in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, DC or LA. This was true of most of my friends at Exeter.
Now, you can’t be negative about something without offering a solution. I thought about what I believed more people like you should be doing 5 or 6 years from now. And I thought you should be starting businesses in places that need it – places like Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, or Birmingham. We needed to create a path for people to do that.
So I quit my job and started Venture for America. I donated $120k and started calling rich friends and asked them, “Do you love America.” Classmates from Exeter helped. Another Exonian introduced me to a Foundation that became one of our first funders.
This place is a magical, wonderful, difficult place to come of age. You are around people constantly, yet it is easy to feel alone. You are among the most successful high school students in the country, yet you feel your success to be challenged at all times. You are taught to do good in the world, yet it is your own success that remains the way that you are judged.
In my experience, if you want a career you will be proud of, you are going to have to fight for it. The market will not help you. Instead, the market will drive you to do certain things that may or may not be what you’d imagined. And here in America in 2019, the market is the most powerful force in our society.
Venture for America has a credo, that I hope some of you find useful. I confess that this place very much influenced it. It is:
“My career is a choice that indicates my values. There is no courage without risk. I believe that actions are the proper measure of one’s accomplishments. I will create value for myself and others. I will act with integrity in all things.
Thank you, students of Phillips Exeter. You will shape the future of this country. Use your power wisely.
Source: Friends of Andrew Yang
John Delaney: I’m Running for President
July 28, 2017
WASHINGTON – Congressman John K. Delaney announced today that he is running for President, the first Democrat to formally enter the race. The son of a union electrician, an entrepreneur and Congressman with a record of innovative thinking, Delaney will speak about this announcement Saturday in a Facebook Live broadcast in New Jersey in the working-class neighborhood where he grew up.
“The current Administration is making us less prosperous and less secure, the healthcare debacle being the most recent example of their brand of destructive partisanship,” Delaney said. “I’m running to bring a new approach to governing and economic policy that addresses our nation’s opportunities and challenges and builds a future where the middle class can grow and succeed. My candidacy is about putting our future first, which involves responding to the rapid changes occurring in the world, strengthening our economy, and building a new social contract that widens the doors of opportunity, makes people more secure, and ensures no one is left behind.”
Delaney brings to the campaign a unique, progressive perspective that combines a belief in the power of the free market economy and the necessary role for government to set the rules of the road and help those left behind. “In the end, we won’t win by just attacking Trump, we’ll win as a party – and as a nation – when we focus on the facts and take on the tough issues that confront us, beginning with mastering the challenge of continued and accelerated innovation,” Delaney said. “If we fail to put partisanship aside and address the significant economic opportunities and challenges we face, we will lose a generation to market forces and change, just like we did when our leaders failed to respond to the dislocation caused by globalization.” Delaney continued, “Building a secure future means taking on these challenges, which are bigger than any one party, and delivering on the core American promise – building an economy where success is not a birthright, but something open to all, with a helping hand and a shared commitment to help those in danger of being left behind.”
Delaney continued: “Our government is hamstrung by excessive partisanship and the politics of small thinking. There’s no better proof of that than the dysfunction over health care – a cynical, political, deeply flawed and cruel approach to policymaking that we as a nation can no longer afford. We are letting critical opportunities to improve the country pass us by. And we are not even talking about the most important thing: the future. The victims of this leadership failure are the good people we are sworn to serve, and we are leaving our country ill-prepared for dramatic changes ahead.”
Delaney grew up in a blue-collar union household and his parents did not attend college. Before the age of 40, he founded and led two publicly-traded companies. Since 2013, Delaney has represented Maryland’s Sixth District in the House of Representatives, a competitive battleground district, and he has received national recognition for his breakthrough bipartisan infrastructure bill, which uses revenues from international tax reform to rebuild America’s roads and bridges. Delaney was named one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune earlier this year. Delaney will be in Iowa this August and will build out his campaign team and national infrastructure over the next year. “This is the beginning of a long process of traveling the country, sharing my thoughts on moving the country forward, hearing from folks and building a campaign built on new ideas and problem solving, from the grass roots up,” Delaney said. “It didn’t feel right to run for re-election and then run for President. That’s standard politics, but I don’t intend to offer a standard campaign,” Delaney concluded. “I’m in for the long haul, one voter at a time. I’m excited to listen, learn and make my case for a future that works for everyone, a future that delivers on the promise of the American Dream.”
John Delaney Speaks on Facebook Live From Hometown in New Jersey
Saturday, July 29, 2017
WOOD-RIDGE, NJ – Democratic candidate for President, Congressman John K. Delaney, spoke today on his blue-collar roots, business career, and core values during a Facebook Live broadcast from his hometown in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey. Delaney’s parents didn’t attend college and scholarships from his father’s union helped him attend Columbia University.
Below are Congressman Delaney’s remarks:
Hello, everyone, this is Congressman John Delaney. You’ve probably heard the big news, which is that I’m running for President, and that’s what I’m here to talk about. I’m in my hometown of Wood-Ridge N.J., the place where I grew up. I’m here with my family, my sister and my mom. Like so many of you, my hometown made me the person I am today. And like so many of you, I never forget where I’m from.
Wood-Ridge is a small town full of hardworking people many of which work in solid blue-collar jobs. These are good people who care about their family, their kids, their faith, and their country.
When my sister and I grew up in our small house on North Avenue, life was simple, but it was really good. My dad was an electrician. He passed away last year and this is his truck – his last of his many pickup trucks he had across his life. I spent my summers working with my dad on construction sites. He taught me some very valuable lessons – he taught me to work hard, to never back down, to stand up for your friends, and most importantly to take care, protect, and love your family. He called it “being a man.” For me, the goal was to be a responsible adult. And it’s worked.
Even though neither of my parents went to college, my mom pushed me hard to get a great education. I ended up going to college across the river at Columbia University paid for, in part, by scholarships from my dad’s electrical union, the IBEW. Every year I would go to Jersey City and thank the members of that union for giving me that scholarship, an opportunity that they were giving me that none of them had ever had for themselves. Stepping on the campus of Columbia University changed my life–like an education does for so many. After that, I went to Georgetown for law school where the best thing imaginable happened to me – I met April my wonderful wife of almost 28 years and we have been blessed with 4 daughters.
Because of my education, I was able to become an entrepreneur. I started two businesses from scratch, both of which became public companies, and I created thousands of jobs in the great state of Maryland, which is where we now call home. One of the best memories I have was ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange with my first company; I was in my early thirties at the time. I could look across the river at Jersey City and imagine all those wonderful electricians I used to thank for helping pay my way through college. You see, none of us do it alone. I also could also see Ellis island, where one of my grandfathers came through. He came from England as a boy but was detained because he only had one arm. You see back then we discriminated against people with disabilities. After holding him for a while, he was let into the United States by a judge – a judge that had one arm. Who knows what would have happened otherwise. He ended up working in a pencil factory in Jersey City not far from where my other grandfather, an Irishman named John Delaney as well, worked as a dockworker. As you can tell, hard work runs in our family.
What also runs in our family is an appreciation for the American dream. Within two generations of the one-armed boy being detained at Ellis Island, his grandson goes on to become the CEO of two New York Stock Exchange listed companies and has the privilege of serving in the Congress of the United States, representing the great state of Maryland and some of the finest people in the country – the citizens of Maryland’s 6th. That’s the American dream.
But is the American dream still alive? That’s the question we have to ask ourselves. Or do you have to be born into the right family, or the right town, to have a shot? We need to make sure we stay the land of opportunity and the best way to do that is to focus on the future. And that’s the work I want to do, which is why I’m running for president. I want to work to advance an exciting and original approach to governing, which is all about the future, about getting things done to grow our economy, create jobs, and – importantly – ensure a better future for all Americans.
The American people are so much greater than the sum of our political parties. As a country, we have accomplished amazing things, and if we come together and rise above our broken politics, we can a do it again. Today, our goal should be to have higher economic growth and a more inclusive economy, lead the world through some very difficult times and very difficult threats, and take action to leave our country and the world better off for generations to come. All of this is certainly possible if we focus on the future and work together.
I envision a future far better than the world today. A future where responsible businesses and the power of our economic model work with a smarter government to not only lead the world in innovation and growth, but also drive positive changes in society, including higher wages for our workers and better health, educational, and environmental outcomes. A future where America’s standing in the world is reasserted with real leadership to stronger global alliances that work for peace and security to keep Americans safe.
To achieve this goal, we have to be honest about what is actually happening in the world. Technology, automation, and globalization are the most powerful forces in the world today. Across our country and the world, these forces have been enormously positive, but they have not been positive for everyone. They will continue to make life better, enhance productivity, solve some of the world’s most difficult problems in society, and open societies. Sadly, these forces will also eliminate certain jobs and require workers to learn new skills much more quickly. They will create security risks, and strain our resources. As a nation, we need to respond to these opportunities and challenges by investing in infrastructure, innovation and promoting start-ups. We need to improve education and make it easier for our workers to acquire new skills and switch jobs as needed. We need to encourage a more just and inclusive form of capitalism, take steps to help our businesses compete and grow, strengthen our safety net and benefit programs and think about fiscal, climate and security risks differently. To me, these are not vague promises; I have specific plans for each.
These goals can only be accomplished by focusing on the facts, making government work better, reinventing the basic social contract, and coming together as a nation to pursue big ideas. We can no longer allow petty and pointless political debates to get in the way of real progress for the American people. Much more unites us than divides us, and it’s time to stop fighting and time to get things done. In truth, the real enemy of progress is hyper-partisan politics that tries to convince the American people that half the country is entirely wrong about what they believe and prioritizes political victories over the common good of our citizens.
No country is better positioned to capitalize on this change than the United States of America. We are the undisputed center of technology. Our workers are the most talented in the world. Our business community leads the world. Our universities are beacons to talent and our multi-ethnic, multi-religious free society is the envy of people around the world. Our armed services are the finest in the world and we have free markets, free press and the rule of law.
Unfortunately, however, we are in a tough spot right now as a country. We have a President who has an unhealthy disregard for the truth and the administration of justice. He has shown himself to be an unsteady, self-absorbed leader, and much of his agenda will hurt working families, exacerbate our challenges and cause us to miss significant opportunities. Fortunately, we stopped his latest assault on something that should be a right for every American – healthcare. And we did it in a bipartisan way by getting a few brave Republicans to look at the facts and understand that this would actually hurt so many people. President Trump is not showing the business skills he promised. In truth, Trump isn’t, and never was, a successful business leader. He was a successful business promoter, which is an entirely different thing. Successful business leaders innovate, create jobs, pay their bills, and don’t file for bankruptcy and hire the most talented not those best connected. This is what I did in building two companies from scratch. Trump does the exact opposite. He’s betraying and hurting the good people he claims to support and he has deepened our divisions.
And Trump has used his success to bully and intimidate people to get his way. I think about success from a different perspective and I try to be a steward of the blessings I’ve had and use them to help people, to give back. When I came to Congress I said I would use my experience as a business leader to come up with new bipartisan ideas to improve the economy and create jobs. That is exactly what I did when I put forth the most significant infrastructure and tax reform proposal in the Congress, which would invest over $1 trillion in infrastructure and create a pathway for trillions of dollars of trapped overseas cash to come back to the United States. This proposal has had over 40 Democrats and 40 Republicans supporting it. That’s the kind of approach real business leaders take in government; that’s the real “art of the deal” in politics.
These are my genuine thoughts, none of which are poll-tested nor developed by consultants. They come from my experience, my work, and my values and my heart and I have the skills to make them happen. April and I will spend the next year preparing for the 2020 election by talking to people all across the country and discussing our plan for an alternative economic vision rooted in a more dynamic economy and a renewed social contract and an overall respectful, bipartisan, get things done approach to governing.
Resistance to the Trump agenda is critical, but what will really matter in the long term is rebuilding our country, renewing our spirit of generosity towards each other, and repositioning our time tested economic model towards broadly shared success. That’s what I want to do. God bless you.
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Source: Friends of John Delaney