Bernie Sanders (00:07):
… Alexandria, they told us this was a conservative state. They got it wrong. Before I go on, I want to say a word about Alexandria. Yes, she is an excellent congresswoman from New York. Yes, she has been an inspiration to young people all over the country. But I want to say something that is even more important about Alexandria. Six years ago, she was a waitress in New York City and she looked around her in a community which has a whole lot of issues. She looked around her and she said, "You know what? We can do better." With no money, no organization, she took on one of the most powerful democratic leaders in the US Congress and she beat him. Now, my point is not to grow her ego. That's not my point in saying that. My point is to say that in this arena of 12,000 people, there are hundreds of Alexandrias and Josephs and Toms and Marys. And why we are here today is not just to be with you in this rally as wonderful as that is, we are here for a deeper purpose.
(02:16)
And that is to understand that in this very, very difficult moment in American history, all of us have got to get outside of our comfort zone. We have got to do tomorrow what we hesitated to do yesterday. And as Alexandria just said, when we stand together, when we do not allow them to divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation, there is no stopping us. I know that there are some pundits out there and they're saying, why does Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who come from some of the most liberal and blue states in the country, why are we here tonight? And the answer is, we don't accept this blue state, red state nonsense. We are one people. That's right. We are the United States of America, not red states, not blue states. The country now faces some enormous problems. And at the top of the list, we have a nation which is now run by a handful of greedy billionaires. I used to talk about oligarchy and people say, "What is he talking about?" Everybody knows what I'm talking about tonight.
(04:38)
When Trump got inaugurated, sitting right behind him were the three wealthiest people in this country, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. And seated right behind them were 13 other billionaires who Trump had nominated to lead major government agencies. Some of you remember a lesson we learned in elementary school when Abraham Lincoln was at Gettysburg and he was on the battlefield where 20,000 union soldiers had died or had been wounded just a few days ago. And he looked out at that battlefield and he said, we are not going to forget the sacrifice they made. We are going to make a government of the people-
Crowd (05:35):
By the people, for the people.
Bernie Sanders (05:38):
That's why we're here tonight. We want a government of the people, by the people, for the not a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class, and by the billionaire class. And right now, unbelievable as we speak you got the wealthiest guy on earth, Mr. Musk. Mr. Musk, you don't hear about this much in the corporate media or on the halls of Congress. Mr. Musk himself owns five times more wealth than the bottom half of the households in America. One man. And this guy is running all over Washington DC slashing the Social Security Administration. And what that means, what that means is elderly and disabled people will find it increasingly difficult to get the benefits they paid into. This guy is proposing to cut 83,000 jobs from the Veterans Administration. These are the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our country. We owe them everything and we're not going to allow Musk and his friends to cut VA benefits. And when we talk about oligarchy, it's not just economic power, it is political power. Right now, in this last election, Musk spent $270 million to elect Donald Trump
Bernie Sanders (08:00):
Trump is president. You get one vote, you get one vote. Musk gets one vote plus 270 million to elect Trump. And his reward is to become the most powerful person in government. But it is not just Musk and the Republican Party. The Democrats have their billionaires as well. And if you want to know why the Democrats over the years have not been as strong as they should be in standing up for working-class people, it has a lot to do with the power of those billionaires. So I know that I speak not just for progressives or moderates or conservatives, I think I both speak for every American who understands that in our democracy, we cannot allow billionaires to buy elections. In America, one person, one vote, not billionaires buying elections. And that is why we got to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. I want to say a word about the oligarchs. Because it's something I really don't quite understand. One might think that if you had 10, 20, 30 billion dollars, it would be enough. You might think that, but in America, we have a lot of people who are dealing with addiction issues, drugs, alcohol, or whatever. Well, these guys, these oligarchs have a major, major addiction problem. And you know what it is? It is greed. They're like heroin addicts. They can't control themselves. They need more and more, and they do not care who they step over in order to get another billion dollars.
(10:29)
So we are going to take care of their addiction problems. We're going to end their greed. But brothers and sisters, it is not just oligarchy we are dealing with right now, we are dealing with a president who undermines our constitution every single day, who threatens our freedom of speech and assembly, and whose agents, as we speak, are rounding up innocent people off the streets, throwing them into unmarked vans and taking them to detention centers in this country or elsewhere. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? I don't know if some of you saw some of these videos, woman walks down the street, suddenly car stops. These guys come in plain clothes, masks on, throw her into a car and whisk her off someplace, happened in Vermont today.
(11:47)
That is what happens in dictatorships, not in democracy. We're not going to let Trump and his friends get away with that. And again, I don't care whether you're a conservative or a progressive. Men and women have fought to defend our democracy and our constitution, and we're not going to let Trump destroy that constitution. What this guy wants is more and more power. The guys who wrote the Constitution back in the 1790s were nobody's fools. And they wrote a constitution which had a separation of powers. You all remember reading about that in the fifth grade. You got an executive branch, you got a legislative branch, you got a judiciary. And each one of those branches keeps a check on the other one. And day after day, what Trump is doing is trying to take power away from the Congress. He's trying to take power away from the judiciary. And right now he's going after the media. I don't know if any of you saw it. He is now wanting to take away CBS's license because they did a story that criticized him.
(13:25)
Oh, my word. CBS criticized him. Oh, let's drive them out of business. How terrible is that? He has sued ABC, he has sued Meta. He has sued the Des Moines Register. This guy cannot take criticism. He can dish it out, all right, but he can't take it. And I say to Mr. Trump, if you can't take criticism, get out of the political process. This is a democracy. And if you can believe it, he is going after law firms that represented clients who are in opposition to Trump and some of these cowardly law firms have caved in. One might think that the function of a large multi-billion dollar law firm is to defend the rule of law, not cave in to Donald Trump.
(14:40)
And he is putting pressure on universities as well. Good news is Harvard University today said, go to hell. During World War II [inaudible 00:15:05] the United States of America and our allies were fighting fascism in the east and in Europe, 400,000 men and women died to defend American freedom. We take as Americans, as the longest standing democracy on Earth is a country that the whole world has historically looked up to. And they say, we want to be like America. We love the American constitution. We respect their democracy. We take democracy seriously. We will not allow Trump to undermine our way of life. Too many people have fought and died to defend democracy,
Bernie Sanders (16:03):
But it is not only domestic policy that we should be concerned with, for the first time in the 250-year history of our country we have a president who is aligning himself with dictatorship abroad. No, President Trump, Ukraine did not start that war. Russia did.
(16:43)
But it's not just Ukraine. Trump is following in the rather unfortunate behavior of Joe Biden and wants billions of dollars more to fund Netanyahu's war machine in Gaza. Israel, like any country on earth, has the right to defend itself from terrorism, but it does not have the right to wage all our war against the Palestinian people. In a territory of only 2.2 million people, Netanyahu has already killed 50,000 Palestinians, wounded over 100,000 and destroyed the entire infrastructure of Gaza. I am doing my best to demand not another nickel for Netanyahu's war machine.
(18:24)
And as bad as all of that is, as bad as the reality that American bombs are killing children, there is something now even worse. Trump and his friends have the brilliant idea that they want to forcibly expel the suffering people of Gaza, push them out so they could build a riviera for their billionaire friends. That is absolutely insane. We will not allow that to happen. And let me now tell you just a little bit of what's going on in America that you're not going to see on corporate media and you're not going to hear on the halls of Congress and that right now in America we have two Americas. We have on top one America in which the wealthiest people, the top 1%, have never ever had it so good. In America today we have more income… In America today…
Audience (20:12):
[inaudible 00:21:05]
Bernie Sanders (21:09):
Okay. Okay. All right. Let me move on to… I know that this is a sensitive issue, something I am helping leading the effort in Congress. But I do want to say, hold it, hold it, what we have also got to focus on is the crisis facing not only the people in Gaza, but the crisis facing the working class of this country. And the way we beat Trump is we develop an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country, not just the 1%.
(21:58)
Today in America, 60% of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Do you all know what living paycheck-to-paycheck is about?
Audience (22:12):
Yes.
Bernie Sanders (22:13):
All right. I grew up in a family that lived paycheck-to-paycheck in a rent-controlled apartment. I know something about it. All right, you tell me. What is living paycheck-to-paycheck?
Audience (22:23):
Can't pay rent.
Bernie Sanders (22:26):
You can't pay for the rents. What else?
Audience (22:27):
[inaudible 00:22:30].
Bernie Sanders (22:30):
You can't afford what?
Audience (22:31):
Groceries.
Bernie Sanders (22:32):
Can't afford groceries. One of the at a time, one at a time. People all over this country want to provide good quality food for their kids. They walk into a grocery store, they can't afford it. What else do you got?
Audience (22:46):
[inaudible 00:22:51]
Bernie Sanders (22:51):
What?
Audience (22:52):
Healthcare.
Bernie Sanders (22:53):
Healthcare. All right. One at a time. People get sick and in this country, they can't afford to go to a doctor. We lose 60,000 people a year because they don't have a money to go to a doctor when they should. If you are a single mom, you can't afford childcare. If you are a college student, you're going to go deeply in debt to try to get the education you need to get a decent job. Meanwhile, while working families struggled to put food on the table, the richest 1% live in their own fantasy world. You may have seen just the other day, Jeff Bezos took some of his friends to outer space. When they go on vacation, they go to their own islands that they have,
Bernie Sanders (24:00):
… fly around the world in their own planes. Our demand is an economy that works for all, not just a few. Now, I want to deal with an issue and I want you all to put this into your hearts. Back in 1940, long time ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the great presidents in American history, Roosevelt gave a State of the Union speech, this is in the middle of World War II. And it didn't get a whole lot of attention. He said, "You know what? We have a great constitution, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly. But you know what we're lacking? What we are lacking is an understanding that economic rights are human rights."
(24:54)
So you have the right to vote, but if you're sleeping out on the street, it doesn't matter. You have the right to vote, but if you can't afford healthcare, it doesn't matter. So what we need to do is to understand and not let the establishment beat us down. Economic rights are human rights. What that means is that Musk should not be able to own himself five times more than half of the households in America. What it means, and this is not a radical idea, it is not a radical idea, we are the richest country in the history of the world, we are not a poor country. We do not have to have people sleeping out on the street or kids going hungry. We don't have to have 20% of our elderly living on $15,000 a year or less. We don't have to have the highest rate of child poverty of almost any major nation on Earth. So what do we have to do? What we have to have is an agenda that speaks to the needs of all Americans, whether you are in Idaho, Vermont, or any place else. Brothers and sisters, healthcare is a human right. We should not be the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare at every man, woman, or child. We need to pass Medicare for all.
(27:15)
Instead of spending a trillion dollars on the military, we need to build 5 million units of low-income and affordable housing. We need to have the best education system in the entire world. I want the best and the brightest to go into teaching. I want the teaching profession to be respected. I want us to have free child care. And I don't want our older kids to have to leave college deeply in debt, free college tuition. And despite what Trump says, climate change is not a hoax. It is an existential threat. We can lead the world and create millions of good-paying union jobs, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency.
(28:55)
Let me conclude by reading you a quote from Frederick Douglass. You all remember Frederick Douglass? He was a great abolitionist and in the midst of the struggle to end the nightmare of slavery back in 1857, this is what he said and I quote. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Now, what the ruling class of this country wants you to believe is that you are powerless. They've got all the money, they own the media, they own the economy, they own the political process, you've got nothing. That's what they want you to believe. But tonight, we are going to stand up loudly and proudly and tell them we have had enough. This country belongs to all of us, not the billionaire class. Let's go forward. Let's do it. Thank you.
