[applause] across these years, we have worked and handled medical projects. Joe biden in the trenches, trying to make america better can agree to disagree, but always in a civil way. Some of our best mentors in the , i haved urban areas met joe several times in the early 70s. My classmate is now the congressman from delaware. I express my thanks in a particular way. Was a great breakthrough when robert became president or nominee. Doubts, fears everywhere. Two sets of rules. We reach out to the waterfront, the depth and breadth. Seeing his running mate. Barack obama, his choice of running mate joe biden. Joe challenged in the labor workers, our focus is the workers right to vote is under attack. He worked on obamacare and Affordable Health care for he is the stuff it takes to make america better, so joe biden, please stand and come forward. Mr. Biden thank you, reverend. Well, i am here to introduce, another biden who is going to become president of the United States, my granddaughter, finnegan biden. If anybody makes it, this one by the way, a lost a daughter, i have one daughter who survived, and i have four granddaughters let me tell you, they are incredible. How many men and women have a granddaughter out there . How many of you have a daughter as well . Here is the deal daughters always are wonderful. We have an expression, a son is a son you get to wife, a daughter is a daughter you have the rest of your life. When your daughter is 12 and a half years old, you put a butterfly, you kiss her midnight, when you wake up, there is a snake in her bed. Daddy, daddy, and they all come back between 19 and 21, and the congresswoman said youre not hydrating enough. I have to take care of your dad. She is a social worker. But here is the deal. Granddaughters not only always love you, but they always like you. And by the way, she is in college, walking down to campus, she said can we hold hands, pop . Can you imagine your daughters saying that . I love you, kid. By the way, her mom is from the south side. Her other grandparents live in chicago, and she is a chicago girl. Anyway, thank you for a much for indulging me, reverend. And i always thank you for remembering my son, beau. He was a friend of yours. Thank you, thank you. Members of the clergy, mayor, thank you for the passport into town. I appreciate it. Congresswoman kelly, a Great Congress woman, and everyone here. There is an expression in parts of south philly, yall are the ones who brought me to the dance, the laborers, and that is not a joke. Jesse knows my state very well. Gotnows that when i say i raised in the black church, he knows i am not kidding. We would sit there before he goes out and try to change things when i was a kid in college and a vice. And high school. Look, before i start, i want to Say Something about the debate we had last night, and i heard and i listened to, and i respect senator harris. But we all know that 30 seconds to 60 seconds on a Campaign Debate cannot do justice to a lifetime commitment to civil rights. I want to be absolutely clear about my record and position on racial justice, including bussing. I never, never oppose voluntary busing, and as a program that senator harris participated in and that made a difference in her life i did support federal option to address root causes of segregation of hours was a communities, including taking on the banks and redlining and trying to change the ways in which neighborhoods were segregated. I have always been in favor of using federal authority over state segregation. I cast a vote in 1974 against the amendment called of the gurney amendment, which would have been the federal courts from using busing as a remedy. It was not what you would call the most popular vote in the country at the time. Reverend jackson, we have spent a lot of time working together over the years, a lot of issues that matter. I know and you know that i thought my heart to ensure civil rights are on force everywhere. Enforced everywhere. These rights are not up to the state to decide, they are our federal governments to decide. It is a constitutional question to protect the civil rights of every single american, and that has always been my position, and so that is why i ran for federal office in the first place. As reverend jackson may be one of the first people that knows, my city was the only city after dr. King was assassinated that was almost burned to the ground, 20 of it. 19th Century Construction was occupied for the National Guard was drawing bayonets on almost every corner for 10 months. I can home from law school that year, and i had two political heroes dr. King and bobby kennedy, and they were both assassinated the year i graduated. I came home and had a job at a law firm, a prestigious firm, and after five months, i decided i could not do it during when i could not do it. When i was elected, one of the first things i did was to go on a committee to start to strengthen the Voting Rights act. I cosponsored equal rights amendment. I supported the equity law. Actted for the civil rights band employment information. I wrote the law, the provision in the law that allows the attorney general to pursue cases involving a pattern or practice of conduct by Law Enforcement officers in violation of federal rights. I wrote that law, and i used that power during the obama administration, including ferguson. By the way, we worked like the devil to make sure that you should not allow Police Departments to buy military items like humvees, you do not go into neighborhoods in a humvee or personnel carrier. Our criminal Justice Reform is president and Vice President as president and Vice President reduced the prison population by 38,000 people. Ladies and gentlemen, the obamabiden administration, we commuted more sentences than the 13 previous president s combined. [applause] mr. Biden by the way, with all the respect, i think chicagoans and everyone, my presidency gives far too little credit for that gets gets far too little credit for all that he did. He is one of the great president s of the United States of america, and i am tired of hearing what he did not do [cheers applause] mr. Biden this man had a backbone like a ramrod. A backbone like a ramrod. You want to know what a person is made of . Watch them under political pressure. He got elected, we were about to fall off a cliff. We had to pass an act, the recovery act, that was 800 billion. And guess what . Remember, he loved during the state of the union to turn and surprise me, he did not tell me, sheriff joe is going to enforce the act. Thanks a lot, mr. President. 800 billion. We get it with less than 2 of waste, fraud, or use in that abuse in that act. But here is what you get, everything that landed on his desk, i watched him. I watched him, i sat with him every single morning, and i watched him. Hundreds of hours in the socalled the situation, not where wolf blitzer lived, the real situation room. Chicago, you had a great, great man out here, and he is still is a great man, and hes ill has a and he still has a lot to offer. We were in office, we started an initiative to break the schooltoprison pipeline. Folks, the discussion in this race today should not be about the past and we should be talking about how we can do better, how we can move forward, how we can give every child in america the opportunity to see success stories. These are not somebody elses children. These are all our children. Not a joke. They are the kite strings that lift our National Ambitions aloft. We have to make people realize what you are doing. What you are doing is every single child in america has enormous potential. Every single child has enormous potential. But it means you have to have good schools in every neighborhood. No childs future should be determined by their zip code. That is why i propose increasing title i funding. We are going to increase teachers pay. We are going to make prek a requirement across the board. Ladies and gentlemen, these schoolteachers work every year, like my wife, she works at a community college, she has never stopped teaching, by the way, the only secondly i know who had a fulltime job, teaching 15 credits a semester. [laughter] mr. Biden by the way, i am known as jill bidens husband, and i am proud of that. But i earned it. I asked her five times to marry me before she would do it. I dont know how that happened, thank you lord. Look, those of you who are teachers in here, you are expected to teach the children to read, write, add, and subtract, but kids come to school with burdens and problems. We have too few school psychologist, too few social workers, too few people in there working to give kids a chance, and we are going to do that under my proposal. [applause] mr. Biden look, we are going to desegregate our schools, because we have a National Interest in creating Diverse School bodies. That is what i believe. We have to make sure that we are moving closer to an idea of americas founding. You know, we all learned in school we hold these truths selfevident that all men and women are created equal, we the people. We have never lived up to that. We have never lived up to that, and this is the 400th anniversary of the first African American being brought to the shores of the United States in slaves. That is the original sin of this that is the original sin of this nation, but we have never walked away from it, either. We have never walked away from the expectation. All of you in this room have never walked away from it. And there is one president i know who has actually deliberately walked away from it, and that is donald trump. Not a joke. Think about this. I do not know about you, jess, but i never thought that after all the rest that had been made, i would see people marching out of fields, carrying torches, contorted faces, anger and hate, accompanied by White Supremacists and the ku klux klan, met by decent, honorable people who said we dont hate you, and what happens . A clash ensues, a young woman who died, and what did he say . When asked about it, he said, quote, no president has ever said this, there are very fine people in both groups. He has yet to apologize or criticize the ku klux klan and White Supremacists. Look, we have a resident who has encouraged the poison of white a president who promotes hate and division, who has encouraged the poison of white supremacy. Our children are watching. When barack was president , our kids not only could they did look up to him. Look, what president s say matters. It matters. And by the way, when we stay silent, our silence is complicit. That is what i learned from my dad. Your silence is complicit. You know, i promise you, if i get elected resident, i will be a president whose hands against racism, who forces inclusion and intolerant everywhere now society, and our institutions, voting booths, and in our hearts. It matters, what we say. It is important to stand by and start by recognizing black, hispanic, asianamerican workers, nativeamerican workers, communities of color all across the nation that have driven the Labor Movement all across this country, as you mentioned, mr. President , a moment ago. From the washerwomen strike in 1880 to the strike and boycott in the 1960s, to chicagos own abby white and jacqueline von, black and brown power has always been a part of fighting for the right to organize, equal power, as my dad would say, some dignity, taking on the fight of all workers, from farmworkers workers to domestic workers, to tearing down systemic racism along the way. We know them, we owe you. We owe them, we owe them big, we owe you. If i am elected president , i want you to know labor will have an absolute, full partner in the white house, and i think labor knows that. [applause] mr. Biden folks, a lot has changed very badly, and this president , and some members of the Corporate Community believe that i want to make it clear wall street did not build america. Stockbrokers and Hedge Fund Managers did not build this country. You built this country. The Great American middle class, the unions built the middle class, that is why it exists. We need to rebuild it but this time, we have to bring everybody along, no matter their race or gender, ethnicity, religion, who they love, where they live, or whether they had a disability. My dad had an expression, joe, you talk a lot more about a paycheck, and he meant it. He said, joe, it is about your dignity, is about respect in the community, it is about looking your child in the eye and say, honey, it is to be ok, and mean it. Too few people, as has been referenced today, think they can say that today. The vast majority of middleclass people are shrinking. They no longer believe their children will have the responsibility. Mr. President , you talked about how your dad persisted and changed things. And in todays corporate culture, in this administration, they do not care about your dignity. They care about breaking the back of workers and record profits, research and development to create more opportunities, corporate profits are going to pay dividends to shareholders and blockbuster executive compensation. Ladies and gentlemen, they are squeezing the life out of workers today. Yes mr. Biden and by the way, making it hard to meet basic needs. Stripping you of your personal dignity along the way. There has long been a war on labor unions. As pointed out today, mr. Chairman, yall are coming back, but here is the deal, there has been another war going on that has not been noticed very much, on the ability of individuals be able to bargain for their selfworth. 40 of workers today have to sign a noncompete agreement. It is one thing to have access secrets of a great, Technical Organization to sign, i wont compete. But a significant portion of these people are hourly workers. Up until i started hollering about this, if you worked for jimmy johns, you had to sign a noncompete agreement is that you so that you would not walk across town and try to get . 10 more from mcdonalds. What is this all about . It is only one purpose, to hold down the ability of individuals even to bargain for their own self worth. It is to keep wages low, and it is wrong. Too Many Companies today classify their workers as managers, when labor fought to make sure that if you are an hourly worker, you had to be paid overtime. What did they do . The person stacking spaghetti cans on top of a shelf in a supermarket, but you control the person who wants a forklift, to bring it out, they say you are now a manager. Ladies and gentlemen, it cost more than 400 million workers 1. 2 billion last year. Where did it go . It went back into the pocket of corporate america, back into the socalled job creators. Since when . Since when were they job creators . The automakers in my state who made all those automobiles, they are gone now. Since when were they not job creators . Today, ladies and gentlemen, the only ones who think they are job creators are stockbrokers. It is ridiculous. It is long past time we have a 15 minimum wage. [cheers applause] mr. Biden long past time. It really is. And we are getting it done around the country. We need to build an economy that rewards work, not just wages, not just wealth. Wages have to be rewarded. Wages. Do you realize that people who are multimillionaires and pay Capital Gains get a lower tax rate than any of you all do . Look, if i am elected president , i will immediately repeal the tax cut for the super wealthy. We have 1. 6 trillion in loop holes that exist in the law now. 1. 6 trillion. You cannot justify the vast majority of that. And so, folks, look, what i am going to do is use the money to invest in americas future. There is an incredibly long list of policies that i do not have time nor do you have an inclination for me to go through. But let me tell you something there. We need an inclusive economy, for better access to capital for blackowned businesses, to reducing the decline in black homeownership among to making sure homes in black communities are valued fairly. Do you realize a home i know you do a same home in a predominantly black neighborhood and one in a white neighborhood, and the black neighborhood, it is valued at significantly less, limiting your ability to borrow against it, to do much about it, and guess what . You pay a higher insurance rates for it, too. We need to make sure black mothers feel confident when they sent their son out on the street that they will be safe. Weve got to recognize that kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gang banger. Ladies and gentlemen, there are too many black men, and i might add women, in prison. I just met with bobby scott from virginia. The save justice act. It needs to be passed. We need to do more. No more minimum mandatory prison sentences, period. The end of private prisons, as barack and i talked about. [applause] mr. Biden funding. Drug courts. At least 400 million a year. Bail reform. No one should be in jail because they do not have the money to pay their bail. No juveniles in prison. Mandatory treatment, not jail, for those affected by and struggling with addiction. It makes no sense to put people in jail. Put them in treatment and keep them there while they are going through treatment. Decriminalize marijuana. Automatically expunge marijuana convictions. [applause] mr. Biden and finally, end the crack cocaine disparity so it is 11, no difference. Too many African Americans have been put in jail for it. Look, what i do not get, and we just have to make the case, if you make it for ordinary people, they figure it out. In prison, you should receive an education, not how to be a better criminal, but you should learn how to read and write. There should be job programs in there. We should be training people. We should be training them. We should have automatic restoration of rights once their sentence ends, including all rights to go to school, help pell grants, not only the right to participate, but the overwhelming interest of the United States and every citizen, black or white or his, that you hispanic, that you reeducate people, give them a chance. Folks, look, we can do all of these things, and so much more. I know we get criticized for saying we can unite the country, but ladies and gentlemen, i refuse to continue the status quo. It guarantees it will continue. We can do it and we can do it without ever compromising on our principles. Our you know, i know how the labor Leaders Movement has moved for decades. That is how we are going to win in 2020, and we are going to win together when we defeat donald trump. [applause] mr. Biden and folks, rev, i have never been more optimistic about americas future, and i mean it. I mean it. You know there is, excuse me for quoting an irishman, a guy named Seamus Heaney wrote a poem about the suppression of catholics in ireland, and he wrote we are taught never to hope on the side of the grave, but then once in a wave of that long tidal justice rises up and hope and history wins. History wins. Folks, we are in a position now where the American People has the the very dark side of america. Every generation is saying enough. We have a chance, a real chance, we have a chance to remember who we are. This is the United States of america. There is nothing we have not been able to do if we are united in it. You know all those lines everybody remembers from John Kennedys speeches from going to the moon . He said this is a challenge we are willing to accept, with the line i love most, he said, we are unwilling to postpone. We are unwilling to postpone. I am unwilling to postpone any longer the incredible opportunities that we have, so ladies and gentlemen, we have to remember who we are, pick our heads up, and god bless you all, and god bless our troops. Thank you. [applause] Vice President joe biden [cheers applause] we are not done yet. How many of you are hungry . Reverend marvin hunter, if you can come to the stage to give grace, bless the food. There is so much more to this program, so please keep your seats, do not leave yet. In the meantime, do not forget rainbow p. U. S. H. Is on all platforms, twitter, facebook, instagram, and youtube, visit rainbowpush. Org for direct links and usernames, and we will be back in just a moment. Reverend hunter is making his way up here to bless the food. Reverend hunter let us pray. God, and the name of jesus, i come on behalf of this congregation as well as myself, thanking you for this day, thanking you, god, for those that have decided to give their lives in service, government for our communities, for our nation. I pray, oh, god, that you will trust in their heart in a real way that the things they say in the campaign will be the things they do once they are in office. Keep them safe from harm and danger. And then, god, i thank you for rainbow p. U. S. H. And their efforts to continue to fight for those that do not have a platform to be able to speak about their pain and hurt. Lets reverend jackson, our leader, and his family. I pray that you bless every family that is here today. As i close this prayer, i asked that you bless this food that we are about to eat. Nurture us. In jesus name, amen. Amen. All right, you may eat, and i will see you in just a moment. Bon appetit. [indistinct conversations] ladies and gentlemen, because it is buffet, we do ask that you guys do things decent and in order. We will take one table at a time. We will have more from the rainbow p. U. S. H. Coalition tomorrow. Some of the democratic president ial candidate senator elizabeth warren, senator amy klobuchar, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard will have remarks, starting at 12 10 eastern time tonight, later President Trump will hold a News Conference as the g20 summit in a socket japan wraps up. Watch the remarks at 225 time on cspan. Or you can listen live on the free cspan radio app. Former special Counsel Robert Mueller at the house intelligence and judiciary julyttees on wednesday, 17, to testify in open session about his report into russian interference in the russian in the 2020 election. Watch live on cspan or listen on the free radio. Rick perry testified tuesday on his departments research and development of grams for the house science space, and Technology Committee lawmakers asked about the current budget request, Nuclear Energy security , climate science, and energy waste management. We will show as much of the hearing as we can ahead of live coverage from President Trumps News Conference. You can also watch the hearing in its entirety online at cspan. Org. Just