Hopefuls spoke at the 2015 urban League Conference in fort lauderdale, for did florida. Hillary clinton, Martin Omalley and Bernie Sanders where the debate democratic candidates. The Republican Leaders were ben carson, jeb bush. This is about two hours. Thank you very much. We are absolutely delighted to be here. Of course, urban league is so important, what it has done historically. I am very very cognizant of the many people who worked so hard, including Whitney Young. In fact, im delighted that the Whitney Young of word award is going to benjamin. Tremendous individual. Individuals like him and myself, would never have been able to accomplish what we did without the blood, sweat and tears of so many people who sacrificed. No one will ever know who they are, but it was their foundation that really provided the freedom for us to do what we do. That is something i think Everybody Needs to always keep in mind. I remember as a nineyearold sitting on the steps in the ghetto in boston, having moved from detroit after my mother, who was one of 24 children, having gotten married at age 13, and they had moved to detroit. She discovered my father was a bigamist. Of course, that led to a divorce. We went to boston to live. I was sitting on the stairs looking through the building across the street out of which all the windows had been broken. And the sun was shining through. There was a sunbeam. It made me think about my future. I remember thinking that i would probably never lived to be beyond 25 years of age. That is what i saw around me. Both of my older cousins had been killed. I had seen people lying on the street with litwins best Bullet WoundsBullet Wounds. It seemed pretty dismal. The fact of the matter is, with all of that going on america is a place of dreams. My mother had a dream of education. She had never been able to get much education herself. And she worked very hard, two or three jobs at a time, leaving at 5 00 in the morning getting back after midnight, scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets. She did not want to be on welfare. She did not like the concept of the independent on other people. He worked long and hard. She occasionally accepted aid. But for the most part, was able to stay off. That is not to say that i dislike people on welfare. There is a nasty rumor going around that carson wants to get rid of all welfare programs, and all safety nets for people, even though he must have benefited from them. The people who say that kind of stuff have an agenda. They are trying to undermine and divide people. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire however, to provide a ladder to get people out of dependency, said they become part of the fabric of america. That is what we need to be talking about. We dont need necessarily to be dependent. We have to understand what true compassion is really about. There are those who came along claiming to be very compassionate. They are going to eradicate poverty. Theres a war on poverty. And we have spent a lot of money since that started in the 60s. Over 19 trillion. What has been the result of that . 10 times more people on food stamps. More welfare, more poverty, more incarceration out of wedlock births. Everything that was supposed to get better is not only worse, it is much worse. I think there is a reason god gave us brains. So that we can actually analyze things. We have two choices. When we make it efficient to do something and it doesnt work you can say maybe we can try something else. Or you can say, lets you more of it. That should do more of it. I think quite frankly, it is better to use that brain to think about what rings do work things do work the other way around. We need to be looking at the Economic Situation of this country. And how do we get it jumpstarted, so that we give people. And hope again . So we give people courage and hope again . One thing i have noticed spending decades in corporate america, is that we have a lot of corporate money overseas. Some people take that to mean that american corporations are horrible and greedy and unpatriotic. Our treasury secretary said American Companies that do business overseas to escape high taxes here are unpatriotic. You know what that indicates . A fundamental misunderstanding of the system. People dont go into business to support the government. They go into business to make money. If you are smart, you create an ear that is conducive to them making money. He andr of course, youe do much better because. You get that is the way it works. We have a strange mentality that has taken root, where lets just say you have a tax system. Where you have a 10 tax rate based on the typing tithing. A guide me tenderly in dollars, he gets 1 billion. The guy who made 10 billion, hes got 9 billion left. We cannot let him have that. We have to take more of his money. The problem with that kind of thinking which is called socialism, is that you now dont have as much money as the guy with 10 billion. Next year, he will put in less than one billion. More and partly, he will take what he does have and try to hide it somewhere. The american system that made us a great nation and catapulted us to the pen above the world in record time, had a different philosophy. They said, lets create a system that encourages entrepreneurial risktaking and Capital Investment so that next year he can make 20 billion and put 2 billion in. That is what expands the pot. That is what causes real growth to occur. There are people who try to demonize that, and try to say that is the wrong idea. The ideal is utopia. Where nobody has to worry about anything from cradle to grave we will take care of all of their needs. Many people have tried that. The problem is, italys ends up looking the same way. A small greek of the leads it always end up looking the same way. A small group of elite at the top. A rapidly dependent middleclass. That is not what we need to do. Those corporations have over 2 trillion of assets, which they dont bring back because they dont want to pay 35 tax rate. They ask, what can i do with this . What if we were smart enough to say, we are going to declare a sixmonth hiatus, where they can bring that money back without paying any taxes and 10 of it has to be used to create jobs for unemployed people, and people on welfare . You want to talk about a stimulus that does not cost american taxpayer at penny and has an enormous effect, there you have it. Those at the kinds of things we need to be thinking about. , a lot of people, when i was growing up, concentrated on racism. A lot of racism. It will keep you from being able to do things. There was racism theres no question. And there still is. There always will be. As long as there are people with small brains and evil forces, it will be there. But what do you do about it . I remember when i was in the eighth grade, having turned around tremendously, because i was a horrible student before. My mother made us read books and we were not happy about that. But you had to do what your parents told you. [laughter] i was reading these books, and as i read about people, particularly people of enormous accomplishment one of the first i had read was booker t washington. I recognized that the person who has the most do what happens to you in life is you. It is not somebody else. Not the environment. They cant stop you. Once i developed that mindset, ice. Listening to the naysayers i stopped listening to the naysayers and people told me i was a victim. I was the only black student in the eighth grade. They had a ceremony at the end of the year. The person with the highest academic performance. It was me. One of the teachers got up and chastised the other kids because they obviously were not trying hard enough is a black kid was number one. Was she an evil person . No, she was ignorant. That is the difference. Some people are just in grants. When i went to Johns Hopkins and i would go in the words and have my scrubs, some nurse would say, im sorry but mr. Brown is not ready to be taken to the or, assuming i was an orderly. I would say excuse me, im dr. Carson and im sorry hes not ready. And they would turn 18 shades of red. But i would be nice to them. I would say, its ok. I had a friend for life, they would do anything for me after that. [laughter] you just have to understand where people are coming from and to be able to react in the appropriate rway. Wa iy. I was doing an interview on the npr. They said you dont talk about race. I said because im about surgery. It is the brain makes you who you are. Once we begin to understand that as a society and stop being so superficial, i think we begin to make an enormous amount of progress. The other thing i think is incredibly important is we need to start thinking about economics, particularly in the inner cities. In the black community and america, there is 1 trillion worth of assets. That is more assets than the vast majority of countries in the world. We have to learn how to use that. You have to turn your own dollars over, in your own community, two or three times before you send it out. That is how well is created. You cannot take the wealth and flee with it, you have to take other people along. If you do that, you have the ability within the black community, to do enormous things on our own. We dont have to wait for somebody else. We dont have to be at the mercy of anybody else. People who have tried to convince us that we need to be subservient to them, and ther e, you poor little thing, i will take care of you. But we have to do it ourselves. We need to learn how to read out utilize resources. We need to be able to Work Together and stop listening to the purveyors of Division Tell you that just cut you think differently about something they are your enemy. Divide and conquer and control. We dont need people who divide and conquer and control we need people who learn how to use their various talents and energies together in an effective way. That is what is going to work. And for the young people, we need to begin to put out appropriate types of models. When you look at the light dont just talk about thomas edison. Talk about his righthand man a black man who came up with the filament who made the light bulb work for more than two or three days. Who invented the electric lamp. Who diagrammed a telephone for Alexander Graham bell. Elijah mccoy invented the Automatic Lubrication System for locomotive engines. The real mccoy. You can go on and on talking about tremendous contributions of black people to this nation. We need to give those young men a very different vision of what success is for them. We have to Start Holding up the right kinds of model. We need to talk to them about how to conduct themselves. Is there injustice out there . Of course there is. If you conduct yourself in certain ways, you are going to run into trouble. Not only with law enforcement, but with that other guy down the block. You run into somebody who is better than you are, and badder than you are, and all of a sudden guns start blaring. We dont need that. Let me just say how important it is for us to think about the fact that the thing that got us through slavery, jim crow, segregation, and all the prejudices is that we had faith in god. There are so many people now who want to throw god out of our society. They want to throw that relationship out. But there is such a thing as right and wrong. There are morals. There are values. There are principles. If we hold onto those things, it will make all the difference in the world. If god be for you if god is for you, who can be against you . Thank you, god bless you. [applause] lets give dr. Carson a big round of applause. Thank you. This is the beginning of the process. I wanted to post this, the National Urban league plans to share with the candidates who come here, a short questionnaire. That will ask you for your position on issues that are contained in the 21st century agenda. The crowd is very interested in knowing if you can commit to respond to the questionnaire in a timely basis. Dr. Carson i would be extremely happy to. As i travel around the country im doing lots of town hall and i dont screen any questions. Im happy to answer questions, and the things you have outlined as important, i would love to get into them in some detail. We appreciate it. Lets give dr. Carson another big round of applause. [applause] thank you for your work and thank you for being here today. Hillary clinton good morning this is a great way to start my day. Im delighted to be here. I want to thank mark for not only the introduction, but all of his work over the years. I have been a fan of mark since he was mayor of new orleans. He did great work there and he is doing great work at the National Urban league. Thank you, mark. We are all thinking, as i hope we do every year, about new orleans as we neared the 10th anniversary of katrina. Something like that should never be allowed to happen in the United States of america again. We have to keep learning the lesson and repledging our commitment. I want to thank everyone for welcoming me here today. I want to give a shout out to your National Chairman of the board, michael. Also backstage, i saw a longtime friend of mine, congressman alcee hastings. And Alexis Herman who served in my husbands administration. And tony west, who served in president obamas administration. There is a veritable hall of fame here. I could never come to a National Urban league gathering without mentioning my lifelong friend vernon jordan. She may not he may not be here today, but he is with us in spirit. It is also close to my heart. Over the years i have gotten the chance to work with you, learn from you. I have poured over your state of black america reports. I have spoken out your conferences. But most importantly, i have seen how you change peoples lives. The theme of this conference, saving our cities, education jobs, and justice. Speaks to the important work you have been doing for decades. I know that you help black entrepreneurs get startup capital. I know you help people find jobs. I know you give familys financial counseling so they can achieve their dreams of buying a home, or sending their kids to college. You make sure parents have the tools to kate take care of their kids health. That is the kind of day to day commitment that makes such a difference. As you help prepare young people for college and work, in a world that can sometimes make them feel that they are not very important, you make sure they know just how precious and powerful they really are. This vital work has been my work, too. My first job out of law school is not a big law school love for them was with the childrens defense fund. The first summer after i graduated, i went doortodoor for kids shut out of school and denied education they deserved. I also began a lifelong concern by working with the cdf to figure out what we did with kids caught up in the juvenile and adult prison system. As first lady, i helped create the Childrens Health insurance program. You were an ally in doing that. As senator, i championed Small Businesses owned by women and people of color because that is where a lot of the jobs in america come from. I thought to raise the minimum wage. No one who works hard in america should have to raise their kids in poverty. These issues, your issues, are deeply personal to me. Im fairly on this morning im here early on this morning to say first and foremost, thank you. But im also here to talk about the future. The work you have been doing is more important than ever. And im going to keep doing that work right alongside you. I would love nothing more than to stay and have a conversation for hours going into depth about every single issue that we are worried about. But you have a full slate of speakers that will follow me. Let me make three points. First, the opportunity gap that america is facing is not just about economic inequality. It is about racial inequality. [applause] now, that may seem obvious to you. But it bears underscoring, because some of the evidence that backs it up with, as a shock to Many Americans it would, as a shock to Many Americans. Africanamericans are three times more likely to be denied a mortgage. And how the median wealth for white families with more than 134,000, but for africanamerican families, it was just 11,000. A lot of people dont realize that our schools are more segregated today and they were in 1968. [applause] or even that africanamericans are sentenced to longer prison terms than white people for the same crimes. [applause] or that political operatives are trying every trick in the book to prevent africanamericans from voting. [applause] and listen to this one. Because as somebody started with as somebody who started with the childrens defense on, and who is now the delighted grandmother of a 10monthold granddaughter, africanamerican children are 500 , 500 more likely to die from asthma than white kids. I studied and advocated, and introduced legislation to close health disparities. I knew how severe they were, but 500 . All of this points to an unavoidable conclusion. Race. Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in america and who gets left behind. And yes, while that is partly a legacy of discrimination that stretches back to the start of our nation, it is also because of discrimination that is still ongoing. Im not saying anything you dont already know, you understand this better than i do. Better than anyone. But i want to say it anyway. Because i am planning to be president , and anyone who thinks that office has a responsibility to say it. [applause] and more than that, to grapple with the systemic inequities that so Many Americans face. Anyone who asked for your vote should try their hardest to see things as they actually are not just as we want them to be. So i want you to know i see it and i hear you. [applause] and the Racial Disparities you work hard every day to overcome go against everything i believe in, and everything i want to help america achieve. The second