prosperity was kind enough in the weeks before i came to actually bombard the telephones, fill the mailboxes, talking about the fact that i was going to come up and visit. i have no doubt that a whole heck of a lot of you don't know what it's like to have afp go after you but it's a fairly common occurrence in a place like montana. i showed up anyway. by the end of the meeting, they acknowledged that 40% of the people that walked through the hospital doors didn't have health insurance. they recognize if they lost that rural hospital, that community was soon to follow. they saw past the rhetoric and understood that not only could expansion improve the health of the friends and neighbors. but at the endst day, it would save that rural hospital which also saves that rural community. their support and then that visit gave their local republican legislator the confidence to defy her party leadership. to defy the coke brothers and actually support the measure and every vote matters. every single vote mattered. because of towns like shoto. we are the only states since 2014 to get medicaid expansion through a state legislature. and not is only a life line thrown to our rural health care system, not only is our unemployment or uninsurance rate gone from 20% in 2013 to 7% last year. but 77,000 mormon mondayians who previously couldn't afford to see a doctor now have health care. i understand that man on the street stories are really only that. it's profound. they stop you on the sidewalk and tell you that your actions saved their life. just showing up is not always enough m communities where i failed, but you have to try. i shoot for 100% with the hope of getting 51%. and do you that running for office and do you that in governing. as the national party democrats don't seem to focus on this anymore. think about those rust belt states that we lost in 2016. the strategy was all about using data to find people who already agreed with us so we can drag them to the polls on election day. there is little attention played to places, paid to place that's might be difficult to win. >> you must be from south dakota. >> no, there is really little talk about trying to persuade people about really offering voters that reason to vote for a democrat for president. what we followed nationally, i would have been kicked out a long time ago. making an argument even in places where people are likely to disagree, it's good for campaigning. it's good for governing. it is good for our democracy and it will be good for our democratic party. we can't assume that values of people even those we disagree with or didn't vote for are all that different than the values that we as democrats are consistently fighting for. we saw this assumption from my per inspective in 2016 win when the party wrote after areas of the map. it's silly and actually dangerous. the value of most americans are not partisan. folks are too busy trying to support their families and put food on the table. most americans value and want the same thing, a safe community, a roof over their heads, good public schools, clean air and clean water. a decent job and the unwavering belief that they can build a better future for the kids and their grandkids. my fundamentally believe there is true. whether you live in manhattan, new york, manhattan, kansas, or even manhattan, montana. i thought to these values and the public policy that delivers them. public education, protection of our public lands and economy that works for everyone in fair taxes. and it translated into people knowing that i was looking out for them. and then what that translates into is the ability to fight and govern and work on areas like equal pay for equal work. translates to signing one of the most far reaching executive orders for protecting our lgbt community, transferring records, translating the first time ever investmentes in public and preschool, translates into never once compromising on women's reproductive freedoms. and when our legislature left and passing unearned income tax credit, something we've been working on for 15 years in montana. the bottom line is that when we do it right, fighting for our shared values, fighting for those great equalizers of opportunity and fighting for the public good will always, always beat out somebody fighting for their narrow self interests. finally, i want to leave with you a radical idea and here it is. if you're going to do -- if you're going to talk about doing something then actually try to do it. think about. that it's montana. simple, i guess. if you're going to talk about something, do it. i imagine dang near everybody in this room would agree that our campaign finance system is broken. i was attorney general when the u.s. supreme court took up citizens united. montana wrote the ammic us brief in opposition. we got a good handful of republican led states. when court opened up and spending floodgates, i defended a law called the corrupt practice act of 1912 in montana. montana for 100 years, we had a prohibition against corporate spending or contributions in our elections. and unlike what happened in citizens united, i actually built a record. i got testimony from democrats and republicans talking about the corrupting influence of independent expenditures. in a decision that is forever captioned american tradition partnership versus bullock, the u.s. supreme court disposed of our 100 year old law if a 5-4 decision. 59-4 decision that was the first significant case after citizens united. as governor i didn't give up. i took a different tact. i worked with democrats and republicans, again my legislature is almost two-thirds republican. i have to do that. but i work with them to pass one of the most progressive disclosure laws in the country. so the dark money groups, no matter what part of the federal tax code that they try to hide behind if, they're going to spend or contribute in our elections or state elections, they have to disclose their spending and who's giving them money. now it took a number of different attempts to get there to get that passed. but as a result, even the coke brothers stayed out of our election cycle for state elections last november. now democrats didn't fix citizens united when we had control of congress in the white house. reform movements more and more are working around washington not with it. washington is become a place where talking is often a substitute for doing. it's a place where folks outside the beltway often think that politicians complain about problems not to solve them but so they can raise money or get more followers on social media. i think that's a very, very cynical view or approach to politics and government. and it's bad for democracy. i think it accounts for much of the distrust of the federal government. yet i also think it's fixable. i believe that the good news is that democrats can stand up for our values and the values of main street, mainstream america and that we can win. you have to believe that we share values. you have to talk about them and show up. thank you for having me today. but more important, thank you for all being here today. question? >> thank you governor. he has time for one, maybe two questions. we have microphones. we have a question right up here. >> hi. >> just wait for the microphone. fantastic. thanks. >> you got it. >> hi. nina bede. can you talk a little bit about this special election for congress and whether or not everybody in this room should send money? >> that i can not say. i was told what i'm not allowed to say. so we actually have a special election may 25th against a guy named greg gianforte who ran against me and spent $6 million of his own and lost. well, i guess -- again, i guess i wouldn't be here were it otherwise. and against a gentleman named rob quist. he was new to politics. so our one congress person and it's a 147,000 square mile state, we only have one. he became secretary of interior, rob quist is a life long montanan, raised in cut bank. actually went through some medical issues so he knows when we're talking about issues like repeal affordable care act how it can devastate individuals and families. i like -- i appreciate the question because it's not unlike when i was running or others. people want to view -- well that's a heck of a long way away and there's no way that a democrat can win. on the march -- women's march, 10,000 people showed up at our state capitol. i don't think you'd have 10,000 people showcapital. i don't think you would have that many people show up if you cancel canceled. >> can i just say -- [ inaudible ] [ laughter ] >> there's latitude in the audience that perhaps i don't have -- am i done? >> yeah. >> thank you again, very much. [ applause ] >> please welcome to the stage tom desire and john podesta. [ applause ] >> welcome, everybody. achl i backward? yeah. it's not working. so we're here to talk about a lot of things but we're going to spend some time talking about climate change. i would note at the beginning that as evidence of catastrophic climbed change continues to pile up with 2016 the hottest on record with heat continuing to sore with sea level rise kochbting to grow with humanitarian crisis and climate exacerbates security events the front and center in america's newspapers, even, finally looking at what's going on. donald trump has reacted by appointing a climate denier to run the. e.p.a., by trying to dismantle and tear down the clean power plant. he's oh postsed a burnt that decimates science. he's on a rampage really against the environment, but i think you would agree with me, tovm. i'm going to ask you this at the outshet, that not all is lost. there is leader pship from businesses and mayors across the country. we're honored to have you here today because after a super successful business career tom decided that he wanted to spend his time not just fighting to tackle climate change but fighting for social justice and i used to talk to tom on the phone, him in california, me back this the east coast. he'd begin ever conversation by saying, john, it's worse than you think! it's really worse than you think! and he'd give me the latest scientific evidence or sml something that's happened or some gigantic piece of ice that fell off the coast of greernland or somewhere. so talking ajts donald trump, he said, john, it's worse than you think! it's really worse than you think! i think, well, maybe that's -- let me start, though, on the climate question. and with really a broad question. how do you assess where we are today? can the planet survive four years of this kind of policy coming from donald trump and his administration? so before i start, i think we should have a round of applause for what john podesta has done and what -- [ applause ] >> sheersly. -- seriously. when we think about the task ahead, i like to break it down into three warts. they have to clean up our electricity system, we have to electrify everything, and we have to dramaticcally increase our energy efficiency, so when we ask about where we are as a country, i'll get to the larger question about the globe -- but if you think about clean up our electricity system, that's predominantly done in the states so that we can have a lot of product over the next four years state by state, including red states, and we've had activity in four read states. there's a major push for cleaner electricity. secondly, electrify everything. when you think about what's the largest sort of green house gases, now it's green house gas, transportation. we have to electrify our transportation system. if with you plug in your electric vehicle into a plug that's powered by a coal power play, it's better to keep your internal kpusings car. you have to do the first step. the federal government has a big day, because if you think they're saying they're going to recue the cafe standards, did they rolled back what obama put in pleas for 2025 then what california and 13 other estates have already greed to do would be a quo of how we undo that. so what the federal government does to attack the electrification and the increasing in efficiency of the transportation sector is critical. and then lastly, energy efficiency is something which argues for itself in terms of costs but where the federal government can put it in place policies to make things happen sooner. so where are we? i would say the american people are behind us. you look at all of the polling datas, american business, establishment is behind us with the exception of the fossil fuel companies b and the engineering data, our ability to actually save money by mooulg to cleaner sources of energy is also behind us. the question is not are we moving to 24? the question is the pace at which we're moving to it, the pace at which the rest of the world is moving toward it. from my standpoint, i view this as much more urgent than is generally thought partially because what john started by teasing me about, that if you keep looking to the scientists kept says it was 2024. now we're sading it's 2025. from my standpoint, the political question here about winning becomes infinitely more important because we have to win now. >> i dwant to come back to the kind of broader role of climate change as part of the progressive message. you said business voices are still on the side of change in support of this energy transformation. not all businesses are on that side. and not -- no longer just the cold companies in the oil industry. the auto companies are aggressively who had spofrd add cafe standards afternoon trump's election are trying to roll them back. what do you think is the prospect of having the rest of industry that has been more positive about trying to take aggressive action being -- becoming something of a counter weight to the special interests that want to see the rollbacks on the regulatory side? >> i do want to agrees the auto makers. first let me answer your question which is we cannot account on bhern business to do that. i have think they're supportive of it but i think they're dependent on how on amicable relationship with the federal government and i think that they are very nervous about picking a fight with a ven buildingful president. so i think it is unrealistic to think that they're going to be at the front arguing and pushing and making trouble. >> he and his twitter -- >> i think the fact of the matter is they're on our side but we can't count on them to be leaders. the american auto makers are clearly making the same mistakes before they made last time. which is if you look at what they make on a normal suv, they love those. electric vehicles are is zbroeing but they're not making any bottom line money. tesla is mor valuable than gm or ford. the market is telling us where the future is going to be. but within the companies, the people who have the power, the people who make the cash money, the people who get to make decisions are looking backwards and saying we work our -- make our money on combustionble cars. it's a shortsighted decision but it looks like that's the way they're going. >> let's come to the broader progressive argument. you said we got to win, we got to win now. we don't have time to waist. you have tried to really build a broader coalition. talk about how you see the effort of blending essentially environmental politics into more broader movement politics? >> well, troebl ten years ago, we were under the impression that progressive energy policies would be supported on a bipartisan basis on behalf of the broader sw of the united states of america and its citize citizens, and i think we spend a number of years and built a number of efforts around that idea. at this point, if you look -- in fact, the republicans have gone back farther than where they were when we started. so we think about it in terms of energy but we also think about it in terms of creating jobs that pay a desent wage that families can live on. we think about cleaner air and a healthier america and we think about an inclusive america that recognizes every single sit zen. so in thinking about that, we think we're going to win every one of those once. every policy area that's been brought up today, we think a progressive coalition will do that and that's not happening when we think about what we're doing, we are absolutely committed to immigrant rights. we are absolutely committed on every one of those. we're strong believers in organized labor and it's absolutely a central part of the american system. we think we win everything together or lose everything together. when we atom about where we're going from here, we think we stick together and win period or we lose. around we lose everything across the board. >>. [ applause ] >> and the difference, john, which i hate saying this. i cleatly agree that american sit venus are much more alike than necessity get credited for. but they have an honest counter party. i don't believe we have one. i don't believe that there's a common ground. i think the only thing we can do is put our heads down and win, period. >> all right sh thank you. >> you've had some fights with some of the building trade unions in the rest of america. how do you assess now the relationship between what you're trying to do in terms of building out clean energy, infrastructure with the -- in particular with the building trade unions are. >> let me start with did california coalition and address the -- the coalition we have which we started 10 years ago is different from the ones people think about. i think it's income bent upon me to say that people who are commonly thought to be environmentally nouksed aren't necessarily the people you think they were. the number one ethnicity that carries about climbs, energy, latinos. number two, african-americans, three three group is asian americans. every coalition goes around the idea that it goes to every part of it. part of what we're talking about that is inseparable from everything we do is that we will create good paying jobs and distribute them in the communities. the third thing is we can believe we can get the chamber of commerce. we've always had business with us in california. we've aufls made it clear that what we'll do is we'll build business and good paying jonsz. this you think about the o three things we have to do, that is millions of jobs. that is going to -- into every commercial building in the united states of america equipping and making it happen. that is redoing the grid. we are going to rebuild the united states of america, period. that is going to happen. we have got to start understanding that we have to do that. that is a gigantic work project. the people from the trades, that's their bailey pick, that's their livelihood and that's what they're absolutely submitted to for their members. the difference we had with the drads is they know we're going to build the united states of america but they think a lot of it is going to be until fossil foufl infrastructure. and the reason they think that is we've been doing that for the last the 50 kbleers. there are a ton of pipelines that have to be built or rebuilt if we go that way. there are a ton of energy-related tasks that go to their unions. they are absolutely committed. what we're saying is, look, it's not that we're going to build the dakota ook ses pipeline or nothing. we're going to build something martyr and better. those jobs are going to be created and by the way, we're going to make sure that those aring organized jobs. [ applause ] so when i talk about it. i'm like, look, our organization supported local measures in p s props last year in california. we are 100% committed to rebuilding the u.s. we have to do it. that's the way we're going to get people decent wages and benefits. >> i love what they're fighting for when we look back and see how many 10s of billions of dollars we spent on fossil fuel infrastructure that is an absolutely waste of money. you know as a 35 year investor, making an investment is not smart. making a smarts investment is smart. making a dumb investment is a big fat mistake. >> and dumb. >> and dumb. >> join me in thank tom skier. [ applause ] >> thank you. whether we're fighting to protect our planet or equity in immigration, criminal justice, health care, obgt economy, the economy or political representation, today's fight is a constant one. with each panel, each key note, each conversation we're reminded that the resistance is 2350u8d by persistence. our next panel will highlight the many faces and voices of the resistance. some new and others who have been working tirelessly for yours to improve lives. before we get to this conversation with oir panel, please take a look at what democracy looks like. please take a look at america up rising, a new series about today's protest movements from devices films. zmoet ♪ ♪ >> this is what democracy looks li like. >> there is no time for political blackness. they can only win by dividing america. >> ban of refugees and asylum seekers. >> no. >> waenld say no to fear and hate. >> no! >> people are invig rited by the ideas that we not just exist to actually we have our country through resist earns. >> we're going to continue to make our voices heard. >> we can create something that is going to be wonderful for all of us. . >> please welcome to the stage leah greenberg, d. ray mckidsen, astrid and igor volsky. [ applause ] >> good afternoon, everyone. who's ready to resist? [ cheers and applause ] >> my name is igor volsky the center or american action fund. after the election our work really changed. we began developing tools for people to use to refuse to defeat jump care, to oppose almost every trump initiative and thought a lot about how to channel all of the great energy that we saw in the aftermath of the election and -- into tangible change. i'm just so proud-to-this amazing panel here with me. i'm going to introduce them. we're going to get into a conversation about what has worked in this new resistance movement, how we sustain the energy and the resistance over the long haul, how we translate that into real political power and then we'll have some time for questions. immediately to my right is marcos malitzaz, his new book, the resistens handbook, 45 ways to fight trump will be out next month. next to himself is leah green berk. she's the co-founder of indwisble, an organization at the front lines of fueling a grass roots network to zweet krump agenda. local groups with at least two in every congressional draekt using the indisble guys to hold their dmebs accountable. in b 2007 leah caught a lucky break. >> nepotism. >> nice of you to put this in your official bio. >> astrid is a dreamer who delivered the spanish response to donald trump's address to a joint session of congress. she's the co-founder of dream big, vegas, a community-based organization in nevada that focuses on communicating with the community. and then last but certainly not least is deray mckeson, the co-founder of campaign zero, the resistance podcast. leave a review after listening. spurred by the death of mike brown and the subsequent protests in ferguson, missouri, dah ray have 3r0id policy makers with common sense president obamas to ensure equity. please become this wonderful panel. >> plaeps r. [ applause ] >> so i want to talk about indwisble being on the front lines of this new resistance, of this new energy. can you give us a sense of what tools, what tactics have really worked in i think ensuring that this president doesn't have too many good days in office. >> absolutely. and is my mick on? can you hear me? all right. thank you. >> she's number four. >> so i think what we've found in the days since the -- the days since the election, what's worked is decentralizization. what's worked is asking people to take on more than they were necessarily comfortable with and what's more is talking to people about building strategy and power and how you do it and how to help them start to figure out how they put those pieces together on a local level themselves. so when we wrote the indwisble guide back in november, we had a simple theory, which was that a lot of people were already organizing. we had pulled together right after the election in our living room and we had said we don't know what we're going to do but we got to do something. it had become clear to us that that was not an isolated thing. can i ask, actually, how many people got together with families or friends or neighbors rights after the election and up had one of these meetings? right. i got this question with a lot of different rooms and a lot of different people. people were already starting to organize themselves and they were looking for ways to do it. i think what we found was people were looking to do more than make a call. they were looking to take ownership of something that they could really feel video in in reactsing what they perceived as a really extraordinary result of the election. >> marcos refers to himself as the grand daddy of the resistance. >> jerry at rick. >> so let me ask you. you've been at this for a long, long time with daily coast. what do you make of this new energy and is your sense that it's moving in the right direction in terms of ensuring that it's sustainable movement for years to come? >> snaers a couple of factors that make this assumer exciting. i came out of the dean campaign. that looked a lot like the bernie sanders one, very white and very male. real eetzed ved early on that a movement cannot sustain itself in progressive politics, if that's who was being represented and for years it sort oh redplektsed that. [ applause ] >> i'm with you. my name wasn't given away. [ speaking spanish ] >> from the beginning we're focused on elections and trying to generate grass roots electio elections. all those stupid arguments while the dpras was burning, that's exactly what happened. systematically, republicans, very organized and smart. did what they did and they left it off from the bottom up to the point we got to last year where a idiot buffoon with no campaign beat our candidate who probably would have been the smartest president in american history. unlike most it's focused, which is this critical. sister district has huchbs of chapters. they're four cornersed on state legislative races. i could never get anybody excited about that but there they were organizing. indy adviceble, just doing more. furthermore, beyond that, though, is the fact that this is the future of america right here. [ applause ] that center for american partisan doesn't have to go outside to find diversity for this panel. before the election daily coast readership with 35% female. it was for whatever reason, i don't know why, those voices, people that did not come. the day after the women's march it was 50-50, literally overnight. it's built on communities of color and women and now you have a movement that's been led by communities of color and women. this movement, it looks like the democratic party, it looks like america and it is focused on the important things which is you do not get to wield power unless you win elections. [ applause ] >> you ran for office. talk a little bit about that experience but also your move into advocacy into part of this larger resistance p movement and where you're going with it. >> so much as changed since ferguson, three years ago, people forget that it was illegal to stand industrial for more than five seconds. you were arrested if not. it's not. now pretesting is one of the most american things anybody could do. what was powerful was that when we think about protests we think about it as this idea to tell the truth in public. we tell the truth. we also know that protest is not the answer but it creates space for the answer. that's what we've seen happen all across the country. it creates space for so many people to organize in ways they didn't think they could do. hi think that's incredible. we've also seen powers of media. we often force thaz issues of erasure. in this moment we came 2 unerased. everybody became able to be their own storytellers and there were no longer gatekeepers tv they can just put manager on line and millions of people can look at it. that didn't exist before. we were on the street in turn n ferguson. you saw the news and we were the worst people in america. but if you saw us on line you saw truth about what was happening. >> the people that -- we raised a hot of money quickly. one of the key lessons was there's a lot more to disrupt. the people who are bread and butter that their they know the answers actually don't know all the answers. if people knew the answer, the last thing that i'll say is that i am worried that we've been led to believe that the best idea always win. but the idea that people can repeat at the dinner table wins. we are normally so right about so many issues that being right isn't enough. we're not against the police, right? we've always said we want communities to feel safe. that's how we've started to talk about this issue. that that's what people understand at the dinner table that there's a wonkyer way to talk about it but we can't be seduced to believe that the best idea will always win. [ applause ] >> for me, one of the most inspiring pieces of advocacy of activism was, of course, the dreamer movement that we saw and i really have the strong sense that in some ways it's laid the groundwork for a lot of the great resistance movement we're seeing in this is area of trump kchlt you talk about how that movement inspired this resistance, what this current resistance can learn from the dreamer movement and everything it's been able to accomplish? >> you know, i think for me, one of the things that -- can you hear me? no? >> you're encloses. >> try this one. >> i think for me one of the most important things has been that i think seeing everybody wake up on november 9th and say we have to start resisting. this is something that my community, my family has been doing since the day we set foot in the united states. we've been resisting being deported. we're resisting being named all these labels. rain e rape estes. we do these horrible things. it has been our families demonstrating that. we can't vote. i wish we could do civil disobedience. we've done it with big sacrifice. yet we've been able to get -- we're not out of the woods. we're still living in fear. we've been able to take control of our stories. we've been able to become the people that are defending ourselves with our allies. i came of -- i don't know, awareness of political movements in 2009 and i know that many people had been working on it far longer than i had but in 2009 is when i really understood that for me that was a time for me to get active and that was because of senator reid in nevada. he was pol ligs who took a risk. he backed undocumented glaents when people were saying don't do it, you're going to lose. it's like if you're willing to fight for ourselves we have to make sure allies are there and are willing to fight. we need to make sure that's what you're doing. it's great to have 50,000 people show up to march and we have only a hundred people showing up at meetings, we're messing up. >> let me ask you loonks those lines, what are -- cause' move forward, as the resistance moves forward what are some of the pitfalls, not voting, not translating that energy into the voting booth but what traps do we need to make sure we don't fall into to? >> yeah. before i get to that, actually what i wanted to address a theme that we had here. you're a white male cristian liberal. right now you're feeling pretty angsty. this is something that needs to be acknowledged. changing of if guard, this leads into. in progress sieve leadership to one where women in marginalized communities are centered. doesn't mean they're part of the party anywhere. they're leading it. and there is some resistance among some corners of that and you see it in things like people saying well we need that. none of us know any working class people in our communities. [ applause ] and so it's code -- it's not just republicans talking in that kind of code. i think that's going to be one of the key issues that we need to sort of resolve and get past is that there is going to be a changing of the guard in who tleeds party. the party is going to look like america and we're going to be better positioned for the future. and the second one -- and lee and i had dinner yesterday and i talked about this. because there's a lot of excitement right now. people are signing up and they want to do stuff. this is great. in 18 and 20 people have good years. we have donald trump. once upon a time we had george bush. then obama won and the day after it was all about how pure obama was and in fighting and we had that grass roots burning thing. and it sort of withered away. to me i'm actually liz worried about in 18 and 20 -- i'm less worried about the next few years than what i am what happens in 2022 when we see how progressive our next president and congress is. it's going to be a challenge. one of the mistakes that the obama campaign did is advertising for america wither away. i think we have more patrol over this. make sure we continue to educate our people this this is a long term movement. we're not fighting to beat donald trump. republicans and stuff organizing when obama was president and they're never going to stop organizing. we have to have that mentality of per chech yul engagement. it's almost frustrating to 24i about that, but if they don't give up, we cannot give up. i'm more worried about the next four years than i am about what happens afterwards. >> lee, can you give us a sense of the advocates, the new activists that your group works with? what drives them? v? who moat invites them. >> great question. yeah. i would say that we're seeing a whole -- a real range of different stories coming together. i think the most common stoerp that i hear is a woman who being -- she voted before but she may not have ever been politically involved anymore and after november had a reaction. i think the -- i've heard a couple of different versions of this but the one that seems to resonate with most folks is the reaction people had was sort of a sense of betrayal. a lot of people who were tiff ated, a lot of people had faith in institutions to prevent us from outcomes like this. generally the leaders that they trusted, they didn't expect that american society could deliver an outcome like this. i think that goes a little bit to the demographics of the folks who were resisting before. because people already had good reason not to have face in societies. >> dorie, it feels to me like that's really part of the tension of the you think that that -- that was like a hard. people are like, wow, so crazy. i'm like americans being crazy! so that was one puckett. when there was one kwep about why participate. the last time president obama around the police. he was -- we were in this small building and it was like you shaming into people not vote is not winning strategy. i understand people should vote. if you vote the world will be a magically better place hasn't worked out for people. b, i got tear gassed in the street in many places and i voted my whole life. right? it twaept say i was going-to-save you when i think about trump, it is -- one of the things i try to be mindful of ist he's the product, h not the producer. he's been around for a long time and that part of our work is to make sure that we unpack that so we know exactly what we're fighting so immigration isn't actually about what communities look like, is it about felons or is it about a simulation. somebody very interestingly was like i just think that people should assem late. i think they should speak the language that i speak. what i kept reading was safety and fellows. it was like people who don't speak english -- that is a problem but me understanding that as a core issue helps me think about this and how i'm going to respond to it. the other thing i'll say around this product, not the producer, is that we have to get to sort of the root cause of what is the issue. one of the interesting things in the movement is we got in the streets a long time ago in ferguson -- it feels like a long time ago. it really is just a couple of years. how is it that activists have as much information as possible to do the good wok of making sure the future looks like that, huh? part of it is deep imagination. health care, there are a lot of people in this room who probably can't explain the difference between medicare and medicaid. which is not a knock on you but it's hard to imagine how the system can be better when you don't understand fundamentals about it. when you get into your meeting and push your congressmanman you have want to know enough to challenge them about what the future looks like. >> astrid, for me, part of the reason why it's been successful is because you have people organizing within their communities. they're organizing within their school groups. they're organizing in their places of worship. you co-founded a community-based organization. talk about the role that direct service community organizations play in the resistance in organizing people in this way. >> yes. i -- i've never voted -- you're already winning on that one. i think our communities -- it's great to be here. it's great to be with so many of you who understand the issues, so many of you have have been fighting for years. but the people who need to have that's conversations were people who thought the muslim ban was the worst thing that happened in the history of the united states. the people we're talking to are the people who aren't documented and never committed a crime and they thought, one day i'm going to be ok because i never did this climb the they say immigrants do. when you talk to your community, that's where it's really at. it's not going to happen on this megaplaying field where we all think the federal congress is one day going to kick in. up know, unfortunately, it's in our communities. it's in our backyards right now and i think it always has been but i think that we've -- you know, as an immigrant, i was raised to believe that the united states was the greatest country in the world, that my mom and dad left everything they had ever had and came here with going because this was the beacon of hope. this was the place that they wanted to be in. and i grew up believing why would anybody think that anything is wrong with the united states. and it isn't until you get older and start to realize this is what's happening or someone would tell me on the buss don't speak spanish and you start thinking about, well, freedom and i want speak spanish? so our communities have been dealing with this for so lodge. our communities are now getting these tools that they need. social media is a great platform. it's a way for our community to come together and say i thought i was the only undocumented person. i really believed i was the only undocumentsed person. none of my friends, none of my family were undocumented, so for me, i was the only one ever who completed this crime, they showed people jumping borders and stuff on cnn. right now is the moment we can reach out to people. people who have never been to a rally. we can't start off at a rally. some people are terrified to go out there. people see rallies on tv and they see people being tear gassed. they see people being confronted by the k kk. people are terrified of that. we have to make sure we're getting all these tools but the that we're also helping people. at least for my community what i've seen most is peoply want to hear that they belong. don't have that at home. they don't have someone saying hey, you belong here. they have a boss who says all you contribute is this labor and for us the thing that we need the most right now is not only use these tools to come together, but to really have our communities organize and that's why for me, the most important thing right now is our local community organizations and making sure we're reaching out to them saying do you have the tools you need? every day i wake up and i'm afraid to look at the news and just the other day i saw that an organization in washington, and i forgot their name, they were being sued by the state for providing these services to undocumented immigrants because they weren't providing the right paperwork. it's, like, that's what's happening right now and so, for me, that's why it's so important that direct services and organizations that are in the community that actually have their pulse on what's happening, that's where we need to be right now. >> one more question down the line and then we'll open it up. two questions for you. marco starting with you speaking of reaching communities and reaching new voices who are politicized or repulsed by what trump is doing. how important is it for us to prioritize reaching the blue dots in red states, that is, reaching voices who may not be readers of yours, for instance, who aren't, you know, super politically active and aren't liberals themselves, but could be open to this new resistance? >> yeah. it's not even blue dots. it's actually, we are by far the american majority on the issues. last year, 97 million americans didn't vote that could have, 97 million. the bulk of those are voters, single women, people of color. and whether they're suppressed order demoralized, these are people that are natural voters who did not vote. this is why it is so frustrating at times to see certain people within the democratic party talk about reaching these working-class people who are really trapped in fake news land at this point. they're trapped by the fox news bubble and they're not getting out of there, and do we even want them to come out of there without a change in attitudes towards the people that make up our party, right? no grabbing pussis, and no xenophobia and those things and if you needed those people for an electoral majority you'd have an argument, but you have a large, untapped pool of our voters available, and i think that's one of the things i'm hoping that the resistance is doing. if i was a billionaire i would throw $100 million into texas and georgia and do nothing, but voter registration and turnout. nothing more. those are blue states and by blue states, by demographics, those are blue states and it pains me to see where some of this money is going, and it pains me to see that we have the resources and we have people with means that aren't investing in those organizations that aren't on the ground resource starved trying to get people to register to vote. so -- what was the question? oh, yeah! so i was answering it! whew! so that, i think, what's amazing about the resistance is not that 400,000 women marched in washington, d.c., because for the fox news and fake news world they can block that out. it never happened, right? it's different when you're a town of 80 in literal lely, the north pole half of the town is out marching. people are in the communities are being present and very heard it is very difficult for the conservative media to pretend that does not exist when people are in their face telling them how much they hate trump and his policies and a party that is enabling him. >> i would add, from our perspective, we've actually been surprised by the real strength of the indivisible groups or of the interest in organizing across the country. we've seen just extraordinary geographic diversity and a lot of the strongest groups are in deep red areas and what we hear from them is they didn't have a venue to come together and to organize and to express their shared principles before. so it actually really serves something more than a forum for action. it's a community, and i think that that also goes to something else that we need to be thinking about, which is -- when we look at the right, they invest over the long term in local power and local organizing. they're there for school board elections and everything up. they're not there just to build the voter turnout operation. they're there all year every year, and that's something that the left just hasn't been able to do in the same way. and so part of what i think we have to do is figure out how we build the best possible operation for 2018 and how we start by doing that by providing the local services and the local capacity that people know who you are when you come around to ask them to vote. >> and that's exactly it. you know, i'm from nevada. nevada are two big blue dots and a lot of red. when you think about it that's what it is. it's the small communities that said we live out in the middle of nowhere and there's 12 democrats and we get together at patsy's house because that's the only place where they feel safe expressing their ideas and saying they're democrats. i think one of the most terrifying parts for me was one time driving from las vegas to reno, and we pulled over at a gas station and this car full of people of color and we were driving up there and seeing a sticker that i'd never seen that had a noose on it and a picture of president obama. and i was thinking i've never seen that before, and i know people have, but i hadn't until that moment, and then i met somebody from that same town that said i'm a democrat. i voted democrat since however along ago and right now is the moments they want to get together and they found other democrats because they had a blue shirt after the election or they were crying after the election, but they found each other and we have to start in those small offices. we have to get the school board. we have to get the city council and as democrats we've been focusing on the big picture and the important offices which is very important, and don't get me wrong, but that's where most of the money goes. we have to focus on these small elections because no matter what, town boards, zoning boards. small things that people don't even think about, but they're very important to our communities. and so that's to me, the most important way to get to these smaller communities that are red and they may be red on a map, but when you go into them which many of us don't go into them because it's red. why send money there and why canvass there and then you talk to people and they start talking about these issues and whether they agree with one issue, but they don't on another, they're going to go with what they need at that moment, and if you've been helping them and if you've been there, if you've been phone banking and talking to them, they'll make sure to turn out and going off what you said about voting, i think if it wasn't so important why would the other party be trying so hard to take it away from people? [ applause ] i, you know, i can't vote. i'm undocumented. i can't, but it pains me to think of these people that can vote, but they can't because they didn't have the right i.d. or they didn't have a birth certificate or they didn't have a voting center nearby, and that's where we need to be concentrating and yes, as an undocumented person sometimes i doubt in the system. not of day, but sometimes i think well, yeah, that's totally possible when people are, like, oh, my gosh, i don't know how donald trump won, and i'm, like, i do. those are the same writing on twit to twitter to deport me and writing to deport the immigrants that were u.s. citizens at this point and when people are very surprised that donald trump won. i'm, like, no, that's not surprising to me. what is surprising to me is how little people understand not only how important their vote is, but how much people want it that they're willing to do anything to take it away. >> last word and then we'll go to questions. >> a few closing thoughts. one is that people want to experience success. the people withdrawn completely from the system are the people who the system haven't worked for so if you want the people to be reinvested and you should work to build a win for them. the second is the difference between equity and equality. people confuse the two. the fight for justice is almost always a fight for equity and when we fight for urban systems, we don't want every school district in the state to get the same same of funding and what does it mean for cities that have a lot of poor and black kids to get not enough money to fund -- to fund the impact of institutional racism and this is always about equity and it's not often about quality in the sense that people think it is. the third is about the language that we use and when we think about charlottesville when people are out with the tiki torches and on the news they wrote white nationalists. what nation is yours? this isn't yours. this was native americans and this is first nations and this is wanot yours. how do we not call that white supre supremacy, and when people make it out to be a movement, they're literally, protesters. the kkk are not protesters. we've reduced them to protesters, we've lost the battle and the fourth thing, which is not sexy, but i think it's real. what are the root cause issues and we talk about immigration, there is a quota for i.c.e. chlt c.e. has to detain 34,000 people a day, and it's the only law enforcement agency with a daily quota. a lot of people are fighting about i.c.e. and until the quota changes because the law says they have to arrest people. they rent out local jails and people don't know. welfare is the same dollar amount as it was -- those sort of things and the people have killed three people a day every day in the past two years. it's things that people just don't know. so the things that get the more air time which is body cameras and police training, but of the 400 people killed by the police this year alone, only two cases has an officer been charged and whether you love the police or not, i refuse to believe that 400 people did something wrong and the police are always right in every case, but these are the things that we don't talk about in public like we should. [ applause ] >> questions. yes, ma'am? it's coming. the microphone's coming. >> hi. can you hear me? no? >> yeah. >> i'm jane whitney from connecticut, and you all kind of represent a snapshot, to me at least, when i talk about there's a silver lining in this cataclysmic event that we are all suffering through. you all represent it and i want to thank you for doing everything you're doing. [ applause ] and, leah, if you can see a bunch of middle-aged women in connecticut, northwestern connecticut poring over the indivisible manual and suddenly discovering your online petitions for jon ossoff has changeded a lot of things, but what concerns me, sustaining the energy and also, how are you addressing the divisions within the democratic party? i mean, is what you're doing enough to transcend or to somehow help resolve the factions within the democratic party? thank you. >> leah, do you want to -- >> oh, i guess i'll get it. there will be factions in the democratic party. the republicans are split three ways and you find a way to co-exist when necessary and you fight when the opportunity arises and right now if we're going to fight, now is a really good time to do it. so -- and you know what's ironic about the divisions in, you know, the kind of bernie holdouts. there's no good word for them because i don't want to smear the bernie supporters in general and there is the hillary crowd and the establishment and these are all b.s. distinctions because we all agree on everything. i mean, there's no disagreement on income and inequality and police brutality and the insane immigration policy because if there was they'd be republicans. there is actually -- so what happens, what's going on here? and what it comes down to is the issue of emphasis. some people think economic equality fixes things and those of us who live in these communities know that that's not the case. sandra bland had a job, and we have latinos with jobs getting deported and families being split up and jewish cemeteries, i think jewish people have jobs. so it's the idea that bigotry -- i mean, look donald trump grabbing the pussis of poor women? the income inequality will solve the core issue of xenophobia and bigotry is abure is the and insulting for those of us who have to live in that reality every single day. so really, it is emphasis, help those of us who have to deal with immediate threats to our very existence. once we feel secure in our bodies and families and communities we are going to fight really hard for income equality. latinos is the number one supporters of socialism. but right now our families are being split up. so let us focus on saving our families. it is kind of hard to focus about florida being under water when our communities are burning toetd some of that is what we ask [ applause ] >> so i would just say i think we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time here. i think the democratic party has a number of different arguments that they have to continue to resolve but at the same time i think there is an enormous opportunity both to continue the energy of the resistance but also to start to craft the positive agenda and to show what progressive government can do for people at a local and state level. i think that is the place to start to have some of those conversations now. i think one thing that we stress on the national level is for advocacy, your leverage is often about responding to what is being put on the agenda. and without the power to set the agenda, you have the most leverage when you are responding to what is currently happen. you have the ability to push for something that is meaningful and start to deliver something. >> on that note, we are out of time. please give a huge round of applause to this remarkable panel. [ applause ] >> it is now my distinct honor to introduce a man who represents the best of us, the best of america. khizr khan is a man who has met inconceivable sacrifice. a gold star father, mr. khan is america. he is you. he is me. he is all of us. and more. he inspires us to speak out against bigotry and hatred, to stand up for each other. to be a citizen in the full sense of the word. and to hold our constitutions a little bit closer to our chests. ladies and gentlemen, mr. khizr khan. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. please be seated. be seated. ladies and gentlemen, i have to ask your forgiveness if my voice rises. it's intentional. it is deliberate in an effort maybe this voice will reach 1600 pennsylvania avenue even now. my offer to donald trump to read the constitution remains standing. remain standing. one more time he has proven that he is unfamiliar with the basic tenets of our democracy, our values. i am grateful to this wonderful event very timely event. i will share with you my observation. this is my 112th event since the democratic national convention. i have continued to speak to various communities. i will share what i have observed since election where our veterans stand, where our concerned communities stand. where those who voted for donald trump, i have stood in front of them and spoken to them and i have heard from them. i will share that blessed event where they shared their concerns and their regrets. let me first share a concern. thomas jefferson long ago wrote the greatest danger to american liberties, the greatest danger to american liberties is the government which i gnores the constitution. you connect the dots within these 120 or so dates, we have seen violation after violation after violation of our basic tenets of our constitution, our democracy. democracy is nothing i stand in front of learned audience, all patriots concerned about the well-being of this nation, well-being of my nation, my country. but i must state this. democracy is nothing but tyranny of majority. it's rule of law that makes sense in the system of democracy. and you have seen within these 120 or so days so many violation of rule of law. our system of government, our system of government where we cherish separation of powers have been maligned time after time. i heard the word resistance. you will hear from my hero, my favorite governor of virginia shortly, but i must share with you and let me reintroduce myself to you. my name is khizr khan. i come from chartville, virginia. to be the capital of resistance of united states. we saw, he saw then and along we saw then there was only one solution to such violation of our democratic values of our constitutional values, of our bill of rights and our separation of power is resistance. i have traveled throughout the country. i have stood before our veterans. they have asked me this question, mr. khan, we were promised we will be looked after. mr. khan, we had given all that we have to this country. we hear that not a single dollar was allocated to legal services corporation that serve us. where would we go? where would we go to seek legal help? in the same audience, they identified themselves that we have voted for donald trump. we ask you, mr. khan, can you tell us what to do. two of the elderly persons stood up in that audience stretching their arm, their dialysis tubes were still in their arm. mr. khan, prior to affordable care act, we used to eat less so we could pay the premium. we could afford to eat properly. we are concerned. can you assure us. can you show us, can you tell us what to do so that we will not face what we faced prior to affordable care act. my suggestion to them was one thing that i share with you. and i share with the entire nation wherever i have gone is that in democracy, when you find that your government is not serving your concerns, the only solution you have is resistance stand up, speak louder, call your senators, call your congressmen. tell them that if you do not speak on our behalf, if you do not address our concerns, we will never vote for you. we will never stand with you. we will never contribute a penny. and you are watching. you are watching these town halls and the result of town hall meetings throughout the country. people are realizing the power of their voice, the power of resistance. it is that that we need to continue to harness the energy, the concerns, the devotion of this nation. i share with you something i recently traveled to europe at the invitation to participate in a debate. the result of french elections is victory for hope and unity. it is a defeat for fear and division. [ applause ] let me put it in context. last century's first 50 years saw two world wars. atrocities against mankind, division and the script was nationalism. economic interest, fear of immigrant. those who divide us are so dumb they continue to carry that script. first world war, second world war, even today. but europe has realized it. the result of the election was testment that the. last 50 years versus first 50 years. last 50 years saw the european union come together, nations come together. last 50 years saw united nation was built, saw nato was built to maintain peace. all together the world is realizing that in unity is prosperity, not in division. the division was it saw two world wars. so the world is realizing. and the reason why i mention this why it is important for us to keep an eye outside of the united states as well, we were hoping that after the election there would be deliberate steps to unit us. but that hasn't happened. to bring the nation together, that hasn't happened. what has been taking place, further division has been taking place. minorities, other communities, different fates are being maligned and subjected to hate and division. that is unamerican. that is against our interest. that is against our prosperity. that is against our bill of rights. the rest of the world aspires to have the blessings that we have which are enshrined in our bill of rights, in our constitution. even today, even today regardless of all of the difficulties we are having in our country, the rest of the world is still interested in learning about our institutions, learning about rule of law. i have stood before the audience of various countries. they have asked this question, can you tell us what this rule of law is. our people wish to know. we had television crews from various parts of the world come to our home asking that question. what is this bill of rights that, and this constitution that you waved at donald trump. can you explain this to us? can you show us what 14th amendment is. what equal protection is. my question to them was are you asking this question to make your conversation interview interesting or you have been asked to ask this question. what is separation of power, what is equal dignity that this person continues to talk about so passionately. i find myself so humble that i was warned not to stand up, not to be so public about my passion. we were humble, modest, grateful citizen of this country, grateful citizen of virginia. when the bigoted statement made by donald trump, i will ban all muslim, all hispanics thrown out, women deserve no respect. judges are partial. small children of our friends whenever i would go to visit with them, when they would come home to visit, small children, elementary school children, middle school children would come to me and ask this question, could you please tell us, can we be thrown out of there, but we were born here. parents would say they don't eat well, when we ask them, they simply say we are so afraid. but we are citizen of this country. these children were born. that was the impact of the bigoted statements on small children when the invitation came that a tribute would be paid to captain khan and we would appear, we taught for two days. i went to check the mail and there was a small white envelope without stamp in our mailbox. i opened it and i read it. it was written, there were four signatures, four names, of course parents had something to do with it, but four elementary school children wrote that small card to us. this is what it said. it said mr. and mrs. khan, can you please make sure that sophia is not thrown out of this country. we love her very much. she's our friend. please make sure. i brought that small card to her and said to her, maybe this is the message. we must stand up for these children. we must speak on behalf of these concerned children and we did. and the rest, you have seen how we were maligned but it has encouraged us because we are grateful citizen. we have been bestoled all the dignity that all of the rest of the world aspires to have. we are so honored that this is the least we can do that we continue to speak for our values, for these dignities, i do not call them amendments to the constitution or bill of right. i call them human dignities. the rest of the world aspires to have them in their life. in this person's simple mind, the world is divided in two sections one is authoritarian regimes. they dictate what ordinary citizen will have and will no t -- not have. on the other hand we are the plesed group that have democracy. what laws will be enacted. we do make mistakes like last election. we will correct it. we will correct it. we are correcting it. maybe this is an opportunity for all patriots to come together. all patriots to join hands. people ask me, what do you advise under the current circumstances. this is my humble suggestion to all of us. you have heard from our wonderful leaders. you will hear from my hero in a few minutes, the governor of virginia. i wish my attorney general of virginia was here as well. these two heroes when citizen of the state was under stress after the muslim ban, they went straight to the airport to stand in solidarity with the community. we love them. we appreciate them. in them, we see the solution to the tyranny of majority by standing firm, by standing tall. by standing with community. and this is my humble suggestion in conclusion that under these circumstances, all of us, all of us patriots need to remain standing in unity. support one another. continue to speak speak louder. if this humble ordinary barely educated person can continue to speak, i am sure i am standing in front of most learned people today. continue to speak, and support those candidates. support those office holders that fully understand your democracy, our democracy, our values. and make sure that during this hopefully this is a brief, brief moment in the history i assure you if you remain standing, remain firm, remain united and support those by your voice, by your efforts, by your contributions, those who stand for the values of this country, for the values that are enshrined in bill of rights, in the constitution, your name and name of organization like this will be written in the history with golden letters. i am so humbled, i am so grateful for this opportunity to stand before you. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> please welcome to the stage jennifer palmieri. >> thank you. i want to thank mr. khan for coming, he is the living embodiment of what it means to be an american citizen and i think he inspires each of us to be better stewards of our citizenship. i am very honored and privileged to be introducing governor terry mcauliffe. he is the living embodiment of optimism. i think we all agree, right? absolutely. and for him, that optimistic spirit is at the heart of what it means to be a progressive. he has been in the fight for a long time and has had a lot of different positions. i was privileged to work for him when he was the chair of our party. with each job he approaches with the same formula. first he listens to the people he is going to serve. sets very bold goals, puts a good team together and works his heart out every single day to deliver. a formula that has brought him success with each endeavor that he has under taken and all of the positions he has under taken as a progressive. as governor of virginia, and particularly in these last few months but always had a lot of progressive values at stake. and he was a brick wall for legislations that would have defunded planned parenthood. as we saw in wisconsin, florida, north carolina just how important it was from stopping voting bills from coming into law ma law. in 2013, he campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs and has delivered. since the start of his administration, jobs in virginia have increased by nearly 200,000. unemployment rate has been the lowest in five years. and then just today, he signed an executive order, the first state in our country to do so taking on in the response to trump's repeal of the power plant rule. so taken action just today to restore protections around climate change in the state of virginia. i am quite certain it is impossible to be in a bad mood being around him. it is my privilege to introduce governor terry mcauliffe. [ applause ] >> thank you. good afternoon everybody. i want to thank for the great introduction. thank you mr. khan. and thank mrs. khan. as the father of the second lieutenant united states marine corps. for you to pay the ultimate price, i want to say our hearts go out to you, our thoughts and prayers are with the khan family forever. we say thank you for what you have done for the great service of our great country. i am here. i am not going to do a commercial on what i is have done in office. that is not why i am here today. i am going to ask you to do something. we are the greatest party in the greatest nation on earth. we do have challenges. i am here to talk to you about something important. and that is gerrymander redistricting. [ applause ] we are here today because we share a set of values as progressive and we understand that those values are under sieged. we have a president and congress today that are trying to roll back things that we think are most important to us. each and every day we need to fight. but it isn't just about fighting, it is delivering with results and that is what we as democrats have to do as we go forward. fight threats to the constitution and maintain america's principles of why we are the great democratic party of united states of america. and build a nation that is more welcoming and opening to everyone. i have just vetoes my 120th piece of legislation. i am proud that i have more vetoes in the history of the common wealth of virginia. and proud that i am 120 in zero. even though republicans control 66 seats. i am proud of my democrats in four years i have never been overridden once. i told women i would be a brick wall to protect their rights. i told members of the lgbt community that we will stand proud. we have led on the issues. and i am proud that i have restored more civil rights to disenfranchise felons than any governor in the hoiistory of th united states of america. [ applause ] at a time as you know i was sued twice by the republicans. i was trying to give people second chance at life. they took me to court. i lost the first one not on a legal precedence because i had the authority to do it. they said you have to do it individually. so you know what i did, i said line them up. 166,000, i said i will sign individually. they sued me for contempt for court. i was honored with that. and we won the next time the supreme court. and last week as i say, the most restoration of any governor of our nation's history. that is what it means to govern, to be a democrat, and to be a progressive. that message is an important one for all of us. you make all of us in elected office, you make us stronger by the great ideas that you have given us. we need to talk about how we go further and take it to the next step. the biggest threat facing our nation is partisan redistricting. people don't vote for the right reasons, they vote because they are afraid of a tea party primary. there are 35 states in america today where the republicans control the governor, and both chambers. so let me remind you in 2020 we will have a new census done for this country and in 2021 they will redraw. if we don't win, we are going to be in a difficult situation. you can have the greatest ideas in the world but if you wasn't win elections and get in office to implement what you want to do, then the ideas are worthless. we have to go forward on the issues of redistricting. we have to win a lot of these govern races coming up and that is the most important thing that i can tell you that we can do. we need your folks. we are making progress. in virginia we sued and we won on our congressional maps. the courts are beginning to help us on these districts that are racially drawn. just because we sued and we were able to win on that single map. but we need to be doing this in every single state in america. they have been doing this for ten years. we have got to get in the game. we have raised billions of dollars in the presidential year and then in the off year we go away. we have to win in the state and local level. i just veet today -- vetoed a bill that in order to get an absentee in virginia you have to fax in your drivers license. number one, a lot of folks don't have drivers license. and who has a fax machine anymore? that is what happens when you control at the local level. so we spend a lot of time looking at the federal level, we need to look at the local level. in virginia we won three straight prisesidential electio. it makes no sense. and it is not just virginia. look at three swing states. pennsylvania, ohio, and north carolina. all of these are 50/50 states in the presidential election. in their congressional delegations it is 72%, 75%, and 77% republicans. these are states, but their congressional delegations give republicans a 42 to 16 majority. and think of the legislation they are pushing at the local level. that is a 26 seat advantage from these four states alone. do you know how many the democrats need to get controlling of the house? 24. four states. there is 26. you get my point. now, this is an alarm that we need to be fighting. it is important for us as we go forward. but there is common sense, broad sense, sproupport for what we n to do. it is important that we get out and we march, that we resist and continue to come up with great ideas. more importantly, we need to be smart on the ground. you need to go back to your states and ask what are you doing about the map. what are you doing about redistricting. is it a fair map? if it isn't a fair map, then what are you doing to change it. do what we did in virginia, we sued in the congressional and on the house of delegate map. sent that map back to virginia. we are making tremendous progress. [ applause ] if we can do this in virginia, we can do it everywhere. so i am giving you a call to action as you leave here today. i didn't want to take up my time talking about me, i wanted to talk about you. and wanted to talk about all of those folks around the country who are continuing on the democrats to stand up and fight and fight smartly. the one thing i haven't been successful with and i have tried very hard, i have tried to expand medicaid in virginia. it is not about me, it is about 400,000 virginians today who do not have health care and who are dying because my republican legislators won't vote for it because it is quote obamacare. they will whisper to me and say, if i vote for it, i will lose my tea party primary. and yet, they have got a platinum plan. it breaks your heart, people say why are you so passionate, come to me in rural parts of virginia where women are saying i am going to be dead if we don't get this. it is the gerrymander districts that don't allow us to make progress. and to see these people just breaks your heart to know we paid for them to get health care but the legislator won't do this because they will lose the tea party primary. president obama, eric holder nancy pelosi and myself have been traveling the country. folks if we do not win the up coming majority of governor races, in virginia they will draw a map that will give them more seats. only one person who can stop a bad redistricting map, that is a democratic governor. so i am proud to say we are making tremendous progress in this regard. if you leave this conference, i will leave you with one point. we have allowed them to take over states, north carolina was a progressive state, they turned it into a tea party state. they rolled back voting rights in the states so when presidential elections comes a lot of people are knocked off the roll. our future, the future of the democratic party for the next decade will be determined on how we handle the redistricting fight. it is time for the democrats to get in the game. thank you very much. [ cheers and applause ] >> please welcome to the state representative keith ellison. jason kander, and ari berman. >> okay. can everyone hear me in hello. yes. all right. great. i am ari berman, a senior writer for the nation. i am thrilled to moderate this discussion on voting rights and civil rights with two of the smartest and coolest more importantly figures in the democratic party and progressive movement. to my right, for once is keith ellison, the deputy chair of the dnc. and to my left for the first time jason kander who was secretary of state from missouri. let's get right into it. i am going to start with you congressman ellison. we just got some new data from the pew research center that found that african american voter turnout declined from 7% from 2012 to 2016. the hispanic vote did not increase. it was that black and latino voters either did not turn out or were not able to turn out. how much of this was a lack of enthusiasm and how much was voter suppression. >> i think a substantial part of it was voter suppression. in wisconsin voter id -- so this is substantial, it is harmful. and in minnesota in 2012, they tried to pass voter id in our state and we defeated it at the ballot box. and they weren't pushing it because confirmed cases of imposter voting going on. virtually no cases. to claim voter fraud is a fraud in itself. we have got to understand that they have decided that if they cannot win on the basis of ideas, they are going to stop people from being able to participate. if you suppress some people from voting, they are not voting. and people get discourage. they say i don't have an id. next thing you know, you can get an effect that goes beyond the population that has been suppressed. it is also purging voter rolls. that is awe -- i happen to believe that we must and we can. and so we are engaging in a very intense effort to lift up, you kn know, door knocks, phone banks and meeting. we need to get together with our neighbors and there is no doubt and we have responsibility but we also have to understand that we have got to sue and raise money to sue because of this suppression that is so rampant throughout the country. >> how do you think we get get turnout so history doesn't repeat itself. >> start now. you absolutely must seize the summer of 2017. that's right now. that means knocking on doors, that means engaging communities. that means engaging in long form conversations. i am not talking to not go by and ask people who they are voting for and keep walking. i am talking about what issues they care about. and then using multifaceted approach. door to door is the best way. but phone calls is important, showing up at rallies is important. anything you can do to engage people around the most pressing issues of our time. we have had the woman's march, the science march, the tax march. people are ready to go. we have to offer them an electoral form of expression. convert the energy to the ballot box. we can make sure that terry mcauliffe can get medicaid to a lot of virginians and all over this country. >> jason, two days after president trump fired jim comey, he announced a presidential advisory -- >> when you have to change the subject to a scandal, they are not doing well. >> yeah. so the vice chair is your good friend secretary of state from kansas, can you talk go the threat that you think this commission poses to voting rights as part of the larger backdrop of republicans and the right to vote. >> what this represents is the continuation of the strategy of taking the republican play book and making voter suppression a fundamental strategic part of it. this is not a policy decision. this say strategic decision by the republican party just like which doors you are going to knock on. they have made a political decision that they are going to solve the problems by not letting the folks vote. this is elevating that officially to the level of it will be run out of the office of the president and with the presidency. it is an enormous threat and them formulaizing -- it is nothing less than a sitting american president working hard actively to undermine faith in american democracy. >> so one of the things that you did when you founded let america vote this year or last year? >> three months ago. >> you told me that you felt like progressives weren't engaging in the war of ideas when it came to voting rights. so talk to me about what was missing and what you and others are trying to do now. >> so when president trump told the big lie about voting, a lot of people understandably and i think this is accurate as well saw a deeply insecure human being who was compensating for his marginal defeat coming up with this lie. what i saw was somebody who was chief election official in missouri, i have seen this play out. i saw the first step. convince people that there is this huge problem and move onto the next step. you combine that with now that jeff sessions is in charge of doj and moving from one counsel table to another, switching sides. so the strategy has been to challenge these in court which getting to your question, what we saw was a real urgency to have this fight expand beyond the court of law and also into the court of public opinion. court of law remains important. when i mean when i say we haven't engaged in it, it is difficult to win a argt thrgume you are not engaged in. so we have to engage politically and say no, this is unamerican, it is wrong to do and it has all sorts of unintended arguments. >> so the presidential commission and election integrity is going to give a report to president trump and i fully expect they are going to call for things like more voter id laws and more proof of citizenship laws. so let's say kobach recommends to donald trump there should be national -- >> understand that we can defeat this stuff if they try to move a piece of legislation. we did defeat it in minnesota. but when they first released the bill to do it, it was in march of 2012 and it wpolling. but some of us said no, we are going to fight this without regarding to the odds. we are going to fight because it is wrong. and over time we widdled it down and inched it down. we of course had mark dayton on our side and we ended up defeating it at the polls. so if this happens, get ready to talk to your neighbors. this is an opportunity to talk to people about how photo id does exclude seniors often veterans and soldiers who are in service, certainly excludes certain people. there was a group of nuns in indiana. 90-year-old nuns. and the people knew them at the voting polls. they said well, sister mary margaret, where is your id. she says, dear, you know me. i live in the convent. well you can't vote. they were excluded. a woman who had been segregated and couldn't vote. she was pushed out. i would say another thing, in connection with this, that jason was a secretary of state. and if there is one blood bath that we have been suffering in elections it is secretary of states. we have to refocus our attention of the office of secretaries of state around the country. i think we are down to seven. we are like seven. like it is this many, right? secretaries of states are like the chief election officers of the state and democratic secretaries of states don't favor a party, they make sure there is a fair election. republican secretaries of states tilt the table to their side. so we have got to get people who are wanting to run in this office. >> one more question on voting rights -- [ applause ] >> one thing that has been missed is so far this year 87 bills accessed to the ballots. this seems to get lost. so how can we bring mour attention to all of these state level fights? >> let america vote.org. >> so our whole thesis here is that it is important to create political consequences for folks who do this. if you are a republican state legislator and you name the state, and you have a difficult vote coming up and it is on a labor issue or a choice issue, you know there could be a political consequence for you depending on how you choose to vote on that. if it is a vote coming up on whether or not to make it harder for people in your state to vote, before we started doing what we were doing there was no political consequence. so for instance, it is anybody who is at the crux of that part of the process. for instance i went down and campaigned in georgia, there are two things going on in that race. the first is it is on the legal challenge side, they won a challenge to the secretary of state there was saying if you had registered to vote after the primary, they were not going to count that registration which is pretty obvious. if you registered to vote right now, they don't want you to vote. the other thing they were doing was consolidating the voting places. so prior to the primary, the local election authorities had a lot fewer voting election places than they did back in november. we went in and we ran radio ads, mobilized people, call the local election authority. they caved and ended up being one of the highest voting places in the district. think about how many people around the country had sent a contribution or knocked on doors and all we did was put a spread sheet together and it makes a huge difference on election day. governor mcauliffe talks about the bill in virginia. in each of these, i am naming these because these are the ones that are actively involved with folks on the ground. in new hampshire, college students there. they have their election every two years, they decided they have a short window in or the to change the electoral. so they have a bill that says if you register to vote and then the first time you vote after you rej stefr they are going to send somebody from the government by for your intent to stay in new hampshire to vote. the prospect of somebody coming by the their dorm room. so in that case, we haven't picked out for instance a like the sponsor of the bill, sponsors come from safe spots so we take a look that maybe won by 100 votes and inclined to support it. and that is the way we are proceeding and we have 55,000 people nationwide volunteered for this. so there are a lot of ways you can help us. >> that is awesome. >> jeff sessions. >> such language. >> why is he still attorney general? >> he is attorney general because we lost an election. i mean, elections have consequences. i mean, and we have really have got to internalize that. you asked that in the last question, you asked what should be done if this commission has certain findings. i think we should anticipate that they are going to say they want to push photo id. it is very important that we let the american people know this is a set up, a fraud, a lie. it is a commission to address a problem that does not exist. and we should go after it. the other thing we have got tong is do have to be proactive. why not have 50 bills introduced by progressives saying that if you are out of prison, you can vote. we need to be on the front of this. why not saying we need to have, you know, if you want to vote, voting should be a holiday and if anybody who does have to vote that day does have a guaranteed right to take time off to vote. we have got to make it easier to vote. voter registration is a silly idea. it is basically, in minnesota we have same day voter registration since the 'ninetie90s. and if you look at the ones that have long registration periods, they have low voter turn out. we need to look at every congressional district, and say to ourselves that if we commit to increasing voter turningout every term by 5%, we will find ourselves in four years with more than 10% because of compounding, but we have got to do it. and start now and engage directly and we have to be intense about it. we have to remind people to vote and use social pressure to vote. don't tell people to vote, tell people to be a voter. it makes a difference. a noun versus a verb. we have got to be on offense against jeff sessions. and by the way this war or drugs this thing he wants to bring back. he wants to drag this discredited idea of harsh sentencing back. it is shocking to me. we had a pi partisan disparity -- ridiculous in my opinion. understand this, the more conventions and the longer time will also suppress voter turnout. becau because you have one missing people who are locked up. so for those reasons and many more, he needs to be opposed and he is already violated his promise to not be engaged in the whole russia thing twice now. so we have got to call him out as a mendacious. we have to get aggressive in going after him as well. >> first the ninth circuit heard. >> they released, they are trying to get documents released from giuiliani, and those documents i am certain are going to be very clear and evidence that is already out there. it is clear that this is a muslim ban, based on people's religion. and this is applies to the executive branch and the states. you can't have a religiously based exclusion. and he said from the beginning we want a complete ban. and then he said he wants to make everybody register. it is clear. and by the way, you might think not everybody muslim is being banned. sure, but every country is being banned because it is a muslim majority country. automatic all i say to my fellow americans is if they can ban my religion, they can ban yours. we have other religious based exclusions in the past and all have gone badly. so we have to stick up and stand up for each other at this moment. [ applause ] >> i want to add something on this because i know we are talking about civil rights, but there are also practical negative effects to rolling back civil rights. in this case, this makes america less safe. as somebody who served as an intelligence officer overseas, i think about what happened in the last couple of days. if you are serving the country overseas, in the last couple of days, the president has made it harder to get people to cooperate and believe. on top of that, when you are, as the president constantly saying whether it is on the campaign trail or now in court, we all know what it really is, it is a muslim ban. so on one side he is playing a part in an isis recruiting video and on the other hand weakening our ability to taking them on. we need to make sure that we are pointing out to folks that if that is not something that you are worried about, you should be worried about the fact >> that's the functional result of what the president is saying. >> one last quick thing. the director of the carina discuss resigned. how concerned are you? >> i hate to say this but it's another fire alarm fire right. this is why we need to engage more people in this movement because there's a lot of work to do. messing with the carina sus -- census is a -- if there are 100 people living in this neighborhood and the trump census says there's only 50, there's going to be a substantial lesser am of resources flow in that community and it will harm that community. so, this is a very serious thing. we need a body of people who will stand up and fight for and stand up for the census. so, if you are looking for some activity to engage in we need some census advocates around here. >> okay i think we have time for maybe one or two questions. one question, i don't know do i -- okay there's a mic coming through. >> hi, we had a mayor and a governor speak to us this morning and both talk about the importance of getting thing done, they didn't have time for gridlock and at least overtly refer to what's going on in capitol hill is a lot of gridlock and positioning and nothing getting done. what would you say to that about the -- the, you know, the governor from north carolina spoke about not getting exactly what he wanted done on lgbtq but at least making a start and getting somewhere with it. spoke about infrastructure bills and all the thing he does and he gets things done but nothing's happening on capitol hill. what's your response? >> my response to that is to say it would be very easy for us to get things done but you may not want them things done. a few years ago, remember the government shut down, 16-day shut down? ted cruz told us something very simple, if you help us repeal obamacare we'll reopen the government, and i don't think most americans wanted us to do that. i am telling you now, i have good friends and get along just find with lots of republicans, it is not a problem of temperament, it is a problem of core believe and values. they think that rich people don't have enough money and poor people have too much money, that's why they're always trying to cut tax and regulations on the rich and trying to cut meals on wheels and trio and everything else for the rest of us. they believe that and they're aggressive about it. so for us to get along with them we have to capitulate to their demands, and i'm telling you, you -- it's not all bad if there's gridlock right now. there may be another period and time in american history where it is bad. i'm telling you for the last four or five years sense 2010 if we did not fight back this country would be poorer for it. and we're at the point now where last year we had to do a dog-on sit in on the house floor just to draw attention to columbines and we still can't get them to do anything and they're the majority. i guess what i'm trying to say is i can understand a governor, state legislature and mayor being frustrated about what happens and what doesn't happen here, but given that they want to repeal dodd frank and for those what want to get something done, i don't think you want me to gut dodd frank, right. understand this is not simply bad kids playing bad in the sand box, this is a group that is trying to change the fundamental culture of american society, diminish the role of government dramatically and a group of other people who believe that, you know you ought to be able to retire, outstanding to be able to earn a decent living ought to be infrastructure, we should have public education, that healthcare should be all right and everybody should be treated fairly. so that's what i say to that. >> all right i think that's the last word. >> sorry for going on long. >> thank to this panel, thanks to jason. thanks to ellison. >> announcer: please welcome to the stage senator maxine waters. representative maxine waters. >> hello everybody. i'm delighted that i've been asked to participate here this afternoon with the center for american progress. i want to talk a little bit about public policy and a bit about how public policy, good public policy is advanced or how it is undermined by the president of the united states of america. i'm the ranking member of the financial services committee, and i have been focused on the implication of dodd frank reforms. recently we spent almost 20 hours pushing back on something called the choice act. the choice act is legislation that was introduced by chairman hent lin to basically deregulate, deregulate the big banks, to do deregulation in ways that would underundo the consumer financial protection. deregulation is all about consumer protection and raining on wall street and raining in the banks that put us in the position. we found ours in 2008 when we actually had a recession, almost a depression. and so, during this period of time, wall street and the banks literally had put on the market and produce these exotic products. exotic products meaning, no interest loans, loans that reset in six months, all kind of loans that people signed on the dotted line for that they couldn't afford. and so as a result of that, we literally, because of these predatory loans we literally ended up with foreclosures all other this nation and particularly in the minority communities that had been targeted with these exotic products. and so dodd frank reform was all about reigning in these financial institutions and getting a handle on what was going on so we could prevent ever having to bail out these big banks in financial institutions. again, during this period of time we had millions of jobs that were lost, we had $13 trillion that was lost in wealth and on and on and on. it was really a very bad period of time. and so, dodd frank is a complicated piece of legislation but a very profound piece of legislation to deal with this economic crisis that we were confronted with. the republicans have been pushing back and they have gone at the center piece of the financial reforms by dodd frank. and that is a consumer, financial protection bureau. we were very lucky, despite the fact that the republicans didn't want it. we got mr. kor draw who's done an excellent job in managing this consumer financial protection bureau and compensated. many of the constituents and all of our communities, for that, those loans and all the kinds of things had been ripped off. we're talking about pay-day loans, student loans, we're talking about the automobile industry, we're talking about the fact that communities are targeted and we're targeted by many of these industries, basically to rip them off and to see how they could get tremendous profits from people who were unsuspecting, for people who are uneducated in many instances for people who did not know how to fight back. and so, we've been working so hard and along come the republicans in doing everything that they can now that trump is in charge, and now that we have a new administration, to move with what is known and is talked about as deregulation. but all that is, is undoing protections for consumers, that's really what it's all about. and so, we're working very hard, but we know that the republicans are in charge, and that they're going to be able as they have been to get this bill out of the financial services committee. it will go to the floor, the republicans have the numbers, we're depending on the senate to be able to push back. we don't know how well they're going to do because wall street basically has a lot of power and influence in the congress of the united states of america, that had it historically, they don't want to give it up. many of the members of congress, both on the democratic side and the republican side have revisited really getting in there and learning exactly how it's done. they say, well we don't understand derivatives we don't understand default swaps, we don't know what that stuff is all about, but that stuff is all about how these major financial service industries are able to make tremendous profits in so many different ways. and so, while we are pushing back and fighting, democrats must be focused along with all the other stuff that we're doing, of what we can do to undo the power and the influence of the biggest banks in america. the consolidation have us at the mercy of about five of the biggest banks in america. we cannot afford to have them continue as they're doing going back to the predatory lending that they did that led us into the crises in 2008. but, really the leadership starts at the top, and this president has already done in his executive orders a direction to say, i want to review all of this dodd frank business. i want to know what it is he's done that's hurting our industries that are out there providing loans, et cetera. and so he's moving in a direction for deregulation in a massive way by way of the choice act. we call it the bad choice act, but it is moving. and it's going to be on the house floor, we're going to lose the vote, it's going to go to the senate, we don't know really what's going to happen. we have to make sure that our legislatures over there, and i want to tell you sharon brown and some of them are on it but they're going to need the help of other democrats and certainly we would hope some republicans would step up to the plate and get involved in this. by this president, this president is one that i have focused on in ways that some people say, oh my god, she said the word impeachment. oh my goodness, it's too soon to say that. they say that we can't focus on it because we have members who are in districts that he won and they can't afford to talk about impeachment, they may be endanger endanger in their election and it goes on and on and on. but there's no way we can move with an agenda to deal with the middle class constituentsy of this country, and poor people and just the citizens of this country that deserve to have good public policy with him at the helm. he does not believe in it, he's hired -- that's a good way of saying it -- he's appointing all of these appointees who are focused on his agenda. just think about, mnuchin, he's your treasure secretary, he is known as the foreclosure king, he foreclosed on 36,000 homes in california. so these billionaires whether we talk about mnuchin, don't get me started by betsy devos, don't get my started on sessions, these billionaires who are now apart of his cap nbinet are oppd to everything that we stand for. we're not going to be able to move an agenda, there are some people that say, well can't you try and work with him. no we can cannot. he's a liar, he cannot be trusted, he'll say one thing today and another thing tomorrow. how do you sit down with somebody who would mick mick and mark a disabled journalist how do you sit down with someone talking about grabbing women's parts? how do you sit down with someone who is -- well, i decided a long time ago when i looked at his allies and those people who are around him and their connections to the kremlin and to the ole garts of russia and to oil and to wanting to lift the sanctions so putin can drill in the arctic, when you looked at that i knew right away that this is bad business and that these allies are all aligned. and they've been working on this for some time, i believe that not only was members of his campaign, like flynn, and carter paige and others who have relationship with the kremlin and putin, et cetera, they didn't just start this they have been working on this for some time. even though i can't get into deb depths it's all about final answer size. it's not about public policy it's about oil, it's about drilling, it's about lifting those sanctions and tillerson is in on it also. tillerson, the ceo coming from exxon who lobbied for lifting the sanctions, who negotiated lifting the sanctions with putin and negotiated the multi billion dollar deal for drilling in oil. it's all about follow the money. i'm convinced if he had had the investigations we should have had by now we would have connected those dots, we will know exactly what is done. i must tell you oen though we have those that say we are finally moving, we're not moving, we're too slow. i want you to know the intelligence committee in the house that are democrats that are good and want to do well, they don't have the cooperation of the republicans in ways that would get a credible investigation done, in my opinion. and the same thing with the senate, i had so much hope that the senate would do better, i was depending on john mccain and lin lindsay graham to get hem back for what they did to them. now i'm disappointed, they don't have the personnel et cetera. we've been calling for and people have been asking for independent commission, we're talking about independent counsel. but i want you to know, if it was not for the media we wouldn't be as far as we are now in understanding what has been going on. the congress of the united states not done their job. we have not been the balance, the check and the balance on the presidential on the executive. and so everybody who supposed to be investigating, supposed to be looking under you keep on doing it, we're going to keep on calling for independent counsel, et cetera. but media, thank you you. dig in there and keep going what you're doing. keep unfolding and making it very apparent to all of the american citizens that something is tragically wrong with the president of the united states of america and his allies. [ applause ] >> we woke up this morning to the fact that your president had the audacity to meet with the t ambassador and the foreign relation's guy from russia, exclude the media, the american media. somehow the russian media got in, and he gave up classified information. well, you know awhile i've been waiting to connect to the collusion, because i really do think there was collusion, just to think about the way that he gave up this classified information and the way that he's tried to obstruct the investigation by firing folks, you can't find any better person than salary -- sally yates. give her a big round of applause. and of course while i thought the comey should have been fired when he first got in, if he was really concern about him, he wouldn't concerned about him, as a matter of fact he praised him all over the country, he praised him. and it was only when he asked for additional resources to do a credible investigation that he got fired. so, here you have the president of the united states, ladies and gentlemen this is not normal. it's something very wrong with this picture and i don't know when americans are going to get so outraged that they will say to all of the elected officials, republican and democrats and everybody, you've got to do what you know you should be doing. you've got to identify and lay out for the american public everything that he has done, these firings, these obstruction of justice, et cetera et cetera. and in the final analysis maxine waters was right, you got to impeach him. [ applause ] >> and so, i know that there are those who are talking about, well, we're going to get ready for the next election, no we can't wait that long. we don't need to wait that long, he will have destroyed this country by then. we cannot wake up every morning to another crises, to another scandal, we cannot have the uncertainty. we cannot have people rolling out who have been with the cia and the justice department and been in presidential cabinets, et cetera saying something is wrong. and they're saying it every day, and i'm told that there is a credible poll out today that says that 48% of the american public is now saying he should be impeached. what more do we need in the congress in the united states of america? let me just say this, that i have the fortune of truly believing in the constitution of the united states of america. i can recall in grade school, basically it will be about junior high when we learned about the three branchs of government and their responsibilities. i was excited about all that, about a way a democracy works and i believe in it, and i believe in it very strongly. and i know there are those on the opposite side of the aisle on the right wing particularly who guesses that if you're not a liberal you're not patriotic. i believe in this democracy, i believe in the constitution. i'm going to challenge them, all of you who think you're more patriotic than anybody else are you going to stand up for america when we show you and connect those dots and we can prove that there was collusion, when we can prove he has interfered with justice and interfered by way of firing all of those who have come close to identifying what happened in this -- in this campaign? i am going to be able to say to those who think they're more patriotic than anybody else, you're not patriotic because if you're going to stand for our democracy to be undermined, if you don't feel upset about our election systems being interfered with you're not patriotic at all. and so we're going to challenge them and see if they're going to be willing to stand up. i think every day we get closer to it but i want all of my colleagues to say this over and over again and to challenge over and over again. we don't have to be afraid to use the word impeachment, we don't have to think impeachment is out of our reach, all we have to do is make sure that we are talking to the american public, that we're keeping them involved, that we're resisting every day and we're challenging every day and we're calling this president to account for what he's doing and what he's saying. i believe in this very strongly, and so i don't know what's going to happen after today when all of the questions are being raised about him sharing this classified information, but i think this is going to put us a little bit further on our way to what i've been calling for slooso long and that is impeachment. thank you. [ applause ] >> announcer: >> we saved the best for last. thank you auntie maxine. it is my -- it is my great honor to close the ideas conference of 2017. how's it been going? how's it been going? i want to thank everyone who's been tweeting on cap ideas. we have one final speaker who i'm really excited to -- to -- to introduce, but i wanted to say one word about the incredible cap staff who worked so hard to make this day work. our teams our event staffs, i just have to call out three people. vinny marlene and hamilton who has been deal being this conference for months and dealing with me. so it is my great great honor to close the ideas conference with senator corey booker who i have known 15, 20 years since law school. sadly he's behind me in law school. he is -- i have to say even in his days in law school he was always animated about serving others. that simple principle of taking your talents and serving other people and he has done that in every role he's been in. obviously, as a mayor of newark we've heard of his legendary efforts of public service, he'll find your dog, save your family from a fire, personally shovel your snow, perhaps not in that order, but worked on revitalizing communities and ensuring the real opportunity for all the people in his community in fighting for economic and social justice. so i can really think of no better person to close out the 2017 ideas conference than my friend senator corey booker. [ applause ] >> hello everybody. hello. so, so this is this problem when you have someone like her in your life who knows you so well. literally i have a scuffle in the back because here's your hand held mic, no aisle speak from the podium. no you have to use a hand held. they know i like to room when i speak. she's been a hero for me, she was one of the people in the law school who tried to shine light to me. for me i'm reflecting herself because she was one of the shine any stars back then. you are a lawyer for social justice or you are a leach upon society and she said, and she lived that principle, that education is a waste unless it's being used to empower other people. and to see her career blossom and get to this place where she is now at a time i think there's a story in american history that often it's the right leader that appears at the right time when their country needs them. and this is a time where not only her but this organization itself is an urgently needed organization for our country. so i want to thank you her for her leadership. i want to give honor to everyone who is here or who has been here. we all need to begin to see ourselves as patriots before we're democrats, before we're progressives, we need to see ourselves as patriots. and for me, for mira to ask me to give the final remarks after you all heard so many speakers, many of them, people that are my friends and colleagues who are my partners, i -- it's just such an honor to be able to speak to a group of patriots after a long conference and get the responsible of taking it home. so, to do that i would like to take you home for a second to where my mom lives because i -- this is my attempt to get some points with everybody here who i went to go visit in the lead up to mothers' day. my mom now no longer lives in new jersey, she has moved to advise vegas, yes, mama lives in vegas. i think it's an inherited trait, she knows what machines will pay off and when. my mom, i went out there because she was performing in a play. and her senior citizen community or retirement community was putting on a play and before she had to ask i now i had an obligation because she was there for every one of my grade school plays, and now the world was coming full circle and i had to be there for her. so, i flew out less than 24 hours on the grand, taking the red eye back here but i sat in the front row, and it was like god had turned the tables. i was now one of those maybe annoying parents who sat in the front row, i had my recording device in my hand, literally recording everything. the senior citizen behind me after the play thanked me because he said i'm farsighted i can see things closer up but i can look in your video and see the whole thing so clearly. thank you for that sir. but the moment i want to bring you to was a powerful moment to me because my mop was playing the red queen in alice and the wonder land. and so there came a moment that you all know that suddenly had me very excited and suddenly connected me to deep cords within my other family and within our country. and it's this moment where alice says, one can't believe in impossible things she said. and then what the queen respond is, i dare say you haven't had much practice then. when i was your age i always did it for half an hour a day, while sometimes i believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. and the reason why that touched me, and i know this is the story not just of my family but everyone here's family, is when i sat down with the elders in my family, my aunts and uncles and my grand parents, the story of america that i heard was not the story of simple glory and abundance, no it was a story of profound struggle. it was a story of pain and hardship. it was a story of set backs and failures and frustration. it was a story of feeling like you're fighting out there in the grass roots when your very government is supporting things that are working against you, your liberty and your justice. when you witness firsthand levels of discrimination and violence, my grandfather told me stories about people escaping the south when he was living in detroit and literally having to shuttle them out of the country for their safety into canada. it made me understand that when my family, and i know yours as well, spoke of the impossible dream of america, it went so much deeper than the glory and the remember ambulance of days gone past that really haven't been. i love the book, the fire next time. this book by baldwin where he tells in brutal truth, where he talks with unflinching realism about the problems of america. and in this entire book he does not pull a punch. but then at the end, and in fact this page in his book, he took some criticism before because some people said it sounded too -- he strikes the note of hope amidst all he described. calling to the conscious of our country to do impossible things. baldwin writes, i know what i'm asking you is impossible, but in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least we can demand. and what is after all em boldened by the speck that call human history, and the history of the negro testifies to nothing less. baldwin was writing become black history but the truth of our country is story after story, so many so fast that our minds can barely contain the stories of heroic actors, every day americans who did kprard fair things under unimaginable circumstances. so much of what we take for granted right now is for the -- baldwin who answered the call to do impossible things. you pick a segment of our society, the suffrage movement with its brutality, women literally dying for the cause of our country, alice paul, mary church tirrell, liberty stanton, the heroism of activist, the time when you were organizing you didn't get a threat to lose your job you got a threat to lose your life. people like eugene debs, phillip ran.gov, who had the goldnebold before i be a slave i'm be buried in my grave. nat turner, civil right activists who's name that isn't well-known. like fred charles worth had his home bombed, his wife chain whipped, himself being stabbed, fighting for america. these are or an sessionters, these are our roots, people who never surrendered to circumstances kept on dreaming. i have to tell you right now when i hear my mom utter something from lewis carroll it fort fies me, as i get back on a red eye to fly back to washington, in my head were the songs from a kid in a black church in cullster new jersey, the spirituals that have been sung that my mom impressed upon me, you're hearing them now in the 1980s as a little boy but those are the songs that sourced us. ♪ ain't nobody gonna turn me around ♪ ♪ ain't nobody gone no turn me around ♪ ♪ i'm go that keep on walking i'm gonna keep on walking ♪ ♪ all the way to freedom land ♪ >> keeping your hand on the ploy when my way get dark at night i know the lord will be my light. ♪ ♪ keep your hand on the plow hold on ♪ >> now i walked the walls of coverage, i'm sorry i can't walk in that building or go on that senate floor no matter how despicable the cra i'm forced to vote on is, i can't lose sight of the history we share that i'm a black man in america walking on to the floor of the senate. and the sacrifices of folk black and white, male and female, christian, jewish, muslim, all that it took for me to be the fourth elected african-american in the history of our country to that body. talk about people who kept their hand on the plow, robert smalls, a name most of us don't know. this is the full history we have of heroic actors. this was a slave who was lent to a slave ship after the outbreak of the civil war and immediately he was plotting to break free. when the confederates left the ship one night leaving him and some other slaves on it, he took control of the ship, put on t captain's guard, sailed his ship right by ford sunkter that had surrendered to the count fed rats. they looked and saw the captains there didn't see nothing wrong he turned his ship and sailed his ship quickly knowing that the union army will fire on the ship. he used his white clothing to raise up and wave, they were literally prepared to fire and they recognized, wait a minute that's a white flag flying. he actually gets to safety, he becomes such a hero, northern newspaper writing about it. he was accredited to us letting black slaves fight in the war. he was credited to 5,000 blacks fight and they died brutally in the civil war for freedom. he then after the civil war gets elected to the south carolina legislature. we talk about public legislation in our party where he passes legislation creating about the first public schools ledgelating by a state in america. then, he gets nominated to congress and walks the same h l haul -- hall ways that i get to walk now. look, the end of his life is not great. he literally goes back to the south carolina state house and is there as an elected representative after reconstruction one of the most bloodest periods of zpesk terrorism we have ever seen and the south carolina legislature strips blacks of his voting rights and he has to vote on it, he has to be there. two years before his death, at the time where lynching is all over this country, this man literally when two black men are accused of being murderers and a lynch mob forms he goes and disperses blacks throughout the town of buford, south carolina and lets the rumor fly that if these two men are lynched they will burn the town to the ground. and the sheriff protected the two black men from the lynch mob. he died in a house that he bought from his slave master. it's one of the stories from american history that folk don't know. and i wonder how now i hear folk despairing, talking about set backs, to be elected to congress as a black man, to have to watch voting rights being striped it wouldn't be to the next century when people like john lewis and others fought to open up doors to voting rights, it wouldn't be till years later after that that a black man would return to the united states senate. we have so much power, us as americans, if we keep our hands on the plow and keep fighting and done let anything turn us around. now i know we're in this time where folk are despairing, i know that, but one of the greatest gifts of my life is a community and newark, new jersey, i grew up in the northeast of the state, i grew up in the suburbs -- yeah my family has to fight an unimaginable battle in 1969 to move into the town, working with the fair housing counsel to get white families to pose as my parents to put a bid on the house. and when my father and the volunteer lawyer show up, my father's lawyer gets punched in the face by the real estate agent and a dog gets sicked on him, but i grew up in unimaginable circumstances that my father told me, you are living dreams that were impossible, seemed impossible to me when i was a kid. you are living a life that was dangerous, a dangerous dream to or articulate if you were your grandfather. but i tell you this, when i moved to newark, new jersey i didn't need to open history books to see heroism. i began to meet people who under unconscionable circumstances refused to stop believing in america. housing rights activists, civil rights activists, fighting against in justices that we as a country didn't think necessarily deserved us all taking to street, losing the understanding that king set so arctic landly a generation before that justice in america is a threat to in justice every where that we're taught in an in escape bl -- that garment has been ripped where we aren't even conscious of other struggle, our neighbors, our fellow americans. i'm so happy that flint, michigan is getting so much attention, but a report was just released that was the truth. over 1,000 communities have led levels in their childrens' blood right here in america four times what flint's children have, right now. when i moved to newark in the '90s this is what i saw. what is it like to live in a neighborhood where you see a parent looking at you with a led-poisoned child? i'm proud that i still live in that community today, when i listen to politicians like our president talk about inner cities in a way that is not appealing to our heart and to our hope and to the light, but demeaning and degrading those spaces, not realizing the heroes who have been fighting, come to my neighborhood. i may be a u.s. senator but the folk in my community don't care that much about my title. i live in a community my census track on a income is $15,000 per household. and this is before this president got sworn in over 100 days ago, we had fights. when we wanted to plant in the soil of our city, urban gardening the state stepped in and said you can't do that because there's too much led in the ground. when this congress wouldn't pass reauthorized legislation that reagan reauthorized, that mitch mcconnell voted for, to clean up super fund sites they couldn't reauthorize the small tax in -- industries. what do my people think when we have two super fund sites when two rivers are still polluted with the agent orange that was dumped into it. and we now know with longitudinal evidence that children born within three miles of a super fund site kr 20% higher rates of autism and birth defects. in my community, i got officers who are fighting every day to stand with the tied of gun violence. literally when gunfire erupts, i've seen it when i was mayor, they don't wait that charge in -- with no situational awareness, putting they're lives on the line. recovering guns that were obtained illegally by people with criminal records. this issue of universe call background checks, to those cops in my community, this is not a policy discussion this is the difference between life and death. i have a friend of mine, natasha lauren he's thshe's this amazin woman, they call her mama natasha where she works because she has this hearts and takes care of the people at i hop where she works, she works a full-time job, she tries to catch shifts in other places but guess what, we pay for her housing, because in this country you could work a full-time job, catch extra shifts, especially if you live places like the new york/new jersey area you don't live above the poverty line. we pay for her food stamps, this is cost that corporations outsourced on to all of us. and think about the trials that so many in my neighborhood that mama natasha face when her children is sick. one of he her -- her boys have asthma. literally the i hop on burger street is across the street from a hospital. her son rushed to the emergency room and was in that hospital and this mom has to make the choice, because we are one of the only stralzed nations on the eartha doesn't have family leave. she has to make the choice whether to give up her shift and visit her child and lose out on that money, which could be the difference between her family having food or not or staying at work while he child suffers, with not just the debilitating effects of asthma but with fear. this is the country that we live in. a nation where the basics come to my block, see where i live, down the street is a senior citizen building. we still have a nation that while people down here in washington talking about cutting social security or privatizing it we still have 5 million seniors on poverty living on their social security checks come to my neighborhood, do like i've done, sit in the circle of demen and listen to a story about how the criminal justice system treats people who are addicted and turns them into a system that debill tats them, that doesn't treat their disease. i tell you all of this to tell you, we have an impossible dream in america that has yet to be made real. and this is before there's a donald trump. i'm so happy to see activism and marching and organizing but i'm telling youg right now, if we make this all about donald trump, we've seen demagogues before, we've seen public misdemeanors in mccarthyism, my calls is not to have this party defined by what we're against and who we're against, we must be defined by the dream of america for all americans. [ applause ] >> now, don't get me wrong, i am upset about donald trump. i've watched over this last hundred plus days, a guy who literally telling his supporters one thing and gets into the white house that are 100% contrary to what he said and what he promised. it's astonishing to me how one person can speak out of both sides of their mouth. it's astonishing to me how his cras take away people's better way of retirement, pollute our systems and take away active health and family planning. this recent stuff to me is more out of a tom clancy novel that it should be out of our reality. i had a person call me today and talk to me, i couldn't believer it. after the russians literally attack us, cyberattack, attacks our elections literally his associates are under federal investigation, he seems to get better access to the oval office to the russian press than the american press. then he fires the very person that's investigating folks, this person said to me that hey, true man had a sign that said on his desk that says the buck stops here, trump should have one that say the -- should stop here. these are surreal times, don't get me wrong they are real issues, that necessitate us resisting and fighting. i want to let you all know our party cannot be just about that. the trends in our country are too disturbs, and in fact if you think about it, trump is a symptom of a problem, he's not the problem. this country was fought for by irish immigrants who built factories and pushed our country into prosperity by black slaves whose labor help fuel fortunes in this country by chinese immigrants who built the railroad and by mexican immigrants who produced food and hope and put the things on the table that we eat every day. creating extraordinary wealth, and then activists and progressives help to fight battles and win more equality, more opportunity, legislation from the federal congress to state house has helped to give us rights and privileges, so many things for us to be proud of, we game the envy of the world. but if you look right now, if you look at where america just over my life time has gone from being number one on the planet earth to where we are now, on issues of the competitiveness of our democracy, the trends in our country are indeed troubling. we know that today in everything from pre-k enrollment, to high school graduation rates we are being outranked. other nations are investing in training programs, look at what's going on in germany. in newark when i went to my manufacturing to get more jobs and opportunities, i said what do you need. the first thank you they said is we can't find machinist. other countries are making meaningful investment in job training but we are not. things that could be making a huge difference for our people, and our economy and for global competitiveness. other countries are seeing that lowering the bar in germany, the cost of colleges, canada it's 6 to 7%, england 7%, in america, 50% needing income to go to college. other countries have decimated/rates of child poverty. in america, still stubbornly one out of five children in america born into poverty. other countries are investing in the infrastructure, america we inherited from our grandparents, the best infrastructure on the planet earth and we have trashed it. literally engineers estimating 3 trrl trillion dollars debt. and our country is at a 20-year low in investment in infrastructure necessary for expanding economic opportunity. and when it comes to the sciences, we are one of the greatest civilization on the planet earth for investing our public resources in science and technology that have expanded businesses and job opportunities from our batteries on our iphone to the touch screens to the satellite navigation all of those things are collective investment in government research, but now china outstripping us, europe outstripping us. we as a nation are falling behind in expanding opportunity for all. and we're leading in the areas we should not lead in. wasting public treasure, whether it's leading in child poverty or leading in probably one area of infrastructure investment we shouldn't want to lead in. which is 5% of the population we got 20% of the globe prison population. and during time i was in law school with mira until i game the mayor of new york, we were putting trillions of dollars, millions of dollars into our investments in prison. building a prison in america every ten days. and so i want to fight in this climate, i want to dedicate myself but we cannot just be a party of resistance, we got to be a party that's reaffirming that american dream. we can't just be a party that's focused on the person in the white house, we got to be focused on those folks in our cities and factory towns. the grass roroots of our countr that's where our attention needs to be. we got to be a nation, and a people, and especially a party that reignitis that conviction that this would be the country of impossible dreams, that is the essence of the american dream. we got to be a nation that says we are about security and opportunity. and security that doesn't just mean fighting against terrorism and keeping a safe informed threats, but security that means all americans, regardless of how they pray, or where they have a bin dee, all americans are free from violence and discrimination. we got to be a nation that's focused on justice and understands justice means working 40 hours a week shouldn't leave you living in poverty. we got to be a nation about opportunity, and opportunity means we become a party of growth and innovation of technology, but we can never be a country that accepts that growth means billionaires and billionaires get richer and richer and the poors get stuck in poverty. the technology innovation shouldn't be celebrated for how many billionaires we create but how well we do in lifting people out of poverty. the technology can't be about transforming work for the better where people or contract workers that don't have retirement security, but that work means that you have true security for yourself and your family. and so, i believe what our history shows us, and king said it so eloquently. the ark of the universe bends towards justice. but make no mistake it doesn't happen automatically. we have to bend it. i believe we can produce an economy that works for everybody but we must build it. i believe we can be a nation that has healthcare for all but we must fight for it. i believe that we can have a day in this country where america leads not just in our wealth for richest or the size of our army, but that we set that impossible dream that we have, the best k-12 public education, that we'll lead again in the quality of opportunity that will lead again in eradicating poverty that will lead again, and social mobility that will lead and invest in science, that will lean in conquering the threat of climate change and that will gl bearers leading to globe to greater piece and prosperity. this moment as we end an incredible conference, we've got to summon a greater courage, the courage that our generations before us, our ancestors showed us, people without title or political office, the courage that they demonstrated through their sacrifice and service to this republic. and for that there's no special formula. there's work work work back into the fields of our democracy. work work work back into the grass roots. work work work back to waking up sleeping people, tending to the hurt, rallying the able and igniting the dream all over again. we are democrats and we must be patriots who work and sweat, work and organize and work and never let the dream get smaller. hands upon the plow. hold on. hands upon the plow. langston hughes wrote a poem about that, giving deference to generations who through song and spirit and faith forged a new america. let me end with this poem. he said, america land created in common, dream nourished in common, keep your hands on the plow, hold on, hold on. if the house is not finished, don't be discouraged, builder. if the fight is not won, don't be weary, soldier. the plan and the pattern is here, woven from the beginning into the warp and wolf of america a long time ago when enslafd people heading towards freedom made up the song, keep your hand on the plow, hold on, hold on, a song a long time ago of people heading towards freedom made up a song, keep your hands on the plow, hold on, hold on. my fellow democrats, my fellow patriots, make us go back into the fields and put your hands on the plow. we must ignite the dream of our country with our hands, forever on the plow. we have unfinished work to be done. our hands must remain on the plow. and i know in my hart and i know in my spirit if we continue in that conviction, if we're willing to do the work and stay steady, then not only will we overcome the obstacles that seem large but we'll usher in a greater era for our country where we make more real and more true to more people the spirit of our nation that we will be a nation with liberty and justice for all. thank you. [ applause ] c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up wednesday morning, new york republican congressman john faso on president trump's agenda. then the virgin islands delegate on former fbi director james comey's upcoming testimony. and muslim advocates president and executive director on president trump's proposed travel ban and the recent terrorist attack in portland. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. wednesday morning. join the discussion. tonight on c-span 3, the senate banking committee considers the president's nominees to be the next hud wd secretary and chair of the council of exec advisers. then stanford university host a conference on the future of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. after that korean and american scholars on the challenges north korea poses to the u.s. and its asian allies. later former california governor around schwarzenegger on after school programs. this hearing will come to heard. >> next a confirmation hearing for president trump's choice to be the next housing and urban development deputy secretary and the chair of the council of economic advisers. this senate banking committee hearing is an hour and 25 minutes. >> we will begin today's hearing with an opening statement by me and then by senator brown and then i'll turn to senator po portman who will introduce mr. hassett and senator shaheen when she arrives who will introduce ms. patenaude. i see friends and families behind you as well. i also see my good friend bob dole, at least i did a moment ago. we welcome him here. each of these nominees stands to impact the living of americans across the country and will play an important role. mr. hassett has had a disti distinguished career. he's a widely consulted expert. his nomination has received bipartisan support from notable economists including past cea chairman. mr. hassett's particular understanding of tax policy and the way it affects citizens and businesses will be a valuable asset to the administration. he has extensive experience with economic modelling and will be able to provide sound economic analysis for progrowth policies. key to economic growth is not only robust financial markets but also economic policies that will best enable all american to unlock their potential. i look forward to hearing from mr. hassett on how economic analysis can play a role in achieving this goal. ms. patenaude is a seasoned veteran in housing and community develop holding leadership roles at the local and federal level. 12 yeeshs ago ms. patenaude received unanimous support by that committee and confirmed by the senate with a voiced vote to become assistant secretary for community and development at hud. in this role she overall all of the development operations. as a former leader in a local housing agency, she has on the ground experience and developed an important understanding of the impact hud ice policies have on local partners. ms. paddtted naud's nomination s been met with bipartisan support as well. this speaks to ms. patenaude's ability to address housing issues. i look forward to working with her on opportunities to improve hud programs, reduce regulatory burdens with, leverage more private capital, empower decision-making and address comprehensive housing fons reform. at this time i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record two letters endorsing mr. hassett, one signed from 444 economists on both sides of the aisle. without objection so ordered. i also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record more than 30 letters showing bipartisan support for ms. patenaude including a letter signed by bob dole and george mitchell without objection. so ordered. congratulations to both of you on your nominations to these very important offices and thank you for your willingness to serve. senator brown. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. hassett. ms. patenaude. welcome, senator sheen, my senator and friend from ohio, senator portman nice to see you. thanks for holding this hearing. i look forward to hearing the views of the two witnesses on economy, housing, community development. ms. patenaude comes to us with a long resume of development programs, hud management and housing advocacy. more recently housing america's families in a report entitled the silent housing crisis, the foundation report of having access to safe and affordable housing has long been recognized as a part of america's critical compact with his citizens. i look forward to hearing her views particularly since her past advocacy seems at odds with the approach that hud has taken in its budget proposal. mr. hassett has done important work related to the policies that drove manufacturing out of ohio communities and others like it across the country. i hope that his work at the council of economiced a vieszers will focus on improving education in workforce development and actually rebuild infrastructure. that's what's needed to strengthen the economy. we've seen the government attempt to take away health insurance. target working americans with increased debt all to gurt the interest of the wealthiest americans. the administration's hud budget proposal is a stark ill zrags hof this agenda. 11 million renters as ms. patenaude and i discussed in my office and she's so very aware of this. 11 million renlt ters pay over f of their income in rent. if they're evicted, they lose, their children go to a different school. 11 million renters. i want you to always remember that number. 500,000 people are homeless. the president's budget would cut $7 billion, 15% from the hud budget. the budget would