Tag: USA

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Bernie Saunders, “Fighting Oligarchy”, Folsom, April 15, 2025

On April 15, 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont delivered a speech at Folsom Lake College in Folsom, California, as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Addressing a crowd of approximately 26,000 attendees, Sanders criticized economic inequality and the influence of corporate interests in politics. He emphasized the need for unity and grassroots activism to challenge what he described as a rigged economy favoring the wealthy elite. The event also featured remarks from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive leaders.

The video is from the ABC10 Youtube website. The transcript was autogenerated from Youtube and edited slightly.

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

We are here this evening.. to say very loudly and clearly to Mr. Trump and people all over this country: We as Americans will not accept oligarchy. We will not accept authoritarianism. And we will not accept a rigged economy where working people struggle while billionaires become richer.

We will not accept a situation where if you can believe it, one man, Elon Musk – you’ve heard of Elon. Elon owns more wealth than the bottom 50% of households in America. That brothers and sisters is insane.

We have got to together create an economy that works for working people, not just Mr. Musk and the billionaire class.

And to make a bad situation even worse at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality. Never had more inequality ever in America than we have today. Mr. Musk and the Republicans in Congress are working on a reconciliation bill. And this is legislation that would give $1.1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1%. And they pay for that by cutting Medicaid by $880 billion. Cutting nutrition programs for hungry kids. And cutting affordable housing.

Now you’ve got a congressman here whose name is Kevin Kiley. So I don’t know if Mr. Kiley is watching the live stream or not. Well, Mr. Kiely, I think some of your constituents have a message for you. Don’t vote to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut programs that the working class of this country desperately needs. And by the way, Mr. Kiely, I have a feeling that some of your constituents would love to sit down and chat with you on that issue. Now Alexandria comes from New York City. I come from Vermont. We’ve come a long way here. The least you could do is sit down with your constituents right here.

You know, as I observe what’s going on in DC, I think a little bit about American history. And I think about Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, and I think you all know this. Lincoln was there a few days after that horrific battle where 20,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded in the fight to end the nightmare of slavery. And Lincoln looked out on the field just a few days after that carnage. And he said, you know what? Our vision of America is a government of the people. By the people, for the people. And that’s why Alexandria and I are here this evening.

We believe in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, not a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. And when we talk about oligarchy, it’s not just the incredible economic power that the billionaires have, which is unprecedented. And it’s not just about the mass of income and wealth inequality, which is also unprecedented.

Today in America, as a result of that disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United. Billionaires like Musk can put unlimited amounts of money into both political parties. So Mr. Musk himself for $270 million. To elect Donald Trump as president. And that for Musk was a pretty good investment, not a lot of money when you’re worth 30-400 billion dollars. So it’s a modest investment, and his reward was to become the most powerful person in the United States government.

But I must tell you, it is not only Musk and the Republicans who are putting huge amounts of money to make sure they elect the candidates of their choice. It is Democrats as well. And there is a reason why. Democrats for so many years, have not had the courage to stand up to the ruling class and represent working people, and that is because that party is dominated by corporate interests. So today we say loudly and clearly, and I think in saying this, I speak for conservatives and progressives and moderate moderates. The time is now to get rid of this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. And move to public funding of elections.

But brothers and sisters, it is not just oligarchy that we are fighting. We are fighting a president who undermines our Constitution every single day. And threatens our freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. We are fighting a president whose agents are rounding up innocent people off the streets. Throwing them into unmarked vans. And sending them to detention centers here in the United States, in El Salvador and elsewhere.

That is not what happens in a democracy. That’s what happens in a dictatorship.

And together we are not going to allow Donald Trump to create an authoritarian society. You know, the founding fathers of our country were not dummies. They had just fought a war against the British Empire and defeated the most powerful person on earth at that time, the King of England. And they sat around and they said, you know what, as we develop our new country, this is in the 1790s, what they were saying is we do not want to give one person unlimited power, and they developed a separation of powers. We got an executive, a legislative branch, and a judiciary. To keep check on each other.

And every single day, you got a president who wants more and more power for himself. He is usurping the power of the Congress. He is now challenging in an unprecedented way, the role of the judiciary in America. Supreme Court recently ruled in a 9 to 0 decision that a man who was illegally picked off the street and sent to El Salvador has got to be returned. A 9 to 0 decision of the Supreme Court, Mr. President, obey the law.

But it is not just Congress and the judiciary whose power he is trying to assume. It is the media as well. Apparently he does not understand that in America we have freedom of speech. He has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register. His FCC is now investigating NPR and PBS. Just the other day, he said that CBS should lose its license. You know what they did? They ran a program which was critical of some of his policies. How terrible.

And this is from a guy who has spent his entire political career attacking people, lying about people in the most vicious ways. So we say to Trump, if you can’t take criticism, get out of politics. This is a democracy and criticism and freedom of speech is what it’s all about. Brothers and sisters, our job. It’s not just right now to defeat the very dangerous situation inherent in Trumpism. We’ve got to fight them every single day, but we have got to do more than that.

We have got to create a vision of what a new America is about. Where we have a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just a few. This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. 0 through 4 are the most important years of human development. We should have the best childcare system in the world, not a dysfunctional system.

We should have the strongest public education system on earth. Do we have any teachers here? Thank you teachers. And we want to make sure that our teachers are well paid and are respected. No teacher in America should start off at less than $60,000 a year. Unlike Trump, we understand the importance of education. Learning and growing intellectually is part of what being human is about.

And in a competitive global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world. We need more doctors. We need more nurses. We need more dentists. We need more electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers. Young people should not have to go deeply in debt to get the education they need.

You know, back in 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the great presidents in our history. He said something that was enormously profound. It kind of got passed over because we’re in the middle of World War II, but what he said at that point is that, look, we have a great constitution, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc. but we’re lacking something, and what we’re lacking is the understanding that economic rights are human rights.

Now the establishment. The establishment doesn’t want us to understand what that means, but what it means is that living in this country, the richest country on earth, a country where today we’re seeing an explosion of technology which is gonna make us even wealthier, what we want is that technology to work for working people, not just the owners of the corporations.

Brothers and sisters, it is not a radical idea. It really isn’t, you know, the establishment and the moneyed interests will tell you all this is a terrible idea, but in this country, every man, woman and child can and should have a decent standard of living.

We should not have. What a disgrace. In LA here in Burlington, Vermont, we got together as a nation, 800,000 people sleeping out on the streets of America. We’ve got 20 million people who are spending half of their limited incomes on housing. Maybe instead of spending $1 trillion a year on the military, what about building 5 million units of low income and affordable housing? If you can believe it, if you can believe it, and it’s true – over the last 52 years, the average American worker today in inflation accounted for dollars is earning less than he or she did back then. You got that?

Think about all of the increase in worker productivity. They didn’t have computers back there. They don’t have cell phones. Workers are producing much more today than they did 52 years ago, and yet in real dollars, they’re earning less. It is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

And brothers and sisters. It is the trade union movement in America that has developed and created the middle class. And millions of workers all over America want to join unions. We got some trade unionists here tonight. Thank you. They want to join unions, but they’re unable to do so because employers use illegal tactics to prevent them from organizing. And that is why we’re going to pass what’s called the POA to make sure that every worker in America will be able to join a union.

You may or may not know. That in America today, we remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right. We have a healthcare system which is broken. Which is dysfunctional. Which is cool. As a nation we are spending almost twice as much. We spend over $14,000 for every man, woman, and child for health care, $14,000. And yet despite spending so much, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. 60,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford to go to a doctor when they should.

I have talked to doctors in Vermont and all over this country who treat patients who walk in the door and they say, why didn’t you come in here when you first felt your symptoms and the patient said I’m uninsured or my deductible is too high. I just didn’t have the money that is outrageous. It is unacceptable. We must pass Medicare for all. And guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child.

And when we talk about what oligarchy is about. And when we talk about what corporate greed is about, I want you to hear one fact that you won’t see in the corporate media or here in the halls of Congress right now as a nation, our life expectancy, how long we live, is about 4 years less than other major countries. That’s pretty bad.

Do you know what’s even worse? If you are working class in America, on average, you will live 7 years shorter lives than if you are wealthy. And you know why that is? Why is that? You got it, everybody else. The word is stress.

I grew up in a working class family. And I’ve been all over this country talking to working class people. You know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and wonder about whether you’re gonna be able to feed your kids or not?

You know what it’s like to know when you get sick or your mother is ill, you may not have the money to get the medical care you need.

You know what it’s like that when your car breaks down, you don’t have the 1000 bucks you need to repair it. You can’t get to work. All over this country, people are struggling every single day. Just to survive. Brothers and sisters in the richest country in the history of the world, we can do a hell of a lot better than that.

Thank you.

But in truth, It is not burning. It is you. And that is, that’s not rhetoric. If we are going to defeat Trumpism, if we’re going to create the kind of nation that we know we can become. It’s going to take millions and millions of working people standing up together. Educating, organizing, knocking on doors, forming unions. We can do it.

Now what the ruling class of this country does and they do it brilliantly. I must confess what they do is essentially tell you you are powerless. Ain’t nothing you can do because we the oligarchs, we got all the money, we got all the power, we own the media, we own the Congress. Ain’t nothing you can do about it.

Well, we are here this evening to tell them, hey guys, you got it wrong. Because when we stand together. And not let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation or our religion. When we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. So in this Pivotal moment in American history.

What I have discovered as Alexandria and I go all over this country, we’re seeing unbelievable turnouts. We were in Idaho, Idaho. We have 12,000 people coming out in idle, most conservatives stay in the country. We have 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, a Republican state. And I think what the American people, Republicans, Independents, Democrats are saying, sorry, Mr. Trump, we don’t want you oligarchy.

Sorry, Mr. Trump, too many men and women have fought and died to defend democracy. You’re not going to take us into authoritarianism. And sorry, Mr. Musk, we’re going to create an economy that works for us, not just for you.

So brothers and sisters, I recognize that the oligarchs have enormous power. They have unlimited amounts of money. And they are extraordinarily greedy. They want it all. But the last that I have heard. I’m not a mathematician, but I do know that 99% is a hell of a lot bigger number than 1%.

So let us stand together.
Let us defeat Trumpism.
Let us create the kind of America we know we can become.

Thank you very much.

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JB Pritzer: New Hampshire, April 27, 2025

Jay Robert Pritzker (born January 19, 1965) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2019 as the 43rd governor of Illinois. A member of the wealthy Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker has started several venture capital and investment startups, including the Pritzker Group, where he is managing partner (Source: Wikipedia).

On April 27, 2025, Governor Pritzker spoke at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire. Addressing party members and supporters, he emphasized the importance of defending constitutional principles, discussed immigration policy, and highlighted individual acts of civic activism by Americans like Andy Smith, Gavin Carpenter, and Lucy Welch. Pritzker concluded by urging Democrats to take more decisive action in support of democratic values ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections.

The video is from the NBC Chicago website and the extract below starts at 3:15 seconds into the speech. The video can be found here.

Governor JB Pritzker:

When I was here about eight months ago at the AFL-CIO Labor Day Breakfast, I laid out the bleak situation that we would find ourselves in if Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Well, here we are.

I gave it to you straight last year, and I’m going to give it to you straight again tonight: In this fragile moment, the direction of this nation will turn on who we choose to listen to, whose stories we decide to tell about what is happening, who we elevate and who we ignore, who we find noteworthy and who we label as just noise.

Who we listen to will shape the way we react to events as they unfold.

Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell you that America’s house is not on fire — even as the flames were licking their faces.

Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians — well, the pundits and politicians whose searing timidity served as kindling for the arsonists — urge us now not to reach for a hose.

Meanwhile, if we took care to listen to the voices of real people, we would hear our neighbors and our friends standing on the streets outside, screaming for a response big enough for a five-alarm fire.

So today I want to talk to you about those people. I want their voices to be what we hear. Their stories to be the ones that we tell.

Stories of Andy, Gavin, and Lucy

Andy Smith lives in Edwardsville, a small city in southern Illinois.
On February 4th of this year, Andy took a homemade sign to a spot where she figured she would get the most visibility — the intersection of Highways 157 and 143.

On her own, she lifted up her sign and started protesting the Trump administration.

Later, she told the local paper that on that first day, she felt like a crazy person standing out there all by herself.
Then someone walking her dog saw her sign, stopped, and decided to join her. That helped, Andy said.

The next day, February 5th, Andy showed up to protest again — and this time, four friends came to join her.

Two days later, on February 7th, the small but hearty band of Edwardsville protesters got their first counter-protester — one guy who yelled obscenities at them.
But in true Midwestern fashion, that guy later returned to apologize.

Andy Smith’s protesters now meet every Friday at 1:00 p.m. Last week, there were 300 of them.

Gavin Carpenter is a disabled military veteran and a maintenance mechanic at Yosemite National Park.

Every February, Yosemite fills with people waiting to see an event that happens only once a year: the winter sun lights up a waterfall on the face of the park’s most famous cliff, El Capitan.

This year, on that day, Gavin climbed to the top of the cliff and hung an American flag upside down — famously known as a signal of dire distress.

When asked why he did it, Gavin pointed to the cuts that Elon Musk and Doge were making to his beloved national parks. He said:

“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to our parks, which are every American’s property.”

Lucy Welch writes the Daily Snow Report at the Sugarbush Resort in Vermont.

Last month, J.D. Vance went on vacation at Sugarbush. So Lucy decided to write a very different kind of snow report.

Instead of the usual details about powder conditions and weather, she wrote about what was happening to the diverse and wonderful community of veterans, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ friends, immigrant workers, and people of color.

She wrote:

“All of these groups are being targeted, undervalued, and disrespected by the current administration.”

And she finished her snow report by saying:

“I am using my relative platform as snow reporter to be disruptive.
I don’t have a whole lot to lose.
We’re living in a really scary time, in a really serious time.
What we do — and don’t do — matters.”

Andy. Gavin. Lucy.
Those are the names we should be paying attention to.

Those are the stories that I want to share.

No pontification. No punditry there.
No tortured op-eds about party messaging.
No hand-wringing over which battles to pick.

These three Americans acted on an instinct we teach our children as one of their first lessons in life:

When you see a danger, you yell for help at the top of your lungs.

We Democrats shouldn’t be comfortable ignoring those cries for help.

The fact that so many are speaks to the real reason that we lost last November.

What I find ironic about the current conversation surrounding our party is that the voices flocking to podcasts and cable news shows to admonish fellow Democrats for not caring enough about the struggles of working families —
are the same ones who, when it came to relieving the struggles of real people, were timid, not bold.

They didn’t want to fight the health insurance companies and the drug manufacturers.
They didn’t want to demand an increase in the minimum wage or require paid family leave.
They gave in to the powerful hedge fund managers and tech bros whose blind pursuit of profits is now destroying everything that matters to middle-class families — from home ownership to health care to veterans’ benefits.

They told us to ignore the fact that most Americans can’t afford a vacation while they’re young or retirement once they’re old.

Here’s the problem with the do-nothing crowd now telling us what to do:

They spent their years watching Republicans illegitimately pack the Supreme Court, take away voting rights from people of color, systematically chip away at the constitutional order —
and all the while, they offered in response a simple defense of norms and decorum and a blind hope that one day soon, Republicans would wake up to find their better angels.

Well, that got us exactly where we are today.

So folks, the reckoning is here. [Applause]

And now that this culture of timidity is on full display, those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants — instead of their own lack of guts and gumption. [Applause]

Voters didn’t turn out for Democrats last November not because they don’t want us to fight for their values —
but because they think we don’t want to fight for our values.

We need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language.

Decades of stale decorum have obscured our better instincts.

We have to abandon the culture of incrementalism that has led us to swallow cruelty and callousness with barely a cowardly croak. [Applause]

It’s time to fight — everywhere and all at once. [Applause]

Let’s start with something that should, well, be easy to say:

It’s wrong to snatch a person off the street and ship them to a foreign gulag with no chance to defend themselves in a court of law. [Applause]

And I want to be clear:
This is not an argument about immigration —
this is an argument about the Constitution.

Remember, Trump just last week arrested and deported three children under eight years old —
all U.S. citizens —
one of them a four-year-old with stage four cancer.

Let that sink in.

This country was founded on the idea of habeas corpus.
It’s a fancy legal term that, in plain words, means no government has the right to arbitrarily take your freedom away from you.

Preserving habeas corpus is not some fever dream of the left-wing echo chamber —
it’s a fundamental concept of justice that people have fought and died for, dating back to the Middle Ages.

It was in the Magna Carta.

It was considered by our nation’s founders to be so vital to our liberty that they wrote it right into the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson called it “the essential principle of government.”
Benjamin Franklin opined that those who would give up habeas corpus for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.
And Alexander Hamilton wrote that the practice of arbitrary imprisonment has been, in all the ages, the favorite and most formidable instrument of tyranny.

Franklin. Jefferson. Hamilton.

Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process —
arguably the most effective campaign slogan in history.
It’s the OG of political messaging.

I mean, what do we think Colonel Stark was talking about, if not this, when he said, “Live Free or Die”?

Today it’s an immigrant with a tattoo.
Tomorrow it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.

There are plenty of people in this country who hold opinions that I find abhorrent —
but my faith in our Constitution dictates that I fight for their freedoms as loudly as I defend my own.

And as a Ukrainian-American Jew, who built a Holocaust museum, whose family immigrated here as refugees from the Russian pogroms,
let me say this to Donald Trump:

Stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors. [Applause] [Applause]

Do not claim that your authoritarian power grabs are about combating antisemitism.
When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism.

When the pendulum swings back — and it always does —
you will have contributed to the climate of retribution that will inevitably follow.

Immigration
Let’s dispel another myth from the MAGA Republicans:

We Democrats believe that undocumented people who are convicted of violent crimes shouldn’t be allowed to stay in this country —
convicted of violent crimes.

We want public safety just as much as Republicans do.

And when we get back control of the Congress — and we will —
and when we get the White House back — and we will —
Democrats need to make it a priority to pass real, sensible immigration reform. [Applause]

We need to secure our border.

We need to keep and attract hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding people — and give them a path to citizenship. [Applause]

Immigration, with all its struggles and complexities, is part of the secret sauce that makes America great — always.

Immigrants strengthen our communities.
They enrich our neighborhoods.
They renew our passion for America’s greatness.
They enliven our music and culture.
They enhance our understanding of the world.

The success of our economy depends upon immigrants.

In fact, 46% — 46% — of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The return on investment for America’s 250-year commitment to immigration is incalculable.

But because of Donald Trump’s xenophobia, we’ve seen foreign students already choosing not to attend our universities —
and being told to leave.

Businesses from overseas are afraid to invest their money here and bring their executives to our shores.

Scientists are choosing to innovate in European laboratories instead of American ones.

Already — in just 100 days — if the best and brightest around the world no longer flock to this shining city on a hill,
then the U.S. economy is likely to fail.

But failure — it’s starting to look like that’s the point of all this, doesn’t it?

We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools.

We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit.

We have an Attorney General who hates the Constitution.

We have a Secretary of State — the son of naturalized citizens, a family of refugees —
who’s on a crusade to expel our country of both.

We have a head of the Department of Government Efficiency —
an immigrant, granted the privilege of living and working here —
a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him —
and who is now looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself.

And we have a President who claims to love America —
but who hates our military so much that he calls them “losers” and “suckers” —
and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen U.S. soldiers.

We have a Grand Old Party, founded by one of our nation’s bravest presidents — Abraham Lincoln —
who today, I might add, would be a Democrat —
but a Grand Old Party so afraid of the felon and fraud they put into the White House
that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it.

Democrats, we may have to fix our messaging and our strategy —
but our values are exactly where they ought to be.

And we will never join so many Republicans in the special place in hell reserved for quislings and cowards. [Applause] [Applause]

It’s Time
It’s time for us to be done with optimism about their motives or their objectives.

It’s time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat.

It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy of wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research.

It’s time to stop thinking that we can reason or negotiate with a madman.

It’s time to stop apologizing when we were not wrong.

It’s time to stop surrendering when we need to fight.

Our small businesses don’t deserve to be bankrupted by unsustainable tariffs.

Our retirees don’t deserve to be left destitute by a Social Security Administration decimated by Elon Musk.

Our citizens don’t deserve to lose health care coverage because Republicans want to hand a tax cut to billionaires.

Our federal workers don’t deserve to have, well, a 19-year-old DogeBro called “Big Balls” destroy their careers.

Autistic kids and adults — loving contributors to our society —
don’t deserve to be stigmatized by a weird nepo baby who once stashed a dead bear in the backseat of his car. [Applause]

Our military service members don’t deserve to be told by a washed-up Fox TV commentator,
who drank too much and committed sexual assault before being appointed Secretary of Defense,
that they can’t serve their country simply because they’re Black or gay or a woman.

And if it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated —
it’s because I am.
And you should be, too.

They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon.

But there’s a way out of this mess.

I know — because I’ve been to this movie before.

When I was elected governor in 2018, it was after four years of a very destructive Republican chief executive.
He had run on the idea of “shaking things up” as governor —
and he promptly started defunding key government agencies, slashing state benefits, and refusing to pass a state budget.

Illinois’s credit rating took a dive.
Companies fled the state.
Social service agencies closed.
Government services that the poor, the elderly, and the sick relied upon — vanished.

Does that sound familiar?

Illinoisans hated it — even the ones who voted for the guy.
They hated it so much that, well, four years later, they elected me — and he was gone.

But here’s the lesson that I learned:

When — when we emerge from this — and we will emerge from this —
our Democratic agenda must be bold.
Our ideas must be fearless.

We must be willing to slay sacred cows,
and allow the courage of our actions to match the immediacy of our words.

We must deliver on that agenda — for working families and for the real people who truly make America great. [Applause]

Listen — I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now.

But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns.

Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption — but I am now. [Applause]

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.

They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.

We must castigate them on the soapbox — and then punish them at the ballot box. [Applause]

They must feel it in their bones —
that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact — because we have no alternative but to do just that — that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors. [Applause]

And when the courage of our civic leaders wavers,
when they fail to stand up for our country in its moment of greatest need,
then we must remind them: cowardice always comes at a cost.

In the world’s most successful republic, no generation of Americans has escaped our true inheritance —
the test that we are given,
the test that asks how hard we are willing to fight to keep our society free.

It was selfish to think that ours would be the first.

But the fact that we are still here, debating the question, tells me that our predecessors never failed this test — even in situations just as dire as the one in front of us.

Cowardice can be contagious.
But so, too, can courage.

And courage born during times when complacency beckons like a siren call —
that is the most important kind of all.

Just as the hope that we hold on to in the darkness shines with its own special light.

These days, I cling to the courage and the hope demonstrated by Andy and Gavin and Lucy.

Courage and hope that risks limbs and livelihoods —
to go to the most visible place possible —
to wave a sign,
or to post an upside-down flag,
and remind everyone that what we do — and what we don’t do — matters.

So tonight, I’m telling you what I’m willing to do:
I’m willing to fight —
for our democracy,
for our liberty,
for the opportunity for all our people to live lives that are meaningful and free.

And I see around me tonight a room full of people who are ready to do the same.

So I have one question for all of you, Granite Staters:

Are you ready for the fight?

Granite Staters,

Are you ready for the fight?

Good night, New Hampshire.
God bless you — and God bless these United States

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Admiral William H. McRaven: Commencement Address, University of Texas at Austin, 2014

William McRaven is an admiral in the US Navy and Commander of Special Operations, which includes the SEALs. He gave this commencement address to students at his former college in 2014.

The video is from the University of Texas at Austin Youtube channel, and the transcript from Lightbuzz.

William McRaven:

President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. It is indeed an honor to be here tonight.

It’s been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT.

I remember a lot of things about that day.

I remember I had a throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married—that’s important to remember by the way—and I remember that I was getting commissioned in the Navy that day.

But of all the things I remember, I don’t have a clue who the commencement speaker was that evening and I certainly don’t remember anything they said.

So…acknowledging that fact—if I can’t make this commencement speech memorable—I will at least try to make it short.

The University’s slogan is,

“What starts here changes the world.”

I have to admit—I kinda like it.

“What starts here changes the world.”

Tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from UT.

That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime.

That’s a lot of folks.

But, if every one of you changed the lives of just ten people—and each one of those folks changed the lives of another ten people—just ten—then in five generations—125 years—the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people—think of it—over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world—8 billion people.

If you think it’s hard to change the lives of ten people—change their lives forever—you’re wrong.

I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the ten soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush.

In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn’t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500 pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn—were also saved. And their children’s children—were saved.

Generations were saved by one decision—by one person.

But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it.

So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is… what will the world look like after you change it?

Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better, but if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world.

And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.

It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward—changing ourselves and the world around us—will apply equally to all.

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California.

Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable.

It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships.

To me basic SEAL training was a life time of challenges crammed into six months.

So, here are the ten lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

#1. So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

During SEAL training the students are all broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students—three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy.

Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast.

In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in.

Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.

For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.

You can’t change the world alone —you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the goodwill of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide you.

#2. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class which started with 150 men was down to just 42. There were now six boat crews of seven men each.

I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys — the munchkin crew we called them — no one was over about 5-foot five.

The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the mid-west.

They out-paddled, out-ran, and out-swam all the other boat crews.

The big men in the other boat crews would always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim.

But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the Nation and the world, always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

#3. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough.

Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges.

But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn’t good enough.

The instructors would find something wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand.

The effect was known as a sugar cookie. You stayed in the uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right — it went unappreciated.

Those students didn’t make it through training.

Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

The instructors weren’t going to allow it. Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie.

It’s just the way life is sometimes.

#4. If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events — long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics—something designed to test your mettle.

Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those time, those standards, your name was posted on a list and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to a circus.

A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics — designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.

No one wanted a circus.

A circus meant that for that day you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue — and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult — and more circuses were likely.

But at some time during SEAL training, everyone — everyone — made the circus list.

But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students – who did two hours of extra calisthenics — got stronger and stronger.

The pain of the circuses built inner strength and physical resiliency.

Life is filled with circuses.

You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.

#5. But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot wall, a 30-foot cargo net, a barbed wire crawl to name a few.

But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three level 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot long rope.

You had to climb the three-tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.

The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977.

The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life—head first.

Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.

It was a dangerous move — seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training.

Without hesitation — the student slid down the rope —perilously fast. Instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

#6. If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacles head first.

During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente island which lies off the coast of San Diego.

The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim.

Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the students on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente.

They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark — at least not that they can remember.

But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid.

And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you, then summons up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.

#7. So, if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.

As Navy SEALs, one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training.

The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles—underwater—using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you.

But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight — it blocks the surrounding street lamps — it blocks all ambient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel — the center line and the deepest part of the ship.

This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship — where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it gets to be easily disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission — is the time when you need to be calm, when you must be calm, composed — when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

#8. If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana Slues — a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.

As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit — only five men, just five men, and we could get out of the oppressive cold.

Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up — eight more hours of bone chilling cold.

The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything and then, one voice began to echo through the night — one voice raised in song.

The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.

One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing — but the singing persisted.

And somehow, the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person — a Washington, a Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan — Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

#9. So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.

Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see.

All you have to do to quit is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to be in the freezing cold swims.

Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT — and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training.

All you have to do is ring the bell to get out.

#10. If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.

To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away from starting to change the world — for the better.

It will not be easy.

But, you are the class of 2014—the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed.

Find someone to help you through life.

Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if you take take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today and — what started here will indeed have changed the world —for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook ‘em horns.

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Martin Luther King: I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” is the name often given to the last speech by civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. King spoke on April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. On the next day, King was assassinated.

King calls for unity and nonviolent protest with resistance to court injunctions in reference to a strike by city sanitation workers, while challenging the United States to live up to its ideals. At the end of the speech, he appears to mention the likelihood of his own death.

The video comprises two extracts from the speech. The entire speech can be heard at here, and the transcript can be seen on a Stanford site here. Recommended.

The transcript is from the American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches website. The video is from the NewsPoliticsInfo channel on Youtube.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions.

Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around.

………………….

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over.

And I’ve seen the Promised Land.

I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

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Martin Sheen: Find Something Worth Fighting For (2010)

The American actor and activist Martin Sheen delivered this speech at We Day in Vancouver, 2010, to an audience of young people encouraged to take action on local and global issues.

The speech concludes with a poem called Chitto Jetha Bhayashunyo (Where the mind is without fear) written by Rabindranath Tagore before India’s independence which represents Tagore’s dream of how the new India should be. Originally in Bengali, the poem was translated into English by Tagore in 1912. Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941), a Bengali poet, musician, painter, dramatist, thinker, nationalist, and writer, who shaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The transcript is from Find Something Worth Fighting For: 2010 We Day Speech by Martin Sheen. The video is from the empoweredmerchants Youtube channel.

Martin Sheen:

You got the message.

I’ve been an actor all of my life. In fact I have no conscious memory of ever not being an actor, but while acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive.

And I am often asked how I manage to unite the two and the answer is quite simple; I don’t have a clue because it was far less a conscious effort than it was a natural progression.

Of course if you grew up in a poor large immigrant family chances are you’re either Irish Catholic or Hispanic and I was lucky enough to be both, so I had a head start when it came to social justice activism.

Both of my parents were immigrants. My father was Francisco Estevez or as they say in Spain, Estévez. He was born in northern Spain on a little village called Vigo on July the second 1897 the very day the United States declared war on Spain.

My mother was Mary-Ann Phelan. She was born May the 22nd, 1903 on a tiny village in the center of the Irish Republic, Borrisokane, in County Tipperary. They immigrated separately of course to the United States, but they met in Dayton, Ohio and were married in 1924. They had 12 pregnancies, 10 survived, 9 boys and one girl, I was their seventh son – my real name is Ramon.

I stayed in Dayton and then I finished high school and I decided to go to New York to pursue a career on the theater. John Kennedy was in the White House and Pope John 23rd was in the Vatican. We held our breath during the Cuban missiles crisis and we were lifted up by Martin Luther King’s dream as civil rights, Vietnam, all came into the national consciousness.

Then suddenly we lost John Kennedy and we still don’t know how or why but it seemed as the worst of the sixties was yet to come. 1968 started with the Tet offense of Vietnam and ended with the return of Richard Nixon. In between, we lost both Martin Luther King Junior and Bobby Kennedy, and we lost them just eight weeks apart.

We backed out of the sixties, still broken but clutching the absolute certainty that lost causes were still the only causes worth fighting for, and that non-violence is the only weapon to use to fight with. “Each time someone stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they stand for a tiny ripple of hope and, crossing, each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build the current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.”

Those words were spoken at Cape Town, South Africa, at the university there in 1966 by Robert Francis Kennedy. They are enshrined on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery as well and they have been a powerful source of inspiration for my generation ever since. The more the world changes, the more it remains the same, I believe, because the three most important needs of every human being on earth are not food, clothing, and shelter as much as the need for freedom, justice, and healing.

It is the gross inequality of food, clothing, and shelter that divides us and the absolute necessity for freedom, justice, and healing that unites us. Clearly we need a more realistic understanding of who we are and why we are here in order to have a honest relationship with each other. Consider the following please, from ‘Earth as a Village’ by Phillips M. Harter, Stanford School of Medicine:

“If we could shrink the earth’s population of over six and a half billion people down to a single village consisting of one hundred people, with all the existing ratios the same, it would look something like this; there would be 57 Asians, 8 Europeans, 21 Africans, and 14 people from the Western hemisphere. There would be 52 women and 48 men. There would be 70 non-whites and 30 whites. There would be 70 non-Christians and 30 Christians.

There would be no doctor, no nurse, no dentist, no hospital or clinic and no school, there would be no safe drinking water, there would be no common language, there would be no electricity and no paved roads, there would be 70 people unable to read or write, there would be 50 people suffering from malnutrition, there would be one person near death and one person near birth. The entire food supply for the village would depend entirely on outside sources. Six people on that village would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth, and all 6 would be US citizens. There would be one college graduate, one TV, one computer, and the average person on that village would be a 13-year-old Chinese girl.”

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not we are all responsible for each other and the world which is exactly the way it is because, consciously or unconsciously, we have made it so. And while none of us made the any of the rules that govern the universe, we do make all the rules that govern our own hearts, and we are all beneficiaries of those many heroic strangers who’ve gone before us over the centuries who assure us that the world is still a wonderful and safe place despite our fears, and we’re not asked to do great things – we’re asked to do all things with great care.

Such an ideal is rare in a culture of so many compromised values and so much cynicism, a culture that all too often knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, and yet there remains a very real and mysterious yearning, deep within every human heart, that compels us to reach outside of ourselves and help others for our own sake.

This yearning is a true manifestation of our true selves, and it can lead to the very first small conscious acts of personal courage which can bring rejection from the crowd and satisfaction from the heart. But this yearning can also be very costly as well. If we’re not so we’d be left to question its value, and this, above all; one heart with courage, is a majority.

Over the entire history of the world, every truth started as a blasphemy and no one has ever made a contribution of any real work without self sacrifice, personal sufferings and sometimes, even death.

The Irish tell a story of a man who came to the gates of heaven and asked to be led in, Saint Peter said “Of course! Just show us your scars!” The man says “I have no scars.” Saint Peter says “What a pity! Was there nothing worth fighting for?”

My fondest wish for each and every one of the young people here today is that you will find something in your life worth fighting for, because when you do, you would have discovered a way to unite the will of the spirit to the work of the flesh, and all of humanity would have discovered fire for the second time.

It is my profound wish that the light from that fire will illuminate your path to that place…

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;

Into that heaven of freedom

Let us all awake.

Thank you.