Lawrence, MA - Representative Joe Kennedy III introduced and endorsed Elizabeth Warren for President in Lawrence, Massachusetts today.
Below are his remarks:
Good morning everybody, how we doing?! Welcome to sunny and warm Lawrence, Massachusetts.
I am so so honored and grateful to be with you guys, and I am so thrilled to be able to introduce the next President of the United States, Elizabeth Warren.
Ustedes estan listo para elegir una presidente?
Folks, I want to tell you why I’m here on the very first day of this historic campaign.
I’m here because I represent places like Fall River, Taunton and Attleboro. These are proud Massachusetts hometowns, like Lawrence, where there is a legacy of work – of hard work.
And where folks don’t ask for much in return – just the ability to take care of the ones that they love. To do right by themselves and their families.
And I’m here because their story is your story.
It’s the story I saw in McAllen, Texas and Tampa, Florida and in Charleston, West Virginia. In cities like Detroit and Phoenix and South Bend. Communities that are full of grit and fight, and a country whose broken economy takes every single ounce of it for granted.
A system that has made it difficult to be middle class. Excruciating to be poor. And down-right impossible to be poor AND. Poor and black. Poor and brown. Poor and female. Poor and gay. Poor and old or sick or addicted.
Folks, today we are a country of soaring stock prices and rising profits and global profits and global force.
But we are a country of working poor, of hunger in rich places, of deep worry for what tomorrow brings.
And this has been our fight. The painful disconnect that we have seen for decades. Another young senator named Robert F. Kennedy discussed some fifty years ago and said:
“Our Gross National Product, if we judge the United States of America by that…does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play…It measures neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
Half a century later, economic injustice remains the challenge of our time, tangled with every other cause we carry: racial discrimination, immigration, climate change, health care.
So friends, I am here with you today because there is ONE candidate in this race, ONE US Senator, ONE proud daughter of Oklahoma and adopted daughter of our mighty Commonwealth who has dedicated her entire life to this battle, to our cause.
For decades before most people in power noticed something was wrong, there was Elizabeth.
Before most Democrats stood up and said yes, we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Fair Housing Act and Dodd Frank –but they weren’t enough.
Before there was an editorial every day lamenting economic inequity, Elizabeth Warren knew: that stock prices don’t tell a country’s full economic story.
Medical bankruptcies and foreclosures and paychecks are part of that story too.
And the most powerful nation on earth with the most powerful economy in human history doesn’t have to sacrifice people for progress.
That is the truth that echoes through the rafters here at Everett Mills, where workers fought not just for their livelihood but their dignity.
“Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses…Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew. Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.”
And ladies and gentleman, that truth that has anchored Elizabeth Warren’s career.
I remember asking her years ago – of all things on earth why bankruptcy? Of all the areas of law she could have chosen, why bankruptcy? Why one so specific and – a young student might say – why the incredibly complicated and arcane bankruptcy?
And her response: Because bankruptcy is about how our system treats people when they lose everything. When rock bottom comes.
And the deeper meaning she took from that. That ours is a country of second chances, of redemption, of horizons that don’t disappear when fate gives you a tough hand. Our national character is measured not by how we treat people when they are flying high but when they are broken. On their knees and empty. And wanting to rise again.
In Elizabeth Warren’s America, we pull them up. We fight by their side. We refuse to leave anyone behind. We will not splinter and we will not segregate. We refuse to accept a status quo that tells us the big things are impossible, progressive dreams unreachable.
And we refuse – we REJECT – a President who tells us we are each other’s enemy. Who forces Americans to fight over the scraps of a system. Instead of UNITING against a system that finds them worthy of only scraps to begin with.
So, I am here with you today because this country needs a leader who will restore the solidarity that Donald Trump stole. Who won’t cower from the big, tough battles, from the ugly injustice and oppression that still finds its way to American soil.
A leader will bring this country together to take on our greatest common threat: a system that protects the powerful and privileged while the rest struggle to scrape by.
That leader is my colleague, my mentor, my friend – Elizabeth Warren.
Please join me in welcoming the next President of the United States!!
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