“It Is Up to Us to Be the Leaders We Need to Save Our Country”

Hello and thank you all for being here.

The pronouns I use the most are the ones probably understood the least by those in the White House today. They are WE, US and OURS.

We are in this together.

And it is up to us to be the leaders we need to save our country and our democracy.

We come to this place this afternoon from many separate journeys. Our ancestors travelled different paths. But all our parents and grandparents and great grandparents and those before them – set their feet upon long and often difficult roads that converge here today, at this critical moment in the history of our nation and humankind.

Among us today are descendants of the original peoples of this land and all those who came here, not to conquer or colonize, but simply to live. Refugees and asylum seekers. Ordinary people who fled war and famine and poverty and repression. People who have always asked for nothing more than the right to live and work and love and care for their families in freedom, with justice. They came to America in search of a dream that has always fallen short, always been flawed, remains incomplete and yet still inspires hope across the world.

We know the history of this land and its peoples. Those forced to walk the trails of tears. Those brought here in chains against their will and those who gladly gave all they possessed to get here. Those who arrived in overloaded ships to live in tenements and slums. Those who walked across the southern deserts. Those who endured Jim Crow and the nights of terror. All those who suffered and dreamed and sacrificed—not to some dreadful god of greed and retribution but for their children and their children’s children. For our future. For us.

That dream—of what a nation by and for the people could be—is now threatened more deeply than any time since war tore our nation apart in the Spring of 1861, claimed the lives of almost a million Americans, and opened wounds that fester to this day.

A fascist regime has taken power. Their billionaire cronies are further enriched. Working people are denied health care. Protections of our land and water and air are abandoned, as are freedom of speech and due process. Grift and cruelty and racism are celebrated. Women are denigrated and denied control of their bodies. Sexual and gender minorities are demonized. The military is deployed in American cities to combat fictional foes. Masked and unidentified thugs terrorize and abduct immigrants and native-born alike. They threaten sovereign nations from Denmark to Venezuela to Canada with war and invasion. They control much of the media, the voting systems of 27 states, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House but blame Democrats for the shutdown of our government while they continue to build prisons and detention camps across the land.

They did not come to govern; they came to destroy. And they claim we are the ones who hate America.