Booker says, “We can’t devolve into a nation where our highest aspiration is that we just tolerate each other. We are not called to be a...
Booker says,
“We can’t devolve into a nation where our highest aspiration is that we just tolerate each other. We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love…This understanding of love is embodied in the African saying: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.’ This is one reason I’m so motivated in this election. I believe it’s a referendum on who best embodies the leadership we need to go far, together.”
He went on to say,
We’ve watched him try to get laughs at others’ expense; try to incite fear at a time when we need to inspire courage; try to rise in the polls by dragging our national conversation into the gutter. We’ve watched him cruelly mock a journalist’s disability. We’ve watched him demean the service of my Senate colleague. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
We’ve watched him, with a broad and divisive brush, say that Mexican immigrants who came to America to build a better life are “bringing crime, they’re bringing drugs.” He says many of them are “rapists.” He said that an Indiana-born federal judge can’t be trusted to do his job because of his Mexican ancestry – a statement that even fellow Republicans have described as racist.
We’ve watched and heard him call women demeaning and degrading names. ‘Dog.’ ‘Fat pig.’ ‘Disgusting.’ ‘Animal.’ It’s a twisted hypocrisy when he treats other women in a manner he would never, ever accept from another man speaking about his wife or daughters. In a nation founded on religious freedom, he says ban all Muslims, don’t let certain people in because of how they pray.
Trump says he would run our country like he has run his businesses. Well, I’m from Jersey, and we have seen the way he leads. In Atlantic City, he got rich while his companies declared multiple bankruptcies. Yet without remorse, even as people got hurt by his failures, he bragged, ‘The money I took out of there was incredible.’ Yes, he took out lots of cash but he stiffed contractors – many of them small businesses, refusing to pay them for the work they’d done. America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.
Talk about pulling out the receipts and giving us the run down! Booker than recited Maya Angelou and gave us more of a rundown by speaking on slaves and history saying,
This is our history: escaped slaves, knowing that liberty is not secure for some until it’s secure for all, sometimes hungry, often hunted, in dark woods and deep swamps, they looked up to the North Star and said with a determined whisper, America, we will rise.
Immigrants, risking their lives in a time of sweatshops and child labor, organized labor unions devoted to lifting the tired, and poor and huddled masses – with the fiercest grit, they shouted so all could hear: America, we will rise.
King pointed to a mountain top, Kennedy pointed to the moon – from Seneca Falls to the Stonewall Inn, giants stood and said in a chorus of conviction that America, we will rise.
My fellow Americans, we cannot fall into complacency or indifference about this election, because still the only thing necessary for evil to be triumphant is for good people to do nothing. My fellow Americans, we cannot be seduced into cynicism about our politics, because cynicism is a refuge for cowards and this nation is and must always be the home of the brave. We are the United States of America. We will not falter or fail. We will not retreat or surrender – we will not surrender our values, we will not surrender our ideals, we will not surrender the moral high ground.
Here in Philadelphia, let us declare again that we will be a free people. Free from fear and intimidation. Let us declare that we are a nation of interdependence, and that in America love always trumps hate. Let us declare, so that generations yet unborn can hear us. We are the United States of America; our best days are ahead of us.
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