Beto O'Rourke Delivers Remarks at Rally for Dr. Eliz Markowitz at No Label Brewing in Katy, Texas

In order to take control of the state legislature, we have to flip nine seats by 2020. And if we don't, when the maps are redrawn after the 2020 census, we are going to be have, we are going to have maps that are unfairly drawn and we are going to have Democrats drawn out of their seats. And we are going to have to live with that Republican corruption and gerrymandering for the next decade. Absolutely boo. That is not something that we can afford to do. And so I need your help. I cannot do this alone. I am just one person, but together we are an army of voters and each one of us can make the difference. I need y'all to understand that your vote counts. In the neighboring district 132, which representative Gina Kalani represents, she won by 113 votes. 113. Every single vote matters. So I need your help. I need you to sign up to do a block walking shift. I need you to pull out your phone and download that Empower app and get mobilized. I need you to donate your money to our campaign so we can reach more voters. And I need you to tell every single person you know, friend, family member, or pet kitten that they need to come out. Early voting starts October 22nd. Voting day is November 5th and we will win this seat. And then we will have the opportunity to have a state legislator that will act upon her promises. And I promise you that as your state legislator, I will work for high quality public education. I will ensure that all Texans have access to high quality affordable health care. I will ensure that our students can go to school in safety and we immediately institute universal background checks, red flag laws, and safe storage laws. And I have no doubt that Beto will do the same. It is so rare to see someone with such fortitude and such courage as Beto. Someone with such a moral compass and a spine to stand up for what is right even when it is not popular. Someone who understands that we must value people over politicians. And so it is my honor and my privilege to announce to you that we have Beto O'Rourke here, presidential candidate for the United States of America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. How are you? Hey, thanks for wearing this shirt. Yeah. Thank you very much. Good to see you. Good job. Yeah. How are you? How's everybody feeling? How is everybody feeling about Eliz? Yeah. Are we going to make her the next state rep from HD28? Yeah. All right. I feel it. And I got to tell you, the road to 2020 runs through 2019. The road to America runs through Texas. And the road to Texas runs through Fort Bend County. So we cannot be in a more important place at a more important time than where we are at this moment. Happily drinking a beer without judgment. It is 12 o'clock somewhere. No label. I want to thank you for hosting us. I want to thank you for bringing us all together under this beautiful sky in this extraordinary country that finally has a chance to get it back and to make sure that we are reflective and representative of everyone, of the genius of America. As we were knocking doors just now, Eliz and I, the first person who came out to talk to us, we asked her, what issue is most important to you? And you might have expected to hear healthcare or gun violence or the endemic racism that defines life for so many of our fellow Americans. Any number of issues that are critical to the future of this country. But the first thing on her mind was compassion. She said, I just want us to be good to one another, to listen to one another, to bring everyone in to the future of this country. So we say, no me importa. If you are a Republican, you're in the right place. If you're a Democrat, you're in the right place. Independents, you are welcome here as well. Whether you're drinking a beer or abstaining on this day, I just want you to know that before you are anything else, you are our fellow Americans, our fellow human beings. And now if ever is our opportunity to treat one another in that way, to make sure that everyone receives the kindness, the dignity, the respect that they are owed as human beings that have been denied to far too many. When I was asking Eliz about what motivated her to run, she talked about her long, deep history with public education. And she said, I want to make sure that our public school teachers and educators and support staff and bus drivers and counselors and librarians and therapists and cafeteria workers are all treated with the respect that they deserve and that they've earned. That we reflect the kindness and the goodness and the strength and the power of what they provide day in and day out in that classroom. Very often in Texas, in fact, better odds than not that you're working a second or a third job just to make ends meet. That out of your own pocket, you are paying not just for the supplies in that classroom, not just for the decorations as we approach Halloween, but for that child on free and reduced breakfast and lunch, you're paying for their dinner because you know they do not have a warm meal to go home to at the end of the day. To that child who shows up in the same pair of jeans, the same t-shirt, the same chonus and socks Monday through Thursday. By Friday, that teacher has purchased a new set of clothes because she understands that his ability to learn is tied to a sense of self-worth and dignity. And though she does not have enough to make ends meet in her own home, she's going to make sure that that kid can meet his goals in his life through that classroom. What if, Eliz asks us, we paid that teacher a living wage, showed her the respect that she deserves, make sure that every kid, regardless of their zip code, the color of their skin, how many generations they can count themselves, Americans, or whether they just got here last week, can look forward to a world-class public school education, beginning not in kindergarten when you're five years old, but pre-k universally for every four-year-old in this country. What if, given what has just happened in Midland and Odessa, given what happened at Santa Fe High School, given what happened in Sutherland Springs, given the fact that someone drove 600 miles with an AK-47, a weapon of war designed to kill people on a battlefield, and it's what it does more effectively, more efficiently, in greater numbers than any other weapon that is out there. 22 people gunned down in a Walmart the Saturday before schools started buying school supplies. Some of them are those teachers buying for those kids that they are sacrificing so much for right now. What if we decided that we are not going to be complicit in the violence and the death and the pain and the suffering and the fear under which our children and their teachers and people across this state, especially Hispanics and Mexican-Americans who've told me they feel like they have a target on their back right now. What if we decided we were no longer going to allow the sale of those weapons of war in our communities? What if we said we were going to buck, that was with the B, the NRA, and instead of listening to or feeling them, we're going to listen to Moms Demand Action, we're going to listen to March for Our Lives, we're going to listen to our fellow Americans who tell me, gun owners and non-gun owners alike, that they also have kids, that they fear for their future, that they want us to do the right thing while we still can, that they recognize this is not a natural disaster, nor is it an act of God, this is a human-caused problem with a human solution, and we are the human beings who have come up with that solution right here in Texas. What if, as we stand here in the most diverse county in the United States of America, we recognize that if immigration is a problem, it is the best possible problem the United States could have, and we want to make sure that no child, no dreamer, has to fear deportation back to a country they do not know, whose language they do not speak, where they no longer have family, and where if we send them there and they are successful against those long odds, they'll be successful for that place, not this state, not our country. What if we acknowledged that so many U.S. citizen children right here in Fort Bend County in Texas, in the United States of America, live in mixed immigration status families, know not when or if their parents on their way to work after dropping them off at school are going to be picked up, detained, deported back, separated from them right now, in the cruelest administration that this country has ever seen, an administration that has lost the lives of seven children under their custody and care, an administration that has caged children after deporting their parents back to the very countries from which they fled, an administration that uses this Orwellian migrant protection protocol to leave tens of thousands of desperate, vulnerable, defenseless human beings wallowing in their own misery in Mexico, unable to follow our own asylum laws. What if we decided right here in Fort Bend County, right here in Texas, we would lead this country in completely rewriting this country's immigration laws to reflect our genius, our power, our strength, to acknowledge the facts that El Paso, Texas is one of, if not the safest cities in the United States of America, not despite, but because it is a city of immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees. No, it is a hard conversation for us to have. It is one that is necessary, in fact, fundamental to any chance of success that we have going forward. The long history of race in America, racism in America, the foundation of this country, not on the 4th of July but on August 20th of 1619, the first time somebody from West Africa was kidnapped from their homeland, their home country, their family, transported in bondage across the Atlantic, made to come here as a slave and build the wealth and the success and the greatness of this country. Not only would they never enjoy the benefits of that, but their descendants effectively locked out of full participation in our economy, in our educational system, and in a state that recently ranked 50th in voter turnout in our democracy. What if we decided that we were going to acknowledge that this is part of our story? It is part of what has held us back and held some communities back more than others. It is part of why we have the largest prison population on the face of the planet, disproportionately comprised of people of color, people who are arrested for using marijuana, which black people and white people use at the same rates, but only black people are more likely than not to be stopped, to be frisked, to be arrested, to be put in jail, to upon release have to check a box on every employment application form, meaning it's less likely that they get the job. Only in this country is there 10 times the wealth in white America than there is in black America. Only in this state is a five-year-old child in kindergarten five times as likely to be disciplined, suspended, or expelled based on the color of their skin, starting a schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline, not in high school, but at five years old when that kid is absolutely defenseless against the system that he's being brought up in right now. What if we decided that we were going to confront white supremacy in America, that we acknowledge that the vast majority of domestic terror, terror groups, and terrorists are white supremacists and they are armed better than they've ever been before, and that we are going to stop them, and that we're going to have this conversation through a reparations commission to make sure that the full entire story of the United States of America is told, because we bring in every single person in this country to the table to address the wrongs that have been committed in the name of this country and ensure that they are not visited on future generations. Are we up to that, Ford Band? Let's lead the way. Y por ultimo, let's make sure that in addition to addressing the every single one of us should be able to enjoy and look forward to, not just for ourselves, but for our kids and future generations, and that's a dignity expressed in immigration. It's a dignity expressed in reconciling the racism in this country. It's a dignity that can be found when health care is a right and not a privilege or a function of luck or circumstance. It's a dignity that defies the status quo in Texas, where the largest provider of mental health care services today is the county jail system. The largest inpatient mental health care facility is the Harris County Jail that schizophrenics, those with bipolar disorder, those with clinical depression, all too often, they shouldn't have to do this, but get arrested to go to the one place where they are guaranteed the care that they would otherwise be unable to avail themselves of. Universal health care that means primary health care, mental health care, and ensures that every woman makes her own decisions about her own body and has access to the care that makes that happen. What if we address the economic dignity of making sure that you do not have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, that one job is enough because it pays at a minimum $15 an hour, that you're able to take time off to be with your family, to take care of your children, to take care of yourself, and that we eliminate discrimination in the workplace where women of color, black women, are paid 61 cents on the dollar that a white man makes for the same job, the same value, the same hours. Latinas paid 53 cents on the dollar today. What if we made sure that every woman, regardless of her background or zip code, is earning the same as any man in this country? And then this, the greatest challenge that we face, not as Democrats, not as Republicans, not even as Texans or Americans, but as human beings, a challenge that you understand perhaps better than almost anyone else in this country, the fact that the floods that we are seeing, the fires that are devastating so many parts of this country, the droughts in north and west Texas that undermine our ability to feed ourselves or grow what clothes everybody here right now, the wars that have been precipitated by a warming planet, the fact that we have but 0.5 degrees Celsius left to us and 10 years within which to make sure we do not exceed it, after which those disasters that I just described, what you've seen here in Fort Bend and in Harris County, will pale in comparison to the death, to the devastation, to the hell that we will visit on our kids and grandkids. We have this singular opportunity, 10 years, to make sure that we free ourselves from independence on fossil fuels, that we embrace renewable wind and solar energy technology, that we keep more land under conservation without cultivating it or raising it or developing it to pull more carbon out of the air and that we take the lead again as this world's indispensable nation to convene the other powers of the planet to do their part as well. Only then and only if all of us come together and only if we commit ourselves to not meeting this with half steps or half measures or only half the country can we be up to the greatest challenge that we've ever faced which will produce the greatest opportunity this country has ever seen. No pressure, Fort Bend County, but this election that begins with early voting on October 22nd and culminates on election night when we are celebrating the hell out of Elizabeth's victory on November 5th, this this is where it begins. Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go do this. Thank you all for having us out here. Gracias.