Sen Cory Booker speaks at King Day at the Dome Full video

Please welcome my friend, my brother, Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. South Carolina! I want to thank Jamie for that generous introduction. I indeed did know him back in the days when he had an afro. I want to be quick. I will not be speaking for 25 hours. I want to be brief. The hour is late and the temperature is cold. I want to remind people that we are here right now under the auspices of the NAACP. It was not easy to be an NAACP member in my parents' era. Members of the NAACP were targeted. They were attacked. They were threatened. They lost their jobs, but that organization stayed together, not just because of the stated mission of its title, but because they were demanding that America be the nation of its promise. And so today we are here as a defiant reminder that though they try to stop this organization, it marches on. Now, a year before I was born, April of 1968, King and his lieutenants were in Memphis, Tennessee. They were there to protest for economic rights. People forget that the march on Washington, that when you look at the list of demands that they had, there were more demands for economic justice than there were even for civil rights. And King gave the speech, we all know, I have been to the mountaintop and I have looked over and I have seen the promised land and we as a people will make it to the promised land. Well, he went back to the Lorraine Motel and he went to bed. He woke up that next morning after his last earthly slumber and went out onto the balcony and an assassin's bullet laid him dead. Now, if we were all to go to the Lorraine Motel today, it's now a museum, and we were to go out onto that balcony and look over, you would see a line in the pavement that traces where the assassin's bullet came from. What was interesting to me the first time I went there was that there was a stone marker commemorating where King died. And the mothers and fathers of that community chose to put words on that stone from the Bible, from the Torah, from the Old Testament. And the words there, they surprised me. It was powerful. It was almost as if they decided to write words that would be a challenge to future generations. Because they know that this was not about one man, it was about one nation. They knew this wasn't about an individual's yearnings, but the striving of generations. They knew that what King stood for was not to bring light unto himself, but to cast light with us unto the darkness. And so what they chose to write there was a quote from Joseph's brothers. Remember, it was Joseph with his coat of many colors. And his brothers saw him, and they proclaimed these words that the fathers and mothers of that community wrote on that tablet. And this is what is written today where King was slain. The words from the Bible, behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him and see what becomes of his dream. That is the question before us. We honor King today, but the truth of the matter is we honor something deeper than that. Because the dream was not King's alone, it is the dreams of our ancestors. It's the dreams of a slave. It's the dreams of immigrants. It's a dream that was spoken of for all of our 250 years. It's the dream that they fought for in Selma. It's the dream that they fought for at Stonewall. It's the dream that they fought for at Seneca Falls. It's a dream that was denied. It was a dream that made the poet Langston Hughes write, there's a dream in this land with its back against the wall. To save the dream for one, we must save the dream for all. I will tell you today that all of us are here because of the people who fought for us and cried for us and sweat for us and bled for us. We are here because of heroes of past who fought for labor rights and union rights. They fought for women's rights. They fought for civil rights so that we can make real on the promise of the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and all women are created equal. This is the story of our country and we honor those soldiers, those foot soldiers of the movement today. We honor them with words. We honor them with songs, but that is not enough. If we leave here today and we don't carry with us the fierce urgency of now, then we have failed as inheritors. We have squandered the wealth. We have surrendered the power. Because what can you say of the American dream today? Well, I will tell you what I believe. I believe it is time that in our generation we redeem the dream. We need to redeem the dream because still in this nation people are going bankrupt because they can't afford their medical bills. We need to redeem the dream because in this nation people who need life-saving prescriptions can't afford them. We need to redeem the dream because in our nation millions of people work full-time jobs and still find themselves in poverty. We need to redeem the dream because social security payments are still low and too many of our elders live below the poverty line. We need to redeem the dream because while China and Germany double down with their investments in public education, we are defunding our schools and not providing for our children. We need to redeem the dream because we have too many of our young people who don't believe the dream works anymore, who see themselves unable to pay for their college education, think that a house for them is beyond their reach. We must redeem the dream and I will tell you that I am full of hope today. I'm full of hope because of what our ancestors have done. American history, if it is anything, it is a perpetual testimony to the achievement of impossible things against impossible odds. How dare we surrender to cynicism or fall to fear thinking that the obstacles are before us are greater than who we are and who we can be together. How dare we think that we cannot grab the torch from our ancestors and make our strides towards freedom. We are a powerful people and the power of the people is greater than the people in power. I don't care what they say from the White House. We are the people and in our generation we shall overcome. There may yet again in our life be unmasked people jumping out of masked vehicles, sweeping people off the streets, unjustly throwing them in jail, but this ain't new in America. We have seen the oppression before. Remember Martin Luther King was on FBI watch list. They surveilled him. They trumped up charges against him, but he prevailed and his dream leaves on. We are facing dire times. There is reason to be afraid, but remember the truth. You cannot have great courage without staring down great fear. You can't have great hope without experiencing great despair. Hope is not the absence of despair. Hope is the active conviction that despair will not have the last word. We the people will have the last word. I tell you this, a lot of people confuse our history. They wait and look to Washington for change, but change does not come from Washington. Change does not come from the State House. Change has always come from the people. We did not get civil rights because years ago Strom Thurmond came to the Senate floor and said I've seen the light. Let those Negro people have the right to vote. No, we got that right because people marched for it. They voted for it. They stood for it. They sweat for it. They cried for it and like Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner, black and white, Christian and Jewish, they died for it as well. And so what will we do now that we are at center stage in history? What will our legacy be? What dream will we leave to our ancestors? What achievements will we make? What battles will we fight? I want to end with this. Greatness of America is found in the neighborhoods and communities. King said it. Anybody can be great. You don't need to be a congressperson or a senator. You don't even need to make your verb agree with your noun. All you need to be is somebody whose heart is full of love and their soul is energized by the spirit. It has always been change brought by the people. We are not an aristocracy. We are not a theocracy. We're not a nation where we said that it's only the elites that will be the powerful. Our system has become so profoundly corrupted now with decisions from a Supreme Court like Citizens United. They have allowed billions of dollars to pour into our communities. It's one of the reasons why Ro Khanna and I reject corporate PAC money because the corruption in Washington is out of control. But we have seen corruption before. We have seen dark forces before. But the only thing necessary for evil to be triumphant is for good people to do nothing. King said it. What we will have to repent for is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. And so I leave you with this story. I have my roots down here down south, but I'm a Jersey boy. And there was a storm that came to New Jersey you all heard of called Hurricane Sandy. And I was the mayor of New Jersey's largest city at the time, Newark. And hours before the storm came in, I went out and had two police officers driving me in a command vehicle. We were going to do one more sweep of the city to make sure everything was locked down. And we were driving around, and most people had obeyed our orders to get off the streets. But every once in a while, I'd see somebody, and I'd turn on my lights and sirens and say, come on, now, get home, get home. Well, as we were driving down this long stretch, as the rain was punishing the windshield and blowing our big SUV around like it was a leaf, I got a phone call. Now, forgive me, because I believed at the time that the phone call started with the stupidest question in America. Here's the question. I answer the phone, and the person says, hello, this is the White House operator. Will you hold for the president of the United States of America? And I'm like, who says no to that question? I mean, I may say no to it now, but I'm just joking. Now, listen, this is about 15 years ago, and I want to be honest with you. I miss Obama. Now, I miss Obama. I miss her husband, too, but I miss Michelle. And so I tell the operator, yes, I'll hold for the president United States. Next thing you know, I'm talking to my second favorite, Obama. And it was a beautiful conversation. Talk about a man of grace and a man of generosity. He not only talked to me about the federal response. This is why I'm so upset, and Ro Khan and I are working against the cuts to FEMA. But he said, Corey, we're with you. I hung up the phone feeling affirmed, feeling encouraged in a storm. And then my phone rings again. And I answer it, no operator this time, but I recognize the voice immediately. It's the governor of my state. Now, you all don't know who the governor was about 15 years ago. You never heard of him. His name was Chris Christie. You guys don't know who that is. But this is not a time for partisanship. It is not a time for tribalism. When there's a storm, it's no left or right. The storm we're experiencing now, I'll tell you this, Republicans need health care just as much as Democrats do. Republicans deserve jobs with dignity just as much as Democrats do. People want to divide us, but we need to remind people we have common cause and common pain that should give us common purpose. And so Chris Christie and I talked. We had a good conversation. We affirmed each other, talked about what we needed to do. It was a meaningful conversation. I will never forget it. And I hung up the phone. But just as I hung up the phone, the wind and the rain seemed to pick up. And we were going up a hill now. And I looked up. And in the distance, all I saw was this light swinging back and forth. And as we got closer, I was able to make out through the windshield that it was a man that was holding that light, swinging it back and forth in a yellow slicker. We got closer, and then I saw it. At the top of the hill, all the mighty trees had already been blown down. And they pulled down the wires and the telephone poles. It was a disaster of wood and wire. And we pulled up slowly. We would have stopped anyway to take notes and alert the emergency crews. But now my officers pulled me right down in front of this man who had been swinging that light. And I rolled down my window, and I saw it was an elderly man. And please forgive me. I almost feel regretful that I did this. But I raised my voice, and I yelled at him. I said, sir, what are you doing out here? And then he looked at me as if I had asked him the stupidest question in America. He points over the shattered wood and twisted wire. He said, Mayor, Mayor, I'm standing out here to make sure no one comes along and gets hurt. I had just talked to the President of the United States of America. I talked to the Governor of my great state. And I'm the mayor of the largest city. But I'm going to tell you right now, in the worst storm I've seen in my lifetime, the greatness that I best saw exhibited was not people who held offices on high, but the man who took his light and in a savage storm went onto the mountaintop, held up his light in the dark of night so that other people would not get hurt. No greater love has a man than this. That is who we are. That is the story of America. Not people with position, but people with purpose. Not people on high, but the grassroots soldiers in the trenches. That's how America is made. That's how we redeem the dream. And so, South Carolina, I ask you right now, will you stand up? Will you raise your light? Will you stand for health care for all? Will you stand for justice for all? Will you stand for economic liberty? Will you stand for public education? Will you stand for your brother and your sister? Because we are Americans. When we stand together and work together and march together, that's when we win together. I tell you this, the secret to our success lies right here, right now. South Carolina, we will overcome. Thank you.