[applause] i want to get your questions. I want to orient you to who the heck am i. I was raised by two incredible parents. They have seen the worst of america. They were civil rights activists. They had seen violence and discrimination, but only saw the best of america. We are who we are as a country because we came together, stood together, and worked together. My dad is one of these guys, the older i got, the more difficult his story for a childhood was. By the time he was older, the hail was like beach balls falling from the sky. Let me tell you when this tsunami hit my town. I was like you grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He said dont disrespect me, thou shall honor your mother and father. You cant look it up, but it happened. My dad was born to a single mom in a segregated world. My history back to slavery was just poverty, poverty, poverty. He would tell me, dont tell people i was poor. Tell them i was po. He was born in america. My father would tell me that he is who he is because of a conspiracy of love. People not related to him were willing to fight for him. My fathers mom could not take care of him. She got ill. It was the community who took him in. No college in my familys history. They told him, you are going to go to college. He could not afford it. A church put a collection plate around and gave him money to go to North Carolina central university. He landed there in the early 1960s when the Student Movement started in North Carolina. This guy who grew up in a segregated town suddenly sees white people showing up to sit in for his rights. When he got to washington, i dont care who you are, irish, jewish, there was a time that Corporate America did not want you. He landed there when black people werent hired by corporations, but a coalition of blacks and whites that stood up and fought for him to be the first black person hired as a sales and but a small company, i dont know if youve ever heard of it, called ibm in the entire virginia area. When he got a promotion, he led people to the table fairly, you do well and the company does better. Inclusion, diversity, he gets promoted to manhattan, looks for places to live and finds out the White Communities in the 1960s in northern new jersey did not want black families. They were doing housing segregation. People, mostly white people, who said they will fight for him. White couples followed my parents around. When they were told a house was sold, the white couple would come and find out if it was for sale. The house i grew up in, we were told it was sold, the white couple found it was still for sale. On the day of the closing, the white couple didnt show up, and my father did, and they hired a volunteer lawyer. When they walked into the Real Estate Agent office, he stands up and punches my dads lawyer in the face and six a dog on my dad. When i was growing up in this beautiful home in my community, every time my dad would tell this story, the dog would get bigger. [laughter] i am literally here, we are all here, because of people who did not just say the words of our nation, liberty and justice for all they were willing to sacrifice and fight for it. My dad watched me growing up and said dont you ever walk around this house like you hit a triple. You were born on third base. I went off and got a scholarship to play football. Tot to oxford, i came back yale law school. My dad was not impressed. He said you have more degrees than the month of july, but youre not hot. Life isnt about the degrees. It is about the service you give. In my family, the values i was raised with, what did i do after i got my yale law degree . I moved into one of the poorest neighborhoods in my state to be a tenants rights lawyer because people fought for my housing rights. I will fight for other people. I still live in that neighborhood today. The only person in the senate that lives in a neighborhood, black and Brown Community below the poverty line, and we dont make the mistake in our community of mistaking wealth for worth. We are an incredible community. I want to get to your questions. I want you to know my values. I fight every day. Life is about purpose, not position. I may be running for president , but i am fighting for the same reasons i ran for city council. That a fight for people are too often left out of the equation. For families like mine, who are looked down upon, discriminated against, to make this nations promise real for everyone. Thats how i fight. How we fight, that is what i know, we stand up for each other. Our strength comes from each other. We are each others hope. We are each others promise. When we stand up and organize and mobilize, that is how we win. People want to make this election all about donald trump. It is not a referendum on him. It is a referendum on us. When we come out, when we stand up, when we bring out the swarm, we win elections. This past election, in some states like wisconsin, he got less votes than mitt romney got. We saw massive africanamerican communities alone, the blacks came out in the same rate as 2012. We would have hillary clinton. The next nominee should be the one that can excite, engage, and ignite a movement. I am not in this just to beat donald trump. I want to beat Mitch Mcconnell. That means we have to win senate seats in North Carolina. We have to win seats in georgia. We have to win seats in arizona. We have to bring out a wave election. People tell me about the polls right now and i laugh. We have never had somebody from our party, someone leading in the polls right now, has ever gone on to be president. Gloria has volunteered to be our microphone runner today. This is when we should all break into a chant. Calling gloria you didnt know you would get a musical discussion. I will kick it off with a right to work governor like we have, how will you as president ensure that labor has a seat at the table . Senator booker you say kick it off, trying to appeal to me as a football player. What is happening in this state is shameful. It is happening and states all around the country. These attacks on our unions emboldened and empowered by a right wing extremist Supreme Court. They are undermining the values and the winds of our generation parents generation. They are rolling back workers rights. Civil rights, Voting Rights. They are rolling back womens rights and the ability for people to control their own body. We have to stop this. One of the ways we stop this is by passing legislation to stop it. This is why i am on the equality act. This is why i am on the new Voting Rights act. We have to get these things past. The decisions to get workers rights, we have to pass it. Great pieces of legislation to proactive that we want to get passed through congress. Not justing to do that by focusing on the white house, but by making sure we have the kind of president that can win the presidency and create a wave where we can win up and down the ticket. When im trying to do in my leadership is to wake up this country to understand this is just like the Civil Rights Movement again. We need to create a nationwide movement. That is why you will have a lot of people stand here but dont ask people what they are going to do for you. That is what politicians do. If you want to talk to leaders, ask what you have been doing this fight already. One of the reasons i have such one of the reasons i have such labor support in new jersey, when i was mayor, everything i did, you want to do something in my city, unions have to be the center. Workers were fighting at the airport for minimum wage, i was on the picket line. [applause] one thing you should ask here in new hampshire, because a lot of these issues are because you have governors like you have right now. What were the president ial candidates doing in the last midterm elections . In this racedy that raised more money for local officials, make sure back on your governor than i did for made sure you pack on your governor then i did. If i am your president , i am going to be not just the president of United States but the leader of the Democratic Party. It is not just about the federal victories. Jobs with dignity, these are the victories we need to win in the next four years. Not just overturning Supreme Court cases and legislation but helping to shift bargaining, raising the minimum wage, saving Pension Plans that are in danger. Making sure people can retire with dignity. We need to make sure we fight for the larger country by fighting up and down the ballot and making sure the Democratic Party and our values begin to rise again. Thank you for coming to new hampshire. I have a question for you about agriculture, agribusiness, and the price of food. I worked 20 years for the state and retired. And an, Social Security, 10 an hour job. The cost of green beans last year was . 99. Now they are 1. 99. The cost of a hamburger, i cant even tell you. Mushrooms were 1. 89. Now they are 3. 89. I went six months without hamburger waiting for a sale. You want to do Carbon Neutral agribusiness, which i agree with. How will that affect the price of food . Senator booker god bless you. I rarely get a question like that. Think a lota i about. I will come to the white house with a much different set of experiences than anybody else. One of them is just living for the last 20 plus years in low income community. I see people on my block that work longer hours than my parents did. Add my corner bodega, they still need food stamps to feed their family. We have a real crisis. It is a crisis for independent family farmers who are being driven out of business right ourbecause of things like farm bill. When you spent one dollar in food, the percentage that goes to the people that produce the food, it has gone down 50 . I met with republican farmers in the midwest and they were telling me that their world has changed because they are getting squeezed. Monsanto has bought all of the source product. Raising the prices of seed and chemicals they use. They only have one person that dictates the price. The reason the price of food has gone up, it is because of big corporate consolidation in the agricultural sector. Again, past is prologue. Ask the candidates what they have done about the crisis. I put a bill in with the other farmer in the senate, jon tester, to put a moratorium on over consolidation in the ag sector. So we can start working to fight on these trends. It also creates reverse realities. We have a Serious Health crisis in this country. My kids and your kids could walk into a Grocery Store and the twinkie product is cheaper than an apple. Because of what farm subsidies are going towards. This is directly related to our childrens help, health care in schoolrformance this is all interrelated. Enough is enough. The cost of goods is going to o high because of this monopolization of oligarchies and i will stop that. I will start having policies to help the independent family farmers, making organic food and healthier food. And they can do it at lower prices if we create a food system that works. You said you were a retiree. There is something about a society, three places you want to look to see what a society is really about. See how they treat their children. We are a nation a shameful we lead industrialized weary leadn, shameful we industrialized nation in child mortality. Childcare is more expensive in most states then College Tuition at state colleges and we pay those childcare workers poverty wages. Look what we are doing to children. No paid family leave. No universal preschool. Look at how a nation treats its children. Look how a nation treats its elderly. Millions of americans, retirees, live at or below the poverty line because we have a Social Security system that is a regressive tax. Think about this. We have people whose Social Security checks are not keeping up with the cost of inflation and people are living on fixed income and seeing everything going up, from prescription drugs to the cost of hamburger. I will make that go from a regressive tax to making it far more progressive by lifting the cap on Social Security payments. [applause] we will increase the payments so no senior system is ever below the poverty line in america. Look how that look at prisons and who they incarcerate. Incarcerate the media. There is only one person from the New York Times here i might want to incarcerate. Russia, they incarcerate their political prisoners. Who do we incarcerate . The poor. Thousands of people in america are there because they cannot pay their bail. We have a criminal Justice System that treats you better if youre rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Who elsearcerate do we incarcerate . The mentally ill. There is no treatment being given. We over incarcerate women. Almost 90 are survivors of sexual trauma and sexual assault. Human Rights Violations for mothers. Bedtill shackle women to when they are giving birth. Another group we over incarcerate his minorities. I respect and love joe biden. I was not being disrespectful to him. But i will tell you what, there were more marijuana arrests and convictions in 2017 that all Violent Crime arrests combined. Who do we incarcerate . Kids at stanford who i saw smoking weed at rates that were pretty incredible . Talk about contact high. Nobody is worried about dartmouth. We incarcerate the poor. Disproportionally minorities. If you are black or white in america, there is no difference in marijuana usage or sales. But africanamericans are four times more likely to be incarcerated. Our prisons are shameful institutions. Women, over incarcerated. Veterans, over incarcerated. That is a testimony to the lack of courageous empathy in our society. All of these things, i just want to say, i am going to stand up and change. Because after two plus decades living in my community, seeing seniors work their whole life living in poverty, seeing people having to make unhealthy food choices, i will change this as your president. [applause] a signgn waving i see waving back there that i have to wrap up right now. You are a great man. This is a crowded democratic field and i want to ask for your support. This is not just about the policies we have been discussing. This is a moment we should make but also with our head with our heart and our gut. Who is going to represent the spirit of this country . I was going up to a stage in iowa and some big dude the i dont know if you know this, i am a big dude, former tight end. The older i get, the better i was. The guy stops me and says, dude, i want you to punch donald trump in the face. I go, dude, that is a felony. We do not beat him by being like him. We match his darkness with our light. We match his hate with our love. It so eloquently, that we have to repent for the silence and inaction of the good people. If we have record voter turnouts, we will win seats up and down the ticket in 2020. I know i am the best person in this field to ignite this country so we have a movement election. What gets legislation done . Getting big movements to push better legislation. We have suffrage legislation not because a bunch of guys on the senate floor got together. No, we got it because of activism. It was not Strom Thurmond who said, i have seen the light. Ro peoplee those neg the right to vote. We got it because of activism. If you elect me your president , i am warning you. Write this down. If you elect me your president , i will ask more from you than any president has ever asked from you in your lifetime. Not asking you to pay more for your groceries. I will not ask you to pay more taxes. Everybody in this room will get a tax break. I will ask you to volunteer. To serve more. I will ask this union to help me organize even more. We need changes in america not from washington but american s standing up for americans. The part of the story i told, i went back to find out who those americans were who stood up for my family. I found the lawyer who represented my family. I asked him why, why would you in the 1960s, you were busy starting your business, why would you help a black family move in your neighborhood . He says, i was sitting at home watching tv. On march 7, 1965, the movie was called judgment at nuremberg. Three channels back then. Most of america was watching this movie and they broke away from the movie to show a bridge in alabama called the Edmund Pettus bridge. Here is a white man on the couch a thousand miles away watching marchers from selma get stopped on a bridge in alabama by state troopers who then tear gassed them and charged in with billy clubs and started viciously beating them. What did this guy on a couch in new jersey do . He did not allow his inability to do everything to undermine his determination to do something. He stood up from the couch and said, i cannot go to alabama. I cant afford a plane ticket. But i will do what is a powerful american tradition. I will do the best i can with what i have where i am. He was a patriot. He showed his love. He called around to see who needed an hour of pro bono work. He found this group of activists that were trying to do something about real estate segregation. He said they started working and they got other volunteers demanding from their neighbors. By 1969, they had a whole system working. He says, i will never forget the day i got a case file from a family trying to move up from the south, frustrated and discouraged, that their American Dream was being stolen away from them by racism. The names on that case file, the family coming up from the south, they were cary and carolyn booker, my parents. I am literally a United States senator. The fourth black person ever popularly elected to that office. I am running for the highest office in the land because an american on a couch in new jersey did not just sit there. They stood up for our country. This election is not about him. It is about, will we stand . Will