[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 were civil rights activists. We are who we are as a country because we Work Together and stood together. My dad 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 fed, dad, you grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He said, dont you disrespect me. My dad was born to a single mom in a segregated world. I know my Family History back to slavery was just poverty, poverty, poverty. He would tell me, dont tell people i was poor. Tell them i was po. I could not afford the other two. But 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. 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. He sees white people showing up to sitin 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. A coalition of blacks and whites dont care who you are, irish, jewish, there was a time that that stood up and fought for him to be the first black person hired as a salesman by Company Called ibm in the entire virginia area. Inclusion, diversity, he gets virginia area. When he got a promotion, promoted to manhattan, looks for places to live and finds out the white families in new jersey did not want black families. He found a bunch of people who said, we will fight for you. They did this sting operation where white couples followed my parents around. The house i grew up in, we were told it was sold. A white couple found out it was on sale. Up on the day. Ow a volunteer lawyer showed up. When they walked into the Real Estate Agent office, he stands up and punch is my dads lawyer in the face and six a dog on my dad. As i was growing up in this beautiful home in this great community, every time my dad would tell the 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 got a scholarship to play football. Went to oxford on a rhodes scholar. I came back to yale law school. My dad was not impressed. He said you have more degrees in the month of july but you are not hot. Life isnt about the degrees. It is about the service you give. My faith and my it is about the service you fame values i was raised with what did i do after i got my yale law degree . I moved into one the poorest cities 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 who lives in a neighborhood below the poverty line. We do not mistake wealth for worth. We are an incredible community. 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. It is a fight for people that are too often left out of the equation. Thelies like mine who were down upon, or discriminated against, to make this nations promise real for everyone. That is why i fight. But 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 of his 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 about one guy and one office. A referendum on him. It is a referendum on us. When we bring out the swarm, we win elections. We are each of his promise. This past election, in some states like wisconsin, he got less votes than mitt romney got. If blacks came out in the same rate as they did in 2012, 2016, we would have president clinton right now. The next nominee needs to be in to ignite a movement. I am not in this just to beat donald trump. I want to beat Mitch Mcconnell. [applause] 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 way 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. Thank you, gloria. This is when we should all break into a chant. Calling gloria i will kick it off with a right to work governor like we have, how will he was president how will you ensure labor has a seat at the table . Senator booker you say kick it off, he is 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 Supreme Court that continues to the values and domains of my parents generation. They are rolling back workers rights. Civil rights, Voting Rights. They are rolling back womens rights, 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 im on the new Voting Rights act. We have to get these things past. There are two demi will great pieces of legislation. The freedom to negotiate act, we want to get passed through congress. We are going to do that not by just focusing on the white house. But by making sure we create a wave election where we can win up and down the ticket. One of the things im trying to do in my leadership is try to wake up this country to understand that this is just like the civil rights movement. We need to create a nationwide movement. That is why you will have a lot of people stand here but dont as people to tell you what they will 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 labor support in new jersey, when i was mayor, everything i did, you want to build a hotel here, project labor agreement. You want to do something in my city, unions have to be the center. When airport workers were fighting for a minimum wage i , was on the picket line. I was marching with them. [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 . There is nobody in this race who helped to raise more money for local officials to make sure that you won your legislature, that you push back on your governor, than 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. We need to make sure it is not just about the federal victories. We need to make sure union leader, labor, 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 shift to lifting the minimum wage, saving Pension Plans that are in danger. Making sure people can retire st with security and dignity. There is a much bigger agenda that one person and one office will not solve. We need to make sure we fight with a 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. My name is mary. I have a question for you about agriculture, agribusiness and the price of food. I worked 20 years for the state and retired. Pension, Social Security, and a 10 an hour job. The cost of green beans last year was . 99. Now they are 1. 99. A hamburger, i cannot even tell you. Mushrooms were 1. 89. Now they are 3. 89. I went six months without a hamburger waiting for a sale. You want to do Carbon Neutral agribusiness, which i agree with. How will that affect the price year was . 99. Of food . Thank you. Senator booker god bless you. I really get a question like that. Its an area that i think a lot about. Again, 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. And they still need food stamps to feed their family. We have a real crisis. It is not just a crisis for us. It is a crisis for independent family farmers who are being driven out of business right now, because of things like our favors bigwhich agribusiness, where you are seeing massive consolidation. 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 used to have five or six people that bought from their businesses. Now they only have one person that dictates the price. The reason the price of food has gone up is not because of the farmer being driven out of business it is because of big , corporate consolidation in the agricultural sector. Ask the candidates what they have done about the crisis. I put a bill in with the other,e farmer in the senate, to put a moratorium on all corporate consolidation in the ag sector. To fight backin on these trends that are jacking up the price on your foods and putting farmers out of business. It also creates perverse 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 where our farm subsidies are going towards. This is directly related to our childrens health, health care system, performance in school. This is all interrelated. Enough is enough. Toocost of goods is going high because of this monopolization of oligarchies and i will stop that. The ag sector is where it will stop. I will start having policy to help the independent family farmers, often making organic food and healthier food. We can have a good system that works. You said you were a retiree. To directly say that. 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 that is shameful. Of industrialrld nations in infant 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. Universal preschool. Look at how a nation treats its children. Next group you want to look at, 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. And yet, their Social Security checks are frozen. 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 Citizen is at or below the poverty line in america. Want to say,p i when you look at how a nation treats its peoples, look how that look at prisons and who they incarcerate. There is only one person from the New York Times here i might want to incarcerate. [laughter] incarceratethey their political prisoners. Who do we incarcerate . The poor. There are people in jail right now 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 else do we incarcerate . The mentally ill. The biggest institutions in america are prisons and jails, and there is no treatment being given. The next group we incarcerate is women. We over incarcerate women. Threet of every incarcerated women on earth is in the u. S. Almost 90 are survivors of sexual trauma and sexual assault. Human Rights Violations for mothers. We still shackle women to beds when they are giving birth. Another group we over incarcerate is 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 than all Violent Crime arrests combined. Who do we incarcerate . Kids at stanford who i saw smoking weed . Talk about contact high. Nobody is worried about dartmouth. We incarcerate the poor. If you are black or white in america, there is no difference in marijuana usage or sales, but four timesricans are more likely to be incarcerated or. Our prisons are shameful in showing that we dont love each other. We put people that are fighting addiction in. Women over incarcerated. Veterans over incarcerated. That is a testimony to the lack of courageous empathy in our society. All of these things i will 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] i see a sign waving back there h a man with hair, a beard i have to wrap up right now. Can i say a closing remark . 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 decisions we should make them with our head, but also our heart and gut. Who is going to represent the spirit of this country . I was going up to a stage in iowa and some big dude thewhe and i am a big dude. Former stanford football player. 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 said, 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. If we have record voter turnouts, we will win seats up and down the ticket in 2020. I am running because i know i am the best person in this field to ignite this country so we have a movement election. What gets legislation done is not just the legislative design, which is important, but getting big movements to push better legislation. We have suffrage legislation not because a bunch of guys on the senate floor got together. Lets give women the right to vote. Ready, break. No. It was because of activism. It was not Strom Thurmond and said, i have seen the light. Lets give those the group people a right to vote. No. We got it because of activism. If you elect me your president , i am warning you. Write this down. The only person that is giving a warning label on their presidency. 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. I have told everybody in this room, youll get a tax break. I will ask you to volunteer. Serve more. I will ask his union to help me organize even more. We need changes in america not from washington but american s standing up for americans. I want to end by telling you part of the story i told on the debate stage. I went back to find out who those americans were who stood up for my family. I found the lawyer who represent ed my family. I asked him why, why would you in the 1960s, when real estate prices were going down, and you were busy starting your business why would you help a black , family move in your neighborhood . 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. 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 cannot 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 didnt talk about it. He called around to see who needed an hour of pro bono work. He found a group of activists, mostly white people, too, who were trying to do something about real estate segregation in new jersey. He said they started working and they got other volunteers demanding from their neighbors. By 1969, they had a whole system working. He said 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. We went on to help that family. You know the