Thank you for making this happen. Thank you sen. Booker thank you for the opportunity. We have a bunch of eager members. I will introduce you real quick. We will open up questions. Sen. Booker that sounds great. Is that ok . Thats great. [applause] sen. Booker i want to get to your questions. I want to orient you to who the heck am i. I am a kid that was raised by two incredible parents. Who have seen the worst of america. They were civil rights activists. They saw violence and discrimination, but they also saw the best of america and they know we are who we are as a country because we Work Together and stood together. My dad is one of these guys that the older i got, the more difficult the stories of his childhood were. Hes like, son, the hail, when i was young, hale was the size of golf balls. By the time he was older, the hail was like beach balls falling from the sky. Son, let me tell you when this tsunami hit my town. I said, dad, you grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He said, dont you disrespect me. It happened a long time ago before the internet, you cant look it up but it happened. 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, boy, dont tell people i was poor. Tell them the truth. 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. Because people not related to him and did not look like 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. But they told him you are going to go to college. He could not afford it. It was a church put a collection plate around and gave him money to go down the hill to North Carolina central university. A historically black college in North Carolina. He landed there in the early 1960s when the Student Movement started in North Carolina. This guy grew up in a very segregated town. Suddenly, 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. He landed when black people were not hired by corporations, but again, it was a coalition of blacks and whites that stood up and fought for him to be the first black person hired as a salesman by a Small Company called ibm in the entire virginia area. When he got a promotion, because he led people to the table fairly, you did well. Inclusion, diversity, strength, he gets promoted to manhattan, looks for places to live, and finds out that white families in new jersey did not want black families. They were literally doing housing segregation. What does my father find . 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. On the day of the closing for the house, the white couple did not show up on the day. My father had a volunteer lawyer show up. When they walked into the Real Estate Agent office, he stands up and punches my dads lawyer in the face and sticks 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] sen. Booker 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, boy, 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 at stanford. Went to oxford on a rhodes scholar. I came back to yale law school. My dad was not impressed. He said, boy, you have more degrees in the month of july, but you aint hot. [laughter] sen. Booker life isnt about the degrees. It is about the service you give. My faith and my family, the values i was raised with what did i do after i got my yale law degree . I moved into one 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 running for president , the only person who lives there from the senate, the only person who lives in a neighborhood below the poverty line. We do not mistake 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 back in the 90s. It is a fight for people that are too often left out of the equation. For families like mine who were looked 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 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 about one guy and one office. It is not a referendum on him. It is a referendum on us. When we come out and stand up and we bring out the swarm, we win elections. This past election, in some states like wisconsin, he got less votes than mitt romney got. The Africanamerican Community alone in michigan, and wisconsin. If blacks came out in the same rate as they did in 2012, 2016, we would have president clinton right now. The next nominee better be that one that can excite and engage and ignite a movement. I am not in this just to beat donald trump. I want to beat Mitch Mcconnell. [applause] sen. Booker and that means we have to win senate seats in North Carolina. In my daddys state. We have to win seats in georgia. We have to win seats in arizona. We have to bring out a wave of election. People tell me about the polls right now and i laugh. We have never had somebody from our party, never, 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. Sen. Booker this is when we should all break into a chant. Calling Gloria Gloria gloria sorry. [laughter] sen. Booker didnt know you would get a musical discussion tonight. I will kick it off with a right to work governor for less like we have, as 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 in states all around the country. These attacks on our unions, emboldened and empowered by a rightwing Extremist Supreme Court that continues to undermine the values and the they are rolling back civilion. Rights. Rolling back Voting Rights. Womens rolling back rights and the ability of people to control their own body. Thats to stop this, and by passing legislation to stop it. This is why i want the new Voting Rights act. The decisions, we have to pass two pieces of legislation that we want through congress. How we will do that is again not by just focusing on the white house, but making sure we have the kind of president who can win the presidency but create a wave election where we win up and down each state, so one thing i am trying to do in my leadership is to wake up this country and understand this is like the Civil Rights Movement again. We need a nationwide movement. Dont ask people to just tell you what they will do for you. If you want to talk leaders, ask what they do already. One of the reasons i have such tremendous labor support in new jersey, when i was mayor, everything i did, if you wanted to build something in my city, Union Workers had to be at the center. When airport workers were fighting for mmm wage, i was with a minimum wage, i was on the picket line with them. Aret of these issues because you have governors like you have right now. So what were president ial candidates doing in the last Midterm Election . No one in this race helped raise more money to help local elected officials here to push back on this governor than i did. If i am your president , i will be not just the president , but the leader of the Democratic Party. And we need to make sure it is not just federal victories. We need victories across the country so that union leaders, union labor, jobs with dignity, that we win the victories we need to win in the next four years, not just overturning Supreme Court cases and legislation but helping to wage, raising the minimum to 15 per hour, saving Pension Plans that right now are in danger, making sure people can retire with security and dignity. A much bigger agenda that one person and one office will not solve. We need to fight for the larger country by fighting up and down the ballot and making sure the Democratic Party and our values, american values, begin to rise again. Thank you for coming to New Hampshire. I live in loudon. I have a question about agriculture and the price of food. I have worked 20 years for the state and then retired. Pension, Social Security and a 10 per hour job. The cost of green beans last year was . 99 and now they are 1. 99. The cost of a hamburger i cant even tell you, and the cost of chicken has gone out of sight. I went to six months without a hamburger waiting very for a sale. You want to do Carbon Neutral big agribusiness, which i agree with, but how is that going with the price of food . God bless you. I rarely get a question like that and it is an area i think a lot about. I will come to the white house with a much different set of experiences than anyone else in the race. One of them is just living for the last 20 plus years in a lowincome community. My folks, i see people on my block who work longer hours than my parents did, and at my corner bodega they still need food stamps to feed their family. We have a real crisis and not just for us. We have a crisis for independent family farmers being driven out of business right now because of things like the farm bill that favors big agribusiness, where you see massive consolidation. When you spend one dollar now on food, the percentage of that that goes now to the people who produce the food has gone down 50 . I met with republican farmers in the midwest, and they were telling me that world has changed, because they are getting squeezed. Theanto has been raising price of seeds and chemicals they use, and the five or six people he used to buy from them, now only one person dictates the price, so the reason food prices are going up is not because of the farmer. Corporatese of big consolidation in the agricultural sector. Past is prologue. Ask all the candidates what they have done about this. Tester bill in with jon to put a moratorium on all corporate consolidation in the andector so we pause that begin fighting back on these trends jacking up the price of your food, and putting farmers out of business. It also creates perverse reality. We have Serious Health crises in this country and theres a problem my kids and you kids can walk into a Grocery Store and the twinkies are cheaper than an apple, because of what subsidies are going towards. This is a perverse food system, thats directly related to our childrens health, our Health Care System and performance in school, all interrelated. So i say that enough is enough. The cost of food is going to high because of this monopolization of the oligarchies, and i will stop that. The ag sector is where its going to stop. I will have policies, so that healthy, independent family farmers who are often making organic food, healthier food and can do it at lower prices. Last thing i want to say about this. You said you were a retiree, and i want to directly say that. Theres something about a society. Three places you want to look to see what a society is really about. How they treat their children. We are a nation that is planets we lead the industrialized nations in infant tr mortality. Childcare is more expensive than state college, and we pay childcare workers poverty wages. Look at what we do with children. No paid family leave. Treats itsnation children. Next, helen nation treats how a nation treats its elderly. Millions of american retirees live at or below the poverty line because we have a Social Security system that is criminal, a regressive tax. Think about this for a second. We have people whose Social Security checks arent keeping up with inflation, so people are still living on fixed incomes seeing every thing going up from prescription drugs to the cost of a hamburger, and yet the Social Security checks remain. I will go for making that regressive to far more progressive by lifting the cap on Social Security payments. [applause] and we will increase the payments, so no Senior Citizen is at or below the poverty line in america. The last thing, to look at how a society treats people, look at prisons and who they incarcerate. Media. Incarcerates the the new person from york times here who i might want to incarcerate. [laughter] but russia, they incarcerate clinical prisoners. Who do we incarcerate in this country . Thwe poor. There are thousands and thousands of people in jail, who are there because they cant pay bail. We have a criminal Justice System that treats you better if you are and guilty than poor and innocent. The Biggest Mental Health institutions in america are our prisons and jails, and there is no treatment being given. The next group we incarcerate is women. We over incarcerate women. One out of every three incarcerated women on the planet is in america. Overwhelmingly for nonViolent Crimes. And almost 90 are survivors of sexual crime and Sexual Assault. And Human Rights Violations from others, we still shackle women to beds when they are giving birth. The other group we over incarcerate his minorities. I respect and love joe biden, not being disrespectful to him, but i tell you what. There were more marijuana arrests and convictions in 2017 than all Violent Crime arrests combined. And who are we incarcerating . You think kids at stanford that are smoking weed . [laughter] nobody worries at dartmouth. We incarcerate the poor and minorities. If youre black or white in america, there is no difference in marijuana usage or sale but africanamericans are four times more likely to be incarcerated. Our prisons are shameful institutions that show we dont we putch other, because addiction over incarceration, women over incarcerated, veterans over incarcerated. That is the testament to a lack of empathy in our society. All these things, i will stand up and change because after over two decades living in my community and seeing my community overincarcerated and seeing seniors living in poverty, people going to bodegas and having to make unhealthy food choices. All this i will change as your president. [applause] sign by a mana ith far too much hair, that have to wrap up. So, a closing remark. Bob, you are great man. [laughter] this is a crowded democratic field, but i want to ask for your support because this is not just about the policies we have been discussing. This is a moment where we will make decisions that we should make with our head and also our heart and our gut. Who will represent the spirit of this country . S am telling you now, i wa going to a stage in iowa and me, bog big dude sees and i am a big dude, former tight end for stanford, allamerican, the older i was. [laughter] he stops me and says, i want you to punch donald trump in the face i look at him and say, dude, that is a felony. We dont beat him by being like him. We match his darkness with our light, his hate with our love. What we have to repent for in this day and age is not the bad actions of the bad people but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. If we have record voter turnout, we will ween up and down the ticket in 2020. Im running because i know im the best person in this field to energize and ignite this country so we have a movement election. Look at legislation. Not just the legislative design, which is important, but getting big movements to push that legislation. We have suffered legislation, not because a bunch of guys on the senate floor got together and said, lets give women the right to vote. No, we got it because of activism. It wasnt Strom Thurmond who came to the senate floor and said ive seen the light, give the negro people the right to vote. [laughter] no, we got it because of activism. If you elect me president , im warning you, im going to ask more from you than any president has ever asked of you in your lifetime. I wont ask you to pay more for your groceries. I want to ask you to pay more taxes. Everyone in this room will get a tax break. No, i will ask you to volunteer more, to serve more. Ill ask unions to help organize even more. Because we make changes in america not from washington but for american standing up for americans. By telling you part of that story i told on the debate stage that i didnt tell here, that i went back to find those americans from my family who helped me move into the town i grew up in, and found the lawyer who represented my family. I asked him, why would you in the 1960s when theres fears of white flight