Watch this holiday week on cspan. Deval patrick spoke at a town hall in New Hampshire. Topics included Economic Growth and combating the opioid epidemic. Nice to meet you. I know you. We have met before. How is the family . My pleasure. Sarah. Hello, sarah. I like your teacher. Tshirt. How are you . Nice to see you. It is so nice to see you guys. Some old friends of mine up in sandwich. Center harbor side. Friend of mine where i spent last night. Extended family for 40 years. You have an extended family here. You are welcome to stay at my house. My name is carlos. Party chairocratic and delicate at large. My story began in 2007. Moved to you New Hampshire family life was tough at the time. I came here, i enjoyed it night school. Ran for office at a young age. I was told that i was too young to run. I won by 46 votes in a city that is all republicans. The only hispanic and the state to be elected until two years ago when we had a few representatives. I am going to quote the governor. He said something that means a lot. He said it earlier. Is onlye first important if there is a second and a third. We have a couple of hispanics elected, that starts to me a lot. I just wanted to host all of the candidates. That was the idea to have a conversation about the issues that matter to us. We have so many things facing us. Our voices matter. Thee i was receiving progressive of the year award last week, i met the governor. I extended an invitation and he said, lets do it. So, here we are. Its an honor because deval firstk was the africanamerican governor for the state of massachusetts. Im used to saying the state of New Hampshire. Only the second in our nation. Still to this day, we have only had two. I think when our nation is so diverse, there should be more than one or two. Huge advocateen a for climate change. As a young person, i believe that we can only solve the problems of the future if we focus on the biggest threat that we have today which is climate change. Thank you for being such a champion in massachusetts for us. Of course, with Health Insurance, you were a huge advocate in passing Health Insurance in massachusetts and making sure that 90 of massachusetts was covered. 99. Im sorry. That is huge. That is something that i value and i thank you for doing that before running for president. He has been a governor that has had result. Without further ado, it is a huge honor to have Deval Patrick here in New Hampshire. Thank you very much. Thank you for the warm welcome. A very generous introduction. Thank you for your leadership which has been key and an example for all of us. For those of you, i know a couple of you here. Prefer conversations. I am not going to do a lot of talking at you. Why i am in the race and what i think the opportunity of this moment is for all of us. I will start there because i think democrats, and i am a proud democrat. Although, democrats get on my last nerve. We tend to focus on the how before the why. And i want to i grew up one why. The south side of chicago. Most of that time in poverty with my mother, my sister, my cameparents, relatives who and went in our grandparents two bedroom tenement. We used to share one of those bedrooms. Every third night on the floor. I went to overcrowded under resourced sometimes violent public schools. I dont remember owning a book until i was 14 years old. I got a break through a Scholarship Program called a which was like landing on a different planet. There was a very strong sense of community. Every childays when was under the jurisdiction of every single adult. If you mess up down the street, she would go upside your ahead and that she would call home. What those adults are trying to get across is when you are a member of the community, you have a stake in your neighbors struggles as well as your own. You are responsible for doing what you can in your time, in our time, to make things better for those who come behind. Those values are what i have tried to live by as i went on to college and law school. I practiced with civil rights lawyers. I did business law. I was headed the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and the clinton administration. Businesses to grow where we can deliver measurable social and environmental goods. I have lived the American Dream. By which i mean, not being limited by the circumstances of your birth. And determination and personal responsibility are absolutely key, so was access to a great education and a Transportation System so you could get back and forth to a job. I knew leaving the south side to come to milton that there were other kids just as creative, just as ambitious, just as determined as me who did not get that chance. Years, the over the American Dream is becoming more out of reach for more and more people. I know it does not have to be that way. Have pulled back from that notion of common cause and common responsibility for a long time. I think the shortterm focus, the obsession with the shortterm focus frankly, is the reason for everything from the economic ands to social anxiety. I would say even to the administration we have in office right now. Anxiety and frustration and even anger that comes from the environment around us is something i recognized from the south side of chicago. Left, itsteel mills left everyone feeling like they had been kicked to the curb. Opioids fill that void. If atsues became issues all, at election time and not in between. The lack of confidence in government as a source of solutions or as a source of even seeing and hearing peoples at a low. We created all of this. E, i mean all of us in a democracy, we get the government we deserve. Better government, if we want more engagement, we have two reach for it. We have to insist on it and stop accepting what is on offer as often as we have. Likei think about things the economic indicators. Everything is so great. Inflation is low as long as you dont count the cost of education, housing, and health care. The things that enable you. Unemployment is low. If you do count both or all three of the minimum wage you have to survive. We dont have to accept this. Experiencethat in my in life and leadership, change that lasts requires setting a goals. Big broad agenda ,hen i was elected governor which was the first thing i ever ,an for, 15 minutes after that the bottom fell out of the global economy. Eight years of real focus and asking people to turn to rather than on each other. A number one achievement in health care service. Right. Not get everything nobody does. But we got as much done as we resultsuse we were focused. We were about everyone everywhere. Not just the folks who were wellconnected and knew their way to and around. Because of the agenda that we had, we kept listening to make sure it was the agenda that actually mattered to people at the point where policy touches people. About the range of leadership experience that i lessons, there are some that stick. One is that we have to reject false choices. We are offered them all the time. You dont have to hate republicans to be a good democrat. I dont think you have to hate police to believe black lives matter. I dont know why we keep getting offered these false choices. The other side is setting up these little tradeoffs. We have to look through that and put that down if we want to make change that matters. The other lesson that i have is that the way you get change that lasts is that you share the victory. It is about bringing people in, setting a goal, others may have or morer or different effective way of achieving that goal. I dont think any person, any party has a corner. I think change that lasts is the only thing that saves our democracy right now. It is why what we are focusing on is an opportunity agenda and a democracy agenda because it is so broken. We are i would say getting around and listening to people and checking whether the agenda we think is the right one is the one that matters. Are,e are sure that you and when i say you, i mean everybody, understand that this is not just a style of campaigning but it is a style of leadership where you should expect accountability and time notetween campaigns and just during campaigns. Isyou want leadership that just about plans and not results or just about being mad, i am mad too, by the way. But just being mad is not about how we use the opportunity of change to heal us as a nation. If that is what you want, i am not your guy. If what you want is someone who understands that lasting and meaningful change is not just necessary but is an opportunity to heal us, i think i am your guy. I would love to earn your support and your vote. Why dont we start with earning your support and have some conversations . Everybody like whenever you speak just say your first name, where you are from,. Nd what is important for you i can just call on people, too. Will . I think that there needs to be more programs that will help people in early recovery to sustain sober houses. Is there a limit on how much time you can have in the sober house . As soon as i got to the sober house, i had a job lined up. A lot of people arent lucky enough to be in that position. Coming out of a time when they are destroying their lives. Difficult if is you have not done it for a while. There needs to be more programs to help sustain them in their. Ransition sustained sobriety. If this is too personal, just tell me to stop. Time . Id you decide it was i hit bottom. I think everybody has to hit their bottom when they decide it is time. Nobody is going to get help if they dont want it. You cannot force it on someone. Where you caught up in the criminal Justice System . Yes. I pulled up to the sober house from prison. I partner with a couple of sober houses here in laconia. Laconia had the highest death rate in the state of New Hampshire for overdoses. The biggest problem is in the winter. This time of year, people are falling into the despair. They cannot afford their housing. They cannot afford to continue to go to work because they dont have a license. Where there is no public transportation, having these things are important. It is a life or death. One of these the things he is touching on, the biggest statistic is when they get out of the sober house, when they have health care and insurance that covers their sobriety for a two months, they get out in 28 days and now they have to find a job, find a place to live. The average rent is about 200 per week minimum. That is being nice. You dont have a job to begin with. Now you are going back to the previous circles that you knew because that is all you know. We need to do better as a society on how we help them continue. After you have destroyed your life is expensive. That is the only way we can put it as a nation from here on. I find a lot of special young men that the system has forgotten about. There is luckily great people in this community that are working hard. To people lost in one year drug overdoses. It is insane. Especially under the age of 30. Education is important. At the same time, if we are going to keep people sober and out of the system. This is another problem we find. They go to jail and they come out and have all these fines to pay. How do you get out of that . You just go deeper and deeper. Why we arereasons rolling out policies in packages instead of in silos is because most people dont live in policy silos. You cant talk about longer periods in sober houses without talking about how you move into independent housing, how you get the training for the job that is actually available and not just training and hoping. A community, act like we have a stake in you to the point you can stand on your own. When i say stand on your own, dont hear that as disrespectful. We all need a hand. The stuff you some of we try to do in massachusetts. Realize, ibegan to left off coming on five and a half years ago. We began to see what was coming not so muche come in the adult addiction community but in department of children and families. We had a family first strategy. Kids will come in because they were in state custody. Getting them back to mom and dad quickly was harder to do because mom and dad one or both were dealing with their own addiction issues. We were beginning to see what was issues, so we were beginning to see what was coming and its since been a huge wave. We opened the largest stateoftheart treatment facility, treatment and recovery facility, i think in massachusetts history, and we built that by the way, right through the recession. That was a step. We did do a drug course so we had that diversion. We put additional money into Recovery Centers and we had a mandatory, we had an administrative extension of the recovery period. Actually quite controversial for some. What i dont think we nailed was the transition after that longer recovery. I think it was extended, i would have to check this. I think it was extended to 65 days. I think thats right. But what we didnt perfect is the transition on into, you know, into that housing, into that job, so you were getting back. The mojo was just being on your own, so i think thats work we can do. The question i would ask you, because its come up in a couple of other conversations here in New Hampshire. Is a solution to get resources down to the local level and have local solutions, a solution to get it to states and have state solutions, or is it to hold it and go at it as a federal solution . The reason i ask that is because ive talked to a few people at the local level who said its a state level and the state isnt doing enough. Ive talked to people at the state level who have said we need federal help. Its really a local level. From the perspective of this evening. There is no easy solution to the problem. I think it would benefit to have it at the state level. That way, you know, people applying through like dhs or Something Like that, to get the help, and, you know, it wouldnt just be with the town, you know. Like you find, rehabs are closed. Like beds arent opened so you have to go to a different county, and if its at the state level, if youre transitioning between counties, you know that wont hold you up as much. Did you have your hand up . Here in New Hampshire, we have a system whats your first name . Sarah. So here in New Hampshire we have a State Government that profits from the sale of the first addictive substance most people try and thats alcohol and yet were supposed to have a fund earmarked for prevention, treatment and access recovery and its never been fully funded the fact is from the sale of okay. And so we have these great Liquor Stores on the highways that you drive by, and were supposed to earmark a ton of that money back into the community and its just not happening. Has it ever happened . I think the first year it happened, we do our budget biannum. 40 . That equals a Million Dollars every single year for the laconia district. Republicans are not really putting the money where it should go. This is a health crisis. Its not any personal feeling that what youve done in massachusetts. We also declared ate Perfect Health emergency. Yeah. Where are you from, joe . Im from laconia. Ive lived here for 33 years to. Touch base on the topic, kind of what hes talking about. The problem isnt with the Treatment Centers the big problem stems out of the insurance because my personal experience, when i was in a treatment center, im just a number to an Insurance Company. Yep. They made a decision after 14 days of never meeting me, never seeing anything but what they got back from your counselor that i was safe to come back to the streets. I begged and pleaded to say i wasnt ready. Im probably going to die. I dont want to leave and i was forced to leave to step down to a lower level, instead of staying in a safe, comfort area, which was a residential treatment center, because at that time, the Insurance Company deemed i was ready to move on to the next level. Another issue would be insurance as well, we talked this today, the medicare, the medicaid issue, you myself some of your prescriptions covered, as soon as you get your first paycheck, now youre on the books. Youre back to work starting to get back on your feet. My insurance has done it to me multiple times, which i actually work here, its a commissionbased job, its up and down, so then they pull your medicaid and you have to reapply. Its almost like i have to stay under i cant make a certain amount of money. Dont make this amount of money to keep your insurance, or pay the prescription out of your pocket and try to make this amount of money. Thats one of the biggest issues, they are putting the money in the right areas. Like he was saying, transition from rehab to sober living, i went to rehab myself seven times before i figured it out, you know. Im not saying everybody is perfect, but im on 88 days right now. [applause] the issue, like he said, you come from jail, you come from rehab. You tore your life down. You have nothing. By the time you get out, there is chuck ees and stars before you get money. A lot of these places, carlos know who i stay with, its owned by a sober house, hes a democrat, and he works with people like, if you dont have money to move in. He wont tell you, you cant move in. A lot of these places put their foot down. If you dont have the first week and you dont have the deposit, it can be 450 to a thousand dollars just to walk in the door. What kind of drug addict that just destroyed his life is going to go ask mom, dad, family and friends, im finally doing the right things, let me borrow a thousand bucks so i can go into a sober house. They think 28 days is enough and ill tell you, 28 days isnt enough for anybody. It took me multiple tries and thats the worst part. Weve all seen it, multiple, ive had over 20 friends already die here in laconia from addiction. It comes down to our community. We can fix it here and then fix it at a bigger level. Right here, people dont realize, and i think New Hampshire is number two in the United States for opioid problems besides ohio. People dont realize the severity of the issue. They dont want to see behind the scenes what its real and what its like to see