[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] governor, i realize they need a a photo of you actually signing the eggs. Okay. You dont want to lay an egg. Dont break an egg. Dont lay an egg. You know are the recording, right . Yeah. My name is rafe [laughing] look at that signature. When he gets towards the last egg i have a feeling it will falter. Did you get one . Smile, governor. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] i just want to say, for four days notice, this is a on friday, two and half days, were auctioning off [inaudible]nd this is amazing, this kind of crowd and the level of interest today here for this great politics eggs breakfast. We do these things because we have great sponsors whop are here. Here. Their names are around the room who help us put these on it weve been doing quite a few of them of course, and i want to just mention that comcast, they are always front and center, always willing to help but comcast will be in this room in about two hours and they filmed our newsmaker submit. They build a full set instream sources this is over we go right into comcast mode so very exciting week. We have a lot of great dignitaries here but i just want to recognize heather who really got thene Harvard Institute of politics off the ground and running and its a great partner with us. Im so happy you are here today. [applause] we have great partner in New Hampshire, a great partner with the new England Council, new England Chamber of commerce. Jim and i basically breakfast, lunch, and dinner together at a want to introduce jim jim brett for the purposes of introduction. Thank you. [applause] let the recordio be known tht i pay for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. [laughing] forget about it. I also want to acknowledge the presence of the former Lieutenant Governor of the combo of massachusetts. Timber is here. We welcome him for his first visit here. [applause] and i, too, would like to welcome all of you on behalf of the new England Council here and want to thank the entire team, st. As, for the wonderful Ongoing Partnership with the nen England Council. I think with a Record Number of candidates this year weve had a Record Number of politics and eggs programs. I believe today is our 20th six and eggs. I dont know about you but my doctor since my cholesterol level is going higher and higher and higher. Its going to come to an end soon but i want to thank st. As for all that they do to make these programs such an outstanding must stop to say the least. And, of course, our gratitude goes to all t the sponsors. Theyre the ones that make it possible to have the venue and thee breakfast here, and they ae corporate citizens of New Hampshire and new england. If you know anyone affiliated with any of them you should thank themou for this wonderful, Wonderful Public Service that they provide here. 2019 hasdi been an incredible yr for the new England Council and we have a few more events in store before the years in. I believe we were over 70 events here this year, all 16 of state and washington with the governors and congressman and senators, president ial candidates and cabinet secretaries. We even had the speaker of the british house of commons speak at the new England Council but we havent taken up the gas pedal. Next week we will host congressional roundtable in boston with bill keating and kathryn clark. The evening of tuesday december 3 we will hope you will join us for our annual Holiday Celebration in William Kennedy institute for the United States senate. Needless to say its a wonderful, wonderful evening. I promise it will be worthth the drive here from New Hampshire. And our final d. C. Event of the will be held on december 10 in washington where we will host congressman Stephen Lynch for a capital conversation. Our guest today is someone who i know needs a little or no introduction in this room but let me take a moment to remind you of this very impressive background. Bornes and raised on the southse of chicago, he first came to england to pursue his education. First at Milton Academy of later at Harvard University where he received both his undergraduate and law degrees. He went on to achieve rate career success, both in the Public Sector as an attorney, president bill clintons justice department, and in the private Sector Holding leadership positions in major corporationso like texaco and cocacola. Some have questioned his decision to jump into the president ial race. The word underdog has been used by many a pundit, but let me remind you that as an underdog, exactly what he was in 2005 when he decided to run for governor of the commonwealth. As aal political newcomer he defeated a wellknown longtime public official in the democraticer primary, wellknown Lieutenant Governor in the general election. During his eight years as the chief executive he pursued an ambitious agenda which included implementing the states first of its Kind Health Care Reform law, investing in Public Education to close the achievement gap of minority students, and setting Ambitious Goals for expandedbl Renewable Energy in the state. All of this is to say he is a man who is not afraid of the challenge or an uphill battle. On a personal note, i had the opportunity to work with and get to know the governor pretty well during his tenure at the statehouse where he appointed me as the chairman of the Governors Commission for the people with intellectual with disabilities. This is i always found him to be kind, very generous, very effective. But moreir important, very compassionate. Hes been out on the president ial campaign trail for the past two weeks, and today we are pleased to welcome him home to new england and to politics and eggs. I did all of you are eager to hear about his vision for the future of our country and why he thinks hes the best candidate to take on the president next year. Please join me in welcoming the former governor of the commonwealth, my dear friend, the honorable Deval Patrick. [applause] thank you. Jim, thank you so much for the extraordinarily generous introduction, and to you and the new England Council, to st. As and to institute of politics can thank you very much for having me. Thank you ladies and children for coming up this morning. Its an honor to be with you. Im delighted that Lieutenant Governor is i guess we are out of state can Lieutenant Governor murray come just to be sure, we are all talking about the same person, and many other friends are here today in the room. You already know my story. Perhaps for thosese of you who dont,e i apologize to those wo do get i want to start there because it provides i think important context for why im running for president and then we can save most of our time for conversation. J as jim said i started out on the southside of chicago. Much of the time on welfare. I livedmy there with my mother,y sister, my grandparents and other relatives who came and went, least after our parents split when i was four. And her grandparents to make that contentment. I mother and my sister and i shared one of those bedrooms a set of bunkbed sigar from the top to the bottom to the floor every third night on the floor. I went to big, broken, overcrowded, underresourced, sometimes by the public schools. Still my grandmother would tell us we are not poor, we are not poor, justar broke. Because broke she said is temporary. Y. For all the, things we didnt have, one thing we did have was a very strong community. That was a time when every child was under the jurisdiction of every single adult on the block. If you messed up down the street in front of ms. Jones, she would hit your head like she dashes like you hurt then you she called home. You got to dance. For those adults were trying to get across was that membership in community is understanding the stake you have in your neighbors dreams and struggles, as well as your own. The other lesson i learned mainly from old ladies in hats in church was that we were supposed to do what we can and our time to leave things better for those who come behind us. Its the same ancient lesson every one of us here learn from our grandparents, at each of us bears responsibility for the next generation. These lessons of community and of generational responsibility have stuck with me. They are thero home i keep being called back to through college and law school, through my you in work in darfur, sudan, for my civil rights work at the Legal Defense fund of the department of justice, through my assignments in business and my terms asst governor. Whethernm representing haitian tenets and eviction proceedings, defending the rights organizers in alabama, making Employment Practices in big companies, fair and open expanding healthcare to over 98 of her residence in massachusetts or helping to grow a company that delivers dental services to poor kids. Ive always worked to leave things better for those who come behind me. Getting results in those settings and in others requires building bridges. Never once have taken an assignment i left my conscience at the door. In my experience confidence in my values alongside and openness to working with others is the formula for change that lasts. Thats why im running for president. We need leadership thats about bringing user together, not tearing us apart. We need leadership thats about leaving things better for those who come behind us, not about scoring partisan points. We need leadership that understands that unity makes us notab only stronger but successl in other words, we need leadership that is about doing the job, not just having it. I am a democrat and proud of it. Democrats are the party of strivers and strugglers, the folks who look to america to offer a wake up and away forward. We are the party of families who want a home they can afford in the neighborhood that safe, of students who want to further their education without being enslaved by debt, of workers want the chance to earn their way, of seniors who want to age with dignity, of immigrants who want a lawful path to mainstream american life, of the incarcerated for one a second chance, of all of us who want healthcare we can afford and count on. Thats us. The party of active government when it comes to protecting the planet and civil and human rights, and the party of government restraint when it comes to endless war or a woman making her own Health Decision or anyone of us marrying whomever we love. I believe that the american experiment is deeply invested in aspiration and common cause. In basic fairness, that it works where we build community and bear our responsibility to leave things better for those who come behind us. Thats the kind of party these dark times require. Thats why im a democrat. But i dont think you have to hate republicans to be a good democrat. I dont think you have to hate conservatives to be a a good progressive or to hate business to be a good social justice warrior. Anymore than you if they just do grow up poorod and staple to cae about chronic poverty. Or to hate police, to believe that black lives matter. I tried to be the kind of man who rejects false choices, not for the sake of camping down disagreement and smoothing things over but because the range of my life expenses has taught me estimate of the choices we present each other in politics are, in fact, false. So i want you to understand that i am proud to be a democrat, but i am not running to president of the democrats. Im running to be president of the United States, and theres a difference. Im not talking about a moderate agenda. Thats the last thing we need in times like these. Im talking about being woke, as my friend says, while leaving room for the still waking. Im talking about what it takes to govern, what it takes to actually make change that lasts. The values of community and generational responsibility are essential for the American Dream to flourish. It was because others here and abroad fought for, prayed for, and died for civic civic idealf equality, opportunityi and fair play that i and some others, maybe even some of you here, have experienced in improbable journey got our circumstances of birth. Grit, determination, resilien, High Expectations and good fortune are fundamental to be sure, but so also are good schools with wellprepared and supportive teachers here so als is food and shelter you can count on. So also is an economy that has a place for you when youre ready to go to work. As people i meet are not looking for government to solve every problem in everybodys life, just to do its part to help people help themselves. There is just no denying that over the years weve seen policy shift away from the values of community and of generationalye responsibility. The obsession with short term quarter to Quarter Results i saw in my Business Life has crept into the way we govern, the way we govern from election cycle to election cycle or news cycle to newsth cycle. We have tilted our economy towards the wellconnected. We have come to associate poverty with the unrelated concept of fault, and weve bleached justice slowly but methodically out of the Justice System. Common cause, let alone,nd decency, has vanished from much of ourtt National Politics and e have so diminished and belittled government over the years that the publics confidence in it to address common needs keeps shrinking. Leaders who spend every waking moment trying to divide us have made it worse. Caging children and the meaning the weak and vulnerable have made us all ashamed. But the troubling fact is that before the Current Administration, the poor were stuck in poverty and the Great Recession exposed how the middle class are justbe a a paycheck o away from being poor. The frustration, alienation, d even the trail that folks feel in farm country or in coal country, in small towns across america, and many a suburb today, is remarkably familiar to me from my life on the southside of chicago. The American Dream i have lived is up for grabs, but it doesnt have to be this way. There is a way up thats not about caring people down. There is a way to build together. I know this because thats what we did in massachusetts. We faced the worst economic crisis in a generation, just like all of you. And because we stuck together and made shared sacrifice in the interest of shared prosperity, we emerge stronger on the other side. D after eight years of hard work and focus through those values, massachusetts ranked first in the nation in student achievement, in healthcare coverage, andy veterans servic, inc. Energy efficiency, and entrepreneurial activity, to name just a few. We helped to revive an economy hammered by a recession by turning it into a global innovationwe powerhouse, creatig a 25 your employment either we developed a National Model for addressing Climate Change by working with our neighboring states on the regional Greenhouse Gas initiative, planning forla an investing in resilience and recovery, closing coalfired power plants and building a solar, wind and Energy Efficiency sector that both generated ample alternatives and created thousands of jobs. We made meaningful reforms in transportation and criminal justice, the ethics rules, our state pension system. Andar we did it with a responsie budget and by earning the highest bond rating in state history. Get everything right. Nobody does. But we got these and other results because we work hard every day to do all the good we could for all the people we could, in all the ways we could, for as long as we could. We govern for everyone everywhere, not just the people who voted for us, by asking people to turn to each other rather than on each other. If we want affordable healthcare for everyone everywhere, if we want an economy that offers a future for everyone everywhere, if you want a Justice System that is just, and immigration system that works, a tax system that makes sense, we need leadership that builds bridges. A politics that says we have to agree on everything before Work Together on anything, that offers government by slogan and shortterm wins is exactly thete kind of politics that brought us to this point. Substituting our version or theres iss not actually goingo deliver change that lasts, if it delivers change at all. In the coming weeks we will be rolling out our policy agenda. You will hear about a reform agenda that proposes fixes to systems like the tax system, immigration, healthcare, and criminal sentencing. Systems that needor to work in order for the American Dream to work. And a democracy agenda to end the hyper partisan gerrymandering excess excessiv, much of the dark, and Voter Suppression that s have steadily and cynically choked off the funda