"America Belongs To Everyone!" Cory Booker Takes Aim At Trump's Divisive Politics

Please welcome Senator Cory Booker. Look, look, Raphael Warnock and I were supposed to talk about the moral moment, and you all put a preacher up before you put the guy up who just sits in the pew. But Warnock and I were both raised in one of the many mighty traditions in America. We were both raised in the black church. And at the center of the black church, the church that carried us through slavery, The church that made us believe. When everyone told us we were inferior, the center of the black church is a gospel of liberation and a gospel of love. Brother Warnock and myself, we are, as are every one of you, our ancestors' wildest dreams. When I walked into the Senate as the only black person in the Democratic caucus, only the fourth black person elected in the history of our nation after a guy with a funny name, I cannot tell you, I did not think. It would just be a few short years when we would have a Senate full of six black folks in the Democratic Caucus. I know my ancestors wept, but at the center of that gospel, there has always been another gospel, and that is the civic gospel of America. You see, the call to the conscience of our country that has been at the center of our tradition in our family roots has always been one of calling to the conscience of a country and demanding that it live up to its promise, demanding that it lives up to its dream. We know that this nation has always been people from diverse backgrounds calling this nation to task. It has been movement after movement of people saying proudly, like the poet named Hughes, that I, too, sing America. We are here because of generations of our ancestors who loved this nation, even when the nation did not love them back. They never surrendered to cynicism. They never gave Up on love in favor of contempt. I love my favorite author, James Baldwin, who wrote at the end of The Fire Next Time an unflinching description of the reality of our nation in the early 60s where there was violence and lynchings, where there was beatings and church bombings. At the end of all of that, he did not surrender to cynicism. He did not give in to hate. At the end of that book, that last page should be required reading. I paraphrase him now. He actually called this country to greater things. He said this is the exact moment that we should ask of each other more. He said, I know what I'm asking you is impossible, but in our day and age, the impossible is the least we can demand. For one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of American history, and Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of impossible things. So to now everyone here who has just seen a blue wave, I want to tell you that this is the time for us not to stop. We don't want a blue wave in America. We want a sea change for Americans. This is the time for us now to stand up with moral outrage, not hate, but the moral outrage that carried people to march to the polls at a time that partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering is returning to the South. It's a time for us to recognize all of those people who said, like our ancestors, I too sing America. Even though I work two jobs and can't afford my prescription drugs and my rent. I too sing America because I fear when I send my children to school, who will protect them in a world where they do more active shooter drills than fire drills. When the internet continues to menace our children and no one does anything to stop them. I too sing America. In a country where the minimum wage has not kept up with the cost of living, in a country where our neighbors who we love, who've been in this nation for decades, work in the shadows and fear a knock on the door could tear them away from their American children and their American spouse. This is a moral moment in America. This is not a partisan one. It is not left or right. It is right or wrong, and the voters told us so. People who have jumped from one party to the next are just looking for someone that will help carry us forward. They are looking for someone that, again, will say, I too sing America, a song that is inclusive, a song for everyone, a song that is our creed, we the people. This is not a moment for small thinkers. This is a moment for bold doers. Let me tell you something that should piss you off. A friend of mine raised the American flag and his teenage son came out and said, Dad, when did we become Republicans? That should piss you off if you're a Democrat or a Republican. Because what's happened to our flag has become a partisan tool, a team jersey, and not a call to that civic gospel. The Gospels. Based in the fundamental ideals of love, our founders said it, we must mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Voters said very clearly that we want America to be America again. As the poet said, the land that never has been yet, but yet must be the land where everyone is free. Oh, America never was America to me, but I swear this oath, America will be. Well, time is now. That we recognize that this is not a moment. It has to be the beginning of a movement. And we need to call people to stand with us. I stood on the floor for 25 hours as defiant, as a defiant voice to say I have not given up on America. I read voices and letters from Americans that are too often looked over or looked down upon. This is the time now that we elevate those voices again and that we in our generation, like civil rights marchers who carried the flag, like suffrage marchers who carried the flag, like generations before us who did big impossible things, whether it was planting the flag after Iwo Jima on Mount Suribachi or my parents' generation who dared to plant a flag on the moon, it's time that we raise the flag and say that we can be a nation Where everyone can afford health care. We can be a nation where a hard day's work earns a living wage. We can be a nation where we love our children and are not a country, the only wealthy nation, that does not have paid family leave. That leads the world in infant mortality. We need to think bigger now. We need to call left and right together to show them that the lines that divide us are not nearly as strong as the ties that bind us. We are one nation under God, and we've got to raise the flag in our generation. We've got to raise the flag for our children and our grandchildren. We've got to raise the flag for hope and hard work. We've got to raise the flag and pledge the oath to each other, my country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. This will be the land for all of God's children to have life and have it more abundantly. This is the nation where we will heal the gap, not between left or right, but between the Americans and the American dream. Let's redeem the dream. Let's call this the moral moment. Let's make our ancestors proud and our great-grandchildren. Let's Let's have them celebrate our gifts to them. Thank you. Subscribe to One India and never miss an update. pray. Download the OneIndia app now.