00:00Today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the
00:05persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years,
00:13what do we see? We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the
00:20wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the
00:25world's first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and
00:31oligarchs who buy elections. We see massed agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our
00:38undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth
00:44has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel
00:51into stone. And we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in
00:56the
00:56soft hands of a precious few. Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick,
01:03but that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it, too, in the nurse who
01:08works
01:08a double shift and then stops on our way home to check on an ailing neighbor. Yes, we see America
01:13in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it, too, in the father who
01:19tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go
01:24to work and still believes his country can do better by his family. Yes, we see America when we
01:30spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we
01:36see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.
01:42We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived
01:47here or what papers they have as ice invades our neighborhoods. We see America each time those
01:53young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America
01:58each time working people demand more, not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.
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