 Good afternoon everyone. Can we ask you to please shut off your phone or put it on silence, please? To respect the space, thank you so much. My name is Carlos Cardona. I'm the campaign manager. Originally from Puerto Rico, but I live in La Cone in New Hampshire for the past 16 years and I call that my home with my children and my partner. I am so honored to be here. It's my first time in the great state of Burlington, Vermont. It was a beautiful view coming down that hill and seeing the lake. And here I thought, New Hampshire has some of the nicest lakes, so don't tell them I said that. You guys have a beautiful lake. Thank you for being here and also thank you for signing the petition for Marianne to be on the ballot. Thank you for speaking to me on the way in and talking about the campaign. It is an honor of a lifetime for me to be representing this campaign on the trail and to be able to be the campaign manager and be, you know, leading this effort. And so I thank you for being here and being part of this. And of course, we'll talk a little bit more after the event, but I don't want to hold it more. It is my privilege and honor to introduce the next president of the United States. Tim, or should I stand? I think I'm going to start by standing actually. It's comfortable. I'm just with the energy to speak. I feel between Burlington, Vermont, and being in a yoga studio, I feel at home. And that's really true actually. Because I feel that in order to address the challenges of this time, the question is not just what we do, but the consciousness with which we do it. Gandhi said the end is inherent to the means. Who we are right now is as important as what we do. Because what we need to do, first of all, if we only do it from old things, it's that inside thing. We will not solve the problems of the world from the thinking we were at when we created them. And also the political paradigm that dominates our country and our world really is so transactional. It's something that is a relic of the 20th century. It is part of what created the problems of the 21st century. But it is a completely inadequate model for addressing the challenges of the 21st century. Those who created the problems present themselves as the only people qualified to solve the problems. But it's actually the fact that they are so much a part of the system that created it that makes them unqualified. They are unqualified because they can't even, well, I wouldn't even say that they don't understand what they've done. I'm beginning to think they do understand what they've done. I used to think that they were simply chopping wood and carrying water for corporate interests in the United States. But I've come to understand they simply are another corporate interest in the United States. So we have a problem. On the other hand, this country has had no problems before. And I know that it's very tempting right now for those who take a real good conscious overview of what's happening in this country. Thank you so much. It's very tempting to feel angry, depressed, go numb. They've got it all locked up. But I think we should take a little historical overview. Certainly the abolitionists had desperate days. And certainly the women's suffragists had desperate days. And the labor organizers had desperate days. And the civil rights movement, those people had desperate days. It's simply our turn. So while what we need to do is huge and historic, our ancestors have made huge and historic course corrections before. It's simply our turn. And also, I'm sure that we all realize that the problems we have today are simply the latest iteration of the problems we've had from the beginning. Because out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, all of them having risked their lives to sign a document that truly does open up an ideal of possibility that is as radical today as it was over 200 years ago. The very idea that all of us are equal and all of us deserve a chance to. They called it Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We would call it self-actualization. It's the same thing. And that everyone should have that opportunity. But out of that 56 men who signed the document, risking their lives to do it, because of the British in one, they all would have been hanged. But 41 of those 56 were slayers. But that dichotomy, that struggle is the American story. It has always been with us. And we are simply living out the latest iteration. Today the struggle is not between those of us who believe in the ideal and recognize that we are keepers of that ideal and that story and that dream. Today the struggle is not with a particular institution. Slaver. You know what to do. You're about a slaver. Institutionalized oppression of women. We know what we need to do. Path of 19th Amendment. The overreach of the gilded age. We know what we need to do. Establish organized labor. Segregation. We know what we need to do. De-segregate. Today it's not a specific institution. It's an economic world view. It's an economic paradigm. And it has financialized everything. It commodifies everything even human beings. And it is expressed through a matrix of corporate power. It's insurance companies, which is why we don't have universal healthcare. It's pharmaceutical companies, which is why we have over a million people rationing their insulin in this country. And 18 million who cannot afford to fulfill the prescriptions that their doctors give them. It's big food companies, which is why we have carcinogenic ingredients in some of our food. It's big agriculture companies and what they've done to agriculture and farming and the land in this country. It's big chemical companies and how they have poisoned pesticides and food in this country. It's gun manufacturers who keep us from having common sense gun safety laws. It's big oil who no matter who it is, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, continue to fall in line with fossil fuel extraction even at a time when any conscious person knows we need to ramp it down. And the defense industry, military industrial complex, and it is over influence on our foreign policy. At this point, my campaign is for those who look at the system and go, they're not going to change it. The dominance of corporate power, what has become a tyrannical dominance of corporate power, is now baked into the cake. And that political status quo is not going to disrupt itself. You've seen your own senator. You saw what happened in 2016. You saw what happened in 2020. At this point, it's not going to be disrupted from within that system. We need to get in there. And while they would say that the only people qualified to run for president are people who are experienced and in maintaining and perpetuate that system, I submit to you that the person who should be the next president of the United States is not someone qualified to maintain and perpetuate that system, but someone who presents myself as qualified to disrupt that system. And that is that. Once again, this is Vermont. You have seen it with your own senator. You know what they do on the level of the primary. But there is one thing that can override that and one thing only, and that is we the people of the United States. So I want to tell you what I would do, you know, a presidential campaign, any political campaign really, is one more job interview. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to tell you what I would do with the levers of presidential power, were you to bestow them upon me. And then the rest, in a very real way, is up to you. I hope that you'll sign the signature so that I can be on the ballot. I hope that you'll volunteer. I hope that you'll support the campaign in any way. But first, I want to tell you what I would do so that you can have any idea whether or not you'd even want to. First of all, we need an economic bill of rights. We need universal healthcare. And before I say these things, I want to point out that every position I have here as part of the economic bill of rights, which is based on Roosevelt's economic bill of rights, is considered a moderate position in every other advanced democracy. That's number one. And number two, everything I'm about to say when it comes to universal healthcare, when it comes to guns and when it comes to tuition-free higher education college and tech school, the majority of Republicans as well as Democrats want these things. We should have universal healthcare like in every other advanced democracy. We should have tuition-free college and tech school like in every other advanced democracy. We should cancel the college loan debt because they should never have existed. We had tuition-free college and tech school at in Florida, California and in Texas before the 1970s. We should have free childcare. We should have paid family leave. We should have guaranteed housing. We should have guaranteed sick pay and we should have a guaranteed living wage. As it is right now, we have one in four Americans who live with medical debt. We have 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. 18 million I already mentioned who cannot afford to pay for the prescription their doctors give them. 68,000 people who die every year from lack of healthcare. One third of America's workers who live on less than $15 an hour and half of them cannot find a place to live. Half of our seniors live on less than $25,000 a year. We currently have a system where because of the president claiming that the COVID emergency is over, we now have millions who have been thrown off Medicaid, millions who have been thrown off their SNAP benefits, but it's even more than that. The reason COVID is declared an emergency is because rich people get it too. The truth of the matter is while COVID is a screaming emergency, there are millions and millions and millions of people in this country who live with what are called silent emergencies. So when the president said the emergency is over, go back to live your life, for many people it was already an emergency. The emergency of poverty, the emergency of hunger, the emergency of lack of a place to live, the emergency of lack of healthcare, the emergency of debt that is so great that at this point what should be considered was the American dream was to buy a house. Today the American dream for millions of people is please dear God, I hope I get out of debt before I die. Now none of those things I could just achieve through a magic wand the president doesn't have a magic wand nor should the president have a magic wand but I could begin to initiate the season of repair. We've got to stop just taking these incremental approaches. They're never going to get there and I have some bad news because they don't want to. Because they don't want to. That doesn't fit the corporatist paradigm. We need a department of children and youth because American children are in crisis. We need a department of peace because we need to learn to wage peace as well as know how to wage war if we think it's necessary. We need to ramp down, not ramp up fossil fuel extraction. This president who calls himself the climate president and he does that because of the healthy investments, admittedly healthy investments and green energy that are part of the inflation reduction act. But you have to do more than invest in green, you have to stop doing dirty. This president has given more oil drilling permits than Trump did and this president has approved the Willow Project the $8 billion Conor Cole Phillips oil drilling project on the North Slopes of Alaska and he put the Willow Project together with the oil drilling permit that he's given to big oil. Plus let's recognize that with that $858 billion defense budget in the United States that makes the DOD, the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet they completely nullify any of these benefits of green energy investments that are in the inflation reduction act. I would declare an emergency, I would declare a climate emergency, I would cancel the Willow Project on day one and we would begin an immediate mass mobilization for a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy. We have been so trained to expect too little. We've been so trained to limit our political imaginations and everything I was saying which should be considered common sense, it's like ooh, that's radical, no, no, no, what's radical is the one in four Americans live with medical debt, that's what's radical. What's radical is the $50 trillion of wealth transfer into the hands of 1% that has gone on in this country over the last 50 years, that's what's radical. Now I have one other major policy piece that I want to propose is what I think is necessary and then we can talk about anything that you want to talk about. It is time to end the war on drugs. It began in 1971 when Richard Nixon initiated it for no other purpose than a political bank. He did not mean it, John Ehrlichman, we have that famous quote from John Ehrlichman, his aide, they knew that drugs were not public enemy number one. We have since that time spent over a trillion dollars on the drug war. It has not alleviated the drug problem. It has exacerbated the drug problem in the United States. It also has exacerbated the problem at the southern border because most of the people immigrating from Latin America are doing so to escape the horror of the drug cartels. What we are doing is not working. It will not solve the crisis at the southern border but it will put a deep debt into that. More than that, we spent what it has done. When I was in college, there were 300,000 people in prison in the United States. Today there are 2.3 million and over half of them are there because of drug offenses. We need to stop criminalizing the drug addict, turn it into a health issue rather than a criminal issue. You don't cage people who need help. For a fraction of what we spent that $100 billion a year on the drug war, we could spend on recovery, harm reduction, and helping people put their lives back together. What you are seeing in communities all over this country is a ravaging, not only by poverty, not only by homelessness, not only by the fact that people have to work two and three jobs, but by the fact that the majority of Americans, the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, the majority of Americans claim to live with constant economic stress, then we call it a mental health issue. We need to look at cause and not just symptom. A lot of the cause of this mental health crisis is economic anxiety day after day, month after month, year after year. The majority of Americans could not absorb a $400 unexpected expenditure. So I would be a president who would say we're going to turn this shit around, wisely, compassionately, elegantly, and carefully. I couldn't get it in four years all the way around, but right now we're headed for the iceberg. The Republican agenda, as the Republicans now exist, you head right into the iceberg. The Democratic corporatists, you head to the iceberg more slowly, but you will hit it simply at a different angle. I say there's no more time. We need to turn it around. I couldn't in my term get it all the way around. I could get it around the curve from one term and then hand it over to a younger generation because there will be time. But getting it around the curve is the task of our generation. This issue that we can get there through incremental change. This country is in decline. And the people who are invested in the situation as it is, their lives are not in decline because they are a trickle-down economic perspective. So we're doing fine for them at the expense of everyone else. So the Republicans will tell you things are even worse than they are because they're not describing the problem as what it actually is. The Democrats will tell you, the corporatist Democrats, will tell you that they are better than they are. And I will tell you, we need to look in the mirror now. We need to transform this country. And we need to look deep into ourselves, face our own complacency, our own denial, our own numbness, our own tendency to distract ourselves, and we need to show up for this generation and this time the way generations before us have done. But we are American. Americans have done great things before and we can do this. Abraham Lincoln stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg and he said that the men who died for the Union there had given their last full measure of devotion so that a government of the people and by the people and for the people would not perish from the earth. It's perishing now. We do not function as a government of the people by the people and for the people. We function as a government of the corporations by the corporations and for the corporations. It is a multi-dimensional problem. It will take a multi-dimensional answer. Electing a president who is willing to name it is just one aspect of it. But if given the opportunity, I feel I could in very, very important ways help lead an effort to wisely, elegantly, and non-violently smash that machine. Thank you. You can ask whatever you want to ask but also bring up whatever topic that you want for discussion in the group or whatever. This is a conversation with all of us, so who'd like to begin? I'll begin. Okay. Well, first of all, I want to thank you so much for coming to Ramon. Thank you. And I'm just so pleased to see you in person. Thank you. I'm watching you on the internet. Thank you. And I have to ask, how does, of course, the miracles fit in to how you would run the country? Well, first of all, the course of miracles makes it clear. When I began earlier saying who we are is as important as what we do. I wrote a book in the late 90s called Healing the Soul of America. And when I did that, what I was interested in was the interface of spirituality and politics. And I did a book. I mean, I had the kind of, you know, I went to school and I said, American History, but I did a deep dive to write that book that I did not. And when I started reading and researching about spirituality and politics, I realized this is not a wheel you have to reinvent. It's already been done. Gandhi, in many ways, having been a student of Thoreau, American transcendentalists, really interesting about Gandhi. And then, of course, Dr. Martin Luther came over to India and studied the principles of nonviolence, which was also based on a lot of Quaker philosophy, the idea of an inner light within us. And then Dr. King went over to India and studied the principles of nonviolence, brought them over for application to the struggle for civil rights in the United States in the 1960s. So I see things exactly as they do, which to me is very course of miracles, or any other serious spiritual and religious path. So first of all, there is no religious or spiritual perspective that gives any of us a path on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings. So that's where it does for me more. I don't care about their data. I care about human despair. I don't care about their punditry. I care about human suffering. That is number one. And I see loving one another as the answer. Don't tell me that when they said, oh, we're going to cut child poverty in half. First of all, my first thought was, well, if you could cut in half, why don't you limit the whole thing? But that's okay. Then they said, we're going to do it through a child tax credit. Great. And they did it with a child tax credit. And that cut poverty in half for how long? Six months. And then that child tax credit expired. They didn't permanentize it. They had already gotten the PR benefit. How does, of course, the miracles fit in? Excuse me. We need a mother in the White House. You can take that however you want. The idea that there are hungry children in America is unacceptable to me. Don't talk to me about love when we have hungry children who are not sad. Don't talk to me about love when we are raping a planet that some people here are going to have to live on long past the time when I'm gone. When there are young people in America who are saying, well, normally I'd be thinking of having children. But given the state of the planet, I don't think it would be responsible. Repair this planet. So to me, what, of course, the miracle says is that we should try to be loving people. That we should try to be generous people. That we should not think not only of ourselves but of others. And that we should go wherever we feel in our hearts directed to go where we might be the presence of the alternative. And to me, all that politics is, is our collective behavior. So to me, public policy should reflect goodness and integrity just like personal behavior should. Now, what the corporate mentality says is, oh no, public policy is morally neutral. There is no such thing as morally neutral. So if you have an amoral system, it will turn into immoral consequences. So when you ask me how, of course, would fit in as the answer, how do we move the American political system, social system, and economic system back into alignment with the better angels of our nature? The better angels of our nature is not that we're a bunch of greedy bastards with callousness and disregard for human suffering and callousness and disregard for the future generations. And I am a bit of a romantic about American democracy. I look at the Declaration of Independence as a profoundly spiritual document. The founding of this country was not only important in terms of the political history of the world, but also the moral and spiritual development of the world. The very idea that God created all of us people, that all of us are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's radical. That was radical then, and it's radical now. But tell me how some little child, and there are millions of those children living in a domestic war zone in America today, if the Declaration of Independence says governments are instituted to secure those rights, it also goes on to say if government's not doing a job, it's the right of the people to alter it. So to me, you know, I very much respect the fact that we keep our political conversations secular in this country. I think it's important, actually, I'm a religious minority myself. I know how important that is. However, the values, the humanitarian values that are the universal spiritual themes at the heart of all the great religions are there in the Declaration of Independence and in the better traditions of the United States. So you don't have to see these things in a spiritual or religious context to know that America's gone off the rails. Does that make sense? It all makes sense. Thank you. Yes, sir. Well, asking to bring up some questions beyond... First of all, I want to segue out of that that the fact that you are embracing the course of miracles as an overtly spiritual candidate and not just paying lip service to the Christian values in this country makes... I'm enthusiastic as I've been for any candidate. Jerry Brown, who was working with the Greens. But the question I wanted to ask you is this kind of a leading question. I don't expect you to have an answer, but it's a new topic that I think we can bring up when we talk about what we're up against, and I had Ralph Nader in the back of the limo when he was running in 1996 for the first time as Green Party's co-chair. I said, Ralph, your anti-corporate message is fine as far as it goes, but what kind of economy are we for? Because it sounds like we're just against work. You know, which it did, and we were. I'm sorry, I know what... He said... I'm not picking at all from any moment. You were talking about Ralph Nader. I had him in the back of the limo. He was running for president. We pulled a Green Party out of it. It was the seventh state. The Jerry Brown campaign in 1992 imputed the Green Party with new life, and we had some of the people that, in fact, the guy who ran and did his job. Platform. Platform was 117 pages of everywhere. Down to a 35-page compact document, which Ralph Nader, you know, was proud of. We did that in New Mexico. I was in the country when he ran. I had him in the back of the limo. We were speeding. He didn't care. We didn't have his seatbelts on either. I said, what kind of economy are we for? Ralph, when I said the anti-corporate message is fine as far as it goes, but what kind of economy are we for? Is this how I remember it? He jokingly said, I don't know. I'm a lawyer. I only know how to be against stuff. That sounds so Ralph Nader. You can hear him say that for a ride. I only know how to be against shit. So he said, well, I said, well, we've got a thing in our platform called community-based economy. We just put that out there. Maybe somebody will explain it to us. You know, I would say there is such a thing as a community-based economy. There's a whole community-based paradigm about who we are. And if we were able to organize economically around that, and there's an opening to do that, because it's so necessary and I think it's something we can feel. And there's a version of it where we can just call ourselves a community right now. No, we need to have common work. All of us working for her, that's a community. But you know, that's one aspect of a community. We have communities in every business as a potential community if they treat each other as families. And then there's a way to approach thinking of a network of local resource-based communities building a local resource and have a more direct connection to the planet. And then we're in a place to negotiate with those people that run the big... because I don't think they know how to transition out of what they're doing. And they're moving out of fear. And I think what happens is we don't have the time to really transform the whole thing like that, but if a really coherent model and Vermont's an exact place to try it, perhaps, what it means to transition. But meanwhile, the other thought I had, because running the Jerry Brown campaign, I actually was the artist for the Jerry Brown, that's how I mentioned Ralph Nade, the Jerry Brown campaign, they asked me to do some work and I threw a bunch of money at making signs, all those stenciled signs some of them turned up over from our workshop out of Colorado. And the idea we were... and then the way we were trying to run the Green Party, what can we do today, all of us now? Let's just vote for you in X number of months to begin to build on the synergy of things coming together. And as a campaign strategy, how can that spread out? You know, Gandhi, when he was asked who was the leader of the Indian independence movement, his response was the small still voice from him. I'm sure every person here is already participating in the real revolutionary energies that are already happening on this planet. Some of you are doing it in education, some of you are doing it in healing, some of you are doing it in science, some of you are doing it in community activism, some of you are doing it in labor. I assume you already are. I mean, this is not something where somebody's going to be elected president and that's going to fix everything. That's not the side-gods of this moment and that's not what would fix everything anyway. This is something we are living at a time where there's a deep political realignment going on and it's going to break one way or the other. We cannot, it's something that's happening. There's too much wrongly and it's unsustainable. It is going to break one way or the other. It is either going to break in the direction of greater justice and democracy or it's going to break in the direction of something very dystopian and even neo-fascist as possible. We're living at a time of two parallel phenomena. One is one world falling apart in front of our eyes and another is a world that is struggling to be born. And we're called upon to be both death-do-less and birth-do-less and to compassionately this is the thing and this is why when I said we need serious change, but it must be wise, it must be compassionate. You can't just throw bounds. That's not the way, obviously not physically, but I mean even figuratively. And it's a process and each and every one of us has a part in it and each and every one of us are directed in our own inner being where can I best serve and that answers your question also. Where is my particular skill set where could it be most helpful? Now in terms of the economy capitalism is not a light switch you turn off at all. Richard Wolff talks about that. Everything is in flux and we can't like say okay we're going to have a caring economy now. It's not like that. Nobody gets to say okay that's dictatorial even if it's a good thing, right? That's not the way it works. But each of us in our own way can start to transition in the area where we are to a more caring compassionate way of doing business doing life, doing personal relationships doing cultural relationships doing social relationships doing political relationships. What I could do as a president the part I could play first of all is that I'm emerging from that consciousness because I think you do elect a president at least I do the consciousness of a person matters to me. But we've been tricked a couple times in my lifetime. Oh you said this, this and this and you would do this, this and that and I've been surprised and we've been played a couple times on that. But that's kind of a different story. What we can do is put guardrails appropriate guardrails up that used to exist in this country that keep corporate power from its unfettered overreach by which it is now putting its tentacles into every corner of American society and tearing us apart. It's tearing apart our health tearing apart our environment it's poison in our water it's poison in our food it's lack of healthcare it's lack of being able to work one job taking away the dignity of work at what point do we push back and push back nonviolently push back at the ballot box but push back very seriously and stop buying this ridiculous notion that if you elect one of them again somehow it won't somehow get there. Yes ma'am. I don't have my glasses on I don't have my close girlfriends actually. I didn't realize that was here. What do you say to people who say voting in a prime end? Yeah, we gotta all elect five we gotta get behind Biden because the fastest are at the door. Right, that question. It's a primary. You can't be a spoiler if it's a primary. That's number one. Number two the Republicans have a lot of candidates in 2016 they still won the Democrats have a lot of candidates in 2020 they still won. This idea if you have a lot of candidates it's gonna make it harder. No, that's just their PR narrative they have come up with. That's number one. Then they say, oh no no no because Teddy Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter No, no, no. Teddy Kennedy did not defeat Jimmy Carter Royla Reagan did. So they are coming up with all of their excuses because they want someone who represents the corporation it's as simple as that and I can't imagine that people don't see it in their mentality it's the same thing they did in 2016 we got this they don't got this if they had kept their finger off the scale in 2016 either Bernie or Hillary would have won I don't know who would have won that primary but I can tell you this we all would have felt good about it and we would have all shown up to vote and Trump would not have been president also it's not democratic how can a party claim to be the champion of democracy except in our own primary season it makes no sense whatsoever what are they so afraid of Bobby Kennedy has one agenda for the next four years which is very different than mine which is very different than the president which is very different than Bobby we all are offering very different agendas for the next four years it's supposed to be your decision the role of the political party is to step back until the electorate has weighed in and that's when the political parties are supposed to step forward they pretended they weren't doing it although they got caught the Debbie Wasserman Schultz won't have with Bernie in 20 they did it we all saw it we all saw that night when all of a sudden those people dropped out we all know what happened now they don't even pretend they don't even pretend it's extraordinary no we are going with Biden he is an incumbent where are the constitution people treat me like who let you in I'll tell you let me in James Madison with a little help from Susan B. Anthony the constitution says running for president you have to be have been born here have lived here for 14 years and 35 years or older and political parties are not even mentioned in the constitution George Washington orders against them saying they could form factions of men who are more concerned with their party than with their country John Adams said they could become the biggest threat to democracy now I'm a Roosevelt Democrat so I don't I just want the traditional pillars of the Democratic Party which was unabashed unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States if the Democratic Party was displaying unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States the minimum wage would not be $7.25 an hour and let us all grow up okay let us all you know this is my experience of Americans you could take any two of us in this room we don't have to know each other we could say okay let's go out to dinner tonight my experience of Americans is within an hour we'd be having a deep conversation and we'd be getting real and we'd be talking about what's really going on in our lives when it comes to our public dialogue we've been trained to be shallow and get kind of dumb and speak in handed down narratives in kind of sixth grade oh they say we have to go with Biden who said we have to go with Biden so we all have to bring the same maturity and authenticity with which we speak in our regular lives into the into the political space we need a level of maturity and a level of openness and independence of thinking that we apply in every aspect of our lives so this idea that we all have to line up behind Biden I want to tell you something Mary there is an entire generation of Americans who are not going to vote for a man who approved the will of Biden they're not and I'm not a Democrat who understands when people say to me oh Mary Ann how could you be doing this don't you understand the fascists are at the door I'm doing this because the fascists are at the door I agree with Franklin Roosevelt who said we wouldn't have a fascist takeover in this country as long as democracy delivers on its promises no help universal health care no living wage guaranteed living wage no tuition free taxable democracy is not delivering on its promises so I'm not worried as a Democrat about people voting for Trump or any of them if we lose in 2024 it will be cause of all the people who stay home and that should not be considered ooh how could she say that it should be considered that we're having a conversation you may or may not agree but my saying that should not be squelched there should not be a command on high don't let her on MSNBC there should not be a command on high don't let her on CNN when Republicans who are polling less than I are on their routinely they have their CNN town halls they're meet the press you have no idea people that I hire who two and three days later oh I can't do it and then go work for the Democratic Party doing the things that were hired by me to do I don't think people would be very pleased except you know what everything I said here today I haven't said anything we don't all already know maybe I gave a statistic or two but everything I've said you either know or you really do know so that's what I say I say that they that I'm going to say this this extraordinarily radical thing I believe Biden is a weak candidate for 23 now if Vivek and Bobby keep with all the like dude cupcake stuff with their shirts off and all that in those videos I just might have to make a yoga video does that answer that question Mary? yes anybody else yes sir I remember years ago you were on the Anderson Cooper show and there was a hurricane coming and you had said something ostensibly that you just hoped positive energy in that direction and I remember that they like critiqued you for what I do best and I viewed it as like I'm not religious but I'm a positive spiritual and that's basically the same thing I'm saying pray for those people but it's not hurtful to say I hope the best for them and I was just curious like do you feel you've been attacked or you're basically saying words of spiritual and being viewed as someone who's not traditional if Cory Booker says it it's considered profound if I say it it's woo-woo yes and I guess how do you rectify that in the media that as you said with many factors in the set and whatnot when you get up to mainstream media they're obviously going to try to picture the spoiler, pitch you so on I guess just how do you rectify those things in a difficult situation you wake up every morning to unbelievable insults to unbelievable lies smear misrepresentation of your whole life and your whole career and you start to feel whiny and you start to feel for me and then you slap yourself and say toughen up buttercup you chose to do this you know this is the way it is and the people who are closest to me know that the best service to me is to remind me that and it's disappointing because our democracy should not work that way it's been particularly depressing to see how many lefties are vulnerable to bullshit in ways that they themselves don't think that they are that's been and it's embarrassing and it's humiliating because some of the things people say but also what a spiritual crucible this is Mary Ann Keis I'll tell you one last point those people who are sitting here about Mary Ann and his sister say hey how's it going here's the most important thing Mary Ann is it's all about sexism, here's the reality the reality is Mary Ann was attacked so viciously in that political article innuendo, slander, etc the same type of garbage occurs with men they are let us suffer that's the basic issue, if you want to come right down that's really what it's about if you analyze it throughout the whole entirely not just you, but a whole whole second I'll get into a cluster of kids, etc that's the reality, right but you are right we have to come to a certain reality that it's not about men or women or whatever, it's sex it's about who is the best person to leave this country and when Mary Ann talks about Medicare for all it's a 15 dollar bill you deal with the income and wealth and the quality that's what we got to deal with the reality is we're not going to see that in Biden we're not going to see that for certain trauma the reality is basically we can come together I am absolutely convinced we can come together, every one of us and say in the wealthiest country in the history of the world it is absolutely imperative that everybody understand that we're not going to have other people starving to death we can't have a situation where literally people are mortgaging their whole entire life just for health care I'm guaranteed right that's my story given the fact once again that Republicans as well as Democrats want that but it impinges upon the bottom line of short term profits for insurance companies so of course they will say about me or anybody who is talking about those things they have to say nothing to listen to over there no no no she's not qualified she's long shot, she's crazy she's a bad person she's whatever and like you look at it on a certain level and you go like the game is pretty obvious yes sir, thank you loving thank you for taking time out of the year first of all I'm going to try to speak loudly but I don't know if I'll be able to speak that out that had to be said I think you touched a little bit on this and it's somewhat intersectional some of the things we've just brought out you know what I'm going to have to come over to you sir I'm sorry because you're hearing okay I'm coming over I'm a little hoarse so you were talking a little bit about things such as disinformation people being misled easily talked a little bit about adversary Bobby Kennedy we're wondering as someone who's seen as a leader in mental, physical, spiritual wellness what thoughts you have about how large parts of the American imagination in the communities regarding that have been taken to spiritual thinking whether he you know distrusting seed oils are talking about mass kidnapping of children that may not actually be happening all kinds of crazy things like that what you think that really is saying about otherwise maybe eight political people who are galvanized by what's going on with that it's been pretty disappointing to see but I believe that what has happened you have certain institutional pillars that we all have to for the most part trust the CDC would be an example there have to be some institutions that for the most part we trust and what's happening now I believe is that there is conspiratorial distrust that is in part created by the fact that there was governmental secrecy that should not have been there if they had been more honest with the American people from the beginning if the American people had more reason to believe of officialdom over the last 10 or 15 years then when a situation happened that we really needed to more than not listen to officialdom it was like somebody crying wolf so clearly people have taken something way too far way too far like into conspiracy almost like what are you talking about land but some of their original questioning that was dismissed was was legitimate and so I think that treating the people one of the things that I have learned well I learned this before this as part of my career my father used to say talk to the smartest person on the jury he was a lawyer and I learned a long time ago that if you speak from an intelligent place people hear you from an intelligent place and politics talks to people like we're dumb it talks down to people thinking that's how you get power and so from that place there were too many areas and too many things where clearly people were not told the truth and so because of the areas where people really weren't told the truth people went like wacko with it like just assuming everything's a lie and not everything is a lie does that answer your question? I want someone, yeah it's putting that cat back in the bag is going to take time yes hi I saw you speak in Manchester a couple of months ago I live in Burlington and I'm at the weekends yeah cool it's really nice to see you again I don't have any questions for you what you're doing you're leading with values you're leading with values that's about the best anybody can do and I'm really excited about your department of children and youth and yeah I actually have to leave pretty soon but I just wanted to say thank you so much and I really value what you do as do a lot of young people thank you very very much when it comes to the unsaturated capitalist vulture capitalism paradigm blah blah blah many people say that the condition of the earth is the largest collateral damage I think children are the largest collateral damage children are not old enough to work so they don't have any financial leverage they're not old enough to vote so they don't have any they're not a demographic they don't have any political leverage and they're not a constituency and I wish to see a massive massive transfer of resources in the direction of children 10 years and younger I don't think we have even begun to grapple as a country with the fact you think you have a you think you have a mental health crisis now just wait 10 years when we are seeing growing into adulthood a generation when in elementary school and middle school and high school prayed every day they would not get shot yes sir in 2016 somebody asked me if I could pick anybody in the world who would be president I said your name and then 4 years later you ran for president so it was you so I'm back you're running again I have a hundred questions for you but the one that's running in my mind right now is how do we get more views into the House of Representatives and the Senate well unfortunately what we have seen obviously in Bernie's case and you see it now happens on the congressional level as well this same too many times both parties their idea of somebody who would be a good candidate is do you have can you self fund what that is code for is do you have a million dollars lying around so a lot of times people have said well I don't really have to get really involved on the primary level and then you know that whoever the democrat is I'll vote for them but that's how we've gotten all the corporates because so many of the corporate democrats once you've had the money and then the people you know there are a lot of good progressives running in primary, senate primaries congressional primaries and it's no different than the presidential they get shot down on the primary level so the way I see it and this goes back to what I was saying before who we are as important as what we do if we are going to truly make the fundamental course correction in our country that is I believe is necessary at this time because we're six inches from the cliff we are going to all of us have to begin to see civics and political activism as simply a layer of a well lived meaningful life you know you hear politicians say I want to go to Washington and fight for you I don't want to go to Washington and fight for you I've got my idea been enjoyable for years but I would like to go to Washington to co-create with you because the same forces we have to be on the watch for in Washington you have to be on the watch for in Mount Billion you have to be on the watch for and conquer New Hampshire you have to be on the watch for in Burlington all of us have to do our part at this point no matter what issue we are involved with and that also includes do I have something to do after this I thought at this point we go home you have to go home do you want to just tell me what you have to go home I used to have men telling me they go for me actually let me just say the simple answer is it's also true on the primary level with House members and senators I mean obviously nobody can blame Vermont you know you've got Bernie Sanders here so you obviously have it down on that this is Vermont I realize where I am but this has to be a we all have to be we have to be very involved in local politics we have to be very this is where Ground Zero is now I mean look so what happened with the good dobs decision look what's happening with book banning look what's happening with forces that would have us not be able to teach certain things in school this is just a we are at a time and I think it's a lot for us to sort of take in we didn't expect this we didn't expect this we didn't expect that this generation would have our rendezvous with Destiny but actually we do and if we just elect you know the problem is not that we need more car mechanics political car mechanics in Washington we have plenty of good political car mechanics you hire them the problem is we're on the wrong road we don't need just another technocrat we need someone with vision I'm not saying I'm the greatest visionary in America or anything like that but I'm the one running for democratic nomination and I'm very very grateful to all of you for giving me a listen you don't have to make a decision who you're going to vote for today I certainly hope that you will deeply consider me I would appreciate your vote so much but on this day what I can ask you is if you even believe that my campaign should exist please help me you will listen to Biden you will listen to Bobby you will listen to me and this is your civic duty and your responsibility to yourself as well as your country but I hope that you will help me be on the ballot I hope that you will sign the signature we need a thousand signatures I hope if you are excited about this campaign I hope you'll take a yard sign I hope you'll take a bumper sticker I hope you'll take a t-shirt I hope you'll wear a button I hope you'll tell your friends I hope you'll get on social media with us if you go to Marianne2024.com first of all I hope you'll push the little donate button even if it's a dollar and if you put to volunteer we are already starting we need people to help us phone bank you can start phone banking right now to phone bank and ultimately canvassing please know how grateful I am thank you