 This is a big turnout, a very generous introduction. We thank my wife, Jane, for walking me up here. But mostly, let me thank all of you for coming out tonight to have a serious discussion about the serious issues affecting our country. You know, in recent weeks, we've had great turnouts all over this country. We had some 10,000 people coming out in Madison. We have crowds in Minneapolis, in Denver, all throughout Iowa, in New Hampshire. And look at this turnout here tonight at Portland. Media people ask me, they say, well, you know, Bernie, why are so many people coming out to your events? Why have hundreds of thousands of people in every state in this country volunteered to play a role in the campaign? Why have 250,000 people made small donations to the campaign over America? That's been politics, democracy, the longest democracy in American history, that it is not acceptable that a handful now controlling our political process is overdue for the corporate media to start talking about the real issues impacting the American people. In this campaign, because they want change, real change, and that is what this campaign is about. Take this opportunity to say a word about what real change is about. I think many of you remember that the great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass made the point that freedom is never given to us. We have to fight for it. We have to struggle for it. And if you look at the history of America, whether it is workers standing up and fighting for their rights and joining unions, that's the way change takes place. And a apartheid system in this country, African-Americans stood up and said, enough is enough. They joined with their white allies. We broke down the walls of segregation and racism. And some people demanded it. We had a president of the United States who signed a Voting Rights Act. But the energy, the drive, did not come from on top. It came from the grassroots. And when you think about the struggle over the decades and centuries of women fighting for their rights, think about the suffragettes. Women who fought, went to jail, sometimes died to say that in America, women will not be second-class citizens. More recently, we have seen another profound revolution in political consciousness. And that is, gay people said, enough is enough. We will not be intimidated. We will not be discriminated against. And their straight allies stood with them. And last week, the Supreme Court did the right thing. My point is a simple one. Is that if we want real change, it's not just electing someone, hopefully me, but it's more than that. And let me tell you right now what no other candidate will tell you. And that is that no one who is elected president of the United States can do it alone. No one in the White House will have the power to take on Wall Street alone, corporate America alone, the billionaire class alone. The only way that change takes place is when we develop that strong grassroots movement, make that political revolution stand together, and then we bring about change. People start moving, then the people on top start listening. Let me just give you a few, very few examples. Over the last couple of years, almost all of my Republican colleagues in Congress have said, we have got to cut Social Security. But then a funny thing happened. Some of us in Congress, but more importantly, senior groups, trade union groups, veterans groups, began to stand up and say, you know what? You're not going to cut Social Security when people can't make it on 12 or $13,000 a year. You're not going to cut benefits for disabled veterans. You're not going to do that. In fact, what you are going to do is expand Social Security benefits. And because of all of that grassroots work, there was a poll came out, Wall Street Journal poll last week. And you know what it said? It said that by a three to one margin, the American people now believe we should expand Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on taxable income. That's how change comes about. Let me give you another example. Three or four years ago, people in the trade union movement started organizing low-wage fast food workers. And what these workers went out on the street saying is they say, we can't make it on $7.25 an hour. And I had the pleasure and the privilege of going out on some demonstrations with these very, very brave people. Three years, four years come and gone. And you have state after state, city after city. And I understand that Portland is working on raising minimum wage. But here's what's interesting. In Congress, we have a bill. Republicans, of course, are opposed to any raising the minimum wage. Democrats have a bill which has let's raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. But you know what the American people say? $10.10 ain't enough. They want $15 an hour. So that is what happens when millions of people, whether it's seniors fighting for expanding Social Security, low-wage workers fighting to raise the minimum wage, the gay community fighting to make sure that gay marriage exists in 50 states in this country. When people stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. What this campaign is about, it is not about me, it is about you. It is about not only winning elections, it is about transforming America. Let's talk about the serious issues facing this country. At the top of my list is the disgrace that in our country today we have more income and wealth inequality than any other major industrialization on Earth. And brothers and sisters, together we are going to end that disgrace. Now the truth is that America today is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. But most people don't know that. Most people don't feel that. Most people don't see that because almost all of the wealth rests in the hands of a tiny few. And income inequality, to my mind, is the great moral issue of our time. It is the great economic issue of our time. And it is the great political issue of our time. As I can be, there is something profoundly wrong when the top 1-tenth of 1% own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. There is something profoundly wrong when most of the new income is going to the top 1%. There is something profoundly wrong when we are seeing a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. And we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. There is something profoundly wrong when one family, the owners of Walmart, own more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral, it is bad economics, it is unsustainable, and it is not what the United States of America is supposed to be about. Let me be as clear as I can be because we are going to send a message to the billionaire class and that message is you can't have it all. Breaks when children in America go hungry. You cannot continue sending our jobs to China when millions of people in this country desperately need work. Your billions in profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens while we have massive unmet needs in this country. The message to the billionaire class is your greed has got to end and we are going to end it for you. Cannot take advantage of all of the benefits of America if they refuse to accept their responsibilities as Americans. About our economy it is not only the horrific level of income and wealth inequality, it is the tragic reality that for the last 40 years, the great middle class of our country, the middle class that was once the envy of the entire world has been disappearing. Despite exploding technology and increased worker productivity, median family income today is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999. In the state of Vermont, in the state of Maine and all over America, we have working people who are working not just one job but two jobs, three jobs, just to cobble together an income in order to survive and to get some health care. That is not the economy that we need. When you talk about the economy, we also have to have an honest assessment of unemployment in America. Now once a month the government publishes a set of figures and the last figures they published said that official unemployment was 5.4%. But there is another set of government statistics. And that says that real unemployment, if you include those people who have given up looking for work and the millions of others who are working part-time 20, 25 hours a week when they want to work full-time, if you add all of that together, real unemployment is 10.5%. But let me tell you something that is even more frightening and is an issue that we do not talk about at all. And that is the tragedy in this country of youth unemployment. And I don't care if nobody else talks about this issue, we will talk about this issue. And here's why. For young people who have graduated high school or dropped out of high school, who are between the ages of 17 and 20, if they happen to be white, unemployment rate is 33%. If they are Hispanic, unemployment rate is 36%. If they are African-American, real unemployment rate for young people is 51%. In other words, what we are doing is turning our backs on an entire generation of young people who want to get a job, they want to earn some income, they want to get out of their homes, they want to become independent. And we are not allowing them to do that. And if you do not believe that there is a correlation between high youth unemployment and the fact that this country has more people in jail than any other country on earth, you would be wrong. Does it happen that in this great nation, we have more people in jail than the communist authoritarian country of China, which has over three times our population? And in my view, in my view, and I feel this very, very strongly, instead of locking up our young people, maybe it's time we found jobs for them and education for them. Maybe it's time we began to rethink the so-called war on drugs. Talk about our economy. We're talking about income and wealth inequality. We're talking about rates of unemployment that are much too high, but there is another reality that we have got to address. And that is that millions of Americans today are working at wages far, far too low for them to sustain a family. I recently talked to a guy who works with a church group who collects food to bring to an emergency food shelf. And what he told me, and I asked him, he'll tell me what percentage of the people who go to the emergency food shelf are working people. And he said 90% of them are working. In other words, what we see all over America is that people are working 40 or 50 hours a week, but they are not earning enough money to provide adequately for their families. What we have got to recognize is that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is totally inadequate. It is a starvation wage. We've got to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Last month, the city council in Los Angeles raised the minimum wage there to $15 an hour. And that is exactly what we have to do in Washington. A radical idea to say that in America, somebody who works 40 hours a week should not be living in poverty. The wage should not only be fair, it should be equitable. There is no excuse today for women earning 78 cents on the dollar compared to that. For women workers, and when we do that, we take a big chunk out of poverty in this country. Are aware that a number of Republicans go around the country talking about family values. Have you ever heard them talking about? They just love families, that's all there is to it. But if you take a hard listen to what they are talking about when they refer to family values, this is what they mean. They are saying to every woman in America that she cannot control her own bodies. I disagree. Women control their bodies, not the government. Americans talk about family values. What they mean, quite literally, is that women should not have the right to purchase the contraceptives that they need. They talk about family values. They tell us that our gay brothers and sisters don't have the right to start a family, don't have equal rights in America. It's a different vision and view of family values. Four great kids, seven grandchildren who are beautiful, and my wife and I have been married for 27 years. We understand family. We believe in family. So let me tell you what real family values are about. The first real overview of family values is that the United States must end the international embarrassment of being the only, only major country on Earth which does not guarantee workers paid medical and family leave, major country on Earth that does not guarantee paid sick time or paid vacation time. Let me say a word about these family values which are really family values. Today in Maine, today in Vermont, a woman had a baby. If that woman's family has a sufficient amount of money, she and the father will be able to stay home with their newborn baby in the most important moments and weeks and months of that baby's life. And they'll be able to bond with that baby and get to love that baby. But if that woman in Maine or Vermont does not have a lot of money, she will be forced to go back to work in five days, eight days, 10 days. Forcing a woman to be separated from her newborn baby is not a family value. It is why I will demand that the United States of America join the rest of the world and provide at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Let me touch on another issue that gets very, very little discussion is that as a result of the collapse of the American middle class and as a result of the fact that many of our people are working longer hours for low wages, it turns out that our people are now working the longest hours of any other people in a major industrialized country. Japanese are very hardworking people. We work 137 hours a year more than they do. We work 260 hours a year more than the British. And God bless our friends in France. We work 500 hours a year more than the French. The point is that I get around the country and I talk to a lot of working men and women. And often what I see in their faces is exhaustion. People are tired. They're tired of working incredible hours. They're tired of not being able to have the family together. I will never forget Burlington, Vermont, outside of a grocery store. A woman telling me, Bernie, my husband and I have one kid. We want to have more children. I'm working three jobs. He's working two jobs. We don't know that we can be the parents we want to be. Some of you may remember, if you read your history, that over 100 years ago, workers went out on the street and they held up posters and placards. And you know what those posters and placards said? That's right. What those posters said is we are not beasts of burden. We don't want to work and work and work. We want to spend time with our kids. We want to get an education. We want to relax with our families. But today, unbelievably, 100 years have come and gone. And 85% of working men, 66% of working women, are working longer than 40 hours a week. The least that we can do in this country is guarantee every worker two weeks of paid vacation. And that is a lot less than most workers in industrialized countries now receive. You know, when posters go out and they call you up and they say, well, tell me, I'm doing a poll for Gallup or for the Wall Street Journal or whatever. Tell me, what is uppermost on your mind? The answer that the posters almost always receive is a four letter word called jobs. People understand that we need to create millions of decent paying jobs if the middle class is going to expand. All of you know our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, water systems, our wastewater plants, our rail system, our levees, our dams. In many parts of this country, they are crumbling. And we are falling behind many, many other countries in terms of the quality of our infrastructure. If we have over 30% of our kids unemployed, if we have 10 and 1 half percent of adults unemployed, it is time to put millions of people back to work, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. If introduced legislation that would invest $1 trillion over a five-year period to rebuild our infrastructure, that would create and save 13 million jobs. And that's what I will fight for as president of the United States. We talk about jobs. It is not just creating jobs. It is saving jobs. For decades, presidents of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have supported trade agreements that have cost us millions of decent paying jobs as corporate America shuts down here and moves to low-wage countries abroad. United States Senator and a former congressman who voted against NAFTA, against CAFTA, against permanent normal trade relations, a trade policy in this country which demands that corporate America start investing in the United States, not just in China, a trade agreement where it works for working families and not just the CEOs of large corporations. Talk about recklessness. When we talk about illegal behavior, these are just some of the words we use to describe what goes on in Wall Street. In my view, given the incredible power that Wall Street has, we will have the six largest financial institutions in this country having assets equivalent to 60% of our GDP where every month you read about them being fined a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there for illegal behavior. In my view, it is time to break up the largest financial institutions in this country. A system that is part of creating a productive economy, making loans to small and medium-sized businesses, helping us create jobs, not a financial institution which is an island unto itself only concerned about making huge profits. If a bank is too big to exist, that bank is too big. I said that wrong. Let me say it again. If a bank is too big to fail, that bank is too big to exist. Another issue that I know all of you are familiar with and let me be as blunt as I can be in case you haven't felt that I was blunt enough and tell you that as a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, as a result of that decision, the American political system has been totally corrupted and the foundations of American democracy are being undermined. What the Supreme Court essentially said to the wealthiest people in this country is, okay, guys, you already own much of our economy. Today is your lucky day. We are now going to give you the opportunity to purchase the United States government and that is precisely what they are doing this very moment. Just one family, and there are more than one, but one family, the Koch brothers, about the Koch brothers. This is a family. Media doesn't talk about it much. This is a family that wants to destroy social security, Medicare, Medicaid, the U.S. Postal Service. They want to do away with the concept of the minimum age. They want to repeal every piece of legislation passed through the last 75 years that protects working families. But now this family worth 85 billion will spend, as I understand it, close to $1 billion in this election cycle to elect candidates who will make the rich richer and increase suffering for the middle class and working families. Now, when you have one family spending more money in an election cycle than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, what you are looking at is not called democracy. It is called oligarchy, and we have got to end that. The United States of America and our government are not for sale. No promises in this campaign, but here's one I have made and I repeat to you. There is no nominee that I will bring before the United States Senate to be a Supreme Court Justice unless that man or that woman is loud and clear and tells us all that he or she will vote to overturn Citizens United. We've got to go further than that. It's not just a question of overturning this disastrous decision. If we believe, as I think all of us do, that we want the United States to be a vibrant democracy where we have the highest voter turnout of any country on earth, not one of the lowest, where young people, regardless of their political point of view or anybody, working person, wants to run for office, that they can run for office without begging millionaires for campaign contributions. We have not only got to overturn Citizens United, we have got to end voter suppression all over this country and most importantly, we have got to move toward public funding of elections. There is an issue out there that I think more and more people are beginning to talk about and to express their feelings on and that is that when we talk about education, we have got to understand that as a nation, we are living in a highly competitive global economy and if we are going to make it as a nation, if we are going to create the decent paying jobs that we need, we must have the best educated workforce in the entire world. Unbelievable but true. Right now in America, in Maine, in Vermont and all over this country, we have hundreds of thousands of bright, qualified, ambitious young people who not only want to make it into the middle class but they want to serve their country in a variety of ways but these bright, qualified young people cannot get a college education for one reason and that reason is their families do not have adequate income. That is wrong. That has got to end. To make certain that in this country, all of our people who have the desire and who have the ability are able to get all the education that they need regardless of their income. That is why I have introduced legislation which I will fight to implement as president which says that every public college and public university in America will be tuition free. Now this is important to our country for a whole lot of reasons. We need scientists, we need engineers, we need teachers, we need police officers, we need a well educated population and it makes no sense to me that as a nation we say to hundreds of thousands of young people, sorry, you're not going to get that education but I'll tell you it goes beyond even that because in Maine, in Vermont and all over this country there are kids today in the fourth grade, the fifth grade, the sixth grade. Their parents didn't go to college. Their family doesn't have much money. The people they know never went to college and these kids instinctively understand that because their families lack decent income no matter how well they do in school, no matter how hard they try, they're never gonna make it into the middle class and they're never gonna get a college education. When we make public colleges and public universities tuition free, we are saying to every child in America that yes, if you study hard, you will be able to get a college education. There is a related issue out there with regard to the financing of higher education and that is the absurdity that we have millions of Americans, some young and not so young, people who are suffering under oppressive student debt have talked to people whose crime in life was that they went to law school, they went to medical school, they went to dental school and they left school hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I have talked to and I suspect there are people here tonight who are paying 20, 25% of their incomes in student debt and here is what is absurd. If you go out and refinance your home tomorrow, you could do it at two, three, 4% interest rates and yet we have millions of people paying six, eight, 10% interest rates on their student debt. We have the United States government now making billions of dollars in profits off of the high interest rates that working class families are forced to pay to send their kids to college. In my view, we've gotta make sure that the government gets out of profiteering on student debt that people holding that debt can refinance it at lower interest rates and when we do that, we can bring the interest rates down by more than half and some people say, well, Bernie, that's a great idea but it's an expensive proposition, well, they're right. It's about 70 billion a year, it is an expensive proposition and we're gonna fund it by putting a tax on Wall Street speculation. Taxpayers of this country bailed out the illegal behavior on Wall Street. It's Wall Street's time to help the middle class of this country. Our responsibilities as human beings and as parents, there is nothing more important than leaving our planet healthy and habitable for our kids and our grandchildren. Others insist is the debate is over. The scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate change is real, that climate change is caused by human activity, that climate change is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world and you need to look no further than the water situation in California or the heat wave in Pakistan. And what the scientists are also telling us is that we have a small, short window of opportunity to transform our energy system before a bad situation becomes much worse. And by that, what they are telling us is if we don't get our act together, the planet Earth will be between five degrees and 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of this century. And what that will mean is more drought, more flood, more extreme weather disturbances, more acidification of the ocean. And what it will also mean according to the CIA and our Department of Defense is that when people around the world don't have land that they can grow their food on, don't have enough water, there will be migrations of people causing international conflict. The United States must accept the moral responsibility of leading the world in transforming our energy system. The world in moving away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and such sustainable energies is wind, solar, geothermal and others. China, Russia, India and other countries will follow us. Let me touch on one other issue of enormous consequence. I mentioned earlier, United States is the only major country on Earth that doesn't provide paid family and medical leave, doesn't provide paid sick time, doesn't provide paid vacation time. But there is another area that we are lagging far, far behind every other major country. And that is in my view, we must join the rest of the industrialized world and say loud and clear, healthcare is a right of all people. That is why I strongly support our country moving toward a Medicare for all single payer program. Brothers and sisters, thank you so much for being here. Let me conclude my remarks by saying this. This is what I wanna say. I want you A, to understand that again, this is not about me, it is about you, your kids, your parents, the future of America. We are in a pivotal moment in American history. We have seen in the last number of decades some real great progress in making America a less discriminatory society. But on one major issue, not only are we not making progress, but we are falling behind. And that is the economic struggle. Today in America, we are living in a country where some people have unimaginable wealth while many people are literally struggling to put food on the table. I want all of you not to think small. Don't accept the kind of world view that you see on TV or the most politicians throw out. Well, maybe we cut education by 2% or 4%. Maybe we throw this many people off our healthcare or that many people. That should not be the debate. The debate should center around the fact that we are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish. Don't tell me that the United States of America, our great country, cannot guarantee healthcare to all people. Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that in this country we can't have the best pre-K and child care system in the world. Don't tell me that every person in this country should not be able to get all the education they need regardless of their income. Don't tell me, don't tell me that we cannot rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Don't tell me that we cannot lead the world in transforming this planet's energy system. We can do that and more if we do not allow them to divide us up by race, by sexual orientation, by gender, by not allowing them to divide us up by whether or not we were born in America or whether we're immigrants, stand together. As white and black and Hispanic and gay and straight and woman and man, when we stand together and demand that this country works for all of us rather than the few, we will transform America and with your help, that is what we're gonna do. Thank you very much.