 On behalf of the City of Burlington, I want to join Ken and welcome to my mind the most dynamic political person in this country to the City of Burlington and to the children's space here in Burlington for mine. The reason that we asked Reverend Jackson to come right here to this children's space and to talk a little bit about childcare is that more than any other candidate for president of the United States of America, Jesse Jackson has a rational sense of priorities and he understands that putting money and giving help to the little children of this country and to childcare workers and to working parents who want to make sure that their kids are going to have affordable childcare is the direction that this nation has to go rather than giving tax breaks to corporations and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a military, much of it supporting right-wing dictatorships. It is a great pleasure, it is a great pleasure for me to welcome to the City of Burlington a man who I sincerely believe if we do our job right can become the next president of the United States, Jesse Jackson. Let me express my thanks and the like to be with the mayor of the city, to be with a cross-section of friends from the state who support our campaign. We by design intentionally chose to come here to the childcare center, to the day care center, to challenge competitors, to challenge the media, to put the focus on our real national and future security. I visit about four high school, elementary schools every week right during the course of our campaign because our children must not be reduced to a cliche, they are our future, they are our right now. And how we relate to them right now will determine security for our future. I remember in 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik, that was a sense of national insecurity. We had been out-distance in space. What did we do immediately? We created a tremendous commitment to scientific research and investment and we called it the National Defense Act, the Educational Defense Act. And once we put it in military language, only our youth could save us. And as a result, we invested more scholarship from scientific study. We raised pay for teachers. We offered incentive for teachers to go back to summer school or go to graduate school when we were most threatened by a leap in scientific technology by the Russians. We immediately used education as our number one line of defense. It remains that even this day, prenatal care, head start, day care, represent the foundation of our nation. We are right now victimized by the notion that we have security by having more missiles in Europe. That's false security. Our security lies within the development of our children. Head start and day care, on the front side of life, are more cost efficient than jail care and welfare and them to spare on the back side. Four years of interstate university in America for four years, full academic scholarship, cost less than $30,000. Those same four years, full penitential scholarship, cost $120,000 to $160,000. Schools at their worst are better than jails at their best. We should invest in teachers and children in their formative years as opposed to jail warden and prisoners in their latter years. So this is the right priority, morally, right priority economically. It represents the first line of authentic and serious defense. We must in our budget priorities shift from the false security of unnecessary missile systems far beyond our needs, again to invest in our children. It lacks to be measured the character of our nation by how we treat our children. I just left Alabama to come here today. All the focus on the new South, new social relationships, athletes playing ball together, students going to school together, half of all the nations poor children live in one region. My sense of mortality in one region. While we talk about defense against the Russian ban, what about defense against the tape worms? Either the bodies of our children. So it is good to be here today. I challenge my competitors, I challenge the media, put renewed focus on the youth of our country. In going to these schools, I ask our youth, usually, Mr. Mayor, four basic questions. How many of you know someone in your age group who's dead because of drugs? Usually about 25% stand. New Hampshire, Iowa, New York, Illinois, California, across the board. I didn't ask if you know someone in your age group who's in jail because of drugs. About 40% stand. I didn't ask if you know someone in your school who's tried drugs. Almost all of them stand. Then I asked if you know someone in your age group who has caught them with suicide. Usually about 60% of our children stand. These are our children who fear that they cannot cope. And thus they resort to drugs as anesthesia for their pain. Our sex without love, making unhealthy and unwanted babies, instant gratification, a sense of their power that results in short-term pleasure for long-term pain. Our children deserve our attention. They are inclined toward drug use as anesthesia and sex without love, short-term gratification without counting the cost. They're avoiding something. They're avoiding a future without family farms, a future without good jobs, a future with a poor environment, a future where they fear the threat of nuclear war. The realistness our children are measuring sticks for us. Their fears are real. Their response, the challenge is real. We who are adults must relieve them of their fears and free them up and assure them of a world without hazardous waste, without the fear of nuclear war, a world with jobs and forms and real security. Thank you very much. Mr. Jackson, as president, would you like to see Mayor Sanders in the Congress helping you get the job done? Well, the role he will play is a personal judgment. I want him to remain in public service because we need him in public service. We need leaders in public service. We have a sense of conscience and a sense of right priorities. How we treat our children in the dawn of life, how we treat the poor in the pit of life, how we treat old people, the seniors, and the golden years of their lives, and yes, how we treat strangers as it were who are abandoned, the measurement of our character. Mayor's emphasis represents real strong characters in the best interest of our nation. Mr. Jackson, you spoke about the immediate concerns in the future of being our children. In Vermont, the immediate concerns are the environment and our family farm, under a Jackson presidency, what we will promote. Let me just add, if I might, that the concern of Vermont is also our children. It is also, thank you, we've also learned that we have one of the highest infant mortality rates in this country, you know what I think? Well, farmers have children. Those children who grew up farmless and then homeless and then without insurance, those children cannot fully develop. So children on the farm need attention and health care and transportation and education. Secondly, we need to have a commitment to agriculture to support farmland, as opposed to the big four grain monopolies. Commitment to fair prices, farmers won't inherit it, not charity. They work, they'll simply only get paid for working. There are people who want fair prices and they deserve it. We should not play off the rural dairymen or the rural farmer against the urban consumer when a cotton of milk goes up, or a box of food is, price goes up. It's not the rural dairymen or farmer gouging the urban consumer. It's the monophilus in between, it's the barracudas eating up the small fish. Rather, there's prices are driven down to drive dairymen and farmers out of business. We must protect the integrity of family farmers and dairymen. I support fair prices, I support supply management, but family farmers I support the return of their land. We can bail out Chrysler, we can bail out Europe and bail out Japan, we can bail out family farmers in this country. We've lost 650,000 family farmers in the last seven years. It doesn't make sense to lose that many farmers while inputting food from abroad, subsidized by the US government, for the sake of subsidizing the big four grain companies and pulverizing family farmers. Are you saying you're looking forward to next week and live in Vermont the week after that? Well, I have a very measured response in this campaign, state by state, because it's not a one-state-thirty-art dash and look at the score for me. It's a 50-state, 50-league, 50-game season. The media played ours, if it were the Super Bowl, it's simply the opening game of a 50-game season. Game two, New Hampshire. And then there are 48 more games to go. The winner will be determined by the one who has the clearest message that can survive the long haul. The race does not go to the swift, the strong or the moneyed, but those who hold out. I've run this race, I know how to hold out. Whoever gets the most popular votes corresponding with delegates will win in Atlanta. I intend to get those votes. One might observe that in the race and in Iowa, that caucus, yes or Simon, David, spent $750,000 plus in kind. I spent $175,000. They had 300 staff members. I had 40. We still got double digits. The most cost-efficient campaign in Iowa. We registered 4,000 new Iowa voters. We left more of a lasting impact upon that state for the Democratic Party. Clearly, our message won. The difference really was money, not message. Other counties are now responding to my challenge or multinational corporations. They should stop taking jobs out of this country, pay their fast, they have taxes and reinvest in America. The party rules just as bad this time as they were before. You got a lot, you didn't get what you would have got. Well, I hold out for the principle of one person, one vote. The last time around, I received 400 fewer delegates than my popular vote called for. I want the popular vote to correspond with the delegates. If that happens, we're going to win the election in Atlanta. What was impressive in Atlanta was how basic rural farmers, teams of truck drivers, seniors and high school and college youth, rural and urban, came together to form a dynamic coalition. That coalition will continue to grow beyond Iowa. To be sure, none of those who create acid rain, those who exhaust our soil and pours our underground water. We have an obligation. Clean up our environment, choose recycling over incineration. Know that cleaning up our environment is health, intensive and job intensive. Now, all the healthier people that we create thousands of jobs of commitment to clean up our environment. It certainly is unfair. If any other candidate in the race in Iowa had my record of support across the country, they would put Iowa and New Hampshire in perspective. I'm leading in New York, in California, Maryland, Virginia, North, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana. So I have the most viable campaign of anybody running. Others of them expect money, media, lightning and luck. To get them from Iowa to New Hampshire and hopefully they'll then be imposed on the nation by the media. The media should not assume the responsibility of eliminating candidates. The people should make that judgment. That is enough room in the lenses of the cameras, all those who choose to run and get any measure of support. The country is ready for a multinational policy, will shift the priorities from merging corporations and purging workers to reinvest in America. That's the message of one in Iowa. The country is ready for a leadership, will put focus on our children in the form of years and choose head start daycare over JLK and welfare. The country is ready for a leader who'll pull people together, rule and urban, cross lines of race and sex and religion and find common ground. The country is ready for someone who'll stop drugs from coming into our country, who'll stop jobs from going out, secure family farms and stabilize our families and clean up our environment. The country is ready for a leader who has experience in foreign policy. My experience in foreign policy is more substantial than my competitors. I've been the Central American Methodist leaders, and still in Africa, and in the Middle East and Europe. So I have a sense that if we use basic principles and consistent principles of support international law, set of determination, human rights, economic development, we'll have peace in Central America, peace in the Middle East and freedom in South Africa. I represent and advocate the direction that will make our nation stronger and better. Thank you. Last one, last time. My proposal for peace and in the Middle East, A, we should reconvene Camp David as a frame of reference. This time, Israelis and Palestinians should be at the table. So we should do what Israelis and Palestinians, but neither can do for the other. Offer mutual security in exchange of mutual recognition. Right now, neither can offer the other that security because both are trapped in death groups, but now only on a path of mutual destruction, mutual annihilation, and the two groups by fear and even hatred to get a lose from that. We must offer a mediation role. It's in their interests, our interests, and rural interests. And try them a loose offer them mutual security in exchange of mutual recognition. The present formula simply will not work. Occupation is to bring the burden to bear. It gives Israel false security. The Palestinians no security. America stands haplessly by unable to relate in the crisis. Occupation politically, it's divisive. It's tearing the country apart. Economically, it's too costly. Emotionally, it is too draining. Militarially, it is too bloody. We must offer a direct leadership. We should not hide behind who's saying our history. We should deal directly and offer both of them mutual security in exchange of mutual recognition. That would be my approach. What's your reaction to America? I'm delighted. I'm impressed. You want to return the favor to him? And I hope that his endorsement will spread. This man needs no introduction. But next I'd like to introduce Ellen Friedman-David of the Democratic Committee. I'm a little bit backwards. My name is Ellen David Friedman. I'm going to be real brief because you've been waiting. I had the privilege of working with and for Reverend Jackson for the last four or five years. Whenever it was, someone called me up about six months before the primaries in Vermont the last time around and they said, would you like to work on the presidential campaign of Reverend Jesse Jackson? And I thought at first it was a trick call or a trick question. And I'll tell you in just one sentence why I thought that when I was the age of most of you people here, when I was in college, we were doing everything we thought we could to change the world, to end the war in Vietnam, to fight against racism, to fight against sexism, to deal with what we saw as corrupt military-industrial complex, and we marched in the streets and we held demonstrations and we occupied buildings. And the one thing we never considered doing was trying to elect somebody as president who was principled, who was anti-racist, who was anti-sexist, who was anti-imperialist, who would end the war we were involved in in Vietnam. We never thought of that as a possibility. The reason we didn't is because nobody then was running who represented that. And it has been a great privilege to work ever since that time for the Reverend Jackson who absolutely stands for those things, who fights for those things every day, whether or not he is president, whether or not he's a presidential candidate. It's a tremendous honor and it's a challenge to us all to support him. I'm going to turn over this stage now to Mayor Bernard Sanders, who just spoke outside and whipped the crowd into a frenzy there, as I'm sure he will whip you into a frenzy. He is likewise a candidate of courage, of principle, who obviously stands for the rights of the people who have been locked out of this system. He is the perfect person to introduce Reverend Jackson to you, Bernie Sanders. Fellow Vermontas, today is a very exciting day for the city of Burlington and for the state of Vermont. And I'm going to tell you why, and I'm going to tell you why very seriously. The fact of the matter is, is that history is being made in the United States right now by a candidate who is running for president of the United States, who as Ellen indicated, is attempting to do something that has never before been done in the modern history of the United States. This candidate is attempting to put together a coalition, a rainbow coalition, a coalition of black workers and white workers and Hispanics and Orientals, a coalition of young people who want the right to get a higher education without having to bankrupt their families, of elderly people who want and are entitled to decent social security benefits, decent healthcare benefits, a coalition of farmers who all over America today are being thrown off of their land of environmentalists, who are wondering why we're destroying our forest with acid rain, why we're depleting the ozone layer, why we're seeing nuclear power proliferating. Today, history is being made because the candidate for president of the United States is saying people of America, working people, young people, old people, stand up and fight for your rights. And let's take this country back from the millionaires and corporations who dominate it. My friends, 50 percent of the American people, including many young people, your age, have essentially given up on the political process. They said, why should I vote? Doesn't make a difference who's elected. One candidate wins, one candidate loses. Doesn't matter. Nothing happens to me. Poor people all over this country don't vote. The candidate that I'm going to introduce has done something unique. He has gone out into the streets and into the farmland and into the ghettos of this country, and he has brought people in to register, to vote. The last word I want to say, and I hope people understand correctly what I'm going to say and why I say that, why I'm saying what I'm going to say. And that is, as some of you may know, for better or for worse or for historical reasons, the state of Vermont happens to be the widest state in the United States of America. That happens to be the demographic fact. Now, why is that important in terms of this election? And why is it important in terms of what happens on March 1st? I'm going to tell you why. The great political geniuses and the political scientists in the media, they have decided that our candidate can't become the President of the United States because they believe that white people are not going to support him. They say, yeah, he's doing well among black people, but white people know we're not ready for a black president. The fact of the matter is that if Jesse Jackson can carry Vermont on March 1st, and I think he can, if he can carry this state, which is a white state, the message will go out all over the United States that this man is going to become the next President of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Vermonters, let us welcome to the state of Vermont the next President of the United States, Jesse Jackson.