 What today is about is discussing an issue that is rampant throughout America. It is a very serious issue, obviously, in this community. And it is an issue that we simply, as a nation in Congress, in the media, do not talk about. And that is the issue of poverty and the toll that poverty is taking on the people of our country. Now, poverty is something that is bad no matter where it is in the world. But what is strange about what goes on in America is that we are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. So when you have desperate poverty, whether it's McDowell County, or whether it's any place else in this country, whether it's in the cities all over this country, when you have unemployment rates that are very, very high, when you have opiate addiction or heroin addiction rates that are very, very high, when you have large numbers of people who are incarcerated, when you have people who cannot access decent quality health care or mental health treatment, when you have communities that don't even have grocery stores in America or access to bank branches, when you have kids who have no hope and have no opportunity, and when all of this takes place in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, something is fundamentally wrong. Just the United Nations report came out recently documenting how poorly we do with regard to our children. In America, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. About 22% of our kids nationally live in poverty, but obviously in low-income communities, the number is much higher than that. We have families all over this country who have bright kids, who have the capability of getting a higher education, but they simply don't have the funds to do that. So what we want to do today is two things, I think, basically. There's an informal hearing, informal discussion. One, we want to talk about the problems so that I and the American people can understand what's going on. And number two, equally important, we want to talk about solutions. And the solutions are going to come, yes, from Washington, yes, from state government, yes, from the local communities. But you guys who live here know the issues better than anybody else. So I very much want to hear your ideas. And we're very lucky this morning to have a great panel. And I want to begin before we get to the panel in thanking Linda and Joel McKinney for running this food bank and also for allowing us to use their facility. We thank them very much. I met Sabrina Schrader, what was it, a couple of years ago? Three, when Sabrina was kind enough to come to Washington, we held a hearing, which was called, and I want to get into this issue today, it was called poverty as a death sentence. You remember that? And what it was about, and I'm going to talk about this a little bit more later, when people say poverty, they say, well, it's too bad. If you're poor, you can't buy a big flat screen TV. You can't go out to a fancy restaurant. Too bad you're poor. But everybody here knows that's not really what poverty is about. What poverty is about is dealing with the stress of whether or not your family is going to make it every single week. And I don't know if Sabrina remembers, but I remember there was a doctor there. Really, very good doctor. And he talked about the physiology of poverty. People know what I mean by that? Physiology of poverty is the stress that your body deals with every day. When you worry about whether the lights stay on and when you have enough money to put gas in the car to get to work, and if you can't put gas in the car to get to work, you lose your job, and what happens when you lose your job to the rest of your life? People on the edge every single day. Now, people have money, don't understand what that is about. But when you don't have any money, you are fighting for survival every day, and that takes a huge toll on your health. And that is why people in this county are living years less than in other parts of America because that stress and the pounding away daily, day after day after day of poverty. Now, I come from a rural state as well, state of Vermont, and the issues that I'm seeing here are not radically different than exist in my state or other states in this country. So what today is about is talking about what is going on, talking about how we go forward from here, and always remembering that this is not a poor country, that this country is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, that we have one family that's worth $149 billion, more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people but the top one-tenth of 1% now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. So that's the context I think we should be thinking about. Okay, let's begin, Sabrina. I think many of you know Sabrina Schrader. And we thank Sabrina for being here, for helping us to organize the event and for coming to Washington a few years ago. Sabrina, take it away. Well, I just wanna say you all make me very proud. I'm really glad to be here. So like you said, I'm Sabrina Schrader and I grew up in Twin Branch, the Twin Branch Haller. All of my family and I were born into generational poverty, like many of you. I know what it's like to not have enough food and what it's like to stand in line at a food bank, not have enough money to pay your electric bill, what it's like to get unemployment, what it's like to not have health insurance, what it's like to walk miles in the snow because your car is broken down, what it's like to be the only one in my family who graduated from high school and the only one to get a bachelor's degree. It's not something that I've ever felt proud of. While many children are born in a poverty every day, poverty is not a child's fault and it is not a family's fault. No one who was born in a poverty asked for a life filled with struggling for everything that you need to live with every day. But nowadays we seem more interested in taking things away from these families instead of giving them a fair shot. I wish it all had been easier, but unfortunately for now, my life continues to be a struggle. Even though programs and people helped me to get this far, I still have more than $30,000 in college loans and thousands in medical bills. I still don't make enough to pay back my college loans and it's been eight years since I've earned my bachelor's degree. I'm still constantly working on solving years of problems that were created beyond my control. Some reasons for the continuation of poverty here are there are no colleges in McDowell County and there is not a road to connect us with everywhere else, improving and building new roads like the King Cole Highway will give us access to resources, hospitals, colleges and each other while creating jobs. Currently people need immediate medical attention and they end up dying on the way to the hospital or in a helicopter and living in poverty every day creates toxic stress. That's the physiology that Senator Sanders was talking about, the physiological problems causes more problems like mental illness, addiction and preventable health issues. We need more healthcare providers and addiction treatment centers to combat these issues in every county of West Virginia. Some people say poverty is a death sentence and I have seen many die before their time. I've had several family members, friends and classmates all die young. Car accidents are common, cancer and serious medical complications. I was in a horrible car accident when I was in 11th grade and that wreck left me severely injured and I had to learn how to walk and talk again. When I was in college I got meningitis and was given a death sentence once again. Thankfully I recovered and I was able to go back to school. For far too long, political and governmental systems have caused and prolonged oppression and it is time for that to stop. And instead, we need to create prosperity here. We must invest in each other and in ways that will help us thrive instead of dying, trying to survive. Poverty is a problem that can be solved yet it continues and it's giving our family and friends an early death sentence. My experience of going to Washington DC to share my story led me to realize that I and all of you can be political leaders too. Now I'm running for a house and delegate seat. We can solve problems if we work together in a compassionate way. I'm doing everything within my power to change what's happening in Southern West Virginia. I continue to do nonprofit type work, travel around the state and surrounding states, go to conferences, workshops, meetings, learning how to apply for grants and network with other people. I do everything that my husband's income and my physical energy allows. God has blessed me to make it through obstacles, many obstacles and every day I am stronger but I need help, we all do. I'm really pleased that this event has been organized today by Senator Bernie Sanders so that we can come together for a community conversation about rural poverty. Now I would like to welcome and introduce Bernie Sanders. All right, before I chat again, I wanted you to meet probably somebody that many of you know. Clearly in rural America, we need to do the best that we can to educate our young people and I wanna thank Tanya Spinella who is a teacher in the Welch Elementary School. Tanya, thanks very much for being here. Senator Sanders, guests and residents of our beloved county. First of all, I wanna stop and say I am very hoarse, so bear with me. And thank you for the opportunity to address you here today. My name is Tanya Spinella and I have lived and taught in McDowell County for the past four years and it has been the most rewarding time of my life. I grew up not far from here in Mercer County in a little town called Elgood. My husband and I chose to come to McDowell County, the place where he grew up, after we finished our degrees at Concord University. In truth, we came back because we were both teachers and we knew we wouldn't have a really hard time finding work. I continue to work here, however, because I genuinely fell in love with the people of this great county. The students I've had the pleasure of working with here are in my very biased opinion, the best students in the whole country, but I'm sure every teacher would say that about her students, but they have an intellect, a drive and a thirst for knowledge as many young burgeoning minds across the nation do. Our students, however, have something else. In many cases, they are born into crippling poverty, broken or untraditional family structures, or worse yet, born into families with severe and debilitating drug addictions. But our students have dreams that aren't encumbered by their socioeconomic status. They have dreams of becoming paleontologists and teachers and artists and engineers. Senator Sanders, our students can dream just as big as any in this nation and thanks to your ideals, students will have the hope of pursuing their dreams through affordable higher education. I was told my first class of students at Welch Elementary School, where I still teach, were the most challenging group of kids in the school. My mentors had told me that I would never forget my first class of kids because they were the class that would either make you or break you as a teacher. So naturally, I was terrified. But I soon learned that these students weren't bad kids. They struggled because their homes lacked support and structure. Recently, McDowell County Schools began a home visiting initiative for kindergarten through third. Amanda Fragile, the title one director at McDowell County Schools, began this project in hopes of giving our teachers an inside look at what our students go through every single day at home. But what the teachers received was so much more and going into these homes, we realized that the kids might not be able to concentrate in class because they were worried about their sick grandmother at home that couldn't afford medical care or they were hungry or an absentee parent had just appeared into their lives again for the first time in years or perhaps they were worried about their homes that in their only source of heat was a single kerosene heater. How can we expect our students to remember their homework or to bring a pencil to class if they've been crying up all night because they have a cavity they can't treat? How can we expect them to learn multiplication when all they can think about is the ever-present threat of eviction after a parent loses a job? How can we expect them to succeed in life when all they've ever been told is that they cannot succeed because they are from McDowell County? My students come to school with a myriad of problems. A student can't be expected to learn if we require them to ignore their life outside of school. This is why my school and many others have moved toward community school projects that include free mental health services for families. Our SMILES program is working to ensure every student in our county can see a dentist. Our various after-school programs attempt to fight hunger by providing students with a third daily meal throughout the week and blessings in a backpack which gives non-perishable foods for over the weekend. These are real problems with real families in our county. This means they require real answers. We can no longer rely on empty promises and outdated solutions. We are working on making a better tomorrow for McDowell County and we believe that begins with you. Thank you. Tanya, thanks very much. Now I'd like to introduce Sam Pensank. Do I pronounce that right? Okay, who is a local attorney who's been involved on workers' rights issues and anti-poverty efforts? Sam. Thank you, Senator Sanders. I'm also a native West Virginian and first came to work and visited McDowell County back in 2004, so it's getting to be a little while, but have worked around Southern West Virginia. I still have, came to work over in Mullins, just over the mountain here through one of the great anti-poverty programs that we have in this country, the Avista program and worked long about 10 years ago now over there. I've worked on workers' rights, anti-poverty, economic diversification and empowerment initiatives throughout Southern West Virginia now, as well as working in various policy making capacities for West Virginians. And as a labor lawyer, my job is to fight for and along with the rights of workers and that's often coal miners who are fighting for better health and safety conditions at work for their black long benefits. I do a lot of work representing miners who are struggling to get black long benefits and we have excellent resources in part thanks to the federal black long programs that provide health clinics in Tug Fork just down the road here in McDowell County and but those clinics, they have a big battle and so we work with them and they receive important support from the state and federal levels. So I work to fight for fair pay for workers and also to take nontraditional approaches to increasing assets and wages and wealth for working people by forming cooperatives that are actually owned by workers and we have a long experience of that in West Virginia, worker owned businesses when the weird steel industry was collapsing back in the 80s, many people may recall West Virginia workers got together and created the largest worker owned company in the nation to take control of that steel mill and keep it open for a long time and it was a struggle and they were fighting global trade but they did it and that was what we do in West Virginia is we get together and we win battles like that and so that's my work. I was asked to speak a little bit about what I see as the systemic sources of poverty and I work as a labor lawyer and as a systems thinker and so this is all very familiar to West Virginia so for the benefit of those who may not be from here we have long-term challenges that are structural challenges in our economy, structural forces keeping poverty in place. We've had population loss and McDowell County knows better than many but all throughout the Southern Coal Fields we've lost a lot of population as in our industries have contracted it's known and it's reported as from during the 80s this county led among all the coal producing counties of Central Appalachia, McDowell County lost 42% of its population more than any other of the coal producing counties back in the 80s and that's been a long-term challenge, population loss, second long-term challenge we have had in West Virginia is under utilization of our land, a lot of our land is owned by big corporations that don't make best use of that land all the time they let it set fallow and people know that it's just a difficult situation to do something about but in a county where I work a lot just over the hill here, Wyoming County and it's a similar here in McDowell when you take surface and mineral rights together the county is almost entirely owned by resource extraction companies and that makes it hard to push for innovative land use that helps working people, that helps local people Thirdly, we've had long-term challenge of private and public debt and West Virginia was created with a 50-year obligation to pay off the infrastructure debt of Virginia back in the 1800s we didn't pay that debt off until the new deal and our government's been struggling to keep up ever since our workers' compensation system which deals with, has dealt for a long time with the back pain and the other pain and injuries that our workers have suffered our workers' compensation system was insolvent in our legislature and we have excellent legislators and I see that there are several of them here today and they fought very hard to try to make up for our public inability to pay for these costly injuries that people have faced on the job but that's been a structural challenge for our state so we've struggled with population loss we struggle with access to land we struggle with debt at the household level too as well as the public level and we've struggled with the decline and the depletion of our resource and there's a lot of talk about that but for 20 years we've understood that a lot of the coal that we have in Central Appalachia would be mined out and basically gone by right about this time the US Bureau of Mines reported back in the early 1990s that after detailed surveys of the geological reserves and estimates about economic productivity over the coming decades the forecast at that time back in the 90s was that our coal reserves would bottom out right about 2015 in counties like Boone and Pike County, Kentucky and others around these our Southern West Virginia counties very carefully studied and lo and behold that's happening now and it's a big challenge so to be effective at eliminating poverty and building wealth for working families we've got to accomplish the broader structural change that I think we're talking about here today and I think that Senator Sanders is talking about broader structural change to address these difficult structural problems that keep poverty in place. I hope that we can hear from the audience. This is a wealth of knowledge in this room. I know many people have taught me most everything I know about the world. I've learned from many of you and from coal miners and other folks and leaders, community leaders around Wyoming, McDowell and so I hope we can hear from you about how we can take advantage as communities of these structural reforms that Senator Sanders is talking about to eat away at the root causes of poverty I'll just name four quickly, four areas. First, Senator Sanders has brought attention and a lot of people in this room are engaged into growing our regional food systems. That improves our access to land, improves the utilization of land as one of our structural challenges. The USDA has a role to play. The Appalachian Regional Commission has a very important role to play in improving access to land in our areas and a lot of us are partnering with them. Secondly, as to food systems, a particular challenge that we need to lift up in West Virginia, it's not a challenge necessarily right here in McDowell and Wyoming now but we have a lot of poultry farmers in our state who struggle with unfair, unjust and unreasonable pricing practices and there's talk to grow the poultry industry and grow in the agriculture industry we need to be mindful of the grain inspection packers and stockyards administration at the federal level, prosecutes unfair pricing practices. If we're gonna grow the ag industry in West Virginia it needs to be beneficial for working people not dirt poor poultry farmers. That's not what we need to create. So first, your campaign is lifting up growth of regional food systems. That's critical. Secondly, building wealth for workers is not just about creating jobs that can be low horribly, low wage paying jobs, low benefits. You've spoken about and a lot of folks here are beginning to work on the issue I mentioned earlier of non-traditional business structures. Worker ownership, cooperative ownership. We have a federal rural utility service at the USDA that is supposed to help create rural utilities. Cooperatively in community owned utilities to better serve our needs without driving our electric bills way through the roof and that's something I know in my practice as public interest lawyer we deal all the time with people who can't pay their utility bills and state and federal government can partner better on those issues. I would say additionally democratizing or improving access to capital by growing the non-profit lending sector and community credit unions taken back power from the banks and the bigger lending institutions that don't serve our communities well. The Federal Community Development Financial Institutions Fund has an important role to play in that. So those are some areas where I think we can look for reform. Great, Sam, thank you very much. I want to do now, I mean I think at the end of the day the solutions to the problems that we face are going to come from the federal government, from the state government, from the local government, from the private sector, from people in this room. Let me just say a few words about what I see as the federal government's role. I'm going to open it up to you. You'll do anything you want. Make comments, ask questions and panel will get involved as well. Number one, real unemployment in this country is not what you read in the papers at 5%. It's really actually double that when you look at people who have given up looking for work on people working part time and obviously in communities like this, the unemployment rate is a lot higher than that. So what do we need to do? As a country we need to create millions of decent paying jobs, right? A lot of ways that you could do it, Sam talked about some of them. But one obvious way that the economists think is the fastest way to do it is in your state and in my state as it happens, we got thousands of bridges that are in need of repair. We got roads, you know in Vermont sometimes people go down a pothole, we don't see them again for weeks, you know? Probably not only Vermont, okay? I was in Flint, Michigan a couple of months ago. You'll know what goes on in Flint, Michigan. Kids are getting poisoned by the water they drink. Well, it's not just Flint, Michigan. We got hundreds of communities where the water systems are inadequate and people are worried about the water they're drinking. We need to improve our water systems, our wastewater plants. We used to have the best rail system in the entire world. Guess what? That is no longer the case. Our airports are in many cases outdated. Parts of this country are levees and dams. If we put a trillion dollars into rebuilding our infrastructure, we can create 13 million good-paying jobs and a hell of a lot of jobs right here in West Virginia where those jobs are most needed. And when you rebuild our infrastructure, we make our country safer, more productive, more efficient. That's number one. Creating jobs. At number two, we got millions and millions of people in this country who are working for wages that are absolutely inadequate. So you work 40 or 50 hours a week and in some cases you're gonna be worse off than when you began the week. All right, so let's be clear. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. All right, people can't live on it. I believe we gotta raise the minimum wage to a living wage so that if you work 40 hours a week, you know what? You're living with a modicum of security and dignity. What does that mean? About 15 bucks an hour. Three, we got a problem in this country that has gone on for a long time based on old-fashioned sexism and that women today make about $0.79 on the dollar compared to men. Well, I think we gotta end that. We need pay equity for women. They deserve a hundred cents on the dollar compared to men. Four, number four. We have had in this country for many, many years disastrous trade policies which were written by corporate America and were designed to enable large corporations to shut down in this country, not pay workers here a living wage, and then move to Mexico and China and other low-wage countries. Pay people pennies an hour. We have got in your state here in West Virginia, my understanding is that as a result of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, you have lost about 30,000 jobs since the creation of NAFTA. Good-paying, manufacturing jobs. We have got to end those disastrous trade policies and tell corporate America that if they want us to buy their products, they damn well better manufacture those products in West Virginia and in Vermont and in America. In those communities like McDowell County and many others who are transitioning away from coal, these communities need help. It is not the coal miners' fault in terms of what's happening in this world. We've got legislation that would put $41 billion into helping those miners and other workers in the fossil fuel industry and rebuild those communities that have been hurt by the loss of fossil fuel jobs. Five, what we have got to do is recognize what every other country on earth, major country, industrialized country is doing. How many countries are there, major industrialized countries in the world that do not guarantee healthcare to all people? Anyone know? You got it. There is one country. Jane and I, Jane, stand up. That's my wife, Jane. All right. We live in Burlington, Vermont. We live 50 miles away from the Canadian border. It ain't a big deal. Everybody in Canada, the children, the elderly, the rich, the poor, everybody has healthcare as a right. They've had it for decades. They spend substantially less per person on healthcare than we do. I had to take some people from Vermont over the Canadian border 20 or so years ago in order to buy prescription drugs because the cost of prescription drugs in Canada are far lower than they are in the United States where we pay by far the highest prices in the world while the drug companies make excessive profits. So I believe, and I want you all to think what it would mean, not just the McDowell County, but this whole country. If we had healthcare as a right for all people, all right? One out of five Americans can't even afford the prescription drugs that doctors prescribe. That's pretty crazy. So we have to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Now, education. I grew up in a family, did not have any money. My mother, my dad never went to college. And there are millions of families and Sabrina was talking about this where the kids don't have parents who ever went to college and they can't even dream the idea of thinking about going to college is almost beyond their comprehension, right? It's like going to the moon and it ain't gonna happen. I believe that in a changing world where the economy has changed, we need to understand that public education is not just first grade through 12th grade. That's what we've had for decades. That's pretty good. But in a changing world, we need to know that today a college degree in many respects is the equivalent of what our high school degree was 50 years ago, which is why we need to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. And I don't want anybody to think that this is a radical idea. It's not some big radical idea. It exists in Germany, exists in Scandinavia and other countries around the world. It makes sense for the future of our country that we invest in our young people. Sabrina Mitchell, what, your $30,000 in debt from student debt? All right, here is a young woman who is $30,000 in debt. There are millions, literally millions, three, four million people who are in debt. Talk to people who are $100,000 in debt. Dr. Burlington, Vermont, $300,000 in debt. What was a crime that she committed? Did you go to Las Vegas and lose money? No, you went out and you got an education, right, which improved your life. Good for your community. All right, she should not be being punished for getting an education. She should be rewarded for getting an education. So there is a lot that the federal government can do. Give you one other example. There is only, again, one major country on earth that doesn't guarantee paid family and medical leave. You know what that means? It means right now in West Virginia, in Vermont, you're gonna have a low income woman, working class woman, giving birth today. She, because she does not have enough money, will likely, in two or three weeks, be forced to separate herself from a newborn baby and go back to work in order to earn the income that she needs to take care of her family. That's wrong. A mom and a dad should be able to stay home with their newborn baby. If somebody in the family is sick, people should be able to stay home. We're the only major country that doesn't guarantee paid family and medical leave. And that's why I believe we've gotta pass legislation currently in Congress guaranteeing three months paid family and medical leave. Now, I am often criticized, I'm often criticized by people who say, well, you know, Bernie, all these ideas are great ideas, you know, but they're expensive. That's true. We wanna provide free tuition at public colleges and universities and lowest student debt cost us about $70 billion. That's a lot of money. So how are we gonna pay for that? Well, in that case, we're gonna pay for it by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation. Wall Street's greed and illegal behavior hurt this country enormously. Millions of people lost their jobs, they lost their homes, they lost their life savings. We bailed them out, now it is time for Wall Street to help the middle class of this country. And the last point that I wanna make gets back to the first point. If we were in Haiti right now, we were in some poor impoverished third world country. What we would say is, you know, wouldn't it be great if we had a strong educational system and all of our kids can go to college or a great healthcare system where we had a wonderful clinic down the road here with good doctors and nurses and low cost prescription drugs. Wouldn't it be great? But in the poor countries, they say, we're poor, we can't afford it. Major point that I wanna make to everybody here. We are not a poor country. We are the richest country on earth. And the problem is the policies that take place in Washington every single day are policies designed to help wealthy campaign contributors. All right, people who go to dinners for $350,000 a couple. Anybody have been to dinner lately? For $350,000 a couple making a campaign contribution? All right, anybody here put a million dollars into a super PAC lately? All right, that's another world. But that's the world of Wall Street and big money interests who make huge campaign contributions and then hold the people they give those contributions to accountable to work for them. So now you have the insane proposition right now in Washington today, where you've got many folks, mostly Republicans, who wanna give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to billionaires, the wealthiest people in this country. And at the same time, they wanna cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and federal aid to education. All right, so I think what we need to do, and let me get a little bit political here, but I wanna stay on the issues of McDowell County. The solution is that millions of people are gonna have to get involved in the political process. They're gonna have to stand up and fight back. They're gonna have to demand the government that represents all of us and not just the 1%. That's nothing new. That's the way change in America always takes place. It is the history of the trade union movement. It is the history of the United coal miners workers union. People stood together and fought back. It's the history of the civil rights movement. It's the history of the women's movement, the history of the gay movement. Whatever movements there are, the only way change takes place, people come together, stand up and fight back and say that the status quo is not acceptable. And I think that's the moment we're in right now. So, so I just wanna thank all of you for being here. I'm gonna open it up to questions and comments. And if you got really, really hard questions, direct them to the people behind me. But I'll try to do what I want. Okay, please just be loud, stand up, be loud. Oh, we got some mics. Okay, you don't have to be. There's one mic. We got two mics. Okay, all right. Who's ready to break the ice and be the first? We got a young man right here. Just stand up and give us your name. Hold the mic yourself. Yeah. My name's Jackson Beria. Thank you, Bernie. I'm from Mercer County, the county over. I appreciate you visiting our state, campaigning in our state. I saw you in Huntington a few weeks ago. And I was wondering how you see yourself maybe in a future presidential spot, how you see yourself helping West Virginia and how you see yourself bringing industry to West Virginia. Good. All right, I think the first thing we need to do is we are gonna target federal resources and federal contracts to those communities that need it the most. And my strong guess is that McDowell County is one of those counties that need it the most. All right, so when we talk about national priorities, it is not to make the rich richer. It is to eliminate poverty and provide decent paying jobs for those people who need it. Now, I can't sit there alone and say this is what McDowell County needs. You know those issues. That's what I wanna talk today. And Sam raised a few ideas in terms of agriculture, et cetera, about where we can go. But that is the first promise. Changing our national priorities. For example, in my view, we should not be spending trillions of dollars on a war like the war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into. And then tell the people of McDowell County and counties all over America, inner cities all over America. Oh, sorry, we don't have the money to invest in your community. Second of all, some of the programs that I talked about, trust me, it will make a profound difference in the lives of people in this county and all over this country. If healthcare is a right, can you imagine that? You don't have to worry about whether you can afford to go to the doctor. One of the things that I did as part of the Affordable Care Act, we got $11 billion into community health centers. Community health centers are now serving many, many millions of people. You walk in the door, it's based on a sliding scale basis. If you don't have any money, you get free healthcare, you got low cost prescription drugs. We need to greatly expand primary healthcare, especially in rural areas. People should be able to get to a doctor when they need to get to a doctor. That will happen. If we pass a national healthcare program like a Medicare for all, it will have a profound impact. What do you think, and Linda might wanna comment on this, if your kids know that if they study hard and they do well in school, that they will be able to go to college because we're gonna have free tuition at public colleges and universities. Will that play a role in their lives, do you think? I believe that it will allow them to dream bigger than they have ever dreamed. The kids in this county, Ms. Schrader kind of touched on that and everything, that the kids in this county think that that's a far off dream. And I've seen it, I've seen it. These kids, when they grow up, some of them say that they want to work at Walmart just like mom, but I think that if they have that option, if they know that they're not gonna go thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in debt for an education, then we might be able to produce the next Einstein or the next president of the United States from McDowell County. That's absolutely right. So those are the few of the things that we can do. But again, I wanna say not just for here, but for all over the country, it's gonna be the local people who know their communities best. But it is obligatory in my view that when we have so much income and wealth inequality that the federal government has gotta change that and get that resources to local communities so they can begin creating the jobs and the opportunities that we need. Okay, other questions or comments? Why don't we go from side to side? Yeah, why don't you, you got a gentleman right there? Yeah, or yes, ma'am. I'm a lady. I know, there was somebody behind you. I know that. Oh, sorry. My name is Beth Sizemore and I'm also from a neighboring county and I'm the executive director of a really small nonprofit. And the focus of our services, it's called Reach Family Resource Center. And we have a lot of prevention services. We have a truancy diversion program and an after-school program and a home visiting program for new parents to kind of intensive home visiting. Great. And I think they are all, like I said, prevention programs to get kids off to a good start. And I think in general in this country, we say, oh, children are our greatest resource and they're our future. And then when it comes time to balance the budget, that's who gets hit. And so I guess I'm just listening to the things that people have said today. I know that we have a lot of struggles with our infrastructure and creating jobs. But I would argue that serving kids and getting them off to a good start is really the solution to a lot of that stuff. That if our kids hit the ground running when they hit school and they can read at grade level, then we're gonna prevent substance abuse and delinquency and crime and everything that our country is plagued with now. So my question is, if you had to prioritize children and children's services, where would they be? Beth, thank you very much for your question and your comments. As I just early mentioned, just the United Nations report that came out that shows that we are disgraceful in terms of how we deal with our kids. 22% of the children in this country are living in poverty. And I would tell you that if our children are the future of this country as they are, we have got to radically change our national priorities and give them the care and the hope and the help that they need right now. Now let me just give you an example. And I like people jump up, okay? Start off. We start off, a woman is pregnant, okay? Right now there are efforts to cut the very, very good program, the WIC program. Now WIC has been successful. It says, if you are pregnant, you need good nutrition. Your baby needs good nutrition. We have got to expand that program, not cut that. We got to make sure. There are communities in this country where infant mortality is far, far too high, all right? So starting even at pregnancy, we've got to make sure that pregnant women get the health care that they need and their newborn babies get it. Then you go to another issue. Tell me about this. I could tell you, in my own state, we're a middle-class family, our daughter is middle-class, two kids struggling to find quality, affordable childcare. That an issue here? All right, so here's the reality. Mom goes to work, this is modern America, right? Mom goes to work, dad goes to work. Well, you got two kids. Three years of age, kid five years of age, or four years of age. Can you find good quality, affordable childcare? In most parts of America, you can't. And if you find a good quality of childcare, it can cost you, depending on where you live, $20,000 a year or more. Well, how do you afford $20,000 a year for childcare when you're making $25,000 or $30,000 a year? That's pretty crazy. So to answer your question in terms, and you're absolutely right, in terms of investing in prevention, rather than investing in the aftermath when we don't have good prevention, what do we do? All right, so kids go to school already two years behind when they walk into the first grade. Does that make any sense? It doesn't. We can create millions of good-paying jobs having well-trained, adequately paid, respected childcare providers, right? Now you do that. We put money and into public schools. We take pride in teachers like Linda. All right, you know, I know West Virginia's a big basketball state and a football... Pardon me? Tanya, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Yo, Linda, I'm sorry. Well, we still take pride in Tanya, all right. But these are the heroines. And the heroes of America. All right, I suspect I could be wrong. You're probably not making a whole lot of money on that job, right? Okay, all right. But we need to tell our young people that teaching is a noble and important profession and we provide the kinds of funding at the federal, state and local level. That's investing in the future. I talked about making public colleges and universities to wish free. Here is another example. I want somebody and I know this is a problem and I'd like people to talk to this problem. Nationally, we have more people in jail than any other country on earth. You all know that? It's the richest country in the history of the world but somehow or another, we have more people in jail. 2.2 million people a year. You know what we spend locking up fellow Americans? $80 billion a year at the local, state and federal level. Locking up 2.2 million Americans. That gets exactly to Beth's point. So you got a kid who goes through the first grade two years behind. As Tanya was saying, these are kids who may come from homes where it's cold in the winter time they may not have enough food, they're gonna struggle with education and then what happens when they're in the 10th grade? They're gonna drop out of school, right? Well, you know what? You drop out of school, your future is not all that great. So maybe you start dealing drugs then you get yourself in trouble. In my view, we are spending $80 billion a year locking people up. Maybe we take a good chunk of that and invest it in prevention, in jobs and education for those kids. So I think you hit the nail right on the head from a humane point of view, from a human point of view and even from a cost-effective point of view, it will cost less money to send a kid to the University of West Virginia than to lock him up, all right? So let's make sure that we can send them to the University. All right, let me ask you all a question. All right, we're gonna get to as many questions as we can, but I wanna deal with tough issues here. My under, we have in my state and we have all over this country an epidemic of opiate addiction and heroin addiction. Anyone wanna say a few words about that? Yes, I see a woman right there. Oh, get the mic, grab the mic. Hi, Bernie, my name's Carrie. She can hold it herself, let her hold it. Put the mic close to your mouth. Okay, my name's Carrie. I'm from Mercer County and I've lived in this area for about 10 years and more and more I see people that I know and love following to drug addiction and it's especially bad in areas with such poverty. My question to you is what do you plan on doing? How do you plan on helping these people with opiate addictions? Okay, I'm gonna give you the answer in a moment that I want more discussion about the nature of the problem. So what we're seeing here is opiate addiction. Okay, woman right here, ma'am, right here. Yeah, hold the mic close to your mouth, please. Okay, most people know me. I don't have to, I'm kind of loud. I am, my name is Mary Ann Clayter and most of the people know me because I'm fighting a battle that you've been fighting on the political scene as running for state auditor. And I have a son that is addicted to pills. And... Addicted to what? To pills. So he's addicted to like Xanis, Loretabs and nothing that the doctor gave him. It's just that he hung around the wrong people which has caused me to get more involved with the juveniles in the detention centers because he also went to jail and he has a felony. And we have so many people that are in sitting in jail because of drug addiction. I also have a son that is paralyzed. And a lot of the people that I'm trying to get him to care for him cannot come and work for me because they have a felony that is drug related. They're so, I just don't understand it. They've got to stop looking at saying that somebody has a felony and looking at and putting a drug conviction on them because everybody that goes into that system, they'll say you had an intent to sell and everybody does not have an intent to sell. But that's the plea agreement that they'll give them. And I just want us to look at these children that are locked up, look at these adults that have been locked up and try to turn their lives around because when they get out of jail, they have no future. Okay, thank you. Okay. I want to stay for a moment, we'll get elsewhere but I want to stay on the opioid or the drug addiction crisis and I'm going to answer the questions. People have raised questions I'll answer but I want to hear from the community about drugs right now. There's a woman right behind you. Yes ma'am, hold up my close to your mouth. I will. Hello, my name is Drima Padgett. I am a CEO of a community action agency and also the reentry and criminal justice system has hit home with me. Please stand up Darryl. This is my husband Darryl Padgett. He did 20 years in federal prison for a nonviolent crime. Yes, a drug offense. He has a master's degree now. Can he get a job? No. What can you do to help people like us? Okay, thank you. Good day Senators, my name is Rocky C. I'm from War West Virginia which is just right across the mountain right here in McDowell County. Unlike a lot of folks here, I have been a fit of an education. I was able to go to college and ultimately law school and I defend people. The indigent criminal accused of drug crimes all the time and let me just say that every crime that we face in this community from domestic violence to larceny of any kind to pretty much everything that we deal with is in some variety shaped by the drug problem here. How severe is the drug problem in your judgment? The drug problem here in my judgment is very severe. I would say that 90% of my clients are in some way addicted to two drugs. Beyond that, it has touched my personal life as my mother died of a prescription drug overdose of frankly of medication that she was lawfully prescribed. So I see it as a professional and I have seen it in my childhood and so I suppose my question to you Senator is this, is that poverty is certainly an issue here but it seems to me as a person who lives and works here that the drug crisis fuels the poverty here because people have an addiction and let's be serious about something for just a moment. Addiction is a disease, it is not a crime but because people are afflicted with the disease of addiction, it prevents them from being able to find good work. It prevents them from being able to provide for the families and it seems to be a continuing cycle of blood so that when one person's parent is affected by that it makes it more likely that they themselves will become addicts, that they themselves will become felons and thereby unable to contribute to their community in a positive way and it seems to me that I'm only 30 years old but during my entire lifetime it seems that the people that I went to school with became their parents and now their children are falling into those same cycles and it's not necessarily by any fault of their own it is because they are sort of swallowed by a system an awful system that's so much bigger than they are and so I suppose my question is simply this is what can Bernie Sanders as president do for those poor folks? Thank you very much for your statement. All right I want to stay on it and I'll try my best in a moment after we hear more to answer all of the questions. I think we have, what do we got, a woman right there? Yeah, hold up my close to your mouth please. Hello Senator Sanders, my name is Rebecca Hicks and I'm from right here in McDowell County. I am on the brink of changing my life as I have received acceptance to an Ivy League institution with a $268,000 scholarship. However, however there were several hindrances we have not acknowledged yet. There was more to receiving a higher education than merely covering the cost for it and you have proposed that we improve our Medicare system. But I do not, I cannot be satisfied with that answer because it is the pharmaceutical company that is facilitating the aggressive behavior that is promoting addiction in our community. How can I leave behind my family when I never know whether addiction will overcome and I will have a family to come back to at all. So I guess I ask, how do you propose we break the cycle here aside from healthcare because it is the healthcare system that is promoting the addiction behavior. Okay. All right, that's Rebecca. Rebecca, is that your name? Okay, Rebecca raises an interesting issue. I mean all of these questions and comments are right on. I mean they're just raising I think the right issues and I think what we can all conclude is everything is related to everything else. So I'll throw out this question. If opiates and all of these prescription drugs are out there, how are they getting, why are there so many of these drugs in the community in the first place? All right, I understand that if I injure my back, I want some medicine, that's fine, to take care of my needs. But how come, is that a problem that just a lot of these pills are floating all over this community? Okay, who wants to speak to that issue? Ma'am, let's get this woman, Mike, right here. My name is Velda Johnson. Hold her a little closer to me, ma'am. My name is Velda Johnson. Velda. And I wanted to speak on a matter, I was injured in a car accident back in 2004. I went to a doctor for 13 years. For 13 years, he prescribed me prescription pain medication. If I had an addictive personality, I would be addicted today. He never tested my blood to see the levels. I mean, I would just go in, and say, how you're doing? He'd write me a prescription. I would leave. Doctors are part of the problem. Yup. Okay. They're prescribing appeals, and then people are selling them on the street. I have a son that's... All right, so people, doctors are prescribing it, and then people are selling those drugs out on the street. Yes, yes, they're not taking them, they're selling them. Right, right, right. Okay. What do you do? How would you... Good. Hold the doctor's account for prescribing those. Good, good. Well, we know, we have a family circumstance. I won't go into details, but a family member of ours. Same exact circumstance. She was in pain. She got addicted to the medicine. Her doctor over-prescribed to her, and her life was radically changed for the worse. All right, that's another issue. All right, we've got a lot of these drugs. Doctors are over-prescribing, and the pharmaceutical industry, the people who create these drugs, seem not to understand the consequence of what they are producing. All right. Well, let's stay on the drugs for a minute, we'll get off to other areas. Somebody maybe tell me, and I've heard, I'm sorry, the attorney here, and I apologize, what's your name again? Rocky. All right, made the point that in most of the cases that he handles as a defense attorney, if I understand it, of various types of crime. People have to steal in order to feed their habit. Is that essentially what we're talking about? Okay, so where you have, just give you, I was in Philadelphia, I was in Baltimore, Maryland in just a couple of weeks ago. I am told that in Baltimore, Maryland, which has a very high crime rate, which has a horrendous murder rate, that almost 10% of the population of that city is addicted to heroin. So in other words, what you're talking about, everything is related to everybody else. You're not gonna get a handle on the crime problem, unless you get a handle on the drug problem. All right, you're not gonna get a handle on the drug problem, I think, unless we deal with some economic issues, and we deal with the despair and the hopelessness that a lot of people are feeling, you know? So parents and teachers got a shot at it. If we can say to kids, look, you got an educational opportunity, there are great jobs out there, there's a great life out there for you if you do A, B, and C and stay in school, but when you don't have that hope and that opportunity, then I think drugs and an immediate fix at a high becomes a more appealing alternative. All right, let's stay on drugs for a few more minutes and we'll get to other subjects. Yes, ma'am, right here, stand up. You got a mic coming to you? Just turn around and face the votes. I hate talking on the mic. Anyways, I was embarrassed to talk at first because I am Sabrina Schrader's sister. So it's really embarrassing because I'm not involved in things she is. I actually was pretty smart as a teenager. We both went to different high schools. We both was involved in Upwork Bound Program and a bunch of other programs. I made good grades, I was involved in sports. Well, I got on drugs not by a doctor. It was by kids that we were hanging around and they wasn't getting it by doctors either. There's a lot of people that are drug dealers that brings it out of state. They go pick it up and bring it out, you know? And you just try it. You don't know what it's gonna do to you. There was drugs that I tried and it scared me. Then there was drugs that I liked and I kept doing it. I never knew nothing about addiction. I didn't know that you could get addicted. I ended up getting married to a drug dealer. It ruined my life. Sorry, I had two children. We got in some trouble. He caught charges and I took the right for it. Well, I went to prison for two years because I wouldn't tell on him. Well, I smartened up while I was there. I got my GED because I quit my senior year to be with him. I did get my GED. I did take a lot of classes. I got a lot of certifications. I went to school to be a veterinarian and I was smart enough to do it. I am a felon. It was an attempt to commit a felony but it's still a felony. I have a couple tickets on me. I've changed my life around. I've been sober for years. I've been doing good. And I could be like other people who's on drugs and say, you know what? Screw it. I can't get my kids back. I can't get a job. I can't get my license back to get a car. Why don't I just keep doing drugs? And there was times when I was sitting in jail that I thought that I would just come out and give up. But I didn't. I had a couple people in my life. My boyfriend and my sister, she talked to me the whole time that I was in jail when we never even had a relationship. I went and spoke with the cop about dropping the ticket. I even brought her with me. But I guess where I'm a felon and he said, I know her, you know, since I'm known, he went and dropped the ticket. We went back and asked him. He said he would call. Nobody's ever called. I can't get a job and I don't have the money to pay the tickets to even start out in life to try to go to college to be a nurse to see if a judge will sponge my record. So what is it about how do you get second chances to trying to turn your life around? And it's hard not to turn back to everybody putting things in your face. I say to myself, I have no friends whatsoever because I'm scared I'm gonna fall back into that world. If I had a job or if I had things that I could do, places you could go, it would be a lot easier. Thank you. That's not easy to say publicly. Thank you very much for your courage. All right, there's a gentleman way over there, sir. Yeah, right there. Yes, stand up, please. Okay, we got that gentleman in the mic, please. Good afternoon, Senator. My name is Anthony Woodyard. I am a graduate of Concord University, a state school here in West Virginia. I'm a resident of Virginia and I'm honored to be here today. I am an adjunct professor of pharmacy technician studies and worked for more than half a decade as a pharmacy technician while working on my undergraduate degree. And I guess one of my first questions is where do prescription drugs come from? They come from a licensed prescriber who is licensed by that state board of medicine or nursing if it's a nurse practitioner. In my years of experience working in the pharmacy world, I find that there is a disconnect between the pharmacy, the prescriber and the patient, and there's such a laxness about the prescribers that we have, not just our mid-level prescribers who the physician assistants and the nurse practitioners in this state and others, but it's the doctors as well who should have the forethought and the knowledge of knowing that what they're prescribing in these copious amounts is not going into the body of one human being who in many times is seen once or twice yearly and they're prescribed these controlled substances and an angry patient comes into the pharmacy and says, where's my prescription? And I'm like, I have no idea. The doctor didn't call it in. My mind reader's not working today. I don't know where it is. We'll call the doctor, it's your job. So I, and due diligence, do my job. I call that doctor, I check on that prescription. Well, we'll just send it in because it's easier. And these are words that I hear so many times over the last half decade, it's easier. I don't want easy from our practitioners. We need more stringent policies and laws on our state boards of medicine and pharmacy to ensure that our practitioners are being more conscientious and more cautious in their prescribing to keep these drugs, these prescription drugs that are used as currency off the streets. That's where we need to start, Senator. Okay, I agree. Okay, other questions, comments? Yes, ma'am. Well, my name is Erica and I work at the local library and I see the drug problems but it's kind of a catch-22. You can't make enough money to make it and then you, so you think, what can I do to make extra money? Well, the only thing around here is to sell drugs and then if you can't do that, then why not just give up and start doing them? If you can't make a living and you struggle every day and like you said before, this stress, this stress is, it's unbearable, you live in poverty and we don't have anything else. So either you turn to drugs or you fight through. We have nothing else. Let's go to this side. You're at a gentleman, yeah, right there standing in the other boxes. Yeah, my name is Joe McClung. Hold up, Mike, close. My name is Joe McClung. I'm from Rich Creek, Virginia and retired off the railroad and I'd like to remind you of that you're a husband of your competitor who tried to raid Railroad Retarbon in 1993 and kept my pension in half. But what I want to talk about is jobs and this concerns you. Under, when people get to grant, when I say a water line project, this happened in West Virginia, I think Clarksburg and they wanted money to build a new water system and so they applied, had some grant money come along, they applied for it and they got an estimate from the government of some outrageous price. The city asked, where you gonna spend all this money? And the first thing was in there was, well, you gotta build a building for the federal people, then you gotta put bids out where contractors from California could come in and bring all their workers in and build this thing and the city said, look here, we don't want another building, we gotta pay light bill on and we want to employ people here who are out of a job and they said, anyway, that city, they told the government, the fed, people you work for, to take your money and stick it and they hired a private contractor to build the water system in, paid for a lot cheaper and they did it and they hired people and they really don't want to hire local people was because the water lines were had to be worked on years down the road so they want to hire people who was knowledgeable where the water lines are and everything else but they can't do it because federal regulation says you gotta hire, you gotta put out bids for somebody in California to come in and build the thing and not hire a soul unless there's a flagman or something and I think some of the problems while you have unemployment here and people can't find a job is because some of the federal law restricts it. Well, Joe, thank you and I agree with you. I'll give you an example of my own state in a very rural low income part of my state, exactly the same thing. They wanted to build, I think it was a bridge and some sidewalks and by the time this little town went through all the bureaucracy, they said to the feds, thank you very much, keep the money, we'll invest locally because it was so complicated and it was like building the George Washington bridge for a small project. So I think, but what I also wanna say and we should not kid ourselves is we are not investing anywhere near what we should in our infrastructure. All right, we got all over this country whether it is water systems or wastewater plants or roads or bridges, they are crumbling and we need to invest appropriately but your point is we need to make sure that that investment is cost effective, that we're not spending three times more than we should and that we're putting people to work who need those jobs the most. Local people, yes, right. Right, well, yeah. All right, let's, all right. I wanna say a drug just for a minute more then we'll go to anything else people wanna go to. I see a woman way in the back there, ma'am. Yes. Good afternoon, Senator Sanders. My name is Joe Davis. I'm a midwife and I serve all of Southern West Virginia. I work in the homes with families and I have some numbers that you may or may not be familiar with. You mentioned in the beginning that the United States of America is the wealthiest nation in the world. We are 40th worldwide for maternal mortality and 39th worldwide for infant mortality. We have a 33% C-section rate in this country which means one in three women who go into the hospital to have a baby will have their baby surgically. The World Health Organization says a good number is 15%. I believe that all of this is due 100% to our for-profit healthcare system and that feeds back into the drug system where we have families who do go to the doctor, they wanna go to the doctor, they have insurance, they go to the doctor, they pay their $30, they see their doctor for five minutes and they walk out of there with a prescription and that is why we have a drug problem and that is why we have a health crisis. In this country with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, because all we wanna do all day long is throw pills at it. I know that every single person in this room wants to be healthy and we need a system by which people can learn to be healthy and not take pills. Thank you. All right, that leads me to another issue and that is an issue that I've worked on very, very hard is all right, I live in McDowell County, I get sick, do I have access to decent healthcare? Who wants to talk about that for a moment? Yes, sir. Can we get a mic up here for this gentleman? Okay, here it's coming. I have an issue that affects me close to home and probably a lot of people in here and that's autism and I worked for 10 years in the cold fields and until I got hurt and while I was working, I couldn't receive the treatments for autism, session of therapy would cost $100 and I made decent money, but I didn't make that kind of money and I'm hoping that with the single payer healthcare that we will be able to involve autism. Absolutely. And that I have to drive my kid to school for a special needs class, he's high functioning but I have to drive him 20 miles to another school that has a special teacher for him and if I'm sure that if teaching jobs paid more that we would have more people in that field and I could let him get on the bus and go to his class. Yes, absolutely, thank you. This is an issue, I'm sorry, your first name is? Jacob. Jason. All right, Jason raises his hand again, we don't talk a whole lot about autism. My God, it is a huge problem all over this country and do we have the capability, do we have the special ed teachers now that we need to be able to deal with these kids? No, we don't. Okay, all right, go any place you want. Any issues on people's minds, a woman right here, ma'am? Yes, stand up, we got our mic. My name is Tiffany James, welcome Senator Sanders. Sorry, your first name is? Tiffany James. Tiffany. Yes. How can we reform education at the national level to guarantee that every child gets a 21st century education? One of the challenges that we face here in West Virginia is that, and I know there's gonna be some politicians who disagree, but I'm just gonna be honest, we're 50th in teacher pay. We average in our principal and our superintendent salaries which are decent to more than decent pay in to come up with our teacher average. So it looks inflated, but our classroom teachers are actually making probably less money than anyone else across the country. What is a starting teacher? If I wanna start teaching in West Virginia, what do I make? 30, 2000. 32,000. Okay, and I've been at it for almost 20 years and don't even make 50. So it's very frustrating to preach to children how education gives you opportunity and avenues when they're kind of sitting there looking at you as a 50th in teacher pays, then why are you still here? Look, again, I don't wanna be too political this morning, but what our campaign is called is a political revolution. And part of that revolution, I mean it's a broad, what it means is we say to the young people all over this country, we need great teachers out there. We need motivated teachers. We need teachers who love kids. We're gonna dedicate their lives to the kids. That is a profession that should be respected, okay? And that is we need the best trained, best educated. We want the brightest. I don't wanna say, well, I could make a whole lot of money going on Wall Street or doing this or doing that, but teaching, you know, that's just for, you know, people didn't do well in school. That's nonsense. She is doing the most important work in America and she deserves to have the recognition and the respect and the remuneration that teachers deserve. So this is a revolution. Now I know this is big football country and basketball country. We all love the basketball players and the football players. You know what, her work is more important than that. All right? And we gotta change that attitude. And I'll tell you where it becomes. You know, this is not just rhetoric, all right? We used to have as a nation the best educated workforce in the world. We used to have a higher percentage of people graduating college than other nations. That is no longer the case for a lot of reasons. And it's no great secret that all over this country we have public schools that are failing. Pay is inadequate and we're not bringing people into the schools where we need them the most. Her job is a hard job, you know? Dealing with kids who are struggling and she has to get up every morning and do her best. Not an easy job. So what the revolution in a sense means changing our national consciousness and saying, you know what, educating our kids is not only the right thing to do. If we are gonna succeed economically in a changing economy where technology is changing every day, these kids need a great education. They don't get a great education unless we have great teachers. And if we don't do that, we continue to give tax breaks to billionaires and send jobs to China and to Mexico. I worry very much about the future of this economy for our kids. Okay, yeah. I just wanted to add to that because I don't think a lot of people know this. The teachers or anybody who works in McDowell County gets paid less. Does any teacher, raise your hand if you're a teacher. Are any of y'all making $32,000 or more? No? Okay, I know, because I've been a social worker and I've worked for all kinds of organizations and I've just recently gotten hired to be a substitute teacher. I'm not gonna, I mean, I might, if I worked every day, I might make $20,000. So it's not feasible. I mean, even with, how many social workers do we have in here, okay? Any of y'all making $32,000 or more? Okay, I didn't think so. So I just wanted to point that out and in McDowell County, people make a lot less than the starting positions in Mercer County and it's the same positions and they're requiring us to get like master's degrees for a $20,000 job and have five years of experience. I mean, like with the way these hiring practices are set up, I mean, you can't even apply for a job because if you don't fit the qualifications, you're not eligible. So that's another issue. Let me just reiterate, in a sense, it's a broad answer to almost every issue that has come up and that is the need to change our national priorities. The need to say it is more important for the kids in my city, in Burlington, Vermont, or here in McDowell County to get a good education than it is to give tax breaks to billionaires. That's all. Now, the billionaires may not be happy, the billionaires may not be happy with that answer, but the truth is we do not survive economically as a country if they get it all and they are getting it all. 58% of all new income in America today, 58% is going to the top 1%. Okay, then you got teachers here making $25,000 a year, right? Okay, if that. Okay, let's take some more. All right, okay, whoops. All right, this is exactly the kind of meetings that I love, but my wife tells me that we got a lot of other places to go to today and I can't be late. I was late getting here and I'll be late going there. Let me just say this, I apologize, I really wish. Well, I love you too. You know, I don't wanna make any false promises. You've heard promises from politicians your whole life, so I'm not gonna make any false promises. But I wanna, first of all, thank the people who are here today and really thank you all for the courage that I've heard here, people standing up and telling some very difficult truths about their own lives. We are a great nation that has gone through a whole lot. I believe that if we have a government that begins to stand with the people in McDowell County or in my own state of Vermont, rather than folks who have a whole lot of money who's greed, you know what drives me crazy and I know something about this because I've been in Congress for a while. I have people coming before committees who are multi-millionaires, multi-billionaires, and they're not satisfied, they need and want more and more and give us more tax breaks. Make it easier for us to throw workers in America out on the street to go to China, cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid. That's a mantra, that's what many of these guys want. They want it all. And I think as a nation, we have got to say that the children in McDowell County are quite as important or more important than the billionaires. All right? But to make that happen, and I know it's hard, and I know when people are struggling, politics and elections are very far removed from their daily lives. But let's keep the faith here and let's reinvigorate democracy and let's create a government that works for all of us. I think every problem that we heard here today, they're all connected. Drug abuse is connected to hopelessness, hopelessness is not being able to get a decent-paying job, not being able to get a decent job is tied to bad trade policies or whatever it may be or employers that don't pay a living wage. All of these things are connected. But I think if we work together at the local level, the state level and the federal level, we can make profound changes in this country. So I want to, this is just a wonderful turnout. I want to thank our panelists and I want to thank all of you for being here. Thank you all very much. Thank you.