Why Cant Government Be More Like Us

[Music]

so

i often say i grew up in the perfect

trifecta

in between ohio texas and mexico

my mom is the oldest of nine children

from a poor farmworking family in

southern mexico

and my dad well he’s a white american

hippie

and yes that is a joint who met my mom

while traveling through mexico in the

70s

my white grandpa even used to like to

say that my siblings and i were

purebred irish americans now

living between two worlds one that was

white and brown

mexican and american poor and middle

class

i learned that despite people’s

differences at the end of the day we all

just want the same things for our kids

we want them to be safe to be healthy

to be respected for who they are and

become everything that they dream of

and that’s why i’ve spent the last 20

years trying to win families those same

basic guarantees and it’s why i founded

two of texas’s largest

voting and civil rights organizations

and ran for u.s senate last year

i have spent my career trying to answer

one question

why can’t government be more like us

you see i believe deeply in the

compassion and goodness of ordinary

people

the power of people coming together of

different races

religions and nations and ethnicities

to address their common problems and

pain

but it’s become increasingly difficult

to do that in a country so divided

we’ve seen an erosion of our trust in

government and each other

and it hasn’t served the vast majority

of us in fact it’s only benefited a few

very wealthy people

so it’s no surprise that today 79

of americans believe that government is

run by

a few big interests just looking out for

themselves

back in 1964 just 29 of americans

believed that

and today for the first time in our

nation’s history

the majority of americans believe their

children will be worse off than them

so how do we set a new direction for our

country so that we can tackle

the big economic and political

challenges we all face

so we can ensure our children’s future

will be better than the past or the

present

i believe we do it by making government

more like us

more like the ordinary people it’s meant

to serve

when i ran for senate i got to travel

all across our state

and meet people on all ends of the

political spectrum that asked me all

kinds of questions

people that were sick or caring for a

loved one with cancer asked

how they would be able to afford the

medication they needed

students drowning in debt asked why

college couldn’t be affordable for

everyone

and parents working two jobs who barely

got to see their children

asked why they had to work so hard and

yet never seemed to get ahead

i learned that no matter the question or

the person

what people were really asking was why

it felt like no one in power

cared about their pain millions of

people before covid and now millions

more feel like they are struggling

all alone people feel forgotten and like

there is no way out

and they’re often made to feel like

there is something wrong with them if

they can’t do it all on their own

well i do not think that there is

anything wrong with any of them

or any of us because we aren’t

struggling with personal

problems we are struggling with

collective

problems in a country that has refused

to care for its own people

but while it may feel like many of our

elected officials have forgotten how to

take care of us

we haven’t forgotten how to take care of

each other

when we see a person in need a family

member

a neighbor or even a stranger most of us

instinctively act and i am so

grateful for that instinct because it’s

helped my own family

when we needed it most

when my mom was pregnant with me and my

sister was one year old

she barely had any money and

my dad would leave to find work for

weeks or months at a time

and we lived in a small rural town in

appalachia ohio

where most the people were poor and coal

miners

my mom didn’t speak much english and our

neighbors didn’t speak any spanish

now my mom had grown up really poor

eating beans and tortillas for nearly

every meal

her whole life but in the cold of ohio

pregnant and breastfeeding her

belly and muscles ached for more for

milk eggs and meat

but she couldn’t afford any of that back

then

one day a little girl our neighbor named

wendy was playing at our house

and she innocently went to the fridge to

look for a snack

but when she opened it she found it

completely bare

except for one bowl of beans

well wendy went home and told her mom

and that night our neighbors came to our

house carrying

overflowing grocery bags with cereal

bread milk eggs fresh vegetables and

fruit

and they told my mom they had bought her

groceries because she was their neighbor

and they just wanted to make sure she

could eat right

now my mom held those bags in her arms

and through tears

tried with her few english words to make

known that she was going to pay them

back

but they just told my mom no you’re not

allowed to pay us

one day when you got more than someone

else it’ll be your turn to buy them

groceries

now as a child growing up when my mom

would tell me this story she would cry

every single time because she said when

she needed it most

she had never felt so much love from

strangers

from people that she could barely talk

to

it’s this story that i grew up with that

taught me what it means to care for one

another

and after that day other neighbors like

ruby and ed corbett came by and brought

my mom deer meat they hunted

and they became my mom’s family when

hers was thousands of miles away

our fam our neighbors weren’t blood but

their instinct was to treat our family

as if we were

our neighbors taught me about how to

take care of one another

and see each other’s common humanity

irrespective of where we come from

the color of our skin or the language we

speak

and this story isn’t unique to me i

heard stories like this all across texas

like the story of dreamer alonzo guillen

who went out on his boat during

hurricane harvey to rescue

neighbors he didn’t even know and

drowned in the

process or the story of tremaine brown

of amarillo texas that runs a one-room

barbecue joint called

chai lee’s he turned his modest

restaurant into an operation that’s

given out over

90 000 meals to families who needed help

during covid

he told me i hope my actions become

contagious

i want people to see that small acts of

kindness

can change someone’s whole life and

their perspective

on someone that’s different than them

over the last few months we have all

heard stories like this

of people helping families or neighbors

that lost their jobs or got sick

to make sure they had what they needed

when they needed it

so why can’t government be more like us

well because the truth is that many of

our elected officials feel

more beholden to a few wealthy donors

than the majority of the american people

you see a lot’s changed since 1964 when

most of us believed that government was

working for us

since then a few very wealthy people

poured billions of dollars into electing

candidates that served their interests

alone

and they spent hundreds of millions more

into eroding our trust in government and

each other

why would they do that because less

government caring for ordinary people

means less in taxes

and more money for them you see they

wanted us to abandon the idea

that we could build a country and

government for all of us

that government could be an extension of

what’s best about us

instead they told us that immigrants

people of color and the poor were to

blame for

all the problems we faced

they convinced many of us to turn our

backs on our own government

without realizing that in the process we

were turning our backs on each other

the result is a country that is

increasingly divided

where many old family members and

friends now can’t see what they

ever had in common and it’s something

i’ve even caught myself doing

a few months ago i went back to visit

the town i was born

in and i got to see some of my old

neighbors

including ruby who sewed by hand

the first clothes that i ever wore and

asked me as a child to call her grandma

ruby got to meet my son and my partner

who came to this country as a dreamer

when he was just eight years old

and ruby hugged me and told me how

beautiful my family was

but i spent a lot of that time just

thinking about who she voted for

you see i’m a progressive but perry

county ohio where i was born

is trump country and i knew that if i

found out ruby voted for trump

i was going to feel betrayed how could

she say she loved me

and vote for someone that wanted to tear

my own family apart

i knew that if i found out ruby voted

for trump my gut reaction would be to

want to turn my back on her like

i believe she had turned hers on me

instead i looked at ruby and i asked

myself

if i was going to reduce my opinion of

her and all the good she had done in her

life

down to her one vote

ruby had cared for my mother and me

before i was even born

well in the end i found out that ruby

didn’t vote this election because she

never has

but if she did she would have voted for

trump because she wanted to see this

country change for a lot of people like

her that feel forgotten

a lot of us know what it feels like to

be forgotten

i saw that here in texas people that

were losing their homes because of

unpaid medical bills

people that worked two or three jobs and

barely scraped by

millions of americans have been feeling

an economic pain

so deep they feel like they are drowning

and no one in power seems to care

so where do we go from here where so

many of us

don’t trust each other much less our

government

i know the answer isn’t in turning our

backs on each other or believing that we

are each other’s enemies

based on who we voted for i promise you

that is a recipe for prolonged division

that only serves the interests of the

rich and powerful that gain further

access and influence

over our government when we can’t see

our common interests

but i believe there is a path forward

and that path forward

lies in the simple and powerful stories

of ruby alonso and tremaine

you see the reason we admire their

individual actions are because they

speak to the courage

and goodness of people caring for one

another

they demonstrate the power and

possibility of what our diverse country

could be so what if

the acts of ruby alonso and tremaine

were no longer individual acts

but we could make them our collective

acts

as a country a people and a government

that refused to be pitted against one

another and instead

chose to succeed by understanding that

our dreams our destinies and needs

are all tied together

i know that change doesn’t happen

overnight or without hard work

but every time our country has made a

big leap forward to protect the

interests

of ordinary people from breaking up

powerful monopolies that once ruled over

our entire economy and government for

their sole interest

or creating medicare social security and

the minimum wage

it took the courage of ordinary people

pushing organizing and demanding

that our government be more like us

our country needs that courage again

not to accept things as they are but to

demand things as they should be

you see i don’t want us to go back to

supposedly better days

because i don’t believe we have ever

lived our best days

we have yet to become everything a

country as

big diverse complicated

and beautiful as this one can be

you