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