Cory Booker 2020 DNC Speech Transcript

Cory Booker: (00:00)
Union job lifted my family out of poverty and into the middle class. My grandfather left the Jim Crow South for Detroit, joined the UAW and got a job on the assembly lines during World War II. That union job enabled him to support his family, raise my mom and send her to Fisk University. That’s the American Dream. Together we work, together we rise. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know the dignity of all working Americans. They know the urgency and the demand of our dream but working people are under attack. The wealth gap grows, our middle class shrinks and poverty persists. Last week, Donald Trump said, and I quote, “Our economy is doing good.” While 40 million Americans are at risk of losing their homes, 30 million aren’t getting enough to eat and 5.4 million people have lost their healthcare because of this crisis.

Cory Booker: (01:02)
He has failed us but still, I believe in the dream of our ancestors. Together with Joe and Kamala in the White House will raise the minimum wage, so no one who works a full time job in America lives in poverty. Together will fight for those who keep us healthy, who keep us safe, who teach our children, will stand for those who cook and serve and clean, who plant and harvest, who pack and always those who deliver, whose hands are thick with calluses. Like my granddad’s were, who lifted me high, who held mine when I was a boy. If he was alive, Joe and Kamala, he would be so proud of you. And he’d tell us, “Take another by the hand and another and let’s get to work.” This dream ain’t free, you got to work for it. So like his generation, up and out of the depression, let’s now work together and stand together and America, together we will rise.