Remarks at a Campaign Rally in Chicago, Illinois

[As prepared for delivery. See video below for remarks as delivered.]

Thank you all very much for being here tonight and thank you for being part of a political revolution which will transform America.

Thank you for being part of a campaign which will be unprecedented in modern American history. Our campaign is not only going to win the Democratic nomination, is not only going to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history, but with your help is going to transform this country. Together, we are going to, finally, create an economy and a government which works for all Americans, and not just the 1 percent.

Together, we are going to create a political system which is based on the democratic principles of one person - one vote - and end a corrupt system which allows billionaires to buy elections. Yes. We are going to overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections.

Today, I want to welcome you to a campaign which says, loudly and clearly, that the underlying principles of our government will not be greed, kleptocracy, hatred, authoritarianism and pathological lying. It will not be the racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry spewed forth by the Trump administration. That is going to end. The principles of our government will be based on justice: economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.

Today, I want to welcome you to a campaign which tells corporate America, the billionaire class and the other powerful special interests who control so much of our economic and political life that we will no longer tolerate their insatiable greed – greed which has resulted in this country having more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth.

Now, I understand that it's not talked about too much in Congress or in the media but, in my view, we can no longer stand idly by and allow 3 families in this country to own more wealth than the bottom half of America. We cannot allow CEOs of major corporations to rake in 300 times as much as their workers? We cannot allow the very rich become much richer, while over 20 percent of our children live in poverty, veterans sleep out on the streets and seniors cannot afford their prescription drugs.

We will no longer accept 46 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent, while millions of Americans are forced to work 2 or 3 jobs just to survive and over half of our people live paycheck to paycheck, frightened to death about what happens to them financially if their car breaks down or their child becomes sick.

We will no longer accept a situation in which, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, our younger generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents - lower wages, higher debt, unaffordable housing, less mobility. I have 4 kids and 7 grandchildren. Downward mobility is not acceptable to me, and it's not acceptable to the American people. This campaign is about moving our people up, not down.

Today, we fight for a political revolution.

Make no mistake about it. This struggle is not just about defeating Donald Trump. This struggle is about taking on the incredibly powerful institutions that control the economic and political life of this country. And I'm talking about Wall Street - where 6 financial institutions have assets equivalent to 54% of our GDP. I'm talking about the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex and agri-business.

There is too much concentration of wealth and power in this country, and this is a fight we're not going to run away from. We believe in democracy, not oligarchy.

Today, we say to the private health insurance companies, whether you like it or not, the United States will join every other major country on earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right. All Americans are entitled to go to the doctor when they're sick and not go bankrupt after staying in the hospital. Frankly, we cannot afford to maintain a dysfunctional health care system which costs us twice as much per capita as most other countries, but provides us with lower life expectancy and poorer outcomes.

Yes. Healthcare is a right not a privilege, and we will pass a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.

Today, we say to the pharmaceutical industry, that you will no longer charge the American people the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, the result being that one out of five Americans cannot afford the prescriptions their doctors prescribe. The outrageous greed of the pharmaceutical industry is going to end. We are going to lower prescription drug prices in this country.

Today, we say to WalMart, the fast food industry and other low wage employers: Stop paying your employees starvation wages.. Yes. We are going to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage - $15 an hour. Nobody who works 40 hours a week in this country should live in poverty. And yes. We're going to make it easier for people to join unions, not harder.

And by the way. Today we say to corporate America that artificial intelligence and robotics are not going to be used just to throw workers out on the street. This exploding technology must serve human needs, not just corporate profits.

Today we say to the American people that we will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: our roads, our bridges, our rail system and subways, our water systems and wastewater plants, our airports and affordable housing - and when we do that we create up to 13 million good paying jobs.

Today we say to the parents in this country that ages 0-4 are the most important years of human development and you and your kids deserve quality, affordable childcare. The children are our future, and we will establish a high quality, universal pre-K program.

Today, we say to our young people that we want you to get the best education that you can, regardless of the income of your family. Good jobs require a good education. That is why we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition free, and substantially lower the outrageous level of student debt that currently exists. America once had the best educated workforce in the world, and we are going to make that happen again.

Today, we say to our senior citizens, that we understand that you cannot live in dignity when you are trying to survive on $13,000 or $14,000 a year in Social Security benefits. My Republican colleagues want to cut Social Security but we have some bad news for them. We're not going to cut Social Security benefits. We're going to expand them.

Today, we say to Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry that climate change is not a hoax but is an existential threat to our country and the entire planet - and we intend to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy and, in the process, create millions of good paying jobs. All of us have a moral responsibility to make certain that the planet we leave to our children and grandchildren is healthy and habitable.

Today, we say to the American people that instead of demonizing the undocumented immigrants in this country, we're going to pass comprehensive immigration reform and provide a path toward citizenship. We're going to provide legal status to the 1.8 million young people eligible for the DACA program, and develop a humane border policy for those who seek asylum. No more snatching babies from the arms of their mothers.

Today, we say to the top 1 percent and the large profitable corporations in this country - people who have never had it so good -- that under a Bernie Sanders administration we're going to end the massive tax breaks and loopholes that you currently enjoy.

We will no longer accept the absurd situation where large corporations like Amazon, Netflix and General Motors pay nothing in federal income taxes after raking in billions in profits. We will no longer tolerate the situation in which the wealthy and large corporations stash billions in tax havens throughout the world.

Yes, the wealthy and multi-national corporations in this country will start paying their fair share of taxes. We are going to end austerity for working families, and provide some austerity for large, multi-national corporations.

Today, we say to the military-industrial complex that we will not continue to spend $700 billion a year on the military - more than the next ten nations combined. We're going to invest in affordable housing, we're going to invest in public education, we're going to invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Never ending wars.

I should mention to you that this morning, as it happens, I was in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 54th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when civil rights demonstrators were beaten as they marched to the state capital. They were beaten, and my colleague Congressman John Lewis was almost killed 54 years ago because they wanted the right to vote.

And I must say that it is incomprehensible to me that, in the year 2019, we continue to have a president, a Supreme Court and Republican governors who still are trying to deny people of color and poor people the right to vote.

In the last decade, more than 30 states have considered voter suppression laws whose clear intent is to disenfranchise people of color. How pathetic and how cowardly is that.

Brothers and sisters, together we will end voter suppression in this country and move to automatic voter registration. We are going to make voting easier, not harder.

And when we talk about civil rights, let me become a little bit personal. As some of you may know I spent four years here in Chicago in the early sixties as a 20 year old transfer student to the University of Chicago.

I said this before, and I'll say it again, that my four years here in Chicago was an extraordinary moment in my life and very much shaped my world view and what I wanted to do with my life. I should also say that while the University of Chicago was and is one of the great higher education institutions in this country, the truth is that I learned a lot more off campus than I did in classrooms.

As someone who came from a working class family Chicago provided me, for the first time in my life, the opportunity to put two and two together in understanding how the real world worked. To understand what power was about in this country and who the people were who had that power. To learn a little bit about the causation of wars; to learn about racism and poverty and other social ills.

My years here in Chicago gave me the opportunity to became involved in the civil rights movement, in the labor movement, in the peace movement and in electoral politics - experiences that significantly shaped my life.

As a student at the University of Chicago, I became involved with a civil rights organization called the Congress on Racial Equality, CORE, one of the leading civil rights groups of that period.

Now, some of you may not know this, but in early 1960s, the University of Chicago owned segregated housing.

Being audacious young people, black and white, our chapter of CORE wanted to expose that unjust housing system. And so our CORE chapter sent white couples and black couples into the university-owned housing to pretend to look for an apartment. And you can guess what happened.

When the black couples showed up, there were just no apartments available. But a few hours later, when one of our white couples went in, somehow, mysteriously, they would have their choice of apartments.

After documenting this clear pattern of racial discrimination, the students in CORE demanded the university desegregate its housing. When they refused, we staged one of the first ever civil rights sit-ins in the North, forcing the university to acknowledge the situation and to consider serious policy changes.

While what we were doing here in Chicago at the time was significant, it came nowhere close to what young people our age were doing in the South in groups like SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We were protesting. They were putting their lives on the line, and some were getting killed.

In 1963 I, along with a busload of other students, took a 600-mile ride from Chicago to Washington, D.C. for what remains in my mind as an unforgettable day. We went to the nation's capital to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - one of the great leaders in American history. I had the honor of being there to hear him deliver his now-famous "I Have A Dream," speech, and that was a day I have never forgotten.

That same year, we knew we had more to do in Chicago.

It had been nine years since the Brown vs Board of Education decision, but the school officials in Chicago had still refused to meaningfully desegregate the city's public schools. Black schools were overcrowded and underfunded, with many students forced to share chairs and desks. Meanwhile, a report at the time found over 380 white classrooms were completely empty.

But instead of putting black children in those empty classrooms, the school officials decided to put old trailers on the black school grounds. We called them "Willis Wagons," after the Chicago school superintendent of that time, Benjamin Willis.

These trailers were a monstrosity. Students would boil in the heat, and freeze in the cold. They were infested with rats. They were an insult and a disgrace – and the community fought back.

One day, many of us went to the spot where they planned to put the trailers. We were corralled by a police line and told not to cross that line.

Well, some os us did. And, of course, we were arrested and thrown into paddy wagons.

We spent that night in jail, until we were bailed out the next morning by the NAACP.

The reason I tell you all of this is because my activities here in Chicago taught me a very important lesson. And that is that whether it is the struggle is against racism, or sexism, or homophobia, or corporate greed, or environmental devastation, or war and militarism or religious bigotry - real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up when people, at the grassroots level, stand up and fight back. That's a lesson I learned in Chicago, and a lesson I've never forgotten.

Have we made progress in civil rights in this country since the early 1960s when I lived here? No question about it. Do we still have a very long way to go to end the institutional racism which permeates almost every aspect of our society? Absolutely.

Two years ago we turned on our televisions and saw Nazis marching in Charlottesville. Nazis marching in the streets of the United States.

We have, in recent years, seen a major spike in hate crimes - against blacks, and Muslims, and Jews, and Latinos and other minorities.

And, over the last number of years, we have seen a terrible level of police violence against unarmed people in the minority community: Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Jessica Hernandez, Tamir Rice, Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, Antonio Zambrano-Montes and others. People of color killed by the police who should be alive today.

We know that African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested, and almost four times as likely to experience physical force in an encounter with the police.

Today, black men are sentenced to 19 percent more jail time for committing the exact same crime as white men, and African Americans are jailed at more than 5 times the rate of whites.

All of this and more is why we are finally going to bring about real criminal justice reform in this country. We are going to end the international embarrassment of having more people in jail than any other country on earth. Instead of spending $80 billion a year on jails and incarceration, we are going to invest in jobs and education for our young people. No more private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up. No more "war on drugs." No more keeping people in jail because they're too poor to afford cash bail.

Real police department reform. The world must get out, led by the federal government, that lethal force is he last resort, not the first.

And by the way, when we talk about criminal justice reform, we're going to change a system in which tens of thousands of Americans every year get criminal records for possessing marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive went to jail for destroying our economy in 2008 as a result of their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior. No. They didn't go to jail. They got a trillion-dollar bailout.

Our campaign is about fundamentally ending the disparity of wealth and power in this country. But as we do that, we must speak out against the disparity within the disparity.

Today, the average black family has one-tenth the wealth of the average white family.

Today, the infant mortality rate in black communities is more than double the rate for white communities, and the death rates from cancer and almost every other disease is far higher for blacks. Black women are three and a half times more likely to die from pregnancy than white women.

Today, Flint, Michigan is still without new pipes for clean water, and there are 3,000 other Flint, Michigans across the country -- neighborhoods with lead rates that were double those of Flint during the height of its crisis.

Today redlining prevents black owned businesses from getting loans, and predatory lending results in higher interest rates in the African American community.

Whether it is a broken criminal justice system, or massive disparities in the availability of financial services, or health disparities, or environmental disparities, or educational disparities - our job is, and we will, to create a nation in which all people are treated equally. That is what we must do, and that is what we will do.

Brothers and sisters. Over the last two years, and before, you and I and millions of Americans have stood up and fought for justice in every part of our society. And we've had some successes.

Together, as billionaires and large corporations have attacked unions, destroyed pensions, deregulated the banks, and slashed wages, we have succeeded in raising the minimum wage to $15 in states and cities across the country. And forced large corporations like Amazon and Disney to do the same. And we have supported teachers who successfully stood up for their kids in strike after strike after strike.

Together, as the forces of militarism have kept us engaged in unending wars, we have stood arm-in-arm to fight back. For the first time in 45 years, we have utilized the War Powers Act to move us forward in ending the horrific Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Together, as so many of our young people have received criminal records for nonviolent offenses, we have fought to end the war on drugs, and have seen state after state decriminalize marijuana, and have seen communities expunge the criminal records of those arrested on these charges.

Let's be honest: while we have won some victories, our struggles have not always been successful. But I am here to tell you, that because of all the work we have done, we are now on the brink of winning not just an election, but transforming our country.

And let me tell you what that means.

When We are in the White House, we will enact a federal jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job. There is more than enough work to be done in this country. Let's do it.

When We are in the White House we will attack the problem of urban gentrification and build the affordable housing our nation desperately needs.

When We are in he White House we will end the decline of rural America, reopen those rural hospitals that have been closed, support family based agriculture, and make sure that our young people have decent jobs so they do not have to leave the small towns they grew up in and love.

When We are in he White House, we will move aggressively to end the epidemic of gun violence in this country and pass the common sense gun safety legislation that the overwhelming majority of Americans want. People who should not have guns, will not have guns.

When We are in the White House, we are going to address not only the disparities of wealth and income that exist overall in our nation, but we will address the racial disparities of wealth and income. We are going to root out institutional racism wherever it exists. Not only will we end voter suppression, we are going to make it easier for people to vote - not harder.

When We are in the White House, we are going to protect a woman's right to control her own body. That is her decision, not the government's.

Brothers and sisters: We have an enormous amount of work in front of us and the path forward will not be easy.

The wealthy and the powerful will do everything possible to defend their financial interests, and they have an unlimited amount of money at their disposal.

But this is what I believe from the bottom of my heart.

If we don't allow Trump and his friends to divide us up.

If we stand together, urban and rural, north, south, east and west.

If we understand that there really is no such thing as a red state or a blue state - but that we are a nation in which in every state the majority of working people are struggling hard to provide a decent life for their kids.

If we stand together believing in justice and human dignity.

If we believe in love and compassion.

The truth is that there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

Let us go forward together.