Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am here to honor the memory of my friend and the friend of every working person in America, Rich Trumka. We lost Rich this morning, and all I kept thinking is the kind of man we have lost and what that means to all of us. Rich was real. He was a third-generation coal miner who rose to become the president of the United Mine Workers and the president of the American Federation of Labor. Rich was also a hunter, and he had the patience of a hunter--the planning, the long hours, sometimes long days, but always on his target. And Rich was a fighter He was relentless. When Rich got in a fight, Rich never gave up. Might not plan every one of those fights, at least not the first time out, but he never gave up. From his growl to his laughter, Rich was real all the way through. He lived his heart every single day. He was always Rich. Back during the financial crash in 2008, 2009, we were trying to build an idea for a consumer agency to make sure that people wouldn't get cheated next time around the way they had been, and what led up to that crash. Rich was there, and he was there because he had seen firsthand what it is like. He had seen his brothers and sisters in the labor movement, who had lost their homes, had lost their jobs, and seen their pensions disappear because a handful of greedy banks and feckless regulators had permitted the rich and powerful to take over our government and to take over our economy, and they brought that economy to its knees.…”