Cory Booker: “I rise in gratitude for the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor. I want to express a lot of gratitude toward the…”

“I rise in gratitude for the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor. I want to express a lot of gratitude toward the Senator from Massachusetts. She has been an advocate for the truth of our country. She has spoken here on this hallowed floor. I have now watched her speak in the streets, at airports, at rallies. She is one of those people--like so many Americans, literally millions of Americans over the course of these last few weeks--who is saying with the force of conviction that they will not be silent when the cause of our country is at stake. I join with her tonight, along with some of my other colleagues, to stand up and really speak from the heart. I think this floor has seen many partisan speeches, but this is not going to be about Republican or Democrat. This is not a speech I ever imagined I would be giving in the U.S. Senate. I never thought I would be here today talking about something that quite honestly was unimaginable to me just months ago. This is a time I could not have foreseen, and I fear my generation of Americans maybe, perhaps, should have known that moments like this are possible; that we who believe in the values of our Nation, we who believe in the ideals enshrined in our Constitution, such as religious liberty, we should know that every generation of Americans has to prove worthy of these ideals and stay forever vigilant in their protection and never get so complacent as to think that this could never happen.…”