Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, so many people that I have memories of, some are still here and some are gone, but they really laid the foundation for a Black middle class. Maybe Granddaddy worked at the school and Grandmother worked at someone's house or maybe they were fortunate enough to have two good labor jobs where they made union wages, but it laid that groundwork for the foundation that we have today. Dr. King was obviously a big part of that. Sadly, on April 4, 1968, he paid his life supporting the sanitation workers in Memphis, trying to push for them to have better wages. When Dr. King died, it wasn't about trying to open up a restaurant to make sure that all people had access to that restaurant or some other place, to make sure that people could ride on the bus; it was to make sure that people had equal opportunity in this country, again, equal opportunity for upward mobility, equal opportunity to be able to take care of their families. I just really appreciate everything that he did. We need to continue to mobilize and organize grassroots efforts around the income inequality in this country. The income inequality that we have in this country is very, very real. You see productivity rising in our country. You see companies recording record productivity, but wages are stagnant. There used to be a time in this country that wages would go up when productivity of companies went up, and we are not seeing that anymore. I think that is really, really sad.…”