My hope for America and the activists is that they never, ever go back to sleep, and they keep fighting for social justice, equality, and decency.
What happens to one directly happens to all indirectly.
I'm always amazed to hear my more conservative colleagues talking about how they care about life. They're pro-life, but when it comes down to safe work environments that allow for unions, being able to pay for child care, having family leave - they don't care about any of that. That's where I argue that they're not pro-life, they're pro-birth.
I think the political class, just overall, has underestimated the suffering in America.
My role is to remind people that everyday people can make a difference. And if we get people out there doing things to make America a better place, we can bring change.
The overflow of big money in politics drowns out the voices of everyday people. That is part of the conundrum in America: The more money you have the more speech you have. That leaves everyday people out of the equation.
It's shameful that the elites basically have one-and-a-half political parties. Working class men and women have zero parties - or they have half a party. That's exactly what progressives are upset about.
We really are going to have to answer the cries of everyday women and men who are calling out for elected leaders to do something different. They want to be treated fairly and they need a political party who represents them.
Democrats have lost over 1,000 seats since 2009. It's very easy for people to get up in arms about Mr. Trump, but the fact of the matter is that the Democrats took their eye off the ball starting in 2009.
There should be no surprise that forgotten America, no matter their ethnicity, because we see that Mr. Trump was able to get Hispanic voters, African American voters. Oh my God, the majority of, of, of the women voters that he was able to amass, even though he was painted as the other, my party, the Democratic party, did not listen to the voices of the forgotten America.
I stand for all people even if it causes me political heartburn - and I'm going to do that no matter what my future holds.
We've had to overcome a lot in America to become a nation of progress. We still have a lot of progress to be made.
We need groups like the Women's March reminding elected officials that they have a responsibility to create pathways of opportunity, and if - and when - they aren't doing that, everyday people are going to put a little "extra" on their ordinary and extraordinary things will happen. At this moment, the not-so-quiet voices rumbling across the country and the world are saying we absolutely and unequivocally deserve better.
When you have mega-corporations that have record profits, but they don't want to share even a little bit of that with their workers, we are actually putting our communities at peril.
We are going to have to do some real soul searching as a country and try to bring America together, because it is divided.
I love Vice President Biden, let's make this clear. But we do need somebody that is going to reconnect with the heart and soul of everyday Americans in this country. The Democrats failed on that. And we can place blame on everybody else that we want to. But the bottom line is you can both love this party and critique this party.
Women should not need a permission slip from government to take care of their own reproductive health.
The better a work environment is, the better it is for the employer - not just the employee.
Labor unions have a long history of benefitting all workers, even those who are not members of unions, because everyone's wages go up. If we don't increase membership - and membership in labor unions is going down because of the attacks against organized labor - it's something every single American, whether they're officially in a union or not, should be concerned about. It's a spiral. It's a weakening of the middle class and our economy can't sustain that.
We cannot deny that people are suffering, and they are making that suffering known at the ballot box.
We have an obligation to each other to not only push our politicians, but to push companies to do right by their workers. They wouldn't even have successful companies without their workers. They are the glue that keeps things together. How, in the 21st century, we have mega-corporations that have lost sight of that boggles my mind.
What happens to women happens to the entire nation. People work hard. But when you're working long hours, you don't get to spend time with your kids, you don't get a chance to take a vacation every now and then, you don't get a chance to make a big purchase (which helps the economy). There's something wrong with that. This isn't about wages, this about quality of life.
If workers are overworked, or companies hire temps at low wages, this fundamentally comes down to the quality of life for a person. It's bigger than wages. They should be able to spend time with their families. And if they're single, they should be able to have fun and not spend every day of their life working 12 to 15 hours a day and never get a chance to take care of their well-being. To me, that's part of living a good life.
If a mother or a caregiver does not have a job that pays a living wage and they cannot afford child care, that is unacceptable.
Child care can almost bankrupt a family, even a two-parent household in which both parents are working. That keeps a parent from being at ease and it really stifles the social and economic growth of a family. Women are hit hard across the board, but particularly in homes where the mother is the head of the household and the only wage-earner. It hurts her, and it hurts her children.
