00:00Thank you and good morning. Good morning. Good morning. There we go. Good morning, Essence Fest. It is so good to be with you. As a mayor, I'm particularly pleased that we're gathering at a center named after a trailblazing mayor, Ernest Moriel, the father of another great mayor, Mark Moriel, in a city that also brought us Mayor Landrieu, who was the ringleader of the U.S. mayors for a time.
00:30And is now led by the very first black woman mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell. It is a season for mayors, and you've produced some amazing ones.
00:41I want to thank Reverend Sharpton for the kind introduction for your leadership and for your insights whenever I reach out.
00:48And I want to thank and express my admiration for Michelle Ebanks, Richelou Dennis, and the entire Essence team.
00:55Acquiring Essence, restoring its black ownership has been a tremendous contribution, and we all admire you a great deal.
01:07My name is Pete Buttigieg. People back home have trouble saying my last name, too, so they just call me Mayor Pete.
01:14You can call me whatever you like.
01:16I want to take a few minutes to introduce myself, tell you what I believe, and why I'm running for president.
01:24I also want to let you know that I stand here aware that black women are not just the backbone of the Democratic Party,
01:32but the bone and sinew that is making our democracy whole.
01:36We have seen time and time again, especially in the last couple elections, that when black women mobilize, outcomes change,
01:48and we need some new outcomes at a time like this.
01:51Now, we need black women to rise up more than ever because we are living, I am convinced, in a moment that will decide
02:04not only what the next three or four years are like in American life, but the next 30 or 40.
02:11And a great deal is going to depend on whether we can tackle racial inequality in my lifetime.
02:18I say this as a mayor from a diverse city in the industrial Midwest, and I can tell you one story
02:26about how our city came back from the brink, not because I went around saying we're going to make
02:33South Bend great again, not by trying to turn the clock back to a past that was never that great anyway
02:40for a lot of us, but by focusing on the future.
02:43But I can also tell you about a story in which black residents of our own hometown have been excluded
02:51from the recovery of our city and of our country by the consequences of systemic racism.
02:58I'm running for president as a young American mayor in part because I believe the toughest issues we face locally
03:06are also the toughest issues we face nationally. Segregated neighborhoods, unequal schools, mass incarceration,
03:14economic exclusion, and we need national leadership that cares about cities and understands what we face.
03:21We have seen the consequences of systemic racism that must be defeated in my lifetime
03:33in order for America to succeed. We know what we're up against in the criminal justice system
03:38and concerns brought home to my community three weeks ago when we experienced the police shooting
03:44of a black man, Eric Logan, and I have challenged our police department to recognize all of the ways
03:51in which the uniform has been burdened by racism. But it goes beyond that. Our entire healthcare system
03:58is burdened by racism when black women are dying from maternal complications at three times the rate
04:04of white women. Your race should have absolutely no bearing on your life expectancy in this country.
04:10Our housing is burdened by racism with neighborhoods segregated not by accident but by federal policies
04:20enacted within living memory. Race should never, ever be an obstacle to living in any neighborhood
04:26that you choose. Our education system is burdened by racism, not just a distant history leading up to
04:34Brown versus Board, but a reality that even today, so many years after Ruby Bridges bravely walks through
04:42jeering crowds a few miles from here, even now we face tremendous segregation and outcomes divided by race.
04:49And on all these issues, black women have been at the tip of the spear, experiencing the consequences to
04:56our nation's shortcomings, but also putting forward solutions to deal with them.
05:00There's been too much talk about black problems in this country and not nearly enough about black
05:07solutions, of which women are at the forefront.
05:12It's why as president, I will not only be addressing and listening to black women, but appointing them,
05:17as we have done in South Bend. And we see the consequences of that, positive ones.
05:22When we brought in the first African-American female corporation council to run our department of law,
05:28she went on to become our county's first African-American female magistrate judge.
05:33And she built a diverse law department that made it easy to find a successor, also black, who is now
05:39going on to be our county in Indiana, our county's first head of the Bar Association, who is a black woman.
05:46Empowerment leads to greater empowerment.
05:50The policies that got us here were intentional, and so we're going to have to be intentional in reversing them.
05:57It's why I believe we need to invest in the future of black America with a Douglass plan
06:03that is as ambitious as the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.
06:07If America could invest in other countries, we're going to have to invest in our own, in our time.
06:14And it starts now.
06:17Now, I want to talk very briefly about the values that animate our campaign and that must be experienced for
06:22all of us because I am tired of values like freedom being talked about like they are the property of the Republican Party.
06:34Republicans talk a lot about freedom, but I believe you are not free if you do not have access to health care.
06:40Health care is freedom, too.
06:44And by the way, you're not free if your reproductive health care decisions are being dictated by male politicians.
06:49And it's twice as important for men to be speaking up about that.
06:56You're not free if you're trapped in a broken justice system, which is why I insist that we can
07:02and must achieve a 50 percent reduction in incarceration without an increase in crime in our time.
07:08And knowing that black women are too often left to hold their families together and facing
07:16incarceration on the rise for them, we know that this is a matter not only of racial justice,
07:21but of gender justice as well.
07:25We also know that freedom comes by way of access to education, which is why one of the first things
07:32I'm going to do is appoint a secretary of education who actually believes in public education in this country.
07:44We've got so much work to do, expanding educational opportunity.
07:49That's why we're going to make college, public college tuition-free for low-income students.
07:53That's why we're going to increase investments in HBCUs, so that we can support the next Katherine
08:00Johnson in STEM and other fields.
08:04While we're on the subject of education, let's acknowledge some good news that just came about,
08:08thanks to the activism of people like Ajoa Asamoah and Senator Holly Mitchell,
08:13who led the efforts to pass the Crown Act in California that says you can't be discriminated
08:18against because of your hairstyle. This is about freedom too. You're not free if you can be kicked
08:26out of school or lose your job because somebody says your hair is a distraction. Hair discrimination
08:33is racial discrimination. We ought to recognize that at the national level too.
08:40And let's talk about economic empowerment. You know, women of color account for nearly half of all
08:47women-owned businesses. $386 billion dollars of annual revenue, which means that we should
08:53continue lifting up women of color and black-owned enterprises, not just with our words, but with
08:58our dollars. It's why I believe we should put forward an initiative named after Madam C.J. Walker
09:06and Reginald Lewis, a Walker-Lewis initiative that would triple the number of entrepreneurs
09:11from underrepresented backgrounds within 10 years. We can do that, and we should.
09:18We'll have a debt for jobs plan so that every debt-pel eligible student will have their college
09:23loans forgiven if they employ at least three people within five years of leaving school.
09:30And we will have an entrepreneurship fund to co-invest $10 billion in underrepresented
09:36entrepreneurs, creating opportunity for more Americans.
09:42This is what freedom looks like in the 21st century. We're not going to leave it to one party to
09:47talk about any more than we're going to leave national security to one party to talk about.
09:52Because when I got off that plane, that C-17 in Afghanistan, while this president was working
09:58on Season 7 of Celebrity Apprentice, I'm pretty sure the flag on my shoulder was not a Republican flag,
10:03it was an American flag.
10:10So we're not going to give up on national security as an issue, especially knowing that in our time,
10:16national security isn't the sort of thing you can deal with by putting up a wall.
10:19We are not safe until we have confronted and ended the threat of violent white nationalism in our time.
10:28So we're going to recognize that freedom doesn't belong to one political party,
10:45security doesn't belong to one political party, and one more thing.
10:49God does not belong to a political party.
10:52The least of all one that sows division in our land and pits people against one another
11:02and holds those most in need down.
11:04That is not in keeping with any faith tradition, certainly not the one I belong to.
11:10Now lastly, and I want to be brief here, but it's so important,
11:14we need to talk about democracy.
11:16Because we're not a democracy so long as racial and partisan gerrymandering allows
11:22politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around.
11:25We got to change that.
11:29We got to change disfranchisement.
11:31And in the world's greatest democracy, I propose that we begin choosing our president
11:36by just counting up everybody's vote, and I mean everybody's vote,
11:39and giving it to the person who got the most.
11:41I know this is a challenging and bleak moment, but running for office is an act of hope.
11:50The scripture tells us that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
12:00We do not see justice and equality in our time, but we have assurance that we can bring it about
12:06if we make common cause politically.
12:09If we change the channel from that horror show that's going on in Washington.
12:16And yes, if black women are empowered to bring the essence
12:21of your experience to the highest levels of American politics.
12:25That is how we bring about American greatness, true American greatness,
12:29found in the everyday, not in a tank rolling down the streets of Washington to make the president
12:34feel like a bigger man, but the greatness that is in the soul of a woman on the west side of South Bend
12:42who oversees her neighborhood in a way that every teenager and every mayor learns to respect.
12:48That's how we get American greatness. We build that up.
12:51We see greatness in the activists in our community who challenge their mayor, bluntly sometimes,
12:57to make sure we live up to a knowledge that every facet of life in our city is different right now
13:03for different people and commit to do something about it.
13:06We have assurance about what we do not yet see if we do the work.
13:11That's why I'm running. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm looking forward to our conversation.
13:17Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today.
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