00:02Good afternoon, everyone. How are we doing today?
00:11My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and I am so honored to be here today.
00:20Sixty-three years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered right here and changed the course of our nation's history.
00:31But what made that day possible began long before anyone arrived in Washington.
00:38Before postal workers, professors, domestics, and organizers gathered here, they started to build something together at home.
00:52Before a movement changed the law, it organized to build power.
00:59And before America could realize a new vision of freedom, the people had to first imagine it and refuse to
01:09let it go.
01:11That took a particular kind of prophetic genius.
01:16The moral clarity to know what we, the people, deserve.
01:22The vision to see what America can become.
01:28And the strategy to bring it all together.
01:33That prophetic genius was everywhere in the movement that built this march.
01:39Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Height,
01:47and one of my personal heroes, A. Philip Randolph.
01:52You see, A. Philip Randolph understood something radical.
01:57That black freedom, civil freedom, and all of our full freedom requires economic freedom.
02:05Because if we cannot exercise our most basic rights, a shelter to grow a family in, food to sustain our
02:14lives, and an education with which to flourish,
02:18then it is no freedom at all.
02:20It is tyranny.
02:23Randolph taught that racial injustice wasn't only enforced through civil segregation.
02:29It was enforced through an economy that depended on black labor while denying black workers their fair share.
02:39Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters against one of the most powerful corporations in the United States.
02:47And by 1963, Randolph and so many others had brought hundreds of thousands of people to Washington to demand that
02:58America finally deliver on its promise of freedom.
03:02He put it plainly.
03:04Freedom is never granted.
03:07It is won.
03:09Justice is never given.
03:12It is exacted.
03:14Brothers and sisters, these drum majors for justice, just as you all and countless others today, were not handed a
03:23movement.
03:25They have always had to build one.
03:28And when they came here 63 years ago, they came with demands.
03:34They demanded the right to vote, an end to segregation, and fair housing.
03:42They demanded a federal jobs program, a higher minimum wage, and an end to discrimination in employment.
03:51Because together, those words carried a profound idea.
03:56The march on Washington for jobs and freedom.
04:00That freedom is both political and economic.
04:04And that movement changed what was possible in this country.
04:08We got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
04:12And that is what paved the way for Head Start, Medicare, Medicaid, and food assistance.
04:19Because the Civil Rights Movement is the foundation for a great society.
04:26A new era of social and economic progress.
04:31That was an extraordinary achievement.
04:34And we are living in the legacy of it today.
04:38But their vision went further than their victories.
04:42Because America may have agreed to open the lunch counter.
04:45But it never committed to us affording the meal.
04:49And that is our work today.
04:52As we defend the foundation that our foremothers and our forefathers built.
04:58You see, they gave us a piece of the freedom.
05:02But 63 years later, we are still fighting to afford it.
05:07America is wealthier today than it has ever been.
05:10And yet, millions of Americans work every day to struggle to afford the basics.
05:16This is not simply an economic failure.
05:19It is a moral and structural one.
05:22And we must refuse to accept it.
05:26So let's be clear about the country that we are fighting for.
05:31We, the people, demand full, protected, and restored voting rights in the United States of America.
05:41We, the people, know that that means we must respond to the arsonists redistricting the South with an organizing legislative
05:51and civil strategy of our own.
06:05We, the people, demand guaranteed health care for every American as a right and not a privilege.
06:18We, the people of the United States of America, demand that one job with no need for overtime should be
06:28enough for our most basic needs, which also include rest.
06:37And we must recognize that that can only happen in an economy where black women are not the first to
06:45be pushed out and the last to be brought back in.
06:50There is nothing new about these demands.
06:54They belong to the same fight and the same heritage that many gathered here 63 years ago.
07:02And we are not alone.
07:05Just as it was then, our ability to win depends on our ability to vote.
07:12Republicans know this.
07:14That is why the Supreme Court's decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act matters so much.
07:20Because they know that when black Americans exercise their full political power, we unlock progress for all of America.
07:32And that is what they are trying to hold back.
07:35But there is a tide rising in this country, brothers and sisters.
07:41They can put obstacles in our path, but they cannot turn us back around.
07:48And this November, the first of many tides is coming.
07:53Coming to respond to every right they are trying to take.
07:57And it is coming to fulfill the promise that hundreds of thousands of heroes carried to these grounds six decades
08:04ago.
08:04It is now our turn to summon that collective genius.
08:09To look beyond the limits of this one moment.
08:12And to see further.
08:13To demand more.
08:15And to organize toward the future we know is possible.
08:20The tide is coming.
08:22And this time, we intend to win it all.
08:26Thank you very much.
08:28And I'll see you out in the streets.
