Yesterday, former Congressman (and former candidate for Texas governor, US Senate and President) Beto O’Rourke held a townhall – with a big crowd, maybe a couple hundred people? – at the Cultural Arts Center in Glen Allen. See below for video and a few highlights, including this great exchange between O’Rourke and Chesterfield County Supervisor Jessica Schneider.
- Schneider: “…I just was at the Latino farmers market this morning and I had four people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you so much for speaking at the courthouse about all the immigrants that are being taken and… I feel too much. I’m an empath. And so what can I do to make the most impact?”
- O’Rourke: “So, first of all, thank you for what you’re doing already. And I love that you are passionate and that you’re emotional and that you’re empathetic and that you feel all this stuff. I mean, I think we need more of that in in the country right now. I mean, just what you said about these roundups and these sweeps. I mean, can you imagine if we survive this, you know, generations from now, what our great great grandkids will be reading about in the year 2025? I hope because it will not be the norm that they will not be able to believe their eyes. This really happened in America – after all the progress and all the years and all the fights and all the victories. It came down to this. There was a guy running for president in 2024 who promised that on day one he would be a dictator. Who described immigrants as poisoning the blood of America. And those crazy fuckers elected him to be president of the United States. And then when he was president and he started to dismantle this country piece by piece, you know, right and protection by right and protection. What did they do And all of us are going to have to account for that. Right? If you’re like me, my kids are my conscience. And I fear their judgment. At some point or other, they’re going to say, ‘Hey, Dad, what what were you doing while all this was going on?’ And you know, this is part of that, right? We’re going to bring people together. We’re going to direct people to the action they can take and we’re going to overcome this. I think you have that same challenge where you are right now. And so my only offer is any capacity you have to bring people together regardless of political affiliation or any other difference by which they would otherwise try to divide us. Let us do that right now. Share the truth of what you’re working on. Ask these people, which you’re probably uncomfortable with, but ask these people for their support. say, ‘I need you to show up at this next meeting, I need you to have my back, I need these other commissioners to know what’s important to all of us.’ This is a time to come together. And we will not be organizing online. We will not be doing this through Twitter or Tik Tok or IG. Yes, we’ve got to be on those platforms. We got to talk and listen to people where they’re at, but this requires coming together in person just like we’re doing here today. So, we want to stay in touch with you and find out how we can be helpful. Thank you for being here today and for the work that you’re doing. Appreciate it.”
O’Rourke: “President Biden had arguably the most successful presidential administration in modern history. He was the first president to successfully invest in the solutions to confront climate change before it is too late. He invested at at a level we haven’t seen since FDR in the infrastructure of this country. He reduced childhood poverty in states like Texas by nearly half. It was absolutely amazing. But as I just mentioned, he struggled and so does the administration in communicating that. Some in swing states, but not everywhere, not in my state, perhaps not in yours…
And then there’s this. We’ve got to be able to do more when we hold positions of power and public trust. All that infrastructure investment? Well, it’s nice that you got to sign the bill, right? And the press releases and the news stories. But I need to see that difference in my life right away. Has my home, if I live in rural Virginia, been connected to the internet? Have the potholes in my street or highway been filled in yet? Well, we’ve got to go through this environmental review process. This thing takes time. There’s a bureaucracy involved. There’s this excuse, that excuse, and the other. And it makes it really hard. These elected positions of public trust and the change they want to see in their lives.
And the last that I think we failed to do was we failed to be with people where they are. In this last election in 2024, we the Democrats poured more than a billion dollars into just seven states…hundreds of millions of our fellow Americans who would love to be part of the election. And the campaign consultants and data scientists and pollsters and everything seemed so focus grouped and tested and approved before it could be sent out. It was almost sterile. We know Kamala Harris, we know Joe Biden, they’re beautiful, wonderful, amazing, incredibly intelligent, personable people. But behind this wall of consultants and polling and, you know, same old corporate politics, I don’t think that that broke through…
Now to be clear, it’s not just on Democrats…The power and the strength of those who attack this country from within has never been greater. The greatness of America, our Constitution, the rule of law, the very idea of self-government have never been called into greater question. But if we want to overcome these threats, it will not be enough simply to sound the alarm. Nor will it be sufficient to only focus on those who are screwing us or screwing up or whose screw-ups brought us here in the first place.
And I promise you that we will not find the answer by spending more money, purchasing more media, creating more digital distance from that essential human connection that we see and find and feel here today. If we are serious, and I know we are, about winning the political power necessary to save America, then I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to be able to describe a new and a better America, one worth saving. An America built on the foundation that made us what Lincoln called the last best hope of Earth…
Let’s listen to our fellow Americans. They don’t find that promise fulfilled in their days, in their lives, in their families, and for their kids. And if they don’t, and they don’t see a future for themselves, they’re willing to gamble on something like we saw in 2024. But to realize this, we’re going to need something better than what we have right now.
As I mentioned, I don’t know that we’re living in a democracy anymore. So, I want you to imagine one. I want you to imagine a future for America, where it is people, not corporations. It is speech and not money that determine the outcomes of our elections, the policies that we choose to pursue together, and the future that we build for this country and our kids and the generations that follow. I want you to imagine public leaders who are really our public servants, who are accountable to us, who hold town hall meetings just like this and take any question from anyone. No holds barred, all comers welcomed. Who no longer can choose their own voters or set themselves up for life in the office that they hold, but instead are freed from the shackles of fealty to donors and even party hierarchy so that they focus on what we need and delivering for the American people. That’s a democracy.
And when they run for office, I want you to imagine them no longer putting out these god-awwful 30-second ads that were produced in an AI factory in Washington DC or bombarding us with please give me $25 right now or the world is going to end and the sky is going to fall. But instead, campaigns run on the ground, face to face, person to person, human being to human being, listening, talking, working through our differences so that ultimately we can work together. We can no longer say to the American people that we are about saving our democracy. It is confusing to them.
They recognize that there was one person who was able to spend $300 million himself to help Donald Trump get elected. That’s not a democracy right now. So, we have to show them that we want to build one. And by building one, we get big money out of politics. We overturn Citizens United so that corporations are no longer people. Money is no longer speech. We pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so everybody can vote in this country. We get politicians out of redistricting. and we return that power and all the power back to the people. That is a democracy and that is what we’re for.
But one of the things that we learned in this last election and we should have learned it long before is that you will not have a political democracy if you do not also have an economic one. If folks cannot get what they need from a government of the many, soon enough they are open to getting what they need from a government of the few or a government even of just one. Now, we expect our fellow Americans to strive to get ahead, to serve, to sacrifice even. All of us have had to do that in our lives. But we do not expect you to have to struggle just to survive. And that’s what so many millions of our fellow Americans are doing right now. So, I want you to imagine a future where we guarantee that your take-home pay is enough to live on so you don’t have to work a second or a job just to get by. I want you to imagine a future where when you’re sick, you can see a doctor before you’re sick. You can see a doctor so that you do not get sick in the first place. We guarantee that you have access to fresh and healthy food, clean drinking water, the time and space to exercise and move your body, to spend time with your kids, with your family, with your loved ones. I mean, this is the stuff that makes life worth living. That’s an economic future that we can all agree on and believe in. It is giving people what they’re asking for. And if we’re honest with ourselves, it is what they need and what they’re not getting right now. And I want you to remember, we are the wealthiest, the most powerful country in the entirety of human history. We do not lack for the resources to get this done. Only the political will to accomplish it.
Speaking of our power and the fact that we are the most powerful country on the planet today, I want you to imagine this future. An America that no longer turns its back on its allies and its friends, but instead chooses to work with them on matters great and small. We alone will not be able to defeat the spectre of climate change before it’s too late. We need the other countries of this planet. The issues and challenges of international migration. We need the other countries of this hemisphere. Nuclear non-prololiferation. I sure as hell do not want to get into another war in the Middle East with Iran. What about nonviolently, peacefully resolving our differences diplomatically, bringing the nations of the world together if that’s what it takes to make sure that we end wars and do not start them? We sow peace and reap prosperity for the people of this world and also for the people of the United States. And imagine us, imagine us standing on the principles of human rights and self-determination and no longer being complicit in the bombing and starving and slaughtering of children and families in Gaza, innocent civilians who are killed by the tens of thousands with the help of this country. Imagine a future we are not part of that. But instead, we use this awesome power to bring the nations of the Middle East together, the nations of the world, if that’s what we have to do, to ensure that we can establish a sovereign, independent state for the Palestinian people, guarantee their safety and security, the security of the Israelis and everyone who lives in that region. It’s good not just for them, it is good for the United States, for our people and our future.
And now imagine this. We bring that same logic back home to this country. And you and your loved ones and your neighbors and your fellow Americans no longer have to fear a masked plain closed federal agent without a warrant or a badge sweeping you off the street, illegally arresting you, detaining you, imprisoning you, deporting you to a country to which you have never been. perhaps sending you to that goolag in El Salvador out from which you will never come. And we we meet that challenge by rededicating ourselves to the Constitution, to the rights and protections contained therein, like due process, which is so sorely missing from this country today. And then back to my fellow Democrats. Listen, I am uh 52 years old and for my entire adult life, the Democratic Party has been promising immigration reform. I don’t even like to utter the phrase anymore because we have so badly failed to deliver on this promise. We had the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2009. We did some wonderful things with it, but we did not move forward on immigration. We had the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2021. We did some wonderful things with that power, but we did not move forward on immigration.
So I want to imagine a future when the Democratic Party once again has control of the levers of government that we use that to rewrite these laws in our own image reflecting our own values legalizing for example every dreamer in this country every Dreamer’s parent in this country every hardworking American who’s putting food on our table working jobs that our kids are not willing to take and make sure that they can contribute even more as US citizens and for those who want to come here who just want to join their family they live in another country right now or they want to work a job because they can’t find back home and this job is unfilled by an American here or they are fleeing certain death for themselves or their kids back in the country where they currently live. We want to make sure and I don’t think this is asking too much that there is a safe legal orderly path to come to this country and to do it the right way. We’re we’re the United States of America. We can figure this stuff out. And look, you see what’s going on. The pastor mentioned it earlier. This is not who we are. These are not our values. These sweeps that we’re seeing through cities large and small. Sewing fear on purpose, terrorizing people who are innocent literally of any crime. And it’s not just immigrants. It’s deporting US citizen children, kids who were born in this country, some with stage four cancer, deported from America without their medications. I mean, who are we at the end of the day if we stay silent and become complicit in what is happening right now to our fellow human beings? We can all agree that we want to have control of our borders. I live in El Paso, Texas, the largest border community in the Western Hemisphere with CEO’s 2.5 million people. We’re raising our kids there. Of course, I want it to be secure. We want to know who’s coming into the United States of America. I think we can agree on that. We want to protect one another from violent criminals. Whether they were born in Virginia or born in Honduras, it doesn’t matter. We just want people to be safe. But I also want you to remember this. Immigrants are not taking anything from any of us. They are contributing far more into this country than they are ever drawing down. They are helping to make this still the greatest country on the planet. I just mentioned it is one of the safest cities in America. Not in spite of the fact that it is a city of immigrants but because it is a city of immigrants. So we forget this at our peril.
But I don’t really think this is about immigration. Just like I don’t think that the attacks on DEI are really about attacks on the idea of diversity or equity or inclusion in this country. Just like I don’t think the attacks on trans Americans are about denying your ability to be who you want to be. That might be an ancillary side benefit for the MAGA movement right now. But what they’re really trying, and I want us all to pay attention to this, is they want to divide us and they want to distract us. They don’t want us to pay attention to the really important big thing that is happening right now, which is that the Republican party and Donald Trump and the billionaires who back them up are robbing us absolutely blind. Is that working? That ‘big beautiful bill’ which is transferring trillions of dollars of trillion is so big I cannot get my head around that number and it’s not just one of those trillions it is four of those trillions adding to the deficit in the short term to the national debt over the long term so not you and me breathing this there right now. But your kids and grandkids and great grandkids and great great grandkids are going to be paying off the debt for money that we sent to the wealthiest people on the planet, bar none, who live in this country, the 1%.
And this is not just a new thing. I mean, Trump did this in his first term. But presidents of both parties have been complicit to a degree over the last five decades. $50 trillion dollar of wealth has moved from lower and middle inome and working Americans to the very wealthiest in this country. If I were part of that heist, I want you to look the other way as well. Right? So, I want you to imagine this, a future where we no longer have socialism for the rich in America. And instead, we make sure that those trillions flow to the people who actually created that wealth in the first place. The folks who work day in and day out in this country, some in states like mine earning $725 an hour. You don’t have one $7.25 an hour job. You have two or three. It’s the only way that you’re going to feed yourself, that you’re going to be able to pa rent, that you’re going to be able to provide for your kids. It is so wrong and it is so unnecessary. Imagine using some of those trillions to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s or the diseases that our loved ones are dying from right now. Imagine using those trillions to build millions of new homes across this country so that people can actually afford to live with their families with a roof over their head because they can’t afford to do it right now. Imagine using those trillions to the benefit of everybody in America. Again, we can do this. It is a function of political will. But to get there, we have to lay out that vision.
The last piece of it that I want to share with you, imagine a Democratic Party that actually fights for these things. that doesn’t submit, that doesn’t roll over, that doesn’t bend over, that doesn’t tell us the fight is over before it has even begun, but fights each and every single day on every front in every state in every county. And so, yes, we would love to see the Democratic Party continue to invest in Northern Virginia. You know, they’re going to go where they’ve always been successful, but how about central Virginia and coastal Virginia and Western Virginia? How about the places that have been written off or taken for granted altogether? And instead of those seven states that the Democratic Party poured $1 billion into and lost every single one of them, how about Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas, too, right? If you think about this, whether we want to agree with this or not, whether we like it or not, probably better said, Texas is our future. And it will either be a future of these extreme abortion bans, a state that leads the nation in school shootings. Nearly two years after the massacre at Uvality that claimed 19 lives, 19 beautiful children, and two teachers, not a single thing has changed in our state to make it any less likely that any other child meet that same fate. We are the state that is the least insured in the nation, that has refused to expand Medicaid even though we invented Medicaid in 1965 with LBJ. Either that is our future, or as Texas continues to pick up electoral college votes, which it will after this next census, and there will be no path to the White House for a Democrat unless we win it, we start investing and working and volunteering and meeting and registering those voters right now.
But if we wait until 2026, if we wait, god forbid, until 2028, if we wait till that census and the reaportionment, I think it will be too late. We have to work now. Which brings me to this. We have the vision. We have the dream. And it must be met with action. Action is the antidote to that despair that tempts us. It is the absolute key to the victory that we seek. And it cannot begin in 2026. And if it hasn’t already started for you, it has to begin today. In this room or just outside this room, there are volunteers who will sign you up and take your free hours this coming week to get out there and meet and register the voters who will decide the outcome of this next election in Virginia and ensure that Abigail Spanberger is the next governor of the great Commonwealth of Virginia. And so let’s make sure that we’re all doing that work right now. We cannot take anything for granted, any person for granted. Let’s get out there. Everyone is important. We talk and listen to each and every one of us. And let us no longer judge or cancel or excommunicate and instead say, ‘Look, if you voted for Donald Trump in this last election, we are glad that you are here today. If you voted for Kamala Harris, the same goes for you. If you did not vote for whatever reason, even better. We are here to listen and to learn from you to make sure that you have a reason to cast that ballot in 2025.
First, and then I’m going to turn this microphone over to you. There are some among us who will doubt whether any of this or certainly all of this is possible. And perhaps for all of us, there are those moments where we doubt whether any or all of this is possible. And I count myself among you. In these moments of doubt, I just want you to remember where we come from and who we are and what we’re made of. I mentioned Thomas Jefferson and the fact that we were just in Philadelphia last night. We are the people against the longest of odds who defeated the most powerful empire on planet earth to secure our independence. And we did so not easily, not conveniently, not sitting on a couch, not in front of our phones. We did it by willing to by being willing to lay down our lives. And countless numbers did. It wasn’t but 80 years later that we faced another even bigger test. and more than 300,000 from the Union willingly laid down their lives to defeat the Confederacy and to end slavery in America. We are those people. We are the people who in 1944 landed on those beaches in Normandy once again willing to lay down our lives to defeat fascism half a world away so that we could protect this fragile democracy here at home. And then in the next generation that followed in the 1960s, we marched, we protested, we stood up. Some lost their lives in the process to secure civil rights and voting rights. And we did that not because it was easy, as JFK reminded us, but because it was hard. Think of the odds that each one of those generations faced. And the fact that they persevered and overcame them and triumphed and make us so godamn proud at this moment. 249 years of history flow into this room at this moment. We are the heirs to all of that struggle, to all of that service, to all of that sacrifice. And what we do with this inheritance, whether in Lincoln’s words, we noly save it or meanly lose it, is going to define us in the eyes of our kids. And it’s going to determine what is possible for America. So no pressure, but we cannot be found wanting at this moment of truth. We absolutely must come through.
Are you with me? All right. Are we together? All right. Thank you for hearing me out. That that is my dream. I now want to hear yours.”
Question: “So in the wake of the election, I’ve seen a lot of sort of soul searching and looking for what the answer to the problem posed might be. And I’ve seen a concerning number of people turn to sort of ceding ground for the sake of trying to build a broader tent. But within that, you know, while building a bigger tent is important, I’ve seen a lot of people start to use language that sort of shifts the Overton window to the right. You know, ceding ground on things like trans rights, on homelessness, even like the corporate issues, wanting to attack billionaire corporations and whatnot. How do you see a path forward for the Democratic Party to build a bigger coalition that is, you know, founded in principle and policy without leaving behind some of our most marginalized and vulnerable groups?”
O’Rourke: “What a great question. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s really weird for people when, you know, present company excluded, but but when Democrats say, “Hey, I’m all about making sure that we protect the immigrant.” Um, we were all about it as a party in 2017 and 2018. Remember the family separation policy? You traveled those 2,000 miles, most of it on foot with your baby girl to protect her from possible death in your home country. And just as you reached the front door of America at the US Mexico border, that kid for whom you are going to sacrifice your life is torn from your arms, placed in foster care, you are deported back to Honduras. and literally in some cases God only knows where that child is today. There are still families who have not been reunited, Democrats were were going to the mat on that issue. And then when the conventional wisdom was that the 2024 election was decided on the issue of immigration, it became unpopular in a third rail in this country. You can’t get a peep out of most Democrats on this fundamental issue. And it’s not about party politics. These are the humans with whom we live in our communities in every single state and commonwealth in the union. Right? And we are a country of immigrants and asylum seekers from the world over. But for America, my family would have perished in the 19th century in the potato famine in Ireland. We we found the one place that would take us in and it was America. That’s our story generation after generation over and over and over again. Where are the Democrats today? Where are the Democrats today on trans issues? You know, I talked about how this focus on who’s going to come into your kids’ bathroom or who’s playing volleyball against your daughter. Somehow with everything going on in the world became the number one issue in America. That’s the greatest threat that we have to protect against. Donald Trump won that issue. And where are Democrats right now? I made the case that they’re trying to divide us and distract us on this issue. But it doesn’t mean that you stop standing up for the people that you care about who are literally among the most vulnerable in our communities right now. Right? So, you know, back to the back to the the rhyming of history. You all know this poem. You know, first they came for the communists. I wasn’t a communist, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the trade unions, and I wasn’t a trade union member, so I didn’t say anything. They came for the Jews next, but I’m not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. When they came for me, there was no one left to say a word. That’s how they do this. You know, when when they were um rounding up these so-called gang members and terrorists and thugs without due process and deporting them to that prison, the largest on the planet in in El Salvador. You know, President Trump said, “Look at these guys. They have tattoos on their throats. Um they’re killing people. They’re murderers. who was going to be brave enough to stand with them. That was by design. He he picked what was going to be the hardest person for you to identify with. And he went after them. And then next they’re going to go after someone who came over this border and was undocumented originally but was paroled into this country by Joseph Biden. He’s going after those folks literally by the hundreds of thousands. Who’s going to be willing to stand with them? Maybe no Democrats will because we lost on that issue in 2024. So why would we stand with them right now? Next, they’re coming for the US citizen, American-born children of immigrants, who through his executive order issued on the first day in office, he was to deny the 14th amendment of the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868. It has been the law of the land that long. But who do you see standing up for those migrants today? You know, soon enough, I promise you, they are going to come for you. And if we do not stand together now, if we do not stand together now, we will hang alone at some point. So this is our warning. You know, history has been very clear about the road we’re on and where it will leave us. So we’ve got to stand up right now and we’ve got to do this together and we’ve got to fight right alongside every single one of us. No one is dispensable. No one is inconvenient. Everyone is important. Everyone matters. and we will fight together and ultimately we will win. “
