00:00Thank you so much. Before I begin, I just have to say, there may or may not be a little
00:05bit of Spanglish here.
00:09Y yo soy puertorriqueña, so por favor, disculpe el acento, y también newyorriqueña además, so we're just going to start
00:19there.
00:21But how are we all doing today?
00:26I'm so deeply excited and grateful to be here with each and every one of you because you all, here
00:35in Bakersfield and in the Central Valley, in just 10 days, are going to change the United States of America.
00:48And you are going to do it by voting for, organizing, and electing our hermano, Randy Villegas, para el Congreso
00:59de los Estados Unidos.
01:02So thank you all so much.
01:05So I just landed here in, I just landed in Fresno last night.
01:12And we landed here from Maine, where Troy Jackson is running for the United States Senate.
01:19And it's incredible to see what is happening across the country and also the role, the deeply individual and specific
01:29role that so many communities play in our country, each unique and different.
01:35And as I was driving from Fresno out here to Bakersfield today, I was looking out the window, and I
01:45don't know if many of you all saw it, but there was this incredible rainbow.
01:52Do you all see that today?
01:55Incredible rainbow, a double rainbow if you all saw it.
01:58It's a sign, it's a sign, but under that rainbow, we saw all of the fields, the crops, the bounty
02:13that the Central Valley provides for the United States.
02:21That bounty is picked and harvested by the people of the Central Valley.
02:31First, second, third generation farm workers, new farm workers that have arrived from all over the world and that have
02:40been here for generations, that have built and fed nearly every American in the United States.
02:50And as I drove and looked out that window, as I looked over the citrus, the oranges, the almonds, the
02:58olive trees, everything throughout the state, everything, I thought about what happened here 61 years ago in Delano.
03:12I thought about the farm workers' strike where so many workers here in the Central Valley walked off the great
03:23fields demanding better wages and dignity.
03:27And I thought about all of the stakes that were out there for our farm workers here in the Central
03:35Valley.
03:36People were living in homes owned by the corporations that employed them.
03:43And standing up to the powerful meant risking your home, your family, your livelihood, being displaced.
03:52People were paid $0.10 for a 28-pound lug out here in the Central Valley.
04:01And they had everything to lose.
04:05Everything to lose.
04:07And the courage that it took for Dolores Huerta, for the Filipinos that stood up, for the Mexican farm workers
04:25who voted to join their strike,
04:28for the working people who said, there is a limit to fear, there is a limit to what we can
04:37lose.
04:38And at a certain point, on your knees, we have to stand up and fight for our rights and our
04:46dignity.
04:49When those farm workers first tried to initiate that strike, people brought in scab workers from all over the country
05:00to try to undercut them.
05:03And at first it looked like it looked like it wasn't going to work.
05:09It looked initially like they had found a workaround.
05:13But then the people of the Central Valley called on the rest of the country to help them.
05:20Called on a nationwide boycott of grapes until their needs were met.
05:27And what we found was that the people answered the call.
05:32The national strike on grapes from consumers from New York and Texas and across the country allowed everyday people to
05:42say,
05:42I'm not buying grapes until our brothers and sisters in the Central Valley get paid.
05:49And what happened, Bakersfield, you know the story, is that it worked.
05:55Powerful growers had to sit across the table from the very workers that they had underestimated.
06:03And what we saw was one of the most inspiring and powerful labor movements in the history of the United
06:14States with the United Farm Workers.
06:19That is the heritage of the Central Valley.
06:26That is the history and the culture of this place.
06:33Because those farm workers didn't just win a contract, they won dignity, they won rights, and they won an inalienable
06:45role in the entire country of the United States.
06:50I bring that into this room because the heritage of that fight where there were countless of so many workers,
07:00there were so many workers that have come and gone from the Central Valley since then, two of them were
07:07a mother and a father who gave birth to several children.
07:16And they eventually set up an auto body shop whose son and their son helped them make ends meet in
07:28that auto body shop.
07:30That's the American dream at work, where we start from nothing and we can make something of ourselves, even if
07:40not in the short term, over the course of generations.
07:45And that young boy's name was Randy Villegas.
07:55About a year ago, Bernie Sanders and I came here to Bakersfield.
08:04And we came here under the backdrop of a big fight in Washington where there was about a trillion dollars
08:17in health care cuts on the table.
08:20We are talking about cuts to Medicaid, we're talking about increases in your private insurance, people on Medicare who rely
08:30on Medicaid for long term care and home care, all of our lives were on the line.
08:37And so Senator Sanders and I decided to go across the country because we knew that neither he nor I
08:45alone could stand up to that.
08:47But millions of people put together can.
08:52And so we wanted to go to working class communities across the country.
08:57And we came here to Bakersfield last April and Dolores Huerta was there.
09:09And I remember sitting with her and holding her hand and feeling how intergenerational this fight and this dream is.
09:23I myself am the daughter of a house cleaner.
09:27My mom cleaned houses.
09:28I cleaned houses with her growing up to afford, you know, lessons, SAT lessons so that I could try to
09:36apply to college.
09:38And Randy is no different.
09:41The son of two auto body shop workers, farm workers turned auto body shop workers, trying to make ends meet
09:48one of the first in his family to go to college.
09:53That's the only way we're going to change this country is with working people supporting other working people to break
10:03down the doors of Congress and allow the working class to walk through them.
10:13Randy grew up right here in Bakersfield.
10:17And when he worked in his family's auto shop, he went from Bakersfield College all the way to a doctorate.
10:26And then he made a choice that tells you everything about him.
10:31He decided to come and to stay home.
10:34He became a professor, helping other first generation students follow in his footsteps.
10:42Students whose parents work the fields, run neighborhood businesses and have spent their lives trying to give their children more
10:50than they had.
10:51And those families are all too often missing from the picture when people talk about the working class in America.
11:00All too often.
11:01And what we have before us is an opportunity to send a direct message that we are here.
11:12That we exist.
11:13And we are present and we are going to change this country.
11:21And we are present and we are going to change this country.
11:33changing and evolving America.
11:36There is nothing to be afraid of.
11:39Because we have always been a nation of working people who have come here with hope and nothing but the
11:47shirts on our backs to be honest and make something of ourselves for our children.
11:53There is nothing to be afraid of in that.
11:56And when I think about that rally that we had about a year ago, it was precisely to warn people
12:05like David Baladao to not hurt the very people who elected him.
12:13We went there to send a warning.
12:16Don't do this.
12:18You don't have to do this.
12:20We don't have to cut the health care of the very working people who feed this nation in order to
12:26line an insurance executive's pocket.
12:30We don't have to fund division and hatred and fear in our communities of family separation and violence and knocks
12:40on our doors without a warrant.
12:42We don't have to do that in order to line a billionaire's pocket.
12:47We can stand with the working people of this country.
12:53And instead of cutting our health care, we can guarantee it for everyone as a right.
13:04But as Randy says,
13:06Tell me who you are and I will tell you who you are.
13:13And Randy,
13:15he is with working families.
13:20Randy is with nurses.
13:23Randy is with teachers.
13:27Randy is with teachers.
13:28Randy is with families.
13:31Randy is with all of his workers here in this congressional district.
13:40And so it's not just a question of who Randy goes with.
13:45It's a question of who we go with.
13:48Who is the community?
13:52Because this congressional district is one of the youngest congressional districts in the United States of America.
14:03We have the opportunity to take the reins and to give direction to where our future will be headed.
14:13And I gotta tell you folks, the future is not with David Baladao.
14:19It's simply not.
14:21The future is Randy Villegas.
14:25The future is the son of immigrants and an auto body shop workers.
14:31The future is a young man who became the first in his family to go to college.
14:37The future is that young man who has dedicated himself to his community.
14:43And I want to close with this.
14:45Because those six decades ago, those 61 years ago, in that Delano strike, they had a saying.
14:59One of the mottos of the strike was peregrinacion, penitencia, y revolucion.
15:11Pilgrimage, penance, and revolution.
15:17The pilgrimage at that time was about the walks and the marches to the state capitals and the municipal capitals.
15:27The marches that they had to many of their political organizing sites.
15:34And that was theirs then.
15:38But we have our own pilgrimages today.
15:41Whether it's the pilgrimages that our parents make to those farmlands to harvest crops to give us a better future.
15:49Or whether it's the pilgrimage that their children, us, we must make to the ballot box to change the future
15:57for all of us.
16:00We have a pilgrimage to the poll sites in just a few days.
16:06We have a pilgrimage to your mailbox if you're just sending in that ballot.
16:12That second piece, penitencia, penance.
16:17The farm workers believed that the pain that we endured was purifying.
16:27That the hardship, that the blistered and calloused hands, that our aches and our bodies were preparation for the difficult
16:37political struggle that we had to endure.
16:40That we had to go through that to understand what it took to stand in solidarity with one another.
16:48And I want to give the message that the Central Valley and Bakersfield has paid that penance for a very
16:56long time.
16:58We have paid the penance in the fear of our families being separated.
17:03We have paid the penance in being underpaid for work that is worth far more than what is reflected on
17:11our paycheck.
17:14We have paid the penance in being denied at the doctor's office and in the bills that we get from
17:20our care.
17:21We have paid the price.
17:24And it is time for that penance to prepare us for the third piece.
17:29Revolution.
17:33Revolution.
17:35Revolution.
17:35Change.
17:36Cambio.
17:37Transformacion.
17:39Because when we pull that ballot, when we fill out that ballot, we understand that it is not the culmination,
17:48but it is simply a step in the larger journey that we have to reorient the United States from a
17:57corrupt politics that is bought and paid for by the 1% and the elite.
18:05To a nation that centers and honors the dignity of working people with higher wages, breaking up the monopolies that
18:15are driving up our prices.
18:18And guaranteeing health care to every single one of us as a right.
18:24Randy has proven that he is able to do that not once, but soon with our help twice.
18:33Because he had to win, he will have had to have won, not just one, but two different kinds of
18:41elections.
18:41And the first was in a primary where he took on the elite of our own party.
18:51And Randy was already outspent and won.
18:55Randy already stood up to the pre-chosen by the elite and won.
19:01And now we have to help him do it again.
19:07We've got the big fish to fry in November.
19:12And so I want to thank each and every one of you because it is only going to be with
19:20us that he is capable of doing that.
19:22Democrats and registered Democratic voters have been out registered in this district against Republicans for a very long time, actually.
19:33And yet a Republican has won the election here for many, many cycles.
19:39That only happens when we stay home.
19:44It only happens because their fear keeps us home.
19:49I understand that it's not just apathy.
19:52I understand that it's also intimidation.
19:56So many of us, if not most of us, if not nearly all of us, come from mixed status families.
20:04And we don't want that target on our back.
20:07But just like 61 years ago, Bakersfield, we can't live on our knees anymore.
20:14We have to stand up and cast our ballot for our brothers, for our sisters, for our mothers, for our
20:22fathers, for our neighbors.
20:23And we have to tell them, I don't care how many people you send out in those streets.
20:28Nothing is going to stop us from casting our ballot and changing this country.
20:34So Bakersfield, let us complete the work of this cycle.
20:38I want you all not just to cast your ballot, but check in on your friends, on your families, on
20:44your neighbors.
20:46Ask them if they've sent in theirs.
20:48Don't take it for granted.
20:50You might be the one person that reminded your friend that they needed to send in their ballot if they
20:56would have otherwise forgotten.
20:57You might be the one person that helped your coworker develop the courage to go to their poll site on
21:05election day.
21:06You might be the one person that makes a difference between Congressman Randy Villegas and the incumbent winning.
21:15It is up to you.
21:17And so I want to thank you all so much because I know deep in my heart that you will.
21:23That you will.
21:25And so with that, I would like to introduce the man of the hour.
