what happens when we put our minimum against our opponents' maximum. the people in wisconsin fought beautifully and bravely. but help was not on the way. their fight against the experience, not just a few -- a whole squadron of billionaires, only one of whom lived in wisconsin. our opponents did their maximum. most of us did our minimum. and we saw what happened. so there's a question there that falls upon this conference. are we going to let the tea party govern america? is that the kind of movement where we are? can we find some lesson in 2008

and 2010 that would let us move forward together, smarter, tougher, wiser, but more determined and more committed. that innocent people whether they be the rodney kings of today, like trayvon who are victimized by racial violence won't have to fight alone. and those of us across the country who are suffering economically, will not be further harmed by the outcome of the two big fights in 2012, in november, politically, in december economically on the budget. well, in order for us to figure out what we're going to do, we're going to have to do something i was taught to do when i was in public school. i got some edumacation.

i went to yale, but i was born in tennessee and both my parents were public schoolteachers. and i had a teacher named ms. brown who was my kindergarten teacher. whenever we were stumped, whenever she would ask us a question that was just too hard to answer, she would say, now put your thinking caps on. you have thinking caps in the budget in your public schools? and we would put them on. and we would think. and lo and behold, somebody would come up with the answer. why was that? because we had a moment to go deep and we had a public schoolteacher who cared. and i'm going to say this before

i move on. maybe i was raised wrong, but in my community, in my neighborhood, in my home, i w never new about a threat to a public employee. we didn't call them public employees. we didn't see them as some sort of threat that needed to be turned into a political punching bag and disrespected. we didn't call them public employees, we called them teachers, we called them nurses, we called them librarians, we called them police officers, they were the backbone of our community, they were our everyday heroes. we were taught to look up to them, we were taught to respect them. we were taught to say, yes ma'am and no sir to them. and they never abandoned us.

no matter how big the fire, no matter how heinous the crime, no matter how slow the learner, they never abandon, not one single time, but now it's fashionable to turn on them and abandon them, we say no, we are a better country than that, we are not going to attack the people who have been there for us, we're going to lift them up and treat them right. but let's just be smart enough to follow the advice of ms. brown, god bless her soul, she didn't have a big bucket to draw on, but she knew how to get young people to think. she said put your thinking caps on. let's put on our thinking caps andlet not be so emotional in one direction, that we do stupid

stuff in the other direction. let's put our thinking caps on. what can we learn from 2008? what can we learn from 2010, that will let us win, not just politically in november, but economically in december. what did he learn in 2008? we all know the happy party of it. but afterwards people went from hopy to mopey, we went from hope to heart break. what happened? well, we didn't know enough. we thought something that was not true. we thought that we had 100% of what we needed to govern in america. we had the house, what i think the best speaker we ever had, nancy pelosi, we had the house of representatives, we had the senate with 60 votes. and we had president obama, we had enough now to govern.

it turned out not to be true. it turned out we only had one-third of what we needed to go. turns out you just don't need formal control of the government, but you also need two other things, you have to have a movement in the streets. and we abandoned the streets. we have to have a media establishment like they have in the -- with us having only the government, but not having people in the streets peacefully and nonviolently and not having a media strategy, we were check mated by fired up, fearful right wing funded by as my brother said brazen billionaires and we were check mated. doesn't mean the administration didn't make big mistakes, we'll talk about those. but fundamentally, we did not have what we needed to be able to govern from below. even as the democrats tried to

govern from above. we had a top down capacity that was not met by a bottom up movement. instead, the streets were filled not with people like us, but with people carrying signs, saying that the president, comparing him to hitler and people were spitting on congress people and calling them the in-word. those people stopped our movement. many people sat down in 2010. what can we learn from 2010? because you know the right wing was on the march. if you look at the numbers, they didn't turn out a lot more people in 2010 than 2008, we just turned out a lot fewer. we stood up in 2008 and made history, and we sat down in 2010 and let other people win the

election. we sat down and said, i'm just so disgusted. i'm just going to quit, i just can't take this. not you. maybe the person next to you, but not you. and it doesn't matter. who cares? after all. ask people in wisconsin if it matters. ask the people in ohio if it matters, ask the people who are living now with the consequences of emotionalization and demoralization. be careful now, careful now. careful now. you have more power and

influence than you recognize. careful now. everybody in this room and most people watching at home are what are called opinion leaders. you may not have a lot of money, you may not have an elected office. you are an opinion leader, they look at your face book page, they look at your tweets, they look at your emails trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. careful now, it's a dangerous time to be reckless and irresponsible with the power that we do have, we are now in danger of demoralizing people at a time when they need to be lifted up, just like dr. perry did. for us to quit now, surrender now, kitchen the cynicism now is to disrespect the shoulders of

the people that we're standing on. it's to disrespect them. people say, it's just too hard, van, i mean i voted once. democracy is not an app. it's not an pp, just download it, push the button one time. that sucks. the people in my father's generation they had dogs sicked on them, fighting for change. they had fire hoses put on them fighting for change.

they were beaten fighting for change. someone went to jail fighting for change, some were murdered, put in the ground, dead, martyrs, never to come back fighting for change. we'll quit over a really mean tweet. did you read that terrible tweet? so we have a quandry, if we just support the president, just support the democrats, we don't get what we want, but if we

don't, our -- can we put our thinking caps on now, look at what they do when they get power, just in case you haven't paid attention. didn't get the memo. >> i think what we should do is have some reforms. no, they decimate us. they destroy the unions. they didn't run on that. as soon as they got power, they did even worse. we're the only ones that get power and do what we have to go through to get power. and then say we now have power. we will now be bipartisan. can we compromise on something and make it happen, please? that's not what they do, they

get power, they decimate us. the epa, which has probably saved more american lives in the past 30 years than even the department of defense. the epa, which is keeping the poison out of our children's bodies. they say they're just going to wipe it out. i hope you don't think they're joking, so when they get power they want to destroy us, but if they just support the existing democrats, we still wind up disappointed. so what's the answer? what do we need to do? it's very simple, the lesson of the past decade is very clear. you have the wrong president, say, george bush, it doesn't matter how strong your movement is. the movement from peace, to try

to stop the invasion of iraq. you put more people on the streets to stop the invasion of iraq than the entire -- you put a magnificent movement on the street. you had the right movement, you had the wrong president. but the people in the streets with the wrong people, and the tea party changes the narrative, changes the discussion, changes the envelope so much, that they were able to make austerity the watch word last year when every economist in the world said it would be the worst thing to do. you had arguably the right president, but you had the wrong move. the key to real change is to have the right president and the right movement at the same time.

that's the way forward. yes, we have to re-elect the president, and we have to reenergize the movement. you have to have a president willing to be moved, you can't have a bush, you can't have a romney, you can't have a coke brothers puppet. you can't have an immovable president, but you also want to have a president that is open to the moving. if we learn their lesson, we can win in november and in december. look at these extraordinary young people. they are blessed with not knowing that the causes they champion are impossible. in fact they're a great blessing.

look at the young people who decided, despite the fact that this administration has deported more latinos than bush, despite the fact that there are vicious laws being put on the books in places like arizona. despite the fact that any moment they could be snatched away or their mother could be snatched away, or their father could be snatched away, and sent away from this country despite all of that discouragement stepped forward and said i am an undocumented child, but i want to be here, i want to be respected, i'm undocumented but i'm not afraid. look at the courage of that. can you imagine, being a child, knowing in other country but this one, and knowing that the only way you get to stays is to be silent, is to be quiet, is to

be cynical, is to believe the worst about the country and never break breath to say who you are, never break breath to say who you are. just be cynical and don't believe in america, you get to stay. but if you believe it's a better country, you may be sent from here, never to see your friends or your family, to live in a land you don't know. look at the courage of these young people, look at their beliefs in who we are as a country. and they stepped forward, when it was hard, when nobody would have counseled them to do it. and moved a president, moved a nation, so now look at these

young people, can we be as courageous as these young people? look at the ones who watched the hopes of a planet be destroyed by a do nothing obstructionist congress that still has not moved on climate change, that still has not moved toward clean energy, that has been stuck on stupid, that have not believed in science now for three or four years. they're saying the big environmentalist folks can't move congress, maybe we should go on and do something else. but they didn't, the young people said we're not going to let them jab this dirty needle of a pipeline into america. we're not going to take the dirt -- we're going to stand up to these tar stands, we don't care if anybody comes to help. and they broke the seal, august of last year, on civil disobedience against this white

house. nobody a year ago was saying it's time to do civil disobedience against the white house, nobody said this is my future. and 350.org, and the native american tribes went down in the heat of august, in the heat of august and they sat in and a message was sent and through their courage, the project was derailed. the fight goes on. but look at these young people. look at the young people who have transformed the decision on lesbian, gay, and transsexual rights, look at their courage, culturally, politically, look at the young people who rescued america last year, coming out that horrible august where the

tea party put congress in a head lock and said if you don't do what we say, we're going to blow a hole in america's economy, we're going to destroy america's credit rating and this whole town trembled in fear and said, we'll form a committee to do superdamage to the american people. and some young people and some struggling folks, no pollsters, no lobbyists, no big grants. went down with some sleeping bags and some tents to the scene of the crime against their future and occupied wall street and turned this country upside down. suddenly you can talk about economic inequality, the

supercommittee never met. you say what are those young people, those young people, they're messaging was really not that great. and what was their agenda. i've got an agenda. and a grant. and 501c 3 status. they obliterated the entire idea that they were going to add damage to this country and bought us a year to put our thinking caps on. so we have a responsibility now. to be as brave and as courageous and as determined as these young people who have shown that if you struggle, we can make

progress, but there's a lesson trying to push through this catastrophe, there is some hope on the horizon, if we aimed for it. and so we have to do three things going forward. first we have to win it in november. and the brother has always talked about the stakes there. but part of the reason we have to win in november, is because we have to also win in december. if they let me in the white house in about six months, and i took some notes. i learned a couple of things. one of the things that i learned, sisters and brothers, there's something called the

lame duck session. you could win in november, and lose in december. because it's december when the most important budget battle of the past 20 years and of the next 20 years will take place. it is december, not just november. that progressives have to rally for. it is december that is the reason that we have to get off our hands and begin to mobilize the people because it's the symbol that the bush tax cuts expire and they will either give the rich more of a break and put more pain on the people, where we're going to move toward some kind of -- it's december when the pell grants run out. the doors to college will be shut for possibly a generation. it's in december that every can

that was kicked down the road during the past two years, we'll deal with that after the election, we'll deal with that after the election, after the election has a name, it's called december. and it's in december that a wrecking ball will possibly come down on our heads or we can follow the lead of the young people and stand and fight. three things we got to do, number one, let's take advantage of the media that we already have. there's a great document try, called the heist. it's going to be shown here at this country, we have independent filmmakers, independent media makers that can begin to check mate the power of this right wing media machine. number two, the fight in december is going to be over economics, we can fight now over economics, the student loan struggle on july 1, if congress is going to act, if we don't

make congress act, the interest rate on the stafford student loan is going to double, from 3.4% to 6.8%, taking billions of dollars out of the pockets of students. do we want young people to be excited about our issues, we need to get excited about young people's issues and stop them from doing this to these young people. we can fight right now. another issue that's coming up in front of this congress, which is the question around homeowner ship and home mortgages, we have got a third of american homes that are under water right now. there's a bill in front of congress that rebuild the dream is pushing, along with other persons on this stage and in this room that would let homeowners refinance, even if they're under water, take advantage of those lower

interest rates, it would save $10 billion a year for about 14 million households, every year going forward, those are the kinds of fights that we cannot releapt on just because poll -- we need to continue those fights going forward. the last thing we got to do is this. put our thinking caps on. the other side is not playi ini tic tac toe. they'll have their congressional delegations right now on their

knees signing pledges, saying they're never going to raise taxes, no matter what happens to america. they're doing it right now. they'll never, no matter how many wars, what happens, why? because when they go into negotiations, they say our hands are tied, we can't give you what you want, so you have to give us what we want, our hands are tied. and i grew up, i got some edumacation, it's a smart move, it reminds me of the public schools. it put itself in peril going past the sirens, you said tie me to my math so i won't give in. to the siren's call. i remember that. mr. thurman, 11th grade.

odesia said tie my hands, tie me to the mast so i won't give in to the siren's call. they've been doing that for a long type. well, i think it's time for us to make just one demand. just one demand. of this president. just one demand of this white house. and we're not stupid. we're not going to lay down, let the tea party run america. we're going to fight. we're going to fight in november and december too. so you need to do something to help us when the real fight goes down in december. now we know this president's a good family man, he doesn't like to use rough language, i understand that, he doesn't like to use dirty talk. he's a good family man. but we got a request, i call on this president to use one

four-letter word when it comes to these bush tax cuts for the rich. just one four-letter word. he hasn't said any cuss words that i have heard him say, three or four years, he can do one four-letter word. we want with regard to the bush tax cuts, a four-letter word from this president, a vow to veto, to veto, the attempt of these republicans to give this country over. we want him to veto any bill that comes before him that will let the rich walk away with another extension. it is time for the wealthy people in america, to pay america back, they have got on the benefits of the tax breaks, the bailouts, the bonuses. and they have left us with this fake grand bargain.