obama spoke at a investigation rally encouraging people to vote in the midterm elections. she is the coheir chair of the organization when we all vote. her speech is about half an hour. >> how are we feeling? are we in las vegas? it doesn't sound like it. how are we feeling? [ cheers and applause ] >> that's what i like to hear. first and foremost, thank you all for being here today. the energy in this crowd is electrifying and it's really what motivates us to go out and get people registered to vote and motivated to go out to the polls. a little bit about myself. i am the youth organizer here in nevada. i am a born and raised nevadan and a political science student

at the university of nevada las vegas. go rebels! so we all have that one person that we care about, in a one person that we can't live without, the person we can count on no matter what the situation is. my father was that person for me. i couldn't picture my life without him. until i had to. my father was deported when i was 8 years old. that changed my life forever. we try to keep our family together. my 8-month-old sister, my mom and i moved to mexico but independented up coming back after just a year and a half. when we came back my mom tried her best to keep thing normal. but things weren't normal. i didn't have a dad. and i was confused. and i was scared. but i can tell you, 12 years later i'm not scared anymore. i'm not scared.

i'm angry! and it's that anger that motivates me to go out to my community every single day and talk to as many people as i can and knock on as many doors as i can and call as many people as i can and tell them, hey, it's time to vote. if you can vote, you should vote. voting. i voted for the officers time in 2016. and it was one of the best feelings i ever had. i voted for the second time in the primaries and it was equally as satisfying. i can't wait to feel that same feeling these upcoming elections and the next elections and the next elections and the next elections, whether it be state, federal or local, you can bet i'm going to be at the polls. if you can vote i expect to see each and every one of you at the polls there with me. if you can vote, vote. and that's why i'm so proud to be a part of organizations like

mi familia vota like when we all vote, we focus with organizing on the ground we talk to community members, tell them about their rights we let them go when it is time to go vote. that time is now. that's why it is my pleasure and honor to introduce the founder and co-chair of when we all vote, someone who is on the ground just as much as any of us, one of the most inspirational women in this country, former first lady, michelle obama! [ cheers and applause ] >> wow. yes! yes! oh, my goodness.

oh! wow. you guys, [ cheers and applause ] >> all right. all right. this is -- this is sunday. i know. >> we love you. >> i know. you all came out on a sunday. i don't want to keep you because y'all are already fired up. i think you all have the message. but let me just thank you all so much. i have to start -- you know, we just have to take a moment and take in what aaron just said. i mean, i was back stage almost crying over the passion that young man has. you know? and that's -- that's what we have to remember is that that's at stake, every election, and this election.

improud of young people like aaron who is taking that loss and turning it into something powerful. and that's the choice we all have to make. again and again. so let's give aaron a big rounds of applause. [ cheers and applause ] . so proud of him. i also want to thank principal jones here at the chaparral high school and all of the administrators for allowing us to be here tonight. but most of all, i want to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy lives on a sunday to come here and be a part of this effort. i love you all, too. love you. truly. so we know why we're here, six weeks until election day. but i am not here to campaign

for any candidate. i am not here to tell anyone how to vote. i'm here today to talk about why voting matters. and why we all need to get registered and ready to vote this november. and i have to tell you that this all feels a little too familiar to me. you know? i mean, i have -- i am having a bit of weird deja vu at the moment. i haven't done this in a while. sadly, though, this isn't the first time i have talked about the importance of voting. you know, over the past decade, really, over the past decade in election after election, i have traveled across the country telling folks the same thing, voting is a fundamental right. and our vote is our voice. i have said it again and again.

it's our way to have a say in the issues we care about. it's how the democracy works. it's our stake in our children's future. i have said it again and again. nothing is really changed. it still matters. and i'm not the only one who is traveling around talking about this issue. my husband, once again -- we like him. [ cheers and applause ] and trust me, he was looking forward to putting his feet up, kicking back, and not having to do this again and again and again. but he's out there. and we've got a whole slew of community leaders and athletes and celebrities who have been talking about voting again. every two years. we have all kinds of registration drives and rallies like this one. and thousands of people like

many of you work your hearts out to get people to the polls on election day. but after all that effort, here's where we end up, still, in presidential elections, only about half of eligible people bother to vote. that's in a presidential election. in midterm elections like the one coming up in november, when no one is running for president, the turnout is even lower. it's the truth. that's where we are. and right now, one in five eligible people in this country are not even registered to vote. and so here we are. and i have to tell you, i have been asking myself, what's going on? you know, what is going on? why are some folks still not showing up to vote?

and i know it's not because people don't care. that i know. we all care about what happens in our communities. right? especially when things go wrong, we care. and it's not that folks don't have opinions on the issues, right? i know that at kitchen tables, barber shops and beauty shops and diners all across the nation people have a whole lot to say about the state this country. we all have opinions, right? every parent has an opinion about their child's school. you know, whether there is enough resources to ensure that their child is getting the best education possible. every parent wants their kids to be safe. whether they are at school or at a concert. and we all have opinions on issues like health care, the economy, how much we are paying

in taxes. but even with all that said there are still millions of people who think that voting isn't relevant to their lives or they think that voting won't make a difference. or they think is system is rigged, so why bother? or maybe they feel overwhelmed. you know, like the issues are too complicated. and that politics is just too ugly. so they just don't want to get involved. some folks are real busy. you know, like, hey, i got so much going on i'm just trying to get my kids to day care, trying to get to work, maybe get some sleep. they just feel like they don't have time for anything else in their lives. trust me, i get it. i get being busy. and i definitely get feeling frustrated. because believe me, i am frustrated, too. i am sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics.

it's exhausting. and frankly, it's depressing. so i understand wanting to shut it all out and just go on and just try to live your life, take care of your family in peace. but here's the problem. while some folks are frustrated and tuned out and staying home on election day, trust me, other folks are showing up. democracy continues with or without you. er in voting in every election, from city council to governor, to president, because the folks who are voting know the impact that the leaders that they took can have on every single part of our lives. those sheriffs that we elect, they decide how our streets are policed. the school board members we vote on, they determine how our kids'

schools are run. the mayors we send to city hall, they can fix those crumbling roads and the public transportation system, or not. the folks who represent us in congress pass laws on everything from job creation to whether we go to war. and those are just the candidates on the ballot. this november, across america, there are also what are known as ballot initiatives, on everything from supporting housing for veterans, whether we promote renewable energy, to improving facilities for our season citizens. those things are on the ballot. and the people who show up to the polls this november will decide what happens on every single one of those issues. so, really, when you think about it, not voting is like letting your grandma pick your clothes out.

now, no offense to grandma. my mom is with me today. and we -- we love grandma. i love when grandma comes to visit. i spending time with it. i love eating her pie, eating a chicken. but how many people here, especially those of you under 30, would let your grandma decide what you wear to the club? how many of you would drive the car that grandma chose for you to drive? or live in an apartment with furniture that grandma picked us for you. all jokes aside, you know. my point being, and i'm being funny, is that not many of you would want somebody who's not you and doesn't live in the same space as you do, doesn't see the same world as you even when they love you and you love them, you wouldn't let them do that for

you. because you know that grandma's choices for you are not the choices you'd make for yourself. what grandma thinks is good for you isn't necessarily what you think is good for you. with all the love in the world. and you certainly wouldn't go to some random stranger in the street somewhere, somebody who doesn't know anything about your life, someone who doesn't care about your community, doesn't understand it, doesn't know it, and ask that person to pick your doctor. or whether -- have that person figure out whether your day care is safe or whether the water you're drinking is clean. you wouldn't expect somebody else to take care of your stuff. but when you don't vote, and that's the thing i don't understand. when you don't vote, that's exactly what you're doing. you're letting other people make some really key decisions about the life you're going to live,

the place you're going to live, how it's going to work out for you. you're just saying, you do it. and you may not like what they decide. you might not like living with the consequences of other people's choices. but that's what happens when you stay home. you're essentially putting your future in the hands of others. and the truth is, that's exactly what some folks are hoping that you'll do. you know, they're hoping that you'll just let them make these important decisions for you, just sit back, let me figure this out for you. there are people out there right now who are making it harder to vote. but we have to kind of sit with that for a moment, because you've got to ask yourselves, in this democracy, why on earth would anybody, regardless of party, want to make it harder for people to participate in the

democracy? but that's happening right now all over the place. they're closing down polling places. they're making it harder for volunteers to get people registered. they're finding all kinds of ways to keep you at home. hoping that when you hear about all those things, you'll just give up and just think that voting is just too hard, that it will take hours of your time, that it requires some special skills and expertise that you don't have. that's what they want. and you can see how those kind of tactics can start making people start feeling like this is just too hard for me. we all know someone who feels like that. again, regardless of party, we all know someone who thinks that way. an uncle, a neighbor, someone you grew up with, and that's why we're here today. because we know that it's going to be up to folks like us who

will come out on a sunday for a rally like this to help those folks out. to help tell the truth about voting. and the truth is, is that registering to vote just isn't hard. it doesn't take long. it's just a few minutes. and once you're registered, in many states, including here in nevada, you can vote by mail. i do that all the time. i vote by mail in my house. in my jeans and my sneakers, comfortable, not rushed, not hunkered over. fill out the table -- the ballot at your kitchen table and just drop it in the mail. and it works. it's just that easy. and voting in person can be just as fast. in fact, in 2016, the average length of time voters waited in line at a polling place was about 11 minutes.

just 11 minutes, and that's an average. some places it was even shorter than that. just think about it. you spend 11 minutes on your phone, you know, watching videos on a given day. you spend 1 1 minutes choosing the instagram filters to text your boo, right? so, the thing we just have to tell yourself, we have 11 minutes to do a lot of stuff, and if we have 11 minutes to do stuff that does nothing for our daily lives, and we've got 1 1 minutes to vote. and trust me -- and here's something i just want to make sure people understand. voting does not require any kind of special expertise, you know? you don't need to be -- have some fancy degree to be qualified to vote. you don't have to read every news article to be qualified to vote.

you know what you need to be qualified to vote? you need to be a citizen. you know? you need to be a part of this country. you need to have opinions about the issues in your community. that's what qualifies you to vote, caring about your kids' future qualifies you to be a voter. wanting a say in what happens in this country qualifies you to be a voter. so, don't be intimidated. don't let somebody intimidate you from being a part of this process. i've been voting since i was 18 years old. and trust me, i didn't know nothing about nothing at 18 years old. right? but what you do know is what you care about. for all the young people, you do know you have a voice. you do have opinions about what goes on. that qualifies you to vote. and it is not that hard. plenty of folks of all ages are

registering to vote for the very first time. and that should be a source of pride. you know? that should be as important as getting your driver's license, right? so, those young people know that they want to have a say about what goes on in their neighborhoods, and they know it's time for a change. that's how folks all over this country are making change in their communities. just give you an example. there's a little county in missouri, boom county. there, there were families struggling to get their children the mental health care they needed. hundreds of families had been requesting counseling service for their kids but the resources weren't there. so the folks in boom county came together, they came up with a plan to fund children's mental health care, they gathered up signatures they needed to get their issue on the ballot and then they got out and voted. and today, just a few years

later, in boone county, they're providing counseling for kids who need it. they're doing mental health screenings for every child in that county. and they're training teachers and child care advocates to better support kids with mental health challenges. and this all happened because folks in that one county, in one part of the nation, believed that their kids deserved better. and they knew that their vote was the way to make it happen. so don't let anybody tell you that that vote doesn't matter. those folks in boom county could have just sat back and said, oh my god, this is awful. our kids aren't being treated well. what a shame. everything feels so hopeless so i'm just going to stay home. they could have done that. but they realized that it's actually the other way around, how our democracy works. they realized that the only way to make change in this country is to get out and vote for the change you're looking for, and when they showed up to vote, things happened.

and the same thing can happen on every issue everywhere in this country. that's how change happens in america. so, our vote matters. it always does. but only if we use that vote. and let's just imagine what if this year we actually did that. what if this year every eligible american decided to step up and be a voter. what if each of us found at least one candidate that we liked on a ballot, one initiative that we cared about and that was enough to get us into the polling place. let's just think about that for a minute. what can actually happen when we all vote? for starters, the folks we elect will have to listen to us and do something about the issues we care about, because we put them there. and the next election, they'll know we can either keep them there or vote them out. there's power in that.

that is the power when we all vote. when we all vote, imagine the kind of schools we can demand for our kids, schools that aren't falling apart. schools that don't have to hold bake sales to buy textbooks. schools that give all our kids and i mean all of our kids education worthy of their promise. when we all vote, imagine what we can demand for our communities. safer streets, cleaner water, after school programs for all of our kids, all the things we've been wishing and hoping for. when we all vote, imagine the kind of leaders we can elect. leaders who share our values, leaders who understand in the deepness of their bones the struggles and hopes of all of us. leaders who want the best for all of our families, not just a handful, but all of us.

that's how democracy works here in america. we get the leaders we vote for. we get the policies we vote for. and when we don't vote, that's when we wind up with government of, by, and for other people. and that's not what we want. so, listen up. if you are not registered to vote, please just get registered. please. i'll say it again. please just get registered. i don't care who you vote for. be registered. be involved in this. don't be intimidated by it. don't think you can't make it happen. just be registered. and you've heard to do that today, just take out your phone and text we all vote to 9779. you can do that right now. and you can learn how to

register online or request a registration form. with a prepaid envelope. be sent right to your house. don't even need a stamp. fill it out, have it done. and if you are registered to vote, i want you to reach out to everyone you know, whoever is in your life, because here's the thing, this is what we've learned from all the studies, look, people don't really want to hear from celebrities and athletes and famous people, because they don't know us. they don't necessarily trust that i really care. maybe some people, maybe, have learned over the years that i actually do care, but here's the thing. in all fairness, people listen to the people in their lives, right? family members. you know you got a brother, an uncle, somebody who likes you, who respects you. you know, you got colleagues, friends, young people here, you all know you all have a couple

of people who listen to you over a bunch of stuff you don't know nothing about. you can have a bigger influence over the people in your lives, more so than i can, more so than one rally can. so, for the people who are registered, who are here, who are focused, do not take for granted that getting a few more people registered and getting them to the polls won't make a difference. because it will. it absolutely will. i say this in election after election, because so few people vote. elections in precinct by precinct can be decided by ten votes, 20 votes, i mean, really, 50 votes. presidential elections in districts are decided by 50 people who decided not to. it is that small of a margin. and people just feel like, well, it must be millions and millions of votes. no. no. when so few people get involved in the democratic process, the people who are involved have way

more control over it. so, don't ever underestimate the power of pulling more people in. we want you to go out there and find other people. you know -- look. you know, we need you guys.

you know? and i am here, and i am here asking you for this. i am here asking you for this. you all stop this now. here's what we have to do. if we want qualified people who we trust, if we want qualified people that we trust, then people have to vote. because you can't vote some of the time and then sit out. you know, we saw that happening. we experienced that. where we had a great president. but every couple of years, folks

sat out. and said, well, i did my part, i voted once, i'm done. i'm out. and i'm just telling you that democracy doesn't work that way. as i said earlier, democracy doesn't wait for you to be bothered. it moves on as it rightly should. and therefore, the people who vote determine the direction of the country. they determine the mood, the tone, and the people who stay out don't get a say. and i want every american to feel the power of that choice so that no matter what happens, people aren't thinking, if i could have, would have, and maybe i should have. we all have that responsibility, and we all have to figure out what is happening where people don't want to exercise that. that has got me in a quandary, you know? i wonder what is it? what will it take? for people to decide that it's

worth it. so, i am here today because i want to see what this country can do when they know what their power is. because it doesn't matter what leaders you elect, if they don't have your vote behind them, there's only so much they can do. it is not about the leader. the power of our democracy is in us. the person that you're looking for is standing in your shoes. you are the person that can save yourself from this. we are our heroes. we are our leaders. that doesn't change. and it doesn't matter who runs, it's on us. so, you all have your marching orders. right? and let me just say, nevada, i love you. i know you're going to get this done. election day is coming right around the corner.

i want you all to take this energy and not just have this moment here with me but to take this energy and run with it. there is a limit of time to get this stuff done. and this room here, if everybody in this gym were fired up and motivated, wow, that's enough to make some real change. so, let's make it happen. you guys are amazing. thank you for taking the time out of your schedules. i love you all so much. let's get it done. thank you. ♪

with the control of congress in question this election day, see the competition for yourself on c-span. watch the debates from key house and senate races. make c-span your primary source for campaign 2018. on saturday, president trump will hold a political rally in west virginia to campaign for state attorney general patrick morrissey, who's challenging democratic incumbent senator joe manchin. live coverage beginning at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. coming up, this weekend, on book tv, saturday, at 6:15 p.m. eastern, the "wall street journal's" matthew hennessy discusses his book "zero hour for gen-x" how the last adult generation can save america from millennials. >> if you're a millennial, google helped you get through high school.

if you're a millennial, wikipedia helped you get through college. if you're a millennial, you're what's called a digital native. your whole life has been shaped by this technology in a way that previous generations never experienced and in ways that many of us never even imagined was possible. and in key ways, this is the thesis of my book, that makes millennials different from the rest of us. >> then on sunday, at 2:00 p.m. eastern, stanford university professor francis fukuyama talks about his book "identity: the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment." >> that's the nice thing about identity. it doesn't have to be fixed. it doesn't have to be based on biology. it can be shaped by leaders, by school, by education, by the way we talk about our shared history and our shared values. and i think that's an important task that lies ahead of us. >> and on sunday, at 9:00 p.m. eastern, on afterwords, emory university african-american studies chair, carol anderson,

discusses her book, "one person, no vote." how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. she's interviewed by democratic congressman jamie raskin. >> it's been extremely contested and it's been violently challenged at many points, right. >> yes, absolutely. so -- and one of the things i talk about is that america is really an aspirational nation. and it's in those aspirations, we, the people, we hold these truths to be self-evident. leader of the free world. those kinds of aspirations. it's based on those aspirations and not those kind of hard core realities where people have fought in order to gain access to their citizenship rights. >> watch this weekend on c-span2's book tv. this weekend, on american history tv, on c-span3, saturday

at 8:00 p.m. eastern, on lectures in history, brandeis university professor abigail cooper talks about african-americans during the reconstruction period. sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on "reel america," the 1919 film "the lost battalion" about the lead-up to the end of world war i and an army unit of men from new york who ran out of water and food when they were surrounded by german forces. at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts, women's history with a visit to civil war related sites in alexandria, virginia, where women worked as nurses and aided communities of newly freed slaves. and at 8:00 p.m. on the presidency, a look at how first ladies have influenced political and cultural times through fashion. watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3.

>> every president, i think, would confirm that experience. i'm going to tell this guy off, i'll get him, and then they go in there and there's something about the office itself and the respect that all americans and a lot of -- most foreigners have for that office where you just don't feel like blowing out the president or taking him on the way you told your colleagues you were going to do. >> you know, when he was in china, he was eventually called back in order to run the cia, something he didn't want to do, because he thought, to be honest, running the cia was a political career killer. he still had aspiration for higher office. and then he says, and i think we should take him at his word, that he remembered his father saying, if the president of the united states asks you to do something for your country, the answer is yes. that sentiment, i think, really embodies his entire sense of obligation, not to necessarily be a president in his own right but to hold the presidency up as a charge to hand off to the next

person. >> jeffrey angle, director of southern methodist university's center for parkiresidential his, discusses his book, "when the world seemed new" sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. >> at a senate hearing on automobile tariffs, auto industry executives and labor union leaders talked about the effect that new tariffs could have on their industry and manufacturing jobs. witnesses also discussed u.s.-china trade relations, nafta, and tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. senator orrin hatch chairs the finance committee hearing. >> the committee