At a town hall event on Sunday with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) was interrupted by a protester.
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00:00Go ahead.
00:02Oh, go ahead.
00:03Okay.
00:04This is kind of repeating what some other people have said about, you know,
00:07we go to the Tesla protests and we come to these events.
00:10I even went to D.C. for the hands-off.
00:12It just doesn't seem like enough.
00:14I mean, you're pissed, I'm pissed, we're all pissed.
00:16And we'd come here and we'd talk,
00:18but there doesn't seem to be anything really meaningful that we can do.
00:23Well, Mike, thank you for especially for going to the Tesla protest.
00:31It is very meaningful.
00:37When the President and Republican members of Congress see these protests popping up all over the country,
00:47they know that they're heading down the wrong path.
00:50And whether it's tariffs or a foreign policy or cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and threats to Social Security,
00:59they know that the American people are not happy about this.
01:03The big question is, at what point do they feel it's going to affect their electoral success in the next election?
01:12I'm not so sure they're there yet.
01:14The President had, he built a base of support that in some ways I think is kind of unprecedented with the support of the Republican Party,
01:27the base of the Republican Party behind one guy.
01:30But if, well, let me just say political gravity is a real thing.
01:38I know a little bit about gravity.
01:40And political gravity is a real thing.
01:43The gravity is going to increase on this guy.
01:46He is going to become less popular because his policies are not popular.
01:51And as he becomes less popular, as he drops down into the low 40s in approval rating and then into the 30s,
02:00the Republicans in the House and the Senate are going to start to distance themselves from him.
02:04And they'll start to speak up.
02:06And they will get off the sidelines.
02:08So many of them are just sitting on the sidelines.
02:10They'll tell Senator Booker and I stuff in private they would never say in public about him.
02:16And what you're doing showing up at these events has a huge impact.
02:22So please don't stop and talk about these issues.
02:29I think it was Susan or it wasn't Ramona.
02:32I think it was Susan was talking about Medicaid.
02:34I think it's important for folks to know here that we don't have multiple different health care systems in the state of Arizona.
02:43There's not a health care system for people on Medicaid and another one for people on Medicare and another one for private insurance or private payer.
02:53It's all the same system.
02:55And the foundation of that system in the state of Arizona and in other states is Medicaid.
03:02If we kick 400,000 people off of Medicaid, hospitals like TMC, where Gabby was born, and our grandkid was born at TMC, or Banner, they lose a significant amount of revenue.
03:18But they don't lose the patients.
03:20They just stop getting paid for them.
03:22But they have to lay off staff and they have to cut expenses.
03:27And what that will do, it will collapse the rest of the health care system.
03:32So it doesn't matter if you're on Medicaid or not.
03:35You should be against these Medicaid cuts because regardless of who you are, they're going to affect you.
03:41So I can't help but wanting to just say to you, they want you to feel powerless.
03:52They want to overwhelm you.
03:54They want to make you think that you can't stop this.
03:57They want you to make you think that you are ultimately incapable of stopping their power and their might.
04:05But I want to tell you this right now, that we, that we...
04:10Excuse me.
04:11Excuse me.
04:12No, I'm sorry.
04:13We'll let you speak if you want to speak.
04:15But you, you're, if you don't sit down, if you don't sit down, we're going to have to bring you out.
04:23You will have to, you will have to leave, ma'am.
04:30Alrighty.
04:31We totally understand you.
04:33We understand.
04:34We understand.
04:35But you are going to have to leave, ma'am.
04:36We have our babies literally befitted.
04:37Literally no health care because Israel has gone 700 different...
04:47You made your point, ma'am.
04:48You, you made your point.
04:49You're going to have to leave.
04:51You are going to have to leave.
04:52You are going to have to leave.
04:54Why are you saying that we should be both...
04:58You made your point, ma'am.
05:00Who is the next speaker?
05:02You're going to have to leave.
05:03You made your point where you are and people are, no...
05:04Who is the next speaker?
05:17You're going to have to leave.
05:18planning on talking to us.
05:19It's okay to try and bless you to buat of us in the absolutely world terrific way as dr OMG.
05:21So we do care.
05:29We do care.
05:29And what is happening in the world is horrific.
05:33And we absolutely understand.
05:36If I may, a couple of things.
05:39Go ahead, Senator.
05:40If I may, a couple of things.
05:41First of all, I applaud what she did.
05:44There are veterans here.
05:45There are veterans here that fought for the right for free speech.
05:49Yes.
05:50Fought for the right to protest.
05:53And this is the traditions from which we come.
05:56Yes.
05:56When did the protesters around the abolitionist movement, were they successful?
06:02Which one was the one that stopped?
06:04But those noble people who stood up and said, this is wrong, they eventually together made a difference.
06:09In the suffrage movement.
06:11In the civil rights movement.
06:13I hear their voices.
06:14I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.
06:17But she kept fighting.
06:18And so I'm telling you right now, I have seen movements come.
06:23When we fought against the health care cuts that they wanted to stop, they wanted to tear down the Affordable Care Act, affecting 20 million people.
06:30It was a slow-growing movement.
06:33When he started, the actual approval rating of the Affordable Care Act was underwater.
06:39By the time John McCain took that vote, the people spoke up, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and they had moved it to be so popular and so demanded for by the people that politicians had to respond.
06:51Do not let them in any way make you believe that you showing up to forums like this, to forums like, we've got to do this more in New Jersey, the Tesla protests, that that doesn't matter.
07:04And I want you to know, just again, the last thing I'll say, Mark has heard this story.
07:09There was a white guy on a couch in 1965 watching TV, and he saw these marchers in 1965, in March of 65, trying to get across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
07:21And he was so upset about what was going on, after seeing them brutally beaten for Bloody Sunday, that this guy thought he was going to go to Alabama, but he's a lawyer, he had a law firm, he couldn't afford to do it, and sat back on the couch.
07:34But then he decided, I'm not going to let my inability to do everything to undermine my determination to do something.
07:40This is 65, years before the 1968 Fair Housing Act, he started deciding that I'm going to work our more pro bono work with the Fair Housing Council of Northern New Jersey.
07:53And he started getting pretty good with helping them take black families denied housing in large areas of the wealthy affluent suburbs of New Jersey, representing them, sending white couples behind them.
08:03When they were told the house was sold, the black couple would leave, and the white couple would come and find out it was still for sale, they exposed it, they brought public attention, and the like.
08:12And finally, in 68, finally in 68, the law was passed, and now he was on the right side of the law.
08:18But let me tell you something.
08:19One of the families he represented in a very dramatic way, they were denied housing, white couple found the house was still for sale, they put a bid on the house for the black family.
08:28On the day of the closing, the white family didn't show up.
08:31The black father did, and a volunteer lawyer, the real estate agent, saw that he was caught and stood up so angry that this guy exposed what he was doing.
08:41He punched the lawyer in the face and sigged the dog on the black man.
08:46Well, the black man fought off the Doberman Pinscher.
08:48There was a lot of violence in the area, but they left, they wrote letters back and forth, the media found out.
08:54The owners of the house were so embarrassed, they sold the house to the black family, and they moved into the town.
08:59The first black family ever to integrate this large area of northern New Jersey.
09:03And then 43 years later, 43 years later, the baby in that family goes to be America's fourth black person ever elected to the United States Senate, me.
09:13And so I am here because one person on a couch during a moral moment didn't just sit there, he got up and did something.
09:25Do not underestimate every single day, no person standing up for a cause of justice is ever doing anything in vain.
09:32It makes more of a difference than you realize.
09:34That's right.
09:35That's right.