At a town hall event on Sunday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke about immigrants.
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00:00We have one more question, Laura. Laura, I believe, Burkhart.
00:08Yeah. Hi, thank you for taking the time to answer this. My name is Laura Burkhart.
00:13My mom was the one who spoke before. I am starting, I just got a full-time job as a
00:17school social worker. I've been working in Title I schools. I got hired at a Title I
00:22school. I work with a lot of kids who, you know, have ADHD, are in low income, and so
00:30my question about the Department of Education, I'm just really worried about
00:34it in general, specifically funding and enforcement for Title I schools, like the
00:38funding, as well for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. So I just
00:43wanted to ask, like, what is going to happen with the programs, this
00:45department, and also, as you guys are currently in Congress, what is something
00:50that the three of you can do, as people in Congress, to help support disabled
00:55students and support people from low-income families?
01:03Well, first off, thank you for your career in public education, particularly
01:07supporting our special, our specialty students. My sister, Maria, my younger
01:12sister, 32 years as a special education teacher in the Cartwright District in
01:17Maryvale in the Phoenix area. Special Ed teachers are a special group of people, so
01:23we owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
01:29The dismantling of the Department of Education is 100% illegal. The Department of
01:33Education was created by Congress. It was not created by this President. The fact that
01:38he and Elon Musk, Elon Musk, they can unilaterally dismantle it, is completely
01:43legal. That's being challenged right now, and it deserves to be challenged. As you
01:47know, the main purpose of the Department of Education is to fund Title I schools, the
01:54lower-income areas, including where we're having this event right now, so the Title I
01:58schools mentioned earlier, and that funding is critical to make sure that those
02:02students have as much of a chance as anyone to get the top-quality education and
02:06advance in their lives and careers. Second is, exactly as you mentioned, special
02:11education, funding for special education programs, which you know personally, just
02:16how critical that is for those students and for the entire student body. But you
02:21know what else they do in the Department of Education? Pell Grants. To give so many
02:26students an opportunity, often first-time college-goers, people's family, and, you know, of
02:33course, the University of Arizona and ASU, which happens to be in my district. Don't boo.
02:38But, and NAU, of course, you know, how many students get that opportunity to attend
02:45college because of the Pell Grant program? And this idea that somehow you can block
02:53grant that money, you can dismantle the Department of Education and block grant that
02:58money to the states, we know exactly what that means. Number one, it means a massive, under
03:04the best of circumstances, a massive cut to our support for public education. And in Arizona,
03:12if we give that money to Tom Horn, that means, that means, tragically, additional voucherization
03:23of public education in the state of Arizona. We ain't going there. And that's why, number
03:28one, we're going to win this lawsuit because this is totally illegal what is, what is happening.
03:33And we're going to make this, if they try to do this, if they, if this, if the Republicans
03:37won't stand up and push back on this particular issue, they dismantle USAID, they're trying
03:43to dismantle Social Security, if they dismantle the Department of Education, they're going to
03:47pay a massive, a massive political price. The American people will not put up with that.
03:54And that is one of the key elements of our fight. Mayor, I know, I know we're running
03:59late on time. I just, I just, um, I, what really frustrates me right now is to see this
04:08administration targeting many of our most vulnerable Americans. And, and the way they're going after
04:14first violating the due process rights of immigrants, disappearing people off the side
04:20of the, of the streets. And let me tell you something. Anton Scalia said this, that if you
04:26are in the United States, citizen or not, you have a right to due process, but they think they could
04:32attack them because they're marginalized people. Let's attack their rights. They're going after
04:38LGBTQ Americans, specifically trans Americans, in the most vile ways, whipping up issues. There are,
04:45uh, uh, more children right now, uh, sick with the measles in Texas than there are trans kids, uh, in the NCAA
04:53trying to play sports. It is, it is such a vilification, uh, to focus again on a vulnerable population.
05:00And then they're, they're, they're targeting, uh, the supports that we have as a society for our incredible,
05:06beautiful children with disabilities. And to me, we are a society that just like I said with healthcare, we have not done,
05:14we have not done our societal responsibility to support the public education of K-12 kids with disabilities.
05:22We have not stepped up and done what we should do already. And now they're threatening these funds.
05:29Frederick Douglass said this clearly. To me, this is callous and cruel, and it also marks more of tyrannical societies
05:38than democratic ones that understand the importance of being there for all Americans,
05:43understanding that we're all in this together. I will tell you right now, the biggest poverty I'm worried about,
05:48and I've been fighting against child poverty, which I think is a moral obscenity.
05:52That's why I was proud to stand with some of my colleagues and get the expanded tax credit that cut the child poverty rate in half in our country,
05:58that showed once and for all that child poverty in America is not an inevitability, it is a policy choice.
06:05Yep.
06:06As Mark said so clearly, back, way back in the Obama days, the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans were a lot higher,
06:12and it was one of the times that the wealthiest Americans did the best. Stock market doubled during the eight years of him.
06:18But poverty that I'm most worried about in this country is a poverty of empathy.
06:23Yeah.
06:24It's our inability to see each other, to understand each other's needs, to understand that families that have children with disabilities,
06:33they are our brothers and our sisters, and in many ways, they are a part of who we are.
06:39So I want to end just with this. In my last town hall in New Jersey, there was a young man named Joseph.
06:45This is why I love the power of social media. This video on our platforms has even seen millions of times.
06:51His mother came in to speak for him and said at the end of her remarks about her son with autism
06:57that he has terrible anxiety in front of people, but he insisted on coming to this town hall,
07:04and he had something he wanted to read. His voice shook and was halting.
07:09But the strength in his words, demanding that we protect the programs in Medicare and Medicaid that support his efforts to live independently.
07:20He spoke so strongly. We now have to understand that we have an obligation to speak up, to stand up, to rise up,
07:29to lift up the voices of our brothers and sisters, to make sure that no president with a cabinet full of billionaires
07:37and an out-of-control richest man in the world like Elon Musk, that these are not the folks,
07:42that their callous and craven cuts to programs for everyday Americans are successful.
07:47We now have to show again and again and again that in this democracy we won't tolerate it and exercise our power to stop it.
07:55The way we stop this is not by condemning people, it's by beginning to expand their empathy by telling these stories to more people.
08:05Not just the people that we agree with, but calling to the conscience of our neighbors to say,
08:09enough is enough because this room is full, other rallies have been full, but we're still not at that tipping point yet.
08:16We need to get more Arizonans, more New Jerseyans to say this is the United States of America.
08:22We say we the people, not just some people, but all the people in our country deserve the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
08:31Well, Corey, so perfectly said, I think we should leave it there.