Keith Ellison Quotes
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This is essential that we have a resurgence in democratic participation. And I don't mean big-D Democrat, I mean small-D democrat. I mean getting involved in your neighborhood, your community. This is no time to say, "I'm not into politics." This is a time to go headlong into the welfare of this nation.
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We need to invest at the local party unit and focus our energy on turn out. That's how we come back, and we can come back.
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We think all over this country we need to rebuild everything from transit, fiber optic broadband in our rural areas and urban areas.
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The fact is, is that Donald Trump knows that as he rifles money from the working and middle classes up to the super rich, he has to sow division among working people, because if working people and middle-class people really take a look at his economic policy, they will come together, and they will stop it. So, what he has to do is to promote racism - hate the Muslims, hate the Latinos, hate the blacks, you know, have male - men and women at each other's throats, you know, make sure we repress the trans people.
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Progressive economic policies lead to a sustainable economy.
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What I'm saying is we [Democratic Party] need to get much more granular.
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I don't feel that I've been hampered by [ racism or discrimination], and the reason why is that we reach out to people on the basis of where everyone meets, and try to build common cause on that basis. Because of that, I think we've cut through some of the issues that normally divide people.
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We'll see if [Donald Trump] really means it though; he will get a chance to deliver on that promise. And if he doesn't, we'll make sure the people know about it.
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I - to say the word "scared", I don`t know if I`m scared because, I have faith that we will see this through. But I take Donald Trump seriously. He has literally millions of people who support him.
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I've been winning with 70 percent of the vote, and if you look at my district, you know it's a majority Christian district, and yet we've still been winning with high margins, so I don't feel like I've had any disadvantages for being a minority.
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We want to be making clear that if [Donald Trump] tries to deliver on his word, that we will be there to say no.
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For activists who want to preserve constitutional democracy, who don't believe in hereditary aristocracy, who believe that teachers ought to be able to deduct the 250 bucks of school supplies that they bring - they might spend their own money for in a classroom, then you still have time to fight a horrible piece of legislation.
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People feel like there're two systems of justice, you know? Over there at Wells Fargo, you know, you had the scandal going on there, but the CEO leaves with a big, giant package. And other folks get in a whole lot of trouble for doing a lot less. The truth is that we have got to make America work for working people again.
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Look, rich people already have a lot of money. There's literally trillions of dollars in cash held by corporations, their stock valuations at an all-time high. They do not need a tax cut to do anything. They can invest now, if they wanted to. They don't want to, because they can make more money just by mergers and stock buybacks and stuff like that. So, this is really just sort of a travesty.
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One thing that I'd just remind young people of is that when John Lewis, who's a member of Congress today, defied George Wallace and led the march from Selma to Montgomery, he was 23 years old. Martin Luther King was the old man in the bunch, and he was 35, so young people need to know that they've always been an important part of our society, have always been at the forefront of pushing for a more just America, and we can't be successful without the impatience, the vigor that young people bring to the fight for social justice.
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I'm happy to talk to anybody about anything.
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Now [in 2016] I have the highest turnout in the state of Minnesota. And Minnesota is the highest turnout state in the country.
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If you unpack the statistics on who is supporting , Donald Trump, it means that there is a lot of people who hold very bigoted racist ideas and there is a lot of them.
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If you put everything, your heart and soul into a campaign, it might take you a while to come around to the realization that, you know, another person has won.
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Here's what I'm saying, that there is now ongoing a post-mortem review of what could have gone better [during Hillary Clinton campaign] and what mistakes may have been made.
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I think it's a good idea to be - to fairly identify where things could have gone better once you get the facts, once you get the data and once you're able to review.
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Can't be all men, can't be all white, can't be all black, can't be all straight. [It has] got to be a wide range of people. Can't be all people of one faith group. We need diversity so we can have the views of all Americans reflected in congressional outcomes.
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The First Amendment says that we can protest and call to - on our government to address grievances.
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If you ignore somebody's record and only focus on something that happened 25 years ago when all they were doing even then was trying to stand up for a minority group that felt excluded and discriminated against, then I don't - I think that is a distortion of a person's record. I mean, a person's record is full, not just the parts that you want to use against them.
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Hopefully folks will look at the good things that I've done over the years, you know, my 10 years in Congress, my 12 years in state legislature, my many years of community organizing for the environment, for police accountability, for criminal justice reform, economic empowerment, trying to fight for small-business people, all these things.
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I think that you need all perspectives to reflect the needs of the country. If you only give people one perspective, inputting their views into the congressional process, you're going to have a skewed outcome.
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Publicly criticizing people, even when I don't have the facts, is not that good of an idea.
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After I win the job and even in the course of seeking it, we're going to be building bridges. And we're going to be meeting people and addressing the concerns that they have.
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To strengthen the grassroots at the party - at the party unit, at the county level, at the precinct level, and then to help motivate and facilitate the local grassroots to get out there and turn out the vote and boost turn out. And then to help govern in places where we do hold city councils and state legislatures.
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As chairman of the DNC, [Keith ] Ellison says he would replicate that kind of turnout on a national scale. But we spoke yesterday about some history that could stand in the way.
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