good afternoon good afternoon could everybody give katie another round of applause and she did a great  back at i have to say thank you for being here we all are here for a very important part and per person but i just want to say i know some people think i might be a little biased but some people think boston is sort of the hub of the state of massachusetts but i would strongly suggest that it's the metro w we have it all here and there's always to coin a phrase more to explore we have so many jewels here in metro west and so much going on from framingham stay mass bay to our cultural institutions to our theater are our universities our natural resources there are just so much it's a beautiful area with a very high quality of life so i welcome you to the have and i look forward to hearing senator markey of course i would like to acknowledge a few folks that are here are terrific governors coun and we have several of our state representatives that i work with so closely and i just want to say sure west is in credibly lucky to have such a tremendous group  the legislature we work really closely together and we work to get things done we work together whether it be those that are here now are democrats but we reach across the aisle as necessary as well it's not what you will hear like what happens in washington we really the states are taking a big lead right now and we are at the forefront of so many important issues so we have representative chris walsh representative alice representative danielle greg we also have former state senator dave  have many city councilors and school committee members which i will let mayor spicer introduce them when she comes up here so i am tasked to give like a little warm up for ed mar which isn't always easy to do for ed because let's face it ed needs no introduction  but i will pass with a job so i will try he has be landless lee represented the people of the massachusetts fifth congressional district and he is fearlessly fought for all americans in his forty years in congress first in the house and now in the senate the son of a modern milkman he was just twenty nine when he upset the traditional balance of power and won his seat in the s house since then he is been a successful champion of issues that matter most to the people of massachusetts including environmental stewardship clean energy consumer protection immigration and privacy just to name a few that it has championed ed markey clearly is a man of many many talents we are grateful for his ability to negotiate federal policy standing his ground when he needs to and compromising when it gets the job done but ed is also known for something else i think if you have heard you know this how many tens of hundreds have we heard his ability to communicate using acronyms he has truly a unique gift so in honor of today i'd like to retell a little piece of ed story using acronyms let's start at the very beginning son of a milkman do you know what i l k really stands for all of these years it stands for marquis is a lawyer and kind hearted after his childhood in malden ed it tended boston college and then boston college law school fees c l s at that time was  c l s a budding champion learning stanching one of the most famous stories about it careers is when he was still in the massachusetts legislature i think we all have heard this story when the speaker was unhappy with the position that it took and he put us in the hall famously said at that time they may tell me where to sit but nobody tells me where i stand so i declare that from now on the word death d e s k when it's associated with ed markey should stand for don't expect senseless it is also well known for his work on broadband access and net neutrality because of his hard work and eat he really stands for fighting for those that need  technology during his time in congress and has developed a reputation for being a stalwart advocate for clean energy and against climate change how many of you know that i mean it is always a forefront of this so it is as green as it comes so when he fights g r e a n and it is gathering resistance to environmental agreed just snice and  finally and i will spare you a whole lot more and has fought hard for consumer protection to that end i declare that protect p r o t e c t should mean preserving rights of tomorrow's evolving consumers today i could go on and on but yes i will spare you and here i think you get the idea in fact nobody but nobody will be as good at making up the acronyms as  markey so what i will say and with that i am glad that we have someone so heartfelt so creative and so response of serving in the u s senate as we face a really uncertain time right now and an uncertain future i'm glad that we have steady hand and open heart at the federal level so i would like to personally thank him for all of his hardware and for not only being a great colleague but being a friend to all of us so at this point i would like to also introduce framingham new although it's six weeks so maybe you're a veteran now mayor mayor vance or she took office six weeks ago when framingham began a city so she's helping to lead the charge of the transition along with the city councillors and the school committee and all the employees and all the residents of framingham she's gotten a terrific head start  next and if i missed anyone that is here i'm sorry beverly hugo school committee member beverly good to you girl and if i missed anyone please stand right i did well i want to say good afternoon and welcome our senator who doesn't need an introduction to framingham i've lived here for thirty two years and for portion of that time he has been my representative and yours as well we had the good fortune of not only him representing us at the capitol hill but being a tireless advocate for us senator spoken did a great job conveying some of his hard work so i will reiterate this but it's interesting that he should be in framingham on this day which happens to be one of my favorite authors birthday toni morrison  today is her birthday and toni morrison once said which is very fitting today is her eighty seventh birthday as you enter positions of power in trust dream a little bit before you think that simply means to always have a vision of the change you wish to make before you act one of the things i can honestly say ed markey has been that change for not only here in framingham but across our commonwealth and without further ado i want to welcome our seen as senator edward j mark thank you thank you all  thank you thank you all in thank you all for coming out here on a sunday afternoon i thank you madam mayor and thank you for welcoming me to city hall here in framing here you can now say that is the case and we thank you for being an inspirational figure not just for framing him but for the whole state of massachusetts and our country thank you so much for your service thank you for your leadership and to senator thank you for all of your great leadership it's always great when a region can have the chairperson of ways and means karen spill could come from here because it really does help a lot when you have someone in that kind of a position and she just does an absolutely fantastic job for metro west and has known her throughout the entirety of her absolutely an all star cast of people and they have already been introduced once but i just want to go through the list and also note that chris wallace did come here a little bit earlier  but he just felt a little bit under the weather but just know that he was going to be here but i thank you david linsky for being here and we thank you for what you're doing on gun control up on the up in the statehouse cabin gentile thank you so much for all of your great service here too carol indictment my friend thank you so much for being here thank you for your great work out alice  of selectmen people who are here thank you so much for making metro west almost a model for the rest of the country in terms of the the balance that is created between job creation in the responsibilities we have to everyone in the community people in other states they don't quite understand that we do believe in capitalism and we actually have out here or one of the lowest unemployment rates in the united states of america but we believe in capitalism with a conscience which is something that donald trump just does not understand about the state of massachusetts just start with guns will start with hopefully is now going to build it up into a children's crusade in our country so that  so that the response to the national rifle association comes from the youngest people in our country who have a right to be able to go to school without wearing whether or not someone  who should not be able to buy a gun can buy a gun which only belongs on the battlefields of the of the world and not on the streets of our country and that these children that these children begin now lead all of us on a crusade which will turn into not relevant anymore in america that's a good acronym and that should become an operational argument for all of us we have one of the tightest set of gun laws in the country and we also have one of the lowest ra s in the country as well there is a direct correlation it's a public health issue and the place where the higher where the framingham heart study began is a place that understands prevention understands the correlation that exists between good safety gun laws being on the books in the reduction in the likelihood that people are going to be harmed by them so from connecticut nearly identical legislation and we need to pass it here in massachusetts because we go first on a narrowly and were only two percent of america's population but we're not an ordinary two percent  we are not just the bay state we are the brain state and we know what has to happen if we are going to be on the issues so so from my perspective now and by the way we'll have cameras here for anyone who wants to ask questions as well but i'll just try to get out a few issues that i think we should talk about  bill mentioned a few of them may have spice it worked over at the museum of science before she became the mayor now what do we all have in common before we're at the age of ten or eleven but regardless of our religion regardless of where we live we are taken to the museum of science that's all part of our growing up here in metro west erm yes fuses in general and at the immaculate conception grammar school sister would say there's no conflict between religion and science in fact science is the answer to our prayers because it allows us to understand what is happening on our planet and so what donald trump did in pulling us out of the paris climate agreement is an absolute assaults upon science who we are what we believe in and what we know has to had passed to happen if we are again to put the preventative health measures in place for the planet the planet is running a fever there are no emergency rooms for planets and we have to unleash a revolution of wind and solar and bio mass and all electric vehicles and energy efficiency so that we created here and then we can spread it across the planet so so to the extent to which every single day under this  the secretary of the interior has now authorize rick sinky drilling for oil off of the coast of massachusetts it's almost like the from mit and boston college being the secretary of energy and having gina mccarthy from u mass boston be the head of the e p a there are almost three you know how to have someone who doesn't believe in anything that these massachusetts people had brought in the preceding generation down to washington to create a pathway for the reduction of greenhouse gases on this planet and so our job again i going to have to be in massachusetts that we stand up for science we stand up for clean energy we stand up for this revolution and we ensure that we continue to we my goal on the environment committee is t then you go to health care and inside of the health care bill inside of the tax bill they were able to repeal the individual mandate we keep it here in massachusetts that's just who we are we invented a sensually the framework for the affordable care act but their intention is nationally to undermine it to undermine it to a point at which it just medicaid over the next ten years while also laying out a framework that would have something on the range of seven trillion dollars in defense spending well you know over over the portal of the boston public library it says the best offensive in of a nation is the education of its people and the way we view that is that we have to provide health care and education to every child in our country we have to make sure they get a well educated healthy start and so the one thing that is not going to make us safer is one and a half trillion dollars of additional nuclear weapons we are not going to be made safer when we already have enough nuclear weapons to pull russia and north korea and china off the map twenty times over right now all we can do which is make the rubble bounce higher with the additional nuclear weapons that would be landing and so to the extent to which the president has these crazy budget priorities he actually cuts at what it is that makes us special out here in metro west which has a none of which which results in an unemployment rate for framing him being two point five percent for all the communities you can just say two two two two in that range for unemployment it's because there's a plan here and a plan is investment in all of the things that ensure that we become a healthier more prosperous economy david being jani knows that all of you know this and so for me  this is the moment here where the president wants a massive military build up tax breaks for the upper one percentile while cutting medicare social security and all the rest of these programs dramatically in fact zeroing out the national endowment of the arts and humanities because we can't afford that but tell that to katie hewlett who just saying the national anthem from framing him high school didn't she do a great job do we really  we really want to cut in zero out the national endowment for the arts and humanities absolutely crazy let me give you some numbers in the budget that he just announced last week twenty five percent for the environmental protection agency twenty five percent cut for the state department eighteen percent cut in transportation fifteen percent cut in the department of interior fourteen percent cut in housing in urban development ten percent cut in labor five percent cut in education one percent cut in the justice department but don't worry because the defense department is getting a fourteen percent increase in their budget at the expense of all of these other programs so we want a strong defense we believe in a strong defense in our country but you can't give a huge information to defend knowingly erroneous premises and the single part of their erroneous promise is that you can have huge tax rates an increase in defense spending and not have a dramatic impact on all of the rest of the programs that go right to the heart of the investment in our country and health care is right at the center of it were up to ninety eight percent of all people in massachusetts who have health care in education we are number one in math we're number one in math verbal and science at the fourth eighth and tenth grade and we would be as a separate as a separate six point six million million person country would be right behind singapore in finland in the world and you know the thing about us when are happy with our educational system even though we're number one we're not happy with our health care system even though we're number one that's who we are and that's why we have such a fantastic delegation here working on all these issues up in the state house pursuant to your instruction as to what you want to see for metro west and for the commonwealth of massachusetts in terms of what we represent so i will it's just so many issues so many issues so little times like a trumpet day if you know what i mean it's just a new issue every single day but so thursday was a bad day there was a bad day thursday was dhaka in florida to really bad things with two terrible responses from donald trump to both of them terrible so these dreamers are here framing him as a perfectly diverse community it kind of represents the aspirations for the country as to what is possible what can happen a very high percentage of african americans of latinos of agents of people from other countries in a car in a in a city of seventy thousand with a two point five percent unemployment rate in a very low crime rate or we can do this ok we can do that and what the president what the president is now saying is that these young people by the way the deadline is now march fifth that's when their protections expire just a couple of weeks so the seven hundred thousand with seven thousand of them coming from massachusetts there is like a political bull's eye on them and the president  hard on thursday of last week to tell republican senators that he did not want them to vote for that bill we had eight republicans but then he just drew the line we needed sixty you know at the save them and we only could get eight of them we needed we needed a levon republicans twelve thirteen fourteen which i believe there were twenty republicans who wanted to vote for it but the president just put out a border on that solution to the problem so we so we have a moral responsibility as a country a to ensure that we do protect these young people they should not be sent back to countries that they did not grow up in they should the bottom of the statue of liberty that is who we are that's why we're all here when my  when my grandfather and grandmother got off the boat from ireland in the twentieth century it wasn't up in the scoreboard that their grandson would be a united states senator people don't leave these countries because they're doing great in those countries it's almost the rule for who leaves right the countries of their arjen they're here not because they're mullingar or but because they are being oppressed because they're not being given opportunities that's why they come here and so we should take this generation of dreamers and protect them and encourage them as deep as a key part of the twenty first century when when i ran for the senate you know you grow up where your mother tells your father he's going to live and so my father was from lawrence and my mother from malta and so i grew up in malden my father drove a truck for the hood milk milk company he grew up on the first floor of a triple decker in lawrence five children mother and father in the shadow of the old s so my father grew up graduated from the vocational program at lawrence high school as for my father went to high school and when i decided to do when i announced for the senate because i wasn't i hadn't been up there recently so i rang the doorbell at eighty eight phillip street first floor three decker see who lives there now where my father grew up with all my uncles and aunts my grandmother and grandfather and lawrence and the door opens and it was a dominican family with their children and the accents were different but the aspirations the same for those children that those parents had as existed for the marquis's coming out a sum out of that first one so i think that's the spirit that we have to try to capture in have come from massachusetts and continue to wreck did towards president trump and that's what elizabeth warren and catherine clock and i try to do every single day down on the floor of the house and senate is just deliver those sentiments of who we are in in massachusetts so maybe what i could do this is one of the only place in the world we can just say net neutrality gets applause ok that's that's how much more sophisticated we are than most parts of the country but net neutrality another way of describing  neutrality is just kind of nondiscrimination so that's what we believe in we believe in no discrimination based upon race no discrimination based upon gender but we also believe no discrimination online no discrimination no matter how small your voices how small your side of software company might be that you will be protected and so the president through his federal communications commission took the net neutrality laws off the books in december and so what i did four weeks ago was announced that i am and i already have forty nine democrats and susan collins on ok so so what i am going to do is  incredible national campaign all round restoring the net neutrality rules we're going to need you to be part of this twenty two million people went online at the federal communications commission saying do not neutrality twenty two million people the next highest of all time is only like four million for any issue at any agency at any time you know if you are like a millennial you know net neutrality is like a constitutional right there is no world within which they have lived that doesn't have this is the principle right for their relationship with this incredible technology so this is going to be a huge battle huge  in our intent is to have it like come on a mass few sets and california and then sweep across the whole country because we need congress to hear from everyone on this issue congress is a stimulus response institution and does nothing more stimulating like ten million people calling into the house and the senate saying i care about net neutrality and if you're out here and europe wondering what is it yeah we biotech industry but it's true for every community that is out here that's who we are we're biotech but we're also this internet revolution hundreds  thousands of smaller companies whose names nobody knows all starting their own little company in twenty in two years ago fifty percent of all venture capital in america went to software in internet start ups companies whose names nobody knows fifty percent of all venture capital that's who we are that's why our unemployment rate stays so low it's biotech it's clean tech we now have one hundred thousand people working in clean tech in massachusetts it's now one of the top ten employers in our state biotech right so this internet biotech clean tech set of interrelationships along with health care is absolutely driving our economy so so there's going to be a vote it's called a congressional review act it was put on the books by nuking which in one nine hundred ninety five so that they could overturn all of bill clinton's rules well now that  his so that if you go and we thank all of you for being here and if anyone wants to go to the microphones we have no over here and rory right here and you could just go over and please stand up and ask away any questions you would like to have answer our children i feel that something's out of whack with that nowadays you're in fear of your children being murdered and let that resonate with you murdered when they go to school we have an opiate crisis which is the largest health crisis of our lifetime you talk about unemployment there's a teenage unemployment in this country there is a growing autism and mental health crisis that we have in this country i ask you here today to be the senator who goes back to washington hopefully next week and rallies the other ninety nine senators and we put a priority back on our youth in this country it's too important not to do that i feel with the crippling college loan debt that we have and the burdens that are now on children with social media and the fact that they can go to school and be murdered and i want to keep using that word because it has to resonate with people you as a leader of this state and as this country have to put partisan politics aside and you need to fix this and i'm here today to ask you to be that leader and thank you sir very much so and again i agree with your i started with gun control because it is a public health epidemic we need prevention in fact i introduced a bill seven years ago six five four three two they have the centers for disease control do a study over the relationship between guns and health in america and i was blocked and walk and walk in block for an evening even having a bow but the new head of the department of health and human services on friday announced much to my shock that they are now going to begin the study the public health study of the relationship between guns in our society so i  a bill year after year on on this issue education we shouldn't be cutting the education budget we should be trying to figure out how to make community college free in the united states of america so it's just a continuation through high school of the educational opportunities which people have the my wife thirty three years ago i met a woman is like i'm an irish catholic politician from few sets and i i met the poop perfect opposite a jewish doctor from from california and so now we've been together for thirty three years she's a career public health service doctor she retired as a two star admiral in the public health service she ran all of women's health during the clinton administration for the whole country but the one thing i do know sir is that and she taught me this is that children are only twenty percent of the population but they're one hundred percent of our future and if you don't and that as wealth waldo emerson said that health is the first wealth and if we're not if we are not investing in the earliest years then there are going to be big problems in terms of the long term outlook for these young people so i agree with you one hundred percent and while many of these republicans shed crocodile tears about how much they care about all these young people you can't be simultaneously be calling for a slashing of health care and educational programs in our country you can't be turning the congress over to the n r a in terms of in terms of the safety of the schools i am with you and i'll just give you one when i got to the senate what they did was this a national journal took all one hundred senators and they analyze each one of our records representatives five hundred and ten loss now by definition by definition i had a republican every single time all of your state legislators who were here they all know this this is how it works you're constantly crossing over and trying to find people who you can partner with but this is a toxic political environment within which we have been working and donald trump likes it that way and so i can tell you the truth i've been doing this a long time this is the most energy ice at every bend in my entire career donald trump gets me up every single day to fight you know to fight this toxicity political toxicity this crisis of democracy which he is helping to create in our country so i'm agreeing with you sir and i will take your message back down to washington with me when i go back  and buy an insta gun the terrorist watch list like ninety three percent of all americans say people on the terrorist watch list should not be able to buy guns in our country we can't even get a vote on the floor of the senate on that issue the bump stock issue that way in which that man took an assault weapon turn and turned it into a machine gun with  and walk in massachusetts you have to go to the police chief we have a system here that has a check at the local level where the police chief gets to find out who wants the gun but nationwide that's not the case and because of the poorest nature of the borders in our country people get just buy in another place and take it to a state that has better gun safety laws so i'm agreeing with user one hundred percent no one wants to take hunting rifles away from people no one wants to take guns which people have always been able to purchase in our country but when but when we have no laws which are on the books that have a mandatory background check then it basically ties the hands of law enforcement officials in our country who otherwise would be in a position to be able to protect the rest of the people in the community while at the same time allowing people who who legally should be able to own guns to be able to purchase them so i'm hopeful that this children's crusade which is the bell to begin is going to be the key turning point in in the history of this issue but i've been disappointed my whole career disappointed my whole career in terms of how powerful the n r a is is just incredible force of political nature that has blocked anything from happening throughout the entirety of my entire career in even when we passed the assault weapon ban in one thousand nine hundred four it was with a ten year expiration date ok so by two thousand and four once again those protections were not on the books any longer and so this is just a statement of their power and it's going to require an uprising of the american people finally and we won't reach that point the tipping point is going to happen we helped puts it's the florida school but they'll be people who asks the why what gets my applause is the how and i've only heard two things maybe three that answer the how again i want to hear more of that particularly prize as well as yourself because i know i live in a democratic state so this state is going to go democratic almost no matter what i will vote that way but as for the rest how all issues go through three phases political education political activation political implementation so for many of the issues that i'm speaking about here today will put gun control aside that's a special issue that has been particularly impervious to any pull political solution over the years what has happened in the last year and a half of just year now he's only been president for a year it's is that issues around which there had been a consensus that had been built let's say and h funding research for finding the cure for the diseases which affect every family regardless of party affiliation that in his first budget last year he put in a twenty percent cut and i age research funding so we worked very hard with republicans over the last year on that issue clearly we're the largest per capita recipient of an age research we get two and a half billion dollars a year that comes to massachusetts to lead the research on finding the cure for cancer for all simers diabetes so in this budget that we just finished ten days ago not only was it not cut by  twenty percent but we actually added a billion dollars for this year and next year to and i actually because we tried to work as hard as we could on a bipartisan basis to break down those divisions but again it was not what trump wanted it was not what the head of his operas of management and budget wanted but we had to fight very hard just by working together and that's what your excellent delegation does carolyn and danielle governor the democrats who are here that's just the way it is you have to try to find a way you know you can't allow the state to be paralyzed you have to try to find a way and the same thing is true done in washington we can't allow this this man you know to poison the political system when jeff flake the senator from arizona started to attack him he just attacked him back so severely that he's not even running for reelection in arizona that's in his own party so all i can tell you is that's all i do with every waking moment i try to find ways of working with republicans in order to find solutions to the problems that affect every family so we want to come back over here yes you just pick up just a hi senator markey bank thank you so much for coming out to metro wes my name is helen i live in natick and i have had multiple sclerosis for twenty years when i first was diagnosed and treated with them for our mass the drugs that i took only cost fifteen thousand dollars a year and over the past twenty years the multiple sclerosis drugs have increased in number t sixteen but the prices have gone up astronomically to over eighty thousand dollars a year and what i'm most concerned about is that these are medications that we take for our lifetime and they prevent  long term disability and what has been an issue for me is that in recent years health insurance companies have found sneaky ways to deny coverage or not coverage and then not only that they have done other things by creasing drug co payments as much as twenty percent of actual drug costs which brings up to sixteen thousand a year so what i'd like to say is i'm very concerned about the drug manufacturers what tactics are they using i've heard of this pricing which i'm very concerned about when new drugs come on the market the biotech companies and companies develop them want to make their money back but the older drugs that have been around for a while have the coop their costs but these drugs continue to go up in price and what i'm most concerned about the next letter that's going to come in the mail is my health insurance going to deny my coverage or make my co payment sixteen thousand dollars and i have one goal in life is the word w o to continue walking and it's very massachusetts and we really need your help to make sure that this is a thank you and thank you for coming thank you for telling your story here thank you so so and i put in and thank you for telling the story of emmaus the mass medical association sent a delegation down to meet with me last week in my office in washington that was twenty different positions and this just makes your point the cost of insulin insulin is not a new technology not a new breakthrough the cost of insulin to a patient has increased ten fold in ten years fault with no new breakthroughs in the technology ok so that's just plain wrong we know what's wrong there was a story in the globe last week that said they had been over a couple year period like a twenty three percent increase in cost of health care in the state due to increase in drug prices so again we're proud of where we are as a health care system but we're not going to be able to maintain access to health care if we continue to see these spiraling drug costs so we need to find some system and the one hope that i have and i don't know what he means but donald trump actually said in his state of the union address two weeks ago and i was sitting next to bernie sanders watching the state of the unity and union address and obviously was sitting next to bernie yet you really have to curb your enthusiasm for any response to anything that donald trump says but he said his goal this year is to pass legislation that controls drug costs and all democrats got up and half the republicans sat down ok so that was the one issue where every democrat got up but maybe just maybe this could be the year although like everything else we never know if his actions are going to what company his words in terms of what he's going to do but i think you put your finger on one of the biggest if not the central issue in the health care system in our country in terms of controlling costs so it's affordable for everyone yes hopkinton this is a great country what it experienced today i'm not a gun owner i'm not a member of the entering but i've been trying to figure out this gun violence problem is and i've been doing some research in there are five to ten million in a ar fifteen s in the haden's of americans right now there are three hundred million guns and rifles in this is i estimate from the n s f which is the national shooting sports foundation and there are over twenty million residences in the united states with a weapon in over thirty six million adults have access to that weapon i really think we're barking up the wrong tree by going after the n r a it i don't think that it's a good use of whatever resources we have to fight this battle because what we really need is mental health services and if i can just finish thirty seven times the police went to that young man's home ok how many times did the teachers in his school express  enough social workers and community outreach people that's what we need we don't need another law we need mental health funding ok now i  so when when i met my wife thirty three years ago she was the chief of behavioral medicine at the national institutes of health at samhsa substance abuse a mental health agency that's where she worked so she began on our first date to start to explain this whole issue of mental health substance abuse and the way she phrased it to me that first night i don't forget it is first you need the is the way you think about the world and second is you need access to the means of the instrumentality the means to act out on whatever it is that gets into your brain that you think now is something that you should be acting out so i am agreeing with you in terms of access to mental health services which is why the repeal of the affordable care act would be one of the most dangerous things we ever did because it would pull out the rug from millions of families who now gain access to the mental health services which they need in our country but and that funding should only be increased for mental health services there should be parity there should be a full recognition of the fact that that disease is just the same as any physical disease which are facts families in our country that's one of the things you learn after thirty three years with jewish psychiatry ok i know this but i also know that we have too many guns we don't have enough control over who can purchase the gun so i agree with you but i think we have to do both ok i just think in order to in order to really ensure that we solve this problem we have to deal with with both sides of the equation and if we do it we're going to see a dramatic decline because there's no other explanation for why our country is the highest in the world country in any industrialized country in the world has done great gun  injuries which are so much lower than ours ok so it's it's it's the absence of a full funding and attention paid to both sides of the question so i thank you for your point and i will i will keep it in my mind and be using it happening but there are no solutions kind of a waste of time on trump if the democrats won votes in november they won't be trumped by being drawn his base his approval ratings and a lot of silence speaks pretty loud people like where the economy is we're not in many wars and they could care less about his sex life his lies and his bullying my parents once told me that if you complain come up with some solutions i have to right now  solutions first the democrats should begin their november elections now and they should forget all the bells and whistles and make a five point promise if you give us the house and senate one number five tell our seniors that medicare and social security are there and will be there for them if and when they are needed is my first suggestion second suggestion that's point one we should be we should as a beginning point harness the outrage the sentiments and the power right now to gather people touched by violence in our schools especially the high school and college students he talked about earlier and their parents we should hold a conference and invite politicians along with funders to discuss an immediate ban on assault weapons students students can use social media to get their peers to register to vote and they with their with their with the right guidance can kick people out of office and put people in office who are against giving out a r k's a r fifteen is i'm sorry to anyone my last comment i willing to help with either or both of these initiatives but let's stop giving the news and start with real can do solutions and i'm agreeing with you and that's why i'm here this is the town meeting form of communication that we pretty much invented and the reason i'm here is to be educated by you but in turn to tell you what is going on down in washington or what the obstacles are to making the rest of the country more like us in terms of our attitude towards climate towards uncontrolled towards protecting health care for seniors and for every one else for banning of assault weapons for each and every one of your items and i agree with you wholeheartedly the problem is and i say this only because he's a master is that trump is a master of distraction he puts so many things out there is each day that the press just goes for that he's just he's just he's just a genius in creating red herrings to distract people from the central issues that should be debated in every single home in the country so i'm agreeing with you and just going to try to get on this list in one thousand nine hundred four i was successful in banning the one million some of the automatic assault weapons for years that were coming in from china at eighty dollars apiece and that ban is still in place that was a million something that was my initiative in one thousand nine hundred number two i am the i am the author of the appliance efficiency act which is the constitution for already doubling the efficiency of all appliances in the united states to reduce the number of coal burning plants actually have to be operating because they don't need to generate electricity for appliances which are twice the fission three and the author of the two thousand and seven law that obama used to increase fuel economy standards for the vehicles which we drive to fifty four point five miles per gallon by the year twenty twenty five reducing greenhouse gases so and that's the promise which obama made in  i'm with you on a are fifteen's a are actually doesn't stand for assault rifle but that's what it really is they have to be banned they don't belong on the streets of our country the people who are the criminals and should not have a higher degree of weaponry then the police department in framingham has when they're walking into a bad situation it is absolutely and completely wrong i'm agreeing with you one hundred percent so i i subscribe to that agenda and the applause that you are receiving as you went through each item up to and including the protection of our seniors in their health care system is absolutely essential where we have extended the framingham heart study the average life expectancy in one thousand nine hundred and i country was forty seven years of age it's now pretty much eighty years of age with women actually living longer that's public health initiatives including medicare and medicaid we can't see them undermined we have to actually see them strengthened we should be putting more this i thank you for all you have done in your career thus far in for all you're going to do for us in your career but most of all i want to thank you for spending daylight savings time you so much thank you i moved i just as what you know i have five hundred and eight laws one of them i had to do it in two separate segments i moved daylight savings time from the last week in april to the beginning of march ok so that in another two or three weeks daylight savings time starts whenever it's an hour in the evening instead of at five in the morning people's miles the con of their miles start to turn up once ok because now they can walk around at night and in fact it actually reduces crime because bad people don't like to commit crimes while it is daylight ok so so thank you r that jurisdiction as a kind of a bonus so i decided the time and actually put an extra week after halloween so that people could take their kids on inter country during the light in the early hours especially the small children so thank you for that yes sir use that for gun control and the second question in a second statement is if we want to call in for the federal level we had binding referendums all of us here could approach the gun control issue are you for can you think of an amendment to the constitution that brings the country back to us yes a referendum yep so on gun control it's overwhelming across the whole background checks on assault weapons people want tight controls this is this is no longer a debatable issue in the country the only blockage is that mitch mcconnell and paul ryan more allow these votes to come out onto the floor of the congress so the referendum is going to be this november fourth ok if we can sweep back with people who are just so upset with our top tally of all the programs which trump has put in place all the things that he's protecting against being  changed then you're going to see real change in our country so and so it but it has to begin at the grassroots it has to begin city by city town by town rising up not just here but across the country red states included and i think that change is now happening and i'm i'm grafton i am what you call other high school immigrant you you talk about the brains this being the brain state we are the ones who are the best and brightest who have come to this brain state we want to know do stuff here i'm also  this very partisan climate that we have today and i appreciate that you're doing that you have done that in the past i will request and ask my request to you is please thing about us keep us in mind the high school community that who are stuck in this backlog without  able to do nothing when you go talk about immigration on the floor there please keep us in mind there are people who are getting affected the most egregious part is that kids the dependent kids and the dependents spouses are treated pretty badly no wonder  things for they may go back as that was being discussed last week my ass for you it was please look into it it has provisions that protect u s workers interests but also provides relief for immigrants like us eliminating country gaps giving work by those in the spouses and a lot of other things so please look into it please what in favor of what is your degree answer it's in technology management it's a matter of science so what we need is for senator hatch for donald trump to just say let's have a complete comprehensive immigration reform where where you are issue the issues of the dreamers the into the issues of those who need temporary protected status those people from haiti  salvador or also on the table where the other nine million immigrants in addition to the two million dreamers are also on the table and your issue should be there too and we could resolve these issues in a relatively brief period of time in a comprehensive way but it's it's it's difficult when there's just an idiot logical agenda on a small part of it because it makes it impossible then to step back and look at the totality of the strategy that we should have for our country we need you in this country we need your family in this country we need your spouse in this country and we need all of these other young people who are so talented in the back of the room in this country but we also  need people who might be coming who might come from brazil and who right here as well and not as well educated and are afraid beginning on march fifth at the naacp could come on the door in the middle of the night and just take them out of their home take them out of their church take them away from the park where there where they might have children to play and be sent back and out of our country so we need to be comprehensive i'm with you sir i think we can do it but we just need to continue to build this massachusetts first please go ahead we residents are being overcharged rent we are experiencing bullying on a steady basis we have a problem which means that funds are given for renovations construction and sometimes they're not spent where they need to be the oversight seems to be lacking from the department of housing and community development just this year the the deal are in massachusetts has talked about confidentiality breaches in a little bit closer a lot of issues about breach of confidentiality some of the larger communities somerville quincy wellesley amherst public housing is disappearing because larger groups are running in and they want to cancel the housing for public people and make more money for instance in amherst it was like more money from the students i work with a group of people real networking we have some board of health issues and board of health local mayors are turning a blind eye i'm asking you to get a little involved in what's going on with public housing i taught school for many years have became a c n a i sold my house and now i'm in public housing we networked together and we are just i have two federal investigations now because i'm considered disabled and there's massive retaliation i'm so i'm just asking you to look into what else we can do we would be thrilled if we could get the deal are more involved and i will try to help you on that and more and more about it and so if you could just step over here i'm going to have christina pichichero who is right back here just begin the conversation with you so i can take action in coordination with you as soon as this meeting to start thank you for coming yes or hi my names i'll tell you what we started just a little bit late but why don't we just my plan would be to end this it five thirty and i will try to get brief for answers to each and every question so please go ahead sir ok so my name's and insurance companies to arbitrarily raise prices in a manner that does not happen in any other industrialized nation and i my question is do you think the democrats can and will move towards a single payer national  in the nerd near term we have to stop donald trump from dismantling the affordable care act as it exists right now so we need to stop and then continue to advance but in the same way that the young woman over here raised the issue about the increasing cost of m s drugs you're raising a very similar question and we have to do something about that in this country and we have to do it whether or not we pass a single payer bill or not we just need a new system that does not allow for insulin drugs to go up from let's say for the sake of discussion a thousand dollars a year to ten thousand dollars a year with no change in the technology in a ten year period my son is also a college student my question today is not how you can help me but what is the best way that i can help you  that's a good question several of us have raised the issue about the gun situation in schools and i would like to know how can i support sure in that venture ok that's a good question we're massachusetts we are only two percent of america but we're not an ordinary two percent of the american revolution started right here in these communities we were not happy with a tyrannical king and we rose up it was no taxation without representation and we demanded that that happened the abolitionist movement started right here in massachusetts the suffragette movement said a right here as a revolution in massachusetts the freedom riders went from here down to the cell to get voting rights for people from massachusetts the affordable care act started here in massachusetts the gay marriage was cited here in massachusetts so you are the revolutionar we go first we put one hundred eighty thousand people on boston common on the women's march one year ago we put fifteen thousand people in front of daniel hall on the affordable care act one year ago we put fifteen thousand people in copley square o year ago on the muslim bin we just have to be us we just have to stand up for the truth of what it is that makes our country great so that's all i can really ask you to do is just be more active to use your online capacity to organize not just here but across the whole country you're no longer bound geographically you can auger knives and you can ultimately create a counter revolution which we are going  because by the way on all these issues that we're talking about there's one thing that separates us from donald trump we are right and he is wrong and we cannot allow for his ideas to become the law in our country so so i thank you man and that's all i can really will happen is this online revolution of contributions coming in the way they did for bernie will supplant the existing financing system that we have for our campaigns in america and that would be my sincere a hope that that's the way it would work for all politicians and that more people will use this capacity to disinter mediate that is you go directly to the politicians and say that you want to contribute and that's the only way we're ultimately ever going to be able to compete with the the koch brothers already said they're going to put four hundred million dollars themselves into this year's election cycle so it's going to be critical for us to have the financing that allows us to get our message out as well and ultimately you know we need campaign finance reform in our country and the most important thing that we can do the most important thing we can do is block any more supreme court nominees of donald trump and then get supreme court justices overturned with the exception of the dred scott decision the worst decision in history citizens united versus the federal election commission that what is poison in politics in america yes ma'am hi that will benefit those living with this disease and their families and thank you for signing the bold in fish structure for alzheimer's act so my question is will you keep supporting us thank you for coming and  for talking about your three grandparents thank you all had all simons if we don't find a cure for alzheimer's fifteen million baby boomers will have all summer so if we don't find a cure fifteen million it will be bigger than the entire defense budget by the time all the baby boomers have retired that is medicare medicare will be spending more on baby boomers with alzheimer's than any entire defense budget in our country so you know my father drove a truck for the hood no company but my mother my mother was valedictorian of her high school class he was president of the senior class but my grandmother her mother died when my mother was a junior in high school so before franklin delano roosevelt the social safety net was one of the girls were going to have to stay home and there were five sisters so my mother just stayed home and she was a single mom raising her younger sisters providing for them so when she got married she was like thirty seven my father was thirty four she married the milkman and i was raised in that house the mal the valedictorian in the mountain well my mother got all simers even though she used to do calculus for fun at the kitchen table even though she never had it to help my brothers and i learn trigonometry and calculus she just figured it out at the kitchen table we knew that we were not as smart as my mother and when i actually said to my father at one point maybe five years into all simers i said what do you think about a nursing home and my father said eddie don't ever raise that issue again it was an honor that your mother married me since she's never stepping foot in a nursing home but keeping her here in the living room and so at age eighty eighty two eighty four six eight twice the size of a left on a milkman carrying those six milk bottles but not everyone has the right arm of the moment to take care of a family member that has also they just don't so we have to make sure that medicaid don't get cut on the one here so funding is there to help and we have to make sure that we fully fund and i age so that we can find the cure because medicine research is medicines field of dreams from which we harvest the findings to give hope to families that we're going to find the cure alzheimer's and all these other diseases like the framingham health heart study help to show can happen if you focus upon it so thank you for being here thank you for focusing upon this issue and  nion local of about a thousand members here in massachusetts i would like to know what we can do all of us including you in the senate legislature to support the cause of organized labor in this country and to continue  strength of the strength of autonomy of the n l r b the national labor relations board and the n r a the national labor relations act which is passing that thirty five thank you very much thanks or like my father my father was the president of a local union his company went out of business that's why he became a milkman but he was the president of a local union his right think that got cut off in an accident when he was a young man he explained to me why then you had to work hard to pass osha to protect against industrial accidents and many other things that he would explain to me at the kitchen table so the foundation of the increase in wages for our country of health care protections of workplace protections is the union movement we have a very strong union movement here in massachusetts we prove that you can have a union movement and have great prosperity and and give protections to every single family so i am with you all the way that is our job to make sure that this goal which they have to undermine the union movement in the trump white house is not successful so i thank you yes sir good afternoon my name is dan wiener i'm a kidney doctor from natick a little bit closer against america dan wiener mckinney doctor from natick i wrote a letter to you about four weeks ago or so but my concerns over something called the dialysis patients demonstration act senate two zero six five essentially this looks really good it has millions millions of dollars of lobbyist money behind it it seems everything that i've heard from you this evening or this afternoon essentially you would consolidate the thirty five to forty five billion dollars a year that goes to the care of dallas's patients but to large for profit companies one of which at least has played very friendly regulations overtime i think most importantly it would decrease patient choice and it wouldn't center vies dialysis corporations to get people into dialysis and keep them on dialysis in disincentives the best treatment for them which is kidney transplant given the amount of money in this how can we promote better health care among people with all chronic diseases without this huge for profit incentive getting in the way of providing health care  well single payer is one way but a constant reexamination of what are the incentives that we're building into the health care system in general and who we're giving those incentives to  are are going to be essential for us to be able to deal with these issues there's a limited amount of funding we have to make sure that it's just not gobbled up by a small amount of the entire system when we do know  that if we work smarter and not harder and ensure that there was a fairer distribution a better distribution of the resources in the health care system that we could be successful but i'll tell you what my health care person is here tonight and if you this goes to the public housing issue that was raised a little bit earlier and that's part of the problem one of the other problems is and i learned this from my wife hundred eighty s when we decided to move in the direction of the dea institutionalization of people in institutions in our country we did dot then simultaneously figure out how to fund the kind of programs including housing that would be available to them so we reduce the cost in one end but then we said across the country including massachusetts people who would need additional help public housing help that's one issue and the homelessness in our country in many instances is accompanied by issues that mental health substance abuse and other  issues that we should also be trying to help to deal with so i think that it would be great if the trumpet ministration was willing to increase and not decrease funding at the department of health and human services the president named ben carson a physician as the head of hud but of course he didn't know anything about before the housing and urban development before he got the job but central to it is ensuring that everyone have the dignity of housing and dignity where they can stay and call their home and so we just have to again fight all of these cuts but also broaden the vision for the totality of the programs that have to be in place in order to deal with homelessness in our country i went and visited the homeless center for veterans which is in downtown boston about a month ago and just walked around this wonderful facility which is there  veterans and they supply help for hundreds of them but they're doing that still only scratching the surface of what still is needed and across the whole state in the country and so i'm with you one hundred percent i thank you for very good question when donald trump talks about fire and fury in north korea when he leaves the impression that he would in fact engage in a preemptive nuclear strike against north korea he is bringing the world closer and closer as the bulletin of atomic scientists have done is they've moved that clock closer to midnight than it's ever been in the history of that warning that comes from atomic scientists in our country and so what i've done is introduce legislation that prohibits donald trump are any president launching a nuclear strike against another country if we have not been attacked by a nuclear strike from that country without permission  of the house and senate in the united states of america which is the constitutional responsibility which we have that's number one number two is that there is an insane increase in the number of nuclear weapons capacity which is in this budget they miniaturized nuclear weapons they increase the capacity to use nuclear weapons in a surgical strike against another country that only puts the other country on a hair trigger it only makes them more apprehensive that we might be able to strike them without any fear of their capacity to be able to retaliate we just have to stop this the more the higher we go it's the higher they will go the more that we think we can have the superior edge is the more that they will increase their nuclear weapons capacity as well and that only brings us closer and closer to the moment where nuclear weapons become a national poll where you can fight a winnable and survivable nuclear war and a lunacy a craziness then overtakes these nuclear strategists where in fact it becomes possible that we could have this again like moment and thirdly and finally saudi arabia now wants a new one two three agreement with us which is that we will sell them nuclear technology so i am going to insist on the floor of the united states senate that every senator be poured on record as to whether or not we want to take the middle east as it is right now and then add in without full scope safeguards saudi arabia also having nuclear power technology they have more solar energy in saudi arabia than they know what to do where they should be investing in that and not asking for your rainy i'm employed tony i'm that goes in without full scale safeguards into saudi arabia on issue after issue we have protect against those catastrophic events and yes we here and i will try to answer very quickly sudbury i'd like to revisit campaign finance reform it seems to me into you address but none of these other things are really going to get addressed because people are too beholden to these major donors i say i used to donate to especially senate candidates in other states and then when i read the mercers were coming in here to defeat elizabeth warren i said no i believe in representative government and how many want to donate to nevada i'm not doing it because i think and i would propose you think about this that people only be allowed to donate to the people who directly represent them for example you could you could vote for your representative to the congress or to senators and to presidential candidates and it should be a fixed amount twenty five hundred whatever you're going to fix and nobody else can no union no pac no company no corporation no nothing only overhaul the entire campaign finance system in this country citizens united has just led to a pollution of the political process across the country that is a threat to democracy as it should exist i'm agreeing with you we need to just go back and reexamine all of it but you know we need going to need to block right wing as mitt romney said when he was running for president the corporations are people too in terms of their ability to influence elections so we need to win this november and then elect a democratic president who will name the supreme court justices who can begin to roll back the absolute compromise of the marker see in our country that citizens united has made possible when unlimited undisclosed amounts of money are able to flow into the political process we have crisis on our hands so we're going to only be able to answer this question and this final gentleman's question over here in of any of the rest of you want to have a conversation with me i will stick around for a while and try to answer your question yes votes one point eight percent of the votes in the swing states of wisconsin pennsylvania and michigan kris kobach who is you know is the attorney general of kansas and was the vice chair of the now defunct voter integrity commission admitted to illegally purging millions of voters from the voting rolls through the interstate cross check program used by over thirty states in michigan he won by a mere ten thousand seven hundred four votes and yet over seventy thousand votes were never count in pennsylvania they use only electronic voting machines that are prone to hacking and are totally about since fair and accurate voting is critical for a functioning democracy would you be willing to introduce a bill requiring paper ballots and effective procedures voting procedures for chain of control  if we said that ten years ago it would have sound crazy but no longer in terms of protecting the integrity of the political process when donald trump has a whole plan in place where he wants every secretary of state in the country to send all the voting records of every voter to the white house for his examination and to billy galvin's credit he said no way or the voters of massachusetts vote voting records going to the white house when the president continues to deny the influence of the russians you know compromising the election of two thousand and sixteen at a presidential level and we know that it was also happening in time period before that then we have a real problem in our country i think one of the things that's going to happen is that we have to protect robert mueller we have to make sure he doesn't get fired we have to understand everything that happened in our own lection in twenty sixteen that is why people rose up here in seven hundred seventy five and seven hundred seventy six so that we could have no foreign  imposition of our selection of who our leaders are but these machines increasingly become questionable in terms of their ability to be able protect against them being compromised so as time goes on here that simple way of just voting with a paper ballot looks like the greatest protection that we can have unless and until we ensure that we have machines that can't be compromised and cyber technology can of course be attacking many of these technologies on an ongoing basis we know the russians are going to continue the president continues to avoid the fact that if the russians had attacked us with military then we would expect a response the same way that john f kennedy our or any other president would have responded the bay of pigs so that's the that's the question that i have  sacrum framing him in the audience will be happy to know this does not require any response i consider myself an average american high school college military service and then worked pretty much on my own to make a good living having said that if i lied to my custom is if i bowl like my customers i did what they hired me thought and i made sure i was honest when i served in the military i did it with the congress at that time i had respect for as an american i am proud to be an american i am embarrassed with the congress i have totally and when i say congress i'm including everybody i'm not a democrat or republican unenrolled in massachusetts all i know is all i hear constantly is the blame for the n r a the blame for the mental health the blame for daca always blaming somebody else if i was in business as long as i was a full forty years and i use your term and i did what is happening today i would be out of business and i would have been fired and i think it is a disgrace for me as an american or myself as an american to have to deal with all the crap in the blaming there is only one group to blame and that is congress period well i thank  will i won't take it as a rhetorical question i will i will just respond by saying that we prove here in massachusetts with a republican governor and a democratic legislature that people can walk can work across the aisle and and that's how i wanted to be down in washington but when people deny climate science when they want to a act when they don't want any gun control laws at all to go on the books after massive numbers of killings at schools all across our country that's not who we are in massachusetts so believe me i work very hard to try to find on a bipartisan basis people who i can work with on those issues and there are issues on which i can work with other people who are republicans but on the issues that we're talking about here tonight  the ones that i think are of most concern to people who are in this audience it requires people to cross the aisle and the president is thus far someone who has decided to poison the political process he did that just by beginning this bertha movement questioning whether or not obama was actually born in the united states of america it continues to polarize along racial lines along gender lines it's not necessary i actually passed the bill three weeks ago and the president signed it and i stood next to him and it's a it's a bill that's going to provide the funding for the detection of fentanyl which is the principal cause killer now in the opioid epidemic eighty percent of all people dying in massachusetts have fentanyl in their blood system so i was able to get a bill passed which is to purchase devices that can detect fentanyl through packaging along our borders in and i communities and i signed the bill i said and i and i and president trump signed the bill and gave me the p that he used to sign the bill three weeks ago that is the way in which the system is meant to work and i can tell you i tried hard on opioids to do it and i'm going to try to hard for you on every other issue as well i thank you all metrobus for everything that you stand for and i thank you for coming here tonight to be the great