thanks very much great to be back here i feel like i'm back with family dorothy was that the hearing at the in a lumpia when linda had invited me to join in testifying at a hearing and you had some great state legislators call my sponsor i know there were others who were supporting at the time a resolution for the impeachment of george bush and i believe dick cheney was included and certainly was included in our comments but that really is an example i think for all of us and it's something that i addressed a lot when i was mayor people would say well first of all they say you're from salt lake city they elected you and salt lake city but i'd call mayors from around the country i mean i call the mayor of berkeley for heaven's sakes or madison wisconsin worker to be more safe and i kept hearing from people over and over and over again the same kinds of things that i know you all hear during these tragic times in our nation's history and that is people say well you know might hurt me at my job or it's not really my business or it's too difficult or will it we can't achieve anyway so why should we try and it's gotten to the point where people start pigeon holing themselves in their lives in these tiny little spots and they say i'm not going to go outside of that so all of a sudden nobody's standing up we see so few people that are standing up against the undermining of our republic the undermining of the values upon which this nation was base from the very beginning the and not that we haven't felt at times to live up to those promises but at least there was the promise at least people aspired for us to fulfill those promises and i know i'm i'm talkin the wrong people because you wouldn't be here tonight you're the ones that are out there fighting you're the ones standing up but we need to get over this idea that we can't do it that it's too difficult that things will never change i hear a lot from people in the occupy movement that we've given up on the electoral system we can't give up on anything we've got to fight outside the electoral system because that's the only way social progress has really come about previously in the civil rights movement the labor movement the women's suffrage movement the anti slavery movement the anti war movement but it also took people who were in elected office who sometimes were pushed but they got the job done in that arena as well we need to fight on every single front and it's every one of our jobs it's not only our responsibility but a great opportunity that we all have cell when you think about what it is that drives us are really are some fundamental common values and i know there are more than this but when you keep in mind the values of freedom equal opportunity security and that doesn't just mean like national security as we so often hear about but our own security secure security community security and compassion and it's those values that really were at the forefront of what the founders had in mind it's at the core of what has been the promise in this nation from the very beginning and until the last twelve years it seemed to be what people in this country uniformly aspired for again we felt at times but we aspired to get things back on track and yet these past twelve years think about it freedom how our freedoms have been so unbelievably undermined and the respect for freedom of people around the world and i'll get to more of that and specifically but with so few people standing up and saying we're not going to tolerate the undermining of these freedoms equal opportunity the notion of equality it was there in the declaration of independence it was there in the constitution is there in the constitution the whole notion that we are one people and that everyone would have equal opportunity for life liberty the pursuit of happiness and yet that promise has been stripped away in such fundamental respects under both in our communities and internationally are we safer to travel around the world today than we were twelve years ago or have we created so much more atra and hostility throughout the world such a lack of respect when people you know it's amazing when you hear the this polygyny talk about iran and the willingness that so many people have to attack iran because they have bad leaders as if we haven't had bad leaders but right after the attacks on this country and september eleventh two thousand and one one hundred thousand people or more came together in toronto at a candlelight vigil to show and communicate their sympathy and sense of solidarity with the people of the united states and after the last presidential election in iran there were people in the united states who came together after the violence by the iranian government against their own people and people in this country stood up at candlelight vigils says communicating the same sentiments of solidarity and sympathy with the iranian people so we need to make it clear as people of our nation we still stand in solidarity we're still there with the people of iran and we will do everything that we can and stead of continuing to undermine the security of the entire world and especially for the united states in the future of our country we will continue to stand in solidarity with the people of iran and do everything we can to prevent any military attack against that country and then the fourth of which i spoke that is compassion compassion seems to be a value that's been completely ignored not only by the neo conservatives that only seek economic and military domination around the world regardless of the tragedy that the falls not only people in other countries but many who are called to serve in the name of our nation the compassion seems to be so lacking in our nation's dialogue and our public policies everything from having the highest incarceration rate by far in the entire world talking about taking away the safety net for so many people for violating the promise that our nation has made for decades under programs like social security and medicare and medicaid and then of course turning a blind eye to the fifty million people who currently have no essential health care coverage and even under the obama plan there would be twenty three million people without basic health care coverage we become a nation where we have more new baby deaths than any other developed nation except for lot thea and the same thing holds true basically tru mortality women dying in childbirth falling far behind almost the entire rest of the industrialized world and that's because of one thing lack of health care coverage for millions and millions of people in this country and then this isn't happening anywhere else in the industrialized world nobody takes out bankruptcy because of high medical bills in any other nation in the developed world seven hundred thousand bankruptcies in the united states every year because of high medical bills and that's not just people who don't have health care coverage it's people who don't have sufficient health care coverage whereas the compassion that value that has been and underlying value to so much that our nation is endeavored to do from the very beginning we consider the first sentence of the united states constitution we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union establish justice insure domestic tranquility that is peace provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america those were the promises upon which this nation was founded those are the promises to which we have aspired until it seems the last dozen the breaks my heart to think of young people who have come of age in these last ten or twelve years the nation that the rest of us grew up in as a freedom loving country sometimes we didn't live up to that but we aspired to it it was a nation that believed in civil and human rights we were always so proud to distinguish ourselves from those tyrannical governments that went around kidnapping disappearing and torturing people are putting their own citizens on assassination lists or going out and rounding up their own people and indefinitely detaining them without charges without trial without legal assistance without a b s corpus and yet that is now what we've become so this is a nation that our young people are growing up  from the time of george washington until george bush our nation never as a matter of official policy ever tolerated torture we help lead the way for the geneva conventions the convention against torture the international covenant on civil and political rights all of which absolutely without exception without any justification accepted prohibited torture and require and this is what's being violated every single day by the obama administration the convention against torture and ronald reagan made this clear when the convention was ratified by the united states senate he made it clear that this covenant requires every signatory nation to prosecute those responsible for torture as that nation prosecute any other serious offenses and then of course we have our own domestic law the war crimes act of one nine hundred ninety six the federal and i torture statute so president bush in the spirit of richard m nixon who said during david frost interview after he was forced out of office richard nixon said well when the president does it that means it's not illegal that's the very definition of tyranny that's a dictatorship when the president gets to decide that he or she is above the law and yet that's exactly what george bush said over and over and over again for eight years in this country and about all we could muster was having a few demonstrations one state considering an impeachment resolution but we stood by and allowed these atrocities to occur we allowed a president to say that his hands are tied by legislation by congress they're not even tied by the constitution because according to him he was the head of the unitary executive branch of government this this cock i'm a me theory that he gets to call the shots regardless of what the constitution or congress's laws say so what brings us to this point tonight let me tell you linda asked me to explain what it is that brought me to this point when i was a young man i didn't know quite what i was going to do i hitchhiked to san francisco and there was an amnesty international event held for the widow of victor yarra he was a folk singer who was rounded up after the coup in chile which united states helped organize and is routed up tortured and killed and i saw at that point people can come together we can bring about change if we stand up against these kinds of abuses make certain that once they've happened we can stand up against them and make certain they don't happen again but it takes a sustained effort to do that so i decided to go to law school i believed in the rule of life believed in our constitution and the values underlying got out of law school and i can tell you it was one of the most uplifting amazing experiences when i would represent people who on the outside had little or no power to disenfranchise forgot incarcerated people who suffered abuse well they were incarcerated whose medical serious medical problems life threatening medical problems were ignore or a young gay man who was abused by police officers in the police officers show up in court with their three piece suits on and was a most amazing thing this enormous  balance of power on the outside and you walk into a courtroom under lady justice and you see that those scales really are balanced because now they're both on an equal footing before the law and these folks have to be held to account to somebody who on the outside had no power but now has all the power imaginable to call them to account at least when you had a judge who understood his or her role in the courtroom i've always believed not just in these principles as ideals i believed in what they bring to our lives the protections help people whose rights are violated not only by government officials but by corporations that they they can take on these powerful interests in the rule of law will be applied there's a beautiful thing on never forget these three police officers and their three piece suits and my young gay client who was abused at their hands in federal court the judge calling them to account and then ripping into them for their abuses of power believe me they left that courtroom with a very different view of what their role was in our society and my client for the first time in his life felt that he had power that he could call upon those who violated his rights to account administration who worked in concert with people in the bush administration who committed countless felonies federal felonies inning gaging and a blatantly illegal campaign of warrantless electronic surveillance of american citizens communications what about members of the prior administration and those who worked in concert with them who kidnapped disappeared and tortured people or or who sent them off elsewhere to be tortured and his response was not the rule of law controls in this country those who have violated it regardless of their station cardless of their wealth their power they will be held to account he said for his own political purposes for his own political agenda let's just forget about it let's just move forward and not look backwards what a message from the prez the united states but it was it was predictable because as the united states senator before he won the democratic nomination he had promised that he would join in a filibuster that he would join in blocking propose legislation that would grant telecommunication companies immunity for their federal felonies in cooperating in the illegal surveillance on american citizens they through millions and millions of dollars in lobbying in three months alone three telecom companies spent twelve million dollars on their lobbyists and was a good investment because even then senator obama after he won the democratic nomination betrayed the promise turn one hundred eighty degrees and voted for that immunity because they had the wealth and because they had the power that's what controls in this country it's called government by the wealthy and it's and it's even more dangerous in this nation instead of those with the wealth being in those positions of control where we can see them there behind the veil we have the pretense of a democracy we have elections but the campaigns are bought and paid for by the wealthy the end result is controlled by the wealthy but there's a spree tests of a democracy and then when these people are elected who calls the shots we know all you have to do is follow the money why do we have such a perverse health care system the benefits only the for profit insurance companies it's because of the corrupting influence of money from the insurance and the pharmaceutical industries we all know republicans democrats greens independents libertarians justice party members we all all that's how it works we know that that's how it works with the military budget with the arms manufacturers we know that's how it works with the for profit colleges most of which are owned by the way by the likes of goldman sachs do you ever wonder now how is that student to wish in loans or non dischargeable in bankruptcy how did that one ever get through the united states congress president obama said during this campaign four years ago he said you can expect to get a different result if you have the same people in these positions of power so what does he do after the economic meltdown in two thousand and eight he brings the same people in as his top economic advisors and officials as fought for the deregulation who brought about the crisis in the first place and crisis is not too strong a word we're still reeling from that economic meltdown and the people around the world are still from the consequences of deregulation and massive fraud obama received more money in the last campaign than any candidate in the history of this country again they're getting a great return on their investment not one major player on wall street responsible for the massey fraud that helped lead to that economic meltdown has been held criminally accountable i mean really these folks take  mortgages of people who have little or no credit rating with with no real collateral or collateral that's way under what's represented and they package him together and then they chop them up and they put them into these security and stream and scald derivatives and they get the rating companies to rate them as triple a securities that has little or no risk securities and then they're sold to pension plans they're sold to insurance companies and then  falls apart and after companies like a a g has sold insurance promising to cover any of the losses but without having any reserves to pay for those promises they are all held out by the united states government because they are too big to fail and to this day and certainly there are arguments yes they if they hadn't been dealt out i mean it would have been nice if they put conditions on the ballot money so that they would be extending credit to the american people and helping our economy but congress apparently didn't have time for that but what's really astounding is to this day there are still these too big to fail banks they have to be broken up or eight each and every day we're facing the same risk of economic disaster we experienced in two thousand  by the way this isn't just us saying this the dallas franch of the federal reserve just issued a report saying the same thing they've got to be broken up and what is a about this administration that they don't understand when they're putting the american people and millions of people around the world still at such tremendous risk of economic disaster when this happens again so i want to get back to why i'm doing this i'm doing this because the changes that we need to see made in this country will never ever come about as long as it's the democratic or republican do awfully that's in control they're in it together they've helped create the situation together they thrive from a together they can't get along they can't raise the money in this perverse corrupt game that they've created without continuing the status quo all and it's just going to continue to get worse so i say dorothy talked about in her remarks this spoiler argument that the voting for the lesser of two evils will add three things to say about that first of all if we let that argument trump making the choice for real change getting the corrupting influence of money out of government supporting candidates who are calling for public financing of campaigns a reversal of the citizens united case even if it takes a constitutional amendment to do it ending the whole notion of corporate person under the constitution if we let that argument about we can't we don't want the greater of two evils to prevail over the lesser of two evils so therefore we're not going to vote for somebody else we're not going to choose a third way th we are guaranteeing a continuation of the status quo let us not be driven by this fear based approach anymore let's take an affirmative stand and say how ever we can do it that we're going to demonstrate at the polls and outside the electoral system that we're not going to put up with a day more and they will never again have our support because they've had it for far too long and they have betrayed us in every way possible second response to the spoiler argument is that president obama isn't perhaps the lesser of two evils he's most certainly the more effect of two evils i think about the democratic party would not have just lined up along with the republicans and allowed a republican president to target u s citizens for assassination wouldn't happen there there too great a political opportunists if nothing else there would have been an opposition party  things stand now when we see these gross violations of human and civil rights there is no major political force standing up against them he's able to neutralize them because he's one of them george bush never would have gotten away with signing off on legislation the n allowing the indefinite detention and think about what indefinite detention means it's not that police officers come by and politically arrest you and explain your family where you're going and let you have your one phone call your lawyer and  take you in for charges to be filed the trial this allows in the middle of the night you to be awakened by agents of the federal government whisked away to a military prison incommunicado your family may never know whatever happened to you and you're held no lawyer no legal assistance whatsoever no right of habeas corpus meaning there's no tribunal before whom you can go to argue that you're being held illegally no charges and no trial couldn't have happened had it not been a democratic president it never would have happened under george bush because there would have been major opposition and yet it's been a trial iced we can't allow this to go on any longer in the united states of america and that comes to my third point where to we try to live as citizens who value the fundamentals of our constitution who values the great traditions of our government and as moral actors where do we draw that line will we draw the line a ramped up wars when we were promised four years ago that he would immediately bring them to an end and he ends up sending so many more troops over afghanistan and without any explanation i've yet to hear a rationale for what we're doing there while we're creating so many more enemies w we've got drones that have taken out between four and eight hundred shouldn't say taken out that's the anesthetize as to what's happening brutally killing between four and eight hundred innocent civilians one hundred seventy five of whom are children do we draw the line there do we draw the line at indefinite detention do we draw the line at u s citizens being targeted for assassination and by the way and where allah locky who is a u s citizen from new mexico killed by an unmanned drone within two weeks his sixteen year old son also a s citizen killed by an unmanned drone hardly made any of the mainstream media in this country talk to your friends other than your socially and politically aware friends that you probably hang out with why you're here tonight rather than the i guess but ask people on the street to they know that this is happening for the first time in our nation's history as a matter  policy we have to be able to draw the line somewhere think about it would anybody that considers himself a good loyal citizen the moral being with they have said five years ago that they would ever support for pres the united states someone who has done what this president has done who would who would set up a military unit nor com to be over north america including to provide policing of american citizens for the first time since the posse comet act in the late eighteenth hundreds who declare a state of emergency did you know that we're living under a state of emergency by the way with a military unit over north america with the power of the president to indefinitely detain with the power of the president to target u citizens for assassination and now by executive order just a few weeks ago the president has claimed the power to control to take over all united states commerce in any factories in any area of our commerce notwithstanding the still seizure case under truman when truman tried to take over the still factories and united states supreme court said no you can't do that but this president assumes the power just as george bush would have assume the power that spells authoritarianism we are in the midst of a rapid track toward authoritarianism an imperial presidency that has been ramped up unbelievably under this president we have to draw the line even if it doesn't mean that your candidate is going to win this election you're sending your own signal that you're not going to put up with sonny more the we're not going to stand for it that we will always fight and stand for the united states as we know it and the constitution as we've known it from the very founding of this country let us not allow the transformation of our nation into what it has been becoming let us tell our young people you're going to see the same country that we grew up in and one in which yes mistakes will be made but where we will always aspire to those higher values now you think about the church committee and there was also a house committee and present forty even appointed the rockefeller commission when there are was information about abuses by our intelligence community especially the f cia was an amazing period of time in our democracy yeah they found out about abuses but they undertook to discover what they were get the details and then disclose them to the people of this country so that we could do what we could to make certain that they didn't happen again that's the only way we know that the cia tried to hire the mob to assassinate castro it's the only way we know that the f b i tried to blackmail martin luther king jr into committing suicide because they went out and gauged in the illegal surveillance of his personal life and then sent him tapes warning him that there was only one way out for him and there was a lot more the cia engaging in a whole cell campaign opening mail without any warrants opening mail of u s citizens and reading through that correspondence that happened but we had statesmen and states women who said that can't happen in the united states without accountability without us discovering what happened and disclosing it and then doing what we could to make certain that it doesn't happen again in the future and now what we see from our government from the president on down lets we put all under the rug those  there are photographs more photographs of torture let's not disclose might make people mad instances of illegal surveillance of torture let's look forward not backward just sweep it under the rug we don't even want an investigation congress has completely failed to live up to its constitutional responsibility to determine whether there have been these abuses of power in the executive branch they've been so derelict under their cars under the constitution that the president sends our armed forces over to libya without even bothering no we not even a pretense of constitutional authorization in blatant violation of the war powers clause of the constitution so what does congress do it was put to the more you can authorize it or not they get together and they said well we'll authorize the funding for it but we're not going to say whether we authorize the use of military forces in libya you know there hasn't been a declaration of war congress has not made the determination itself as to whether this nation should go to war since world war two either they don't take any action or as with the gulf of tonkin resolution in the authorization to use force against iraq they say we'll leave for the president to decide completely unconstitutional delegation of the sole pr of congress probably the most important power provided under the constitution and they leave it to one person there can be a more dangerous situation facing our nation so you combine the us now with the situation where we have the greatest disparity in wealth and income since the one nine hundred twenty s since before the great depression with the top one percent holding more than forty percent of the personal wealth in this country and twenty two percent of our children living in poverty and ssion in congress being the lapdogs of wall street still the salit aristocracy financial aristocracy and an elite that seems to be amusing from accountability under the law and then there are the rest of us but the rest of us can make the difference we can't any longer use the excuse of citizens this corrupt finance system in our in our campaigns there are no excuses because we can organize we can pull people together at the grassroots and get them involved and for those who say i'm not going to vote because i don't believe in the electoral system let me say you are part of the problem young people who didn't vote in the last election the midterm election are responsible largely for the composition of congress because they came out and voted for obama then they got discouraged and they stayed home but it's all of us we have all got to do everything that we can and gain inspiration from the arab uprisings the people in egypt didn't say it's been this way forever it's never going to change the people in didn't say you know it's dangerous or i don't have time for that i've got some more football or basketball to watch the people in libya standing up against this brutal brutal dictator  now they came together they organize and they said we're not going to allow top there's too much at stake it's not only us it's our children it's later generations it's who we are as a people and so they organize they use the democratically beautiful means of communication that social media provides that we have if they could do it we can do it in this nation we can call for major radical changes the kinds of changes that our founders were seeking for our nation the kinds of liberties that so many have fought and died for given so much to leave for later generations so now it's our job people been fighting for these values from the beginning of our nation up until the last twelve years now it's up to us ben franklin this might be an apocryphal story but it makes a very good point he was leaving the constitutional convention when we came up to  e she said well dr what do we have a monarchy or a republic he said well ma'am a republic if you can keep it keeping and maintaining our republic is the job of every generation we have a tremendous challenge facing us but if we fell into our responsibility and our opportunity then it's very unlikely that later generations are going to enjoy the same kinds of liberties and promises the freedom the equal opportunity the security and the sense of compassion that have been the values driving this nation from the very outset so let's rise to that occasion let's embrace that opportunity let's live up to our responsibilities and to everything we can to organize everybody together across the political spectrum and turn this nation around thank you very much j glenn evans and i thought that the ended slavery and eight hundred sixty five but over there in criminal justice system what is your take on the privatization of our criminal system our prison system and the privatization of our educational completely opposed to privatization of our prison system of law but against it in utah and one of my proudest moments is when my son when he was in law school published in a joint publication of george washington university law school in the a b a an article that was extremely critical it's a great article a survey of what's happened one prison facilities a been privatized and he comes down with a great analysis against privatization those are the times that you're you're really proud as a parent i knew that he was listening all those years our prison industrial complex in this country is an obscenity these companies by the way it's hard to believe as a says they actually spend money lobbying for sentence and hants months so that they have a larger market so that they keep more people in the prison so that they can make more tell i i wasn't aware until probably year or so ago as to who owns these private colleges forty seven you heard about olympia small snow stepping down look into it it wasn't because it's  too hostile in congress always been hostile in congress her husband was in the midst of this scandal involving the company that owns university of phoenix which is forty seven percent own by goldman sachs their recruiting practices have been absolutely despicable and think about it the students are charged these huge tuitions they're not dischargeable in bankruptcy no billing bankruptcy used to be reserved for the most extreme kinds of cases like fraud or child support but now young people trying to get an education they do they get these they undertake this huge indebtedness and in too many instances it's charon teed by the united states government so when i referred earlier to the corrupting influence of money in our government and for profit colleges recently congress was trying to reform what was going on and restricted government guarantees for colleges that were putting out students who weren't getting jobs and who weren't equipped and these colleges and the investment banks that own them put on the lobbying blitz they went out and got mostly democratic lobbyists many of them people who have gone through the revolving door from congress to these firms dick gephardt was the primary lobbyists that led this movement and they went in and they watered down that legislation the point is almost meaningless again costing the american people hundreds of millions of dollars and all of them going to bat for these for profit colleges and investment firms that on them that's a horribly abusive situation sometimes just google goldman sachs for profit colleges and the story is they're the abuses what they do to recruit these young people and get them stuck with those that absolutely shameful and then we end up as taxpayers being on the hook i've talked to some of these students i'm sure you all know some maybe maybe some of you are in the audience but when you hear a woman telling you with tears in her eyes that she won't be able to own a home she'll never get a mortgage because of her student loan that continues to accrue interest that she'll never be able to contribute toward her own daughters to wish because of the burden that she's still carrying you know that this needs to get turned around and very quickly and by the way i am in favor of making the same kind of commitment for free and equal opportunity higher education as we made for all of our children for secondary education many generations thank you for coming to seattle i have been one of those people because i'm of an age that i will not settle for the lesser of two evils and i haven't been settling so i'm glad to have an option  this next election it may not be of any importance to you i just wondered how you would pursue getting on the election debates on t v there  two fundamentally anti democratic elements of the system besides all the money in the obvious first of all i don't think anybody knows that i didn't know how bad it was until i got involved getting on the ballot in the first place and on the helsinki accords we got together with all these eastern european countries and we said here's what you need for democracy one of the things was you need to allow people to form their own political parties and compete against each other on an equal basis and yet in this country we the republican democratic parties have made it virtually impossible in several vital states to do just that  but we are going we're going to everything we can to get on the washington ballot here just as a party here is working on that would love to get your help by the way but the second point is as to the debates of women voters used to have independently run and managed to bates they'd invite third parties to participate they decided the format they decided where they'd be held when how many there would be the republican and democrat you need to read this book no debate cinma kember the author's name the republican democratic party's got together fact was the chair of both national parties they formed the national or the presidential debate commission you see the seal that each of these debates it looks like a government or quasar government commission some independent commission it's a republican and democratic parties their candidates assign representatives to get together to negotiate and they do they figure out all the terms they put it down in a minute written memorandum of understanding they give it to the commission the commission due to flee salutes and they go off and they do what ever they're told to do by the democratic and republican parties who have course don't want me on the stage you think they want anybody's going to say the same cut the kinds of things that i would have to say or the ralph nader had to say or that even pat buchanan had to say ross perot the second time around just to i'm sorry to this really quickly sometimes the anecdotes that leave leave of a greater impression when bill clinton was running against dole dole was scared to death of having ross perot on the stage so he said if you'll agree that we keep roe off you get to call the rest of the shots clinton's folks said great because we're seventeen points up in the polls so we're only going to have two debates ninety second responses and we're scheduling them opposite the world series playoff games that's what they did george stephanopoulos admitted to chris wallace in an interview we did it that way because we wanted it to be an absolutely not event because we were so far up in the polls we didn't want anything to go wrong what a disservice to the american people and to our democracy and then let me ask you again and i hate to repeat this but if you haven't signed the sign up sheet please do it because that's the only way we're going to be able to be in touch with you and we would love to let you know what's happening and how you can help us along the way thanks very much