'We Can Beat Them': Mark Kelly Reassures Voters Who Feel Down About The Current State Of Politics

Forbes Breaking News

At a town hall event on Sunday, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) spoke about the current state of politics in America.

Transcript

00:00We have one additional storyteller. It will be Silvia Gonzalez-Andersh.

00:12Hello. Thank you for being here and hearing our concerns, since Siskamani won't give us the time of day.

00:20I was born to hard-working immigrant parents. I'm a Mexican-American citizen.

00:26I joined the United States Air Force at the age of 18, and I was one of the first groups of women

00:35to actually have to do a man's job to prove that we could do a man's job.

00:39I had to carry a 50-pound toolbox across the flight line to prove that I could still do a man's job.

00:45So, and there was lots of other things like that.

00:49You know, after that, after my active duty, I worked in five VA hospitals,

00:53taking care of the patients that came back to us after the, you know, the wreckage of war.

00:59And we were always critically understaffed, but we did the best we could with what we had.

01:05And we took care of our veterans.

01:07While I was doing that in five different VA hospitals, I was a military spouse for another 20 years.

01:13So veterans like me were promised care, and the attacks on these programs are a betrayal to our service.

01:26And speaking of deported veterans, I was just at a retreat talking to these deported veterans

01:35and hearing their stories and hearing the horrific conditions that they have had to live to

01:39and go back to countries that they never lived in.

01:42So it's a real problem.

01:45But the savings that I had had for being my entire life, working and saving,

01:52that money is evaporating just for the sake of market manipulation,

01:59for wealthy people to make more money.

02:01The American dream is what I was told and what I believed.

02:11But, you know, it's really hard to live with this reality that the American dream is not for people like me.

02:23I was told that if I worked hard and I assimilated, I could succeed.

02:29But is it just for the rich, or is it not for people like me?

02:34A minority, a woman, a veteran, a senior, and now a cancer patient.

02:41What are we going to do to protect the services that I worked for,

02:46that I thought was my entitled work that I had put in in Social Security and Medicare?

02:52Is the cruelty the point, or for people like me?

02:59I'm sorry.

03:00I'm just a little emotional.

03:10Ma'am, I, and what was your name again?

03:13Sylvia.

03:14Sylvia.

03:14Sylvia, thank you.

03:15Thank you for your story.

03:16Thank you for your service in the United States Air Force.

03:19I was in the Navy, but we like the Air Force, too.

03:26I think the American dream was supposed to be for everybody.

03:31I think, unfortunately, with this administration and many of the Republicans in the United States Congress,

03:37it's become more about how do you reward donors that donated to their campaigns, folks with a lot of money,

03:46folks like Elon Musk and other billionaires who support so many members who have been elected to the United States Congress,

03:55to the House and the Senate.

03:57So it has become more about the wealthy and less about regular folks.

04:01But we can get, we can beat them.

04:04Don't be defeatist about this.

04:07Don't give up.

04:10Because the reality of the situation is there are more of us than there are of them.

04:18Now, we've just got to convince some of our fellow Americans who have been voting for them

04:23that it's not in their best interest to do that.

04:28It just isn't.

04:29And when you have an administration that is looking out for the wealthiest

04:33and not folks that are working so hard every single day to put food on the table and pay their rent,

04:40that's not a path for success for our country.

04:42It's not sustainable.

04:44We need a country where people can, you know, have one job,

04:51not have to work like Corey talked about, two shifts in a 24-hour diner.

04:56So thank you for being here.

04:59This really does matter, and it makes a difference.

05:01And when we do this the next time, if in, I know we cut it off when people were trying to sign up for this,

05:08but if we get a bigger venue and a bigger venue after that,

05:11by the time we get to the next election, we can win this seat here in this district.

05:15And we can win races up and down the ballot.

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