AND THEN WE WILL ALL BE FREE

“A necessitous man is not a free man." - President Franklin Roosevelt

At the end of the q and a section at my talk in Eugene, Oregon last night, a woman shared her story in a way that perfectly reflected the message of our campaign.

“I work in healthcare,” she said. “I’m taking care of my mother, who has Alzheimers’, and my two sons are trying to get the college loans you’ve talked about tonight.” Her face and demeanor revealed a sense of burden no hard working American should have to carry.

I don’t know the woman’s name, but she is clearly a good woman and the system has obviously failed her. In every other advanced democracy her mother’s healthcare as well as her son’s college tuition would be provided for. Americans have, quite simply, been trained to expect too little.

And the problem is so much worse, because there are millions of Americans just like her: working hard, trying to provide for their loved ones, and barely able to keep their head above water. An ever shrinking portion of our population has easy access to either healthcare or higher education. It’s extraordinary how much we’ve moved our resources into the hands of a very few.

As I’ve said so often, the American people are not the problem. The problem is a political establishment so bought and sold by their corporate donors - in that woman’s’ case, big insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the educational-industrial complex - that our government does more to enable those who cause the problems than to advocate for those who suffer because of them.

That’s why I have been running for President.

Everyone in the room last night completely understood the message in all this. In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, “A necessitous man is not a free man.” That woman, quite simply is not free. And we must not distract ourselves in the face of her pain. We must correct our course.

One more standing ovation last night, one more room in which we’ve planted some seeds. My final words to the lovely woman who had shared her story was this, “I don’t even know you, but I wake up every morning and I think of you.”

I will not stop thinking of her, and I will not stop working for the day in which such an unnecessary and unjust burden has been removed from her shoulders.

And then we will all be free.