Speaking up to save lives, Mr. Chair, no matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this chamber. The cries of the Palestinian… - Rashida Tlaib Al-Harbi

Is this money that is really helping the American people, or is it helping companies? Because when we become a, you know, kind of company- and corporation-driven government, from having our military and having our education system—even now our healthcare system is so much towards leaning towards very corporate-like and very for-profit—I think that’s when the danger comes in. That’s when we know those people are not for us, they’re for the greed that comes with trying to privatize our whole military industry.

I was at the airport on my way to D.C., and I said, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to, you know, not be there, kind of in his face, like I’m not going anywhere, you’re going somewhere.” And for me, at that moment, I said to her, “But also, I don’t know about wearing white, because, I mean, the suffrage movement didn’t always — it didn’t include the brown, black women.” And so, it was hard for me. So, I remember, Ilhan is like, “Well, wear something else.” I was like, “Ooh, I’m going to wear a Palestinian thobe”...I couldn’t sit through some of it, and we ended up leaving, especially when they just went just full-out applause when they put that medal around Rush. And then — I know. I know. Do you know there was a 97-year-old man who was a guest of another colleague, who has been working really hard to try to get the Medal of Freedom for this man, who survived Nazi Germany? And he invented something to do with solar, profound accomplishments, profound strength, things that we need to be celebrating in our country. And he watched in the gallery to see somebody like that get the Medal of Freedom, when he’s sitting there, asking — you know, when he’s sitting there, just like, “I’ve done all these things in my life. I’ve survived all this.” And he did it from — you know, in this beautiful, gracious way, even after all that he’s been through.

There’s this new era of social justice movement about, “Yeah, we’re going to organize in the streets.” And let me tell you, I mean, I grew up hearing people like Grace Lee Boggs and all, everybody, that said, “Don’t wait for somebody to introduce things in the halls of Congress or wait ’til the White House wakes up. We transform our country by movement work outside of the halls of Congress and in the White House.” And so, believe in that, because that’s exactly what we’ve done.