Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich with Tavis Smiley

“ There’s not an American that doesn’t understand the culture and the understanding that Prohibition was a failure, and so we repeat it again like we repeated Iraq after we had the failure of Vietnam. When will we learn? When we learn that the issue of drugs is a public health issue. Addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal issue where we throw people in jail and criminalize them to no advancement to the people, and if there’s one group of people in this country that needs to face up to that problem, and we have to face up to it, and that is the African American community. ”

“ And it was their fundamental recognition that for us to achieve racial equality was not simply good for African-Americans, but it was good for America as a whole; that we could not be what we might be as a nation unless we healed the brutal wounds of slavery and Jim Crow. Now, we have made enormous progress, but the progress we have made is not good enough. As many have already mentioned, we live in a society that remains separated in terms of life opportunities for African-Americans, for Latinos, and the rest of the nation. ”

“ I would reward companies that pay over the prevailing wage, that go into the inner cities, that go into rural areas. I would also have tax-free holidays for technology start-ups – three years, if they train people in the inner city, if they hire people over the prevailing wage.
We need to rebuild this economy by being pro-growth Democrats. We should be the party of innovation, of entrepreneurship, of building capital, getting capital for African American small businesses. We need to find a way in this country that we say that globalization must work for the middle class. ”

“ New Orleans and Katrina have become a symbol of everything that went wrong with this administration’s failure to respond to a people in need. I could think of no better way to have New Orleans and Katrina, that event, become a symbol of what we can do right in this country, by giving people the opportunity to come back and the support they will need to regain their lives.
This is an American city. Anywhere else in America, we’d want to step up and see to it that people would get that help; this is the least we ought to be able to do to see to it they get their lives back together. ”

“ None is more important, in my view, than the issue of education. Whether or not from the earliest education opportunity to the highest level of education opportunity, this is the key to equal access to our society. It is something that can never be taken away from you if you get it. To say today that you’re going to exclude race as a means of allowing for the diversity in our communities is a major step backwards. ”

“ When you think about the statistics that have been cited here, you realize that it’s time to get real about health care and education in America. We need to understand that the ability of our public schools to be able to communicate sex education as a priority at the early age helps children to understand the consequences of their action.
But there’s another dimension here, too, and that is we have a nation of such wealth, yet we have 46 million Americans without any health insurance, another 50 million underinsured. It’s time for us to make every American know that they should have access. ”

“ But the bottom line here is that eliminating the tax breaks is not going to keep jobs here in America. We’ve got to make it more attractive to have jobs here in America and for corporations to be here.
You’ve got to take the burden off the corporations with a health care system that’s universal, so we’re not at a competitive disadvantage. You’ve got to have a better education system to provide for the highest-tech jobs that we educate our folks for, so we’re not importing 400,000 computer engineers to work in Silicon Valley. ”

“ If you’re African-American, you’re more likely to be charged with a crime. If you’re charged with a crime, you’re more likely to be convicted of the crime. If you’re convicted of the crime, you’re more likely to get a severe sentence. There is no question that our justice system is not color-blind.
But can we also create an infrastructure for success for those who are charged and convicted for the first time, so that we help them with drug counseling, job counseling, job training, education, help them get the back – back into the community with some chance of changing their lives. ”

“ I happen to believe very strongly that our tax and fiscal policies ought to reflect our moral values and that our tax and fiscal policies ought to be fair, responsible, and pro-growth, as well. We live in a society where obviously it’s going to be important to expand our economy so that jobs will be created, businesses can grow, people have an opportunity in this life. ”

“ We have two health care systems in America, and we know that race plays an enormous role in the problems that African Americans face and the problems that African Americans face with health care every single day. There are huge health care disparities, which is why we need universal health care in this country. But we have work to do. All of us have work to do. And by the way, also making sure that every single American, including people of color, are allowed to vote and that their vote is counted in the election, and that we know that their voice is heard in the election. ”

“ Most corporations, I think it’s fair to say, don’t share that concern. In fact, they argue that we’re living in a global economy and Americans have to compete in that environment. Which side are you on? And if you agree that outsourcing is a problem, what’s your solution?
GRAVEL: No, outsourcing is not the problem. What is the problem is our trade agreements that we have that benefit the management and, of course, the shareholders, and have neglected on either side of the issue, whether it’s in Mexico or in other countries or the United States. That’s the problem that must be addressed. ”

“ The scourge of our present society, particularly in the African-American community, is the war on drugs. I’ll repeat again as a challenge to my colleagues on this stage, that if they really want to do something about the inner cities, if they really want to do something about what’s happening to the health of the African-American community, it’s time to end this war.
There’s no reason to continue it in the slightest. All it does is create criminals out of people who are not criminals. Education? Yes. Health care? ”

“ There’s nothing that will be a higher priority to me as president of the United States than to see to it that America’s children, from the earliest days of their arrival, certainly through the upper education branches of our educational system, have the equal opportunity. ”

“ I have fought for more than 35 years for early childhood education, for more mentoring, for more parent education programs, to get our children off to a good start. I have fought to make sure that schools were fair to all children. That’s the work I did in Arkansas, to try to raise the standards particularly for the poorest of our children, and most especially for minority children. And certainly in the White House years, and now in the Senate, I’ve continued that effort because I don’t think there is a more important issue. ”

“ I started an organization called New Jobs for New York to try to stand against the tide of outsourcing, particularly from upstate New York and from rural areas.
We have to do several things: end the tax breaks that still exist in the tax code for outsourcing jobs, have trade agreements with enforceable labor and environmental standards, help Americans compete, which is something we haven’t taken seriously, which goes back to the very first question about education and skills. Let’s not forget that 65% of kids at an age, cohort, do not go on to college. ”

“ For the first time in our history, we’re in a position where those who are the wage-earners are paying a bigger chunk than they should. It’s got to shift back, and the basis for them doing that is they really believe the wealthy know better. They think we don’t know how – average folks don’t know how to make the economy work. It’s all about their ideology. It’s got to fundamentally change. You have to tax investment and you’ve got to give a break, a break to wage-earners. ”

“ Having the protective force is critical. But we have to look at Africa not just after a crisis happens; what are we doing with respect to trade opportunities with Africa? What are we doing in terms of investment in Africa? What are we doing to pay attention to Africa consistently with respect to our foreign policy? That has been what’s missing in the White House, and that, our term security is going to depend on whether we’re giving children in Sudan and Zimbabwe and in Kenya the same opportunities so that they have a stake in order as opposed to violence and chaos. ”

“ We need somebody in the White House who’s going to recognize these children as our own.
KUCINICH: Dr. King recognized that when there’s a war, people of two countries suffer, because what he was talking about was the link between war and fear and poverty, as opposed to peace and security and prosperity. And so when we shift the paradigm of this country away from war, then we start to have the resources which must be there for education, for universal pre-kindergarten, for fully-funded elementary and secondary education, for college for all. ”

“ Yet today 68% of those in jail are minorities. In your own book, Tavis, you say that one out of three African-American males spends some time in jail. That is wrong.
And what we need is a strategy to deal with poverty. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. Increase the minimum wage. Have a living wage in this country. Find ways to expand child care. Find ways also to let Americans join a union. This will not only give them more health care but more accountability and the ability to protect themselves. ”

“ My gracious, the only way you’re going to get justice is to turn around and empower yourselves to become lawmakers so you can change the system, and there’s no thought of really changing the system today. ”

“ And what we want to do, I think, is live in an America where, no matter who your family is or what the color of your skin or where you’re born, everybody gets the same chance to do well. And people who have done well ought to have more responsibility to pay back to the country and to the community and those around them.
I think there are at least a couple things we need to do. First, we need to get rid of George Bush’s tax cuts for rich people, which have distorted the tax system in America. I would use that money to pay for universal health care, to make sure everyone’s covered. ”

“ And how are our tax dollars spent? Right now we know that those who are in the highest brackets are not paying a fair share. We understand that. And we also understand that a lot of these corporations are taking their business offshore so they can offshore their profits and escape paying tens of billions of dollars in taxation. And we also know that our tax dollars right now are being spent overwhelmingly on war and military buildup. ”

“ Outsourcing is a problem. Most outsourcing jobs are technical. We need to upgrade our science and math standards in our school. It’s education. And I would create 250 science and math academies to deal with that gap.
In addition to that, what we need is trade agreements, fair trade agreements where we say, no slave labor, no child labor; we’re not going to have – we’re going to have environmental protection; we’re going to have to deal with wage disparity. ”

“ It’s the reason I started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina. It’s the reason I’ve been working so hard on this issue.
And I think the starting place is to understand that there is no one single cause of poverty. You know, when you have young African- American men who are completely convinced that they’re either going to die or go to prison, and see absolutely no hope in their lives; when they live in an environment where the people around them don’t earn a decent wage ”

“ It is a basic right in a Democratic society. We should be able to fund all those diseases where people are suffering and they need care, but we have to end that for-profit medicine. It is time to take the for- profit insurance companies out of the business, Michael Moore is right about this, by the way – and have a not-for- profit health care where everyone’s covered. ”

“ That the criminal justice system is not color blind. It does not work for all people equally, and that is why it’s critical to have a president who sends a signal that we are going to have a system of justice that is not just us, but is everybody. ”

“ Every child age 3, 4 and 5 should have access to full, quality daycare. Eliminate those disparities that we see early on in school. Eliminate No Child Left Behind, which is aimed at testing instead of improving children’s educational opportunity through language, music and the arts. And finally, we need to take the resources away from war and military buildups and assure that every child should have a chance for a quality college education as well. ”

“ There’s no doubt that the tax system has been skewed. And the Bush tax cuts – people didn’t need them, and they weren’t even asking for them, and that’s why they need to be less, so that we can pay for universal health care and other initiatives. ”