Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by The Honorable Eric Garcetti

PHILADELPHIA, July 28, 2016 Good evening. Buenas noches.

It's great to be here from Los Angeles, a city with such a huge, thriving Latino population that we expect Donald Trump to build a wall around us.

When I have traveled through this country, from the Midwest, where my wife grew up, to the Deep South, where I became a Navy officer, to towns across the Southwest I visited during this campaign, I heard Americans anxious about their future. And after last week's convention in Cleveland, I can understand why. There, instead of ideas, it was insults. Instead of policy, it was polarization. Instead of hope, there was hatred.

As a mayor, I'm here to tell you: America's cities don't have time for theatrics. America's cities have urgent problems to solve. Local leaders across America support Hillary Clinton because she understands that, and we are prepared to confront and solve these problems together, just as we are in my hometown.

In Los Angeles, we looked at America's crumbling infrastructure and started fixing it – putting more than 500,000 people and $50 billion to work repairing our roads and building our port, airport, and railways.

In Los Angeles, we saw too many Americans living in poverty, so we became the biggest city in America to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, inspiring other cities and states to do the same.

In Los Angeles, we saw too many lives lost to gun violence, so we banned high-capacity magazines and we are taking illegal guns off our streets.

In Los Angeles, we saw too many high school dropouts and too many graduates in debt, so we are making community college free.

We didn't do any of this by finding a common enemy. We found a common purpose. America doesn't need a political pyromaniac for president.

Donald Trump has no vision for our country and no genuine answer to our challenges. His voice is loud, his language is coarse, and his politics has a darkness that would not only stop, but reverse the march of progress toward the greater, more prosperous, more equal America we can and must become.

Elect Donald Trump and get empty promises and no plan for our country.

Elect Hillary Clinton and put $500 billion and more than 6 million Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure.

Elect Hillary Clinton and raise the minimum wage across the country.

Elect Hillary Clinton and reduce gun violence on our streets.

Elect Hillary Clinton and make college debt-free.

We did it in L.A.; we've done it as Democrats across America's cities; now let's do it for the entire country. That's Hillary Clinton's vision — a united America working together. And that vision makes it possible for me to be here tonight.

I'm just your average Mexican-American Jewish Italian, but my ancestors, faced with war and persecution, crossed oceans and rivers to come to this improbable, miraculous democracy.

My grandfather, Salvador, was carried over the border in his mother's arms, during the Mexican revolution. My other grandfather, Harry, was the son of Russian Jews fleeing persecution. They and their wives, Juanita and Julia, a meatpacker and public school teacher, made lives here.

And after Pearl Harbor, one of my grandfathers answered his nation's call and manufactured uniforms for GIs.

The other put that uniform on, crossed an ocean not knowing if he'd ever come back to fight for the only country he knew, and as a result earned his citizenship.

Today, their grandson is the mayor of the biggest city in the biggest state in this union, humbled to stand before you.

America works best when every strand is woven into our national fabric. Some of us make the uniforms. Some of us wear the uniforms. But we all have a role to play.

When we mock immigrants, women, Indians, or people with disabilities, we mock our own history. This is a country where Navajo code talkers, and mothers on assembly lines, and Japanese-American GIs whose families were in internment camps, won a war led by a president who couldn't walk.

That is the great work that lies ahead – together, to build a nation stronger than the one we inherited.

That is the great work that Hillary Clinton will lead us in as the next President of the United States.

Hermanos y hermanas, juntos somos más fuertes.

We are Stronger Together.

Thank you.

Media contact:
[email protected]  
Phone: 215-398-5252

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160420/357779LOGO

SOURCE 2016 Democratic National Convention Committee

Related Links

http://www.demconvention.com