I stand before you today in a city established, shaped, and divided by time. Generations ago, Detroit and its army of American workers built the tools with which the United States and its allies ended the Second World War; they built the vehicles that drove American mobility; they built the engines that propelled the American experiment into the modern era. Generations later, the same evolving modern era caused those manufacturing jobs to disappear, as increased global integration reshaped the global economy, and as automation revolutionized the world.

 

Generations ago, Detroit was home to the March for Freedom, a rally in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led 125,000 people down Woodward Avenue before delivering the first version of his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, months before he delivered it at the Lincoln Memorial. Years before and years after, Detroit was home to some of the country’s most violent riots, the explosive consequences of generations of institutional racial discrimination and segregation.

 

Generations ago, Detroit was considered an example of America’s greatest achievements. A generation after that, Detroit was considered the result of America’s greatest failures. Today, Detroit is experiencing a revitalization — a renaissance — that inspires hope for cities built and withered in the 20th century.

 

I’m familiar with these kinds of places. South Bend, Indiana — the city I grew up in, the city that has come to know me as “Mayor Pete”— was devastated when the Studebaker plant, once a powerful example of American ingenuity and industrial power, shut down in 1963. Just like that, thousands of people lost their jobs and the economic heart of South Bend stopped beating. Families whose livelihoods depended on the plant and its employees were left with nothing. Businesses saw their customers disappear, and South Bend ground to halt. The South Bend I grew up in was still struggling to recover. The South Bend I grew up in required heroic effort just to keep running.

 

The South Bend that elected me mayor in 2011 wasn’t all that different from the South Bend I grew up in. Much of the country had dismissed us a dying city, as just another victim of an industrial era that had long since passed.

 

In the last eight years, South Bend has proven that it’s very much alive. Billions of dollars of investment have rebuilt the city’s downtown and created thousands of new jobs. We’ve invested in our neighborhoods, and begun the process of renovating and rebuilding deteriorating homes. Population growth is higher than it’s been in a generation. We have a long way to go, but we’ve shown that with the right policies, the right leaders, and the right vision, dying cities can be brought back to life.

 

We were able to begin this journey because we understood that Studebaker and manufacturers like it were not the future of South Bend. We knew that changes had to be made to move our city into the new generation. We understood that problems with origins in generational change could only be solved if we changed too. It’s this understanding — that generational problems require generational changes — that I bring to this city; that I bring to this country; that I bring to this presidential race.

 

Generational shifts usher in change, but revivals are not always equitable. The revitalization of downtown South Bend attracts young talent and develops a growing, modern economy, but it can’t help retirees threatened to be evicted by rising property taxes. The development of downtown Detroit fuels building repairs and construction, but it forgets communities beyond the downtown area. It forget communities burdened by generations of inferior schools and inadequate investment, communities often primarily made of up of people of color.

 

We need to begin to address revitalization holistically, to treat each issue as one part of an enormous and complicated system: a system that requires institutional reforms. But in order to pursue those reforms, we need to rediscover our values, and reframe the way we consider our responsibilities to each other. That’s why I’ve centered my campaign around three defining values — freedom, security, and democracy — each one an essential component of what I consider to be the key to moving forward together: something I call intergenerational justice.

 

I believe in intergenerational justice because I believe in civic responsibility. That’s why I decided to serve my country as a naval intelligence officer; that’s why I came home, to South Bend, to repay a city that has given me so much. That’s why I believe that, as a nation, we ought to rediscover national service. But I also believe that fulfilling our civic responsibility involves a re-imagination of national service. It requires a shift towards one that satisfies our responsibilities not just to the United States of America, but to Americans. Intergenerational justice is this re-imagination, the idea that each generation of Americans has responsibilities to one another, and that only when we begin to govern this way, and live this way, can change begin to take hold.  

 

The issues we face today — climate change, economic inequality, racial inequality, and so many others — are issues that affect us all, but each will be experienced differently by different generations. My generation, the millennials, and those that come after us, will bear the burden of climate change, unless we act decisively now. Older generations of Americans, those just starting their retirements and those already years into them, will continue to see the cost of medication creep into unaffordability if we do nothing to reform the healthcare system we have today.

 

Many of the issues we face today are not new. Enormous wealth disparities along racial lines can be traced back to decades of racist housing and banking policies — policies like redlining, that prohibited African Americans and other people of color from buying homes and that segregated them into communities — communities that were then ignored by the governments elected to be their partners. Our broken immigration system can be linked to decades of political aversion to institutional reform. We can’t address these generational problems if we can’t understand their generational origins.

 

Intergenerational justice is rooted is the past, but it doesn’t aspire to it. Economic justice, environmental justice, social justice — these goals don’t claim to return to memories of an idyllic past, nor do they rely on the misguided belief that such ideals were ever a reality. An honest politics is not one that revolves around the word “again;” a just society is not one that ignores years of suffering, discrimination, and economic hardship in return for the false promise that they never existed, or that they no longer exist today.

 

Instead, intergenerational justice calls upon all of us — Americans young and old, black and white, gay and straight, republican and democratic — to recognize that we are on a blank page between two chapters of the American story, and that it’s up to us to write the next chapter with our responsibilities to each other in mind. These responsibilities are best articulated through the core values of this campaign.

 

A just society can’t exist without a just democracy. Intergenerational justice hinges on this fact — that’s why I’ve made democracy a core pillar of this campaign. No matter what issues we prioritize, no matter what policy changes we pursue, we can’t guarantee effective change if our democracy is in bad shape.

 

The fundamentals of our democracy are strong, but for generations they have failed to permeate through all levels of society. When our country was founded, voting rights were extended only to one privileged section of the population. Years later, we fought to correct that injustice. In the 20th century, when the suffragettes earned women the right to vote, and, years later, when civil rights activists succeeded in passing the Voting Rights Act, we witnessed the power of our democratic system.

 

But the rights those brave men and women fought for are still not fully realized. Voting rights are not universal when a political party decides it’s in their best interest if fewer citizens vote. Our voices are not heard when congressional districts are drawn to engineer a political monopoly. Our democracy is broken when the person with the most votes is denied the Presidency twice in this century alone.

 

Gerrymandering, voter suppression, Electoral College upsets — these challenges don’t just require policy reforms, but a reform of how we think about our democracy. For too long, we’ve accepted that the rules can be written to benefit those that write them. For too long, we’ve accepted that these problems are entrenched within our democracy, to be worked around, rather than cut out and done away with. Now, we are presented with a unique opportunity to get them out for good.

 

Our President has cast himself as a reformer — a new voice in Washington — and many of his supporters believed that he would be the shock the system required to overhaul it for good. Instead, he’s sunk deep into the swamp he swore to drain. Still, he has been a shock to the system. He’s made it clear that, no matter your politics, the old way wasn’t working for everyday Americans. Like a wrecking ball, he’s torn down the pillars of Washington and taken out the old ways of our democracy with him. We’re here to build it anew, the way it ought to have been built in the first place. To build a just democracy for all.

 

To do so, we’ll need sound institutions. After witnessing open partisanship by a Supreme Court nominee in his confirmation hearings, after undemocratic manipulation by Senator McConnell to deny Merrick Garland a fair hearing, it’s clear that the Supreme Court is no longer the impartial and independent branch of government that the founders intended. Instead, it’s become a political weapon, an extension of the partisan divide that has gripped this country, gridlocked congress, shut down the government, and rendered our union dysfunctional. It’s time the Supreme Court is depoliticized, expanded, and reintroduced to impartiality.

 

That same partisan divide has fueled increasingly violent rhetoric and spite in this country, most dangerously from the White House. We all benefit from a civil democracy, from civility itself, and we owe it to ourselves to reintroduce our government to decency. Maybe it’s time we follow the example we set here in Detroit, or in South Bend, and adopt some of that “Midwestern nice” that this country desperately needs.

 

Make no mistake — civility cannot come at the expense of progress. Critics of today’s politics often hearken back to a bygone era of bipartisanship in Washington, but neglect to mention that that same bipartisanship maintained an unjust social order. Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement fought for the right to live decently, but they did so through civil disobedience and protest. They didn’t buy kind words with silence. In our call for conversation, in our quest for dialogue, we can’t afford to leave justice behind.

 

Achieving justice is central to our democracy. I believe that achieved justice can be best represented by the second core principle of our campaign: freedom. For too long, our conservative friends have thought of freedom as their own. Now, let me be clear: freedom does not belong to just one political party. Freedom has been Democratic bedrock ever since the New Deal. Freedom from want, freedom from fear.

 

In claiming freedom, our conservative friends have narrowly defined it as “freedom from” — freedom from taxes, freedom from regulation — as if government is the only thing that can make you unfree. But there’s a lot more that can make you unfree. You aren’t free if you can’t start a small business because leaving your job means losing your health insurance. You aren’t free if you’re part of the 40% of Americans who don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense. You aren’t free if your reproductive rights are restricted by male politicians and bosses.

 

This campaign is here to expand our understanding of freedom, to reclaim and re-establish what freedom truly is. Freedom has another definition, one just as important: the “freedom to.” It’s “freedom to” that brings me to another component of intergenerational justice: economic justice.

 

I grew up in the early 1980’s, when a generation of New Deal liberalism gave way to an era of supply-side Reagan economics. It’s this way of thinking that has dominated our politics and our policy for forty years now. It’s this era that’s responsible for one of the greatest issues we face in this country today.

 

Today, we’re experiencing wealth and income inequality like we haven’t seen since the gilded age, a time when robber barons hoarded wealth at the expense of working class folks — at the expense of the men, women, and children who toiled in their factories. It’s this era that has made stagnant wages the new normal, that’s made tax giveaways for billionaires and corporations acceptable, that’s shrunk the middle class while creating unimaginable wealth for only a select few. And it’s time for that era to be over.

 

Our economy is at a transition point. As the global economy changes, as the world becomes more and more integrated, and as firms increasingly turn to automation, we’re faced with an economic challenge unlike any other in our history. Cities like Detroit — midwestern cities of the old American industrial order — have been left behind as jobs move overseas, or as jobs are replaced by machines, while coastal cities shape the new American economy.

 

If our president had his way, we, in the middle of the country, would resent the economic vitality of the coasts. We’re here to deny him of that wish. We’re here to plan for the future — to do as we’ve done in South Bend, with investment in industries that demonstrate the potential of American ingenuity. We’re here to usher in the future.

 

But economic justice doesn’t just deal with industries. A journey to intergenerational justice has to address economic injustice across generations. That means adequately preparing millennials and younger americans for the economy they’ll inherit. It will require reforms to education, for us to strengthen public schools to provide each and every American child with the skills they need to access opportunity. It will require us to ensure that college is affordable for all who want to pursue higher education, for us to ensure university students aren’t graduating hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

 

Economic justice for older Americans means establishing retraining programs for men and women who have spent their whole lives in one career, so that they don’t have to rely on unemployment as the world continues to change. It means fully funding social security and lowering the cost of prescription medication so that Americans no longer have to work into the sunset of their lives. It will require us to ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care, so no one is rendered penniless by life’s harshest realities.

 

Economic justice means investing in marginalized communities and communities of color. It means rectifying a history of racism and discrimination with fair housing policies that allow those hurt by redlining to stay in their homes as housing prices rise with economic growth.

 

It means making the marketplace fairer by enforcing antitrust laws, just as President Roosevelt did over a century ago, to guarantee Americans the benefits of increased competition. It means prioritizing consumer protection so that those taken advantage of by credit card companies and predatory banking can seek justice.

 

It means repealing the tax breaks the Republicans handed to corporations and the wealthy, and replacing them with a just tax policy in which everyone pays their fair share. Only when we all fulfill our responsibilities — to the country and to each other — can we guarantee freedom.

 

Freedom and democracy are made possible by the last core principle of this campaign: security. America is only strong when it is secure, and today we’re faced with unconventional and existential threats to our national security. The largest of these challenges — the great security issue of our time — is climate change.

 

No part of the country is immune to that threat. We’ve seen it in the floods in Nebraska, the tornadoes in Alabama, the Hurricane in Puerto Rico and the fires in California. Right here in Detroit, climate change threatens a dramatic increase in storm damage and flooding, the effects of which will fall most severely on our most vulnerable communities.

 

Despite the delusions and deception of Republicans in Congress and the White House, the science is clear: we only have eleven years to drastically reduce our emissions or the effects on our climate will be devastating. It’s not even a question of which policy response is best: we have a President who not only denies the very existence of climate change, but who seems hell bent on speeding it up.

 

Intergenerational justice has its most important mission in addressing climate change. Tomorrow, my generation and the generations after us will be the ones responsible for dealing with the damage dealt by climate change. Today, the responsibility to limit that damage falls upon all Americans, of every generation. It falls upon us, in this moment, to come together to stop climate change in its tracks. We can’t afford four more years of inaction, and together we won’t allow it.

 

Our conservative friends have turned their backs on addressing climate change, and in doing so they’ve allowed the president to abdicate our crucial role of global leadership. By withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, we’ve abandoned our seat at the table. We’ve sent a signal to the rest of the world that we just don’t care about them, and in doing so, we’ve jeopardized our national security.

 

After all, we haven’t just relinquished our role as global leaders on climate change: we’ve abandoned our role as a global leader altogether. At this moment, it’s as if the United States doesn’t have a foreign policy at all. Instead of reinforcing our commitments to our allies, our leaders are cozying up to autocrats and reigniting Cold War arms races. Instead of leading with a clear vision, our President conducts diplomacy on Twitter and ignores the advice of his own intelligence community. Instead of preparing for the security threats of tomorrow, we’re peddling yesterday’s xenophobia and isolationism, and through it all, we’re leaving ourselves defenseless.

 

Now is the time, on this blank page of American history, to lead with our hearts and our minds, to reaffirm our alliances, and to guide our foreign policies with our greatest values, not our worst impulses. This means adopting just immigration reform, so we never let children be separated from their parents again. It means investing in cybersecurity to protect our privacy and our democracy. It means avoiding pointless wars and petty squabbles, and reinvesting in diplomacy. Most of all, it means adopting a national security policy that makes Americans safer, not one that leaves us alone.

 

But we have to begin at home. Our nation is not secure when someone who can't pass a federal background check can buy a gun. Our nation is not secure when young boys of color fear for their lives when they interact with law enforcement, nor is it secure when law enforcement officers don’t have the proper tools and training they need to do their jobs. Our nation is not secure when private prisons incentivize incarceration, rather than rehabilitation, and we create a permanent underclass never fully reintegrated into society.

 

Most of all, our nation is not secure when communities are excluded from the national conversation. For too long, cities like Gary, Indiana, or Flint, Michigan, or Detroit or South Bend have been cast aside as dead and dying cities, as cities left to decay while the country moves on without them. Generations have gone by while these towns and cities and communities — in the Midwest, in the South, and on the coasts —  have suffered under the weight of a changing world, and it’s time we tell the next chapter of their stories.

 

This city has become a beacon of hope for many, but to many others, change has yet to come. Problems borne generations ago require new-generation solutions, and with this campaign, we aim to be the first of many.

 

The first question I most often get asked isn’t about my sexuality, or my military service, or my time as Mayor of South Bend. The first question people ask me is: you’re young, why now? My answer is that now more than ever, someone from my generation, with my life experience, with my set of skills and perspective: someone like that represents the generational change this country needs. With this campaign — with all of your help — we can turn the page of the American story, and we can leave these generational challenges in the past.