Remarks at the National Action Network 25th Anniversary and National Convention, New York, New York, April 13, 2016

[as prepared for delivery]

Good morning! It's such a great privilege to join you today, to be with such a remarkable gathering of serial activists.

Let's give it up again for my friend Julian Castro, who's been an outstanding HUD Secretary and a great partner in the effort to expand opportunity for more Americans.

Looking around this room, the first thing that comes to mind is one of my favorite quotations from Dr. King. In his famous letter from the Birmingham Jail, written this very week in 1963, he explained: "I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension'… constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth." Thank you all for providing that tension, the tension we need to produce lasting change. Or as our friend John Lewis puts it: thank you for causing "good trouble."

Reverend Sharpton, thank you so much for this honor and for your great leadership. Just about every month, I have the privilege of "Keepin' it Real" with him on his radio show. I call in to talk about the job numbers that we release at the Labor Department on the first Friday of each month. And we discuss both the undeniable progress our nation has made in the last seven years, and the pressing unfinished business we still need to address.

Undeniable progress and pressing unfinished business — those are really the two fundamental truths of America as we sit here today.

In 2009, President Obama inherited an economy in shambles — we hemorrhaged more than two million jobs just in the three months before he was sworn in. But thanks to the innovation of our businesses, the grit and determination of our workers and our President's bold leadership, we've come a long way. 73 consecutive months of private sector job growth, to the tune of over 14 million jobs. The unemployment rate was nearing 10 percent when the President took office — today it's 5 percent. The African American unemployment rate has been cut nearly in half. When this administration began, the auto industry was on life support, and Republicans were ready to pull the plug. Last year, auto sales reached their highest levels in history. 

Now, there's an "Eeyore Caucus" out there arguing that we've made no progress. They're the same people who made it their mission to ensure President Obama only served one term. They want to deny him any successes, so they continue to say the sky is falling.

I would challenge them to tell that to LeDaya Epps, a woman I met in in Los Angeles. She grew up in foster care. She had been in and out of the criminal justice system, and there was a time when she was bouncing from job to job with no stability. But with the help of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, she signed up for a union apprenticeship in construction. She went through a rigorous boot camp, and now she's working on the crew building the new light rail system in LA -- a good job that provides some stability for her family and is allowing her to punch her ticket to the middle class.

The Eeyore Caucus is wrong, and I see the evidence every day. That's truth number one.

But the second fundamental truth is that we have a long way to go before we can say we're creating shared prosperity and an economy that works for everyone.

Because while I've met a lot of LeDayas, the stories like Alicia's are the ones that keep me up at night. Alicia is a mother of three who works at a discount retail store in Detroit. I was up there to meet with workers in the Fight for 15 movement — and the night before I met her, Alicia and her kids slept in her car. 

The struggle for a more perfect union persists, especially for communities of color that find themselves starved for hope and opportunity. If you live in the Brownsville or East New York sections of Brooklyn, or if you're from the Sandtown-Winchester section of Baltimore like Freddie Gray — for that matter if you're from the hollers of Eastern Kentucky or the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota — I can understand why you'd feel that you're on the outside looking in at this recovery.

The tide is most definitely rising, but we need make sure it lifts all the boats, not just the yachts. Too many people are working a full time job and getting their dinner at the food pantry. Too many people haven't had a meaningful raise in years.  

This second truth — this unfinished business — it's the same truth that drew 250,000 people to Washington back in 1963. They were marching for jobs and they were marching for justice.

Jobs. And Justice. You need one to have the other. Justice for communities means access to good jobs. But good jobs won't come to our communities if we don't fortify the key pillars of justice.

That's why we need to raise the national minimum wage — because no one who works a full-time job should have to live in poverty.

That's why we need accountable community policing, where law enforcement and communities work together toward their shared goal of safer streets.

That's why we need to continue to raise our voices — even in 2016, regrettably — for free and unfettered access to the ballot.

That's why we need to make sure workers have a voice on the job, pushing back on attacks against collective bargaining rights and the labor movement that built the middle class in America, and in the African-American community in particular.

That's why President Obama — and my Labor Department specifically -- has invested so strongly in summer jobs for disconnected youth, in reentry programs that help people coming out of the criminal justice system find good work, in apprenticeships for underserved populations. It's why we've started a new grant program to help communities locate one-stop job centers "behind the fence", on prison grounds. It's why the President launched the My Brother's Keeper initiative to help so many boys and young men of color rise above circumstances to realize their highest and best dreams.

It's why we've focused on investing in Baltimore, particularly in the aftermath of the unrest there a year ago. In my visits to that proud and resilient city, what I've found is that the challenges aren't about much more than the community's relationship with the police; they're about poverty, inequality and chronic opportunity gaps. I've met with people — young people especially — who are craving opportunity but don't know how to access it. They don't lack ambition or intelligence, or talent or potential. What they lack is a roadmap to success.

At Frederick Douglass High School, I met a young woman who wants to be a nurse but doesn't know anyone who's a nurse, so she doesn't have anyone to help her find that career pathway. I met another student who wants to take Advanced Placement courses — and has the chops to do it — but they're not offered at her school.

These remarkable young people have got game, but they don't have mentors. They've got game, but they don't have high-performing schools. They've got game, but they don't have decent transportation options. They've all got game; now we need to make sure they can get in the game.

To continue in our quest to form a more perfect union, we need more LeDayas.

We need to ensure more people have access to jobs, and to justice.

And to do that, we need to summon basic, timeless values:

Number one: Every person is gifted and talented and deserves a chance to maximize their potential. Number two: Zip code should never determine destiny. Number three: We believe in second chances. Number four: Our nation is strongest when we field a full time — every person matters; there is no such thing as a spare person in America. Number five: Democracy must be accessible to every person, in every community. Number six: Sustainable change requires people outside the government and people on the inside working together. 

These values — they've been my roadmap for more than 25 years. I've seen firsthand that when we apply these principles…when we do it intelligently and strategically… when we combine idealism and pragmatism…when we deploy both community activism and strong government leadership…we can and do make progress. We make progress both to build shared prosperity and rebuild the infrastructure of our democracy. We make progress for jobs, and for justice.

I saw it with the Los Angeles Police Department. I prosecuted LAPD officers for misconduct long before anyone had heard the name Rodney King, and I'll never forget the fateful day 24 years ago when the city burned and America wept. But I've also watched as the LAPD transformed itself into a force for civic good, thanks to new leadership, persistent community engagement and the active involvement of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. The LAPD is not perfect — but it's closer to perfect than ever before.

I saw it in communities across the country when I was Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights — we used our authorities to help change the culture of police departments from East Haven, Connecticut to Seattle. And each time, community engagement was key to the success and sustainability of our efforts.

I saw it in the wake of the foreclosure crisis that decimated communities of color nationwide, where the corrosive power of fine print shattered the American Dream for so many African-American and Latino homeowners. In the Civil Rights Division, we used our authorities to obtain more than $660 million in fair lending discrimination settlements, including the two largest settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. I've seen people made whole again.

I've seen with my own eyes, in my own work, that when we are animated by our core values, we can accomplish the seemingly impossible.

At the same time, these glasses aren't rose-colored. I understand that we still face many headwinds. And quite frankly, one of the areas where I am most frustrated is voting rights, where so many states are trying to turn back the clock. The fact of the matter is that these voter ID laws proliferating around the country are all about making it harder for black and brown people to vote. Just a week or so ago, one Congressman admitted in a television interview that voter ID will help Republicans carry his state in the fall election. You know what he means when he says that.

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But as I reflect on both the undeniable progress and the unfinished business…I can't help but feel a sense of unbridled optimism. I'm optimistic because, time and time again, I've seen us rise above division and prejudice to summon our better angels.

I'm optimistic because we see a bipartisan consensus beginning to develop around ban-the-box initiatives and criminal justice reform, around the idea that the mass incarceration of people of color doesn't make our communities safer or our nation stronger.

I'm optimistic because of the Affordable Care Act. Dr. King once said: "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." Today, there is vastly less of that shocking and inhumane inequality -- roughly 20 million people have been able to get the health coverage they need and the uninsured rate among African-Americans has dropped 53 percent since 2013.

I'm optimistic because of the movements we've seen rising organically from the grass roots, not just today but throughout our history -- movements of courageous people standing up and speaking out…refusing to be mistreated or marginalized, demeaned or denigrated…proudly asserting their rights and creating powerful change. We see it from the Freedom Riders and the Memphis Sanitation Workers to the Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter.

And I'm optimistic because America has always produced leaders who know how to transform protest into public policy, to convert social activism into the law of the land, to turn moments into movements. Our best leaders are both dreamers and doers. They understand that idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. They teach us that government can and must be a catalyst for inclusion, opportunity and progress. They teach us that you can't do it without government, but that you can't do it only with government — that we need serial activists like you to keep providing Dr. King's tension, to keep causing John Lewis' good trouble.

But to ensure we continue getting those leaders — the leaders we deserve — we must remember that elections matter. And this next one, less than seven months away, really matters.

I'm optimistic, ultimately, because of something I heard President Obama say a little more than a year ago in Selma on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. He spoke that day about how the most important word in a democracy is the word "we".

No matter what challenge we face — whether it's inclusive economic growth or voting rights or fair lending or police reform — it's the power of we that makes and sustains our progress.

The power of we will allow us to ensure that every community has access to both jobs and justice.

The power of we tells us that we all succeed only when we all succeed, that blowing out your neighbor's candle doesn't make yours shine any brighter.

It's the power of we that allowed fast food workers, facing long odds and with limited resources, to demand a $15 an hour and a union.

It's the power of we that emboldened the sanitation workers of Memphis to assert that just because I pick up trash doesn't mean you can treat me like garbage -- because "I Am a Man".

The power of we is the belief that we're a stronger nation when we turn toward one another and not against one another, when we build a bigger table and not a higher wall.

The power of we tells us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It tells us that contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan is our problem even if we live a thousand miles away.

The power of we tells us that — from Emmett Till to Tamir Rice -- violence against a child is violence against all our children. 

The power of we means that, to create change, we need both grass roots and grass tops. We need bold leaders and galvanized followers. To pass the Voting Rights Act, you needed John Lewis and SNCC, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, willing to take nightsticks to the face for the right to cast a ballot. And you also needed Lyndon Johnson and the bully pulpit, strong leadership willing, finally, to take the politically unpopular but morally indisputable step toward justice.

To create lasting change, WE need both. We may all play different instruments, but we belong to the same orchestra. So grab your cello or clarinet, your trumpet or tambourine, and let's make some music that reverberates across the nation. Together, WE can move forward toward shared prosperity and a stronger democracy. Together, WE can create jobs and justice. Together, WE can form a more perfect union. Thank you so much.