“Today I speak to you from the Tweed Courthouse, over one hundred years after William Tweed himself died while incarcerated for his corruption, to decry the sorry state of our modern politics. With the recent leaders of both houses of the New York State legislature having been convicted of corruption in other court houses stones throw from where I am speaking, our political system has gotten worse not better. The Patriotic Millionaires is an organization created to fight against the evil cycle of the richest people using their money to get more political power, and using their political power to get more money. That is not good for democracy, it is not good for any of us. We must have meaningful reform of the campaign finance system.
We intend to use the issues we care about as litmus tests, so we can all know who we should support, and who is against us in Albany, and in Washington.”
Today, I united with community groups, activists, and state officials to call for the overhaul of state voting, ethics, and campaign finance laws to get big money out of politics and counter voter disenfranchisment during the “Demand Democracy” rollout on the steps of Tweed Courthouse.