Thank you for inviting me to say a few words. Let me begin by thanking all of you for having the guts to run for public office. It’s a lot harder to go out and knock on doors to represent constituents with the problems they face seven days a week, so I want to thank you very much for that. Despite the horror in the White House right now, they’re out there all across this country. We’re seeing strong progressive growth. It is not just Zohran Mamdani in New York or Katie Wilson in Seattle. From coast to coast, you are seeing progressive democratic socialists standing up, taking on the establishment, and winning elections.

And one of the great secrets of the corporate media is that right now in the House of Representatives, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has about one hundred members, including dozens and dozens of very strong progressives. That is the result of the hard work all of us have done over the last number of years.

I’ve been asked to give you some advice. What I’m gonna tell you is probably what you already know. Number one, here is a radical idea: do your job that you were elected to do. Now, I’ll tell you a story. I was elected to be mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and won it by ten votes way back in 1981. We had a strong foreign policy. We had exchange programs. We dealt with national issues. But I’ll never forget, there was an article in the local newspaper, and the report asked some guy, “But what does it mean? What do you think about having a socialist as your mayor?” And the guy said, “Well, I don’t know much about socialism, but I do know they’re getting the snow off of the streets a lot faster than they used to.”