I Still Have That New Senator Smell.

I Do Not Believe That Marijuana Is A Gateway Drug, And Having Been A Mayor Trying To Keep My Community Safe, If There Was Any Drug That Was Driving Violence, More Than Marijuana, It Was Alcohol Which Is Legal. And So I Just Don't Think This Is A Gateway Drug. And By The Way, If You Regulate It You're Actually Going To Overcome A Lot Of Problems With People Having To Go To The Streets To Buy Their Drug. You Don't Know How Dangerous That Is.

Here, We Have A Country That Is Making Its Veterans, People Who Are Struggling With Post-traumatic Stress, People Who Are Struggling With Depression, Who Often They're Only Hope Is Their Access To Marijuana To Treat These Illnesses, And Here We Are Criminalizing Them For Doing What's Necessary To Stabilize Their Lives As A Result Of Their Service. This Is Not Who We Are As A Country. We Are Better Than This.

Courage Has You Say In A Defiant Spirit You Can Take Everything From Me, You Could Cut Me Deep, You Could Render Me In Shame But You Will Never Ever Stop Me From Loving Those Who Mock Me, From Loving Those That Hate Me, From Loving Those Who Don't Forgive Me, From Loving The Cynics, From Loving The Darkness So Much That I Myself Through My Small Acts Of Consistent Unyielding Love May Bring On The Light.

We Now Know From A Princeton Study That Superfund Sites Are Causing Higher Rates Of Birth Defects. We Now Know That There's No Excusing The Lack Of Moral Urgency To Do Something About This Environmental Crisis. We See Flint, Michigan, For Example, And The Attention It's Gotten, But What Most Americans Don't Seem To Realize Is That This Lead Problem Is Not Confined To Just Flint. There Are Over 3,000 Jurisdictions That Have Twice The Lead Levels In People's Blood Than Flint Does. We're Now Seeing More People Being Exposed To The Truth About Environmental Injustice In Our Country.

The First Thing We Should Be Concerned About The Blm Movement Should Be The Issues That The Black Lives Matter Movement Is Bringing Forward. There's No Fundamental Platform Being Brought By Activists In Oakland, Baltimore, Or New Jersey. The Main Issues That You See, The Commonality Between Activists All Around The Country, Are Trying To Deal With The Challenges In The Criminal Justice System, Something That Is Very Much Central To My Work. So My Hope Is That People Stay Focused On The Urgency To Create Justice Here At Home.