Everyone has a part to play. We have the power. You can do it.
I'm a strong black woman, and I cannot be intimidated. I cannot be undermined.
We have a responsibility as elected officials to do good public policy in the best interest of all the people.
I want to be the kind of elected official who not only pays attention but who acts on behalf of people - just average people. Fancy lobbyists get to tell their story, but the average person doesn't.
I am one who believes in the power of the people. I am inspired when I see people hit the streets, who challenge their elected officials, and are willing to stand up and fight. I encourage it.
I have been an organizer and then activist and a legislator, all of that. But then there's this big gap after I advanced in Congress and ended up as the ranking member of financial services committee. It took me into the financial services issues and Wall Street and Dodd Frank. And it took me away from the things that I did years ago.
That's why investigations are so important, to drill down and to connect those dots and to get the facts. What we have is a lot of smoke that causes us to want to know more about what has happened.
A lot of young people don't have a lot of faith in politicians. You can't depend on what they say. They talk in circles. They don't speak the kind of language that has truth to them. I'm speaking differently.
This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.
We have suffered discrimination. We have suffered isolation and undermining. But we stand up for America, oftentimes when others who think they are more patriotic, who say they are more patriotic, do not.
I want our millennials and our young people to do what they started out doing with meet-ups, to talk about what is going on, and spread the education.
I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.
I think the Democrats' role is to be vocal.