An American Prayer at Electiontide

An American Prayer

Lord, do not turn from us as we turn from dispossessed refugees and impoverished immigrants

Lord, do not treat us as we treat those who come penniless to our jails, courts, and prisons

Lord, do not despise us as we despise all those we regard as less than ourselves

Lord, do not destroy us as we are determined to destroy our enemies

In your mercy, lead us in the paths of righteousness and peace

to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you

But not yet

Dark Skin is Not Probable Cause

This is how District Judge Carlton W. Reeves began his August 4, 2020 order in Jamison v. McClendon, which you can read for yourself.
 The main text, in the Times typeface, and all the footnotes are Judge Reeves’.

My comment are indented in the Helvetica typeface.

____________________  

No. 3:16-CV-595-CWR-LRA 

CLARENCE JAMISON, Plaintiff

v. 

NICK MCCLENDON,

In his individual capacity, Defendant. 

____________________

ORDER GRANTING QUALIFIED IMMUNITY 

____________________

  Before CARLTON W. REEVES, District Judge.

Clarence Jamison wasn’t jaywalking.1

He wasn’t outside playing with a toy gun.2

He didn’t look like a “suspicious person.”3

He wasn’t suspected of “selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.”4

He wasn’t suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.5

He didn’t look like anyone suspected of a crime.6

He wasn’t mentally ill and in need of help.7

He wasn’t assisting an autistic patient who had wandered away from a group home.8

He wasn’t walking home from an after-school job.9 He wasn’t walking back from a restaurant.10

He wasn’t hanging out on a college campus.11

He wasn’t standing outside of his apartment.12

He wasn’t inside his apartment eating ice cream.13 

He wasn’t sleeping in his bed.14

He wasn’t sleeping in his car.15

He didn’t make an “improper lane change.”16

He didn’t have a broken tail light.17

He wasn’t driving over the speed limit.18

He wasn’t driving under the speed limit.19

No, Clarence Jamison was a Black man driving a Mercedes convertible.

____________________

1 That was Michael Brown. See Max Ehrenfreund, The risks of walking while black in Ferguson, WASH. POST (Mar. 4, 2015).

2 That was 12-year-old Tamir Rice. See Zola Ray, This Is The Toy Gun That Got Tamir Rice Killed 3 Years Ago Today, NEWSWEEK (Nov. 22, 2017).

3 That was Elijah McClain. See Claire Lampen, What We Know About the Killing of Elijah McClain, THE CUT (July 5, 2020).

4 That was Eric Garner. See Assoc. Press, From Eric Garner's death to firing of NYPD officer: A timeline of key events, USA TODAY (Aug. 20, 2019).

5 That was George Floyd. See Jemima McEvoy, New Transcripts Reveal How Suspicion Over Counterfeit Money Escalated Into The Death Of George Floyd, FORBES (July 8, 2020).

6 That was Philando Castile and Tony McDade. See Andy Mannix, Police audio: Officer stopped Philando Castile on robbery suspicion, STAR TRIB. (July 12, 2016); Meredith Deliso, LGBTQ community calls for justice after Tony McDade, a black trans man, shot and killed by police, ABC NEWS (June 2, 2020).

7 That was Jason Harrison. See Byron Pitts et al., The Deadly Consequences When Police Lack Proper Training to Handle Mental Illness Calls, ABC NEWS (Sept. 30, 2015).

8 That was Charles Kinsey. See Florida policeman shoots autistic man’s unarmed black therapist, BBC (July 21, 2016).

9 That was 17-year-old James Earl Green. See Robert Luckett, In 50 Years from Gibbs-Green Deaths to Ahmaud Arbery Killing, White Supremacy Still Lives, JACKSON FREE PRESS (May 8, 2020); see also Robert Luckett, 50 Years Ago, Police Fired on Students at a Historically Black College, N.Y. TIMES (May 14, 2020); Rachel James-Terry & L.A. Warren, ‘All hell broke loose’: Memories still vivid of Jackson State shooting 50 years ago, CLARION LEDGER (May 15, 2020).

10 That was Ben Brown. See Notice to Close File, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS DIV. (Mar. 24, 2017), available at https://www.justice.gov/crt/case- document/benjamin-brown-notice-close-file; see also Jackson State Univ., Center for University-Based Development, The Life of Benjamin Brown, 50 Years Later, W. JACKSON (May 11, 2017).

11 That was Phillip Gibbs. See James-Terry & Warren, supra.

12 That was Amadou Diallo. See Police fired 41 shots when they killed Amadou Diallo. His mom hopes today's protests will bring change., CBS NEWS (June 9, 2020).

13 That was Botham Jean. See Bill Hutchinson, Death of an innocent man: Timeline of wrong-apartment murder trial of Amber Guyger, ABC NEWS (Oct. 2, 2019).

14 That was Breonna Taylor. See Amina Elahi, 'Sleeping While Black': Louisville Police Kill Unarmed Black Woman, NPR (May 13, 2020).

15 That was Rayshard Brooks. See Jacob Sullum, Was the Shooting of Rayshard Brooks 'Lawful but Awful'?, REASON (June 15, 2020).

16 That was Sandra Bland. See Ben Mathis-Lilley & Elliott Hannon, A Black Woman Named Sandra Bland Got Pulled Over in Texas and Died in Jail Three Days Later. Why?, SLATE (July 16, 2015).

17 That was Walter Scott. See Michael E. Miller et al., How a cellphone video led to murder charges against a cop in North Charleston, S.C., WASH. POST (Apr. 8, 2015).

18 That was Hannah Fizer. See Luke Nozicka, ‘Where’s the gun?’: Family of Sedalia woman killed by deputy skeptical of narrative, KANSAS CITY STAR (June 15, 2020).

19 That was Ace Perry. See Jodi Leese Glusco, Run-in with Sampson deputy leaves driver feeling unsafe, WRAL (Feb. 14, 2020).

____________________

Clarence Jamison, driving a Mercedes convertible eastbound through Mississippi, was stopped by Officer Nick McClendon, and held beside the highway for nearly two hours. 

The issue Judge Reeves illuminates in his 72-page order is that current law gives him no option to granting Qualified Immunity to Officer McClendon, not because Officer McClendon exercised good faith law enforcement but because the claim is for all practical purposes prejudged.

Judge Reeves narrates the the one-hour-50-minute traffic stop of Mr. Jamison from the record. He then rewinds to trace the relevant law from its post-Civil-War origins to the present day.

It’s not a pretty picture of Lady Justice.

Judge Reeves, writing for an audience of nine on the US Supreme Court, frames the issue as clearly as anyone I’ve read: If we mean to extend equal justice to Black Americans, Indigenous Americans — to all people of color in the US — the path necessarily passes through an unwinding of the perversion of justice embodied in how the doctrine of Qualified Immunity has come to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of doing wrong.

I’m persuaded there is nothing about this call for renewed justice that in any way targets honest cops, honest attorneys, and honest judges.  

In fact, I’m convinced that setting all this right can and must remove the cloud of misgivings and fear that is generated by bad actors, but overshadows honest officers of the court as well, through no fault of their own. 

Picking up with Judge Reeves at page 30:

____________________

A review of our qualified immunity precedent makes clear that the Court has dispensed with any pretense of balancing competing values. Our courts have shielded a police officer who shot a child while the officer was attempting to shoot the family dog;117 prison guards who forced a prisoner to sleep in cells “covered in feces” for days;118 police officers who stole over $225,000 worth of property;119 a deputy who body-slammed a woman after she simply “ignored [the deputy’s] command and walked away”;120 an officer who seriously burned a woman after detonating a “flashbang” device in the bedroom where she was sleeping;121 an officer who deployed a dog against a suspect who “claim[ed] that he surrendered by raising his hands in the air”;122 and an officer who shot an unarmed woman eight times after she threw a knife and glass at a police dog that was attacking her brother.123

If Section 1983 was created to make the courts “guardians of the people’s federal rights,’” what kind of guardians have the courts become? 124 One only has to look at the evolution of the doctrine to answer that question.

Once, qualified immunity protected officers who acted in good faith. The doctrine now protects all officers, no matter how egregious their conduct, if the law they broke was not “clearly established.”

This “clearly established” requirement is not in the Constitution or a federal statute. The Supreme Court came up with it in 1982.125 In 1986, the Court then “evolved” the qualified immunity defense to spread its blessings “to all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”126 It further ratcheted up the standard in 2011, when it added the words “beyond debate.”127 In other words, “for the law to be clearly established, it must have been ‘beyond debate’ that [the officer] broke the law.”128 An officer cannot be held liable unless every reasonable officer would understand that what he is doing violates the law.129 It does not matter, as the Fifth Circuit has explained, “that we are morally outraged, or the fact that our collective conscience is shocked by the alleged conduct . . . [because it] does not mean necessarily that the officials should have realized that [the conduct] violated a constitutional right.”130 Even evidence that the officer acted in bad faith is now considered irrelevant.131

____________________

116 Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 800 (1982).

117 Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304, 1323 (11th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, No.
19-679, 2020 WL 3146693 (U.S. June 15, 2020).

118 Taylor v. Stevens, 946 F.3d 211, 220 (5th Cir. 2019).

119 Jessop v. City of Fresno, 936 F.3d 937, 942 (9th Cir. 2019), cert. denied No. 19-1021, 2020 WL 2515813 (U.S. May 18, 2020).

120 Kelsay v. Ernst, 933 F.3d 975, 980 (8th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, No. 19-682, 2020 WL 2515455 (U.S. May 18, 2020).

121 Dukes v. Deaton, 852 F.3d 1035, 1039 (11th Cir. 2017).

122 Baxter v. Bracey, 751 F. App’x 869, 872 (6th Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 1862 (2020).

123 Willingham v. Loughnan, 261 F.3d 1178, 1181 (11th Cir. 2001), cert. granted, judgment vacated, 537 U.S. 801 (2002).

124 Haywood, 556 U.S. at 735 (citation omitted).

125 See Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818; see also William Baude, Is Qualified Immunity Unlawful?, 106 CAL. L. REV. 45, 81 (2018). Previously, the Court had used “clearly established” as an explanatory phrase to better understand good faith. See, e.g., Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 322 (1975) (finding compensatory damages “appropriate only if the school board member has acted with such an impermissible motivation or with such disregard of the student’s clearly established constitutional rights that his action cannot reasonably be characterized as being in good faith.”).

126 Malley, 475 U.S. at 341; see also Pamela S. Karlan, Foreword: Democracy and Disdain, 126 HARV. L. REV. 1, 61 (2012). Malley was also the first time “objectively unreasonable” appeared in a Supreme Court qualified immunity decision.

127 Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).

128 McCoy v. Alamu, 950 F.3d 226, 233 (5th Cir. 2020) (citation omitted). That leads us to another rabbit hole. A district court opinion doesn’t clearly establish the law in a jurisdiction. Id. at 233 n.6 (citation omitted). Nor does a circuit court opinion, if the judges designate it as “unpublished.” Id.Only published circuit court decisions count. See id. Even then, the Supreme Court has “expressed uncertainty” about whether courts of appeals may ever deem constitutional law clearly established. Cole, 935 F.3d at 460 n.4 (Jones, J., dissenting) (collecting cases).

129 al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. As Professor John Jeffries explains, “[t]he narrower the category of cases that count, the harder it is to find a clearly established right.” John C. Jeffries, Jr., What's Wrong with Qualified Immunity?, 62 FLA. L. REV. 851, 859 (2010) [hereinafter What's Wrong with Qualified Immunity?]. This restrictive approach bulks up qualified immunity and makes its protections difficult to penetrate. When combining the narrow view of relevant precedent to the demand for “extreme factual specificity in the guidance those precedents must provide, the search for ‘clearly established’ law becomes increasingly unlikely to succeed, and ‘qualified’ immunity becomes nearly absolute.” Id.

130 Foster v. City of Lake Jackson, 28 F.3d 425, 430 (5th Cir. 1994) (quotations and citation omitted).

131 See Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 316 (2015) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“an officer’s actual intentions are irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment’s ‘objectively reasonable’ inquiry”) (citing Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 396, 397 (1989)).

____________________

"And there is more," Judge Reeves writes, before continuing for another 30-odd pages before concluding:

____________________

Again, I do not envy the task before the Supreme Court. Overturning qualified immunity will undoubtedly impact our society. Yet, the status quo is extraordinary and unsustainable. Just as the Supreme Court swept away the mistaken doctrine of “separate but equal,” so too should it eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity.

Earlier this year, the Court explained something true about wearing the robe:

"Every judge must learn to live with the fact he or she will make some mistakes; it comes with the territory. But it is something else entirely to perpetuate something we all know to be wrong only because we fear the consequences of being right."288

Let us waste no time in righting this wrong.

s/ CARLTON W. REEVES

United States District Judge

____________________

288 Ramos, 140 S. Ct. at 1408.

Is this really the look you were going for America?

In June 2016, a rabbi friend told me he’d never really experienced direct antisemitic language until his middle teens. The situation was almost comical … almost. It had to do with selling/buying unwanted baseball tickets outside a major league stadium. In the exchange of tickets for cash, there was a moment of confusion about how much change was due, and the White man my friend was dealing with reassured him by saying "I wouldn’t try to jew you out of it."

My friend talked about his sense of obligation to speak to defend his Muslim friend, an imam whose brown skin and tradition beard and clerical garb made him stand out in the Midwestern town that was his home. My friend said America had been good to Jewish people and felt he had a sort of privilege that compelled him to act, if not from friendship then from self-preservation because, as he’d told me in another conversation, "If they come after American Muslims, it’s just a matter of time until they come after us."

A few months later, near the end of September 2016, my rabbi friend told me his name had been distributed on an internet list of flagged Jews — people apparently perceived by the list-makers as somehow dangerous.

My friend said he’d been targeted with threatening language on social media. 

He told me he’d been verbally harassed on public transportation. 

He said a stranger called him "god-killer."

What changed in America between mid-June and late-September 2016?

Four years later, that change has deepened and worsened. Today, my friend wrote:

Over the last 4 years, personal, online antisemitic threats of violence and harassment have just become a part of my normal. 

**This week alone** I have been told: "your time is up, Juden!", "I pray we don't have to kill you all!", and had a group of nazi trolls join [his spouse’s] class on Sukkot yesterday screaming "Heil Hitler!" and drawing swastikas.  

And it's only Wednesday.  

#TrumpsAmerica

Replying to a social media friend who expressed a hope that he was reporting the abuse, my friend said, "This is not an abnormal week in "fan mail"....if I reported it all, it would be constant."

Between June and September, 2016, my rabbi friend saw his homeland turn from a place where he had no serious reason to think he did not belong, to a place where he is threatened with impunity by people whose hatred is ideological —people who have an idea about who he is contrasted with an idea of who they are and hate him for being other than them.

It takes a population of piss-poor Americans to stand by while this goes on … people whose unearned advantage is being born not-brown, not-Jewish, not-Muslim, not-immigrant … people who don’t grow up having to look over both shoulders in the land of the free.
It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m a White, straight, "Christian," man, and I know it’s not supposed to be like this.

I can't rest, because

My neighbor

My friend

My sister

My brother

Can't breathe.

I’ve seen some crazy election stuff in my lifetime...

I’ve never seen this.

I’m older than all but about 10% of my American neighbors, and I’ve never seen anything like this.

Last week, more than 70 former Republican administration officials — most of them security officials — denounced the sitting President of the United States.

“For the following reasons,” they wrote, “we have concluded that Donald Trump has failed our country and that Vice President Joe Biden should be elected the next President of the United States.”

Here’s their list ... read the statement for yourself to see their brief explanation of each point.

1. ​Donald Trump has gravely damaged America’s role as a world leader.
2. Donald Trump has shown that he is unfit to lead during a national crisis.
3. Donald Trump has solicited foreign influence and undermined confidence in our presidential elections.
4. Donald Trump has aligned himself with dictators and failed to stand up for American values.
5. Donald Trump has disparaged our armed forces, intelligence agencies, and diplomats. 
6. Donald Trump has undermined the rule of law.
7. Donald Trump has dishonored the office of the presidency
8. Donald Trump has divided our nation and preached a dark and pessimistic view of America.
9. Donald Trump has attacked and vilified immigrants to our country.
10. Donald Trump has imperiled America’s security by mismanaging his national security team.

These officials from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump Administrations are serious people. Their condemnation of the President’s performance continues, and then turns:

While we – like all Americans – had hoped that Donald Trump would govern wisely, he has disappointed millions of voters who put their faith in him and has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term. 

In contrast, we believe Joe Biden has the character, experience, and temperament to lead this nation. We believe he will restore the dignity of the presidency, bring Americans together, reassert America’s role as a global leader, and inspire our nation to live up to its ideals.

 While some of us hold policy positions that differ from those of Joe Biden and his party, the time to debate those policy differences will come later. For now, it is imperative that we stop Trump’s assault on our nation’s values and institutions and reinstate the moral foundations of our democracy.

“To that end,” they conclude in bolded type, “we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him.

Serious people, doing a very serious thing, the likes of which I have never seen.

. Plan to Vote Today [and Hold Onto Your Receipt] .

The information we need to vote where we live.

VOTE.ORG 

Read It Yourself : Kamala Harris’ speech joining Biden campaign : August 12, 2020

With these words, Senator Kamala Harris joined the Biden campaign for the White House.

[Thanks to Harper’s Bazaar for the transcript]

As I said Joe, when you called me, I am incredibly honored by this responsibility and I'm ready to get to work. I am ready to get to work. After the most competitive primary in history, the country received a resounding message that Joe was the person to lead us forward. Joe, I'm so proud to stand with you, and I do so mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me whose sacrifice, determination and resilience makes my presence here today even possible. 

This is a moment of real consequence for America. Everything we care about–our economy, our health, our children, the kind of country we live in–it's all on the line. We're reeling from the worst public health crisis in a century. The president's mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

And we're experiencing a moral reckoning with racism and systemic injustice that has brought a new coalition of conscience to the streets of our country demanding change. America is crying out for leadership. 

Yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him. A president who is making every challenge we face even more difficult to solve. But here's the good news: We don't have to accept the failed government of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. In just 83 days, we have a chance to choose a better future for our country. 

So Joe, Dr. Biden, thank you for the trust you've placed in me. Jill, I know you will be an incredible first lady and my husband, Doug, and I are so grateful to become a part of your extended family. 

Ever since I received Joe's call, I've been thinking, yes, about the first Biden that I really came to know. And that of course is one of his beloved sons, Beau. In the midst of the great recession, Beau and I spoke on the phone practically every day, sometimes multiple times a day, working together to win back billions of dollars for homeowners from the big banks of the nation that were foreclosing on people's homes. And let me just tell you about Beau Biden. I learned quickly that Beau was the kind of guy who inspired people to be a better version of themselves. He really was the best of us. And when I would ask him, 'Where do you get that? Where did this come from?' He'd always talk about his dad. And I will tell you that the love that they shared was incredible to watch. It was the most beautiful display of the love between a father and a son. Beau talked about how Joe would spend four hours every day, riding the rails back and forth from Wilmington to Washington, so he can make breakfast for his kids in the morning and make it home in time to tuck them in bed each night. All of this so two little boys who had just lost their mom and their sister in a tragic accident would know that the world was still turning. And that's how I came to know Joe. 

He's someone whose first response when things get tough is never to think about himself, but to care for everyone else. He's someone who never asks, 'Why is this happening to me?' and instead asks, 'What can I do to make life better for you?'  

His empathy, his compassion, his sense of duty to care for others is why I am so proud to be on this ticket. And Joe and I–yes, we are cut from the same cloth. Family is everything to me, too. And I cannot wait for America to get to know my husband, Doug, and our amazing kids, Cole and Ella. Because whether I'm cheering in the bleachers at a swim meet or setting up a college room dorm or helping my goddaughter prepare for her school debate or building Legos with my godson or hugging my two baby nieces or cooking Sunday dinner, my family means everything to me. And I've had a lot of titles over my career, and certainly 'vice president' will be great. But 'Momala' will always be the one that means the most. 

My mother and father, they came from opposite sides of the world to arrive in America, one from India and the other from Jamaica, in search of a world class education. But what brought them together was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. And that's how they met, as students in the streets of Oakland marching and shouting for this thing called justice in a struggle that continues today. And I was part of it. My parents would bring me to protests strapped tightly in my stroller. And my mother, Shyamala, raised my sister Maya and me to believe that it was up to us and every generation of Americans to keep on marching. She'd tell us, 'Don't sit around and complain about things. Do something.' So I did something. 

I devoted my life to making real the words carved in the United States Supreme Court: "Equal justice under law." And 30 years ago, I stood before a judge for the first time, breathed deep, and uttered the phrase that would truly guide my career and the rest of my career: Kamala Harris for the people. 

The people, that's who I represented as district attorney fighting on behalf of victims who needed help. The people, that's who I fought for as California's attorney general when I took on transnational criminal organizations who were trafficking guns and drugs and humans beings. 

And it's the people who I have fought for as a United States Senator where I've worked every day to hold Trump officials accountable to the American people. And the people are who Joe and I will fight for every day in the White House.  

And, let me tell you as somebody who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut. Just look where they've gotten us. More than 16 million out of work. Millions of kids who cannot go back to school. A crisis of poverty, of homelessness, afflicting Black, Brown, and indigenous people the most. A crisis of hunger afflicting one in five mothers who have children that are hungry. And tragically, more than 165,000 lives that have been cut short, many with loved ones who never got the chance to say goodbye. 

It didn't have to be this way. Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. And we all remember that pandemic, but you know what happened then? Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people in the United States died. Two. That is what's called leadership. But compare that to the moment we find ourselves in now. When other countries are following the science, Trump pushed miracle cures he saw on Fox News. While other countries were flattening the curve, he said, the virus would just–poof–go away. Like a miracle.  

So when other countries opened back up for business, what did we do? We had to shut down again. This virus has impacted almost every country, but there's a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation. It's because of Trump's failure to take it seriously from the start, his refusal to get testing up and running, his flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks, his delusional belief that he knows better than the experts. All of that is the reason that an American dies of COVID-19 every 80 seconds. It's why countless businesses have had to shut their doors for good. It's why there is complete chaos over when and how to reopen our schools. Mothers and fathers are confused and uncertain and angry about childcare and the safety of their kids at school. Whether they'll be in danger if they go, or fall behind if they don't.  

Trump is also the reason millions of Americans are now unemployed. He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground. Because of Trump's failures of leadership, our economy has taken one of the biggest hits out of all the major industrialized nations with an unemployment rate that has tripled as of today. This is what happens when we elect the guy who just isn't up for the job. Our country ends up in tatters. And so does our reputation around the world.  

But let's be clear: This election isn't just about defeating Donald Trump or Mike Pence. It's about building this country back better. And that's exactly what Joe and I will do. We'll create millions of jobs and fight climate change through a clean energy revolution, bring back critical supply chains so the future is made in America, build on the Affordable Care Act so everyone has a peace of mind that comes with health insurance, and finally, offer caregivers the dignity, the respect, and the pay they deserve. We'll protect a woman's right to make her own decisions about her own body, root out systemic racism in our justice system, and pass a new Voting Rights Act–a John Lewis Voting Rights Act–that will ensure every voice is heard and every voice is counted.. 

The civil rights struggle is nothing new to Joe. It's why he got into public service. It's why he helped reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and restore employment discrimination laws. And, today, he takes his place in the ongoing story of America's march toward equality and justice as the only who has served alongside the first Black president and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate. 

But as Joe always points out, this election is about more than politics. It's about who we are as a country. And I'll admit, over the past four years, there have been moments when I have truly worried about our future. But whenever I think that there is a reason for doubt, whenever I've had my own doubts, I think of you, the American people: The doctors and nurses and frontline workers who are risking your lives to save others; the truck drivers and the workers in grocery stores, in factories and farms, working there, putting your own safety on the line to help us get through this pandemic; the women and students taking to the streets in unprecedented in numbers; the dreamers and immigrants who know that families belong together; the LGBTQ Americans who know that love is love; people of every age and color and creed who are finally declaring in one voice that, yes, Black lives matter. 

All across this country, a whole new generation of children is growing up, hearing the cries for justice and the chance of hope on which I was raised, some strapped into strollers of their own. And trust me, it's a song you'll never forget. So to everyone keeping up the fight, you are doing something. You are doing something great. You are the heroes of our time. And you are the reason I know we are going to bring our country closer to realizing its great promise. But to do it, we'll need to work, organize, and vote like never before, because we need more than a victory on November 3rd. We need a mandate that proves that the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be.  

Joe likes to say that character is on the ballot–and it's true. When he saw what happened in Charlottesville three years ago today, he knew we were in a battle for the soul of our nation. And together with your help, that's a battle we will win. Earlier this year, I said, "I'll do whatever Joe asked me to do." And so now I'm asking you to do the same. 

So, visit JoeBiden.com to get involved in this campaign and vote, because electing Joe Biden is just the start of the work ahead of us. 

And I couldn't be prouder to be by his side, running to represent you, the people. Thank you. And may God bless the United States of America.