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Good afternoon.
I am Ray Gill and I have the pleasure and honor of serving as the executive director
of the historic King Drive Business Improvement District number eight.
And today I stand before you not only in a professional capacity but also as the proud
granddaughter of Lawrence Hill, a man whose resilience and entrepreneurial spirit led
to mark on our community.
In 1949, my grandfather, honorably discharged from the Navy, opened his first restaurant
on 619 West Walnut Street, one block away from where we are now.
But because of racially charged urban renewal policies in the 1960s aimed at suppressing
this community, his restaurant was demolished when 6th Street was white.
He rebuilt his business later on on 12th Street guided by the tenacity that still defines
this community.
President Biden's investing in America's agenda is giving people with a spirit like
my grandfather had a shot.
Because of this reconnecting communities and neighborhoods grant made possible by the
President's agenda, a vibrant 6th Street is on the return.
Projects like complete 6th Street transcends infrastructure.
They are commitments to community, to safety, mobility, and quality, especially from the
neighborhoods that were burdened by historical disinvestment and the freeway expansion.
75 years later, if my grandfather was alive, he would be proud.
It is my distinct honor to introduce the individual leading this transformative charge
with a vision centered on connecting people rather than dividing them.
Please join me in welcoming our President of the United States, President Joe Biden.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The grandfather served our nation in uniform and he started a family business only to see
it demolished in a community disconnected because of new highways.
But he never gave up, neither of you, nor of the people of this community, I want to
thank you.
I want to thank you for your partnership across the board for getting a super-covid
rebuilding the economy so much more.
The same goes for the great Senator Tammy Baldwin and your incredible Congressman Glenn
Moore.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Your son here?
He comes to the next room.
Well, she represents her hometown as such a credible integrity and tenacity.
Very doctorable.
You are one of the most impressive young guys I met and I met all of them I think.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
That's how I warn anybody, don't run from here.
They know where you live and you think you saw what you're talking about.
Thank you for your passport and the city and leadership of this project I'm here to talk
about.
Look, the communities everywhere at this Boys and Girls Club, I'm going to gigantic support
for boys in addition to the biggest in the country.
But when I was a Senator, I provided a lot of money during the crime space to go on
with Boys and Girls Club.
What you do is you build confidence, you build spirit, you build a sense of belonging
and it really matters.
And this project is for you, which is for you to really deserve.
Look, the story of Bronzeville here in Milwaukee is one that we see all across the country.
Our interstate highway system laid out in the fifties was a groundbreaking connection
or a nation, coast to coast, that was a purpose of it.
We're going to transform the way people live, work and travel.
We set the connecting communities, they divide it.
These highways actually tore them apart.
I come from a city moving to Delaware, where the same thing happened.
We're in a situation where I-95 is four lanes going through a community that was all
African-American and it's just split.
And it's now about 50, 60, maybe 70 yards wide.
I'm president, I can't get that clean yet.
Why do you pay for it?
I don't know.
Well, we all came aside.
The same thing happened here.
And many cities across the country.
There are also cities that all across the grade for highway used to be.
And they are along, you know, redlining, along with redlining.
They disconnect the entire communities from opportunities.
Sometimes in an African-reinforced segmentation.
That's what happened here in Milwaukee.
More than a hundred years ago, Rosal was the home of a thriving hub of black culture
and commerce.
Homes on the part of the zone by black families.
Black small businesses will tell us the jazz clubs to like restaurants like Grays' Grandfathers.
In the middle of the 20th century, tens of thousands of black Americans migrated from the south
in Milwaukee and other cities in New York.
But by the 60s, so-called urban renewal struck this country.
The construction of I-94 and I-43 tore down roughly 17,000 homes and 1,000 businesses,
driven through neighborhoods and nearby roads.
Here on 6th Street, the road was widened to space and residence and businesses.
Also, the people outside the neighborhood would get downtown.
Today, 6th Street is a wide road without a protected bike path, bike lanes and bus nights,
with limited access to the green space.
Speed and reckless driving is only in crashes 5,000,000 cities average.
All of this, looking people, likely people out of opportunities and maybe the more isolated
and the social and economic life for the rest of the city.
Congressman Moore told me when she was a child, she lived a short walk on public library.
It was a safe place to read and learn, where libraries were given a cake for the library
and be a cake for children when they showed up.
That's true, isn't it?
But then, new plans instructed to walk and make the library inaccessible.
Sadly, too many communities across America faced the loss of wealth, prosperity and possibilities.
It still reverberated today.
Imagine all those homes and mama pop stores that could have been posted and passed down
from family to family, financial security, generational wealth.
Imagine what they contributed then and what they could have contributed all these years.
And what that would have meant for all of them to walk in all the communities across the country.
For generations, black, brown and Native American, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians,
communities weren't fully included in our democracy in our economy.
Yet by pure courage, heart and grit, they never gave up.
They pursued the full promise in America.
Today, we're recognizing that history to make new history.
I'm here to announce the first to find investment, 3.3 billion, 3.8 billion dollars
and 132 projects in 42 states in a health-right historic Rome.
In the process, delivering environmental justice by reconnecting disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods
and new opportunities for future prosperity and possibilities.
These investments advance my justice for the initiative to deliver at least 40 percent.
40 percent of all the benefits of clean energy and climate investment to disadvantaged communities.
That's the commitment I made with keeping.
Here, Milwaukee will be 36 million dollars in new federal funding to rebuild 60.
APPLAUSE
My name is Ryan Swinewalk.
For children walking to school, safer lifelines for residents and visitors,
dedicated bus lines to get to work faster, new trees to provide shade, modern infrastructure spent,
sewage from flowing into Milwaukee River along Lake Michigan.
These are life-changing improvements.
They're also going to make it easier to store black communities in the north,
and Latino communities in the south to access jobs, school, and entertainment.
Opportunities in the city and central hub from watching Milwaukee bus play
to attending Milwaukee area to technical college.
If I didn't mention technical college, I'd go home and sleep for home.
If I'm away, there's a full-time key for me.
APPLAUSE
I'm not.
For running sure that good paying construction jobs creating this project,
go to members of the community, benefiting the very same project.
APPLAUSE
We've helped with professional delegation, especially Senator Tammy Baldwin,
who worked so hard for these funds.
We're making sure that the construction materials of this project are made in America.
APPLAUSE
One second.
Look, you know, I've been very involved for a while.
I know I don't look like I just arrived.
APPLAUSE
Walk in the side.
I didn't realize even though I was deeply involved in issuing civil rights law
that got me involved and run from the first place.
I didn't realize that banking in Roosevelt's term,
when they were going to the fight for the units to organize,
they had a provisional law that not many presidents paid attention to.
And it says that if the Congress appropriates money,
the president spent on the public project or any project,
that he must use an American worker, and he must use American material.
Folks, very few, very few lived by that.
Very few presidents did that, but not anymore.
That's why we're going to be challenged.
APPLAUSE
We have lived and felt the decisions made decades ago.
Today, today, we're making decisions to transform your life for decades to come,
and we're doing it all across America.
Let's be clear.
This groundbreaking investment comes from two historic laws I signed
with the support of Tammy Nguyen.
I bipartisan infrastructure law,
both significant law modernized our roads, bridges and so much more
in generations of consequences.
APPLAUSE
Another law of the inflation reduction act,
which is the most significant investment in fighting climate change
in the vast environment, ever in history, anywhere in the world,
that's not hyperbole.
APPLAUSE
We're already making a difference.
Look, let me give you one example.
Back in December, I was in Milwaukee
and met with a plumber named Prashan.
Well, owns it.
Is he here?
LAUGHTER
Well, it was a small business, zero point.
It was in hundreds of plates, lead plates,
so children and families in this community can turn on the faucet,
clean water can talk about the risk of brain damage.
Well, it was supposed to take the city 60 years,
so it made all these pipes to do this work
because of the infrastructure law I signed.
We're now getting it done all the time,
every lead pipe in the city within ten years.
APPLAUSE
I'm proud to have the shot of my guest at the city of the Union at the rest of us.
Folks, we're on the way to living clean water to every American.
We're on the way to living affordable high-speed internet to every American.
At low cost.
The community's too awful left behind, we're rebuilding the road.
We're filling in the cracks on the sidewalk,
we're creating spaces to live a work of place safety,
and to breathe clean air,
and to shop at a nearby grocery stop with fresh and healthy food.
We're taking on housing discrimination,
increasing access to home ownership,
and building more homes and apartments
to bring across the rent down.
APPLAUSE
Everything we're doing is connecting people with opportunity
not disconnecting people from opportunity.
And we're seeing progress.
Through my American Rescue Plan,
we put $1,400 checks in people's pockets to get them to the pandemic.
We're investing nearly $80 million in this concept of state small business credit initiative,
helping countless small businesses grow.
And we're walking small business applications up 70% compared to before the pandemic.
Small businesses make up half of our economy.
We haven't talked to big corporations, it's true, they're gigantic.
But if you add up all the small businesses,
they make up half of all the gross domestic product
providing good paying jobs and opportunities.
And everyone applies for a small business in the middle of the moment.
It's an act of hope.
And the share of Black and Latino Americans employed in Milwaukee
in 2022 is the highest in more than a decade.
APPLAUSE
The wages are rising faster than prices,
and now we have among the lowest inflation rates of any country in America,
and still we're still fighting to lower it even further.
We're fighting to lower health care costs, education costs,
and give just a little more freedom on my dad would say.
The ordinary families at the line I wrote about.
Let's be clear.
My predecessor is Allah, and is Allah's in Congress,
including the Senate of Ryan Johnson.
Well, he got it against the Infrastructure Law,
that funds this project.
They want to undo everything I just talked about.
My predecessor talked about Infrastructure Week for four years.
He didn't get a single thing done,
not one.
Ryan Johnson, every Republican in Congress,
got it against the Infrastructure Reduction Act,
which is helping fund these projects.
And wants to repeal, look for it.
With your help, we cut black and Latino child poverty in half,
because of the child tax hold through my American license.
APPLAUSE
And led by your Senator Ron Johnson,
every single Republican in Congress voted against that as well,
every single one.
I signed the law to beat big farmer by giving Medicare the power
to price prescription drugs and lower drug presence
for senior significance,
every Republican voted against it as well.
And by the way, guess what?
It lowered the federal deficit by $160 billion.
APPLAUSE
It just saved money for seniors.
Didn't this save money for seniors?
It meant Medicare didn't have to pay off those
of the government costs, for example.
Those of you, everybody knows somebody
who needs insulin for diabetes.
Well, guess what?
Just lowering the price to $35,
and only costs $10 to make, by the way,
instead of $400 a month,
saved the government all that money.
Now they're trying to cut Medicare, Medicaid,
and Social Security.
Wisconsin's very own Senator Ron Johnson calls Social Security,
I get this one, I admit.
He calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
Oh, I'm serious, think about it.
Did you ever think you hear anybody say that?
A Ponzi scheme?
Give me a break.
No, just this week, Donald Trump said,
cuts the Social Security and Medicare are on the table.
When asked, and he changed the position, he said,
quote, there's a lot we can do in terms of cutting.
Tremendous amount of things we can do, end of quote.
I want to show you, I will never allow them down.
APPLAUSE
I won't cut that, please.
I will not cut that.
Instead of cutting Social Security and Medicare,
the tax rates are super lovely.
I'm going to protect the citizens of Social Security and
Medicare to make the wealthy begin to pay their fresh shit.
APPLAUSE
So many close to this.
Four years ago this week, I came to office,
our country was hit by the worst pandemic and economic crisis
in the century.
Remember the fear and anxiety everybody felt?
Record job losses,
raising virus that would take more than one million American lives.
And for every life lost, I expect there was estimated eight close
family behind, eight children, mother, father, uncle,
and man.
A mental health crisis.
A isolation alone in this.
A president, my predecessor, who failed the most basic duty
any president knows is American people.
The duty to care.
APPLAUSE
In my view, that's not too good.
Why can't we all have determined to uphold the duty that gets us
through one of the toughest periods in our nation's history?
And we have.
And now we're building the future of America full of possibilities.
Building the economy from the middle out of the bottom up,
not the top down.
That top down stuff, not the whole life, man,
and all my kids can take growing up.
Investing in all America, and all Americans,
to make sure everyone has a fair shot.
We need nobody behind.
Look, our plan is working.
America's coming back.
That's America.
That's what this project is all about.
The project for jobs and justice, prosperity,
and living with possibilities.
And that's why I swear to God,
I never been more optimistic about America's history than I did that.
Not because I'm president,
because we're one of those inflection points in Israel.
We really are.
Things are going to change no matter who the president is.
A big way.
They're going to change much for the better or much worse.
All we have to do, folks, remember who the guys named we are.
We're the United States of America.
All right.
Thank you.
You want to make a country in the world to come out of every crisis stronger than we've been in,
stronger than we've been in.
There's nothing beyond our capacity.
I mean, sincerely, think about it.
There's nothing beyond America's capacity if we do it together.
And that's what we're going to do.
May God bless you all.
May God protect you.
Thank you.