Beto O’Rourke kicked off his presidential campaign in El Paso on Saturday with a speech railing against an “unprecedented concentration of wealth and power” and expressing support for immigrants. The 2020 contender switched to Spanish to tell the crowd he would fight to make the country a place where ethnicity and time spent in the U.S. are not factors that block voting. “We are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum-seekers. We have learned not to fear our differences, but to respect and embrace them,” said of Trump’s immigration claims. “We see the languages spoken in this community—the traditions and cultures—as a strength for El Paso.” O’Rourke also framed himself as a crusader against big money, saying that “this extraordinary, unprecedented concentration of wealth and power and privilege must be broken apart.” “This is our moment of truth,” O’Rourke said, “and we cannot be found wanting.”
Let us be clear: we will not be defined by our fears or the smallness of our differences; we will instead be known by our ambitions, our aspirations and the resolve, the creativity, the service and sacrifice by which we will have achieved them.
