The following speech was given at Dream for America’s DemocracyFest, alongside Democratic luminaries like Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, United States Senators Mark Kelly and Andy Kim, United States Members of Congress Ro Khanna, Eric Swalwell, Angie Craig, Seth Moulton, Jamie Raskin, Suhas Subramanyam, and Jimmy Gomez, and a special message from former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Steve M. BoyleExecutive Director of YIMBY Democrats for AmericaHello, DemocracyFest! And thank you, Dream for America, for bringing together so many people today from all generations, but especially our rising generation, to fight for American Democracy and fight for a new vision for the Democratic Party.
My name is Steve Boyle. I am the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America, as well as the Host of the podcast Radio Abundance, where we fight alongside leading Abundance-minded Democrats like Maryland Governor Wes Moore, like Congressman Robert Garcia, the Founder of the YIMBY Caucus, and like Congressman Josh Harder, the Founder of the Build America Caucus, to fight for our two missions: to Build America and Defeat Fascism, and to unleash the era of Progressive Abundance.
We know that, if we want a more Progressive world, we have to build it first.
You know, for a long time now, both parties have had trouble answering the question: “What is your vision for America? What will it actually look like and feel like to experience living in America in 10 years? 15 years? 20? 25? What does American Greatness and Progressive American Greatness actually mean in the 21st century?”
We believe in both American Greatness and Progressive American Greatness, and that's why we champion Progressive Abundance. We hearken back to the FDR era, when a muscular, active government passed the New Deal. When governments around the US took it upon themselves to build The Golden Gate Bridge and The Hoover Dam. When private citizens and ordinary Americans were empowered to act as creative entrepreneurs and builders of our culture, and The Empire State Building rose to 5x the skyline of Midtown Manhattan, building a new kind of neighborhood character: a neighborhood character that would become one of the most iconic in the world and in history.
And, oh yeah, under FDR, we also curb-stomped the Nazis in Europe and defeated Fascism around the world. We'll need all of that now, from government state capacity, to a muscular Progressive agenda, to taking on Fascism at home and abroad, to inspiring and allowing citizens to build and build their own future.
We will need that spirit of ambition and optimism today because the rise of Fascism that we are facing right now is a natural consequence of people, and especially young people, who are giving up hope that this system can ever help them, that life can ever be affordable, that they can rise and build the future of their dreams rather than just simply trying to stay alive and find a place to live.
It's a consequence of us as a party, but also our whole nation, not having a real vision for the future that inspires people. That gives people an idea of where we're headed.
How can we address and acknowledge and redress our past wrongs while still aspiring to have pride in what we've built and to build a bigger and more progressive future for ourselves, and to celebrate the journey that we've been on as a nation while imagining the new heights that we can resort to?
Progressive Abundance is a vision of an America where we all can rise, where citizens can build anything they set their minds to, and where our governments have the state capacity to get stuff done and solve problems themselves, taking on long-standing and centuries-long Progressive goals while also letting citizens build and create, where the costs of the everyday things all of us need, like a roof over our heads, get cheaper and more accessible.
It's a world where we protect and cherish and celebrate our cultural communities across the United States and uplift marginalized and vulnerable people and treasure the cultures and neighborhood characters that we've created, not by thwarting the future, but by building it, taking those cultures and those neighborhoods, and instead of freezing them in amber, building walls around the past, and turning them into expensive museums, we can extend our culture skyward, with growing neighborhoods and new, gorgeous architecture and experience design for people and civic and public life: new public squares and plazas and pedestrian routes and amenities for everybody, new civic and public life with new buildings as new monuments, and festivals to the cultures we've come from, the cultures we've built together, the dreams we share, the values we care about, and the future that we are building together.
You know, for me, being a Democrat in this moment is essential and non-negotiable. We, in this moment, have been called upon by history and endowed with a great purpose and a historical mission. We must, in this era, as ourselves, make history by standing up to Trump.
We must defeat him and defend the American Republic. Defend the mission of our founders to forge a government of freedom and self-rule. The mission of the Union Army and generations of Civil Rights leaders to deliver everyone from bondage. The mission of FDR and the American presidents and American heroes of the 20th century to lift the world from the darkness of authoritarianism.
To me, Trump represents the sum of all of America's foes of the past. He is the ‘big boss’ at the end of the game.
From the English King George, he takes a will to make the law his own, to bend the country to his will, to serve the whims of one man against the many.
From the Confederacy, he takes the desire to impose a hierarchical system on the United States, where some citizens with privileges and favor get everything, and the rest of us have to lose.
From the Nazis and the global Fascist movement of the early 20th century, he has built concentration camps. He has rounded up everyday residents, stuffed them into vans for things they've written or how they look, and shipped them overseas to Salvadoran prison camps or to the concentration camp he's built on our own soil: Alligator Alcatraz.
From the Soviet Union, he takes command-and-control over our economy and our press, dictating our economic policies in whims and micromanagement while intimidating and stifling dissent.
And from Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden and the Age of Terrorism, he takes a willingness to attack America and Americans and American institutions on our own American soil.
I am a survivor of Al-Qaeda terrorism. I narrowly survived an Al-Qaeda train bombing on the London Underground 20 years ago, and I emerged from that dark tunnel with the blood of their victims on my face. And yet, to me, Donald Trump is the preeminent anti-American terrorist of our lifetime, for he has done what Osama Bin Laden could never do, or never dreamed of.
You know, on 9/11, you may recall the planes that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but we should not also forget a fourth plane, Flight 93, that was headed to Washington DC and headed to the US Capitol.
The Americans on that flight, Flight 93, realized they were all bound together by the same fate. They would all eventually die, as all of us will. Their fates were joined, as are all of ours. What remained in their little lives was for them to choose how to use it. They held in their hands America's future and the future of their families and everyone they loved and cared about and generations of people that they would never meet and who were not yet born.
They held in their hand the fragility of America's institutions and American Democracy, and with the rallying cry of “Let's Roll!,” they stormed the cockpit, saved the Capitol, and saved American Democracy.
But, to me, there's a second and darker story of Flight 93: a story where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell like dominoes, ricocheting downward until our nation lost its purpose, our government lost its credibility, our people lost our confidence, and terror turned inward.
In this story, from the sacred burial ground and burning embers of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that downed vessel rose back to life to finish its terrible journey, now resurrected, and on the 6th of January, 2021, between the flames and broken glass and Confederate flags and the noose marked for the Vice President of the United States, with pilot Donald Trump, Flight 93 finally did hit its target and crashed into the United States Capitol, threatening our Democratic existence along with it and turning our government over to a strong man whose administration just last month proclaimed the slogan “Opportunity, not Democracy.”
So being a Democrat and fighting Trump is the only option. And yet, there has been plenty in our own party that makes you say, "how dare you?”
How dare you say, rightfully, that climate change is an existential emergency and a planetary threat, and then make it so hard to build solar and wind and nuclear that climate deniers in Texas are lapping California on building clean energy?
How dare you say you will protect immigrants and make our cities “sanctuary cities” and then make them so unaffordable that those very immigrants can't afford to live there? For there is no sanctuary where you cannot afford a home.
How dare you say you'll protect cultural communities and marginalized Americans and queer Americans and then make it so hard to build homes in the cities where those safe havens are that our neighborhoods become expensive museums, finding a home becomes a bidding war and an auction, and communities are hollowed out from the inside and across whole cities where people can no longer afford to live, so that kids seeking safe havens can't find a place in our cities and the makers of our culture have to flee to more dangerous and far-flung locations?
How dare you say that you are fighting Trump and then make it so difficult to build in Blue States like California and New York that, when the 2030 Census hits, Blue States will lose so many Electoral Votes and Red States like Florida and Texas will gain them, so that for three consecutive presidential elections — 2032, 2036, and 2040 — if we do not act now, it will become nearly impossible for a Democrat to win the Presidency?
We could win every state that Biden won in 2020, sweep the Blue Wall, and lose the Presidency and the House for 14 years, from 2030 to 2044.
If we go that long without a Democrat in office, do you think we'll get another shot? Do you think we'll see another Progressive President?
I do not.
This is why YIMBYism and Abundance and Progressive Abundance in the Democratic Party are the keys to the future of the Democratic Party and the keys to American Democracy.
To win, we need to prove that we're the better alternative to make American life and American homes more affordable and abundant, to create a world where everyone can thrive, to fight incumbent privilege and oligarchy with new innovation and invention and competition.
We need to show that a Democratic government can get stuff done. And if, like me, you crave a 21st century FDR, then they will need the permission and the state capacity to act.
And we need to win.
So, if you believe nothing else about why Progressive Abundance is the right future for America, know that because of the 2030 Census and the Electoral College map, winning elections and saving Democracy depends on building homes right now in Blue States.
You cannot call yourself a Progressive who fights Trump if you leave us with an unwinnable map because you thwart new construction.
Because it takes time to pass laws and build homes and for people to move, we don't have the luxury of waking up to this challenge in 2029. We have to do it now. This year. We have to build homes.
It's build homes in Blue States, or lose the country for decades and generations to the next era of MAGA Fascists and the successors of Trump.
If you don't like the idea of new neighbors, I think you will hate your new concentration camp cellmates.
And, if you care about neighborhood character, I think the neighborhood character you care most about is the character of our Democracy and our freedoms.
No Fascists in My Backyard.
We have to build. We have to thwart Fascism. We have to save Democracy.
We have to think of ourselves as people — and maybe even heroes — who are living in history and making history, with the same opportunities to make history — the same challenges and the same possibilities — as any of the heroes of history's past, from America's founding fathers to the folks who held us together in the Civil War, to the folks who fought for Civil Rights, to the folks who fought against the evils of Fascism, Authoritarianism, Authoritarian Communism, and Terrorism.
We are just like them.
We need to write our own historical legacy by Defeating Fascism, Building America, and unleashing The Era of Progressive Abundance.
I hope that you will join me. Thank you for being here and being a part of this movement today. You can join us at YIMBYDemocrats.org. Check out Radio Abundance and, please, if this moves you, reach out to me directly. You can find me at Steve@YIMBYDemocrats.org.
Thank you so much! Thank you, DemocracyFest! Thank you, Dream for America! Build America. Defeat Fascism. Unleash Progressive Abundance. Onward. Upward. Skyward. Excelsior, my friends. Thank you!