James Talarico

since before time existed.

And it is also always moving us forward.

And we are always changing and evolving.

And both of those things can be true at the same time.

What's that a reference to?

So it's, again, a story in the New Testament of when Jesus walks into the temple.

And I think it's hard for us in our modern context to really understand an equivalent of the temple, because you would think it's a church or a synagogue or a mosque.

But the temple was so much more than that.

It was the center of not just religious power, but economic power and political power that

And so this humble rabbi from the backwoods in the Galilee doesn't just stay in his room and pray when his neighbors are being hurt.

He walks into the seat of power and he flips over the tables of the money changers, the tables of injustice.

And it's a profound act of protest, of civil disobedience.

It's ultimately what gets him killed by the Roman Empire.

And I and many others, we always think about Jesus being gentle and kind and soft, all those things he was.

But he was also strong and tough and confrontational and aggressive.

when people were being hurt.

And at least for me, and I think for this country, we have to remember that that is what love demands of us sometimes.

And so I wanted to center that story when we started the campaign, because this campaign was gonna be about fighting back.

The billionaires who own our algorithms, who own our cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens and keeping us all divided.

This was gonna be a campaign that was gonna bring people together to stand up