Beto O'Rourke calls for urgent responses to gun violence, climate change

Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke joked that the last time he visited Alabama, he was playing in a punk band.

"We were playing in someone’s house to a crowd that was about a tenth of the size of this," the Democratic presidential candidate joked to about 75 people at the Goat Haus Biergarten in downtown Montgomery on Friday night. "There were maybe six or seven people who came out to see us."

O'Rourke's presentation might not have been as loud as it was at that residence in Auburn 25 years ago, but the candidate tried to convey a sense of urgency in a wide-ranging half-hour discussion that touched on subjects ranging from gun violence to immigrant rights to climate change. O'Rourke mingled sharp criticism of President Donald Trump, who he called "the most racist president we've had since Andrew Johnson" with an insistence that time was running out to solve the most pressing problems facing the country.

"How are we going to meet this challenge together?" he said. "If we fail, we not only fail one another, we fail every generation that follows us going forward. We have to do this, in my opinion, without fear."

Read more: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/18/beto-orourke-calls-urgent-responses-gun-violence-climate-change-in-montgomery-alabama/4013230002/