This is a rough transcription of the presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's speech while visiting Austin in February 2007.

On February 10, two Saturdays ago I stood in front of the old state Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, a place where Abraham Lincoln has served and where he delivered this famous speech in which he said that a nation divided against itself could not stand.

And he was an inspiration for all of us, but for me to be there and see 17,000 people in seven-degree weather was truly an inspiration, and it told me not people were simply supporting my campaign, but it told me that people were ready for a change.
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That it wasn't just about me.

And it was a humbling experience, and my wife and my children went with me from the announcement on to Iowa. There was a little bit of rain. I hope people don't mind. So we went on to Iowa and it was a family affair, I had my wife, I had my 8-year-old daughter, Melia, 5-year-old daughter, Sasha and my mother-in-law, I had godparents we brought, my niece and nephew in to play with my kids, and we went to cedar rapids, Iowa and we had 2,500 people, and we went to waterloo, Iowa and there were 2000 people, we went to aims, Iowa and 7,000 people.

And everywhere we went there was this enormous excitement and spirit and I asked my children at one point how they were doing because they hadn't been on trips like this before. And my daughter, who was playing with her cousins and drawing and playing games, my 8-year-old said, oh, daddy I am having a great time, thanks for bringing me.

And then she went back to drawing and then after a few minutes she looked up and she said, now, what are we doing here again?

What are we doing here? It is an appropriate question for today.

What are we doing here today?

Why are we gathered in this place? We are gathered here in this place because the entire nation understands that we are at a Crossroads.

We are at a Crossroads internationally.

We are at a Crossroads domestically.

We know that we can't continue on a course in which we spend more money on healthcare than any nation on Earth and yet we have 46 million uninsured and we have people -- and we have families who have health insurance but are co-payments and deductibles are going up every day.

We see small businesses that can't afford to provide healthcare for the workers. We see large businesses, uncompetitive internationally because other countries pay for healthcare for their people. And so people say to themselves, why wouldn't we invest in preventative care so that children can get regular checkups instead of going to the emergency room for asthma? Why wouldn't we treat people with diabetes early instead of reimbursing for the $30,000 amputation because they didn't get treatment? Why wouldn't we take the money that we save by making sure that everybody has prevention and put that money in to providing affordable, accessible healthcare for every single American? That's something we can do and the American people believe in that.
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People look at our energy policy or at least our lack of an energy policy.

And they say to themselves, not only is our economy held hostage to the spot oil market, but we spend $800 million a day for some of the most hostile nations on Earth.

We fund both side of the war on terrorism.

And in the bargain, we end up melting the polar ice cap and creating climate change that ultimately is going to affect everybody, especially people along the coasts of the gulf, along coastal areas all over the planet, people in Africa, who are already struggling, who are going to see drought and people say we can do better than that. We are the wealthiest, most innovative nation on Earth. There is no reason why we can't create affordable alternative fuels.

There is no reason why we can't grow our own fuel. If Brazil can do it, if other countries can do it, we can do it.
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Not only can we save environment, not only can we improve our economy, we can create jobs and innovation and opportunity.

What is preventing us from doing it is not the lack of technology or good plans or good ideas?

What is preventing us from doing sit a lack of political will?

And an inability to bring people together around a new agenda for a new America.

People look at our education system and they say to themselves, why is it at a time when we know that the economy is changing we have got a global economy, in which our young people are going to need an education now more than ever, and yet we see our test scores declining? We have got schools all through Texas, all through Illinois, all through California, where the -- out number computers and teachers are underpaid, students are uninspired, and we know what to do.

If we put money into early childhood education, we could prepare every child for school. We could pay our teachers more, and give them more flexibility in the classroom.

And if we do that, teachers want to be accountable.

They want high standards for their kids but they have to have the resources that accomplish that.

And at a time where every young person in America knows they need skills, why would we make it harder for kids to go to college? Why would we raise interest rates on student loans? Why wouldn't we bring them down? We know we can do that. And most of all, people around the country are asking themselves, why we are still in a war that should have never been authorized and should never have been waged? Austin, I am proud of the fact that way back in 2002, I said this war was a mistake.

I said that we should not give open-ended authority to a president because it would lead to an open-ended occupation.

And despite the fact that some of us could disagree back then in terms of what we should have done, every single American at this point understands that after having spent half a trillion-dollars, after over 3,100 of our most precious resource, young men and women who have courageously gone over there and fulfilled their mission and done everything they had to do, everything that was asked of them, laid out their full measure of devotion, despite all of that we are actually less safe than we were before this war started. Al Qaeda is recruiting more terrorists, Afghanistan is slipping and sliding back into chaos.

Austin, it is time for us to bring this war to an end. [ APPLAUSE ]

And we know, we know the steps that can be taken. I put in a bill that says that we can begin a phased withdrawal, a responsible withdrawal, one that lays out benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that recognizes that we can defeat, if we put our young people in the midst of a sectarian civil war, that as we apply pressure on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government to come together around a political accommodation, that we can redouble our dip tick efforts diplomatic efforts around the region, that we won't abandon the region and continue to provide logistical provide and training and anti-terrorist activities in the area but what we can't do is simply continue on the course that we are on. Because it is leading to more deaths and more chaos and more destruction and anybody who denies that is not looking at the facts on the ground.
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We have got a report that Tony Blair, our most stalwart ally in this whole process, when George bush -- when George bush talks about a coalition he is basically talking about Tony Blair.

And Tony Blair this week announced that they are beginning a phased redeployment, because they recognize that we are no longer in a situation in which we can solve the problems of Iraq militarily, that we can only solve them diplomatically and politically and people have to come together.

Now, Tony Blair can understand that, then why can't George bush and Dick Cheney understand that?
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In fact, in fact, Dick Cheney says, well, this is all part of the plan that was a good thing that Tony Blair was withdrawing. Even asked the administration if preparing to put 20,000 more of 14 our young men and women in. Now, keep in mind this is the same guy that says we would be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said we are in the last throes.

I am sure he forecast sun today. When Dick Cheney said it is a good thing you probably know you have big problems. But understand that there is a human soul to. This I have been traveling across the country for the last couple of weeks, and in the last week alone, I have had three mothers come up to me on the campaign trail and began to week because their children are about to be deployed. We have got at least 300 Texan lives that have been lost in this war, thousands more who have been injured, maimed, limbs severed, and those mothers think about that and understand that when those young people go over there without a clear sense of mission, there is a possibility that they may never come home. And now to make things worse, the same week Tony Blair announced he was pulling folks out the administration announced 14,000 national guardsmen and women were going to be deployed there, too soon to provide them the training they need, many of them not without the armaments armaments, the reinforced Humvees that they need. And that is what those mothers are thinking about.

They are thinking about the young man who came to one of my town hall meetings with his wife, 26 years old, had been in a coma for six months, and IED had exploded, he had been blinded in both eyes, a scar down the center of his face. Unrecognizable to his family.

Six months after the injury.

Lost the use of one arm. And I remember talking to him, and he was talking about how he was putting his life back together again.

And as he spoke, I look at his wife.

And I tried to imagine her trying to deal with the small children that they had and this husband.

There is a human cost to this.

This is not abstraction.

This is not a matter of ideology.

This is not a matter of us acting tough.

This is a matter of understanding that when we ask our young men and women to sacrifice on our behalf, that we have to make sure that it is based on sound intelligence, we have to make sure that there is a strategy that makes sense, we have to make absolutely sure that the strength of our military is matched with the power of our diplomacy and the power of our alliances we have failed in doing that.

It is time to bring our young men and women home.
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And when we bring our young men and women home, when we begin a phased redeployment, I call for a start of May 1st of this year to have all combat troops out by law, by March 31st of next year when we begin to do that, then we are going to be in a position to actually create the kind of national security strategy that we need for the 21st century. A strategy that recognizes that not only do we have to be strong militarily and not only do we have to hunt down terrorists, not only do we have to finish the job in Afghanistan, but we also have to attend to the ungoverned spaces, the poverty and the strife and the violence that people around the nobody experience each and every single day, that the roots of terrorism lie in the genocide in Darfur. That the roots of terrorism exist wherever people are being harassed by a corrupt government.

That we have to protect our ideals and our values around the world, not simply our military, that's how we will make ourselves more sure.

That's how we will craft the strategy for the 21st century. And when we begin to start bringing our troops home, think of the resources that we can start bringing up, so that we can spend billions of dollars in rebuilding roads and bridges and hospitals and schools right here in America, so that we can start playing broadband through inner cities and rural America, so they can walk in to the Internet economy.

So that we can start investing in rebuilding New Orleans. That a year and a half after the fact still looks like a war has been fought.

I remember when the president went to that Plaza and pledged that New Orleans would be back. And yet a year and a half later, if you travel through that area, you still are reminded of those things in which folks are on rooftops without water, without food, without shelter. Where bodies are still floating in the water.

Neighborhoods and entire stretches that are completely abandoned.

And it symbolizes that at some point during the course of the last six years we have lost that essential sense of fellow feeling, that believes that regardless of what devices, regardless of our differences in race, and religion, and political parties that there is more that bind us together than pulls us apart that we are all one people, that we are bound together, that we have mutual responsibility towards each other that I am my brother's keeper, that I am my sister's keeper, we have forgotten that, Austin, we have got to return to that spirit that builds America.

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And we can do it. Because we have done it before. And I wrote a book recently called the audacity of hope, and in that book, I talk about the fact that I got the title from my speech at the democratic national committee, at the democratic national convention but I have to confess in front of you, there is in the book that I actually stole the line from my pastor. Because when I first moved to Chicago, I was a young organizer about the age of a lot of young people here, and I decided to work with a group of churches and try to rebuild steel plants that had closed and communities that had been devastated, homes that had been foreclosed, and commercial strips that have gone into decline and so these churches came together to see if we could set up job training programs for the unemployed and after-school programs for young people who had lost focus and didn't know what direction they were going in, and since I was working with a bunch of churches I realized I should probably start going to church once in a while.

So I want into the church, Trinity united church of Christ, and the pastor there is a guy named Jeremiah Wright, and Dr. Wright was delivering a sermon titled the audacity of hope.

And his basic idea was very Simple. What he said was this. He said the easiest thing in the world is to be cynical.

Nothing is easier than to say that the world is what it is, to watch the television and read the newspapers and see poverty and strife and violence and war, famine, and to say there is nothing we can do about it. That is the best we can hope for, is to protect ourselves and our families, to look after ourselves, to abandon the public life to those who are cynical, the special interests, the lobbyists, the people who will wield power only for their own benefit, what is hard, what is difficult was bold, what requires risk, what is audacious is to hope.

It is to believe that the world as it is is not the world as it has to be.

That we can close the gap between those two worlds, if we apply hard work and imagination and diligence and if we work together.

And I was inspired by that sermon, and not only because I thought that it applies to my life, because it told me that you don't have to ignore the problems in the world to be hopeful.

You simply have to be committed to bringing about change and doing everything you can to imagine a better world.

But I was also inspired because I realized that idea described the very essence of America, that America at every stage always had the audacity to hope.

You think about it.

This is a nation that started with 13 colonies who decided at some point we are going to throw off the yolk of our tyranny and defeat the most powerful nation in the world, the British empire.

And then not only did they decide to break off from the empire, they also decided to start an entirely new government.

Of, by and for the people. Never been tried before. And there were a whole bunch of people that said the experiment in democracy could not survive, and yet it did. And that some people noticed that in the midst of this experiment written into the very founding charter, we have violated the idea in the declaration of independence that all men had been created equal and that slavery was still staining this land and there were those who said, we couldn't do anything about slavery, but there were a bunch of abolitionists that said, yes, we can.

And they agitated and they organized and they mobilized and ultimately a war was fought and blood was shed and under Lincoln's leadership the house was no longer divided between half slave and half free. And then there were a whole bunch of people who noticed that women didn't have the right to vote.

That was the tradition. But I am sure there was some woman one day who looked across the dinner table and said, she saw her husband and said I am smarter than that guy. Why is it he gets to vote and I don't get to vote? [ CHEERING ]

And so she started mobilizing her friend and her neighbors and they started marching and writing petitions until they were full partners in the building of America and there were workers that looked around and said we believe in free enterprise.

We know that the business of America's business, but at some point workers should be able to share the prosperity and the productivity of this nation, so some of them decided, well we are not doing too well while we are divided why don't we get together and form a union and together they all lifted up a middle class in this country and got wages and benefits and over time the vast things we take for granted and people said it couldn't be done but some people said, yes, we can.

And a world war was fought, and a great depression, created a situation in which one-third of the country was ill clothed and ill fed and ill housed and another world war came about, and each juncture, somebody said, there is not much we can do.

And yet we did it.

And after that war, when young men and women who had fought or served or been on the assembly lines, building that arsenal of democracy, those who were of African descent came back and said we fought for this country, why are we still sitting in the back of the bus? Why are we using a different water fountain and people said, well, you better not stir things up. It is too dangerous. It is too difficult. And again there were a whole bunch of women who would walk rather than ride the bus. After a long day of doing somebody else's laundry and looking after somebody else's children because they knew then they were walking for freedom, and then there were a whole bunch of men who were willing to register to vote knowing full well that their lives might be at risk and then young people like all of you in this audience today, who got on buses, even though they didn't have to, they were comfortable in their living rooms watching television, but they said we are going to get on the bus and we are going to ride down to Mississippi and Alabama and we are going to come down to Texas, and we are going to register voters and we are going to resegregate, because they said this is not the kind of America that we want.

We imagine a better America.
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And when Dr. King spoke and said let justice flow down like water and like a mighty stream the people responded and we created a better America and created a more perfect union and that's the moment we are in today.

That's what this rally is about.

I want your support in this race.
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I want -- I believe I can lead this country.

People say that I haven't been in Washington that long, but I have been in Washington long enough that I know that Washington needs to change and I think I can be an agent for change in Washington.
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So I am ready to serve, and when we decided to do this, my wife and I sat down and we asked ourselves, are we willing to make the sacrifices involved? Are we willing to put our family through this? Through the rigors of the process? Because we weren't in a rush, we weren't in a hurry, our life is pretty good right now.

And I have got a pretty good job.

I have got enough attention. But we decided that there was a unique moment in time WHERE IF we were able to help galvanize a movement for change that the American people are ready to be awakened, that they want to shake off their slumber, that they are tired of being afraid, that they are tired of being pitted against each other, that we can potentially bring about the kind of America that all of us believe in.

And so I am ready to serve, but here is what I have got to tell all of you. I can't do it alone.

I am an imperfect vessel. This campaign is not going to be about me, ultimately it is going to be about you.

It is going to be about your energy and your time, it is going to be about your hopes and your faith.

If all of you are willing to put in the time and the energy, then I guarantee you that we can make this thing happen.

I am absolutely confident as I look at all of the thousands of people who are here of every race and every creed and every color, I am absolutely confident that if all of you decide to take up this cause, that if you have made a determination that you are tired of the America that has been because you imagine the America that is laid out before us, and if you are willing to put your shoulder to the wheel of history at this moment, that amazing things can happen.

So I want you to do the things that are going to be required for this campaign, I want you to -- everybody who leaves here today I want you to get on the Internet and I want you to round up five or ten or 25 or 50 friends and tell them, get on Barack Obama.com we are building building a movement.

I want you to do that.
I want you to start talking about your friends now who are not registered to vote, who have no interest in voting, especially the young people. I want you to talk to your bud POOKIE, your friend JJ and tell them, it is time for you to turn off the TV and stop playing game boy.

We have got work to do. [ CHEERING ]

If everybody here decides they want to get involved in the campaign and they want to contribute $5, $10, get on the Internet.

I don't want to have to raise money in Hollywood all the time. I would rather raise it right here in Austin.

If all of you are -- if all of you will do that then I am absolutely confident we can make this happen and if you have any doubts, let me just end with a quick story.

When I was running for the U.S. senate, nobody gave me a chance. I was running against a guy who had spent $30 million in the race, I was running against another guy who had the support of all of the democratic machine in Illinois.

And yet we started campaigning, we started attracting some crowds, especially people who hadn't been involved in the process.

And the conventional wisdom, the pundits were that doesn't matter, he talks good and has good ideas and passed good laws, but the black guy named Barack Obama they won't vote for him. And the primary came and we won by 30 points.
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And then they said, well, he is not going to win the general election.

And it is true we didn't campaign much in some areas of Illinois and one area we needed to spend more time in was southern Illinois, and for those of you who don't know Illinois, southern Illinois is the south. It is closer to little rock or Memphis than Chicago. And people were especially skeptical that a black guy named Barack Obama could win in southern Illinois.

But the senior senator from Illinois Dick Durbin he was from down south and he says, come on, come with me, and he took me on a 39 day -- or 39 city five-day tour of southern Illinois. And we went to all kinds of little towns, we went to Hillsboro and Murphysborough and we went to every hill and borough in southern Illinois. And one of the places we went to was a place called CARO, Illinois and for those of you who don't know, CARO, Illinois back in the late sixties and early seventies was the site of some of the worst racial violence of anyplace in the nation, as bad as anything going on in Mississippi and Alabama, I mean there were cross burnings and active white citizens counsel and black people couldn't get jobs in this town and ultimately there was civil unrest and the national guard was called in.

And as we are going down to CARO, he starts telling me the first time he went down there was during this period, and that he was a young lawyer, that he had been called in by the lieutenant governor to see what could be done to improve the racial climate there.

So he goes down, takes the train, gets picked up at the depot, it is driven by a volunteer to where he is going to be staying.

And before he gets out of the car the volunteer says to him, “Listen young man whatever you do, don’t use the telephone in your motel room,” and he says why not, “well the members – the switchboard operator of the motel is a member of the white citizen council and will report on everything that you say.” So this made him a little nervous but he goes ahead and he has a job to do and he starts unpacking his bag and suddenly he hears a knock on the door and there is a big guy standing there and mean looking guy what the hell are you doing here? And that gentleman is really feeling nervous.

And so am I because he is telling me the story as we are pulling into CARO.

And so we pulling in and we drive around the county courthouse and telling me more of these stories and suddenly we come to a big parking lot, and there are about 300 people gathered there, and I don't know what they are doing there, but I notice they are all up in where they might have been active participants in what had been going on 30 years ago. But then as we get closer I notice actually about a third of the group is black, and about two-thirds is white, and as we get closer still, I notice they are all wearing these little blue buttons that say Obama for U.S. senate.

And we get off the van and they start handing us barbecue and they start taking pictures, and want autographs and Durbin and I look at each other and say we didn't say anything we knew what the other person was thinking. If you would have asked Dick Durbin 26 years ago when he first went down there 30 years later he would be coming back the son of a immigrant, father died when he was young, mother got cancer, got scholarships, got his way up and you told him he would be coming back as a senior of the United States senator and that he had with him a black guy, bore in Hawaii with a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas named Barack Obama, and that he was the nominee, nobody would have believed it.

But it was happening.

Which remind me of what Dr. King said two weeks after bloody Sunday.

After the marches had been turned back from the independence bridge, beaten, tear gassed, Billy clubbed, feeling discouraged, Dr. King gathered them together in a church and he said, remember, the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.

It bends toward justice but here is the thing, Austin it doesn't bend on its own, it bends because you bend it in the direction of justice.

It is because each of us put our hand on that arc and we say, we want you, we want universal healthcare for all Americans, yes, we can.

We want education for all Americans we will bend it in the direction of justice.

We want an end to this war and we want diplomacy and alliances and peace.

Yes, we can.

If all of us put our hand on that arc and bend it in the direction of justice, I am absolutely confident that we can create the kind of America that our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren deserve. Let's go, Austin let's get busy and let's get going.

Thank you.