To kick-off an amazing three days of product innovations, customer stories, inspiring speakers and more at Connections, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Scott McCorkle took the stage for his opening keynote. But before diving into his remarks on the state of the digital marketing landscape, he took the time to reflect on one of our most important core values — equality.

“People will ask us, ‘why equality?’ and the answer is opportunity. It’s having the opportunity for every Salesforce employee to do their best work and standing against discrimination of any kind,” said McCorkle.

McCorkle was then joined onstage by Congressman John Lewis — an individual who “embodies the spirit of equality and the fight for equality” and has been called the “conscience of the U.S. Congress.” A leader of the civil rights movement who fought alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and organized the March on Washington as well as the March on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Congressman John Lewis won his seat as the representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district in 1986, and he has been reelected 14 times since. We were so lucky to have Congressman Lewis join us in Atlanta for a sitdown with McCorkle. Here are a few of his inspiring quotes, and check out the full interview in the video below.

“So when people tell me nothing has changed, I tell them to walk in my shoes and see how much has changed.”

“I heard the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., growing up only 50 miles from Montgomery. So the words of Rosa Parks and the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired me...listening to this man, it was like ‘John Robert Lewis, you too can do something! You can make a contribution!’”

“It was almost a calling, I felt like I had an obligation, a mission, and a mandate. And I still believe today that when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just; when you see that people are being discriminated against because of their race, their color, or their nationality, or because of sexual orientations, we have a moral obligation to speak up, speak out and do something about it.”

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