Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is highlighting his poverty-stricken childhood as he enters the Democratic presidential race with an appeal to voters feeling the brunt of economic inequality. Patrick says he’s running for the “people who feel left out and left back.”

In a video announcing his candidacy Thursday, Patrick says he grew up on Chicago’s South Side, was raised in a two-bedroom tenement house and went to “a big, broken, overcrowded public school.” Patrick says his family was on welfare.

As the first in his family to go to college and law school, Patrick says he’s had a chance to live his “American Dream.” Patrick says over the years the “path to that dream” has closed off for others and the government and the economy are “letting us down.”

Patrick says the other candidates in the Democratic field bring “a richness of ideas” and “depth of character.” But he says the 2020 election is about “the character of the country.”

Patrick says the 2020 race is about “more than removing an unpopular and divisive leader.”

(Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)