On Sunday August 25 democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren made a stop in Seattle. The event was originally planned to be held at the WAMU Theater (capacity 7000) but RSVPs indicated that venue was not going to be big enough so it was moved outdoors to the Seattle Center under the shadow of the Space Needle and adjacent to the Peace Fountain. The official count given by the Seattle Center was 15000 in attendance. I was in a lot of pain from back and knee injuries but as Mick Jagger sang long ago, wild horses wouldn’t keep me away (yes I changed the lyric a bit to fit my agenda). My nearly 26-year-old son and I grabbed a bus and headed downtown. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and the event was nearly an hour late getting started.
Elizabeth stood on a makeshift stage in front of a large American flag and started with praise for our governor Jay Inslee (who recently dropped his presidential bid) for bringing climate change front and center for many democratic candidates (even though the DNC refuses to hold a debate exclusively on climate change but I doubt all that money they take from the fossil fuel industry isn’t influencing that decision in the least). She spoke of her family, how she was the youngest and only girl of four kids and how her brothers are all veterans, one of whom served five tours in Viet Nam. Her father worked odd jobs but was always able to support the family until he had a massive heart attack when Elizabeth was in middle school (and by now the only child still at home). After that he was unable to work for a long time and that’s when she learned words like mortgage and foreclosure. So her mother took a minimum wage job at Sears so the family wouldn’t lose their home. She emphasized that in the seventies minimum wage was enough to sustain a family of three where now minimum wage won’t even support one person anywhere. This brought raucous cheers.
Warren went on to describe how she attended a college costing only $50 a semester and ended up becoming a teacher of students with special needs. She asked for a show of hands for anyone in the crowd who teaches students with special needs and a few hands including mine went up. She mentioned how it was hard for her to find work as a teacher fresh out of college and how she ended up working odd jobs until applying for law school. She found a law school costing only $450 a semester, graduated while pregnant, practiced law for awhile, then went back to teaching.
She then asked, why are American families struggling? Why is the middle class being squeezed out? Her answer was the way our government now operates. Our government currently works for big pharma but not for those needing prescriptions. They work for big oil companies who want to drill everywhere but not for the rest of us suffering from the effects of climate change. This is corruption and we need to call it what it is. Whatever issue brought you here today, it was brought to you by big money and we need big structural change. This again brought raucous cheers and scattered shouts of, Warren! Warren!
She continued speaking about climate change, saying it was brought on by twenty-five years of corruption in DC and how we need to attack the corruption head on. We need the biggest anti-corruption plan since Watergate. We need to end lobbying (more raucous cheers) and we need to lock the revolving door between Washington and Wall St. We also need to make sure Supreme Court justices follow basic rules of conduct and ethics and require anyone running for federal office to release their tax returns. The giant corporations have swallowed up the small ones and the medium ones and the ones previously considered large. This way they have the power. We need a president who will enforce the Anti-Trust Law and give more power to the workers, making it easier to join a union. She stressed that unions helped build the middle class and how it’s time for a wealth tax. She proposed that your first $50 million is free and clear. After that you pitch in two cents for every dollar after. If you worked hard for your wealth you got there by using workers educated in public schools and used goods transported on our public roads. If you made it big, pitch in so others also can make it big. With that two cents we can provide no cost child care to working parents and raise pay for all teachers. We can provide tuition free tuition to all public colleges and trade schools and increase Pell Grants for working families. Warren then stressed her plan to invest more in traditionally black colleges and forgive all student debt. Scattered chants of, student debt! student debt emanated. She continued with her support to end political gerrymandering and to roll back every racist voter suppression law and overturning Citizen’s United and if you value American freedom you should be able to marry whom you want to. The senator wrapped up by saying she had the opportunity to become a teacher, a professor and a United States senator and a candidate for president. Everyone deserves the same opportunity.
After her speech she took a few questions from attendees. The first question asked about rights of LGBT people. Warren responded by pointing out that trump is pushing a law making it legal for medical providers to refuse to treat gays and lesbians and that Trump’s plan was to pit group against group to divide and conquer (for those familiar with how Hitler came to power you’ll know he used the same tactic) so no one notices he’s stealing their money.
Someone asked about the border crisis, to which the senator pointed out that the crisis was largely caused by Trump cutting humanitarian aid to South American countries which gave rise to gang rule so people had no choice but to flee their country. She mentioned she went to the border before border officials figure out how to keep people like her out. She described conditions like an Amazon warehouse but filthy and crammed full of cages of people. There was cage after cage of little girls and cages after cages of little boys. There was even a cage for nursing mothers and she added that no great nation separates families or enforces an immigration policy that makes their plight worse. She suggested a pathway to citizenship, not just for dreamers but agriculture workers and students whose visas expired. Bring them out of the shadows. We will not remove children from parents or lock up asylum seekers.
She wrapped up by saying a country that elects Donald Trump is in serious trouble and we need to find the cause. She promised the first day she is sworn in she will put a moratorium on drilling and pipelines and spend on science and invest in research and development for clean energy with the requirement that those clean energy developments must be built in the US. She added that about 1.2 million new green jobs will ensue and that they will be union jobs. We will leave nobody behind. We will persist and change the course of American history. She finished with, dream big, fight hard and let’s win.
The one topic she didn’t raise was the fact that we send $10 million a day to Israel with no conditions. Israel is using that money to slaughter Palestinians. This subject is treated like the big elephant in the room everyone is afraid to talk about. Of all the democratic presidential contenders, I have only seen Bernie Sanders address this as a problem. This is why Sanders remains my first choice. But Elizabeth is a close second and if she ends up being the nominee I will surely vote for her. A Sanders/Warren ticket would be hard to beat. I will also add that this election is more than just beating Trump. This election is about restoring democracy. We have been becoming more and more of an oligarchy with the richest corporations and individuals having laws passed favoring increasing their profits while making the rest of us poorer and sicker. Elizabeth Warren would surely begin the trend back towards us being a democracy again.
– All photos property of Holly Homan, all rights reserved.
