Tuesday, February 05, 2019

What About President Elizabeth Warren? That Has A Nice Ring!

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Next Saturday, Elizabeth Warren will make it official: she's running. Big surprise? No. Good news? I think so. Of all the candidates and potential candidates, she has-- along with Bernie (and Marianne)-- the best ideas to put out for Americans to think about. The rest of them, frankly, are coming across as one form or another of careerist. The cases being made by Kamala, Beto, Biden, Gillibrand, Castro... are all about them. Elizabeth Warren is making a case about us.



So Saturday she announces in Lawrence, Massachusetts (at Everett Mills, the site of the Bread and Roses strike in 1912. Why there? That's where immigrant textile mill workers, led by the IWW, fought back against the "greedy mill owners who cut workers’ already meager salaries." The strike lasted 2 months and united workers of 40 different nationalities. IWW leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn went to Lawrence to help direct the strike, which resulted in congressional hearings forcing the mill owners to settle and giving workers in Lawrence and the rest of New England substantial raises.

The Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass, 1912


After Lawrence, she heads right up to Dover City Hall in New Hampshire for a 3 PM organizing event. Sunday morning she'll be at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, followed by a rally in Iowa City at the Iowa Memorial Union at the University of Iowa in the late afternoon. And then in the evening she'll be at the Mississippi Fairgrounds in Davenport for a more intimate roundtable discussion.

She doesn't stop there. Right after Iowa, she's off to events in South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and California.

There must be something even more sublimely wonderful about Elizabeth Warner than even her fans-- like myself-- have understood. The extreme right hates her even more than they hate Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton! Think about that! According to some right-winger at the Washington Times yesterday, refers to her as a "lightning rod," the "tip of the spear," a "strident liberal," someone with "cultural pedigrees," an "indefatigable backer of government power," a "class warrior from a privileged position" and "the symbol of everything they don’t like: a Harvard professor who is to the left of Barack Obama." At least he pointed out that she is"not a flip-flopper," a reference to Kirsten Gillibrand, who has virtually come to define the term.




BREAD AND ROSES
by John Denver

As we go marching, marching
In the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens
A thousand mill lofts grey
Are touched with all the radiance
That a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing
Bread and roses, bread and roses

As we go marching, marching
We battle too for men
For they are women's children
And we mother them again
Our lives shall not be sweated
From birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Give us bread, but give us roses

As we go marching, marching
We bring the greater days
For the rising of the women
Means the rising of the race
No more the drudge and idler
Ten that toil where one reposes
But the sharing of life's glories
Bread and roses, bread and roses



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3 Comments:

At 6:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

justify her endorsement of the opposite of Elizabeth Warren in 2016 please.

If she is all that great... or even mediocre in the beliefs she claims to have, she NEVER would have done that.

There is a "real" Elizabeth Warren somewhere. But it isn't the one you see... or she would NEVER have done THAT!!

Better than trump? possibly. Worse than obamanation? easy.

What could a president Warren do with a permanent mcturtle senate and an off-and-on Pelosi led house? not one damn thing. What would she WANT to do? you don't know. maybe $hillbillary does.

 
At 9:34 AM, Anonymous ap215 said...

*sigh*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xij179Ao3w

 
At 8:56 PM, Blogger Clif Brown said...

I'm 68 years old and one of the most remarkable things I've observed over this time is the evaporation of all that organized labor established including itself. So much blood was spilled and misery occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries to earn the things that unions won and within the past few decades it has been dismantled bit by bit, in front of everyone by Congress with essentially no resistance. Corporate America has established unquestioned control and moves from strength to strength.

I worked in a union before retirement. When we were out on the street during a lockout in 1998-9 I went about downtown Chicago interviewing random people, asking them if they knew that we were out (we were demonstrating nearby) and what they thought about unions in general. The overwhelming majority did not like unions and these were not members of the 1%.

It is miraculous to me that the right has been able to cast out unions with what seems to be the blessing of the little guy and the result is clear, more money goes to the top, the middle class is eroded, average wages have been stagnant for many years and "right-to-work" laws have spread. We the people have been had and have essentially stood by while it took place.

How can any sensible person believe that businesses should be free of government regulation when their reason for being is to make as much profit as possible with a history of doing so in all kinds of ways damaging to the public from Love Canal through Enron to the housing crash? Yet both parties (Republicans are worse) have given the regulatory agency top jobs to business hacks. This goes way back - remember Reagan appointing James Watt to the EPA decades ago? Elizabeth Warren speaks the truth when she says the system is rigged and she challenges the rich and powerful in hearings as is part of the function of government regulation. She has the education/background to question bigwigs effectively. I wish her well and I think AOC has come down from heaven.

 

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