How Elizabeth Warren Made Fighting Corruption A Feminist Rallying Cry

[BeyondGeography]

If winning the Democratic nomination requires wooing the party’s progressive wing and harnessing the power of activist women, then Senator Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that. At a rally in New York City’s Washington Square Park on Monday evening, just hours after she beat Senator Bernie Sanders for the coveted endorsement of the Working Families Party, Warren laid out a far-reaching anti-corruption plan that rooted her campaign in a long history of women reformers.

But the speech also served as a road map for her path to the nomination, positioning Warren as the only candidate in the race who can knit together the women voters and progressive activists who propelled the Democrats to midterm victories in 2018...The location of the speech was symbolic. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—in which 146 garment workers, most of them immigrant women, burned to death in 1911—would become a turning point in both the women’s and labor movements, accelerating women’s suffrage and leading to labor reforms that protected workers. It was also, as Warren pointed out in her speech, a wake-up call for young Frances Perkins, who witnessed the fire and became a crusader for worker’s rights before becoming the first woman to serve in a President’s cabinet, as Secretary of Labor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

...Merging the progressive critique of unchecked capitalism with the promise of the first woman president could be Warren’s path to victory in the primary. Sanders is “saying the same things as her, but from a man’s point of view,” says Adrian Bey, a 45-year old fashion designer who voted for Sanders in 2016. “You can get more flies with honey than with vinegar,” he says. “Not to say Bernie is vinegar, but she’s definitely honey.”

...Supporters say that this playbook—merging external activism with practical political maneuvering—makes Warren more likely to get things done. “That has been the Working Families Party theory of change,” says Nelini Stamp, the Director of Strategy and Partnership for the Working Families Party. “We’ve elected candidates to office and if they don’t do what our people have demanded, we hold them accountable. We’ve done the inside-outside game for a long time.”

On this night, even Warren’s podium was symbolic. It was built with wood salvaged from the Perkins homestead, crafted by a Warren grassroots donor who owns an all-woman woodworking company, and modeled after the soapboxes that organizers would speak from during the early labor movement. It was 46 inches tall, for the woman who wants to be the 46th President of the United States.

More at https://time.com/5678605/one-woman-and-millions-of-people-to-back-her-up-how-elizabeth-warren-made-fighting-corruption-a-feminist-rallying-cry/

[blm]

1. This: podium is wood salvaged from Frances Perkins' homestead.

The whole story is just.....wow.

She gets it. And more people are starting to see it.

[BeyondGeography]

2. I'm feeling it too

Last edited Tue Sep 17, 2019, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Poetry to go with the prose, all credible and deeply felt. What a candidate we have here.

Link to tweet

[blm]

3. This is dynamite stuff for general election

No wonder the Rump campaign doesn’t want to run against Warren.