Welcome once again to a $27-group / The Political Revolution open thread — a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, enjoy some inspiring quotes and good music, and (most importantly) spend time gazing at a picture or two of foresterbob’s cat Noble Fur.
Not thinking small tonight! Many of tonight’s quotes are quite long (although I’ll try to squeeze some short quotes in too).
Tonight’s first quote, for instance, runs a little more than 41 minutes:
That’s Elizabeth Warren’s full speech from Saturday, announcing that she’s going to run for president.
(If, in addition to Warren’s speech, you’d also like to hear the 10 minute speech which Joe Kennedy III made immediately before her speech, you can find a video of that here.)
If 41 minutes is longer than you have time to watch at the moment, here’s a shorter version which Elizabeth Warren e-mailed out yesterday:
A little over 100 years ago, the textile mills in Lawrence employed tens of thousands of people, including immigrants from more than 50 countries.
Business was booming. The guys at the top were doing great. But workers made so little money that families were forced to crowd together in dangerous tenements and live on beans and scraps of bread. Inside the mills, working conditions were horrible. Children were forced to operate dangerous equipment. Workers lost hands, arms, and legs in the gears of machines.
One out of every three adult mill workers died by the time they were 25.
But one day, textile workers in Lawrence – led by women – went on strike to demand fair wages, overtime pay, and the right to join a union.
It was a hard fight. They didn’t have much. Not even a common language. But they stuck together.
And they won. Those workers did more than improve their own lives. They changed America. Within weeks, more than a quarter of a million textile workers throughout New England got raises. Within months, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to pass a minimum wage law.
And today, there are no children working in factories. We have a national minimum wage. And worker safety laws. Workers get paid overtime, and we have a forty-hour work week.
The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America. It’s a story about power – our power – when we fight together.
Today, millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected.
And just like the women of Lawrence, we are ready to say enough is enough.
We are ready to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our children’s lives, and our grandchildren’s lives: The fight to build an America that works for everyone.
I am in that fight all the way.
~ ELizabeth Warren
Green New Deal
For far too long, ideas like a carbon tax or cap-and-trade were touted as the premier solutions to climate change.
While those things could be part of a solution, the Green New Deal resolution says they are inadequate as the whole answer.
The pipes in Flint weren’t a market failure, they were a social failure.
It was a failure to see the people in Flint as important as the WH. Those decisions were predicated on a legacy of racism and dehumanization of the poor.
The environmental issue of water is how that was expressed.
And part of what the Green New Deal says, at last, is that Flint wasn’t an accident.
The folks dying in West Virginia aren’t an accident.
The Bronx having one of the highest child asthma rates isn’t an accident.
It’s a structural failure to care, and to treat these communities fairly.
Finally, the reason we scope out with a resolution is because I am not here to say that only one member of Congress will solve a global crisis.
Think of the Green New Deal resolution as a “Request for Proposals.”
We’ve defined the scope and where we want to go. Now let’s assess and collaborate on projects.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
For those whose computers don’t reproduce embedded tweets well, what that one says is:
This is the reality of what my residents live with every single day. We have high rates of asthma, cancer, and experience chemical spills and unbearable odors. Today, I uplift the voices of my residents by supporting the Green New Deal.
~ Rashida Tlaib
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A Green New Deal is ambitious. It's bold. And I’m cosponsoring this resolution with representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey because it’s exactly the kind of action it will take to conquer the biggest threat of our lifetime.
~ Kirsten Gillibrand
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The U.S. is the most powerful economy on earth and we must lead the world in the fight against climate change. We can do that by passing the Green New Deal to save the planet and create millions of new jobs.
~ Bernie Sanders
If we want to live in a world with clean air and water, we have to take real action to combat climate change now. I'm proud to join representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey on a Green New Deal resolution to fight for our planet and our kids’ futures.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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For too long, we have been governed by lawmakers who are beholden to big oil and big coal. They have refused to act on climate change. So it’s on us to speak the truth, rooted in science fact, not science fiction.
Here’s the truth: climate change is real, and it is an existential threat to our country, our planet, and our future. With each passing day, the imminent threat of climate change grows -- and we see it in everything from more instances of extreme weather to rapidly melting glaciers.
According to a harrowing report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have a shrinking window to take drastic action to cut carbon emissions and make meaningful change to save our planet.
The Green New Deal is a bold plan to drastically shift our country to 100% clean and renewable energy -- all while guaranteeing jobs to American workers. We will repair our country’s crumbling infrastructure, upgrade buildings across the nation, and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Bold action takes bold leadership, and I’m grateful to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey for leading the charge on this critical resolution.
We do not fight this fight for our generation alone -- but for generations to come.
~ Kamala Harris
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Elizabeth Warren!
In celebration of Elizabeth Warren’s announcement this week that she’s running for president, here are a few more of her quotes that I saw this week and think are worth sharing:
When I asked the Pentagon last year if they tracked US fuel and bombs used in Saudi air-strikes that killed civilians in Yemen, they said no. This time, the Pentagon admitted there’s an entire database of that info and the Department of Defense has access to it.
We have data to determine if Saudi jets killed Yemeni civilians with our support. We need to face the ugly truth -- by continuing to enable Saudi Arabia, America is complicit in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. We must end our support for this war now.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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It’s long past time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. And when they return, we need to make sure they get the health care, GI benefits, and other support they've earned.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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I believe real democracy requires equal justice under law.
It’s not equal justice when African Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be sentenced.
No more.
~ Elizabeth Warren
We need real tax reform in this country.
My Ultra-Millionaire Tax would make the richest tippy-top 0.1% of Americans start doing their part for the country that helped make them rich.
~ Elizabeth Warren
We need to End Corruption Now in Washington. Let’s
- Close the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington
- End lobbying as we know it
- Ban foreign governments from hiring lobbyists in Washington
- Fix the Swiss cheese definition of “lobbyist"
~ Elizabeth Warren
A bank teller who takes a few 20s from the bank is looking at serious jail time. But the Wells Fargo CEO can cheat millions of Americans and walk away. That’s a rigged system -- and it needs to change.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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The Climate Crisis
This week, Trump made another polluted appointment to a position in his Cabinet. He appointed David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, to head the Department of the Interior. And we got proof, once again, that giant polluting corporations are happily installing their puppets into positions of power.
This has to stop. Climate change is the single greatest threat to our way of life, and we all know oil companies only care about their bottom line -- not about protecting the health of our children and grandchildren.
Look, we know that President Trump's going to nominate puppets of powerful special interests to lead our government's most important agencies. That's not a surprise. The question is whether there are enough senators on both sides of the aisle who have the courage to finally stop Trump from selling our air and water to the highest bidder.
We need to work together to stop our government from becoming one giant puppet show.
~ Jay Inslee
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Climate change is an existential disaster facing the entire world. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. A Green New Deal can save the planet and create millions of new jobs.
~ Bernie Sanders
Sooner or later, we’re going to have to go big on climate change. So let’s start thinking big.
~ Eugene Robinson
That’s from a recent op-ed Robinson wrote for the Washington Post, A Green New Deal Sounds Like Pie In the Sky, But We Need It. (Thank you to benny05 for spotting and sharing it.) It’s good to see the realization that climate change is now a climate crisis is breaking through even into mainstream media outlets.
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Democratic women of congress make the news!
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AOC
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All too often, our criminal justice system — from tickets to convictions — is treated as a game, where the one racks up the most “points” wins.
Paired with foolish criminalization of marijuana, poverty, etc, it wreaks chaos on people’s lives and stagnates communities for generations.
As a result, our system is “innocent until proven guilty” only for the rich and “guilty until proven innocent” for the poor.
To borrow from Zephyr Teachout, the RADICAL rule of law is the idea that in the same scenario, our courts would treat a billionaire the same as a Bronx teen.
t does not mean the treatment and presumption of guilt before a verdict. It does not mean we aim for the most punitive punishment.
It means that in the eyes of the law, we treat everyone the same.
That’s far from what our current system does. And that’s why it must change.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Speaking about what the Trump administration is doing to immigrants on our southern border, she said:
This is one of the most urgent moral issues and crises that we have in America right now. This is not a political issue. Children dying in detention centers should not be a partisan concern. It should be a universal concern for every American in the United States.
ICE operates with virtually no accountability, ripping apart families and holding our friends and neighbors indefinitely in inhumane detention centers scattered across the United States. We’re here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime.
I will not give one dollar to black-box detention facilities that think that some people in this country are deserving of constitutional protections and others are not.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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Small incremental policy solutions are not enough. They can be part of the solution, but they are not the solution unto itself.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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A Brand New Day
Time for a little music, perhaps? Here’s one of my favorite tv theme songs, Brand New Day.
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A couple of short quotes
At a time of huge income and wealth inequality, Americans should be outraged that profitable corporations are laying off workers while spending billions to boost their stock’s value to further enrich the wealthy few.
~ Chuck Schumer
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In a month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest-ever member of Congress, has changed America's discourse about billionaires and the common good, and introduced a historic plan that virtually every presidential candidate many years her senior supports.
If you're young and ready, don't walk.
Run.
~ Anand Giridharadas
A pair of Pramila Jayapal quotes!
Here’s a nice short one:
Everybody in, nobody out. Every single person in the United States will be eligible for coverage under the Medicare for All Act. Health care is a right, not something you need to “qualify” for.
~ Pramila Jayapal
And here’s a longer one, taken from an interview which Joan Walsh did with Pramila Jayapal for an article in a recent issue of The Nation:
I ask if she’s planning to endorse someone personally this time around. “I haven’t endorsed anybody, and there’s no presumption that I would endorse Bernie again. The ideas he ran on are important, but I’m also interested to see what the whole field looks like. I continue to believe that diverse candidates are really important. I’m very grateful to Bernie, and I have no regrets about my endorsement. But we are in a different moment, and I want to look at the whole field. Plus, I’ve been working with most of the people who are running!” She ticks off legislation that she’s collaborated on with Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeff Merkley, and Cory Booker; only the day before, her home-state governor, Jay Inslee, announced that he’s jumping into the race as well.
To Jayapal, that crowded field is an asset. “I think if we can hold ourselves in this place of multiple possibilities, where each person animates a slightly different audience, brings a different conversation to the table… Part of the problem is that the Democratic Party is always looking for a savior: ‘Let’s move to the person who is the most dynamic and the most charismatic and sign on with them now and be done!’ I’m like, ‘No! We have people! We have to allow that leadership to emerge.’ And it’s emerging!”
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And lastly for tonight, here are a few more quotes from the senator of one of the New England states. (He’s only their junior senator, but every week he says quite a number of good things about important issues so he might be someone for progressives to keep an eye on in the days ahead.)
What if, instead giving tax breaks to billionaires and massive corporations, we gave 40 million Americans a raise by making the federal minimum wage a living wage of $15 an hour?
While psychologists tell us that ages 0-4 are the most important years of human development, we have a dysfunctional childcare system which underpays staff and is too costly for working families. We need universal, publicly funded childcare.
How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change?
Millions of our people are working for starvation wages. Here is the simple truth. Nobody can raise a family or pay the rent on poverty wages of $8 or $9 an hour.
We are the wealthiest country in the world. We can do better. We can raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
When people tell us the only thing that we can get is incremental health care change, we will tell them “no thanks.” We’re thinking big and demanding fundamental change on this issue.
At a time when we see an unprecedented and coordinated attack against a woman’s right to choose, it is incredibly important that we fight to make sure that every woman in this country has the right to control her own body.
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