Tony Hoffmann, Massachusetts US Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren and Jonathan Geballe at Manhattan Fundraiser
Tony Hoffmann, Celia Wu and I attended a fundraiser for Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren last night in SoHo. Several hundred neighborhood supporters gathered, and Warren walked through the milling crowd, shaking hands and thanking donors. That gave me the chance to greet her and announce that our team of New York election attorneys (via the New York Democratic Lawyers Council) would be coordinating with her lawyers to protect the vote in MA on election day. She was thrilled, and grateful.
Professor Warren then took the microphone and gave a vigorous, engaging and powerful speech. True to her professor training she opened with a brief history on how in the 1930s our country knitted together great strength and solidity by enforcing a somewhat level playing field, from workers to financial institutions. But Wall St was able to undermine the strong regulatory restrictions in the 1980s and things began to pull apart. Warren’s driving effort is to return to that pre-1980s equilibrium. She responds to the ugly personal attacks of opponent Sen. Brown campaign by simply reciting his pro-corporation, pro-oil, anti-middle class voting record. The crowd went silent when Warren closed by reminding us that we will be remembered for what happens in this election, and the direction we set for the next generation. And then erupted into applause and cheers. Warren is the real thing; a genuine battler for consumer rights and for making Wall Street live by the same rules as the rest of us.
VID has asked you for contributions to our bus campaign for Obama in Pennsylvania and for other causes … but if you have a few extra dollars a good place to send them is to Warren. Her voice is our voice, and we need her on the floor of the SenateYou can get to her campaign at http://elizabethwarren.com/
Jonathan
Other Reading: New York Magazine, Sept. 20, 2012