SOUNDTRACK: TEGAN AND SARA-“Proud” (1999).
Each chapter in this book is headed by a quote from a different song. I chose this Tegan and Sara song because it sounds so remarkably different from their current stuff (things do change in 20 years, how about that).
This song sounds a lot like it was made by Ani Difranco (early in her career). It opens with a shuffling acoustic guitar. A chunky melody with scratching between chords. Then an interesting and off-kilter drum beat kicks in.
The singer (I never know which one is singing) has a kind of snarling power to her voice
Freedom’s rough
So we take our stand and fight for tomorrow
Finally we got something something we can
Bring down the house with
The second verse gets much bigger with a fat bass
The middle section has a super catchy repeating of “no no no” in a kind of scatting style and then soaring vocals.
The song quietens down again for the verses until the bass comes back for the raucous ending.
The quote that the book uses is
Freedom and blood
I make my mark and fight for tomorrow
Sounds like Elizabeth Warren to me.
[READ: November 4, 2020] Elizabeth Warren
This is one of four books in the Queens of Resistance series. The series celebrates a different woman fighting oppression and making waves in the United States government. [The other books are about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters].
The books are written by Brenda Jones who was communications director for Rep. John Lewis, and Krishan Trotman, an editor at Hachette who specializes in multicultural voices and social justice.
This series is aimed at younger readers, young women mostly, and is meant to be an inspirational account of women who are fighting for justice throughout their lives and especially during the present administration.
This book acts as a biography as well as an up to the minute account (as of May 2020) of what this powerful women is doing.
I wanted Elizabeth Warren to be President. She was my first choice (with Kamala Harris being a very close second). So this book was like candy to me. I knew a lot about Warren, but I really didn’t know much about her backstory. This book fills all that in.
It’s written in a kind of conversational style that I found, at times, very disruptive. The narrator throws in the direct address “sis” a lot which is really distracting because it is not done very often and kind of breaks the flow. I gather it’s meant to be something of a spoken text (technically the book is a “letter”), in which these interjections would work, but it’s just odd in writing. I have no problem with the other outbursts *Round of applause* *snap Snap double snap*, because they are set apart with asterisks. But if that’s the only gripe you have about a book, the book must be pretty good.
The tone (sis aside) is really wonderful. It’s written for people who may not fully understand the workings of politics, but not written as if you’d never heard of any of these ideas. Each chapter opens with a quote from a song.
Warren’s biography begins with her mother imagining that “Betsy” would have the same kind of life that she did: a husband who worked and children to fill the house. It was very 1950s). But Betsy was very smart. She excelled in school and had a teacher who encouraged her do aim bigger, to “do something.”
Elizabeth Warren has been fighting against big banking (her promotional mug says “filled with the tears of billionaires”) for decades. I didn’t know that she grew up in a state of financial uncertainty. Her father was the breadwinner. But after he had a heart attack and could no longer work (his company gave away his job because they thought he was going to die!), her mother had to get a job. Her mother hated this idea–she wanted to be a stay at home mom. But it was the only way they could make any money. She had a minimum wage job and was able to support a family of six and a mortgage–times were certainly different in the 1950s.
That’s why Warren is so familiar with financial troubles. As of 2017, 40 percent of mothers were the sole or primary breadwinners in their families.
But in order to do anything she needed to go to college. Her mother was appalled that she would want to do that–what a waste of money. But if anyone was made for college, it was Elizabeth.
But first she stumbled–she got married and gave up on her education for a time. ugh. This, of course made her mother very happy.
But she did go back to school after a while and she became a teacher. But she was fired once they found out she was pregnant (a law has since changed that terrible practice). However, her husband wanted a traditional wife. And Elizabeth wanted the world. So they divorced. She became a single parent.
She desperately relied on the help of her Aunt Bee–who stayed with them for sixteen years to help raise her children.
Elizabeth knows about struggling.
In 1980, she married anagain, this time to Bruce Mann, the man who has stood by her all these years.
In 1981, she and some classmates did a study on bankruptcy in America. They believed, as conventional wisdom had it, that people who filed for bankruptcy were lazy do-nothings. But their study found this to be totally untrue. Most of the people who filed for bankruptcy were hardworking people who had a tragedy befall them. This hit home when one of her brothers, a hard working man, lost his job due to the international oil crisis. His business fell apart through no fault of his own.
Warren’s vision for America–the laws she wants to upgrade and put in place, are a lot like Franklin Roosevelt’s’ FDA program. Put Americans to work for the country! During Warren’s childhood, the federal government grew to be the largest employer in the entire United States and created more democratic reforms than at any other time in American history.
These changes altered American life and grew much of the American middle class as a force to be reckoned with, who expected the kind of social mobility to better neighborhoods, more elite schools, entrance to higher paying jobs and a way of life that Millennials would kill for today.
But it couldn’t last forever, By the etime Elizabeth Warren as investigating bankruptcy, President Ronald Reagan was in office and championing a rollback of the social programs and regulations that had helped the middle class more than those at the top. From the Reagan era on, America was dragged back to an environment where corporations dominated the landscape without regard for the needs of the people.
Reagan was such a villain…how did so many people fall for him? [insert trump and Bush for Reagan].
Eventually Waren started teaching law at Harvard and she was hugely popular. She also started writing books and became a sought after speaker. he speciality was economic law.
So she worked on a bankruptcy law commission created by Bill Clinton. Decades later when the economy crashed, because of deregulation–the book does avery good job of explaining how the housing crisis happened–2008 called for more oversight intro corporate malfeasance.
And Warren was there. She headed the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the Troubled asset Relief Program.
She made a lot of political fiends and then became the first female senator from Massachusetts. She had never intended to go into politics but it was the only way she could ensure that her ideas were presented as she wanted them.
Then it was time for her to work tirelessly for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She was tough and direct and unafraid of trumps bullying
trump: For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning at least you know I will be there awake to answer the call
Warren: Is that what keeps you up at night, thinking of new and interesting ways to call women fat or ugly or sluts.
During trumps time she worked tirelessly. And in the face of the horrible Republican senate– nevertheless she persisted. She attacked the nomination of Besty DeVos, she attacked the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. And while she wasn’t able to stop those appointments from happening she at least shone a light on the hypocrisy.
The last section is all about her run from President. The fact that his book came out in May of 2020 means the book doesn’t know that she did not get very far. But it does include some of her most vicious takedowns during the debate. And a whole section on her dog.
It also shows how she would wait after her events to meet with everyone who wanted to me her–she took over 60,000 selfies with fans. Unlike trump who left seniors abandoned n a frozen airport.
The chapter outlines her vision in great detail and makes me even sadder that she isn’t President. Her ideas are well thought out, accountable and good for everyone–even the people who think they need to vote for people who don’t give a shit about them
Well, at least she can help out Biden. (please, please please).
Leave a Reply