“We Are Here to Say, ‘Enough Is Enough'”: Elizabeth Warren Formally Launches Bid for President

“Our fight is for big structural change.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks in Lawrence, Massachusetts, SaturdayScreenshot of Facebook Live video

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) formally announced her run for president on Saturday at a rally in the former mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts—the setting for one of the country’s most famous labor strikes a little more than a century ago.

Warren, who first told supporters she was forming an exploratory committee back in December, shared the story of the women textile workers at Everett Mill who shut down the looms in 1912 and walked out to protest dangerous conditions and win better wages and overtime pay. “These workers led by women didn’t have much…Nevertheless, they persisted,” she said to big applause.

“Today millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that’s been rigged, rigged by the wealthy and well connected,” she continued. “Like the women of Lawrence, we are here to say ‘enough is enough.’ We are here to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our children’s lives, and our grandchildren’s lives just as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago.”

She described her childhood in a middle-class family in Oklahoma and her rise from the daughter of a janitor to a law professor and a US senator, saying that over the years those opportunities had become harder to come by for many Americans.

“The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken,” she said. “He is just the latest and most extreme symptom of what’s gone wrong in America, a product of a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else.”

“So once he’s gone, we can’t pretend that none of this ever happened; it won’t be enough just to undo the terrible acts of this administration…Our fight is for big structural change,” she continued. “And that is why I stand here today to declare that I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.”

Warren was introduced by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass). The congressman, a former student of Warren’s, offered a strong endorsement: “There’s one candidate in this race who has dedicated her entire life to this cause. Before anyone in power recognized there was something wrong, there was Elizabeth.”

Watch the full speech here:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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