Elizabeth Warren speaks, you listen
Greetings and salutations, dirty hippie commie liberal arugula pumpkin spice latte-sippers of America. Have you been going through E-Dub withdrawals because it been almost TWO WHOLE MONTHS since we showed you a video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren kicking all the asses, with her words?
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Of course you are, you need another hitsooooooobad, don't you? Yeah, we know you need it, you need it RIGHT NOW, so here ya go. Have your addicted selves some starbursts in your bathing suit areas, with Elizabeth Warren speeching those sweet, sweet Warren words like how she does, at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
Today's topic? Racial injustice in America and how that is messed up, yo, and also how Republicans' trickle-down economics has golden-showered African-Americans even worse than white folk, and BLACK LIVES MATTER, ohhhhhhh yeah. And of course it is delivered in her patented professor style, so simple that almost any idiot could understand what she is saying, and what she is saying is how we need to focus on racial justice, like, NOW, for America.
There is enough of the good stuff to keep you busily fapping in your bunk through your entire lunch hour. And because we are the world's greatest E-Dub dealer, we'll even give you a few little tastes for free, YOU'RE WELCOME.
I have often spoken about how America built a great middle class. Coming out of the Great Depression, from the 1930s to the late 1970s, as GDP went up, wages went up for most Americans. But there's a dark underbelly to that story. While median family income in America was growing - for both white and African-American families - African-American incomes were only a fraction of white incomes. In the mid-1950s, the median income for African-American families was just a little more than half the income of white families.
And the problem went beyond just income. Look at housing: For most middle class families in America, buying a home is the number one way to build wealth. It's a retirement plan-pay off the house and live on Social Security. An investment option-mortgage the house to start a business. It's a way to help the kids get through college, a safety net if someone gets really sick, and, if all goes well and Grandma and Grandpa can hang on to the house until they die, it's a way to give the next generation a boost-extra money to move the family up the ladder.
For much of the 20th Century, that's how it worked for generation after generation of white Americans - but not black Americans. Entire legal structures were created to prevent African Americans from building economic security through home ownership. Legally-enforced segregation. Restrictive deeds. Redlining. Land contracts. Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it.
State-sanctioned discrimination wasn't limited to homeownership. The government enforced discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in schools, discrimination in credit-it was a long and spiteful list.
Professor Warren clearly did her Ta-Nehisi Coates assigned reading! Would you like some more? Of course you would like some more.
Fifty years later, violence against African Americans has not disappeared. Consider law enforcement. The vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect their communities. They are part of an honorable profession that takes risks every day to keep us safe. We know that. But we also know - and say - the names of those whose lives have been treated with callous indifference. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. We've seen sickening videos of unarmed, black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air - their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them. Peaceful, unarmed protestors have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets. And it's not just about law enforcement either. Just look to the terrorism this summer at Emanuel AME Church. We must be honest: Fifty years after John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, violence against African Americans has not disappeared.
OK, junkies, just one more hit:
We have made important strides forward. But we are not done yet. And now, it is our time.
I speak today with the full knowledge that I have not personally experienced and can never truly understand the fear, the oppression, and the pain that confronts African Americans every day. But none of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets.
Listen to the brave, powerful voices of today's new generation of civil rights leaders. Incredible voices. Listen to them say: "If I die in police custody, know that I did not commit suicide." Watch them march through the streets, "hands up don't shoot" - not to incite a riot, but to fight for their lives. To fight for their lives.
This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.
You'll want to watch the whole thing, probably again and again and again some more. And then you might want to buy yourself this So Sexxxy Elizabeth Warren T-shirt, for your body. However you wish to use it.
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Sigh. Carly's brain is technically too small to harvest.
A day later, and no more Liz Warren Facts? I am disappoint. :-(