#WCW Feminist Profile: Senator Elizabeth Warren

Senator Elizabeth Warren was born on June 22, 1949 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Pauline and Donald Herring. Before her political career, Senator Warren was in academia; she was a professor of law at University of Texas School of Law, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and most recently at Harvard Law School. She specialized in bankruptcy law and commercial law and was considered one of the top minds, and one of most cited law professors, of the field in these areas.

Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, Senator Warren served as the chair for the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She was a renowned consumer protection advocate and forged the path for the establishment and implementation of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. She served as Assistant to the President and Special Adviser to the Secretary of Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Obama. 

In 2012 she ran for a spot in the Massachusetts Senate against republican incumbent Scott Brown and won, becoming the FIRST FEMALE elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. While campaigning for the Senate election, Sen. Warren replied to the charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is "class warfare" by stating:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along”.

President Obama later echoed her speech during a 2012 election campaign speech. Sen. Warren was assigned a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, and immediately started to put on the pressure. At her first Committee hearing in 2013, she pressed banking regulators as to why they hadn’t taken any Wall Street bank to trial, citing that she was worried that big banks were being treated more leniently than others, which shouldn't happen. A video of her questioning the regulators went viral through social media. 

At another banking hearing in March of that year, Sen. Warren questioned Treasury Department officials as to why criminal charges for money laundering were not brought up against HSBC. She showed her adamant disapproval, stating that "If you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to go to jail... But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night." She later sent letters to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve questioning their decisions to settle instead of go to trial. 

Senator Warren was appointed to be the first-ever Strategic Adviser of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, a position that was created just for her. In July 2015, she, amongst others (Sen. John McCain, Maria Cantwell, and Angus King) introduced the new Glass–Steagall Act, a revamped version of the Banking Act of 1933, which intended to reduce the risk for American taxpayers in the financial system and decrease the likelihood of future financial crises. She stated that “despite the progress we've made since 2008, the biggest banks continue to threaten our economy”.

In 2016, she was appointed a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, fueling [hopeful] rumors that she might be up for a bid in the 2020 Presidential Election. (I, for one, would be completely ECSTATIC is she ran. I’d probably even join her campaign!) 

Despite making considerable splashes along the way with her no-nonsense, no-free-tickets attitude towards big corporations and Wall Street, she made another [even bigger] splash when she gave rise to the current Feminist Battle Cry last year during a Senate session in the debate over Jeff Session’s nomination for Attorney General. Sen. Warren read a letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1986 to Sen. Strom Thurmond regarding Jeff Session’s Nomination as a Judge at that time. The letter stated:

“Civil rights leaders, including my husband [Dr. Martin Luther King] and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. SESSIONS has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Mr. SESSIONS' conduct as U.S. Attorney, from his politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, indicates that he lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.”

— Coretta Scott King

As Sen. Warren read the letter allowed, she was interrupted, talked over, and badgered by Presiding Senate Chair Steve Daines of Montana who reminded her of Senate Rule XIX which prohibits ascribing "to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator". 

“Senator Warren stated that she had only said that former Senator Kennedy had called Senator Sessions a disgrace, and she asked whether reading King's letter that had been admitted into the Senate Record in 1986 was a violation of Senate Rules. Presiding Senate Chair Daines again quoted Rule XIX. Senator Warren asked to continue reading Mrs. King's letter, and Presiding Senate Chair Daines allowed her to do so.

“While Senator Warren continued reading the letter, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky interrupted, saying, "The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama, as warned by the chair." Senator Warren said she was "surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate", and requested to continue. Senator Daines asked whether there was objection. Senator McConnell objected, and Senator Daines called for a vote saying, "The senator will take her seat", preventing Senator Warren from continuing. The Senate voted to sustain McConnell's objection along party lines, 49–43, silencing Warren for the duration of the Sessions confirmation hearings. Thirty hours remained in the hearings, and Democrats objected to Senator Warren's silencing. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon subsequently read the letter from Coretta Scott King without objection. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey pointed out that the letter was already in the 1986 Congressional Record.”

On February 7, 2017, Republicans in the Senate voted that Sen. Warren had violated Senate Rule 19 during the debate, claiming that she impugned his character when she quoted statements made about Sessions by Coretta Scott King and Sen. Ted Kennedy. Following the Senate ruling to silence Senator Warren, Senator McConnell said on the Senate floor:

“Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” 

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Amy Wang, from the Washington Post, wrote “If the Republican senators had intended to minimize Warren's message, the decision backfired—severely. Her supporters immediately seized upon McConnell's line—giving Warren a far bigger megaphone than if they had simply let her continue speaking in what had been a mostly empty chamber, some pointed out.”
 

"Nevertheless, she persisted" was an instant battle cry for all nasty women in the resistance, to continue our fight for equality and justice and fair treatment. I think it rang so true to women because the scene of watching an incredibly brilliant, tried-and-true female leader, an expert in her field, be condescendingly shut down, interrupted and talked over, and berated by one of the many males in the room was all to familiar. And then again when she was voted to be silenced, a male colleague read the letter and finished it without continuous uproar that had been directed at her. How many of us have been in the same situation. We have been talked down to, mansplained to, talked over, silenced, belittled, ignored, after countless times of proving ourselves worthy of our (1/8 of a) seat at the table- a table which claims to be equal, inclusive, and gender-blind.

Senator Elizabeth Warren taught me that 'you can't win what you don't fight for'. How true that is, in every aspect of our lives, but especially as it pertains to social justice. When I graduated with my degree in psychology, I decorated my graduation cap with this very phrase, because it summed up my entire educational and life experience up to that point: NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED. May we all continue to persist and resist!  Sometimes the fight gets too hard, too dirty, too unfair, but we must press on. 

We cannot win what we do not fight for.