Senator Elizabeth Warren, the 69-year-old Massachusetts Democrat, officially launched her campaign for president at a rally today in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of New England’s poorest and most heavily Latino communities.
“I am a candidate for president of the United States of America,” she told the cheering crowd on a blustery day where the wind chill hit 19 degrees.
Warren struck a populist note in her speech, highlighting her humble origins as the daughter of a janitor, and lashed out at a ‘rigged’ system that favors big banks and the elite.
She proposed an ‘ultra millionaires tax’ on the super wealthy and twice praised the Green New Deal, an ambitious environmental, economic and social master-plan rolled out this week by freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Warren also lashed out at President Trump, saying: “The rich and the powerful use fear to divide us. We’re done with that. Bigotry has no place in the Oval Office.”
The former law school professor began her speech with a lecture on the history of the rally’s location, Everett Mill, where the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912 organized a strike of female workers whose pay was cut corresponding to a new law shortening the work week of women.
Warren praised the mostly immigrant women for winning a pay raise and inspiring new worker protection legislation.
“They stuck together and they won,” Warren said.
She added that the history lesson was a “story about our power when we fight together” and vowed that the upcoming election would be “the fight of our lives.”
Warren concluded her speech to the walk-off song Respect, by Aretha Franklin.
Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a Massachusetts Democrat and grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, introduced Warren at the rally and endorsed her run.
Warren enters a crowded field for the nomination, including Sen. Corey Booker, Sen. Kamila Harris, and Secretary Julian Castro.
This past Wednesday, Warren repeatedly apologized for claiming on a 1986 bar registration form to be ‘American Indian’.
Warren’s prior publication of DNA test results revealed her share of Native American heritage to be little as 1/1,024.
In a statement, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, reacted to Warren’s announcement with disdain.
“Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected,” Parscale said in a statement.