Warren just launched her campaign by declaring war on the billionaire class in epic speech

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) kicked off her 2020 campaign to win the Democratic nomination for president with a rally at a symbolic site in the state she represents in Congress.

Warren addressed an enthusiastic crowd in sub-freezing temperatures outside of Everett Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts where women and immigrants led a famous strike against exploitative factory owners back in 1912 at the dawn of the organized labor movement.

The location was the perfect backdrop for the senator’s message attacking the tiny number of billionaire oligarchs who “have been waging class warfare against hardworking people for decades,” as Warren told the crowd.

The former Harvard professor who helped then President Obama set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help fight the abuses of major banking and credit institutions — a government agency subsequently undermined and defanged by the Trump administration’s corrupt cronies — railed against a political establishment “bought off” and “bullied” by corporate donors and vowed to fight for a working and middle class society that has lately been squeezed so tightly that it “can barely breathe.”

Warren also reserved some of her righteous anger for the current occupant of the office she wants to occupy.

“The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken, he is just the latest and most extreme symptom of what’s gone wrong in America,” Warren said about President Trump. “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.”

With the field of candidates entering the Democratic primaries growing ever larger, Senator Warren challenged her party rivals to match her commitment to refuse to accept money from lobbyists and corporate-funded political action committees or allow Super-PACs to work on their behalf.

Warren also revealed that she had gained the backing of fellow Massachusetts politicians, including Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA), Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu, and Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-MA), who introduced her to the assembled crowd with a rousing endorsement that praised the senator for her long advocacy for issues that have only lately gotten mainstream attention.

“Before there was an editorial every day lamenting economic inequity, Elizabeth Warren knew that stock prices don’t tell a full account of our country’s economic story,” Kennedy reminded the crowd. “Medical bankruptcies and foreclosures and paychecks are part of that story, too.”

Senator Markey endorsed his colleague in glowing terms saying “For six years, (Warren) has been fighting in the trenches for what is right,” and calling Warren a “one woman protection detail fighting to ensure that Wall Street reforms stay on the books.”

Warren has already unveiled some key proposals as part of her campaign promises, including a collection of proposals designed to prevent the kind of pervasive corruption that has run rampant under the Trump administration — a phenomenon the senator has called “a cancer on our democracy.”

Her plans to help fight structural economic inequality include a proposal for a 2% tax on Americans with assets over $50 million and 3% for individuals with a net worth of over a billion dollars. She also intends to continue her fight against corporate control of the economy, vowing to “break up monopolies when they choke off competition” and “take on Wall Street banks so that the big banks can never again threaten the security of our economy.”

“And when giant corporations — and their leaders — cheat their customers, stomp out their competitors, and rob their workers,” Warren said, “let’s prosecute ’em.”

As one of the smartest and most credible progressives joining the Democratic presidential race so far, Warren is a candidate that everyone seeking substantial change in favor of the majority of citizens and looking for intelligent and compassionate presidential management of the executive branch of government should consider throwing their support behind.

You can watch a clip of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign kick off speech in the video included below.

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Original reporting by MJ Lee and Gregory Krieg at CNN.

Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.