Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren brought her campaign to Chicago this weekend, focusing on the corruptive influence of money in a town hall meeting downtown Friday then delivering a fiery speech that evoked her Christian faith at a Bronzeville church on Saturday.
“I could not come to a church like this, I could not come to a house of God, without speaking about my faith,” the senator from Massachusetts said after her 20-minute speech before a mostly African American crowd at the Apostolic Faith Church. “My faith animates all that I do. I truly do believe in the worth of every human being.”
Standing in the church’s pulpit, Warren clutched a Bible, read Scriptures and told stories about what she learned from being a Sunday school teacher to fifth graders. She leaned on a verse from Matthew where God commands followers to give to the “least,” and her remarks drew applause and shouts of praise from the crowd.
Warren said that her interpretation of the story is that God is present in every person and that religion directs people to feed the hungry, bring water to the thirsty and visit the imprisoned. As a result of that religious calling, if elected, she would implement policies that would specifically address lingering inequities in the black community.
“We can level the playing field and put $50 billion into our historically black colleges,” she said. “And we can cancel student loan debt. We can begin to close the black-white wealth gap. I have a plan to fund black entrepreneurs — let’s close the entrepreneurship gap. I have a plan to counter the effects of redlining.”
Warren was one of three Democratic presidential hopefuls who appeared at the church Saturday as part of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s annual convention. She has re-emerged as a top-tier contender for the 2020 nomination and gave a confident performance in the first Democratic debate on Wednesday.
Her candidacy and platform represents the increasing progressive leftward movement of the Democratic Party, an outgrowth of current rival Bernie Sanders’ 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton.
Warren’s proposals include free college tuition and child care. Her plan would be financed by a wealth tax on what she said would be the top earning 75,000 families in the country who “represent the top one-tenth of 1%.”
Also appearing at Saturday’s event were Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who each talked about their own platforms and motivation for running.
The candidates’ appearance on the South Side comes as all of the rivals are battling for the attention and support of black voters. There are three African American candidates in the crowded and diverse field, but by Saturday none of them had appeared at the Rainbow/PUSH convention. Black voters are expected to account for about 20 percent of the Democratic Party’s electorate nationwide.
Klobuchar reminded the audience of her modest beginnings as the daughter of two working parents, her time as a law student at the University of Chicago and used some of her time to criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of race and foreign affairs.
“We have a president right now who refuses to acknowledge racism in this country, who said after Charlottesville there are two sides,” she said. “But we know there is only one side when the Ku Klux Klan is on the other side. That is the American side.”
Gabbard, a veteran and now a major in the Army National Guard, said she would “bring a soldier’s heart to the White House, bringing these values of service above self, the principles of respect and honor, integrity and courage.”
“This is why I’m running for president, to end this insanity, to end these wasteful regime change wars,” she said.
After her speech Saturday, Warren told reporters that she supports the national conversation on reparations to descendants of enslaved African Americans.
On Friday, Warren told a large crowd at the Auditorium Theatre at Roosevelt University that big money has too much power in government.
“Whatever issue brought you here today — I guarantee if there is a decision to be made in Washington, it has been touched by money, it has been moved, shaped and accepted by people with money,” she said.
Providing an introduction to a large audience in an hourlong town hall setting with the promise of post-session selfies, Warren recounted the travails of a childhood in Oklahoma that formed many of her ideals, including a recollection of how a minimum wage could sustain a family of three.
“Today, the question asked in Washington is where do we set the minimum wage that will maximize the profits of giant multinational corporations? I don’t want a government that works for giant multinational corporations. I want a government that works for our families,” she said.
Warren contended power has become too concentrated among large giant corporations.
“These giant corporations, they just run everything. They call the shots in Washington. They roll over their own employees. They roll over their customers. They roll over the communities they’re located in,” she said. “We need more power in the hands of workers. Unions built America’s middle class.”
Warren said her campaign is about the need for “big, structural change” including the need to change Washington “by hitting corruption head-on.”
“The good news is, I have the biggest anti–corruption plan since Watergate. The bad news is, we need the biggest anti–corruption plan since Watergate,” she said.
Ticking off such items as a need to “end lobbying as we know it” and curb a “revolving door” between Wall Street and Washington, Warren, appearing alone onstage in front of a large American flag, said to the audience, “I could do these all night long. Just do corruption.”
While she regularly criticized Trump, she didn’t mention any of her rivals for the nomination. She also didn’t mention her health care “Medicare for All” plan that would do away with private insurance.
Warren, a senator since 2013, previously served as special adviser for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Barack Obama administration after Republicans opposed her nomination as director. She had proposed creation of the agency as a Harvard Law School professor years earlier.
Her Friday appearance came hours after rival contender, former Vice President Joe Biden, came to Chicago to attend the Rainbow/PUSH conference.
Earlier Friday, Democratic Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia joined with Warren in sending a letter to JP Morgan Chase CEO and President Jamie Dimon asking about reports that Chase would reintroduce forced arbitration clauses in its credit card contracts.
Garcia, who backed Sanders’ bid for the White House four years ago, and Warren said forced arbitration would “make it more difficult for customers to hold banks accountable for misconduct.”
“Instead of going to court, wronged consumers who have signed contracts with forced arbitration clauses must use private arbitration forums, which do not have the same protections as courts and whose proceedings are often secret. As a result, corporations win the overwhelming majority of the cases, and they are able to hide their misconduct from the public,” a statement from Garcia’s office said.
Chase began informing customers of the arbitration policy earlier this month. Customers who don’t want to be bound to arbitration were told they must opt out by informing Chase by mail by Aug. 7.
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