Sen. Warren's speech at the May 22, 2014 'The New Populism' conference in DC. Hat Tip to Truth-out.org
Below the youtube link is my transcription of her speech. Please forgive any errors of transcription, typos, and paragraphing.
The game IS rigged. The rich and powerful have lobbyists. Lobbyists, and lawyers, and plenty of friends in Congress. Everyone else not so much. Now we can whine about it, we can whimper about it, or we can fight back. Me, I've decided to fight back.
<over applause>You bet.
This is a fight over economics, over privilege, over power. But deep down this is a fight over values. Conservatives and their powerful friends will continue to be guided by their age-old principle: I've got mine, the rest of you are on your own.
But we are guided by principle too. It's a simple idea. We all do better when we work together and invest in the future. We KNOW that the economy grows when hard-working families have the opportunity to improve their lives. We KNOW that country gets stronger when we invest in helping people succeed. We KNOW that lives improve when we care for our neighbors, and help build a future, not just for some of our kids, but for all our kids.
These are Progressive values. These are America's values. These values play out every day. These values are what we're willing to fight for.
So, let's go over the list one more time <points finger at audience> and I want to hear a good strong Amen! out there.
We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it.
We believe no one should work full time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.
We believe that people should retire with dignity, and that means strengthening social security. And we're ready to fight for it.
We believe that a kid should have a chance to go to college without getting crushed by debt, and we're willing to fight for it.
Oh, we believe that workers have a right to come together, to bargain together, and to rebuild America's middle class, and we're willing to fight for it.
We believe -- and I can't believe I have to be saying this in 2014 -- we believe in equal pay for equal work and we're willing to fight for it.
And we believe that equal means equal and that is true in the workplace, in marriage, and in all of our families, and we are willing to fight for it.
This is how I see it. We, we the People, decide the future of this country. These are our shared values, and these are the values we are willing to fight for. This is our moment in history. We are called on to determine the future of this country. And if we stand by and let it slide away, then shame on us.
But if we get up and we fight for what we believe in, we will head this country in the right direction for ourselves, for our children, and for our grandchildren.
I hope you're ready to fight.
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As a performance, first the applause. Not sure how big the crowd was; if we heard the crowd suppression mike feed instead of a floor mike: the applause lines didn't seem particularly overwhelming on the sound track. However the biggest applause getters were the right of labor and the right of equal pay.
In my view, she was definitely trying out a fiery (for her) speech-giving style. Again, hard to tell how effective it was from the audio, but I think she's more fiery when just delivering the facts.
I would ignore any rumor I might start that Warren stole the speech's topics from Hillary Clinton in an attempt to steal her core agenda.