A Fighting Chance (43 page)

And we did it.

Tens of thousands of volunteers did it.

Women did it. Women broke with their husbands and boyfriends and brothers and voted for me by a knock-your-socks-off twenty-point margin.

Unions did it. Vets did it. The LGBT community and black ministers and small-business owners did it. Latino activists and Asian leaders did it. Students and scientists did it. Mothers and dads and grandmothers and granddads did it. Even kids did it.

The people did it.

What was the lesson of that day? When we fight, we can win. And when we get really fired up and fight shoulder to shoulder, we can do some pretty amazing things.

Some say the rich and powerful now control Washington and always will. I say this battle isn’t over yet. True, the playing field isn’t level and the system is rigged. But we’re putting up a heck of a fight, and we intend to keep on fighting.

This victory wasn’t mine. That’s not some kind of fake modesty talk—no, that statement is deep-down truth. This victory belonged to all the families who have been chipped away at, squeezed, and hammered. This time, they fought together and won. And now they were sending me to Washington to fight for them and for every hardworking family who just wants a fighting chance to live the American dream.

Epilogue | Fighting Again … and Again

IT WAS MAY
8, 2013, and I was working on a speech in my office in Washington.

I sat at my desk and took a last look at my notes. My temporary office surprised visitors a bit: it was in a trailer. To get there, you walked along elaborate, marble-clad hallways, took a sharp turn onto a plywood ramp, and then suddenly encountered an office featuring prefab walls, cast-off furniture, and a fake window that concealed a tangle of electrical wires and cables. But hey, fancy office or not, I was now a senator, and I could take my shot at introducing a bill on the floor of the Senate—which was what I was about to do, for the very first time.

When it came time to head over to the Capitol, I decided against taking the underground train that usually ferries people back and forth. I wanted some space to think, so I decided to walk through the tunnel on the sidewalk that runs alongside the train. Besides, I move pretty fast—sometimes I beat the train.

As I walked through the big, hollow space, the sound of my heels echoing off the walls, I remembered an encounter the previous summer, back when we were in the thick of a hotly contested campaign. The local teamsters had offered us their hall in Worcester for a Sunday afternoon rally. I gave a short speech and took a lot of questions. Afterward, a long line formed. People gave some advice or offered encouragement. There were pictures and babies and a fair amount of laughter.

Near the end of the line was a young man: early twenties, medium height, sandy-brown short hair. When I reached him, he stepped forward and, with no preliminaries, blurted out that he had done everything he was supposed to do. Counting on his fingers, he punched out the list. Worked hard in high school. Went to a good university. Got good grades. Graduated on time. Everything—check, check, check.

And then … nothing. No job. No new apartment. No bright future. He’d been looking for work for more than a year, and still nothing.

Actually, it was worse than nothing. Every day he fell a little further behind. His student loan debt got a little bigger. His stretch of unemployment got a little longer. His fear that he would never build a secure, independent life cut a little deeper.

Now he had moved back in with his parents—and he had no idea when he would move out or how he would get his own life under way.

I met him in Worcester. But I heard the same story in Falmouth and Dorchester. In Marlborough, Marshfield, and Methuen. In Weymouth and Westport and Ware.

I heard the story over and over and over, until I wanted to shout to the rooftops on behalf of these young men and women. They were trying
so
hard, but they felt like their futures had broken apart before they had even begun.

And now here I was, about to give a speech on the floor of the US Senate.

I stepped into the Senate chamber and walked straight to my desk—the same desk that for so many years had belonged to Ted Kennedy, and to John Kennedy before him. I clipped on my microphone and took a deep breath. And then I jumped in.

America’s young people are struggling with more than
$1 trillion
in student loan debt. I asked: Why does the United States government lend to the biggest banks—the same banks that nearly broke our economy—at an interest rate that is less than one percent, and then turn around and charge our students an interest rate that is
nine times
higher? Why is the US government scheduled to make $185 billion in profits off the backs of our students? We’re not investing in these students—no, we’re asking them to pony up the money to subsidize the rest of us.

Then I introduced my bill, the Bank on Students Act, which would require that the Federal Reserve lend money to our kids at the same rate they lend to the big banks. I finished with:

Unlike the big banks, students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They have only their voices. And they call on us to do what is right.

Months have passed since that day in May; I’ve been a senator for a little more than a year. I’ve seen our Congress up close, and parts of it are truly dysfunctional. I’ve already lived through one government shutdown and too many Republican filibusters to count. Every day I wrestle with the same ruthless reality that I’ve known for many years: Change—real change—is hard. Uphill, grind-grind-grind, sweat-it-out hard.

Yes, change is hard, but it is
possibl
e—and that’s the part that fires me up.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about what can’t be done. People said the new consumer agency was a pipe dream. But now it’s the law of the land, and in July 2013 I presided over the US Senate as Rich Cordray finally became its first full-fledged, real-deal director. That agency is here to stay. After Rich’s confirmation, one headline read:
ELIZABETH WARREN SMILES BIG AFTER RICH CORDRAY CONFIRMATION
. Got
that
right!

There are other ways to make change happen. Committee hearings are usually pretty dull affairs, the stuff that fills the 3:00
A.M.
slot on CSPAN. But those hearings offer a chance to make some progress. At my first Banking Committee hearing, I pushed regulators to name the last time they took a big bank all the way to trial. They stumbled and fumbled, and a video of the exchange shot around the Internet and was viewed by more than a million people. Maybe, just maybe, more government officials will think twice before deciding that some bank executive is too big to jail.

And student loans? No, I didn’t get the Bank on Students Act passed. But at least the final deal on student loan interest rates was better than where it started: $15 billion better for students over the next ten years. And, in the end, I wasn’t alone. More than a dozen senators from around the country stood up with me to say no to any deal in which the government makes a profit off the backs of our students. That’s not a bad place to begin the next round in this battle—and, believe me, we will come back to this issue again.

Of course, student loans are just a start. There are many more fights ahead, and more work to be done—and I worry that we’re running out of time. For a generation now, America’s middle class has been squeezed, chipped away, and hammered so hard that the foundations of our economic security are beginning to crumble.

Every day I think about the people I’ve met who are part of this battle. The woman in New Bedford who walked two miles so she could talk to someone who would fight for her. The father who worried that basic fairness would be denied to his transgender child. The woman who brought her tall, good-looking husband to a rally and talked with me about his slide into the darkness of Alzheimer’s. The big guy at the construction site who went nine months without work last year. I remember their faces, their fears, their determination.

Every one of them worries about our future. Every one of them has anxious days and sleepless nights. But every one of them is tough and resourceful. And every one of them—every single one of them—has a deep core of optimism that says we can do better.

I believe that it’s this optimism about the future that sets us apart as a people, this optimism that makes America an exceptional nation. We built this country by striking out on new adventures and propelling ourselves forward on a path we named progress. Along the way, we learned that when we invest in one another, when we build schools and roads and research labs, we build a better future—a better future for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren.

Equality. Opportunity. The pursuit of happiness. An America that builds something better for the next kid and the kid after that and the kid after that.

No one is asking for a handout. All we want is a country where everyone pays a fair share, a country where we build opportunities for all of us; a country where everyone plays by the same rules and everyone is held accountable. And we have begun to fight for it.

I believe in us. I believe in what we
can
do together, in what we
will
do together. All we need is a fighting chance.

My grandmother wrote “Wetumka, Okla” on the back of this picture, which dates from around the time my mother and father were born. During World War II, my parents left Wetumka and moved with my three older brothers to Muskogee, where Daddy was a flight instructor and Mother ran the house. Daddy loved to fly, and these were good years for them.

By the time I was born, my parents had taken some hard knocks. In the 1950s, we lived in the last row of houses in Norman, Oklahoma. Daddy built me this sandbox in our backyard. Aunt Bee often looked after me. Every year, she bought me a dress for the first day of school. I always wore the newest one for the school picture, including this third grade shot.

There were lots of strong women in my mother’s family, and they loved nothing better than family reunions. Here I am with my Aunt Bee, my mother, my grandmother, my Aunt Bert and my Great Aunt Laura.