Elizabeth Warren on how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came into being (intersectionality)

Politics is depressing.  I've learned not to follow it if I want to keep from being overly depressed.  This is made easier since one of the first things I had to cut due to money (ages ago, before SSI cut back on what they give me) was TV.  I have no television, I watch no news.

But I saw a link to Elizabeth Warren's interview on the Daily Show, it'll be her last with Stewart since he's retiring.

Now I've wanted her to be president since before she was a politician.  I make no secret of my allegiance to her cause.  There are very few people who I think stand an actual chance of fixing the kinds of problems we face.  Most of them aren't in politics.  Most of them don't stand a chance in politics.*  Warren is the best example of someone who I think can fix things who has succeeded in politics.

So, there's that.  And it's been too long since I've seen Jon Stewart (no TV).  And I very much like to hear her talk.  She's great at it.  I think that's what makes her so powerful.

So I watched.  Well, started watching, I've only seen the first half so far because I wanted to bring up something that doesn't happen enough.  The title of the post:

Warren: So where we started with this-- we didn't even have the agency at all and the question was, can we get this agency passed into law? I talked to a bunch of people in Washington. This was, I was, you know the professor I had no... no.. nothing.

Stewart (overlapping with her ending): Right, at that time you were not a ... in any way you're not a senator, you're not poli-- right.

Warren; (overlapping with his ending, way to make the transcription process difficult people): So I'm not a senator, I'm not connected in any way, I go around and talk to people. They tell me two things. They tell me one, "That is a great idea; you could actually make a difference with an agency like that." And two, "Don't do it."

*Stewart laughs. Audience laughs*

Warren: And they said don't even try, because the big banks will shut this down...

*Stewart is still laughing*

Warren: I know! I mean, a hundred percent.

Stewart: Alright.

Warren: But here's the deal-- Here's the deal: we fought back. We got organized. I--I took conference calls. The first conference call I ever did on this consumer agency had three people; I don't think that legally qualifies as a conference call.

Stewart: No, I'm pretty sure that's not.

Warren: But from there we got organized. We started getting the groups like-- God bless em, like AARP, and Consumer Reports, and the AFL-CIO,

Stewart: Right

Warren: and the NAACP**, and La Raza and they all said, that, you know, "That's not our first issue, but this stuff about cheating consumers,

Stewart: Right

Warren: it comes somewhere in the things we care about." *pause* They got organized. More than a hundred groups got organized into Americans for Financial Reform, they pushed and we got that consumer agency passed into law. We did it. People did it.

*crowd starts cheering

Warren: We worked hard and we made it happen.

Random thing. It has been remarked by many people before. If fictional dialogue were written like actual speech no one would want to read it.

Here is that again, cleaned up some:

Where we started with this-- we didn't even have the agency at all and the question was, can we get this agency passed into law?

I talked to a bunch of people in Washington. I was, you know, the professor [...] So I'm not a senator, I'm not connected in any way, I go around and talk to people. They tell me two things. They tell me one, "That is a great idea; you could actually make a difference with an agency like that." And two, "Don't do it."

And they said don't even try, because the big banks will shut this down.

But here's the deal: we fought back. We got organized. I took conference calls. The first conference call I ever did on this consumer agency had three people; I don't think that legally qualifies as a conference call.

But from there we got organized. We started getting the groups like AARP, and Consumer Reports, and the AFL-CIO, and the NAACP**, and La Raza and they all said, that, you know, "That's not our first issue, but this stuff about cheating consumers, it comes somewhere in the things we care about."

They got organized. More than a hundred groups got organized into Americans for Financial Reform, they pushed and we got that consumer agency passed into law. We did it. People did it.

We worked hard and we made it happen.

Anyway, oppression tends to be intersectional by default.  It would take a lot of work that oppressors are not going to put in to make it not be.  That makes it easy to divide people.

The plight of old consumers is not the same as the plight of black consumers (even though there is overlap in the field of old black consumers) and so on.  All of those groups that got together could easily have stayed apart on the basis of the idea that the other groups problems were not their own (those in the overlapping areas tend to get both ignored by supporters and exceptionally screwed over by jerks.)

Coming together required realizing that while there are different things going on in the general field of screwing over consumers, and what that looks like when done to one group might not be what it looks like when done to another group, all of these groups benefit from not getting screwed over.

Another important realization, one that it's impossible to say if the groups made in this case, is that the overlapping areas do exist and thus the groups always have cause to work together because some of the people they're there to look out for are in both groups.

The second one is rarer, but it's important for everything.  Take oppression X and oppression Y.  A group set up to deal with X will usually not really be concerned with Y and a group set up to deal with Y will often not be that concerned with X.  They should be.  They should be because the people who face X and Y (the people both groups are theoretically looking out for) tend to get it worse than you'd expect.

That's part of the realization of intersectionality.  Oppression tends to combine synergisticly.

An early example was that of black women.  You can't understand the situation of black women just by understanding the situation of women in general and black people in general because the two things don't simply combine additively.  They build off each other.

But, anyway, getting side tracked.  The thing here is-- the important thing here is: they did come together.  They did it before.  They can do it again.  The world can in fact improve.  Everyone thought it was impossible for the CFPB to be born, but it was created.

All that it required, really, was a lot of people willing to focus on something that wasn't their primary concern.

It could, potentially, happen again.  There is, in fact, hope for the world.

[added] If you want to watch the interview, of which what I addressed was only a small part, then here are some links: Part 1 Part 2 [/added]

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* For example, if a current student at my university ever manages to effect positive change on said university that student will sure as hell not be me, it will probably be Meaghan LaSala.

She cares about students rights, workers rights, racial and ethnic minority rights, indigenous rights, she's anti-corporate exploitation, she deeply understands intersectionality, she's an activist.

Shes an instigator, an organizer, and an agitator.

She's an all around awesome person and she can lift the hammer of Thor.

I cannot imagine a situation where she would win an election.  She'd be called a communist and marginalized.  (Note that I have no idea if she is a communist, but whatever her political leanings I have faith that they've got a strong moral foundation.)

All of that said, I'd vote for her.

** I'm never quite sure how to best transcribe "the N double A C P" Obviously there's a different cadence to that than "the N A A C P" but both spell the exact same thing: NAACP. Maybe it's like transcribing accents: you don't bother unless there's a damn good reason since the important thing is usually meaning, not how it sounds.