Review of “This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class,” 2018 edition, with a new afterword, by Elizabeth Warren. New York: Picador/Metropolitan/Henry Holt. Paper, 285 pages.
By the author of “A Fighting Chance” and other books.
As people who endeavor to help the homeless and others facing big challenges on the street, it behooves us to look at the goals—and the accomplishments—of persons like the author of this particularly important book.
StreetSense helps provide information on persons and policies reflecting the importance of social justice. We hope to continue to champion the cause. And we hope to help unhoused and other individuals facing challenges in Chicago and other cities in other countries.
Senator Elizabeth Warren does a tremendous job of taking research, politics, and the law and turning them into a practical book. As in the other cases. Warren has a strong sense of social justice, and she shares her hopes, her actions, and her disappointments here.
I was overjoyed to find a copy of this at a favorite thrift shop – in the free stack. I started reading it immediately, and I am glad I did.
Warren first published this in 2017, and this version includes a statement from 2018. In five chapters and an epilogue, she tells about her personal journey through being broke as a child and ends with what was happening once Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States.
Chapter 1, “The Disappearing Middle Class,” makes the point that just working hard and trying to keep your job a long time did not work. Just as when she was a kid, in more recent times things have been changing and people may have to look for other work when their jobs go overseas and other changes occur. She tells how her dad worked as a janitor and her mother went and got a job at Sears—thus saving the family home.
Chapter 2, “A Safer Economy” talks about the irony of some people believing that in giving the rich big tax breaks the money will trickle down to the average American. This has never worked, and Warren gives some examples of how that idea fails the middle class.
Chapter 3, “Making—and Breaking—the Middle Class” shows examples of families who can lose everything as nobody seems to be interested in helping them.
Chapter 4, “The Rich and Powerful Tighten Their Grip” tells of all the ways in which the CEOs and others at the top get away with destroying jobs and families. While companies like Wells Fargo reap their destruction—such as by firing 5,000 lower-level employees—they allow their CEO and other top employees to stay out of jail – scott free.
Chapter 5, “The Moment of Upheaval” tells of the greatest—and most terrible—problem to hit our nation in the last decade, namely Donald J. Trump winning the presidential election. From the very first day, his new policies and his important appointments showed that the wealthy would be favored under that administration. Dark days, indeed.
Epilogue: “Fascist” was the word written on the banner carried by those protesting the election of Trump…and Warren talks of the protest that took place that January—in 2017. That was the beginning of the sign many Americans indeed did not vote for Trump, did not want him to win the electoral vote, and did not want to sit idly by as our country ran aground. Warren was encouraged, and she marched with thousands others in Massachusetts to make it known people would be protesting, and watching, everything the Trump would do in his term.
In the “Afterword to the 2018 Edition,” Warren makes it clear that she was not going to be silenced by those who would railroad their projects through the Senate. For example, she was not happy about being silenced when trying to read a letter from Coretta Scott King during the nomination process for Jeff Sessions to serve as Trump’s Attorney General. She was told to refrain from reading that letter, and was told by Mitch McConnell to “take her seat.”
It was at this point that Warren realizes decorum and decency have left the Senate, and she endeavors to get people to listen. Eventually, she is talked over, and she later sends her message out to the nation through other means. That episode provides clues as to what is to be expected of the Congress under Trump.
Warren gives us here a wonderful introduction to the Trump administration, the Republicans’ general lack of politeness in Congress—started by and fueled by Trump, and the actions and statements of senators like McConnell who is all about pushing forward Trump’s plans.
She knew early on Trump was dangerous. She mentions this several times in the book—originally published in 2017. Now in 2023 we see Trump continuing with his selfish and complicated form of bullying—in the most recent examples burning up resources and wasting time to fight crimes he seems to be guilty of… right down the line.
Warren saw the future.
I recommend the book for all persons interested in things political, the current nonsense of the trials and attempts to defend a man who wanted to overturn the election results. Helping the unhoused in our world is complicated and strangled by the use of time to focus on a man who is trying to defend himself from charges he cannot escape.
Trump continues to use all these resources to uphold his innocence (using dollars from taxpayers—and taking food out of the mouths of the hungry in doing so.)