Elizabeth Warren 1/12

By: Hana Hofeld

I sit in my hotel room barely able to keep my eyes open to write this after the exhausting but enthralling once in a lifetime experience I had today. This morning my eyes teared up as I watched Senator Elizabeth Warren walk out into the audience of the Fisher middle school gym in Marshalltown, Iowa. I wasn’t really sure why, but I had tears in my eyes as she came out. Maybe it was because I was seeing this ever so inspiring woman for the first time in person or maybe I was just overwhelmed with excitement in the reality that she was 4 feet away from me. Either way it was an important feeling to note.

I chose to take the journalism route on this trip for a few reasons. One being that I wanted to try something new. I wanted something that would be a challenge and also a great learning experience. And two, I had no strong preferences over which candidate I would have wanted to work for. In the five days that we have been on the ground here in Iowa, I can say that deciding to do this trip in the eyes of a journalist was the best decision I could have made. I have seen the candidates from a different light and working as “student media” has allowed me front row access to every candidate we have seen so far, not to mention meeting and taking some sort of photo with all of them.

In the past few days I have had the privilege of seeing Marianne Williamson (the night before she dropped out), Bill Weld, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, and Elizabeth Warren. We still have quite a few more to see but after today, I can fully say from what I’ve seen so far, is that Senator Elizabeth Warren has my heart. I say this for a lot of reasons. For one, I have always been a fan of hers. Junior year of high school I wrote a research paper discussing the courageous act she took of reading the Correta Scott King’s letter aloud on the Senate floor; this caused a lot of backlash but yet she persisted to do what was right. Another reason I like Warren is that she achieved her lifelong goal of wanting to be a public school teacher. It’s not often you find someone in government who was a teacher before making policies that affect teachers hands on. Warren knows the difficulties of what it’s like to be in the classroom every single day. This issue hits close to home for me because my mom is a teacher in the Chicago Public School system so for me electing a president with a good education plan is extremely important. 
Warren has avid plans for college students and criminal justice reform, both issues I’m passionate about. The energy she brought today was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Everytime she made a point she’d raise her hand in a power fist motion and jump up and down. The 70 year old has the energy and excitement of a 40 year old. Not only is she full of passion, but she is extremely relatable. She started her speech by telling her story. She made a joke about how she had been married twice, she told us about her teaching story, law school, and so on. Today was a transformative experience for me in that I got to see Elizabeth as a real human being. She was so genuine and authentic, which are often things you don’t get to see of presidential candidates since everything is so televised. I am very interested to see how I will feel later in the week after seeing Biden, Yang, Booker, and Buttigieg. In the words of Warren today, “we have the chance now in 2020.” This statement is powerful, the time is now and this is the time where we have the chance to change the direction this country is going.