Speaking in Baltimore Monday afternoon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tied the recent unrest and riots in the city to the failures of the financial system that she regularly criticizes.
“The recent events in Baltimore are not the result of a single tragedy,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at an event held at the University of Maryland’s law school in Baltimore. “These events are also about millions of people, young and old, here and across the country, who find themselves struggling to make it in a system that is increasingly rigged against them.”
Warren attributed the wide gap in wealth between the typical white and African-American families to “the impact of blows that reach across the generations.”
“After decades of being ripped off — first through restrictive deed covenants, then through redlining, then through deceptive land contracts — African Americas were left with less and less wealth,” Warren said.
“Then along came Wall Street, ready to target African-American neighborhoods for the worst of the subprime mortgages,” she added, referring to the subprime boom that led up to the financial crisis in 2008.
Warren, who was separately in the news Monday for her conflict with the Obama administration over trade policy, was speaking Monday at an event that is part of an ongoing series of events she is holding with Rep. Elijah Commings, D-Md., intended to draw attention to economic difficulties facing the middle class.
The event took place just weeks after riots swept the city in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American who died in police custody.
Monday’s event was meant to examine predatory lending, one of many topics that Warren has highlighted as a member of the Senate Banking Committee and, before that, as a regulator and professor at Harvard Law School.
The lack of access to traditional banking, Warren said, is a particular problem for minorities in places like Baltimore who instead rely on payday lending or auto-title loans.
