Lessig speaks; please you call for MAYDAY

Lawrence Lessig speaks tonight at 7 pm in the Flatiron District in Manhattan. The speech is part of RunWarrenRun.

Professor Lessig explains why Elizabeth Warren should run. In Professor Lessig's words, Elizabeth Warren should run:

For the thing that she speaks so powerfully about — a rigged system — is rigged precisely because of the corruption caused by the way we fund campaigns. And yet, there is a significant chance that we Democrats will have a primary without any candidate who would even mention the issue, let alone commit to reform that might address it.

Hillary Clinton is incredibly strong and incredibly smart. In normal times, she’d make an extraordinary president. But these are not normal times. And the corrupt system we have now was birthed under her husband’s watch. She (and he) have depended upon it to get to the place she is now. She had nothing but impatient scorn for Obama and Edwards when they pressed the issue in 2008. And she has offered nothing to demonstrate that she either gets it or cares about addressing it. Everything indicates that she believes she can govern effectively without removing this cancer that has compromised our democracy.

She can’t.

No one can (which is why we’re even seeing rumblings about the issue from the Right). And what we desperately need now is a contest that will force the issue into the center, and give us at least a chance of addressing it in 2016.

Yet we’re facing the prospect of a Democratic non-primary campaign, without a single debate, that generates a nominee who has not had to enlist the support of a grassroots movement. That’s a dangerous prospect, not just for Democrats but for our democracy.

Senator Warren wouldn’t just create the genuine, hard-fought primary contest that this country needs. She—and, I believe, she alone—could also galvanize the movement that we’ll need if the next president of the United States is to have a prayer of actually taking on this the hardest, most important issue of our generation — because only by solving this can we solve anything else.

If you don't know, tens of thousands of Americans are at work battling to defeat the corruption caused by the way we fund campaigns.

MAYDAY.US and its supporters are hard at work on this at the Congressional level.

Please tweet to @MAYDAYUS and tell them you want to help out and you want to call your Representatives in Congress to ask them to support reform.