Rep Barbara Lee is in the news today, for her advocacy for women’s rights and for sharing her personal experiences with the American people and Congress.
I applaud her courage, but I don’t want to write about her testimony, or even write about the issue she testified on.
This isn’t because I’m trying to minimize women’s rights - to the contrary this may be the most important issue before us today. It defines us as a nation.
But I want to set that issue aside for a moment because this was clearly a very personal experience for Rep Lee, who chose to sacrifice her privacy in order to take a stand for something she believes in. I want to honor that privacy, but I’m also so moved by her courage that I wanted to at least express something about this extraordinary Congresswoman, who has served so diligently with honor and dignity.
So here is what I thought I’d do. What Rep Lee did today is part of what makes her a hero, but it isn’t the only thing. I’m sure the experiences she shared today influenced who she is, but I’m also sure they don’t define her entirely. So I want to discuss other things she’s done that make her a hero to me, and perhaps anyone reading this who feels the same way might chip in.
I feel like talking about how she inspires me is a great way to honor her while also respecting her privacy.
1. She’s my hero for opposing the AUMF in 2001
(Yes, I’m taking the easy one. I thought of the diary and wrote it, so I get dibs. Lol. Seriously, though, I invite anyone to add to this topic because it’s so huge).
Barbara Lee has been in Congress my entire adult life, and for almost my entire adult life I’ve known who she is, largely because of the stand she took in 2001.
On the day of the 9/11 attacks, I was sent home from work shortly after the first tower fell. I had a roommate at the time - we were both your intellectual California progressive types who would talk moral philosophy and physics over fish tacos after surfing. I remember watching the coverage with him, and we both moved past the horror and grief pretty rapidly. (I’m not saying we were over those things, we just started looking beyond them pretty fast.)
”Well, that’s it,” my friend said flatly, “he’s going to take us to war, we can’t stop it.” He was clearly referring to President Bush, even though he didn’t specify. We’d both volunteered for Gore, and for the first time in our lives were learning what it meant to viscerally hate an elected leader. “Which country do you think he’s going to bomb first?” He asked. I didn’t have to think very hard about that. “All of them.”
And so we began our march toward war and then a long national nightmare.
And as that debate was taken up in Washington, Rep Lee was the single voice of authority that stood up and spoke out against the idea of granting pretty dangerous powers to a pretty dangerous president. In my memory, the media sort of treated her like a joke. “Ha ha, look at the lady Rep who thinks she’s going to get anywhere swimming against the current.” Maybe my memory of the coverage isn’t entirely accurate, but I don’t think she was taken seriously. I’d go pull up some of the coverage, but I feel like I’d find the treatment of her to be both sexist and racist and dismissive, and I don’t have any more “pissed off tokens” to feed the meter this week.
Regardless how they treated her, she spoke for me. She spoke for my friend. I’m sure she spoke for many of the people who read this (both of you, ha). She was saying the exact things we were thinking and expressing the exact fears we felt: if you give this president that power he will abuse it and we will go to war and people will die.
And she was right. She wasn’t prescient, she doesn’t deserve the Nostradamus award. A six year old reading the Tarot could have predicted that outcome, but Barbara Lee was the only person with the courage to stand up in the sacred space in the Capitol and give voice to things that needed to be heard. That is what leaders do. That is what heroes do.
2. She’s my hero for her work on women and climate change.
I didn’t want to just take the easiest thing to applaud her for and leave it there.
Rep. Lee introduced the Women and Climate Change Act in 2018. I am not going to pretend that I’m wonky enough to have followed this bill over the years, I do not know every proposal on everyone’s table. But I have seen her speak out on the issue several times and I remember a long discussion on MSNBC at some point in the recent past.
The reason this resonated with me is that it introduced a concept to me that I might not have considered on my own — that there is going to be an intersectionality of women and climate change that is going to result in some special circumstances, specific needs, and specific crises. In short, climate change is going to suck, but it’s going to suck more for women and a lot more for poor women.
There are places in the world where consequences of things like school budgets getting cut due to climate change costs will be disproportionately (or entirely) put upon women and girls. When poverty rates go up, women are disproportionately impacted. And when we look at the new influx of migrants at the border, it’s clear that women have been impacted by climate change in ways that are motivating them to undertake extremely dangerous journeys.
How many beltway press stories have I read about this issue? I can’t think of a single one, and I recently started writing a series focused on climate change and sustainability, and I’ve read like 200 articles this month on the subject. Probably a thousand over the last few years…it’s a core pinned topic in my Apple news every morning. The effect of climate on women is just not something that gets covered.
So once again, we have Rep Lee standing up to say something that is so clearly true: we are going to face huge issues specific to women when it comes to climate change. And once again, she’s one of the few voices in the room that has the foresight, tenacity and will power to stand up and talk about this. And once again, her voice is raising a vital point: if we do not actively stand up to ensure women get attention, then all of the resources will flow right past them and they will predictably be left behind without help and without hope.
And that helps illustrate why Rep Lee is my hero — she teaches me things I need to know. Like I said, I’m trying to write bimonthly pieces on climate change. How long would it have taken me to put women’s issues on my list? If not for Rep Lee, probably a long time, honestly. Because she spoke up today, she was in the news, which inspired me to write this, which reminded me of work she’s done, which informed me of things I need to learn and do to be a better progressive.
This is what I mean…this is the thesis here: Rep Barbara Lee is always there to speak up and speak out, and the fact that she does matters.
Okay, those are two of the things I think about when Rep Lee shows up on MSNBC or in the headlines. She has been there in Congress for as long as I can remember, and I feel like every time I hear from her she teaches me something. She inspires me, and I always walk away from an interview of her resolving to work harder, to be a better progressive, and also to be a little nicer to the non-progressives around me. (Not that I can’t fight…just that I can do it with the sort of dignity and grace she demonstrates when she does.)
And to all the women out there, this “timeout” on the issue of choice was out of respect for Rep Lee’s privacy. As a progressive and a feminist, I’m outraged. I’m ready to go to war on this issue. I see your rights being assaulted, and I hear you and feel you. We will win this, and I’m ready to play any role I can to help make that happen. For tonight I wanted to reflect on other things, but tomorrow the fight continues.
I will turn it over to the community to share their experiences with this extraordinary lawmaker and her history. In the meantime, I’ll end with what I emailed her office earlier: for every fight she undertakes, for everything she does, for everything she stands for, ❤️ X 1,000,000.