Transcripts For CSPAN Womens Convention 20180103

You are the biggest crowd i have spoken to, i am really glad that it is such a warm and welcoming crowd of women. [cheers and pplause] and would like to thank everyone has been organizing that womens convention, it was amazing yesterday and it will be amazing today. Special thanks to marianne who evenorked so tirelessly, getting me on stage this morning. My name is maggie moore and i am one of the organizers of the rudolph foundation. We work on leveling the Playing Field for women pursuing careers in the public field and finances. [applause] support and, we internships, provide mentorship and professional Development Workshops and networking rigid from salary negotiation to speaking with confidence. Ranging from salary negotiation to speaking with confidence. You should be able to work in washington dc in a letter your background or identity, because you want your policy to impact people and we need people of all backgrounds at the negotiating table. [applause] and that opportunity to change the world around you, should not exist only for the people who can afford to work for free. [applause] which is why i am so excited perez, thee carmen moderator of this mornings than a recession. She is a role model and inspiration to the women we support, the future changemakers, because the she has done it herself. She has spent her life working for social justice, including president ainst the and industrial complex, the cofounder of the Justice League and of course, one of the National Coaches of the womens march on washington. [applause] justice,ceived the hes and Freedom Award at the conference, and she has been named one of times most influential people. Please join me in welcoming to the stage, the perfect are sent to chair a panel on intersection analogy, carmen perez. Applause] good morning, everyone [applause] how is everyone doing . Are we fired up . [cheers and applause] are we ready to go . Yes carmen yes, that is what i like to hear this morning, well have an amazing, amazing conversation about intersectionality. But before we do that, i actually want to give some love to some folks. First of all, i want to give some love back to all of you for showing up as early, so thank you. [applause] and i also just wanted to say that how many of you have gone to the social justice city . [cheers and applause] yes. Thats such an amazing place for me because initially it was a vision that was implemented by a woman named nikita. So im excited that you have been able to go visit. There are so many things that but you all could participate in, and i just want to say that 10,000 texts were sent out yesterday, to remind people to vote next week in key races in virginia, new jersey, michigan and other states. Theyre in room 358 all weekend doing phone banking and texting. So if we could go and visit them, please go there. Let us go ahead and get started here. Only ready, ladies . Yes we have the ceo come ahead of the federation of hottest and welfare agencies, a new york citybased poverty fighting organization. Erika who is a political director for our the future of grassroots and congressional politics. Lets give it up for erica. We have the next guest who is action, an wish unapologetically Judicial Organization working for justice, inclusion, and equity in the u. S. We have rebecca, a former Obama White House staff and senior fellow for disability policy at the center for american progress. Woo [applause] we have liliana, a is a trans who latina working to uplift trans women of color voices. [applause] we have my luck, the Senior Vice President for social justice. And my a while who was a Senior Vice President for social justice and the former chair of the independent Oversight Agency from new york citys police department. Yes. [applause] least we haveot , the executive director of the San Francisco bay area of the office of the council of islamic relations. [applause] carmen i have to say, i am really excited to moderate the panel this morning because interseon analogy ctionality is my existence. Chicanaexicanamerican woman who grew up in Southern California in a Poor Community where there were gangs but i also grew up playing basketball. So there are Different Things that i identify with, and intersectionality allows me to be myself. When i studied feminism at uc santa cruz under leadership, i learned the word intersection the leadership of ie does hurtad, i learned intersectionality. It was coined by Kimberly Crenshaw in the 1980s, the idea that social identities, system of oppression and Group Identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. With all that said, a lot of us, when we were organizing the womens march on washington, we were intentional about being intersectional. With the panel, we will gain more knowledge of how we begin to incorporate that term and ideology into our work and every day lives. And i also want to say that although there was this visibility to it during the womens march, people have been organizing intersection early for many decades. New concept, not a new term but it is becoming more visible. Have previously talked about this, but we are going to have a casual conversation. Are you ready for this . All right. I would like to start off with we have powerhouses on this stage right now and i really wanted to start off with me asking all of you, especially times, women especially all of you, see the effective women and do not think it is achievable. Right . Say, well, that person has been organizing for 20 years, how can i even get there . I wanted to start by admitting that rome was not built in one day, right . And it wanted to ask all of you what was your first job . When i , was 11 years old, i had a paper route. How many of you had a paper route . Yes. Now i am the executive director of an organization and cofounder. But it really took many years. Along the journey, it allowed me to embrace several identities and ideologies that have now supported my ability to become more intentional about my work. So were going to start with you. Good morning, everybody. Excited to be here and grateful for the opportunity to have a conversation with all of you and the esteemed panelists. I am in antipoverty policy and advocacy leader. I ran an organization that is staterooted but is concerned about the needs of all. It has in the name protestant. Concerned we care about all of our neighbors, we are not just religiouspaste. We are concerned about everybody. My first job, interestingly, was working on the women, infants, and childrens program, doing research on wic. It is a program that is at risk right now, and provides food and support the low income mothers. Interestingly, i stumbled into it. I am a child, though of civil rights leaders. I am the child, grandchild and greatgrandchild of preachers andinterestingly, i stumbled ino it. I am a child, though of civil rights leaders. Activists sociae , leaders. So i think for me, growing up in a household where we were told to speak our truth, my dad is to my dad used to say all the time, freedom is the ability to say no to a lie. [applause] so growing up in a household where that was poured in to us, that is what formed me into who i am today, i believe. Is this on . Great. I am an undocumented woman. If you asked what my first legal job was, when daca came around it is a whole different , question. My first job without papers was at a chuck e. Cheese restaurant. Ishink for me, this question it really informs a lot of my frustration that i developed as an undocumented woman. Cheese, i worked at a daycare with a lot of undocumented women who were there for over a decade sometimes working without , documents like me. At the same time, i already graduated from Arizona State university. So i was pretty much stuck at a job getting paid less than andmum wage in arizona, also with a diploma that i couldnt use. So that really is one of the first experiences that got me i couldnt usehy my degree, working in a daycare. I loved those babies, but it was really hard, it was not what i wanted to do. But i am grateful that it happened because it pushed me to figure out how to make that better, not just for me but for other women. [applause] good morning everyone, it is an incredible honor to be here and be among this group of women. Job was in olympia, washington, washington should at the mall. I moved out of my house when i was 16, and i was working fulltime, going to school fulltime. I was a punk rocker, had bright orange hair and a shaved head and that was the job i could get. [laughter] it was at that time, a job that allowed me to pay my rent, which at this moment in time, that thatjob would not be a job i could live on. So i am grateful for that job. [applause] first off, carmen, i didnt not know you were a slog . Slug too am a that means we went to uc santa cruz. We are slugs. Banana slugs. Perhaps the greatest most intersectional School Mascot that there is. [laughter] my first job was being a bra specialist for victorias secret. What it taught me, and i still use it to this day, people are actually shocked that included a lot of times in my bio, and it is still on my resume. And i tell people that Public Policy and lingerie is the same thing. You have to make people want to put their money out for something that in no way shape or form will actually impact their lives. [laughter] and it is usually filled with some substance, either hot air or oil or Something Else that is unidentifiable. [laughter] and you have to make them care about it. So i use it in my daytoday life, every single day. [laughter] [applause] good morning. Good morning, my name is liliana sangel reyes. Job, i was a tobacco and Substance Abuse awareness peer so i didm note want to workt in fast food, soh i decided thati i could get an office job to literally rightng. Write emails and office flyers. Ironically, it has led me to become an lgbt tobacco Treatment Specialist and Substance Abuse specialist. [laughter] only because i did the work and it seems like any job i went to, they said, oh, awesome, get this certification. And then everyone wanted it. So i became a specialist without wanting to become one. [laughter] that is a hard one to top. Grew up withnnifer parents who were civil rights activists. I want to distinguish work and job. One of the things my parents and my grandparents before them taught us is that it takes work to be a citizen. Our first job is citizenship. [applause] so if i talk about work as opposed to paid jobs the first , work was a bunch of us kids, children of the activist organizers, it was the time of the vietnam war and we formed a group called children against the war. I think i was seven years old. The leader was congressman jamie was eighto i think years old at the time, and we would all meet at his house, all , to have organizing meetings for the protests that we were going to have against the war in vietnam. In hisie would pull out family room, the coffee table and he would stand on top of it and he would lecture us about the evils of the war in vietnam [laughter] meanwhile, this other kid named david was shooting spit balls at my head and i was trying to hide behind the chair. Anyway, the point was at the end of this, our parents helped us get a parade harm it permit to have a march down pennsylvania avenue against the war in vietnam. [cheers and applause] , childrenled ,. Inst the war, the police expecting a huge and , massive antiwar demonstration, had about 500 Motorcycle Police officers, and the only people on the sidewalks were our parents, 10 to 12 people. [laughter] cheering us on as we marched down saying, stop the war stop the war . [applause] [laughter] good morning, everyone. I am with care the council on American Islamic relations. I am not sure how to follow that. [laughter] my first job was folding clothes at mervyns does anyone remember it . It closed. I really wanted as a kid food , a service job, which sounds odd to say out loud especially if you know how hard those jobs are. My parents were not down with that, they were in pursuit of what they thought was the american dream. They said, we came all the way to america you cannot work in , food service. So i worked at mervyns and folded clothes during the holiday season. I will say that i am fortunate and also cognizant of the privilege that i had to work , through college and do it for extra money and not because i needed to pay my bills. But by the time i got to law school, i needed to work to pay my bills. So as a product of the California Public education system, i worked all the way through. My favorite job, which informs how i do my work today, was my time with the California Faculty Association organizing professors and didnt to push back against tuition national increases, and also with the national union, organizing home workers, security guards, industries that are often not organized that we are more , to recognize powerful when we Work Together. [applause] carmen i love all these stories. i think we could just keep going. I will say i think it allows us to see how your lives are intersectional and we think we as women, are monolithic, but we are not. In your work in organizing that you do every day, why do you think it is important to organize across movements . And do you personally think it is an effective way to build power . So, i will begin. In my daily work, i am focused on property. I am focused on the needs and concerns of our neighbors our , brothers and sisters, some of us who do not have enough money to make ends meet on a daily basis. If the political and structural powers headed their way they , would look at it as a class issue, independent of race experience and gender experience. They would ignore the fact that when they talk about diversity, in the main, they separate race from gender. So when you look at what state corporations and do today, they often place greater influence on gender. That allows them to distinguish between race and gender and not the two together. What that looks like is if i want to meet the quota if you will, let me hire more women, they do not have to be women of color. Let me hire africanamerican men. Let me hire latino men. It leaves out latino women, indianamerican women, women, just go across the board. So if i am fighting poverty i , have to appreciate this intersectionality, and the movement has to coexist. It has to be looked at together as not just a race issue alone, or a gender issue alone. I have to fight for the intersectionality out of it. Right now, i am addressing issues of criminal Justice Reform and im a shading increasingly that what we do in america is we do not appreciate that race and poverty and criminal injustice are all intersected. We look at taking on criminal Justice Reform as though it is just an experience tied to perhaps poverty. [applause] 80 of people incarcerated are poor, 60 of them are latino and black. If we address criminal Justice Reform only through, lets look at what is happening in the court system but not in black or , latino communities, and look at how people do not have access to jobs or education, then we miss the mark. [applause] that is why we have to focus on the intersection of all of these things. [cheers and applause] the last point, you have to always to remember that the powers that be want to keep things segmented. If we are always focusing on class, then we are not appreciating a race undercurrent. If we look at gender alone we do , not look at how we strip away the economic attention here in have to keep movements focusing on intersectionality, so that while they are trying to divide us, we remain united. [applause] many of you paid attention to the 2016 president ial election . [laughter] really thet is fundamental presentday answer to that question. Number one, what we saw is that power should have represented the 3 million more votes resulted in a different president of the United States, ok . [applause] milliononly reason 3 plus votes did not, was because of something called the electoral college. And we have the electoral college, because he had slavery. So now the entire country has a man with his finger on the nuclear button, who has assaulted women, who forgets the name of servicemen who die in the field, who has not dealt toh the dreamers ability continue to work and learn in this country, who has told us that police should be a little rough with people when they get put in police cars and maybe not maybe knock their heads door because we never have resolved the fact that as a country, we have constructed a politics built on race. Race was also built on class and gender. It was. [applause] that, cannot fight any of unless we recognize that we are in it together. That what it fundamentally represents is whether you are a coal miner in kentucky, or a garment worker in new york, or simply a woman taking care of a family at home, that dr. Martinly, what luther king jr. Said, remains true which is that fundamentally we are bound up in it together and we will either rise or fall together and we will take the rest of the world with us. So what that means, in terms of our organizing is fundamental. It means that we have to see the relationship between police misconduct, criminal justice, education and investment in education, health care, immigration because all of these have become pushbutton issues to do exactly what jennifer said, to divide us. We do not have to let that be the case. If we see the relationship and we can be in the relationship in the way we can be, there is nothing more important than after nfl players started taking during the National Anthem, that a a white woman who was going to sing the National Anthem took her knee while she sang it. [applause] liliana i think intersectionality is important because we see the impact of what happens to extremely marginalized people when Public Awareness heightens. For instance when the lgbt , movement, a very white off,ent, started to take lgbt, specifically trans people and specifically trans people of color were left behind. The year that gay marriage was legalized, and the year after there was the highest number of , trans women of color murdered that has ever been documented. So when we think about trans women of color and the amount of people that are murdered simply youuse of who they are, if are not doing intersectionality, then you are part of the violence. Youre part of the people that are killing me and us. [applause] this is a world wild worldwide phenomena. In the United States, black trans women are murdered at higher rates. In the world, latina trans women are murdered at significantly higher rates. It is not because of anything but if i go to the gas station , and i am authentically me, i can get shot and nothing happens to the people that killed me and nothing happens to the community that let it happen. So intersectionality is undoing that work and not allowing people like me to be afraid when we walk the streets. [cheers and applause. Carmen rebecca. Rebecca i heard, at latest count, there are 5000 women here. Is that the latest count . Carmen about 4200. Rebecca well, if there were 5000 women here. Carmen there are more than 5000 watching. Rebecca 1250 of you are my people. If you are a cancer survivor, you are a woman with a disability. If you have an eating disorder, you are a woman with a disability. If you have ever gone to therapy in your life, you are a woman with a disability. [applause] if you are coming through Substance Abuse and recovery, you are one of ours. And i am here to you right now the house of representatives is pushing hr 620, which will systematically dismantle title iii of the ada, so you could not even come to this convention because you could not get through the damn door. Over 400 arrests over 400 disabled activists were arrested for all of your health care. 400. [applause] [cheers] yet we are continually erased any time they rattle off the list of people who put their lives on the line to save health care. Over 900 dead in puerto rico is the latest news. Over 900. That is not even talking about the hundreds of people with disabilities that were impacted going into this storm, and all of those people coming out of the storm will have acquired disabilities as a result. Those are my people. Those are all of your people. I come into this space with a woman with a physical disability, and that is my privilege. No one will ask me, no one will question my need for a stool. But if it is one in four of us, if you do a quick count of the panel, i am not the only one up here. But i have the privilege of being able to disclose. If we will push back on 620 and preserve the rights for all of our people, you need to acknowledge the fact that disabled women are already in your movement. [applause] [cheers] carmen i need to add to what rebecca said. While we have been organizing the convention and the womens march, we have several people who work with us on ada. And while we were putting together a campaign for our sister linda, and we wrote the hashtag istandwithlinda, it erases so many people who cannot stand. Even the intentionality is important when we are putting together narratives and stories and hashtags, that we have to ensure that we are bringing other people to the table. Thank you. [applause] erika thank you. So for me, the work i do, i do work through our revolution. Intersectionality and politics is very important. Because, for me, i am not looking at who can we lift up as a candidate just because they are female or because they believe that we should be having, you know, the they believe in reproductive justice, etc. For me, i want to lift up women not just because they are women, but because they have the right intention through fixing problems in the communities that i come from and a lot of the people i know that are usually not paid attention to come from. Just to give you a little bit of story i was working for the , bernie campaign. Just to disclose this. [cheers] i do not want to talk about the politics of 2016, but just to give you a sense of why i started working, for me, before i went into the campaign, i was working for the guatemalan consulate. I am not from guatemala, but i wanted to work with them because i wanted to work with children coming from Central America. What was heartbreaking for me was to hear that stories of little girls who literally had to take contraceptive pills to cross the border because they knew they would get raped, or because they were ready to be raped. They were mentally ready to be raped as they crossed the border. Many of them come already here, were 14yearold girls and already pregnant. All of this was happening and no one was talking about it. For me, i was like, who is talking about these girls . Who is talking about these children coming through Central America . I want to see who is there for those children. Unfortunately, i did not see that in the women. To me, in my work, and in the work you are doing locally, in elections and electoral work, we need to lift up women who are progressive, who are willing to look at the world in an intersectional way, not just reproductive justice. Also, women who, perhaps, have problems because of their race or their class or a disability or anything else that we are going through, gender identity, etc. So for me, that is very important. Zahra thank you. Two things. One, thank you, rebecca. I am always excited to be on panels where i learn something new. As a woman who goes to therapy, i did not know that that counted as being a woman with a disability. But you are right. That it is definitely difficult to disclose. It is something i have been doing for two years, because how does one do this work over and over again and continued to show up and be full and be present,be whole, without getting professional help . So thank you. Thank you for starting that conversation and supporting those of us who are trying to figure out how to disclose and normalize that this is what we do to get help and be whole. That is the first thing. The second thing is really just the story. I shared, in my introduction, that i am the daughter of immigrants who came to the United States in pursuit of the american dream. And though we were raised in a faithbased home, where we knew that social justice was a part of our being, we did not necessarily connect that to challenging the police, challenging the war on drugs, or to questioning government. Growing up, we watched we watched cops and walker, texas ranger, and other horrendous shows that glorified lawenforcement and did not think the war on drugs had anything to do with us as a south asian immigrant family. Fastforward to 2010, and a young arabamerican man walks into my office, and i am a new lawyer at the time, and he says i found a gps tracking device on my car. And i said that sounds like a television show, what are you talking about . He says i took my car in for an oil change, and we happened to look under it not something i have ever done and we found a device. It was bigger than the iphone 6. We found a battery pack with it. We took it off. We did not know what it was. We took a picture of it and posted it online. And the other tech geeks online helped us figure out, through the serial number on there, it is a tracking device. Two days later, the fbi showed up at his door and asked for it back. [laughter] i kid you not. I would not believe it if we did not have the freedom of information act documents to prove it and had we not sued them to learn more. Along the way, what i learned as the daughter of immigrants, was this was not the first time this had happened. It had happened for decades to black and latino communities. Our lawsuit was not even the first lawsuit. They were existing lawsuits. It took the Supreme Court well over 10 years to say to a black man on the east coast, who had similarly found a device on his car, that is a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. And by the time they decided that, Law Enforcement was no longer using devices that big. They were just getting the information directly from the tech companies. And i share this story, because for me, it was a turning point. In recognizing it is one thing to talk about intersectionality. But it is another thing to care about an issue that does not seem like it impacts me in the moment. I would like to say we should all come to the table selflessly, because it is the correct thing to do. But there is also a selfish reason to do it. If we do not stop them when they come our brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, copanelists, and neighbors, they will come for us in the same exact way. [applause] [cheers] stosh being the last person to answer this on the panel is an intense experience. So i will just say a few things that, for me, it is a project if the endeavor is social transformation, as opposed to social reform, than then intersectionality is absolutely necessary. That we cannot actually, allocative way, make a very qualitatively make a very , different world, an unrecognizable world, without doing this work in a different way. To me, it feels like a key feature of what is needed for all of us. I also want to reflect what was said last night. That as women and people with different identities and experiences and who have compounded experiences with oppression are at the table, actually architecting the vision for governing in the future, it will mean our Public Policies will look and be entirely different and not leave people behind. It will reflect all of us and all of the people we are connected to in a very different way. Finally, i will say i believe the work of intersectionality is actually healing. If there is a way in which we are making an ancestral and lineage repair when we do the work of intersectional organizing. [applause] and i want to say how meaningful it was. Last night, a group of jews were gathered to bring the sabbath, and by the conference, by the convention organizers, we were provided a space to gather and sing and pray. And not only that, because some jews observe shabbat by not spending money or observing dietary laws. Organizers had gone to the effort of not only space but providing food, so people who wanted to be at this convention would not have to choose between jewish observance and practice and participating. It was a concrete demonstration of what it means. For jews, that was deeply healing. That was so healing. Many of us, including people who are white jews, like myself. Although it is important to say the Jewish Community is a Multiracial Community with 20 jews of color, that we have felt alone. We have experienced thousands of years of murder and displacement and genocide. While now it looks like someone that looks like myself is safe, we also know it is cyclical, and it is precisely when it appears the safest and most invisible that we are at the greatest risk. And we know that we are, right now, less at risk than every person on this panel. It is our job to be clear that we are all in this together. And what happened last night was a profound moment of healing, so thank you. [applause] jennifer let me add one more point. As i listened, and learn, which is critically important, i am also reminded of the fact that if we do not organize across movements, we run the risk of the oppressed becoming the oppressor. Right . Where wins are achieved for a certain group. A certain segment of the population. To the detriment of other segments of the population. Do you understand what i am saying . Lets take feminism. Lets take the black womans response to feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. When alice walker coined the term womanism. Because she believed the black womans experience was not fully represented in the feminist movement. Black women were struggling for survival. They wanted to care for their families. They were beginning to see the impact of incarceration, unemployment, underemployment, on their families. And the feminist movement was focused on sex and independence. Right . Freedoms. The right to have your own voice. And so the needs, the concerns of the black community and the black woman were not fully represented. We look forward, and we have black women fighting against white women. We do not want that. Take sheryl sandberg. Did anyone read the book lean in . Good book. But she says women just have to aspire to be more to get ahead, be more assertive, be more aggressive. She has said in commentary about the book that black women do not lean in enough. What she does not appreciate that black women have been found to be more assertive and to be through research to be more assertive and to be more aggressive. The fact is they are kept from the table. In lifting up the experience of women as a whole and not understanding the nuanced experiences of women of color, she ignores that. And, in turn, it gets termed a gender issue, and maybe some get ahead but others dont. We have to be careful about the oppressed becoming the oppressor. [applause] carmen i love that. Because i will say that in planning the womens march and planning the womens convention, there are often times where i find myself alongside my other three cochairs, particularly tamika and linda, the women of color, being called fake feminists. What it has me understand is that white radical feminism does not include black feminism. Chicana feminism. It does not include me. What i also have learned in my studies as a chicana feminist is that feminism was founded in the late 1800s by a man who was a french philosopher. So the initial iteration of feminism had some patriarchy in it. The white suffrage movement, although i am extremely grateful for the gains that i am able to experience and the privileges i have, but it did not include black women. And then black feminism was introduced. And that is when chicana feminism were able to talk about how we were a part of something that we have always been living every single day. Chicanatudied feminism, when they were describing what it was, i was like, that is my mother. I never labeled it. So again, we have to think about what it looks like. If we are intentional and inclusive. That segues into my question of what are challenges of organizing intersectionally . What are the challenges that we find ourselves in . When we were putting together the policy platform within the womens march, everyone wanted to against trump. March that would have been the easy thing to do. But we had to actually march for something. [applause] and what we have asked people to do is we brought together about 27 to 30 women, gender nonconforming and trans women, to talk about their issue and finding their intersectionality through a gender lens. And that was accomplished. And so we marched for immigrant rights, lgbtqia rights, criminal Justice Reform, but it is not easy. As we talk about organizing and making sure we are intentional and making sure we are intersectional, it does not happen overnight. So what are some of the challenges you all face in your organizing and trying to be intentional and intersectional . I will start. I want to start with something rebecca said. Being intersectional and working in an intersectional way also means recognizing that when we support the right on specific issues that Impact Communities that we may not always identify ourselves with, we benefit. So one example was when people with disabilities fought for the ada and won sidewalk cuts in the streets, who benefited . Everyone pushing a stroller, right . I mean, every elderly people with the walkers. When women fought to become Police Officers and brought sex discrimination cases against Police Departments that had arbitrary requirements on height, short white men got to become cops for the first time. [laughter] so our i say that because one of the challenges with working intersectionally, sometimes, is recognizing that, in the words of audre lorde, we do not live single issue lives. We dont. Right . [applause] at the same time, there are times when we must push on particular issues, and that can be difficult for people with limited resources and time, sometimes, to recognize why they should push on a specific issue that might not be the primary issue of the moment. And these examples of recognizing the gains that will come to everyone in defending the rights and demanding the investment in particular issues at particular points of time, is sometimes the most strategic thing to do and demonstrates exactly what i also think jennifer is talking about not becoming the oppressor as we fight for issues we might he putting most of our time in. [applause] rebecca i think for the disability community, it was twopronged. Carmen, i want to go back to what you were talking about, when it came to the plan, the womens march plan. When i first saw the disability draft and saw that the original was composed by eight people seven of which were white, four , of whom were men, i will not lie, i had to blow the damn thing up, and i did it for shits and giggles. [laughter] because it said the number one issue for disabled women was the u. N. Convention on civil rights for disabilities. I am sorry 50 of people being killed by cops right now are people with disabilities. 80 of women with intellectual disabilities are raped or assaulted by 18. The u. N. Convention is important, but it will not impact our lives on the ground. We need fair pay. We need family leave. Our issues are fundamentally womens issues. So it meant deconstructing that. And talking to our own community and saying this is bullshit. This does not represent who our people are. How do we rebuild it . How do we reframe it and center the voices of women of color with disabilities to ensure it is representative of all of our folk . Folks with Mental Health disabilities. With eating disorders, chronic conditions, crohns, chronic fatigue, those that might not come to the rally but we know you are included in the mix. [cheers] and the challenge for us has been and i would strongly encourage folks to take a moment and google the Harriet Tubman collective, and look at completing the vision for black lives, because in the movement for black lives, disability is pretty much significantly erased in it. It was black disabled leaders who went back and said let us create a supplement for this. Let us make sure that natasha mckinnons experiences as a black disabled woman are not ignored in this document. Let us make this a more fulfilling. Its not only looking at our issues in the community about being too damn male and stale. It is saying we are already in your mix. How can we help you fix this . [applause] jennifer i appreciate the point rebecca is making. One of the challenges we face, sometimes we make assumptions, that if we have got a certain person in the conversation, we can check the box. Oh, now we understand all of issues of persons with disabilities, we do not need to learn anymore, we do not need to look further, we dont need to unmask some of the things right in our face. One example im always reminded of, being concerned about issues of criminal Justice Reform and the intersection with poverty and race, is as people move forward, trying to make strides in tackling overincarceration in this country, the experience in communities of color, one of the efforts that has been under way for a while now is something called ban the box. Everyone familiar with ban the box . When you go to complete an application for employment and there is a little box have you ever been arrested or convicted of a crime, have you ever had to be imprisoned . There has been an effort in many jurisdictions to get rid of that box. It feels good, right . What we do not appreciate is if we do not lean in, that black male who fills out a job application that cannot account for two years or four years or six years it is not going to be assumed that he was taking care of mama because she was sick. Its not because mom was dying, and he needed to be there. The assumption is going to be, whether he checked that box or not, he was somewhere else. He was off to college i. E. He was incarcerated. We have to appreciate if we dont dig deeper and dont understand how reality plays into the policies that we are seeking to change, the reforms, and how people will interpret them, the box may be gone, but the mindset is still there. So we have to challenge that. [applause] erika one other thing i really appreciate about the cochairs is that women who are coming into the space and saying, i do not see what i should be seeing on this platform, i dont see this issue being here, talked about, or you know, you are not about people that we should be talking about, and their issues. For me, it is also i am just really trying to get people in power to speak up when they have to. The fact is that sometimes, we are not completely aware of the things we should be including in our own platforms as organizations or politicians or people putting together a convention. Sometimes, we do have those blind spots. That is why it is important that, you know, we have women who are willing to be really strong and upfront and say youre missing my voice or you are missing the voice of my my mother or the people that i love. For us, it is really important to do that. Not just calling each other out but rather lets figure out how we can have a conversation and get people to understand how we have other voices in this kind of gathering, even on political platforms, to push social change forward. [applause] stosh it seems obvious on some level, but it feels to me one of the fastest ways to address challenges is to actually be in a relationship with one another and understand that we live in a society that deliberately segregates us, and that even though we live in proximity with one another, we are trained to distrust and be in opposition to one another so systems of power can continue. So to proactively build and reach across the many differences gives us the ability to understand one anothers lives and hear about what its like to be me, what its like to be you. And then, we have less of a chance to mess it up in the first place. But then when we do, because it is inevitable, that we live in a world that is so broken that, in the process of repairing it, we will make mistakes, it means we have the relationships and the trust, and the love and care for one another that we can have the conversations that are brave conversations, that we apologize, and then we actually act different. But that only happens if we build relationships intentionally. And if we build relationships over time. Not just one time at a conference, but years and years of getting to know one another and loving one another. [applause] zahra i would say the challenge with intersectionality can sometimes be that if my people are dying, if it is our lives on the line and it is bad news, bad news, bad news every day, it takes hard work to stop and say we are not the only one, not the only ones suffering, not the only ones impacted, and this is not the only way in which oppression is happening. But when im drowning on work on the muslim ban, i have to be intentional about coming up for at air and thinking, what is going on with daca and health care and antisemitism . But that takes intersectionality. It takes intentionality. It takes the transformational relationships. The one that is not just transactional and we say how are you . And no one really gives an open and honest answer, it takes hearing from people in communities next to us and neighboring us and intersecting us about what is going on with them. I think the other thing, the way forward, even when we not doing fulltime intersectional work, or may be all and have time to work on is what is killing my people, is to make sure we are not becoming the oppressors. That i am not willing to accept a win for my people if it comes on someone elses back. [applause] i am not willing to sacrifice anyone elses liberty from my liberty. So if we fight islamophobia without fighting antisemitism, if we fight for Immigration Reform without talking about why people are migrating worldwide and what it is about our Foreign Policy that forces them to move, if we are willing [applause]. To close some jails and not others, if we ban the box but do not get bail reform, if we ban the box but do not get restorative justice, those are not wins. So even when i feel like im drowning and maybe all i have time to work on is one issue, i have to be sure that when i am moving that issue, i am moving that issue for for everyone, and i am not sacrificing anyone elses rights for the sake of my own. [applause] carmen do you have anything you wanted to say . Lilianna i think we have to understand our perception of when we work with people. In my line of work, as a trans woman of color, im highly educated, highly degreed, and highly credentialed. And i say that, because i had to do that to navigate the space. People would not just hire me because i am a trans person. That is not how it works. Because i have all of that, it means i try really, really hard to know what im talking about and know what im doing. But because i work with people that had historically not worked with trans leaders outside of a community organizing, people assume im a client, so the perception of trans women of color usually seen as a client when i go to nonprofit worlds, they assume im a client. They look at me as i am speaking as a client rather than speaking as a specialist. It directly impacts the power they feel they have over me. I have been given books about how to write logic models. I have a masters in public administration. They taught me how to write logic models. When i talk to people and they say let me help you with resources, it is because they assume i do not know anything. When you think about how to work with people and communities, how are you perceiving them . Are you only working with them because they are clients . And if you are, then you have a power over them, and maybe you do have a power over them and they just allow it, but that impact versus intentionality. Like it really does not care what your intent is. If it hurts, it hurts. So be mindful of your perception. [applause] maya all of these challenges are critical, but there is one we have not named. Trauma. [applause] we live in a country that has produced so much trauma across so many communities, whether it is young women who have to be prepared to be raped when they cross the border, whether it is a trans woman worrying about whether you will be physically attacked walking down the street, the person with a disability who shows up at a Job Interview on time in a wheelchair and then got asked, how will you get to work on time . All of these things are various forms of trauma. I would say White Communities who do not always agree with us on policy issues have also suffered trauma. And some of the positions they take, which i think a fundamentally against the best interests of the country, are also borne of trauma. I think that unless we start to recognize that it is sometimes very hard to Work Together because of the trauma experiences that we all carry, until we start to demand a country that actually invests in Mental Health and Mental Health services [applause] maya because the reality is no one has to suffer from trauma. There are treatments. There are treatments available. And you have to be wealthy to pay for them. And so i just save this to say it is a challenge to intersectional work. It is a challenge to all of our work. And it is even a challenge to come together as a country and have the kind of dialogue on facts that will produce the policy outcomes we need to invest in a prosperous future for all of us. [applause] jennifer i appreciate what you are saying, maya, and i will harken back to a comment you made earlier all of us being steeped in structural racism, sexism, and classism. It is an appreciation that one of the greatest challenges we also experience in intersectional work is that we show up to the table, but we show up bringing our identity alone to the table. And so we speak from our own perspective and our own vantage point, which is critically important, but we are not necessarily listening in, trying to really understand the experiences of others. And how that all works together. And the fact of the matter, speaking to your point, is if we dont appreciate that we are not just fighting a fight for some rights, we are fighting a fire for all rights if we do not appreciate that, what were really trying to do is take down structural and institutional racism, classism, sexism, right, and all of the phobias borne out of it, then we lose sight of the bigger vision, and then we actually lose the war. So we start fighting these little fights, and we lose the bigger war. The importance the work we have to do is to not only educate ourselves about the issues we work on on a daily basis, but really try to get understanding. Be an expert in our own spaces but try to be the best generalist we can be about the people we are intersecting with and their issues and concerns, so we can fight the war together. [applause] carmen and so, before we close this panel out, lets give everyone a round of applause for being so brilliant and intentional and amazing. [applause] [cheers] carmen and some of the takeaways that we have for today is we have to be intentional in our organizing, understanding that there are times when we invite people to the table that we also may have to give up our seat. There is a lane for everyone to get involved. And also, lets also be mindful of those who have been oppressed and for us to not become oppressors. Lets be open, lets listen, lets lean in, lets dig deep within ourselves, right, lets keep our eyes on the prize, on our mission and our vision and liberation, lets not make assumptions about one another. Lets proactively challenge ourselves and our organizations, as well as have brave conversations. Build intentional and transformational relationships with one another. And so there is so much that we could do. This is a journey. Learning is a process. Intentionality is a process. We are going to make mistakes, but lets be mindful that while we are seeking our own liberation, that we are not hurting others on our journey there. Thank you, everybody. [applause] maya can we end on one note of hope . I just want to call this out, because it is so important. When black players in the National Football league started taking a knee, one of the things they did was create a list of principles. And on that list of principles, they not only talk about police misconduct, which is critically important, they talked about sexism, they talked about immigration, they talked about internationalism, investing in communities, and it was an example in a place where, we do not, as a country, typically typically think about intersectional leadership, and men, we do not think of intersectional leaders, absolutely representing the power and importance of intersectionality. [applause] carmen and on that note, in regards to men, what i think is really beautiful about black feminism is during the time when that was being put together, what they recognized, black feminists recognized, is that they were also fighting alongside their fathers, sons, and husbands. When we are talking about inclusivity, we also have to include our men in our conversation. I wanted to highlight that, because i know i am i am able to do the work that i do because i have an amazing father, amazing brothers, and i have a wonderful boyfriend, who is somewhere here, named jared jordan. [laughter] thank you, everyone. [applause] all right. Thank you. Enjoy todays session. The Sojourner Truth lunch honoring congresswoman Maxine Waters begins at 11 45 here in hall c. Washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, wall street journal immigration discussesaura mettler possible legislative action on immigration. And more with daniel stein and Benjamin Johnson come of these echoed a the American Immigration lawyers association. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Night, federal appellate judge john newman looks back at his 38 year judicial career in his book. He is interviewed by senator richard blumenthal. Years, judge of 45 having gone from that active life of making decisions and going to court and advocating a case to judging, was that a difficult transition for you and did you ever miss the life of advocacy . It was not difficult. It has been for some i have known. I have known people who became judges and so disliked the decisionmaking process that they left the bench. I was an advocate. I found the decisionmaking process, while it was different, enormously challenging and satisfying. Being an attorney, i love being a judge, because the opportunity to resolve disputes large and small, some of them have a large political and public significance, that is a very satisfying role. Watch sunday night at 9 00 eastern on book tv on cspan2. Next, we hear from female leaders of the private and public sectors. They spoke and an allday forum on women and leadership hosted by politico in washington, d. C. This portion runs about one hour and 15 minutes. [crowd noise] announcer please welcome founding partner, tory burch foundations president , laurie. [applause] laurie good afternoon. I hope you all ate