21st Century American Women Politicians

"If you think campaigning is easy, it’s not. It’s fun. It can be fun. But at some point when you’re spending 18 hours a day, seven days a week out on the road, it’s a grind’ and it can be"

"I’ve always tried to do what was best for Arkansas, even if it meant taking on my party, the president, the Wall Street banks or the Washington unions that spent $10 million to defeat me"

"For any Black woman who is considering running for office, I would first say to her that you are complete. You don’t need any additional education or degrees"

"I believe that poverty is the root cause of crime. So, if you want better health outcomes or better outcomes in general from some of the things that all cities deal with—like increased crime and increased poverty—you must provide opportunities for people to have money and to live their best lives"

"We have always wanted community input. We have to meet people where they are and we want them to tell us how their government can work for them not the other way around"

"Equitable development must be driven by the community, not by politics"

"Unenviable position of inheriting many lawsuits from the previous administrations, and in many cases is required to defend the city, not to mention her fiduciary duty to the taxpayers as well"

"When I talk about addressing the root causes of crime, I am talking about supporting families and communities that have suffered disinvestment for decades under the failed status quo"

"I see my job as mayor to find ways to expand options for people to exercise their right to vote within state law"

"I will not stay silent when I spot racism," Jones, 49, said during her speech, delivered at the city's Omega Center. "I will not stay silent when I spot homophobia or transphobia. I will not stay silent when I spot xenophobia. I will not stay silent when I spot religious intolerance. I will not stay silent when I spot any injustice.""

"Our goal is to build a really united cohort of progressive lawmakers in Congress who can shift the national conversation and neutralize the false populism of the far right and push visionary legislation"

"Our generation can't afford for anything less than putting forward an actual plan to fix America and not just responding to the Republicans"

"We need to build a mission-driven caucus in Congress who will hold whoever is in charge accountable to the best the Democratic Party can be"

"When we have a full democracy where closer to a hundred percent of the population votes, then I will believe that we truly do not have a majority of people backing our ideas"

"We want to add to the majority and make sure that everyone in a blue district is an actual champion"

"Through this job, I’ve realized nobody actually knows what they’re doing. So that gives me a lot of comfort"

"They are waging a battle for the soul of America, and for the soul of the Democratic Party"

"From an economic justice angle, we’ve been spending a ton of our money on these endless wars. Our approach to that is to run candidates that are pro-peace and are also ready to create a peace economy hopefully when we get out of those wars and lead better by example for ourselves."

"We must set the precedent for justice and accountability before fascists do."

"I will have no distractions in my administration because we focused on doing what's best for the people of the state"

"We're fighting to bring the government back to the people and out of the hands of dictators. And we're here to say that the era of Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, okay? Get outta town, get OUTTA town, 'cause you don’t represent our values. You are not New yorkers, you're not New Yorkers. Because we come from a long line of people who fought for women's rights that happened here first. We fought for environmental justice that happened here first. We fought for labor rights that happened here first. We fought for the LGBTQ rights that happened here first."

"I think the end result will be a somewhat more moderate Kathy Hochul, which I think squares with where she actually is, which is a bit of a common sense, moderate Democrat"

"Anyone who commits a crime under our laws...has consequences...I don't know why that's so important to you."

"If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day. That is a natural reaction."

"I have felt a weight on my shoulders to make sure that every little girl and all the women of the state who’ve had to bang up against glass ceilings everywhere they turn, to know that a woman could be elected in her own right and successfully govern a state as rough and tumble as New York"

"I'm a mother. You're hard-wired to care about your children and your family's safety. So voters need to know that we have a plan"

"I want by the end of my administration, for every woman to say there are no barriers, there is no longer a ceiling"

"I want to get money out to people. We have way too much money sitting there that should be going to renters and to landlords who are suffering"

"These projects help us turn the face of New York city's long-standing dependence on fossil fuels, ensuring millions of New Yorkers-especially those living in our most vulnerable communities-can have the promise of cleaner air and a healthier future"

"For all y'all talking about "we can't have lawlessness": What do you call it when cops murder without consequence? When a mayor violates the municipal code? Shouldn't the people in power be held to highest level of accountability when it comes to following the law?"

"The current system expects activists, organizers and abolitionists to do it 100% perfect right now with limited resources. While the flawed racist system has been doing it imperfectly for hundreds of years while exploiting us and our resources. Things I think about..."

"If u want ppl 2 deliver u groceries & goods but don't want to hold the corporations they work for accountable for PPE, thriving wages, hazard pay, & taxes, you're exploiting cheap labor for your own safety. We won't survive on exploitation. We only survive through solidarity."

"We’re not trying to create a space that’s like how the world works. I’ve just learned time after time that when you allow a young person to actually make decisions about what is best for them, oftentimes in the long run, it actually is best for them. They know a lot about their daily lives. I only see them for four to five hours a week. Who am I to tell them what to do in those four to five hours?"

"We live in a really messed up society. It’s not equitable. It is still very racist. And white supremacy is very present – and classism, and sexism, and homophobia and transphobia. All of those things permeate the many institutions that we move through, and that has deeply shaped my life, my work trajectory, the things that I do."

"no community is a monolith. Whether we’re talking about white communities or Black communities or the Asian diaspora or Native communities, there is disagreement around a lot of things – gender, age, class. Going back to Ericka Huggins, that conversation was very formative for me, because I asked her, “How do I interact with elders I disagree with?” And she said, “You know, I had elders I disagreed with. This is a tale as old as time and is not a new thing. But are you moving in a principled way? Are you moving transparently? Are you being accountable? Is it really coming from a place that is grounded in a bigger vision of community care and wellbeing? Then keep moving in that way. If you’re not causing harm and what is being built is actually transformative, that will come out in the long run.”"

"We’re not going to get to a place of change or transformation if we only want to engage in things that make us comfortable. As a non-binary person, very little about, I don’t know, going to buy clothes feels comfortable. Who decided that because you have X genitals that you needed to do X thing or act X way? I spent a lot of my life very uncomfortable in my body and very uncomfortable with what I was told was the expectation for me as a “woman.” When I finally came to the understanding that is actually not who or what I am and chose to move honestly, I started to feel more free, but also other people felt more uncomfortable."

"people who move through the world without the privilege you have are uncomfortable, probably every minute of the day, but are actively choosing to be their liberated self. They make it possible for everyone else to live more honestly, even if that means we live more uncomfortably."

"I really do believe artists, our trans community, folks who choose the pathway that actually feels best to them even if it’s maybe not the pathway their parents wanted for them, folks who break open boxes, really do set the stage for the rest of us to have opportunities to live in more liberated ways. I feel a certain sense of responsibility to keep pushing those boundaries. So that 10, 20, 30 years from now the generations that come, they can live in those more liberated spaces."

"I expected the age critiques and the experience critique, because I know that people do not value activism, organizing, or coalition building when it comes to public service. Even though that might be more valuable than career politician experience in the sense that career politicians often get so isolated from actual community members, so their ability to work in coalition — we’re usually convincing them to work with us."

"I didn’t get into this race to grow people’s theory and intellectual prowess around equity. We got into it because we want to see that become a real thing. We want to see affordable housing actually exist, we want people to be able to move back into the city, we want people to have actual incomes and livable wages that allow them to live in the city. That is really what equity comes down to."

"We’re at a pivotal point where we’re asking that big existential question of ‘who has the right to live in Seattle?’ but also ‘who has the right to stay in Seattle?’ I’m critiqued a lot for my stance on wanting developers to have to invest more, but you’re right — it’s not about investing in buildings when we want investors to invest more, it’s about actually investing in the people of Seattle — people who have made Seattle the attractive, beautiful, cultural place that it is. It’s becoming a museum of those things, things that folks who grew up in Seattle can come visit sometimes, but those folks can’t live there. We need some people who are willing to draw some hard lines in the sand and say, ‘This is our value. We value Seattlelites getting to stay here and live here.’ I also value this growing city. But if you are not investing in the people who are going to be living in your buildings then what are you building your buildings for?"

"I don’t want to end up with more of what philanthropy has done to us, where philanthropy as an industry requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. The non-profit industrial complex requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. It is literally built upon people who — if suddenly there were no poor folks — they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves because their entire lives have been built upon this non-profit industrial complex. So, I think that there’s an economic injustice that we’ve allowed to exist for the sake of keeping the non-profit industrial complex going, keeping certain public projects going so we’re not actually invested in ending the actual injustice."

"I think it’s really important that I sit down and have very important and solution-oriented conversations with the people who have been holding the city down through multiple administrations and find out first what solutions are they wanting to bring to the table. I think that’s really important not just for buy-in but for effective solution building.”"

"In 1970, of 15,650 major elected and appointed positions at all levels of government, federal, state, and local, only 310, or 1.98 percent were held by Mexican Americans. This result is no mere coincidence. It is the result of manifold discriminatory practices which have the design and effect of excluding Mexican Americans from participation in their own government and maintaining the status quo."

"if the goal of this great university is excellence, and it is and should be, the attainment of that excellence requires diversity as a fundamental element. Anything less is mere pretension."

"It means requiring all students to study the history, culture, and contributions of these people whom we call "minorities.""

"We do not fulfill our role as a university when we, effectively, abdicate our charge to foster and maintain diversity in the university environment."

"The university of the twenty-first century would be irrelevant if it did not take account of the most striking changes in our world: rapid communications, enormous increases in lit-eracy, and, most importantly, greater mixing of cultures in all aspects of our lives."

"What does it take to build a great university? One must start from the premise that a great university is much more than a campus which provides a home to a group of professional schools. The courses which it chooses to offer, the people it chooses to employ and to teach, and the questions it chooses for research ultimately derive not exclusively from discussions in faculty meetings, but from society: society's demands, its questions, its dreams. The university is both the creation of and the intellectual force for the society in which it lives. A university flourishes as it examines and teaches the intellectual questions arising from the society of that time and place."

"I am concerned that some members of the university community do not share the belief that failure to make the university more culturally diverse not only represents a loss to the institution but indeed threatens its very existence as a major world university. Many such people hold that standards of excellence can be maintained while being insulated from the society which nurtures it. For many of them the very use of the term "affirmative action" tempts them into a logical fallacy: that where the recruitment method includes an element of affirmative action, anyone recruited in this manner is necessarily less qualified or able to secure the university's excellence."