Pelosi's Remarks On The 175th Anniversary Of Seneca Falls

The following post is by Rep. Nancy Pelosi at MSNBC.com:

On this day 175 years ago, in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York, a group of visionary women shook the world.

With their Declaration of Sentiments, they not only echoed but improved upon our founding charter — boldly asserting that “all men and women are created equal” and rallying women to “demand the equal station to which they are entitled.”

Imagine the courage that it took for those women at that time. Some had left home without their husband’s or father’s permission, and spoke openly about issues of discrimination and disenfranchisement and domestic violence.

The groundbreaking convention in Seneca Falls further energized what was a burgeoning women’s rights movement in America. And since then, generations of fearless women marching, mobilizing and demanding full equality for all have carried forth their torch.

For their audacity in blazing a path for progress, our nation owes a debt to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Jane Hunt, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and countless heroines of history, including those who were enslaved, abused or marginalized.

More than seven decades later, women won the right to vote with the 19th Amendment, although it would take many more decades before Black women could fully exercise this freedom everywhere. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 are both pieces of an ongoing effort to close the gender pay gap. In the 1990s, Congress secured expanded access to family and medical leave, as well as strong protections in the Violence Against Women Act. 

Meanwhile, our coalition has only grown broader and stronger as we have fought for the rights and protections of transgender women and nonbinary Americans. 

All this progress has made possible a woman as vice president, a woman as speaker — and someday soon, a woman as president.

Today, we stand on the shoulders of our courageous foremothers. Because they took a stand, at last we have a seat at the table. 

Yet outrageously, our centuries-long march toward gender justice was abruptly halted last summer when the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court took a wrecking ball to women’s health freedom.

The monstrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade ripped away long-held rights — and unleashed a flood of draconian policies denying access to the full spectrum of reproductive care, even in life-threatening circumstances.

For the first time in our history, girls growing up today have less reproductive freedom than their mothers. Democrats will not rest until the rights of Roe are restored for all.

At the same time, women still face too many barriers in the workplace.

Gender justice starts with finally achieving equal pay for equal work. And we must ease the burden of caregiving that falls disproportionately on women by investing in the expanded child tax credit, universal child care, paid family and medical leave, home health care services and more.

This is the imperative, ongoing work of the Biden-Harris administration and Democrats in the Congress — and we are committed to finishing the job.

The story of America has always been one of ever-expanding freedoms, from abolishing the scourge of slavery, which was strongly supported at Seneca Falls, to ensuring all women and people of color are able to vote, to securing reproductive freedom, to achieving marriage equality.

These victories were made possible by everyday Americans participating in the highest form of patriotism: outside mobilization. This is the indelible legacy of Seneca Falls, stirring generations of women not to wait but to work for change.

So, on this momentous 175th anniversary, let us renew our pledge to continue the work of Seneca Falls. Because all of America’s mothers, wives, sisters and daughters must be able to enjoy the liberties and opportunities that they deserve. 

When women succeed, America succeeds. 

Remembering A Great Speaker Of The House - Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi is stepping down from House Democratic Party leadership. I think she will be remembered at one the the greatest Speakers the House of Representatives has ever had.

Here is part of an op-ed on Speaker Pelosi by Michelle Cottle in The New York Times:

When Nancy Pelosi first took up the speaker’s gavel in January 2007, it was amid soaring talk of making history and breaking barriers. “For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling,” she proclaimed at her swearing-in. “Now the sky is the limit. Anything is possible.”

Sixteen years, four presidents, two impeachments, one pandemic and a failed insurrection later, Ms. Pelosi will soon hand over that gavel for good and step down from House leadership amid a darker, more divided political landscape than she likely imagined in those first heady days. The George W. Bush years weren’t a high point for bipartisan comity and public trust in government, but they were a far cry from the violence-obsessed, conspiracymongering nihilism of Trumpism. But Ms. Pelosi has never been one to let the haters get her down, and some of her most important acts of leadership have come at some of the nation’s lowest moments.

History, being reductive, will remember Ms. Pelosi as the first woman to rise to the exalted post of speaker, just two steps away from the presidency. Those who have watched her work in the House for so many years will remember her as something arguably just as notable: a total badass.

By that term, I don’t mean that Ms. Pelosi is some swaggering, performative tough guy. Quite the opposite. In her two decades atop the House Democratic caucus, whether in the majority or the minority, she has been a strikingly effective leader in part because she doesn’t much give a flip about her public image. What matters to her is getting stuff done — be it passing legislation, thwarting the opposition’s agenda or protecting her members come election time. She is brutally pragmatic (too much so for some in her caucus) and has a shrewd sense of the political pressure points of allies and opponents alike. She doesn’t hog the credit for her clever ideas, nor does she waste time publicly rationalizing or blaming others for her bad ones. No one outworks her, and aides and allies have happily cultivated the legend of her endless energy. (Key points: Doesn’t need sleep. Runs on chocolate.)

Ms. Pelosi has frequently been underestimated. It is one of her competitive advantages. That whole grandmother-in-pearls thing led many to assume that she could be talked down to or outmaneuvered or intimidated. More than one Republican president and congressional leader has seen his best-laid plans shatter against her vaguely awkward, excessively bright smile. (Ms. Pelosi has never been natural in front of the camera.) Mr. Bush’s second-term goal of remaking Social Security never had a prayer. Even President Donald Trump was clearly in awe of her and had no idea how to deal with her treating him like a petulant man-child. He still doesn’t. The poor guy can’t even come up with an insulting nickname for her that sticks.

Many have misunderstood Ms. Pelosi’s political core. She has spent her congressional career representing San Francisco, fueling caricatures of her as a wild-eyed, bomb-throwing lefty extremist. But she is a political creature not of San Francisco so much as of Baltimore, where she was raised in a local Democratic dynasty. Her father, “Big Tommy” D’Alesandro, went from Maryland’s House of Delegates to five terms in Congress to three as mayor of Baltimore. She and her brothers learned to count votes and knock on doors practically from birth. Constituent service was a quasi-religion, and starting at age 13, the D’Alesandro children spent several hours a week fielding constituent requests and helping maintain a “favor file” on everyone they assisted. “We dealt with human nature in the raw,” Ms. Pelosi’s brother Thomas D’Alesandro III (who also served as Baltimore’s mayor) once told me.

The transactional, pragmatic politics of her youth have served Ms. Pelosi well as leader. When it comes time to whip votes or cut a deal, she has her own version of a favor file to consult: She knows precisely what the members need — not to be confused with what they want — and how much they can reasonably risk to take one for the team. Time and again, she has wheedled, negotiated and threatened her restive members into line to pass legislation ranging from Obamacare, which the speaker cites as her proudest legislative achievement, to last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really more about reducing health care costs and tackling climate change. . . .

Ms. Pelosi is stepping back from leadership while her political stock is high within her party. Despite House Democrats losing the majority, pretty much everyone acknowledges that they dramatically overperformed this cycle, given the political fundamentals at play. And her personal brand has been burnished by her cool handling of the assault on her husband and the recently released video showing her poise during the Jan. 6 insanity. (With Congress under attack, she was ripping open a beef stick with her teeth? Ice-cold.) . . .

Ms. Pelosi is an original, and we are unlikely to see another leader of her ilk any time soon. She elbowed her way to the tippy top of the congressional boys’ club, then set about distinguishing herself as the most formidable, most effective House leader since the middle of the last century. Love her or hate her, you have to acknowledge the fundamental badassery.