“My mother told me that ‘can’t’ is not in the dictionary. Shirley Chisholm encouraged me to shake things up, not to go along to get along.”
“If you really believe that this is the right thing for the country, for your district, for the world, then you have to do it, and be damned everything else. You don’t do that all the time, but there’s some moments when you have to do that.”
– Former Rep. Barbara Lee reveals to the Associated Press the advice that made her a renegade during the more than 20 years she represented Oakland in Congress, as she wraps up her congressional career. Lee has often stood apart, from being the first Black student to integrate her Southern California cheerleading squad in high school, to being the only Black woman elected to the House from California’s areas north of Los Angeles her entire time in Congress, to being the sole lawmaker to vote against authorizing the use of military force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Her vote against the war was met with death threats, but that, along with being among the only Black women in the room, didn’t stop her from voting for what she believed was right for the country and her constituents. Lee and other lawmakers pushed President George W. Bush to initiate the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to fight global HIV/AIDS, which is an ongoing effort. She was also one of the first to argue that the Hyde Amendment, which “prohibits federal funds for abortion services with few exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnancy endangers the life of the pregnant person,” discriminates against low-income women who rely on federal health insurance. Others have since joined her cry, and Lee’s opinions have come to be “respected, accepted, and even emulated,” writes AP’s Lisa Mascaro. For one of her final acts as a representative, Lee, who is the 20th Black woman to be elected to the House, teamed up with Sen. Laphonza Butler to pass a bill to award her mentor and friend Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1969 and presidential candidate in 1972, the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously on what would’ve been Chisholm’s 100th birthday. Neither the House nor the Senate opposed the measure that President Joe Biden signed into law in December. Lee continues to support women of color seeking election to a political office through the organization Representation Matters. Although her next career move hasn’t been decided, Lee spent the final days of the 118th Congress with the next generation of leaders who are poised to complete her unfinished business, including repealing the Hyde Amendment.
