Rep. Barbara Lee has at all times stood aside, a matter-of-fact renegade with a protracted record of firsts.
In highschool, she was the primary Black scholar to combine her Southern California cheerleading squad.
Through the Democrat’s greater than 20 years in Congress, she has been the one Black lady elected to the Home from California’s areas north of Los Angeles.
But it surely was Lee’s lonely 2001 vote as the one lawmaker in opposition to the authorization for the usage of army power in opposition to these accountable for the Sept. 11 assaults that indelibly set her aside.
“When you actually consider that that is the correct factor for the nation, to your district, for the world, then you need to do it, and be damned the whole lot else,” Lee instructed The Related Press throughout a current breakfast interview on the Capitol.
“You don’t do that all the time, but there’s some moments when you have to do that.”
As Lee heads for the exit, wrapping up a storied profession representing the Oakland space, the 78-year-old congresswoman as soon as seen as an outlier with deeply unpopular positions — her vote in opposition to the battle resulted in demise threats — has watched her views come to be revered, accepted and even emulated. Casting her last vote on the Home flooring in late December, Lee was met with applause, her legacy a touchstone for a brand new era.
But her experiences — together with dropping a Senate main in March for a seat later gained by a then-Home colleague, Democrat Adam Schiff, in the identical 12 months that voters nationwide rejected Vice President Kamala Harris for President-elect Donald Trump, — additionally present a stark reminder of the challenges Black girls confront in American electoral politics.
“There are few congressional leaders, public servants, that have served with the kind of courage and tenacity as Congresswoman Lee,” stated outgoing Sen. Laphonza Butler, the California Democrat who was appointed quickly to the seat after the demise of long-serving Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
With Butler, Lee teamed as much as move one of many last payments of the 118th Congress, awarding the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to her mentor and pal Shirley Chisholm, one other trailblazer — the primary Black lady elected to Congress, becoming a member of in 1969, who went on to make a longshot presidential run — in what would have been the New York Democrat’s a centesimal birthday. It was accepted by the Home and Senate with out opposition, and signed into regulation by Democratic President Joe Biden in December.
A single mother and social employee by coaching, Lee had been disconnected from politics. She was a volunteer group employee with the Black Panther Celebration when she met Chisholm. Lee present in “Mrs. C” a brand new sort of chief who “stood up for people.” Lee acquired concerned in Chisholm’s 1972 presidential marketing campaign. Lee finally labored in Congress and ran for workplace herself, taking up the seat after her boss, Rep. Ron Dellums, retired.
However as Lee tells it, what’s significantly noteworthy about her personal profession, is that she’s quantity 20 — the twentieth Black lady elected to the Home.
“I’m only the 20th one!” she stated.
“Can you imagine that? I mean, that’s pretty scary. Black women haven’t had their voices and their perspectives and their experiences reflected in the policies.”
Time and again, she has tales of being among the many solely Black girls on the desk — most prominently when she and others pushed Republican President George W. Bush to launch the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Reduction (PEPFAR) to struggle world HIV/AIDS. It is an effort that continues to today.
Equally, she was an early critic of the Hyde Modification, which prohibits federal funds for abortion providers with few exceptions within the circumstances of rape, incest or if the being pregnant endangers the lifetime of the pregnant particular person. Lee views it as discriminatory in opposition to low-income girls who depend on federal well being care. Hers was a as soon as uncommon place that has since gained wider assist.
“I’ve been at tables all these years by myself, which meant I had to form allies and alliances to be effective,” she said, “which I did.”
She explains that as a Black lady, she brings a perspective that’s usually misplaced on others, going by means of life with “antennae” that sense what is going on on “because of our history.”
Lee’s antennae had been positively choosing up indicators on the eve of Jan. 6, 2021, amid the chatter of far-right teams coming to Washington.
“I wore tennis shoes to work that day,” she stated.
When the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and she or he and different lawmakers had been fumbling to placed on their gasoline masks and evacuate the Home chamber, she remembers how the Home chaplain rose and began praying.
“I said: ‘Oh, Lord. This is serious. We got to start praying, too,” she stated. These sneakers “came in handy.”
But it surely was her vote 20 years earlier, within the days after the assaults on Sept. 11, 2001, that might ever outline Lee’s legacy in Congress.
She agonized over the selection, and stated she was as shocked as anybody at being the one vote in opposition to the decision that approved what she warned of: America’s lengthy battle in Afghanistan and past.
The response was fierce and menacing, but additionally affirming of her conviction. Different Democratic lawmakers crossed to her aspect and she or he has since constructed a coalition, together with with hard-right Republicans against abroad army motion.
“She’s always dreamed big, she’s always been bold, she’s always had a strength of conviction — and she’s very strategic,” stated Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a part of the “Squad” of progressive lawmakers first elected in 2018. “She’s passionate, but not reactive, she’s thoughtfully responsive.”
The youthful lawmakers usually name Lee “O.G.”
Lee notes there at the moment are a number of dozen Black girls elected to the Home — an enchancment however, she stated, nonetheless not sufficient to catch up for the nation’s 200-plus-year historical past.
She works with the group Illustration Issues to assist girls of colour working for workplace, and did so this previous election cycle. She backed Democrats Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, who went on to make historical past as two Black girls becoming a member of the Senate.
“I got to make sure other Black women don’t have to go through what I’ve been through,” she stated.
Lee’s subsequent chapter is to be decided. She spent the ultimate days of the congressional session pushing priorities out the door and discovering the following era of leaders to hold ahead her unfinished enterprise, together with repealing the Hyde Modification and the authorization for the usage of army power.
“My mother told me that ‘can’t’ is not in the dictionary,” she stated. “Shirley Chisholm encouraged me to shake things up, not to go along to get along.”
