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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in Fact,

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Speaker 1: we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing

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Speaker 1: women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,

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Speaker 1: the progress we've made, and how far we still have

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Speaker 1: to go. Today we're talking about representation and activism with

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Speaker 1: Maria Teresa Kumar, the founding president of Voto Latino, the

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Speaker 1: leading Latin X voter registration and advocacy organization in the country.

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Speaker 1: It's no surprise that throughout our history women have led

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Speaker 1: the fight for women's rights. Women have also played a

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Speaker 1: vital role in pretty much every social movement. So Journal

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Speaker 1: Truth and Lucretia Mott were abolitionists and self regists. Rosa

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Speaker 1: Parks and Dorothy Height where civil rights movement leaders to

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Speaker 1: Laura's Wuerta led the fight to improve conditions for farm workers,

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Speaker 1: and she's still on the front lines. Brenda Howard, also

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Speaker 1: known as the Mother of Pride, is credited with creating

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Speaker 1: the first Pride parade. Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving,

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Speaker 1: and Shannon Watts forged Mom's Demand Action for gun violence prevention.

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Speaker 1: And those are just a few of the women who

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Speaker 1: have refused to accept the status quo and fought for

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Speaker 1: expanded rights, protections and opportunities for women, but also for everyone.

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Speaker 1: Any time change is needed, odds are there have been brave, strong,

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Speaker 1: and gutsy women at the forefront. My guest today is

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Speaker 1: certainly a brave, strong and gutsy woman who I have

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Speaker 1: long admired and been lucky to know. Maria Tracy Kumar

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Speaker 1: co founded Vote Latino in two thousand four. She's an

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Speaker 1: Emmy nominated contributor to MSNBC. Fast Company named her one

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Speaker 1: of the one hundred most creative business minds in the country,

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Speaker 1: and l named her one of the ten most influential

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Speaker 1: women in Washington, d C. Maria Treca Kumar, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for joining me today to talk about voting

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Speaker 1: rights and activism and so much more. Thank you so much, Chelsea.

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Speaker 1: You know, I thought we could start at the beginning

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Speaker 1: of your story. You came to this country, the United States,

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Speaker 1: from Columbia when you were four, and I wondered if

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Speaker 1: you could just share how you think those early experiences

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Speaker 1: of of being an immigrant and then being a new

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Speaker 1: American shaped you. So when I came to this country,

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons we came was that my adopted

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Speaker 1: father had fallen ill in Columbia and so you needed

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Speaker 1: to convalesce, and so my mom and I ended up

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Speaker 1: in the tiny little town called Geyserville, California that in

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Speaker 1: the last census had less than people. And where is Geyserville, California.

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Speaker 1: It's in Sonoma County. And so my mother went from Bogota, Columbia,

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Speaker 1: which is very much like New York City, to teeny

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Speaker 1: tiny town. Were the expectations from my grandparents because they

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Speaker 1: were grape growers, was that while my ad convalesce, she

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Speaker 1: had to go work in the field. And Chelsea, I

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Speaker 1: have to tell you that my mother was such a

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Speaker 1: good support. Was I don't think she'd ever seen a

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Speaker 1: plant in her life, and the next thing you know,

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Speaker 1: she is picking grapes. And it was such a formative

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Speaker 1: moment because I also knew the opportunities that this country

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Speaker 1: afforded me. We're going to be vastly different than growing

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Speaker 1: up in Colombia. My mother is after Latina, and by

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Speaker 1: that the deck was already stacked against her. She had

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Speaker 1: little education, and I had the opportunity to probably go

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Speaker 1: to school, but more than likely would not have and

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Speaker 1: understanding I had the opportunity to go to school, I

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Speaker 1: fell in love with the United States, and I will

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Speaker 1: never forget going to San Francisco City Hall when I

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Speaker 1: was nine years old and raising my right hand and

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Speaker 1: pledging allegiance to United States and becoming a US citizen.

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Speaker 1: And if you ask why the work that I do

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Speaker 1: a Voldo Latino is so significant, is that I remember

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Speaker 1: that nine year old with these aspirations and thinking big

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Speaker 1: and recognizing that the world opened up before me the

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Speaker 1: moment I became a US citizen. And it breaks my

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Speaker 1: heart to know that there's millions of undocumented youth here

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Speaker 1: in this country that have those exact same dreams, but

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Speaker 1: because our laws changed from the moment I came to

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Speaker 1: this country to today, that their future is different. And

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Speaker 1: the more that we can get people to recognize that

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Speaker 1: we're leaving great minds behind because they can't self realize,

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Speaker 1: is what are the motive fitting factors of the work

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Speaker 1: that I do. So I want to go back to

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Speaker 1: that moment, you know, when you were a nine year

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Speaker 1: old and you felt this enormous promise and potential and

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Speaker 1: yet it also sounds like real activation. Did you always

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Speaker 1: know that you would work in activism and advocacy. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's so interesting that you ask. So. I loved the

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Speaker 1: idea of the American promise that I could be anything

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Speaker 1: now that I was US citizen. And literally two years later,

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Speaker 1: I remember coming home and I'm crying and my dad

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Speaker 1: was like, well, what's going on, honey, I said, I said, Dad,

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Speaker 1: I can't be president. And my Dad's like, what are

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Speaker 1: you talking about? I said, well, you know, in America,

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Speaker 1: you promised. You know, I was promised I could be anything,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't that I wanted to be, but this

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Speaker 1: idea that you could unity was limited, right. Uh. But

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Speaker 1: I always knew that I liked helping people. I always

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Speaker 1: knew that. And the reason again when my mother came first,

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Speaker 1: and then she brought my aunts and my uncle and

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Speaker 1: my grandmother, I found myself navigating the country for my

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Speaker 1: family at a very young age. The racial profiling and

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Speaker 1: the policing that was happening in Sonoma when I was

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Speaker 1: growing up was very real. I love Sonoma. It gave

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Speaker 1: me an incredible experience and informed who I was. But

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Speaker 1: Sonoma was very segregated, and they sadly tracked our young

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Speaker 1: men in particular at a very early age, the men

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Speaker 1: were struggling, and you would think that they had grown

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Speaker 1: up in the worst part of New York City instead

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Speaker 1: of a very rural, aggressive Sonoma. And it was at

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Speaker 1: the same time the backdrop of when Pete Wilson's Proposition passed,

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Speaker 1: and so we were Sonoma and California was on fire

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Speaker 1: with racial tension, and my family for the very first

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Speaker 1: time felt not only differentiated, but in danger unsafe, and

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Speaker 1: it broke my heart because this was the country that

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Speaker 1: I loved. This is the country that said we welcome

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Speaker 1: you and let yourself realize and they were we were

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Speaker 1: going against our own creed as I had understood it

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Speaker 1: when I was growing up. And so if you ask

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Speaker 1: what are the factors that motivated me? Was very much

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Speaker 1: the dynamics between my dad's family, who were farmers, and

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Speaker 1: my mom's family, but then also the institutions that were

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Speaker 1: raising us with the backdrop of a very hostile governor,

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Speaker 1: and it basically baked me. Can you please tell our

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Speaker 1: listeners what was prop so proposition was the original show

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Speaker 1: me your Paper laws which identified anti immigration language in California,

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Speaker 1: and Pete Wilson promoted it. It was a ballot initiative

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Speaker 1: that Californians, my neighbors voted for, and it was heartbreaking

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Speaker 1: because it was the very first time I had to

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Speaker 1: have a conversation with my family that they were in

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Speaker 1: danger and they needed to become a citizens. Why then

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Speaker 1: voting rights? You had this sense of injustice that was

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Speaker 1: affecting your family, your community. It wasn't kind of what

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Speaker 1: you believed America should be. And there probably are many

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Speaker 1: different areas where you could have directed your time, energy, talents.

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Speaker 1: Why voting rights? I had the opportunity to work in

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Speaker 1: Capitol Hill right after college for vic Fasio. He was

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Speaker 1: chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and I was able to

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Speaker 1: see up close who influenced policy and how. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things that I learned where that the people

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Speaker 1: oftentimes advising our members didn't come from the community they

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Speaker 1: were trying to serve. So there was a huge gap

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Speaker 1: in intention and policy outcome. And so while I was

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Speaker 1: at the Kennedy School, I had kind of a light

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Speaker 1: bulb moment of there are millions of young Latinos behind

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Speaker 1: me that have the potential to define this country so

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Speaker 1: that those policy outcomes are actually met with intention and purpose.

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Speaker 1: And if we start mobilizing them, we could actually leap

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Speaker 1: frog a lot of the static that we see in

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Speaker 1: policy making. In two thousand three, let you know, technically

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Speaker 1: became the second largest group of Americans in this country.

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Speaker 1: And Volta Latino we started in two thousand four, and

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Speaker 1: the two thousand ten cents said, sure enough of the

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Speaker 1: growth in this country was due to the Latino population.

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Speaker 1: And this is what folks didn't realize is that they

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Speaker 1: were American born children. So while let you know, we're

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Speaker 1: technically the second largest population in America in two thousand three,

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Speaker 1: they were mostly the majority under eighteen years old, and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until two thousand eighteen that they became the

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Speaker 1: second largest voting block. So vota you know, it's this

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Speaker 1: seeing the future from the perspective of I know what

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Speaker 1: it means to grow up under the backdrop of a

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Speaker 1: really bad governor. And so where did volto Latino go?

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Speaker 1: We went to Colorado when tank Creato was on the rise.

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Speaker 1: We went to Arizona when we saw the rise of

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Speaker 1: anti immigration laws, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas. Places people

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Speaker 1: told us that we were wasting our time, and people

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Speaker 1: said that Latino's youth didn't care. Like that's all I heard,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, that's none of my experience. And so, now,

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Speaker 1: almost twenty years after the founding of Vote Latino, in

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Speaker 1: which you have more than proven that young Latinos will

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Speaker 1: registered to vote, will turn out to vote, will continue

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Speaker 1: to vote, what stories do you share to help personalize

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Speaker 1: the statistics that you just articulated. We expected Latinos to

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Speaker 1: become the second largest voting block, not until and in

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Speaker 1: fact it happened. And when they hit that marker of

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Speaker 1: being the second largest, we were able to flip Arizona,

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Speaker 1: and the year before we had flipped Virginia, and two

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Speaker 1: years before we had been able to basically make both

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Speaker 1: Nevada and Colorado a battleground state. And so we just

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Speaker 1: saw this progression. And so when people say, well, the

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Speaker 1: Latino vote didn't make a difference, I said, well, now

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Speaker 1: let's go to Georgia. In Georgia, Latinos represented four percent

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Speaker 1: of the electoral base. With our brothers and sisters in

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Speaker 1: the African American community and with Asian Americans, it becomes formidable.

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Speaker 1: Four percent makes all the difference. Both. Let you know,

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Speaker 1: we registered twenty three thousand folks in Georgia, ten thousand

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Speaker 1: of them Chelsea were first time voters. Biden won by

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Speaker 1: eleven thousand votes. We did it in Georgia, we did

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Speaker 1: it in Arizona, we did in Nevada, in Pennsylvania. It's

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Speaker 1: by no coincidence that we were able to help bring

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Speaker 1: in not just the White House, but the set in Congress.

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Speaker 1: When you have bad actors, because Georgia has terrible actors,

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Speaker 1: Arizona has had terrible actors, and you have a rising

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Speaker 1: Latino youth population that has grown up in households where

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Speaker 1: they're trying to navigate the country for their families and

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Speaker 1: see their parents working themselves to the bone for a

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Speaker 1: country that doesn't always even see them. The only thing

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Speaker 1: that we have to fight for is at the ballot box.

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Speaker 1: That's for the most eighteen year olds, that's the only

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Speaker 1: recourse of voice. And if we tap into that energy

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Speaker 1: and make them believe that change happens, then we have

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Speaker 1: a country that is truly fulfilling its promise. And in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen, it was no coincidence that a

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Speaker 1: multicultural America came out in the largest numbers in a

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Speaker 1: mid term and changed Congress not only with the most women,

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Speaker 1: but the most people of color, the most veterans, the

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Speaker 1: youngest generation of members. And that shows that when we

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Speaker 1: participate equally, we have access, We'll be right back stay

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Speaker 1: with us. The work of changing the electorate to actually

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Speaker 1: match who we are as a country and then ensuring

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Speaker 1: that people are able to vote and then do vote

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Speaker 1: is long haul work. You talk about vote Latino starting

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Speaker 1: and four, and then you talk about the work that

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Speaker 1: you were able to build toward ten fifteen years later.

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Speaker 1: Are there people in your life who have really inspired,

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Speaker 1: mentors you, and also supported you kind of in this

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Speaker 1: necessarily persistent, gritty work. I have to say that I've

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Speaker 1: been fortunate enough that throughout my walks of life of this,

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Speaker 1: I've had many mentors. But I would say that the

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Speaker 1: first one was my mom. I was living in New

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Speaker 1: York City. I packed my bags and I went back

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Speaker 1: home to Cinoma, California, with this idea of Latino. Right.

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Speaker 1: So she has a boomerang, you know, for someone who's

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Speaker 1: on the eve of the thirtieth birthday, who had been

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Speaker 1: helping her pay rent and you know, pay your mortgage,

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Speaker 1: and saying, Mom, I want to start this and I'm

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Speaker 1: going to do it on my credit card, which folks

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Speaker 1: listening don't ever do that. It's terrible, terryll terrible advice.

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Speaker 1: But when I was down and when people telling we're

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Speaker 1: telling me, you're you know, Latinos don't care. Latino youth

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Speaker 1: in particular, young people don't care. Why are you wasting

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Speaker 1: your career? When those times came, my mother was the

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Speaker 1: one that said, no, that you have seen it from

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Speaker 1: the front lines, you have lived it, and this is

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Speaker 1: a story you need to tell. And then I had

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to meet women in Silicon Valley who understood

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Speaker 1: what I was trying to achieve. And it was the

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Speaker 1: unlikely allies that came into my life that really believed

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Speaker 1: in this idea that we had to forge a different

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Speaker 1: type of America. And through it, I've had incredible mentors,

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Speaker 1: whether it has been Kamala when she was d that's

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Speaker 1: when I first met her. Gavin gave me a lot

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Speaker 1: of counsel. But then, you know, through the journey, Pelosi

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Speaker 1: was one of the first people to take my phone

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Speaker 1: call and said, yes, I will meet with you. And

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Speaker 1: then I've had, believe it or not, a lot of

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Speaker 1: volunteers along the way. We have a power summit every

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Speaker 1: year at Modadino, and the idea is trying to get

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Speaker 1: young people to think about running for office, how to

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Speaker 1: balance their check book, how to think in a different space.

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Speaker 1: And I will never forget. We were in Las Vegas

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Speaker 1: and I ran into this young man. I said, oh,

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Speaker 1: my gosh, you suited up because I had remembered him

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Speaker 1: from the last conference. He's like, yeah, I bought this

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Speaker 1: suit for this and I brought three friends and his

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Speaker 1: parents were farm workers and Chelsea. When he said that,

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Speaker 1: I felt like tears coming to my eyes because I

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Speaker 1: realized that we had communicated what we wanted, that he

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Speaker 1: belongs in all the spaces, and I knew how hard

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Speaker 1: he must have worked to buy himself that suit, and

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Speaker 1: that he believed enough this enough that he brought his

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Speaker 1: friends with him. And we're starting to see more young

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Speaker 1: people run for office right now. We have Greg Cassar,

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Speaker 1: who we trained back in two thousands routine. He ran

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Speaker 1: for office and became the youngest city councilman in Austin.

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Speaker 1: He fought for fair wages there and now he's running

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Speaker 1: for Congress. And that's what we're about. We're about changing

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Speaker 1: that paradigm. I'm curious, especially given your response to who

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Speaker 1: of your mentor has been and so many have been women,

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Speaker 1: not not all of them, but so many of them

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Speaker 1: have been women. How do you think being a woman

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Speaker 1: has shaped your leadership, your vision for Vote Latino, and

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Speaker 1: the work of Vote to Latino, both in the organization

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Speaker 1: and with your partners. I think that I've been fortunate

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Speaker 1: that I was. I was raised in a matriarchy, so

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Speaker 1: and as a result, I have always been given I think,

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Speaker 1: the tools and the understanding of walking into a room

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Speaker 1: and recognizing the way someone else may carry and also understanding,

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Speaker 1: like I shared, my father was very ill for a

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Speaker 1: very long time. My mom has come to this country

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Speaker 1: with very little education and didn't know English, and the

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Speaker 1: next thing we know, she has become a head of household.

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Speaker 1: She was going to school, getting her a degree, putting

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Speaker 1: me through school, bringing her family, and just becoming such

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Speaker 1: a passionate warrior for her family and doing it with

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Speaker 1: grace in the face of every racist and sexist comment

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Speaker 1: you could poblsibly have imagined. And it taught me how again,

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Speaker 1: walking into these spaces that the collaboration and the amount

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Speaker 1: of all you need has to be done with friends,

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Speaker 1: and it has to be done in partnership. And if

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Speaker 1: we are to have a healthy family, if we are

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Speaker 1: to have a healthy community, healthy country, it has to

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Speaker 1: start with women. And it has to start with women

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Speaker 1: because we are making the decisions of how to nurture

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Speaker 1: and care for our families, to how to actually provide

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Speaker 1: a different type of perspective of what work means in

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Speaker 1: order to be able to balance. But I have to

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Speaker 1: share with you I've been fortunate enough that I also

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Speaker 1: have a partner that celebrates the work and that allows

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Speaker 1: the space for me to say, well, I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to be able to do X y Z that our

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Speaker 1: traditional roles. I don't want to have traditional roles in

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Speaker 1: our house. Yesterday, kelsay, I think you'll appreciate my son.

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Speaker 1: My husband was taught, was saying a quote about how

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Speaker 1: all men were queer equal, and my son said, all

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Speaker 1: men and women amen. Amen to your son. And I

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Speaker 1: imagine many people come and ask you for advice, imagine

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Speaker 1: especially women and women of color. And as someone who

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Speaker 1: has been profoundly successful in your work, what advice do

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Speaker 1: you give when especially young people come and ask for

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Speaker 1: career guidance or just life guidance. I think one is

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Speaker 1: enjoy the moment that you're in and learn as much

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Speaker 1: as you can from whatever moment you are because you

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Speaker 1: never know when you're going to need those skills. I

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Speaker 1: started working when I was an eleven eleven years old.

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Speaker 1: Working at a cash register taught me customer service. Working

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Speaker 1: in congress taught me how to politic and understand policy

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Speaker 1: and the mechanics. I worked for a healthcare or firm,

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Speaker 1: selling research and stuff, and I didn't like it, but

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Speaker 1: I learned how to be poised and sell it ideas

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Speaker 1: and when they were all came together, everything taught me

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Speaker 1: how to be able to promote and grow Voto Latino,

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Speaker 1: from the accounting to the management, to the execution of

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Speaker 1: strategy and creating it. Had you told me that every

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Speaker 1: single thing that I started doing when I was eleven

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Speaker 1: was going to serve me in my future role, I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have been so sure. But one of the things

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Speaker 1: that I've always appreciated from again my mom, is the

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Speaker 1: zeal of always doing whatever you're doing to the best

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Speaker 1: of your ability and your capacity. We're taking a quick break.

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Speaker 1: Stay with us. I want to go back to voting

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Speaker 1: rights for a moment, because we are in a different

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Speaker 1: place today then we were when you started a Vote

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Speaker 1: to Latino in two thou and four, both in that

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Speaker 1: we have made progress in some areas and also have

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Speaker 1: significantly more challenges in others. And so I wonder if

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Speaker 1: you could just kind of lay out where you think

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Speaker 1: we are as relates to voting rights in this country

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Speaker 1: and where you think we need to go. When we

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Speaker 1: started with Latino, I always had an urgency to build

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Speaker 1: it fast, and that urgency came with an understanding that

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Speaker 1: someone like the former twice and peach president was going

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Speaker 1: to come about just from my experience of seeing it

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Speaker 1: at the local level. When we started Vote Latino, the

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Speaker 1: job was very easy. Registered to vote, convinced them to

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Speaker 1: go cast a ballot. After the gutting of the Voting

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Speaker 1: Rights Act, we came into the business of starting to

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Speaker 1: sue states depending on what state they're in. The same

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Speaker 1: vote that many of your listeners was able to cast

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Speaker 1: in two thousand twenty after a verified, certified election of

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Speaker 1: all fifty Secretary of States Republican Democrat, that same vote

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Speaker 1: now is vulnerable because of the all the laws that

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Speaker 1: they did in two thousand twenty one where that same

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Speaker 1: person who cast the ballot may not be able to

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Speaker 1: cast in Can you explain kind of why that why

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Speaker 1: that is because I don't think a lot of people

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Speaker 1: understand on existential level what has happened very quickly to

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Speaker 1: the sacred right to vote in our country. So in

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Speaker 1: two thousand twenty, as a reminder, every state said, yes,

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Speaker 1: this is a fair, certified election. There was no voter fraud.

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Speaker 1: We stand by it, whether the Secretary of State was

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Speaker 1: Republican or Democrat. Since then, there has been what we

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Speaker 1: call atlt. Latino a bill in a box. It is

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Speaker 1: a bill coming out of disproportionate out of the Heritage

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Speaker 1: Action Fund from the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and they

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Speaker 1: are literally going state by state and selling the exact

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Speaker 1: same package of legislation to restrict the access to the

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Speaker 1: voting booth. It's the same strategy that they used to

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Speaker 1: create anti abortion legislation. It's the same type of tactic

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Speaker 1: that they've used for anti immigrant laws. None of this

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Speaker 1: is coming from the ground swell of the states. It's

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Speaker 1: very much coming from an extreme group of folks, and

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Speaker 1: it's because they read the tea leaves of who did vote,

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Speaker 1: and it was a multicultural America. It's not who they

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Speaker 1: want to vote now because we see a very different

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Speaker 1: world vision. We actually believe in climate change, we believe

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Speaker 1: in women's choice, we believe in women's agency, and we

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Speaker 1: believe that immigrants should have rights and be treated humanely.

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Speaker 1: And the list goes on. And so I'll give you

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Speaker 1: an example of one of ways people are trying to

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Speaker 1: restrict the vote in Texas. I don't know how you

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Speaker 1: registered to vote when you were eight teen, but registered

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Speaker 1: to vote on my college campus. The very first person

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Speaker 1: I ever voted for, I was proud to say, was

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Speaker 1: your father. I was so excited and I still have

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Speaker 1: a stub. Yeah. I also I registered to vote in

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Speaker 1: Palelato because I was at Stanford. But yeah, my first

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Speaker 1: votes absolutely were based on where I was going to school.

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Speaker 1: I believe it or not. We're suing right now Texas

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Speaker 1: because they passed the piece of legislation last year saying

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Speaker 1: that you needed residency requirement now to register on your

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Speaker 1: college campus. The challenge is that we know that just

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Speaker 1: between two thousand and twenty and by the time Greg

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Speaker 1: Abbott is going to be on the ballot this year,

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Speaker 1: a quarter million Latino youth are going to turn eighteen

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Speaker 1: in Texas alone, So all these restrictions are by design.

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Speaker 1: And if I was a young person today, I would

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Speaker 1: be so angry and so upset and offended that you

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Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of older people trying to disenfranchise

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Speaker 1: your vote, generally older white people, older white people trying

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Speaker 1: to disenfranchise your vote, and they are not aligned with

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Speaker 1: your values. While it is proportionately falls along color lines,

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Speaker 1: it disproportionately falls generationally along young people. They're the ones

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Speaker 1: most impacted by the Shenanigans. So when I say that

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Speaker 1: we're building towards the future, it means literally it's towards

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Speaker 1: the future. But how do we create policy and access

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Speaker 1: to a community that for the most part, still can't vote,

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Speaker 1: yet can't fully self realize themselves just because their kids well,

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Speaker 1: And how do we have sufficient civic education in schools

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Speaker 1: and in other places where children spend time so that

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Speaker 1: young people grow up expecting the right to vote and

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Speaker 1: expecting themselves and their friends to vote. That's exactly right.

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Speaker 1: How do we create that culture? And I think you

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Speaker 1: know what folk, most folks don't realize is that in

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Speaker 1: the nineties seventies, Uh, they actually took civic education out

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Speaker 1: of schools, and right now we only have eight states

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Speaker 1: at a fifty eight states that provide civic education for

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Speaker 1: a whole year. That's nothing, yes, because we should be

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Speaker 1: having age appropriate civic education at least kind of in

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Speaker 1: every tranche of school elementary, middle, and high school and

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Speaker 1: ideally embedded in every year of school. And yet we don't,

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Speaker 1: or at least we don't yet, not yet, not yet.

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Speaker 1: That could be another project. So where do you think

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Speaker 1: will be in a decade if you were to look

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Speaker 1: in your crystal ball. Well, right now we are in

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Speaker 1: a work on the road. We can fight like hell.

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Speaker 1: Elections are going to be for us some of the

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Speaker 1: most consequential and I know people hear this every single time,

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Speaker 1: but we are right now in the eye of the storm.

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Speaker 1: We need a functioning Congress and if we don't participate

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Speaker 1: in the midterm elections, then the challenges is that Republicans

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Speaker 1: will come into office and then we have to ask

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Speaker 1: ourselves next presidential election, when the Democrat wins, will this

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Speaker 1: same Congress of Republicans certify a fair, free election. People

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Speaker 1: always say, well, how did we get to this point?

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Speaker 1: I said, well, many of us stopped nurturing our democracy,

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Speaker 1: we stopped participating, we stopped loving it. And my hope

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Speaker 1: is that people recognize that our country is worth fighting for,

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Speaker 1: and the liberties of our young people are worth fighting for.

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Speaker 1: And we have a generation waiting to take the reins

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Speaker 1: of leadership, but we have to make sure that we

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Speaker 1: are responsible not just responsible leaders. But I always say,

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Speaker 1: you know, oftentimes people talk about ancestors like we are

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Speaker 1: the living ancestors of our children right now, and are

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Speaker 1: we ancestoring properly so that they have a shot of

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Speaker 1: being self realized to their best version of themselves? And

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Speaker 1: if we think of it through, how are we ancestoring

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Speaker 1: our democracy, living, breathing it? And I think it allows

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Speaker 1: people to recognize the responsibility that we have not just

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Speaker 1: to each other, but really to our kin into our families.

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Speaker 1: When readers that just the last question we've we have already,

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Speaker 1: you know, spoken about so many statistics that motivate you,

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Speaker 1: inspire you, I think, also anger you. I do wonder, though,

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Speaker 1: if there is sort of one statistic or fact that

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Speaker 1: you'd like to leave our listeners with that is particularly

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Speaker 1: important to you, whether it's inspiring or enraging I'm on

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Speaker 1: the board of Emily's List. Emily's List is we believe

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Speaker 1: in helping women run for office who are pro choice,

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Speaker 1: democratic women and trying to recruit women in the before times, Chelsea,

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Speaker 1: I like to say it was really hard. There was

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Speaker 1: always a litney list of why they couldn't run. And

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Speaker 1: so in two thousand and sixteen, to give you an example,

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Speaker 1: six d women collectively sent an email saying that they

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Speaker 1: were interested in running for office at Emily's List. And

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Speaker 1: Emily's List is a huge organization. After the election of

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Speaker 1: the former president that twice impeached, over forty two women

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Speaker 1: contacted Emily's List within seventeen months saying that they wanted

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Speaker 1: to run for office. And we see a bench now

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Speaker 1: of incredibly talented women. It wasn't by chance that for

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Speaker 1: the first time in Congress in two thousand, eighteen hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty six women filled the chamber of the U. S.

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Speaker 1: House of Representatives. It's because we were able to field candidates.

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Speaker 1: Nina Hidalgo at twenty seven years old, she is one

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Speaker 1: of someone to watch. In Texas, we see Jessicas and scenarios.

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Speaker 1: Also in Texas we saw who had run like we

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Speaker 1: see a whole group of young women with a different

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Speaker 1: type of fortitude of saying, the only way we change

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Speaker 1: our country is I become involved, and that shyness has dissipated,

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Speaker 1: and that is what gives me hope claiming space and

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Speaker 1: then using their platforms to help actually advance opportunity and equity.

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Speaker 1: Well rich, you certainly inspire many people as well, and

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Speaker 1: I count myself among them, and I am incredibly thankful

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Speaker 1: for your time today. This is fun. Thanks so much, Chelsee.

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Speaker 1: You can learn more about Voto Latino at Voto Latino

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Speaker 1: dot org and you can find Maria Theresa on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at Maria Theresa. In Fact is brought to you by

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