Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for creating this opportunity for us to celebrate 100 years of women serving in Congress. It is remarkable that we are still trying to see our numbers inch upwards and continue to be at something like 19 percent when women represent over 50 percent of the voting population. I thought it would be interesting to highlight one of these women in Congress, a great woman, and one that I have long admired. Her name is Helen Gahagan Douglas. She was the first California woman elected to Congress in her own right--in that case, not succeeding a deceased husband. Helen Gahagan was an actress and an opera singer who did not consider herself political until a chance conversation she had over coffee while performing in Vienna, Austria, in 1938. The man was a Nazi sympathizer, and the things she heard truly sickened her. She returned to the United States intent on destroying Nazism. She and her husband, Oscar-winning actor Melvyn Douglas, joined the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and called for a boycott of products made in Nazi Germany. The release of John Steinbeck's seminal novel, ``The Grapes of Wrath,'' consumed her. She began studying the plight of migrant farmworkers coming to California from the Dust Bowl States. After meeting the author, Helen was named president of the John Steinbeck Committee and became the national spokesperson for the rights of migrants.…”