Political Quotes

“I thank Mrs. Lawrence so much for gathering us all here tonight in celebration, because celebration is what we must do. We must celebrate not just Women's History Month, but everything we did today. We must celebrate that we passed the extension of the ERA, that we passed the Violence Against Women Act, that we passed the American Rescue Plan with all of those wonderful provisions that will lift women and children out of poverty. I come from a place where for many years they didn't give us the vote, they didn't give us statehood, and there was much discrimination. But it was also a place where women and women of color have a long and proud history of transformative leadership, and I honor a few of them today. One hundred years ago the suffragist Adelina Otero-Warren helped lead the charge to ratify the 19th amendment in New Mexico. After her success, she became the first Latina to ever run for Congress. Unfortunately, she wasn't successful, but 100 years later I am the first Latina to represent my district. In my family, my grandmother, Isabel Lopez Leger helped to integrate the segregated city of Las Vegas, New Mexico, refusing to move when the neighbors realized she was a small, Brown, Spanish-speaking Hispana. My big grandma, as we called her Ganga, Abelina Romero Lucero, understood how central the vote was to achieving equity and representation for our communities, making calls to mobilize voters from her hospice bed. She was a Democrat until she died.…”