WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Barbara Lee has all the time 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.
Throughout 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 towards the authorization for using navy pressure towards these accountable for the Sept. 11 assaults that indelibly set her aside.
“For those who actually consider that that is the precise factor for the nation, in your district, for the world, then it’s a must to do it, and be damned every part else,” Lee instructed The Related Press throughout a current breakfast interview on the Capitol.
“You don’t do this on a regular basis, however there’s some moments when it’s a must to do this.”
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 towards the conflict resulted in loss of life threats — has watched her views come to be revered, accepted and even emulated. Casting her ultimate vote on the Home ground 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 received 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 ladies confront in American electoral politics.
“There are few congressional leaders, public servants, which have served with the type of braveness and tenacity as Congresswoman Lee,” mentioned outgoing Sen. Laphonza Butler, the California Democrat who was appointed briefly to the seat after the loss of life of long-serving Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
With Butler, Lee teamed as much as cross one of many ultimate 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 one hundredth 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 Occasion when she met Chisholm. Lee present in “Mrs. C” a brand new type of chief who “stood up for individuals.” Lee bought concerned in Chisholm’s 1972 presidential marketing campaign. Lee ultimately labored in Congress and ran for workplace herself, taking on the seat after her boss, Rep. Ron Dellums, retired.
However as Lee tells it, what’s notably noteworthy about her personal profession, is that she’s quantity 20 — the twentieth Black lady elected to the Home.
“I’m solely the twentieth one!” she mentioned.
“Are you able to think about that? I imply, that’s fairly scary. Black ladies haven’t had their voices and their views and their experiences mirrored within the insurance policies.”
Again and again, she has tales of being among the many solely Black ladies 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 battle international HIV/AIDS. It’s an effort that continues to this present day.
Equally, she was an early critic of the Hyde Modification, which prohibits federal funds for abortion companies with few exceptions within the instances of rape, incest or if the being pregnant endangers the lifetime of the pregnant particular person. Lee views it as discriminatory towards low-income ladies 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 on my own, which meant I needed to kind allies and alliances to be efficient,” she mentioned, “which I did.”
She explains that as a Black lady, she brings a perspective that’s usually misplaced on others, going by life with “antennae” that sense what’s occurring “due to our historical past.”
Lee’s antennae have been undoubtedly selecting up alerts on the eve of Jan. 6, 2021, amid the chatter of far-right teams coming to Washington.
“I wore tennis sneakers to work that day,” she mentioned.
When the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and she or he and different lawmakers have been fumbling to placed on their gasoline masks and evacuate the Home chamber, she remembers how the Home chaplain rose and began praying.
“I mentioned: ‘Oh, Lord. That is critical. We bought to begin praying, too,” she mentioned. These sneakers “got here in useful.”
But it surely was her vote 20 years earlier, within the days after the assaults on Sept. 11, 2001, that will ever outline Lee’s legacy in Congress.
She agonized over the selection, and mentioned she was as stunned as anybody at being the one vote towards the decision that licensed what she warned of: America’s lengthy conflict in Afghanistan and past.
The response was fierce and menacing, but additionally affirming of her conviction. Different Democratic lawmakers crossed to her facet and she or he has since constructed a coalition, together with with hard-right Republicans against abroad navy motion.
“She’s all the time dreamed huge, she’s all the time been daring, she’s all the time had a energy of conviction — and she or he’s very strategic,” mentioned Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a part of the “Squad” of progressive lawmakers first elected in 2018. “She’s passionate, however not reactive, she’s thoughtfully responsive.”
The youthful lawmakers usually name Lee “O.G.”
Lee notes there are actually a number of dozen Black ladies elected to the Home — an enchancment however, she mentioned, nonetheless not sufficient to catch up for the nation’s 200-plus-year historical past.
She works with the group Illustration Issues to assist ladies of coloration operating 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 ladies becoming a member of the Senate.
“I bought to ensure different Black ladies don’t need to undergo what I’ve been by,” she mentioned.
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 using navy pressure.
“My mom instructed me that ‘can’t’ will not be within the dictionary,” she mentioned. “Shirley Chisholm inspired me to shake issues up, to not go alongside to get alongside.”
