0:00

Hi,

0:08

I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in Fact,

0:10

we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll

0:13

be talking with trailblazing women at the top

0:15

of their fields about their personal journeys, the

0:17

progress we've made, and how far we

0:19

still have to go. Today we're

0:21

talking about representation and activism

0:24

with Maria Teresa Kumar, the founding

0:26

president of Voto Latino, the leading Latin

0:28

X voter registration and advocacy

0:31

organization in the country. It's

0:33

no surprise that throughout our history women

0:36

have led the fight for women's rights. Women

0:38

have also played a vital role in pretty

0:40

much every social movement. So

0:43

Journal Truth and Lucretia Mott were abolitionists

0:46

and self regists. Rosa Parks

0:48

and Dorothy Height where civil rights movement

0:50

leaders to Laura's Wuerta led

0:52

the fight to improve conditions for farm workers,

0:54

and she's still on the front lines. Brenda

0:56

Howard, also known as the Mother

0:59

of Pride, is credited with creating the

1:01

first Pride parade. Candy Lightner

1:03

founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and

1:05

Shannon Watts forged Mom's

1:08

Demand Action for gun violence prevention.

1:10

And those are just a few of the women who have

1:13

refused to accept the status quo and fought

1:15

for expanded rights, protections and opportunities

1:17

for women, but also for everyone.

1:20

Any time change is needed, odds

1:23

are there have been brave, strong, and

1:25

gutsy women at the forefront. My

1:28

guest today is certainly a brave, strong

1:31

and gutsy woman who I have long admired

1:33

and been lucky to know. Maria Tracy

1:35

Kumar co founded Vote Latino in

1:37

two thousand four. She's an Emmy nominated

1:40

contributor to MSNBC. Fast

1:42

Company named her one of the one hundred most

1:44

creative business minds in the country, and l

1:46

named her one of the ten most influential women

1:49

in Washington, d C. Maria

1:57

Treca Kumar, thank you so much for joining

1:59

me today to talk about voting

2:02

rights and activism and so

2:04

much more. Thank you so much, Chelsea.

2:06

You know, I thought we could start at

2:09

the beginning of your story. You came to this

2:11

country, the United States, from Columbia when

2:13

you were four, and I wondered

2:16

if you could just share how you think those early

2:18

experiences of of being

2:20

an immigrant and then being a new American shaped

2:23

you. So when I came to this country,

2:26

one of the reasons we came was that my adopted

2:28

father had fallen ill in Columbia

2:31

and so you needed to convalesce, and

2:33

so my mom and I ended

2:35

up in the tiny little town called Geyserville,

2:38

California that in the last census

2:40

had less than people. And where

2:43

is Geyserville, California. It's in Sonoma

2:45

County. And so my

2:47

mother went from Bogota, Columbia,

2:49

which is very much like New York City,

2:52

to teeny tiny

2:54

town. Were the expectations from my grandparents

2:57

because they were grape growers, was that while my

3:00

ad convalesce, she had to

3:02

go work in the field. And Chelsea, I

3:04

have to tell you that my mother was such a good support. Was I don't

3:06

think she'd ever seen a plant in her life, and

3:08

the next thing you know, she is picking

3:10

grapes. And it was such

3:13

a formative moment because I also knew the opportunities

3:15

that this country afforded me. We're going to be vastly

3:17

different than growing up in Colombia.

3:20

My mother is after Latina,

3:23

and by that the deck was already

3:26

stacked against her. She had little education,

3:28

and I had the opportunity

3:30

to probably go to school, but more than

3:33

likely would not have and understanding

3:35

I had the opportunity to go to school, I

3:38

fell in love with the United States, and

3:40

I will never forget going to

3:42

San Francisco City Hall when I was nine years

3:44

old and raising my right hand and pledging

3:46

allegiance to United States and becoming a US citizen.

3:49

And if you ask why the work

3:51

that I do a Voldo Latino is

3:53

so significant, is that I remember that

3:55

nine year old with these aspirations and

3:58

thinking big and recognizing that the world

4:00

opened up before me the moment I became

4:02

a US citizen. And it breaks

4:04

my heart to know that there's millions of

4:07

undocumented youth here in this country

4:09

that have those exact same dreams, but because our laws

4:12

changed from the moment I came to this country to

4:14

today, that their future is different.

4:17

And the more that we can get people to recognize

4:20

that we're leaving great minds

4:22

behind because they can't self realize,

4:24

is what are the motive fitting factors of the work that I do.

4:27

So I want to go back to that moment, you know,

4:29

when you were a nine year old and you felt

4:32

this enormous promise

4:34

and potential and yet it also sounds like

4:36

real activation. Did

4:39

you always know that you would

4:41

work in activism and

4:43

advocacy. You know, it's so interesting

4:46

that you ask. So. I loved the

4:48

idea of the American promise that I could be anything

4:50

now that I was US citizen. And literally

4:53

two years later, I remember coming home

4:55

and I'm crying and my dad was

4:57

like, well, what's going on, honey, I said, I

5:00

said, Dad, I can't be president. And

5:04

my Dad's like, what are you talking

5:06

about? I said, well, you know, in America,

5:09

you promised. You know, I was promised I could be anything,

5:11

and it wasn't that I wanted to be, but this idea

5:13

that you could unity was limited,

5:16

right. Uh. But I always

5:18

knew that I liked helping people.

5:21

I always knew that. And the reason

5:23

again when my mother came

5:25

first, and then she brought my aunts and my

5:28

uncle and my grandmother, I found myself

5:30

navigating the country for my family at

5:32

a very young age. The racial profiling

5:34

and the policing that was happening in Sonoma

5:36

when I was growing up was very real.

5:40

I love Sonoma. It gave me an incredible experience

5:42

and informed who I was. But

5:45

Sonoma was very segregated, and they sadly

5:47

tracked our young men in particular at a

5:49

very early age, the men were struggling,

5:52

and you would think that they had grown up in

5:55

the worst part of New York

5:57

City instead of a very rural,

6:00

aggressive Sonoma. And

6:02

it was at the same time the backdrop of when

6:04

Pete Wilson's Proposition passed,

6:07

and so we were Sonoma and California

6:10

was on fire with racial tension, and

6:12

my family for the very first time felt

6:16

not only differentiated, but in danger

6:18

unsafe, and it broke my heart because

6:20

this was the country that I loved. This is the country that said

6:23

we welcome you and let yourself

6:25

realize and they were we were going against

6:27

our own creed as I had understood

6:29

it when I was growing up. And so if you ask

6:31

what are the factors that motivated me? Was very much

6:34

the dynamics between my dad's

6:37

family, who were farmers, and my mom's family,

6:39

but then also the institutions that were raising

6:42

us with the backdrop of a very hostile

6:45

governor, and it

6:47

basically baked me. Can you please tell our

6:49

listeners what was prop so

6:53

proposition was

6:55

the original show me your Paper

6:57

laws which identified

7:00

anti immigration language in

7:02

California, and Pete Wilson

7:04

promoted it. It was a ballot initiative

7:07

that Californians, my neighbors voted

7:09

for, and it was heartbreaking because

7:11

it was the very first time I had to have

7:13

a conversation with my family that they

7:15

were in danger and they needed to become a citizens.

7:18

Why then voting rights? You

7:21

had this sense of injustice

7:23

that was affecting your family,

7:25

your community. It wasn't kind

7:27

of what you believed America should be. And

7:31

there probably are many different areas

7:33

where you could have directed your time, energy,

7:35

talents. Why voting rights?

7:38

I had the opportunity to work in Capitol Hill

7:41

right after college for vic Fasio. He was

7:43

chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and I was able to see

7:45

up close who influenced policy

7:48

and how. And one of the things that I learned

7:51

where that the people oftentimes advising our

7:54

members didn't come from the community

7:56

they were trying to serve. So there was a huge

7:58

gap in intention

8:01

and policy outcome. And so

8:04

while I was at

8:06

the Kennedy School, I had kind of a light bulb moment

8:08

of there are millions of young Latinos

8:11

behind me that have the

8:13

potential to define this

8:15

country so that those policy outcomes

8:18

are actually met with intention and

8:20

purpose. And if we start mobilizing

8:23

them, we could actually leap frog a

8:25

lot of the static that we see in policy

8:27

making. In two thousand three, let

8:30

you know, technically became the second

8:32

largest group of Americans in this country. And

8:34

Volta Latino we started in two thousand four, and

8:36

the two thousand ten cents said, sure enough of

8:40

the growth in this country was due to the Latino

8:42

population. And this is what folks didn't realize

8:44

is that they were American born children. So

8:47

while let you know, we're technically the second

8:49

largest population in America in two thousand three, they

8:51

were mostly the majority under eighteen

8:53

years old, and it wasn't until

8:55

two thousand eighteen that they became the second

8:58

largest voting block. So vota you

9:00

know, it's this seeing the future from

9:02

the perspective of I know what it means to grow

9:04

up under the backdrop of a really bad

9:07

governor. And so where did volto Latino

9:09

go? We went to Colorado when tank Creato was

9:11

on the rise. We went to Arizona when

9:13

we saw the rise of anti immigration laws,

9:16

Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia,

9:19

Texas. Places people told us that we

9:21

were wasting our time, and people said

9:23

that Latino's youth didn't care. Like that's

9:25

all I heard, and I was like, that's none of my

9:27

experience. And

9:30

so, now, almost twenty years after

9:32

the founding of Vote Latino,

9:34

in which you have more than proven

9:37

that young Latinos

9:40

will registered to vote, will turn out to vote, will

9:42

continue to vote, what stories

9:45

do you share to help

9:48

personalize the statistics that you just

9:50

articulated. We expected

9:52

Latinos to become the second largest voting block,

9:55

not until and

9:57

in fact it happened. And

10:00

when they hit that marker of

10:02

being the second largest, we

10:04

were able to flip Arizona,

10:07

and the year before we had flipped Virginia,

10:10

and two years before we had been able to

10:12

basically make both Nevada

10:15

and Colorado a battleground state.

10:18

And so we just saw this progression. And so

10:20

when people say, well, the Latino vote didn't make a difference,

10:22

I said, well, now let's go to Georgia. In Georgia,

10:25

Latinos represented four percent of the electoral

10:27

base. With our brothers and sisters

10:29

in the African American community and with Asian

10:32

Americans, it becomes formidable. Four

10:34

percent makes all the difference. Both. Let

10:36

you know, we registered twenty three thousand folks in

10:38

Georgia, ten thousand of them Chelsea

10:40

were first time voters. Biden won

10:43

by eleven thousand votes. We did it in Georgia,

10:45

we did it in Arizona, we did in Nevada, in

10:47

Pennsylvania. It's by no coincidence that

10:50

we were able to help bring in not just

10:52

the White House, but the set in

10:55

Congress. When you have bad actors,

10:57

because Georgia has terrible actors, Arizona

10:59

has had terrible actors, and you have

11:02

a rising Latino youth population that

11:04

has grown up in households

11:06

where they're trying to navigate the country for

11:08

their families and see their parents

11:10

working themselves to the bone for a

11:12

country that doesn't always even see

11:15

them. The only thing that we have to fight

11:17

for is at the ballot box. That's for the

11:19

most eighteen year olds, that's the only recourse

11:22

of voice. And if we

11:24

tap into that energy and make

11:26

them believe that change happens, then

11:29

we have a country that is truly fulfilling

11:32

its promise. And in two

11:34

thousand and eighteen, it was no coincidence that

11:36

a multicultural America came

11:38

out in the largest numbers

11:40

in a mid term and changed Congress

11:43

not only with the most women, but the most people

11:45

of color, the most veterans, the youngest

11:47

generation of members. And

11:50

that shows that when we participate

11:52

equally, we have access, We'll

11:57

be right back stay with us. The

12:09

work of changing the

12:11

electorate to actually match who

12:13

we are as a country and then ensuring

12:16

that people are able

12:18

to vote and then do vote is

12:20

long haul work. You talk about

12:23

vote Latino starting and

12:25

four, and then you talk about the work

12:27

that you were able to build toward ten

12:30

fifteen years later. Are

12:33

there people in your life who have really inspired,

12:36

mentors you, and also supported

12:38

you kind of in this necessarily

12:41

persistent, gritty work.

12:44

I have to say that I've been fortunate enough that throughout

12:47

my walks of life of this, I've

12:49

had many mentors. But I would say that the

12:52

first one was my mom. I

12:54

was living in New York City. I packed

12:56

my bags and I went back home to Cinoma,

12:58

California, with this idea of Latino.

13:01

Right. So she has a boomerang, you

13:04

know, for someone who's on the eve of the thirtieth

13:06

birthday, who had been helping her pay rent

13:08

and you know, pay your mortgage, and saying, Mom,

13:10

I want to start this and

13:13

I'm going to do it on my credit card, which folks

13:15

listening don't ever do that. It's

13:18

terrible, terryll terrible advice.

13:20

But when I was down and when people

13:23

telling we're telling me, you're you know, Latinos

13:25

don't care. Latino youth in particular, young people

13:27

don't care. Why are you wasting your career?

13:30

When those times came, my mother was

13:32

the one that said, no, that you have seen

13:34

it from the front lines, you have lived it, and

13:37

this is a story you need to tell. And

13:39

then I had the opportunity to meet women

13:42

in Silicon Valley who understood

13:44

what I was trying to achieve. And it was the

13:46

unlikely allies that came into my life

13:49

that really believed in this idea

13:51

that we had to forge a different type of America.

13:54

And through it, I've had incredible mentors,

13:57

whether it has been Kamala

13:59

when she was d that's when I first met her. Gavin

14:02

gave me a lot of counsel. But then, you

14:04

know, through the journey, Pelosi was

14:06

one of the first people to take my phone call and said, yes,

14:08

I will meet with you. And then I've had,

14:10

believe it or not, a lot of volunteers along

14:13

the way. We have a power summit

14:15

every year at Modadino, and the

14:17

idea is trying to get young people to think

14:19

about running for office, how to balance

14:21

their check book, how to think in a different

14:23

space. And I will never forget. We

14:25

were in Las Vegas and I ran into this young man. I

14:28

said, oh, my gosh, you suited up because

14:31

I had remembered him from the last conference. He's like, yeah,

14:33

I bought this suit for this and I

14:35

brought three friends and his parents

14:37

were farm workers and Chelsea. When he said

14:39

that, I felt like tears coming to my eyes because

14:41

I realized that we had communicated what we wanted,

14:43

that he belongs in all the spaces, and

14:45

I knew how hard he must have worked to buy himself

14:48

that suit, and that he believed enough this enough

14:50

that he brought his friends with him. And

14:52

we're starting to see more young people run for office

14:55

right now. We have Greg Cassar,

14:58

who we trained back in two thousands routine.

15:00

He ran for office and became the youngest

15:03

city councilman in Austin. He

15:05

fought for fair wages there and now he's

15:07

running for Congress. And that's what we're about.

15:09

We're about changing that paradigm.

15:12

I'm curious, especially given

15:15

your response to who of your

15:17

mentor has been and so many have been women, not

15:19

not all of them, but so many of them have been

15:22

women. How do you think being a woman

15:24

has shaped your leadership,

15:27

your vision for Vote Latino,

15:29

and the work of Vote to Latino,

15:32

both in the organization and with your partners.

15:36

I think that I've been fortunate

15:39

that I was. I was raised in a matriarchy, so

15:43

and as a result, I have always

15:46

been given I think,

15:48

the tools and the understanding of walking

15:50

into a room and recognizing the

15:53

way someone else may carry and

15:55

also understanding, like I shared, my

15:58

father was very ill

16:00

for a very long time. My mom

16:02

has come to this country with very

16:04

little education and didn't

16:07

know English, and the next thing we know, she has become

16:09

a head of household. She was going to school,

16:11

getting her a degree, putting

16:14

me through school, bringing her family, and just becoming

16:17

such a passionate warrior

16:19

for her family and doing

16:21

it with grace in the face of every

16:24

racist and sexist comment you could poblsibly

16:27

have imagined. And it taught

16:29

me how again, walking into these spaces

16:32

that the collaboration and the

16:34

amount of all you need has to

16:36

be done with friends, and

16:39

it has to be done in partnership. And

16:41

if we are to have a healthy family,

16:43

if we are to have a healthy community, healthy country,

16:46

it has to start with women. And it has to start with women

16:48

because we are making the decisions

16:51

of how to nurture

16:53

and care for our families, to how to

16:55

actually provide a different type of perspective

16:58

of what work means in

17:00

order to be able to balance. But I have

17:03

to share with you I've been fortunate enough that I

17:05

also have a partner that celebrates

17:07

the work and that allows

17:09

the space for me to say, well, I'm

17:11

not going to be able to do X y Z that our traditional

17:14

roles. I don't want to have traditional roles in our house.

17:16

Yesterday, kelsay, I think you'll appreciate my son.

17:18

My husband was taught, was saying a quote

17:21

about how all men were queer equal,

17:23

and my son said, all men and women

17:25

amen. Amen to your son. And

17:28

I imagine many people come

17:31

and ask you for advice, imagine

17:33

especially women and women of color.

17:36

And as someone who has been profoundly

17:39

successful in your work, what

17:41

advice do you give when especially young people

17:43

come and ask for career

17:45

guidance or just life

17:47

guidance. I think one

17:50

is enjoy the moment that you're

17:52

in and learn as

17:54

much as you can from whatever

17:57

moment you are because you never know when you're

17:59

going to need those skills. I started

18:01

working when I was an eleven eleven years old. Working

18:03

at a cash register taught me customer

18:06

service. Working in congress taught

18:08

me how to politic and understand policy and the mechanics.

18:11

I worked for a healthcare or

18:13

firm, selling research

18:16

and stuff, and I didn't like it, but I learned

18:18

how to be poised and sell

18:20

it ideas and when they

18:22

were all came together, everything

18:24

taught me how to be able to promote

18:27

and grow Voto Latino, from

18:30

the accounting to the management,

18:33

to the execution of strategy and creating

18:35

it. Had you told me that

18:37

every single thing that I started doing when I was

18:39

eleven was going to serve me in my future

18:42

role, I wouldn't have been so sure. But

18:45

one of the things that I've always

18:48

appreciated from again my mom, is the zeal

18:50

of always doing whatever you're doing

18:52

to the best of your ability and your capacity.

18:57

We're taking a quick break. Stay with

18:59

us. I

19:11

want to go back to voting rights for

19:13

a moment, because we

19:15

are in a different place today

19:18

then we were when you started

19:20

a Vote to Latino in two thou and

19:22

four, both in that we

19:25

have made progress in

19:27

some areas and also have

19:29

significantly more challenges in

19:32

others. And so I wonder if you could just

19:34

kind of lay out where you think

19:36

we are as relates to voting rights

19:38

in this country and where you

19:40

think we need to go. When we started

19:43

with Latino, I always had an urgency

19:45

to build it fast, and that urgency

19:47

came with an understanding that

19:50

someone like the former twice and peach president

19:52

was going to come about just from my experience

19:54

of seeing it at the local level. When

19:57

we started Vote Latino, the job was very easy.

19:59

Registered to vote, convinced them to go cast a ballot.

20:01

After the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, we came

20:04

into the business of starting to sue states

20:07

depending on what state they're in. The same vote

20:09

that many of your listeners was able to

20:11

cast in two thousand twenty after

20:13

a verified, certified election

20:16

of all fifty Secretary of

20:18

States Republican Democrat, that

20:20

same vote now is vulnerable because

20:22

of the all the laws that they did in two

20:24

thousand twenty one where that same

20:27

person who cast the ballot may

20:29

not be able to cast in Can

20:31

you explain kind of why that why that

20:34

is because I don't think a lot of people understand

20:37

on existential level what has happened

20:39

very quickly to the sacred right to vote

20:41

in our country. So in two thousand

20:44

twenty, as a reminder, every state

20:46

said, yes, this is a fair, certified election.

20:48

There was no voter fraud. We stand by

20:50

it, whether the Secretary of State was Republican

20:53

or Democrat. Since then, there

20:55

has been what we call atlt. Latino

20:58

a bill in a box. It is a

21:00

bill coming out of disproportionate out of the

21:02

Heritage Action Fund from the Heritage

21:04

Foundation in Washington, and they

21:06

are literally going state by state and

21:08

selling the exact same package of legislation

21:11

to restrict the access to the voting booth. It's

21:14

the same strategy that they used to

21:16

create anti abortion legislation. It's

21:18

the same type of tactic that they've used for

21:20

anti immigrant laws. None of this

21:22

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

21:25

very much coming from an extreme

21:27

group of folks, and it's because they

21:30

read the tea leaves of who did vote, and

21:33

it was a multicultural America. It's

21:35

not who they want to vote now

21:39

because we see a very different world vision. We actually

21:42

believe in climate change, we believe in women's choice,

21:44

we believe in women's agency, and we believe

21:46

that immigrants should have rights and be treated

21:48

humanely. And the list goes on. And

21:51

so I'll give you an example

21:53

of one of ways people are trying to restrict

21:55

the vote in Texas. I don't

21:57

know how you registered to vote when you were eight teen, but registered

22:00

to vote on my college campus. The very first

22:02

person I ever voted for, I was

22:04

proud to say, was your father. I was so excited

22:06

and I still have a stub. Yeah. I

22:09

also I registered to vote in Palelato

22:11

because I was at Stanford. But yeah, my first

22:13

votes absolutely were based on where

22:15

I was going to school. I believe it or not. We're

22:17

suing right now Texas because they passed the piece

22:19

of legislation last year saying

22:22

that you needed residency requirement

22:25

now to register on your college campus.

22:27

The challenge is that we know that just

22:29

between two thousand and twenty and by the time

22:32

Greg Abbott is going to be on the ballot this year,

22:34

a quarter million Latino youth are going to turn

22:36

eighteen in Texas alone, So all

22:39

these restrictions are by design. And if I

22:41

was a young person today, I would

22:43

be so angry and so

22:45

upset and offended that

22:47

you have a whole bunch of older people trying

22:49

to disenfranchise your vote, generally older white

22:51

people, older white people trying to disenfranchise

22:54

your vote, and they are not aligned

22:57

with your values. While it is proportionately

22:59

falls along color lines, it disproportionately

23:02

falls generationally along young

23:04

people. They're the ones most impacted

23:06

by the Shenanigans. So when

23:09

I say that we're building towards the future, it

23:11

means literally it's towards

23:13

the future. But how do we create

23:15

policy and access to a community

23:17

that for the most part, still can't vote, yet can't

23:20

fully self realize themselves just because

23:22

their kids well, And

23:24

how do we have sufficient civic

23:26

education in schools and in other

23:28

places where children spend time so

23:31

that young people grow

23:33

up expecting the right to vote

23:36

and expecting themselves and

23:38

their friends to vote. That's

23:40

exactly right. How do we create that culture? And

23:43

I think you know what folk, most folks don't realize

23:45

is that in the nineties seventies,

23:48

Uh, they actually took civic

23:50

education out of schools,

23:52

and right now we only have eight states

23:54

at a fifty eight states that provide

23:56

civic education for a whole year. That's nothing,

23:59

yes, because we should be having age

24:01

appropriate civic education at least

24:03

kind of in every tranche of school elementary,

24:06

middle, and high school and ideally embedded

24:08

in every year of school.

24:11

And yet we don't, or at least we don't

24:13

yet, not yet, not yet. That

24:15

could be another project. So

24:18

where do you think will be in a decade if

24:20

you were to look in your crystal ball. Well,

24:23

right now we are in a work on the road.

24:26

We can fight like hell. Elections

24:29

are going to be for us some of

24:31

the most consequential and I know people

24:33

hear this every single time, but we are right now in the eye of

24:35

the storm. We need a functioning Congress

24:38

and if we don't participate in the midterm elections,

24:40

then the challenges is that Republicans

24:43

will come into office and then we have to ask

24:45

ourselves next presidential

24:47

election, when the Democrat wins, will

24:50

this same Congress of Republicans certify

24:52

a fair, free election. People always

24:54

say, well, how did we get to this point? I said, well, many

24:57

of us stopped nurturing our democracy, we

24:59

stopped participating, we stopped loving

25:01

it. And my hope is that people

25:03

recognize that our country is worth

25:05

fighting for, and the liberties

25:08

of our young people are worth fighting for.

25:10

And we have a generation waiting

25:13

to take the reins of leadership, but we have to

25:15

make sure that we are responsible not

25:17

just responsible leaders. But I always say, you know, oftentimes

25:19

people talk about ancestors like we are

25:21

the living ancestors of our children right now,

25:24

and are we ancestoring properly so that they

25:26

have a shot of being self realized

25:28

to their best version of themselves? And

25:30

if we think of it through, how are we ancestoring

25:32

our democracy, living, breathing

25:34

it? And I think it allows people to recognize

25:37

the responsibility that we have not

25:39

just to each other, but really to our kin

25:41

into our families. When readers

25:43

that just the last question we've we have already,

25:45

you know, spoken about so many statistics

25:48

that motivate you, inspire

25:51

you, I think, also anger you.

25:54

I do wonder, though, if there is sort of one

25:56

statistic or fact that you'd

25:58

like to leave our listeners with that is particularly

26:00

important to you, whether it's inspiring or

26:03

enraging I'm

26:05

on the board of Emily's List. Emily's

26:07

List is we believe in helping

26:10

women run for office who are pro

26:12

choice, democratic women and

26:14

trying to recruit women in the before

26:17

times, Chelsea, I like to say it was really

26:19

hard. There was always a litney list of why

26:21

they couldn't run. And so in two thousand and sixteen,

26:23

to give you an example, six d

26:26

women collectively sent an

26:28

email saying that they were interested in running for office

26:30

at Emily's List. And Emily's List is a huge

26:32

organization. After the

26:34

election of the former

26:36

president that twice impeached, over

26:38

forty two women contacted

26:41

Emily's List within seventeen months

26:43

saying that they wanted to run for office. And

26:46

we see a bench now of incredibly

26:49

talented women. It wasn't by chance that

26:51

for the first time in Congress in two thousand, eighteen

26:54

hundred and twenty six women filled

26:56

the chamber of the U. S. House of Representatives.

26:59

It's because we were able to field candidates. Nina

27:01

Hidalgo at twenty seven years old,

27:03

she is one of someone to watch.

27:06

In Texas, we see Jessicas

27:08

and scenarios. Also in Texas we saw

27:11

who had run like we see a whole

27:13

group of young women with a

27:15

different type of fortitude of saying,

27:17

the only way we change our country is I become

27:20

involved, and that shyness has dissipated,

27:22

and that is what gives me hope claiming

27:25

space and then using their platforms

27:27

to help actually advance

27:30

opportunity and equity. Well

27:33

rich, you certainly inspire many

27:36

people as well, and I count myself

27:38

among them, and I am incredibly thankful for

27:40

your time today. This is fun. Thanks so

27:42

much, Chelsee. You

27:45

can learn more about Voto Latino at

27:47

Voto Latino dot org and

27:50

you can find Maria Theresa on Twitter at

27:53

Maria Theresa. In

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