Barbara Lee Speaks For Me
This is post is one in a series of posts I wrote during International Women’s Month 2022. These posts emerged against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and explored how women can exercise more power in our world and how that might change things.
Wow. The results in my LinkedIn poll last week about how women can best exercise power in our world were fascinating.
The two top selections were running for political office and building wealth. Corporate and business leadership and activism were a somewhat distant third and fourth.
So let’s talk about women in politics.
Before leaving California and moving to Germany, I lived in a neighborhood called Rockridge, right on the border between Berkeley and Oakland.
I’m proud to say it was the home district of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who still serves there.
Why am I proud? Because Barbara Lee has demonstrated the single most courageous act of leadership that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
On September 14, 2001 she was the sole member of the entire U.S. Congress to vote against the ‘Joint Resolution for the Authorization for Use ofMilitary Force’.
This was the ‘blank check’ that eventually paved the way for the U.S. to invade Iraq.
This was two days after 9/11. Emotions ran high. Her political allies in Congress advised her against it. Even the Black Congressional Caucus advised her against this vote.
But she did it anyway.
Here’s what she said, voice trembling, to a joint session of congress:
“However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let’s step back for a moment. Let’s just pause, just for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.
Now I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with it today, and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful, yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”
For these totally level headed words, she was called ‘anti American’ by the Wall Street Journal, bombarded with vicious insults and received death threats.
Now, more than 20 years later, her courage and bravery are celebrated as being ‘prescient’. Just about everyone acknowledges she was right.
Of course she wasn’t the only woman in congress at the time. Many female politicians voted for the resolution.
But imagine if there were more female leaders like her?
What If there was a critical mass of leaders in the house and senate that demonstrated Barbara Lee’s clarity of mind and courage?
What if they could’ve rallied their fellow leaders in a different direction?
Imagine if the Iraq war never happened?
How would our world look right now?