My sisters are proud today.
Why? Because many of us won elections yesterday.
The victors are county commissioners, city council members, state legislators, U.S. representatives, mayors, and governors.
Not to mention the fact that our daughters can become doctors, lawyers, superintendents of school systems, CEO’s, bank presidents, astronauts, officers in the armed forces, attorney generals, college professors, real estate executives, and just about anything else they want to do.
Add in the fact that our female offspring can go to college on athletic scholarships, and, hey, we have the world by a string.
And to think women have had the right to vote in this country for less than 100 years.
Women who took to the streets to protest our inability to participate in elections were put in prison, beaten, and murdered…and they suffered so that we could do what we did yesterday — vote.
And these women, dear friends, were progressives. They dared to buck the male-dominated system. They fought against it and they won.
Just like the progressives who stood with me in the 1970’s against corporate ideology that said we could not have the same jobs our male counterparts did.
Progressives who said, “I am as smart as he is and I can do a better job — if given the chance.”
Progressives who said, “You cannot ask us if we are on birth control in a job interview.”
Progressives who said, “In the eyes of the law, we should be treated as equals.”
Check the timeline for women’s rights in America, my friends, and you are going to find a progressive leader behind every movement.
Because change and progress are one and the same.
We are all entitled to our own opinions. But stop before you pull the lever next time.
Stop before you spit out the term “progressive” and “liberal” as if you had sour milk in your mouth.
If it were not for progressives and liberals, none of my sisters would be quite as proud today. Because they would be unable to do what they are doing.
While some of us are old enough to know better and some of us are too young to remember, none of us should ever forget.
Be whom you choose but remember why you have the opportunity to do so.
And it wasn’t because someone wanted things to stay the way they had always been.
It was because someone dared to fight for progress.