Name a thing - A thing!

An ode to past female democratic presidential nominees.

By Leona Towner

(Left to right) Paola Ramos, Ayanna Pressley, Zerlina Maxwell take a group photo after their panel discussion.

CHICAGO - Monday afternoons DNC session ‘Shirley Chisolm Predicted This Political Moment. Now is the time to unite’ had a very blunt message.

Defend Kamala Harris.

An all women panel united on stage to tell the audience what they’ve learned working in previous female led political campaigns and what they currently deal with on their day-to-day jobs as policy informers, influencers, and makers on the national stage.

Their collective advice being that this generation finds its power in honest direct factual statements.

“We know what calling her a crazy lady is. Racism, Sexism, just call it out,” Zerlina Maxwell former Director of Progressive Media for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and current media talent said.

“Harris has been reintroducing herself and fighting sexism and racism her entire career, so she is building on those lessons learned, and she has a community of people that are rallying behind her defending her narrative in a way that we couldn’t do in 2016,” said Paola Ramos, former Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Maxwell then went on to point out the flaws of the mainstream media’s messaging saying that they keep pretending there is this gray area, and they circle around calling Trumps remarks what they bluntly are to try and show both sides and we aren’t at a point where we can keep doing that.

“I am not going to lie to (her audience) them, I don’t sugar coat, I just tell the truth with the facts that I have at my disposal. I don’t tell people how to feel, I just talk to them about what they are thinking, feeling, and processing in this moment.” Maxwell said.

Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, arriving fashionably late, first let everyone know that she was raised in Chicago. Her first coloring book was made by the Chicago Defender, and her earliest memories were of her mother reading her the speeches of Barbra Jordan and Shirley Chisolm as bedtime stories, then she also got to the panels main point.

“Yes, call a thing, a thing,” Congresswoman Pressley said. “When someone ask an elected official is Donald trump a racist and people contort into a pretzel because they are afraid to call a thing a thing! Do y’all really thing they still mispronounce Kamala cause they don’t know how to say it. Call a thing, a thing.”

Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm was the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress and run for president under a major party ticket and vye to be the democratic parties presidential nominee in the early 1970’s. Chisolm is whom the soon to be official democratic nominee and Presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris has credited as the shoulders to which her career as the second Black woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the U.S. Senate, stands on.

“Congresswoman Chisolm honors the dichotomy that we as black woman experience where we are hyper visible and invisible at the same time. You are incredibly visible in the sense that you are targeted, surveyed, profiled, brutalized, but also your pain is delegitimatized, your contributions erased rendered a foot note. That was Shirley Chisolm’s existence, but history has remembered her kindly. Black woman have always been the pace setters, we’ve always been the canaries in the coal mine.” Congresswoman Pressley remarked.

Vice President Harris has also given credit to lessons she has drawn from the very recent Hillary Clinton Vs Donald Trump 2016 presidential election, as the Harris Walz team tries to do what Clinton’s team almost did.

Hillary Clinton spoke Monday night at the DNC about her hope for VP Kamala Harris' future. Photos provided by DNC

“I wrote down a quote from Minyon Moore, it’s something she told all of us as we were devastated after we lost the electoral college in 2016, and she said when you are the first person to do something, when you are blazing a trail you have to go through the fire,” Maxwell,  former Director of Progressive Media for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign said, “Secretary Clinton was trying to get through the fire and she was getting burned but she did create space for the Vice President to continue down the same path, with people shielding her from the flames.”

For anyone that says America is not ready for a woman president, Clinton’s campaign is a factual reminder that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote meaning more individual Americans did vote for her over Donald Trump. Clinton lost the electoral college fight and with grace, but the flames are still hot, with the understanding that a United States female presidency has still not yet been accomplished.

“How do I push through the fire?” Congresswoman Pressley responds to a question about her current resilency as one of few current sitting black female representatives. “I draw strength from the woman (her mother) that gave me my roots and my wings, who is now an ancestor, who orders my steps and I remember the words of Coretta Scott King in that freedom is never really won, it is won and earned in every generation. I know the path to justice is not linear it is very disrupted, jagged, out of rhythm and we are just all in this moment doing our part to earn and win freedom for this generation.”

Pressley later explained one of the biggest generational changes she's witnessed. She spoke on how the old school of thought was not to give (gossip) something oxygen, because it was the responses that fanned the flames, “because what we’ve learned (now) is that if you don’t address the thing head on that thing gets a whole body. So now, we saw people immediately respond to attacks on Kamala Harris and that’s what we have to do.”

Harris is the third woman and the second black woman vying for the coveted position of President of the United States, but according to this panel of powerful political women that can see what Harris’ campaign has that the others missed, she may be the first woman to win.