Organizers of the 2017 womens march on washington held convention in detroit. Includes of the event advocates, Group Leaders and sanders former press ecretary talking about how to dismantle oppression and end discrimination. [cheers and applause] good morning, everyone. How is everyone doing . [cheers and applause] are we fired up . [cheers and applause] we ready to go . Yes. Thats what i like to hear. Well have an amazing, amazing conversation about intersectionality. We do that, i want to give some love to some folks. Irst of all, i want to give some love back to all of you for showing up so early, so thank you. [applause] just kind of want to say that how many of you have to the social justice city . [cheers and applause] yes. Thats such an amazing place for e because initially it was a vision that was implemented by a woman named nikita. That you have been able to go visit. Things that many i could participate in, and texts say that 10,000 sent out to remind people to races. Key theyre in room 358 all weekend doing phone banking and texting. [applause] director foritical our revolution, future for congressional politics. Lets give it up for erica. Of been the arc george action and judicialtically organization working for justice, inclusion, and equity in the u. S. Yes. We have rebekah, a former obama seniorouse staff and fellow for disability policy at the center for american progress. [applause] we have liliana, a translatino working to uplift trans women of color voices. We have my luck, the Senior Vice President for social justice. A Senior Vice President for social justice and the former chair of the independent Oversight Agency from new york citys police department. Yes. Last but not least, we have the executive director of the San Francisco area Office Council of islamic relations. [applause] carmen i have to say, i am excited to moderate the panel this morning because intersection audi is my existence. I am an them a who grewmerican woman up in Southern California in a Poor Community where there were gangs but i also grew up playing basketball. There are different different intersect with. Intersection audi allows me to be my whole self. When i studied feminism at uc leadership, ier learned the word intersection audi. Was coined by Kimberly Crenshaw in the 1980s, the idea that social identities, system of oppression and Group Identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. Said, a lot of what we were organizing the womens march on washington, we were intentional about being intersectional. With the panel, we will gain more knowledge of how we begin andncorporate that term ideology into our work and every day lives. That although say thee is a visibility during womens march, people have been organizing intersectional he for many decades. It is not a new concept. It is not a new term. Now becoming more visible. We will go ahead and go across the board and i know we had talked about, and we will have a casual conversation, are you ready . Alright, i first want to start off because we have powerhouse is on the stage now. I wanted to start off with me asking all of you, especially becausebecause often times, wom, especially all of you, see the women and do not women and do k it is achievable. You are often like, ok, that person has organized for 20 years. How can i even get there . I wanted to start by admitting that rome was not built in one day and i want to ask all of you, what was your first job . Was 11 years old, i had a paper route. How many had those . Now i am the executive director of an organization and cofounder. Many years. Y took along the journey, it allowed me to embrace several identities that havegies supported my ability to become more intentional about my work. We will start with you. Good morning, everybody. Excited to be here and grateful for the opportunity to have a conversation with all of you and the esteemed panelists. I am in antipoverty policy and advocacy leader. Anown Organization Organization that is state rooted but concerned about the needs of all. It has in the name protestant. I take it to me and we care about all of our neighbors. We are concerned about everybody. My first job, interestingly, was working on the women, infants, and childrens program, doing research on with, a program that is at risk right now, which provides food and support to low income mothers. Interestingly, i stumbled into it. I am a child, though of civil rights leaders. Great grandchild of preachers and activists, social justice leaders. Think for me, growing up in a household where we were told to speak our truth, my dad is to say freedom is the ability to say no to a lie. Growing up in a household where that was poured into us, that is what formed who i am today, i believe. Is this on . Great. My first job. If you ask me what my first it is a whole different question. Was at chuck e. Cheese. Really the question informs a lot of my frustration ant i developed as undocumented woman pair i worked at a daycare with a lot of undocumented women there for almost a decade sometimes working without documents like me. At the same time, i already graduated from Arizona State university. Job getting paid less the minimum wage in arizona. I couldnta diploma use. It is one of the first experiences that got me angry at wyatt could not use my degree, working in a daycare. It was really hard. It was not what i wanted to do. I am grateful that happened because it pushed me to figure out how to make it that are for me and for other women. [applause] good morning, everyone. Honor to be here among women. I moved out of my house when i was 16 working full time, going to school, i was a punk rocker, had bright orange hair and a shaved head and that was the job i could get. That will not be a job i could live on so i am grateful for that job. First off, i did not know you were a slug. You are . That means we went to uc santa cruz. We are slugs. Banana slugs. Perhaps the greatest most intersectional School Mascot that there is. My first job was being a broad specialist for victorias secret. What it taught me, and i still use it to this day, people are shocked i put it in my bio and it is still on my resume. I tell people that Public Policy and lingerie is the same thing. You have to make people want to put their money out that for something that will not actually impact their lives. It is usually filled with some substance, hot air or oil or something id unidentifiable. You have to make them care about it. This in my daytoday life every day. Good morning. Was itsy first job, i a backup and Substance Abuse awareness. It i was 16 and did not want to work in fast food. I decided i could get an office job to literally right emails and office flyer stearate ironically, it has led me to become an lgbt tobacco Treatment Specialist and Substance Abuse specialist. Only because i did the work and it seems like any job i went to, they said, oh, awesome, get this certification. A specialist without wanting to become one. [laughter] [applause] it is a hard one to top. Like jennifer, i grew up with parents who are civil rights activists. Distinguish work and job. One thing my parents and grandparents before them taught us is that it takes work to be a citizen. Our first job is citizenship. Work astalk about opposed to job, the first work was a bunch of us kids, children itthe activist organizers, was the time of the vietnam war and we formed groups, children against the vietnam war. I think i was seven. Jamieader was congressman raskin, who was eight at the time and we would all meet at his house, all five of us, to have organizing meetings for the for the we would have war in vietnam and he would all on theyou would pull out coffee table and lecture us on in vietnam. The war and another kid named david was heading spit balls at my and i was trying to hide behind the chair. The point was at the end of s, our parents had against the war in vietnam. We were called children against the war and there were six of us at the time. The police were expecting a huge and massive antiwar 500nstration, had about Motorcycle Police officers, and the only people on the sidewalks were our parents, 10 to 12 people. Cheering us on as we marched down saying stop the war, stop the war. Good morning. I am with care the council on islamic relations. I am not sure how to follow that. My first job was folding close folding clothes at mervyns does anyone remember it . Wanted as a kid a food service job, which sounds odd to say out loud especially if you know how hard those jobs are. My parents were not down with they were in pursuit of what they thought was the american dream. They said you cannot work in food service so i worked at mervyns and folded clothes during the holiday season. I was aware of the privilege i had to work through college and do it for extra money and not because i needed to pay my bills. As a product of the California Public education system, i worked all the way through and my favorite job, which informs ,ow i do my work today organizing professors and students to push back against tuition increases, and with the national union, organizing home guards,kers Security Industries not often organized what to recognize that we are more powerful when we Work Together. Stories. All these we could just keep going. I will say i think it allows us to see how your lives are intersectional and we think we as women are monolith but we are not. So in your work that you do why is it important to organize across movement and do you personally think it is an effective way to build power . I will begin. In my daily work, i am focused and the needs and concerns of our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, some of us who do not have enough money on a daily basis. Powers hadtical their way, they would look at it as a class issue, independent of race experience and gender experience. They would ignore the fact that when they talk about diversity, they separate race from gender. At what corporations do, they place greater influence on gender. That allows them to distinguish between race and gender and not to together. Looks like is if i want to meet the quota if you women,et me hire more be women ofhave to color. Let me hire africanamerican men. Let me hire latino men. It leaves out latino women, indian women, grow across the board. If i am fighting poverty, i have to appreciate intersection out and the movement has to coexist at the that the influences are introduced canary, that we cannot say poverty is a race or issue alone. Or class issue alone. I have to fight for the intersection out it. Right now, i am addressing issues of criminal Justice Reform and im a shading increasingly that what we do in america is we do not appreciate that race and poverty and criminal injustice are all intersected. We look at taking on criminal Justice Reform as though it is just an experience tied to perhaps poverty. 80 of people incarcerated are poor. 60 are latino and black. If we address criminal Justice Reform only through looking at what is happening in the Court Systems but not in black or latino communities, and look at how people do not have access to jobs or education, then we miss the mark. That is why we have to focus on intersections all of these rings. The last point, you have to always remember structural powers that be want to keep things keep things segmented. If we are always focusing on class, then we are not appreciating a race undercoat undercurrent. Gender alone, we do not look at how we strip away the economic attention here in we have to keep movements focusing on intersection out in set we remain united. [applause] how many of you paid attention to the 2016 president ial election . Because that is a presentday answer to the question. Haver one, power should represented the 3 million more votes that resulted in the united ok . And the only reason 3 million plus votes did not was because of the electoral college. We had that because slavery. The entire country has a man with his finger on the Nuclear Button who assaults women and who forgets the name of men who who has notield, doubt with the dreamers ability to continue to work and learn in this country, who have told us that police should be a little rough with people when they get put in police cars and maybe not their heads against the door, because we never have resolved the fact that as a country, we have constructed a politics built on race. Race was also builds on class and gender. It was. Cannot fight any of that unless we recognize that we are in it to together and what it fundamentally represents is whether you are a coal miner in kentucky, or a garment worker in womanrk, or simply a taking care of a family at home, fundamentally, what dr. Martin luther king jr. Said remains true, which is that fundamentally we are bound up in it together and we will either rise or fall together and we will take the rest of the world with us. What that means in terms of our organizing is fundamental. See the relationship between police misconduct, criminal justice, education and investment in education, health care, immigration, because all of these has become have become pushbutton issues to divide us. We do not have to let that be the case. If we see the relationship and we can be in the relationship in the way we can be, there is nothing more important than after and a fellow players started taking a need during the National Anthem, a white woman who was going to sing the National Anthem took her knee while she sang it. I think intersection analogy is important because we see the impact of what happens to extremely marginalized people when Public Awareness heightens. When the lgbt movement, a very white movement, started its takeoff, lgbt, potatoes specifically trans people and specifically trans people of color were left behind. The year that gay marriage was legal, there was the highest number of trans women of color has ever been documented. We think about trans women of color and the amount of people murdered simply because of who they are, if you are not doing intersection out a, youre part of the people killing me and us. This is a worldwide phenomenon. In the United States, black trans women are murdered at higher rates. It is not because of anything but if i go to the gas station and i am authentically me, i will get shot and nothing happens to the people that killed me and nothing happens to let itmunity that happen. I am doing work and not allowing people like me to be afraid to walk in the street. Rebecca. Rebecca i heard there are 5000 women here. Is that the latest count . About 4200. If there were 5000 women here. 1250 of you are my people. If you are a cancer survivor, you are a woman with a disability. If you have an eating disorder, you are a woman with a disability. If you have ever gone to therapy in your life, you are a woman with a disability. If you are coming through Substance Abuse and recovery, you are one of hours. Im here to tell you now, the house of representatives is pushing hr 620, which will systematically dismantle title iii so you could not come to this in to this convention because you could not get through the damn door. Over 400 arrests, over 400 disabled activists were arrested , 400, and yet we are continually erased any time they rattle off the list of people who put their lives on the line to save health care. Rico. 00 dead in puerto over 900. That is not even talking about the hundreds of people with disabilities impacted going into all of the people as a result. Those are my people and your people. Me, no one will question my need for a stool. Us, i amone in four of not the only one appear. The privilege of being able to disclose. If we will push back and reserve rights for all of our people, egg knowledge the fact that disabled women are already in your movement. I need to add to what rebecca said. While we are organizing the march, several people work with us on ada. When we were putting together a linda, it erases so many people who cannot stand. Even the intentionality is important when we are putting together narratives and stories that we have to ensure we are bringing other people to the table. Thank you. Do,or me, the work i intersection audi for me is very important because, for me, i am can weking at who lift up as a candidate just because they are female or because they believe we should reproductions to i want to be able to bring in women because they have the right intention through fixing problems in the communities that i come from and a lot of the people i know come from. I was working for the bernie campaign. Want to talk about the politics of 2016 but just to give you a sense of why a started working, for me, before i went to the campaign, i was consulate. The because i wanted to work with children coming from coming from said central america. Literally hadirls to take contraceptive literallyd to take contraceptive pills to cross the border because they knew they would get raped, or because they were ready to be raped. They were mentally ready to be raped as they crossed the border. Many of them, 14yearold girls and already pregnant. No one was talking about it. Like, who is talking about these girls, the children coming from central america. There forsee who is the children. I did not see that in thethey we women. Worke in my work, and the you are doing locally in an elections and electoral work, we need to lift up women who are progressive, who are willing to ,ook at in intersection away because ofaps their race and their class and disability and anything else we etc. Oing through, so yes, that is very important. Thank you. Wo things, thank you, rebecca i am excited to be on panels where i learned something new. As a woman who goes to therapy, i did not know that that counted as being a woman with a disability. It ise right that difficult to disclose or i have been doing it for two years because how does one do this work over and over and be full and beat present, without getting professional help . Is difficult to disclose or i have been doing it for tw