 Well, good evening. My name is Greg Bowman. I have the honor and the privilege of serving as the dean at the Roger Williams University School of Law. And we're thrilled to welcome you to this evening's virtual event at our law school, celebrating and commemorating the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution. This year, 2020, marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which guarantees and protects the constitutional right to vote for women. And what a massive change we have seen over the past 100 years. Imagine just 100 years ago, Ada Sawyer had to take her case to the Rhode Island Supreme Court to secure a woman's right to sit for the state bar exam. And by contrast, our law school's first-year class this year is 54% female. And among our second-year class, that figure is closer to 60%. That's progress. There's so much more work to be done, but the progress is, in so many ways, exhilarating. It gives us hope. And it gives us determination to continue to push for change, for justice, and for inclusion for all. So this evening, we have a really great exhibit. It's a marvelous exhibit, which is sponsored by the American Bar Association. And we are pleased to welcome our outstanding students and alumni, faculty, staff, speakers, and friends who have gathered with us tonight to celebrate it. Thank you again for joining us. The video that we are about to present showcases a traveling exhibit that is now in residence at the Roger Williams University School of Law. And that's apt, because 2019 at our law school was a landmark year for our school with our celebration of the first women lawyers in Rhode Island. We dedicated one of the law school's classrooms to Dorothy Crockett, who was Rhode Island's first African-American female lawyer. Dorothy Crockett was admitted to practice in 1932. And she was only the seventh woman admitted to practice law in the state of Rhode Island. We also dedicated another classroom to Lynn Foster Freedman, a woman who is a modern icon for women in law. She served on our law school's board of directors for many years until this year, and she currently serves on our university's board of trustees. Lynn continues to be a wonderful friend to our law school, to the legal profession, to our university. And she is a favorite adjunct professor among our law students. And in addition, we held annual events such as the Women in Roads networking event and the Women in Law leadership lecture. So we're proud to be committed to supporting women in the legal profession. We are proud to celebrate the impact of women in the legal profession. And we are proud to train the next generation of women who will be lawyers and leaders for our state and for the nation. So again, great exhibit. We're excited to have you here with us. I want to proudly point out that the video that you are about to see was produced in-house here at the Roger Williams University School of Law by my colleague, assistant dean Raquel Ortiz in the Law Library and her fantastic team of librarians. We appreciate and we thank you all very much. This historic centennial of the 19th Amendment offers us a tremendous opportunity to commemorate a milestone of our democracy and to explore its relevance to the issues of equal rights today. The ABA Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress Traveling Exhibit, which features historic photos and artifacts primarily from the Law Library of Congress, details the story of the battle for ratification of this amendment and outlines the many challenges that remain in our nation. This 19th Amendment Traveling Exhibit will be at the Roger Williams University School of Law until tomorrow. It has been here this week. For health and safety reasons, there will unfortunately be no public viewing. But we do have this virtual viewing and this video. And we thank you for attending. And I hope that you enjoy the video and the event. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. First, thank you, Dean Bowman, for welcoming us to this event. And thank you, Dean Ortiz, both for that great video. And also, everyone should know that Dean Ortiz has been instrumental in having the exhibit hosted at Roger Williams. So we're very thankful for that. I am Professor Emily Sack. I'm a professor here at the Law School. And it is now my great honor to introduce our first speaker, the Rhode Island Secretary of State, Nellie Gorbea. Secretary of State Gorbea made history when she was sworn into office in January 2015, becoming the first Hispanic elected to a statewide office in New England. And she was re-elected to serve a second term in 2018. She has been behind several important initiatives to increase civic engagement and government accessibility. She has worked to pass automated voter registration, online voter registration, and to secure funding for modern voting technologies. And her work to increase voter engagement, especially among new and young voters, has already seen results. Rhode Island saw a 64% increase from 2014 to 2018 in the number of voters aged 18 to 20 voting in the general election. She has also developed civics and history resources for teachers to use in the classroom, including the high school elections program, which offers schools the opportunity to hold their student elections with real ballots and real voting machines. Secretary Gorbea's determination to increase voting accessibility for all people in Rhode Island was exemplified this summer when she was involved in litigation that reached the United States Supreme Court. She successfully defended the state's suspension of a witness requirement for absentee ballots for the upcoming election against a challenge by the Republican National Committee and the State Republican Party. Secretary Gorbea was quoted at the time of her victory as saying, quote, your health should never be the price of admission to our democracy, making it easier to vote safely from home by removing the burden of obtaining two witnesses or a notary is a common sense step that will protect Rhode Islanders during this pandemic. And I need to add that Secretary Gorbea has been a wonderful friend to the law school. And so we're so delighted to have her. So thank you. And I will turn it over to Secretary Gorbea. Thank you, Emily, for that wonderful introduction and hello to everyone. It's wonderful to be here, at least virtually with all of you. I miss going to these events and being able to personally get to know people up close. But, you know, we have to do what we have to do during this pandemic. And I want to thank Dean Bowman, who I feel like I know, but I actually haven't met in person, because we've already had some really wonderful chats. But I want to, so I want to thank him for organizing tonight's event. I welcome Sarah Guillermo and of course, Professor Gloria Brown-Marshall, also virtually, but we're one of the welcoming to the great state of Rhode Island. Hopefully this is only a brief intro and at some point you'll actually be able to come over to the ocean state. It's been really neat to see the exhibit by the American Bar Association. And Kelly Kincaid has taken on the local chapter of the Women's Bar Association. And we've had also some great chats. But it's really wonderful to be here with all of you. So finding innovative ways to virtually celebrate the 100 years of the 19th Amendment is something that we've been tackling in my office as well. I mean, as luck would have it really, we got our 100th year, we had a full year planned of all sorts of fun events and really bringing attention to this. And then we got hit with a pandemic. But so I'm excited to see that the law school is persisting and that my good friend, Raquel Ortiz, is leading the way to help us remember the path here. And I'm proud that we've been able to adapt and still honor those trailblazing women of a century ago. Actually, if you take a tour of the state house, you'll be able to see Elizabeth Buffham Chase and Christiana Havanister's busts. They're the only two women busts in the state house and Rhode Island. And so it does seem particularly appropriate to still remember and to celebrate their power and continue to figure out ways in which we can continue to stand up for what's right. The Rhode Island General Assembly ratified the 19th Amendment in January 6th, 1920, which January 6th has a special meaning in Rhode Island history later on as well because it became, January 6th, 2014 became the first inauguration of a woman governor. And my inauguration as well, I wasn't the first woman secretary of state, but it was a special day too. But back in 1920, the General Assembly ratified the 19th Amendment. And I think it bears to reflect on the text itself. It said, the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Sounds like a really great idea. And of course, like any good idea, some decades of hard work and determination to make it a reality. And while we should absolutely honor the persistence and courage of that movement, I do really hope that we will make this more than a year of celebration and that we'll be able to move the issues forward because certainly our work is not done. I wanna take the lessons from the women's suffrage movement, the good and the bad and use them to move Rhode Island forward into a better future. And I say the good and the bad because let's be honest, the 19th Amendment did not guarantee all women the right to vote. Now, people of all races and backgrounds worked to make it happen, but it was really white women who saw the benefits and got the credit. The path of suffrage for all women continued for many, many years. And countless women of color saw their work and advocacy go unsung. And it wasn't really until the Voting Rights Acts and the work in the 1960s that promise of suffrage became a reality for many of us. So, yes, we've come a long ways in 100 years since then, but there's a lot more work to do when it comes to access to the ballot box. And it's interesting because I think in many ways, our country has moved much further with regards towards universal suffrage, I'll say towards because there are still areas of this country that struggle with the concept of universal suffrage. But, or the practice, I should say, of universal suffrage, but we still have challenges in the way our elections run in the way our government runs so that much of the promise of that universal suffrage is not quite fulfilled. I am a firm believer that our best public policy decisions come when there's a variety of opinions, perspectives and backgrounds around the policymaking table. It's a diversity that makes things harder to come up with quickly, but it is a diversity that makes really good public policy. And it's really vital that you add your voices to that conversation by voting and by being involved in your community. And it's in that spirit of inclusivity and diversity that my office has launched a collaboration with the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. And so if you wanted to get some inspiration and all of us needed at one point or another to sort of reflect on where we've been and where we could go, the collection is called Shall Not Be Denied. And it was an effort that we've had to really amplify programming around the commemoration of the 19th, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. And in there, we have some really great resources, I'm sure, for some good legal papers and analysis and briefs and just some basic resources for educators and parents. So if you wanna see more, you can go to the Shall Not Be Denied website or actually you can go to my own website at the Secretary of State's office. I have the privilege and the honor to be able to manage the state's historic archives. For those of you that are not from Rhode Island, we have documents there, basically documenting our government but going back to 1638. So, and we just moved to a new location at 33 Broad Street. The place is available by appointment only and I wanna encourage you and hope that at some point when this pandemic is over and it will be over that you'll come and check them out because not every state has a draft of the Bill of Rights or an original copy of the Declaration of Independence signed actually by John Hancock. So come in and check those out. And with those we have a ton of documentation around this centennial. So what this centennial offers us is the opportunity to talk to Rhode Islanders about the complex history of the women's suffrage movement and to increase civic literacy and engagement throughout the state. And one of the most obvious lessons from the women's suffrage movement is the power of making your voice heard and how that can produce massive change. And today, we're all lucky enough to have that power in our constitutional right to vote as women who are citizens. And through our votes, we really can change things that we don't like about our government or cities in our neighborhoods. You know, I was a candidate that was not supposed to win her race early on. I was up against a self-funded, very established Rhode Islander who had come from a multi-generational Newport family who had run before, had lent themselves half a million dollars to run for Secretary of State, had the endorsement of the party, had the endorsement of the labor unions. Oh, I had one. I had one labor union with me. And yet, you know, I went at it. I was convinced that I was the better candidate, that I had the right experience, that Rhode Islanders, if they got to know me, would figure out that I was the better choice. And with a lot of hard work, we made it happen. And the most common thing that I got told after I won that primary was, wow, Nellie, congratulations. I voted for you. I didn't think you were gonna win. And so there lies the power of the vote because when we vote, it seems like it's just a solitary thing that it really doesn't, like what can it really matter, one vote? And I think that with the challenge of the Electoral College, it makes it even more so at the federal level. And yet, I think the 2016 election showed how much it matters for people to vote. And at the local level, it really matters. We just had a wave, like this state has never seen, of newly elected women and people of color win their primary seats on September 8th. And all of that happens because one by one, all the votes get added and change happens. And when Rhode Islanders did that, in my case, they changed history. They changed how our government is reflected. I became the first Hispanic in New England to be elected at a statewide level. But that can't happen if people don't vote. If people just say, oh, my vote doesn't really matter. I have so many other things to do, somebody else will vote. Well, we can't do that. We have to make sure that each and every one of us and all of those around us vote. And so as Secretary of State of Rhode Island, my top priority has been to make this amazing constitutional right to vote convenient and secure for all Rhode Islanders, particularly in light of this pandemic. And as Emily said, I very much believe that we should not allow a pandemic to affect people's right to vote. And we have the technology and we have the systems to ensure that we can increase access to that ballot box without sacrificing in any way. In fact, I would say while protecting the integrity of every vote. So what we've done to do that is we've upgraded our voting infrastructure. We've modernized our election laws to meet the challenges of contemporary society and how people live. And yeah, that meant fighting all the way to the Supreme Court so that Rhode Islanders don't have to risk their health to vote during the pandemic. A side note, the path to that particular win starts way back in my undergraduate years when I took a course on the law in Hispanic society in the US. And it was taught by an alumnus who was an attorney, Manuel Del Valle, and it was a student-initiated seminar because the university that I was at, of course I had no Hispanic courses at that time. And a group of us got together and said, we really want courses that speak to us. So somebody thought, well, don't we do a course like this? We heard that it can happen. And so we put it together. And that's where I learned about the Voting Rights Act. And I learned about the amazing history, the interwoven history of our communities, which I don't think is reflected on very often, how, yes, women's right to vote is part of the reason that we then all have a right to vote, but then how in the 60s, the different precedent-setting cases that the African-American community fought for then were used as precedent for Hispanics throughout the Southwest to win their desegregation battles and voting rights battles. And the same for Asian and Pacific Islanders. And so I hope that while you're in law school, you'll take a little bit of time to find those connections because they will make your study of the law much richer as you go forward. Anyway, back to Suffrage. Anyway, so yes, we've done all these important improvements to elections in our state. And it means that Rhode Islanders have several options for voting safely and securely. You then vote safely from home with a mail ballot. You can vote early in person in your city or town hall, starting 20 days before the election, or you can actually vote at the polls. We do have that option for those that really wanna do that on November 3rd with social distancing and masks and plexiglass and lots of sanitizer. So no matter what method of voting best suits you, you can make sure that you can cast a ballot this year. And what better way to honor the trailblazing women who won the right to vote 100 years ago to say, I'm gonna go do this because of those that came before me. And so if you have any questions about voting this year, the one thing I will ask, do not get sucked into the social media news feed of hysteria on the elections. What you really need to go is you need to go to your election officials. Those are your trusted sources of information. And in Rhode Island, for example, you would go to vote.arid.gov or you would call the United Ways line 211. If you're here studying from another state and need to figure out how to go, you can still go to vote.arid.gov and we have links to every state's absentee ballot process. And I think there might be a few of you that are here from another state. And go there, don't rely on social media or third parties for the most part. There's a few organizations that I would trust like the League of Women Voters as a fantastic website as well. And the political parties themselves, of course, but there's a lot of disinformation and confusion that's being sewn honestly quite deliberately to get us to somehow not exercise that right to vote. And I'll tell you right now, the whole conversation around the mail ballots is a lot of throwing of smoke into something that honestly works and has worked and I believe will work for most people. In the state of Rhode Island within an hour and a half after I asked for a meeting with the Postmaster General in Providence, I had her on the phone, she called me up, we talked about it. Now, we didn't just find the post office this year, our office as every election office should has had a longstanding relationship with the post office. So that's just one example of things get thrown up into the news cycle that make you wanna doubt that this is gonna actually happen, right? And the truth is that there has been very few cases of voter fraud at all, whether by mail or any other case in the history of recent elections in the United States. The stuff that people talk about for the most part is talk and not reality. And if you do have a question, go to your election official. I encourage people to call my office. I love voter fraud questions because we walk you through all of the ways in which it's really, really hard to manipulate the votes in a way that you can change the count. So do it for those women 100 years ago and since then that have fought for all of us to have a better community and a better society and make sure that there you go, that you go out and vote. Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you sharing this evening. And I can't say enough, it's my honor to be your secretary of state and really to be able to share with you and to be able to deliver a safe and secure election that you can trust. And I hope that you will stay strong, that you study hard and you stay safe. Have a good evening. Thank you so much, Secretary Gerbea. Before we turn it over to Kelly Kincaid, I just wanted to let people know that we do have a Q and A function on the screen and we are holding questions until the end of the event but our speakers have kindly agreed to be here. And so feel free at any time as we go to write a question in the Q and A and they will be answered at the end of the program. So thank you, Kelly. Good evening, my name is Kelly Kincaid. I am the current president of the Rhode Island Women's Bar Association and an attorney with Adler Pollock and Sheehan. The Rhode Island Women's Bar Association is so pleased to be one of the sponsors for tonight's event. It's my pleasure tonight to introduce you to our second speaker, Professor Gloria Brown Marshall from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her resume is quite extensive and impressive so I will give you some of the highlights. She currently teaches constitutional law, race and politics, gender justice and evidence to graduate and undergraduate students. She's also a civil rights attorney prior to John Jay College, Gloria litigated cases for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Brown Marshall is the author of many scholarly articles and textbooks. Some of these include the Voting Rights War, the NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice and Race, Law and American Society, 1607 to present. Professor Brown Marshall speaks nationally and internationally on constitutional and human rights issues. Presently, she is a member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. She's a recipient of many honors, including but not limited to the NAACP Ethyl Lawrence Trailblazer Award, the Association of Black Women Attorneys Community Service Award and the New York County Lawyers Ida B. Wells Award. Finally, Professor Brown Marshall has a forthcoming book to be published in November of 2020 titled, She Took Justice, The Black Woman Law and Power. I'm really looking forward to reading that one. Welcome Professor Brown Marshall. Thank you. And it will be from that book, She Took Justice, The Black Woman Law and Power. From that, I will give my presentation and it's really making me nervous to follow Madam Secretary. So I will do the best I can under the circumstances. I thank you all for being here and I wanna talk about power. And it's 100 years from the passage of the 19th Amendment. And what an occasion that we had yesterday, a woman of color, a woman of African descent and Asian descent to do a fantastic job as an attorney, former prosecutor, to debate Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States. This black woman, Kamala Harris, who was the former Attorney General of California and a US Senator. And what a remarkable job she has done. And many people said, of course, it's historic, but she's not the first black woman to be in that position of Vice President nominee because there was a lot of bass in the 1950s, a black woman who was on the progressive ticket as a vice presidential nominee. The power of the black woman is so extensive that I wanna spend my time, if I might, just telling you about the power of the black woman, the power of the black female attorney, the power of the black suffragette. And from there, you will see why for most black women is the natural phenomenon, if you can put those two together, that there would be a Kamala Harris and there would be a Michelle Obama an attorney as first lady and former partner at a major law firm. The way the law and the black woman work together as abolitionists, as suffragettes, as power brokers, but to understand the power of the black woman, you have to go back 400 years. And given the fact that I have about 15 minutes, I'm gonna make this a very quick 400 year journey. But I like to start with Queen Nzinga. And Queen Nzinga is the African queen, warrior queen and diplomat in Angola, Africa. Last year, many of us know from the New York Times project and many others that 1619 was the arrival of, the year of arrival of 20 Africans and to the Virginia colony. Those Africans, 20 Africans arrived in a colony that was founded in 1607 by the English. It is the only permanent English colony of that time. 1607, think about it. A colony founded in 1607, where we had the English, the Dutch, the Irish, the Scots. We had our diversity, the Native Americans, the Powhatans, and then the arrival of the Africans. So we've always had diversity from the very beginning. It's power, the issue of power is what we're talking about here when it comes to the suffragettes and when it comes to voting today, power. So when those 20 African men, women and children arrived in 1619, their issue was, who were they and what could they do under law? Because the House of Burgesses was just formed the month before they arrived. The Africans arrived in August of 1619. The House of Burgesses, the representative body was founded in July of 1619. So now we have the legal body that is going to form the laws that will be created, the basis of what we now call our country. Our country is thought not to come from Massachusetts. Many people believe that it was the arrival of the Mayflower. The arrival of the Mayflower was not until 1620. The Africans were there in 1619. We were there before the Mayflower. And it was during that time period in the 1600s that you saw the African woman and male go forward by the mid 1600s. Mary and Anthony Johnson, an African couple from that time period. Now keep in mind, Queen Enzinga negotiated a peace treaty on her own with the governor of Portugal who was there in Angola as an imposing colonial force. And she, Queen Enzinga, negotiated this peace treaty in 1622. 1622, an African queen is negotiating with European forces. So those people who were taken from Angola and put on those ships and now find their themselves in Virginia come from that level of DNA. Those women from Angola had the strength, and you might call them the Adam and Eve of the African American. And so Mary and Anthony Johnson, who are Angolan Africans in this Virginia colony, rise up from indentured servitude to have land of their own in the 1600s, servants of their own in the 1600s, European and African servants of their own in the 1600s. Then why isn't our story different? Because the lawyers, the lawmakers in the House of Burgesses began to strip away the rights and strip away the underpinnings of humanity for those Africans. So that by the time we get to 1705, we have chattel slavery, movable property, chattel. Human beings is chattel slavery. 1669, the law is passed that allows a European to kill an African without any felony as a consequence. 1669, that's how long we've been killing Africans without consequences in this country. By 1680, they've taken away the right of self-defense. And all of these things are in my book, Race Law and American Society, 1607 to present. And the reason why I even wrote that book as a civil rights attorney in these little towns where I was litigating cases at the time was because I wanted to know how long people of African descent in this country had been fighting for their rights. And so that meant fighting for their voting rights as well. So as we go through, we know there are free Africans as well as enslaved Africans. And those free Africans are fighting for their rights and those African women are watching the legislative process. They're watching the voting process. So that's why I say by the time we get to 400 years later, it's not as though someone woke up and decided, oh yes, now let's vote. They were watching the process the entire time, even if they were denied access to that process. For example, we need to know that there were, as early as 1768 in New Hampshire, a black politician who ran for constable and was elected in the 1700s. We need to know by the 1780s, mom bet brought a lawsuit. She brought a lawsuit in Massachusetts. She sued for her freedom under the Massachusetts Constitution. This is a black woman who's enslaved. And what did she do? She went out and got a lawyer and sued for her freedom because she said, if you're going to pronounce yourself free from England and create a constitution indicating your freedom and having provisions for your freedom, then I should be free too under this constitution. And you know what? She won. Yes, she won. And she changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman. So these are the stories that have been left out of many of the law books, left out of many of the history books. So by the time we get to 1848 with Seneca Falls, we already have an abolitionist in suffragettes before there's a word suffragette. And her name is Sergerna Truth. And so Sergerna Truth decides that she's going to bring lawsuits to get her freedom for her son, and she wins her lawsuit. That she's going to bring a defamation suit, and she wins her lawsuit. But in 1848, when the women gather at Seneca Falls, they didn't invite Sergerna Truth. But one person was there, Frederick Douglas, one person of color. There were men and women who were white, but Frederick Douglas was the only person of African descent. And it's been said he was the one who told the women, if you're going to have a proclamation of rights, you must include the right to vote. As we go forward, we know that the black suffragettes have tried on many occasions to be a part of the movement. And in Rhode Island, unlike other places, you were more inclusive, but most of the country, people were not inclusive. And so in 1851, it was in Akron, Ohio that Sergerna Truth stood up before those women and asked the question, ain't I a woman? You want equal rights from your men, but you're not willing to embrace your African sisters, your sisters of color, and see them as equals. This dichotomy or hypocrisy is something that we've been battling with for all of this time. So when we get to some of these issues that we have, for example, the conflict between the white suffragettes and the issue of black men gaining the right to vote. When the Civil War ended in 1865, Abraham Lincoln said, but for these black soldiers who fought for the Union, the North would have lost. So when Frederick Douglass rises up again and says, these black men deserve the right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, a very well-known suffragette, said, quote, I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman. The response by Frederick Douglass was this, and I quote, when women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans, when they are dragged from their houses and hung from lampposts, when their children are torn from their arms and their brains dashed out upon the pavement, when they are objects of insult and outrage of every turn, when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads, when their children are not allowed to enter schools, then women will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own, end quote. So this issue, this conflict between white women and black women, between white women and the black male vote, continued for many, many years to come, but the black male did receive his right to vote in 1870. So this is not only the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification, it's also the 150th anniversary of the black male receiving his right to vote with the passage of the 15th Amendment. In that amendment states, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Our first black US senators were in the 1870s. Hiram Rebels, 1870, our first black US congressman in the 1870s and 1880s. When we started looking at the black women who were working as grassroots organizers, they started doing that work in the 1800s. The first black female lawyer was in 1872, a graduate of Howard University Law School, Charlotte Ray. So here we once again see all of these types of issues that are taking place within the black community and black female lawyers are at the forefront of it. We have these black men in federal offices, state offices, and local offices. And then of course, just as we had in the 1600s, we go two steps forward and one step back because those black men then in black women now see the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations, the John Burt Society. We start to see the Supreme Court with case after case undermining the black full equality under law. We began to see segregationist laws that lead us to Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896 that segregated this entire country and ushered in separate and equal. We go forward with litigation, after litigation, but at the same time, we had the suffragettes who were black women who said this government, state, local, and federal government will not meet our needs. So we have black women forming organizations, social services organizations. We have black suffragettes organizations formed by women like Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, and we also need to know that each time we had these black women reach out to their white sisters, they were so often rebuffed. Rebuffed by women like Frances Willard, rebuffed by Alice Paul, who in 1913 refused to allow the black women to march in a parade around the White House. And this was a protest to demand that President Woodrow Wilson give his support to the women's right to vote. And instead of embracing their black sisters, they said to them, either you march in the back of the line or you don't march at all. Why? Because it was a political issue. They wanted to make sure that these white women in the South were not put off by having an integrated protest march. So Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and so many others like Maria Stewart continue to fight for their rights despite what white women would or would not do. And I offer this quote from Nanny Helen Burles, another black suffragette and many others, Adela Hunt Logan, and this one summed it up best from Colored American Magazine and its dates. And I quote, if white women with all their natural and acquired advantages need the ballot, that right protective of all other rights, if Anglo-Saxons have been helped by it, how much more do black Americans, male and female, male and female need the strong defense of a vote to help secure them their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The reason why this is so important is because lynchings are taking place across the United States. When George Floyd was lynched in Minneapolis, that was not the first time there had been lynchings, even that far North. So we need to understand that those sheriffs are elected, those prosecutors are elected, the judges are elected on the local levels, and these African Americans needed that vote in order to protect themselves and their children, to help secure an education, even a segregated education from their school districts. They needed to know that their needs were remit. And so as they marched forward, black women knew that their lives were in danger. They were assaulted, they were raped. Whenever there was once again two steps forward, there would be one step back and too often that step was a violent one. So by the time we get to 1919, the year before the passage of the 19th Amendment, there is a fear of the black vote because the black male vote was already powerful enough to change the outcome of an election. In 1873, in the Colfax massacre, black people gathered together to try to figure out what role they would play in the upcoming election. Whites heard about it and they arrived in this Louisiana place, shot into the building, killing hundreds. That case went to the US Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court said, well, they weren't trying to prevent you from voting so they didn't violate your civil rights. Civil rights legislation had been passed by the federal government in 1866, 1867, 1871, why? Because they knew the states would not protect the rights of the African. And that's why these black people said, I must have the right to vote so I can vote on these statewide campaigns to better protect my family and to have a decent livelihood. 1919 is also known as the red summer. The summer the streets around this country ran red with blood because so many black people had been attacked by white mobs. But keep in mind, this was also the same time as the Spanish flu. And that's why this time period of this uprising of nationalism is very disconcerting because it happened this way a hundred years ago. The Spanish flu was from 1918 to 1920. We still held local elections. We still held national elections. We wore masks, but we still held those elections. And yet we had this horrible backlash against the black woman receiving the right to vote. And in my book, The Voting Rights War, I have letters that were pleading to the NAACP to please help us. And so cases were brought time and time again, cases were brought to end the grandfather clause that said if your grandfather hadn't voted before 1865, then you couldn't vote because they knew that the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. So so many black people would not have been able to vote because they couldn't have voted during that time period. The literacy test where people had to actually take a test before they could register to vote. The poll tax, where they had to pay a tax before they could register to vote. And you have to think about this, the poll tax and the literacy test, those things were given at the sheriff's office. So that meant that the sheriff knew that you were going to be a so-called troublemaker that you wanted to actually register to vote. Louise Lassiter and other women brought cases in order to try to stop the poll tax, to stop the literacy test. Black women, so many of them, like Ellen Bolts, Butts, B-U-T-T-S, brought these cases in North Carolina. Once again, again and again, these cases were brought by black women forcing their way into the political process. So by the time we get to the 1950s, black women are already deep social grassroots organizers. They had been organizing like this since the 1800s. As they move forward and you began to see them organizing and helping and snick and in core to get more black people registered to vote. And they were put in harm's way. They lost their lives and livelihoods, their health were broken based on what they gave to this country to make it be what it said it would be in the Constitution. And my argument is that African-Americans put the conscience in the Constitution. So by the time we arrived with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when you watch the films, and I hope you do as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when you watch that film, you'll see black women thrown to the ground beaten with clubs. You'll see black women who had to rise up again and again and again. So when we get to Shirley Chisholm, who then becomes the first black woman to become a member of the US House of Representatives, it's only once again after litigation. She was not a lawyer, but it took lawyers bringing cases in Brooklyn for her to be able to even stand for election. They had to desegregate and redistrict Brooklyn in order for it to be the first black woman to be a representative, first black person to be a representative from Brooklyn. When we go forward, we see there was Barbara Jordan who was a lawyer and so many others who had to pave the way for Calmy Harris to become this vice presidential nominee. 100 years, 100 years from the 19th Amendment passage, 150 years from the passage of the 15th Amendment. Now over 400 years from the arrival of those 20 Africans into the Jamestown settlement, the Virginia Colony. Yes, it's about power and it will continue to be about power. And as you move forward, realize so many people have done so much, people who never knew our names, people who said, I'm gonna sacrifice in my lifetime for generations to come who will have more freedom than I've ever known. And I say the same thing. I want to make sure that there are generations of people unknown who will have so much more freedom, so much more power. There will be women who will walk with their heads held high knowing that the pavement has been made. Their journey is not as difficult and life should be a little better because of the work we're doing today. All of us of all generations, I thank you so much and I look forward to your questions. Thank you so much, Professor Brown-Marshall for your very important remarks about the 400 years of black peoples, but especially black women's powerful role in forging for voting rights and the continued fight to this day just to be treated equal under the law. Both fights for equality and the vote continue to this day, but as you said, we'll keep fighting for our future generations. So thank you for that inspirational point at the end. And good evening all, my name is Louisa Freddy and I'm a current 3L at Roger Williams University School of Law. And I'm also the president of the Women's Law Society. Tonight, I have the honor of introducing our next and final speaker of the night and that will be Sarah Guillermo of Ignite. Sarah Guillermo is the executive director of Ignite, a movement of young women who are ready in the direction of protestors. Founded in 2019, Sarah was instrumental in growing the organization from a small high school based program in the California Bay Area to the largest, most diverse young women's political leadership program in the country. From the program model that Sarah co-developed with Ignite's founder in 2020, Ignite is on the track to train upwards of 10,000 young women across 30 states to own their political power. Sarah Guillermo currently holds an MSW from the University of Denver and BA in psychology from UC Santa Cruz. Thank you so much for joining us tonight and welcome. All right. Thank you so much, folks. Oh, I think my screen is sharing. Yes, I can't see anybody. So let me know if you can't see it. Hi, everybody, I'm Sarah Guillermo. Thank you, Luisa, for that beautiful introduction. I know that we're getting to the tail end of our time, so I will not go into too deep of an intro, but Ignite is a movement of young women who are ready and eager to become the next generation of political leaders. I'm so excited to be celebrating with all of you, even though it is completely virtual. And I know that my colleagues have done quite a bit of work in our history world already with the piece of the only thing I wanted to highlight within the 19th Amendment is the women, white women got the right to vote with the 19th Amendment, but not necessarily run for office. And just want to highlight the piece that women started to join government and these positions as their husbands died and they had to take over. And then I think definitely already highlighted the piece with black women and women of color not getting the right to vote until 1965. I'm gonna fast forward us to 1992, 93, also known as a year of the woman. And at this time, I don't know for folks that were alive and well at this point in our nation's history, but there was so much anger around abscam investigations and there was all these investigations of over 30 targeted officials in our government and seven of which were actually convicted of bribery and conspiracy that led to all of these vacancies in Congress. So I'm highlighting this particular year for us because it really opened the door in terms of opportunity and a whole lot of anger across our country that really propelled women to taking up these positions in office. And then fast forward to 2017, we are seeing this anger get mirrored in all of the different places today. And there's really a ton of opportunity for young women who are stepping up all across our country right now. And then in 2018, we saw the highest number of women elected into Congress. And today we're seeing record numbers of women running for office. And so I share all of these different pieces because Ignite is working so hard to accelerate these numbers every single day. And we're building a vast talent pool of young women who are ready and eager to become the next generation of political leaders. I'm gonna try the video, let me know if you hear it. I was in elementary school and I think someone asked me what do you wanna do when you grow up and I said the governor of California. So I had adults laughing at me all the time because they just thought it was so cute. Sometimes you feel so alone thinking, hey, I'm in politics, I'm a girl, I like these issues. I was not told that I could do it at a young age. I was never encouraged to be a leader as a woman. I started Ignite because I'd worked in women's political organizations at the national and state and local level. And I was just frankly getting frustrated with the fact that we had so few women in office. It just seemed sensible to me that what we needed to do was start younger and start getting young women to think about it. These spaces weren't made for us and spaces aren't going to be given to us so we need to step up and we need to take them. Because at the end of the day, nothing is set in stone. Your rights can be taken away. Even if you don't take an interest in politics, politics takes an interest in you. You know, I keep hearing that the future is female and I just wanna push back and say the present is female. We not only just need to run, but we need to win. My name is Wendy Carrillo and I recently ran for Congress. My name is Nuri Martinez and I'm the Councilwoman for the City of Los Angeles. I would love to be like a Congresswoman one day. The Senate is something that I thought about and like far away from now. Don't wait. The moment is now. If you wanna run for office, do it where you are. If you're in high school or middle school or college, run for office on your campus. Don't wait until you feel perfectly qualified. There is no moment of perfect qualification in life. You just gotta seize it and go for it. All right. I love that video. Let's just make sure that this, okay, okay, perfect. I just really wanna highlight the big piece that Ian, our president founder shares there is that there is not gonna be a perfect moment for many of us as we make our choices to decide to run for office. But what we do know now and what we've known across all of these different generations is that women are underrepresented at every single level of government. And so 10 years ago, we were really looking at these numbers and we saw an opportunity to move closer to gender parity and political leadership. At Ignite, we focus on the 500,000 seats at the local level from the mayor to the mosquito abatement board. I'm gonna say that again, in the triangle, we are focusing on the 511,000 seats at the local level. And these are the seats that our young women are applying for boards and commissions on and that they're running for at their city level. And these are the folks that are creating local policy that are making decisions on how to respond to COVID-19 immigration policy, whether or not schools will go back into session and in which ways they will. So at Ignite, we are working to accelerate young women's paths to political leadership every single day. We're working to eliminate the barriers for young women to start serving. For example, this particular fall, we launched a program called Power to the People where we're training young women to apply to local police oversight commissions all across the country. And then in cities where there are not police commissions, we're working with them to advocate on the creation of these commissions so that they can continue to serve in these leadership roles. Ignite's the largest young women's political organization in this country. We're the only organization that provides sustained political leadership training and engagement to high school, college and graduate school women in their home communities. And as you can see from this photo, it's a tiny snapshot, but young women at Ignite represent the diversity of our country. We serve over 70% of young women of color. And I broke up with this and I talked really fast. So we are at the tail end of this, but I think both Secretary Corbea and Professor Gloria definitely already highlighted on the big pieces in terms of where power lies in our country right now. And really thinking about the power of black women, I really want us to think about the power of young women in this narrative and thinking about how we are making an impact in our government and in changing the face of democracy. So I have two things that I really, really want to highlight and I know you all have probably heard this 90 times, not just here tonight, but also in the different spaces that you're living in already. But there are so many things that each and every one of you can do to impact your communities today. And I really want to highlight one, we have an election 20 plus days away. People have already casted their votes in so many states across this country already, but vote like your life depends on it because it totally does. The Suffragettes picketed the White House for 18 months straight, 18 months straight demanding the right to vote. And so this is such a big opportunity for us if we're willing and able that we need to show up. And then if you are not ready to vote, you need to make a plan, make a plan to vote. At Ignite, we have a ton of different resources to help you make your plan. You can text Ignite on your cell phone to 33777 and we can support you. And then my second call to action for this evening is really thinking about how do we make civics and democracy every single part of our daily lives. So I ask all of you to mobilize your communities to participate in the civic process so we can truly normalize these behaviors as if it was just like brushing our teeth every single morning and really thinking about how this work can be ingrained in every single part of our daily lives. So thank you so much for having me this evening. It's still afternoon on the West Coast, but evening in all of your places. I will stop my screen share and then I will hand it back to you, Luisa. Thank you so much for your insight and sharing your experiences about helping young women enter into the political realm. I know it's been, we're completely underrepresented and we really appreciate all of your work in helping getting us out there and involved. And now tonight everyone, we will be ending that portion, the speaking portion of our event. And now we will be moving into our Q&A portion with Dean Ortiz reading off the first question. And just a reminder everyone, if you do have a question for any of our speakers, please type it into the Q&A box right down at the bottom of the Zoom screen. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lulu. So the first question tonight is for Professor Brown Marshall. Do you have suggestions for law schools and law professors on how to change the narrative? I'll change the narrative from what to what do you think? But to be more inclusive? To be more inclusive, sure. Okay, yes I do. One, my book, Race, Law and American Society, 1607 to present, or any book that really speaks to race and the law. And the reason why I say this is because we talk about even basic changes, social changes, but we don't talk about the law. This is the most litigious nation in the world. We have more lawyers, more law cases. We have more laws than any other country. And yet we really don't, despite exporting our constitution around the world, sit down and talk about the power of law in our lives. And so law is instituting the structure that continues to have this race-based nature that is at the heart of what was left over from slavery and of course the pillaging of land from Native Americans and the oppression of other people of color Latinos around this country. And so if we don't speak to those legal issues and the legal construct, we're not gonna make real changes. And the criminal justice system is that last bastion of unchanged American society that is a vestige from the time period of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And those things were put in place by law. And so if we don't use law to change it, then it's going to stay in place. We're not trying to change the hearts and minds. We're trying to change behaviors first. And people wouldn't stop at the stoplight if you didn't have a criminal consequence that went to this failure to stop. And so we have to look at the law. We have to look at those consequences and we have to understand the fear of a black woman, the fear of black people is one in which people have grown to get over those fears because of Fair Housing Acts, because of the Voting Rights Acts, because of the Civil Rights Act and other ways in which people's rights were protected. And so, but lawyers have to know what the laws are that are standing in the way of full engagement and full equality. And once they know those laws, then they can better situate a type of a response that is going to be effective. So first, know what the laws are that are still vestiges of slavery and racism of another era. And then let's look at what kind of legal changes we can make to make this country more inclusive and make it equal underlaw. Thank you, Professor. And by the way, we do have your book in our library and somebody beat everybody else to the punch to it. It's out now. Next question. All right, our next question is to Sarah Guillermo and it is, how do we join Ignite? Oh, lovely. Well, we're not in Rhode Island yet. So if you're from Rhode Island, we'd love for you to start a college factor. So if you're connected K through 12, we have a licensure model for folks to bring our curriculum to their school campus. If you are in college or in grad school, we have a college chapter toolkit that you can download that will help you get the program started as a student organization on campus. But if you're not ready for both of those, we have like so many events online right now that you can tune into lots of different pieces. So you could just go to ignitenational.org and then see our very robust list of online offerings to take a peek at that. Thank you so much. So I believe people will log on to ignite.org. If I could, I'd like to ask a question of Secretary Gorbea. I wondered, Secretary Gorbea, if you wouldn't mind just telling us a little bit more detail about your litigation that went to the Supreme Court because I know that that's something that our law students would be interested in. So as a non-lawyer, I can speak a little bit to it but what we really want to have come and give a deep brief on it is Angel Taveras, the former mayor of Providence who actually is now our legal counsel for election matters at the Department of State. And I highly encourage that you bring him in to talk about this and other election issues in Rhode Island. So my first approach to any changes that require legal change is to of course go through the legislature. It's the right thing to do, it's the respectful thing to do. And so we tried to get the General Assembly in Rhode Island to suspend this requirement and we tried it out first in the presidential preference primary which happened on June 2nd. The legislature was not interested at that time, really didn't see that presidential preference primary as a significant event and it's true. I mean, it was a primary where we knew the results. It was gonna be Biden, it was gonna be Trump. I was very interested given that this was happening on June 2nd that we actually try out as many changes as we could in that particular primary because anytime you change systems, there are unintended consequences that you didn't foresee and to do it on whether it's an off cycle election, when you introduce voting equipment, new voting equipment, it's always good to try things out when the stakes are a little bit lower. So at that time actually when we went to try to do this for the presidential primary, it was clear that the legislature was not gonna meet, they were on hiatus because of the pandemic and so we went to, along with the Board of Elections, we went to the governor and she issued an executive order and took those requirements which honestly, we were outliers, it was us and I think North Carolina, the only ones that had those requirements for two notaries and a notary or two witnesses. And when you think about it, it sounds like it's to help with the integrity but the integrity of the vote is not that piece. The integrity of the vote is guarded by the signature verification that happens both by local election officials on the mail ballot application and then by the Board of Elections on the oath envelope with a ballot. So this was really, I think it evolved over time as an opportunity for campaigns to say, oh, you have a mail ballot, we can help you with that part of the process. And so that's why I think it was really hard to change it but in the middle of a pandemic, we said, look, we can't have random people knocking on people's doors. So the governor did put it into her executive order and we did await with that requirement for the presidential preference primary. And then we proceeded to when the legislature started meeting later in the summer to try again. Can you please spend this just for the year? We're now talking a legal change but just at least give us this year. And we had it pass in the Senate but it was held up in the House of Representatives. And so at that point, and all of this is happening and the clock is ticking and turning around mail ballot envelopes. I mean, it's the nitty gritty stuff of getting things done that is the real challenge. It's not the big picture stop. It's how we don't go to Kinko's and order, you know, 300,000 envelopes for mail ballots. So you have to get these things done way in advance. So we couldn't do that. We tried to get the governor to attend to it and for whatever reason she didn't. And so in the end, we were forced to basically say, we're gonna have to go to print with this requirement of the two signatures and the notary. And the good government groups, Common Cause, ACLU, we go into voters and a number of community groups decided to enter into a lawsuit at the district court, the federal district court in Rhode Island. And when that happened and they named me and the Board of Elections as a plaintiff, we said, you know, we agree that this is not, that this is an issue that needed to be resolved. And so we entered into a consent decree, we started negotiating and entered into a consent decree of the court. And at that time, the Republican Party, literally you can't make this stuff up at like 1150 at night, filed their concerns. And the judge decided to hear them out. Meanwhile, I'm like fighting my nails because I have to send these things to the printer or we're gonna miss the boat. And so, but the judge heard them out and said, no, you don't have standing. The elected officials all, you know, there's nobody who's issued any complaint at a local level. This is gonna, this should continue going forward. Then their next recourse was to file at the First Circuit Court of Appeals. If you ever wanted to hear a very amusing session on voting rights, you should listen to the tapes on that. But my particular favorite moment was when one of the three judges, one of whom actually is a Rhode Islander, Roger E. Thompson, and one of whom is a Puerto Rican judge, Torrella, one of them asked the lawyer for the Republican National Committee. So you talk about voter fraud and this is really important, but where is your evidence of voter fraud? And he kind of spoke, spoke, spoke, but never addressed that. And it's because they can't, because there aren't, there is no evidence of this kind of voter fraud through mail balance. So we won that, the appeal three to zero, and then they took it to the Supreme Court. And, you know, we put our best foot forward and crossed our fingers and we got a decision that was 6-3, which I thought was really remarkable. But it goes to, I mean, the reason we won is it was remarkably good legal writing by our counsel. We spoke to the Attorney General. We spoke to the lawyer for the Board of Elections. This was not done in a vacuum. And I think that's a really important lesson for all of you who are sort of getting ready to practice that a lot of times people are afraid of discussing things in a broader group. And, you know, you really shouldn't be afraid of that. That there are ideas and pushbacks that are important to have at that time that will make it a stronger case. So, yeah, that's my story. And when I got the call that we had won, I was in the hallway in front of my towel closet, putting laundry away, because that's what you do in between Zoom calls, you know, when you're, you know, and all I could remember was the song from Hamilton, where it says, we won, we won, we won. That was the soundtrack in my head. So, and what's great is that we were able to deliver an election that gives people choices and keeps them healthy. And so that is an amazing opportunity. Thank you, Secretary Gravea. We have one last question. We have time for one more question. So here it goes. Can the three of you please address the way in which voter suppression lives on today in the US? Is this still an issue? And it's a big question we know. Oh yeah, it's totally still going on in every, yeah, every election cycle somewhere. And it happens in, you know, the devil is in the details, right? That I just spoke about. It's in, you know, it does a signature count. If somebody is Sue Garcia, but was registered as Susan, and, you know, despite the fact that you provide other information and it all matches, well, that's not the voter registration name. And that is a suppression of a vote. Luckily in Rhode Island, we've provided for two options, driver's license or the last four digits of the social security number. And the Board of Elections has said that they would consider that, you know, that that's a valid vote. But there are places where people take it upon themselves to make it harder. And not all the times, you know, around racist issues, although certainly racism certainly does exist, but in their minds, it's around integrity. And so that's how they rationalize it. And it's unfortunate that we still have that in this country. But the best cure against it is to continue to vote. And for those of you who are attorneys, to serve time as poll workers, to be election officials, to work pro bono for, you know, an election process, either with Common Cause or the ACLU, those are all really important vehicles and tools for making sure that our democracy works better. Thank you. Professor Brown-Marshall? Well, it appears in places like Texas where the governor decided to only have one drop-off location per county in a place geographically massive like Texas, and those cases go to the higher courts and then they're rebuffed. But, you know, that takes time and money and energy to bring those cases, as the secretary has pointed out. I mean, we have to continue to put resources to bring these lawsuits. And time when you know these people believe they're gonna lose, but it's a war of attrition. I think it shows itself in places like Ohio where if you had a postcard that came to your house and you missed the postcard, they took you off of the voting polls because they said that you are no longer in residence there or there are some other issues. So you've been purged in places like Florida where people have paid their due to society by completing their sentences and then they have these owner's fines and if they don't pay the fines then they're not allowed to vote. So it's another modern version of the poll tax. And then they pass by 64% in Florida a legislation that said that they don't have to pay this tax and then they turn around and then pass legislation to force them to pay it anyway. And then people are chipping in so that they could pay this for them. I mean, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about places where we have, and I'm just gonna say it, Donald Trump who gets on television, you can take your screen off again, Nellie, but it's on a body seizure. It's like, I'm gonna say it, Donald Trump is going on undermining mail-in ballots that he uses for himself. And so there's so many ways in which there's this whole idea of $20 million that was allotted for poll watchers who are also armed, who are going to be hanging around polling sites to make sure in their minds that people actually have a right to vote. And so that intimidation factor is there. There is so much going on right now that is voter suppression that you don't realize this is a nation that was supposed to be a shining light of democracy around the world. And what we have done to undermine what we consider a basic right of citizenship, it goes beyond what we've said before with Fannie Lou Hamer who said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of having to continue to protest to get your right to vote. We've paid the highest prices in lives and livelihoods for this vote. And that's why I say to young people who might be discouraged right now because they just see old people yelling at each other. What you need to understand is William Barr has promised to suspend habeas corpus. He's already asked for that in March. He wants to bring troops into our cities for legal protesting. There's so much out there that is on the ballot stated and unstated. Or if your vote didn't matter why do people keep trying to suppress it? That's a great line. Yes, agree. Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is that I think obviously did out of both of what you just shared. And clearly we're in a pandemic. And I think as things are constantly shifting and the voter laws are constantly shifting every single day, there's something new that's updated, right? We have programming in Wisconsin and one of our young women had been voting. Her mother is a state senator. So clearly they're very civically engaged. She has asthma and she didn't. She applied for her absentee ballot. It never came. She has asthma so she can't go to the polls. And so it was the first election she couldn't vote in. And so I think those are stories of folks that are happening all across this country. And when you think about Houston being one of the largest most populated cities in America with one drop-off location. And you think about the polling locations that are getting ripped off of campuses all across the country. It really disproportionately impacts the people that can't go to the polls. And then particularly for low-income students, you're making the decision of do I go to the class that I already paid thousands of dollars to go to? Lost students, you all know this. And then option two, like do I go to work where I need to make my minimum wage job in order to pay this very large tuition? And then how do I make those two pieces meet? And so those are the decisions people are making every single day. Am I gonna be safe? Am I gonna be able to pay the bills? And then how do we connect the dots for that? And so I don't know who asked that, but it is so real. And if you are not seeing it, wow. I don't know what lens that looks like in this world being the brown immigrant that I walk outside the door with every single day. But I think that you are the humans that we need to help everyone else see that because we all need to be able to shift that and we can't go back to thinking that it's fake. But I wanna end on a, I know this is our last thing. So I don't wanna end here because I think there's a lot of darkness in our times, but there's a lot of opportunity for hope. And the hope is that you will all get involved whether it be, you know, my path here to being Secretary of State started with my saying, I'm gonna go check out that Governor's Commission on Hispanic Affairs and sitting in on three meetings because I knew there were public meetings and then suddenly getting drafted to be a member. And then the next thing you know, I'm like representing the commission as the Hispanic contingent on a motor voter task force because motor voter had passed during the Clinton administration. And we sat there and agonized over the voter registration process and how could it be done in a way at the DMV that was inclusive. And I remember this one moment where somebody said, like, what about homeless people? Are we gonna require there to be an address because if there is a required for an address then we disenfranchise homeless people and whether they're vets or not or whatever. And I thought, you know, I had never thought of that. And so being at those tables of everyday government is hugely important. And I love the fact that Ignag talked about sort of the 50, whatever, the 500,000 other jobs. Being on a board and commission with your legal training is hugely helpful. If you're not, I hope many of you eventually will run for office. But while you're getting there, there's a ton of places where your perspectives and your ability to see things in a different way. And talk about them in a different way will help change what we're doing in government and how we're running our society. And I look to California actually, Sarah, as sort of what gives me hope, right? So I'm old enough to know that Prop 187 was the abs, I remember the Prop 187 times. Prop 187 was a hugely discriminatory proposition in California. It was a time when there was a horrible governor who seemed like the worst person ever at the time who was yanking undocumented children from public schools who were saying that they didn't deserve to be vaccinated and no public health dollars should go for that. And all these horribly anti-immigrant stuff. And from that moment in California history came a whole generation of people, including California's current Secretary of State, Alex Padilla and Ricardo Lara, who's the insurance commissioner, Kamala Harris, like there's a whole group of brown and black elected officials that come out of that moment. There was a massive signing up for citizenship finally because it hit people. This is real, this is affecting us. And now, look, in my mind, California is sort of where this country needs to go. It's a diverse, amazing state with lots of progressive ideals, inclusion and stuff. Is it perfect? No, because no place is perfect. But it does encapsulate, I think, what is the hope of American democracy. And I think that our moment in history right now is exactly that. We're seeing a huge pushback to what is gonna be happening, which is that you're gonna have increasing numbers of people of color become the majority. And there's just a backlash to it. But it's each and every one of you. And I see there's a few guys in the audience. Thank you for being here tonight. So that we all work together to get to that other side. And there is a path to the other side. I'm firmly convinced. Thank you so much to our panelists for answering that last very big question. What a great question to end the event on. And a special thank you to our speakers, Secretary Nellie Gorbea, Professor Brown-Marshall, thank you so much for your outvoting and women's part in that. So much to our co-sponsors for this event, which is the Roger Williams School of Law, of course, the Rhode Island Women's Bar Association and the Women's Law Society and our Wulaw events, a special thank you. And thank you all to our attendees who made it to our event. And everyone have a great night. And don't forget to go out and vote. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you.