Ordinary to Extraordinary Equality

Let them hear you. Use your voices to let them hear you. There’s a song that resonates with me that seems to be the song that is the end up for today. It is by Sweet Honey in the Rock. How many of you know that song? I was going to sing it, but, uh… [laughter] well, we’re going to try.

Well, it’s something that I want. When you leave here today, go up to YouTube or Google and look for Ella’s Song, a tribute to Ella Baker. Ella Justine Baker, and it goes like this –

[Singing]

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

[Applause]

Make that your anthem. Because if we believe in freedom, it’s about doing more than the ordinary. We’re talking today about making extraordinary moves. But first, let’s figure out what is ordinary. Ordinary means commonplace; there’s nothing extra going on, just the things we do every day. This was an ordinary day when you got up this morning and, of your own free will, decided, “I’m going out. I’m going to be with people who believe in equality.” I will give up my sleeping in on Saturday morning to be with 300 people who believe that we cannot rest until freedom comes. We will take the time and energy to talk about how we can do better. Because we want to be extraordinary. We want to go beyond what is usual and what is customary.

But let’s look at what is ordinary, what is ordinary in the day around the world. For us, we got up. Most of us drove our own cars or had a good friend come pick us up. But in other parts of the world, like in Mauritania, these women are getting up in a desert community and going out to learn about early childhood education. For those of you in education here, we know this is one of the most important things we can do to prepare our children for the future. And when women are educated, we get our children to be educated. We have a high literacy rate in NC, but we can do better.

Women in Vietnam are going out to pick up a few sticks or little dry corn husks so that they will have the ability to have fires to cook or extra dollars to sell – an ordinary day. In Mali, what has become extraordinary is that girls are able to play on the sports teams. How many of you played sports? I know when I started playing sports, and let me tell you, I’m a seasoned cheerleader, I look good because I’ve been here a few days. We don’t talk about how black don’t crack. [laugh] When I was a young girl growing up poor in the South as a black woman growing up poor, as a colored negro child growing up poor – and I say poor because we couldn’t afford to last [inaudible]. [laugh] My mother’s aspiration for me was for me to do something to get out of the house, to work hard, to take care of my children, to hopefully be married well. And when I disappointed her by not following the cheerleader route, the beauty queen route, and I decided to play basketball, I made my momma proud. This was a long time ago. This was when they felt women couldn’t possibly run the entire basketball court. Have you been there? I was a stationary guard. They thought I didn’t have the breath to make the whole court, and they were right. But we won’t tell them. But when I was playing basketball, it was a time when girls were just barely wearing pants anywhere. When I went to elementary school, some of you know about this, we wore pants only when there was bad weather and we took them off when we got to school, folded them neatly and put them back on because we were only allowed to wear them for bad weather. Can you imagine? Those of you who wear pants every day? But when we talk about people equality here in the US, we had to move through some things as well. We made a lot of progress.

[Music]

In Germany, 42% of women are scientists. We aren’t there yet. We’re getting there. But why isn’t there? We’re not – because girls have been socialized out of STEM programs. We’re pushing it, STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – the science tells us that age 4, girls and boys are equally interested in [inaudible] but as they move forward, girls are taught to do something else. These are amazing professions, but we have the right to do anything. Why would we keep them from doing anything that prevents them joy?

In Afghanistan, where I had a chance to visit several times, women were forced to be in the back, in the corner, quiet, not allowed to even go to school for 25 years between Russia and the Taliban. Women in Afghanistan had almost no rights. But I am so happy that they are now part of legislative filings in that short span from the early 2000s to now. And we are still excited about women in the legislature here, being judges here, and it should be – not taking anything away from these powerful ladies here – but it should be ordinary and not extraordinary. And it is still extraordinary because we are not doing everything we can do to make sure that it becomes an ordinary occurrence. That you see 50% of the people who are judges, the Chiefs of Police, the people who run this country, look like me. They don’t have to be beautiful and brown, but they should [inaudible] laughter.

In Switzerland, there is an economic council where seventy-five percent of the women on the panel make up the brain trust. Here, you’re still subjected to “manels,” where when we’re talking about money, engineering, science. Most of the people on the panel, typically all the people on the panel, are men. Let’s move that to being ordinary, just in Switzerland, to be just ordinary here.

In China, these happy children are being taught by their teachers that HIV is something you don’t want to have and that there are ways to prevent it. It’s sad to say that right here in Guilford County, we very frequently make the top 25 areas for HIV rates. That has become ordinary for us. We didn’t have [inaudible] not too long ago, let’s make that extraordinary.

1,000 women a day become infected with HIV. In North Carolina, 6% of the new HIV cases occur in people over 60. [murmur] I know, I was like, I didn’t know my mom was living like that. [laugh] You get older, honey, and it gets better. [laugh] That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

But we can make it extraordinary to make HIV a part of lives at all. This is something that has been going on for decades, and while we’re changing it from being an absolute death sentence to being something that is a chronic illness, it changes the life of the person who has it. Women who have HIV tell me the thing they miss the most. What do you think they miss the most? Shout it out. [inaudible] Hugs? That’s true. People don’t want to touch them. They think that it will just jump across to them if they do. It’s not an easy disease to catch. But we should not have it at all. Protect yourselves. Get out of the way of the old way of thinking and educate your children about sexual responsibility early. Because puberty starts at age 8 for girls and 9 for boys. For those of you mothers who are thinking, “I got to 13 or 14, don’t worry about it.” You don’t. That is too late. Talk to them before their hormones are talking to them. Because when women have control of their bodies, they have control of their lives.

In the USA, women are getting out to work every day. When I was growing up, if a woman had to work, it was a commentary on the fact that she picked the wrong man to be her husband. Some of y’all young people saying, “what?” Yes. There used to be a time when women were never expected to go outside of the household, but now this is ordinary. What is extraordinary and unfortunate is that women are still only making three-quarters of what their male counterparts are making. That has been a statistic that has been around for decades now. We need to do something about that. As a registered nurse in a truly female-dominated profession, 91% of the nursing workforce is female. Interestingly, female nurses make 91 cents on the dollar for their male counterparts. We need to make an extraordinary move. In Thailand, many women are part of the police cadet corps. Why is that important? Because when there is violence in the home, or women want to complain about something, if a female officer shows up, they are more likely to be forthcoming and more likely to expect that their voices are heard.

In Brazil, whether we are using our voices, our culture, or dance, there are still inequities for women. But let us not feel so bleak because we still have inequities here. In many [inaudible], a mother is teaching her child to read. How many of you are teaching your children to read? One thing we’ve gotten into in this digital age is that it is going to take away opportunities for equity. We are putting our children in front of digital devices. They do not educate them; they simply entertain them. You need to talk to your children, have conversations with them. And when you get tired of them asking, “Why, mama, why?” just Google it and give them an answer. On a very ordinary day, in Sudan, women are getting up and putting 25-pound packs of equipment on their backs so they can look for unexploded land mines. Can you imagine that as a part of your ordinary day? War is going on too much, too far, too often. But whether at home, on the streets, or around the world, we have a lot of violence.

Let’s talk about intimate partner violence. A long time ago, when I began my nursing career, almost 40 years ago, I know you’re still surprised. But during that time, if someone came in – a woman came in who was injured – she might not have the ability to press charges. Or she would press charges, maybe nothing would happen. But if she was in a violent situation, if she pressed charges, we could expect that she might get some more violence when the perpetrator was released. The laws changed over time in the 70s and 80s so that now the woman does not have to say, “he beat me” or “my partner beat me.” But there are some interesting things about intimate partner violence. Homicide is the #1 cause of death in the workplace for women. Homicide. Number one cause, usually perpetrated by someone who loves them. What could we do about that? We could be the people who reach out, who use our voices to say, “I see you.” You don’t have to say, “I see you have a bruise on your face that you’re trying to hide.” “I see that you’re flinching if I come near you.” But you can just say, “if you need to talk, I’m here.” Many people who are caught in violence, and more often than not are women, don’t have anyone they can turn to. They are fearful if they talk to you at work or at church or in the community, you’ll condemn them. Reach out to them. Sexual violence and harassment – we’ve had a lot of information about this over the last few years and the “Me Too” movement. There are a lot of “me too-ers.” There are a lot of us that have had the unfortunate opportunity to have some sexual thing happen to us. Whether it was a touch or a comment. Let’s do better. Let’s train our young girls and our sons. This is inappropriate. It is not funny. It is not okay. And anytime I ask a man I know who has been the person who does this – “what would you do if this was your sister, mother, or wife?” They were like, “that couldn’t happen to them.” And yet, they do it. They feel like it’s just a joke. It’s not a joke to who receives it.

Human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Let’s call it what it is. It’s slavery. It is slavery because it means there is a person who does not have the right to walk away from the situation. Whether they have been taken away from their birth homes, whether they’re runaways who’ve tried to leave a bad situation but ended up in an even worse one, whether they are people who have come here looking for domestic work just to find a domestic hell, this is something that we need to learn more about. Take the opportunity to find out what it looks like in your community and be willing to speak up if you see something, say something.

Female genital mutilation. There are some people who will say to me, “don’t call it that, call it cutting.” When you take something that was made the way you were born and you change it to something else, it is a mutilation. But in this situation, while we may be sitting here patting ourselves on the back, thinking this is something that only happens in other countries, it happens right here in the USA. This is where little girls, usually aged four, five, six, seven, eight, have their reproductive organs rearranged, sometimes removed, and sometimes sewn up because the expectation is that a woman does not have the ability to control her urges and therefore someone else makes sure she’ll be pure and chaste and ready for a virgin marriage because she won’t want to have sex. Imagine the chronic urinary tract infections and difficulty of childbirth and pain all the time. It is happening right here.

Child marriage. Okay, I’ll admit it, I was a child bride. I was 17 when I got married. I thought I was smart and doing my part for the world and I was taking care of my Marine the best way I could. I was stupid. It was a really bad move. When I told my mom, “I’m going to marry this man, what do you think?” And she said, “he’s short.” That should have been enough right there. When she said a little bit. [inaudible] She was particularly disparaging. But my mother assumed I was pregnant and that I was trying to save face for the family, so she didn’t stop me. And when my son was born 10 and a half months later, she was like, “dag, I wish I would have said something.” I feel blessed every day I have my son with me, but I [inaudible]. What is the age of marriage in North Carolina? Shout it out. 16? 18? Well, let me just say, around the world, this is a chart of when women can marry and when they got married about 18 or 15. Now, here we go. This is the USA. We think we are all so special. But in the USA, those more “taupe” and gray areas are those places where there is no legal minimum. [gasps]. No legal minimum. 25 states have no legal minimum. That is, if your parents can say yes, if you’re an emancipated minor, you can say yes. But in North Carolina, the legal age is 14. 14. Let’s just say, why? Why? Part of it is us. Because we don’t know. Because we don’t educate ourselves. And when we don’t know, we just let things happen. Stay aware.

When we use our right to vote, we can change these things. 99 years ago, almost to the day, we got the right to vote. [applause] That’s right. But how many of us use it? The right to vote means you have the right to not vote. And unfortunately, many people recognize that failing to vote is a vote. In 1890, Wyoming became the first state to allow women to vote. There were other states where women could vote, and then they sometimes lost it. But by 1920, every woman got the right to vote. That did not mean, however, that that gave us all the rights that you have. That came later with the equal rights amendment which came on the heels of what? The civil rights movement. Right. Because every time there is a movement to improve the lives of any group, the follow-on will typically be the improvement of life for the next group. Which is why we should always make sure we don’t sit back and say, “that can’t happen to me,” because it might not at that moment, but it will.

On an extraordinary day, ordinary people will not show up to vote because – why is that people don’t vote? [audience] My vote doesn’t count. What else? Not educated on the issues. What else? Angry. They’re just mad. And they’re going to be madder when they don’t vote, right? The thing is, there could be 50 reasons why people don’t vote but there shouldn’t even be one. Nothing bothers me more than when I’m sitting there on election night looking at the countdown and then someone breaks in to say, “North Carolina, polling places are closed because of a notice that a rat ate the power cord or something.” And then you see these people that say, “I’m so mad, I’ve got to work and I [inaudible].” OK, so you’ve had early voting for the last month or two, why did you wait till the last day? There is no reason ever to say, “I couldn’t vote because I went over on the last day.” Because if it was ordinary for us to go early, there’d only be 10-20 people showing up on the last day. It wouldn’t have that horrible effect it has about 1000 people getting turned away at polling place after polling place. Because this is from Martin Niemoller, the Lutheran pastor, we’ve seen this all the time. You’ll see it at the Holocaust museum – “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out.” Let me just say that any time you read this, there can be any kind of version of the person who came first or second depending on when he was speaking. But in essence, “then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t care because I wasn’t working and it didn’t make no difference. Then they came for the Jews, and since I wasn’t Jewish, I thought ‘well, Jesus will rise up and part the sea or something for them. And they’ll be alright!’ But then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me. And that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re looking at atrocity after atrocity after atrocity and feeling very confident that it’s not happening in my hood. I don’t have to worry about that, as long as I’m in the right place, in the right city, in the right state, it’s not about me. But guess what? It is always about us. Because this is our family. The human family. And when bad things are happening, there’s usually some breakdown in the system that we could get a law, that we could run for office, that we could go out and vote and change.

Because we who believe in freedom cannot rest.

[Singing]

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

[Applause]

This song has many verses. And she talks about as long as a black man, a black mother’s son, is not as important when killed as a white man, then a white mother’s son, then we’re not free. It talks about the fact the most important thing is not what I do, but my ability to pass on to everyone else what they should do. A great leader knows that it always takes a team. That whoever you are who is inspiring and articulating the vision, if you don’t get people to work the vision, it will die. If we believe in freedom, we need to preach to everyone who’ll listen. We need to make sure we don’t rest until it comes. Because on an ordinary day when nothing special was going on, we got up this morning, we got dressed, and we drove ourselves here, we had a great breakfast. We heard an amazing vocalist and a harpist that made me want to cry, and we sat beside people who are willing to do the work. Because we want to make an extraordinary move so that next year on the 100th anniversary of the rights movement, we are not saying what we did not do, we are talking about all the extraordinary moves we’ve made since we were last here. What is an extraordinary day in your world? Think about it. What is ordinary to you might not be ordinary for the woman across the street. It might not be ordinary for the homeless person trying to find a bed. Don’t take anything for granted in this world. What can you do to make it an extraordinary week?

Volunteer. There are plenty of people in here today who would appreciate having your time. When you volunteer, you give benefit to someone else. Vitalize – it means to give strength and energy to another. We are no longer feeling vital when it comes to the voting process. I am old enough to remember marches in the street. I am old enough to remember the inability to simply go into a bathroom when I need to go. I am old enough to remember that my mother cooked at a restaurant but couldn’t eat at a table at the same restaurant. We have those same inequities today. Equality means we have all the same opportunities to do something. Equity means that we have the capacity to get it done, whether that is a ramp to get to the bathroom or an easily accessible reading apparatus. Equity is not about having the same thing; it is about being treated the way we need to be treated in order to get what we should receive and vote. Your individual voice comes together with everyone here to make a collective change. Volunteer. It doesn’t have to be difficult. Many people are thinking that volunteerism means they have to give hours and hours and hours. But you can volunteer by paying attention to the young girl who looks like she doesn’t have a friend in the neighborhood. You can invite her over and ask her what’s going on in her day. Maybe no one has asked her in a very long time. You can check on your neighbors, and when Miss Ella doesn’t have her newspaper picked up in two or three days, you can go see if she’s alright. We can be the voice that helps make our community safe. We can do the same thing at work. If you see someone being bullied, bullies are only productive when no one stops them. If you’re thinking they’re always so terrible to her, they’re always so terrible to him, but you don’t say anything? If you’re a strong person, tell them, “hey, stop!” You always have a human resources department. If it’s bad, then it’s happening at schools. They have guidance counselors and principals. Don’t allow bullying to happen. And please don’t be the person that’s saying, “aw, that’s a part of growing up.” Too many young people are committing suicide these days because of bullying. That’s especially with electronic bullying over the internet. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Will you say that with me?

[Singing]

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Don’t rest. When you leave here today, look for an opportunity to help. Look for organizations that support people who have less. While we can feel very good about ourselves in these United States of America, we have a long, long way to go. There are still people every day who do not have what they need – the most basic things – and we are throwing those things away. For those of you, like me, who have many, many things in their closet they ain’t never going to get into again, take them to the shelter. Take them somewhere where they will be used and adored and someone will be grateful for it. Because…

[Singing]

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Don’t rest.

[Applause]