DNC 2016: The Women Caucus

At a political convention, caucuses are intended as cheerleading sessions to rally the faithful, and the Women’s Caucus sessions at the DNC were no exception. This was one of several special interest groups meetings run by the DNC during its morning and noon-time sessions, and the attendees on Tuesday morning were getting hyped as party luminaries such as newly appointed DNC Chair Donna Brazile and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi enthused about the historic nature of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Here’s Brazile leading the crowd in a call-and-response tribute to women’s rights advocates from Abigail Adams to the modern era:

Donna Brazile shouted out feminist heroes from Abigail Adams to Barbara Jordan, and of course, Hillary Clinton.

A video posted by Kim Pearson (@journogeek) on

Brazile recalled that Adams, the wife of Founding Father John Adams, had written to her husband asking him and his Continental Congress comrades to “remember the ladies” as they plotted a course toward independence. Here is the full quote:

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

 

Brazile, a political veteran who speaks in cadences reminiscent of the Rev. Jesse Jackson at the height of his powers, spoke indirectly to the controversy surrounding the Wikileaks disclosure that some DNC staffers talked about ways of undermining the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt).  She had apologized to the Sanders campaign two days before.

 

A photo posted by Democratic National Convention (@demconvention) on

CC BY-ND 4.0 DNC 2016: The Women Caucus by Kim Pearson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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