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I could hardly have thought
that when i was a kid in the streets
%uh marching for what became the equal employment opportunity commission I think we called it the
fair employment practices commission
%uh that I would some years later come to chair such commission 0:00:20.539,0:00:22.179 that's how
you want to do public service you get in there where the fight is
and %uh %uh I became chair of that commission i became
actually my career path was was to indeed seek to do
with my career
what i wanted
%uh to do with my life and if i wanted to improve %uh
civil rights for people of all kinds then that's what you do with your life that's what
i became that's why i became a civil liberties lawyer
that's why i became %uh
%uh human rights commissioner of new york city when we lived there for some years and
chair of the e_e_o_c_ and ultimately professor of law and
going to congress
was not
what i had intended
it was kinda silly to start up saying hey i want to be a member of congress there were only four hundred and forty of us
seems to me one starts saying
what do you really want to do with your life
I consider myself an accidental congresswoman
when i was growing up in washington washington didn't have any member of congress
it is one of the great shames of the united states
that not until nineteen seventy one was there a representative like me
in the house for short time after the civil war there was
but when my
party the democrats took back control during the late nineteenth century
that brief period of some representation
only in the house disappeared now
we are at the brink of not only getting a voting member of of of the house but
with a new president who's a good friend %uh a small d_ democrat
as well as a large d democrat i think we are on the brink of bringing some democracy
to the district of columbia as a kid growing up here
%uh there wasn't any mayor or city council the whole shebang
was ruled by three commissioners
so you didn't exactly say i'm gonna grow up and be a congresswoman when there wasn't
any congresswoman
now of course as a member of congress i
i get to vote in three committees
%uh I'm a chair of a sub committee
but my folks pay income tax like everybody else
i've gone to funerals of young people killed in iraq
like my colleagues but we don't have the final vote on whether you go to iraq or not whether your
taxes get raised or lowered or not
we are shortly i think to correct that with %uh kind of congress we
now have and of course with the president elect