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Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway. We're continuing our series, Black.Queer.Rising., highlighting Black LGBTQ+ change-makers who are making an impact on our world. Our next guest is certainly doing that in politics. Congressman Ritchie Torres is the first gay Afro-Latino elected to Congress representing New York's 15th Congressional District, also known as:

Song: South Bronx, the South South Bronx. South Bronx, the South South Bronx.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When it became clear that Congressman Torres was positioned to win his District's primary in the summer of 2020, he gave this impassion statement to a local outlet, New York 1.

Congressman Ritchie Torres: I would not be here today were it not for my mother. The South Bronx is full of mothers like mine who have suffered, and struggled, and sacrificed so that her baby boy can have a better life than she did.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I asked Representative Torres about the models he looked towards when he decided to run for office.

Congressman Ritchie Torres: To be honest, I had no models because there were hardly any people like me in public office. I spent most of my life in poverty, born and raised in this Bronx. I was raised by a single mother who had to raise three of us on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was $4.25. The most deformative experience of my life was growing up in public housing. I grew up in conditions of mold and mildew, leaks and lead, without consistent heat and hot water in the winter because public housing in New York city is so chronically underfunded.

I actually grew up in a public housing development right across the street from Trump Golf Course. As I saw the conditions get worse in my home every day, the government was investing a $100 million in a golf course for Donald Trump. I remember wondering to myself at the time, what does it say about our society that we're willing to invest more in a golf course than in the homes of poor people of color.

That inspired me to get my start as a housing organizer, and then eventually with encouragement from tenant leaders, I took the leap of faith and ran for public office. I was only 24, I had no deep pockets. I had no ties to the dynasties or Bronx politics or the Bronx party machine, but I spent a whole year knocking on doors, and I went into people's homes, and I heard their stories. I won my first campaign on the strength of door-to-door, face-to-face campaigning, became the first openly LGBTQ elected official from the Bronx.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to go back for a second to the moment when you say, "This is what inspired me to move towards the public service work." It seems to me an alternate possibility is that you stand in that breach, you see the money going to the golf course, you see the realities of living in poverty, just across the street from it. Instead of saying, "Let me move towards public work," that you would say, "Clearly, this government, this public space, these elected officials care nothing about me, about my community, about those who are like me, and therefore I don't want to be anywhere near it."

I'm wondering, given that is clearly also a very reasonable alternate path, what other aspects may have sparked that decision to move towards it instead of away from it?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: First, I have enormous respect for organizing. For me, change arises from the creative tension between the outside game and the inside game, but I felt that I could do more in elected office than I could do on the outside. When you're a member of the New York City Council, you can pass a law that improves the lives of 8 million people. There are a few positions in private life that are comparable to the sheer power of elected office.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm also interested in the folks who looked at you and said, "Hey, you should run for office." I think there's always something very powerful about people who see in us something we may not see in ourselves, or maybe haven't fully acknowledged in ourselves yet. Of those folks that you were working with in tenant organizing and in housing organizing, are there particular folks who really helped you to envision what it would look like to run for office?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: It was mostly women of color. I had trepidation about running for office, partly because I had a fear of public speaking, partly because I'm an introvert, and politics feels like it's a profession meant for extroverts. I thought my youth would be a liability, but when I began knocking on doors, I came to realize that people saw in my youth a symbol of change, that it was more of a benefit than I thought it would be. People would tell me, "In the 40 years I've been living in the South Bronx, I've never had a public official or a candidate for public office knock on my door." I saw an opportunity to represent a new generation of leadership in the heart of the Bronx.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is the experience of that intimate shoe-leather-based campaigning tell you about what might be possible? Because, again, your point about not having money is not a small one. I'm not sure folks understand, when you're running even for local offices, much less Congress, which we'll get to in a moment, if you don't have the deep pockets and the huge intergenerational bank accounts, it shapes what you do all day. It means you spend a lot of time in the box, on the phone, calling, trying to raise money. What did you learn from that door-knocking experience?

Speaker 2: In my experience, the most powerful form of voter contact is door-knocking. It's face-to-face interaction with voters. You find that people are more welcoming than you would expect. Many people would invite me into their homes, would share with me their struggles. It motivated me to fight my heart out, not only as a candidate, but as a public servant.

When I ran for Congress, very few people thought I could win because I was running against the most powerful brand name in Bronx politics. I had an intuition that I would win. Most of the electorate in the South Bronx are women of color, Latinas and African American women. Many of those voters saw me in me their own child and grandchild, saw in me the embodiment of their hopes and aspirations, and that's a powerful connection.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It seems to me there might have been a time where being certainly a young Afro-Latino man but also a gay Afro-Latino man might have actually served as a barrier to those folks seeing you as one of their children or grandchildren. When you ran in 2020, were elected to Congress, what I hear you saying right now is that that wasn't a barrier, that you were still seen as community.

Congressman Ritchie Torres: There were political insiders who said that a young gay man has no chance of winning in the South Bronx, which has a tradition of social conservatism. There were political insiders who said that as an Afro-Latino, I could not win because there's colorism within the Latino community. None of those were barriers. The face-to-face personal connection is too powerful.

What I found is when you knock on doors, and when people get to know you, and they see themselves in you, they see their own stories and struggles in your story and in your struggles, there's nothing like a campaign that forges a personal connection with the electorate.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Does representation ever feel like a burden to you sitting at all of these multiple intersections?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: It's both a burden and a blessing. When you are a first, you feel the weight of history on your shoulders, but it's a blessing to represent the hope that a young kid of color from the Bronx can overcome the odds and become a leader in his community, can become a member of the most powerful legislation in the world.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Our conversation today is part of a series here on The Takeaway that we're calling Black.Queer.Rising. I've been asking all of my guests in this series, when you hear the words Black, queer, rising, what does it mean to you?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: The word that comes to mind is pride. I'm proud to be Black, I'm proud to be queer. I love the quote, "I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm not going anywhere." The next generation of elected officials are increasingly representative of America, are increasingly rising as a multiracial, multiethnic, LGBTQ-inclusive democracy.

I never thought that I would become a member of Congress and witness within the first two weeks an insurrection against the US Capitol. There's a sense in which the insurrection in the US Capitol is a reaction against the rising of Blackness and the rising of queer identity. It's a reaction against the changing complexion of America.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Representative Richie Torres is a Congressman representing New York's 15th Congressional District.

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