Melissa: September 14th, 2001 our nation was still in shock from the September 11th terrorist attacks, and in the halls of Congress, officials were weighing how to respond.

Barbara Lee: I rise today really with a very heavy heart. One that is filled was sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Only the most foolish and the most [unintelligible 00:00:22] would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world.

Melissa: Representative Barbara Lee of California, spoke on the house floor that day, fully acknowledging the pain of this tragedy, but rebuking a resolution authorizing a military response to the September 11th attacks.

Barbara: This unspeakable act on the United States has really forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction. September 11th changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us, yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

Melissa: Ultimately, representative Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against military action in Afghanistan. Two decades, trillions of dollars, and tens of thousands of lives later, her decision feels particularly prescient. In a moment that's emblematic of the congresswoman's career as a whole, she's someone who's never been afraid to take a position that's out of step with the political establishment. This singular approach to politics is on full display in the documentary, Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power which premieres today on Starz. I spoke with Representative Lee about the film and we started by discussing the lessons she learned from one of her mentors, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

Barbara: This woman was a woman who I love dearly, first of all, just as a human being. Secondly, can you imagine being the first African American woman elected to Congress? Now we have at least 25 unbelievable, phenomenal Black women elected to Congress. Then she was the first, but I got involved with her campaign when she ran for president in 1972.

I was not registered to vote and I had a class at Mills college and I was supposed to do fieldwork in a presidential campaign. Then it was McGovern, Muskie, and Humphrey and I said, no, flunk me I'm not going to do any of this fieldwork with these white guys because they don't-- I was on welfare raising two small kids as a single mom and I was Black Student Union president and I was an activist and community worker with the Black Panther Party. I was very conscious of what the deal was in terms of politics and I chose not to participate.

I invited Congresswoman Chisholm to Mills College as the first African American woman elected to Congress and during her speech, she talked about she was running for president. Well, I never knew that and so afterwards, I mean Mrs. Chisholm, she spoke fluent Spanish, she talked about poverty reduction. She was against the Vietnam war. She was one of the first board members of the National Association of Reproductive Rights, she was like a progressive African American woman.

I went up and talked to her later about this class I was about to flunk, but I told her how impressed I was because she spoke to all the issues that I cared about, said maybe I think about passing the class now and working your campaign. She took me to task. She asked me if I was registered and I said, no. With her tough love, she insisted I registered to vote, and then she told me she really thought that I have something to offer and I couldn't stay on the outside looking in and that she thought I should really get involved in politics.

I reluctantly said, okay and I asked her how to get involved in her campaign. She said, "Well, I don't have a lot of national money, I leave it up to my local organizers." I went, told my professor that I would consider passing the class now that I met another candidate that I could work with and work for and asked her what to do next and so she said, "That's up to you. That's part of the coursework, you got to figure this out." I ended up bottom-line organizing the Shirley Chisholm, Northern California primary campaign out of my only class I've ever taken in government. The rest is history.

We took about 8% of the vote in Alameda. I went to Miami as a Shirley Chisholm delegate and then she mentored me and then of course, when I ran for the Assembly Senate Congress, she was right there with me, phone banking, walking precincts. We did a heck of a lot together, and so, I say because of Shirley Chisholm, I am. In 1998 when I was elected to Congress, I was only the 20th Black woman ever elected since the first Congress held session in 1789. She was like, "Can you imagine the first?" My God, she was a phenomenal woman.

Melissa: As you tell that story, it draws attention to this critical aspect of what it means to be represented in a democracy. This point that you were like, it's not like I didn't understand that there was a social and political world out there that needed to be addressed, but when I looked at who was running and who was a potential candidate, it didn't mean anything to you. The folks didn't have a connection to your lived experience. Are we doing any better on that front? When young people look at their elected leaders, do they feel like they are seen?

Barbara: I hope so. I think what I shared with you about me in the day, I see a lot with young people now and the movement is what's so important. The Black Lives Matter movement, young people embracing the next movement in our country, and so, I think that we've made a lot of progress not enough, of course. Come on, representation matters and not to have the perspective, the lived experiences, the brilliance of Black women at all levels of government. Not only has the Black community lost out, women have in the country, has lost out.

We've got to make up a lot of time. We got to repair all the damage where we weren't included and keep going and rev this up, but I think young people get it, I really do. I think young people know that they've got to hold elected officials accountable and I think their issues with regard to accountability, we need to address. Those of us who have "gotten on the inside" because like Shirley Chisholm told me, "When you get on the inside, don't just go along to get along. You get in there and shake things up, change the system because these rules were not made for you or me."

Melissa: Of course, in some ways, I suppose, young people have always gotten it. I'm thinking here of the late Congressman John Lewis who entered into our social and political consciousness as such a young person and all the way until the end always retained such an insight and love for young people. I'm wondering if you've seen the film, what it feels like to hear the things that the late Congressman Lewis had to say about you.

John Lewis: She has the capacity to do what I call getting in the way, getting in trouble, good trouble.

Barbara: That was humbling for me because I love John and I work with John and I looked up to John and for 18 years, I traveled with John on the Civil Rights pilgrimage taking kids from my Martin Luther king Jr Freedom Center who he mentored and came to California. We were very close and John passed away the day after my birthday, which is the day the first film showing was held at a drive-in theater in California.

July 16th was my birthday, the next day John passes and so when I hear and see John in the film, I'm so moved because the things he said about me, I couldn't believe it. First of all, because he was like my mentor, I looked up to John day and night, but we were close. We talked about, "good trouble." We talked about why the defense budget was so excessive and taken away from domestic priorities. Why nonviolence was the only option for our young people and for this country. We talked a lot about gun violence.

Also, we talked about young people because he was young. Look at all of the foot soldiers and leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, these were young people in high school, college, early 20s. To have John in the film is just poignant, but is humbling. It just makes me say, okay, John, I got to fight harder. I know you're encouraging me, Black Lives Matter and we got to fight for peace and justice in your name and in your honor.

Melissa: Speaking of fighting hard, you did a lot of that during the past four years. Not that you hadn't been doing it before, but certainly or maybe not counting last year, but the four years prior during the Trump Administration and I'm wondering about how your work has shifted over the course of the past year and the way that one still needs to resist and fight and speak up with a friend in the White House, a Democrat in the White House, but the ways it's also quite different than the Trump Administration.

Barbara: Melissa, thank you for that because the Trump Administration, we were constantly resisting, constantly fighting, playing defense and offense, both, and with this administration, I think we see an administration that's trying, first of all, to repair the damage of the four years of the Trump administration. I've been so much to part of that, how do we reorder our budget priorities? How do we address COVID by targeting resources to where the communities need it the most? The most vulnerable where COVID is impacting us. Of course, that's Black and brown communities.

There's a whole shift and the administration is on board. They get it. It's not like trying to make the case, they understand very clearly. I was on the drafting committee for the platform and President Biden signed off on so many initiatives that I had placed in the platform, like ending the authorizations to use military force, repealing the [unintelligible 00:09:49], supporting reproductive justice and equity. So much of what the Biden administration stands for, I've been working on forever and the big issue now of course is how we navigate with such a slim majority in the House and in the Senate, and so we have to be very strategic.

Now, the work becomes how do we make sure the Democrats deliver? We have delivered on so much, but how do we let people know we've delivered, and how do people know that we're still fighting each and every day, primarily against the Republicans when you see 16 Republicans who wouldn't vote for the Voting Rights Act? When they did in 2006 when I was there with George Bush in the White House as he signed it then and worked on it. Then we've got a heck of a lot of messaging and work to do, so the public understands we are fighting day and night on their behalf.

Melissa: Can we take one more beat on that? Because it's one thing for us in media to make that point about Republicans who previously voted for voting rights but I'm wondering when you're a colleague, when you're all sitting next to each other, and you know that Congressman ABC voted in a previous iteration for the Voting Rights Act and now remain silent or votes against, do you have a conversation about it? Do you say, what are you talking about? What's going on here?

Barbara: I do all the time, and they shrug their shoulders. They say, "Well, you know," or they just put their heads down and shake their heads. They know, especially those moderate Republicans like those 16. They know good, and well what's right. Somehow, they have bought this Trump line and fear for their re-elections, and it's so dangerous. They bought into the big lie just politically, but when you talk to them, and I serve on the Appropriations Committee, it's a bipartisan committee. I work with these men and women each and every single day. The hypocrisy and the lack of integrity when we talk is shocking.

Then there's one Republican who I work with on a variety of issues. He had the nerve when we were talking one day to tell me that, Well, once you guys release these political prisoners." I said, what? I mean this is a moderate Republican talking about the people who attempted the coup, the violent coup that almost prevented a peaceful transfer of power. He's talking about these people as political prisoners. This is a moderate Republican, and I looked at him. I said, "Are you kidding?" [laughs] He just shook his head.

Melissa: Come on now, words have to mean something [crosstalk]

Barbara: He shook his head.

Melissa: Oh, that's-- okay.

Barbara: I'm telling you, but that's how it is. It's really very shocking that you can stoop to that level, in terms of what you really believe what you don't believe. Let me tell you, I wouldn't be in a foxhole with any of them because if you can give up on democracy and deny that these people almost shattered our democracy and almost killed people, it's almost a mass assault [unintelligible 00:12:57]. I was sitting there right on the floor. They're going to tell me it wasn't a mass casualty event and these people weren't insurrectionists, and they weren't planning a coup against the US government. If you don't acknowledge that and say, this was just a tourist trip, therefore, move on. No, you can't really trust people like that.

Melissa: Following September 11th attacks, you were the only House member to vote no on an invasion of Afghanistan. We've talked about this some in the past, but I always want to keep coming back to it, especially as we see the level of human suffering occurring in Afghanistan now 20 years after we have occupied and then left the nation. I'm wondering what your thoughts are at this moment.

Barbara: Well, thank you, Melissa, because as I reflect on this, I have a lot of thoughts. First of all, that was a 60-word authorization. There was a blank check that gave any President the authority to use force and go to war forever, and I'm trying to get it repealed now. Hopefully, we'll get that done with Republican support.

20 years later-- First of all, we should have left much earlier, much sooner. I'm glad President Biden kept his promise to leave because have we stayed, you can be sure thousands more of American troops would have been sent to Afghanistan and, in fact, we know there's no military solution. In fact, more lives would be shattered not only with our brave troops, but also the Afghan people, the refugee crisis, and all this going on in Afghanistan.

Also, I don't think, though, that the administration really planned for it properly. I chair the subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations of the Appropriations Committee, Melissa. First time an African American has chaired that subcommittee, and I'm responsible for a $62 billion budget, a lot of which includes humanitarian assistance to women and children in Afghanistan. Education, development, diplomacy, a lot of what we see taking place in Afghanistan now.

Unfortunately, we have to figure out how to address because we have NGOs there, and we can't fund directly the Taliban government, but the NGOs, and there's a humanitarian crisis there. We're trying out how to help the NGOs to help the Afghan people.

Secondly, women, yes, made tremendous gains and children, and we're trying to continue funding educational efforts and their security assistance. Again, how you do that with the Taliban government in place is very difficult. We should have planned more for that transition, and we should have planned for the departure of Americans and Afghans who wanted to leave, who were loyal to the US. I think the planning was poor, but I think, and I go back to what the President's position was, and what he said he was going to do, he did it promises made, promises kept.

We have to figure out how to help people in Afghanistan, how to help on the immigration crisis, how to make sure that Afghanistan doesn't revert back to what, unfortunately, could happen. Let me tell you is no military solution. We can't stay there for the next 20 years and think that the Taliban and the Afghan people would be safe and that US troops weren't going to be in harm's way, because that's a given. I think most military officials would say that and tell us that and they have and that's counter to our national security strategy.

Melissa: All the more reason-- the sticky complication all the more reason to have not gone in the first place. Let's talk about-

Barbara: Most women just say-

Melissa: Sorry, no, please [crosstalk]

Barbara: That was right after the horrific events of 9/11. I too was as angry and as anxious as anyone in this country. My chief of staff's-- his cousin, Wanda Green was a flight attendant on flight 93. I was in the Capitol and had to evacuate when we're told a plane might be coming in. Just like everyone, I too felt we had to do something. Three days after the horrific attacks, with an unbelievably overly broad authorization to use force, that's not when the Congress should give over authority to any president. You wait, you determine what the exit strategy is, what the goals are, where we're going, they didn't even say Afghanistan or Al-Qaeda in the authorization.

That's the problem, I think. It's the rush to judgment when in fact, when the country is in mourning, and by profession, I'm a psychiatric social worker. Psychology 101 says, "When you're in mourning, angry, sad, and grieving, you don't take decisions that-

Melissa: You stand still.

Barbara: -[crosstalk] implication, you stand still and determine the best strategy forward. We didn't do that. The country didn't do that. There was no way I was going to vote for that, and to heck with it because it was unconstitutional, first of all. Secondly, I knew it would lead to more violence and put our troops in harm's way and the Afghan people in the refugee crisis unless we were very strategic in what we did, and in fact, unfortunately, that happened.

Melissa: Here we stand, today was a day of some pretty tense talks around Russia and Ukraine. I'm wondering how you're processing and thinking about what the US position should be in this moment, relative to those aggressive actions, and to both the interest of Ukraine and of the United States.

Barbara: Sure, Melissa, and I think back to my visit to Ukraine in 2019, when even then the threat of a Russian incursion and the threat of Russia was very clear. I knew then what Putin's play was. Fast forward to today, I think the administration is doing the right thing. First of all, Ukraine is a sovereign country and I believe they have the right to determine what alliances they join, NATO or not. They're a sovereign country.

Secondly, I think the Biden administration is doing the right thing in terms of making sure every diplomatic option is dealt with. I mean, every option. What I'm concerned about, the insertion of troops that the President said, of course, no combat troops, but there's always a chance for a miscalculation or an error to occur with weapons and troops in harm's way. We have to be very careful in how we move forward sending hardware and sending our troops in non-combat positions because that can easily change it to a combat role, especially in the defensive operation. Thirdly, we talk about sanctions and those are options but the sanctions, you always have to be careful with because it could cause more damage and hurt the Russian people than not and in fact, it could actually trigger a worse response with regard to Putin in terms of what his next steps could be. It's a very calibrated move and I think that this administration is being very careful but I also worry about the military buildup by the United States.

I'm watching this very carefully because a lot of this is under my subcommittee, but I believe diplomacy is going to be the only way and if Putin continues with his aggressive behavior, we have to really look at Ukraine as our ally. We support its sovereignty and we need to make sure that we're on the same page with Ukraine and provide the support that they need, but make sure that our troops are not put in harm's way for any miscalculation for any need for combat.

Melissa: Then I'll ask just one last question and this is maybe just a little bit of a personal point of privilege, as my title at my academic university at Wake Forest is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair. There's been more than a little bit of dancing, screaming, and thrill at my home since we learned that there will be a Maya Angelou quarter. Apparently, you're behind all that.

Barbara: Well, Melissa, I don't think anyone is more deserving than yourself to hold this chair. My gosh, I've known you over the years. I know Maya would be really proud of you, first of all. I tell you, I knew Dr. Angelou very well and I introduced this legislation, mainly in 2017, to say, wait a minute, coins have George Washington's face, we don't have any women on any coin. I introduced the Coin Act and it went through several iterations of my legislation but I had-- because I had to build bipartisan support, I have to have a Republican author, I have to have a Senate author, Democrat, and Republican.

This was, "sausage-making" for years, and then we decided with [unintelligible 00:22:23] to set up a public process where the public would weigh in, in terms of who should be on these coins. The first coin that the public weighed in on that everyone embraced was the coin with-- the beautiful coin with our beloved Dr. Maya Angelou on it.

I am just so really excited when I talk about this because we can just see more women on these coins, but you know what? Some have criticized it because they said it was symbolism, but you know what? Symbolism is okay but it's not just symbolism. This is about learning about these women and the challenges that they faced and how they conquered the world, how they rose in spite of the challenges, and who they are. A lot of people don't know who Sally Ride is. A lot of people don't know who Dr. Angelou is, they haven't dug deep into her life.

This is about telling these stories of these women finally, and hopefully, their faces on these coins will lead future generations and those right now who don't know much about these great women to really learn more about the storytelling, what do they encounter, and how can we use their strategies and what they did to get through what they went through for today for the good and how can we use their lives to change the world?

I'm really pleased, it's humbling to have these quarters done and this was just a brainstorm than myself and the former treasurer, Rosie Rios, had who was a phenomenal treasurer under President Obama, sitting in my office one day right after the Obama administration was coming to an end. Right when it was coming to an end.

Melissa: Let me just say those who say that it is just symbolism, you have maybe not paid a lot of attention to what the symbols look like. It absolutely matters. Congresswoman Barbara Lee, representative for California's 13th congressional district and subject of the documentary, Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power. It's premiering this week on Starz. Congresswoman Lee, thank you so much.

Barbara: Thanks a lot. Hope to see you soon. Stay healthy, stay safe, stay masked.

[laughter]

Melissa: You would know.

Barbara: [laughs] Okay.

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