Donna Brazile, the world renowned Democratic strategist, is up from poverty, and decidedly connected to the plight of the poor.
The New Orleans native delivered a fiery address highlighting the current wave of cutbacks that are hurting low income women, during the sold-out Women Employed Working Lunch event held May 19 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.
Brazile was blunt with her assessment of recent budget proposals.
“Women will continue to come under enormous attack,” Brazile stated. “The most interesting thing about the last six months, is if you watch governors and state lawmakers, and even Congress, figure out what they’re going to do to close the budget gap, the first thing they are doing across the country is cutting back on women’s health. They’re cutting back on programs that help women in the name of cutting the budget, they’ve thrown an ax at women’s health care — the blunt [end] at maternal health care, the knife, at access to birth control and breast exams and even food for nursing mothers and formula for infants. That’s what they’re doing all across this country.”
Low income families, women in particular, have become targets of drastic budget cuts, Brazile explained, and the measures would not balance the budget, but instead, throw struggling families into peril.
“If anyone believes that what these lawmakers are doing would help to close the deficit, please think again. Each proposal that [is] left unchallenged would not only spoil the national debt or the state debt, but in the long run it’s going to push us further behind,” she said.
Brazile spoke frankly of her humble beginnings in New Orleans, and how watching her parents, and other poor people toil for their families taught her a valuable, unforgettable lesson that the disenfranchised rarely got ahead.
And this is why she’s an advocate for today’s working poor.
“I don’t need talking points … there’s something about growing up in poverty that you’ll never forget,” she said. “And what you never forget is that your parents are working hard each and every day and they’re trying to do what’s right. They’re instilling those values in their kids.
“They’re doing everything right, and yet, they’re not getting ahead. [There’s] a stiff headwind against them … just when you think you’ve been able to conquer one thing, you turn the corner and here comes something else hitting you.”
When she’s on the talk-show circuit, Brazile says she often finds herself coming to the defense of the poor. “I was telling a certain candidate to back off, people are not on food stamps because they want to be on food stamps,” Brazile said to rousing applause. “They are on food stamps because they don’t have the ability to feed their families.”
Donna Brazile urged the crowd of 1,100 to utilize social media and to join Women Employed to fight the powers that be. “Every day they’re picking on poor people, they’re trying to tell us they know what’s best for our lives. They are not going to get us a life line or a help line, they are not going to bail us out, they’re going to make it harder with roadblocks, and Women Employed exists for you to move those roadblocks and tell those people you’re not going to hurt poor women anymore.”
