CBC Shorts: Co-Chair Troy Carter, Rep Joyce Beatty, and Rep Summer Lee

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This episode is a replay of one of our interviews from our live stream as a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference. If you want to listen to or watch the full stream, check out the links in the episode description. You can also find a full list of all the guests we interviewed.

Welcome home, y'all.

We are so fortunate to be joined now by Congressman Troy Carter, who is an Annual Legislative Conference co chair.

He is representing New Orleans.

And we also are being joined by Congresswoman Joyce Batty, who is a CBC Foundation board member. And we also see present the extraordinary, extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful Summerly. Congresswoman Summerly. We might as well get y'all all up, because you'll come to go line up.

To march across that stage. In just a moment, she didn't walk, She floated. She did floated. She elegantly floated into conceeats.

I want to shout out my friends Quentin and Stephanie Brown, who are here.

Also, we're gonna get them on. We got all the members, y'all because they gotta go, They gotta go. Line up. Look at you.

You look beautiful, beautiful and handsome and handsome.

So happy to have you guys here.

So from vision to victory. We are the last day of the conference. How do you think we've done? Are we closer to the victory? And this is a non partisan question, to be.

Very We're absolutely closer to the victory.

Get closer to the mic.

We're absolutely closer to the victory. When you look at the excitement, the energy, the commitment, people see the opportunity to save our democracy. And I think while this has been a great opportunity to come together, party with a purpose. While we're having a good time, we're also talking about significant policy. We're talking about making sure that the antidote to Trump twenty twenty five is November fifth, twenty twenty four vote.

I want to come to you, miss baby, and I also want to defer to my colleagues. But I wanted to start here because I heard someone say to me the other day.

They were like, there's a member of Congress.

She got this short PIXI cut and she had sharper and she gave us our marching orders at Black Women's Agenda. So I know you can tear the house now. So what you got for us, I know you got something to say. And by the way, we would not be here at this conference without the advocacy, the fierce advocacy a Congressman Joyce Bady, and she does it for the people every single day.

So thank you, no, thank you all for doing this. And I certainly agree with Congressman Troy Carter. And let me just say, we are closer because we have a platform. We are closer because we have a candidate fat not partisan when you think about we're here for CBC FLC. We took fifty percent of little Black babies out of poverty. We put thirty five dollars cap on insulin for our seniors and others. We put sixty five billion dollars into

So we have a platform.

Economy is better. Fifteen million jobs inflation. Now, if you look at the plan of the two different visions, I certainly want to be on the sister's vision.

And so I'm just saying KKK.

You know what we usually think about when we hear that, Well, I'm gonna give it a DEI name on King's Day, Katanji Jackson. Brown's gonna square in kam La Harris.

Right, that's my kkj kk.

Yeah, I'm because I got a black job. My black job twenty twenty five. As Troy said, it's bad. It dismantles everything that we believe in in our values. So I'm gonna call it twenty twenty four.

Vote.

I just need everybody to vote. But let's not get over excited. Let's not think the job is done, because we are a long way from it until we get to election day. So I just want everybody to take the energy and double it for the next fifty some days and then I'll be really happy to say I.

Love that congress Woman Lead, thank you so much for joining us. I love the margin orders we just got from Congressman Baby Jotaka Edie, who I'm sure you guys.

Know her, one of my dear friends.

Yes, we love Joe Teka and her work around one with black women. She addressed the conference this week and one point that she made here in DC inauguration weekend, there is no accommodation. Hotels are sold out. That is how confident people are about this election. And so I hear your caution Joe Taka's marching orders, where if you have a hotel room booked here, but you ain't registered nobody to vote.

There, then you ain't been doing your job.

So Congressoman Lee, I'm curious what you would say to people out there who are rightfully celebratory of this moment after what we've been through as a people and as a country. What are your marching orders to our audience watching right now?

Yeah, so listen, I'm in Pennsylvania, So I always take excitement. I take joy that I see especially in these places, right because when we gather, we bring this sort of energy, but when we go home, we forget sometimes that we're going back to people who are.

In these circles.

Yeah right, they're not getting dressed up tonight. They haven't been able to hear all the inspiration from these panels. They haven't absorbed all the black excellence that we've been absorbing. So we got to go back to the states just like mine, to western Pennsylvania, and we actually have to talk to people who are not as tuned in as we are, and that's not as easy. And it's okay to admit that when we talk about what solar Baby said that we have a plan, we have to take it.

That's our responsibility.

We have to go on doors and we have to let folks know what's that stake and what we can do to address that.

We have to let people know.

That hope isn't something that is just a word, but we have a belief in each other and ourselves, and when we step up for ourselves, we can get those things done. But you know, that is translating all of this into some actual action. We always get folks who say they want to, you know, go go to the rallies. And I love rallies, y'all, I do. There's a lot of energy out these rallies. But the reality is is that the people who we need are not the rally We need to go and get.

Black folks on college campuses.

We got to go and get young folks who are reasonably concerned about a lot of stuff. We need to take that concern and we need to help connect them into the system. We need to plug them in, and we got to be patient with them. So I'm seeing this and I think that this is a really good foundation. But we know in these fifty something days, we have work to do still.

Yeah, I think that's so.

It's kind of like an analogy for the kids who show up to the guidance counselor's office because they want to go to college. Those are not the kids who are in the most need. It's the kids who are not participating. So I love that you made that point. I think that's a poignant.

I don't want to be a Donald downer, but I do want to say a lot of people elect people to public office and then they start to criticize those individuals basically saying, well, they didn't get done.

What it is that they said they would do.

I often try to remind folks, look, we came here under ball and Chain had to endure, you know, four hundred years of servitu before even being legal, then having that taken away before then we're still seeing laws that are passed that bring us into our full existence. What does Kamala Harris. In addition to folks going out and voting and organizing for her, what companionship does she need in order to facilitate the movement of an agenda that makes life different for people in the streets.

She needs an.

Acheen Jeffries to be Speaker of the House.

We need to have.

A full complement of democratic senators in the majority in the US Senate. We need a patient community, a faith based community, an academia, nonprofit and business to recognize that the alternative is no democracy. The alternative is a reversal of people's rights. The alternative is a total ignoring of the Constitution and the rights that we have.

We cannot go backwards.

And so when you think about where we are, we have a vice president who was a district attorney, an attorney general, a United States Senator, and now the Vice president soon to be President of the United States, the most consequential candidate to have ever served as vice president, and no one has had as much experience as she does bringing to the oval office. It's ridiculous that people will suggest otherwise. Everyone should stand and defend and just call balls and strikes.

The facts bear out.

Kamala Harris clearly has the requisite skill sets, temperament and abilities. What we have to do as a people, as Jesse Jackson said in nineteen eighty eight, you can't helpe me in.

You have to vote me in.

So we've got to remind people that for the next fifty one fifty two fifty three days.

We got to hump.

We got to just as as Selig just said, we can't depend on the circles that we're in. We're the choir preaching to the choir. We've got to go out to the communities, into the barbershops, the beauty shops, into the nightclubs and the sororities and fraternities, and we've got to tell people, yes, your vote does matter, and we can't afford to think we've got this thing one so

You know, I want to flag for you all.

Of course, the Congressional Black Caucus is known as the conscience of the Congress. And with the three of you all sitting here, you all have divergent politics. Your politics aren't all the way aligned. And what I love about this is people get to see themselves reflected in each of you. And as the caucus continues to grow, we see from how you vote, from the way you negotiate,

But this conference is always.

A convening for people of divergent opinions and perspectives to share.

In forums, people get up and ask questions, sometimes want a debate with y'all. But there was this really harrowing moment last night.

I was walking out of the Salamander and there was a protest, and the protest was for Justin Johnson, who was killed at a McDonald's in DC, shot ten times. And I was so troubled that it was at a black hotel for our black members.

And of course I was walking with Papa Rye.

And my dad looks at me and he says, this is where they knew they could be heard.

And so I know that.

Justin Johnson and so many others, Breonna Taylor and mott Arbury have been at the top of you all's minds, and you've legislated for them. But I just want to say thank you for facilitating this space, for the protesters, for Justin Johnson, for the protesters against the Israel Hamas war, for the protesters to ensure that black lives matter. So for facilitating this space, I just want to say thank you, and I want to honor you all for being here.

Thank you so much. Do we realize that now, I'll say this, and I think we'd all agree, we realize our diversity. Sometimes people think when you say Congressional Black Caucus that we're all alike, and we are not. And that's what we value appreciate because that is our strength. But what's even better when you put it all together, that's the power. Is we can make anything happen, as we did with the infrastructure bills, or we can stop anything from happening, as we did that.

We got both parts that we wanted.

We wanted to make sure that the services were going to be voted on and signed, and so we did it all because of our unity and our power.

Yeah.

And if I could add to that, just even with what Brother Carter was just talking about, when we think about what we are really needing to do right now. It is how do we invest in the coalitions of the future to see me. You know, I'm a black girl, friend Lamond Valley of pittsborgh outside of Pittsburgh, right, I'm a progressive and a lot of people for a long time, you know, we're told that you couldn't be black and progressive, and I actually don't always agree that we differ in

No clear answers.

So when we talk about how do we invite in these folks who have been disenfranchised, who maybe or are feel a little disaffected, how do we make room for them, how do we welcome them? And when they see me in the place like that, they see that that's possible. They see that you know what, even if I don't come you know, speaking the same language, I don't come with the same background, I don't come from the same socio economic status, that my blackness still qualifies me to be in Congress.

That my perspective, my experiences.

Qualifies me to have an opinion, and that opinion deserves to be represented in every hall of power.

That's what this is about. And right now, when we.

Think about what we need to do in these next forty something days, we need to figure out how do we remind and keep our democratic coalition together. How do we remind people that even the democratic coalitions of the past aren't going to be sufficient right now.

What we know, what Republicans know, and what.

We need to know, is that that coalition of black folks, of brown folks, of young folks, of progressives, of moderates, people who are urban or world and suburban coming together right now is what's going to keep us afloat, to keep democracy alive well.

So we need to pull that together.

You need to go back and tell them when they say you can't be progressive and democrat, that they don't know our history. If you don't think Shirley Chisholm will progress, if you don't think John Lewis was gray, if you don't think Charlie Rango was and all of them.

If you don't think Maxine Waters and Jim Clive right not progressive.

So we have to make sure we keep our history. They do that to try to pit us against us. When a younger generation comes in and says progressive and Black Lives matter, will see I'm from the generation before we was raising our fists and seeing black power with Jesse Jackson in the eighties.

So I just want to do it on now, and that's what I want to ask.

This lady said, I have receipts, and on type of received, y'all also have time. We have the chairwoman Terry Sewell of the Congressional Black Hawkins Foundation who's here, and Nicole Austin, Hillary who is the president, who are going to join it, And I know y'all got to get ready to go meet your president.

Thank you for letting me.

Thank you, Congressman Carter, Congresswoman Baby, Congressman summer Lee. We are so grateful for your participation today.

Hey y'all, thanks for listening.

Remember to rate, review, subscribe, and tune into our regular episode that drops every single Thursday, Welcome Home, y'all.

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