Berkeley Talks transcript: The power of mentorship, sisterhood in politics

Martin Meeker: Greetings, everyone. My name is Martin Meeker. I’m the director of the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. And today, we’re welcoming you to the event “Bay Area Women in Politics.” This panel discussion features a group of distinguished guests moderated by my colleague, Amanda Tewes. And this panel is a kickoff for a new oral history project that we are about to begin called “Bay Area Women in Politics.” And I think Amanda will tell you a bit more about that.

This panel is being hosted by the Oral History Center. The Oral History Center is the oral history organization that’s part of the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. We were established in 1953. Since that time, we’ve conducted around 4,000 interviews. The interviews we do range typically from 90 minutes to over 40 hours in length. So we estimate that we’ve probably done 30,000 hours of recordings over this period of time. I’m happy to let you know that all of these interviews are available in transcript form for everyone to read free of charge. And you can see in the Zoom webinar chat that I’m sending to all panelists links to both our online search form as well as our projects page where you can browse these oral history interviews.

We have a particular strength in the history of California politics, and also a good strength in the history of women in politics, including a project that was done with the surviving members of the suffrage generation that I think Amanda is going to mention. And I’m going to sign off myself and move to the main event but I’d like to introduce you to Amanda Tewes.

Amanda has been with the Oral History Center now for over two years. She is a historian interviewer. She has her Ph.D. in public history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And she works on a whole wide variety of projects, including history of the arts, as well as politics. And she is the person who has developed this new project on history of women in politics. So let me hand it over to Amanda. And thank you so much, and I hope that you enjoy the event today.

Amanda Tewes: Thank you, Martin, and thank you especially to our panel for coming together and making this a great event today. I do briefly just want to tell you about the Bay Area Women in Politics Oral History Project. As Martin mentioned, this comes on the heels of many years of our work here at the Oral History Center documenting the history of women. And particularly, we have interviews with Alice Paul, Jeannette Rankin, and March Fong Eu and some really early interesting political leaders in California and beyond.

And so moving with that emphasis, we really wanted to think about this project as a way to document the history of our region’s political women from elected officials, to activists, to campaign staffers, to fundraisers. I think we can all agree that women are often the backbone of America’s political work. And we felt it was important to record that. And the hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage is just next month in case anyone has forgotten. So this is a really exciting time to be thinking about the past, present, and future of women in politics, particularly as it relates to our home in the Bay Area. But of course, we all know that this is not just a historical topic. This is evergreen in the news cycle. And any day now, we’re waiting on an announcement about the democratic vice presidential candidate. So much more to be looking forward to here.

But of course, this oral history project is going to form the basis of our conversation today. So we’ll discuss what women’s political work has looked like in the Bay Area since the 1970s really. And it’s going to be an interesting way to look at the past and present. And just a reminder, please stick around to the end if you can. We have a short video to show you about some of the work that we’ve done with interviews on political women in the past and a sneak peek as to what we’re going to be doing in this project. Because this project is going to be an expansive look at not only the political women in our area, but also the activist of second wave feminists in particular. And there’s a lot to be garnered from all of this conversation.

And again, just to remind you that Martin will be monitoring the chat box. So if you have any questions there, please offer them up for our panelists there and we’ll help distribute those at the end. But without further ado, let’s talk to our fabulous panel here.

Louise Renne was a San Francisco supervisor from 1978 to 1986 and the first woman city attorney for San Francisco from 1986 to 2011. She is currently a founding partner of Runny Public Law Group which handles public interest matters. And she hopes to someday see a woman president, which don’t we all, Louise?

Shanelle Scales-Preston is the first-term member of the Pittsburgh City Council and district director for Congressman Mark DeSaulnier. She previously worked for Congressman George Miller and has been in public service for nearly 20 years. A lot of collective experience on this panel.

Libby Schaaf has been the mayor of Oakland since 2015 and served on the Oakland City Council from 2011 to 2015. She was born and raised in Oakland, which she proudly describes as the most unapologetic sanctuary city in America. During her tenure as mayor, Oakland has undergone an economic revitalization and building boom as well as cut gun violence in half. She is most proud of launching the Oakland Promise, a bold cradle-to-career initiative to send more low-income Oakland kids to preschool and college.

So we have quite a talented group of people to speak with here today. I want to open this question up to all of you here at the beginning. Louise, can you start off and tell us about your first political experience? How did you come to politics?

Louise Renne: Well, I’ve often wondered if the reason I had an interest in law and politics is I was born on August 26th, which was the day of the 19th amendment being ratified. But I suppose I could say that my first political experience was actually in grade school. I went to a public school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And on election day, we always had mock elections. And so in grade school, we would discuss the candidates and would get to vote. And so I would have to say maybe that was my first political experience. But I think maybe the most meaningful just moving on was that during the Kennedy administration, both my husband and I were involved in Civil Rights Movement and in Bobby Kennedy’s campaign, which unfortunately ended so tragically. But I think that I have always had a long standing interest in both politics and law.

Amanda Tewes: Mayor, do you want to follow up that?

Libby Schaaf: Sure. I’m born and raised in Oakland, and I’ve always been just madly in love with my city. I know you’re going to ask later about kind of our mentors, but I can’t help but bring up one right now. I was fortunate to have a godmother named Mary Morris Lawrence, and she was the first woman to be hired by the Associated Press as a news photographer in the 1930s. And my family was not political at all, but they really believed in community service and volunteerism. It was Mary Morris Lawrence who dragged me to ERA rallies, who took me to League of Women Voter meetings, who actually really encouraged me to get interested in local politics.

And so it took a while. I did the law school thing. I practiced law because I had huge debts for a while. But my heart was always drawn to public service. And I fell into a political staffer job kind of accidentally as the aide to then city council president, Ignacio De La Fuente. After that, I got hired by Jerry Brown when he was the mayor. I just stayed kind of as a staffer, and then the Emerge California program really empowered me to make that step to run for office myself. I’m so grateful to them.

Amanda Tewes: And what about you, council member?

Shanelle Scales-Preston: Yes. I would say my first political experience was starting off as an intern for Congressman George Miller. Right after I graduated from college, it was my first gateway into really paying attention to politics. I was really into public service and helping others. And I had a professor in my political science classes that encouraged me to apply for an internship at George Miller’s office. From there, I was there for about three months and they hired me onto their team as a part-time staffer, and I also got a chance to work for at the time was Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier. So that made my one full-time job out of college, which I was really excited about. It really helped me learn two different levels of government.

So I got a chance to learn the county level as well as the federal level. And I had the opportunity to do that for about a year. And a job came open in George Miller’s of Washington DC office. So I left and went to DC, which was great for me because I went to Cal State East Bay, so that was really close. So that was my first real time away from my family, away from Pittsburgh.

And after two years, I came back and I stayed with George until he retired in 2014, and then I had the opportunity to move over with now Congressman Mark DeSaulnier as his district director. So I have been a staffer for a long time coming up on 20 years next year, believe it or not, but I had had the opportunity to work on campaigns during that time as well for both members as well as other members that were running here in California and other states, helping them with their campaigns.

And so what made me decide to run for office here in Pittsburgh, some of the members were retiring from the city council and they approached me about serving on the city council, which at the time, I wasn’t quite sure just because as being a working mom, being on a city council, it’s $500 a month. So there’s just no way to figure out how just to do one. So you still have to have a full-time job. But once I knew that I will be able to do both through my job, I just jumped for a chance. Anything to give back and serve the community that has done so much for me.

Amanda Tewes: I’m so glad you introduced how you thought about running for office because I think that’s a big step to take for any woman. And Mayor, I was wondering if you could speak to that a bit about your decision to first run for office. What was involved in that?

Libby Schaaf: I think it all started in late 2008. Like I said, I had been a staffer. I’d been behind the scenes for a long time. I actually got laid off by the Port of Oakland. I was serving as the director of public affairs, but it was like just the whole meltdown recession. And my godmother, Mary Morris Lawrence, had passed away and I kind of had a replacement godmother named Judy Johnson and she dropped off on my front doorstep Nancy Pelosi’s autobiography with the Emerge California application stuck into it with a Post-it that said, “You have to do this.” So you don’t say no to your godparents and your mentors.

And so I filled out the application thinking, “Oh, I might run for office someday in the distant future.” I just had my second baby. Just changing diapers and washing bottles seemed like about the only thing I could manage. But I got into the program, and it was being around other inspirational women, women telling you every day like, “What have you been waiting for? You are so qualified.” That really kicked me in the bottom to actually run for office and I graduated from the Emerge Class of ’09. I declared my candidacy in 2010.

And I will say I made that final decision really with just a lot of interesting prodding. Studies show that women have to be asked multiple times to run, I guess men not so much. So just don’t forget the power of actually asking. Telling people that you see them in these roles, it makes all the difference in the world.

Amanda Tewes: Yeah. I imagine, though, that you had a background in law. Louise, you had a background in law. Louise, what do you think your background brought to your political career?

Louise Renne: Well, I think, of course the immediate impetus to my being appointed to the Board of Supervisors was due to the 1978 tragedy at San Francisco City Hall when Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated, and Dianne Feinstein became the mayor. And Dianne Feinstein appointed me to take her place on the board of supervisors. But the background to that was that I had been early on involved in establishing California Women Lawyers, which was a statewide organization devoted to increasing more women in the judiciary and also more opportunities for women in law and politics. And in 1977, I was the president of California Women Lawyers, and Jerry Brown had just appointed Roseburg to be Chief Justice when Senator Richardson and others decided that they were going to in effect get her kicked off the court by not having her reconfirmed if you will by the public. And so there was a campaign to oust Chief Justice Roseburg.

I, as president of California Women Lawyers, and the others, we decided we needed to do something about that. And Roseburg was then taking the position that she would not get involved in a political campaign. So I went up to Sacramento to see one of her good friends, Phil Isenberg who then in the assembly, later mayor of Sacramento. And I said, “There’s got to be a campaign because otherwise she will lose.” And he said to me, “Well, Louise, you’re going to run it.” I have never run a campaign before. But obviously, there was no choice. So I ended up running the statewide campaign to retain Chief Justice Roseburg and she won.

And I had been somewhat involved in neighborhood politics a bit too, and with the Attorney General’s Environmental Unit. And I think a combination of these events, if you will, led to Dianne appointing me to take her place on the board of supervisors. There was a neighborhood committee and a district committee established that she looked to recommendations and they recommended me. And so I then became a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And I was there for a while when the city attorney died unexpectedly, and Dianne then appointed me to become the first woman city attorney. Well, that’s a bit of the history there.

Amanda Tewes: I thought I didn’t do that anymore. I was a Zoom expert. I’m sorry. Louise, I’m interested in that you were the first woman in that position. What did that feel like for you? What was that experience like being the first?

Louise Renne: Well, obviously, I was very proud of being appointed by then Mayor Feinstein, and immediately became emersed in the work. I will have to tell this funny story on myself because the San Francisco City Attorney had been very ill. And as a result, the office had become in disarray if you will, literally and physically in the conference room where everybody matter where depositions or members of the public came, there were broken chairs. There was just trash in the hallways. So the first thing I did almost the first day in the job is I told everybody they were going to take the morning and we were just going to clean the place up. And I could just see some of the people rolling their eyes saying, “Well, that’s what happens when you appoint a woman. You’re going to get housecleaning.”

Anyhow, I tell that story on myself because actually, it did make a difference because all of the people thought, “Wow, she really cares.” And we did. And ironically, one of the things too was early stages of IT. And I called a group in one of that first days too and said, “We need a backup of all of the IT stuff that we had such as it was in those days.” And lo and behold, the morning after that, the man who was in charge died. If we wouldn’t have backed it up, we would have lost all of that. So that was just kind of getting going. And then fast forward, I guess what I’m most proud of is the affirmative litigation work that we did. And I have to give credit in this case to Jon Holtzman who’s now one of my partners, and he came in and said, “You know, I…” We had this discussion about how the traditional role of a city attorney is to defend the city. The public officials, the mayors, the city councilman or Board of Supervisors and defend the city.

But there are times when you need to work affirmatively. And so I had a friend some of you may know, Drew Raimi, who was then quite an activist in San Francisco. And she was really complaining about the Olympic Club because the Olympic Club would not allow women and minorities even though they were on San Francisco public property. They were playing on three holes of the public property. So the first case that we did and in an affirmative way was to sue the Olympic Club because they were not admitting women and minorities. And we said, “You have a choice. You can either start admitting women and minorities to the Olympic Club, or you can play on 15 holes.” That is your choice. And so the outcome as history will say is that women and minorities are now admitted to the club. Women have become president. And it’s very ironic that some of the men who were most opposed later on actually called me to say thank you because their daughters were able to play at the Olympic Club.

Amanda Tewes: Thank you for sharing that-

Louise Renne: A lot of lawsuits that we did to that might be of interest.

Amanda Tewes: Yeah. I think what’s really interesting about that story is that you’re discussing some of the challenges that women face just being in public positions, much less elected positions. But by the time council member you came along into politics, what were some of the challenges you so for women who had heard from women who’d come before you?

Shanelle Scales-Preston: Yeah. So I think some of the challenges are you have where it’s either men or women that feel as though you’re not ready. Or there’s a way that you go about it that you need to go and talk to all these different individuals and they have to give you the blessing before you run for office. And I think today, that’s different. I think for myself, seeing the Women’s March in 2016 and just being a part of getting involved with that movement, you just have so many women that just wanted to make a change. And living here in Contra Costa County, it’s just something I had never seen before. I mean, to see over 5,000 women marching in Walnut Creek, marching and chanting Black Lives Matter, I’m like, “Wow, this is different.”

And I felt represented and supported as well because being a staffer, you’re in all these different meetings. You’re around all these different groups of people and you feel like… There was just this change. So for 2018, there was just so many women that decided to run for office. And one person in particular, Diana Becton, she’s our district attorney here in Contra Costa County. She is the first African American district attorney as well as the first African American woman district attorney. I enjoy working on her campaign and going out to campus with her and she’s just really inspiring just to see that Contra Costa was ready to make that change to have a woman in office which helped me decide that I needed to do more just here in my community.

As for our city council, we haven’t had many women on the city council. I think I am number six as a council member, but the women in Pittsburgh are really strong. Nancy Parent, she happens to be one of our living legends here in Pittsburgh but served on the council for a long time. And she was one of the women that told me that I was running. And no one tells Nancy Parent “No.” But she has been one of the trailblazers here. And I felt like the women that was before me, Vice Mayor Merl Craft who serves on the council now, she was already also very supportive. And Yvonne Beals, she was the first African American woman.

So I think when she was elected, I was 23 just getting out of college and I just remember going to her swearing in ceremony just thinking how remarkable that was for her to be 29 years old and to be the first African American woman to serve on our city council. It just inspires you to see that there’s change and the needle is moving although it’s moving slowly, it is time for women to do more.

Amanda Tewes: Mayor, I’m interested in after you graduated from Emerge in 2009, you decided you’re going to run for office of some sort someday. What advice did you receive from other women about what it was going to be like or what you should be doing moving forward?

Libby Schaaf: I think some great advice for anyone who’s thinking of pursuing office someday or tomorrow is it is all about the people in your lives. So don’t forget to stay in touch with your friends from high school and college. Get involved in things never because you think it’s going to look good on a resume or a campaign brochure, but because you are passionate about it. Because people who see that passion, they’re the ones that are going to show up and knock on doors and call perfect strangers to tell them about your candidacy and even write you your first checks before anybody else does.

So nurture those relationships, take care of them. Get involved in things that you are uniquely passionate about. Never be fake, and also take on some leadership roles. Get appointed to a commission, get a job in politics like a staffer. It’s interesting Shanelle and I have a very similar background or join a nonprofit board. Get in positions where you have to fundraise. It’s a lot easier asking people for money for issues or causes you care about. It’s much more uncomfortable when you’re asking for yourself. So it’s good practice.

And then get involved with things like Emerge. Having this sisterhood, having this support network around you, it really is trying to kind of compete with the old boys network. That is a real thing and those relationships matter. And the Emerge stamp of approval, I know when I get a call from an Emerge alumni, I always will make time to meet with them because I know their quality if they were in that program. So just those are some little pieces of advice. Career paths are funny. I never dreamed of being in elective office, even getting out of college as a poli sci major. It just didn’t seem like a thing that I would ever think about doing. So your career is funny. Trust your values and your gut and it will take you in the right direction.

Amanda Tewes: Louise, I’m hearing the mayor talk about the importance of networks. And I know that when you were first running for office, there was no such thing as Emerge. How did you build those networks with women or people who would support a woman running for office?

Louise Renne: Well, I think Mayor Schaaf’s advice is very good and advice I tried to follow as well. I tried to let my friends, my neighbors know that I welcome their support. Back in those days, I mean, you used to campaign on the corner buses, Muni system, also the bingo games. Those were a big thing in those days. You went around on the bingo circuit and pass your literature out that gives you a little time. All the bingos being called. So the traditional ways. I think another thing too is that it’s particular if you are already holding office if I never allowed any deputy city attorney to get involved in the campaign in any way, but I always certainly hoped that they were enough support of me that they would be telling their friends, “Hey, she should be re-elected.”

I’ll also just say back to your question about the early days when I became city attorney and I pass this on to anybody who gets in a position where you have the ability to make a difference, I think it is very critical as the people you appoint and to make sure that whatever office you hold is as diverse as possible. When I first became city attorney, of course, I was the first woman city attorney, but there were no women in charge of very important areas of the office. So I appointed the first woman to head the litigation part of the office, which is huge. I appointed a Latina woman to be the general counsel at the San Francisco Airport, which had never been done before. And so I think that a message I would give to people is as Mayor Schaaf says, you have to be nice to people. You have to be thoughtful and considerate so that they have a reason to support you, and then do the substantive work that adds to more reasons to support you.

And so I think Mayor Schaaf’s advice and others advice about that is very well taken. Oh, I should add too just as a little historical aside that Kamala Harris, now Senator Harris in the early days headed our Family and Children’s Services team, and she did an excellent job.

Amanda Tewes: Very good. So Louise, when you attained this position of power, you were able to help bring up women behind you. And I’m wondering, council member, if you can speak about how you think about mentoring other women or how that will come for you in the future.

Shanelle Scales-Preston: Yes. So I think over the past couple of years, I have really focused on the young women in our community, as well as even in the office ensuring that we have women on our team, making sure our team is diverse, as well as interns. Just here in our community, there are different groups that have been working with young people who are interested in running for office or on the planning commission or any other type of commission. And I have been making sure… I’ve been making myself available to speak with them, to mentor them. There are two that are getting ready to run for office now for school board here within the city of Pittsburgh, and just letting them know similar to what Mayor Schaaf mentioned is you just got to be true to yourself.

I think people see often if you’re authentic or not. The tough part now is just during COVID and you can’t be like face to face. Here in Pittsburgh, knocking on doors is what really works here still and it’s not social media. And I learned that from my campaign. People appreciate you coming to the door and just having a conversation and wanting to know where you stand on the issues and just wanting to see that passion behind if you’re going to fight for those particular issues that they really truly care about and just to see a face with a name. So just as these young women are getting ready to run, my goal is to [inaudible] as many people in the community as possible because those people will encourage others. And that’s one vote. The next person, they help push for the next vote whether they’re just putting signs in your neighborhood block on everyone’s door. Any little help from a constituent actually work. So my goal is just to work with all of our women here within the community to get them up and ready.

Amanda Tewes: Mayor, same question. I’d really be interested to hear how you think about mentoring other women.

Libby Schaaf: Well, let me just start by appreciating all the mentors I’ve had. I remember when I was running for mayor, there was never a poll that showed me winning. And maybe three weeks before… Anyway, it was very close to election day. It was like a critical time. Absentee ballots had just been dropped. And I got a call from Barbara Boxer who was still our senator or U.S. Senator at the time who never endorsed in local races called me and she said, “I want to endorse you.” And she actually flew out to Oakland to do it in person with a big press conference. And when she was done, she talked about how our paths to these offices were so similar. How we started in the background, how we worked behind the scenes of staffers, how we raised kids and juggled that while trying to keep true to our passions for public service.

And when she was done, she handed me her speech, and it was handwritten in her own handwriting on just yellow lined paper. And she said, “I want you to have this and to keep it,” because I wrote every word myself from my heart.” And I won the election actually with a very strong margin considering that no poll had ever showed me winning. And I believe her endorsement was one of those turning points, not to mention Jerry Brown’s endorsement, which was also very helpful, but I had worked for him. It was different.

And so when other women just reach out… I mean, my house was vandalized last week. Who calls me personally to see how I’m doing but Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein? So that mentoring even when you get into position, no one is ever above being mentored even when you’re the mayor of a major American city. I appreciated those calls so much. Now, as I try and mentor others, I do it a lot through the Emerge program. That way, I feel like I can hit a lot of people all at once. I come every year and I do the fundraising training because women, you need to learn to love fundraising. It’s really empowering once you get into it. And I try and put my money where my mouth is. I try and write checks to women who are running. It was cool. I saw a little comment from Katherine Stephanie who was in my class in Emerge in 2009 who was appointed and then ran to be San Francisco’s supervisor. Someone, again, who was a staffer for years.

I want to shout out Lupe Valdez. Shanelle and I were talking about her when I got my first job in politics and I knew nothing. I had this fancy law degree and I’d worked at a big law firm. So I thought I was going to work on policy. But Ignacio and I think this is a great policy, everyone has to do constituent work. No matter how fancy your degree is, you have to answer the phones and solve whatever problem is on the other line. And every call that came in, I would say, “That is a very interesting issue. I am so sorry that is happening to you. I will get right back to you with a solution.” And I’d hang up the phone and I’d say, “Loopy, what do I do?” She was so patient with me.

So whether it’s at the workplace or through programs like Emerge, we have to pay it back because so many women, and Louise, you’re one of my just sheroes. So many women have blazed the trail, have punched through those glass ceilings for us, and we’ve got to do the same. So whether it’s, again, just looking people in the eye and telling them, “You are amazing, you have to run. Do not let anyone tell you that it’s not your turn because it’s your turn now.” Just even that cheerleading aside from writing the cheque and actually showing up and phone banking and knocking on doors and doing just the shoe leather stuff of campaigns, that is how you pay it forward and we all have to do that.

Amanda Tewes: Yeah. Thank you for that. Louise, do you have anyone to add as a mentor or someone you could look up to when you first started in politics?

Louise Renne: Well, obviously, Dianne Feinstein was the one who appointed me to take her place on the board of supervisors, and she had big shoes to fill. And I thoroughly enjoyed my time on the board of supervisors, even though it was a very, very turbulent time in the aftermath of what had happened in the assassinations. And of course, no sooner did we have that when we had Proposition 13, and then we had the whole AIDS epidemic to contend with. And throughout it, I’m happy to say I was able to work very closely with then Mayor Dianne Feinstein, but I have been very lucky all my life.

First of all, I had a mother and people don’t usually say their mothers were a mentor, but I would have to say mine was. I mean, my mother was never able to go to college. Economic circumstances wouldn’t permit, but she was always, even when I was a little kid, “Louise, you have to do well in school.” Both my parents, “You have to do well in school.” There was no differentiation between my brother or me. We both had to do well. We both had to do well. When I was in college, I had a mentor that took a special interest in helping me Know that I could go to law school even though some of the law schools in those days still were not admitting women or had just admitted women and which is hard to believe. I mean, like Harvard Business School, for example, didn’t admit women, but I had a mentor in college who kept saying, “You can do it, you can do it.”

And so I have felt very fortunate to have mentors all… I don’t know anybody who can honestly say there hasn’t been somebody in their life that helped them along. And I try to pay back by working with young people in public housing here in San Francisco. There’s a wonderful organization called Friends of the Children that mentors children from basically first grade all the way through high school and I’m not part of the organization now. I’m a retiree. I still continue to work with some of the families that I became close to. Because I think as everybody on this program knows, if you’re fortunate, you have to give back. It’s what makes a better world. And certainly in this day and age where the needs are so great, I think we have to take particular time out to think, how do we go about reaching out and helping others who are in need right now? And hopefully, they in turn will turn around and give back.

Amanda Tewes: I think that’s a really hopeful note. I want to give you a final question to have all of you think about, what do you see is the future of “Bay Area Women in Politics?” What are you hoping for? What’s coming our way? Gosh, council member, why don’t you start us off? And it looks like we can’t hear you right now. No.

Shanelle Scales-Preston: How about now?

Amanda Tewes: Yeah, success.

Shanelle Scales-Preston: Okay. I see more women, more women in politics, at every level of government, but also just more women in the workplace. That’s something that we do not see. Even as a staffer, some meetings that I go to, sometimes I’m still the only woman in the room. Admit it or not, sometimes I’m still the only African American person in the room as well. But just to see more diversity within businesses and having women of color that are in management roles and positions, I think that’s a big change that we’re going to see coming. And I look forward to that. And I think as we start to see more women, we’ll start seeing more positive change. California is just one of those states that’s always at the forefront and leads the way for the rest of the states a lot of the time. But we’ll start seeing that slowly move across the other way as we continue down this path or just making sure gender equality is met for all of us.

Amanda Tewes: Louise, how about you? What do you see for the future?

Louise Renne: Well, I think more women in politics. Most definitely, I hope. I’d like to pick up on the point, though, that council woman has brought up and that is diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It’s absolutely critical. For reasons I won’t get into today, I am involved in some litigation that has to do with the lack of diversity in the corporate governance structure. If you do a search of virtually every American Corporation today, you will find a number that, A, never had, still don’t have, and no immediate plans to have a black American on the board, a lone Latino on the board, no other diversity. Women are starting to make more, white women. But if you take a look at the lack of diversity in the corporate boardroom where there are things a person on a corporate board can do just an elected official.

For example, you can make sure that your suppliers are diverse. You can make sure your law firms are diverse, etc. So I think that justice there has been and will continue to be a major effort required in the political realm. That in the economic realm, there is so much work to be done. And hopefully, I think with renewed vigor and interest outgrowing out of tragedy, that hopefully, we will be able to take the tragedy of George Floyd’s death and the movement that seems to be making a difference will hopefully continue and spread out not only through the political world, but the economic and certainly corporate world. That’s my hope.

Amanda Tewes: That’s wonderful. Mayor, last word on this. What do you see is the future of “Bay Area Women in Politics?”

Libby Schaaf: Well, let me talk about the future I want to see. And I think all of us will say we have to be optimists to survive in these careers. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning because we also have to hold tremendous suffering and tragedy in our communities. That is also part of our jobs. But I want to see a world that is equitable and where everyone thrives. And when I talk about equity, I believe that structural racism is one of the biggest barriers to everything good that we want for the world. And that includes getting an actual representative democracy. It’s not just about women, but it’s also about people of color. It’s about anyone who does not fit the dominant identity. And we have to start to reverse engineer those policies, those practices that have been in place forever that are maintaining these obstacles to people getting these opportunities.

So I just think we have to name that and rededicate ourselves to breaking them down. Because everyone suffers when we have taken huge swaths of our community and deprived everyone of the talent, of the brilliance of the people that are living in our cities. And again, as a mayor, I think a lot about cities. The other part about everyone thriving, it is so unacceptable, that so many people do not have their basic human needs met. The expense of housing, the fact that people are having to hold down three jobs just to pay rent or to feed their families is atrocious and that also deprives us of representative political leadership because most political positions have to be done in your free time. They don’t pay a full-time salary. And even if you are running for an office that does pay a salary, a full-time salary, you have to be a candidate on your own time. And so many people cannot reasonably do that as well as addressing the gender roles that make women both feel but also in reality take on all the responsibilities of the household.

The other advice that I give women is find a great partner in life. My husband does all the laundry. I am so proud of that. I am so grateful for that. You’ve got to find partners that are willing to be actual equal partners in raising kids and holding down a household. The biggest barrier I have found is all the mom shaming that goes on when you run for office if you have young children. So that’s both a psychological warfare but it’s also a reality. So I just see a future where we have resolved these inequalities as well as the injustice of poverty. And that is what our democracy needs to really invite everybody to that table.

Amanda Tewes: Thank you. I think that’s a good note to end our larger conversation on. Martin, can you share with us some of the questions that have been coming from the audience?

Martin Meeker: Well, I certainly invite our attendees to submit some questions through the Q&A panel. A few have come through largely kind of questions for the mayor about urban politics. There was one on potholes, but of course. But if there are any more specific questions, please either use the chat or the Q&A. But actually, I have one question and in particular, the mayor, you’ve mentioned this program, Emerge California, and I’m sure that everyone can look it up through Google. But I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about it and what it’s done and what it does for people.

Libby Schaaf: Sure. Emerge California was founded by Andrea Dew Steele and Susie Tompkins Buell with this idea that we needed to create a pipeline of democratic women. Things like Emily’s List and other programs would support women who were running for a state office or a federal office. But so often before you’re ready to do that, you’ve served on your library commission. Isn’t that I think how Nancy Pelosi got her started if I’m not mistaken? Or you’ve run for city council or school board, you’ve got to start somewhere. And so Emerge was intentional about helping women run for their first office. And it has been so successful. It now has three programs in California, so northern, central, and southern, and then they also spun off Emerge America that has started Emerge programs in states all across the country. And they’ve had some huge successes, I think in Virginia, of the number of seats that flipped from Republican to Democrat, the vast majority of them were won by Emerge graduates.

And just on a personal level, again, the sisterhood, the friendships that I’ve made, the people who not only helped with my campaign, but when I’m having a policy problem, I can pick up the phone and call. This network has just been a gift that keeps on giving. There are probably other programs out there and I don’t want to assume everyone is a Democrat. I’m sure the Republicans have a similar program. But this idea of starting the pipeline, I think, was brilliant. And it’s very practical training. They train you. I mean, the communications training is life changing. And this is something that I think Emerge recognizes, is that women tend to be more authentic communicators. And instead of trying to train us out of that, they actually try and help us polish that natural inclination. And I think people are ready for a little more authenticity and just being real from their politicians, right?

So just I’m so thankful. Emerge trains you on field strategy, how to pick a campaign consultant, like I said, fundraising. So all these practical aspects of actually being the candidate. And I think like many Emerge graduates, I had worked on other people’s campaigns. I had worked behind the scenes for politicians. It’s not the same when you are the candidate. And to get that intense training as well as the gift of this network, it is invaluable. I always say if it weren’t for Emerge, I would not have run and I wouldn’t have won.

So just big love out to my Emerge sisters. I saw Katherine Stephanie out there. And if you’re not ready to do it, write them a check. Write them a check. They need to raise money to run. And right now, we need good leadership in this country. I think we’ve got to keep people in love with democracy and it is being threatened in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime. So please support programs like Emerge.

Martin Meeker: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. That was an excellent description of it. We have a question from a gentleman named Zack who asks, “What are the two or three best things we, meaning men and women, can do to recruit and support young women to run for and win elective office?”

Amanda Tewes: Council member, do you want to take that one?

Shanelle Scales-Preston: Yes. I would say first would be once you find the candidate that’s running money, I would say the male candidates that I were running against, they were receiving more money than the female candidates. There were six people that were running in my race, two women and four men. And when you go back to look at the records, some of those even happened to be different organizations or unions or people, for some reason, they supported male candidates more. More money went behind the male candidates. So even though they supported me, the dollar amount was low. So I would say be fair and equal to support women as well.

And second, whatever support you can provide in mentoring and guidance or showing that person or introducing that person to an individual who may be able to help. I was blessed that I worked for Congressman George Miller and Congressman Mark DeSaulnier. So everyone don’t have those types of opportunities. And I didn’t know that I was actually being mentored by these males, but I was, and they were great. I grew up in a neighborhood that I didn’t come from a lot. So I appreciate all the opportunities that came before me. But the structure that my work environment, my colleagues are my family. So it’s like my George Miller family, some of those people that I’m broke off. Melanie Weintraub happens to be a campaign consultant and came out of retirement to help me with my campaign. But she used to work for George Miller with Teresa Alford, another person who used to work for George Miller came out to help me with my campaign.

And so my DeSaulnier team, we mentioned Lupe a bit earlier, and my former chief of staff helped me with my candidate statement. The people around you can be really supportive and can be your family as well. And so just blessed to have just that large family of my colleagues to help with that push. And so I think we can look outside our box with other individuals to help us get to the goal.

Martin Meeker: Thank you, council member. Appreciate that. I look at the clock and I see it’s 1:00 p.m. and we need to be respectful of our busy panelists’ schedules. So I’m going to hand it back to Amanda for any closing remarks. And I do want to encourage you to stay on as kind of a post event-event and Amanda will describe a video that she’s going to show.

Amanda Tewes: Yes. Well, thank you again, all of you for joining us. I think the stories that you shared today really reflect the kind that we want to document in the oral history project, “Bay Area Women in Politics” because it is so important to hear about the behind the scenes machinations of how you get the political work done and who supports you along the way. I think you’ve offered us many wonderful examples of that. So thank you to all of you, Mayor Libby Schaaf, Council Member Shanelle Scales-Preston, and former supervisor, Louise Renne. If you want to stick along with us and watch our video, you may. I know you’ve got busy lives.

Okay. So for those of you sticking around, we’re going to show you a snippet of a video that I had a wonderful intern last summer, Eleanor Naman, who created this piece. Digging into our archival collection and looking at older oral histories, you’ll see some familiar names in there like Alice Paul. And also thinking about how we could connect this archival oral history work we already have with the future of this oral history project. So you’ll see a little bit of that there. And if all goes well, I will share my screen and this will be easy.

Martin Meeker: Actually, one second, Amanda, before you go ahead. I just want to, again, thank our panelists from the Oral History Center or two of our panelists from the Oral History Center. We appreciate your time and you’re welcome to stick around and watch this, but certainly, if you need to go back to work, we understand that as well. For all of those still staying with us, there’s still a bunch of attendees. As director of the Oral History Center, I want to certainly invite you to support the work of our center as well as this project. The Oral History Center is basically a nonprofit at the University of California. We are soft money operation. So all the interviews that we do need to be funded externally. So if you want to support this project and others, I encourage you to go to this link right here about our funding and donate tax deductible donation to the Oral History Center. So with that said, I’m going to hand it back over to Amanda. Thank you so much.

Amanda Tewes: Thank you, Martin. Here we go.

[Clip from the video]

Interviewer: Is there anyway, Alice, that you could characterize the women in this movement? Is there any trait or characteristic that any of them had in common?

Alice Paul: I always felt there was one thing that they all had in common, which I presume you have. I don’t know, I think you have, which was a feeling of loyalty to our own sex, and an enthusiasm to have every degradation that was put upon our sex removed. That’s what I had anyway.

Speaker 8: There’s a slogan in the legislation. Do you want to keep a woman in Congress?

Interviewer: Is that right?

Speaker 8: And they said, “No.” That was in ’16, ’17. And the women had just gotten the vote.

Interviewer: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Speaker 8: They knew I could stay so that people would vote for me because I had a better organization than any man and than any woman has had since.

Rosalind Wiener Wyman: This town was really stunned when I won, like the headline in the… It was the Mirror in those days said, “It’s a girl,” and I mean it was a full headline and the story went across the country, and of course, I wore 20. I wore 20, about 20 pairs of shoes out. I was the first woman to be elected in a major city in the United States, and a city of its size. I mean, it had been done in little cities, but nobody in a major city. Even though I went in there green, I really learned and I was not going to be caught and I knew the rules of the council and I knew that charter inside and out by the time I sat down in that seat. And thank God I did because I was resented when I first got there greatly. I mean, most of the men were old enough to be my father, my grandfather.

Interviewer: It had been a tight little club for many years.

Rosalind Wiener Wyman: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was really murder when I arrived and it was not pleasant at the beginning at all.

March Fong Eu: I think at the beginning, they kind of thought it was a novelty in terms of, “Well, nobody with… No Chinese American has ever even attempted to do anything like this. She’s just kind of a foolhardy person trying something, the impossible.” So I guess when they found out that, well, indeed, I did it and that was successful and it appears that I’m going to keep on doing it and keep on staying there, I think he began to really… then they began to accept me for what I was doing

Elizabeth R. Gatov: He was a curious man. But he really didn’t think women had much place. And there were many men that I encountered who didn’t. But naturally, when you find somebody like that, you get around them and ignore them. You don’t try to get into a head-on collision with them or explain to them why. Politically, my method was to try to not necessarily to be the person who had the bright idea. If you could plant it in somebody else’s head, it’s so much better. It was their idea and you could help them which I… a role I liked.

But I really never felt that by yourself, you get anywhere politically anyway. You’re either too far out in front, so there’s nobody behind you, or you’re just a lonely voice in the wilderness. I think you have to move with a certain consensus in order to make any progress.

Hope Mendoza Schechter: No, I get the feeling of we’re the drones. We’re the ones that literally put the campaigns on and they need us. We’re the workers. We’re the ones that really do the day in and day out manning of headquarters, volunteers, etc., and put on the campaign.

Frances Mary Albrier: What the teachers and those in Tuskegee and Howard, they instilled in we older ones that we were not… we would not get what we thought we would get. We would not get into positions that we were entitled, but we must struggle and work to place the other younger ones behind in those positions. And it would take time, so we’d have the patience. And I have lived to see the things that I’ve worked for come to pass today because I never thought I’d see so many young black women in positions that I see them in today.

We needed clubs and organizations to get these women into so they could learn the mechanism of running the country and their part in it. Because we all felt that someday that women would step in and take over some of these offices themselves.

Mary Hughes: More and more, reporters have learned too, that if you ask a woman about her children, you ask the man. That they, reporters, especially female reporters, have come to understand that these small things, relatively small questions, when taken together, can… the age, the color of the dress, the where are your children, can unfairly put a woman candidate in a box that is a disadvantage. And so over this same generation, that’s changed a lot. There’s a difference between winning the election and changing the culture. So my job was always to win the election. What I knew in the off-season was that I had to study what things were happening in the culture that were making it harder for these women to win, and then work on solutions that I could try out in the campaigns that that would give them advantage, that would enable them to dispel notions or prejudices about the way gender might be holding them back, or hobbling them some way.

And so that was great fun, but I was never confused that a campaign that I was working in was… That anything about that campaign should be designed to change the culture. It should be designed to win the election.

Amanda Tewes: All right. That video is also available on YouTube for those of you who want to take a gander. And thank you again to everybody for coming with us on this journey today, and again, to all our panelists for engaging in such a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it and look forward to many more.