Kelly McCreary & Laphonza Butler | The 2022 MAKERS Conference

Kelly McCreary & Laphonza Butler at the 2022 MAKERS Conference.

Video Transcript

- Please welcome Kelly McCreary and Laphonza Butler.

[APPLAUSE]

KELLY MCCREARY: Everyone, what a pleasure to be here with you all today. Incredible lineup, incredible speakers. And we have one more before you. I'm speaking to Laphonza Butler today, President of EMILY's List. I have a lot of questions for you. Maybe you have something for me too. So let's dive right in. Let us waste no time.

So you're President of EMILY's List. It's the nation's largest resource for women in politics. I am wondering what led you to EMILY's List. Why now? What is your engine? What's the engine driving you and your work today?

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Thank you so much for the question, Kelly. And I'm happy to get into it, but can we just appreciate like what's happening right here?

[APPLAUSE]

Long-running "Gray's Anatomy." can we just celebrate this sister and give her flowers? Look, my story in coming to EMILY's List, and my choice-- Kelly and I've been talking about, we both have a daughter. My daughter is a little bit older, but my why to EMILY's List is really all around my daughter. And it really is the story of a turtle. I know, right.

KELLY MCCREARY: Say more. Say more, please.

[LAUGHTER]

LAPHONZA BUTLER: So you know, I came to EMILY's List, made the decision to join EMILY's List late in 2021. And my daughter was doing kindergarten at the kitchen table, like most people's kids. But in 2020, at the end of 2020, I was listening to her class have a mock election. And the turtle was running, if you hadn't gotten that part yet.

But so the turtle was running. There was a wolf running. There was a snake running. There's lots of people running.

KELLY MCCREARY: Anthromopized. People, yeah.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: People running running in their election. And listening to-- I could hear like my daughter's participation in the conversation, and I heard before I had to get on my own Zoom that she was the only kid that voted for the turtle. And so at the kitchen table at dinner, we had to like talk about this. So I needed to understand why my child voted for the turtle.

It's like, well-- I asked I was like, well, Nyla, who won the election? She said the wolf won. Well, why did the wolf win? She said, well, because he promised that he would give more time at recess and that kids would get more candy.

[LAUGHTER]

Right, and I looked at my daughter. I'm like, well, you like all of those things. Why not? Why are we not voting for the wolf? So I said, well, why did you vote for the turtle? Get ready. My kid looked at me and said, well, mama, the turtle promised to make sure everybody was treated fairly. My God.

[APPLAUSE]

KELLY MCCREARY: Good momming. Good momming.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: And so when the opportunity came to me to join EMILY's List, it took me back to the story of the turtle, because what I felt like my daughter was telling me was what kind of community she wanted to be a part of, what kind of government she wanted representing her.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yeah

LAPHONZA BUTLER: What kind of society. She really wanted to help to create. And I had to ask myself the question, what am I doing today to help ensure that the turtle could eventually win.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yeah.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: So that's how I got to EMILY's List.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yes. Wow. The turtle had an unpopular platform, it sounds like. But that's exactly-- it would be wonderful if we could all sort of arrive at the turtle's values and appreciate what the wolf has to offer, but know that ultimately, the turtle is what we need.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Because if we're all ultimately treating each other fairly, the notion of more is not a thing.

KELLY MCCREARY: Right.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Because everyone will have enough.

KELLY MCCREARY: That's right. That's right. And there's no keeping up with the Joneses. There's no striving. Exactly. Speaking of, so we were discussing-- I come from a household where both my parents were union members. I've carried that on. Both I myself, my husband, we are union members.

And I know that having access to good-paying union jobs that were stable and afforded them time off, among other incredible benefits, enabled my parents to create a life for us that felt fair, right. Even in a society with lots of different ways of living, we had enough.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Yeah.

KELLY MCCREARY: And you worked for 20 years to create that same fairness in labor by being the President of California SEIU. Starting at the age of 29, now, the theme of this conference being "Making the Future," there are so many incredible young women out there who would love to know how it was-- well, I want to know.

How did at such a young age that you were-- how to be led to that space? It led to a space of leadership, right, at something like that, in labor, in the world of labor. And also, was it a calling? Did you sort of fall into it, and how did you navigate the waters? I imagine there must have been pressure and certain expectations, low or high. You know, how did you work through that, and what advice would you offer young leaders coming up now?

LAPHONZA BUTLER: You know, it's interesting. I get asked this question because my career has been a bit circuitous, spending 20 years in the labor movement, but having first been born and raised in the Deep South in Mississippi, finding my way to the labor movement, finding my way then to working on behalf of Vice President Harris when she was running for president, being a leader of policy and politics for Airbnb, and then winding up at EMILY's List. It has been quite a journey.

And so for me you know, I think about why I'm doing something. And then once I'm clear on why I'm doing it, there is-- I can be quite tunnel-visioned about it. When I came to California in 2009, I knew that I wanted to accomplish 10 things at SEIU California. I wrote down my 10 things, and when I had accomplished my 10 things, I left.

And most people thought, well, that's crazy. Like, you're only 39 years old. Why are you leaving at the height of your career? You're meeting with governors. You're doing this and that. I came to do what I came to do. I came to run my leg of the race, and it was time for me to pass the baton for someone else to run whatever was their leg of the race.

And so for me, it's that clarity. I was raised in the Deep South. I saw my-- I lived poverty. My father died when I was 16 years old. My mother worked three jobs, sometimes all at the same time, to give me and my two brothers a better opportunity.

I went to a historically Black college where I was able to have professors who were on the floor of the Democratic National Convention when Fannie Lou Hamer famously said in 1964 that she was tired of being sick and tired. Those were the people I learned from every single day, who taught me that there were structures that permitted my family's poverty.

KELLY MCCREARY: That's right. Right.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: And so being a part of the labor movement, it wasn't my design, but the gift it gave me was the opportunity to figure out how to take the lessons of those passionate organizers to fix the challenges that my family faced so that the women that I worked for here in this state would have a different story to tell.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yeah.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: And so I focused on doing my 10 things, and I passed the baton and went on to write a new chapter. And I'm excited about writing all those chapters, and I think that's really the work of EMILY's List in so many ways, is to help women across the country who want to run for office to start to write their own next chapter, to figure out what their 10 things are and to be able to pass the baton.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yeah. And so the women, as they write their list of 10 things, I imagine it wasn't a linear checklist, right. It wasn't just like one, two, three. I'm sure you had to circle back to some things here and there. So what's your sort of philosophy around navigating those challenges as you are tackling those 10 things on your list, or those managing the ups and downs of a campaign? The entry into the field of other women who are not Democratic pro-choice women.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Sure.

KELLY MCCREARY: I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Yeah, no, so for me, it is-- I really do try to stay in the space of like impact and outcome. So much of us, so many of us, I have found, can sometimes get lost in the process. And we become so focused on whether or not the process is right that we get delayed. I won't say I get distracted but we get delayed in experiencing the impact and the outcome.

KELLY MCCREARY: Oh, this is hitting me. Please, please, say more, say more.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: So that is where I try to remain-- it's a constant battle to be able to say, I want to experience X or Y in terms of impact and outcome. And yes, I will get mistreated, and yes, I will keep pushing back against it. And yes, I will raise my voice, and somebody will raise their voice louder. And there's always the push and the pull. Ultimately, though, for me, I probably have an unhealthy ability to focus on what it is that I'm trying to get out of whatever the experience is.

KELLY MCCREARY: I love that outlook, though, because it's like, you know, it is. It's easy to get bogged down in the micro, right, and to forget to keep zooming out, keeping your eyes on the prize, see the whole big picture and where you fit into it. And yeah, in a time where for me, you can sort of look around, especially at the political landscape, and feel really discouraged.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: Sure.

KELLY MCCREARY: That sounds like an understatement. But you know, I feel like I get hope from zooming out and seeing that people are making impact in big and small ways all over the place. We don't have to take it on. When you see a problem, you don't have to take the whole thing on yourself, right.

You can use organizations that we already have at our disposal. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. You know, you can access EMILY's List if you want to get into the field. You don't have to figure it out all by yourself. And that gives me a lot of hope, right. I'd love to hear about what's giving you hope right now.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: I mean, so I've traveled. We were talking a little bit earlier just about travel, and how we're all sort of getting older in our lives, and can't do to the red eyes back to the East Coast.

KELLY MCCREARY: No more red eyes.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: So instead of red eyes, my team just piles in other states so that I don't have to go straight back in a red eyes. So I go from California to North Carolina or to Arizona and things in the middle, so that it doesn't feel quite like a red eye.

So the thing that I have found inspiration, though, in all of those trips and stops are not only the incredible candidates, the women who are choosing to run for office in this moment where their children are being harassed, in this moment where their lives are being threatened, where there is less trust and satisfaction in people who run for office and people who take on these opportunities for public service.

It's not a small thing for them to do it. I find myself being inspired every day by the stories of women like Amelia Sykes, who's running for Congress in Ohio. or we all know-- and I was just with Congresswoman Val Demings, who's taking on running for Senate in Florida. Just the persistence of these candidates when there are those who would say it's over. Don't run. And they are choosing to do it anyway.

And then I also find encouragement in young women who are finding their own voice in this moment where reproductive freedom is on the line. And they are organizing walkouts and voter registration, and doing all the things in their communities to make a difference, to make their voice heard. And I find great hope in that. And I think about like, you know, as my daughter is 8 today. In 10 years--

KELLY MCCREARY: Oh, happy birthday.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: In 10 years, she'll be casting her first ballot, right. It's a little scary to think about. Today, it's scary to think about. But I find hope in like the women who are making the future today so that when it's her turn, she can actually cast her ballot to solve the problems of tomorrow, the challenges of tomorrow, and not casting her ballot to solve the challenges that we today could solve. So that's where I find my hope.

KELLY MCCREARY: I love that. Thank you. I'll eat off that. They're saying to please wrap it up, but you just touched on it briefly. But if you don't mind, I just want one more little question. I mean, listen. We have the EMILY's List president here. You know, what they do is put up-- oh my god, candidates who are pro-choice, right. And we know right now that our reproductive freedoms are at stake in this election.

So last question. I want to know from your perspective, what is at stake for women? What does the road after on Wednesday morning look like for us?

We were chatting a little bit about this in the back. It's like, you could tell we had a lot of time. We talked about a lot of things. Look, I think two things I think about Wednesday in relationship to that question. If you didn't vote on Tuesday, you don't get the complaint on Wednesday. That's the first thing I think about Wednesday.

And then secondly, when we all in this room vote and we take our friends to vote on Tuesday, and we get up on Wednesday, we've got to make sure that we take a moment to take care of ourselves, to look at and love our loved ones. And then on Thursday, we have to get back to work.

I think what Coretta Scott King told us is more important today than it has ever been. And that is that justice is not ever truly won, but it is fought for and earned every generation. And so we have to continue. We have to know that an election is not the end. It is just the beginning.

And so when we vote on Tuesday, we get to rest on Wednesday and we get back to work on Thursday, creating the future and making the future that our daughters and that America's daughters deserve.

KELLY MCCREARY: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Laphonza. Thank you all. Let's all get out there, vote, telling people to vote, vote, vote, vote.

LAPHONZA BUTLER: And watch Gray's Anatomy.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

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