Hillary Clinton Campaign Press Release - On the Road For Hillary: a Travelogue

From the moment that Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, I knew I wanted to be involved with her campaign.?

As a longtime admirer of her both personally—her ability to achieve that ever elusive white whale known as work-life balance as both a politician and a mother—and professionally (her track record of taking a stand for women and children), I was determined to be useful in any way I could.

I imagined this might take the form of a cheeky straight-to-camera endorsement or maybe an amusing T-shirt design, but I never imagined I would be traveling to four or more cities a day to spread the word on why I vote, why you should too, and why I'm supporting Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. But when the lady asks, I answer, and I found myself heading to Boston with a massive, torn garment bag (shout-out to the dude at Chicago O'Hare airport who taped it up!) and a much-practiced speech in my shaking hands.

I want to start this recap the way I started the remarks I delivered in Boston; Manchester, New Hampshire; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Chicago; Iowa City; and Des Moines, Iowa: by saying that involvement in politics came late for me. I didn't seize the opportunity to vote when I turned 18. Rather, I had to be urged to give a darn about the electoral process in our country.?

It was my friend Audrey Gelman, who worked on Hillary's 2008 campaign as a junior press aide, who told me point-blank in 2012 that if I didn't use my platform to talk about what mattered to me, then I was basically voting for Mitt Romney. And, especially as women, who we vote for matters just as much as the issues we rally around. I was never going to see the change I wanted to if I were half-hearted about showing up to the polls and half-hearted about saying what I believed in.

So it was only fitting that Audrey join me on this trip, often reminding me to reapply lipstick, pull up my tights, and carry my remarks in my purse. I thank her for encouraging me to pursue this incredibly gratifying aspect of my life.

A little more background: For those of you who don't know, I interviewed Secretary Clinton for the inaugural issue of Lenny Letter, and that opportunity, to speak with her for an hour about both the personal and the political, really informed the words I shared with the young people—mostly young women—who I met during this whirlwind 48 hours.

My first stop was Boston, where I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Hillary supporters—most notably Barbara Lee, a woman who has helped countless other women make their way to office. Her aim is to research the roadblocks that keep women out of office and also to get a diverse range of female senators, governors—and yes, presidents—elected, so the ratio of women to men in government can actually reflect our population.?

Barbara also has my heart for another reason: She collects modern art by women, including a piece by my mother (of a dancing little cake!) that hangs in her front hallway, and she has made generous donations from her collection to the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Here I am prepping furiously before the event or, as they call it in politics, being briefed.

This event is where I linked up with Abby Wambach, the remarkable (and recently retired) U.S. women's soccer star. She has the potential to be a cult religious leader, that's how charismatic she is. Glad she's using her powers for good and stumping.

In New Hampshire I executed a quick outfit change, then zoned out on the nearest sofa. Abby caught this picture of me in a position that is very natural to me—reclining like a stressed snail.

After that, Abby and I parted ways: She continued through New Hampshire (miss you, Abby), and I stopped in Manchester before catching a plane to Chicago. The Chicago event was delightful, and not only because I met the mother and daughter behind the famous Eli's Cheesecake. They sent Audrey and me not one but FIVE cheesecakes.?

Here, Audrey is celebrating this historic win in our hotel room.

Iowa was next, starting in Iowa City, where I had lunch with a lovely woman named Sarah, who talked frankly with me about her range of concerns as a soon-to-be mother of two, a writer, a Creative Commons lawyer, and an Iowan. She also helped me wrap my head around the caucus process, which is complex, old-school, and really instills a unique sense of political responsibility in the Iowans I met.?

At the end of our journey, Audrey bought and presented me with the book Caucus Chaos, both a souvenir of our time and something I should read so that I can look incredibly smart at cocktail parties.

In Des Moines my event was at a very stylish, Portlandia-esque silkscreen and design studio, where I got a chance to meet Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards's daughter, Lily, the director of communications for the campaign in Iowa.?

I was really thrilled to be making the rounds directly after Planned Parenthood endorsed Hillary—their first primary endorsement in their hundred-year history. The adorable elves at the silkscreen studio made bags and T-shirts with this very personally pleasing image.

Before heading to the airport, I hugged Casey, the gentleman from the campaign who had been driving me in a minivan across the state. He loved my custom-knit Hillary sweater so much that I had no choice but to surrender it. I do feel it's in good hands.?

Doesn't he look pleased?

So ... what did I say to all these people? Why did I go to six cities, take five planes, give seven versions of this speech, and compromise my already shitty immune system??

It wasn't just for the cheesecake. Below is an abridged version of the remarks I shared. Although lots of these quotes have circulated in the media, it's always nice to give something context. Especially something as important as this ...

I'm not just here to tell you why you should vote, although you definitely have to vote, vote hard, and vote often. I also have an opinion on who you should vote for. I have admired Hillary Clinton for many years—24, to be exact, since I was six years old, and she entered the White House as the first lady of the United States. Even as a child, I was impressed not only by the poise with which she approached her position but also the ferocity. Not content to hide her own accomplishments and cede her identity to her husband, she used her time in the White House to help form the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women and to tell us that "women's rights are human rights" in her Beijing speech of 1995.?

Time and time again, she refused to be placed in the box that had previously been drawn for women in her position.

Secretary Clinton went on to have a political career that, on its own terms, is a radical accomplishment. As New York senator, she introduced the CARE Act twice, ensuring that rape and incest victims had access to emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms. As secretary of state, she continued to battle against violence toward women, spearheading a U.N. resolution that established guidelines for an international response to sexual assault in war-torn areas.?

Through her travel, writing, and the Clinton Foundation, she has worked tirelessly for causes ranging from AIDS research to closing the word gap for low-income families and making reading a part of every child's life. Her conviction is moving; her tenacity, astounding.

It's no secret that women's rights matter to me. It's why my Twitter feed is littered with insanity and my underpants say feminist on the butt (NOTE: I packed several pairs of these. They make me feel good ... .)?

Women's rights matter to me more than anything in the world because, as HRC said, women's rights are human rights. Women's equality allows our children to grow up strong and protected, without fear. Women's equality is about the equality of every living human, inextricably linked with issues of racial injustice and religious persecution.?

We so often think globally when it comes to women's rights—as we should, as does Secretary Clinton—but the assault on our rights here in America is alarming, and becoming more so every day.

Hillary Clinton's commitment to reproductive justice, wage equality, and protecting working mothers is unparalleled. When we sat together this past September for an hour-long interview, I saw how clearly she understood the connection between women's rights and the Black Lives Matter movement and how committed she is to bringing young disenfranchised voters back into an active dialogue with politics.?

We discussed a range of other essential issues—student debt, universal health care, gun control, and campus assault, to name a few—and she impressed me time and again with her clear-eyed plans for tackling these murky and challenging issues, issues that so often feel powerfully divisive and impossible to surmount.

I can't talk about Hillary Clinton without saying that she has also survived horrific, gendered attacks on every aspect of her character with unimaginable aplomb. The way she has been treated by the media is just more evidence of the anger that exists toward women, particularly ambitious women, and the way we are not allowed to exist on our own merits but rather as extensions of men in power. Hillary Clinton has roundly rejected this premise, and she is running for president again. As a newly grown-up woman who has experienced my fair share of backlash, of public body shaming, of puritanical judgments, that moves me.

Nothing gets me angrier than when someone implies that I'm voting for Hillary Clinton simply because she's female, as if I have some feminist version of beer goggles—let's call it estrogen blindness. This assumption is condescending at best and hideously misogynistic at worst. The fact is, there are plenty of women whose politics horrify me, just as there are plenty of men who I would love to see in elected office. My gender doesn't prevent me from making cogent decisions about who to vote for: In fact, my gender only informs those decisions in a powerful way.

But I will end with this: We live in a country where women still battle daily for our basic rights. Whether it's wage equality, access to birth control, or the right to press charges against our rapists with a measure of support and dignity, women are having to run twice as fast as their male counterparts just to stay in one place. So while Hillary Clinton's anatomy is not the reason I'm voting for her, I believe that nothing will send a stronger message to America and the world at large than electing a competent, experienced, and brilliant woman to the highest office in the land.?

Our first female president would send a message that we are here. We are ready to lead. In fact, she has been leading all along.