State Senator Sylvia Santana stood in front of a room of Black women who run Michigan campaigns and told them the talking part is over.
Santana hosted the annual luncheon for Black women in Michigan politics, which honored Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary, and Jalisa Washington-Price, a veteran political strategist who was a senior political adviser to Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. What Santana said from the front of the room was not a thank you. “We can no longer just talk; we have to do,” she said. “And these elections have consequences, and so who you put in office matters.” If that does not happen, she said, Black women “will be on the table instead of at the seat at the table.”
She put the claim underneath it plainly. Santana said, “We built this country; we were the foundation of this country,” and that “our voices matter, our creativity matters, who we are as a people matters.”
Washington-Price told the room the gathering itself was worth something, then named the harder part. “It’s important we continue to have like convenings like this, right?” she said. “But we have to run through the finish line.”
Jean-Pierre talked about what she had watched up close. “It’s easy to campaign, very hard to govern,” she said. She added that she believes history will be kind to the Biden-Harris administration.
