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I first performed this little show
a decade ago, uh, for an audience
of maybe 20 people, mostly friends.
I've performed it during presidential elections,
Supreme Court hearings, marches and protests.
Every time I walk out there, the world has changed.
Bye, girl.
-Yep. -I never quite know what's gonna happen.
-Thank you.
Hi. Hi. Thank you.
Thank you all so much for coming out tonight.
Uh, I'm Heidi. Welcome.
Uh, when I was 15 years old, I would travel the country,
giving speeches about the United States Constitution
for prize money.
This, uh, this was a scheme invented by my mom,
a debate coach, to help me pay for college.
I would travel to big cities, like Denver, Fresno.
-I, uh, I would win
a whole bunch of money, bring it back
to put in my little safety-deposit box for later.
I was actually able to pay
for my entire college education this way.
-Thank you. Thank you so much.
It was... it was 30 years ago, and it was a state school,
-but thank you.
Uh, a few years ago,
I was thinking about the Constitution
for various reasons.
And I, uh, I thought it would be interesting
to go back and see what my 15-year-old self loved so much
about this document-- because I loved it.
I was a zealot. So I called my mom.
I asked her to send me my speech.
She had thrown it away.
-Uh... which is weird,
'cause, like most moms, she saves everything.
When I was 12, I got a buzz cut,
so I could look like Annie Lennox,
and she still has the bag of hair.
-But for some reason,
she threw away my prize-winning speech.
So I thought what I would do is...
resurrect the speech and the contest
based on what I remember about myself at 15.
Here are, uh...
here are a few things I remember.
In, uh, in addition
to being just terrifyingly turned on all the time...
...I was obsessed with witches and the Salem witch trials,
uh, theater-- here I am!--
-and, uh...
-Thank you. Thank you so much.
And most importantly, Patrick Swayze.
This is the American Legion Hall in Wenatchee, Washington.
This is where I'm from.
The "Apple Capital of the World."
It's a small town. It's a little bit conservative.
This is not a-a naturalistic representation of the hall.
I got my friend Rachel to help me reconstruct this
from my dreams.
I guess it's kind of like
one of those crime victim drawings.
Also, I forgot a door.
Uh, oh, oh, also this.
This is the actual book I used to prepare for this contest.
Your Rugged Constitution.
It is fantastic.
It has all of these cute little cartoons
that explain the amendments to you.
It's, uh, it's endorsed by Herbert Hoover.
-Uh...
I actually noticed recently
that this copy was published in 1956,
which means it didn't have all the amendments,
but that never stopped me from winning.
Actually, I didn't lose very often,
because I was just really fucking good at this contest.
My fiercest competitor was this genius girl, Becky Dobbins,
who every year gave a speech about how the Constitution
was a patchwork quilt.
-Uh...
The thing she was so good at, though,
is that, in order to win this,
you had to draw a personal connection
between your own life and the document.
And Becky was great at this.
She would tell these incredible stories
about her... her pioneer grandma who...
I don't know, like, ate people along the trail.
-This part...
this part was so much harder for me at 15.
I just, I was very emotionally guarded as a teenage girl,
and I did not want to talk about my grandmother.
Uh, we'd give these speeches for rooms filled with older,
mostly white men.
Uh, hi. Hi.
There's so many of you.
Uh, in my memory, they were always smoking cigars,
though I think that can't be true, right?
But I would love it if you could help me out
and just all become the men for me.
So you are all men now. Thank you.
Uh, thank you.
Okay, I'm gonna start now.
I'm gonna be 15, but I'm not gonna do anything weird
to make myself 15, so, uh, here I am, I'm 15.
Good morning.
-Good morning. -Welcome to the regional finals
of the American Legion Oratory Contest
here at LCW Legion Post Number Ten in Wenatchee, Washington.
This contest exists to develop a deeper appreciation
for the U.S. Constitution among high school students
and to help them pay for college.
Here are the rules! Now, this is a two-part contest.
In part one, the contestants get seven minutes
to deliver a prepared oration
that demonstrates his or her understanding
of the Constitution and draws a personal connection
between their own lives and this great document.
In part two, the contestants will draw an amendment
from this can.
They will not have time to prepare a speech.
They will have to speak extemporaneously
on this amendment.
Now, this part of the contest is tough,
and I'm not gonna make it any easier on these kids.
We want to give them the idea of what it'll be like
when they're arguing in front of the Supreme Court one day.
Today's contestants are Becky Lee Dobbins
from Lawrence, Kansas, who brings us
"The Constitution Is a Patchwork Quilt,"
and Heidi Schreck from Wenatchee, Washington,
"Casting Spells: The Crucible of the Constitution."
Let's give these kids a hand before the contest starts.
-Get it out of your systems.
All right! All right, there!
All right, there.
Heidi Schreck.
Please approach the podium.
Your time begins...
-...now. -The Constitution is a living document.
That is what is so beautiful about it.
It is a living, warm-blooded, steamy document.
-It is not a patchwork quilt.
It is hot and sweaty.
It is a crucible.
Do you know what a crucible is?
It is a pot in which you put many different ingredients
and then you boil them up together
until they transform into something else--
something that is sometimes magic.
So, you see, our Constitution is like a witch's cauldron.
Of course...
you all know so much more about the Constitution
than I do because you have all fought in wars.
-Thank you.
Thank you for fighting for our country,
and also for giving me so much scholarship money.
Looking at all of you reminds me
of a-a fantasy I used to have as a little girl
about being attacked by a rapist or murderer.
A rapist or murderer who is a man.
Like all of you.
In my fantasy, I am able to talk the rapist and murderer
out of murdering me because I am able
to make you see that, just like you,
I am a human being.
You say, "I'm here to murder you,"
and I say, "No. Think about this for a moment.
Just like you, I am a human being."
And then, you see me for the first time as a human being.
You say, "Oh, my God, you're right.
You are a human being."
And then you start to cry and I forgive you.
-And a rainbow appears.
And we climb up on this rainbow together.
And by this time, a-a big crowd of my friends from school
has gathered on the street below, and they're so jealous
to see me walking on this rainbow.
"How can she be so special?
Doesn't she have to be in school?"
And I'm like, "I'm delivering this poor man to heaven.
Have a good time in gym class!"
How does this relate to the crucible of the Constitution?
Well, you see, a crucible is a boiling pot--
that is one definition--
but a crucible, it's also a severe test,
a test of patience or belief.
A-A severe test such as the one you and I went through together
-when you wanted to murder me.
Just like with our situation, our Constitution
can be thought of as a boiling pot
in which we are thrown together in sizzling and steamy conflict
to find out what it is we truly believe.
This is why it's such a radical document.
202 years ago,
a group of magicians got together
on a sweltering summer day in Philadelphia,
and they wanted to kill each other, but instead...
...they sat down together and they performed
a collective act of ethical visualization.
Or as I like to call it, a spell.
Now, did they get everything right? No.
No, they didn't.
But that's what amendments are for, right?
Which is why, to conclude my speech,
I would like to tell you about the most magical
and mysterious amendment of them all: Amendment Nine.
Amendment Nine says:
"The enumeration in the Constitution,
"of certain rights,
"shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people."
Do you know what that means?
It means just because a certain right
is not listed in the Constitution,
it doesn't mean you don't have that right.
The fact is there was no way for the framers
to put down every single right we have.
I mean, the... the-the right to brush your teeth.
Yes, you've got it.
-But how long do we want this document to be? -
Here's another example. When I was a little girl,
-I had an imaginary friend named Reba McEntire. -
She was not related to the singer.
Just because our Constitution does not proclaim
the having of imaginary friends as one of my rights
does not mean I can be thrown in jail
for being friends with Reba McEntire.
Isn't that amazing?
Think about it for a moment.
Our Constitution doesn't tell you
all the rights that you have because it doesn't know.
Justice William O. Douglas, the great Supreme Court justice,
when he talked about Amendment Nine,
he used the word "penumbra."
What is a penumbra?
Well, gentlemen...
...here I am, standing in the light,
and there you are, sitting in the darkness.
And, uh, this space between us,
this space right here of partial illumination,
this shadowy space right here-- this is a penumbra.
People laughed at Douglas
for calling it this, but I like it.
I think it's a helpful way to think about the Constitution
and also maybe about our lives.
I mean, here we are,
stuck between what we can see and what we can't.
We are trapped in a penumbra.
It-It-It's like how when I was a little girl,
I used to believe that I was a changeling.
I mean, I still think I might be a changeling,
but I'm gonna go ahead and keep acting like a human being
until my real family comes along to claim me.
-I would sit
on the shores of Spirit Lake in the shadow
of Mount St. Helens, and I would wait
for my real family, the swimming fairies,
to grab me by the legs and pull me under the water.
And we would swim down deep, as deep as we could possibly go,
and just when I thought I was about to drown,
we would pop up in another lake on the other side of the world.
And when I stepped onto the shores of this new land,
I would finally understand who I really was.
That is why I love Amendment Nine so much.
Because it acknowledges that who we are now
might not be who we will become.
It, uh, it leaves
a little room for the future self, and...
and-and we-we just have to hope
we don't drown in the process of figuring out what that is!
-Thank you! Thank you so much. Thank you.
-Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
-Thank you. -No applause, please!
Now for the extemporaneous part of our contest.
Miss Schreck, I'm gonna ask you
to pick an amendment from this can.
I loved this part of the contest.
The, uh, the adrenaline, trying to remember
all the facts about an amendment.
Also, my dad coached me on this part,
and it was nice because I was 15,
so we were having a really hard time,
and, uh, talking about the Constitution
was a way for us both to pretend I wasn't becoming a woman.
Amendment Fourteen, section 1.
Amendment Fourteen is big, folks.
It contains four different sections
that have changed the lives of every person in this room.
Now, because Fourteen is such a bear,
the contestant will only address section 1 of this amendment.
Ready?
Amendment Fourteen, section 1:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
"are citizens of the United States
"and of the state in which they reside.
"No state shall make or enforce any law
"which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
"of citizens of the United States;
"nor shall any state deprive any person
"of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
"nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the law."
Well done.
She will have one minute for her overview
and two minutes to address each of the four clauses
of Amendment Fourteen, section 1.
Just a reminder:
make this as personal as possible.
Tell us how this amendment has affected your life.
Your time begins now!
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay!
So, the Fourteenth Amendment is like
a giant, supercharged force field
protecting all of your human rights.
It, uh, it comes right after the Thirteenth Amendment,
which, as you all know, abolished slavery,
ending the most shameful chapter in our nation's history.
Lincoln knew, though,
that just abolishing slavery would not be enough,
so he got his friend John Bingham
to help him write the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments:
the Reconstruction amendments.
These amendments made the newly freed slaves citizens,
gave them equal protection under the law
and protected their right to vote.
This amendment, Fourteen,
huge force in the civil rights movement.
It, uh, it facilitated the desegregation
of schools, buses, hospitals,
although that would take over a hundred years.
And let's be clear, somebody had to activate the force field.
It, uh, it took the heroic work of civil rights leaders
like-like Dorothy Height,
Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr.
to rouse the great powers of Amendment Fourteen.
Uh, uh, uh... Oh! I do want to note
that Amendment Fourteen gave equal rights only to men.
Black women were not given these rights.
No women were given these rights.
The question of Native American rights never even came up.
Even Lincoln was trapped in a penumbra on that one.
This is the first time that the word "male"
is explicitly written in the Constitution.
So, whereas before there was a little room for interpretation
about whether women could vote,
now it was explicit: we could not vote.
Lincoln asked us to wait just a tiny bit longer
to get the vote-- just, like, 54 years longer.
-Voting is outlined in section 2.
Please stick to Amendment Fourteen, section 1.
Right, sorry. Wonderful.
-My dad says
this is what we call the penalty box of democracy.
Sometimes you have to wait for things.
Sometimes it's better to fix one bad thing
-than to try to fix two bad things and fail. -
Clause 1.
"Any persons born on U.S. soil
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof
are citizens of the United States."
Your time begins now.
Clause 1 overturned
the most disgusting Supreme Court decision in history:
Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom in 1857
after living as a free man
with his wife and daughters in Illinois.
Not only did our Supreme Court rule
that Dred Scott would have to go back to being a slave,
they decided in a seven to two decision
that no person of African ancestry
could ever become a United States citizen.
Four members of this court owned slaves themselves.
Although he lost, Dred Scott's brave action
ignited the forces of abolition,
led to Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation
and enshrined in law
right here in the Fourteenth Amendment
the right of every person
born on U.S. soil to become a citizen
except Native Americans.
One other tricky thing about this clause is that
it actually-- it doesn't say anything about
how immigrants can become citizens.
It leaves it up to the whims of lawmakers
to decide who they think is a good immigrant
or a bad immigrant.
For example,
in 1882, our government decided
that Chinese immigrants were dangerous and stealing jobs.
So they passed the Chinese Exclusion Act,
which made immigration from China illegal until 1943.
On a... on a... on a... on a deeply personal note,
my great-great-grandmother Theresa
was considered a good immigrant.
She came to Washington State
from Gengenbach, Germany, in 1879
because my great-great-grandfather
ordered her from a catalog.
The reason that she was considered a good immigrant
is that the male-to-female ratio in Washington State at this time
was nine to one.
I-I don't know if she wanted to come to America or not.
I do know that she died at age 36 in a mental institution
and that therefore she was never actually able to become
-a citizen. Thank you! -Clause 2.
"No state shall make or enforce any law
"which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States."
Your time begins now.
Clause 2 ensures that you, as Americans,
are free to travel from state to state,
free to buy property in any state
and free to pursue happiness in every state.
Here's a fascinating story about interstate travel.
The lack of women during my great-great-grandmother's time
was considered such a big problem in Washington State
that in 1865, a man named Asa Mercer
cooked up a scheme to deliver 500 women to Seattle.
He went back east to Lowell, Massachusetts,
and he told the women there,
many of whom had been working in factories
since they were seven years old,
that Seattle was a paradise for ladies.
It was a place they could live free and independent lives,
become writers, teachers, milliners.
Then he went back to Seattle and told the men there
if they gave him 300 bucks, he could guarantee them a wife.
Now, even with all this money from the men,
Mercer could not afford a boat, so he wrote to Lincoln.
He asked for an old military ship to transport the women.
Lincoln did not write back. It was 1865. He was busy.
-So, Mercer hopped a train,
took it all the way to D.C. to talk to Lincoln in person
only to arrive and discover
the capital was wreathed in black
because Lincoln had just been assassinated.
Now, you'd think this would've stopped Mercer's plan,
-but no, no, no, no.
Instead, he went to Ulysses S. Grant
and he said he had talked to Lincoln--
-like, a while back--
and that Lincoln had promised him this boat for the women
and, yes, he was sad about Lincoln,
but the boat?
Grant said, "Take it."
A few days into this journey,
the ship's crew started to spread rumors on board
that Seattle was not a paradise for ladies.
The men there were loggers, they were drunks,
they beat up their wives.
So, when the ship reached Chile,
15 women demanded to get off the boat.
Mercer said, sure, they could deboard in the morning.
And then, in the middle of the night,
he pulled up anchor, effectively kidnapping them.
My-my-my-my great-great-grandmother Theresa
was purchased for $75,
when my great-great grandfather ordered her
-from The Matrimonial Times-- Okay. -
-Clause 3. -Just hold on. Hold on. I just-- Hold on.
Ever since I've been making this, I just--
I've been wondering about my great-great-grandma Theresa.
She died of melancholia. That was her official diagnosis.
"Melancholia. Age 36. Western State Mental Hospital."
I also grew up believing
that all the women in my family on my mom's side
inherited chemical depression
from Theresa and her melancholia.
We, uh-- we all take various forms of medication for it.
-They're working.
We also all have the same way of crying--
this, like, very loud, melodramatic way of crying
that I like to call "Greek Tragedy Crying."
It's where, no matter what happens to you,
you just-- you howl and you wail as if, uh, uh...
well, as if-- as if you've just killed your own children
because your husband betrayed you.
And it sounds kind of like this.
I lost so many boyfriends that way.
One of my boyfriends--
actually, the boyfriend who stayed, the one I married--
he explained to me that the-- that the crying
just felt really aggressive, you know?
That it kind of felt like I was crying right at him.
Anyway, uh,
since I've been making this, I just--
I've been wondering about the diagnosis.
There are no records of what Theresa's daily life was like,
but it seems like it must have been so hard,
because it certainly was for other women.
Actually, these are some headlines I found
in the Cowlitz County Newspaper.
This was her hometown newspaper.
These headlines all happened in one week.
"Napavine Man Shoots Wife in Back."
"Husband Stomps Wife's Face with Spiked Logging Boots."
"Jealous Husband Ties Woman to Bed for Three Days."
And this one. "B. Phelps ran into her daughter's apartment
"to find her son-in-law in the act
"of shooting her fleeing daughter.
"'Get out of here,' he said.
-'Everything here belongs to me.'" -
Clause 3.
"Nor shall any state deprive any person
of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Your time begins now.
Clause 3...
is one of the most miraculous in our entire Constitution.
We stole it from the Magna Carta.
It ensures that the government cannot lock you up,
take your stuff or kill you without a good reason.
It is also the heart of the 1973 Supreme Court decision
Roe v. Wade,
a case that is all about penumbras.
With the help of Justice William O. Douglas's
beautiful penumbra metaphor,
Justice Harry Blackmun used the Ninth Amendment
to shine a light into the other amendments.
And he found there, in the shadows of the Constitution,
the right to privacy,
and he argued that this gave a woman
the right to decide what to do with her own body.
Uh, well, technically,
he argued that a doctor and his patient have a right to privacy
so that he can decide what to do with her body.
This was a very special moment
for the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments.
They, uh, they came together
in a-a "Wonder Twin powers, activate" kind of way
to protect a woman's right to choose.
Of course, depending on your view, gentlemen,
you may consider this an unholy alliance.
My view, which I do feel obligated to share,
even if it endangers my scholarship money,
is I support a woman's right to choose.
-Thank you.
-Thank you so much. -All right!
-I-I would also like to say
it is a choice I would never make personally.
I-I said that.
No, I really said that in the contest.
And then, uh-- and then, six years later,
I got pregnant, so that was confusing.
I didn't know what to do.
I was 21. I just graduated college.
I, um... I was back in Wenatchee,
living in my parents' basement.
I was helping my dad paint houses for the summer,
because I was saving up money to move to Siberia
to teach English for one million rubles a month.
I decided to take a pregnancy test.
I was just a couple days late on my period,
and I was just-- I was praying
it was one of those hysterical pregnancies
like ladies in soap operas get.
But I could not go to Planned Parenthood
because my mom's best friend worked there,
and I couldn't go to a drugstore
because someone might see me and tell my parents.
So I looked in the phone book. I found this listing.
It said, "Free Pregnancy Testing. Quick. Confidential."
Sir, I'm gonna keep going.
-I went downtown.
I found this unmarked building.
I snuck in the back door.
And the first thing I saw when I walked inside
is that the walls were covered with pictures of fetuses.
There was this huge poster that said,
"Adoption is a beautiful choice,"
and then this sign that said, "Birthright."
I panicked. I, uh...
I wanted to run out the back door.
But in case you can't tell by this point in the show,
I was raised to be just psychotically polite.
So, when Marcy, the receptionist, said,
"We're so glad you're here,"
I just smiled and said, "Me, too!"
And then she and I proceeded to have, like...
-like, a nice-off.
She took my hand.
She said, "Heidi, if you are pregnant,
will this be good news or bad news?"
And, uh, I started to cry, loudly, but,
because I didn't want to let Marcy down,
I said... : "Good. Really good news!"
And she said, "Yay!"--
even though she must have known I was lying--
and then she hugged me.
She hugged me, and I sobbed into her shoulder.
And, uh...
And she smelled so good.
She smelled just like my Grandma Betty, like...
like White Shoulders perfume
that has been left out in the sun way too long.
Uh, you might remember my town is, uh, conservative.
It, uh-- it was an abortion-free zone.
You, uh-- you actually had to drive
three hours west to Seattle,
five hours east to Spokane to get an abortion.
I decided I wanted to go eight hours south to Eugene, Oregon,
because there is a clinic there
called the Feminist Women's Health Collective,
run by lesbians,
which is clearly the safest possible place on the planet
to get an abortion.
And that is what I wanted. I wanted an abortion.
I knew it was my right.
I knew it was legal.
I knew it had been legal
for most of the history of this country.
Actually, because I'd been able to go to college,
I knew abortion had only become a crime
in the late 19th century,
right before the government started forcibly sterilizing
women of color and indigenous women.
And I knew that when abortion became illegal,
it didn't become rare; it only became deadly.
I knew that, uh...
that Gloria Steinem had had an abortion
and Billie Jean King and Susan Sontag.
I, uh... I-I knew that Penny from Dirty Dancing
had had an abortion.
And I knew that when Jennifer Grey asked her dad,
Jerry Orbach, to save Penny's life
after her back-alley abortion almost killed her,
I knew she was asking a lot of her father,
because this was the 1960s
and Jerry Orbach could have been arrested
for getting anywhere near an abortion.
And I knew that this is how we were supposed to understand
that Jerry Orbach was a good man
and also how we knew that Jennifer Grey
and Patrick Swayze's love was real!
That is everything that was going through my head
while Marcy and I were hugging.
I just-- I didn't say any of that to her though.
I didn't say anything. I, uh...
She gave me my positive pregnancy test.
I said, uh, "Thank you."
And then I headed for the door. She followed me.
She gave me this pamphlet that explained,
if I had an abortion,
I would probably become suicidal and barren
and maybe go to hell.
And then she tucked in the tag at the back of my dress
and she said, "I can't help myself.
Always a mother."
I, uh... I also--
I didn't tell... my mother what I was really doing.
I have no idea why.
I didn't tell her I was pregnant.
Which is weird, because my mom's a feminist.
She's pro-choice.
She, uh, she marched for the Equal Rights Amendment
and cried when it didn't pass.
She even had, uh, like, one of those, like,
white-lady feminist theater troupes that does...
I don't know, like, puppet shows of "The Yellow Wallpaper."
-Uh...
But, for some reason, I just-- I couldn't tell her.
In fact, I didn't tell anyone for 25 years,
until I started performing this show.
And then all my friends came to the show
and told me about their abortions
and their mothers came to the show
and told me about their abortions, which, uh--
which were so much more harrowing.
Actually, I told one other person.
I-I told the guy. I-I told Jean.
Jean was so chivalrous.
He offered to pay.
Uh, for half of it.
-And, uh...
he even suggested that we drive down Highway 101
and camp on the beaches, make some kind of--
kind of vacation out of it.
-Yeah, ew, right? Thank you.
-Thank you!
That is how I felt!
Look, I just... I want to say, I don't have to say this,
but I was on birth control when I got pregnant.
I had been on the pill since I was 15 years old.
My friend Renee and I snuck in the back door
of Planned Parenthood before my mom's friend worked there.
Neither of us was having sex yet, but we just...
you know, we wanted to be on birth control just in case.
Just in case... we were in a hot tub,
and-and the sperm swam up and attacked us.
Or, you know, in case of a real attack.
I remember it was such a nice day.
We, uh, we went to McDonald's,
and we took our first pills with chocolate shakes,
and I could kind of feel it working right away, you know?
-Like, I felt very womanly.
Like, something kind of came alive inside of me.
What I didn't know at the time
is that birth control had only been legal
for all women in this country for 15 years.
I mean, I was 15, so I thought it had been legal
since, like, the dawn of time, but, no, no.
In 1965, this incredible woman, Estelle Griswold,
got herself arrested for giving out birth control
to poor women at her Connecticut Planned Parenthood.
She faced a year in prison,
took her case all the way to the Supreme Court, and this...
this is when William O. Douglas brought out
his beautiful penumbra metaphor.
This is when he said, "One thing our Constitution
"surely guarantees is the right to privacy,
"and that this allows a woman to put in an IUD
"as long as she is married and as long
as her husband says that it is okay."
This was a such a scary moment for William O. Douglas.
No, he-he really put himself on the line for us.
Because the truth is nobody understands the Ninth Amendment.
-Nobody, except me at 15.
Justice Scalia said
he didn't even remember studying it law school.
Scalia said he couldn't tell you what the Ninth Amendment meant
if his life depended on it.
Which I guess his didn't!
So they had to dig up this amendment nobody uses,
nobody understands, because there just was no other way
to deal with a female body, because our bodies,
our bodies had just been left out
of this document from the beginning.
They were just like, "We don't... we don't know
what to do with this kind of a body."
That is my founders impression. Thank you.
So they dug up this amendment nobody uses,
because they wanted to make birth control legal.
They wanted to, because, well, because I found out
that William O. Douglas--
who was my hero when I was 15 years old--
Justice William O. Douglas was 67,
and he was having an affair with a 22-year-old college student.
And... and it turns out that three other justices
may have been having sex with young women, as well.
So, I'm thinking... Right?
They-they needed to find a way
to get the birth control flowing!
-I would just...
I would love to play you a little snippet
of the actual Supreme Court argument,
because it is trenchant.
Uh, it's fascinating.
Oh, it's... it's 1965.
There will not be a woman on this court
until Sandra Day O'Connor arrives in 1981.
Here are nine men deciding the fate of birth control,
four of whom are cheating on their wives.
Now that I've interrupted you,
uh, you've told us that in Connecticut
the sale of, uh, these devices is, uh, not molested
because they're sold for the prevention of disease.
Is this, uh, true about
all of these devices that are covered, uh,
that each of them has the potential dual function
of acting in a contraceptive capacity
and as a prevention of disease?
It's probably only true
with respect to some, but some get by
under the term "feminine hygiene," and, uh, others, uh...
Uh...
-uh, I-I...
I just don't know about, uh,
but, uh... uh...
They are... they are, uh, all sold
in Connecticut, uh, drugstores on one theory or another.
Is there anything in the record to...
to indicate, uh,
-uh,
the, uh, stem of the birth rate in Connecticut
vis-à-vis the states that don't have such laws?
It's, like, four hours of that.
Birth control became legal
for single women in this country in 1972,
uh, which is the year after my mom got pregnant with me.
This is what I was thinking about when my mom drove me
to Seattle to meet Jean to go down for an abortion.
I was thinking about the fact
that she was my age when she had me,
that she wanted to become an actor and a writer
and move to New York City, which is, of course,
what I'm gonna do, but I don't know that yet.
And as soon as I have that thought,
I'm overcome by this horrible wave of nausea.
I ask her to pull the car over, I open the door,
I puke on the side of the road,
and when I sit back up, I can tell that she knows.
And I'm just... I'm waiting for her to tell me that it's okay,
that, uh, that it's my body,
and like she taught me, this is my decision.
But when I look at my mom, she's got this wild look in her eyes.
And then she starts hyperventilating.
She's basically having some kind of panic attack.
And all of a sudden, she shouts, "You better not be pregnant!"
And I shout, "I'm not pregnant!"
-Clause 4.
"No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws."
Clause 4 is even more miraculous than Clause 3.
It is the Equal Protection Clause.
It ensures that we cannot be discriminated against
on the basis of race, sex, religion,
immigration status.
It, uh, it actually uses the word "person," not "citizen,"
which means if you are an undocumented immigrant,
you must be given all the protections of Clause 3,
the Due Process Clause.
You cannot be locked up without a fair trial.
You cannot have anything or-or anyone seized from you.
I, uh...
I just... I've been talking about this, uh...
this clause for such a long time, over ten years,
and, uh, I find it harder and harder
to talk about every day.
Uh, although to be honest,
it wasn't that easy ten years ago, either.
Uh, I also... I do have, um...
I have a personal connection to the Equal Protection Clause.
I just... I never would have spoken about it at 15.
I, uh... I didn't tell anyone.
And whenever I get to this part, I...
I just... I have this desire to protect my 15-year-old self
from speaking about it.
Uh... actually, you know what? I'm gonna, um...
I'm gonna just talk about the Equal Protection Clause,
uh, as myself, now. I'm gonna... I'm...
In fact, I'm just... I'm gonna be myself now all the time now.
-So...
I'm gonna be, uh, an adult woman in my very late 40s.
-Hi.
Also, my face just fucking hurts from smiling like that.
I'm sorry, sir.
I actually have no idea what your purpose is here anymore.
Uh...
The clause is miraculous.
It, uh... it really is.
People have used it to do so much good in this country.
Uh, the Equal Protection Clause was used...
It was actually the heart of the civil rights movement.
Decades after this contest, uh, it will be used,
along with the Due Process Clause,
to make marriage equality possible.
This clause was used to win all sorts of rights
for working women, including the right to equal pay,
the right to be free from sexual harassment.
-Uh...
A few years before this contest in 1983,
lawyers tried to use this clause to address the problem
of physical and sexual violence toward women,
with the idea that you can't possibly
be equal in this country if you are subject
to epidemic levels of violence.
Uh, as you may already know, four women are murdered
every day in this country by a male partner.
It, uh, it was actually three women
when I started performing a year ago.
It's gone up.
One in three American women are sexually assaulted
during their lifetime.
Uh... one in five--
I'm sorry, yes.
Uh, one in three American women
are sexually assaulted during their lifetime.
One in five American women are raped during their lifetime.
Uh, a study came out recently that said the United States
was one of the ten most dangerous countries
in the world for women.
That's physical and sexual violence,
sex trafficking, uh, lack of access to health care,
lack of access to reproductive care,
death in childbirth, uh, especially for Black women,
gun violence.
Uh, on a personal note,
ten million American women live in violent households.
My mom lived in a house like this.
So did my Grandma Betty
and, uh, probably my great-great-grandma Theresa,
though, uh, I don't... I don't have any evidence for that
except for maybe, maybe the fact that she died of melancholia
at age 36.
Uh, will you hand me my Grandma Betty index cards?
I, uh, I just... I want to tell you a little bit
about my Grandma Betty and the Equal Protection Clause.
I actually... I know these stories very well.
I prefer to read them.
"My, uh...
"my Grandma Betty married my grandpa when she was 19.
"My grandpa was what we call in my family a good man,
"which meant that he didn't beat up his wife and kids.
"He was a six-foot-six logger
"who built the one-bedroom house they lived in
"with his bare hands.
"Legend has it that he chopped down the trees
"to build this house,
"and then he dragged the lumber up
"from the base of Mount St. Helens on his back
like a horse."
I, uh, I actually have never understood
that part of the story, because he had a truck.
"Grandma Betty and her good husband
"had two kids when my grandma got pregnant with my mom.
"One day, she was feeling antsy.
"She wanted to go to the Cowlitz County Fair.
"My grandpa took an extra logging shift
"to pay for the tickets.
"He and his partner Ray were sawing
"a 150-foot evergreen tree.
"They misjudged the trajectory of the tree
"and it fell on my grandpa, killing him.
"My mom was born while my grandma was still grieving.
"My widowed Grandma Betty supported her three kids
"by working as a waitress at the local diner.
"A man named Dick came in often.
Dick was a barber. He was very good-looking."
My grandma loved good-looking men.
-As do I.
"My, uh, my Grandma Betty married Dick pretty quickly.
"Pretty quickly, he started to beat her up.
He beat up her kids."
They had three more kids together.
He beat them up, too.
"When my mom's sister turned 16, my grandma's husband raped her.
"My aunt got pregnant. She went away to have the baby.
"He raped her again. She went away again.
"She came back home after giving birth to a second child
and graduated at the top of her class."
I, uh, I just want to say,
all of these kids grew up to be pretty happy.
They did, miraculously.
They, uh, they all have families that they love
and jobs-jobs that, like most of us, they kind of like.
Uh, none of them perpetuated the abuse
that had been inflicted on them.
I realize it is not great storytelling
to skip to the end like this, but I actually don't want you
to have to worry about them for the rest of the play.
-They are okay.
Like so many people in this country
who go through similar things, uh, they are mostly okay.
I, uh... I was so pissed off at my mom
when she told me that story.
She, uh, she told me when I was 15, and I remember,
I was just, I was furious with her
because I was a deeply heterosexual 15-year-old girl.
I just, I really wanted to make out with boys all the time.
I-I did not want to think that they could be violent
or they could be rapists.
Uh, I mean, they could be troubled.
-I loved it when they were troubled. -
They could be, like-like, a down-and-out dance instructor
-at a Catskills resort.
But, uh, the thing I remember saying to my mom is,
"Why didn't Grandma Betty just take all of you and run away?"
And, uh, my mom had no answer for me.
She went in her room, she shut the door,
she wouldn't come out.
Uh, but my dad took me aside and he explained, um,
that Grandma Betty couldn't run away because she was sick,
because she had this thing that women get
called "battered woman syndrome."
Which, uh-- I remembered I was so confused by that.
Like, "Oh, no, how do you catch that?"
And, uh, also, if you ever met my Grandma Betty,
you would know this was an absurd way to describe her.
She, uh, she was almost six feet tall.
She had these gigantic muscles, this wild black hair.
Beautiful.
In, uh, in addition to waitress, her other job was log runner.
That is where you stand on a bunch of logs
in a raging river, and then you take this giant stick,
and all day long, you just, you just push the logs
down the river till they...
Actually, I don't know what happens to the logs.
This is...
This is my favorite thing to do in the whole show.
Also, he can't stop me 'cause I didn't write anything for him.
Not my grandma's dream job, by the way, log runner.
What she wanted to be from the time
she was a little girl was a painter.
And she actually taught herself to paint by copying Picasso,
who was her favorite, so her little one-bedroom house
was filled with all of these, just,
shitty-looking Picasso reproductions.
And when I was a little girl,
I thought they were her paintings.
I think I was in high school before I realized that Picasso,
and not my Grandma Betty, had invented The Weeping Woman.
I, uh, whenever I talk about the things
that the women in my family wanted to be, all this, um...
all this crazy stuff happens in my body.
Like, uh, I've had this pain in my back for, like, a year,
and, uh, my throat gets really tight.
Like, I can't get my voice out, and I, uh...
I, uh, I have this painting of my grandma's up in my house.
And I think, I think maybe she was a good painter;
she just, she never painted anything that was hers.
It's funny, actually, Jean and I went to see my Grandma Betty
on the way to get my abortion.
And I remember I wanted to tell her what I was doing
'cause I thought she might be happy for me.
My, uh, my Great-Grandma Breckyn had 16 children.
My Grandma Betty had six children
and a violent husband.
I just, I thought she might be excited that I was
getting to do something different with my life.
But, uh, after the way my mom reacted, I just...
I remember I almost told her.
She, uh, she made these
beautiful popovers for breakfast.
I sat down at the table and I almost said,
"Grandma Betty, I'm pregnant."
And instead, I said, "Grandma Betty, I miss George."
Which is-- I actually have no idea why I said that.
George was this sock monkey that she sewed for me
-when I was three years old.
I loved this sock monkey to death.
I mean, I murdered him with my love.
He was missing an eye; he was missing a tail.
Eventually, like, I got a little shoebox
and made a monkey coffin for him.
And I remember telling my Grandma Betty that I wished
that I could take George the sock monkey with me to Siberia.
And my grandma just went, "Mm!"
'cause she was very unsentimental.
But the next Christmas, she sewed me
a brand-new sock monkey and she sent him
all the way to Russia, and I named this new sock monkey
-George the Second.
And then when I turned 40, I, uh, I decided
George the Second was lonely and needed some kind of friend.
So I bought this tiny little red-and-white-striped monkey
that I named George the Second's Friend.
And to this day...
I am married.
To this day, George the Second's Friend
is the most important person in my life.
I bet you're wondering how any of this relates
to the Equal Protection Clause.
In spite of how it feels,
and apparently what some people think,
this play is so carefully constructed.
-It's not my fault if you can't see the structures. -
In, uh, in 2005,
the Fourteenth Amendment was invoked
in a case called Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
"Jessica Gonzales had received a restraining order
"against her violent husband.
"A month later, he kidnapped their three daughters.
"Jessica, terrified, called the police seven times for help
"and went to the station twice in person
"to show them the restraining order
"and beg them to look for her daughters.
"The police not only refused to help her,
"they asked her to stop bothering them.
"By morning, Mr. Gonzales had legally purchased
"a semiautomatic weapon while their daughters
"waited in the car and then killed them.
"Jessica Gonzales--
"who now goes by the name Lenahan--
"Jessica Lenahan very bravely sued
"the Castle Rock Police Department
"for failing to show up to protect her and her kids.
"The state of Colorado had recently passed a law
"that required police to arrest a person
"who had violated a protective order.
"So Jessica sued and she won.
"Then the city appealed, took the case all the way
"to the Supreme Court, and this court,
"led by Antonin Scalia,
"overturned her case, killed the Colorado law,
"and gutted the Violence Against Women Act
"by ruling that the police did not have
"a constitutional obligation
to protect Jessica Lenahan or her daughters."
I, uh, I just, I listened to this case so many times, uh...
And the thing I notice when I hear the justices speak...
The thing I notice is that they spend very little time
talking about Jessica Lenahan as a human being.
They don't talk about her daughters--
Rebecca, who was ten,
Katheryn, who was eight, Leslie, who was seven.
Instead, they spend a very long time
arguing about the word "shall."
As in the phrase "the police shall enforce
a restraining order."
And, look, I understand, even as a layperson,
that precise language is crucial in law.
But I find the balance of these two things...
At one point, Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer
got in this little argument about whether either of them
even understood what the word "shall" meant.
Uh, Terri, can you...?
Wait, wait, I-I thought we were
just talking here about state law
as to whether "shall" means "shall."
Do you think that that it's a matter of state law
whether-whether, if it does mean "shall,"
it creates a property interest for purposes
of the federal, uh, Constitution?
No, Justice Scalia, I don't.
Suppose "shall" does mean "shall."
Fine. But you might have a statute that says,
"The fire department shall respond to fires.
"The police department shall respond to crimes.
The Army shall respond to, uh, uh, attacks."
Even the word "shall" doesn't necessarily mean...
Scalia ultimately decided that "shall" did not mean "must,"
Which, uh, which I actually find very confusing
because Scalia was a devout Catholic.
Some constitutional scholars have called this decision
the death of the Fourteenth Amendment for women.
It basically shuts down the possibility to look
to our federal government, to our Constitution,
for protection from physical and sexual violence.
It's most devastating for women of color,
for trans women,
for nonbinary and binary trans folx,
for women with disabilities, for indigenous women--
who suffer the most violence in this country.
And right now, it's terrible.
It's actually killing immigrant women
and their children who are fleeing violence.
I, uh, I just--
I really, really wanted to understand why.
How they decided this.
I just... Maybe because of my own family history
of this kind of violence,
I just, I needed to make sense of it.
So, I talked to several constitutional scholars,
and this is what I learned.
I learned about two kinds of rights:
negative rights and positive rights.
Negative rights protect us from the government taking our stuff,
locking us up, killing us.
Positive rights are active rights.
They are things the government must do or provide.
They include things like... like the right to a fair trial,
to an attorney,
in some countries, the right to health care.
Our Constitution, primarily, with some exceptions,
is a negative rights document.
It was designed to protect the men
who made it and their property--
their property that was sometimes people--
from the government, which is in part
how they came to decide that Jessica Lenahan
was not entitled
to any active or positive protection from the police.
I also learned
that if the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified,
she might have been entitled to protection under that.
And I understood for the first time
why my mom cried when that didn't pass.
So, what I'm trying to understand right now
is what does it mean if this Constitution
will not protect us from the violence of men?
And I don't want to vilify men. I don't-- I love men.
I really do.
-I fucking love you.
I'm the daughter of a father.
But the facts, the facts are so extreme.
They really-- I had no idea, truly.
I did-- I thought it would be interesting
to take the prompt of this contest seriously,
to-to find a personal connection
between my life and this Constitution,
and then I learned that this century,
the 21st century, more American women
have been killed by their male partners
than Americans have died in wars,
including 9/11.
That, uh...
That is not the number of women
who have been killed by men in this country.
That is only the number of women who have been killed
by the men who supposedly love them.
Which is...
I just, I-I...
find the statistic so overwhelming, I...
I have to forget about it just to get through my day.
Except, I think you can't forget about it, right?
I think...
...even if you don't know the statistic,
the truth of that is there all the time.
The truth of that...
...rampant violence against women's bodies
is underneath everything all the time...
...humming.
When I was 17,
I used the money from your contest to go to college.
I, uh, I registered prelaw.
I also auditioned for the fall play Red Noses.
It was about a theater troupe in the Middle Ages
trying to survive the plague.
I played a one-legged tap dancer who dies.
On, uh, on the first day of rehearsal, this senior boy
asked me if I wanted a ride home, and I said sure,
and then, uh, as soon as we got to my dorm, he parked the car.
He said, "Oh, my God, I've been waiting to kiss you
for so long," which I thought was weird
'cause we'd known each other three hours.
But he was cute, so I kissed him,
and then suddenly, he just took off my pants.
And, uh...
You all, I was so smart when I was 17.
I-I was way smarter than I am now.
Plus, I had read everything, I thought.
I-I had read Gloria Steinem and bell hooks and Audre Lord.
I-I was taking advanced feminist studies.
And yet I still decided to go ahead and have sex with this guy
because it seemed like the polite thing to do.
I think.
Now, I don't know, though.
Uh, I don't know, because, uh,
when I remember being in the car,
I remember how dark it was outside.
I remember looking around. Uh...
There was nobody on the street.
My dorm was way, way out on the edge of campus.
And I remember having this sick feeling
in the pit of my stomach,
and then this fleeting thought,
so quick, I almost can't put it into language.
But if I had to say it out loud, it would sound like:
"stay alive."
Which is...
It's, uh, it's really strange, because this guy
would not have hurt me.
He wouldn't. I know that he wouldn't.
We're friends to this day.
I mean, we're Facebook friends, but...
I'm 99% sure he would not have hurt me,
so why did I feel like my life was in danger?
Can you read those Hammurabi index cards?
The first law pertaining to domestic violence
comes from Hammurabi in 1800 BC.
It decreed that a husband could inflict punishment
on any member of his household for any reason.
The Roman code of pater familias
said a man could kill his wife for adultery
or for walking outside without her face covered.
In Renaissance France, when it became clear
that too many women and children were being beaten to death
and it was hurting the economy, men were restricted
to blows that did not leave marks.
In 18th-century England, the law said that a man
could only hit his wife with a whip or stick
no thicker than his thumb.
Although many people think this is where the phrase
"rule of thumb" originated, that's not actually true.
Ooh, that thing I said, about the male-to-female ratio
in Washington State being nine to one?
Not true.
That is what my history teacher Mr. Berger taught me.
There were thousands and thousands of women
in Washington State, of course.
The women of the Salish tribes, the Wenatchi tribes.
And apparently, some of these women
had been marrying white men for a hundred years,
and according to these women's journals,
these marriages were actually pretty good.
Because these tribes were egalitarian.
Women could be priests. They could be translators.
They could be boat makers.
Then Washington became a state, was under the umbrella
of the Constitution that I worshipped,
which meant that indigenous women
were no longer considered people,
the marriages became illegal,
and they brought in a bunch of white women
like my Great-Great-Grandmother Theresa.
-Go ahead.
In 1910, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a wife
could not press assault charges against a husband
because it would open the doors of the courts
to accusations of all sorts of one spouse against the other.
In 1977, the California Penal Code stated
that wives charging husbands with criminal assault
must suffer more injuries than commonly needed
for charges of battery.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that Jessica Lenahan
could not sue the Castle Rock Police Department
for failing to show up to protect her and her children.
In 2014, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled
that the United States violated the human rights
-of Jessica Lenahan and her daughters. -Thank you, Mike.
-Uh, everybody, this is Mike.
He's, uh-- yeah, he's wonderful.
He's a wonderful person, wonderful actor.
And, uh, when I realized I was gonna have to talk about
so much violence up here onstage,
I just, I really wanted some positive male energy
up here with me.
I'm representing a real person from Heidi's life,
Mel Yonkin, who was a-a Legionnaire.
He fought in World War II.
He was an incredibly sweet man that would travel
around the country with Heidi and her family,
going from contest to contest.
He always told her how proud he was of her,
and-and when she won, he would get kind of misty,
pretend he had a cold.
I was very excited when Heidi asked me
to be a part of the show, although I did think
it was kind of a serious responsibility
-to be representing "positive male energy." -
I feel like I spent many years sort of refusing
to be boxed in gender-wise.
I guess I kind of thought of myself
as having gender-neutral energy.
Which, given that I always present as male,
sometimes that seems a little... irresponsibly privileged to me.
Also, I would like to be able to report that I also had
a crush on Patrick Swayze when I was younger like Heidi did.
But the truth is I was kind of more into Mel Gibson.
Yeah. No, I...
I just, I just really wanted to be him
in-in the movie The Road Warrior, and after it came out,
I was always talking to my friends about,
"Oh, I want to dye a little tuft
of my hair blond over my ear,"
like Mel had in the movie.
And I thought I had a hilarious Australian accent,
but, I mean, you just heard it; it's a Cockney accent.
Which is interesting because my dad actually
is a British working-class immigrant,
but he's not a Cockney.
He's from Wales and Yorkshire,
which are two totally different accents.
I won't be doing them for you now.
-You are welcome.
Um, my dad is this incredibly charming guy.
All my friends are really crazy about him, and I remember
being a kid, and both kind of admiring his, like,
masculine charisma, and also knowing that something about it
was, like, a little bit put on.
For example, he went through a CB radio phase.
I was in high school, we were driving across country together,
but we were in two different cars,
and so he wanted us to stay in touch via CB radios.
And so, he would say stuff like, "Heads up, Mike,
we're gonna take a left at the next exit."
And I would say stuff like, "Dad,
when are we gonna get a bathroom break?"
And once, another voice broke in
and said, "Couple queers on the line."
-Like, a trucker or somebody,
like, a deep male voice, like, deeper than mine or my dad's.
There was a terrible pause, like, a pit in my stomach.
Was my dad lisping inadvertently?
Or was I or something?
And then my dad responded, "And a faggot listening in."
So, all things considered, good save? Or...
But I must not have been out to my dad at that point.
There's no way he would use that kind of language
if he'd known I was gay back then.
I mean, I didn't really know I was gay back then.
Maybe I thought my sexual orientation was "nerd."
Couple years after that, I was in college,
and I was gonna drive down from Maine to Boston
to live with my girlfriend--
I was still dating women at the time--
and I was wearing a YSL slate-blue suit vest as a shirt,
tight cotton cutoffs
with these big-big red, white and blue stripes on them,
and brown ankle boots with these fuzzy pink socks
kind of like rolled up, peeking out the top.
And so, my dad saw me as I was headed out the door
and he says, "You look ridiculous.
You cannot wear this!"
And I know he was only trying to protect me,
but he may also have had a point,
because a couple years after that,
I was first living here in New York City,
I was with four of my friends,
we were walking from the Tunnel Bar to another bar
that was literally just called The Bar, that was down
in the East Village, like, right off the F train,
and I was wearing black nylon Patricia Field hot pants
with these little red velvet polka dots on them.
And we passed a group of teenagers,
and one of them punched me in the face.
As I've gotten older, I've become more comfortable
just kind of...
presenting as "basic male."
It feels...
...I don't know, more me.
I think.
Couple years ago, I was in Baltimore
and I was at a sports bar called Pickles Pub.
And there was a guy at the bar.
He was, like, six-foot-two, 230 pounds,
like, a big, big bald white guy.
And behind the bar was a woman and she was running around
taking everybody's orders.
And so, the guy turns to me and he goes,
"Don't you want to fuck her?"
And there was a weird pause
where I didn't really know how to respond to that.
I mean, was he really asking me?
Was he testing me to find out if I was gay?
Was he capable of violence?
Was the woman behind the bar feeling like how you felt
in the car with that guy that time?
This guy was, like, a beast physically, but I also had
this kind of weird sympathy for him.
So, I slapped him on the back and I said, "Good luck, man,"
and I walked out of the bar.
I would love it now if all this could go away, too.
Uh, the contest, all of this.
I, uh, I would love to have
one of those incredible Broadway set changes now.
Uh, since it's not that kind of play,
uh, maybe we could all just imagine
that we're someplace else.
Maybe we could imagine something else.
And you are welcome to be yourselves again.
If you haven't already done that, this is a perfect time.
You are, uh, you are so welcome to be yourself.
My mom and my aunt, uh, are the ones
who told the police about their stepfather,
because my Grandma Betty was too scared to do it.
My, uh, my mom and my aunt had been born
a little further out of the penumbra than my grandma.
They were born a little over 20 years
after women got the right to vote.
Also, my mom had this woman teacher
who took her aside, told her something else was possible,
and also taught her this newly fashionable word, "feminist."
When, uh, when my mom's stepfather found out
they had talked to the police, uh, he became enraged.
He got his constitutionally protected gun,
and he threatened to kill his whole family.
And my Grandma Betty finally decided,
in spite of the fact that she'd inherited
the pretty logical belief that her life
and her kids' lives did not matter in the eyes of the law,
in spite of that, she decided she had to do something.
So she finally gathered all her kids together and ran away.
The, uh, the police showed up for my family.
It was a small town.
They were white.
They, uh... they arrested my mom's stepfather,
but my Grandma Betty was too terrified
to testify against him, so, uh, my mom did that, too,
in support of her sister, at age 15.
And then my Grandma Betty said that she was lying.
She was not lying.
Uh, her stepfather was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He served two.
But, uh, the fact that he went to prison at all
is probably why I get to be here right now,
telling you these stories.
Sometimes, uh, when I think about how brave
my mom and my aunt were as teenage girls,
I just-- I mean, it gives me such respect for them.
It makes me want to do more, be braver.
But also, it also makes me think about the fact
that progress doesn't only move one way.
I just, I feel so excited by young people lately.
I really do.
I feel like you all are so much braver
than I remember being at your age,
you have more compassion, you certainly have
a more sophisticated understanding of gender.
Sometimes, I feel like you're, like you're shining
a light backwards into the darkness
so I can follow you into the future.
I, uh, I've actually-- I've struggled my whole life
to forgive my grandma for not protecting my mom.
I just, I...
I don't know how to forgive her,
because it made my mom's life so hard.
But, uh, but that's also really confusing,
because I loved my grandma so much.
I mean, we all loved her. My mom loved her.
My aunts and uncles loved her.
And-and the Grandma Betty I knew is-is not the same woman
who didn't protect her kids.
The grandma I knew loved us all like crazy.
She gave her whole life to her kids,
her grandkids, her great-grandkids.
She would've done anything for us.
She-she... she sent me that sock monkey all the way to Siberia.
She-- I know she would have thrown her body
in front of a truck for me.
So I have no idea how to make sense
of my two grandmothers.
Except while I've been making this,
I've realized how many of us are forced
to be two people in this culture.
Actually, something I learned from a younger person,
a younger feminist, that helps me understand my grandma
just a little bit better,
is they taught me about this concept
called "covert resistance."
Covert resistance is the idea that sometimes
seemingly passive, victim-like behaviors, uh,
pleasing behaviors, are the sanest and smartest response
to living in a violent culture, in a culture and a country
that is making it clear every single day
it has no fucking interest in protecting you.
In the case of, say, my grandmother,
covert resistance is all the invisible, brave actions
a woman takes inside a violent relationship she can't leave
because she doesn't make as much money as a man,
because the police might not show up when she calls,
or depending on the color of her skin,
they might show up and something terrible might happen.
Because she doesn't have decision-making power
over her own fucking body.
Covert resistance doesn't really fit
into our traditional narratives of heroism.
It, uh, it involves a lot of tiny, daily actions.
It involves things like a woman feeding her kids,
working 12 hours a day for them,
helping them get a good education,
helping them graduate at the top of their class.
It can also involve less positive things,
things like getting sick, maybe dying of melancholia,
and, uh... not running away.
Because in this country,
the moment a woman decides to run away
is the moment her life and her kids' lives
are in the most danger.
Uh, when my Grandma Betty died, my uncle found $30,000
hidden underneath her mattress with a note that said
to give $5,000 dollars to each of her kids.
She had been saving that money for 50 years.
I, uh, I actually, I took George the Second's Friend
with me on this business trip to L.A.
He, uh, he loves the West Coast.
I had him in my bag wrapped in a stocking cap,
and then it got cold on the plane, so I took him out,
I put on a hat,
I wrapped him up in an airplane blanket, uh,
so I wouldn't be, like, a middle-aged lady
with a stuffed monkey on my lap, and then I was at baggage claim,
and I realized I had left
George the Second's Friend on the plane.
And, uh, yeah, my reaction was much bigger than that.
Actually, I don't even know how to describe it to you
except to say that if Meryl Streep and I had been
auditioning for that "dingo ate my baby" movie together,
-I would have gotten that part.
I was wailing. I was sobbing.
I was, I was doing the Greek tragedy crying.
I ran up to the counter, tears streaming down my face.
This woman took one look at me, she was like,
"Oh, my God, are you okay?"
-And I was like, "No! No! No!
I left something very valuable on the plane!"
And she was like, "What is it?!"
And I said, "My child's favorite toy!"
-It gets worse.
-"And my child is very sick!"
No, it's so bad. It's so hor-- It's horrible.
But she really leapt into action.
She called up to the gate, she was like,
"Get that monkey off the plane!"
And then she swiped me through security,
and I started running, racing,
running faster than I've ever run in my entire life.
I-I ran past, like, 14 Starbucks.
-I got to the gate.
I can see George the Second's Friend
just sitting by this guy's terminal.
I ran up, tears still streaming down my face.
This guy paid no attention to me,
so I was just like, "Fuck it!"
I grabbed George the Second's Friend,
I ran away from him, I collapsed to the airport floor,
and I just kept wailing and wailing and wailing.
And I have no idea what I was crying about.
I don't know if I was crying for my Grandma Betty,
or-or because of chemical depression,
or just because he is such a cute little monkey,
or maybe because of centuries and centuries
of fucking inherited trauma,
or maybe, maybe it's just the appropriate response
to everything right now!
My, uh, my mom,
my mom says when you are consumed,
when you are paralyzed with rage and despair,
you have to think of a woman
running along a beach with a dog.
There's more.
She says if you watch the dog, it keeps running back and forth
and back and forth, so it seems like progress is
constantly being undone, but if you watch the woman,
you can see that she is moving steadily forward
and forward and forward.
I hope.
I, uh, I actually, I told my mom about my abortion recently,
because I, uh, well, I had to 'cause I was gonna tell you all.
She was so blasé about it.
She was like, "Okay."
I said, "Mom, why did you freak out back then?"
She said, "Well, I can be relaxed about it now
because your life turned out okay."
She wanted to know if I was pissed off at her.
I was like, "No, because my life turned out okay."
I think there were two mothers with me
in the car that day, too.
I think there's the first mother, who's a feminist,
who made me do this contest so I could go to college,
who, along with her sister, ended the legacy of violent men
in our family by testifying.
And then there's the second mother,
the mother who had been terrorized as a child.
The mother whose first memory at age three was seeing
her stepfather punch my grandma and thinking,
"Oh, no, this is what life is like."
And it is what life is like.
The mother who had inherited centuries
of belief in her own worthlessness.
No, not belief-- not just belief.
Centuries of laws that explicitly told her
she was worthless.
For me, though, that first mother was enough.
She taught me what my rights were.
I knew which laws were there to protect me,
and I had laws to protect me at that time.
I didn't need the second mother
to be there for me in the moment,
because I had laws.
Which just makes me think maybe it's not helpful
to think of the Constitution as a crucible,
in which we're all battling it out together,
in which, uh, in which we go in front of a court
of nine people to negotiate for our basic human rights,
which is what we have been doing for 230 years.
Because if this is a battle, or even a negotiation,
then the people who have always been in power
in this country-- always dominated, always oppressed--
men...
...white people...
are going to keep dominating and oppressing.
Maybe, maybe we can think of the Constitution as like
that first mother, a Constitution that is obligated
to actively look out for all of us.
There are so many countries
that have those kinds of constitutions,
modern, positive rights constitutions,
that actively rectify inequality,
that have human rights enshrined from the beginning.
179 constitutions have explicit gender protections
written into them-- ours is not one of them.
Our Constitution is really, really old.
Of course, the problem with making
an all-new positive rights constitution...
...with human rights enshrined from the beginning
is, uh, we would still have to trust the people
interpreting that document, right?
We still have to trust the people who are in charge.
And the excuse
for not hiring women in the criminal division was
they have to deal with all these tough types,
and women aren't up to that.
And I was amazed.
I said, "Have you seen the lawyers at legal aid
"who are representing these tough types?
They are women."
People ask me sometimes,
"When, when do you think it will be enough?
When will... will there be enough women on the court?"
And my answer is, "When there are nine."
I, uh... I loved this contest.
It made me believe people would listen to me when I spoke.
Also I, uh, I had braces and terrible acne.
It was nice to be valued for my brain.
While I was making this, I, uh, I met with young women
who are doing these kinds of contests today.
I just, I wanted to hear what they were thinking
about our country, about our Constitution.
And one of these brilliant young women
-has agreed to join us here tonight. -Rosdely.
-Go.
Hi.
My name is Rosdely Ciprian.
I'm a 14-year-old debater from New York City,
and I've been involved with parliamentary debate
since the second semester of sixth grade.
I've argued topics such as legalizing medical marijuana
and whether the United States should have
more diplomatic engagement with the People's Republic of China.
Mr. Beattie is my debate coach.
He coaches to argue both sides of a debate.
Which is why Heidi invited me here tonight--
to dig deeper into a big question about the Constitution:
Is it protecting us, or is it the source of our problems?
Personally, I think the answer is both.
But for the sake of having a good debate,
we're each going to take a different side here tonight.
But before I can explain to you
the rules of a parliamentary debate,
let me just say that the Constitution is not a crucible.
At least that's not how I like to think of it.
Why not just think of the Constitution as a human being?
I mean, it was made by human beings,
so it's not a big stretch, right?
Are human beings perfect? No.
Are we capable of perfection? No.
But this doesn't mean we're not valuable.
We're always growing and changing, learning.
My opponent brought up the Ninth Amendment
in her prepared speech-- which went way over time, by the way.
-Sure, the penumbra metaphor is an interesting way
to understand the Ninth Amendment,
and I'm not arguing against it.
But let me help you understand it in another way.
Now, I don't have any imaginary friends.
But I have invented a character I like to play in rehearsal
named Boxellia.
Boxellia is a scrillion-year-old AI robot
who can tell the future.
She knows what you're gonna do next summer,
and she knows what life on Earth will be like
a thousand years from now.
To me, the Ninth Amendment is like Boxellia;
she holds the memory of our future.
And too bad for us,
we won't know what that is until we get there.
-Okay, let's start this debate. -All right, let's do it!
Uh, okay, for the past two years, uh, Rosdely and I
have been doing parliamentary style debate together-- parli.
Uh, this is a style that did not exist when I was in high school.
And, like she said, we're gonna do a real-live debate
-for you right here, right now. -Yes, and our topic is:
Should we abolish the United States Constitution?
Uh, and there are some amazing folks
passing out pocket Constitutions,
-so you can follow along, check our work. -
Typically, in a parliamentary debate,
there are three people on a team,
but we're going to be doing this one-on-one tonight.
This is a style I like to call "Iron Woman."
And usually in a debate, we use a form called "PO-POOP,"
which is "Proposition, Opposition, Proposition,
Opposition, Opposition, Proposition,"
but we've invented another style we like to call "POPOPO,"
which is "Proposition, Opposition, Proposition,
Opposition, Proposition, Opposition."
-The debaters
have been training me to be the moderator,
and my most important duty is to flip a coin to determine
which side of the argument the debaters are gonna take.
Rosdely, call it in the air.
-T-Tails.
-Yeah. -I guess that means
-you're heads, Heidi. It's heads. -I'm heads.
-Heads? Okay. -Yeah.
Uh, I want opposition, keep.
Okay, I'll take proposition, abolish.
Okay, debaters, you have 90 seconds to prepare,
starting now.
Okay, Rosdely's also been telling me
that in parliamentary debate, audience participation
plays a huge role in determining the outcome.
That means that if one of our debaters
says something that really lands with you--
positively or negatively-- you got to make some noise.
If Rosdely or Heidi says something that you really love,
what are you gonna do?
And if they say something you really hate,
what are you gonna do?
And if upstairs hates it but downstairs loves it,
what are you gonna do?
Yeah, this feels okay. I have, I have faith in you.
-Ready?
-Uh, yes. -Uh... yes.
Will proposition please approach.
You have two minutes, starting now.
Good evening, judges. My name is Rosdely Ciprian,
and I'm here to represent the proposition:
"This house ought to abolish the United States Constitution."
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Will everyone please raise your hand?
Now, if you're a white man who owns property,
please put your hands down.
Under the original terms of the Constitution,
those of you with your hands up are not considered citizens.
Let me ask you a question.
How would you feel if these white men went into another room
and made all the rules for the rest of us?
That's what I thought. Let me ask you a second question.
How many rich, white men who own property
are still in control of our government today?
-I know, right?
So why don't you look through your pocket Constitutions
and see where people like us belong.
I am right-- oh--
-right here on page 34... -Point of order!
-We can't use props in the debate! -Noted!
-Who said that? Who said that? -Thank you.
You taught me that. You taught me that.
-Did I? Did I?
Moving on, moving on. My second point, judges,
is that the dead should not govern the living.
Thomas Jefferson himself said
that we should draft a new constitution
for every generation.
-The framers...
The framers have been in their graves for over 200 years.
They lived in a world without toothbrushes, deodorant
and toilet paper.
The great Benjamin Franklin
didn't even take a bath in fresh water, but instead he took
something called an "air bath," where he would
walk around naked, thinking that the air would bathe him.
And our very own George Washington died
because he had a cold and decided to treat it
with bloodletting.
So why, why are we listening to Bloodletting Washington
and Air Bath Franklin?!
Our Constitution is like the Horcrux in Harry Potter.
It is a piece of our founding fathers' soul
that is still somehow still alive,
ruling over the rest of us.
Let me explain. In Harry Potter,
a Horcrux is an object in which a dark wizard
has hidden a fragment of their soul
for the purpose of gaining immortality.
It is time to destroy the Horcrux
so that we can finally move on from the sins of our past
and finally write a document that is truly democratic
-and fully alive.
-Thank you.
Judges, uh, I am the first opposition speaker to the motion
that we should abolish the United States Constitution.
My opponent, uh, just quoted Thomas Jefferson
and said that the dead should not govern the living.
However, Thomas Jefferson himself is dead,
so why is she listening to him?!
She also said she wants
to make a brand-new Constitution,
but let me ask you this.
Who gets to make this new, perfect, utopian Constitution?
Will those of us who had our hands raised get to make it?
I don't think so.
This new Constitution will be made
by politicians, and since Congress
is still made up of mostly old white men,
why does she think they will write a better Constitution?!
Finally, judges,
I do not know what that Harry Potter thing is,
so I will not debate it.
Judges...
we have the oldest active, living constitution
in the world.
My opponent, who... who is very young,
-wants you to think
that this is a bad thing, but the reason our Constitution
has lasted so long is because it contains
the tools of its own correction, and it also contains
the tools we need to free ourselves from tyranny.
-And we need these tools right now!
-It is undeniable
that America is more equal, more democratic than it was
230 years ago.
In fact, you know what?
It is because of this Constitution,
not in spite of it, that she and I can stand up here today
-and insist on a better future for our country! -
Abolish, you have one minute for rebuttal.
Judges, my opponent's rebuttal that Thomas Jefferson is dead,
so why should we listen to him, I guess she can have it.
-I don't need it.
I will grant that I do not yet have a plan
for who will create this new document,
but I do know that it'll not be fully created by white men.
-And apparently...
apparently, my opponent-- who is much older--
isn't aware about the recent changes in our government.
Congress is more diverse than it has ever been,
-and I have-- yes!
Yes! Yes, yes, yes!
And I have faith that people like me will be involved
in this redesigning process,
whether these men like it or not.
We have all these amendments that are supposed to correct
the wrongs of our history.
However, let's look at the 13th Amendment.
It abolished slavery,
only for it to be reimagined as a prison industry
that is a new systemic form of oppression.
It is something that I consider to be an illusion of progress.
And how do you expect to make any real progress
when the electoral college is a hot mess...
...two of our... two of our last three presidents
did not win the popular vote,
different branches of government are overstepping their powers,
-voter suppression is rampant...
and nine people-- nine people-- have the disproportionate power
over our basic human rights and communities of color, women,
-LGBTQIA folx and immigrants
have their rights violated on a daily basis. Thank you.
Keep, you have 30 seconds
-to cross-examine. -Our document was designed
to make the changes that you want to make.
So why are you willing to put our entire democracy at risk
instead of just passing an amendment?
Well, we haven't passed an amendment in my lifetime.
We've been trying to pass the Equal Rights Amendment
for the past hundred years; what makes you think
-we're gonna pass it now? -Okay. Fair enough.
We're actually one state away from ratification,
-so you want to give up now? -Well, it's not giving up
if we're being set up to fail.
-Fine, let me ask you this.
Let's say we give you this new Constitution.
-Okay.
What is to stop
private lobbying organizations, corporations,
like, say, the NRA, from influencing
-the making of this new document with their money? -
Well, this is why we need a new Constitution
to stop these big lobbying corporations
from using their money to tilt the boat
that is our laws.
-Okay, but how?
How are you gonna make that happen?
-By making a new Constitution.
-Time!
Keep, you have one minute for rebuttal.
-Judges!
I agree that some of the progress,
uh, that has been made in this country is an illusion.
However, if we throw out this Constitution,
we throw away real progress
that people fought and died to achieve.
If we get rid of this Constitution tomorrow,
here is what would happen.
Same-sex marriage would be illegal in 14 states.
-Abortion would be illegal in 30 states.
-Segregation would technically be legal
in 32 states.
-Judges, the only thing
protecting most of us right now is actually this Constitution.
And the only thing, the only thing holding us together
at a very divided time is a collective faith
in this document.
Yes, you and I might interpret it differently,
but without it, we risk complete collapse.
Judges, Abraham Lincoln said
we should not throw out the Constitution,
but to throw out the men who abuse it!
-Thank you!
-Abolish,
you have 30 seconds to cross-examine.
Would you agree that the Supreme Court could roll back
most of the rights you just listed
even if we keep this Constitution?
-Yes, I absolutely agree with you. -Oh, okay.
That is, that is why I think we have to do the-the--
That's why I don't think that our basic human rights
can be left up to the whims of a partisan court.
It's why I think we have to do
the hard work of passing amendments,
even if they don't always work, even if it takes time.
We don't have time. How long is it gonna take?
How long is it gonna take
to write a climate change amendment?
-At this rate, we'll be extinct!
I-I hear you, but I don't think it's gonna take longer
to-to write that amendment than it will to write
-a whole new Constitution. -Okay.
Out of 4,500 words and 27 amendments in the Constitution,
is the word "women" even mentioned once?
-Time!
-No, no, but I...
Each side will have one minute to conclude,
starting with abolish.
Being a young girl in modern America,
I never really thought about the Constitution that deeply.
I had other things to think about:
friends, conspiracy theories, food and Netflix.
I now realize that the Constitution's harms
outweigh its good, and this is the reason
why we need to get rid of it.
The Constitution was a radical, upstart, visionary document
created by passionate people
like James Madison and Gouverneur Morris,
who were trying to envision a new-- google him--
-who were trying to envision...
who were trying to envision a new beginning
and a framework for making change.
But today it is being used by a small segment of the population
as a conservative force to prevent change.
The farther we get from its inception,
the less it speaks to who we are now.
This document is old and arthritic.
I am one of this generation's founding daughters
telling you want I want for the rest of my life.
I want a document that takes action on climate change,
that believes health care is a human right,
-that protects gender equality
and says that education is a fundamental pillar
for our society.
So join me, join me in making a new document
-that protects us all.
-Thank you.
Judges, the truth is I totally agree with my opponent.
-I believe
that to have a neutral Constitution,
a negative rights Constitution,
means that we have a Constitution
that simply perpetuates the status quo,
which means that it perpetuates white supremacy and misogyny
-and violence.
I wish we could get rid of this document
and make a brand-new Constitution
exactly like the one she describes.
I just, I do not believe that there is a way to do this
without putting the most vulnerable people
in this country in danger.
-I also...
I also don't think democracy is something that just happens
to us because we magically change a piece of paper.
Democracy is something that we have to make happen,
that we have to fight for,
that we have to enact every single day!
Judges, the great civil rights activist Diane Nash said,
"Freedom is, by definition, people realizing
they are their own leaders."
So, you know what? Let's pass a climate change amendment.
Let's pass the Equal Rights Amendment!
-Or you know what?
Better yet, let's run for Congress ourselves!
Rosdely Ciprian, I am ready
to start knocking on doors for you!
-Pandering! -That...
Fine, you know what? I am pandering,
-but I also mean it!
-Thank you! Thank you so much.
Okay, so... it is time to choose the judge.
Rosdely will be choosing our judge.
Let's see.
I see people looking away, which is how democracy dies.
-Um...
-Would you like to be our judge? -Me?
-Yes. -Uh... Uh, s...
-Sure.
-Okay, what is your name? -I'm, uh--
-My-my name's Maddie. -Where are you from?
I'm from Berkeley, California, but I live in New York now.
-Oh. -Oh, amazing. All right.
Um, Maddie, do you mind, uh, do you mind standing up for us?
Do you mind actually walking up to the front
-of the stage for us? All right. -Oh, s-sure.
-Um...
-Park yourself right here, yeah. Very nice. -All right. Um...
Maddie, as you know, you have a very important decision to make,
uh, to keep or abolish the United States Constitution.
Uh, we would love for you to make your decision in silence.
Don't tell us, and once you know,
open the corresponding envelope
and read the official language out loud to the people.
Uh, that way, it's legal.
-Uh, we'll be over here,
so we can't see what you're deciding.
Okay. I, Madeline,
on behalf of the audience
of What the Constitution Means to Me,
do hereby vote to abolish
-the Constitution. -Yay! -
Uh, all right, no. Thank you so much.
I guess, uh, since you voted to abolish,
uh, I guess you can keep your pocket Constitutions
so you have something to read in your bunkers.
Uh, we are at the end of our evening,
uh, but Rosdely and I...
Before we go home, Heidi and I
like to ask each other a couple questions,
get to know each other better as people.
And these questions were left by last night's audience,
so feel free to leave your own questions on the way out.
-Um, Terri? -Yes?
Will you please dim the lights?
Absolutely. Here you go.
Okay.
-Sorry.
Rosdely, what smell reminds you most of home?
-Home?
Probably, 'cause of my Dominican culture,
mangú, salami, fried eggs,
which is basically smashed plantains,
fried sausage and, like, this orange juice
mixed with milk drink.
That reminds me of home.
-I want to eat all that right now. -Yeah, so do I.
-All right.
What is the worst fashion trend from your childhood?
Oh, my God.
Um, there's... there were so many.
-Um...
Uh, very permed hair, the-- I teased my bangs up
and wore, like, a big permed helmet.
-Rosdely, this is your last question. You ready? -Yes.
Uh, Rosdely, what do you imagine your life will be like
in 20 years?
I will be 34.
Um, I want to be a New York Times best seller.
Oh, and then I kind of want to have a signature look by then.
Like Doc Martens, business casual pants and a T-shirt.
And my hair will just go with the flow.
-That's what I imagine.
And one of these brilliant young women
has agreed to join us here tonight.
Hi. My name is Rosdely Ciprian.
My name is Thursday Williams.
I am a recent graduate
of William Cullen Bryant High School
and an alum of the Legal Outreach Program
where I practice constitutional debate.
-Heads. -Tails.
-Heads.
-I'll take proposition, abolish. -Opposition, keep.
-Opposition, keep. -I would like proposition, abolish.
"This house ought to abolish
the United States Constitution."
-Yes.
The proposition says she's going to make an all-new Constitution,
but let me ask you this:
Would you let me go into another room
and decide all the rules for all of you?
No, you wouldn't. Let's be honest.
How many rich, white men who own property
are still in control of our government today?
I know, right?
We will not erase the sins of our history
by simply tossing out a piece of paper.
-Especially when this piece of paper... -
...is capable of shining a light into our own blind spots.
Thank you.
Hey!
Just a glance at current headlines
should tell you that this moment really is different.
The consequences of any of us
sitting on the sidelines are more dire.
With that being said, if you want to change a country,
you need to wake up, get involved, go vote,
put pressure on your local representatives, protest.
Matter of fact, no. Let's do it ourselves.
Let's run for local office.
Let's run for student government.
Let's be the change that we desire.
Let's start with our own personal constitution
and build our way out.
-Thank you.