YouSaid · the spoken record

Tina Tchen

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2020-08-13

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2020-08-13

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1. “On those issues and Being intersectional about it, women and men, young people of every race and ethnicity, of LGBTQ, standing up for transgender women who are being murdered at unprecedented rates. They are our hope, right, David. I mean, this is”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Absolutely. No, absolutely. I mean, I think that they are, it has been astonishing to see, you know, you and I know what it's like to actually organize a rally before the internet. We're doing mimeograph pages of flyers to send around to people. Their ability to harness the tools that they have because they grew up with them to instantly respond and be on message with incredible profound messages. That's the other thing. It's not just their activism and showing up on the streets. It's a pretty amazing understanding of the interconnectedness of these issues, of the depth of things like sexism and patriarchy, how that manifests itself and racism and how that history manifests itself in what you see in whether it's police brutality or just sort of the kinds of discrimination that occurs. What's happening on the border, right? And staying at”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Live every moment like you assume. Assume you're in a transformational moment, that's how you will make change. But we sorted out the problem. We know we're in a transformational moment because we've never lived through this unprecedented time where everybody in the world is going through the same horrific challenge that we all are. And so this collective will to do something better, I think exists in a way that it has never existed before. But now we have to actually develop the new policies, develop the new way of business, advocate for them, and make the change happen. Because then happen by itself, as you and I know, that's what our old boss told us, right? Be the change. You are the change you've been waiting for, as he said, right?”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Or it could be really a pivotal. And I believe it is. I mean, all the conditions are set for it to be a pivotal transformational moment on sexism, on racism, on really treating essential workers fairly because we now see how important they are. But it requires really deep change in how we operate. And it requires people to step up and do it, right? Do the hard work, be loud about it, you know, make noise about it, be transformational about it. It takes employers who and you start to see this, you know, recognizing it's in their self-interest to actually respond to these issues and they will build a better company coming out of it if they do, if they let their workers work flexibly from home, if they give them paid leave. Even if the government's not telling them to do it, enlightened employers can do it and they're going to get ahead. You know, Gloria Stein and I once heard her say, you know, somebody asked her, how do you know if you're in a transformational moment? She said, well, you should just.”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “On it. Well, here's the challenge for us, right? For those of us who are living this moment right now is we have the ability to make it one of the other, right? You know, I'm remembering John Lewis, right, after, you know, last week. And that's his challenge to us is it could”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “We're working on caregiving. We're working on fair pay and promotion because you really got to look at all of those things and try to change our workforce.”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I think we're making some progress, right? So, for example, I think most major companies in the United States have changed their sexual harassment policies, right? To be more inclusive, to be less narrow, change some of the reporting systems. But the real issue, David, that's not going to do it, right? You know, that's why we have this broader mission, really, you know, what we say is we want to create safe, fair, and dignified work for everyone, because that's what it would take to actually eliminate sexual harassment from happening. And that means you got to get into all the structural barriers that allows a patriarchy to continue in most workplaces, you know, that, you know, where we only have 7% of the Fortune 500 CEOs who are women today and not a single one is a black woman, right? Today, you've got to break those systems down to really make places safe and eliminate sexual harassment. So that's why we are working on equal pay and we are working on paid leave.”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Well, it is related because the reason how we got there was we set up the Times of Legal Defense Fund, right, to help give representation to survivors of sexual harassment. We have survivor justice calling people out and being there for the Harvey Weinstein folks during their survivors during the trial, those issues. We wanted to do more. I mean, the real goal is to end sexual harassment from happening, right? People should not have to endure it and then go find a lawyer to get redressed. We need to really have workplaces that are safe.”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “As bad as things are with the pandemic and with the economy. We have, however, a moment, as I've said, if our economy was a house, we have stripped the thing down to the studs, right? You know, this is not just what we dealt with back in 09, right, with the Great Recession. This is every part of the economy, every sector, unemployment, you know, at multiples of what we were combating. And yet the opportunity is let's really address the structural barriers in our economy. Let's build back better. Let's build back something that invests in workers. Let's talk about things like paid leave, paid sick days finally got in and the emergency cares bill. You know, let's really right the wrongs of the way our workplaces were set up so that we can, you know, have truly inclusive workplaces that are flexible and that recognize the investments of workers.”

   2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Right time. I happened to be in Los Angeles right after the Harvey Weinstein stories broke and met with some of the actresses who were sort of reeling from that revelation and really realizing, David, that they weren't alone. The reason it struck them all so hard is for years they had just endured the sexual harassment silently by themselves because that's what the system had set up. And the revelations just made them realize, oh my God, we're not alone, which is why you saw that snowball of so many people speaking out. And then the hashtag me too that let millions of women around the world speak out about their issues. And all of a sudden, we saw the dimensions of a problem that we didn't realize we had. And so that led to the legal defense fund, which times a legal defense fund, which I helped put together. So I've been sort of involved from the beginning, really wasn't prepared to do it full time, but we needed a CEO to come in. And it feels like a really transformative moment. So here's the thing.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “We're in a really different time. I mean, it is in a little full circle, and then sort of picking up everything I learned along the way, I will say, David, it's sort of like one of those where, you know, my experience at the law firm, you know, and being the only woman or one of only a few in various points, you know, our experience in the White House, where in addition to what we've talked about, I also, you know, together with Vallery, we ran the White House Council on Women and Girls, where we worked on working families issues, right? And all of these issues on paid leave and equal pay. And then, you know, actually when I came out of the White House, I started, went back to a law firm, but I started practice on helping companies address these issues of equity and inclusion because I found from the White House a lot of companies actually want to do the right thing. They just weren't sure how to do it. You know, and sometimes the lawyers are telling them not to look under the covers to see if we're paying people unequally because we don't want a problem, but that's actually what you need to do. The times of stuff all just, again, sort of fit right place.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Well, there you go. But, you know. Other people have challenged sort of, you know, if you think about men go toe to toe a lot, right? And are able. No, fair enough. Fair enough.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Right. But, you know, we are already seeing, you know, the kind of sexist and misogynistic tropes trotted out like what are they wearing, right? And how much weight have they put on or what's their hair looking like these days that have nothing to do with the experience and expertise of women? And one of the things actually we're going to be doing over the next 90 days at Times Up is sort of saying time's up, right? On sexist political coverage and let's evaluate women on the strength of who they are, not on what they're wearing or what their husband does or what their hair looks like.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Our biggest scandal, as we like to not say. You're right on. I will say I learned a lot from that, and to Michelle Obama's credit, she just sort of understood it and embraced it. And we just did what we had to do. And she would sometimes recognize that once people got done looking at the shiny object of the new dress she wore, they would pay attention to the issues. But I will say just in the current moment, David, you know, one of the things we're focusing on in Times Up right now over these less than 90 days period is we've gotten a moment where there's a woman nominated, you know, for vice president of the United States by one of the major parties, other women in the public eye.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “And that pressure that the staff is under, you know, is pretty enormous. But we have great staff. I mean, I have to give credit to just the couple hundred people, as you know, who came through who were our staffers. Amazing”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yeah, well, you know, she was. I mean, she was, I mean, we are actually because we were trained as lawyers, I think the two of us have a lot of similarities, you know, in what we demand and what we're looking for, the standards to which we would hold people before we were going to go out publicly with something. So I think that worked out well for us. That's why we worked so well together. We had a sort of similar approach on, you know, and, you know, there's a tremendous pressure. You remember this, it's a White House staffer. The microscope you're under, the constant attention, the like, you know, people writing about our shoes, goddammit, right? At any moment, the level of detail to which you have to think about because if you miss one of those details, it's the one thing that will sync an entire foreign trip or, you know, pick your thing.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Exactly. She never lost that. She never lost that. And she brought that perspective, which is why I think we were so successful is, you know, she brought that perspective to what we were doing in East Wing and also to what her husband was thinking about.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “What that typically was, and you'll remember, was the great thing about her was, you know, she didn't watch cable news, she watched HGTV, right? And she was, you know, and she would say this, you know, she was probably, and she was right more in touch with what your average person.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “The president's agenda or not. And if it's not, then we got to ask another question about why we are spending time on it. And then for me as the staffer, you got to think about how do you create initiatives that are sufficiently at scale to be worthy of the First Lady in the United States, but sufficiently targeted and smart in their strategy that they'll actually have an impact because she never wanted to do just public awareness feel nice things. You know, she wanted actual results, but actual real people would feel right Joey said, for example, on the, you know, there's been countless military awareness issues out there and yellow ribbons and so on. But she said, I want actual military families to feel a difference with what we're doing. And that was the challenge. And it's hard to craft those, but I'm really proud of our team. I mean, I think in all four of those areas over the six years, over the eight entire eight years, we did, you know, a pretty good job on that.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “No, it's interesting, you know, it's really hard to do, right? And it is harder than it looks. You know, look, you look back and everything she did and it sort of seems obvious, right, that she would do things around kids and nutrition and health, right, which we didn't let's move and the veteran stuff and active duty military and joining forces and then the education stuff in that we did and then the girls education stuff on Let Girls Learn, which was our finals or the four initiatives. It looks obvious. It's really hard. It's really hard to figure out an issue, but we start, our starting point was always, what will she be passionate about? Because if she's going to spend time on it, you know, it needs to be something she's connected to. Her other, you know, commandment to us, rightly so, was there's only one person elected in this building. So everything we do, and this wasn't just about the initiatives, this was 100% of her public time. Everything we should analyze is this going to provide.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Exactly. And that's the moment that happened, you know, when Valerie became the senior advisor for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison and, you know, I'm like, I don't know what public liaison is, but it kind of sounds like maybe something I can help you out with. And we had this famous coffee in the Starbucks at the basement of the Aon building, or whatever it's called now, right, the old standard oil building where we really talked about it just before Thanksgiving and it was like, of course, you know, then you just say yes right away and you figure out the rest later.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “I'm a finance committee, right? We did all of that, but so people were asking, and it's so interesting, David, when you're as active as I was politically in Chicago, I had no idea about the federal government. It's really opaque, right? Unless you've ever been in the federal government, like, what are the jobs that are, you know, what are the jobs in the White House? You don't really actually know what these are. And so I had no idea. And I was settled enough that I didn't need to go to Washington just to go, right? I didn't feel that need. But of course, if there was something that he needed that I could be helpful to him at, you know, the president of the United States asked you to do something, you're going to go.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Was and I have a house that I loved. My kids were settled. And right after the election, lots of people come at you and ask because they had known I'd been very active. I was not formally on the campaign. I was one of those like friends of Barack and Michelle who just, we flew ourselves on our own Don Iran to every primary battle state to do voter protection on a primary day.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “In front of the post office, I remember it well. And what I also remember is I had dragged along some people from my church. So my minister is there. She's standing there. And she's like, who is this guy? That is the one moment that I looked at her and said, okay, you're looking at the first black president of the United States That's”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “It was not a big deal, which is why you can't find footage. It was across the street, under the calder, right? The calder's big calder sculpture. Across the street from a federal”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “To that race. No. So, my conclusion of the breakfast David was I looked at him and I said, Look, I will always support you, but I think it's a terrible idea. And luckily, he did not listen to me. And then, you know, the other moment I remember vividly is I was at that anti-war demonstration. Oh, yes”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “So, and you know, remember the lineup in the race already, we had a rich trial lawyer who was going to self finance. We had the scion of, you know, if it's not the dailies, it was the hind family.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “At the same time, I was running a voter registration project for women. And so it might have been then, but somewhere along the line, it was always a supporter of his. I remember actually, David, I don't know if I've ever told the story publicly. I remember he may not remember when he was thinking about running for Senate, right? The U.S. Senate race, he called me up to have breakfast with him. And we had breakfast at that Hyatt Regency, you know, underneath a glass atrium. It's a vivid recollection of this. We're having breakfast underneath the glass atrium. He tells me he wants to do this. And I sort of looked at him and I'm kind of like, you know, and I have in my head other progressive leaders who went out too fast, too far, like Monica Faith Stewart, for example. She runs for Congress after giving this great speech actually about the ERA on the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives and then flames out, right? And it didn't work and it kind of didn't come.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Not at all. You know that none of us thought it was going to end that way, right? You know, at various points. But you're right. It's a really, you know, as you know, for as big a city as Chicago is, the progressive political community is kind of small. And we all knew each other, you know, really well. And I often say I don't have a good how I met Barack and Michelle. I don't have that Valerie story, right? Where the dinner and the whole thing, you know, I don't have a really good story about how I met Barack and Michelle Obama because it's long enough ago that the three of us can't remember. It's somewhere along the line in being active. I remember it could have been during when he was doing a voter registration project on the South side because”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “She is fits in our family perfectly, her personality is exactly like mine. I mean, she just, you know, it's been a great gift for both, you know, her older brother, Patrick, and me. And it's great. She's now a Montessori teacher. She's here with me. She graduated from college. She's a Montessori teacher. He's a Marine Corps officer, which I'm very proud of.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And about a family in Chicago that had done this. And, you know, I sometimes say, I'm not so sure if the article had been about Salvadoran baby boys. I would have been as moved as I was as a story by about, you know, Little girls in China who could be me, right? It's like there, but for the grace of God, go I on what that could be. And my desire at that point to, you know, make sure Patrick had a sibling, you know, again, I was lucky and I had the means to do it. And it's amazing. You know, it's one of those things, David, that makes you believe in a higher being and a higher power.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Kind of stressful for her. Actually, the reason I adopted Emma Patrick was about six or seven when I started the process. I was actually, I can remember vividly sitting at my kitchen table late at night reading the Chicago Tribune. There was a story, your old paper, a story on the front page of the tribune about adoptions for China, which at the time were very novel, like unheard of. It was the first article I'd ever read about it.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Yes, you're right. You know, that your research is a really good David. That was the tradition in China. So, you know, this is, we're talking about China in the 1920s. This is old China. And in Old China, if you were a son who had a lot of children and your older brother, as was this case, had no children, you know, one of your children would be adopted. And so my mother was for a very young age. And it was only because of the war, World War II starting that my grandmother went out to the country, which is where the uncle and aunt were living and retrieved my mother because she said it's not safe and I want her back. And at that point, you know, my mother was like six years old and she's actually getting taken away from who she thinks is her mother. So that was a little confusing.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Just thousands and thousands and thousands of women in this country because we are the only country without a national paid leave policy, industrialized country. There's us in Papua New Guinea. Let's be clear in the world that doesn't have some form of paid maternity leave or parental leave. And that's where my passion for working families issue comes from is that I got lucky and I know I got lucky. But so many thousands of women and now men too are not so lucky.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “I, you know, you can feel it when you've got the gap and you're not really sure, you know, and you're trying to try out a new person or you're not really sure what's happened to your kid during the day, you know, the toll that it takes on you while you're trying to concentrate on your work. And I could only imagine, and I thought about this a lot as I was living through it, what do you do if you're a minimum wage worker, right? Or you are, you know, someone who doesn't have that kind of financial means that I had. That's the only way I got it to work, David, was I had enough money and enough ability to hire the kind of childcare that made me comfortable.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Well, you know, David, I was lucky because I was a scandal lawyer, so I had means, right? I had the financial wherewithal to hire, you know, full-time, you know, in-house childcare for my children. And we got lucky where, you know, I wind up over the course of my two kids, we had, you know, two folks, you know, each of whom, you know, one worked for me for close to 20 years and the other person worked for me, you know, for close to 25 years, including the second one who actually moved from Chicago with me because Emma was only 12 years old when we went to DC and intended to stay a year and she stayed for six till Emma graduated from high school. And so I got lucky with people who really loved my children and I could feel confident during the day when I was at work. There were moments when I had gaps in my childcare.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Was the first woman on the federal bench stepped down and joined our law firm and really back when we only had, I think, four or five people in the litigation department and really helped grow that sort of put the Chicago litigation department of Skinarps on the map.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “I did as an associate. And it was sort of in my last year when I was up for partner that I got the opportunity to do that. And to that, I credit the partner on the case, who was a woman named Susan Getsendanner, who you'll remember”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Definitely, David, not a lot of women, definitely not a lot of women of color. Definitely not a lot of Asian women going into law at all and definitely not going into big stakes litigation. So I was very often the only woman in lots of conference rooms, lots of courtrooms.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “No one else has ever done it. It's hard to believe now because everybody's international, everybody's been acquired by somebody else. But back then, Chicago was very provincial and it was kind of a big deal that these two guys who are very big Democratic politics guys too, which is. Meets”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “And remember, back then, for people who know the legal market in Chicago, no one from the outside world was in Chicago. It was kind of a big deal that a New York firm would come into Chicago.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “That's not your job. And I really wanted that to be able to become that kind of lawyer and a really good lawyer on the skill set that you need to do. I mean, being a lawyer is like any other trade, you've got to do your time doing the scut work of what it takes to be a good lawyer and be a good trial lawyer, which is what I wanted to be.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “And it was great. It was a great experience, but it also taught me that as a public interest lawyer, the best public interest lawyers were lawyers who had been private sector lawyers first because you learn as a private sector lawyer when somebody's paying the bills and you can look in the eye at somebody who's going to lose their business or something else if you lose the case, it creates a discipline in you as a lawyer because that's what lawyers need to be. Lawyers need to act in service of someone else and use their skills for that and have that responsibility. And the lawyers who had gone straight through to public interest didn't have that, right? They were kind of deciding the issues on their own. And I subsequently defended the Department of Children Family Services for part of my corporate law career. And I saw that on the other side, right, of lawyers who, you know, would put offers on the table and it was like, I know your clients, if they were sitting here, would really like this offer, except you don't like it as a lawyer.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Well, so when I was in state government, I had had an idea when I graduated from college about whether I'd be a lawyer, but sort of back in those days as a Harvard graduate, if you hadn't already picked up being a doctor and if you hadn't already decided you were going to go to B school, everybody defaulted to law school. And I didn't want to actually do that. So that's why I went out and worked for a while. But then decided, you know, everybody who was making policy really had a law degree, right? We're pushing issues forward. So I did go to law school with that in mind and I'm thinking, you know, well, gee, you know, maybe I'll do a lot of pro bono cases. Maybe I'll do, you know, I knew I was never suited to be a legal assistance lawyer because I'm just not that good on the social work. It takes a toll and it takes a really certain strength to do that individual casework that's not in my personality. And I spent, so my first summer I spent at a big law firm. The second summer I did spend working for BPI, as you know, you know, one of the great.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “And in fact, the night, that night in the hotel, at the Hyatt on Barak celebration, I met an older black woman and she had a Harold Washington campaign poster that she'd flipped over on its back to put Baroque's name, which was exactly that, right?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “You know, again, through all of this, just activism, and there was a moment I was an officer for the Illinois National Organization for Women and we were kind of being bipartisan, nonpartisan as you do when you're part of advocacy organizations. And then it just became clear, you know, you just have to be a Democrat, right? Because the Republicans at the time were so anti-anthing progressive for women. And then that moment, gosh, David, you know, I mean, I compare it to, you know, the night that, you know, our friend, you know, Barack Obama won for US Senate, right? Those two events, you know, Harold's election and Barack's election to the U.S. Senate for the first time, that first major statewide race were the, you know, sort of singular moments where you felt there was a breakthrough through so much.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “No, well, it was. It was. It was, you know, and I was a very young, you know, idealistic person thinking, you know, of course, you know, equal rights should be. But it was a great moment for me. I mean, David.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Yeah, was it good? Okay. Because she was, there are some people I haven't watched it yet. There are other people I've talked to who are also leaders in that time period who are irritated because they really think, you know, there's too much credit given to Phyllis Laffley in that moment. She's certainly the same.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Exactly. Exactly. I had no idea. I had no idea. You know, as I often say, who knew, but Springfield, Illinois in those years was the hotbed of American feminism, right? It was the place everybody came to and worked at because Illinois, as you know, was the only northern industrial state at that moment who had not yet ratified the ERA. It was the linchpin to getting the other three states, which would have to come from the southern states to get to ratification. And everybody was everybody took up residence in Illinois. Ellie Smeal, that's how I first met Ellie We had people, as you remember, you know, towards the end chaining themselves to the doors, not me, but other people chaining themselves to the doors of the legislature to protest at the very end as the time was running out.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “She was another Yeah, Comptra ran for governor, you know, first one was for governor in Illinois. So yes, Dawn became a very good friend because one of the things I did, this is, you know, some of your life, David, is being in the right place at the right time and it just gets shaped by the serendipity of those events is I landed because I got married to someone who's working in Springfield. I'm in Springfield, Illinois in 1978.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source