Mini Timmaraju

Welcome to My Body My Pod, a reproductive freedom podcast. I’m your host, Mini Timmaraju, President and CEO of Reproductive Freedom For All. This week’s episode is a little different and a really special one. We’re partnering with our good friends at the Women’s March to bring you a conversation from their 2026 convening right here in my hometown of Houston, Texas.

Mini Timmaraju

I’m recording this backstage just before I head on stage with Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, and Nsé Ufot, a member of the Women’s March board and Konig civil rights leader. Hundreds of people are here to organize, build power, and imagine what’s possible when we fight for change together. And that’s exactly what we’re about to talk about. What winning looks like.

Mini Timmaraju

How we build a country where the next generation has more rights, not fewer rights, and everyone has the freedom to make decisions about their bodies, their families, and their futures. I have a feeling it’s going to be a really good one. So let’s get into it.

Announcer

Please welcome to the stage Nsé Ufot, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, and Mini Timmaraju.

Rachel Carmona

Hi, everyone.

Nsé Ufot

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Rachel Carmona

How are you doing? It’s been a long day.

Rachel Carmona

Okay. You’re like, we’re ready, we’re ready. I want to say thank you for hanging in there. I know it’s been a long day. I got up at five. I know at least one other person got up at five today. I don’t know what time you were?

Nsé Ufot

I don’t play those games.

Rachel Carmona

Nsé was like, that’s fake news. You didn’t have to do that.

Nsé Ufot

Let’s say, 7:17.

Rachel Carmona

Yes. So we are here today to talk about feminist futures. And part of this is just about, you know, flowing with the conversation so that we can understand what it looks like. Some, some folks may have heard of this Democratic operative. To us, she’s mostly just the homie, Anat Shenker-Osorio.

Rachel Carmona

And she, you know, will see information that Women’s March puts out and she’ll be like, you all are talking about the recipe and the people need to learn about the brownie. What is the brownie that we are fighting for? Cannot just be, you know, defeat this act or stop this confirmation or do whatever. But what exactly are we fighting for in the face of a a very clearly articulated plan and particularly one, in the, in the thousand pages of Project 2025 and all of the addenda that they have put out that clearly names that the destruction of feminism and a return to femininity and a withdrawal of rights for on reproductive front, on electoral front, on social fronts.

Rachel Carmona

You even see their talking heads and their people who socialize ideas, saying women shouldn’t have unfettered access to social media. And so we are here to really talk about what the future looks like, because obviously, this whole convening is really a preparatory meeting to learn the skills and the tactics and to make the relationships that we need to organize towards our next convening in a year.

Rachel Carmona

So I am really excited to be again with Nsé, Women’s March WIN board chair over here. Remember, she identifies as a poet and a rapper.

Nsé Ufot

It’s not a real thing, y’all.

Rachel Carmona

If you go to her TikTok, you know that that’s bullshit.

Nsé Ufot

These anti raps are not going to rap themselves.

Mini Timmaraju

There was a request for your TikTok.

Rachel Carmona

There was a request for your TikTok.

Nsé Ufot

There – request denied.

[assorted laughing and indistinguishable chatter]

Rachel Carmona

It’s not that, it’s not that secret. And then to my left here,

Nsé Ufot

It’s, I’m so creative.

Rachel Carmona

Yes. We’ve got Mini Timmaraju, who I actually talked about your quote earlier today in our opening session where I was talking about your, your podcast, where you said, there’s people certainly on our opposition, but also amongst our friends who’ve decided that the death of women is an acceptable political collateral. And so we’re-

Mini Timmaraju

In this state, my home state, my hometown. This is my hometown.

Rachel Carmona

Yes. So really, we’re here to talk about first, I just wanted to set exactly how real it’s going to be up here. And then secondly, I was going to toss to Mini actually to set the stage a little bit for the first question. But also we’ve got a special situation going on right now.

Rachel Carmona

So the first question is really like, what does winning look like for us? Like in 50 years, if we wake up and we’re tired of “winning bigly.” What do women’s lives look like? You know, including obviously Mini is the President and CEO of the artist formerly known as NARAL, currently known as Reproductive Freedom For All. And yeah, shout out.

Rachel Carmona

It’ll always be NARAL, I always tell Mini my first job was at NARAL, so I used to- I was 15 years old, I had to get written permission from my mother. And so I was a telemarketer when I was 15 in the summer and I used to call. Hi, my name is Rachel, and I’m calling on behalf of the National Abortion Rights Action League and I had a whole script.

Rachel Carmona

So that’s why it’s always NARAL for me. So I’m going to toss to you for both the question of what it looks like, but also what’s what’s special about our situation right now in this panel?

Mini Timmaraju

Thank you both for having me. And it’s great to be with all of you today. Rachel mentioned our podcast. It’s called My Body, My Pod, and we are going to cross post this conversation on the podcast and you’re a part of it. So audience reaction is key.

[Nsé Ufot cheers, then the crowd cheers]

Mini Timmaraju

We want folks at home when they listen to this, to feel the vibe, the feel, the energy of what Women’s March activism looks like, feels like, sounds like. I think it’s so important that we remind folks that we haven’t gone anywhere, right? We’re still ready to march in the streets. If I have one more person say to me, what happened to the marching in the streets?

Mini Timmaraju

It’s happening. We’ve just got to, you know, save our energy for critical moments, pick our spots. Right. And I’m sorry we’re a little burned out. I’m a little tired.

Rachel Carmona

Yes. The girls are tired.

Mini Timmaraju

Right? We’re tired. So we need to pick our moments, pick our battles. But we’re here. And you are the sleeping giant in this war for our democracy.

Mini Timmaraju

So I never say no to Rachel. She knows that. Especially to come back to my hometown and see, to use her phrase, my homies. And it’s just a joy to be here in a place where, to start off on the negative, because we talked about it. Women are dying, right? Tierra Walker’s family is suing Ken Paxton right now for allowing her to die for causing her death, right? We are living in a moment of dystopian reality, and we cannot let the country get used to letting women die just for living their lives. Right?

Mini Timmaraju

So for me, the first part is 2050. I was doing the math. I was like, how old am I going to be? Like, I’m going to be almost 80 years old, so I’m going to be an elder. I’ll be an elder in the year 2050 and I will be counting on- I see some younger folks here- I will be counting on y’all to be up here, and for me to be at home watching on my virtual reality, right? Well, hopefully I’ll be healthy. I’ve been weightlifting and doing my proteins.

Rachel Carmona

Same, same.

Nsé Ufot

Girl!

Mini Timmaraju

And doing my hormone replacement therapy, which will be fully covered in the year 2050. Nobody should even have any feelings of menopause in 2050, right? Because before you even get to the hot flashes, they’re slipping you a little something, right? Instead of having to go to 50 different doctors to be like, am I crazy? What’s going on? Why do my ears itch? For the younger ones. You’ll know later.

Rachel Carmona

Yeah, earlier than you think.

Mini Timmmaraju

It’s rough. I really thought I was going crazy. I’ve always said, like, my next job after this one is going to be like menopause fight, fighting for menopause, right? Because it’s crazy. Yeah. They will gaslight you into thinking you’re losing your mind and it’s just your body adjusting to a loss of estrogen.

Mini Timmaraju

So in the year 2050. I really hope we are in a position where we’re not fighting for every damn little thing, every small benefit, every basic dignity that we should be afforded to as women. I mean, of course, we should be in a position where no woman is dying, where we have abortion accessible and available and fully funded by the government.

Mini Timmaraju

By the way, we are real close to this. For the first time in the history of Congress, we have 200 co-sponsors of the legislation that would repeal the restriction on federal funds to be used for abortion care.

Mini Timmaraju

And it’s on the backs of this devastating crisis that was the result of the Dobbs decision, right? More and more Americans, including more independents and Republicans are outraged and can’t believe that women can’t get access to this care funded by the government, funded by- covered by Medicaid. So in 2050, hopefully we’ve taken care of all this, right? We have paid leave. We have equal pay. We have equitable pay. Forget equal pay. Let’s talk about equitable pay, because some of us need to get paid more than our male counterparts.

Nsé Ufot

Let’s talk about it.

Mini Timmaraju

Right? Let’s talk about that. So that’s the dream scenario. And once we have those basic equities, to me 2050 is about what’s the big bold beautiful vision we live when we have a true matriarchy, right? What can we build together? And I really am grateful that you asked this question, because I was on my flight this morning from DC and I was like, I don’t think I’ve let myself think like this.

I’ve been so in the weeds in the battle of like every single day, every election by election hand-to-hand combat, killing bills, blocking bad confirmations, fighting on- fighting the FDA, fighting the DOJ, that I haven’t had a minute to sit and think, “What’s the fruits of our labor going to look like for my children?” And I’m raising two black boys and I want them to have a feminist future, right? It’s for them. It’s not for just women. It’s for them to live a fully equal, equitable life.

Nsé Ufot

So good.

Rachel Carmona

That’s what you said this morning when you were like, we’ll plan to win. Like we have to plan to win. We have to, we were talking about Rosa Parks and her intervention and that she had, she had planned and prepared to be arrested that, and, and, and so I’m just recapping in case some people weren’t in the room when we talked about we’d planned to win. So what is, what’s that in your world?

Nsé Ufot

Well, first of all, the place that Mini described, what did Tina say? I want to go to that place. I want to go to there.

Mini and Rachel [in unison]

I want to go to there.

Nsé Ufot

I want to go to there for sure.

Mini Timmaraju

The great Liz Lemon.

Nsé Ufot

For sure. I imagine that after 25 years of organizing from this powerful launching place that we in fact, like, have a pro-life government and a pro-life America, and I mean from like birth to people dying of old age, and that in those, in between those dates that we get to live a life that is affirming, that affirms communities and lets us live and love in ways. And so, like, if you want to get specific right, it means that, like, healthcare isn’t in any way a profit driven industry.

Mini Timmaraju

That’s right.

Nsé Ufot

Like in any way. Right. That isn’t a concern. Like shareholder value has nothing to do with how we deliver care to our neighbors and to our citizens. What I mean is that access to high quality education is in no way tied to where you live, right?

Nsé Ufot

Like, in no way does it predict, your zip code predict how long you will live, right, and what you have access to. And so those things feel pro-life because I feel like the the, the government, the politics, the vibes, the narratives, the actors that we are fighting against right now are super invested in things that are going to kill us.

Nsé Ufot

Right? And, like, they’re obsessed with it. I mean, we’ve been talking about how large language models are not AI and like, there’s a whole AI grift. And in a world where people kind of don’t really understand what’s happening, we follow the money and we’re following the money, and it keeps doing this and this and this. And then you add more from workers and then but it keeps going this and it doesn’t come back out.

Nsé Ufot

And that is not helpful. That will accelerate the end of people’s lives, the end of our democracy, the end of these institutions that we rely on. And so when I say this powerful launching pad, I’ve been thinking about life and investing in things that bring life and investing in things that we know make people’s lives better, right? As opposed to investing in weapons of war and genocide and pretending like menopause is some like condition that is so rare and so exotic that we can’t invest research into it.

Nsé Ufot

I’m mad that they still don’t know what fibroids are, right?

Mini Timmaraju

Exactly.

Nsé Ufot

Like what do you mean, right? But like, different types of erectile dysfunction medication, right? And like there’s there’s deep investment in-

Mini Timmaraju

Deep investment.

Nsé Ufot

Deep investment in that as an industry.

Mini Timmaraju

But I mean Viagra got covered before birth control. I’m just going to say that before the ACA.

Nsé Ufot

Yeah. I’m sorry, I’m sorry what?

Mini Timmaraju

Viagra was covered by major insurance companies well before birth control was mandated to be by the Affordable Care Act.

Nsé Ufot

That man don’t like you. I don’t know how else to say it, that man hate you, he don’t like you, he don’t like you.

Mini Timmaraju

They don’t like us. Yeah.

Nsé Ufot

I feel like, organized people. I don’t feel this way. I know this. that organized people are the only thing that give us a shot against organized capital. I, and when we are honest about successful people’s movements throughout the history of the world, like it has been called a whole bunch of different things, but it was feminists versus fascists, right?

Nsé Ufot

At very different points throughout the history of the world that that was the software, that that was the operating system underneath the winds. If we really tap in, again to successful people’s movements, when it was the people versus power, when it was the people versus organized capital, that underneath all of that, I’m talking about the American civil rights movement.

Nsé Ufot

I’m talking about various countries and their independence movements that the operating software underneath that was what feminists know about how to keep each other alive, how to keep people safe while organizing for the world that we deserve. So I that’s what I see.

Rachel Carmona

It’s really about I mean, also confronting the, the original sin of misogyny and sexism that, you know, predates a lot of the things that we talk about. We talk about capitalism, we talk about different, you know, systems of oppression. And really, when you think about it, you know, misogyny and racism has been operating for millennia, you know, far beyond the founding of any country or, you know, political system that we know about.

Rachel Carmona

And so, for me, I think, I think that it’s important for us to contend with that and to not continue to be good fighters against it, but to, to, to attain a win and to not have to be in a position to defend that win with our actual lives for eternity. In addition to everything that you said. And the one thing that I will say, in the interest of time, I’m going to move us along. But I would also say that the orgasm gap should be closed.

Nsé Ufot

Yeah. And also consequences. Can we have consequences in 2050? Consequences for like misogyny. Consequences for racism. Consequences for white mediocrity. Male mediocrity. Nepotism. Right? Can we have some consequences and accountability?

Mini Timmaraju

I would argue two things. Just I know you wanted to move us on, but I gotta respond to this.

Rachel Carmona

No, I’m ready to sit here and argue, like, I’m fine.

Mini Timmaraju

Argue two things. One, I want to come back to the orgasm gap. I do. But I think we are living in the consequences of all those things right now. And it’s being disproportionately; we’re being punished for our success, right? What’s happening right now is punishment and backlash to the amazing success of women’s liberation. Right? Of the civil rights movement.

Nsé Ufot

That’s right.

Mini Timmaraju

Of immigration policy, right? Like, my parents were asked to come to this country to fill gaps, knowledge gaps that this country needed them to get closed. And now, you know, people from my community, my family’s from India, you know, are being rounded up by ICE after they were being begged to come here to close educational gaps and professional gaps in this country.

Rachel Carmona

Right? We are being punished. We are being punished for our success. The consequences are not on the right folks, which is where you were going. But we are- they know that they are mediocre. And they can’t compete. Because they can’t compete, they’re trying to shove us out of the workforce.

Nsé Ufot

Correct.

Mini Timmaraju

And they’re happy to let us die.

Nsé Ufot

Correct, correct.

Mini Timmaraju

In fact they’ve tried to like they’re kind of almost incentivizing us to die.

Nsé Ufot

Yes. Correct. Correct. 1600 January Sixers have been pardoned. And it’s not-

Mini Timmaraju

Who are also, by the way, those January Sixers are FACE Act violators too. Meaning they were violators of the law protecting abortion clinics. There’s a direct overlay between those two groups of terrorists.

Nsé Ufot

Well, and to the point of incentives, not only have they been pardoned, but many of them believe that they will be receiving money, that they will be compensated.

Mini Timmaraju

Well, he tried.

Nsé Ufot

For the work that they’ve done, right?

Mini Timmaraju

They tried, yeah.

Nsé Ufot

And so that is an incentive to do it again.

Mini Timmaraju

Correct.

Nsé Ufot

Right? And we should be honest about that as we’re thinking about the world that we want to live in.

Mini Timmaraju

Absolutely. And everything that we’ve seen in this administration has been their incentive. Right? This whole, you know, deification, this, you know, rise of white supremacy, this rise of the Trump administration, Heritage Foundation, Project 2025. This is their reward.

Mini Timmaraju

So understanding that how do we flip that? Right? What are the incentives for us? What are the things that- and I made the comment earlier about burnout like kind of half, you know, jokingly. But I want to talk about it, and I want to talk about the orgasm gap, too. Because we have to find pleasure in the work.

Mini Timmaraju

Right? We can’t keep fighting this fight exhausted. They’re counting on it, right? Burned out, beat down. Not getting equal pleasure. Where is the joy?

Rachel Carmona

I mean that’s why they’re coming for the WNBA.

Mini Timmaraju

100%

Rachel Carmona

Like, a bunch of queer women of color, and they’re hooping,

Mini Timmaraju

Because young boys love the WNBA, too!

Nsé Ufot

Yeah, correct.

Rachel Carmona

And they’re like, “oh absolutely not. Absolutely not.” And they’re taking that away. But also I have an argument in, you know, I don’t. Well, I don’t know. I live in Texas. I’ve done a little field work on this, but, so Republicans aren’t good at sex.

[crowd laughing and clapping]

Nsé Ufot

Ooo, say more.

Mini Timmaraju

So, for folks who are listening to this, a lot of hands just went up, like “amen hands,” like, “yeah!”

Nsé Ufot

Like hands, “I have field research.”

Mini Timmaraju

Field research, Rachel!

Rachel Carmona

I have a working theory that, that, you know, part of their malice, part of their, like, you know, their, their disdain, part of their anger is about their- part of the reason that certain apps crash when they come to town.

Mini Timmaraju

Oh, yeah.

Rachel Carmona

You know what I mean? And you know who’s been out telling business: Hunter Biden.

Mini Timmaraju

Oh my God.

Rachel Carmona

Hear them out. And so my point here is, and I, and I, when I say this, I am dead ass, I am dead ass. I think that they cannot figure out a way to be wanted. So they’re finding out a way to be coercive, or they’re coming back to, to manners that have worked to be coercive. It is just in my lifetime that marital rape has been outlawed.

Rachel Carmona

Many people here would have been in, like, high school or college or middle school. You know, it was not a long time ago. So I think that there actually is a really tight connection between their inability to be engaged in life giving, positive, affirming, feel good, joyful, pleasurable things. And so instead, they’re going to be coercive, forceful, you know, abusive, assaulting.

Rachel Carmona

I mean, I think a lot about, when I’m thinking about, you know, their party, I think a lot about consent. And, you know, when you think about the Declaration of Independence, there’s a line in there that talks about the government is basically empowered by the consent of the governed. And when we’re inside.

Nsé Ufot

Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it.

Rachel Carmona

When we have a president who brags about grabbing people by the pussy, when we have an illegal war that is being run without the consent of the government, when we’ve got ICE incursions without the consent of the states and the communities that they’re going into, what we’re really talking over and over about is a lack of consent. And that is the point at which I think we have not only the ability to with- the mandate to withdraw that consent. And I think that looks very differently in different places. I personally am like, don’t fuck Republicans, but also. let’s go vote, like, like, you know, let’s support the, the, the May Day strong homies who are, you know, organizing days where we’re withdrawing our labor

Mini Timmaraju

I mean, the websites that are crashing that these that we’re not the problem. We need to get some of our allies to stop, you know, ‘consenting’ with Republicans.

Nsé Ufot

What I’m hearing, is if one plus one is two, and two plus two is four, Mike Johnson would not have shut down the Congress for the rest of the year if he had been allowed to love who he wants to love, right? And we wouldn’t all be suffering, right? I want you to know that Congress they, they done went home, y’all. Right? Oh, September and October, where our elected representatives are supposed to be doing the people’s work. They have gone home because they don’t want to answer the people’s questions.

Rachel Carmona

And whole time, what they had on the agenda, they were talking about reducing the gas tax, which if, we’ve all come from different places in Texas, lowest, you know, gas taxes, diesel is $6, you know, a gallon right now. And, you know, the incels were kind of getting at me online and they were like, “oh, I don’t care about them.”

Rachel Carmona

I’m like, who’s them? Like, every item in your grocery store has been moved by a diesel truck. The price of diesel drives our entire economy.

Mini Timmaraju

And you’re paying for it.

Rachel Carmona

Yeah, we’re paying for it. So like they don’t want to talk about Epstein. They don’t want to talk about diesel. And they are willing to, like, just not be in session to avoid having to make, you know, having to take action on Epstein and on the things that are so damning because when have you ever met a politician that would hide a fact that benefited them? Like they are on the run, and especially in Texas, if you look at the polls, shit ain’t looking cute, we’re going to leave it there because it’s a C3 space. But one of the things that I want to say is, I guess the question is like we talked about, okay, so what is 2020, or 2050 look like? And where, where is that freedom? Because like we talk all the time, a lot of us have been in movement spaces. I was just telling Mini backstage, I haven’t been, your girl hasn’t been to DC in a year and a half. The vibes are rancid.

Mini Timmaraju

Yeah, no. I wouldn’t recommend it. I have to be there, I have to be there, if you don’t have to be there I don’t recommend it.

Rachel Carmona

Yeah, the vibes are rancid. And so I’m kind of like,

Mini Timmaraju

Protect your peace.

Rachel Carmona

protecting my peace. So, and it’s wild to say I’m, you know, again, I live in Amarillo, Texas, and I’m sure a lot of people would be like, “what? You’re trying to be in Amarrilo before DC?” And I’m like “and am.” And, and so I guess like the kind of thing that I’m wondering is like, where do we find peace? Where, if we can-

Rachel Carmona

and the reason that, in my opinion, the vibes are rancid is that because MAGA is riding roughshod, but movement always isn’t a fun place to be. There’s a lot of vinegar, like there’s a lot of people trying to catch flies with vinegar and not honey. And movement isn’t always the welcoming place that it needs to be for us to build to the scale that we need to get where we need to be.

Rachel Carmona

So, you know, where I like to spend my time is where the stakes are higher, to be honest with you, because people get up to less bullshit, less ego, less, less fighting to fight, less who’s in charge and more of what. And so what I’m wondering is, where do we, where do we feel free in movement right now because we can’t talk about liberation and then run a, run a, at my my hyper fixation this week has been the, Western Mass lesbian bar discourse. And like-

Mini Timmaraju

Well, I was about to say Massachusetts, so.

Rachel Carmona

Yeah, yeah. So where can we feel free? Like, because, because we can’t get people to buy into organizing to liberation If we’re inside a movement that makes us feel less free, less joyful, less of any of these things, you know, that we’re talking about. And so where does this future that we’re talking about right now exist, even if it’s in pieces, even if it’s in just snatches and glances and glimmers?

Mini Timmaraju

So I was thinking about this question. And I was thinking about the matriarchy, and the places in the country where we have, you know, majority women running shit. So I’ll start with Massachusetts, where we have, Governor Maura Healey, a lesbian, not an accident in my mind. When you put lesbians in charge of stuff-

Rachel Carmona

Shit gets built. Shit gets built. A lot of carabiners around this bitch.

Mini Timmaraju

They make it. Shit gets done. Where they just- who is a former college athlete herself. A big WNBA booster.

Rachel Carmona

Shout out to the W.

Mini Timmaraju

She is, under her leadership, they just passed one of the most expansive abortion rights in the country. They got rid of arbitrary viability lines in their legislation. You can have abortion access throughout pregnancy in Massachusetts. It is a big deal.

Mini Timmaraju

Other states that have done that led by tough, badass women. Maine, led by Janet Mills. Right? You know, we’ve got women in really tough battleground states pushing the envelope and defending and expanding access to care, access to rights. Katie Hobbs in Arizona, who’s up in her tough reelection. She’s amazing. Chris Mays, her attorney general, also a lesbian. I’m just going to say, sorry, I’m just going to keep calling it out. I think it’s worth-

Rachel Carmona

Lesbians don’t have as big of an orgasm gap.

Nsé Ufot

It’s just data.

Rachel Carmona

It’s just data. It’s just – do with it what you will. Harvey Milk always sat up here to recruit you. You know what I mean? I’m just saying.

Mini Timmaraju

I’m going to trust the data. So-

[audience laughing]

Mini Timmaraju

Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan has really been a frontline defender of rights and has led the state through a major transformation. And Jocelyn Benson is now running for governor, and she’s looking like almost ten points ahead, which is wild in this moment that we have states that were really significant, like red, purple battleground states that are now being led through the wilderness by women leaders.

Mini Timmaraju

And you’ve got incredible work happening on the ground. And we’ve got really good legislation being passed in those states. We’ve got the state funding access to care. New Mexico under Michelle Lujan Grisham, she literally when Texas went through it, has been going through its most significant crisis on reproductive freedom. Michelle Lujan Grisham used state funds to build abortion clinics on the border of Texas and New Mexico.

Mini Timmaraju

She’s like, don’t get to take care of your Texans, I’m going to take care of Texans, right? And Deb Haaland is set to be, is poised to be the next governor. First Native American governor of New Mexico. So you’re seeing it. And then, I mean, I can go on and on about the cities. You know, I’m a Houstonian.

Mini Timmaraju

Lots of complicated politics here in Houston. But, you know, I remember when we had our lesbian mayor and things were getting done here, Annise Parker. Shout out to Annise Parker. You know, we’ve had moments in time throughout this country in lots of, like, we’ve got pockets of really good things happening even in red states.

Mini Timmaraju

Right? Like we’ve got Atlanta, you know, and Georgia, where really good work is happening and people are being taken care of. You know, I’m about to go down to Atlanta to celebrate the anniversary of the Feminist Center, which, despite everything, they’re one of the oldest abortion clinics in the country. There was a feature film done by Soledad O’Brien that got nominated for an Academy Award.

Mini Timmaraju

It’s on HBO streaming. If you haven’t seen it, it’s called The Devil Is Busy. It’s 30 minutes, so watch it if you can. It’s beautiful. It’s told from the perspective of a woman who is the security, head of security for the Feminist Center. So it’s a day in the life of the Feminist Center abortion clinic in Atlanta, Georgia post-Dobbs.

Mini Timmaraju

Post the ban in Georgia. And I tell you the story because it’s a, it’s a beautiful little oasis, but it’s also really important story about how black women are on the front line of protecting and saving other women. We have a six week abortion ban in Georgia. They are still doing abortions at the Feminist Center.

Nsé Ufot

Correct.

Mini Timmaraju

They are still doing it under tremendous harassment, and they are taking in women from all over the South.

Nsé Ufot

Correct.

Mini Timmaraju

Who are coming to Georgia and having that one day of being taken care of. Right? So to me it’s happening already. You’ve got the blue sky states like Maine and Massachusetts, you know. But you also have places in our own hometowns where we have women gathering together and fighting oppression and doing everything against the odds and not saying no when people need care.

Nsé Ufot

Correct.

Rachel Carmona

I think one of our, one of my, my mentors, a friend board chair, all the things, Rinku Sen; I was having a really hard time at work and I was like I don’t know if I can make it. And she said, the thing about it is, is that, like, when you have really big fights, you think that you get through them by like fighting through it, like swinging and everything like that.

Rachel Carmona

And she’s like, for the most part, you endure and you just gotta wait them out. And you, you fight and you think about ways to survive and thrive inside of it, and you wait them out. And that has been true of history. And it actually reminds me of something you said I texted Mini, like the day after the election in 2024.

Rachel Carmona

I was like, “how y’all doing?” Mini said, “I’m from Texas. We lose all the time.”

Nsé Ufot

Listen!

Rachel Carmona

Mini said, “I am at work.” Mini was like “I am at work. Where are y’all at?” I was like, oh, I was like oh, let me to go work too, then.

Mini Timmaraju

It’s true, it’s true. I we didn’t go home. We went straight back to the office. We had shit to do!

Rachel Carmona

I was like, I was in there moping, let me go to work.

Nsé Ufot

Well, and I’ll tell you that that was, that’s where my answer is, is the South, right? And I just sit and listen to the smartest people who know nothing about how to win, right?

Mini Timmaraju

Mmm, let’s talk about that.

Nsé Ufot

Because, and they prove every day that they know nothing about the South. They prove every day that they know nothing about the win. They prove every day how much loser energy they carry around, and that they try to infect us with it, that they have nothing. Do not let people who have zero vision, who have figured out how to survive like cockroaches under the current existing toxic system, like, tell you w hat is possible, right? I’m telling you that the reason that we get busy in the South is because the conditions are so dire, because voting is tied to black people’s survival. You think we love these Democrats? No.

Nsé Ufot

Not at all. Right? That people know and understand that we are going to do everything we can with everything that we have. And when people talk about like blue states and must win states, it’s states where the fight isn’t that difficult. Not that there isn’t a fight, right, but it doesn’t feel existential, right? Because you can’t get busy the way that we do in Texas.

Nsé Ufot

What you mean private money building abortion clinics on the border, right? That, what you mean, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 African American women all terminated from federal government. Knowing the role that women and working women play in the lives of families. You mean to tell me that you put hundreds of thousands of black women out from stable employment, destabilizing entire families, entire communities, and this country ain’t burned yet, right? That you have these black women who are still trying to think about organizing peaceful participation in our elections still to this day, right? Because they know that the alternative, we don’t win. Right? Right?

Mini Timmaraju

Right.

Rachel Carmona

And this is the question that you’re already into. But what power are we using, do we have that we’re not using? And Nsé, we were on a retreat in April and she was like the,  the group that unlocks the righteous, the righteous rage of women is the one that will win. Period. End of.

Nsé Ufot

Full stop. Full stop. I think it’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha women, because the way that my nieces are roasting me and I was like, “no, no, no, I’m a feminist. I’m not like my mom. I’m like, no, grandma is the- no? Me too? Okay.” They’re angry, they’re angry. And they’re, we have our work to do, and I hope it’s them because they are funny and telling the truth. And we need to hear it.

Rachel Carmona

And they do the TikTok dances.

Mini Timmaraju

But then we have to, but then we have to invest in them. Because, you know, I think there’s a lot of Gen Z  and Gen Alpha talent coming up and they don’t have the resources. So our job is to get them the resources and step out of the way. So I’m happy to do that. Not gatekeep, but pour into them. I think that that’s right.

Rachel Carmona

One of the things that I have struggled with, probably the thing that I’ve struggled with the most, to be honest, is that we have opposition from the opposition, but we also have opposition from our friends.

Mini Timmaraju

Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Carmona

And so there are people from both sides of the aisle, who are invested, that the things that we’re talking about don’t ever arrive.

Mini Timmaraju

Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Carmona

And so I think that one of the things that we have to be very clear about is the ways in which we are protecting our own political power, but the ways that we’re also rejecting narratives, like one of the things that I, am really, I’ve really been upset about is the under reaction broadly of the left to the rise in misogyny, attacks on feminism, attacks on, you know, and even in, in, inside of our spaces, like I had one of our colleagues, one of our, you know, folks on the left, they had asked us to share something. And I was like, “I’ll share it.” But I just noticed that, you know, we’re talking about the care economy, and there’s not a mention of women in there. And they were like, “yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t test well.” And so-

Mini Timmaraju

I have a- yeah.

Rachel Carmona

So I think that they’re and, and I would like to then you know I had this conversation I was on a podcast recently and, and they said, “oh well who was that. It must have been like somebody, you know, and you know, like, like a, you know, a far right Democrat, like a moderate, like a, you know, 20 years ago would have been a Republican, but it moved.” And I was like, “Mmm, no.” It’s across the spectrum. And so I think it’s really important for us also to contend with, you know, the idea that how how is it that we are working in building power around gender, around women, around, you know, feminism as a political ideology and not being willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater because people are saying, well, we went too far in abortion.

Rachel Carmona

We went too far. And people are dead-ass telling me that this is not being said inside of Democratic places or like leftist spaces and I’m like,

Mini Timmaraju

No, no, no, that’s not true.

Rachel Carmona

“No, no, no, it absolutely is.”

Mini Timmaraju

So we just have to look, as we just have to look at, you know, as recline and, you know, all the whole group of, you know, well intentioned, I’m sure, you know, white dudes in Democratic politics who have never been comfortable talking about abortion, who’ve never been comfortable talking about sexual assault, who are part of the culture that Brett Kavanaugh is from right?

Mini Timmaraju

They went to schools like Cornell where they were, you know, this horrible case that’s bubbling back up of those young men and the, you know, the gang rape and the fraternity. You have a whole class of, you know, elites and that, we have that across the board. That’s from the left to the right, you know, who are comfortable in that culture.

Mini Timmaraju

They’re more comfortable in that culture than in our culture. Right? They’re comfortable in the patriarchy. It is their reflex to defend each other. That is like a core fundamental value. I’m married to a white man, who, I mean, I guess he’s one of the good ones because I married him and he’s been, and he’s raising black boys.

Mini Timmaraju

But I have a front row seat every day to the things that are sort of subconscious. And he is, I mean, poor guy, if you’re listening to this, honey, you are one of the good ones. I love you, but he has to constantly deconstruct it. Right? And I, I get to watch it and it is not natural. Everything in our society exists to uplift and uphold their superiority.

Nsé Ufot

Absolutely.

Mini Timmaraju

So we talk about white supremacy. It sounds like, oh, reverse racism. Blahblahblahblah. No, it’s a basic, fundamental fact, right? We live in a world, in a global world. Like even in India, we have white supremacy thanks to colonialism. Right? So I’ve grown up with white supremacy my whole damn life. So coming back to this issue, of course, embedded in that is a fundamental belief that they are the superior sex, they are the superior gender.

Mini Timmaraju

Everything comes from their point of view. So I say all that to say every single day, every single investment we make electorally, we are doing the math and the calculus of how do we prove that abortion was salient, abortion was a winner, abortion was a driver, and abortion didn’t lose this election. Right now, I just a couple of days ago, I was on the phone with a reporter talking about the election in Maine and Susan Collins, like, if Susan Collins wins, is it because abortion wasn’t that important in Maine?

Mini Timmaraju

But if she loses, is it because abortion was really salient? I was like, abortion is part of the conversation because this is the woman who was a deciding factor in confirming Brett Kavanaugh and is responsible for the overturning of Roe. Point blank. This is the first time she’s on the ballot since Dobbs. But if she wins, it’s about so much more.

Mini Timmaraju

And if she loses, it’s about so much more. But there is this. And this was a woman reporter, by the way, by the way,

Rachel Carmona

I was going to say.

Mini Timmaraju

It’s not just a lefty, you know, dude, we are constantly having to make these points. So running exit polls, making sure we can prove that independents and Republicans also care about this issue.

Mini Timmaraju

I say all this to say that’s never going to stop. I fundamentally believe, and this is part of the exhaustion you guys. And this is part of the burnout, right? I can’t just go to work and say, I’m going to win this fight on the righteousness and the morality and the fact that women are dying. Maybe you should just care because women are dying.

Mini Timmaraju

Maybe you shouldn’t have to worry about its salience. And when I, what do I mean by that? What do I mean by that? I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have to keep proving that abortion is a popular issue, even when ballot measures on abortion are winning in red state after red state after red state. But they, right? But I shouldn’t have to.

Mini Timmaraju

I should just be able to say I don’t want to see another Amber Nicole Thurman. I don’t want to see another Tierra Walker. I don’t want to see any more dead women. That should be enough, right? But it’s not. That is a problem across our political ecosystem. They’ve gotten really, really comfortable with political wins on the backs of women’s labor.

Mini Timmaraju

And at the expense of women’s lives. That’s not going to change until we just aggressively elect; and I’m not saying all women are the same and all women are equal. Lots of Republican women who are part of the problem. But I really do believe a fundamental thing that has to shift is we have to have more women controlling the funds, controlling the campaigns. It’s not magical. We got money in handmaidens to the patriarchy mixed up in all of this. But we would have less of it if we had more women in charge.

Nsé Ufot

100%.

Rachel Carmona

I think it’s also such a like, you know, I’ll be, I’ll out myself as a Barbie movie fan.

Mini Timmaraju

No, I mean-

Rachel Carmona

And everyone is like everyone is like it’s been like there was so much like, online discourse and chatter. And I think I mentioned earlier today, I was like, y’all can’t tell me shit because I went and talked to Barbara Smith about it. And, and Barbara Smith is like, I’m just confused why you are taking your political cues from, like, you know, Barbie movies. Like, she was like, “I dressed up, I dressed up like Barbie” and she went to go see the movie. But it reminds me of the speech of, like, you can’t be enough.

Rachel Carmona

Like, right, right after the election, we had planned a march. We had the march planned. We were like, we’re going on the record in history.

Mini Timmaraju

And that was an amazing march.

Rachel Carmona

Yes. And it was huge.

Mini Timmaraju

And I needed it. I needed it in my soul.

Rachel Carmona

And people said like, some of the discourse was, “well, it’s going to be smaller than the first march, so you shouldn’t do it.” And I was like, “this is the most absurd shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” because-

Nsé Ufot

Loser energy.

Mini Timmaraju

Loser energy!

Nsé Ufot

Big loser, big L energy! I want it off of me!

Rachel Carmona

Yes! Because we were just like, so. So if you can’t be bigger than the biggest protest that the United States has ever seen, then you should do nothing? Is the, is the move? You know, and I think that that’s like this paralysis that we get into, and, and I, and I bring this up not to air my grievance about that march, although I still do have grievance about that march.

Rachel Carmona

But I bring this up because if men had the biggest single day mobilization as- talking about issues of gender ten years ago maintained upwards of half a million, up to millions of people in motion every year thereafter, and then did it again. There would be pundits saying, “Jesus Christ, the United States is in shambles, like something has to be done today,” but because it’s women, it’s like, oh, we don’t like the hats.

Rachel Carmona

It’s cringey. We don’t think that, we don’t find it sexy. And then that’s actually and it seems like, oh, it’s it’s cute. But then that, that is a direct slippery slope to Renée Good being murdered by an ICE agent and being called a fucking bitch afterwards. And why was she a fucking bitch? Because he didn’t want to have sex with her.

Rachel Carmona

Or maybe because she didn’t want to have sex with them. You know what I mean? And she was not, you know, engaging in the male gaze, you know, she was there getting work done, being, being, you know, standing, standing on business. And so I have, you know, obviously, I’m still thinking about this, this power, like, I can’t get enough of the loser energy conversations, but it’s like, every person here has signed up to go back into your community and to do some really tough nuts and bolts organizing.

Rachel Carmona

Organizing a march is one thing. Creating an organizing strategy and organizing people in your community around shared, shared goals and common cause is not for the weak. And so it’s important for us to have a vision of what we’re trying to create, but also an understanding of the roadblocks that get there so that we can be prepared, to Nsé’s point earlier, and to get this shit done regardless, because we are rolling a fucking juggernaut in the next year so that we come back here and we’re talking about what we got done for women, what we got done for governance.

Mini Timmaraju

That’s right.

Nsé Ufot

This is a, I think it’s also really important, as I’m thinking about the next 90 days and just our operating technology as we go out over the next 12 months, is, there is a difference between just people who are, who identify as women and people who do women’s work. Right? And I feel like that feels really important because when I am thinking about the Republican women in the Georgia state legislature, I identify them that way because- I know this is a C3 space, but like, that’s the hat that I’m grouping or the banner that I’m grouping them under.

Nsé Ufot

They don’t go to the capital to do women’s work at all, and in fact, are the enemies of the progress that women are organizing for in Georgia. And so it feels really, really important. I think that as we go forward, that like understanding how to identify your friends, how to identify your foes, and how to identify when somebody is sitting on the fence and you have to spin back, right?

Nsé Ufot

Like being able to know that feels really, really important. Two, the enemies of progress, are deeply invested in trying to trick us out of our spot, to devalue the knowledge that we have, to devalue the intelligence that we have. Our relationships and the communities is also infrastructure. We keep each other safe. Mutual aid is one way that people sort of frame it and discuss it.

Nsé Ufot

But there are so many ways in which women gossiping, if you will, sharing information with one another has saved people’s lives. That is real. Like that is real. Not gatekeeping information. Being a girl’s girl, you can call it whatever you want, right? But I know that real technology and underneath and real strategy underneath a lot of things that have saved people’s lives, built things that help us win and that give us joy and have come from women. Not gatekeeping information and sharing it with each other despite what the boss said, despite what some man said. Right? Despite what the government said. So I know that that is a superpower that we all have access to, and I’m excited to see how it gets operationalized over the next year in building the things in your community, like, what are we always talking about?

Nsé Ufot

Right? What are the things where we’re always like, well, there ought to be a law. Why doesn’t somebody like- those things come from when we’re honest with each other, when we don’t lie about what we’re seeing. Yes. Your eyes are absolutely seeing what you are seeing. Your ears are absolutely hearing what you are hearing. There are people who are absolutely organized and invested and do not care if we die, right? On the way to them hoarding as much wealth and as many resources as possible. And they are still the losers that they were in junior high. They’re still the loser that they were when you told them no. Right? And in the world that we are building for ourselves, we are not going to forget that. We’re not going to hold that. We’re not going to lose it. There are things that we want to win for ourselves, and it takes just as much energy to, like, pretend to do the thing as it does to actually do the thing.

Nsé Ufot

Right? And so, yes, I’m excited about that. That’s what feels important for me over the next 90 days, is not wasting time and energy invested in tactics and strategies that we know won’t work, right, that are offered to us from somebody else. Insight that’s coming from outside of ourselves, outside of our communities, outside of our conversations. We are each other’s protection.

Nsé Ufot

We are each other’s provisions. You know what your communities need. You know what your families need. You know what you need. You matter, right? That people do this work, right? Not like superheroes or messiahs. Real humans do this work and they have needs. And I’m excited to be in community with you all. And I’m going to stop talking right now because we’re running out of time.

Rachel Carmona

Have you all seen that meme of like, “Whole Time”? And the thing is always like, “Mind You,” quiet as it’s kept.

Nsé Ufot

All of them. All of those.

Mini Timmaraju

I need I need a set of Nsé memes. To send to people when I need to punctuate things.

Nsé Ufot

My dad used to say that if they cut my hands off, I’d be mute.

Rachel Carmona

I agree, I agree.

Rachel Carmona

We we talk at Women’s March a lot about like, I know it’s, it’s always weird because I’m always saying this on a microphone, but like Women’s March was really started by, by a bunch of women who just picked up a mop when there was a mess to clean up. So like the, the, the revolution, the goals, the liberation that we’re talking about here is not going to happen from behind a mic. It’s just going to happen, you know, with shoe leather and hard work and hard times. And I worked at this organization once, they had a habit of firing their EDs. And I was like, no, no way they’ll fire a 5th ED. I was like, they’re going to get caught.

Rachel Carmona

And my colleague said, the first one’s the hard one, every one, every, every other hard thing gets easier. And I think about that every day because the first time you do a hard thing, it’s the hardest time it’s ever going to be. Whether you’re talking about lifting weights, whether you’re talking about having a tough conversation with a volunteer, whether you’re talking about making an ask for money because we need to run a billboard, like whatever it is, the first time is the hardest time, and everything else gets easier because we get good at what we practice. And so I think we just have to be in practice. And we had a question. We have a little bit of time and it’s kind of like, what are we- What can we do or refuse in the next 90 days that gets us to these goals that we were talking about, both the stops we need and the starts that we need.

Mini Timmaraju

So I know we’ve said a few times, this is a C3 convening, but I can just generally talk about what’s happening in the world, right? So we’ve got an election in a very short period of time. I don’t want to give you the impression that that is the only way to make change. But there, it is an immediate, it is an immediate tactic, right? Like we need everyone we care about to show up. We need everyone who we know identifies the way we do to show up. We don’t have to be picking winners and losers. People have pretty good heads on their shoulders.

Mini Timmaraju

They’re listening to candidates. They understand who’s with them and who’s not. This is going to be a wave election. We need to be able to show, I want to be able to show the next day, what the gender gap was. Okay, this is a thing we should make sure everyone is talking about. And when I meet, what I mean by that is the gender gap; a disproportionate number of women voting for the candidates that care about the issues we care about, right? Paid leave, abortion rights, you know, investments in child care, democracy, preserving our ability to vote, right, our ability to protest, our ability to participate in society, all of those things. And there’s clear choices to make in all of these races. Right? So we have an immediate opportunity right now from a completely nonpartisan perspective to mobilize people to get out and vote and to still, I think in some places, register. Right?

Nsé Ufot

October 5th in a lot of places.

Rachel Carmona

October 5th.

Mini Timmaraju

I think the other piece of it is making sure folks are paying attention to what these candidates are saying in the 11th hour. This is where stuff start going to start to get kind of messy. You’re going to catch some folks saying dumb things. You’re going to catch some folks doing good things and bold things. And we want to uplift the bold, the champions who are running on our issues and talking to us authentically and honestly, about the things we care about. And we want to shame the people who are saying stupid stuff. That’s an important piece of this.

Mini Timmaraju

Going back to what Nsé said about consequences, they have to be immediate and swift. So if you have someone out there being a rape apologist or minimizing pedophilia or avoiding talking about Epstein, we need to immediately call that out. There needs to be immediate actual consequences. And there’s one right now, and it’s called the election.

Rachel Carmona

You know, the Cornell rapists, there’s actually more of them,

Mini Timmaraju

There’s like, seven of them.

Rachel Carmona

Yeah. Which is actually more than like the amount of trans athletes who are ready for the NCAA draft for the W, just FYI.

Mini Timmaraju

Oh my god.

Nsé Ufot

I’m done, I’m done, done.

Rachel Carmona

Which is- go ahead.

Mini Timmaraju

We don’t we don’t have time for this, 11 minutes.

Rachel Carmona

Because where my, where my hyper fixations end up, like, anywhere in the W. Like, listen, I’m outside in the hallway afterwards talking all of it. Wings in five. Go ahead.

Nsé Ufot

Also, you guys, everyone doesn’t have to do all the same things, right?

Mini Timmaraju

That’s right, that’s right.

Nsé Ufot

We all have a role to play. Like it is a movement that everyone has an assignment. Everyone has a genius, everyone has a gift. I think about the March on Washington all the time, because when in a world where they were marching on Washington for jobs and freedom at a time like who got the buses? Oh, the unions, the CIO before they were the AFL CIO, like, they were the good union guys who were not like, super racist. They were only a little bit racist. Right? And so the good union guys got the buses to the Deep South so that those people could get from Miami to Washington, D.C. for the March on Washington, because it was for jobs and justice. And ultimately it’s going to benefit us all. The, the women’s church auxiliaries and like the sororities, made the sandwiches because there’s nowhere for you to stop between Miami and Washington, D.C., where people would serve you food, right, and an army marches on its stomach, right?

Nsé Ufot

We don’t have any meetings in my organization without food, music, and child care. We don’t ask nobody to come to nothing without food, music and child care. Right? And so everyone has a role. And when we’re building power and when we’re building a movement, you bring, it’s your offering, right, that you give from what you have and you give from what you can give and what you’re excited about. You take assignments too, right? But you offer what you have and that’s how we win. So everybody doesn’t have to be doing all the same things. And all your events don’t have to look the same. And all of our winning doesn’t have to look the same. So.

Rachel Carmona

I would say I, I think about the, the March on Washington a lot too, because, you know, the main coordinator of that was Bayard Rustin, who has largely been wiped from history because he was gay, and that didn’t match the narrative. So you might not match the narrative. I don’t match the narrative.

Nsé Ufot

And Communist.

Rachel Carmona

And what?

Nsé Ufot

And Communist.

Rachel Carmona

And Communist. You know, I, one of the things that I noticed, like people will give my bio for me a lot, you know, and they leave out the part that I actually lead with in my bio is that I cleaned rich people’s houses for four years before I went to community college, and they leave that part out and then they say, oh, but she went to Harvard and worked at Amnesty International and now leads Women’s March. They will make you and they’ll tell your story how they want to tell it. So don’t let them tell your story. Talk to, like I got, I got radicalized on my hands and knees cleaning rich people’s houses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That will always be where I got radicalized. It wasn’t, you know, in a class and that matters. And so I think about that, and I also think about the Black Panthers a lot.

Rachel Carmona

And I think about the, the radical nature of the breakfast program when, when we like right now, we’re all somewhere other than another place, right? It costs money to be here. It costs time to be here. It costs care to be here. And the way that we have activism set up right now is that it’s not ingrained in our daily lives. We don’t get childcare through our membership organizations or through our things. And like, I’m not by any means an NRA apologist, but one of the reasons that they have such a strong membership is that they have a benefit of getting insurance, that’s difficult to get in other places, and so they’re able to offer material support to their members. Anti-NRA, pro material support to people who are asking to do a thing.

Rachel Carmona

So I think really think about the ways in which you set up your communities as you go back home and you’re starting to organize. What are the ways in which we can inextricably link our material conditions, making people’s lives better with the agendas that we’re building this weekend? I think it’s the only way we’ll win. We are so out of time. They are like, they put, the text is like this in the, in the monitor. I want to say thank you to Nsé and Mini.

Mini Timmaraju

Thank you. Thank you.

Rachel Carmona

Thank you all here.

Nsé Ufot

Y’all are so dope. I love this.

Mini Timmaraju

Thank you all for being here.

[crowd continues applauding and cheering as the end graphic appears]