From working with Black Panthers to calling for cease-fire, Barbara Lee stands by her beliefs
On a rainy January day, Rep. Barbara Lee wandered the campus of Mills College at Northeastern University pointing out sites from her historic past.
The leafy, seminary-like grounds in Oakland look different than when she attended. Even, to her frustration, the school's name has changed.
But for Lee, her time on campus is preserved in amber — the years of student activism, her first trip to Africa, and a political awakening.
It's where she met Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, and where she volunteered with the Black Panthers during the tumultuous late 1960s and early '70s. Her work at the women's college provided her first taste of Oakland politics, one that carried her to Congress and now animates her bid for the U.S. Senate against fellow Democratic Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Katie Porter, as well as Republican and former Dodger Steve Garvey.
"She is an organic leader who was a seed that came from the soil of the Oakland community, which has long cared deeply about doing right in society," said retired Pastor Alfred J. Smith, 92, a famed local clergyman who led Allen Temple Baptist Church, which Lee has attended for decades.
Lee's quarter-century serving in Congress has been defined by that desire to do right. At times it's been a lonesome pursuit, but it's one that she feels has, over the years, proved prescient.
Lee cast the sole vote in 2001 against the Authorization for the Use
