Statues and Limitations

The first thing I noticed when I first visited the Capitol was the statues. They are everywhere - in the rotunda, lining the halls, in corners and on perches. Yet you will be hard pressed to find a woman represented in marble or limestone. Many of these are statues of great, wise and wonderful men. Yet they do not fully represent our nation's history.

Today, that is especially true. I spent the day running around the Capitol for work today, and the whole time I was conscious of the fact that this is a day that will be written about in books and remembered for all of American history. Nancy Pelosi has truly broken a barrier that has held strong for over 200 years and it was humbling to be a part of something like that, to know that years from now I'll be able to say, "I was there when..."

As a young woman I was inspired today by the awesome possibilities our country holds, and by the generation of women who came before me to make this a possibility, so that as Speaker Pelosi said, "for our daughters and granddaughters, the sky is the limit".

As a young, female Democratic staffer who has been working in politics for just a few years, and in D.C. for a much shorter time than that, today was a day of hope and of promise for a new America. Walking the halls of the Capitol, knowing we were just hours and minutes away from having a strong Democratic majority was different than any other time I had walked those halls before - because I felt the urgency of responsibility to fulfill the promises that we, as a Party, made to the American people.

In the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress a number of initiatives are going to be passed that will change the lives of millions of Americans, for the better. This is an agenda that is based on taking action, instead of spouting rhetoric. So while we may celebrate with champagne and toasts tonight, it is not without knowing that tomorrow, we get to work to make good on the promises that we made as we traveled the road to get here.

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