All Rev'd Up: How Minority Congresswomen Respond To Opposition

Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley — In this combination image from left; Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., July 10, 2019, Washington, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., March 12, 2019, in Washington, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY., July 12, 2019, in Washington, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., July 10, 2019, in Washington.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

July 15, 2019

Updated January 16, 2020

President Donald Trump targeted four freshman minority congresswomen with racist tweets on Sunday, telling them to "go back" to "the broken and crime infested places from which they came."

The four Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, known as "the squad," responded in a news conference late Monday. Pressley urged Americans "to not take the bait" and called Trump's tweets a distraction, and Omar and Tlaib called for the president's impeachment.

Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III discussed the effects of Trump's tweets and how these congresswomen are forging a new way forward in their party.

"As a father, how do I process and parse this with my children who I'm trying to teach to be responsible citizens, who I'm trying to teach to love their nation, when from the highest office of the land, this vitriol and foolishness comes out?" Price said.

Monroe noted that other Democrats are also clashing with the "the squad" in regard to many of their policy approaches. "The squad" were the only Democrats in the House to vote against border spending package, stating they could not approve granting more money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"What [the congresswomen] are saying is that, even though you will throw some humanitarian money and aid to these detainees, the system is fundamentally broken. So what you're doing is a band-aid, when systemically this needs to be revamped. That's part of why they disagreed with Nancy Pelosi," Monroe said.

"What we have to address here is that Nancy, and an older generation in particular, is not only being reactionary but also operating out of fear. And I think we all are fearful — how do we get Trump out of office? But the point is that we won't know what we stand for until we air out these various differences so that we can have a DNC platform of what we all stand for and everybody feel that they're part of it," Monroe said.

Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist and the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a Visiting Researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology.

Price is Professor of Worship, Church & Culture and Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Together they host the All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by WGBH.