YAY! Some good news courtesy of WAOD reader Cara.
Karen Bass became the first Black woman to lead a state legislative body in the country. She is a former community activist from Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger praised Bass as an "extraordinary person," and said she earned her post as one of the most powerful politicians in California "the old-fashioned way -- she worked."See, she did not come out of the cradle wanting to be the most powerful Black woman in the state legislature. She started down this path out of righteous indignation caused by what she saw in her workplace. Ordinary people can make a difference. You just have to care about somethign enough to act.
He also touched upon the tragedy Bass endured two years ago, when her 23-year-old daughter and son-in-law were killed in a Los Angeles car crash. Bass had recently said that she would give up her political career to spend one more day with her daughter.
"That says everything about you," Schwarzenegger said.
Bass held no elected office before winning an Assembly seat in 2004 to represent a district that includes West Los Angeles, Culver City and Baldwin Hills. A physician assistant raised by a homemaker and mail carrier in the Venice-Fairfax area, Bass sought in the early 1990s to find solutions to drug addiction, gun violence and other social ills she witnessed treating emergency room patients. LA TIMES
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