Pelosi has always been a progressive; until the last few years, the right used her as the ultimate symbol of left-wing extremism. But her relentlessly pragmatic approach to politics is the polar opposite of, say, the Bernie Sanders approach. Pelosi doesn’t begin by asking what kind of world we want. She asks where the votes are. The speaker is, as she herself has said, a master legislator.
That’s from a review of a new biography of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
I consider myself a pragmatist as well. To pass a bill in the House of Delegates, you have to count to 71.
However, I am also motivated to make the world a better place.
I think of what Robert Kennedy said in Capetown, South Africa in 1966 , the second year of Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment.
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.’ “
Speaker Adrienne Jones has created a Workgroup to Address Police Reform and Accountability in Maryland. I am one of the House members she named to this group.
I hope to bring to that task what I have learned from both Speaker Pelosi and Senator Kennedy.
