February 8, 2026 • 59 mins
In This Episode
Congressional candidate Elizabeth Lee is a nationally recognized nurse, board-certified patient advocate, and reproductive healthcare policy expert with over a decade of experience advancing access to care. She built a career helping thousands of patients navigate complex medical, financial, and ethical barriers—while also advising lawmakers on federal IVF and reproductive health protections.
First Half:
We begin this segment by discussing Elizabeth Lee’s background as a national figure and advocate for IVF treatment for individuals struggling with conception. She makes her case as a congressional candidate and discusses what she plans to bring to Washington D.C. if elected.
Second Half:
The second half of the show is dedicated to uncovering some of the shortcomings of the current administration and discussions of how Elizabeth Lee plans to interject common sense, diversity of thought, and a scientific/fact-based approach to problem-solving if elected.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host,
Ramsey's job. Big shout out to q Ward, who actually
has the week off, and it is well deserved. But
you have no fear. It's still business as usual around here. Today.
We have a special guest in the building, Nurse Elizabeth Lee,
(00:24):
who is making her congressional bid, and she has come
to the show to tell us all about it. So,
without further ado, let's get into it. Yes, very excited
to be here. Thanks for having me, absolutely absolutely so.
One of the things that I have recently learned about you,
but I was not clicked onto it. You know, there's
(00:47):
so much to pay attention to nowadays, But I learned
that you sort of rose to national prominence. I guess
right around the time that Roe v. Wade sort of
in recent history, made its way back into the headlines.
So do us a favor. For folks that might have
become familiar with you, remind them of where they might
(01:09):
know you from. And for folks just coming to this conversation,
let them know sort of how you entered into the
national arena.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, no, thank you so much. So I came into
this arena as a bedside nurse who nursing was my
second job, or my second career rather, so I was
a little older, a little wiser, and I had done
my time as a bedside nurse and really wanted to
get involved in clinic nursing and became an infertility nurse. Okay,
(01:39):
and infertility is a really underspoken about silent epidemic. One
in six people suffer from infertility. Rural metro rich, poor, black,
white does not discriminate one in six. And so, having
just been a hospital nurse, to all of a sudden
(02:02):
now having to talk about like payment plans with patients,
told me we've got we've got a real problem here
because at one in six, this is a medical problem.
Insurance should be paying for this. And so I started
just being the loud voice in the room on that.
(02:22):
And as we marched towards the fall of Roe v. Wade,
as you mentioned, which was via the Dobbs decision, a
thing that I think many thought could never happen, and
many saw as just waiting to happen. Because I'm going
to be the first to admit that my generation of
(02:44):
old millennials, we did not do enough. We did not
do our part to really you know, rights are only
you have to fight for your rights. Rites on paper
are just that, and like if we've not seen that
play out today around us, right are to be on
American soil means you have the right of due process.
(03:06):
And yet that's flown out the window. So as we
marched towards some early indicators that said that that Dobbs
decision was going to likely take place, I started getting
very concerned that the future of the fertility clinic was
at stake because the folks that were in favor of
(03:32):
overturning Roe v. Wade use a definition of life which
is life begins at conception. Okay, so IVF or in
vitro fertilization, fertilization is there. That's when they say conception
takes place. So all of a sudden, I have human
(03:55):
beings frozen in a cryo lab that have rights, and
you look at me like I have two heads, right,
because that sounds crazy, yeah, completely crazy. And yet several
months I think, just maybe three months about after the
Dab's decision, an embryo was inadvertently dropped on the floor
(04:21):
of a lab and employee wondered. In the story goes,
you know, he reached into a liquid nitrogen tank and
pulled out a straw with an embryo on it, and
it fell, and then all of a sudden they were
talking about like murder charges for an embryo. So that
(04:41):
was my sort of real coming into my own as
an activist. I had been a very loud advocate, but suddenly,
you know, I think people are often called to activism
when they feel something deeply, and I saw the effect
that a treating infertility not as a disease and its
(05:05):
treatment as a commodity rather than treatment, and then watching
people be continually priced out of that, you know, was
kind of rife with, Wow, this is already really broken.
So then when you know, real view, aid was overturned
that obviously had widespread national implications for abortion rights, and
(05:29):
it had widespread implications for the IVF field, just as
I had sort of you know, blown blown the whistle
about a year or so prior. In fact, I was
in a lobby meeting with a member of Congress's legislative
Aid prior to the decision and I told him, listen,
this is this is what's going to happen. And he said,
this is not There's no way that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So yeah, so that was sort of my rise into
the quote unquote national spotlight. And part of that was
because I hosted a weekly impromptu Facebook live every Monday
night for the clinic I was working for, and it
was patients all across the country could come on these
(06:15):
live streams and ask me questions, just live, like no script,
no anything, Just come on here and ask me all
the questions that you're too embarrassed to ask your fertility doctor,
and I'll answer them for you. So I sort of
got that reputation for being like, let's pull back the curtain,
let's call a spade a spade, like you know, well.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
You know, one of the things that I think that
I learned right now in this conversation, honestly, is how
many people I guess infertility effects. I thought that it
was something that might affect one in like ten thousand,
(06:59):
Maybe I had no idea. One in six is like
I know six people, one of them struggling with infertility.
That might be. And I read a statistic and I
verified it because I work in this journalistic space, so
I have to, you know. But it's something like forty
percent of men will never become fathers. So that's true
(07:25):
if you look at U it's crazy, but yeah, because
you don't think everybody reproduces in this generation, but no,
forty percent of men they will never become fathers. And
then I start to hear this one in six fertility
struggle statistic and I'm like, okay, well, that certainly jives
with what I know to be true, at least about
men and you know, procreation so well.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And it's compounded with something that folks don't really think about.
But with women gaining rights to all kinds of things,
right voting, having our own credit card, all these very
radical things that you know, we had to fight for.
Meant that women were more empowered or educated perhaps I'm
(08:15):
not sure which word, but to delay child bearing for
a career. It became more accepted to have a career first.
But we were so poorly educated. I say we, meaning
my generation and pretty much anyone my age or younger.
(08:40):
Horrible public education on our reproductive systems and how they
truly work. Just no fluff, no ideology, just science. Right,
this is an organ that produces this, which does this,
like we just so. I would have conversations ramseys with
pati who were like fifty five and shocked when I
(09:06):
told them that their chances of conceiving with their own
eggs was less than point one percent. But I'm I'm
perfectly healthy. I know, I never smoked a day in
my life. I know the most model human with ovaries,
those ovaries are only going to be working until you're
in your mid thirties, and then after that there's this
(09:28):
stark drop off. We didn't know, Like I think a
lot of people that I have worked with in this
space over the many years that I've worked in it,
and it's part of what's driven me to run for
Congress is because so many times I heard like, why
didn't anybody tell me that? Like, and there's an option
(09:53):
to freeze my eggs, why didn't anybody tell me that?
Or You'll have people come in and they'll say, yeah,
I had hemotherapy as a sixteen year old for such
and such. Well, chemotherapy is often give me to toxic entirely,
meaning that it kills off the ability of the body
to make either genetically functional eggs or sperm. Why didn't
(10:15):
anybody tell me? Was my own story. I cracked my
own thirty year, thirty plus year health journey by becoming
a nurse myself. Again, why didn't anybody tell me? We
owe it to one another, we owe it to society
to give. And I think this is where we've talked
(10:36):
about the idea of the system being broken deliberately in
many ways. Right, So yeah, but I just got tired
of watching these systemic things continue to play out. Right,
they play out in my own life, my own struggles, right,
(10:56):
and then I but I can recognize my privileged too.
I as hard as life was growing up. I was
born with a rare genetic disease. It didn't get diagnosed
until I figured it out at age thirty seven, after
going through five major medical institutions across the United States,
carrying binders upon binders upon binders full of imaging and
(11:18):
lab work and all kinds of things to try to
investigate why as a twenty year old, you know, teenager,
and then as a twenty year old you know woman,
was I in constant pain, had a headache every day
for years on end. I had to break through that noise,
not until after I became a nurse myself. I remember
(11:43):
my early days as a nursing assistant and taking care
of a patient who had this disease called POTS. And
at that time, you know, everybody would have said pots
is super rare, super rare. But I remember taking care
of her with the understanding of the older nurses that
this is very, very rare. And yet I saw myself
(12:07):
in this patient like it was bizarre because I thought,
that's exactly like you know, I'm reading her chart. I'm like,
this is the same you know thing. And yet even
then I had to become an older, wiser, more discerning
(12:28):
nurse that had more data behind me, or time behind
me or something, until I was really able to insist, no,
this is what you all have been telling me over
these years, that you know, gaslighting me into believing that
there's nothing actually wrong with me. Guess what it was
a rare geneticerence. Yeah, it's my life story.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, I don't mean to interrupt you, but the reason
that that's shocking to me is so you mentioned, you know,
you recognizing your own privilege, So you know, Q and
I work in a space where we do our best
to bring important, marginalized voices to national conversations. And so
(13:16):
we often hear, especially from black women, that they aren't
listening to but and I would never take it from
them that they probably get the worst of the worst.
That's true statistics, Sure, sure, exactly, But I wouldn't have
guessed that. You know, you mentioned gas lighting and that
sort of thing, So that's got to be so, I
(13:37):
guess that's what inspired your journey to being a nurse.
But I feel like with your campaign, you're taking the
nurse element into your campaign because I've seen your sort
of campaign materials. Let's do it twice, so do us
a favorite right now? Plug all the connective tissue that
people might want to use to plug in with your campaign,
(13:57):
will do it? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So Elizabeth Lee nurse running for Congress in Arizona's fifth district,
a seat once held by John McCain. And you can
find us on socials at nurse Lee Lee is spelled
Lee the number four a Z, so very cute. Nurse
Ly for a Z. That's our website as well, nurselyfaz
(14:18):
dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Okay, all right, So, so that being sort of central
to the marketing of this campaign, which I love. By
the way, talk to our listeners. We are on in Arizona,
of course, but we're on nationally as well, and there
(14:39):
are a lot of people nationally that recognize that numbers
matter in this time, numbers in Congress, numbers in this Senate,
you know that sort of thing, and this is how
we can do our best to kind of check what
is for all intents and purposes on checkpower.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So there might be people nationally that are interested in
supporting you, but you, like to your district will have
to be accountable to those people who might want to
support you now that you've given them your connective tissue.
So talk to our listeners a bit about how the
nurse part factors into this congressional run, maybe what people
(15:19):
could expect from your your time in office, and maybe
even what makes you different from the other people seeking
the same seats.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Absolutely, no, I mean this is we made it a
central part of our campaign for a reason. Year over year,
nurses are are the American people are polled, and year
over year for I want to say seventy straight years,
nurses are the top trusted profession in America. Okay, nice
(15:52):
so I often say, when I, you know, I get
assigned to your case in the hospital, I don't stop
and look up your political affela to make any decisions
about what you deserve. Because there's this thing called standard
of care. So in medicine, the standard of care for
(16:12):
let's say finding out your diabetic would be, after doing
laboratory tests, you would go see a specialist who would
help understand your form of diabetes and would help get
you the right insulin therapy. But he wouldn't he or
she wouldn't send you home without teaching you how to
use the insulin, teaching you what the insulin's for right,
(16:33):
and then checking up to make sure you're actually using
your insulin appropriate right, because patients don't always understand or
they don't always do it right. So nurses are involved
in an outcomes driven process, not a loyalty driven process.
A loyalty driven process would be you get you're the physician,
and you give me an order, and I see this order,
(16:55):
and I go, this is an unsafe order. You just
ordered ten times a normal amount of plug dinner for
this patient. But you know what, I really love, doctor ramsays,
so I'm gonna have to be loyal to him, and
I'm gonna have to give this patient like way too
much blood dinner. That does not happen. It's inconceivable because
nurses medical providers, we take an oath to the patient,
(17:18):
much like we expect our elected leaders to take the
oath that they took to our constitution. Seriously. Right, as
a nurse, I am duty bound to report things even now.
If I see elder abuse or child abuse, I am
a mandated reporter. And I don't care who you are,
(17:39):
left or right. You do what's wrong, I'm going to
call you out for it. And that's what nurses have
to do you. We even have to do it with
the doctors that you love, right because and any good
doctor will tell you that nurses are the connective tissue
will go with that of the medical system because we
help pull all the pieces together. And also what's really
(18:00):
important is we use what's called a nursing process. We
assess the situation before we get meds out, before we
do anything. We're taken in a lot of information. Then
with the information we've gathered, we're going to work towards
a diagnosis because we have to. We can't go to
solutions yet. And by the way, that's what folks can
(18:22):
partially expect different from me. Sometimes people say, oh, it's
very like argumentative, and maybe that's not the right word.
But I want to understand something very deeply, because if
I'm going to make a decision on it, especially one
that impacts eight hundred and ten thousand people in your district,
the amount of people that's the average amount in a
congressional district right now as of the last census, but
(18:44):
around eight hundred thousand people, I better know what the
heck I'm talking about. And so, just like the values
of a nurse, if I got an order to give
a medication that I've never even heard of, the very
first thing I'm going to do is sit down and
educate myself even on what before I even go see
(19:05):
the patient speak to the patient. These are the kind
of values and the kinds of systems driven thinking that
we need more of in Congress because we have so
much and so many of the And I think people
ask me a lot. They'll say like, well, why Congress,
Like have you never run for anything before? Why not
(19:26):
go to you run for city council? And I think
we need amazing people to run for all the things
that the reason why I was drawn specifically to Congress
was because my area of expertise of a nationally focused
clinical expert in reproductive medicine, combine with my own journey,
(19:50):
my own like life that has been a series of
one trauma after the next, marked very much by grief
and law. Yes, and I've had a choice all along
the way to get up, dust myself off, and keep going,
you know, keep crawling forward. People don't believe me when
I tell them I had a headache every day for
(20:12):
two straight years. But it was a choice, you know,
like do I go out and find the why or
do I kind of keep slapping a band aid on it?
And that's what you see in Congress right now, you know,
you see of a five hundred and thirty five member body,
between the US House and the US Senate, there are
(20:32):
less than twenty five or twenty five or around twenty
five medical professionals doctors or nurses, twenty five. In my opinion,
if you are going to rip healthcare away from millions
of people, if you're going to deploy such aggressive immigration enforcement,
(20:56):
you better be able to you better be able to
answer for that because you're you're harming the net health
of everyone.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
If I may, let me let me see if I
got you before I ask the next question. So you're
going to bring to Congress, if elected, a scientific method
(21:27):
in your approach to dissecting policy rather than say, for instance,
dogma or guessing or vibes. Got that so far?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Absolutely all? Right?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
On top of that, because you're focused on healthcare specifically,
you're going to make that central too, or that that
your defense will prove central to the overall health care
defense for people not just in your district but in
(22:07):
the country everywhere. Okay, so I got it so far. Okay, Well,
then if I met, I would like to for the
benefit of our listeners. I'm sure you know these things.
I would like to interject some things that I know
to be true, and you can help me with these
if you so choose. The first thing I'll say is
(22:27):
a question that I ask myself. I have to ask
myself frequently, is what is the purpose of a government?
Right just because of the spaces that I'm in. It's
a question that gets everybody on the same at the
same starting line. What is the purpose? Not what do
we want from our government? No, what is the purpose
of a government, right, So typically the answer to that
(22:52):
question is something effectually, the answer is, the government's purpose
is to organize the lives of the population and to
care and to take care of the needs of the population.
They could be defensive needs, you know. So that's why
in Congress there might be some former veterans, there might
(23:13):
be you know, organizing, so you might have some lawyers
in there, but there's no one that ever pushes back
against the idea that the government should be at least
involved when it comes to the healthcare of the people.
And I think that more recently people believe that to
be true because if there were no government, specifically center
(23:35):
for disease control in place during COVID, there would be
a lot more dead bodies after COVID. Right, So you
see how having an organization with people who are intelligent
and informed and empowered to decide, you know, how a
population should respond to these sorts of things is helpful
(24:00):
in central to a prosperous society. So well, that said,
I recognize also that it's easy enough to say, you
know what, the other people seeking my seat that are
you know, you and I have never established whether or
not you are a liberal or a conservative. But let's say,
(24:23):
for instance, you're a liberal. You have let's say you
don't believe that the folks that are seeking the seat
that kind of espouse the same views as you are
going to be effective in that role as effective as
you right, And you know full well if indeed what
(24:47):
I believe to be true is true, that the people
who are more conservative that are seeking the seat, they will,
let's say, your belief is that they will perhaps put
the needs of desires of the president hypothetically ahead of
the needs of the people in their district. Okay, put
(25:09):
the optics of their career ahead of the people in
their district, of the people of this country. And you
have said that you don't really care who you have
to go up against. But let's say that you end
up besting all of these folks, and now you are
(25:33):
in a seat in Congress, and Democrats are they start
moving to protect Bill Clinton from the Epstein files or whatever?
This is all hypothetical, or there's people that say, hey,
you know what, we need to give more money to
(25:58):
this country or to Israel or to what is it Ukraine,
or whatever the case is. Are you prepared to go
to battle with people in your own party, and do
(26:18):
you think that how would I say this? Do you
think that that is a prudent strategy given that the
opposition seems to be well fortified and their ranks feel
(26:38):
a bit unbreakable right now?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, no, And I think that's fair. And I think
that what I would say to that is sort of
what we talked about earlier, and it's about the ultimate
loyalty of the representative that they take to the people.
So you know, if some thing, if something is not working,
(27:02):
no matter whose idea it was, if it works, it works.
If it doesn't, it doesn't. So while I do very
much believe that the Democratic Party has a lot of
explaining to do, if you will, for yeah, yeah, because
(27:24):
there were a couple a number of things, but I
think you know one, you know, they they sold us
and that Joe Biden would be a one term president.
It would be a transitional president, right And many people
say that, really did he say that? I said no,
he absolutely did, because it was part of why I
because I had concerns. I have had concerns. You if
(27:46):
you open a business tomorrow, okay, you're most likely not
going to hire a crew of a dozen eighty year olds.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Sure, yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So why do we continually, you know, do that. So
but because we were fractured and Biden had very blue
collar roots in terms of his you know, some of
his dedication to his own family. But no, when he
did us wrong by not going against the promise to
(28:21):
be a one term president, I'm happy to call him
out on that because it's true he did say he
would be a one term president. And at the end
of the day, that's the standard that you apply. If
somebody says, I mean lies have become their currency, it's
the it's the it's the and not not just on
(28:44):
one side of the aisle. I think in politics in general,
especially if you look at you know, if you just
objectively look at the number of people in Congress, their
net worth before they were elected, their current net worth,
we would very well be able to see them both
sides of the aisle. There is there's shenanigans. It would
(29:05):
be completely naive to think that there weren't on both sides.
So we have to call out what's wrong because it's
what's wrong. So just like I would go back to
a beloved doctor, not that we're talking about those people
being beloved, but and say hate doctor I. You know,
(29:26):
I hate to break it to you, but you were
actually wrong on that. But that doing that is hard.
Let me tell you what, Especially as a young nurse,
that's really hard. And as a woman too, and across
a lot of different cultures. You know, it can be
very difficult to stand your ground. But t'ree damn right,
I'm going to stand my ground. If we've got people
(29:47):
in the party whose answer to the fascist takeover that
we're seeing is a strongly worded letter. Right, two things
can be true at once.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
All right, stay tuned. We'll be back with more after this.
Still broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios, I'd like
to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where
our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I
am your host, Ramsey's job. Big shout out to q Ward,
who has taken the day off. It is well deserved
and much needed. He will be back with us next week.
(30:20):
But right now, we have a special guest in the
studio with us. She goes by the name of Elizabeth Lee.
You can find her on all social media platforms at
nurse Lee for a Z and let's get back to
the conversation. I appreciate that response because you know, I'm
one of those people that sort of has my ear
to the street, and you know, I learned that you
(30:40):
were too, So let me not say that like that's
not true with you. But you know, I'm the type
that gets outside at a protest. I love a good protest, absolutely,
I well, good good bye. I think that I protest
in a way that it's probably a little bit more.
I like to agitate people. I like to push the one.
But I gotta be careful because I got a big apple.
(31:00):
Everybody knows me, and they me getting arrested, you know,
messes a lot of stuff up. But I just kind
of like that energy anyway. Sure, being out at protests,
being around the country. You know, I traveled this country
quite a bit, and I have to bring these sorts
of conversations to Baltimore to DC, to New York, to Miami,
to Louisiana to you know, pick us for Philadelphia, California
(31:22):
of course, all over the place. When I'm talking to people,
one of the things that I hear is the frustration
that people that are allies and would be allies. So
let's call these people liberal leaning folks. How frustrated these
(31:42):
people are with the Democratic Party, And I don't think
it's because necessarily that Democrats have not accomplished as much
as they would have liked. It's because of the fact
that Democrats it became very clear that Democrats were bought
(32:07):
and paid for by packs.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And here's the part of the conversation where things get
a little tricky. But people that know what I'm saying
know what I'm saying. And people that don't, you know,
this is not a conversation for them anyway. They're not
frustrated with Democrats or whatever the case is. But those
that are, they really didn't like seeing body parts from
(32:35):
children and that sort of thing, and the Democrats really
didn't have anything for them, and so rather than cast
a vote to prevent this from happening, they just didn't vote.
And these are the people that I hope that you
were speaking to right now saying that, hey, I'm willing
to challenge you know sort of what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Absolutely if you don't. If you don't, what are you
there for? Honestly, I deeply believe that I would rather
win and go serve one term in Congress and never
turn my back on my constituents than to get there,
(33:17):
and no sooner be completely fixated on how I'm going
to get re elected, because that's a lot of and
that's part of the problem. The big dollars, the big
pack money is an unfair influence in our national election space.
And I mean nothing became more clear to me once
a year June, so I believe it was June of
(33:40):
twenty four, I was invited by a few Senators to
attend sit in the gallery as the Senate voted on
a key IVF bill that would have really protected IVF,
especially for our veterans. It was co sponsored by Tammy
Duckworth of Illinois. And I went to that that vote
(34:04):
knowing likely how it would end up, but still with
this like hope in my heart that like folks would
somehow wake up and do the right thing, you know.
And as I'm sitting in the gallery, I'm looking down
and it's interesting, when you're in the Senate gallery, you
very well have been, but they you know, you can't
have your phone, you can't even have a piece of paper.
I can't even write anything down, like they're very strict,
(34:25):
So you're you're it's kind of an interesting experiment in
you've got nothing to do but to study what's happening
before you. And I'm a total nerd, so I know
all of the players. And a nurse that was with me,
she's actually my podcast co host, and you know, she
still tells this story of how funny it was. It
(34:46):
was like having a sportscaster sitting next to you, because
I was like, and that's so and so, and that's
so and so, and they they co sponsored this and that.
But the point is, I'll never forget that moment where
I look down and I saw like Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham,
Ted Cruz, kind of like that group. I want to
(35:11):
say that the Senator Kennedy from Louisiana was there. I mean,
it was like and I went, oh my gosh, it's
it really is so true that a bunch of rich
white men are making decisions about everyone else's lives, healthcare, everything.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yet Oh no, you were You're going to say you
were going to list the categories. I was going to
say that things.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Absolutely right and so, and I mean to RFK specifically.
You know, I've had this conversation out and about let's
give some credit where credit is due. Okay, two things
can be true at once. You can be a complete
moron and uh and ultimately be responsible for the deaths
of people for the some of the stuff you spout.
(35:53):
And we do need to get food dies out of
our out of our children's food. We desperately do we
need to get forever chemicals out of the things that
we eat and drink off of. And I mean, you know,
there's some research showing that these types of offenders are
part of the rise in infertility, because infertility is a
(36:18):
orchestral process between one's brain and their sex producing hormones
for everything to happen on a very specific timeline, and
so these endocrine disruptors they sideline that. So my point
is is that, you know, we're so quick to be like,
oh my gosh, RFK, but I'm still willing to acknowledge
(36:38):
a positive where there's a positive. I think that that
being kind of what folks can expect from me, right
is you know, when I was in d C just
a few months ago, I had a great opportunity to
have a really what felt like a really great conversation
with Alabama Senator Katie britt and she's doing a lot
to champion IVF. She's on the other side of the aisle.
(37:00):
She supports a president I don't support, but she's also
championing something that I do support. So we've just othered
each other so badly. It's like Washington right now is
a bowling alley. The Republicans step up and a hurl
the ball, perfect form, but write down the right hand
gutter and the Dems they perfect form. They're high fiving
(37:24):
down the left hand gutter. Who wins at the end
of the night the bowling alley? But yeah, no one so.
But it's kind of the imagery right of you know,
you're in this square off with the other team. That's
the way we treat it now. As opposed to a
really good doctor in the hospital. When I come and
(37:46):
I say, hey, you wrote this order for ten times
the safe amount, he would go, you are incredible, Thank
you for your diligence, thank you for speaking up right.
He wouldn't say, how dare you call me right? And
we've got to get back to being able to converse
(38:07):
through hard conversations with especially with people who we think
we disagree with.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Good, Okay, now I want to sort of circle back
a bit. I don't know if I because we got
about maybe tenish minutes left, and I want to get
two questions in. One of them is I want to well,
(38:37):
first off, this is the place where we do this,
so this has to be the more important of the questions.
There are a lot of places around the country that
do not ask this specific question. This show exists so
that I can ask this specific question. How do you
intend to stand up up for the historically marginalized in
(39:05):
your district and in this country? In what ways do
you feel like these people can use your voice to
accomplish the things that limit their capacity to enjoy the
(39:30):
American dream to the fold.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yes, I think you can look at exactly what I've
been doing over the past twelve months straight at this point,
which is just showing up and listening.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Okay, expound and remember, so what have you been doing.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
My father used to frustrate me because I would go
to him like an early adulthood and ask for advice,
and he would not give me advice. He would always stay,
but in a really great way because he was very
much like, well, it's your life, it's your choices, right.
Most pers and say like you should do X, Y
and zu, right, but my dad would always really listen
and give me space to work my feelings out or
(40:08):
even sometimes work the problem out all by myself. Right.
So you know, I think you can easily see how
important it is just to show up and listen, because
when you do that, you can help whoever the person is.
(40:29):
So a voter in my district, but more broadly any
American right, because we all know one vote in the
House of Representatives can mean the difference between a law
passing and a law failing, period, point blank. Whether I'm
from Arizona and you're sitting in Alabama right now, you
need to care about this because what you get with
me is you get somebody who is not afraid to
(40:51):
show up. I was at thirty events in January alone.
We held a you know Alex Pretty, the nurse. I
know you've talked about him on your show. You read
Amanda Gorman's poem, which was just I just really moving
and being a nurse myself, right, and having just held
(41:15):
a vigil two weeks prior for Renee Good because I
was just dumbfounded at what was taking place. But we
held a candlelight walk in Gilbert, Arizona, you know, to
honor Alex pretty and three hundred people showed up. We
expected like thirty. But people need space to be in community,
(41:41):
to learn that there are that you're their safe space.
I think that's always been my secret sauce as a nurse,
if you will, because I do have a very I
will say gifted, but it's gifted to me. I'm not
like I didn't do anything to deserve it. But people
often tell me you you you do such a good
(42:01):
job holding space for uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Okay, okay, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
And I would just add with with our marginalized communities,
so much of it is we assume what you need
instead of ask you, listen, and then empower you to
be able to follow through with that choice.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
That's what I was hoping to hear.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
And that's what my dad really taught me, was that
his job was to set me up for the best
decision I could make, because it wasn't about what. And
people will say to me all the time, you know,
Republican or Democrat, And I'll say, you know, at the
end of the day, when you start with that question,
you have unnecessarily put space between us. Right, but if
(42:54):
we just listen to one another. Right, I can not
share the same faith as you, but share the same
values of liberty that you do, so that I can
make sure you can practice your faith with your people
the way that you want to and empower other groups
(43:18):
to do the same thing. It's not about Elizabeth, what
do you believe on X? Well? What let's talk about
what is the Like, let's start with the nursing process,
and let's not you know, I mean, part of what
we saw with the recent Minnesota shootings was immediate jumping
to conclusions and very scripted conclusions, right, Like, we don't
(43:40):
have time for that. People's lives are on the line.
We need to assess the situation. Like you just got
rolled into my er having a heart attack, so we go, Okay,
what's the standard of care for a heart attack?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Not?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, you know, I'm kind of feeling today like we
should get a snack first, and then like, let's see
what sky how this guy votes? Yeah, that would be preposterous.
And yet are elected representatives whose salaries we pay, whose
lifestyles we subsidize. By the way, they were getting all
cranked out about six dollars in snap money per day.
(44:17):
When Congress gets one hundred dollars per dim for meals
each day, or it might even be per meal, but
we'll say it's at least one hundred dollars a day.
We subsidize that. The least you could do is the
job we sent you there to do.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Well, Uh, I want to make that live just a bit.
And the reason why I asked the question before I
get to the second question, we let you go. But
during COVID, you know, Q and I, we had to
cover the Tuskegee experiments. We had we had to do
a lot of stuff. We had to bring a lot
(44:52):
of history up so that people understood what was going on.
One of the things that we did was a deep
dive into medical journals that are still being widely circulated
in medical schools today. And one of the issues is
(45:15):
that this data comes from slavery. People don't know this,
but you could buy a slave and experiment on your
slave the same way you could buy a labrat. Slaves
weren't regarded as human, they were property, right, so you
could buy a slave and just and there was a
lot of sick people that did a lot of sick
things and we know this. This is why I'm not
(45:36):
one hundred percent African, my grandmother's and all them, you know. Anyway,
the point is is that these experiments yielded bogus scientific results,
but that was enshrine into medical journals. That was kind
of passed on to the next generation and the next
(45:59):
and so and so, because the people that kind of
oversee all of this don't really have an interest in
going back and revisiting this slave science. They just take
it at face value. Then, since I would imagine it's
white men are overrepresented in terms of doctors and so forth,
it might not even occur to these people that hey,
(46:20):
you know what, black people breathe the same amount of
air as everyone else, so we don't need to adjust
for the amount of air intake because they have wider noses,
and black people feel pain in the same way that
other humans feel pain. Indeed, these are homo sapien sapiens
the same as any other and our bodily structures are
the same. Rather than again the bogus science, black people
(46:41):
have thicker skin and less dense nerves or whatever it
is that they use to justify this. And so just
knowing that you have a scientific approach, not just to politics,
but to people. That helps me feel a little bit
more comfortable in terms of your approach to marginalize people
who you may end up representing or whose interest you
(47:03):
might represent more broadly around the country. Now, the last question,
and we don't have a whole lot of time for it,
but I feel like there's something to be said about
challenging people's beliefs when they are based in dogma rather
(47:28):
than science. Yes, now, I happen to know that that
is a very, very difficult thing to do. I'm a
person that grew up literally in the church. Our listeners
know this, and my father and his father they were
both ministers, you know. So I got it, honestly. So
I know how compelling the instructions that you get from
(47:52):
church and the connection that you make to a higher
power in your mortal soul, how compelling that can be.
I also know that Republicans, let's call it what it is,
Republicans or conservatives, I'll say it that way, have taken
(48:14):
abortion that single issue on the heels of segregation. When
segregation proved to be unpopular with the American population, they
pivoted to abortion to try to get evangelicals to continue
to vote for the Republican Party because they were largely
conservative outside of the espousal of or I guess, the
(48:37):
lack of widespread espousal of segregation. So you end up
with a concerted effort to marry abortion to politics and
get this voter base into your ranks. And now, and
the connection, of course that they made was through religion.
(48:58):
God doesn't want you to kill the baby before you
were made in your womb. I knew you that sort
of stuff, right and again to a person raised in
that that's very compelling. Right now, I happen to know,
and I want to let you lose here, but I
happen to know that you know, the Bible will treat
a miscarriage like a property crime. Right In other words,
(49:21):
if you if you push a man's wife to the
ground and she miscarries. I don't I don't know that
this is exactly the way it is, but I vaguely
familiar with the passage because I have to be. If
she miscarries, then you owe the husband like money. That's
that's how it's treated. But if you harm the wife,
(49:44):
then it's or a child or something, then it's sort
of like a life for a life, eye for an
eye sort of a thing. Right, So children weren't treated
or I guess fetuses weren't treated as life as a lie,
they were treated as property prior to them being born. Okay,
that in mind, you got your work cut out for you,
as you well know. I'm sure, how do you or
(50:06):
how have you because maybe you've already kind of walked
this path before, But how do you out ask for
the sake of our listeners just coming to this conversation,
plan on interacting with people who will bring dogma to
a conversation where you intend to bring science logic, even
(50:28):
their own dogmatic text, how do you plan on navigating
those wafes?
Speaker 2 (50:34):
You know, I'm thinking when you when you're talking about this,
I'm thinking of an absolutely incredible black woman female obviously
woman I just said physician, but she's a faith based
abortion provider and right you go, hmm. And what I
learned from her her book and you know, hearing her speak,
(50:56):
is that again two things can be true at once.
You can have a personal disagreement with abortion, and my
role as your representative will be to protect your right
to do as you see fit with said situation. Helping
people to understand that. You know, I'll often say, are
(51:21):
you open to considering a different perspective, because because when
they do say that they are, I'll say, help me
understand why we will allow a woman to give birth
on the street corner and we don't care about her
or the baby, but if two days prior that woman
(51:44):
were to have an abortion, we would have cared all
about it. It's a truly it's a true double standard,
and it's one that squares directly against I think the
truly conservative underpinning of where that came from.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
And you circumvent the Bible right and the text and
you bring it to the real world. So I like that, Yeah,
well you have some strategy. I love that you have
a lot of strategy. And you know, obviously I can't
cast a vote for you. You know, I can't say
anything but understand what I'm trying to say. What's a
favorite again for all of our listeners around the country.
(52:23):
Leave some more of that connective tissue so people can
tap in with your campaign and learn more about you
and if donate, if that's something that you're open.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
To, absolutely so again, I'm Elizabeth Lee Nurse from Gilbert
Arizona running to flip a Congress seat blue in this
year's midterms. You can find out more about me, my story,
what led me to this point, what I plan to
do for the district at Nurse Lee Lee the number
four AZ dot com. So that's Nurse Lee the number
(52:53):
four AZ dot com. You can find us on socials
at that same handle at Nurse Lee for AZ. And
and absolutely when you think about the number one thing
that will make the difference between us winning and losing,
it is unfortunately true that it is money. And if
every person listening to this show gave us five dollars
(53:14):
a month, I could spend all of my time making
a difference, as opposed to half my time and the
other half calling rich people for money. Like we have
a truly people powered campaign. Over fifteen hundred individuals across
the country have donated to us because they see the
(53:34):
value in bringing leaders to Congress with those values.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I can see why.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
I can see so, Nursely for As that's where you
can find us.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Okay, I think you bring up a great point too,
is that a lot of again, a lot of people
that are running for officer, as I mentioned, bought and
paid for and the donors typically donate and they expect
a politician to deliver something to them. So I've been
(54:05):
long been a fan of people powered campaigns. You know.
The first one I saw was Bernie Sanders and a
recent fantastic example is Zorn Mam Donnie, where you have
you know, people funding your campaign, people donating to your campaign,
and then you're beholden to the people and so it's
less of a a race, I guess, to get the
(54:33):
most dollars, and it's rather a race to get the
most donations. And I think that that is a better
way of getting the people centered in politics. So, you know,
it's not really you know, I'm I'm not mad at
(54:54):
socialist campaigns. I'm not mad at a lot of you know,
social principles. I think that they make a lot of sense,
at least the pursuit the intention behind it, and where
a person might look at capitalism and the benefits of
capitalism and say, you know, capitalism has brought about a
(55:18):
lot of you know, innovation and whatever it is that
people say, you know, and you know, there are some
good things. I guess if you choose to view them
that way. You know, I have a fancy car, I
have a fancy watch, I have a fancy whatever iPhone,
you know, whatever the thing is. You know, capitalism kind
of presses those buttons. But I think socialism not that
(55:41):
that's what's happening here, but I think that socialism is
more of a I guess a the pursuit is making
sure that people are happy, not that people are wealthy necessarily,
because wealth is a necessarily a measure of happiness. Some
(56:03):
people that have more money do end up happier, That's sure.
That's that's for sure. But you know, when you're making
sure that the bottom doesn't fall out for a society,
then I think that that is something that is definitely
worth considering. The reason why I'm saying all this, of course,
is because the campaigns that I mission, that I've mentioning, sorry,
(56:23):
are from you know, democratic socialists, and so when I
hear something about, you know, a people powered campaign or
something like that, immediately I think that's the sort of
thing that a lot of people that have become disillusioned
with the Democratic Party might be able to get behind.
And so I wanted to make sure I took a
(56:43):
moment to accentuate that and make sure that folks kind
of know that at least with what you're doing and
having it being you know, mostly people powered or maybe
completely people powered, that that actually means a lot. Because again,
for the folks that have taken an issue with you know,
(57:04):
the once great heroes of the Democratic Party, the Cory Bookers,
the Hakim Jefferies, those sorts of folks, and you know,
met their breaking point with you know, the bombing and
Gaza or whatever, pick a thing, it doesn't really matter,
you know, Democrats, you know, voting to fund ice or
(57:28):
whatever the case is. Again, you circle that block, you
come back around that corner, and you realize that the
people's voices aren't really being centered in those rooms, The
people's voices aren't being centered in those powerful conversations. The
people's voices are actually being cast aside in favor of
(57:49):
big donors. And so, you know, I've said it before,
I'll say it again. Money and politics really does corrupt
the political arena to a significant degree. And I'm one
grateful that your people power. Thanks for having me absolutely
all right, Well, thank you so much for your time.
Once again. Today's guest has been congressional candidate Elizabeth Lee,
(58:11):
a nationally recognized nurse, Board certified patient advocate and reproductive
healthcare policy expert with over a decade of experience advancing
access to care. Thank you so much, Thank you all right,
and that's going to do it for us here at
Civic Cipher. A big shout out to my man q Ward,
who will be back in the saddle next week. In
the meantime, be sure to follow us on all social
(58:31):
media platforms at civ I c c I, p h
e R Civic Cipher. You can find me on all
platforms at rams's Jock Qward, I am Qward, and you
can hit the website that is Civiccipher dot com. That's
where you can make a donation. Our show is growing
with your donations. Your support goes a long way, and
we appreciate that you can also find us on all platforms.
That support goes a long way as well. If you
(58:53):
got anything else you want us to know, hit us
at Civiccipher dot com And until next week, y'all. Peace,
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host,
Ramsey's job. Big shout out to q Ward, who actually
has the week off, and it is well deserved. But
you have no fear. It's still business as usual around here. Today.
We have a special guest in the building, Nurse Elizabeth Lee,
(00:24):
who is making her congressional bid, and she has come
to the show to tell us all about it. So,
without further ado, let's get into it. Yes, very excited
to be here. Thanks for having me, absolutely absolutely so.
One of the things that I have recently learned about you,
but I was not clicked onto it. You know, there's
(00:47):
so much to pay attention to nowadays, But I learned
that you sort of rose to national prominence. I guess
right around the time that Roe v. Wade sort of
in recent history, made its way back into the headlines.
So do us a favor. For folks that might have
become familiar with you, remind them of where they might
(01:09):
know you from. And for folks just coming to this conversation,
let them know sort of how you entered into the
national arena.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, no, thank you so much. So I came into
this arena as a bedside nurse who nursing was my
second job, or my second career rather, so I was
a little older, a little wiser, and I had done
my time as a bedside nurse and really wanted to
get involved in clinic nursing and became an infertility nurse. Okay,
(01:39):
and infertility is a really underspoken about silent epidemic. One
in six people suffer from infertility. Rural metro rich, poor, black,
white does not discriminate one in six. And so, having
just been a hospital nurse, to all of a sudden
(02:02):
now having to talk about like payment plans with patients,
told me we've got we've got a real problem here
because at one in six, this is a medical problem.
Insurance should be paying for this. And so I started
just being the loud voice in the room on that.
(02:22):
And as we marched towards the fall of Roe v. Wade,
as you mentioned, which was via the Dobbs decision, a
thing that I think many thought could never happen, and
many saw as just waiting to happen. Because I'm going
to be the first to admit that my generation of
(02:44):
old millennials, we did not do enough. We did not
do our part to really you know, rights are only
you have to fight for your rights. Rites on paper
are just that, and like if we've not seen that
play out today around us, right are to be on
American soil means you have the right of due process.
(03:06):
And yet that's flown out the window. So as we
marched towards some early indicators that said that that Dobbs
decision was going to likely take place, I started getting
very concerned that the future of the fertility clinic was
at stake because the folks that were in favor of
(03:32):
overturning Roe v. Wade use a definition of life which
is life begins at conception. Okay, so IVF or in
vitro fertilization, fertilization is there. That's when they say conception
takes place. So all of a sudden, I have human
(03:55):
beings frozen in a cryo lab that have rights, and
you look at me like I have two heads, right,
because that sounds crazy, yeah, completely crazy. And yet several
months I think, just maybe three months about after the
Dab's decision, an embryo was inadvertently dropped on the floor
(04:21):
of a lab and employee wondered. In the story goes,
you know, he reached into a liquid nitrogen tank and
pulled out a straw with an embryo on it, and
it fell, and then all of a sudden they were
talking about like murder charges for an embryo. So that
(04:41):
was my sort of real coming into my own as
an activist. I had been a very loud advocate, but suddenly,
you know, I think people are often called to activism
when they feel something deeply, and I saw the effect
that a treating infertility not as a disease and its
(05:05):
treatment as a commodity rather than treatment, and then watching
people be continually priced out of that, you know, was
kind of rife with, Wow, this is already really broken.
So then when you know, real view, aid was overturned
that obviously had widespread national implications for abortion rights, and
(05:29):
it had widespread implications for the IVF field, just as
I had sort of you know, blown blown the whistle
about a year or so prior. In fact, I was
in a lobby meeting with a member of Congress's legislative
Aid prior to the decision and I told him, listen,
this is this is what's going to happen. And he said,
this is not There's no way that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So yeah, so that was sort of my rise into
the quote unquote national spotlight. And part of that was
because I hosted a weekly impromptu Facebook live every Monday
night for the clinic I was working for, and it
was patients all across the country could come on these
(06:15):
live streams and ask me questions, just live, like no script,
no anything, Just come on here and ask me all
the questions that you're too embarrassed to ask your fertility doctor,
and I'll answer them for you. So I sort of
got that reputation for being like, let's pull back the curtain,
let's call a spade a spade, like you know, well.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
You know, one of the things that I think that
I learned right now in this conversation, honestly, is how
many people I guess infertility effects. I thought that it
was something that might affect one in like ten thousand,
(06:59):
Maybe I had no idea. One in six is like
I know six people, one of them struggling with infertility.
That might be. And I read a statistic and I
verified it because I work in this journalistic space, so
I have to, you know. But it's something like forty
percent of men will never become fathers. So that's true
(07:25):
if you look at U it's crazy, but yeah, because
you don't think everybody reproduces in this generation, but no,
forty percent of men they will never become fathers. And
then I start to hear this one in six fertility
struggle statistic and I'm like, okay, well, that certainly jives
with what I know to be true, at least about
men and you know, procreation so well.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And it's compounded with something that folks don't really think about.
But with women gaining rights to all kinds of things,
right voting, having our own credit card, all these very
radical things that you know, we had to fight for.
Meant that women were more empowered or educated perhaps I'm
(08:15):
not sure which word, but to delay child bearing for
a career. It became more accepted to have a career first.
But we were so poorly educated. I say we, meaning
my generation and pretty much anyone my age or younger.
(08:40):
Horrible public education on our reproductive systems and how they
truly work. Just no fluff, no ideology, just science. Right,
this is an organ that produces this, which does this,
like we just so. I would have conversations ramseys with
pati who were like fifty five and shocked when I
(09:06):
told them that their chances of conceiving with their own
eggs was less than point one percent. But I'm I'm
perfectly healthy. I know, I never smoked a day in
my life. I know the most model human with ovaries,
those ovaries are only going to be working until you're
in your mid thirties, and then after that there's this
(09:28):
stark drop off. We didn't know, Like I think a
lot of people that I have worked with in this
space over the many years that I've worked in it,
and it's part of what's driven me to run for
Congress is because so many times I heard like, why
didn't anybody tell me that? Like, and there's an option
(09:53):
to freeze my eggs, why didn't anybody tell me that?
Or You'll have people come in and they'll say, yeah,
I had hemotherapy as a sixteen year old for such
and such. Well, chemotherapy is often give me to toxic entirely,
meaning that it kills off the ability of the body
to make either genetically functional eggs or sperm. Why didn't
(10:15):
anybody tell me? Was my own story. I cracked my
own thirty year, thirty plus year health journey by becoming
a nurse myself. Again, why didn't anybody tell me? We
owe it to one another, we owe it to society
to give. And I think this is where we've talked
(10:36):
about the idea of the system being broken deliberately in
many ways. Right, So yeah, but I just got tired
of watching these systemic things continue to play out. Right,
they play out in my own life, my own struggles, right,
(10:56):
and then I but I can recognize my privileged too.
I as hard as life was growing up. I was
born with a rare genetic disease. It didn't get diagnosed
until I figured it out at age thirty seven, after
going through five major medical institutions across the United States,
carrying binders upon binders upon binders full of imaging and
(11:18):
lab work and all kinds of things to try to
investigate why as a twenty year old, you know, teenager,
and then as a twenty year old you know woman,
was I in constant pain, had a headache every day
for years on end. I had to break through that noise,
not until after I became a nurse myself. I remember
(11:43):
my early days as a nursing assistant and taking care
of a patient who had this disease called POTS. And
at that time, you know, everybody would have said pots
is super rare, super rare. But I remember taking care
of her with the understanding of the older nurses that
this is very, very rare. And yet I saw myself
(12:07):
in this patient like it was bizarre because I thought,
that's exactly like you know, I'm reading her chart. I'm like,
this is the same you know thing. And yet even
then I had to become an older, wiser, more discerning
(12:28):
nurse that had more data behind me, or time behind
me or something, until I was really able to insist, no,
this is what you all have been telling me over
these years, that you know, gaslighting me into believing that
there's nothing actually wrong with me. Guess what it was
a rare geneticerence. Yeah, it's my life story.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, I don't mean to interrupt you, but the reason
that that's shocking to me is so you mentioned, you know,
you recognizing your own privilege, So you know, Q and
I work in a space where we do our best
to bring important, marginalized voices to national conversations. And so
(13:16):
we often hear, especially from black women, that they aren't
listening to but and I would never take it from
them that they probably get the worst of the worst.
That's true statistics, Sure, sure, exactly, But I wouldn't have
guessed that. You know, you mentioned gas lighting and that
sort of thing, So that's got to be so, I
(13:37):
guess that's what inspired your journey to being a nurse.
But I feel like with your campaign, you're taking the
nurse element into your campaign because I've seen your sort
of campaign materials. Let's do it twice, so do us
a favorite right now? Plug all the connective tissue that
people might want to use to plug in with your campaign,
(13:57):
will do it? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So Elizabeth Lee nurse running for Congress in Arizona's fifth district,
a seat once held by John McCain. And you can
find us on socials at nurse Lee Lee is spelled
Lee the number four a Z, so very cute. Nurse
Ly for a Z. That's our website as well, nurselyfaz
(14:18):
dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Okay, all right, So, so that being sort of central
to the marketing of this campaign, which I love. By
the way, talk to our listeners. We are on in Arizona,
of course, but we're on nationally as well, and there
(14:39):
are a lot of people nationally that recognize that numbers
matter in this time, numbers in Congress, numbers in this Senate,
you know that sort of thing, and this is how
we can do our best to kind of check what
is for all intents and purposes on checkpower.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So there might be people nationally that are interested in
supporting you, but you, like to your district will have
to be accountable to those people who might want to
support you now that you've given them your connective tissue.
So talk to our listeners a bit about how the
nurse part factors into this congressional run, maybe what people
(15:19):
could expect from your your time in office, and maybe
even what makes you different from the other people seeking
the same seats.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Absolutely, no, I mean this is we made it a
central part of our campaign for a reason. Year over year,
nurses are are the American people are polled, and year
over year for I want to say seventy straight years,
nurses are the top trusted profession in America. Okay, nice
(15:52):
so I often say, when I, you know, I get
assigned to your case in the hospital, I don't stop
and look up your political affela to make any decisions
about what you deserve. Because there's this thing called standard
of care. So in medicine, the standard of care for
(16:12):
let's say finding out your diabetic would be, after doing
laboratory tests, you would go see a specialist who would
help understand your form of diabetes and would help get
you the right insulin therapy. But he wouldn't he or
she wouldn't send you home without teaching you how to
use the insulin, teaching you what the insulin's for right,
(16:33):
and then checking up to make sure you're actually using
your insulin appropriate right, because patients don't always understand or
they don't always do it right. So nurses are involved
in an outcomes driven process, not a loyalty driven process.
A loyalty driven process would be you get you're the physician,
and you give me an order, and I see this order,
(16:55):
and I go, this is an unsafe order. You just
ordered ten times a normal amount of plug dinner for
this patient. But you know what, I really love, doctor ramsays,
so I'm gonna have to be loyal to him, and
I'm gonna have to give this patient like way too
much blood dinner. That does not happen. It's inconceivable because
nurses medical providers, we take an oath to the patient,
(17:18):
much like we expect our elected leaders to take the
oath that they took to our constitution. Seriously. Right, as
a nurse, I am duty bound to report things even now.
If I see elder abuse or child abuse, I am
a mandated reporter. And I don't care who you are,
(17:39):
left or right. You do what's wrong, I'm going to
call you out for it. And that's what nurses have
to do you. We even have to do it with
the doctors that you love, right because and any good
doctor will tell you that nurses are the connective tissue
will go with that of the medical system because we
help pull all the pieces together. And also what's really
(18:00):
important is we use what's called a nursing process. We
assess the situation before we get meds out, before we
do anything. We're taken in a lot of information. Then
with the information we've gathered, we're going to work towards
a diagnosis because we have to. We can't go to
solutions yet. And by the way, that's what folks can
(18:22):
partially expect different from me. Sometimes people say, oh, it's
very like argumentative, and maybe that's not the right word.
But I want to understand something very deeply, because if
I'm going to make a decision on it, especially one
that impacts eight hundred and ten thousand people in your district,
the amount of people that's the average amount in a
congressional district right now as of the last census, but
(18:44):
around eight hundred thousand people, I better know what the
heck I'm talking about. And so, just like the values
of a nurse, if I got an order to give
a medication that I've never even heard of, the very
first thing I'm going to do is sit down and
educate myself even on what before I even go see
(19:05):
the patient speak to the patient. These are the kind
of values and the kinds of systems driven thinking that
we need more of in Congress because we have so
much and so many of the And I think people
ask me a lot. They'll say like, well, why Congress,
Like have you never run for anything before? Why not
(19:26):
go to you run for city council? And I think
we need amazing people to run for all the things
that the reason why I was drawn specifically to Congress
was because my area of expertise of a nationally focused
clinical expert in reproductive medicine, combine with my own journey,
(19:50):
my own like life that has been a series of
one trauma after the next, marked very much by grief
and law. Yes, and I've had a choice all along
the way to get up, dust myself off, and keep going,
you know, keep crawling forward. People don't believe me when
I tell them I had a headache every day for
(20:12):
two straight years. But it was a choice, you know,
like do I go out and find the why or
do I kind of keep slapping a band aid on it?
And that's what you see in Congress right now, you know,
you see of a five hundred and thirty five member body,
between the US House and the US Senate, there are
(20:32):
less than twenty five or twenty five or around twenty
five medical professionals doctors or nurses, twenty five. In my opinion,
if you are going to rip healthcare away from millions
of people, if you're going to deploy such aggressive immigration enforcement,
(20:56):
you better be able to you better be able to
answer for that because you're you're harming the net health
of everyone.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
If I may, let me let me see if I
got you before I ask the next question. So you're
going to bring to Congress, if elected, a scientific method
(21:27):
in your approach to dissecting policy rather than say, for instance,
dogma or guessing or vibes. Got that so far?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Absolutely all? Right?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
On top of that, because you're focused on healthcare specifically,
you're going to make that central too, or that that
your defense will prove central to the overall health care
defense for people not just in your district but in
(22:07):
the country everywhere. Okay, so I got it so far. Okay, Well,
then if I met, I would like to for the
benefit of our listeners. I'm sure you know these things.
I would like to interject some things that I know
to be true, and you can help me with these
if you so choose. The first thing I'll say is
(22:27):
a question that I ask myself. I have to ask
myself frequently, is what is the purpose of a government?
Right just because of the spaces that I'm in. It's
a question that gets everybody on the same at the
same starting line. What is the purpose? Not what do
we want from our government? No, what is the purpose
of a government, right, So typically the answer to that
(22:52):
question is something effectually, the answer is, the government's purpose
is to organize the lives of the population and to
care and to take care of the needs of the population.
They could be defensive needs, you know. So that's why
in Congress there might be some former veterans, there might
(23:13):
be you know, organizing, so you might have some lawyers
in there, but there's no one that ever pushes back
against the idea that the government should be at least
involved when it comes to the healthcare of the people.
And I think that more recently people believe that to
be true because if there were no government, specifically center
(23:35):
for disease control in place during COVID, there would be
a lot more dead bodies after COVID. Right, So you
see how having an organization with people who are intelligent
and informed and empowered to decide, you know, how a
population should respond to these sorts of things is helpful
(24:00):
in central to a prosperous society. So well, that said,
I recognize also that it's easy enough to say, you
know what, the other people seeking my seat that are
you know, you and I have never established whether or
not you are a liberal or a conservative. But let's say,
(24:23):
for instance, you're a liberal. You have let's say you
don't believe that the folks that are seeking the seat
that kind of espouse the same views as you are
going to be effective in that role as effective as
you right, And you know full well if indeed what
(24:47):
I believe to be true is true, that the people
who are more conservative that are seeking the seat, they will,
let's say, your belief is that they will perhaps put
the needs of desires of the president hypothetically ahead of
the needs of the people in their district. Okay, put
(25:09):
the optics of their career ahead of the people in
their district, of the people of this country. And you
have said that you don't really care who you have
to go up against. But let's say that you end
up besting all of these folks, and now you are
(25:33):
in a seat in Congress, and Democrats are they start
moving to protect Bill Clinton from the Epstein files or whatever?
This is all hypothetical, or there's people that say, hey,
you know what, we need to give more money to
(25:58):
this country or to Israel or to what is it Ukraine,
or whatever the case is. Are you prepared to go
to battle with people in your own party, and do
(26:18):
you think that how would I say this? Do you
think that that is a prudent strategy given that the
opposition seems to be well fortified and their ranks feel
(26:38):
a bit unbreakable right now?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, no, And I think that's fair. And I think
that what I would say to that is sort of
what we talked about earlier, and it's about the ultimate
loyalty of the representative that they take to the people.
So you know, if some thing, if something is not working,
(27:02):
no matter whose idea it was, if it works, it works.
If it doesn't, it doesn't. So while I do very
much believe that the Democratic Party has a lot of
explaining to do, if you will, for yeah, yeah, because
(27:24):
there were a couple a number of things, but I
think you know one, you know, they they sold us
and that Joe Biden would be a one term president.
It would be a transitional president, right And many people
say that, really did he say that? I said no,
he absolutely did, because it was part of why I
because I had concerns. I have had concerns. You if
(27:46):
you open a business tomorrow, okay, you're most likely not
going to hire a crew of a dozen eighty year olds.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Sure, yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So why do we continually, you know, do that. So
but because we were fractured and Biden had very blue
collar roots in terms of his you know, some of
his dedication to his own family. But no, when he
did us wrong by not going against the promise to
(28:21):
be a one term president, I'm happy to call him
out on that because it's true he did say he
would be a one term president. And at the end
of the day, that's the standard that you apply. If
somebody says, I mean lies have become their currency, it's
the it's the it's the and not not just on
(28:44):
one side of the aisle. I think in politics in general,
especially if you look at you know, if you just
objectively look at the number of people in Congress, their
net worth before they were elected, their current net worth,
we would very well be able to see them both
sides of the aisle. There is there's shenanigans. It would
(29:05):
be completely naive to think that there weren't on both sides.
So we have to call out what's wrong because it's
what's wrong. So just like I would go back to
a beloved doctor, not that we're talking about those people
being beloved, but and say hate doctor I. You know,
(29:26):
I hate to break it to you, but you were
actually wrong on that. But that doing that is hard.
Let me tell you what, Especially as a young nurse,
that's really hard. And as a woman too, and across
a lot of different cultures. You know, it can be
very difficult to stand your ground. But t'ree damn right,
I'm going to stand my ground. If we've got people
(29:47):
in the party whose answer to the fascist takeover that
we're seeing is a strongly worded letter. Right, two things
can be true at once.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
All right, stay tuned. We'll be back with more after this.
Still broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios, I'd like
to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where
our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I
am your host, Ramsey's job. Big shout out to q Ward,
who has taken the day off. It is well deserved
and much needed. He will be back with us next week.
(30:20):
But right now, we have a special guest in the
studio with us. She goes by the name of Elizabeth Lee.
You can find her on all social media platforms at
nurse Lee for a Z and let's get back to
the conversation. I appreciate that response because you know, I'm
one of those people that sort of has my ear
to the street, and you know, I learned that you
(30:40):
were too, So let me not say that like that's
not true with you. But you know, I'm the type
that gets outside at a protest. I love a good protest, absolutely,
I well, good good bye. I think that I protest
in a way that it's probably a little bit more.
I like to agitate people. I like to push the one.
But I gotta be careful because I got a big apple.
(31:00):
Everybody knows me, and they me getting arrested, you know,
messes a lot of stuff up. But I just kind
of like that energy anyway. Sure, being out at protests,
being around the country. You know, I traveled this country
quite a bit, and I have to bring these sorts
of conversations to Baltimore to DC, to New York, to Miami,
to Louisiana to you know, pick us for Philadelphia, California
(31:22):
of course, all over the place. When I'm talking to people,
one of the things that I hear is the frustration
that people that are allies and would be allies. So
let's call these people liberal leaning folks. How frustrated these
(31:42):
people are with the Democratic Party, And I don't think
it's because necessarily that Democrats have not accomplished as much
as they would have liked. It's because of the fact
that Democrats it became very clear that Democrats were bought
(32:07):
and paid for by packs.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And here's the part of the conversation where things get
a little tricky. But people that know what I'm saying
know what I'm saying. And people that don't, you know,
this is not a conversation for them anyway. They're not
frustrated with Democrats or whatever the case is. But those
that are, they really didn't like seeing body parts from
(32:35):
children and that sort of thing, and the Democrats really
didn't have anything for them, and so rather than cast
a vote to prevent this from happening, they just didn't vote.
And these are the people that I hope that you
were speaking to right now saying that, hey, I'm willing
to challenge you know sort of what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Absolutely if you don't. If you don't, what are you
there for? Honestly, I deeply believe that I would rather
win and go serve one term in Congress and never
turn my back on my constituents than to get there,
(33:17):
and no sooner be completely fixated on how I'm going
to get re elected, because that's a lot of and
that's part of the problem. The big dollars, the big
pack money is an unfair influence in our national election space.
And I mean nothing became more clear to me once
a year June, so I believe it was June of
(33:40):
twenty four, I was invited by a few Senators to
attend sit in the gallery as the Senate voted on
a key IVF bill that would have really protected IVF,
especially for our veterans. It was co sponsored by Tammy
Duckworth of Illinois. And I went to that that vote
(34:04):
knowing likely how it would end up, but still with
this like hope in my heart that like folks would
somehow wake up and do the right thing, you know.
And as I'm sitting in the gallery, I'm looking down
and it's interesting, when you're in the Senate gallery, you
very well have been, but they you know, you can't
have your phone, you can't even have a piece of paper.
I can't even write anything down, like they're very strict,
(34:25):
So you're you're it's kind of an interesting experiment in
you've got nothing to do but to study what's happening
before you. And I'm a total nerd, so I know
all of the players. And a nurse that was with me,
she's actually my podcast co host, and you know, she
still tells this story of how funny it was. It
(34:46):
was like having a sportscaster sitting next to you, because
I was like, and that's so and so, and that's
so and so, and they they co sponsored this and that.
But the point is, I'll never forget that moment where
I look down and I saw like Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham,
Ted Cruz, kind of like that group. I want to
(35:11):
say that the Senator Kennedy from Louisiana was there. I mean,
it was like and I went, oh my gosh, it's
it really is so true that a bunch of rich
white men are making decisions about everyone else's lives, healthcare, everything.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yet Oh no, you were You're going to say you
were going to list the categories. I was going to
say that things.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Absolutely right and so, and I mean to RFK specifically.
You know, I've had this conversation out and about let's
give some credit where credit is due. Okay, two things
can be true at once. You can be a complete
moron and uh and ultimately be responsible for the deaths
of people for the some of the stuff you spout.
(35:53):
And we do need to get food dies out of
our out of our children's food. We desperately do we
need to get forever chemicals out of the things that
we eat and drink off of. And I mean, you know,
there's some research showing that these types of offenders are
part of the rise in infertility, because infertility is a
(36:18):
orchestral process between one's brain and their sex producing hormones
for everything to happen on a very specific timeline, and
so these endocrine disruptors they sideline that. So my point
is is that, you know, we're so quick to be like,
oh my gosh, RFK, but I'm still willing to acknowledge
(36:38):
a positive where there's a positive. I think that that
being kind of what folks can expect from me, right
is you know, when I was in d C just
a few months ago, I had a great opportunity to
have a really what felt like a really great conversation
with Alabama Senator Katie britt and she's doing a lot
to champion IVF. She's on the other side of the aisle.
(37:00):
She supports a president I don't support, but she's also
championing something that I do support. So we've just othered
each other so badly. It's like Washington right now is
a bowling alley. The Republicans step up and a hurl
the ball, perfect form, but write down the right hand
gutter and the Dems they perfect form. They're high fiving
(37:24):
down the left hand gutter. Who wins at the end
of the night the bowling alley? But yeah, no one so.
But it's kind of the imagery right of you know,
you're in this square off with the other team. That's
the way we treat it now. As opposed to a
really good doctor in the hospital. When I come and
(37:46):
I say, hey, you wrote this order for ten times
the safe amount, he would go, you are incredible, Thank
you for your diligence, thank you for speaking up right.
He wouldn't say, how dare you call me right? And
we've got to get back to being able to converse
(38:07):
through hard conversations with especially with people who we think
we disagree with.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Good, Okay, now I want to sort of circle back
a bit. I don't know if I because we got
about maybe tenish minutes left, and I want to get
two questions in. One of them is I want to well,
(38:37):
first off, this is the place where we do this,
so this has to be the more important of the questions.
There are a lot of places around the country that
do not ask this specific question. This show exists so
that I can ask this specific question. How do you
intend to stand up up for the historically marginalized in
(39:05):
your district and in this country? In what ways do
you feel like these people can use your voice to
accomplish the things that limit their capacity to enjoy the
(39:30):
American dream to the fold.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yes, I think you can look at exactly what I've
been doing over the past twelve months straight at this point,
which is just showing up and listening.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Okay, expound and remember, so what have you been doing.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
My father used to frustrate me because I would go
to him like an early adulthood and ask for advice,
and he would not give me advice. He would always stay,
but in a really great way because he was very
much like, well, it's your life, it's your choices, right.
Most pers and say like you should do X, Y
and zu, right, but my dad would always really listen
and give me space to work my feelings out or
(40:08):
even sometimes work the problem out all by myself. Right.
So you know, I think you can easily see how
important it is just to show up and listen, because
when you do that, you can help whoever the person is.
(40:29):
So a voter in my district, but more broadly any
American right, because we all know one vote in the
House of Representatives can mean the difference between a law
passing and a law failing, period, point blank. Whether I'm
from Arizona and you're sitting in Alabama right now, you
need to care about this because what you get with
me is you get somebody who is not afraid to
(40:51):
show up. I was at thirty events in January alone.
We held a you know Alex Pretty, the nurse. I
know you've talked about him on your show. You read
Amanda Gorman's poem, which was just I just really moving
and being a nurse myself, right, and having just held
(41:15):
a vigil two weeks prior for Renee Good because I
was just dumbfounded at what was taking place. But we
held a candlelight walk in Gilbert, Arizona, you know, to
honor Alex pretty and three hundred people showed up. We
expected like thirty. But people need space to be in community,
(41:41):
to learn that there are that you're their safe space.
I think that's always been my secret sauce as a nurse,
if you will, because I do have a very I
will say gifted, but it's gifted to me. I'm not
like I didn't do anything to deserve it. But people
often tell me you you you do such a good
(42:01):
job holding space for uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Okay, okay, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
And I would just add with with our marginalized communities,
so much of it is we assume what you need
instead of ask you, listen, and then empower you to
be able to follow through with that choice.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
That's what I was hoping to hear.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
And that's what my dad really taught me, was that
his job was to set me up for the best
decision I could make, because it wasn't about what. And
people will say to me all the time, you know,
Republican or Democrat, And I'll say, you know, at the
end of the day, when you start with that question,
you have unnecessarily put space between us. Right, but if
(42:54):
we just listen to one another. Right, I can not
share the same faith as you, but share the same
values of liberty that you do, so that I can
make sure you can practice your faith with your people
the way that you want to and empower other groups
(43:18):
to do the same thing. It's not about Elizabeth, what
do you believe on X? Well? What let's talk about
what is the Like, let's start with the nursing process,
and let's not you know, I mean, part of what
we saw with the recent Minnesota shootings was immediate jumping
to conclusions and very scripted conclusions, right, Like, we don't
(43:40):
have time for that. People's lives are on the line.
We need to assess the situation. Like you just got
rolled into my er having a heart attack, so we go, Okay,
what's the standard of care for a heart attack?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Not?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, you know, I'm kind of feeling today like we
should get a snack first, and then like, let's see
what sky how this guy votes? Yeah, that would be preposterous.
And yet are elected representatives whose salaries we pay, whose
lifestyles we subsidize. By the way, they were getting all
cranked out about six dollars in snap money per day.
(44:17):
When Congress gets one hundred dollars per dim for meals
each day, or it might even be per meal, but
we'll say it's at least one hundred dollars a day.
We subsidize that. The least you could do is the
job we sent you there to do.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Well, Uh, I want to make that live just a bit.
And the reason why I asked the question before I
get to the second question, we let you go. But
during COVID, you know, Q and I, we had to
cover the Tuskegee experiments. We had we had to do
a lot of stuff. We had to bring a lot
(44:52):
of history up so that people understood what was going on.
One of the things that we did was a deep
dive into medical journals that are still being widely circulated
in medical schools today. And one of the issues is
(45:15):
that this data comes from slavery. People don't know this,
but you could buy a slave and experiment on your
slave the same way you could buy a labrat. Slaves
weren't regarded as human, they were property, right, so you
could buy a slave and just and there was a
lot of sick people that did a lot of sick
things and we know this. This is why I'm not
(45:36):
one hundred percent African, my grandmother's and all them, you know. Anyway,
the point is is that these experiments yielded bogus scientific results,
but that was enshrine into medical journals. That was kind
of passed on to the next generation and the next
(45:59):
and so and so, because the people that kind of
oversee all of this don't really have an interest in
going back and revisiting this slave science. They just take
it at face value. Then, since I would imagine it's
white men are overrepresented in terms of doctors and so forth,
it might not even occur to these people that hey,
(46:20):
you know what, black people breathe the same amount of
air as everyone else, so we don't need to adjust
for the amount of air intake because they have wider noses,
and black people feel pain in the same way that
other humans feel pain. Indeed, these are homo sapien sapiens
the same as any other and our bodily structures are
the same. Rather than again the bogus science, black people
(46:41):
have thicker skin and less dense nerves or whatever it
is that they use to justify this. And so just
knowing that you have a scientific approach, not just to politics,
but to people. That helps me feel a little bit
more comfortable in terms of your approach to marginalize people
who you may end up representing or whose interest you
(47:03):
might represent more broadly around the country. Now, the last question,
and we don't have a whole lot of time for it,
but I feel like there's something to be said about
challenging people's beliefs when they are based in dogma rather
(47:28):
than science. Yes, now, I happen to know that that
is a very, very difficult thing to do. I'm a
person that grew up literally in the church. Our listeners
know this, and my father and his father they were
both ministers, you know. So I got it, honestly. So
I know how compelling the instructions that you get from
(47:52):
church and the connection that you make to a higher
power in your mortal soul, how compelling that can be.
I also know that Republicans, let's call it what it is,
Republicans or conservatives, I'll say it that way, have taken
(48:14):
abortion that single issue on the heels of segregation. When
segregation proved to be unpopular with the American population, they
pivoted to abortion to try to get evangelicals to continue
to vote for the Republican Party because they were largely
conservative outside of the espousal of or I guess, the
(48:37):
lack of widespread espousal of segregation. So you end up
with a concerted effort to marry abortion to politics and
get this voter base into your ranks. And now, and
the connection, of course that they made was through religion.
(48:58):
God doesn't want you to kill the baby before you
were made in your womb. I knew you that sort
of stuff, right and again to a person raised in
that that's very compelling. Right now, I happen to know,
and I want to let you lose here, but I
happen to know that you know, the Bible will treat
a miscarriage like a property crime. Right In other words,
(49:21):
if you if you push a man's wife to the
ground and she miscarries. I don't I don't know that
this is exactly the way it is, but I vaguely
familiar with the passage because I have to be. If
she miscarries, then you owe the husband like money. That's
that's how it's treated. But if you harm the wife,
(49:44):
then it's or a child or something, then it's sort
of like a life for a life, eye for an
eye sort of a thing. Right, So children weren't treated
or I guess fetuses weren't treated as life as a lie,
they were treated as property prior to them being born. Okay,
that in mind, you got your work cut out for you,
as you well know. I'm sure, how do you or
(50:06):
how have you because maybe you've already kind of walked
this path before, But how do you out ask for
the sake of our listeners just coming to this conversation,
plan on interacting with people who will bring dogma to
a conversation where you intend to bring science logic, even
(50:28):
their own dogmatic text, how do you plan on navigating
those wafes?
Speaker 2 (50:34):
You know, I'm thinking when you when you're talking about this,
I'm thinking of an absolutely incredible black woman female obviously
woman I just said physician, but she's a faith based
abortion provider and right you go, hmm. And what I
learned from her her book and you know, hearing her speak,
(50:56):
is that again two things can be true at once.
You can have a personal disagreement with abortion, and my
role as your representative will be to protect your right
to do as you see fit with said situation. Helping
people to understand that. You know, I'll often say, are
(51:21):
you open to considering a different perspective, because because when
they do say that they are, I'll say, help me
understand why we will allow a woman to give birth
on the street corner and we don't care about her
or the baby, but if two days prior that woman
(51:44):
were to have an abortion, we would have cared all
about it. It's a truly it's a true double standard,
and it's one that squares directly against I think the
truly conservative underpinning of where that came from.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
And you circumvent the Bible right and the text and
you bring it to the real world. So I like that, Yeah,
well you have some strategy. I love that you have
a lot of strategy. And you know, obviously I can't
cast a vote for you. You know, I can't say
anything but understand what I'm trying to say. What's a
favorite again for all of our listeners around the country.
(52:23):
Leave some more of that connective tissue so people can
tap in with your campaign and learn more about you
and if donate, if that's something that you're open.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
To, absolutely so again, I'm Elizabeth Lee Nurse from Gilbert
Arizona running to flip a Congress seat blue in this
year's midterms. You can find out more about me, my story,
what led me to this point, what I plan to
do for the district at Nurse Lee Lee the number
four AZ dot com. So that's Nurse Lee the number
(52:53):
four AZ dot com. You can find us on socials
at that same handle at Nurse Lee for AZ. And
and absolutely when you think about the number one thing
that will make the difference between us winning and losing,
it is unfortunately true that it is money. And if
every person listening to this show gave us five dollars
(53:14):
a month, I could spend all of my time making
a difference, as opposed to half my time and the
other half calling rich people for money. Like we have
a truly people powered campaign. Over fifteen hundred individuals across
the country have donated to us because they see the
(53:34):
value in bringing leaders to Congress with those values.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I can see why.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
I can see so, Nursely for As that's where you
can find us.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Okay, I think you bring up a great point too,
is that a lot of again, a lot of people
that are running for officer, as I mentioned, bought and
paid for and the donors typically donate and they expect
a politician to deliver something to them. So I've been
(54:05):
long been a fan of people powered campaigns. You know.
The first one I saw was Bernie Sanders and a
recent fantastic example is Zorn Mam Donnie, where you have
you know, people funding your campaign, people donating to your campaign,
and then you're beholden to the people and so it's
less of a a race, I guess, to get the
(54:33):
most dollars, and it's rather a race to get the
most donations. And I think that that is a better
way of getting the people centered in politics. So, you know,
it's not really you know, I'm I'm not mad at
(54:54):
socialist campaigns. I'm not mad at a lot of you know,
social principles. I think that they make a lot of sense,
at least the pursuit the intention behind it, and where
a person might look at capitalism and the benefits of
capitalism and say, you know, capitalism has brought about a
(55:18):
lot of you know, innovation and whatever it is that
people say, you know, and you know, there are some
good things. I guess if you choose to view them
that way. You know, I have a fancy car, I
have a fancy watch, I have a fancy whatever iPhone,
you know, whatever the thing is. You know, capitalism kind
of presses those buttons. But I think socialism not that
(55:41):
that's what's happening here, but I think that socialism is
more of a I guess a the pursuit is making
sure that people are happy, not that people are wealthy necessarily,
because wealth is a necessarily a measure of happiness. Some
(56:03):
people that have more money do end up happier, That's sure.
That's that's for sure. But you know, when you're making
sure that the bottom doesn't fall out for a society,
then I think that that is something that is definitely
worth considering. The reason why I'm saying all this, of course,
is because the campaigns that I mission, that I've mentioning, sorry,
(56:23):
are from you know, democratic socialists, and so when I
hear something about, you know, a people powered campaign or
something like that, immediately I think that's the sort of
thing that a lot of people that have become disillusioned
with the Democratic Party might be able to get behind.
And so I wanted to make sure I took a
(56:43):
moment to accentuate that and make sure that folks kind
of know that at least with what you're doing and
having it being you know, mostly people powered or maybe
completely people powered, that that actually means a lot. Because again,
for the folks that have taken an issue with you know,
(57:04):
the once great heroes of the Democratic Party, the Cory Bookers,
the Hakim Jefferies, those sorts of folks, and you know,
met their breaking point with you know, the bombing and
Gaza or whatever, pick a thing, it doesn't really matter,
you know, Democrats, you know, voting to fund ice or
(57:28):
whatever the case is. Again, you circle that block, you
come back around that corner, and you realize that the
people's voices aren't really being centered in those rooms, The
people's voices aren't being centered in those powerful conversations. The
people's voices are actually being cast aside in favor of
(57:49):
big donors. And so, you know, I've said it before,
I'll say it again. Money and politics really does corrupt
the political arena to a significant degree. And I'm one
grateful that your people power. Thanks for having me absolutely
all right, Well, thank you so much for your time.
Once again. Today's guest has been congressional candidate Elizabeth Lee,
(58:11):
a nationally recognized nurse, Board certified patient advocate and reproductive
healthcare policy expert with over a decade of experience advancing
access to care. Thank you so much, Thank you all right,
and that's going to do it for us here at
Civic Cipher. A big shout out to my man q Ward,
who will be back in the saddle next week. In
the meantime, be sure to follow us on all social
(58:31):
media platforms at civ I c c I, p h
e R Civic Cipher. You can find me on all
platforms at rams's Jock Qward, I am Qward, and you
can hit the website that is Civiccipher dot com. That's
where you can make a donation. Our show is growing
with your donations. Your support goes a long way, and
we appreciate that you can also find us on all platforms.
That support goes a long way as well. If you
(58:53):
got anything else you want us to know, hit us
at Civiccipher dot com And until next week, y'all. Peace,
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