WTF: Women for Tennessee's Future

Memphis friends, please join Future901 on February 10th as they raise money to support progressive candidates!!!

Join us a week from tomorrow, and let's move West Tennessee forward!

Big Announcement! During our our Recent Winter Holiday Party, our board chair Bonnie Dow made the following announcement:

"So excited to see you all here, it feels like it has been forever. We really wanted to have this event here at Mangia Nashville, our longtime holiday location, and I would like to thank Kay West and Nick Pellegrino for making this happen. To Kay, we say thanks for wrangling this event from North Carolina, and Nick, we so appreciate your support for all of these years, not to mention your delicious food and excellent drinks. Some applause for Nick please, who would like you to know that while Mangia is no longer open daily, it IS open for those amazing special Italian feasts it is famous for.

This is a special night for us, because we are going to look both backward and forward. Last month, WTF turned 10. Ten years ago, we filed the paper work to start a political action committee and started raising money to elect women candidates. Lisa Quigley, one of our founders who will speak in a moment, is going to recount that story. She is the one, by the way, who thought of the WTF acronym that people love to love and love to hate. I cannot tell you how many times over the past ten years that someone has said to me, in a really well meaning way “are you sure you want to use that acronym? Do you know what it means?” YES. YES WE DO.

As I said, tonight we look both backward and forward. The WTF board has made the important decision that as of January 1, we go inactive as a state and local PAC in Tennessee while we step back and think about how we can best reinvent ourselves for the future of women and politics in Tennessee. Redistricting has made our mission pretty much impossible—the only way for us to get more Democratic pro-choice women into the Tennessee legislature is to replace the Democratic pro-choice men that have been very supportive of us over the years. Which doesn’t seems like a good idea.

Over the last decade, we have supported legislative candidates across the state. But we have had the most success at the local level. We have helped elect county and city candidates in Hamilton and Knox and Shelby and Davidson county. But also in Maryville, Clarksville, and Tullahoma. And let us not forget 2015, when we helped to elect Megan Barry as Nashville’s first woman mayor as well as several new women council members, one of them the council's first openly gay member, Nancy VanReece. Or 2019, when we endorsed and funded FOURTEEN women who ran for Metro Council in Nashville and ELEVEN of them won. Including the first Muslim council member, Councilwoman Zulfat Suara, and the first Latina councilmember, Councilwoman Sandra Sepulveda District 30. That was the year that the metro council reached gender parity. Also that year, we helped elect Indya Kincannon as Mayor of Knoxville.

Of course, we have had some state level victories, too. We helped Senator Heidi Campbell flip a state senate seat from red to blue for the first time in 15 years. When she did that she took over the last GOP held legislative seat in Davidson County. We supported State Representative Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, through multiple elections, including this year’s when the Republicans redistricted her into a wholly new district that was designed to make her lose and SHE WON ANYWAY.

But after the redistricting this year, everything about statehouse races will be harder. And we’re not sure that fighting the good fight but always losing, because of the way that the districts are drawn, is the best use of our time or your money. And we wanted to explain that to you and not just disappear. Make no mistake, WTF is a success story—we spent ten years making things better for women in politics in Tennessee. But we may need to find another path to keep doing good. And when we figure out what it is, we will let you know. Tonight, we are here to celebrate what we accomplished with your help. That we supported almost a HUNDRED CANDIDATES over 10 years, and spent THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN THOSE RACES. That we helped elect Nashville’s first woman mayor, that we helped create a city council in Nashville that is 50% women and one in Knoxville that is MAJORITY WOMEN. Let’s please raise a glass to all of the women with the courage to run for office over the last ten years and to all of the women who opened their wallets to support them. Because they deserve our thanks.

As WTF: Women for Tennessee's Future steps back, we will be supporting other organizations that support what we support - Democratic women and women's autonomy. We'll be highlighting those organizations in the coming weeks and asking you to help us support them !”

WTF is excited to announce our endorsement of Delishia Porterfield for State Representative in District 52!

Delishia, a mother, educator, licensed minister, and battle-tested legislator, is a lifelong Tennessean, committed to public service. Delishia began her career in public service on March 19, 2019, when she won the Special Election for the Metro Council District 29 election. She currently serves as the Chair of the Minority Caucus and Vice-Chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee. She previously served as the Chair of the Education Committee and Vice-Chair of Budget and Finance and has served on Government Operations, Health, Hospitals and Social Services Committees. As Budget and Finance Co-Chair, she worked to pass Nashville’s most progressive budget, making Nashville teachers the highest paid in the State. She is passionate about racial, social and economic justice and fighting for working families and women’s rights.

Delishia values public school and graduated in the top 5% of her High School class. She went on to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Tennessee State University. She earned her Bachelors of Science degree in 2004 and her Masters of Education in 2010, both from TSU.

Delishia’s path as a professional educator has been driven by her passion for children with disabilities and their families. She began in 2010 at Page Middle School in Williamson County, as a Special Education teacher. Her desire to teach in the Antioch/Southeast Nashville community brought Delishia to teach Special Education students at Antioch and Thurgood Marshall Middle Schools. She also served as a Special Education Department Chair, a Student Council adviser, School Culture and Climate Chair, and a cheer coach.

Before starting her career in public service, Delishia served as a Special Education Coach for over a dozen Metro Nashville public schools, served as the Faculty Advisory Committee Chair for itinerant staff and was a proud, dues paying member of MNEA.

Delishia is the proud mother of a Metro Nashville Public Schools rising 10th grade student. This beautiful and intelligent young lady is her mother’s favorite companion, as they travel, dine out, and generally enjoy their life in Nashville with their rescue fur-babies, Seven and Violet.

A woman whose life is defined by her faith, Delishia was licensed in 2016 as a Minister at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. There, she put her gift for guiding children to good use for 4 years in the Children’s Ministry, as the children’s church teacher at the Antioch location.

Delishia currently sits on the Board for The Destiny Theatre Experience, a Nashville theater company, as well as eMpowerment Inc. and Ignite Her Pursuit, both non-profit organizations that partner with schools in Southeast Nashville.

WTF is proud to support Delishia Porterfield for State House, District 52!

WTF makes a financial investment in every candidate that we endorse. It's the foundation of our mission. But we can't do it alone. Please make a contribution to Delishia's campaign if you can: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/delishia-for-house-1

WTF is excited to announce our endorsement of Charlane Oliver for TN State Senate District 19!

Charlane Oliver made Tennessee her home over 20 years ago when she moved to Nashville to attend Vanderbilt University. There, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Human & Organizational Development. Later, she earned her Master of Public Administration from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She's been blazing her own trail as a servant leader, community organizer, nonprofit founder, and wife and working mother ever since.

Charlane is the co-founder/co-ED of The Equity Alliance, a graduate of Leadership Nashville and Young Leaders Council. She holds current membership with Nashville’s Agenda, Nashville CABLE, NAACP Nashville, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and serves on the boards of Stand Up Nashville and Nurture the Next. Previous board affiliations include Metro Nashville Emergency 911 Communications District Board, YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, and Purpose Preparatory Academy. She is a longtime member of Mount Zion Baptist Church and volunteers for her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop.

Her family's multi-generational lineage of public service spans two centuries. With ancestors who served in the United States Armed Forces during the Civil War, World War II and Vietnam War, she counts civic, governmental, and political advocacy as her divine calling. The daughter of a veteran public school teacher and Air Force military veteran, Charlane grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas reared with her family’s Christian and working class values. Following her parents’ divorce at the age of seven, Charlane was raised by a single mother and had to overcome poverty, battle with depression and survive sexual assault, portions of her background that developed in her a deep passion to advocate for vulnerable communities, especially those overlooked and undervalued.

WTF is proud to support Charlane Oliver for State Senate, District 19!

WTF makes a financial investment in every candidate that we endorse. It's the foundation of our mission. But we can't do it alone. Please make a contribution to Charlane's campaign if you can: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/cowebsite

WTF is excited to announce our endorsement of Courtenay Rogers for Williamson County Commission, District 10!

Courtenay Rogers is a 7th generation Williamson County resident with deep roots in Franklin and a heart for her community. She’s a U.S. Navy veteran, having served as an officer aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Grace Hopper after earning degrees in Naval Science and French from the University of Mississippi. Her leadership and operations experience in the Navy led to her career track in technology, marketing and, ultimately, entrepreneurship.

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Courtenay proudly served as a Surface Warfare Officer during Operation Enduring Freedom. Her ship spent three months in the Persian Gulf and it was the highest honor to serve beside brave women and men willing to risk their lives to protect the United States of America.

Service is clearly important to Courtenay and she’s deeply involved with her community and serves as the Vice-chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party - WCDP. She’s a current a volunteer for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Twende Program, the Williamson Social Justice Alliance, and The Equity Alliance and she is a Founding Member of Unite. Courtenay graduated from Leadership Franklin in 2011 and the Franklin Citizen’s Government Academy in 2019. Prior to launching her own company, she served as the President of the Nashville American Marketing Association after serving as the communications chair and the programming chair for numerous years.

Courtenay has served her country and her community and now she's ready to serve Williamson County.

WTF makes a financial investment in every candidate that we endorse. It's the foundation of our mission. But we can't do it alone. Please make a contribution to Courtenay's campaign if you can: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/electcr

The myth of the middle ground is comforting when you do not want to confront that our legislative majority is consistently spewing hate-fueled positions that should make fair-minded Tennesseans cringe. There just is not a middle ground between "gay and trans citizens deserve no protection from the law" and "gay and trans citizens are, in fact, CITIZENS, and deserve to be treated as such." There is no middle ground between "racism is a fiction and there is no reason to talk about it in our public schools" and "racism is a historical fact, that should be taught like other historical facts." Refusing to take a side on issues such as these is NOT "trying to see both sides." It is cowardice and a refusal to defend the truth. Shame on the Tennessean.

Follow Betsy Phillips here: https://www.nashvillescene.com/users/profile/betsy%20phillips/

No, the Rhetoric Isn't Equally Bad on 'Both Sides' Conservatives are making wild accusations and passing laws that harm marginalized folks

This is a moment to celebrate. The first black woman justice, too long coming, and another step toward gender parity on the highest court in the land. We now have the highest number of women EVER--four--on the Supreme Court. Although still not enough, we live to fight another day. For sure.

Supreme Court Highlights: Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson The 53-47 vote elevated the first Black woman to the pinnacle of the judicial branch as senators erupted in cheers. Three Republicans joined Democrats in supporting President Biden’s nominee.

Madeleine K. Albright paved the way for women, including Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, in the traditionally masculine domain of foreign affairs. She was a smart and thoughtful voice on the world stage, not to mention a sparkling personality. She was one of a kind.

Madeleine Albright, First Woman to Serve as Secretary of State, Dies at 84 She rose to power and fame as a brilliant analyst of world affairs before serving as an aggressive advocate of President Bill Clinton’s policies.

WTF is excited to announce our endorsement for Alderman Rupa Blackwell who is running for re-election in Tullahoma. Alderman Blackwell believes that each of us has a vital role to play in making our community better. Since being elected, she has addressed the needs of her community at every level through both governance and community activism. Rupa championed multiple initiatives focused on socioeconomic equity, relationship violence and economic revitalization, while fulfilling her promises to support investments in infrastructure and economic development.

Please support Rupa's campaign by contributing here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/wtfrupablackwell

WTF is excited to announce our endorsement of Erika Sugarmon for County Commissioner District 12! Erika is a highly qualified educator of 23 years who sees how food, housing, and health care insecurities impact her students and their families. She is running on a platform for safer communities, fully funding the educational system, and fixing the roads and bridges while investing in broadband. Early Voting is April 13 -28 and Election Day is May 3, 2022.

You can support Erika's campaign by contributing here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/wtf-erika-sugarmon

Chinese New Year Celebration at Plaza Mariachi (3955 Nolensville Pike, Nashville). The event is held outdoors. Free event, all are welcome! Sat. 2/12/2022, 3 -5 PM
Chinese New Year Season traditionally last for 15 days. The final days of the celebration will be Chinese Lantern Festival - Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville

Rep. Jim Cooper has been a good friend to WTF. He supported our work in multiple ways for a decade. We thank him for believing in our mission, his service to Tennessee, and his impressive career fighting for the right things. He will be missed.

Thank you for your service, Congressman Jim Cooper | Editorial Rep. Jim Cooper announced his retirement from Congress. He has shown himself to be a model of service and civility. May his successor be the same.