Our very own Carla Wallace accepted a Torch award from the Louisville Democratic Party at this year's Women Deliver Democracy event. Here are her remarks:

​ I appreciate being here with sister honorees and ALL of you. Women leading Resistance. YES! Thank you for having me. Big Shout out to my LSURJ crew in the room. I see you.

All of us here already know how serious this moment is. Authoritarianism is stalking the land. This is NOT a pendulum swing. And it is not just Trump. Authoritarian forces have deep roots in a system that puts profits before people, and uses racism (and fashions it to include misogyny and transphobia) to divide those of us who have a SHARED interest, in a society where ALL of us don't just survive, but flourish.
  
Everything we care about is on the line.

And here is the hard part. The heartbreaking part. The Democratic Party, in the hands of the centrists, helped grease the rails that got us here. 

YES. By supporting neo liberalism—turning so much over to the unfettered cruelty of corporate greed–the Democratic Party has helped shred the safety net, undermine unions and wages, let our earth be plundered, fund genocide and war. Millions of people have been devastated by so-called welfare reform, tax cuts for the rich, bail outs for the banks. The 1994 Crime Bill (yep, Clinton) has driven mass incarceration. We lock up more of our people–overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately Black…than any other country in the world. KY alone incarcerates people at a higher rate than ALL but one other country in the world.  

All of this has led to the biggest gap EVER between those at the top and everyone else. And it's left too many white voters hurting and looking for someone to blame. Immigrants, Black people, Trans People, Women. The forces in charge rode ALL that, ALL the way to the White House.

EVERY TIME we tack to the right, the so-called WINNING strategy -  and support candidates who stand for nothing but more of the same - we collude in our own downfall.

I know that there are those of you in this room working to shift all this. I appreciate you. I encourage you. It's not easy.

Speaking of which….Should we have to beg this Party’s mayoral candidate to stop giving breaks to industries in Southwest Louisville making our people sick, and die? Should 35-year-old Tyrah Adams have died in an alley where cleaning it mattered more than her life? A mayor who allows someone with a tail-light out to be ripped from their family, turned over to ICE and possibly die in a detention center? 

We should not have to convince certain Democratic Metro Council people that we do not need to put half a billion or more into a new jail. Let’s invest in what keeps people out of jail–housing, youth programs, non-carceral mental and substance use treatment. And please, call BS (or call me) when they try to tell you we should do both. It is just a cover for funneling those millions to corporate cronies. 

Short story about what is possible when we actually talk with and listen to the voters. In 2023, SURJ threw down in the governor’s race. Over 600 SURJ members on the ground in Kentucky and across the country reached just shy of half a million voters, had over 71,000 conversations, and secured over 10,000 commitments to vote. We talked to voters in majority-white, working class counties, most of them rural, who were either unlikely to vote or unlikely to vote for a Democrat. Everywhere we worked, we won. In 2019, Beshear lost Letcher County. But in 2023, in large part due to our efforts, he won there by 5 points. 

Some of you might be grumbling about DSA or about the Working Families Party. I am a democrat and also a proud member of both. Instead of fighting candidates who understand that a system that puts profits over people is inherently incompatible with democracy, let’s embrace that energy and cheer them on. 

At this moment, we need a broad united front against fascism that includes ALL of us.

None of us get the luxury of sitting this out. That means we have to vote for those democrats who might not (yet) be the peoples’ champions we know they should be. But in this unity, must also be the seeds of reckoning.

Kentucky was BLUE once you all. Unless there are some serious shifts in this party, it never will be again. I think it is possible. I believe in you. Let’s grow an agenda that shows up with the people again, not with the developers, the prison builders, the polluters—but with the people—ALL the people.

Together, there is so much that is possible for Kentucky and beyond.