by Wendy Davis
At about fifteen minutes before midnight, in the midst of this chaos, the presiding officer finally ruled that the third point of order had been appropriately sustained—a debate over parliamentary inquiry that had started at 10:06 p.m. The third strike had been ruled successful. My filibuster had, with certainty, finally come to an end. But the “people’s filibuster” had just begun. As Senator Duncan shouted to the secretary of the senate to begin taking the roll-call vote, the roar of the crowd in the gallery rose even more. And they were joined by the chorus of thousands of voices in the building, outside the chamber. I could feel the floor shaking under my feet with the thunderous noise they were making. And beautifully—poetically, almost—something truly democratic occurred. People, thousands of people, were demanding that their voices be heard. And heard they were. As Patsy Spaw, the secretary of the senate, began taking the roll-call vote, Republican senators were screaming to be heard, running up to her at the dais to register their “yes” votes in favor of the bill. Needless to say, the Democratic senators were not doing the same. Amid the confusion, the presiding officer gaveled and said, “SB 5 has now passed,” and tried to adjourn the body, but my Democratic colleagues and I, especially Senator West, who was consulting his own cell phone, which read the time as 12:00, and balking at the obvious discrepancy between it and the clock on the senate wall, refused to go quietly.
“Mr. President! What time is it? What’s the time? We can’t take a vote after midnight! Constitutional point of order!” And a whole debate ensued over which clock was actually correct.
Typically, when a vote is taken and recorded, the secretary of the senate enters it into the computer and it is time-stamped. The original time stamp on the recorded vote matched reality. It was 12:03 a.m. SB 5 was dead. But within just a few minutes—and it is still unknown how or why—a new time stamp was entered. This one showed that the vote had been taken at 11:59 p.m. Our night was therefore far from over. And a debate raged on, with Senator West taking the lead on the floor, each of the senators huddled around him as they argued back and forth with the presiding officer about whether the bill had actually passed before the midnight deadline. At some point, while that went on, I left the floor, sat down for the first time all day, and ate a bite and drank some water, both offered by my kind and nurturing colleague Senator Zaffirini.
Ultimately, the senate, as a “caucus of the whole,” reconvened in the Betty King Room just behind the senate chamber, and argued our positions. Fairly quickly, after a comparison of the original time stamp (thanks to someone on social media who had captured the proof of that original stamp) and the second time stamp, the lieutenant governor and my Republican colleagues conceded that the bill had not passed by the deadline and that there was no way they could reasonably defend an interpretation otherwise. But then a great debate ensued about what the lieutenant governor would say about why he was changing his ruling in order to save face. It was ludicrous. The words the lieutenant governor agreed upon, after a tremendous amount of back-and-forth and a great deal of wordsmithing, were delivered by him as he retook the dais at sometime past 3:00 a.m.
Shortly before he did, and before we all gathered on the floor to hear him officially declare the bill dead, I had texted Cecile Richards, the executive director of Planned Parenthood and the daughter of our now-deceased but much-beloved governor, Ann Richards. Cecile was in the rotunda, surrounded by the crowd still gathered there awaiting word. My text read as follows:
“The Lieutenant Governor has agreed that SB 5 is dead.”
Cecile quieted the crowd and read it aloud to them. And they erupted with tears and laughter and excitement.
Very quickly after receiving the official ruling from the lieutenant governor on the floor, my Democratic colleagues and I exited the senate chamber, where we were met by hundreds and hundreds of people, joyously shouting. We were embraced by them and cheered by them as we spoke and thanked them. There was so much emotion that it’s hard to even describe what that moment felt like. It was surreal. Who among us could have possibly predicted the events of the day? We were awed by it all—by the outcome, yes, but more by the fact that each of us had played an important role in protecting the health of Texas women. I was grabbed and hugged and wept on by people, once strangers, who were now allies in combat. And we had won. Later we all gathered on the southern steps of the capitol to speak to the press. We were surrounded by so many people from the media that we couldn’t see over them through the night’s pitch-black sky to the throngs of people who were there, cheering, crying, applauding. So we borrowed the bullhorn that Cecile had been using to communicate to the crowd in the rotunda and took turns, aiming it high in the air so our voices would be carried, giving our brief thanks for the support and the work of all who had participated in the journey of that day and the weeks that had led up to that day. Speaking to the crowd is a moment I will never forget:
Today was democracy in action . . . Today was an example of government for the people, by the people, and of the people. And you all are the reason that happened. You were the voices we were speaking for today from the floor, and we are so proud as a group of Democrat senators to have represented your interests on this issue today.
—
We Texans have lived under a couple of decades of steamroller-type leadership, where the interests of a special few insiders tend to supersede those of millions of Texans and their families. It’s gone on so long that, quite honestly, sometimes fighting the battles to push back against that tide has felt futile. Many people around the state have become accustomed to governing being done without their input or influence and they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that that’s just the way things are. Even for myself and my senate Democratic colleagues—there have been days we’ve gotten up and fought for things that we knew in our hearts were a losing battle, finding it hard to muster a high level of enthusiasm for what we know will be a fight that leads to a foregone conclusion.
But the events of that day of June 25, 2013, led to an awakening.
And it was the awakening of an energy that can’t be immediately tamped down. It wasn’t just about reproductive rights. It was about a group of citizens, all over the state of Texas, who were fed up with those folks on the inside who aren’t listening to them. June 25 was different. People across this state were inspired to believe that when they do stand up and when they do cry out, they can be heard and they can make a difference.
A beautiful blog post written by Rachel Farris, an Austin resident, powerfully described her feelings about the moment that the people in the gallery rose to their feet that day:
I have been asked if it was planned. If we were encouraged by someone. If we knew it was coming. The truth is this: when you have no words left, when every word spoken has fallen on deaf ears, when the representative you have chosen to speak is no longer allowed to do so, sometimes all there is left to do is scream. The final twenty minutes of the people’s filibuster was a manifestation of the impact of every word that had been said but not truly heard in the Senate that day. Because while the Republicans in power chose not to listen, we had been listening. We had been sitting. We had been waiting. We had no words, but we stood and we had a voice.
And even though that awful bill restricting women’s reproductive rights passed just a few days later when a second special session was called, people were empowered by what they’d been able to accomplish that day—not what I accomplished but what they accomplished. And I see that now everywhere I go in Texas—an awakening to what it means to participate and how empowering that can be, and a new understanding and acceptance of the fact that we cannot cede our values simply because we may not win every time we speak out. And an understanding that there’s a much larger collection of those values out there than maybe we’ve known. Because when you’re sitting quietly reading the newspaper, thinking, “There they go again!” you don’t know that there are hundreds of thousands of people across
the state feeling the same disappointment and disgust in their leadership. But last June these people found one another, and this is what they said:
Look at all of us! Look at what we can do.
—
The Monday following the filibuster, we were called back to a second special session. A rally convened on the capitol lawn, with people raising cleverly worded handmade signs above a sea of orange T-shirts. I spoke, some of my colleagues spoke, and we were joined by our fellow Texan and outspoken advocate for women’s issues Stephanie March (best known for her role on Law & Order: SVU), who also spoke. There were six or seven thousand people on the capitol lawn that day, and longtime Department of Public Safety officers said they hadn’t seen a turnout of the public like that since the LBJ era, when he would speak at civil rights demonstrations. It was just amazing. And so powerful. And the most overwhelming part of it for me, then and now, isn’t the media frenzy or all the Twitter memes and the videos and the songs. It’s what I still witness almost every single day as I travel around my much-loved state.
A young woman—and it’s almost always a young woman—will come up to me, trembling, and look me in the eyes and start crying. As Rachel Farris so beautifully described it, they have “no words” to put to what that moment meant to them, what finding their voice means to them, what having someone who’s speaking for them means to them. It’s so humbling and so inspiring to know that as lonely as these battles have sometimes felt over the years in the Texas senate, they’re not really lonely battles at all.
TWENTY
“Oh, Pooh. If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there’s something you must remember.”
“And what might that be, Christopher Robin?”
“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is: even if we’re ever apart, I’ll always be with you. I’ll always be with you. Always be with you . . .”
—A. A. MILNE
ON AUGUST 5 OF 2013, I gave a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Afterward, I received a text from my dad, who had watched it online, that read: “Simply amazing at the NPC! So in awe of you and so proud, I wept!” Exactly one month later, in the early-morning hours of September 5, I said my final good-byes to him as I watched him take his last breath. And I wept. And wept and wept.
Not even two weeks after he sent me that text, my dad was taken by ambulance to a local hospital in Fort Worth. Suffering from acute abdominal pain, he had driven himself to one of those twenty-four-hour doc-in-the-box places, and was quickly transported to the hospital. He had a severe bowel obstruction that had caused a part of his colon to twist around on itself and die. Emergency surgery went well and we were told he’d be going home in just four or five days.
I was traveling as part of exploring whether a run for governor would make sense. “I’ll be fine,” he’d said to me. He wanted to know the details of where I’d been, how it had been going. He was excited for me. And he was anxious to know what I would decide. As I checked in on him from the road, everything seemed to be going well. But on day five, things started looking a little worrisome. A lifelong smoker, he was having difficulty breathing—his lungs were suffering post-surgical effects. My stepmother, Suzi, was reassuring when we spoke, but by the time I landed in Fort Worth the following day, I discovered that things were much more serious than she’d understood. At almost the exact time the wheels of my plane hit the tarmac, my dad was being intubated and put on a respirator, beginning a downward spiral from which he would never recover.
In the days that followed, I was with him every moment that I could physically manage, as were my siblings, Chris, Joey, and Jennifer. As was my half sister, Kathy, my dad’s firstborn, who had flown in from Rhode Island to be with us. As were many of his grandchildren. As was my stepmother. As was my mother. We kept vigil, each of us taking turns in his room, watching his labored breaths. We slept in the hospital and took turns going home to shower and catch a few hours of solid sleep in a real bed. Meanwhile, my dad fought a valiant fight to stay with us. There were only a couple of days during those two weeks that I got to see his warm brown eyes. His doctors had tried him off the respirator, bringing him out of the sleep state that they’d kept him in. And though I could see his beautiful eyes, and though he spoke to me, he was off in another place still, fighting the demons who were trying to take him away. They were getting the better of him, leaving him reintubated with a machine taking over the fight on his behalf.
Miraculously, it seemed, my family and I watched my father defy all the odds. At one point, his entire body had started shutting down. He had emergency surgery on his heart, which the doctor predicted he would have little chance of surviving. He pulled through nonetheless. A separate doctor was assigned to every possible part of his system—his kidneys, his blood, his heart, his lungs . . . his brain. We thought our prayers had been answered when, one by one, each started to improve. We became experts in reading the outputs of the machines that were monitoring him, understanding what the numbers meant and seeing for ourselves that he was turning around. We took turns talking to him, whispering in his ear as he slept. We watched as the nurses turned and bathed him with such loving care. We kissed his face and his hands. We ran our fingers through his thick wavy hair. We rubbed his feet. We moved his arms and legs, trying to prepare him for the physical challenges we knew he would face when he awakened. We played CDs for him, favorites of his that Joey and I had retrieved from his collection. We sang to him, along with his favorite performers.
And we spent more time together as a family than we had since our parents had separated and divorced. We reminisced. And we laughed. And cried. My mother and Suzi, who had long since become friends, supported each other in the most beautiful way. We kids said to my mom, “Tell us about the time when . . .” and she would tell us, either leaving us all laughing hysterically at some funny tale or crying at a sentimental one. Joey and I worked the crossword together like old times.
Our moods lightened each day as the doctors would come to us, shaking their heads in disbelief at my dad’s recovery. Every organ was improving. Finally, a decision was made to remove the respirator for the second time. Now we would only need to wait for the drugs that had kept him in his deep slumber to wear off. And so, we waited. And we waited. The doctors were reassuring: “He’s been on a great deal of medication. It will take time.” But after a couple of days with no sign that he was awakening, an MRI was ordered.
And then, just when we all thought we’d be preparing for the long-term care and rehabilitation that we thought he would need, we found ourselves instead preparing to say good-bye to this giant of a man we all loved so much. Tragically, during my dad’s silent sleep-filled battle, he had suffered a series of strokes. As the neurologist showed us images of the damage to his brain, we held on to one another and wept. Though he’d managed a miraculous recovery in all other respects, his brain had suffered irreversible damage. He was gone. Our father would never be our father again. Over the next day, the neurologist patiently waited for us to absorb and process the information she had shared. He was gone. And we knew what we had to do. Because we all knew our father. We knew what he would want.
Nonetheless, Jennifer and I went to our father’s home. He and Suzi, though still married and still very close, had been living apart for several years. We wanted to see if he had written a living will, and we looked through the entire house, every drawer and closet, without success. What we found was a simple two-page Last Will and Testament that he had typed up himself on his computer, describing how he wanted his modest belongings divided. That he wanted to be cremated. That he wanted his ashes to be joined with those of his most cherished dog, Ziggy, who had died before him, and spread over the Grand Canyon by his family.
Back at the hospital, we gratefully received prayers from the hospital’s clergy. And we prepared to have my dad moved to palli
ative care. And then, miraculously, as we watched the nurses carefully move him into a transport bed, my dad gave us a parting gift. With all his might, he had fought to climb out of the deep, dark place where he’d been and he looked at us all with those deep brown eyes of his one last time. We were standing outside the room, watching the nurses do their work, when I saw his eyes flutter open. And in an instant, we were all beside him—my siblings, my mom, and Suzi. Each of us cried out to him, sobbing, telling him how much we loved him, desperate to fill these precious moments with nothing but our intense love for him. He stayed with us for as long as he could manage—a few minutes at most. But it was enough. He had shown us, one final time, how much he loved us all.
Later, the doctors would tell us that they had seen it before, the miracle of what happened with my dad. They could not explain it. But we didn’t need an explanation. We were not surprised that my dad had managed it. He was magic, remember?
In the palliative care unit, as we prepared to say our final good-byes, the doctors told us he might hold on for a few hours, maybe a day. But true to the fighter that he had always been, my dad hung on for almost three days. We each, my siblings and I, took turns swabbing his mouth with a small sponge dipped in water. We watched as Amber massaged his hands and feet with lotion. And, as he began to slip away from us, we took turns privately whispering to him, kissing him as tears fell from our faces to his.
When it was my turn, I found myself contemplating the symbolism of his “bread and butter” superstition. And, knowing what we were facing—that soon we would come to confront a physical separation unlike one we had ever known—those were some of the final words that I whispered into his ear.