Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  I walked onto the stage and began.

  Today, I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people whose human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today. In many ways, they are an invisible minority. They are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed. Many are treated with contempt and violence by their fellow citizens while authorities empowered to protect them look the other way or, too often, even join in the abuse. They are denied opportunities to work and learn, driven from their homes and countries, and forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm.

  Some in the audience had a curious look on their faces. Where was this going?

  “I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” I continued.

  I was proud to deliver every word of that speech, but a few lines in particular stand out in my memory. Remembering David Kato, I spoke directly to all the other brave LGBT activists fighting uphill battles in lonely, dangerous places worldwide: “You have an ally in the United States of America. And you have millions of friends among the American people.”

  Remembering all the conversations I’d had with foreign leaders who threw up their hands and said, “Our people hate gays, they support these laws, what can we do?,” I spoke directly to those officials: “Leadership, by definition, means being out in front of your people when it is called for. It means standing up for the dignity of all your citizens and persuading your people to do the same.”

  And in an echo of my speech in Beijing and my words at the State Department a year earlier, I said, “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

  I woke up the following morning to my first indication that the speech had broken through: the hairdresser who styled my hair that morning, who was gay, theatrically fell to his knees in gratitude. I laughed and told him to get up, for heaven’s sake. My hair, as usual, couldn’t wait.

  The ripples created by the speech were bouncing around the globe and back, and my phone was soon crowded with messages. A huge number of people had watched the speech online. I was gratified, for many reasons. Though I had expected a few of the African delegates in the audience that day to walk out, they did not. And as I’ve seen from the many pictures and videos people have sent me from Pride events around the world, the words “gay rights are human rights” have been blazoned on countless posters, banners, and T-shirts. I was proud that America had once again stood up for human rights, just as we had on so many previous occasions.

  Late in my term, I received a letter from a Foreign Service officer stationed in Latin America that has become a treasured possession: “I write you not as an employee of the Department of State writing to the Secretary, but as a husband and as a father writing to thank you, as an individual, for all you have done for our family over the past four years. I had long dreamt of being a Foreign Service Officer, but had never seriously considered it until you became our Secretary of State. The moment that you directed the Department to recognize same-sex spouses as family members, the one thing that had been holding me back was suddenly no longer standing in the way.” He went on to describe the joy of having his husband of seven years be able to join him at his foreign post and that, as a result, they were able to welcome twins into the world as well. He even enclosed a photo of their happy family. “What was hardly imaginable three years ago . . . that we’d be diplomats for our country, that our relationship would be recognized by the government, that we’d be able to be fathers, has all come true.”

  * * *

  * * *

  When I left the State Department in 2013 and began working at the Clinton Foundation in New York, I knew that I wanted to continue working on “the great unfinished business of the 21st century.” The fast-approaching twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing helped focus my thinking. I was proud of how much had been accomplished in that time. Yet there was no doubt that we were still a long way from the goal of “full and equal participation.”

  Melanne had started an academic center on women, peace, and security at Georgetown University, for which I agreed to serve as honorary founding chair. Now that we weren’t flying around the globe every other day, we found ourselves talking and thinking more about the sweep of history and the future of the movement to which we had devoted so many years. I called Maggie Williams and asked her to come strategize with us. Along with Chelsea and our great team at the Clinton Foundation, including Jen Klein and Rachel Vogelstein, who both had played key roles at the State Department, we came up with a new plan.

  At the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in September 2013, I announced that the Clinton Foundation would mobilize a broad effort to evaluate the progress women and girls had made since Beijing and to chart the path forward to achieve full and equal participation for women and girls. I said it was time for a clear-eyed look at how far we’d come, how far we still had to go, and what we planned to do about this unfinished business.

  With partners like the Gates Foundation, we began work on a digital “global review” of the status of women and girls in time for the twentieth anniversary of Beijing in September 2015. I wanted everyone to be able to see the gains we’d made, as well as the gaps that remained. We’d present easily accessible information that could be shared and put to use by advocates, academics, and political leaders to design reforms and drive real change.

  I also wanted to build on the Platform for Action the world endorsed in Beijing and lay out a 21st-century agenda to accelerate full participation for women and girls around the world, including in areas that were still over the horizon in 1995. For example, none of us in Beijing could have imagined the ways in which the internet and mobile technology would transform our world or comprehended what it would mean to have 200 million fewer women than men online in the developing world. Closing that “digital divide” would open up vast new opportunities for economic and political participation.

  Eventually we started calling our new initiative No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project. The name was a playful echo of the “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” that became famous at the end of my Presidential campaign, but it meant much more than that. You didn’t have to be at the highest levels of politics or business; women and girls everywhere still faced all sorts of ceilings that held back their ambitions and aspirations and made it harder, if not impossible, for them to pursue their dreams.

  Not long after I announced No Ceilings, I heard a surprising story. Stephen Massey, a colleague from the Clinton White House, happened to be in Beijing and wandered into a bookstore. It was a large and modern shop, but quiet and nearly empty. Then Stephen could hardly believe his ears. Over the store’s loudspeakers he heard a familiar phrase: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” It was my voice. They were playing a recording of the speech throughout the store. What a difference twenty years makes! In 1995, the Chinese government had shut down the closed-circuit television feed carrying my remarks. Now those controversial words had become “background music” for shoppers, part of the fabric of everyday life. Stephen whipped out his smartphone, recorded a video, and emailed it home. When I saw it, I had to laugh. Was that really a good way to sell books? In China?

  The message of Beijing and the lifetime of work it represented had become so much a part of my identity it was practically written into my DNA. I was glad that it had permeated into the culture, in places that had once been hostile. The cause of protecting and expanding human rights is as urgent and compelling as ever, and further progress is unlikely without continued American leadership.

  * * *

  * * *

  In February 2014, the Human Rights Campaign (the other HRC!) invited my daughter, Chelsea, to speak at a conference on gay rights. In her remarks she o
ffered a new twist on a familiar phrase. “My mother has often said that the issue of women is the unfinished business of the 21st century,” she said. “That is certainly true. But so too are the issues of LGBTQ rights the unfinished business of the 21st century.” Of course she’s right, and I could not be more proud of her strong stand on behalf of equality and opportunity for all people.

  Earlier I described the work of American foreign policy as a relay race. Leaders are handed the baton and asked to run our leg as ably as we can and put the next runner in the best possible position to succeed. Well, families are like that too. From the moment I first held Chelsea in my arms in the hospital in Little Rock, I knew my mission in life was to give her every opportunity to thrive. As she’s grown up and stepped out into the world in her own right, my responsibilities have changed. And now that she’s expecting a child of her own, I’m preparing for a new role that I’ve looked forward to for years: grandmother. And I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my relationship with my own mom, as an adult as well as in childhood, and what lessons I learned from her.

  When I became Secretary of State, Mom was just about to turn ninety. She had been living with us in Washington for the past few years, ever since being alone in her apartment overlooking the zoo on Connecticut Avenue became too much. Like so many Americans of my generation, I felt both blessed to have these extra years with an aging parent and very responsible for making sure she was comfortable and well-cared for. Mom gave me so much unconditional love and support when I was growing up in Park Ridge; now it was my turn to support her. Of course I never would have let her hear me describe it that way. Dorothy Howell Rodham was a fiercely independent woman. She couldn’t bear the thought of being a burden to anyone.

  Having her so close became a source of great comfort to me, especially in the difficult period after the end of the 2008 campaign. I’d come home from a long day at the Senate or the State Department, slide in next to her at the small table in our breakfast nook, and let everything just pour out.

  Mom loved mystery novels, Mexican food, Dancing with the Stars (we actually managed to get her to a taping of the show once), and most of all her grandchildren. My nephew Zach Rodham’s school was just five minutes away, and he came over many afternoons to visit her. Spending time with Fiona and Simon Rodham, her youngest grandchildren, was a precious delight for her. For Chelsea, her grandmother was one of the most important figures in her life. Mom helped Chelsea navigate the unique challenges of growing up in the public eye and, when she was ready, encouraged her to pursue her passion for service and philanthropy. Even in her nineties, Mom never lost her commitment to social justice, which did so much to mold and inspire me when I was growing up. I loved that she was able to do the same for Chelsea. And I’m not sure if I ever saw Mom happier than at Chelsea’s wedding. She proudly walked down the aisle on Zach’s arm and exulted over her joyful, radiant granddaughter.

  Mom’s own childhood was marked by trauma and abandonment. In Chicago her parents fought frequently and divorced when she and her sister were young. Neither parent was willing to care for the kids, so they were put on a train to California to live with their paternal grandparents in Alhambra, a town near the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. The elderly couple was severe and unloving. One Halloween, after Mom was caught trick-or-treating with school friends, a forbidden activity, she was confined to her room for an entire year, except for the hours she was in school. She wasn’t allowed to eat at the kitchen table or play in the yard. By the time Mom turned fourteen, she could no longer bear life in her grandmother’s house. She moved out and found work as a housekeeper and nanny for a kind-hearted woman in San Gabriel who offered room and board plus $3 a week and urged her to attend high school. For the first time she saw how loving parents care for their children—it was a revelation.

  After graduating high school, Mom moved back to Chicago in the hopes of reconnecting with her own mother. Sadly she was spurned yet again. Heartbroken, she spent the next five years working as a secretary before she met and married my father, Hugh Rodham. She built a new life as a homemaker, spending her days lavishing love on me and my two younger brothers.

  When I got old enough to understand all this, I asked my mother how she survived abuse and abandonment without becoming embittered and emotionally stunted. How did she emerge from this lonely early life as such a loving and levelheaded woman? I’ll never forget how she replied. “At critical points in my life somebody showed me kindness,” she said. Sometimes it would seem so small, but it would mean so much—the teacher in elementary school who noticed that she never had money to buy milk, so every day would buy two cartons of milk and then say, “Dorothy, I can’t drink this other carton of milk. Would you like it?” Or the woman who hired her as a nanny and insisted that she go to high school. One day she noticed that Mom had only one blouse that she washed every day. “Dorothy, I can’t fit into this blouse anymore and I’d hate to throw it away. Would you like it?” she said.

  Mom was amazingly energetic and positive even into her nineties. But her health started to fail her; she had trouble with her heart. By the fall of 2011, I was growing worried about leaving her alone. On the evening of October 31, another Halloween, I was preparing to leave for London and Turkey. My team was already on board the airplane at Andrews waiting for me to arrive so we could take off. That’s when I got the call that Mom had been rushed to George Washington University Hospital. I quickly canceled the trip and sped there. Bill, Chelsea, and Marc rushed down from New York, and my brothers and their wives, Hugh and Maria and Tony and Megan, arrived as quickly as they could. Mom was a fighter her entire life, but it was finally time to let go. I sat by her bedside and held her hand one last time. No one had a bigger influence on my life or did more to shape the person I became.

  When I lost my father in 1993, it felt too soon, and I was consumed with sadness for all the things he would not live to see and do. This was different. Mom lived a long and full life. This time I wept not for what she would miss but for how much I would miss her.

  I spent the next few days going through her things at home, paging through a book, staring at an old photograph, caressing a piece of beloved jewelry. I found myself sitting next to her empty chair in the breakfast nook and wishing more than anything that I could have one more conversation, one more hug.

  We held a small memorial service at the house with close family and friends. We asked Reverend Bill Shillady, who married Chelsea and Marc, to officiate. Chelsea spoke movingly, as did many of Mom’s friends and our family. I read a few lines from the poet Mary Oliver, whose work Mom and I both adored.

  Standing there with Bill and Chelsea by my side, I tried to say a final good-bye. I remembered a piece of wisdom that an older friend of mine shared in her later years that perfectly captured how my mother lived her life and how I hoped to live mine: “I have loved and been loved; all the rest is background music.”

  I looked at Chelsea and thought about how proud Mom was of her. Mom measured her own life by how much she was able to help us and serve others. I knew if she was still with us, she would be urging us to do the same. Never rest on your laurels. Never quit. Never stop working to make the world a better place. That’s our unfinished business.

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  * * *

  Where did Hillary go?” the President asked, looking around. He was in the middle of a short speech about democracy in Burma, standing on the porch of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house in Rangoon. “Where is she?”

  It was November 2012, and we were on our final trip together as President and Secretary of State. I waved from off to the side and caught his eye. “There she is,” he said. As he thanked me, I thought about how far we had come from that day more than four years earlier in Dianne Feinstein’s living room. Like our entire last trip together, it was a moment of bittersweet nostalgia, of satisfaction in what we had accomplished, delight in the partners we had become, and sadness that it would soon be
over.

  Just two weeks earlier the President had won reelection. Unlike in 2008, this time I hadn’t been able to campaign for him. By law and tradition, Secretaries of State stay out of domestic politics. The Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the first I had missed since 1976. In 2008, the convention in Denver had offered me a chance to endorse President Obama and help unify Democrats after the long primary campaign. But during the 2012 convention I was half a world away, representing our country on a diplomatic mission to Asia.

  On the night my husband addressed the convention and formally nominated the President, I was in Timor-Leste, Asia’s newest country, which had won its long struggle for independence from Indonesia in 2002. After a day of diplomacy in the capital of Dili, just before flying to Brunei for a meeting and dinner with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, I stole away for a few private moments in the residence of our Ambassador. There was no CNN and only limited internet bandwidth, but Philippe Reines had managed to connect to his TiVo back in Washington, so we could watch a delayed recording of Bill’s just-completed speech on the Ambassador’s home computer. I sat down to watch while the rest of my team crowded behind me.

  I had to smile when I saw him take the stage in front of the enthusiastic crowd. It had been sixteen years since Bill’s last campaign, but he still loved the excitement of a great political moment. Like a country lawyer laying out the facts for a jury, he explained how deeply damaged our economy and global standing had been in 2009 and how the Obama Administration had begun turning things around. At the end of his speech he addressed the question of American decline and renewal. “For more than two hundred years, through every crisis, we’ve always come back,” he said. “People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false teeth. And so far, every single person that’s bet against America has lost money because we always come back. We come through every fire a little stronger and a little better.” After Bill finished, President Obama unexpectedly appeared onstage to thank him. As the two Presidents embraced, the crowd went wild. Watching from some ten thousand miles away, I was full of pride for the former President I married, the current President I served, and the country we all loved.