US Senator Tammy Duckworth is our October HerStory recipient. She is a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, and was the first disabled woman to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives, elected in 2012. She moved from the House to the Senate in 2016, and has spent her time in Congress fighting for both Veteran’s rights and Family Leave. When she had her second child in 2018, she became the first person to give birth while serving in Congress. She then proceeded to load her 10-day old baby up and bring her to the floor of Congress to cast an important vote on a presidential appointment that she opposed.  

Duckworth wanted more than anything to be a helicopter pilot, and even after being shot down and losing both legs and the full use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack, her recovery was focused on once again getting into the cockpit. A friendship with a sitting US Senator changed all of that. This senator encouraged her to run for office, and once it became clear that her injuries were going to preclude her from flying, she threw her hat in the ring on a congressional seat, which she lost. Undeterred, Tammy Duckworth took that loss as an opportunity, and her new life trajectory was begun. Shortly after, she was appointed as Director of Veterans Affairs in Illinois, and in 2012, she ran for a House seat, won that, and has been in politics ever since. Two causes she has consistently supported are family leave rights and veteran’s issues. 

Like many of our HerStory recipients, Senator Duckworth was the first of many things: the first first female double amputee from the Iraq war; the first Thai American woman elected to Congress; the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress; the first woman with a disability elected to Congress; the first female double amputee in the Senate; and the first senator to give birth while in office. Her strength and commitment are an inspiration to us all, and our Veteran Affairs colorway, dyed to look like the camouflaged uniform she wore while in the service, pays homage to the armed forces, for which she continues to fight. Because she was the first in all of these ways, the path is clearer for others to make their own way.

Sonia Sotomayor, or Sonia from the Block, as our colorway that honors her is called, is the third woman, the first (and currently only) woman of color, and the first Latina to serve on the United States Supreme Court, having been nominated by Barack Obama in 2009. She grew up in the Bronx, in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and self-identifies as Nuyorican (a portmanteau of New York and Puerto Rican, referring to members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City). After initially dreaming of becoming a detective like her hero Nancy Drew, at 10 years old, Sotomayor changed gears and zeroed in on a future in law, inspired by Perry Mason.

Sotomayor received a full scholarship to Princeton, and her acceptance into the Ivy League school was assisted by affirmative action, in which she believes deeply. She has spoken up about the inherent biases in many standardized tests that make it harder for people from disadvantaged communities to thrive; affirmative action levels the playing field and gives opportunities to those with fewer advantages. During her time at Princeton, she advocated for the University to engage in more fair and inclusive hiring practices, and her work resulted in the first Latinx faculty members being hired, and more voice given to organizations centered around people of color, in particular Latinx folks. She became interested and invested in Critical Race Theory, which, unlike the culture war now raging would have you believe, is a body of legal scholarship that examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States. She closed out her college career by winning a top prize for undergraduates that honored both her work at school and her advocacy and volunteerism.

After law school, Sotomayor worked for a spell in the prosecutor’s office in NYC, and vigorously prosecuted violent crime. She deepened her commitment to community involvement as well, fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in her post-prosecutorial career first as a lawyer and then as a judge. As she rose through the judicial ranks, she became known as a strict but fair jurist. She’s also the judge who saved baseball in the mid-1990s (her injunction against the MLB effectively restarted the stalled season). Her first case as a Supreme Court justice was Citizen’s United, and she argued against the rights of corporations in matters of campaign finance.

Time and again, Sonia from the Block has argued in favor of equity and fairness, handing down rulings with a strong but balanced hand, and advancing the causes of justice and equity. She’s a role model for all young women, in particular young women of color, as they navigate a world in which they might just need to advocate for the changes that will allow them to thrive. As we all navigate this very difficult world, may we all remember that fighting for what is right is never wrong, and may we all look to Justice Sotomayor for inspiration and guidance. Our Sonia from the Block colorway was inspired by the Puerto Rican street art in Sotomayor’s beloved Bronx, the colors and visual textures that reflect and inform the culture of the Nuyoricans that live there.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (she shares how to pronounce her name here) rose to prominence in Canada when she made an impassioned speech in the House of Commons on International Women’s Day in 2017. She was a part of a group called Daughters of the Vote, which empowers young women to speak up about what they want their votes to accomplish, and what their visions are for the future of their communities, both small (town) and large (country). Qaqqaq, an Inuit, spoke about suicide rates in Indigenous people, and her vision for a Canada in which Indigenous issues are front and center. She was approached by the New Democratic Party to run in her home territory of Nunavut (a largely Indigenous territory, and the newest, largest, and northernmost territory in Canada). She won her seat in Canadian’s Parliament by running on a platform that centered the basic human rights of Inuit people, including suicide prevention measures, securing more food security, insuring access to safe water, and increased access to safe housing. 

Throughout her tenure in Parliament, Quaqqaq worked hard on Indigenous issues and rights, but felt her momentum stymied at every turn. Earlier this year, she announced that she isn’t going to seek reelection. The racism she endured, both on a personal scale (she admitted to never feeling completely safe at work in a stirring speech on the floor, discussing how Parliamentary security would often question her rights to be there), and on a systemic scale (the futility she felt at trying to make change in the face of a bureaucracy that is steeped in historical white supremacy and systemic racism) was inescapable, and she came to the realization that she could do more good outside of the political structure. With the time she has left in her term, she has been advocating for stronger climate change policies, and, most recently, a reckoning for the harm perpetrated by the residential schools throughout Canada, pushing the Canadian government to formally investigate the crimes against humanity that we are learning more and more about. 

Our Aurora Borealis colorway in an homage to the otherworldly-seeming light displays that can be enjoyed in Mumilaaq Qaqqaq’s beloved Nunavut, and to the light that Quaqqaq is in Canadian activism. We hope you enjoy learning more about her, and keeping an eye on her as we are sure she will continue to advocate for the Indigenous peoples of Canada. She’s only 27, after all.

Geraldine Roman is a role model for girls and women (heck, for people interested in being good human beings) everywhere. She is a force to be reckoned with in the political landscape of the Philippines, where she was the first trans person elected to Congress in 2016. Plus, she wore the most amazing princess dress of our childhood dreams in her official portrait!

Roman’s life and political philosophy embody the term “intersectional.” She fights for Indigenous rights, she fights for LGBTQIA+ rights, she fights for health rights and veteran’s rights and environmental stewardship and sustainability. She truly believes that in order for anyone to succeed, everyone has to have the chance to succeed. She’s the kind of person you want at the table with you, gently and lovingly steering conversations to difficult places, and leaning in to the humanity in everyone.

She has done much for the LGBTQIA+ community in the Philippines, but her work goes far beyond that. Her political platform, EQUALITY, is an acronym for her many intersectional advocacies: Education, Environmental Quality, Universal Healthcare, Agriculture, Livelihood, Infrastructure, Transparency, and the Youth. “Equality means giving all Filipinos equal rights, equitable opportunities and chances to improve their lives, to become happier citizens of this country regardless of their personal circumstances,” she declares.

We wanted to celebrate the beauty inherent in this wonderful woman, and the beauty that is the Philippines themselves, in our HerStory colorway. We created Waling-Waling, inspired by the Waling-Waling orchid, which is considered to be the Queen of Philippine flowers and is worshiped as a diwata, or natural spirit by the indigenous Bagobo people. We hope that, as you admire your skein of Waling-Waling, you do a little something for a community that is less privileged than yourself. It’s what Geraldine would do.