Contemporary Authors

• (With Lauren Peterson) Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. (New York, NY), 2018

1. Make trouble : standing up, speaking out, and finding the courage to lead https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061243 Richards, Cecile, author. Make trouble : standing up, speaking out, and finding the courage to lead / Cecile Richards with Lauren Peterson. First Touchstone hardcover edition. New York : Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2018.©2018 xii, 276 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm HQ1236.5.U6 R53 2018 ISBN: 9781501187599 (hardback)9781501187605 (trade paperback)

• Cecile Richards - http://cecilerichardsbook.com/#author

  Cecile Richards is a national leader for women’s rights and social and economic justice. As president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund for more than a decade, Richards has worked to increase affordable access to reproductive health care and strengthen the movement for sexual and reproductive rights. She and her husband Kirk Adams have three children and live in New York City and Maine. She spends most of her free time baking pies.

• Planned Parenthood - https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/our-leadership/cecile-richards

  Cecile Richards

  Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018, is a nationally respected leader in women's health and reproductive rights. Cecile’s commitment to reproductive rights is far from over — she will always fight alongside Planned Parenthood.

  A Video Message from Cecile

  Over the past decade, we‘ve faced down challenges that once seemed impossible and found new ways to speak our truth. Most importantly, we’ve helped Planned Parenthood patients get the care they needed — and that won’t change. Cecile Richards has a message on what’s next.
  About Cecile Richards

  As president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Ms. Richards led a movement that has worked for more than 100 years to build a healthier and safer world for women, young people, and marginalized communities. Every year, more than 600 Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers nationwide provide health care services to 2.4 million patients, and sex education to more than 1.5 million people. Planned Parenthood’s websites, including Planned Parenthood in Español, receive an estimated 76 million visits each year from people seeking health care services and education in both English and Spanish.

  Ms. Richards joined Planned Parenthood in 2006. During her tenure, she expanded advocacy efforts to include fighting for access to health care, ensuring that Planned Parenthood played a pivotal role in shaping health care coverage and services for women under the Affordable Care Act. She led multiple nationwide campaigns to preserve access to Planned Parenthood preventive care through federal programs. Under her leadership, the number of active Planned Parenthood supporters more than tripled, surpassing ten million.

  Before joining Planned Parenthood, Ms. Richards served as deputy chief of staff for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. In 2004, she founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of 42 national grassroots organizations working to maximize voter registration, education, and participation. She began her career organizing low-wage workers in the hotel, health care, and janitorial industries throughout California, Louisiana, and Texas. Ms. Richards is a frequent speaker and commentator on issues related to women’s rights, reproductive health, and sex education.

  Ms. Richards serves on the board of the Ford Foundation. She and her husband, Kirk Adams, have three children and live in New York City.
  Our Leadership

  Cecile Richards
  Naomi Aberly

  Our Executive Members

  Melvin Galloway
  Dawn Laguens
  Kim Custer
  Latanya Mapp Frett
  Danette (Danni) Hill
  Jethro O. Miller
  Tom Subak
  Debra Alligood White
  Raegan McDonald-Mosely
  Franklin Rosado

  National Spokespeople

  Roger Evans
  Raegan McDonald-Mosely
  Leslie Kantor

Richards, Cecile: MAKE TROUBLE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Richards, Cecile MAKE TROUBLE Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-5011-8759-9
The president of Planned Parenthood recounts her life as an activist.
For decades, Richards has been at the forefront of anti-war, civil rights, labor, and women's issues; as she demonstrates, activism and the desire to work for the common good run in her family. Her father was a labor attorney and environmentalist, and her mother, Ann Richards, was a fierce fighter for women's rights who became governor of Texas. As a high school girl new to Austin (she was born in Waco), she made and wore a black arm band supporting the moratorium to end the Vietnam War. After graduation, she headed east to Brown University. She supported striking janitors and librarians, took a semester off to intern for the Project on the Status and Education of Women in Washington, D.C., and became a union organizer in New Orleans. There, she met and married labor organizer Kirk Adams and formed a family that has supported labor across the country ever since. After some time in Southern California, she went back to Texas to work for her mother's campaign for governor, and she formed the Texas Freedom Network to fight against right-wing textbook censorship. Then it was off to Washington again to serve on Nancy Pelosi's staff. The author sprinkles short asides throughout the book that alternate between genuinely instructional and boring--e.g., well-worn tips on work-life balance. However, the guidelines for starting any organization are spot-on: direct, down-to-earth, and highly practical. In 2006, Richards and her family moved to New York City so she could assume the lead role at Planned Parenthood in 2006, and she has made the organization instrumental in a wide variety of women's -rights causes. In the past year, she has spent considerable time battling for her organization amid the Trump administration's efforts to cut funding.
A memoir that makes palpable the immense influence of an organization that has improved so many women's lives.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Richards, Cecile: MAKE TROUBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959962/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=b202a872. Accessed 25 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959962
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Make Trouble: Standing Up,
Speaking Out, and Finding the
Courage to Lead
Carol Haggas
Booklist.
114.13 (Mar. 1, 2018): p6. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead. By Cecile Richards and Lauren Peterson. Apr. 2018.304p. Touchstone, $27 (9781501187599). 305.420973.
Some people are hardwired to pursue their lives' passion. The daughter of Ann Richards, the firebrand feminist Texan politician, and David Richards, a landmark civil rights attorney, Richards learned about having the courage of one's convictions at an early age. She championed workers' rights for janitors and nursing-home staff and protested punitive voter restrictions wherever they occurred, experiences that would eventually put her on Capitol Hill working for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But it is her work as president of Planned Parenthood that catapulted her to national attention, especially in the wake of nearly constant GOP assaults to defund the organization during the passage of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent budget battles. As she speaks admiringly of her mother's trailblazing career and lovingly about the nascent political and organizing work of her three children, Richards makes clear that the life of a grassroots activist can be an all-consuming mission, but one that reaps untold personal benefits and results in unimaginable rewards for individuals and the nation. An intimate yet wide-ranging chronicle of a life in the trenches and at the pinnacle of her profession, Richards' enthralling memoir will provide rousing motivation for anyone passionate about social and political causes.-- Carol Haggas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Haggas, Carol. "Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead."
Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 6. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A532250751/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c1350b2e. Accessed 25 June 2018.
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Book World: Cecile Richards offers
advice for professional troublemakers
Linda Wertheimer
The Washington Post.
(May 11, 2018): News: From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Linda Wertheimer
Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead - My Life Story By Cecile Richards
Touchstone. 276 pp. $27
---
Making trouble may have come naturally to Cecile Richards, born to a father who was a civil rights lawyer and a mother who would make the great leap from housewife to governor of Texas. Richards traces her first act of speaking out to a dramatic day at her Dallas elementary school when she told her teacher that she did not want to recite the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of class. Her teacher was horrified. Cecile was 11 years old.
Now Richards, who is stepping down as president of Planned Parenthood, has written a memoir of her life of activism called "Make Trouble," with the inevitable subtitle "Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead." The book begins in September 2015, when Congress investigated Planned Parenthood after a group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress released a video that appeared to show Planned Parenthood staffers talking about selling fetal tissue. Not true, Richards writes, and not "our first rodeo with video scams." This was an elaborate one that prompted anti-abortion activists to leap into action. Richards was called to testify before a congressional committee, almost never a pleasant experience. Members of Congress can say whatever they want; the witness is sworn but they are not; the real audience is the mosh pit of cameras between the committee and the witness. There is no comforting Perry Mason to object to questions and no dignified judge to insist on order.
Richards got it with both barrels from a largely hostile committee of mostly white men. She presumably offers this experience as a cautionary tale: Making trouble as a profession carries with it the certainty that there are plenty of people prepared to make trouble back at you. She talks about her panic, about long hours working to be well-prepared, about wearing a blue suit
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that she regarded as a suit of armor fortified by a pin that belonged to her mother, and about taking up meditation. And in another lesson for political women, she notes that during five hours of testimony, none of her distress or vulnerability showed. This tale almost has a happy ending: Planned Parenthood was vindicated, though the episode did take a toll on an organization that is almost always under siege.
After her eat-your-peas beginning, Richards takes us back in history to Texas and the beginnings of her mom and dad, who came from opposite sides of Waco, a greater gulf than you might imagine. They married and moved to Dallas, where Ann Richards worked hard at being a wife and mother, and volunteered for progressive causes and candidates in a very conservative community. Those were the days when smart and motivated women were teaching fifth grade, if they were working at all; when moms in Dallas' upper-class University Park enclave were cooking elaborate meals for their friends and making creative Halloween costumes for their kids. Those women might have brought the same determination to running General Motors, but that was not happening.
When Cecile went to college she chose Brown University, distant from Dallas in every way, which did not prevent her Texas mother from assembling a wardrobe for her Ivy League daughter. Richards felt like a refugee from "Little Women" in her long wool skirts until her roommates re-dressed her. Being Ann Richards' daughter was wonderful of course, she says, but the woman who went on to govern the huge state could be overpowering at times when she concentrated her efforts on her slender blond daughter.
In college, Richards began her work as an organizer, working for Brown University's janitors and against the Seabrook nuclear power plant. "I may have majored in history," she writes, "but I minored in agitating." She was working as a union organizer in New Orleans when she met her future husband, Kirk Adams. One of the threads running through her memoir is: If you want to make trouble as your life's work, be mindful of who you marry. Richards repeatedly gives thanks to her husband, who is not the sort of man who assumes that his wife will follow wherever his work takes him. In their lives, it has been mostly, although not always, the other way around. Inevitably, their work and her family took them to Texas when Ann Richards decided to run for governor.
Ann Richards' fans will enjoy Cecile's account of her mother's political career and the amazing Texas women who played supporting roles, including Barbara Jordan and Molly Ivins. Cecile Richards recounts the painful decision of friends and family to stage an intervention and start her mother on a path to sobriety (Ann Richards called it "drunk school"). She takes us to her mother's triumphant speech at the Democratic convention in 1988 and on to her tough campaign for governor and her unsuccessful bid for re-election. Every step along the way, Cecile Richards was "all in" for her mother - which seems to be a family trait. These parts of the book are my personal favorites, and I would love to have had more stories of women waging politics.
Almost as interesting are Richards' lists of things to know about political organizing, learned from her mother's experience and from working with women like former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. After the Democrats' big loss in 1994, she felt a need to make some trouble of her own, and eventually she did, organizing a coalition of groups called America Votes that works to
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register voters and get out the vote.
Richards offers a few tips on organizing, notably: "You have to be willing to ask for money." She also points out that you have to have an idea good enough to encourage people to support you financially - "proof of concept," she calls it. And always hire a room that's half the size you need with half the chairs you need.
Richards also has a list of things you might do if you want to raise activist kids. Guard against gender roles, she says; they are alive and well and start early. Everything you need to know in life you can learn on a campaign, she says, even beyond winning and losing. Kids can pick up new skills, she writes. "There is nothing like sorting a mailing list to nail the ABCs." This is a woman who has a way with maxims.
Maybe her most important tip is contained in a chapter title: "Say Yes." Although America Votes was making progress, she found herself considering a possible opportunity with Planned Parenthood after a search firm called to see if she'd be interested in discussing a job as its president. As it became clear that the organization was serious about her, she was terrified. "Somehow," she writes, "I gutted up and showed up" and took the job. "Never turn down a new opportunity," she advises. "And never ever hold yourself back from accepting a big job or a big chance." She asks, "What is it about us women" that causes us to hold ourselves back? Early on she notes that her mother didn't do that: "Every political race she'd gotten into, it was because she knew that she was qualified and could do a better job than the incumbent, even if she was the only one who thought so."
At the 1984 Democratic convention, an NPR reporter found Ann Richards on the convention floor to ask how it felt to see a woman nominated as vice president. Richards was "teary eyed" as Geraldine Ferraro's name was announced. "I wasn't sure I would ever live to see this day," she said. Cecile Richards is nowhere near saying that a new day is coming in the wake of women's marches and pink knitted hats. She does say that now women have enormous power and it's time to use it - presumably to make trouble.
---
Wertheimer is a senior correspondent at NPR.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wertheimer, Linda. "Book World: Cecile Richards offers advice for professional troublemakers."
Washington Post, 11 May 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A538186548/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=601cd50c. Accessed 25 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A538186548
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"Richards, Cecile: MAKE TROUBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959962/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=b202a872. Accessed 25 June 2018. Haggas, Carol. "Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 6. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250751/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c1350b2e. Accessed 25 June 2018. Wertheimer, Linda. "Book World: Cecile Richards offers advice for professional troublemakers." Washington Post, 11 May 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A538186548/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=601cd50c. Accessed 25 June 2018.

• Bon Appetit
  https://www.bonappetit.com/story/cecile-richards-planned-parenthood
  Word count: 1005

  Planned Parenthood’s Outgoing President Cecile Richards on Making Trouble—and Pies
  “Women want to be the architects of their future and their destiny, not just the recipients of it.”
  May 16, 2018
  By Hilary Cadigan
  cecile-richards.gif

  When she’s not fighting for women’s health or facing Spanish Inquisition-style congressional hearings, Cecile Richards bakes pies. Cherry, especially, but also pecan, lemon meringue, the occasional apple. Now, after 12 years, the lifelong activist is stepping away from her role as president of Planned Parenthood and embarking on a new chapter: traveling the country in support of her new autobiography, Make Trouble.

  In the book, Cecile recounts her journey with grit and candor, from her upbringing in East Texas to her first job organizing low-wage laborers in New Orleans to her years advocating for Planned Parenthood and the one in five American women who count on it, despite the countless men who have tried to stop her. She also delves into the more personal details: her ongoing love affair with tacos; her struggle to balance work and motherhood; the lessons she’s learned from her own mother, the legendary Ann Richards, outspoken feminist and last Democratic governor of Texas.

  We spoke to Cecile about her life of activism, the foods that have fueled it, and what’s ahead. As the late great Ann used to say, “Politics can be dirty, but there’s nothing dirtier than trying to get a dried egg off a breakfast plate.”
  Watch
  Carla Makes Seared Scallops with Brown Butter and Lemon Pan Sauce

  So, your book was originally supposed to include a recipe with each chapter. Why?

  I’d never written a book before and as I was putting it together, it seemed like in every part of my life food (and music) had been important, in very different ways. I’ve lived all different places in the country, and we had different food traditions in Texas than we had in Louisiana or California. The book is a lot about activism, and it’s a bit of a memoir. It’s hard to separate that from what we were eating, what we were listening to, and what we were cooking.

  Including a lot of pies!

  Yes! I’ve tried everything and I like to think I’m still learning. But I guess the most important thing about making a pie is, what do you use? Are you a lard person, are you a butter person? Are you a chilled vodka in the crust person? There’s a million different ways. I’ve tended to settle back on an all-butter crust. My favorite recipe is from Tartine, the bakery in San Francisco. I have all their baking books.

  When I came to Planned Parenthood 12 years ago, I started a pie-baking contest. Which is kind of fun because at the time we only had about 35 employees, and now we have about 500. So it’s become a contest I can’t even win anymore. Sometimes I would make four different pies, hoping that something would at least place, you know? My most treasured gift on leaving was a booklet of all the winning pie recipes.

  How has cooking helped you bridge gaps in your work as an activist?

  This goes back to my early organizing days. I worked for years with women who—we had nothing in common. They were hotel workers or they were janitors, or many of them worked in nursing homes. But whatever their cooking traditions were, getting a chance to share a meal, you learn about people. What foods are important to them? To me, that can tell you a whole lot. Cooking and sharing food together, it’s a universal human experience.

  Food has been political for you too. As you write in the book, your first big stance was in middle school when you decided to become a pescatarian.

  Right, exactly! That was actually kind of horrifying for my mother. Because, you know, growing up in Texas and then suddenly declaring I wasn’t going to eat meat anymore. I remember her sending me to the doctor. He looked at me—and looked very puzzled. But eventually my mother became a gourmet cook for all kinds of foods she’d never made before. That’s what women do. Adapt. It was her way of showing love.
  cr family photo
  Courtesy of Cecile Richards

  Cecile Richards (third from left) with her family in seventh grade, the year she went pescatarian

  Now that you’ve left Planned Parenthood, what’s next?

  I’m very focused on what I can do to support the women who are running for office. There are many, many, many of them. Many more than we’ve ever seen before. And then I’m exploring all kinds of issues that I care about. I’ve been working for 12 years to help advance women’s access to reproductive health care, which I think is important. And there are a lot of other things that women care about in this country. Like affordable childcare, access to equal pay, higher education, and good public schools.

  What’s your message to women at this moment in time, when things feel very difficult, but also kind of exciting?

  I think it’s a time to really look to ways in which you can support each other. Support other women. Stand up for people who may need it. Stand up for women who are standing up for themselves. That’s the overwhelming sense I’m getting from women around the country. They want to be the architects of their future and their destiny, not just the recipients of it.
  Buy it: Cecile Richards’ memoir, Make Trouble, is $19 on Amazon.
  Speaking of pie...
  BA's Best Coconut Cream Pie

• Refinery 29
  https://www.refinery29.com/2018/04/195523/cecile-richards-planned-parenthood-make-trouble-book
  Word count: 314

  Cecile Richards On Being A Trouble Maker & The Important Lessons She Learned From Her Mom
  Ashley Alese Edwards
  April 4, 2018, 11:59 AM
  cecile richards
  Cecile Richards says she's been a trouble maker her entire life. "But I hope that more than just make trouble, I've actually been slowly but surely standing up for the things I believe in," the outgoing president of Planned Parenthood says in a video exclusive for Refinery29.
  In her new book Make Trouble, Richard talks about her early acts of defiance and the special lessons she learned from her mother Ann Richards, who went from being a housewife to the governor of Texas.
  "She raised four children, did tons of volunteer work, but never had a job outside the home," Richard says. "Then suddenly she broke free and decided she wanted to live her life."
  According to Richards, the most important thing she learned from her mother is to just go for it.
  Richards has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration — and advocate for the wave of women running for office in 2018. "I'm really excited in these next few months to make sure that women are not only running for office but they are registered to vote and that they're turning out in November," she told CBS recently. "I think women have the opportunity to change the landscape and change the direction of America."
  "Don't wait. Don't ask permission," Richards says. "And I hope this book Make Trouble can encourage a lot of women these days to take a leap and maybe do things they never thought they could do before."
  Read these stories next:
  Cecile Richards Has Some Choice Words For Trump — & Ivanka
  Cecile Richards On Mansplaining & What You Can Do For Women
  Cecile Richards & Hillary Clinton On The Threat To Your Reproductive Rights

• Democracy Now
  https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/8/make_trouble_cecile_richards_on_her
  Word count: 3331

  “Make Trouble”: Cecile Richards on Her Life Story, Reproductive Rights & Women-Led Activism
  StoryMay 08, 2018
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  Topics

  Women's Health
  Women's Rights
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  Guests

  Cecile Richards
  former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund since 2006. Her new memoir is titled Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead.

  From the massive Women’s March against President Trump’s inauguration, to the wave of teachers’ strikes sweeping across red states nationwide, to the #MeToo movement, women have been at the forefront of rising political and social mobilizations challenging the Trump administration’s agenda and the entrenched gender-based violence and white supremacy in U.S. society. For more, we speak with Cecile Richards, who has just stepped aside as president of Planned Parenthood after 12 years. She’s just published a new memoir, “Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead.”
  Transcript
  This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

  AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And we’re joined by Texas-born Cecile Richards. She has just stepped aside as president of Planned Parenthood Federation and Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She had been there at the helm for 12 years—her new memoir, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead—on a revival tour across the country.

  So, you were born, Cecile, in Waco, Texas. You’ve just left Planned Parenthood. Are you planning to run for office?

  CECILE RICHARDS: I don’t have any plans to run for office. But I have been an agitator and a troublemaker and organizer my whole life. And I am keenly focused on making sure that every woman in this country is registered to vote, is activated, and votes this November and beyond, because I do think this is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to make serious social change.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, you’re the daughter of Ann Richards, an icon in the Texas Democratic Party, national Democratic Party, former governor of Texas. The influence that your mother and her career had on your own life?

  CECILE RICHARDS: Oh, tremendous, and not only my life, but women everywhere. I still run into women who say, “I got into public office,” or “I ran for office,” or whatever they’re doing now, in large part because of Mom. And I think—in a funny way, I think there are parallels, because Mom was never supposed to win. You know, she was a liberal woman, divorced woman, in Texas, if you will. And she won because the grassroots outpouring of teachers and union folks and LGBT people and farmworkers, you name it, was so overwhelming, we won that day. I think that’s what we’re looking at in this country. I’ve never seen more organizing happening, more excitement and folks finally realizing that who we elect to office has an enormous influence on what happens in our lives.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you mention the teachers that supported your mother, we’re seeing this enormous spread of strikes in the red states—

  CECILE RICHARDS: That’s right.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —of the United States. And the teachers of America are largely women. So the reality is that this is a mass movement of women workers standing up in red states.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Everywhere. No, everywhere. In fact, I was just in Arizona and—to speak at Planned Parenthood. But the teachers, of course, there have been on strike. They had 75,000 people out in the streets. And as you say, 75 percent of these teachers are women. They’re fighting not only for themselves and for equitable pay and a living wage, but they’re fighting for their pupils. And it is incredible to me that women across this country are leading the fight for public education at a time that Washington is silent.

  AMY GOODMAN: So, your mother served as governor of Texas from ’91 to ’95, before George W. Bush.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Correct.

  AMY GOODMAN: In 2003, she was asked by James Henson of the Texas Politics Project about whether she felt her many years of work on the issue of women’s rights had been successful.

  ANN RICHARDS: There’s no question that the very fact that young women have the same opportunity in college, that they have a chance to play sports because of Title IX, that they have the right to terminate a pregnancy that doesn’t make sense in their life or for the life of a child, the fact that we have equal opportunity in the workplace—all those things would never have happened if those of us who were participants of the women’s movement had not been there and fought so hard.

  JAMES HENSON: You sound satisfied.

  ANN RICHARDS: Oh, I’m hardly satisfied. I’m outraged, most of the time, at how the progress seems to stall, how difficult it is for young people to realize that their very freedoms are in jeopardy if they’re not willing to fight for them. But you also have to look back and accept and be pleased that things have changed. My grandmother, during a period of her life, did not have the right to vote. The law in Texas was that idiots, imbeciles, the insane and women could not vote. And less than one generation later, I was the governor of Texas.

  AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ann Richards. Yep, she was the governor of Texas. And we’re joined by her daughter, Cecile Richards, who traveled that road with her, through success and through losing, as well. And what she taught you and what you went on to do, how did you come to be head of Planned Parenthood? You almost didn’t apply for that job.

  CECILE RICHARDS: No, it’s right. Well, I think, like a lot of other women, I—you know, when I was called to interview for the job, I had all my own self-doubts. I didn’t think I was qualified. I had never done anything that big. I almost canceled the interview. And then, of course, I did what any grown woman would do: I called my mom. And she said, “Are you kidding me, Cecile? This is the most important organization for women and women’s health in the country.” And thank goodness she told me to go to the interview.

  But she was a big believer in women, and that women, you know, we always discounted ourselves, we were always waiting for the perfect moment, we were always waiting to be asked. And her message was always “Don’t wait for someone else to ask you. Don’t wait for instructions. And for goodness’ sake, start before you’re ready.” And, you know, I have taken that to heart. And I think—you know, I’m sorry she’s not here to see today, the fact that so many women, record numbers of women, are jumping in, running for office, getting involved, even if they don’t think they’re ready.

  AMY GOODMAN: You had a meeting, as head of Planned Parenthood, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Yes.

  AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how that meeting took place, where you met and what they had to say.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Well, I had—this was right after the inauguration. Of course, we had had the Women’s March, which was historic, you know, largest marches in recorded history. And I got a message that Ivanka wanted to talk about Planned Parenthood. And, of course, I knew that the president had said he was going to defund us. And as skeptical as I was about meeting, I thought if there were any opportunity to explain exactly what we do, the important healthcare we provide to millions of people, that I had to take the chance. When I found that she was bringing her husband, Jared Kushner, I convinced my husband Kirk to come along with me. And we met out at a golf course, some golf course that the president owns in New Jersey.

  And there, Jared Kushner really laid out his proposal, his deal, I guess. And he said, “Look, the Republicans control everything. We’ve got the White House, we’ve got Congress. You have nothing. You know, you have no bargaining power here.” And essentially what he wanted me to do was to say that if Planned Parenthood would quit providing abortion services to women in the country, he would talk to Speaker Paul Ryan to try to assure our funding and maybe even get us more funding. And that was the—that was sort of the extent of it. And, of course, I said, “That is not ever going to happen. Planned Parenthood is never going to trade off women’s rights or women’s ability to make their own decisions about their pregnancy for money.” He went back at it. And Ivanka was—you know, said, “Well, you have to understand, my father is pro-life.” And I said, “Well, that’s—you know, he is entitled to his own opinion. He does not have the right to take away this right from every single woman in America.” And that was kind of it. And we all went our separate ways.

  And I guess what I would point out is, even though the Republicans controlled Congress, control the White House, there was a mass mobilization over the last year and a half by people who supported Planned Parenthood, and we defeated that effort to defund Planned Parenthood. And I’m proud to say our doors are still open all across the United States of America. But that’s why we have to organize. That’s why we have to mobilize. That’s why we have to get people to vote this November.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and in that vein, your book, Make Trouble, you talk about it not as a memoir but as a call to action.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Yes.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s the action that you feel necessary at this stage?

  CECILE RICHARDS: The action is, whatever you’re doing, if you’re not scaring yourself, you need to be doing more. This is not a moment to wait and think someone else is going to take care of this problem. And the encouraging thing to me is, we are seeing women in unprecedented numbers now taking action. I think the last poll I saw said 20 percent of Americans in the last year have marched or protested or done something. That’s historic. Even in the fight to protect Obamacare and Planned Parenthood access, one of the estimates was that 85 percent of the phone calls to Congress were coming from women. So, women are on the move. And I know you’re talking to some soon out in Colorado. Everywhere I go, women are taking action and doing more than they ever thought they could, because the future is at stake, and they are feeling empowered.

  AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to another clip of you. This is before Trump was elected. But I did want to ask: Did Ivanka say anything, though she had called you to the meeting?

  CECILE RICHARDS: Very little, except that she was disappointed that I hadn’t said nice things about her father during the election, since he had praised the work of Planned Parenthood. And I said, “Well, I did say at least he understood the important work we did. But in the same breath, he said he was going to defund us, so it didn’t seem like there was much room for a compliment there.”

  AMY GOODMAN: So let’s go back to 2015. This was between Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah, then the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and you, Cecile Richards, then-president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Chaffetz tries to present a slide that he claims is from Planned Parenthood’s data, showing an increase in abortions and a decrease in cancer screenings.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: You don’t do mammograms, correct?

  CECILE RICHARDS: There is—I—I—

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: There’s like one or two places that does it, but—

  CECILE RICHARDS: That’s—

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: —you don’t do mammograms.

  CECILE RICHARDS: If you would give me one moment to explain—

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: Sure.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Planned Parenthood is a women’s health center, just like every—where I go for my breast exams every year. If you need a mammogram, you’re referred to a radiological center, and that’s how women actually receive their care. And we provide breast exams to—I could get you the numbers of how many hundreds of thousands of women received breast exams at Planned Parenthood last year, has nothing to do with—I don’t—again—

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: Here’s the problem.

  CECILE RICHARDS: You created this slide.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: Last thing—I’m trying to wrap up.

  CECILE RICHARDS: I have no idea what it is.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: Well, it’s the reduction, over the course of years, in pink. That’s the reduction in the breast exams, and the red is the increase in the abortions.

  CECILE RICHARDS: This is—this—

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: That’s what’s going on in your organization.

  CECILE RICHARDS: This is a slide that has never been shown to me before. I’m happy to look at it. And—but it absolutely does not reflect what’s happening at Planned Parenthood.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: You’re going to deny that if we take those numbers out of your report—

  CECILE RICHARDS: I’m going to deny the slide that you’ve just shown me that no one has ever provided us before. We have provided you all the information about everything, all the services that Planned Parenthood provides. And doesn’t feel like we’re trying to get to the truth here. You just showed me this. I’m happy to look at it.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: I pulled those numbers directly out of your corporate reports. My time has expired.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Oh, excuse me, my lawyer is informing me that the source of this is actually Americans United for Life, which is an anti-abortion group, so I would check your source.

  REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: Then we will get to the bottom of the truth of that.

  AMY GOODMAN: So that was Jason Chaffetz questioning you. This was a grueling, 5-hour hearing with you as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. I think, before the Trump administration, you were the one to continually talk about fake news. How faked was this?

  CECILE RICHARDS: Oh, everything—I mean, it wasn’t a hearing, Amy. I thought it was going to be a hearing, so I was prepared with the facts. But it wasn’t. It was actually an effort to embarrass me or embarrass Planned Parenthood on national television. But they were completely unable to do that, in my opinion. In fact, they interrupted me. They wouldn’t let me answer. At one point my son texted me; he said, “Mom, you’re doing such a great job. I think raising me all those years really helped you prepare for these guys.”

  At the end of the day, in fact, not only was Planned Parenthood completely found—you know, there was no wrongdoing. The perpetrators of the scam were indicted on 15 counts. And frankly, the popularity of Planned Parenthood went up. And today, after all the attacks by this administration, this Congress—Jason Chaffetz, of course, now retired—Planned Parenthood is more popular than ever. In Fox News’ own most recent poll, we were the most popular organization in this country. Our membership has swelled. We are now actually more than twice the size of the National Rifle Association. And that’s what’s important to me, is that now, going into the future, it is ensuring that every person who’s ever relied on Planned Parenthood for healthcare is mobilized, is active and is voting in the elections.

  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking of going into the future, what’s the future for Cecile Richards, in terms—are you going to run for political office?

  CECILE RICHARDS: Well, never say never, but that’s not my plan right now. I’m going around the country talking about my book, but also talking to women. I think women are, again, the most important political force in the country. We saw African-American women really lead in getting a new senator elected in Alabama. We’ve seen women winning historic races in Virginia, in Wisconsin, in Texas even, my home state, first two Latina congresswomen likely to come to Congress in November. To me, this is an opportunity for, finally, women to get political equity in America. And I’d love to be part of making that happen.

  AMY GOODMAN: An interesting conversation to have on this primary day in a number of states, like West Virginia.

  CECILE RICHARDS: Yes, that’s right.

  AMY GOODMAN: So, Cecile Richards, thank you so much for joining us. Cecile has recently stepped aside as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Her new memoir, which she’s traveling the country with—again, tonight she’ll be with Jessica Williams at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and then on to Nashville. And where from Nashville?

  CECILE RICHARDS: Yeah, actually, then we go to Chappaqua, and, you know, really pretty much going everywhere in the country.

  AMY GOODMAN: Are you going back to Waco, where you were born? Is it true that a clinic was just founded there?

  CECILE RICHARDS: So proud that in Waco, Texas, we just opened a brand-new Planned Parenthood health center. And it’s exciting to see, across the country, Planned Parenthood’s resilience and our ability to continue to provide services no matter what.

  AMY GOODMAN: Cecile Richards, premier troublemaker. Her book, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead.

  When we come back, we’ll speak with journalists from The Denver Post and the Boulder Daily Camera. They’ve been fired. They’ve resigned. And some of them today are protesting outside a hedge fund, the Alden Capital fund, here in New York. Find out why.
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• The New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/books/review/cecile-richards-make-trouble.html
  Word count: 1254

  A Professional Troublemaker’s Guide for Young Activists
  Image
  Cecile Richards at a House Government Oversight committee hearing.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

  When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

  By Katha Pollitt

  April 25, 2018

  MAKE TROUBLE
  Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead
  By Cecile Richards with Lauren Peterson
  304 pp. Touchstone. $27.

  Cecile Richards — the outgoing president of Planned Parenthood — may look calm and unflappable with her trademark blue suits and neat cap of golden hair, but she’s a troublemaker from way back. As a sixth grader in Dallas she refused to say the Lord’s Prayer in class. As a junior high schooler in Austin, she wore a black armband to express solidarity with the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, infuriating the principal. The rest is history. “Make Trouble” takes us through Richards’s life in activism and politics: Before Planned Parenthood, she had a full and varied career that included union organizing, starting the progressive organization America Votes and working for Nancy Pelosi. But there’s lots more, including loving depictions of family and friends, from the legendary Texas journalist Molly Ivins to her mother, Ann Richards, the “frustrated housewife” who became a beloved governor of Texas.

  Richards paints some vivid pictures of life in politics, too. For example, despite misgivings, she reached out to Ivanka Trump after hearing that she might want to help Planned Parenthood. They met at a Trump golf club in New Jersey, where Ivanka and her husband, Jared, offered her a deal: If Planned Parenthood stopped performing abortions, funding for birth control might go up. “Jared and Ivanka were there for one reason: to deliver a political win. In their eyes, if they could stop Planned Parenthood from providing abortions, it would confirm their reputation as savvy dealmakers. It was surreal, essentially being asked to barter away women’s rights for more money.”
  Image

  Books by public figures, especially when written with help from others — Lauren Peterson is a speechwriter — are often pretty deadly, but “Make Trouble” manages to be genial, engaging and humorous. (“It was almost like dealing with kidnappers,” is how Richards describes the months of waking to find yet another doctored video claiming to prove that Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue.) She’s good at sharing credit and giving praise — especially to her husband, the longtime labor organizer Kirk Adams, who was always game to move to a new city, take on a new adventure and pitch in with raising their three children. Her portrait of Nancy Pelosi as a nice person, a thoughtful boss and a brilliant strategist largely responsible for the passage of the Affordable Care Act (without the Stupak amendment that would have banned insurance coverage for abortion) is a pleasant corrective to the increasingly common view of her as an incompetent witch.

  As its title implies, this is not just a memoir but a call to action. Richards wants you to know that you too can make social change. She also wants you to know that a life of social activism is fun. She offers career advice (“never turn down a new opportunity”) and even travel tips (“try to know where the best ice cream is in any given airport terminal”). Considering how often progressives are portrayed as joyless scolds, this is a message that needs to get out more. There’s a lot of satisfaction in activism, even if you don’t win every battle.

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  Those battles are something I wish Richards had gone into more deeply. Although she opens with her appearance before the congressional committee investigating Planned Parenthood for profiting from fetal remains — the same committee that investigated Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, with as little to show for it — her take is basically upbeat. She and her daughter may curl up in bed and weep together on election night 2016, but a few pages later she’s knitting a pussy hat for the women’s march held the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. She doesn’t spend much time analyzing the current state of reproductive rights in this country, the number of abortion clinics closing or the continuing threat to defund Planned Parenthood and cancel Obamacare’s expansive birth control benefit (which has no co-pay requirement), to say nothing of the hundreds of state restrictions on abortion passed in the last few years.

  Richards is absolutely right that Planned Parenthood is popular — one in five American women has visited one of its clinics. Almost all women have used birth control at some point, and one in four will have had at least one abortion by age 45. Given those facts, I would have liked to read why she thinks the enemies of reproductive rights have been so successful. The once pro-choice Trump — who said Hillary was willing to “rip the baby out of the womb” right before birth — is in the White House. As a congressman, Mike Pence wanted to shut down the federal government in order to defund Planned Parenthood; today he’s the vice president. She describes as a big win the storm of outrage that resulted when the breast-cancer charity Komen Foundation decided to drop Planned Parenthood from its list of recipients (it had to backtrack within days). But she doesn’t say that the woman behind Komen’s ill-fated plan, Karen Handler, defeated Jon Ossoff in a much-publicized Georgia congressional race. Nor does she mention the 2015 murder of three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic by a deranged abortion opponent.

  “For the first time in my life, I’m wondering whether my own daughters will have fewer rights than I’ve had,” Richards writes. She’s hardly the only one to have that fear: After the election, Planned Parenthood experienced a 900 percent increase in requests for IUDs from women looking for birth control that would outlast the Trump administration. It is not going to be easy to undo the damage that every day seems to bring to women’s rights, status, opportunities and well-being, but if you’re looking for books to fill you with energy for the long haul that lies before us, this one is a great place to start. After all, with a man in the White House accused of sexual harassment by over a dozen women and Health and Human Services staffed from top to bottom with opponents of reproductive rights, what better time to make trouble?
  EDITORS’ PICKS
  The Glamorous Grandmas of Instagram
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  She Found Comfort in a Brooklyn Diner, Then Lost Everything
  Correction: April 25, 2018

  An earlier version of this review misidentified the first woman governor of Texas. She was Miriam (Ma) Ferguson, not Ann Richards.
  Correction: April 25, 2018

  Katha Pollitt is an essayist, a poet and a political columnist.

  Follow New York Times Books on Facebook and Twitter, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.
  A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2018, on Page 8 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Fighting the Good Fight. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

• CBS News
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cecile-richards-planned-parenthood-make-trouble-new-book/
  Word count: 739

  Cecile Richards on leaving Planned Parenthood, women running for office

  Cecile Richards is entering her final weeks at the helm of Planned Parenthood. The organization provides health care programs like birth control, cancer screening, pregnancy care and abortion services to more than two million people at more than 600 centers nationwide. For 12 years, Richards fought for women's health care and organized campaigns to protect Planned Parenthood's federal and state funding. She will step down as president next month.

  "It's hard to leave, but I'm ready to step aside and have someone else take on the responsibilities at a time where I think we're incredibly strong in this country," Richards said Monday on "CBS This Morning."

  It's an "exciting time" in the nation, she said, with a record number of women running for office. As the daughter of Ann Richards, Democratic governor of Texas in the '90s, it's a trend she's followed closely. If half the members of Congress could get pregnant, "we would quit fighting about birth control and Planned Parenthood and move on to other issues," she said.

  "Women running for office. Does that mean Cecile Richards running for office?" "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King asked.

  "Well, never say never," Richards responded. "But I'm really excited in these next few months to make sure that women are not only running for office but they are registered to vote and that they're turning out in November. I think women have the opportunity to change the landscape and change the direction of America."
  make-trouble-cover.jpg

  Richards is sharing her own story for the first time in her new book, "Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead," published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS.

  "I hope this book is both a memoir but also a little bit of a call to action for people who want to make a difference in the world," she said.

  In the book, she also writes about a meeting she had with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump not long after President Trump was elected.

  "I'd heard that they were interested in meeting to learn more about Planned Parenthood. And I would do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone about the important care that we provide," Richards said. "So I took my husband, actually, because I wanted somebody else with me and we sat and talked to them, but it really seemed pretty clear that they just wanted to make a political deal. They wanted us to quit providing abortion services to women in America."

  "Didn't they say we could guarantee funding if you say you'll stop abortions?" King asked.

  "That's basically what they said. And I just said we will never turn our backs on women in America. It's a legal service. And plus, as you say, no federal funding goes for abortion services. So, though I was very disappointed in the outcome of the meeting, I have been incredibly encouraged, again, at the outpouring of the people who support Planned Parenthood. And that's really why our doors have stayed open this last year."
  © 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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