Donna Brazile — veteran political strategist, bestselling author, and ABC News correspondent — has been making her voice heard since she was a little girl, successfully advocating for a new playground in her neighborhood.
During the 2025 Agosto Lecture Tuesday at South Texas College of Law Houston focused on “Truth to Power: A Guide to Civic Engagement,” Brazile continued to lift her voice to encourage the large crowd of students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community leaders to stay engaged and continue to hope.
“Civic engagement means holding our elected officials and community leaders accountable, but it also means individually staying engaged and being a part of our communities,” she said. “We can’t hold anyone in power accountable unless we are accountable as citizens — understanding the rule of law and the Constitution, paying attention to what is happening around us, recognizing the needs right where we are, and bringing our voices to those needs.”
Moderated by Brazile’s good friend and South Texas Law Professor Njeri Mathis Rutledge, the discussion was wide-ranging, touching on the importance of peaceful protests, the value of teaching children early about the foundational principles of our country, and the need to use technology for the common good instead of to polarize us and leave people behind.
Brazile discussed the power of hope to draw our country together and to call people out to vote.
“Those who turn out to vote have a reason to hope,” she said. “Disillusioned people live on the outskirts of hope and think no one cares about them. They want a path to participate in the American dream, and if they don’t feel touched and heard they don’t feel hope — and they don’t vote.”
Brazile is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, author of the bestselling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, and a nationally recognized commentator on politics, diversity, and civic engagement. She became the first Black individual to manage a presidential campaign when she served as campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. Her career has spanned nearly five decades, including roles as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee and as chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute.
The Louisiana native described the despair that overtook many people after Katrina hit her home state, and she praised Texas for welcoming people after that tragedy. She explained that her dad encouraged her to go to D.C. to share her knowledge about the needs in Louisiana with the president — and she did.
She helped bring transformational projects and support to Louisiana, in part because she was able to sit down and visit with President George W. Bush — who she knew because she ran his opponent Gore’s campaign.
“As a person involved in politics from a very young age, who always wanted to make a difference, it meant so much to me to be sitting in the office of the president, discussing ways I could help my community,” she said. “We disagreed on nearly everything, but somehow, we became friends, and he helped me bring significant help to Louisiana over the next few years.”
Brazile joined a list of distinguished speakers the Agosto Justice Center for Leadership and Empowerment has brought to campus to discuss pressing issues of law, justice, and society.
“Our lives are more than work and pay,” Brazile said, in a talk filled with history and humor. “It’s what you build; it’s what you leave behind. I hope people will stay engaged and remain hopeful. Our country is going through growing pains, but we can get through this. As it says in Zechariah, we must be prisoners of hope; we must be bound by it. We need to keep seeking joy and peace; that will lead us to hope.”
