INTERVIEW & PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIERSTEN HOFF, AUDIO RECORDING & EDITING BY RAELYNN SNODGRASS
Photographed by Kiersten Hoff
STEPHANIE CHANG, MICHIGAN STATE SENATOR for DISTRICT 1
On her place of special meaning, Lafayette Park… I actually think that even though I had lived here for a while before I had my first daughter, I feel like I actually really started to enjoy the park even more once I had her and so I remember a few weeks after I gave birth, taking her out for a ride in the stroller and being so nervous about taking her outside of the house and like not knowing what was going to happen and then it also rained and everything, so that was annoying. But I just remember going for a little stroll with a couple of friends -- one was still pregnant and the other one had had her daughter the month before, and just feeling this sense of like okay, we’re a bunch of moms, we’re figuring this out, it’s going to be okay. But like, amongst this beautiful park with all these amazing trees. Since then, [we’ve spent] a lot of time…here. It’s a great park, a lot of fond memories of the earliest days of being a mom as I was like figuring out what the heck I was doing as a mom, so, yeah!
“My mother took me to the polls every time she voted...it really [did] start with my parents when I was a baby!””
On her decision to run for office… So I ran in 2014. Like I mentioned, I hadn’t really thought about running, but Rashida Tlaib– she was my predecessor in the state house, she is among the first that really kind of encouraged me to run. And I had been working as an organizer, doing all this various stuff around social justice issues and, you know, I basically realized this is a way to make an impact in a bigger way on a different level. And so ran to basically just try to make a difference and I’m really glad that I ran and now it’s been over six years– actually wait, has it been six years? Yeah, it’s been six years, wow! So I feel very much that I’ve done the things I said I would do, there’s still so much more to do. I’m really glad– It took me a long time to decide to run actually, it took a good six months– but having encouragement from Rashida and from my good friend Dessa and just others that were really making me think about, “okay if I’m not going to do this what else would I be doing and would I be able to make an impact in the same way?” And I’m really glad that I did it!
Advice for women who want to run for office in the face of current barriers… I guess the first thing is just to really go for it. Two, I think the mentorship piece, find a really good mentor. I also think it’s really powerful to shadow someone. I actually, when was still in the middle of six months of trying to figure out if I should run or not, I did shadow Rashida at the state capital. It was really helpful for me to be able to just physically see, visualize myself there and also to ask random questions throughout the day and just see if I could picture myself doing that work because I’m a very visual person. So I definitely encourage people to shadow, no matter what it is that you’re thinking about running for whether it’s school board or city council or whatever, anything, is to actually shadow and see what it’s like.