REFUSE TO ‘SHUT UP AND SING’

Iwas raised by a single mom in a small, economically distressed town in Pennsylvania. After my father died when I was 3, I watched my mother struggle to build a new career in an America where a woman couldn’t get a mortgage or even a credit card in her own name until 1974. I knew I wanted to wait to become a parent until I had gotten an education and built my career. For me, becoming a mom at 40 was the right choice. Many women I know chose different paths. The point is, for women of my generation and every generation that came of age since 1973, it has been our choice.

You can’t plan an education, a career, a life without planning your family. In the United States — where employers are not required to provide paid family leave and the maternal mortality rate is higher than any other wealthy country, especially for Black women — forcing parenthood on people is an unspeakable cruelty.

Someone like me is always going to be able to access reproductive health care. But none of us is free unless all of us are free. Knowing that, I have worked hard to push back against those who seek to restrict reproductive rights. Inspired by my mom, who has always been politically active, I volunteered at a rape crisis center in college and, later, for sexual assault and violence intervention programs. I also recently completed a six-year term as a national board member for Planned Parenthood.

You would think these experiences would have prepared me for June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court issued its crushing ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. I was that person shouting at everyone that Roe could fall and we had to fight like hell to make sure it never happened. Yet the decision landed this sickening, fatal-seeming blow.

I am furious and full of rage.

But sitting next to rage is determination. Part of why I love the music business and the reason I have made my home in it is that we are a group of ambitious, spirited, creative people who are driven by our desire to manifest what we know is possible. We are all unrelenting advocates for what we believe in. I am especially honored to work with so many incredible artists who are unafraid to speak out. We have audacious goals. We must work to make them real. We must shine a light on injustice and hold our leaders accountable. We need to get to work right fucking now.

I am channeling my anger and pain in two ways, one immediate and one longer term.

One: Repeating, every damn day — We are not in the “shut up and sing” business. Many of us run social media accounts that have genuine impact. From the upcoming midterms to funding organizations providing sexual and reproductive health care, there is a lot of crucial, urgent work to be done triaging the confusion on the ground and helping to put sane leaders in key positions of resistance moving forward. If you have a platform, use it.

Two: We will play the long game. That’s what they did. How do you overturn a decision that is half a century old and has overwhelming majority support among Americans? You work. Purposefully, without wavering. When we find artists we believe in, we support them for as long as it takes. We do this because we know that nurturing the thing you believe in, no matter what, is the only way to see it succeed. Our country needs that resolve now.

—Michelle Jubelirer chair/CEO, Capitol Music Group