In 1944, the Democratic Party held its convention in Chicago, where it nominated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a fourth term in office. Angie Gialloreto remembers it.
Eighty years on, a lot has changed—including White House term limits. But Democrats are back in Chicago, and Angie, who has been a Pittsburgh-area party official for more than six decades, is there as the convention’s oldest delegate. She’s 95 now, and says she’s most excited about young people getting their start in politics, like she did as a 15 year old growing up in Pennsylvania.
Mother Jones caught up with Gialloreto and spoke with her about the changes she’s lived and witnessed in Democratic politics, and her hopes for the future. Our conversation included Ellie Goluboff-Schragger, a 20-year-old University of Pennsylvania student who is the state’s youngest delegate.
Goluboff-Schragger thanked President Joe Biden for deciding to leave the campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, and for “recognizing that it’s time for a new generation.”
“What he did was not for me, not for you, but for our country,” Gialloreto says. “This is something spectacular, and we’re going to take advantage of it.”
After eighty years in the fray, Angie is urging a new generation to step up. “It’s time young people should have the voice and daggonit, they better have the opportunity to express it,” she says. “There’s been this closed door thing. ‘Oh, you’re too young.’ No! Do it. Express yourself. Let people know what you want and how you feel.”
“I started at 15,” she says. “I sure in hell am not going to stop at 95.”
