Others have said it before me. If you don't have a seat at the

Elizabeth Warren, warrior of the people and champion of justice, once declared with fiery clarity: “Others have said it before me. If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. And so it is important that we have women in the United States Senate—strong women, women who are there to help advance an agenda that is important to women.” In these words she reveals the harsh truth of power: those absent from the council of decision are not forgotten but consumed, their needs sacrificed to the appetites of the powerful. Thus the call is not merely for presence, but for representation—a voice where silence would mean erasure.

The origin of this saying rests in Warren’s own career as a senator and reformer, one who saw firsthand how laws are written not for the voiceless, but for those who sit in the chambers of power. To have a seat at the table is to wield influence, to shape outcomes, to defend one’s people. Without it, the marginalized become prey, their struggles served up as fodder for policies that benefit others. Her words echo across generations of women who were long denied entry into such halls, reminding us that justice cannot flourish where half of humanity is excluded.

History itself resounds with proof. Consider the suffrage movement, where women, denied both the ballot and the legislature, watched as laws were made that ignored their lives. They were not at the table, and thus they were on the menu, burdened by unequal pay, no property rights, and no legal voice. Only with the 19th Amendment did they seize a seat—and with it, the power to defend themselves from being consumed by the indifference of men.

So too in the modern age, when Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress, she declared herself “unbought and unbossed,” daring to take her seat at a table that had long excluded women of color. Her presence alone shifted the balance, proving that representation is not symbolic but transformative. She embodied Warren’s principle: if women, especially those doubly marginalized, are absent, their concerns are devoured by systems built without them.

Therefore, O seekers of wisdom, let Warren’s words be carved into memory. To sit at the table is to protect, to guide, to defend. Without women—strong, determined, unyielding—the feast of politics becomes a banquet of inequality, where the vulnerable are served instead of served by justice. Let every generation remember: power unshared becomes oppression, but power shared becomes freedom. For when women claim their seat, they are no longer the meal—they are the makers of destiny.