Representative Jennifer Bacon has something many elected officials would benefit from: a developed worldview, a theory of the case that guides her actions in office. It’s a worldview that developed some time between her childhood in south Florida and her arrival to the state House of Representatives in January 2021. Maybe it developed during her time at Tulane, when a Black dean told her that her grandfather didn’t take the train from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago just for her to flunk out of college; or when, years after taking that dean’s words to heart, she was told she should straighten her hair before taking the Virginia bar exam. Maybe the last few pieces of it fell into place when she won a seat on the Denver school board in 2017, and earned a front row seat to what systemic inequality really looks like.