Quincy girls in middle school class are on an equal-rights mission

From: The Patriot Ledger

Six seventh-graders from Quincy's Broad Meadows Middle School are trying to get the federal Equal Rights Amendment on track for passage again. From left are Ilkim Gumus, Alessia Mochi, Julianne Sheehan, Veronica Bentley, Grace Akkara and Eleanor Anderson. The photo was taken on Monday, June 13, 2016.

By Jessica Trufant

The Patriot Ledger

Posted Jun. 17, 2016 at 9:50 PM
Updated Jun 19, 2016 at 10:41 AM

QUINCY – Broad Meadows Middle School teacher Ron Adams showed his seventh-graders a documentary on suffragette Alice Paul and her fight for equal rights for women.

At the end of the documentary, students learned that the states never ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, which Paul introduced in 1923 and Congress approved in 1972. To this day, the U.S. Constitution does not protect women from discrimination based on sex.

That didn’t sit well with some of the seventh-grade girls in Adams’s English language arts class. MORE

BREAKING: Americans--by 94%-- Overwhelmingly Support the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

From:  PR NewsWire

Actress Patricia Arquette to testify on the ERA at the DNC Platform Committee hearing in Phoenix, Arizona on June 18 

Jun 17, 2016, 10:03 ET from ERA Coalition

NEW YORK, June 17, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the ERA Coalition/ Fund for Women's Equality released a poll finding near-universal support for amending the United States Constitution to include protections for women. The ERA is a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. 

80% of those polled mistakenly believe that men and women are already guaranteed equal rights in the U.S. Constitution.  As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated: "Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't." 

 Patricia Arquette, an activist for women's equality and committed ERA supporter, will testify in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday, June 18, 2016 at a DNC Platform Committee hearing, where she will urge the party to make the ERA a priority. "All of the things we want for women, including equal pay and effective legal recourse for gender-based violence, are in the ERA," Arquette says. "This polling shows the country is with us—we need Congress to catch up." MORE

 

Dreams of equality for Catholic women

From:  National Catholic Reporter

by Maureen Fiedler  |  Jun. 10, 2016 NCR Today

On Tuesday evening, I invited some neighbors to my house to celebrate an historic event. It was the moment that the first woman had earned nomination as the U.S. presidential candidate of a major political party. Her name is, of course, Hillary Clinton.

However one regards Hillary politically, this was an historic evening… one more glass ceiling was shattered -- and it is a significant glass ceiling.

I've spent a lot of energy in my life working for gender equality: especially the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and women's ordination in the Catholic church, so when any movement in the direction of gender equality takes place, it's cause for celebration.  MORE

Charlotte Anderson, Hillsborough judge and equal rights activist, dies at 72

From:  Tampa Bay Times 

Anna M. Phillips, Times Staff Writer

Retired Hillsborough Circuit Judge Charlotte Anderson, left, appears with Ms. magazine founder, author and activist Gloria Steinem in 2015 at the first Helen Gordon Davis Waves of Change Luncheon at the Crowne Plaza Tampa Westshore. Anderson, who helped create a division dedicated solely to victims of domestic violence, died last month at the age of 72. [JAMES BORCHUCK | TIMES]

TAMPA — Charlotte Anderson, a former Hillsborough County judge who helped create a division dedicated solely to victims of domestic violence, died last month at age 72.

 Elected to the bench in 1994, Ms. Anderson presided over domestic violence cases, as well as run-of-the-mill civil suits, for 15 years. She was well-known as a champion of many causes, from women's rights to antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians, and a fixture in local Democratic Party politics.

"She was a real pioneer as a woman's activist," said Nadine Smith, CEO of Equality Florida, an LGBT advocacy group. "To have somebody of her profile be visibly supporting our work at a time when there weren't a whole lot of people racing to stand up really mattered."  MORE