With one more state left to ratify ERA and finally provide all Americans with guaranteed protection against sex discrimination, EQUAL MEANS EQUAL is focused on Arizona’s upcoming midterm elections.
With a 40% female legislature (and a possibly higher percentage after November) and a cultural proximity to Nevada, which ratified the ERA in March of 2017, we believe there a strong potential for ERA ratification in Arizona.
Over the past months we have been working with incredible ERA activists on the ground in Arizona: Jami Parrish and Bonnie Aaronson in Tucson, Dianne Post in Phoenix and the awesome Carmen Linero-Lopez from Feminist Majority Campus who has shared with us her team of amazing student activists.
We have placed six full page ads in the Arizona Republic that have been running (October 21st – 29th) educating about the ERA and thanking the legislators and candidates that have signed our Equality Pledge and committed to vote “yes” on ERA in the upcoming 2019 legislative session.
And we are hosted two major concert events!
The events will feature important bipartisan speakers including the ERA sponsors in the Arizona House and Senate (Dem and Rep) as well as bands, comics, shout-outs from celebrities and much more!
The concerts are free to the public and our goal is to make sure the 500,000 students who registered to vote for the very first time in the past couple of months, get to the polls and cast their votes for candidates who support the ERA and equality for all Americans.
To that end we have been plastering 3000 ERA posters on the 9 campuses we are working with so that all the hundreds of thousands of students, should they be unable to attend the events in person, will have seen these posters and come to realize that Arizona needs to ratify ERA. We also have banners, fliers, rally signs and T-shirts ready to distribute.
We could sure use your financial support. Obviously this is a huge (some would say ridiculously overwhelming) job to pull off – but we see this as a gamechanger. If we are able to make sure that pro-equality candidates are elected in Arizona, we will be able to secure the votes for ERA come January. And if Arizona votes yes on ERA, we’re done. 38 states is all that is required to ratify a Constitutional amendment as per Article V. Once we deliver that last state, women and girls are no longer second class citizens under federal law.
This is an existential moment for America and the movement for equal rights and the ERA. Can you please help?
- Send us a donation – no matter how small or large it will go directly into actions and programming – EME is a volunteer organization so your money is going to stuff that will actually help get ERA ratified – and, honestly, we couldn’t need your help more urgently than we do now.
- Come to Arizona and help out at the concerts – we’ve printed five thousand two sided informational flyers about why we need the ERA, what it would do and why it’s not too late. Every one of the 5,000 people at these shows should leave being fully educated about the ERA and able to educate others.
- Help with press – we need stories, articles, live TV interviews, podcasts – all of it. And we need it now. We all know how important this election is, but America needs to know how it connects to women and how they are treated in our society. We need to present ERA as the solution to what we have been seeing so clearly lately, in terms of gender discrimination.
- Amplify our voice on social media by tagging #equalmeansequal #RatifyERA and retweeting and reposting our materials every single day.
- Get out there and vote – and make sure you’re voting for a pro-ERA candidate.
We can do this. We WILL do this. We ARE doing this. Let’s do it together.
All our love, our thanks and our hearts go out to you,
Kam, Nat and the EME Team
