Unintended Consequences Will Follow Loss of Abortion Care in Arizona (video)

Posted on by Pamela Powers
Rep. Pam Powers Hannley

“Parental choice!” is the rallying cry for Arizona Republicans who promote spending state tax dollars to pay for private and religious schools.

Republicans shout “My body! My choice!” on the Floor of the Arizona House when they rail against wearing facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID.

They cry for the freedom to be unvaccinated — against COVID, measles or anything else.

They exercise their power to protect their right to carry assault weapons to the grocery store and to keep guns cheap and plentiful in Arizona.

BUT when it comes to reproductive rights and body autonomy for women, Republicans insist on government control over family planning choices that are NONE of their business. This is the height of hypocrisy. Government has no right to insert itself into private medical decisions.

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Arizona Reacts to End of Abortion Rights (video)

Posted on by Pamela Powers
Planned Parenthood & Dems Press Conference

Planned Parenthood of Arizona (PP) and the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) held a joint press conference at the Arizona Capitol on June 24, 2022, the day the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, the landmark abortion rights case from 1973.

At the press conference, PP President and CEO Brittany Fonteno said that Planned Parenthood stopped all abortion care services and canceled appointments in Arizona that day, due to multiple conflicting state laws on the books.

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My Focus Is Food & Housing Security (video)

Posted on by Pamela Powers
affordable housing

This week House and Senate members are gathering co-sponsors and filing many of their bills. This year, as I have in the past, I am focusing on the Social Determinants of Health and Adverse Childhood Experiences. Arizona is one of the stingiest states in the US. We force people to live with sickness and poverty.

Governmental policies should give people the freedom to thrive. That means helping families with food insecurity, housing insecurity and financial insecurity. That means helping them keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

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Podcast: Fight for $15 in a Right-to-Work State (video)

Posted on by Pamela Powers
Rep. PPH Podcast

Forty years ago, in the fall of 1981, when I told my Dad that I was leaving Ohio and moving to Arizona, the first words out of his mouth were, “Well, you know Arizona is a ‘right to work state,’ don’t cha? That means ‘right to work for less.’”

I grew up in a union household. Dad was a Steelworker for most of his work life. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he was in the thick of the struggle for better wages, better benefits, and better working conditions for factory workers in Northern Ohio. Technically, I knew what “right to work state” meant, but at the time, I had no idea how moving to a right to work state would affect my career and my children’s future opportunities.

My last job in Columbus was as a professional photographer working for a swanky graphic and product design agency. (It was a really cool place to work, and over the last 40 years, particularly when I a wage slave at the University of Arizona, I often wonder why I left!)

At my first job interview in Tucson at a much smaller advertising and graphic design agency, the owner asked about my salary history. I had more than six years of experience in design, photography, and printing production. I told him that I was making $8 per hour in Columbus (and as far as I was concerned, I was worth every penny!) He literally laughed in my face and said, “You’ll never make that kind of money here in Tucson!”

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Podcast: Labor Day, How Unions Are Organizing Arizona

Posted on by Pamela Powers
Rep. PPH's podcast

Work has changed dramatically in the past 40 years.

In the 1980s, President Reagan busted the air traffic controllers’ union, corporations began closing factories and offshoring American jobs to countries with cheap labor, and trickledown economics dictated tax cuts for the rich and the dregs for the rest of us.

It the 1990s, banking deregulation paved the way for the Wall Street crash of 2008 by eliminating financial protections enacted after the Great Depression.

During the Great Recession, which dragged on for years, almost 9 million Americans lost their jobs. Unemployment hit its peak at 10% in 2009. Although, many governors tout robust recoveries from the 2008 Wall Street crash, the jobs Americans have today are dramatically different from jobs in the 1970s – before union busting, offshoring, and tax cuts for the rich became commonplace. Before politicians cared more about fundraising and getting elected, than about the people they claim to serve.

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Arizona Republicans Vote Down ERA (video)

Posted on by Pamela Powers
Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley

Arizona House Democrats made a substitute motion to suspend the rules and bring HCR2010 Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to an immediate vote today (May 19, 2021). Republicans have been bringing us to the floor for one or two votes for several days in a row while they work their backroom budget deals, far from watchful eyes of voters, reporters and Democrats.

The Floor drama went a bit differently than the ERA vote has in past years. The newly elected Democratic women Legislators really wanted to propose the ERA. I agreed and said it would be better if someone else made the motion, this year since they’re on to me after four years of motions. Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham didn’t recognize Rep. Melody Hernandez, but a few minutes later, just as Majority Leader Ben Toma made the motion to adjourn, Grantham recognized mild mannered, former school teacher Rep. Judy Schwiebert, who rose to make a substitute motion to suspend the rules to bring HCR2010 to a vote. Republicans didn’t try to substitute her substitute motion. Consequently, we voted on the Schwiebert amendment, unlike other years. (Later Grantham said he goofed on the parliamentary procedures; Toma’s motion to adjourn should have taken precedent.)

This has been a tough year for women in the Legislature with multiple attacks on our rights, passage of the Draconian anti-abortion bill SB1457, and no additional funding for housing, maternal and child health, or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). In this toxic, anti-woman environment, I think it is only fitting to propose ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

The vast majority of people living in poverty in Arizona and in the US are women and their children. Why are we purposefully shortchanging future generations by forcing working mothers to struggle to put food on the table and a roof over their heads?

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