ERA – Powers For the People

Arizona Republicans Vote Down ERA (video)

Posted on May 19, 2021May 19, 2021 by Pamela J. Powers

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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#HB2388: Big Brother Meets Aunt Lydia (video)

Posted on February 9, 2020February 14, 2023 by Pamela J. Powers

With big data surveillance, church recruitment, government-funded, incomplete and biased medical information, and unregulated clinics providing “all wrap-around pregnancy, counseling and post-childbirth services”, HB2388 is Big Brother and Aunt Lydia’s love child.

Last week was draining– with multiple tax cuts in Ways and Means, fake pregnancy centers in Health and Human Services (HB2388), and passage of the Build Your Own Border Wall on the House floor on reconsideration. (Another Zombie Bill brought back from the dead).

I recorded the video (below) late in the day on Thursday after the end of a two-part, marathon health committee meeting with multiple ideological debates. I am proud to serve with Dr. Amish Shah, and Reps. Kelli Butler and Alma Hernandez. The four of us did a great job standing up for patient choice, reproductive rights, medically accurate and unbiased information, science, privacy and separation of church and state.

No on HB2388 & Yes on HB2068: Someone Else’s Religion Should Not Dictate Your Healthcare (Video)

Posted on February 5, 2020February 14, 2023 by Pamela J. Powers

The Arizona Legislature’s Request to Speak (RTS) system should be on high alert for the House Health and Human Services Committee meeting on Thursday, Feb. 6.

We will be hearing Cathi Herrod’s funding bill for the fake pregnancy hotline bill (HB2388). This bill gives $1.5 million a year to the 211 information and referral line, but it has strings attached. The information provided will be tailored by the provider’s religious beliefs.

If this bill or the mirror bill (SB1328) passes, the free public 211 referral line would not be allowed to refer to anyone to any organization or clinic that provides abortions or to any provider that would offer other much-needed public health services like pap smears, pregnancy tests, birth control, HIV tests, and basic public health services… in addition to abortion.

These two bills are bad public health policy that force young women and their children into lives of poverty because of an unplanned pregnancy. They cost the state money because 52% of the lives births in Arizona are funded by AHCCCS, the state’s Medical program.

These two bills restrict your access to care based upon someone else’s deeply held religious beliefs. The government should not fund this.

Virginia Dumped the #GOP & Passed the #ERA (video)

Posted on January 16, 2020February 15, 2023 by Pamela J. Powers

ERA wins multiple Capitol Times awards, 2019.

January 15, 2020 is a red letter day for the women of the United States because the Virginia Legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

While the Arizona Legislature has been tied up in pomp and circumstance, speeches, and meetings with lobbyists during this first week, Virginia got busy and passed the ERA. How did this move so quickly? The voters Virginia ousted the Republican majority from their legislature in the fall election and restored the Democratic Party to power in that state. Democrats get things done. Democrats in the Arizona House forced a floor vote on the ERA three years in a row, but a handful of powerful Republican men blocked the ERA because they did’t want their members to be embarrassed arguing against equality for their wives, mothers, sisters and friends. (The truth sometimes hurts.)

Now that Virginia has become the 38th and final state needed to ratify the ERA, it will be sent to the Congress to be made part of the Constitution.

John Oliver Asks: Which State Will Make History by Being #38 to Ratify #ERA? (video)

Posted on July 17, 2019January 9, 2020 by Pamela J. Powers

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) needs only one more state to ratify it before it can become an amendment to the US Constitution. Although State Senator Sandra Day O’Connor and Arizona State Rep. Sister Claire Dunn proposed ratification, Arizona is one of the laggard states that never ratified the ERA in the 1970s.

Both Senator Victoria Steele and I proposed ERA ratification in 2019 and in past years. Now, HBO Commentator John Oliver has jumped on the ERA bandwagon. Below, you can watch his segment on the history of the ERA and why it should be ratified. Steele has a cameo appearance talking about Arizona’s opportunity to move out of laggard status and move into the history books as the 38th and final state to ratify the ERA.

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‘Democracy in Chains’ Connects Dots on Libertarian & Republican Strategies (video)

Posted on April 29, 2019June 23, 2021 by Pamela J. Powers

If you often scratch your head at the bad bills that the Republicans pass in Congress and in the state legislatures and wonder what their end game is, you should read Democracy in Chains by Nancy McClean.

What you may think are random bad ideas that have somehow gotten into law are actually part of a grand scheme that has been playing out since Brown versus the Board of Education attempted to desegregate public schools in the United States.

An academic, McClean has studied the articles, books and letters of James Buchanan, the economist not the former president. Buchanan was the primary theorist of public choice theory. In the 1950s, public choice theory was used as a rationale to close all of the public schools in the state of Virginia (rather than comply with desegregation) and is being used today to support state-funded vouchers for private and religious schools. In Virginia in the 1950s, the state gave money to white parents for private school vouchers and allowed hundreds of black children to go uneducated for years. Needless to say, this was a travesty of justice.

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