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ERA bus rolls through Central New York with a mission to codify equality once and for all

The ERA Bus outside US Representative Brandon Williams’ Syracuse Office.
Holliday Moore
/
WAER News
The ERA Bus outside US Representative Brandon Williams’ Syracuse Office.

A bright green bus filled with women’s rights advocates is rolling across New York state throughout the month of September. Recently it stopped in Syracuse demanding attention, especially from one man.

“If they can roll back a woman's rights to an abortion, they can roll back any right,” former US Congressional member Carolyn Maloney warned the gaggle of supporters. “The only way to protect women,” she continued as she pushed an elevator button to go up, “is to put them into the constitution where they rightfully belong.”

It’s the message she is bringing to policy makers throughout New York and the country. On this visit, she parked her bus outside junior congressman Brandon Williams’ regional office on Warren Street to ask him to free the original Equal Rights Amendment. The bill was held hostage last year when it was tabled under Resolution 25 in the House Judiciary Committee.

To vote on it, the House must approve a motion to discharge the amendment to the floor of the United States Congress so that it is eligible for a vote.

“We have 214 signatures. We only need four more,” Maloney explained to the elevator full of supporters as they ascended to William’s office on the seventh floor. “We're here to ask Representative Brendan Williams to be one of those signatures.”

Former US Representative Carolyn Maloney holds letter addressed to Rep. Williams asking that he sign to release the Equal Rights Amendment from the House Judiciary Committee. Williams is one of the last holdouts to do so.
Holliday Moore
/
WAER News
Former US Representative Carolyn Maloney holds letter addressed to Rep. Williams asking that he sign to release the Equal Rights Amendment from the House Judiciary Committee. Williams is one of the last holdouts to do so.

It’s been a full century since suffragist, and founder of the National Woman's Party (NWP), Alice Paul authored the Equal Rights Amendment back in 1923. Written after the passing of women’s right to vote, Paul had wanted to codify women’s equal rights by making it a federal crime to discriminate against anyone on the basis of sex.

Although it was initially written with women’s equality in mind, NOW leadership has expanded the language to define discrimination to sex, race, sexual orientation, marital status, ethnicity, national origin, color or indigence.

Under those parameters, “It doesn't just affect women as women, but the LGBTQIA community is going to be affected by this,” said Toni Van Pelt, former National Organization for Women (NOW) president and one of the activists driving statewide with Maloney to get the ERA out of committee and moving again.

Representative Williams is one of the last holdouts who could release the ERA bill to the full House for a vote. Attempts by WAER to hear how Williams will vote have gone unanswered.

“We need 218. It's been 101 years. Not one year more,” Maloney announced at the end of her visit to Williams’ Syracuse office.

Stepping out of the elevator into the lobby she, too, is rebuffed, but determined that the ERA be “recognized and published as ratified this year.”

She hops back into the bright green bus, with newly written signatures endorsing her mission all along its side, including endorsements from other New leaders, like Syracuse City Mayor Ben Walsh and Mark Spadafore with the Greater Syracuse Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and State Senator John Mannion who's challenging Williams in the upcoming Congressional election.

Signatures of other local leaders who support Maloney’s mission signed the outside panel of the ERA Bus, including State Senator John Mannion, Syracuse City Mayor Ben Walsh, and Greater Syracuse Labor Council President Mark Spadafore.
Holliday Moore
/
WAER News
Signatures of other local leaders who support Maloney’s mission signed the outside panel of the ERA Bus, including State Senator John Mannion, Syracuse City Mayor Ben Walsh, and Greater Syracuse Labor Council President Mark Spadafore.

Moore arrives in Syracuse after working in the Phoenix, Arizona, market, where her extensive experience includes tenures as a Morning Edition reporter for KJZZ-FM, the local NPR affiliate; producing, anchoring and reporting for KTAR News Radio; and serving as a political and senior reporter for KNXV-TV.