The Equal Rights Amendment Bills, House Bill 271 and Senate Bill 184, are still active bills since constitutional amendments are exempt from crossover deadline. In the next few weeks, please escalate personal visits, emails, letters, and calls with your elected representatives and senators in the NC General Assembly. It needs to be a face-to-face visit, individualized mailing, or phone call.
First, if your representative or senator is a Republican, please express your insistence that he/she must get the ERA Bills out of committee with a favorable report because women’s rights are foundational to this country.
Second, if your representative or senator is a Democrat, he/she is already a co-sponsor of the ERA Bills, so thank them and express your insistence that they all step up efforts to champion equal rights and push the Committee Chairs to get the bills out of committee with favorable reports. Contact your legislators even if you know they are supportive; we need to get them moving on this.
Third, ERA activities in May included the Great 38th Clothesline Spectacle on the Halifax Mall. At the event, we displayed ERA support resolutions and petitions that you and your teams collected from across North Carolina to show state wide support for Equal Rights. To reinforce the depth of ERA support by local municipalities, organizations and individuals residing in their legislative district, please personally deliver or email your resolutions/petitions to your legislators. Visit our resolutions page to find a copy of the resolution from your community.
Fourth, make a note of what you learn from your visit/correspondence and pass it along to us (info@era-nc.org). I will make sure that your information is recorded on our ERA Legislative Report Cards. The report cards will be used to calculate votes for ERA and to target potential yes votes for action. I am keeping report cards for each legislator. If you need any help or additional information, please let me know.
Let’s show our elected officials what persistence looks like!