ERA Coalition Press Release: April 23, 2020 - (Virtual) Campus ERA Day

CAMPUS ERA DAY ON APRIL 27TH TO BE VIRTUAL EVENT IN SUPPORT OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Actor Alyssa Milano, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, and ERA Advocates from Around the Country to Join Panel

For Immediate Release --

(April 23, 2020) New York, NY -- The fourth annual Campus ERA Day hosted by The ERA Coalition and the Eva Kastan Grove Fellowship Program at Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College will be held as a virtual event on Monday, April 27th at 6:00 PM EST.  The annual event is the largest of its kind in support of the Equal Rights Amendment ratification. Students representing colleges from states including South Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan, Mississippi, and Hawaii will come together on Zoom. For the first time, Campus ERA Day will welcome high school students as participants.

The year 2020 has already seen monumental progress:  Virginia ratified in January, fulfilling the constitutional requirement that three-fourths, or 38, of the states ratify an amendment for it to become part of the Constitution. A few days later, the Attorneys General of three of the states that ratified most recently - Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia - filed suit against the Archivist of the United States demanding that he certify the ERA as a constitutional amendment. Less than a month later, the House of Representatives, in a broad and bipartisan vote, removed the revised 1982 time limit for ratification.  The House passed the original ERA resolution in 1971. A similar bill to remove the deadline is pending in the Senate, bringing the nation closer than ever to recognition of the ERA as the 28th amendment to the Constitution.

The live-streamed April 27 panel discussion on Zoom will be broadcast simultaneously on Facebook Live. Joining will be: award-winning actor and activist Alyssa Milano; Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY); head of the ERA Coalition’s Legal Task Force Linda Coberly; and three legislators who were instrumental in seeing the ERA ratified in their respective states - Nevada State Senator Dr. Patricia Spearman, former Illinois state representative Steve Andersson, and Virginia Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy. A special guest joining the panel this year is high school sophomore Rosie Couture of Generation Ratify. Senators Cardin and Murkowski, co-sponsors of SJ Res 6 to remove the time limit on the ERA, will speak to the students on video. Carol Jenkins, the CEO and co-President of the ERA Coalition who has twice served as a Grove Program Leader at Roosevelt House, will moderate the event.

Participating students across the country will have the opportunity to ask questions in a live Q&A session, via Zoom video conference https://zoom.us/j/121535572 .  The event will also be livestreamed on the ERA Coalition’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/eracoalition/.  Students may ask questions via Twitter at @campuseraday and @ERACoalition and using the hashtag #CampusERADay. 

“2020 has been a year of great breakthroughs for the ERA,” said Ms. Jenkins.  “The excitement and enthusiasm of these students, their passion for equality and for the Equal Rights Amendment makes the future look all the more promising. This generation gets it--until there is real constitutional equality, we have a broken system. They believe they can fix it and so do we.”

Jessica Neuwirth, a co-founder of the ERA Coalition and the Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program for Roosevelt House at Hunter College, launched the first Campus ERA Day in 2017 with a cohort of Grove Fellows from Hunter.

Hunter College President Jennifer Raab who established the Grove Fellowship program at Hunter said, “Despite being away from their college campuses, we are pleased to be able to bring students together to raise awareness about the need for an Equal Rights Amendment.”  The Grove Fellowship program at Hunter, established with a generous gift from the family to mark the 80th birthday of Hunter alumna Eva Kastan Grove (‘58) funds learning, mentoring, student travel, and other activities that prepare them for careers in public service.

The ERA Coalition continues to pursue a 50-state ratification strategy with active organizations in all of the 12 unratified states pushing to pass the ERA in 2020.

For more information about the Equal Rights Amendment and ERA Coalition, please visit our website.

About the ERA Coalition:

The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted, organized action to the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA Coalition has a sister organization, the Fund for Women’s Equality, which promotes public education and outreach on the need for constitutional equality. Comprised of nearly one hundred organizations across the country, the Coalition provides education and advocacy on Constitutional Equality.

Press Contact (for the ERA Coalition): Carol Jenkins

media@eracoalition.org

+1 (646) 596-2550

ABOUT ROOSEVELT HOUSE

Roosevelt House, an integral part of Hunter College since 1943, re-opened in 2010 as a public policy institute honoring the distinguished legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who lived here from 1908 until 1933. Its mission is three-fold: to educate students in public policy and human rights, to support faculty research, and to foster creative dialogue and civic engagement. Roosevelt House also offers tours and exhibits that bring the history of the Roosevelts to a wide audience.

ABOUT HUNTER COLLEGE

Hunter College, located in the heart of Manhattan, is the largest college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Founded in 1870 - and now marking its 150th anniversary - it is also one of the oldest public colleges in the country and famous for the diversity of its student body, which is as diverse as New York City itself. Most Hunter students are the first in their families to attend college and many go on to top professional and graduate programs, winning Fulbright scholarships, Mellon fellowships, National Institutes of Health grants, and other competitive honors. More than 23,000 students currently attend Hunter, pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 170 areas of study. The 1,700 full- and part-time members of Hunter's faculty are unparalleled. They receive prestigious national grants, contribute to the world's leading academic journals, and play major roles in cutting-edge research. They are fighting cancer, formulating public policy, expanding our culture, enhancing technology, and more.

 Press Contact (for Hunter College): Harold Holzer

Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College

Phone: 646-894-6902     

Email: hh433@hunter.cuny.edu