This post is from Planned Parenthood Arizona Strategic Relations Officer Kelley Dupps, who traveled to Virginia in late 2019 to work on state campaigns and help turn Virginia blue. After the news broke of Virginia’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Kelley shared some thoughts from last fall and reflected on where we’re heading into 2020.
Virginia is a political beast of a state. Once the capital of the Confederacy and current home to the National Rifle Association, Virginia sports 13 lucky electoral votes (only two more than Arizona), and has served as a training ground for many organizers learning how to make a red state blue. When activists take a tobacco-growing, gun-toting Southern capital and organize it to recognize the humanity and equality of their citizens, they provide inspiration — and a proof of principle — to other organizers nationwide that the seemingly impossible is quite possible.
Effecting Change in Virginia
Virginia showed us what’s possible, and in 2020 Arizonans must remember that elections can be won or lost by just a few votes.
Last year around this time, in January 2019, the Virginia Senate refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Wielded by men and women who believe in patriarchy and voted to ensure that women were not seen or treated as equals under the law, that veto triggered a lot of grassroots passion, and the election season of 2019 in Virginia was lit! Voters wanting more visibility and representation in their democracy sent more women, people of color, and LGBTQ candidates to the state Capitol than ever before, turning a once beet-red state into big ‘D’ Democratic blue.
And elections have consequences.
A year later, on January 15, 2020, Virginia legislators voted to ratify the ERA, solidifying that women are to be treated as equal under the law! Continue reading