SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
equal rights amendment
What Is To Be Done? Take Hold of Our History
We must lay claim to or, better, reclaim America’s past and—without discounting the terrible tragedies and ironies that have marked the lives of so many Americans—articulate the truly radical story of America.
Apr 24, 2025
“America needs something more right now than a “must-do” list from liberals and progressives. America needs a different story… the leaders, and thinkers, and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people… The right story will set our course for a generation to come…”
“Tell it—for America’s sake.”—Bill Moyers, A New Story for America(2006)
The time has come. The crisis intensifies, and the struggle is being joined. Abraham Lincoln’s warning of 1862–“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth”—speaks ever more directly to us. But keep listening. Lincoln did not merely issue a warning to his fellow citizens. Believing they already essentially knew what he was to say, he reminded them of who they were and made it perfectly clear to them what they had to do to overcome the crisis and prevail against the enemy they confronted. He told them that winning the war and sustaining the Union required not simply defeating the Confederacy, but also making America’s revolutionary promise all the more real for all the more Americans. He told them that to truly secure the United States they had to end slavery. He called on them to make America radically freer, more equal, and more democratic.
The time has come for us to do the same. The time has come for us to remind ourselves of who we are and what that demands. The time has come for us to take hold of our history and make America radical again.
The resurgent democratic energies and agencies we are sensing and seeing reveal that Americans not only continue both to believe in America’s revolutionary promise and to feel the radical impulse imbued in American life by the Revolution and sustained by the struggles of generations, but also yearn to defend American democratic life. Thus, they challenge not only a treacherous and reactionary president and his party. They challenge us—the democratic left—as well.
Even as we draw inspiration and encouragement from America’s progressive and radical story, we should never forget what our forebears never forgot, that the America we seek lies not in the past, but in the future that we are struggling to make.
They challenge labor unionists, progressives, radicals, socialists, and true liberals to do what we have failed to do for the past 50 years. They challenge us to finally fulfill the fearful expectations that in the 1970s drove the corporate powers that be and their conservative and neoliberal champions to declare war on the progress of American democratic life and pursue to this day class-war and culture-war campaigns against the democratic achievements of generations; the hard-won rights of workers, women, and people of color; and the very memory of how those achievements were secured and those rights were won. They challenge us to unite in a coalition—call it a “popular front” if you wish—to liberate the Democratic party, the historic Party of the People, from the Money Power and to take up the fight to truly assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans. A coalition determined to not only win elections, but also harness the powers of democratic government, subject capital to ever greater public regulation and control, and push the nation all the more in a social-democratic direction.
We cannot delay. We must start doing what we have not been doing. We must embrace our history and recognize that we are radicals at heart. And we must build a coalition of democratic forces which is committed not merely to restoring the democratic legacy of generations and the rights of workers, women, and people of color, but also, if we are to truly secure them, to radically or, if you prefer, progressively extending and deepening them. We must address the needs of the commonwealth and its citizens by re-appropriating through taxation the wealth transferred from working people to capital and the rich. We must empower labor both private and public to organize and bargain collectively and to elect union brothers and sisters to corporate boards. We must make ourselves more secure by demilitarizing and de-weaponizing everyday American life and by establishing a system of universal national healthcare. We must enact the Equal Rights Amendment and guarantee a woman’s right to control her own body. We must not simply abolish the Electoral College, but actually enact a constitutional amendment guaranteeing citizens the right to vote. Moreover, we should redeem FDR’s vision of an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.
We must, however, do more than come up with a “must-do list” that will appeal to and draw together diverse interests. We must do what America’s finest radical and progressive voices have always done in the face of crises and forces determined to stymie, or bring an end altogether to, the progress of American democratic life. We must recover and proclaim anew the revolutionary promise projected in Common Sense, the Declaration, the Preamble, and the Bill of Rights so as to call out the powers that be and call forth our fellow citizens.
We must do what our greatest democratic poet Walt Whitman did on the eve of the Civil War when he wrote in his continuing epic, Leaves of Grass:
YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders,––Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.
We must do what Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her colleagues did at Seneca Falls in 1848 when they stated in the Declaration of Sentiments that “all men and women are created equal”; what Frederick Douglass did in 1852 when he asked his fellow Americans “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”; what Lincoln did most eloquently at Gettysburg in 1863 when he projected a “new birth of freedom” to assure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth”; what Eugene Debs did when he called forth Paine and other radicals and progressives to champion the causes of labor and socialism; what Franklin Roosevelt did in proclaiming the Four Freedoms and envisioning the creation of an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans; and what Martin Luther King, Jr. did when demanding a fulfillment of America’s revolutionary promise on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
Moreover, we must lay claim to or, better, reclaim America’s past and—without discounting the terrible tragedies and ironies that have marked the lives of so many Americans—articulate the truly radical story of America, the truly radical story that is America. The story of how, in the face of fierce opposition, and despite all of our terrible faults and failings, generations of Americans native-born and newly-arrived, men and women in all their extraordinary diversity, have struggled both to realize the nation’s fundamental promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to enlarge not only the We in We the People, but also the powers of the people. Indeed, the story of how our greatest generations confronted and transcended mortal threats to American democratic life in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1930s-40s (not to mention the 1960s) by making the United States radically freer, more equal, and more democratic. And we must tell that story in a way that enables us to not only appreciate why we feel the democratic impulses and yearnings we do, but also to recognize and embrace our many and diverse struggles to make real the nation’s promise past and present as ours not respectively “theirs” alone.
Finally, even as we draw inspiration and encouragement from America’s progressive and radical story, we should never forget what our forebears never forgot, that the America we seek lies not in the past, but in the future that we are struggling to make. And in that spirit, we should recall, if not publicly recite, lines such as these from Langston Hughes’ 1936 poem “Let America Be America Again”:
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
The time has come to take hold of our history and make America radical again. The time has come not merely to take back America, but all the more to make America America.
Note: This article is based on the Afterword to my 2020 book Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'This Is a Victory': Biden Affirms ERA Has Been 'Ratified' and Law of the Land
"It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people," said the president.
Jan 17, 2025
More than half a century after the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, President Joe Biden on Friday announced his administration's official opinion that the amendment is ratified and its protections against sex-based discrimination are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
The announcement has been long demanded by rights advocates including Democratic lawmakers who have recently called on Biden to affirm the ERA's ratification in order to protect reproductive rights that have been gutted by the Republican Party.
"It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people," said Biden. "In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex."
The statement came five years after Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. With that move, state lawmakers completed the requirement that three-fourths of U.S. states ratify the amendment.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, ratification deadlines that were set by Congress after the ERA had passed by the time Virginia ratified the amendment, and five states have rescinded their approval.
But a senior White House official toldCNN Friday that the president's decision was informed by the American Bar Association's opinion that "no time limit was included in the text of the Equal Rights Amendment."
"The Constitution's framers wisely avoided the chaos that would have resulted if states were able to take back the ratifying votes at any time," according to the legal association.
Former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who in November called on Biden to take every action available to him in order to protect reproductive rights, including ensuring the ERA was recognized as part of the Constitution, called the president's announcement "an historic and consequential step."
"For over a century, we have fought for the principle that 'equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,'" said Bush. "These 24 words must now be published and enshrined in our Constitution to provide a crucial safeguard against discrimination for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and all marginalized communities."
With Biden issuing his opinion, advocates have held that the archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, must now certify and publish the amendment.
In December, Shogan released a statement saying that in 2020 and 2022, "the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable" arguing that the ERA could not be certified.
The senior administration official told CNN that Shogan "is required to publish an amendment once it has been effectively ratified."
"It will be up to the courts to interpret this and their view of the Equal Rights Amendment," they added.
Kate Kelly, a human rights lawyer who wrote the book Ordinary Equality about the ERA, asserted the amendment has been part of the Constitution since it was ratified by Virginia in 2020.
"The Archivist has no constitutional or legal role in the amending process," said Kelly. "She does NOT get to decide what is or is not in the U.S. Constitution. Her boss (the president of the United States) has spoken for his administration. That's it. The ERA is in! This is a victory."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Biden's action on Friday honored "the work of generations of activists and organizers for equal rights."
"While we still have much work to do to ensure that the next generation of women has more, not less, rights than previous generations, this is an important declaration," said Jayapal. "Now we must do the work to truly make this the practice of the land."
Keep ReadingShow Less
More Than 120 House Democrats Call On Biden to Ratify ERA
"Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency," said the lawmakers.
Dec 16, 2024
With weeks to go until President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office with a Republican trifecta in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, more that 120 Democratic lawmakers on Sunday called on President Joe Biden to take a crucial step toward protecting millions of Americans from Trump's far-right MAGA agenda by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.
The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and met the requirement for it to be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states in 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment.
Yet during his first term, Trump and the Republican party blocked the implementation of the ERA, claiming that since nearly 50 years passed in between the amendment's passage and the meeting of the ratification requirement, the threshold was not achieved by the deadline set by Congress.
"No Republican would care about" the deadline, said journalist Emma Vigeland, "if roles were reversed."
Citing the U.S. Code, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment—led their colleagues in telling Biden that the national Archivist, Colleen Shogan, is required to certify an amendment "when the National Archives and Records Administration receives official notice that a proposed amendment to the Constitution has been approved by enough states."
All Biden has to do to ratify the amendment, which would explicitly outlaw sex and gender discrimination, is direct Shogan to publish the ERA, said the lawmakers.
"Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency," wrote the representatives, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), and James McGovern (D-Mass.).
Earlier this month, 46 U.S. senators joined the call for Biden to ratify the ERA.
As Trump has bragged about his hand in the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and Republicans have advocated for a national abortion ban, reproductive right advocates have said that after being officially added to the U.S. Constitution, the ERA could be invoked by judges to overturn anti-abortion laws.
In Utah, a state-level ERA was invoked in September to place an abortion ban on hold.
"A constitutional guarantee against sex discrimination would strengthen the protection of reproductive rights, ensuring that people have the right to make decisions about their own bodies without political interference or unequal treatment," wrote the lawmakers.
The signatories noted that portions of the Civil Rights Act and Education Amendments protect people from government-based sex discrimination, but gender equality is still "vulnerable to changes in the political landscape, judicial interpretations, and shifts in public opinion" because the Constitution does not explicitly protect it.
"By adding the ERA to the Constitution, it would establish an unambiguous guarantee that sex-based discrimination is unconstitutional," wrote the lawmakers. "The ERA would help eliminate gender-based pay gaps, improve workplace protections, and ensure that gender biases no longer affect hiring, promotions, or job security. With the ERA enshrined in the Constitution, people who experience sex-based discrimination would have a clearer legal path to challenge discriminatory laws or policies. California's state ERA did just that, securing protections for women in the workforce and ensuring equal treatment in education and healthcare."
By directing Shogan to ratify and publish the ERA, they added, Biden would be throwing his unequivocal support behind an amendment supported by 78% of Americans, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.
Biden said on August 26, Women's Equality Day, that he has "long supported the ERA" and called on Congress "to act swiftly to recognize ratification of the ERA and affirm the fundamental truth that all Americans should have equal rights and protections under the law."
But by simply "directing the archivist to publish the ERA," said the lawmakers, Biden would "leave an indelible mark on the history of
this nation, demonstrating once again that your legacy is one of expanding rights, protecting freedoms, and securing a more inclusive future for all Americans. We urge you to take this final, transformative step toward ensuring the full promise of equality for every person in the United States."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular