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Another Women's Equality Day will come and go Aug. 26, and still no equality for women is in sight.
What have we seen? The regression of our rights.
And what actions toward equality of rights for every citizen have been taken to move our state and country toward a more perfect union? At the state level, not a whole heap.
In the Minnesota House, early action took place this past session to pass Equal Rights Amendment bills through a host of committees, but an anti-choice majority in that chamber prevented House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, from calling for votes on the House floor.
In the Minnesota Senate, far-right conservative white men, clinging to the last throes of a patriarchal structure that has dominated for so long, refused to even meet with activists to entertain the notion of a conversation about the idea of legalizing equality.
More forward motion on equal rights is playing out at the federal level. This year the U.S. House passed legislation to remove the arbitrary time limit imposed on the ERA last century; similar action awaits Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, permitting a vote in the U.S. Senate.
