Reprinted from The Voice, May 9, 2019
Cecile Richards, a recent guest on the MSNBC Morning Joe television program, announced that she and co-sponsor Alicia Garza have formed a new organization entitled: “Supermajority.”
The following article was written by Chantal da Silva for Newsweek.
“Three prominent activists have launched an organization seeking to encourage women to use their political power to influence the country’s elections, including the upcoming 2020 presidential race.
“(Led) by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, former Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards, and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Ai-jen Poo, Supermajority, as the group has been named, aims to mobilize at least two million women over the next year to become political leaders within their communities.
“‘Women are marching, running for office, donating to, and advocating for causes and campaigns, and voting in record numbers. We can be the most powerful force in America—if we do the work together,’ Supermajority’s website states. ‘One woman can be ignored, two can be dismissed, but together, we’re a Supermajority, and we’re unstoppable.’
“In an apparent reference to the #MeToo movement, the organization, which describes itself as multiracial and intergenerational, said that “in the past two years, we’ve seen what happens when women mobilize.
“‘We’ve been the majority of voters in every national election since 1964. In 2018, women helped elect a Congress with a record-breaking 127 women members,’ the group said. But while ‘women are on the cusp of becoming the most powerful force in America,’ Supermajority’s co-founders say that to ‘fundamentally transform this country’ women must work together.
“To help further that goal, the group’s leaders say their organization will provide on-the-ground training to help women advocates ‘get and stay informed on issues that affect their lives,’ in addition to creating a ‘women’s agenda’ that will put women’s issues first, ‘from economic equity and opportunity to dignity and safety on the job to keeping families and communities safe.’
“While Supermajority’s aim is to push politicians to adopt a ‘women’s new deal,’ as Richards put it to The Associated Press in a recent interview, the group is not expected to endorse individual candidates.
“In addition to Richards, Garza, and Poo, Supermajority’s leadership team includes activists and organizers Jess Morales Rocketto, the chair of Families Belong Together, Deirdre Schifeling, a senior adviser for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Civitas Public Affairs Group partner Katherine Grainger.
“The group’s creation comes as women’s voices are becoming increasingly powerful in politics and beyond. Particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which saw countless numbers of women around the world come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, a new, strengthened, focus has zeroed in on issues affecting women in the U.S. and around the world.
“Seeking to harness women’s growing ‘collective power in this moment,’ Supermajority states it aims to ‘lift up an agenda that addresses our needs and hold candidates and elected officials accountable,’ Silva wrote.
“The specific instances in which the U.S. Constitution requires a super-majority are limited to: Convicting an Impeachment (2/3 majority in the Senate — Article 1, Section 3) Expulsion of a member of one house of Congress (2/3 vote of the house in question — Article 1, Section 5) Aug 16, 2010.”