New Leadership and the Final Road Home: Syracuse, New York

Syracuse has been an important stop on our road to equality before — and we were especially pleased to return at a historic moment for the city.

In 2024, our Sign4ERA bus tour came to Syracuse and was welcomed by then-mayor Ben Walsh, a strong ERA advocate and one of the first Mayors for ERA. Two years later, the Driving the Vote for Equality Tour returned with the Golden Flyer II to meet Syracuse’s newly elected mayor, Sharon Owens — the first African American and only the second woman elected mayor in the city’s history.

And just as important: this was our final stop before turning the Golden Flyer II toward New York City and the completion of an extraordinary journey across America. We arrived in Syracuse carrying the signatures, stories, encouragement, and determination of 25 states and more than 10,000 miles. We left carrying something more: the voice of a city that knows, from hard personal experience, exactly what is at stake.

The program opened with author Jeryl Schriever — introduced by Janet Schweinke of Central New York NOW, who served as the event’s emcee — telling the story of Alice Burke and Nell Richardson’s 1916 cross-country suffrage drive to an audience that included many hearing it for the first time. She read from a Los Angeles Times account of the women’s luggage: three evening gowns, fourteen dresses, a tiny sewing machine, a Corona typewriter, extra axles, transmission gear, chains, and spare tires, somehow packed into a car barely larger than a go-kart.

She traced the route through snowstorms and desert crossings, the bullet hole in the cat’s basket near the Texas border, the rerouting around Pancho Villa, and the dead chicken in a desert well between Phoenix and California. She noted that Alice and Nell passed through Syracuse near the end of their journey — turning south at Ilion, down through Poughkeepsie, and back to Manhattan after 10,700 miles.

“If Alice and Nell could drive that car with all of that stuff and a cat over terrible roads, through snowstorms, through rivers with broken gear pins — we can do this too. We can get this done. All we need to do is call our Congresswoman, make noise, because if you’re not making noise, it means you agree with what’s going on.” — Jeryl Schriever

Carolyn Maloney reminded the crowd that this is not the first time the ERA NOW tour crew has stood in Syracuse — the 2024 bus came through working to pass the New York State ERA and build an ERA-supportive Congress, and succeeded on both counts. Three congressional seats flipped from anti-ERA to pro-ERA in 2024. Now, she said, the goal is a majority in both chambers after November 2026 — and a Joint Resolution in the first 100 days of the new Congress.

She described the three-part strategy: Sign4ERA.org, now carrying more than 166,000 signatures toward the goal of one million by Election Day; the Driving the Vote for Equality Tour itself, building momentum in local communities across the country; and Mayors for ERA, where Mayor Owens was already a committed champion.

She closed with a call to action: sign the petition, ask five friends to sign, and if your member of Congress won’t support the ERA, find someone who will run against them. “We need an ERA Congress,” she said. “Not an Epstein Congress.”

Nicole Watts — the first woman to chair the Onondaga County Legislature, and the first Democrat to chair it in roughly 50 years — described driving to Seneca Falls the moment she was nominated, wanting to stand with the statues along the river and remind herself whose shoulders she was standing on. “There were hundreds of thousands, millions of women over time that have been fighting this fight,” she said. “And it is crazy to me that we are still fighting it.”

She framed the ERA as a defense of the democratic foundation itself: “We are not a representative government if we are only representing some of us. We all need the right to vote. We need to remove the barriers in every way — and make sure the laws are there to not only protect that right to vote, but to ensure that all of the needs of all of our people are coming into play when we are making decisions.”

Anne-Marie Tallaricio, President of the Central New York Labor Federation representing 11 counties, opened by asking everyone in the crowd to look left and look right: “Every woman you see has had to do more than any man who holds the same position. And I bet they make less.” She spoke from personal experience — when she announced her candidacy for labor federation president, two male colleagues ran against her. One literally turned his chair around when he heard she was running. She won. She made the point plainly: “When we finally get a woman president of this country, she will know more than any man who came before her about what is going on at the so-called kitchen table.”

Gwen Moak, President of the Syracuse-Onondaga County NAACP, delivered the organization’s formal statement of support: the NAACP formally supports the ERA and its recognition as the 28th Amendment, viewing constitutional gender equality as deeply intertwined with racial and economic justice. “The NAACP believes that passing the ERA will provide a stronger legal framework to combat disparities in employment, health care access, and wages,” she said. “Let’s get the ERA passed.”

Mark Spadafore — upstate New York political director for 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and President of the Greater Syracuse Labor Council — spoke as a man who came to listen before he spoke. “My role today is not to speak over those voices, but to stand beside them and add my voice to the call for equality under the law.” He connected the labor movement’s history of collective action directly to the ERA fight: “No democracy can claim to value freedom while half its population still has to fight to have equality explicitly recognized.”

"When women rise, working families rise. When women have equal protections, workplaces become fairer, communities become stronger, children see a future with more opportunity and more justice. The fight for the ERA is not a women’s issue. It’s a worker issue, it’s a family issue, and it’s an American issue.” — Mark Spadafore

And then Mayor Sharon Owens took the microphone — and the room understood immediately why 70 percent of Syracuse voted for her.

She began at City Hall’s second floor, where a wall of photographs shows rows upon rows of men, then Stephanie Minor, then Ben Walsh, and now her — second woman, first African American. She was told she couldn’t win because she wasn’t a politician. She was told she couldn’t win because a woman had already served. She was told the city wasn’t ready for a Black mayor. She won each argument, and then she won the office.

“I’m the mayor of this city because I’m qualified to be the mayor of this city. My eyes see, my ears hear, my mind thinks, and my heart resonates on issues, experiences, and hopes of people of all genders, of all races, of all economic statuses.” — Mayor Sharon Owens

She connected the ERA directly to the voting rights fight — noting that both end in the word “amendment,” which means something had to be changed because it wasn’t right. “What we’re learning,” she said, “is that we cannot rest on our laurels on what we believe the Constitution protects — because there are those who are trying to dismantle it. But we say, hell no.”

She pledged to carry the ERA message to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in the coming weeks — and she had a message for the audience too: “When we’re underestimated, that’s our superpower. Underestimate me all day.”

A note from Congressman John Mannion — unable to attend but sending his support — was read aloud by emcee Janet Schweinke: he had been a signer on the first ERA petition brought to Syracuse and remains committed to the federal fight. The organizing backbone of the day was provided by Diane Dwyer and Nancy Bunn of Central New York NOW, whose tireless preparation made everything possible.

Syracuse has now welcomed this movement twice — in 2024 and in 2026 — and each time with new energy and new leadership stepping forward to carry the work. Mayor Owens’ election reflects the progress that becomes possible when barriers are broken and more women bring their experiences, voices, and leadership to public office.

Leaving Syracuse, the Golden Flyer II turned toward New York City — and the completion of an extraordinary journey across America. Behind us were thousands of miles, communities across the country, and Americans who had added their names and voices to the call for equality.

But returning home does not mean the work is over. The road ahead remains clear: build support, gather more signatures, and continue working until the Equal Rights Amendment is recognized in the U.S. Constitution.

One final stretch. One final destination. And one enduring goal — equality for all.