CEDAW Hearing Scheduled. Your Action is Needed.

CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) will, after a hiatus of eight years, finally receive another hearing in the US Senate.  Passage by the US has been pending for 35 years.

The US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law will be holding a hearing this coming Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 2 p.m. in the Dirsken Senate Office Building, Room 226. This will be the first hearing on CEDAW since 2002 and the first time ever that the Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on a human rights treaty. The hearing is open to the public.

We would like to see the room filled with supporters of CEDAW, so if you can make it to Washington, DC for this important hearing to show your support, please do so. If you will be attending, please notify Erica Swanson at the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights so that she can get a count of supporters and have a sticker for you to wear in the room; that way, the Senators will know you are supporting the treaty. Her email address is swanson@civilrights.org.

Note, if you can't make it to the hearing, you can listen in.  Just go the this page at 2 pm on Thursday, November 18, 2010 and click on the "Webcast" button.

You may also submit testimony to the subcommittee. I will be submitting testimony on behalf of PA NOW along with the signatures of 515 people who signed on this summer through our Facebook Causes page as well as a printed petition we distributed at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in State College in July.

The formal deadline for receiving statements on your support of CEDAW is one week after the hearing. You should address these to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510. The fax number for the Majority members of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law office is 202-228-4461 and the phone number is 202-224-6884. The phone number for the Minority members of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law office is 202-224-5972 (there is NO fax number listed for the minority committee members on the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee website.

Members of the the Subcommittee include:

MAJORITY MEMBERS:
Dick Durbin (D-IL) Chair
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Arlen Specter (D-PA)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD)
Ted Kaufman (D-DE)

MINORITY MEMBERS:
Tom Coburn (R-OK) Ranking Member
Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC)
John Cornyn (R-TX)

Thank you for your support. Now lets push for full passage without any reservations or restrictions.