{"id":153419,"date":"2026-03-05T04:34:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T04:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153419\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T04:34:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T04:34:27","slug":"driving-the-vote-for-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153419\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving The Vote For Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Costa<\/a><\/p>\n

Costa Constantinides, chief executive of the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens, expressed his delight that \u201cMs. Maloney had agreed to give our kids a sneak peek of her organization\u2019s plans\u2013but that\u2019s no surprise. She has always been so generous to our organization, our kids, our fam\u00adilies, and our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, February 27, 2026, former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, CEO and President of ERA NOW, led 40 students from the Variety Boys and Girls Club in the first public discussion of Driving the Vote for Equality. This national, multi-state campaign is inspired by the 1916 suffrage road trip that helped win women the right to vote through the 19th Amendment. The 2026 tour began in New York City on March 1 before traveling more than 10,000 miles through 25 states to mobilize support for Congressional affirmation of the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.<\/p>\n

Maloney began by reminding students of the promise our founding fathers made in the Declaration of Independence: \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d \u201cThat was a great promise, but too many people were left out of the promise, and our Constitution,\u201d she said. \u201cIt left out anyone who didn\u2019t own prop\u00aderty. We fixed that. It left out men of color. We fixed that. But it still leaves out women and girls. We have to fix that. And we can do it by making sure we amend our constitution through the Equal Rights Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Congresswoman Maloney began by reminding students of the promise our founding fathers made in the Declaration of Independence. \u201cThat was a great promise, but too many people were left out of the promise, and our Constitution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1916, the amendment to allow women to vote was stalled by government,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat\u2019s when two brave women drove across the country to educate and build the case for women\u2019s right to vote. Today, we are again stalled by our government, so we are fol\u00adlowing the suffragists\u2019 path to educate and build the case to pressure the U.S. Congress to affirm that the ERA is law.\u201d Costa Constanti\u00adnides, chief executive of the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens, expressed his delight that \u201cMs. Maloney had agreed to give our kids a sneak peek of her organization\u2019s plans\u2013 but that\u2019s no surprise. She has always been so generous to our organization, our kids, our fami\u00adlies, and our community.\u201d Former Congresswoman Maloney also in\u00adtroduced Jeryl Schriever, author of \u201cDriving the Vote for Women: An American Journey for Suffrage\u201d which chronicles the travels of Alice Burke and Nell Richardson as they crossed the country at a time when there were few roads and even fewer women driving.<\/p>\n

\"On<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, February 27, 2026, former Congresswoman Carolyn Mal\u00adoney, CEO and President of ERA NOW, led 40 students from the Variety Boys and Girls Club in the first public discussion of Driving the Vote for Equality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey went from town to town, greeted by local suffragists yet still dealing with break\u00addowns and too many men who thought women were too stupid to vote,\u201d said Schriever. \u201cBut the motor\u00adcar was also their secret weapon, in that they also could talk about engines, sparkplugs and all things automotive and men and women responded with in\u00adterest. And it was no pic\u00adnic\u2013\u2013 at one point they had to walk six miles to get water, only to find a dead chicken in the well. They decided to drink it anyway because they felt they were \u2018dying of thirst.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The students responded with several questions about discrimina\u00adtion and how to change it, and of course, cars. They talked about their own experiences. And they were excited to see the huge picture of the Golden Flyer II and trace the routes on enlarged maps. Victoria Pilotti, board secretary of the Brooklyn-Queens Chapter of the National Or\u00adganization for Women (NOW) and president of the Zonta Club of New York also greeted the students and talked about how both organ\u00adizations are supporting Driving the Vote for Equality on the local and national levels. Maloney served in Congress for 30 years (1993-1923) and is currently an Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Leader in Resi\u00addence at Hunter College\u2019s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Costa Constantinides, chief executive of the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens, expressed his delight that \u201cMs.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-153419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}