In preparing for our annual meeting, we wanted to reflect on both the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the founding of our country with our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776.
We have invited the Executive Director of the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Dana Vickers Shelley, who will discuss with us where the government of the United States is today and how we can rebuild from the damage that has been done. We also want to review what can’t be restored. The ACLU, founded in 1920, has been on the front lines challenging the current administration, literally from Day 1. We hope, as an activist organization, that our NOW members can leave with our own plan to save our democracy.
NOW, as both an organization and an institution, has become a leader in grassroots activism, focusing on achieving and establishing through societal, legislative, and judicial change, protections for the rights of women and girls in this country. “NOW’s purpose is to take action through intersectional grassroots activism to promote feminist ideals, lead societal change, eliminate discrimination, and achieve and protect the equal rights for all women and girls in all aspects of social, political, and economic life.”1 NOW has faced challenges since our founding in 1966, and as the world has changed, so has the need for our strong advocacy. Ellie Smeal and Kim Gandy, former NOW presidents, will review our strengths and how we have survived our own struggles and growth.
1 NOW’s Statement of Purpose
Kim Gandy joined NOW in 1973 and served in NOW leadership at every level, including 22 years as a National NOW officer, and as President from 2001-2009. She served as vice president and general counsel at the Feminist Majority Foundation from 2009-2012, and until her retirement in 2019 served as president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Kim also served on the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for 8 years, and 10 years on the board of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
Eleanor Smeal is the Co-Founder and President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms. magazine, and former president of NOW. For over five decades, she has played a leading role in both national and state campaigns to win women’s rights legislation, and in a number of landmark state and federal court cases. One of the architects of the modern drive for women’s equality, Smeal is known as a political analyst, strategist, and grassroots organizer. She was the first to identify the “gender gap” – the difference in the way women and men vote – and popularized its usage in election and polling analyses to enhance women’s voting clout. In 2015, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Dana Vickers Shelley brings strategic communications and political advocacy expertise, plus a lifelong commitment to racial justice, to her leadership of the ACLU of Maryland. During Dana’s first six years at ACLU-MD, the organization developed its first strategic plan, prioritizing educational equity, voting rights, immigrants’ rights, government and police accountability, and making the state’s legal justice system more equitable. She leads a 30-person team of advocates, attorneys, organizers, communicators, and policy strategists who are working with communities in every region of the state to empower Marylanders to exercise their rights so the law values and uplifts their humanity.
