The People’s March

Remarks offered by Destie Hohman Sprague at the People’s March in Portland Maine, January 18, 2025.

45 years ago, the founders of the Maine Women’s Lobby set out to represent women in the State House, to build a Maine where we all have the resources, rights, dignity, and autonomy to live the lives of our choosing. This moment feels like a rebuke of all we work for: a world without sexism, misogyny, and racism… a world of gender justice, where people can fully embody their gender without fear, discrimination, or violence.

Right now, we are facing dark days, and national and global leadership are rising up on a tide that is unapologetically patriarchal. The campaign that led to this presidency centered on messages of control over the lives and bodies of women, queer, and trans people - anyone who challenges the gender status quo. In the intervening months, we have seen this rise to power center sexual predators, racists, and billionaires, while *our rights* are being rolled back, with the death toll to prove it.

Still, we must maintain our belief that there are still levers for change, and one of them is the policy process. In Maine, public policy has made meaningful, powerful changes to expand gender equity. In the last few years, advocacy has helped expand access to MaineCare for birthing parents, eliminated the ‘viability’ standard for abortion, protected doctors providing reproductive and gender affirming care, eliminated mandatory nondisclosure agreements that protect sexual harassers, reshaped Maine’s childcare systems, and of course, we passed Paid Family and Medical Leave — the most significant change to caregivers in the workforce in 40 years. We KNOW that policy can change lives.

But advocacy has not yet enshrined our fundamental right to protection from discrimination in the Maine Constitution. That is why passing an inclusive Equal Rights Amendment is at the top of our agenda this year. An inclusive ERA will guarantee that all Mainers have freedom from discrimination based on sex, gender, race, ability, and country of origin, and has been used in other states to secure access to abortion, to fund response to gender based violence, to build pay equity, and more.

This struggle is not new. When a similar proposal was brought to the Maine Legislature in 1963, one Legislator noted: "And because as far as my knowledge of the State of Maine goes, there has never been nor is there now any practice of discrimination as far as religion is concerned, or as far as ancestry, or sex, or race. I have always enjoyed living in the State of Maine because of that. And I feel today if we go to tampering with a problem that is not a problem, we will be creating problems rather than solving them." The bill failed.

And in 2023, SIXTY years later, this: “Across our country, this has been defeated because it isn't about equal rights, it's about special rights for some and not for others. Our Constitution protects all individuals and treats everyone fairly.”

We know we have work ahead of us, as we always have. Policy can feel wonky and inaccessible and this bill will require the support of two thirds of the Legislature to come before the people. But we know that the voice of the people matters. This is a chance for us to demand the rights and protections that we deserve - not only from Maine’s government and Constitution, but as we watch the roll back of our rights at the federal level, and wait for what comes next from the incoming administration. In Maine, we can build a firewall against this encroachment.

Policy change - like the ballot box - is but one action among many to build equity. I hope you will join us for the ERA, but if not that, then something else - every one of our lives are touched by policy, and we are in a unique position in Maine where we each have access to legislators that people in other states don’t have. Together, we can vote the right people into office, hold them accountable, and raise our voices together as a community of advocacy. Together, through our collective power, we will build the road to the future we deserve.