Council Votes to Back ERA Boycott

To spur ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the Cambridge City Council last night voted to boycott future meetings of the National League of Cities (NLC) held in states that have not approved the ERA.

Council members will still travel to Las Vegas, Nev., for next month's scheduled NLC meeting, despite Nevada's refusal to ratify the amendment. Councilors will lobby at that meeting for an NLC-wide boycott of states that have not approved ERA.

"We will go to Las Vegas so that we can remind the NLC to help this process," councilor Saundra Graham said.

Only councilor Walter Sullivan opposed the measure. However, a similar motion was withdrawn from the council last summer when it appeared unlikely to pass, Betsy Dunn, state chair of the National Organization of Women (NOW), said yesterday.

"We spent the summer working on educating people and letting the councilors know that their constituents felt this was an important way to help the ratification process," Dunn said.

Seventy per cent of Cambridge voters favored ERA in a statewide referendum three years ago, Dunn said. She added that figure proves Cambridge's support for the controversial proposal.

"They will be able to go to the convention with this motion in their pockets and say 'we can't come back.' That will give them some leverage in getting the entire organization to boycott," Dunn said.

She said the boycott led the state of Missouri to sue NOW for restraint of trade. "They wouldn't have spent the money on the suit if they hadn't begun to feel the effects of the boycott," Dunn added.

Fifteen states have not ratified the amendment, which needs the support of three more states to become law. Next year's meeting of the NLC is scheduled for Georgia, a state where ERA is unratified.

One woman's rights activist at the meeting said the timing of the vote, which came 24 hours before tonight's woman's issues candidate's night, may have helped its passage. The candidate's forum begins at 7 p.m. in the high school cafeteria.