I remember well when my grandmother, a university lecturer at BYU, (with whom I was living with at the time) informed the family that she had been refused an expected pay raise, to match the raises all the men in her department had received, with the explanation that “the men had families to support.” My grandmother was, in fact, the “bread-winner” supporting our household and the one solely caring for her extended family. It puzzled me then, as a young boy, and it remains confounding to me now, how differences in hiring and compensation could be justified on the basis of sex, rather than appropriately based on competence and qualifications for one’s job.

While we, as a country, have no doubt made some progress since my grandmother was denied fair compensation based solely on her sex, there is still a prevailing premise of differences between men and women that has not yet been corrected in America and that leads to continued discrimination – both intentional and unintentional.

At a protest march a few years back, my photo was captured by a journalist and featured in Cosmopolitan Online magazine with the caption “woman holds protest poster”. I am not bothered in the least by any potential gender confusion here, but rather, I am proud to stand with all my fellow citizens in stating that we need to formally ratify and adopt the ERA to end any further forms of discrimination on the basis of sex. —Merrill Oates, Utah voter in Hungary.

Annual General Meeting - Online

Chairperson:  Josh Tulgan

Vice-chairperson:  Carolyn S.  Wieland

Treasurer:  Hitoshi Hirano

Secretary:  Marian Dent 

Counsel:  Amy Kouznetsova

11.1     The Executive Committee is composed of the Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer and Counsel and may, in addition, include two Members-at-Large elected from among the eligible Members of the Organization. The chairpersons of any Standing Committees will be ex officio members of the Executive Committee without voting privileges.

Guy Archer
Vladimir Kouznetsov
Maya Melnikas

 

Our gathering in 2008 was documented by local media and joined by other groups also seeking political reform.  Here is a short clip of the event from a Hungarian news portal: 

During the last hour of President Obama’s administration, on 20 January 2017, we returned again to the same square to close out this chapter in American history.  Around 50 members of Democrats Abroad came together to sing American anthems and to share with each other some of the Obama accomplishments that we found most significant.  Participants spoke out expressing the importance of: America regaining respect in the world, the Affordable Care Act, Dignity, Net Neutrality, Marriage Equality, Economic Recovery, improving the rights of women in the workplace, and having a president with the ability to speak in complete grammatical sentences. 

Our DA-Hungary Chair, Marylin Ball-Brown, led the group in singing This Land is Your Land, America the Beautiful, and We Shall Overcome.  As a trained opera singer, she then closed out the event by singing Amazing Grace.  Many in the crowd had eyes filled with tears as we bid farewell to the Obama Presidency.

Not in the US for the week of Super Tuesday?

You can vote for your choice of Democratic presidential candidate in-person at the American Corner in Budapest, on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of March.

Contact and RSVP to: [email protected]