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  • Letters to the Editor
  • Interviews of, and Articles about, Sonia
  • In its June 27, 2020, issue, the Sarasota Herald Tribune contained a letter from Sonia about the desegregation of Sarasota's beaches resulting from many years of struggle by Sarasota's black community. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Feb. 28, 2019. In it, she complains about the fact that schools in Sarasota County don't teach women's history. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Mar. 31, 2018. In it, she complains about finding a 2-inch stick in a can of sauerkraut and of the lack of action by the supermarket involved and the Florida Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Oct. 9, 2017. In it, she discusses the fact that President Trump's attacks against football players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem goes against the spirit of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's letter was the lead-off letter in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's "Letters From Our Readers" section on Dec. 15, 2016. This letter congratulated the newspaper for its four-part series called "Bias on the Bench." The paper did a one-year investigative research project that revealed that judges' decisions in Florida were influenced by race, gender and politics. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune complaining about its publication of a sexist and ageist column by columnist Frank Cerabino, April 26, 2014. Read the letter.
  • Sonia writes in response to the "We Have What It Takes" column in the Aug. 24 edition of SRQ Daily. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s comments to Rita Henley Jensen, editor in chief of the online Women’s eNews, critical of the July 25, 2013, laudatory and false article about the late journalist and anti-Semite, Helen Thomas. These comments were published in the Women’s eNews on Aug. 6, 2013. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune seeking a solution to the low income of Sarasota’s young artists was published on July 9, 2013. Read the letter.
  • In its Sept./Oct. 2012 issue, the Cornell Alumni Magazine contained a letter from Sonia about the need for people to eat a predominantly-vegetarian diet. Read the letter.
  • On July 12, 2012, Sonia wrote a letter to editor Myra Kovary that she published on her Occupied New York Times blog on July 12, 2012. Read the letter.
  • On March 3, 2011, Sonia’s letter to the editor concerning the lack of secular options in substance abuse programs at the Sarasota County Jail appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Read the letter.
  • On Sunday, August 1, 2010, Sonia wrote a letter to the editor to The Washington Post about the July 28 front-page article "After son's birth, a 'horrid' discovery," about an incident at a Virginia hospital. Read the letter.
  • On May 18, 2010, HeraldTribune.com published Sonia's letter to the editor about Kathleen Parker's column, "Gender and Geography". Read the letter.
  • On October 9, 2009, The Forward published Sonia's letter to the editor about paid maternity leave. Read the letter.
  • On August 27, 2009, The New Canaan [CT] Advertiser, published Sonia’s letter to the editor about her dear friend and mentor, the late Dr. Ida Davidoff.  Read the letter.
  • On November 16, 2008, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published Sonia's letter to the editor about holding president-elect, Barack Obama, to his promises on paid family leave. Read the letter.
  • In its December 3, 2006, issue, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune contained a letter from Sonia about the four months in 1988 she spent working for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Read the letter.

Interviews of, Articles about, and Books that Include Sonia

Articles about Sonia are also contained in the section on Belgium.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Letters To The Editor

Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) - The Occupied New York Times - July 12, 2012

By Sonia Pressman Fuentes, Alumna of Cornell University, Class of 1950

Dear Editor:

I was surprised and disappointed that in the July 9 issue of the New York Times, in an Opinion article entitled “Fixing the Constitution,” where ten scholars, half of them women, proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, not one of them suggested the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the amendment drafted by Alice Paul, the legendary suffragist and feminist, whom I knew.

That amendment provides: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

On its website at http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why.htm, the Alice Paul Institute gives the following reasons for the necessity for this amendment:

  • Without the ERA, the Constitution does not explicitly guarantee that the rights it protects are held equally by all citizens without regard to sex. The first – and still the only – right specifically affirmed as equal for women and men is the right to vote.
  • The equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was first applied to sex discrimination only in 1971, and it has never been interpreted to grant equal rights on the basis of sex in the uniform and inclusive way that the ERA would.
  • The ERA would provide a clearer judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination, since federal and state courts (some working with state ERAs, some without) still reflect confusion and inconsistency in dealing with such claims. It would also clarify sex discrimination jurisprudence and 40 years of precedent for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who claimed in an interview reported in the January 2011 California Lawyer that the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment, does not protect against sex discrimination.
  • The ERA would provide a strong legal defense against a rollback of the significant advances in women’s rights made in the past 50 years. Without it, Congress can weaken or replace existing laws on women’s rights, and judicial precedents on issues of gender equality can be eroded or ignored by reactionary courts responding to a conservative political agenda.
  • Without the ERA, women regularly and men occasionally have to fight long, expensive, and difficult legal battles in an effort to prove that their rights are equal to those of the other sex.
  • The ERA would improve the United States’ human rights standing in the world community. The governing documents of many other countries affirm legal gender equality, however imperfect the global implementation of that ideal may be.

It is high time this country ratified the ERA and let its women, who constitute over half its population, know that they have rights equal to those of the male minority in this country. I call upon President Barack Obama to use his bully pulpit to state that ratification of the ERA is a priority for his administration and to exhort state legislatures to ratify the amendment and fix our Constitution.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes
Cofounder of NOW (National Organization for Women)

Former longtime member of the Board of Trustees of the National Woman’s Party, founded by Alice Paul
website: http://www.erraticimpact.com/fuentes