The state of the State

The chain gang and ERA'S bitter end

NEVER had June 30 at the General Assembly meant so much: it was the last day to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and the most volatile in recent memory. Never had the public's expectations of what the legislature should do run so far beyond the political realities of what the legislature could do. Never had the Illinois General Assembly so wanted to make an end, so

The group of women seated outside the office of House Speaker George Ryan became known as the chain gang during the demonstrations in favor of ratifying the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. In the foreground are news media representatives.

yearned to be done with its constitutional duty to make laws on schedule, so welcomed a deadline.

This year, the economy had reduced the legislature to impotency. The only real issue was the solvency of state government; the only resolution the raising of taxes. And that was impossible in a year in which everyone, from the governor to the legislators to the judges of the circuit courts are on the November ballot. The Illinois General Assembly had no choice: legislators agreed to sit out the spring session without making major new moves on fiscal issues. Without new revenue, legislators could hardly expand services; they would be lucky if they balanced the budget. The only bills with a prayer of passage in 1982 were the ones the Democrats and the Republicans could use against each other in November. With no extra money available this year, though, neither party found anything worth fighting over; few bills promised credit at the polls, many threatened blame.

The mood ran from bitter to belligerent. Thanks to the Cutback Amendment, 59 House seats won't be filled in the 1982 elections. Thanks to reapportionment, and the Democrats' luck of the draw, the Republicans may lose control of the House in the 1982 elections. And thanks to the agreement to sit this session out, the House Rules Committee killed more bills this year than in any previous off year, certainly more Democratic bills.

The ERA was a political issue that had never claimed the priority of either party. The votes simply didn't exist, not to change the rules, not to ratify. Lawmakers knew the ERA was already dead; they saw no reason to go on the record again, especially when the record would put legislators in an unnecessarily awkward position. Besides, lawmakers reasoned, the rest of the nation had no business trying to turn Illinois into a bloody, emotional battlefield. The General Assembly had enough problems; the public had been on its back since lawmakers raised their own pay four years ago. This year, the legislature didn't even bother to observe its traditional rites of spring, a softball game, a legs contest, the impersonation routines. Legislators were not enjoying themselves this year. The session was not a happy one.

Enter the fasters — and the "chain gang," a handful of women from a downstate college town who called themselves the Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens and who claimed responsibility for 16 acts of nonviolent civil disobedience during four self-styled Days of Rebellion.

It was the chain gang — not the fasters — that electrified the atmosphere in June at the Statehouse. Attitudes toward the protestors shifted form tolerance to tension; nerves were frayed, blood pressures went up. Then legislators literally lost their tempers. It was the sit-in around the speaker's podium — not the splattering of blood on the floors in front of the doors to the House, Senate and Governor's Office — that made legislators mad as hell and determined not to take it any more. It was the disruption of the proceedings of government — not economics, not politics — that in a single day turned this least dramatic of sessions into the most dramatic.

No one had ever dared to confront legislators on their own turf. No one had ever been allowed to walk onto the floor of the House, march down the aisle, sit down in front of the speaker's podium. No one, no one from the outside that is, had ever caused the House to adjourn in chaos — and gotten away with it.

The disruption stunned the House. The chain gang had started chanting the text of the ERA before most members got to their feet. Rep. Pete Peters, a Republican from Chicago who is widely respected on both sides of the aisle, was the first to get the

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floor; his speech sounded like nothing so much as the late Peter Finch's scene in the movie "Network":

"Mr. Speaker, because the tape [recording of the proceedings] does not indicate what is going on, I would

'Let them sit. Let them scream. Let them yell. Let the state know, let the state know where they are. . . .'

like... to indicate that individuals in absolute and total violation of the rules of this House... have entered the chamber, are demonstrating on the chamber floor.... That is not equal rights. That is not equal dignity before the law. That is not fair. That is not decent. That is not right. That is not all those things that people have been talking about for as long as they have been talking about — the last 10 years — in regard to this Amendment.... Mr. Speaker, whenever you are ready, I am ready to put the Motion that we adjourn until July 1."

Chaos.

Peters again gets the floor:

"Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the Chair ask the Sergeant-at-Arms not to remove any of the demonstrators, because that is what they are waiting and they are looking for, a confrontation and more screaming and yelling. I...I implore you, Mr. Speaker, do nothing, say nothing to these people who are laying here. Let the public of this country, for now and for the next seven and 10 years, make a determination as to exactly what route they want this country to go. Let them make a determination whether those who, for the past 10 years, have been saying 'The proponents of the ERA are wrong.' Let them make the determination they are right. I, in fact, am slowly but surely, making up my mind that perhaps for the last 10 years I have been wrong on this issue. But, Mr. Speaker, let me ask you this. Without touching one hair on the tiny heads of these people here, I ask that you ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to remove everyone from this floor who is not a Member, press, staff and every other person on this floor with the exception of those who are proposing to be proponents of ERA. Let them sit. Let them scream. Let them yell. Let the state know, let the state know where they are...."

Peters was not alone; the public was outraged.

On June 16, the day of the sit-in, five days before the House failed to pass the ERA, eight days before the Senate failed to pass the ERA, ratification of the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ceased to be the dominant issue before the Illinois General Assembly — at least as far as the legislators' constituents were concerned. Civil disobedience went on trial at the Statehouse in Springfield. At issue was whether the nonviolent actions of the chain gang threatened to incite violence. (The decision for legal action fell under the jurisdiction of the secretary of state.) Public opinion condemned civil disobedience as an intolerable disruption of the proceedings of state government.

The chain gang had, it seemed, failed to "bear witness to women's oppression, to women's anger at this oppression and to women's determination to fight to be free," much less to "signal a new phase of militancy in American feminism," as the women proclaimed in their closing news release.

The ERA may or may not fade away, depending on whether the mainstream of the women's movement can deliver the kind of elective power they promised June 30. Meanwhile, the state resumes its struggle to remain solvent. The Illinois General Assembly is scheduled to reconvene for its fall veto session on November 5, three days after the election. Regardless of who wins or loses, the fiscal state of the state will most likely remain a conundrum.

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