Advocates for equal rights and gender equity are among those most concerned about the victory of President-elect Donald Trump.
Lisa Stone is executive director of Legal Voice, a non-profit that advocates for women and LGBTQ people throughout the Northwest. The morning after the election, she called an impromptu staff meeting.
“So that people could express how they felt and what they thought and what the feared and what they hoped. And so we did,” she said. “And there was a lot of crying and a little bit of laughing and an enormous amount of resolve.”
Resolve, she says, to keep fighting for equal treatment under the law. Among their most immediate concerns is Trump’s promise to swiftly do away with the Affordable Care Act.
“And what a lot of people don’t know is that the Affordable Care Act, for all it’s flaws – and it has them – has some terrific protections for women and LGBTQ persons. It prohibits discrimination based on sex. It prohibits discrimination against transgender people,” Stone said.
In the longer term, she’s concerned about the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court and efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and a women’s right to choose to have an abortion. But she suspects it could be years before that comes to a head.
Her group is taking some consolation in the fact that the passage of progressive laws such as the increase in the state minimum wage, which includes the right to paid sick leave, bodes well for Washington state. She says Legal Voice will continue to work for local laws such as protections for victims of gender-based violence in employment and in housing and for a pregnant workers fairness act.