December 1, 2025

Dear Friends and Family,

This past Monday, November 24, 2025, I joined a virtual meeting with Kate Williams Stern, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s Chief of Staff, carrying a torch that has been passed hand to hand for over four hundred years. By the time the Team Meets call ended, I was on fire. I was holding it higher than when I logged on—and more determined than ever that this flame will not flicker out on my watch.

That torch first glowed in 1619 when a young woman stepped off the  Dutch charter ship Bang-Om onto the shores of what would one day become these United States. A family story shared generation to generation. She carried nothing but the fierce belief that her daughters, and their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters would one day enjoy freedom and stand equal under the law. This flame echoes the symbolism of Lady Liberty’s torch, raised high as a beacon of enlightenment and “liberty enlightening the world”—a gift from France in 1886 to honor the centennial of America’s founding, embodying the revolutionary ideals of 1776, when life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were declared inalienable rights drawn from ancient sources.

Women have carried this torch for millennia: from Greek goddesses like Demeter, who wielded it in her eternal search for Persephone, symbolizing maternal hope and guidance through darkness, and Hecate, illuminating hidden paths of knowledge and the crossroads of fate; to the Roman Libertas, the female embodiment of freedom from tyranny whose torch inspired Enlightenment thinkers and French revolutionaries. Every generation since has kept that flame alive—through suffrage; through Elizabeth Peratrovich shaming Alaska’s territorial legislature into passing the nation’s first anti-discrimination act in 1945; through the women who froze on picket lines so Alaska could ratify the ERA in 1972; through Rev. Katrina Martha Van Alstyne Welles Swanson’s modern-day ministry as one of the Philadelphia Eleven in 1974 (irregularly ordained, retroactively recognized in 1976)—a path the ERA mirrors when its deadline is retroactively removed. This is the path to equality we walk together.

On Monday, I laid that torch on Kate’s desk and asked a simple question:

Will Senator Murkowski champion the ERA and carry it across the finish line?

Because America is burning through women’s lives while we wait. Let’s look at Alaska, the state Murkowski represents:

• Alaska has the highest rate of rape in the nation—nearly triple the national average.
• Eighty percent of Alaska Native women will face violence in their lifetime.
• Women here earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar—worse if you’re Native—and that missing money is the very reason so many cannot escape their abusers.
• After Dobbs, a woman in a remote Bush village must spend days and thousands of dollars she doesn’t have to reach the medical care the Constitution once promised.

There is no disputing it: thirty-eight states, including Senator Murkowski’s home state of Alaska, have already done their part. The only obstacle left is an expired 1982 deadline and a Congress that keeps treating Lady Liberty’s torch like a decorative candle.Senate Joint Resolution 38 is two pages long. It’s not complicated. It removes the deadline and declares the ERA ratified. It is bipartisan. It is sitting in committee. And it will languish there unless someone with moral authority forces it into the light.

The urgent next step? A Dear Colleague letter led by Senator Murkowski.

One act—proven a hundred times over—breaks bills out of committee and onto the floor: a Dear Colleague letter led by a respected senator. It is the modern equivalent of raising the torch so high that no one in the chamber can look away. This isn’t optional; it’s essential. As lead sponsor, circulating this letter would rally dozens of her Senate peers, signal unbreakable resolve, and build the bipartisan coalition required to force SJ Res 38 out of committee, onto the floor for debate, and toward a vote before the session ends.

Dear Colleague letters have propelled stalled bills like VAWA reauthorizations and pay-equity reforms. For SJ Res 38, it would transform whispers of support into a thunderous call to action, pressuring leadership to prioritize gender justice amid the holiday recess rush. Without it, the resolution risks burial in the next Congress’s backlog—delaying the process at a time when we have all just lived through the longest unreasonable congressional dysfunction — thue Shutdown of 2025. This equivalent of a shutdown leaves Americans vulnerable women to rollbacks in pay equity, violence protections, and health care.

Senator Murkowski has co-sponsored ERA bills. She has testified. She has spoken the words. Now America needs her to raise the torch higher than words—to put her name at the top of that letter and circulate it this week, not next year. We cannot afford delay. Generations of suffragists, from Alice Paul to Alaskan trailblazers like Elizabeth Peratrovich, bled for this moment. Senator Murkowski’s leadership could make history, enshrining equality in the Constitution and delivering immediate wins: stricter scrutiny on discriminatory laws, bolstered federal enforcement against wage theft, and a shield for survivors in our remote communities.

So “fired up” from the meeting, I did what Katrina would have done when the flame starts to gutter: I passed it forward. I wrote the petition myself, shared it with a few close friends for feedback, and it is taking off.

Sign the petition now—33 signatures strong, but we need 50 immediately to amplify our demand. Then 500. Then aim for 1,000! Every signature edges us closer to equality. Petitions with 1,000+ backers are 5× more likely to succeed. Let’s surge past that threshold and deliver this to Senator Murkowski’s office, urging her to draft and circulate that Dear Colleague letter for SJ Res 38—propelling the ERA across the finish line.

If you are reading this appeal, you are now part of the chain—spanning generations of strong women—that began on the deck of the Bang-Om in 1619. The torch of equality is on fire. The torch is in your grasp.

As we approach America’s 250th birthday in 2026—the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration that proclaimed “all men are created equal”—it is fitting, overdue, and poetically just that the Equal Rights Amendment finally becomes the law of the land in this anniversary year. Imagine the power of that moment: the resolution passes, the archaic 1982 deadline is stricken forever, and on some glorious day in 2026, President Trump lifts the pen for the ceremonial, symbolic signature that publishes the 28th Amendment into the Constitution. Lady Liberty’s torch—carried by women for millennia and across oceans—will blaze higher than ever before, fulfilling the promise Katrina brought ashore in 1619 and completing the revolution that began in 1776. That will be a day every daughter of this country will remember where she was when the light finally reached every corner of the land.

Tell her the daughters—the daughters of Elizabeth Peratrovich, the daughters of America—are asking her to raise the torch so high that the entire Senate finally sees the light. Tell her men and women are working together to make this country great. Tell her we demand the ERA.

Sign the petition. Share it. Call Senator Murkowski’s office. Tell her the meeting with Kate Williams Stern was appreciated—but appreciation does not pay the bills, does not close wage gaps, does not stop rape, does not enshrine equality.

For those ready to act beyond signing, head to our Power of One action campaign and start calling your senators, the White House, and sharing this email with your family, friends, coworkers, and colleagues. If you have a burning heart and want to direct your energy, simply reply to this email and we’ll get back to you promptly.

Katrina’s Dream and their partner ERA Action are the powerhouse ERA advocacy team fueling this charge with targeted campaigns, toolkits for constituent pressure, and insider strategies to back Senator Murkowski’s push. Their expertise turns grassroots fire into legislative lightning. Contact them to host ERA events or amplify the petition. No other group is your direct line to victory.

The torch has traveled centuries to reach this moment.

Let’s carry it across the finish line together and hand it—blazing—to the next generation.

Sign now—history won’t wait.

Love and Light in Christ,

Helene de Boissiere – Swanson

P.S. The torch stays lit because people like you keep fueling it. If this message set your heart on fire for the ERA, please make a quick $20 gift (or any amount) to our $20 for 20 – Igniting Equality  Semiquincentennial fundraiser. Every dollar keeps the pressure on Senator Murkowski and funds the calls, toolkits, and delivery of the petition straight to her desk.

Twenty dollars for 2026 – the year we finally make equality the law of the land. Thank you – the daughters are counting on us!