The annual National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference is being held in Chicago July 5-6 and will include adopting the organization's agenda for the coming year as well as the election of its national officers.
In 2002, NOW officially endorsed marriage equality and for the past decade has worked with other allied organizations to advance the issue nationally and on a state-by-state basis.
Current NOW President Terry O'Neill said that marriage equality will continue to be a main focus for the organization, and the conference will include workshops focused on attaining equal marriage rights.
"Marriage equality is one of our major campaigns," O'Neill said. "We are going to be rolling out new materials and more materials and engaging chapter leaders at the community level. We are targeting states with our allies in the equal marriage movement, and we are going to be really active.
"In 2012 we were extremely active in all of the states that had marriage equality referenda and we and our allies scored a clean sweep."
O'Neill also points to immigration reform as a key issue where the organization is standing with the LGBT community, demanding that any changes that are adopted include LGBT families.
"Our coalition is not breaking apart over these issues," she said. "We are determined to have same sex couples have their families fully recognized, and I know that our allies in the immigration reform community are with us. Now whether we can get the elected officials to be with us, that is something else. But the allied organizations we really are together."
O'Neill noted that one of the biggest changes to the progressive community recently has been a greater determination to work together and commit together to progressive issues.
"The theme of this year's conference is 'Stronger Together: United for Equality,'" she said. "The reason that we wanted that as the theme is that we believe the challenges that are facing ordinary families throughout the country are so layered, if you will, that the organizations in the entire progressive community are coming together in a way that I don't think we've come together perhaps ever in the past.
"We know that the Republican playbook is to divide and concur the progressives and thereby defeat Democrats and we're not buying it," she added. "Women are absolutely not fooled by what the Republicans are trying to pull off."
In addition to its focus on marriage equality and inclusive immigration reform, NOW will also be focusing on other key issues, ending violence against women around the world, strengthening social security, and fighting for freedom from poverty in a Wal-Mart economy, all of which will be the focus of specific workshops during the conference.
NOW has a full agenda for the coming political elections also, which involve both advancing social issues as well as winning political campaigns.
"Moving forward we really have our eye on 2020 because that is a key year, that is the year that the census will come out again and redistricting is key," O'Neill said. "The progressive movement, we really didn't do well in 2010 in the redistricting and we are now paying a huge price for it.
"Between now and 2020 what do we have to do? Two things, at the federal level we have to step up our game and get feminist, progressive, preferably women, but feminist candidates, elected to both the house and the senate.
"The state level is where women's reproductive healthcare is being sincerely compromised in state after state after state, so we are starting small, but we are determined to have a state by state by state effort to address these devastating restrictions. It's not just restrictions on abortion, its restrictions on birth control. In New Jersey alone, Gov. Chris Christie has zero-funded family-planning clinics at the state level, for three years."
NOW will hand out three awards for courage and leadership this year during the conference: Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers, is receiving the Women of Action Award; Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky will receive the Woman of Impact Award; and Heather Booth and Jeanne Galatzer-Levy will accept the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Women's Health Award on behalf of The Jane Collective, which was founded in Chicago in 1965 and was one of the first abortion counseling services.
Conference speakers include U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D) and Rev. Jesse Jackson on July 5, and Carol Moseley Braun on July 6. Elections for NOW president and two vice presidents will take place July 6, followed by a reception with music, dancing and a cash bar.
For more information, visit www.now.org/organization/conference/2013/ .