Recommendation to adopt resolution in support of The Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and request City Manager to identify a current City Commission such as the Human Relations Commission that will partner with California State University, Long Beach to complete a gender analysis study of Long Beach. After the gender analysis study is completed the selected City Commission should examine policy reforms as outlined by study and consistent with CEDAW in order to make recommendations to the City Council for implementation of any policy reforms or additional programming that is consistent with goals of CEDAW.
Thank you. And now we'll go ahead and move on to the next item, which is, I believe it was 11. If I apologize, Councilwoman. PRICE Was it 11? Yes, Madam Clerk. Item 11 Communication from Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Gonzalez, Vice Mayor Lowenthal and Councilwoman Mingo. Recommendation to adopt resolution in support of the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. And request the City Manager to identify a current city commission that will partner with the CAC will be to complete a gender analysis study of Long Beach. Thank you. Councilman Price to you. Thank you. Thank you for your patience, everyone who's here for this item? We were not expecting it to take this long to get called, so I appreciate you guys sticking around. In honor of International Women's Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender gender parity. To celebrate International Women's Day, my female colleagues and I are requesting the city attorney to draft a resolution in support of the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, also known as CEDAW. C does a landmark international agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equity for women around the world. In December of 1979, the United Nations General Assembly adopted CEDAW, and in 1998, San Francisco became the first municipality in the world to adopt a local ordinance. CEDAW offers countries a blueprint to promote basic rights and to open opportunities for women and girls in all areas of society. In addition to asking the Long Beach City Council to support CEDAW, we are also requesting the city manager to identify a city commission that can partner with California State University Long Beach to complete a gender analysis study of Long Beach after the Gender Analysis Study is completed. Our selected City Commission should examine policy reforms as outlined by the study and consistent with CEDAW in order to make recommendations to the City Council for the implementation of any policy reforms or additional programing that are consistent with the goals of Sweden. This very important legislation was brought to our office by our resident Nazanin Amani Nazanin, thanking us and is a member of the Women's Intercultural Network and is leading the campaign of cities for CEDAW. I hope the City Council will support CEDAW and our work to ensure women and girls are treated equally in all areas of our society . I'd like to ask all of the women and men who are here tonight in support of this item to stand and be recognized. Thank you to my colleagues who signed on to the item, and I ask all of our colleagues to join us in supporting this item when we vote. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Gonzales. Yes. I want to thank Councilwoman Pryce and I want to thank everyone here tonight for their work on this every single day. I know we get one night to recognize this. And when it comes back, I'm sure we'll continue the celebration. But it really speaks volumes as to what is possible. You know, when we when we initiate a study, when we look further into the quality of life of women. Many of us here work in male dominated fields and in politics and in my other life, in technology. And it's always how do we make sure that young, young women, girls, you know, I have all boys at home. But how do we make sure that young girls have opportunities like we do here on the dais? How do we make sure young women have opportunities to learn about technology, to learn about being on commissions, to learn about being in things that they didn't even think possible for themselves. And so I want to thank you again for all of your work. And I look forward to this coming back and recognizing this as a day to celebrate women. Thank you. Thank you. Council or actually Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Wanted to thank Councilmember Price for including me on this motion it and I'm really pleased to see that everyone has shown up for this item and thank you for your patience. We're privileged that you would bring this before us today and ask us to take action on it. While we don't have any jurisdiction over the major impediments that women experience throughout the world. It is a very strong statement that our council can make. The convention is the only human rights treaty that affirms the reproductive rights of women and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. And so, as many times as we can heralded the merits of it. Hold it up. I think we can make progress. It still mystifies me that we have these conversations today in the 21st century. And I'm listening to Councilwoman Gonzalez talk about male dominated industries. I think technically I am as well, but. We all are, actually. When I look down the dice. But we've been privileged through the help of many people along the way, we have been able to succeed in areas that maybe many women have not been able to. And for that, I am personally grateful for all the men and women that came together to allow that to happen in my life. And I'm hoping that while it's somewhat of a travesty that we're having this conversation in this day and age, I am always glad when there is active dialog nonetheless and that continued storytelling and I think we can move toward the change you want to see. Thank you for bringing this to us and I'm obviously very much in support of it. Thank you, customary, Ringo. Thank you. I want to thank my colleagues to the right side of me. It seems like that's where all the women seem to be in the right side. But I do want to express my gratitude for you bringing this forward. I think it's a way long overdue. Is taking too many years to put this put this forward. And I want to share my thoughts with you and the fact that you have a partner with me in this issue. In another life, I used to work at Cal State, Long Beach. I was an administrator there. And when I had plenty of opportunity to talk to students about professions, about marketability, about employability, and when young girls would raise your hands, when I would ask question, what do you want to be? They would say, Nurse, I would ask you the question, Well, why not be a doctor? Or would they would say, I want to be a mechanic away where? Okay, why don't you be an engineer? It was always that effort to try to push them forward to be something beyond what they thought their own expectations would be. And I think it takes, as the saying always goes, it takes a village, but it takes all of us commitment to help our young our young women to see that they make it through life in a way without prejudice and without obstructions and without obstacles to be able to accomplish what they want to accomplish now, what we want them to accomplish, what they want to accomplish. And that's something that has always been difficult to, for some segments of our society to believe is that, you know, girls, too, and women have goals and ambitions and desires and they all all want to be career minded and want to be where they want to be, because that's where they can be. But the bottom line is that this is a long way, long overdue. And in my second phase of my life, working for the city of Long Beach, I was the city's recruitment officer for many years. And it was my goal to increase the numbers of women in in our in our employment, in our force. I was very pleased to see that during my efforts in recruitment, that we were able to hire the first woman firefighter in the region here in the city of Long Beach. And we've had been able to increase our representation of women in the police force as well. So we have made progress, but we have a long way to go. And it's it's a cultural change that we need to make within ourselves. It's a change of attitudes. And once we get there, we're going to be seeing a much better world. So thank you for being this, for bringing this forward. And I look forward to your voting and the audience when it comes again. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Andrews. Yes, and thank you, Mayor and I myself. It's a must that I, you know, so excited about this being brought to the diocese. Being a father of four daughters. And I had to weigh in because I have a wife that said after she saw this, you better weigh in. And I'm so happy that I am, because I think this is a great legislative item. And I commend that Councilwoman Price for bringing this item forward. And this is another huge step towards affirming that Long Beach, the city that stands for equality. And it's so wonderful to be a part of a situation of this type. And thank you again, Mrs. Price. Gentlemen, also. Thank you and certainly echo the comments, I think. Oh, Councilmember Urunga was very eloquent and as well as Councilmember Andrews. I certainly stand in support of this this item. I want to thank Councilmember Price and the the women to the right the right women for bringing this forward. And I just wanted to to also say what an honor it is to serve with strong women on this council. We are equals. And each and every one of them are shining examples of of of leaders, for for young women and for for many years to come. And you guys are all great role models, so thank you very much. It's an honor to serve with you all. I'm impressed by each and every one of you and happy to support this motion. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Well, after that, I don't think there's anything else I could say. So I want to thank the people who came today to be supportive of the item. It means a lot to us. And thank you for the leadership you've shown in each of your industries. Thank you and public comment on this item. Please come forward. Dear Honorable Mayor Robert Garcia and council members. My name is Nazanin Amani. I have been a resident of Long Beach with my husband, who is here in support of Saeeda and my two sons for the past 25 years since we left Iran. I heard about cities for their campaign two years ago when I became member of Women Intercultural Network through my sister in law, Harmony, who is also in the audience. Who is the women's rights and human rights activist? Getting acquainted with Cedar. I was surprised to find out that the US Constitution does not grant equal rights for women. I was even more surprised to find out that U.S. and Iran are two of the six countries in the world who have not ratified this human rights treaty. Well, I couldn't do much about Iraq. Not yet, at least. But I took the initiative to bring this to my district councilwoman, Suzy Pryce. Attention, who brought us here today. Thank you very much, Susie. One of the many benefits of Cedar is raising awareness about many things, including domestic violence and moving forward to minimize it. And this is especially important in Long Beach since we all know our city is struggling with homeless issues. And according to a recent report from Good Shepherd, Child Shelter, domestic violence account for 21% of homelessness. I appreciate your time and vote in favor of this resolution in advance. And I also want to thank everybody in the audience who have taken the time from their busy life to be here to support the resolution. I leave you with this note that the civility of this society is measured by the way they are treating their woman. Thank you. Absolutely. Next speaker, please. Dear Mayor and council members, I'm Francis Rosner, president of the American Association of University Women Long Beach Branch, known as AAUW Long Beach. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you, and thank you to council women Gonzalez, Lowenthal, Pryce and Mongo for bringing forward this resolution in support of CEDAW. Since 1881, it has been the mission of AAUW to advance equity for women and girls. And we've been advocating in Long Beach since 1911 a long time. In 2010, our branch sent a resolution to the National Office of UW in support of CEDAW ratification in preparation for AAUW written testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law Hearing held on November 18th, 2010. We're here today still without national ratification, but with our AAUW Public Policy Action Statement still affirming our active participation in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and our commitment to ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women or CEDAW. It's time for us to stop piecemeal inequity for half the populace. We've had the Suffrage Amendment, Fair Financing Laws, Title nine, which only applies in educational settings using federal funds. Women now allowed to be in most areas within the military and numerous attempts at pay equity. We tried to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed and we came so close, but it didn't happen. And even with the fact that numerous studies have proven that in communities where gender equity does exist, families are happier and healthier and businesses have stronger growth. Our 139 Long Beach branch members, women and men, are proud that our diverse and inclusive city, as you've pointed out, will be declaring for human rights, joining other large cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco as early adopter role model in this growing grassroots initiative to ensure gender equity in the United States. City by city once and for all. Once CEDAW is implemented within our city based upon the CRC will be analysis. Long Beach will already have gender equity policies in place as California and the rest of the nation are still passing laws about gender equity. One by one, we believe that acceptance now of CEDAW is an act of a far sighted city council. Our branch members are 100% in support of this resolution before you this evening. Thank you for your time and your thoughtful leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment? Please come forward. Hello. Happy Women's History Month. My name is Zoe Nicholson. I live at 8.6 Coronado in beautiful Rose Park and Second District. If you drive past my house today, you will see a suffrage flag hanging, which I hung at one minute after midnight last night. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, council members, administrator, city citizens of Long Beach and in particular, I want to thank Councilmember Price for considering that Long Beach might become a city of Cedar. I've been active in the American women's movement now for over 50 years. In 1982, I sat on a folding chair for 37 consecutive days in the rotunda in the Illinois state legislature, passing on water only. I'm rather serious about equal rights, which, you know, the era never passed. And to this day, women are not included in the Constitution. I am a scholar on the Equal Rights Amendment and a consultant on the ERA. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Here in March. This is one of 32 days legislated when we get to actually talk about women. Women hold up more than half the sky. Women carry most of the water from the shore to the family. Across the globe, women bear, feed, clothe and educate the young. We care for the sick, the aging, the dying. And yet we are disposable, discarded, stoned, tortured, gutted of our sexuality, denied education. We are forced to marry at age 12. We die in early childbirth. We are denied reproductive autonomy. We are raped as a weapon of war. We are denied mobility up the corporate ladder and even driving a car. The U.S. ranks a poor 75th in women, in leadership in the world behind the likes of China, Nepal, Rwanda. When you have an opportunity like this, I am asking you to grab it, to carry it, to teach it, to be it, to do it, to behave as if it passed already. It is the work only of the most advanced, privileged people who have this astonishing opportunity. As electeds, you get to bypass the uncivilized behavior of the United States Congress and become a Cedar City. And I am here to ask you to lift the women of Long Beach and hear this global heartbeat to be a Cedar City. Your mother wants you to do this. The four grandmothers of all directions want you to do this. Please stand with me in the clear light of day and say you have protected their daughters worldwide and become a City FC. Thank you. Thank you. That was wonderful. I was like, spoken word almost. Thank you. Dear Mr. Garcia and City Councilwoman. City Councilman. Um, I'm here on behalf of a woman intercultural network which is national sponsor of cities for See the Campaign Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted in 1979 by the U.N. General Assembly. This international treaty is often described as the International Bill of Rights for Women. The six U.N. member states that have not ratified and or acceded to the convention are Iran, polio, Somalia, Sudan, Congo and United States. Actually, U.S. has signed but never ratified Cedar City's first. See, there is a campaign to protect the right of women and girls by passing ordinances establishing the principle of CEDAW in cities and towns across United States. The campaign was launched at a meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2013 by the NGO Committee on the Status of Women. And I was there when she there was cities foresee that was adopted that support the work of United Nations commission. On this status of woman. And support. And this says a woman and un woman. Many cities has already, as you as other people who spoke here shared that like san francisco and city of l.a. Has and washington has passed ordinances. As someone who has followed cedar for the last 32 years and have written extensively on the importance of CEDAW as a chair of Global Council Circles of Woman, Intercultural and Network that is Sponsor City for CEDAW nationally. A dream is coming true for me as a city, as a resident of Long Beach since 1974. And I never, ever thought that I would. See the day that the Cedar has been, you know, a resolution for being passed in our city. I want to thank Councilwoman Susie Price, which is for our district at the east side, of course, at Long Beach. And as we are embarking on a journey by passing a resolution. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. There's other public comment. Please come forward. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Members of council. My name is Sonny Zia. I sit on the board of. Trustees, Alameda Community College District. My colleague Ginny. Baxter wanted to be here as well, but she couldn't, unfortunately, tonight. And I sent her support for this item. It's a great pleasure for me to be here in support of the resolution on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. I want to thank you, Councilwoman Susie Price, for your leadership in proposing this resolution. Along with your fellow. Council. Woman. It is truly great. To see our leadership take meaningful action and support improving. The lives of girls and women. In Long Beach. Thank you for going beyond words of support and. Looking at finding ways that. To impact gender equity by way. Of conducting an analysis and assessing pathways to make. Change for the better good of all our community members. It is unfortunate to. See us fight for equity. 36 years after President Carter signed CEDAW and after the Lilly Ledbetter Act, I'm confident with leaders such as yourselves. We can. Transform our nation to do better in. Closing. This. Gap and not be placed in the bottom. With third world countries. Of severe who have severe human rights violations. Like Islamic Republic of Iran. And Sudan. We can do better. We must do better. I thank you for putting this item forward, and I appreciate your approval of the recommendation before you. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Please come forward. And is there any other public comment after this? This or last one? Oh, actually, we'll have the lady in the back. So let me actually go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, ma'am. Please go ahead. And I will do the lady in the back and then we'll close up. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. And the Council. Women and men. My name is Ruchi Burman, and I am the chair of the CEDA task force in Orange County. But I'm also a harbor department employee, so it's my pleasure, with immense pleasure. I'm attending this meeting this evening, and I'm extremely happy that Councilwoman Suzy Pryce actually brought it to the city council meeting tonight. And I'm grateful to such a large Lowenthal, who I had met over a year ago, where we had talked about at the UN Women meeting or the conference where we had brought this up for the first time. So extremely grateful for this opportunity that we can hopefully pass this tonight. There's just one thing I would like to point out that the positive side of having a city solicitor adopted the city of San Francisco. When they adopted this in. 1998, they actually have dropped domestic violence cases, still down to 44%. So that is a huge positive side of having CEDAW in your city. So if, you know, not having that not having the reduction in crimes against women is not a big incentive. I don't know what is. So thank you and hope you pass this resolution tonight. Thank you. Thank you. And I take the the lady at the top there. Hi. My name is Sharon Cottrell. Can you hear me? And I reside at 2035 East Broadway, and I've been a resident of Long Beach since. The first week of September 1964. Many of you were born here and. I've been involved in community politics for many most of those years. Not always have. I've been proud of this city, but I feel very proud tonight. And we always are trying to count five on. The city council when we want something. The people have spoken approvingly. I think we have seven already votes. I am old enough that when the women's movement, when we first began to agitate, to do things, to stand up for ourselves and try to get rights, the consciousness raising, the. First now National. Organization of Women. And there was a movement to have women's commissions at City Council. And there was a woman. Gosh, your name? Just Renee Simon. And I can't quite remember. Whether Rene actually was maybe the first city council person. Or she was running for city council. But whatever it was, it was the consensus that she lost because she championed a women's commission. So I just wanted to tell you that to show. So that was the late sixties or the early seventies. Say, 47 years ago. So that's a ways we've come. And thank you very much. Thank you. Q We're going to we're going to take this back to to the Council before we do that. I just wanted to thank all of you that spoke that was that was really great testimony tonight. And we can all agree that women, quite frankly, make everything better. And I wish we had more women on on every body and in Congress and in corporate America. And it's good to see more women also at our universities now more than ever, which is which is really exciting. So thank you all that spoke. I'm going to turn this back over to Councilwoman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to everyone who came out and spoke tonight. I agree with the mayor that we had we heard some very powerful statements by the folks who spoke. And I'm really grateful for that. I neglected to mention that none of this would have been possible without my chief of staff, Julie Maliki, who worked really hard on this and really made herself a subject matter expert. That's that's kind of a big thing we do on our staff. Everyone becomes a subject matter expert on three or four topics, and she really became a subject matter expert on CEDA and knows more about the subject than I could that I could ever study or prepare for. So. And she actually, interestingly enough, sent me a a text that reminded me that she was so proud to see all the women here tonight. And she sent me a really sweet text about my grandmother and said, you know, she's smiling down at you tonight because my grandmother was a woman who was a single mom and the principal of a school at a time when women didn't even work and has really been a source of inspiration for me and my family. And my mom obviously worked until very recently as a single mom. And and I think, you know, I'm raising two boys. And the first time I took them to court with me in my my my day job, my oldest son, who was probably four or five at the time, there was a judge on the bench, a male judge, and he probably doesn't remember this. But my son turned to me and goes, Mom, they let men be judges too. Like the idea, like he had grown up seeing all these strong working women in his environment, that he was really surprised to see that a man could do the job. So so we've kind of changed things around a little bit. And, and I think my colleagues, as I sit here with my colleagues, I think they treat us as equals. We treat them as our equals. And, you know, I think we are very, very careful as a body, as we always should be, to be very respectful of the way that we talk to one another so that we shatter some of the stereotypes and gender narratives that we've been hearing for so much of all of our lives, and that we have a new approach to how we handle one another, even when we disagree. And I'm sure the men would agree that when we do disagree, the women always are the best arguers, for sure, but we do our very best to work with one another. And and I really appreciate the partnership that we have all built. So thank you very much, everyone, for being here. Thank you. That's true. That is definitely true. Councilmember Richard. I agree. I just wanted to chime in and just say this is an incredible, important resolution. And I sat back and listened to incredibly important and I listened to the lady who said, do it for your grandma. Do it for it. Right. And it moved me to speak up. I was going to sort of just kind of let this go because it was it was I'm obviously going to support this. This is a no brainer. But I felt the need and the urge to, you know, speak up. And honestly, you know, we are in a nation that values this, our first lady, as the Let Girls Learn initiative. You know, I'm watching Super Tuesday right now. It looks like we might have a woman in the White House pretty soon, not not campaigning at the dais, but I'm just saying when I'm watching on the news. But I think this is incredibly, incredibly important. Thank you so much for bringing this forward. And I've had a thoroughly good time watching this item. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I think that Councilman Price brought to my attention that for the first time since I've been an elected official, I'm every female member of this council has a female chief of staff and actually the chief of staff. 14th floor is a super majority of women because even some of our male colleagues have women chiefs of staff. So I think that so maybe it's not a male dominated world, at least not here on the 14th floor of Long Beach. So thank you so much for all you've done to break those barriers to get us to where we are today. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you all again for coming. Great. Great resolution. Please cast your votes. Motion carries.