Watch out Andrew Jackson. Women and men all over America are banding together and petitioning to have a woman to take over the $20 bill by the year 2020 — just in time for the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

This campaign is a great platform for Americans to take the time to educate themselves on the women who have helped shape this country and vote for whom they believe best represents the women’s rights movement. It is also an opportune moment to signify how far women have come.

W20, or Women on 20s, started its campaign to address the fact that many Americans are not familiar with the leaders of women’s rights campaigns and to give the women of American history the recognition they deserve.

“It’s our mission to make sure that when the new face of U.S. money is chosen, it is decided by We the People in a widely publicized online referendum from a slate of candidates who embody the values, ambitions and ethics upon which this country was founded,” says the movement’s website, womenon20s.org.

The women to have held a spot on U.S. currency can be counted on one hand: Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea and Helen Keller. And of those women, the only piece that is still released for circulation is Sacagawea’s golden dollar. But who uses those anyway? And on top of all of this, the man on the $20 bill was opposed to paper money.

Jackson may have been the seventh president, but that is where his accolades end. He owned a slave plantation and supported and enforced the Indian Removal Act. The act forcibly moved over a hundred thousand Native Americans from their land east of the Mississippi river out West, so whites could use the land for cultivation. This resulted in thousands of Native American deaths, all for the greed of white Europeans.

Jackson’s policies do not stand with American values, and it’s a slap in the face for anyone of Native American or African American descent to have him on currency. A woman leader like Sojourner Truth, Margaret Sanger or Harriet Tubman could easily replace Jackson. In addition to these women, there are 12 other candidates who are up for the spot on the $20 bill, according to the Women on 20s website. Originally, the website had 100 candidates, but after further review with women’s history experts, it was able to whittle the list down to 15 women for a public vote.

President Barack Obama has even touched on the issue, “Last week, a young girl wrote to ask me why aren’t there any women on our currency, and then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff — which I thought was a pretty good idea,” he said to a crowd in Kansas City, Missouri last summer.

And there’s a good chance the president will act on that good idea; if the petition Women on 20s created reaches 100,000 votes by the end of the month, Obama will then be required to respond to that petition. Organizers hope he’ll respond by asking the Secretary of the Treasury to finally even the score. This process doesn’t go through Congress like a bill — it’s far more simplified and can be approved without major hurdles.

The public should sign this petition and play a part in this debate. It’s time to put your money where your mouth is.

Julia Smith is a junior newspaper and online journalism and sociology dual major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @jcsmith711.

Published on March 22, 2015 at 10:30 am