The blog of the Frances Perkins Center

“The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”
–Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, 1933 – 1945

Frances Perkins Center honors six Maine women leaders

Written by summer intern Sichu Mali

On June 26, the Frances Perkins Center 1st Annual Garden Party was held at The Brick House, the Perkins homestead. The theme of this year’s Garden Party was “Maine Women Leaders: Past, present and future.”

Frances Perkins's grandson, Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, looks on as executive director Barbara Burt reads congratulations to honorees Shenna Bellows, Selma Botman, Laura Fortman, and Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

Five Maine women leaders were honored at the event. The honorees were Maine Civil Liberties Union (MCLU) Director Shenna Bellows; Commissioner of Labor Laura Fortman; Bates College President Elaine Tuttle Hansen; University of Southern Maine (USM) President Selma Botman; President of Maine Senate Elizabeth Mitchell; and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.

While Senate President Mitchell and Congresswoman Pingree were not able to attend the event, a representative of Congresswoman Pingree received the honor on her behalf. Congresswoman Pingree sent a letter in which she celebrated the Frances Perkins Center and said she was joining us at this event in spirit. In her letter, she acknowledged that Frances brought a deep commitment to improving lives of all Americans by playing an instrumental role in creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and a federal minimum wage.  She emphasized the importance of an organization such as the Frances Perkins Center that is dedicated to furthering her legacy of commitment to working people. Congresswoman Pingree also reminded the garden party attendees that universal healthcare is the one unfinished piece of Frances Perkins’s agenda for social and economic justice.

Senator Olympia Snowe sent her best wishes to the Frances Perkins Center and congratulated the six women leaders. She described Frances Perkins as exemplifying Maine’s legendary work-ethic, can-do spirit, and hallmark independence. Senator Snowe envisioned the center as a vibrant epicenter for research and the thoughtful interactions and deliberations among students, scholars, and policy makers whose common inspiration is founded on the magnificent life of Secretary Perkins.

Besides MCLU Director Bellows, Commissioner of Labor Fortman, Bates President Hansen and USM President Botman, the other distinguished guests at this event were New Deal historians Dr. Christopher Breiseth and Neil Rolde as well as Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal and Karenna Gore Schiff, author of Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America.

A Couple with Unwavering Determination

By Sichu Mali, summer intern

Judy and Kevin Simpson

Last Wednesday evening, I was listening to Ed Desgrosseilliers at the 2009 Watering Can Awards Celebration program as he was presenting The Social Landscape Artist Award to Kevin and Judy Simpson. I was impressed with the vigor that the Simpson couple brought to the stage.

What struck me the most about them was the sheer amount of time that they had dedicated to social justice causes. They have been involved in civil rights and community service for well over four decades. In the 1960s, they had worked with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Congress On Racial Equality to end school segregation and housing discrimination. Besides striving for racial equality, they had also advocated for peace and non violence. They had been active in the movement to bring U.S. troops home from Vietnam. Besides, they had led the local chapter of Neighbor to Neighbor while disapproving U.S.-funded violence in Central America. Their commitment to social justice has been not limited to race and peace issues. Lately, they have joined Maine People’s Alliance and are now campaigning for single-payer health care, fair taxation and the Employee Free Choice Act- an act that would amend the National Labor Relations Act to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts.

One could not help but be touched with their unwavering determination. Even after all these years, they are still actively pushing for social and economic reforms. Their faith in a progressive society still remains strong. As Judy would say, “Injustice is not a permanent feature of the world. We just keep at it and along the way, we manage to inspire others.”

The issues championed by the Simpsons were the issues Frances Perkins had defended throughout her life. Minimum wage, collective bargaining, employment assistance, social security and unemployment insurance were the topics that Frances included in the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Social Security Act when she drafted them. At Frances Perkins Center, we honor her vision and serve to raise awareness of Frances’s work. As a part of a project for this event, I put together an exhibit about Frances Perkins and the Frances Perkins Center which is displayed below:

Exhibit

The Typewriter Mystery — Solved

By Sichu Mali, summer intern

I have arrived at The Frances Perkins Center as a summer intern to help catalog and research letters, documents, and other belongings of Frances Perkins and her family. The first item that I examined at The Brick House (the Perkins family home) was a typewriter that belonged to Frances Perkins. The typewriter manufacturer is the Remington Rand company. According to a Times-Herald article published on June 27, 1945, it had been presented to her when she resigned from the U.S. Department of Labor. The article, titled “1,800 in Labor Department Say Au Revoir to Mme. Perkins,” mentions that a gift fund of $373 collected by the department employees had enabled them to give her a few things she wanted, which included this standard-size typewriter. She had expressed her wish to receive a typewriter for her personal use as the government was not going to provide her with typewriters after June 30, 1945.

Another article about the gift, in the June 27, 1945, edition of the Washington Daily News, told this story:

During my research, I also came across articles on the Remington Rand strike of 1936-37. In 1936, a federal union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had called a strike against the management of the Remington Rand company, which was the largest manufacturer of office supplies at that time. In retaliation, the company administration made use of scare tactics (now called the Mohawk Valley formula) to force the workers to withdraw their strike. After much difficulty, the union workers and the management were finally able to reach an agreement after a session mediated by Frances Perkins.

The going-away present

1 “1,800 in Labor Department Say Au Revoir to Mme. Perkins”, Times-Herald, June 27, 1945.
2 “It’s Farewell to Faithful Fanny Perkins,” The Washington Daily News, June 1945.
3 “Approve Rand Peace Plan,” New York Times, April 21, 1937; “Strikers Approve Rand Peace Terms,” New York Times, April 22, 1937.

Our summer intern

We are very pleased to welcome our first summer intern to the Frances Perkins Center. Her name is Sichu and she’ll be a senior at Mount Holyoke College next fall. Sichu is an international student and hails from Katmandu. She’s a sociology major at Mount Holyoke, and plans to go to law school after graduation.

Yesterday, we took a tour of scenic places near the Frances Perkins Center. Here's Sichu on the rocks in front of the Pemaquid Lighthouse.

Sichu will spend the summer cataloguing papers and memorabilia at the Center and helping with office tasks.

Single-payer proponents ask for a seat at the table

The Senate Finance Committee, under Chair Max Baucus (D-Montana), has been holding hearings on health care reform, one of which was held last Tuesday. Proponents of a single-payer health care system–modeled on Medicare and, like Frances Perkins’s most significant accomplishment, Social Security, available to all–were upset that they did not have a representative at the table at any of these hearings. Jerry Call, who attended our conference on May 2nd and spoke up there for the single-payer system, was one of the protestors at the May 12th hearing. Here’s a YouTube video of that event (Jerry appears after about 7 minutes).

Here’s what Jerry said at our conference, talking about the discussion that took place in the Health Care for All workshop:

We’re basically faced with two choices. In probably June or July or maybe as late as August, the Administration will come out with a mandatory for-profit insurance program similar to what Massachusetts has done and failed at. And I think the sense of the group was that we’re pretty much going to lay down and accept it. We’re going to go with the political will of this mandatory insurance program. We’re not going to get a public program out of it. Not only is it not feasible, it’s not advisable. And Baucus already said last week that he is putting it aside, which is the same thing as if  he said it is off the table. It’s off.

So the other option to that is, the other side that we discussed was, well, we could be idealists, if you will. We could step out there and try to do something about it. We could stand up for our principles and say “Let’s go out and let’s demand a single payer Medicare for all system.” So that’s the simple choice. I mean, you can either go out and demand it or you can just lay back and take what Obama will give you. Which is a mandatory for-profit insurance system.

On the same day as the Senate Finance Committee Hearing, May 12, MoveOn.org sent an email to members asking them to call their senators and urge them to make sure that a Medicare-based health insurance option stays in the president’s plan. They claim that the Republicans are planning to kill that option:

Luntz wrote a confidential memo that laid out the Republican strategy: Pretend to support reform. Mislead Americans about the heart of Obama’s plan, the public health insurance option. Scare enough people to doom real reform.

If you want to know more about that public health insurance option, check out The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform: Key to Cost Control and Quality Coverage by Jacob S. Hacker of Berkeley. Here’s the PDF: Jacob_Hacker_Public_Plan_Choice

Western Maine Labor Council recognizes Frances Perkins and the Center

On May 2nd, the Western Maine Labor Council held their annual breakfast observing Workers’ Memorial Day and May Day in Lewiston. It was attended by 150 people. Several awards were presented, including one to Frances Perkins and the Frances Perkins Center. Here’s what the Lewiston Sun-Journal reported:

A third award went to the late Frances Perkins and the newly created Frances Perkins Center in Newcastle.

Perkins, who had deep family roots in Maine, was the secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first female cabinet member, a principal author of the New Deal and a lifelong champion of working people and workers’ fundamental right to organize.

Leslie Manning, deputy director of the Maine Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Standards, delivered a dramatic biographical sketch of Perkins’ life beginning with her witnessing the tragic deaths of 146 young immigrant women in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. The tragedy influence her life and led to her being known as “the Mother of the New Deal.” Her grandson, Maine resident Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, accepted the award.

Read the full article here.

Leslie Manning and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall at the WMLC breakfast

The end run around blocking change

Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, wrote a fiery blog post in the Huffington Post last night: “Corruption is Dangerous to Your Health.” In it, he excoriates the corporate lobbyists who effectively block so much legislation that would improve the lives of all Americans, such as paid sick leave:

More than 160 countries, the Times tells us, have laws that ensure all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness. The US does not. The reason goes no further than the influence of money on politics.

There’s a way to change this culture of corporate influence and it’s a piece of legislation called “The Fair Elections Now Act,” H.R. 1826 and S. 752. Here’s what Congressman John Larson and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree wrote in a join editorial in the Kennebec Journal yesterday:

The Fair Elections Now Act, which has been in the works for more than a year, takes the big money out of our political system and empowers small donors and average Americans. Our proposal, which would be entirely voluntary, would require candidates for Congress to qualify by raising at least 1,500 small contributions of between $5 and $100 from in-state residents. Once they qualify, they will receive an upfront grant, based on the average costs of winning campaigns in recent elections, for their primary campaigns; and if nominated, another grant for their general election campaign. Candidates will also receive a 4:1 match for in- state contributions. No individual may give more than $100 and that match will stop after a certain spending level is reached.

The Fair Elections Now Act builds on the experiences of states to perfect a system that has cleaned up local elections across the country. In Connecticut and Maine, more than 80 percent of candidates for the state Legislature now participate in a clean- elections system. The clean-elections laws in these states have let lawmakers get back to doing the people’s business, tackling big issues such as the economy and the environment without the influence of lobbyists and big donors.

Senator Durbin is the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, and Senator Arlen Specter is the co-sponsor. The House version is sponsored by Larson and has 24 co-sponsors. Without the need to raise millions of dollars to wage a competitive campaign, candidates (and thus, elected officials) would not be beholden to corporate pressuring. It’s not that the voices of corporations would be silenced; they would simply be a part of the chorus instead of the solo divas.

We advocates for social justice have a choice. In each battle — for health care, workers’ rights, etc. — we can fight the corporate interests lined up against us, or we can go to the root of the problem and free our legislative process from its addiction to corporate dollars. Systemic retooling is not easy but it’s the only way to make an end run around those powerful entities blocking change.

Frances would say, “Seize the moment — before it passes”

Much has been made of economist Paul Romer’s statement, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Yes, Congress passed the Economic Recovery Act, and yes, it was huge. But unfortunately, much of that money is now going to shore up states’ income-starved budgets — instead of stimulating the economy in new ways. And another huge amount has gone to shore up financial institutions, without a penny of that trickling down to regular people.

We’re not done, yet. I hope no one thinks that we are. We have decades of painful diminution to make up if we expect the middle class to return to its previous robustness, and that’s going to take massive investment. Of tax dollars.

If we don’t do it now, it may never happen. There may never be another chance, and the United States will continue its downward slide.

President Franklin Roosevelt and his Labor secretary, Frances Perkins, had a vision of the kind of place we could be living in today, the sort of standard of living we could be enjoying. It’s embodied in their “Economic Bill of Rights.” Their initial work — including social security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage — was passed in 1935. But the rest of the list and most notably, national health care, was interrupted by the onslaught of World War II.

Yet, they never lost sight of those social justice goals.

January 11, 1944, FDR said this in an address:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

As World War II came to a close, FDR and Perkins knew it was time to again turn to their social justice agenda. Unfortunately, illness and death intervened. FDR died on April 12, 1945, before these goals could be enacted.

Frances Perkins, upon hearing of FDR's death on April 12, 1945. (Image: NARA photo, SSA website

Imagine what America would be like if these rights were recognized and supported. Sixty-five years after the “Economic Bill of Rights” was announced, we have the opportunity to make them real. But only if we move fast. Who knows what fate lies in store for us?

Advocating for a NEW New Deal

On Saturday, the Frances Perkins Center sponsored a conference called “The New New Deal: Building an Economy That Works for All of Us.” While, in a week or two, we’ll be releasing a report detailing the discussions and suggestions that came out of the conference, here are a few pictures. The conference was supported by grants from the Maine Department of Labor, the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at the University of Southern Maine, and Maine Initiatives: A Fund for Change.

Panelists included, from left to right: Cliff Ginn, Opportunity Maine; Garrett Martin, MECEP; Tim Belcher, MSEA/SEIU; John Christie, Augusta Career Center; Sarah Standiford, Maine Women's Lobby; Laura Boyett, Maine State Bureau of Unemployment

Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree chats with attendees before the start of the conference

Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman responds to a comment fom the audience

Not shown are panel moderator Ben Dudley from Engage Maine and keynote speaker Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci.

Join us this Saturday!

To register online, go to http:tinyurl.com/May2register.

Poster for our May 2nd conference