Newcastle, ME – In response to the designation of the Frances Perkins National Monument, which celebrates the life and legacy of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a presidential cabinet, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and Maine Conservation Voters (MCV) released the following statements:

“LCV celebrates the designation of the Frances Perkins National Monument honoring the life and legacy of workers’ rights advocate Frances Perkins,” said Gene Karpinski, LCV President. “Perkins served as Secretary of Labor under President Roosevelt and championed transformative policies such as Social Security, a minimum wage, and the 40-hour work week. Her dedication to labor rights highlights the connection between strong environmental and labor policies and the importance of an empowered workforce to achieve our climate goals. We applaud the Biden-Harris administration’s dedication to protecting our nation’s most culturally and environmentally significant sites with this designation, which recognizes women’s contribution to this country and further cements their historic conservation legacy.”

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“Maine Conservation Voters applauds the decision to designate the Perkins homestead as a national monument,” MCV Partnerships Director Nick Janzen said. “Frances Perkins was a crucial voice for land conservation and labor rights and helped millions of Americans out of poverty as an architect of the New Deal. While her legacy includes groundbreaking achievements for women in politics, the environment, and workers, Perkins also exhibited a dismaying lack of awareness about the very real and adverse impacts of segregation and voting barriers. This designation presents an important opportunity to learn from Perkins’s at-times contradictory life and age.”

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