Biden to Establish Monument for Trailblazing Frances Perkins

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Newsweek

Published Dec 16, 2024 at 10:57 AM EST


President Joe Biden is set to sign a proclamation on Monday that will create a national monument honoring Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to a presidential Cabinet.

Perkins, who served as Labor Secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, played a critical role in shaping the New Deal and establishing labor protections in the U.S.

Why Is Frances Perkins' Legacy Being Honored Now?

Biden's decision to honor Perkins comes nearly 60 years after her death in 1965. Perkins was a driving force behind landmark policies including the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the National Labor Relations Act.

These laws provided crucial safeguards for workers and were central to FDR's New Deal initiatives during the Great Depression. Her advocacy also laid the foundation for workers' rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining.


Mrs. Frances Perkins, member of the civil service commission, testifies before post office and civil service committee April 27, 1950 in Washington. On Monday, President Joe Biden is planning to sign a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring the late FDR-era Labor Secretary. Bill Allen/AP Photo

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/president-biden-establish-monument-frances-perkins-2001254

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Link to White House FACT SHEET - FACT SHEET: President Biden Designates Frances Perkins National Monument

[Deuxcents]

1. It's really sad that history has seemed to have forgotten Ms Perkins and her relentless pursuit

To get policies voted on that we, today, have. She’s responsible for push thru the Social Security Act of 1935, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that banned child labor and worked to get the 40 hour workweek, minimum wage. She was the first women in the US presidential cabinet and I cannot image the road blocks and the backlash she endured. A monument for Francis Perkins, yes, indeed.

[appalachiablue]

2. K/R

[SunSeeker]

3. A great American hero.

She single handedly created the core of the social safety net for Americans.

And she did it as a woman in the 1930s. What she managed to accomplish is truly mind boggling.

[erronis]

4. Heather Cox Richardson today

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-16-2024

Today, President Joe Biden designated a new national monument in honor of Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The first female Cabinet secretary, Perkins served for twelve years. She took the job only after getting FDR to sign on to her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

...

By 1979, religious traditionalists had rejected the modern move toward women’s rights and made common cause with Republicans eager to derail the New Deal. In 1980 the support of those traditionalists put Republican president Ronald Reagan into the White House. Their influence grew in the 1990s as white evangelicals became the base of the Republican Party. By 2016 they had brought into the Republican Party a determination to reinstate a male-dominated, patriarchal world that resurrected the government Frances Perkins’s vision had replaced.

That impulse has grown until now, in 2024, attacks on women have become central to the destruction of the kind of government Frances Perkins helped to establish during the New Deal. Religious extremists in the Republican Party have in some states reduced or prevented women’s access to healthcare and are talking about taking away women’s right to vote, and the party itself has downgraded the role of women in society. When House Republicans released a list of their committee leaders for the next Congress last Thursday, there were no women on it. For the first time in 20 years, no House committees will be chaired by women.

“Very fitting in the MAGA Era—No Women Need Apply,” former Republican representative from Virginia Barbara Comstock posted on X.

[IL Dem]

5. I recently finished reading a biography about her.

She was extraordinary!

The book is titled Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray. I highly recommend it.