More than a century ago, the League of Women Voters was founded after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.
Exactly one century ago, the La Grange Chapter of League of Women Voters was founded, in 1924, by Francis Kidston, and grew over the last 100 years to include 120 members from 12 different suburbs, including La Grange Park, Brookfield, Countryside, Lyons, McCook, and Riverside.
Now called the La Grange Area LWV, the organization celebrated its centennial Dec. 9, starting with a proclamation from La Grange Village President Mark Kuchler.
“A former village president said of the League that the relationship was always respectful, whether we were standing shoulder to shoulder or going toe to toe,” Laurie Braun, La Grange chapter past president, told the Village Board at its Dec. 9 meeting. “This type of civil, respectful participation, so badly needed today, has been a firmly held principle of the League of Women Voters since its inception.”
The village’s proclamation stressed that “the La Grange League has educated generations of women and men through candidate forums and educational programs” and “many League members had gone on to serve in local government.”
Initiatives the League has been involved with over the years have included preparing immigrants for participating in democratic government, partnering with the Rotary Club on youth counseling, medical and employment services, hosting hundreds of candidate forums and registering thousands of voters.
Moreover, the La Grange Area Chapter has been involved in specific issues over the years, including opposing many “get tough” on crime policies that marginalized rehabilitation, supporting public education, and in 1977 overseeing a public forum on affordable housing in La Grange.
Peg Moster, who joined the LWV over four years ago at the urging of a neighbor, has been a vocal advocate for affordable housing in La Grange.
Moster said she spent the first couple years mostly doing research on the topic, because the La Grange Area League covered so many communities.
“That was the beginning of talking to the various trustees to help them understand the necessity for addressing the issue,” she said.
One problem La Grange had been experiencing was people who had grown up in the Village and wanted to come back to raise children discovered that many “can’t afford to buy back in,” she said. “We’ve always been a community with a variety of income )levels), and we’re getting to be more and more a village of the wealthy. That’s what the trend is going towards.”
La Grange Area Chapter member Jan Goldberg said her focus in the League over the years has been the fair map movement and efforts to promote more equitably drawn maps for congressional and General Assembly districts.
“There was an Illinois redistricting committee that we worked with, and we worked with a number of independent groups,” she said.
The goal was to have an independent commission draw districts, which would help put an end to partisan gerrymandering. But such an effort requires amending the Illinois Constitution.
As Goldberg noted, that could be done by working with the General Assembly, but “why would they take their own power away?”
The League and other supporters of the measure tried to amend the state Constitution through a petition process, but the first attempt was thrown out because of the wording of the petition.
Goldberg said the second attempt had the right language and enough signatures, but was overturned in court.
“I was just heartbroken,” she said. “All that hard work. But like many battles, you lose but you move on.”
The league has had a larger impact in local politics, Goldberg said.
“We do a lot with the school boards and the village board, we’re very involved,” she said. In years with contested races that draw lots of attention, the League’s candidate forums help keep voters informed. “We write questions, solicit questions on our website, and if I was the moderator, I would look over the questions, ask them and make sure someone else was keeping time.”
The League had an active role in the lead up to the latest Democratic primary for Cook County district attorney’s office, writing questions for debates aired on local television.
“That race was so close,” Goldberg said of Eileen O’Neill’s razor-thin, 1500-vote win over Clayton Harris III. “They were so classy about it, because it took them 10 or 12 days to count the votes, and you didn’t hear a peep out of either campaign. How unusual is that?”
After the official village proceedings Dec. 9, the anniversary celebration continued afterward at Milk Money Brewing, 75 S. La Grange Rd.
“We had about 22 members visiting the village and everyone came to the party afterward,” Goldberg said.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
