[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 155 (Tuesday, December 6, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2449]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RECOGNIZING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF MARY M. LASSEN

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                        HON. MICHAEL E. CAPUANO

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 6, 2005

  Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in tribute to Mary M. Lassen, who 
has served more than a decade as president and CEO of the Women's Union 
in Boston. Mary Lassen has been an extraordinary force for social 
justice and effective reform. The Women's Educational and Industrial 
Union, established in 1877, supported suffrage, legal rights, and wider 
opportunities for women. Mary Lassen built upon those historic triumphs 
and led the union into a new century, working with and on behalf of 
poor and immigrant women. Under her leadership, the union has provided 
job training for women moving from welfare to work, supportive housing 
for survivors of domestic abuse, and compelling advocacy for family 
economic self-sufficiency.
  Mary Lassen graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College, 
determined to secure liberty, justice, and opportunity for all persons. 
Her struggle against poverty and injustice has been both intellectual 
and pragmatic. She believes in rigorous analysis and sustained 
collaboration. After working as a community organizer, she became 
executive director of the Committee for Boston Public Housing. In that 
office, she introduced early childhood, antiviolence and community 
building programs in several of Boston's public housing developments, 
and then, characteristically, she took time to reflect. In a sabbatical 
year, as a fellow of the Mary I. Bunting Institute at Radcliffe 
College, she produced a study of ``Community-Based Family Support in 
Public Housing.'' During a public policy fellowship sponsored by the 
Japan Society, she explored women's employment and workforce 
development in East Asia. She has inspired the union's important 
research on Family Self-Sufficiency and helped forge the Massachusetts 
Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project, MassFESS, a statewide 
coalition of organizations, to measure the real costs of living, 
working and paying taxes without subsidies and to frame policy in terms 
of these real costs.
  Under her leadership, the Women's Union opened Horizons II, 
increasing by 30 percent the number of supportive transitional housing 
units for battered and homeless women and their children in the city of 
Boston. This year, the Women's Union celebrated the opening of a newly 
designed, state-of-the art, woman-focused technology training center. 
The title of their report expresses their goal: Achieving Success in 
the New Economy.
  Several of the most daring, inspiring, and influential women in the 
history of our country have been associated with the Women's Union, 
sometimes as supporters, sometimes as clients: Louisa May Alcott, Julia 
Ward Howe, Helen Keller, and Amelia Earhart. Mary Lassen deserves a 
place among them.

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