League of Women Voters of Concord-Carlisle

The League of Women Voters (LWV) was founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt at the final meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, just a few months prior to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Concord's LWV was founded a decade later under the leadership of Miss Sarah Goodwin. Reflecting the history of the national organization, its earliest members were many of Concord's leading suffragists. In 1962 Carlisle LWV members joined with Concord and together became the League of Women Voters of Concord-Carlisle, Massachusetts. The mission of the League of Women Voters is threefold: study, action, and voter service. The organization is non-partisan and does not support individual candidates or align itself with any political party, however, it does support and advocate for issues that it has studied. The League has both introduced and supported warrant articles at Concord's annual Town Meeting. Their efforts to inform the electorate include offering informational forums, candidate forums, and sponsoring debates, as well as disseminating voter information through fact sheets, handbooks, articles, and the media. Among the issues that have been addressed by the LWV of Concord-Carlisle are water resources, housing, land use, education, recreation, and crime prevention. The League has taken on such local issues as the proposed redesign and re-engineering of Route 2 in the early 1970s and controversies surrounding the environmental impact of Hanscom Field on the surrounding community. In addition to local issues, many members are actively engaged on the state, regional and national level. Membership in the League was originally open only to women, but in the 1990s was extended to all.