One of Vermont's fiercest fighters for human rights, Peg Franzen, recently passed on after battling cancer. Ms. Franzen has been a key leader of the Vermont Workers’ Center and the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign over the last decade. She had a long career working for disability rights, social and economic justice for over 30 years before joining the Workers’ Center. Over the last five years of her life, she was a driving force for the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign and played an instrumental role in the push for universal healthcare in Vermont with the passage of two landmark laws, Act 128 (2010) and Act 48 (2011).
“Peg Franzen’s legacy is enormous. She has profoundly impacted the lives of thousands of people. She showed what it is to be a real leader in every sense of the word. Peg never wanted to be in the limelight. She wanted the focus on the broader collective of people taking action together. In that way Peg was an example of the kind of leader we can all aspire to be,” says James Haslam, Executive Director of the Vermont Workers’ Center. “We gave her a promise that we will keep our eyes on the prize for realizing universal healthcare, and building a movement for all our human rights and real democracy. She showed us how we can change the world.”
In 1979, Ms. Franzen co-founded the Vermont Center for Independent Living, which has since grown to a statewide organization with offices and members across Vermont fighting for disability rights. She also co-founded the Peace & Justice Center in 1977. When she was working for the Committee for Temporary Shelter in 1989, she started the COTS Walk, which now raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for the state’s largest homeless shelter. When Ms. Franzen joined the VWC in 2002 she began working on our VT Workers’ Rights Hotline. She went on to serve on the Workers' Center’s Coordinating Committee as an At-Large member, Treasurer, and from 2009 - 2013 she was the President.
During that time Ms. Franzen was a lead spokesperson for the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which was started in 2008 to change what was politically possible in healthcare reform. She acted as the eyes and ears of the grassroots network in the State House. Since its creation in 2011 with Vermont’s breakthrough universal healthcare law, Ms. Franzen served on the Advisory Committee for the Green Mountain Care Board.
Under Ms. Franzen’s leadership as President, the VWC experienced explosive growth in statewide capacity and membership and has become a national leader in grassroots human rights and workers’ rights movements. Ms. Franzen had been set to be honored on Human Rights Day (Dec. 10) in New York City by the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative and Poverty Initiative for her leadership on building the human right to healthcare movement in Vermont, which has served as a model for other states sparking new grassroots campaigns in Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and Oregon.
Ms. Franzen is survived by her spouse Joyce Werntgen (also a leader for disability rights and the Workers’ Center), ex-husband and friend Herbert Franzen, daughter Lisa and son Matthew, son Michael and wife Kerry, grandchildren Alex and Heidi Franzen, step-grandchildren Samantha, Christopher and Shawn Neste; and stepsons, Kurt, Neal and Eric Werntgen and their families. She was pre-deceased by her son Robert in 1989. There will be a celebration of Peg’s life on Sunday, December 15th at 1 PM at the Old Labor Hall in Barre, Vermont.