Petra Leadership Network
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Nahar Alam - 1998 Founder of Workers' Awaaz; courageous organizer of immigrant and domestic workers subjected to cruelty, abuse, and exploitation. |
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Susana Almanza - 1998 Co-founder and Executive Director of People Organized in Defense of the Earth and her Resources (PODER); leader in the struggle to raise public awareness of environmental, community, and health effects of toxic waste. |
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Pablo Alvarado - 2002 Salvadoran refugee, leader of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights In LA's Day Labor Union, Pablo Alvarado has transformed street-corner hiring sites into innovative labor centers and spearheaded an organizing network to close the gap between undocumented workers and organized labor nationwide. |
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Robert Avant - 2000 (d.2008) Executive Director of the North Panola Community Resource Development Corp.; President of Panola County Board of Supervisors; organizer of cooperative ventures including affordable housing, banking services, water supply, and a federal enterprise on behalf of his underdeveloped community. |
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Frank Bardacke - 1998 Driving force of the Watsonville Human Rights Committee; adult high school teacher; activist for labor rights, social justice, better housing, and improved access to education for the Mexican-American and Mexican communities. |
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Ellen Baxter - 1994 Founder of Committee for the Heights-Inwood Homeless; recognized for her dedication to seeking and implementing solutions to the problems of homelessness in urban America. |
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Hava Beller - 1989 Documentary filmmaker; recognized for her depiction of political and personal courage in The Restless Conscience, a film about resistance to Hitler within Nazi Germany. |
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Soccorro Hernandez Bernasconi - 1996 Advocate for cultural identity; community education activist; outpatient counselor for Centro de Anistad; recognized for her advocacy over 30 years for the cultural identity and autonomy of her Yaqui and Latino community. |
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Kekuni Blaisdell - 1996 Physician, medical scholar and professor; recognized for his tireless advocacy for the rights and fundamental freedoms of Knaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiians) and other indigenous peoples. |
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Devin Burghart - 2007 Devin Burghart, director of the Center for New Community’s Building Democracy Initiative, tracks and unmasks white supremacists in all their disguises and counters messages of hate, bigotry, intimidation and violence through research, community organizing, education and training. |
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Mattie Butler - 1989 Chicago community organizer; founder and President of Woodlawn East Community & Neighbors; recognized for advocacy that has led to jobs, housing and education for thousands in southwest Chicago. |
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Mary Caferro - 2008 Executive director of grassroots anti-poverty group Working for Equality and Economic Liberation and legislator in Montana House of Representatives, Caferro is a powerful voice for increasing the minimum wage and reforming the healthcare system. |
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James Callen - 2002 Recognizing that systematic corruption was poisoning the civic life of his community and obstructing economic revival, James Callen co-founded the Citizen's League of Greater Youngstown and has waged a courageous 20-year battle to break the stranglehold of the mob on local politics and commerce. |
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Sandra Campbell-Jackson - 1996 Founder and Director of Raising Others' Children; recognized for her nurturing and development of a support system for inter-generational kinship care and empowerment. |
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Robin Cannon - 1991 Co-founder and President of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles; recognized for her contribution to social, economic, and environmental equity in Los Angeles minority and low-income neighborhoods. |
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Marcia Capuano - 1993 Principal of H.L. Harshman Junior High School; recognized for her dedication to education reform and racial justice in the urban schools on the Near East Side of Indianapolis. |
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Chhaya Chhoum - 2006 Staff director of CAAAV Youth Leadership Project since the age of 19, Chhoum harnesses the energy of her young peers to remedy urban poverty in a Southeast Asian immigrant community that lost much of its adult generation. |
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Ron Chisom - 1994 Community organizer; co-founder and Director of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond; recognized for his efforts to combat racism in America. |
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Samuel Cotton - 1997 (d.2004) Founder of Coalition Against Slavery in Mauritania and the Sudan; a courageous voice in the United States against contemporary human bondage. |
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Carrie Dann - 2003 Mary Dann - 2003 (d.2005) Carrie and Mary Dann, grandmothers and founders of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, have withstood decades of hardship, hostility, corporate greed and government harassment to assert the land rights and human rights of Native Americans. |
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Murphy Davis - 1991 Founder and Director of the Southern Prison Ministry; co-founder and partner of the Open Door Community; recognized for her service to the inhabitants of Georgia's death row and the Atlanta homeless. |
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Susana DeAnda - 2009 Founding co-director of the Community Water Center, DeAnda educates and organizes low-income residents of the San Joaquin Valley to become advocates for clean, affordable drinking water. |
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Geraldine DeGraffenreidt - 2002 By the sheer power of her personality, Geraldine DeGraffenreidt, foster mother of many and maternal outreach worker for the Chatham County, NC, Public Health Department, has not only persuaded scores of unwed mothers to take advantage of county health services but has also encouraged the young men who fathered their children to become productive participants in their childrens' lives. |
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Robert DeSena - 1992 Founder and Director of the Council for Unity; recognized for creating a model cross-cultural program in public schools to defuse gang violence, fight racism, and redirect the lives of New York urban youth. |
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Dolores Farr - 1999 Founder and Executive Director of the Healthy Babies Project; nurse and provider of health education and clinical services for pregnant women and teens, especially those struggling with substance abuse. |
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Lenny Foster - 1997 Coordinator of National Native American Prisoners' Rights Coalition; Director of Navajo Nations Corrections Project; advocate for prisoners' religious freedoms. |
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Earnest Gates - 1992 Businessman and community activist; recognized for his leadership in creating partnerships among the community, the private sector, and the city government to preserve and revitalize Chicago's West Side neighborhoods. |
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James Gilmore - 1998 Police officer, community organizer, and co-founder of 100 Black in Law Enforcement; activist on behalf of his precinct's neighborhood residents and outspoken critic of police brutality and police racism. |
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Roberta Guaspari - 1992 Violinist, teacher, founder of Opus 118; recognized for her commitment to broadening educational opportunities of East Harlem's public school children through the arts. |
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Clayton Guyton - 2003 Calyton Guyton, founder of the Rose Street Community Center, put his life on the line to reclaim his East Baltimore neighborhood from the degradation of drugs, violence, despair and neglect. |
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Graylan Scott Hagler - 1990 Community organizer; Minister of Plymouth Congregational Church; recognized for his efforts on behalf of minority neighborhoods, including advocacy for law enforcement consistent with constitutional safeguards. |
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Haleemah Henderson - 2002 Ingenious organizer for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, Haleemah Henderson has brought affordable banking services and financial literacy to welfare recipients and others victimized by loan sharks, pawnshops and unscrupulous check-cashing businesses. |
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David Hawk - 1989 Founder of the Cambodian Documentation Commission; recognized for his work in the cause of international human rights in Southeast Asia. |
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Kenneth Serapio Hunter - 1990 Pediatric surgeon; recognized for his service to fellow Miskito Indians in the villages and refugee camps of Nicaragua and Honduras. |
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Michael Hurwitz - 2004 Founding co-director of Added Value, an inner-city farm and market project that fosters the leadership and business skills of at-risk teenagers and provides safe space, opportunity and fresh foods to the isolated and underserved neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. |
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Rahim Jenkins - 1997 Founder of Righteous Men's Commission; a leader of Anacostia's ongoing struggle for civic participation, mutual respect and unified action on issues of common concern. |
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Tina Johnstone - 1997 Founder of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence; leader of The Silent March, a memorial to gun victims; leader of grassroots activism on behalf of gun control. |
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Juanita Kirschke - 2000 Co-founder and Director of the Detention Resource Project; friend of isolated immigrants, including children and asylum seekers detained under severe prison conditions; organizer of volunteer legal assistance and social services. |
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Al Kurland - 1994 Educator and community organizer; recognized for his commitment to and support of urban youth in New York's Washington Heights neighborhood. |
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Olin Lagon - 2005 A former high school dropout, Lagon left a promising corporate career to provide digital training and jobs for Native Hawaiians and to form an alliance among Native Hawaiian, Alaskan Native and American Indian companies that is generating opportunity in some of the nation’s most economically depressed communities. |
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Allan Macurdy - 1994 (d.2008) Scholar and activist; recognized for his work on behalf of people with disabilities and other minority communities. |
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Kamau Marcharia - 1991 Community organizer; recognized for his efforts to empower African-American citizens in rural South Carolina. |
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Ian Marvy - 2004 Founding co-director of Added Value, an innercity farm and market project that fosters the leadership and business skills of at-risk teenagers and provides safe space, opportunity and fresh foods to the isolated and underserved neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. |
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Emily Maw - 2006 Director of The Innocence Project - New Orleans, Maw focuses on exonerating the wrongly convicted who are serving life sentences in Louisiana and Mississippi, the states with the highest incarceration rates in the world. |
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Tirso Moreno - 1993 Coordinator and founder of the Farm Workers Association of Central Florida; recognized for seeking improved wages and safer working conditions for farm workers. |
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Vivian Nixon - 2008 Director of the College and Community Fellowship Program, Nixon helps former prisoners earn higher education degrees and is an outspoken advocate for restoring and expanding educational opportunities behind and beyond prison bars. |
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Martha Ojeda - 2001 Executive director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, Martha champions the rights of Mexican factory workers who brave corporate reprisals and government hostility as they struggle for independent unions, fair wages and safe working conditions. |
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Gerald One Feather - 1995 Oglala Sioux rights advocate and founder of Oglala Lakota College; recognized for his work in spearheading education reform, upholding Sioux treaty rights, and helping his people to seek traditional solutions to contemporary problems. |
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Ken Paff - 1996 Co-founder and National Organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union; recognized for his work to restore democracy, accountability and honesty to one of America's largest labor unions. |
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Tyrone Parker - 2007 Tyrone Parker, co-founder and executive director of the Alliance of Concerned Men, mediates disputes among young people at risk in high-crime areas of greater Washington, DC, and works to expand opportunities for them and their families. |
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Darby Penney - 2005 Founder of the Community Consortium and the International Network of Treatment Alternatives for Recovery and co-creator of The Suitcase Project, an exhibition recovering the past of forgotten institutionalized patients, Penney is an outspoken advocate for the rights of those with psychiatric disabilities. |
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Rhonda Perry - 2001 Program director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Rhonda helps thousands of independent farmers and the rural poor to combat the social, economic and environmental degradation of their communities by big agribusiness. |
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Ron Podlaski - 1993 Founder and Director of the P.K. Sethi Prosthetics Clinic and Training Center; recognized for providing health care and economic opportunities for amputee victims of land mines. |
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Audrey Porter - 2008 Director of Survivor Services at the My Life/My Choice Project; leader in the effort to reshape the response of law enforcement and social service-providers to victims of prostitution. |
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Esther Portillo - 2003 Esther Portillo, founder of Libreria del Pueblo, has led boycotts of sweatshop products, protected children from lead poisoning, organized hundreds of vulnerable tenants to preserve and improve affordable housing and at 26, she's just getting started. |
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Lucy Poulin - 1993 Member and leader of Homeworkers Organized for More Employment; recognized for fighting unemployment, illiteracy, and despair among the rural poor in northern Maine. |
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Ninaj Raoul - 2000 Co-founder and Executive Director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees; supporter of Haitian refugees; community organizer, and outspoken opponent of insensitive immigration laws, police brutality, and unfair working conditions. |
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Danalynn Recer - 2004 Founding Director of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, Recer overcame steep obstacles to become a respected scholar and attorney and works tirelessly, pro bono, to improve the quality of trial-level defense in Harris County, Texas, America's "Capital of capital punishment." |
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Jacqueline Robarge - 2009 Founding director of Power Inside, Robarge works to provide a continuum of care as well as policy advocacy to halt the cycle of the same women being repeatedly incarcerated in and released from the Baltimore City Jail. |
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Cecilia Rodriguez - 1990 Founder of La Mujer Obrera; recognized for her support to and advocacy for minority women in the garment industry of southwest Texas. |
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Elena Rodriguez - 2001 President of Mujeres Unidas and coordinator of farmworker outreach for Terry Reilly Health Services, Elena works to secure preventive medicine, reproductive health care and children's medical insurance for Idaho Latinas and their families. |
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Mayseng Saetern - 1995 Founder and counselor at the Asian Women's' Center; recognized for her public commitment to advancing the rights of immigrant women and for bringing attention to issues of domestic violence within the community. |
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Eva Sanjurjo - 2006 Founder of Greening for Breathing, Sanjurjo has led her low-income community's long struggle against environmental degradation and for safe streets, green spaces and green jobs. |
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Tim Schermerhorn - 1999 Founder of New Directions, a rank and file reform group with the Transport Workers Union Local 100; builder of alliances with other labor action groups and progressive organizations. |
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Claudia Smith - 2000 Founder and Border Projects Director of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation; resourceful advocate in the United States and Mexico for the human rights of migrants endangered by harsh border control policies. |
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Linda Stout - 1990 Founder and Director of the Piedmont Peace Project; recognized for creating a model multi-racial movement dedicated to organizing, educating, and empowering North Carolina's poor. |
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Joan Timeche - 1989 Former Director of the Hopi Department of Education and current Program Director for the Center for American Indian Economic Development in Arizona; recognized for fostering educational and economic opportunities for Native Americans while preserving their cultural and spiritual life. |
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Carrie Thomas - 2003 Carrie Thomas, founding director of the Smithville Neighborhood Freedom Center, courageously confronted the racist power structure of her small town and, by raising her voice, helped the entire African-American community find theirs. |
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JT Thompson - 2009 Founding director of Resurrection After Exoneration, Thompson runs the only reentry, transitional housing and resource center for men who were wrongly convicted and exonerated. |
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Curt L. Tofteland - 2007 Curt L. Tofteland, Producing Artistic Director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival and founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky, directs the longest-running Shakespeare theater company contained within the walls of a medium-security adult male prison. |
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Ken Toole - 2001 Co-founder and program director of the Montana Human Rights Network, Ken works with citizens across the state to resist the bigotry of white supremacist and other hate groups and to defend the sovereignty of Native Americans. |
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Tom Tso - 1991 Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation; recognized for his efforts to integrate traditional Navajo law and Anglo-American legal processes. |
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John Cole Vodicka - 1999 Founder of the Prison and Jail Project; courageous advocate of prisoners in southwest Georgia; activist against racism and abuse within the criminal justice system. |
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Hollis Watkins - 1999 Co-founder and President of Southern Echo, Inc., a grass-roots organization fostering positive social change across Mississippi; dedicated community organizer in the struggle for racial justice. |
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Peggy White Wellknown Buffalo - 2009 Founding director of The Center Pole on the Crow reservation in Montana, White works to provide children with the traditional values and contemporary skills necessary to insure a sustainable future for the Crow people. |
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Gina Womack - 2006 Founder and co-director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, Womack has built a statewide organization that is reforming one of America's most racist and brutal criminal systems. |
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Paul Wright - 2005 Skilled jailhouse lawyer and courageous investigative reporter, Wright founded Prison Legal News, a nationally recognized monthly published from behind bars for 13 years, and continues to hold hostile prison bureaucracies to account by exposing incompetence and inhumane conditions, brutality and racism. |
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Rachel Yoder - 1995 Founding member of Parents for Quality Education with Integration; recognized for her advocacy for racial justice in the public schools of Ft. Wayne. |
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Leonard Zeskind - 1992 Researcher, writer, and monitor; recognized for his efforts to increase awareness of hate groups and white supremacist activity in Europe and America. |
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Aaron Zimmerman - 2005 Founding director of New York Writers Coalition, one of the largest community-based creative writing programs in the country, Zimmerman encourages and finds audiences for the work of new writers, from disadvantaged children and teens at risk, to adults who were homeless, incarcerated or survivors of the World Trade Center. |
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ACTUAL - AIDS Children Teaching Us About Love - 1998 Advocates within hospitals and communities for the improved treatment of pediatric AIDS patients; providers of vital family-to-family outreach. |