SAVE THE DATE

Celebrate Unsung Heroes Advancing the Rights and Dignity of Others at the Petra Foundation's 19th Annual Dinner

November 16, 2007
National Press Club, Washington DC

Plan now to join us at our annual awards dinner and meet leaders from all over the country who are working on the frontlines of the struggle for human rights and dignity.

Your participation in and support for this event enables Petra to host hundreds of citizen activists to work together - across the lines of age, race, class and issue - for a more just society.

2006 Petra honorees Chhaya Chhoum and Gina Womack work to expand opportunities for young people in South Bronx and in New Orleans communities. Photo: Arts group PR.

NEWS

Photo: Earlie Hudnall, Jr.,
Hip Hop (Dallas, 1993).

Street-level Solutions Inform Public Policy

On April 13, 100 Petra friends gathered at the home of John Shattuck and Ellen Hume to learn about the work of Boston's Ten Point Coalition to defuse urban violence from its director, the Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond. 2006 Petra Fellow Gina Womack, founding co-director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, and her colleague Grace Bauer, described similar problems with young gang members in New Orleans.

One week later, The Boston Globe published an op-ed endorsing a more balanced approach to fighting violence co-authored by Petra founder and federal judge Nancy Gertner who attended the event. The article cautioned against over-reliance on federal prosecutions, which can undermine the close ties between local enforcement and communities. It endorsed a coordinated, focused, and sustained partnership among law enforcement agencies, schools, social service agencies, businesses, churches and concerned communities and recommended providing meaningful alternatives for young people tempted to commit crimes.

Darby Penney.
Photo: Dorothea von Haeften.

Petra Advocate for Psychiatric Patients' Rights Wins Award from NY Foundation for the Arts

Darby Penney, who was recognized as a Petra Fellow for her pioneering work for the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities, was awarded a nonfiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts for her first book, "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic" (co-authored with Peter Stasney) scheduled for publication in January by Bellevue Literary Press.

Michael Royce, Executive Director of the NYFA, called Penney's book "hugely important" and said her project stood out from others like "a diamond in the rough."

Penney, who was delighted to join former winners like filmmaker Spike Lee, novelist Oscar Hijuelos and playwright Tony Kushner, said she felt privileged to tell the powerful stories of some of those who died as forgotten wards of the state.

Photo: Courtesy of
Greening for Breathing.

Greening for Breathing

Greening for Breathing, founded by 2006 Petra Fellow Eva Sanjurjo, is now executing its Hunts Point urban forestry plan to link residential areas to green spaces as well as plant buffers between pollution sources and nearby homes. Joining forces with Sustainable South Bronx to create "green-collar" jobs, GFB was thrilled to hire newly trained, neighborhood Greenway Stewards to help maintain the formerly bleak stretch of South Bronx waterfront that is being transformed into parkland and recreation space.

Elsewhere on the environmental front, Michael Hurwitz, honored by the Petra Foundation in 2004 for his work to promote sustainable development in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn by training young adults to be leaders through the operation of a socially responsible market-farming enterprise, has been appointed director of NYC's 44 local Greenmarkets.

Petra Fellows Press for Criminal System Reform in Louisiana and Mississippi

Lenny Foster. Photo:
Dorothea von Haeften.

This spring, 1997 Petra Fellow Lenny Foster gained rare national press coverage of his efforts over the past three decades to uphold the religious rights of Native American inmates ("Prisons Around the Country Offer Sweat Lodges to Indian Inmates", AP, May 29, 2007).

Despite the guarantees of the First Amendment, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, Foster travels to visit more than 2,000 native prisoners in 96 federal and state facilities to insure compliance and enforcement, addressing prison policy that arbitrarily dictates what is secular and what is sacred and denies traditional practices on the basis of "security concerns."

"For the longest time, we've been denied the right to practice our religion... We were told not to speak our language, to cut our hair, to convert to Christianity... Our sweat lodges, our medicine bundles, our pipes were burned," says Foster. He has seen the positive effects traditional ceremonies have on prisoners. "There's a real cleansing of the soul that takes place."

A young Navajo inmate of a Sandoval County (NM) lockup who is allowed to take part in a weekly sweat lodge ceremony agrees that the ancient healing traditions helped him become a different person. "We look beyond these wires," he says, pointing to the rolls of razor wire that separate the prison from the endless prairie. "We look beyond all that even though we know we're within... Once we get the ceremony going, our minds go back home; they go back to the places of our people, our land."

Gina Womack.
Photo: Joshua Cogan.

2006 Petra Fellow Gina Womack, founder of Families & Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, reports that its priority this year is working to block the school-to-prison pipeline as the region's education system is reorganized post-Katrina. FFLIC is on guard against predominantly black schools being forced to close to make way for upscale real estate development and is recruiting and training parent volunteers to reduce the need for private uniformed guards in schools.

Visit FFLIC Website

Emily Maw.
Photo: Joshua Cogan.

In the past six months, 2006 Petra Fellow Emily Maw and her staff at the Innocence Project-New Orleans have celebrated the exoneration and release of Travis Hayes and Cedric Willis. Convicted as teenagers, the two served, respectively, nearly 10 years and 12 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Visit IP-NO Website

CONTRIBUTE

Support the Petra Leadership Network

Thanks to the great generosity of hundreds of individuals, the Petra Foundation, a publicly supported 501(c)(3) organization, has worked for 19 years to recognize and support the kinds of people Petra Shattuck most admired: extraordinary leaders who take risks and overcome obstacles to make distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy and dignity of others.

To date, 75 such individuals have been honored as Petra Fellows. In addition to giving each fellow a no-strings financial award, the foundation sustains its commitment to them, welcoming them to a national network of citizen activists and fostering the resulting collaborations. All who wish to join the Petra Leadership Network are warmly welcomed.

To make a secure tax-deductible donation, please use the link below. To donate stock or other appreciated assets or to learn more about how to get involved, please contact meg@petrafoundation.org.

Donate now