Maria Gillan to Receive Clara Lemlich Award

Maria Mazziotti Gillan will be honored this spring with a Clara Lemlich Social Activist Award. The award is named for Clara Lemlich, a Jewish immigrant who began organizing as a young garment worker, which led to her being blacklisted. Undeterred, she then devoted herself to the cause of suffrage, and throughout her long life, she continued to organize on behalf of consumers and laborers and for the cause of peace.

The Lemlich Awards for Social Activism were founded in 2011 by LaborArts and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. The Puffin Gallery for Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York and Tamiment LIbrary, NYU are co-sponsors. Funding is from the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund, the Puffin Foundation, and Tamiment Library.

This two-part event honors women whose activism will inspire future generations. The virtual event on May 12 (with pre-recorded elements) will be followed by a permanent web page for each honoree featuring the written form of the intro, their acceptance, a bio; and a video interview.

More information and registration information will be posted here closer to the event.

This year's honorees:

 

Dorothy Burnham, human rights activist, educator, and activist, celebrated her 107th birthday on March 22, 2022.  

Maria Mazziotti Gillan - known as the people's poet of Paterson NJ, she has done a remarkable job of bringing poetry to an extraordinarily broad audience.

Dolores Huerta - Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association and one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement.

 

Reverend Jeannette J. Phillips has been a pioneer in securing access to health care for the disenfranchised for over five decades.

Kathie Sarachild was one of the founders of New York Radical Women in 1967 and is a theoretician of the women's movement.