
At age 26, Ms. Clarke directs one of New York State’s long-standing hubs for social justice organizing, the Albany Social Justice Center. While still a student, she cofounded Save Our SUNY, which organized against tuition price increases and cuts in academic programs, and New York Students Rising, a statewide coalition that advocated for quality affordable higher education and student empowerment. After graduation, she organized for the Graduate Students Employees Union (GSEU/CWA 1104) and helped bring a new labor contract for SUNY graduate students. She cofounded the Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration (CAAMI), a leading upstate New York voice on issues of prison justice and police violence, and the Upstate NY Black Lives Matter Chapter. Throughout her work, Angelica M. Clarke has been able to inspire young activists while simultaneously building relations with, and creating bridges to, older generations of social justice advocates.
Two runners-up will receive the $1,000 Edna Awards of Distinction:
- Jessica Carmona Cabrera, the Central California Regional Coordinator for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, an immigrant, youth-led alliance that advocates and organizes for immigrant rights in California; and
- Cathy Dang, the Executive Director of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, which works to build grassroots community power across diverse poor and working class Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City.
This year’s Kate Mullany Award recipients are:
- Jessica Ellul, a unit coordinator on the oncology ward at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, CT, who spent three years tirelessly fighting for – and ultimately winning — a union for the service and maintenance staff at the hospital;
- Angela Melvin, a worker at the Wichita, Kansas T-Mobile call center, and the driving force in trying to organize a union despite aggressive anti-union activity; and
- Allysha Shin, RN, who helped lead a union-organizing drive at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, CA, in part to address safety lapses in the Intensive Care Unit, and was fired for her organizing efforts
The Edna Award and Kate Mullany Award winners will receive their awards at a reception on February 9, 2017 in Washington, DC. For more information on the award reception, please visit: https://2017ednakate.eventbrite.com