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The Thomas Merton Award has been awarded since 1972 by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice in Pittsburgh, United States. [1] It is named after Thomas Merton and is given annually to "national and international individuals struggling for justice."
Thomas Merton was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis". He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Barbara Jean Lee is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998. A member of the Democratic Party, Lee represents California's 12th congressional district, which is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it is one of the nation's most Democratic districts, with a rating of D+40.
Boston College Law School is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
The University of San Diego (USD) is a private Roman Catholic research university in San Diego, California. Chartered in July 1949 as the independent San Diego College for Women and San Diego University, the two institutions merged in 1972.
Richard Lewis Thornburgh was an American lawyer, author, and Republican politician who served as the 41st governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, and then as the United States attorney general from 1988 to 1991. Before his time as attorney general and governor, he served as the United States attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Daniel Joseph Berrigan was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
The 2000 Democratic National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nominating convention for the Democratic Party. The convention nominated Vice President Al Gore for president and Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut for vice president. The convention was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California from August 14 to August 17, 2000. Gore accepted the presidential nomination on August 17, the final night of the convention.
The Diocese of Worcester is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in the New England region of the United States. The diocese consists of Worcester County in central Massachusetts.
John Dear is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, lecturer, and author of 35 books on peace and nonviolence. He has spoken on peace around the world, organized hundreds of demonstrations against war, injustice and nuclear weapons and been arrested 85 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice, poverty, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction.
Fred David Gray is an American civil rights attorney, preacher, activist, and state legislator from Alabama. He handled many prominent civil rights cases, such as Browder v. Gayle, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, along with Thomas Reed, both from Tuskegee. They were the first black state legislators in Alabama in the 20th century. He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985, and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in Western Pennsylvania established on August 11, 1843. The diocese includes 61 parish-groupings in the counties of Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Greene, Lawrence, and Washington, an area of 3,786 sq mi (9,810 km2) with a Catholic population of 625,490 as of 2022. The cathedral church of the diocese is Saint Paul Cathedral. As of July 2021, the diocese had 194 active priests.
Pittsburgh is home to the first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA 1020AM; the first community-sponsored television station in the United States, WQED 13; the first "networked" television station and the first station in the country to broadcast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, KDKA 2; and the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Until 2016 Pittsburgh was one of the few mid-sized metropolitan areas in the U.S. with two major daily papers; both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review have histories of breaking in-depth investigative news stories on a national scale. In 2016, the Tribune-Review moved to an all-digital format. The Post-Gazette moved to publishing five print editions a week in 2018, three print editions a week in 2019, and two print editions a week in 2021. The alternative papers in the region include the Pittsburgh City Paper; Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle; The New People, published weekly by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice; the New Pittsburgh Courier, one of the larger ethnic publications in the region; and Zajedničar, the only Croatian-language newspaper currently published in the United States. The Pitt News, a financially independent student-written and -managed newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh, is closing in on its 100th year of publication. The University of Pittsburgh School of Law also hosts JURIST, the world's only university-based legal news service.
Catholic social activism in the United States is the practical application of the notions of Catholic social teaching into American public life. Its roots can be traced to the 19th century encyclical Rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII.
The Thomas Merton Center is a non-profit grassroots organization in Pittsburgh whose mission to build and support collaborative movements that empower marginalized populations to advance collective liberation from oppressive systems.
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley. It is one of 14 schools and colleges at the university. Berkeley Law is consistently ranked within the top 14 law schools in the United States.
Molly Rush is a Catholic anti-war, civil and women's rights activist born in 1935. She co-founded the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with Larry Kessler in 1972, She was one of the Plowshares eight defendants. They faced trial after an anti-nuclear weapons symbolic action at a nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
The Margaret Sanger Award was an honor awarded annually by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1966 to 2015. Created to honor the legacy of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, it is the Federation's highest honor. It is given to individuals to recognize excellence and leadership in the reproductive health and rights movement. Although it is identified as an annual award, it hasn't been given out and since 2015.
The International Civil Rights Walk of Fame, is a historic promenade that honors activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement and other national and global civil rights activists. It was created in 2004, and is located at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. The site is more than just a promenade; it is an outdoor exhibit that showcases, in granite and bronze, the footstep impressions of those honored.
Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary is a Roman Catholic college seminary located in Indianapolis, Indiana, within the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. The seminary takes its name from Bishop Simon Bruté, first bishop of the Diocese of Vinncennes, who came to Vincennes, Indiana from Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1834. Bishop Simon Bruté Seminary has provided college-level seminary formation since 2004. Seminarians from 8 dioceses across the Midwestern United States reside at the seminary and take classes at Marian University.
Byrd Rowlett Brown was an activist, lawyer, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for improving life for Pittsburgh's African Americans and the poor through his long terms as president of the Pittsburgh Branch of the NAACP and his legal and civil work. He led a march on Duquesne Light to protest unfair hiring practices. This work resulted in the creation of training programs for African-Americans so that they could gain admission into trade unions. Byrd Brown used his education to promote equality rather than to gain wealth. "Pro bono was his middle name," said former NAACP president Harvey Adams. He ran for Congress in 1970 and mayor of Pittsburgh in 1989. Reverend J. Van Alfred Winsett III noted that despite struggling with racism, Brown "carried himself with dignity, never with hatred."