Please join us on Wednesday, September 13 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM ET as we honor Richard Moore, one of the founders of the environmental justice movement, and Gina Ramirez, an environmental activist and leader on Chicago’s Southeast Side, in recognition of their leadership in pushing the nation’s environmental laws, policies, and institutions to provide justice for low-income communities and communities of color in the United States.
Mitchell Bernard, chief counsel of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will deliver introductory remarks, and Peggy Shepard, co-founder and chief executive of We Act for Environmental Justice, and Yukyan Lam, senior scientist at the New School’s Tishman Environment Center, will present the Awards.
This event is co-sponsored by the NYC Bar Environmental Law Committee and is free of charge, but pre-registration is encouraged. RSVP today.
All public areas of the venue are accessible.
If you would like to request an accommodation to ensure maximum inclusion or have questions about accessibility, please make a note in your RSVP.
About the 2023 Award Recipients
Richard Moore is a longtime leader of the environmental and economic justice movement in the United States. He was a major force behind, and the signatory to, the 1990 letter to major environmental groups, Group of Ten letter, that helped put environmental concerns on the mainstream map. He is co-chair of the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC). He is co-coordinator of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He is the recent past co-coordinator of the national Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, which advocates for stronger, safer, and just chemical processes. He is also co-founder and board member of the Just Transition Alliance and recent past board member of Coming Clean, Inc. Currently, after working to create a Justice 40 Coalition in New Mexico, Los Jardines Institute achieved the first national Mayoral Executive Order. Moore was named co-chair to the city’s J40 Oversight Committee. He is a recipient of many awards and accolades acknowledging his decades of movement leadership, including the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World in 2005 and Health Care Without Harm’s highest distinction, The Environmental Health Hero Award in 2016. In 2015 Richard was inducted into the Civil Rights Hall of Fame, Hall of Resistance in Selma, Alabama.
Gina Ramirez is a third generation Southeast Side Chicagoan. Ramirez’s work focuses on furthering Chicago’s land use and zoning rules that can provide crucial protections for areas that are burdened with cumulative industrial pollution. Ramirez is senior advisor to the Southeast Environmental Taskforce, Midwest outreach manager at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and a member of the Chicago Environmental Justice Network. Over the past few years she has worked on a variety of environmental justice campaigns, from stronger rules on the bulk storage of manganese to a denial of the General Iron permit, which gained national attention. In addition, Ramirez collaborated with community partners to conduct a health study on manganese impacts on children which began in 2022.
She is the recipient of the Matthew Freeman Social Justice award and an active volunteer with Parents of Extraordinary Children working to bring resources to children with developmental disabilities in the Southeast Side of Chicago. She has a MA focused in sociology from Roosevelt University and BA in communications from DePaul University.
About Peter A. A. Berle Environmental Integrity Awards
The Berle Award has been given periodically by The Century Foundation to honor Americans who, through action or scholarship, provide innovative leadership to help the United States and the world confront the challenges of climate change, environmental pollution, and the resulting injustices. The 2023 Berle Awards represent the final year of a prize commemorating the life of Peter A. A. Berle, who died in 2007 and was an early pioneer of the environmental movement in New York, and later President of The Century Fund and the National Audubon Society. The award was established by TCF and former colleagues and family members of Peter Berle in cooperation with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Audubon Society, the Environmental Defense Fund, EarthJustice, and the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.