Well, you tell me.
I know, I know, what a cheap stunt, right?
But here’s the deal: every year, the United Church of Christ (that’s my peeps, yo) holds an award dinner recognizing contributions toward the causes of peace and justice. They find their winners through an open nomination process, described below.
Here’s the nominating sheet, as forwarded to me in a Justice and Peace Action Network (JPAN) e-mail:
WEB FORM: Please fill out by May 1st and email to: perumala at ucc dot org.
United Church of Christ JUSTICE & WITNESS MINISTRIES Justice Award Nomination Form For General Synod XXV Atlanta, Georgia, July 1-5, 2005
In keeping with the spirit of former national agencies of the United Church of Christ, the Board of Directors of Justice and Witness Ministries will present awards in five categories at the JWM General Synod XXV dinner to those who have done exemplary work in the area of justice. If you know a justice worker, a local church, or grass roots organization that you think deserves to be honored for prophetic justice work, please fill out this form and return it by email by May 1, 2005.
Categories: Please use separate e-mail for each nominee
- Local Church (Multiracial/Multicultural, Just Peace, Open and Affirming, and Accessible to All Award)
- Clergy (Oliver Powell Award)
- Laity (Martha Dayag Award)
- Grass Roots Organization (Dorothy Day Award)
- Youth/Young Adult (Nkosi Johnson Award)
Name of Nominee:
Award Category:Address: ____________________ City: ___ State: ____ Zip Code:_____
Telephone:______ Fax:______ E-mail:_________UCC Conference: __________
Local Church Name: _______
Contact person for local church/grass roots organization: ________
Telephone: _________ Fax: ______ E-mail: ____________Briefly share nominees’ major accomplishments, ministry and mission in the area of justice:
Briefly explain why you personally feel this person, local church or community organization should receive an award for justice work:
Name of Nominator:
Address: ______ City:______ State: ______ Zip Code:__________
Telephone:____ Fax:____ E-mail:_______
Obviously, the first category is pretty limited, and I believe the second is at least weighted toward UCC clergy.
But, the other three are pretty much open. You know an individual or an organization that deserves to be recognized? Let ’em know.
They don’t have to be religious people, and they don’t have to be church organizations. Just people doing good work.
I’m going to nominate Howard Dean. How about you?
Sorry not to have been around more in the past week or so. I’ve been trying to get this ding-danged Affirmation Project off the ground.
More soon.
My vote goes to Winnie Foster of the Sojourner Truth Center, in St. Petersburg, Florida. I lived with her briefly during my time doing voter reg in Florida: St. Pete Times Cached Archive.
He has still not patented the foot. Anyone who wants to can go see him and he will teach you to make them. Ram wants as many people as possible to learn to make the feet.
The inventors of the Jaipur foot seem a mismatched pair. Dr. Pramod Karan Sethi, 70, an orthopedic surgeon, is a fellow of Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons, while his collaborator, an artisan named Ram Chandra, reached only the fourth grade in Jaipur.
Chandra is a kind of Pygmalion: he can turn whatever piece of stone or gold he touches into a lifelike creation. Born into a family that had been master artisans for four generations, he quickly established himself as one of Jaipur’s finest sculptors, and his talents were sought by temple priests and princes. “If all I saw was your nose, it would be enough for me to sculpt a likeness of your entire body,” says Chandra, 75, whose folded hands are like a box of old wooden tools. “It’s all to do with proportions. That is the way God has made men.”
Watching Sethi’s patients, Chandra became convinced that he could fashion a more lifelike–and useful–artificial limb. He took his proposals to Sethi, who explained to the barely literate craftsman about pressure points and the intricate movements of bones within the foot.
Then one day, while riding his bicycle to the hospital, Chandra ran over a nail, and his tire went flat. He wheeled his bicycle to a roadside stall, where the repairman was busy retreading a truck tire with vulcanized rubber. Once his bicycle was fixed, Chandra raced to the hospital and consulted with Sethi. Soon Chandra returned to the tire shop with an amputee patient and a foot cast. He asked the repairman if he could cast a rubber foot. “He agreed,” Sethi says, “and refused to accept any money once he found out why we were doing it.”
Rubber alone was not good enough; it shredded within a few days. It was only after Chandra and Sethi began to construct the rubber foot around a hinged wooden ankle–wrapping it in a lighter rubber (similar to a bicycle inner tube but flesh colored) and then vulcanizing this composite–that their invention succeeded. The resulting limb takes only 45 minutes to build and fit onto the patient and is sturdy enough to last for more than five years.
Much of the credit and many of the awards for the Jaipur foot have gone to Sethi; the two inventors have not seen each other since the surgeon retired from active medicine in 1981. Chandra works with a Jaipur-based charity, the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti, which provides free artificial legs for the poor not only in India but in other countries too. He says he feels no bitterness over Sethi’s greater fame. At his Delhi workshop, where he has been developing above-the-knee artificial limbs, Chandra points out a little girl whose leg was severed in a bus crash. “People said I would be a rich man if we had patented the Jaipur foot, but it’s enough satisfaction for me to see the joy on that girl’s face when she walks again.”
He too is semi-retired. He dresses in a simple white dhoti and lives frugally. “I only need money for the barber and occasionally the tailor,” he says, laughing. He rises at 4:30 a.m., milks his cow and prays until breakfast time. Only then does he resume his ongoing effort to improve the Jaipur foot…link
I will vote for Marla Townsel..the most courageous woman of our time that probably no one will remember six months from now.
My second vote would go to Bono for his humanitarian work to eleminate poverty and Aids not only in Africa but around the world. His oraganization is called ONE. You may visit the web site ar http://www.one.org. For so much celebrity, he is one humble human being.
I’ll second those choices.
Sorry, it’s Melody Townsel and the other I wanted to add is Maria Ruzicka. If only we all were as brave as these two unbelievably brave souls.