Richard Moore & Gina Ramirez to Receive the Century Foundation's Berle Award
We are pleased to report that the Century Foundation (TCF), a leading progressive think tank, has announced that Richard Moore, one of the founders of the environmental justice movement, and Gina Ramirez, an environmental activist and leader on Chicago’s Southeast Side, will receive TCF’s 2023 Peter A.A. Berle Environmental Integrity Awards. The Berle Award is given periodically to recognize leaders who – through action or scholarship – have advanced the nation’s environmental laws, policies, and institutions to provide justice for low-income communities and communities of color.
“The Berle Award recognizes the growing importance of our nation’s environmental justice movement and its central role in helping address urgent environmental and climate challenges,” said TCF President Mark Zuckerman. “We cannot address climate change if we ignore the fact that its impacts often fall hardest on low-income people and communities of color. Richard Moore called our nation’s attention to this truth more than 30 years ago, and Gina Ramirez has carried the torch forward on behalf of her community in Chicago.”
The 2023 Berle Award winners were selected by an independent panel of environmental leaders – including our own Peggy Shepard – along with former colleagues and family members of Peter A.A. Berle. They will be presented to the winners in September in New York City, in a ceremony that is free and open to the public.
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. And WE ACT will be honoring him at our 2023 Gala! Read his full bio here.
Gina Ramirez is a third generation Southeast Side Chicagoan. Her 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. She 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. Read he full bio here.
The 2023 Berle Awards represent the final year of a prize commemorating the life of Peter A.A. Berle, who died in 2009 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. You can learn more here.
