We are delighted to be able to present this award to you to recognize your warm heart and to help defray the expenses of your latest social justice project. We know that in addition to your law practice and your long partnership in human rights advocacy with your husband, our friend David Weissbrodt, you have been an active member of the Justice, Education, and Action Committee (JEAC) of the Spirit of St. Stephen’s Catholic Community here in Minneapolis. This local community declares as part of its mission statement: “Accepting the challenge of the Gospel, we declare our solidarity with all who suffer from injustice. We will continue to meet the needs of the vulnerable, responding to hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, loneliness, and intolerance.” Members of the Justice, Education, and Action Committee are charged with educating the church community about problems of injustice and with providing means to act in a concrete way to make things better.
As part of this ongoing work, you and others on the JEAC committee have taken the opportunity to utilize the visit to the Twin Cities of Sister Simone, the nationally renowned American Roman Catholic religious sister who is the Executive Director of NETWORK, to focus on local problems of neglect and discrimination. Sister Simone’s work is focused on bridging the divides between people, in order to build alliances and to counter the strategy of divide and conquer which too often keeps the powerful in power The Twin Cities are blessed with a new generation of leaders, many of them young women, working on the problems of their own communities and constituencies. The JEAC committee is hosting a roundtable discussion for some of these women leaders with Sister Simone, to share their experiences, listen to the voices of other local leaders, and explore how they might work together.
We wish you the best of success for the roundtable. Following your heart toward big objectives is the way Sullivan Ballou lived, and we are delighted to be able to recognize you in this small way as someone who is reflecting the same spirit.
Congratulations!
Elissa and Bruce Peterson, Founding Members