Today’s the day in California when community activists get a heap of cash ($25,000) for their efforts at social justice, winners of what’s known as the Peace Prize. Past winners have included Father Greg Boyle who works with gang youth in Los Angeles, to Connie Rice, Condeleeza’s (second) cousin whose apple fell far from Condi’s tree, as she runs a civil-rights nonprofit. Yet most awardees are unknowns, people who toil at the grassiest of grassroots for decades in relative obscurity, except to those whom they impact.
The awards this year, the 15th that The California Wellness Foundation has honored such efforts, went to three lifetime advocates, Casey Gwinn, Patricia Lee, and Cora Tomalinas, three folks I can almost guarantee you have never heard of, but who have likely made a world of difference to the hundreds, if not thousands, they have worked with.
