2011 Awards Gala

The Campaign for America's Future and Institute for America's Future invite you to our annual Awards Gala Dinner. Join us as we salute our progressive champions and activists!

Online registration for the gala is now closed. If you are interested in attending the event or in sponsorship options, please contact Salem Pearce at spearce@ourfuture.org or 202-587-1607.

Honorees

America's Future Lifetime Leadership Award

Drummond Pike, Tides Center founder

America's Future Progressive Champion Award

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, accepted by Cecile Richards 

Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award

The Wisconsin Movement for Workers' Rights and the Middle Class, accepted by Peter Rickman of the UW Teaching Assistants' Association and leaders from all parts of the movement

American Dream Award

The DREAMers and activists fighting for The DREAM Act, accepted by Gaby Pacheco of United We Dream

2011 Lifetime Leadership Awardee, Drummond Pike

Drummond Pike

Drummond Pike founded Tides Foundation in 1976; the Tides Center in 1996; the Advocacy Fund in 1994; Groundspring.org in 1999; Tides Inc. in 2003; Tides Shared Spaces in 2004; and the Tides Network in 2006. He served as Chief Executive of all until November 2010. He continues to work with and advise a small number of principals on philanthropic and financial matters.

Recently named a Principal with Equilibrium Capital, a private equity impact investing firm based in Portland, Ore., he is also volunteering time with Paladin Partners to support emerging progressive leaders and organizations.

In the 1990s, Tides emerged as a key provider of infrastructure to the progressive community, supporting donors and grantmakers through a range of philanthropic services, working with newly forming organizations in what became the nation's largest sponsorship organization, developing low-cost online donation services (Groundspring merged with Network for Good in 2006), and developing multi-tenant nonprofit centers through Tides Shared Spaces. In 2008, the Advocacy Fund expanded significantly as a key sponsor of advocacy initiatives focused on immigration, climate change, and the eldercare work force. By 2010, Tides' aggregate cashflow regularly exceeded $200 million annually and was often ranked, when aggregated, among the top 100 charitable enterprises in the U.S.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Working Assets, a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism, and was among the founders of its predecessor company. His service on nonprofit boards includes Island Press, Environmental Working Group, Tides Canada Foundation, Democracy Alliance, JK Irwin Foundation, Livingry Foundation, and Enlyst Foundation. Mr. Pike received a Masters of Political Science from the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University after graduating with Honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1970.

A fourth generation Californian, Mr. Pike resides in Mill Valley, Calif., with his wife, Liza, founder of Resource Media. He is also a licensed commercial river guide in the Grand Canyon with Arizona Raft Adventures.

2011 Progressive Champion Awardee, Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is the nation's leading women's health care provider and a trusted source of preventive care for women, men, and young people in communities across the United States. Every year, through its more than 800 health centers, Planned Parenthood provides affordable primary and preventive health care - including birth control, cancer screenings, and testing and treatment for STDS - to three million patients. One in five women has visited Planned Parenthood at some point in her life. As the largest provider of sex education in the country, Planned Parenthood reaches more than a million people with educational programs every year, while PlannedParenthood.org receives over 30 million online visits annually from people in search of reliable information about sexual and reproductive health and directions to their nearest Planned Parenthood health center. With more than 5.7 million supporters, Planned Parenthood is the nation's leading advocate for women's health and rights. And through its innovative work in Africa and Latin America, Planned Parenthood empowers people around the world to lead healthier lives.

In 2011, Planned Parenthood has been at the forefront of a nationwide battle to protect women's access to essential health services. At the beginning of the year, newly elected leaders in the House of Representatives launched the most aggressive assault on women's access to health care in a generation, passing legislation aimed at eliminating the national family planning program and prohibiting Planned Parenthood health centers from providing care through federal programs such as Medicaid. Planned Parenthood responded with an unprecedented national effort to rally support to defeat these measures. In two months, more than 800,000 people signed an open letter to Congress in support of Planned Parenthood and more than 100 members of Congress signed a "Dear Colleague" letter opposing efforts to bar Planned Parenthood from providing preventive care through federal programs. During that period, supporters made more than 40,000 calls to Congress and more than 25,000 people attended more than 300 events across the nation to oppose efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. In a decisive victory in April, 58 U.S. Senators - including five Republicans who broke ranks with their party - voted down the legislation. Since the vote in Congress, however, the battle has moved to the states, and Planned Parenthood is continuing to work with supporters and partners to protect its ability to serve the patients who depend on its health centers for essential care all year long.

Cecile Richards

Cecile Richards is a nationally respected leader in the field of women's health and reproductive rights. As president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Ms. Richards leads a national organization that has worked for 95 years to build a healthier and safer world for women and teens.

Since joining Planned Parenthood in 2006, Ms. Richards has expanded the organization's advocacy for access to health care and ensured that Planned Parenthood played a pivotal role in shaping health care coverage and services for women under the Affordable Care Act. In 2011, she led an unprecedented nationwide campaign to preserve access to Planned Parenthood's preventive care through federal programs. Under her leadership, the number of Planned Parenthood's supporters has doubled, reaching more than 5.7 million.

Before joining Planned Parenthood, Ms. Richards served as deputy chief of staff for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. In 2004, she founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of 42 national grassroots organizations working to maximize registration, education, and voter participation. She began her career organizing low-wage workers in the hotel, health care, and janitorial industries throughout California, Louisiana, and Texas.

Ms. Richards is a frequent speaker and commentator on issues related to women's rights, reproductive health, and sex education, and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

Ms. Richards currently serves on the board of the Ford Foundation. She and her husband, Kirk Adams, have three children and reside in New York City.

2011 American Dream Award, The DREAM Act Activists

For the past decade, immigrant youth have been the most effective leaders in the battle to expand access to education and legal rights for young people raised in the US but born elsewhere. Their primary goal has been passage of the DREAM Act (the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), which provides a conditional path to citizenship for undocumented youth that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service. These young activists took on the responsibility of building a social justice movement, while contributing energy and imagination to national coalitions and youth projects within immigrant rights organizations.

Out of this activity, emerged the national immigrant youth-led organization known as United We Dream Network, which solidified in 2008 with a mission to achieve equal access to higher education for all people. United We Dream has built a grassroots movement led by immigrant youth, both documented and undocumented, and children of immigrants. Training and leadership development and organizing are all part of their work at the local, state and national levels.

Among the extraordinary leaders of this effort is 25-year-old Gaby Pacheco, an undocumented immigrant who came to the United States with her parents when she was seven years old from Ecuador. Passionate about education from the day she began school as a third grader, Gaby has excelled academically, in sports, in community service and in music. With two Associate Degrees and a Bachelor’s in education, she is still unable to teach and pursue a career providing musical therapy for autistic children. She helped to create Students Working for Equal Rights with 16 chapters throughout Florida. To dramatize the need for the DREAM Act, Gaby and three others walked 1,500 miles from Miami to Washington, DC last year arriving in time to see the DREAM Act legislation pass in the House of Representatives.

Gaby Pacheco

Gaby Pacheco is an undocumented student leader from Miami, Florida who want to be musical therapist and work with people with autism and down syndrome. She has an AA in Music Ed. AS in Early Childhood education, and a BA in Special Education K-12.

In 2010, she walked 1,500 miles in support of the DREAM Act, to bring to light the plight of immigrants in this country, and to urge President Obama to stop the separations of families and deportations of DREAM act eligible youth; this walk was dubbed the Trail of DREAMs. She is currently the END (Education not Deportation) Project National Coordinator for the United We Dream network. END is a project that seeks to stop the deportation of DREAM Act eligible youth! You can find out more at endourpain.com.

2011 Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award, The Wisconsin Movement

The Wisconsin Movement inspired Americans across the country when a protest turned into a movement mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people in a fight for democracy against the right-wing assault on labor rights and the middle class. When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker used the guise of “emergency budget legislation” to strip so-called collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin’s 175,000 public workers, the anger of people all over the state became the catalyst for labor’s largest action in decades. Led by the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin, the first protest against the bill brought more than 1,000 people to the Governor’s office. By the next day, more than 10,000 people rallied outside the state capitol, and several thousand others took their protest inside and set up an encampment. Within two days, nearly 70,000 people descended on Madison. By mid-February, the 47,000-member South Central Federation of Labor in Madison endorsed consideration of a general strike. On Saturday, February 26, 100,000 people marched on the state capitol.

After weeks of continuing conflict, GOP state senators, in a late night maneuver in early March, forced through the anti-union measures in a separate bill. Three days later, the labor movement responded with a demonstration of more than 100,000 angry people determined to win back their rights. Conservative Senators then founded themselves facing unprecedented recall elections, with some of them ousted from office. The Wisconsin Movement helped to spark progressive mobilization across the country, from Ohio to Florida, as citizens rallied to defend the rights to organize and to vote and basic social programs that are under assault.

Peter Rickman

Accepting the Award is Peter Rickman, a dual-degree student and graduate assistant at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the University of Wisconsin Law School, and an activist in the labor and student movements. He is a leader in the Teaching Assistant’s Association (AFT #3220) and the South Central Federation of Labor, as well as campus and local progressive politics. A lifelong Wisconsinite, his academic work focuses on practices of unions to build power for workers and his activist work centers on building a movement for social and economic justice. Peter was among the first to demonstrate at the Capitol.

He is accepting this Award along with the following leaders:

Marty Beil, Executive Director, Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24; Mary Bell, President, Wisconsin Education Association Council; Michael Bolton, Director, United Steelworkers District 2; Doug Burnett, Wisconsin Political and Legislative Director, AFSCME International; Bruce Colburn, Director, Health Care Reform Camp, SEIU Milwaukee; Robert Kraig, Executive Director, Citizen Action of Wisconsin; State Senator Mark Miller, Senate Democratic Leader; Mahlon Mitchell, State President, Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin; Phil Neuenfeldt, Executive Director, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO; and John Stocks, Executive Director, National Education Association.