Peoria Pundit

From a press release:

The 46th annual meeting of the Peoria chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union takes place beginning at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 5 at the Hotel Pere Marquette in Peoria.

The event features presentations of awards, election of officers, and a guest speaker, state Sen. Dave Koehler. He will speak on health care as a basic right for all.

Koehler has worked for social justice as a former staff member of the National Farm Worker Ministry, as a community organizer and program manager for Peoria Friendship House. He was executive director of the Peoria Area Labor Management Council (PALM) and president of Labor Management Cooperative Health Programs, Inc. He was a member of the Peoria City Council from 1982-1997 and was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 2006.

ACLU chapter president Dave Weiman will receive the David Citron Award, which goes to a member of the ACLU, for his activism on many issues. He has been a leader in the Heartland Safe Schools Initiative, to expose and prevent the harassment and bullying endured by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students in middle and high schools. A forum he helped organize attracted over 200 concerned citizens.

Two student journalists at Illinois Central College who spoke out for freedom of the press will receive the Belfer Award, for non members. They are Dawnell Zeine and Brandon Hagan, who were editor and assistant editor of the student newspaper the Harbinger in 2006. They developed a public campaign to resist pressure from an adviser and campus administrators who wanted to control the content of the campus newspaper. Their efforts led to ICC declaring the Harbinger a public forum free from censorship.

Officers also will be elected.

The event is open to all members and friends of the ACLU. The dinner costs $30 each. Information on the dinner is available by calling 309/688-1409. Reservations with payment can be sent to ACLU, 608 E. Swords Dr., Edelstein, Il. 61526 by April 29.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under The Wire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.