Local Activists Honored at DC JwJ Awards Tonight

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Longtime labor activist Carrie Biggs-Adams – seen most recently on picket lines as “VeriGreedy” the big pink Corporate Pig – joins fellow awardees Occupy DC, the Kalmanovitz Initiative For Labor And The Working Poor and Reverend Raymond Bell tonight at DC Jobs with Justice’s 10th Annual "I'll Be There" Awards (5:30p at the AFL-CIO). Netfa Freeman of the Institute for Policy Studies will host the awards, paying tribute to these labor and community leaders for exceptional solidarity. A community organizer since the 1960s in California, Biggs-Adams moved to Washington, DC some 11 years ago, hit the ground running at demonstrations against the Supreme Court’s appointment of George W. Bush and has been raising hell all over town ever since. Occupy DC turned into a major force in the city and the nation, maintaining a camp at McPherson Square that helped change the debate about wealth in America, from joining Justice for Janitors’ take-over of K Street last October to the ongoing foreclosure and eviction defense actions of Occupy Our Homes. Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor develops creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives in a changing economy. One example of this mission is Kalmanovitz’s outreach to Washington’s immigrant community, involving Georgetown undergraduate students in engaging with DC’s day labor population represented by La Union de Trabajadores de Washington DC and volunteering twice a week to teach English at the hiring site. The Reverend Raymond C. Bell, pastor and founder of The Spirit of Love and Deliverance Baptist Church (SOLAD) in Capitol Heights, MD, has served as Chair of JwJ’s Workers’ Rights Board for the past two years. - photo of Biggs-Adams at 11/2/2011 VeriGreedy Rally by Julia Kann; photo of Occupy DC in McPherson Square by Chris Garlock