Friday, February 27, 2009

Nominate CPC Watch Project Coordinator for Choice USA's Excellence in Leadership Award!

Hello Friends,

Becca here. I just got word that ChoiceUSA is accepting nominations for their 7th Annual Generation to Generation Award.

I'm not sure if this is completely tacky or what, but I'm asking you today to consider submitting a nomination for our budding organization, the brainchild of activist extraordinaire Lauren Guy McAlpin. The award is the Excellence in Leadership Award, "given to a group or individual 30 AND UNDER who has exhibited radical, unrelenting leadership that led to social change particularly impacting sexual and reproductive health and rights."

Here are some reasons I believe we should nominate Lauren for the award:

- Her commitment to reproductive justice has been an inspiration to myself and other CPC Watch supporters and friends. Juggling three jobs, a marriage, and a budding choice organization is surely no easy task, and yet the hours she has spent organizing, sending emails, networking, writing for ChoiceUSA's blog, and almost single-handedly putting together our monthly newsletter are unparalleled.

- When asked why she started CPC Watch, Lauren told me the very existence of crisis pregnancy centers made her blood boil. Inspired by the work on CPCs by larger choice organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL, Lauren saw the need for an advocacy organization that focused 100% on CPCs and their operations. She truly believes CPCs are one of the greatest threats to reproductive justice today, and took that concern directly to the frontlines and started a webpage, one that has budded into a small but dedicated organization committed to ensuring every woman has the resources she needs to make educated reproductive decisions.

- Throughout the excitement of Barack Obama's election last November, Lauren remained a critical thinker and true to her commitment as a grassroots activist, continuing to ask important questions about what Obama's presidency will, and will not, do for choice advocates, and what we as activists need to continue to work towards to ensure reproductive justice for every woman.

- Lauren has a long history of grassroots activist work in anti-war and pro-impeachment groups, where she has been committed to the concerns of women above all else. Each of her speaking engagements through the World Can't Wait organization and her campus chapter of the Antiwar Coalition focused primarily on attacks on women's rights under the Bush administration, and how continuing war in the Middle East has been detrimental to women and families.

I hope you will consider nominating my friend and comrade, Lauren Guy McAlpin, for the Excellence in Leadership Award. Submissions are due by March 31st, and the forms can be found here:
http://www.choiceusa.org/images/PDFs/g2gc%20nomination%20calll.pdf

Thanks everyone,
Becca

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