Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

2023 Hillman Prize winners announced!

NEW YORK – The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces today the winners of the 73rd annual Hillman Prizes for journalism, recognizing the New York Times’ extraordinary investigation into Haiti’s colonial debt; ProPublica/New Yorker’s feature on the privatization of hospice; and More Perfect Union’s agenda-setting videos explicating corporate greed.

“Investigative journalism is a pillar of our democracy that exposes injustice and calls for greater accountability from our institutions,” said Sidney Hillman Foundation President Bruce Raynor. “This year’s Hillman honorees have done exemplary work demonstrating the importance of investigative reporting in spurring public discourse and holding those in positions of authority to account.”

AL.com wins a Hillman Prize for reporting that shut down the predatory Brookside Police Department, and the first-ever Hillman for a podcast goes to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, a gripping and deeply researched podcast about a dramatic chapter of American history, nearly a century old, but with themes that echo loudly today.

For Books, the jury selected Margaret A. Burnham’s By Hands Now Known, a paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence.

This year’s prizes were judged by Jamelle Bouie, columnist, The New York Times; Maria Carrillo, former enterprise editor Tampa Bay Times/Houston Chronicle; Ta-Nehisi Coates, bestselling author and former national correspondent, The Atlantic; Alix Freedman, global editor, Ethics and Standards, Reuters; Harold Meyerson, editor at large, The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation.

The 2023 winners of the Hillman Prizes are:

Book – By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, W.W Norton & Co.

Broadcast – Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, MSNBC

Newspaper – The Ransom: The Root of Haiti’s Misery, The New York Times

Magazine – Endgame, ProPublica and The New Yorker

Web – The Rise and Fall of a Predatory Police Force, AL.com

Opinion & Analysis – The Class Room, More Perfect Union

Reporting by this year’s prize winners has had significant positive impact, including:

●  AL.com’s exposé of predatory policing for profit which prompted the Alabama legislature to pass a measure restricting towns across the state from using revenues from fines and fees to supply more than 10% of their budgets

●  ProPublica/New Yorker’s reporting which resulted in trade groups and government watchdog agencies joining forces to push regulators to address alarming business practices in hospice care

●  The New York Times’ groundbreaking reporting, spanning centuries and continents that revealed the massive corporate and colonial heist perpetrated against Haiti, which to this day has impeded its efforts to develop its economy

●  More Perfect Union’s series of educational videos that drew public attention to big pharma’s price-gouging on insulin,Ticketmaster’s monopoly, and other everyday economic injustices

The foundation also announces today that David Cole, National Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is the recipient of the 2023 George Barrett Award for Public Interest Law. David’s commitment to protecting the civil rights and civil liberties that George Barrett championed spans four decades. The Sidney Hillman Foundation grants this lifetime achievement award to an attorney who fights for justice in our court system on behalf of people who don’t have money or power.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation will host an in-person event with limited capacity on May 9, 2023, at 6:00 p.m.

About the Hillman Prizes

This year’s honorees follow in the trailblazing tradition of past Hillman Prize winners ranging from Murray Kempton in 1950 for his articles on labor in the South and Edward R. Murrow in 1954 for his critical reports on civil liberties and Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare, to Julie K. Brown in 2019 for reporting on the sex crimes and sweetheart deals of Jeffrey Epstein and Ari Berman’s 2022 reporting on voter suppression. 

The Hillman Prizes are open to journalists and subjects globally for any published reporting widely accessible to a U.S. audience. Winners are awarded a $5,000 prize and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel.

In 2011, the Sidney Hillman Foundation inaugurated the Canadian Hillman Prize. This year, TorStar reporters Rachel Mendleson and Steve Buist won for “Unchartered,” which uncovered how often police violate people’s rights accorded under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and what’s being done about it.

 
The Hillman Prizes for journalism honor the legacy of Sidney Hillman, an immigrant who dedicated his life to building a “better America.” Hillman, the founder and president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), believed that a free press was essential to a fair and equal society.The Sidney Hillman Foundation has sought to carry on his legacy by honoring journalists who illuminate the great issues of our times — from the search for a basis for lasting peace, to the need for better housing, medical care and employment for all people, and to the promotion of civil liberties, democracy and the battle against discrimination of all kinds.

Sidney's Picks: Unions for Wells Fargo and Ben & Jerry's?

Photo credit: 

Impulse Buy, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: 9000 Higher-Ed Workers Strike at Rutgers

Photo credit: 

The seal of Rutgers, Wikimedia commons

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Why 9000 higher-ed workers are striking at Rutgers. (Mother Jones)
     
  • How Biden’s nominee to run the Department of Labor defended garment workers in the 1990s. (The 19th)
     
  • Democratic lawmakers consider new legislation to stop employers from writing off union-busting consultants on their taxes. (Bloomberg)
     
  • Florida bans abortion after 6 weeks, a move that will further increase risks to pregnant people. (NBC, WaPo)
     
  • Man “eaten alive” by bugs in his jail cell, according to his family. (WaPo)

Sidney's Picks: Tennessee GOP Expels Black Democratic Lawmakers

Photo credit: 

Tennessee Statehouse, wikimedia commons

Best of the Week’s News:

  • Republicans expel two Black Democratic lawmakers from the Tennessee state House for “violating decorum” during a protest for gun control, but keep their white colleague who did the same thing. (Tennessean)
     
  • In France, you need 42 uninterrupted years of work to draw a full pension. French feminists say this rule unfairly penalizes women. (In These Times)
     
  • Jane LaTour, union activist and chronicler of women in the labor movement, dies at age 76. (NYT)
     
  • Residents at one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals hope to votethis month on whether to form a union. (GBH)
     
  • U.S. economy adds 236,000 jobs, inching unemployment to a near 50-year low. (WaPo) 

Check out the Photos from the Canadian Hillman Prize Ceremony!

Photo credit: 

Canadian Hillman Prize-winners Steve Buist (L) and Rachel Mendleson (R) with Canadian Hillman judge Garvia Bailey. 

Check out the photos from last week’s 13th annual Canadian Hillman Prize ceremony in Toronto, where we honored outstanding investigative journalism for Canadians, made new friends, and reunited with old ones. 

Meet the winners and read their work here

 

 

 

 

Sidney's Picks: Starbucks and LA School Employees Strike

Photo credit: 

Gage SkidmoreCreative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: Sanders About to Go Medieval on Union-Busting CEOs

Photo credit: 

Shelly PrevostCreative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • With Bernie Sanders in the chair, the Senate HELP committee is going to make life tough for CEOs like Howard Schultz. (Slate)
     
  • Feds investigate Steve Bannon for links to alleged mega-fraud. (MoJo)
     
  • New Mexico “lost track” of two dozen juveniles with life sentences. (ProPublica)
     
  • Employees of the audio distributor Band Camp have announced the formation of their union. (TechCrunch)
     
  • Florida governor Ron DeSantis seeks “political retribution” against teachers unions and health care unions. (Tallahassee Democrat)

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces 2023 Canadian Hillman Prize Honourees

Photo credit: 

Toronto Star

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces today that the 13th annual Canadian Hillman Prize is awarded to Rachel Mendleson of the Toronto Star and Steve Buist of the Hamilton Spectator for their original and impactful investigation “Unchartered.”

Forty years after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms set out the limits for acceptable police behavior, Mendleson and Buist’s investigative reporting brought to light for the first time how often those rules are violated. Across the country, they uncovered over 600 reported cases of serious, and sometimes violent police misconduct, from illegal stops, searches, arrests and detention, to denials of individuals’ right to counsel.

“There were many “what??” and “wow!” moments while reading the clear, concise, and revelatory reporting undertaken by Rachel, Steve, and their team,” said judge Garvia Bailey, “The reporting forces us to closely examine how individual rights set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are being repeatedly infringed upon by police across the country. Countless criminal cases are thrown out by the courts, while officers are rarely, if ever, held accountable. The reporting is timely, vital and deserves not only to be read widely, but to be recognized for excellence.”

The Hillman judges also recognized two entries with honourable mentions:

“Profiting Off Kids’’ by Andrew Russell, Carolyn Jarvis, Michael Wrobel of Global News and Kenneth Jackson of APTN exposed the dark side of Ontario’s for-profit foster home system. They reported stories of vulnerable young people locked in squalid homes, sometimes going hungry, while underpaid and underqualified staff overmedicated and violently restrained them. The owners, meanwhile, amassed lavish real-estate portfolios and luxury goods.

Radio-Canada Enquête’s “Recycling’s Dirty Secrets” by reporter, Chantal Lavigne, and producer, Gil Shochat, penetrated the opaque recyclable waste trade. They discovered that mounds of Canadian plastic waste are illegally hidden in containers of paper recycling destined for export. International inspectors catch some shipments and return them to Canada, while others slip through. In destination countries such as India, the reporters exposed how these plastic scraps are often burned, causing environmental pollution and serious health problems in the local population. 

“Investigative journalism is a pillar of our democracy that exposes social injustices and calls for greater accountability from our institutions,” said Alex Dagg, Canadian Board Member of the Sidney Hillman Foundation. “This year’s Hillman honourees have done exemplary work demonstrating the importance of investigative reporting in spurring public discourse and holding those in positions of authority to account.” 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation will host an in-person event to celebrate the honourees on March 30 at 6pm in Toronto.

Sidney's Picks: Why Does Poverty Persist

Photo credit: 

Brecht BugCreative Commons.

Best of the Week’s News:

  • Hillman Prize-winning sociologist Matthew Desmond proposes new objective in the war on poverty: fighting exploitation. (NYT)
  • The storied history and uncertain future of Scabby the Rat. (Guardian)
  • Why unions matter so much. (NYT)
  • Teamsters’ president calls GOP senator a “greedy CEO in senate testimony. (WaPo)
  • Barista union will ask Starbucks shareholders to back an independent review of the coffee company’s labor practices. (Reuters)

Sidney's Picks: Judge Smacks Down Starbucks' Union-Busting in Buffalo

Best of the Week’s News:

  • In massive blow to Starbucks’ union-busting campaign, judge orders coffee retailer to reopen stores and respect workers’ rights. (WaPo)
     
  • Starbucks is also facing discontent from its white collar workforce. (Bloomberg)
     
  • big step forward in the campaign for affordable insulin. (Vox)
     
  • Biden administration announces crackdown on migrant child labor, days after this New York Times exposé. (NYT)
     
  • Antifascists expose Dallas Humber, the Voice of Terrorgram and a propagandist for mass shootings. (HuffPo)
     
  • The Warrior Met coal strike ends after 2 years. (Democracy Now, Nation)

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