Visionaries Awards

All my life, racism and discrimination have persisted. That's why I decided to learn more. Someone tried to discourage me from continuing my studies. She said, 'You are an Indian'you always will be an Indian.' I told her, 'Yes, I will always be an Indian, but an Indian who knows how to read and how to write.'

In the 1980s we organized the first meeting of indigenous people in Peru. Then we formed CHIRAPAQ, and with the Ford Foundation's support we've been able to defend indigenous rights, to develop pride for indigenous culture, and to give indigenous peoples a voice on a national and global level. At a national level, we were the first organization to talk publicly about indigenous women's rights. At first it was not received well by indigenous men, but now many indigenous organizations are creating programs for women.

If you don't have the opportunity to learn and decide what you want to do with your life, it's impossible to be free. But I see hope. More leaders are emerging and sharing their knowledge, more public education initiatives are being established and more organizations are focusing on indigenous women's issues in particular. And now I see children who are very proud about our language, about who we are. A good education, a democratic education'an education based on human rights and dignity'is important for everybody.

In a society like the United States'with a history of unequal treatment'equal justice requires a lot of effort, commitment and vigilance. The Equal Justice Initiative challenges the excessive sentencing of children. We work with dozens of death-row prisoners who were unreliably or illegally convicted or sentenced. We're making a major effort to challenge racial bias in jury selection. And we're doing new work around poverty.

We've been successful in securing new trials for scores of death row prisoners. We've been successful in changing the thinking about the prosecution of children, and about harsh sentencing. We've succeeded in overturning wrongful convictions and unfair sentences and challenging discrimination. Probably our greatest accomplishment has been creating hope in very marginalized communities where hopelessness and despair have caused a great deal of frustration and dysfunction.

You have to be willing to believe in things you haven't seen. One of the great challenges of reform and social justice intervention is that everyone is always saying what you cannot do: We've persuaded ourselves that we can't end poverty, that racial discrimination will always be with us, that the poor can't be adequately educated, that some kids are hopeless. Talking more structurally about ending poverty remains one of the great challenges, because it connects to the issues surrounding criminal justice and dysfunction. The opposite of poverty is not wealth'it's justice.

My vision of a just world is one where taking care of yourself and your loved ones, and doing work you are engaged by, is the norm. The hard work that we do should be valued. We shouldn't be punished for being good parents, sons or daughters.

Any time there's been a social reform, we hear the same arguments: The sky will fall, it will kill jobs. And over and over, we've shown that in fact the economy grows and communities grow when we allow families to be strong.

Soon after my former organization, 9 to 5, helped pass the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Act in 1988, the parents of a member had a heart attack and a hip replacement between them. They couldn't care for each other. Because of this law, she and her siblings were each able to take time off and take turns caring for their parents without jeopardizing their jobs. It was really important to the recovery of her parents, and also to the family's emotional health and financial security. I know hundreds of stories like that'many of them from people who became engaged in the movement as a result of their experiences.

I feel successful when I see movements grow and people stand up, when I watch people become aware of their own power as they join together with others. I measure success by that kind of growth, not just by what gets passed into law.

When I arrived in the border neighborhood of San Ysidro, I began to work with a nonprofit, community-based agency to design affordable housing projects. Through our conversations with people in the neighborhood, I began to rethink my own practice, and to investigate the impact of immigration in the transformation of the American city, and particularly the American neighborhood.

What gives me hope is the amazing power of human resourcefulness. There is a very alive and very dynamic Mexican American culture in many American cities, with a huge cultural intelligence that has allowed them to produce a more inclusive idea of housing. Seeing that, we began to conceptualize a very different idea of development, one that would recognize a community's patterns of living and make a housing project sustainable in the long term. I want to reconnect the reality of environments like that with the way we actually produce urban policy.

I believe that citizenship is a creative act. As a field, architecture is amazing because it can transform ideas into physical forms. The best ideas in the next decades will not emerge from sites of abundance and privilege, but from sites of scarcity.

Art should be bold and new. It can remind political leaders of their responsibilities and encourage youth to take action to change society. We're coming from a culture where leaders like to be praised. It is important that leaders are told when they are wrong.

Editorial cartooning is much more than just drawings'you need to know the characters and history and look at issues from a fresh perspective, without fear or favor. It's a craft that uses humor to remind society and political leaders of their mistakes and responsibilities. How far political cartoonists go is seen as a barometer of the freedom of expression of a country. Africa is lagging behind.

In Kenya, in 2008, we had a hotly contested election. Because of the tribal nature of this country, the whole situation became inflammatory. As an editorial cartoonist, I've always commented on crisis and conflicts from other regions in Africa. But in 2008, for the first time, I was part and parcel of a crisis. I was compelled to take a hard look at what I was drawing, because what happens if you add fuel to the conflict?

I created 'The XYZ Show' to target social issues and try to connect with youth. The use of puppets and the use of political satire was something no one had done before in African countries. We talk a lot about unemployment, education, corruption, HIV and AIDS, tribalism. People started liking what we were doing because we were not afraid.

Being able to tell stories through art is what moves me'stories that open your eyes, not just about Africa, but about humanity. At the Museum for African Art, our exhibitions tell the stories of the dreams, the fears, the prayers and the aspirations of communities of people for generations.

Twenty percent of the globe is, somewhere in their background, from Africa. It's the cradle of humanity. It all began there. As African Americans, we need to take pride in our cultural identity. Even if you are not African or of the African diaspora, you cannot be a responsible global citizen and omit the entire African continent, its history and its people.

We see ourselves as a bridge between diverse socioeconomic and religious communities. We're making connections between cultures and using African art as the touchstone. And with our new building on Museum Mile, we are lengthening and diversifying the cultural backbone of New York City's cultural tourist economy.

When you come to the museum, what you're seeing is literally the embodiment of our history: justice and real pride, installation by installation, exhibit by exhibit. We want people to look at African art and say, 'Now I know something more, not just about them, but about me.'