The theme for this year’s New York Urban League (NYUL) gala is “Fight Today, Change Tomorrow: Voting & Civic Engagement,” which NYUL President Arva Rice said is in line with the work of each of this year’s four honorees.
This year’s gala, which takes place on June 6 at Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan, will honor 1199SEIU President George Gresham; Aurora James, founder of the Fifteen Percent Pledge; and Renee McClure, director of DNY Customer Account Management, National Grid with Frederick Douglass medallions. Camille Joseph-Goldman, group vice president, government affairs, Charter Communications, will receive the 2024 Ann Kheel Award.
The gala’s celebrity co-chairs are the actress Meagan Good, television and film producer Tonya Lewis Lee, and legendary fashion model and activist, Bethann Hardison.
“The event is designed to honor individuals who in the spirit of Frederick Douglass know that there is no progress without struggle,” said NYUL President Arva Rice. The gala’s theme and the night’s honorees reflect the Urban League’s national campaign which is focused on “defending democracy, demanding diversity, and defeating poverty,” Rice adds.
Gresham’s work providing help and support for people in the labor movement ties in with Aurora James’s push to have more Black designers represented in major department stores. Renee McClure’s position as a director at National Grid put her in the position to be a strong advocate for bringing more African Americans into the emerging world of opportunities in the energy field, and Camille Joseph Goldman’s reception of the Ann Keele Award acknowledges her activist efforts throughout the city. Each honoree is doing what the national Urban League promotes.
“Unfortunately, at this point in time, we have to defend democracy in a way that I never would have thought of with the rollback in voter rights, voter suppression, voter ID laws that have been introduced in the large majority of states,” Rice said. “The very, very core of what the Urban Leagues are about, which is to defend democracy, has become once again front and center. That’s one of the reasons why we have selected this theme about fighting today and changing tomorrow.
“The second reason why we’ve selected it is because we need to demand diversity,” Rice added. “The fact that just less than [a few years] years ago, after George Floyd, people had a profound awakening and understanding of the African-American struggle in this country, and now we have completely gone full circle and are having to demand diversity: DEI programs are being dismantled around the country. People have even started to use DEI pejoratively, as in ‘didn’t earn it,’ which is just deplorable, and we saw the takedown of the president of Harvard University. Demanding diversity is a key component of the work that the Urban League must do now and do in the future.
“And the last reason is because it’s what we do all the time, which is we’re working to defeat poverty. That’s the reason why we have our education programs, why we have our employment programs. Why we have investment in small businesses is that we’re trying to defeat poverty, because we know the crippling impact that it has on children, families, education, [and] employment. Those are our three prongs for defending democracy, demanding diversity, and defeating poverty.”