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Thomas Merton Award goes to rights center

Thomas Merton Award goes to rights center

Two progressive organizations that have often shared a path during their past half-centuries of existence — one a social activist coalition, the other a legal advocacy group that often defends such activists — met again Monday, when the Thomas Merton Center gave its annual award to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The Thomas Merton Center, named for an activist Roman Catholic monk and writer, was founded in 1972. Its stated mission includes raising “moral questions involved in the issues of war, poverty, racism, classism, economic justice, human rights, and environmental justice.”

The center presented its 45th annual Thomas Merton Award to Vincent Warren, executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. The event took place at the annual dinner of the Garfield-based Thomas Merton Center at the Sheraton Pittsburgh Hotel at Station Square.

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“There’s really a shared history” between the two organizations, said Gabriel McMorland, executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, at an afternoon press conference. He paid tribute to the rights center’s “decades of work toward peace and justice.”

The center began in 1966, defending African-Americans in Mississippi during the civil rights movement, and over the years defended immigrants, those fleeing Central American wars in the 1980s, Guantanamo inmates, other Muslims and Arabs facing post-9/11 proceedings.

“You can tell what is going on in the world by who our clients are,” said Mr. Warren. In fact, he said the legal plight of individuals often directly relates to foreign policies of the United States in another part of the world, such as Latin America and more recently the Middle East.

He said that after the election of President Donald Trump, the center anticipated which communities might be most vulnerable to a legal crackdown. One area of focus has been in defense of those who tried to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border but were denied their right of entry while their case was being heard.

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He and Mr. McMorland said the center has kept busy under both Democratic and Republican administrations. They noted that problems with the asylum process began under the Obama administration, which also had reached a record level of deportations of immigrants who had entered illegally, and that the Clinton administration in the 1990s had used Guantanamo to detain Haitians attempting to reach the United States.

Mr. Warren said the center, with a staff of nearly 50 lawyers and others, has long advocated for people who “raise their voices and demand the government treat them effectively, who demand that people are able to live in dignity without government interference and without corporate interference.”

And it also supports activists’ right to speak out in dissent from government policies, he said. Mr. Warren paid tribute to the Thomas Merton Center for being an “extraordinary beacon for activism and justice throughout the decades.”

First Published: November 21, 2017, 2:20 a.m.

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