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LINCOLN — A social justice agency and a sociology professor will be recognized today for their work carrying out the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest and professor Helen Moore are this year's recipients of the “Following the Dream” award presented by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
First given in 1998, the award honors those following the vision of leadership, equality and civil rights described by King in his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Nebraska Appleseed works both within the Lincoln community and statewide on four main issues: poverty, child welfare, health care and self-sufficiency for immigrants.
“It's a lot of different things, but they all add up to what we are trying to achieve, and that is everyone has the opportunity to be successful and can contribute to the community,” said Rebecca Gould, executive director.
In 2009, for example, the agency helped 10,000 working mothers obtain transitional health care coverage after they were taken off Medicaid, the government medical program for low-income people.
“Not only was this important to those women, but it also gave us a chance to talk about the problems in our health care system,” Gould said.
Moore, a native of Southern California, earned her doctorate at the University of California, Riverside, and has taught at UNL for 30 years.
She said she has found UNL to be a good place to pursue her work.
Besides classroom study, Moore said, students participate in community projects.
“They are learning how to understand relations of social justice,” she said. “My goal is to have students understand how that affects people's lives.”
Along with teaching, Moore volunteers for Voices of Hope, manning a crisis line for rape and domestic violence victims.
“My philosophy is to leave a place better than you've found it, and to me that means not only the university, but the community and state as well.”
UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman, who helped select the honorees, said both understand that the road to equality and social justice is an ongoing journey, one that the community must work toward every day.
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