{"id":5665,"date":"2012-04-30T14:59:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T18:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=5665"},"modified":"2015-06-19T11:14:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T15:14:25","slug":"maria-leavey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2012\/04\/30\/maria-leavey\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Wagner chosen as a finalist for the Maria Leavey Tribute Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prison Policy Initiative Executive Director Peter Wagner has been chosen as a finalist for the <a href=\"http:\/\/action.ourfuture.org\/content_item\/marialeavey2012\">Maria Leavey Tribute Award<\/a> for his decade-long work to end prison-based gerrymandering. Campaign for America&#8217;s Future presents this award annually to honor an &#8220;unsung progressive hero.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Campaign for America&#8217;s Future recently <a href=\"http:\/\/ourfuture.org\/20120430\/Voting_Begins_For_This_Years_Unsung_Progressive_Hero?q=blog-entry%2F2012041727%2Fvoting-begins-years-unsung-progressive-hero\">announced<\/a> the five finalists and <a href=\"http:\/\/action.ourfuture.org\/content_item\/marialeavey2012\">opened public voting<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Two Occupy movement volunteers, a Chicago community organizer, an Atlanta health care activist and <b>a crusader against &#8220;prison-based gerrymandering&#8221;<\/b> have been nominated for the annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award, which honors an unsung progressive hero. The deserving person you select will receive the award at the June 18-20 &#8220;Take Back the American Dream&#8221; Conference. The five finalists were announced earlier today on our conference website, and now the voting begins to select a winner.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Peter <a href=\"\/news\/2011\/09\/14\/10-years\/\">launched the movement<\/a> to end prison-based gerrymandering ten years ago with the Prison Policy Initiative&#8217;s first report, <a href=\"\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/importing\/\">Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York<\/a>. He found that an archaic Census Bureau rule enabled legislators with prisons in their districts to claim incarcerated people as &#8220;constituents,&#8221; bar them from the polls, and then use that extra clout to advocate for more prison expansion.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last decade, Peter worked to expose the problem of prison-based gerrymandering and bring new organizations and leaders in to the movement. The bi-partisan urban and rural movement has won many victories. Four states and hundreds of local governments around the country refuse to dilute the votes of everyone who doesn&#8217;t live immediately next to a prison, and the Census Bureau has <a href=\"\/news\/2011\/04\/20\/groupquartersreleased\/\">started to take notice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/action.ourfuture.org\/content_item\/marialeavey2012\">vote for Peter<\/a> to send the message that prison-based gerrymandering has no place in America&#8217;s future!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please vote for Peter Wagner to receive the Maria Leavey Award to honor his decade of work to end prison-based gerrymandering!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-5665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5665"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}