Julissa Bisono, a 25-year old Workplace Justice Organizer for Make the Road New York Wins "Mario Savio Young Activist Award"

December 5, 2008

Contact: Contacts: Lynne Hollander Savio 707-703-9829, Irene Tung 718-755-6750

*** FOR RELEASE DECEMBER 5, 2008***

NEW YORKER WINS "MARIO SAVIO YOUNG ACTIVIST AWARD"

Berkeley, CA - Julissa Bisono, a 25-year old Workplace Justice Organizer for Make the Road New York, has won the 2008 Mario Savio Young Activist Award, sharing a $6,000 prize with her organization.   Honorable mention and $500 prizes were given to 22-year old Macias Ramos of Los Angeles, for his work on behalf of undocumented students, and to 23-year old Melody Gonzalez, for her work with migrant workers through the Student/Farmworker Alliance in Florida.
            Bisono was cited for her efforts to organize low-income immigrant workers to combat illegal wage and poor working conditions in the restaurant and nightclub industries. Several years ago, Bisono helped to found Workers United, a group of Latino immigrant workers. As a result of Bisono's work, the group's membership has grown to over a hundred. The group has successfully used community organizing and legal advocacy to win hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid back wages for workers whose employers failed to pay the minimum wage or overtime wages as required by the law.
            The Mario Savio Young Activist Award is named for the leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1964. It is given each year to a young person with "a deep commitment to human rights and social justice and a proven ability to transform this commitment into effective action."
            Julissa has been working for social justice since the age of 15," said Lynne Hollander Savio, chairperson of the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture fund, a private group which gives the award. "She is a fiery advocate on behalf of her group members and is able to inspire them to fight for themselves and help them develop the skills to do so."
            The award was presented last night at the annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture in the Berkeley Community Theater. The keynote speaker was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaking on "Our Environmental Destiny." Mario Savio, who died nine years ago at age 54, came to public notice in 1964, when students at Berkeley rebelled against restrictions on political activity at the University. Their protest drew nationwide attention and stirred activism by college students across the country. Savio's words to his fellow students sparked a non-violent sit-in and the largest mass arrest in U.S. history up till that time.
            "There comes a time," he said, "when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all."
            Although condemned by University administrators and public opinion at the time, the Free Speech Movement has been recognized for some years as having made a positive contribution to university life. Upon Savio's death, a plaque was installed naming the steps of Sproul Hall where he made his speeches as the Mario Savio Steps. The Free Speech Movement café, commemorating the protest, was opened in the undergraduate library in 1998 and has become a popular campus gathering place. The yearly lecture series which bears his name is co-sponsored by many departments at the university, and has presented such well-known speakers as journalist Seymour Hersh, teacher and author Cornel West, and historian Howard Zinn.