I just got home from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project's annual gala and auction, where the following received awards:
- Golden Door Award: Ann Benson, Directing Attorney, Washington Defender Association's Immigration Project. Last year Benson won the LexisNexis Matthew Bender Daniel Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Immigration Law, presented at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual meeting. UW note: She has taught several courses at the UW.
- Golden Door Award: El Comite Pro Amnistia y Justicia Social, an immigrant advocacy group.
- Amicus Award (for a "law firm that has shown exceptional participation and commitment to probono legal representaiton to assist and further the rights of immigrants and refugees"): Law Offices of Gibbs Houston Pauw. (The firm's website provides documents related to several class action suits on behalf of immigrants.)
Some words of inspiration:
In her acceptance, Ann Benson quoted Gandhi: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world" and reminded us to work for better lives for all each day.
And one of the attorneys from Gibbs Houston Pauw reminisced about setting up the firm 25 years ago, when the newspapers were full of stories about upwardly mobile attorneys at big firms. He said he and his partners wanted to practice law in such a way that when they retired they could look back and believe that they had made a difference in people's lives and improved their community.
Filed in: NWIRP, immigration, Benson, Washington-Defender-Association, El-Comite-Pro-Amnistia, Gibbs-Houston-Pauw
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