The
Ethical Culture
Society of Essex County
516 Prospect Street, Maplewood,
New Jersey 07040 Phone 973-763-1905
Email: ecsec.nj@gmail.com
Board of Trustees: Zia Durrani, President; Jacqueline Herships, Vice-President; Jeanine Rosh, Treasurer; Diane Beeny; Jill Farrer;
William Graves; Shannon Kirk; Lisa Novemsky; Bill Stoever, Peggy Toy. Leader Emeriti: Martha Gallahue, Boe Meyerson, Jim White
Liz Cunningham, Office Manager
Today is
Local Hero Award
In 2015 the Social Action Committee of the Ethical Culture Society of Essex County instituted a program of celebrating Local Heroes who have enriched the lives of our community and region. We believe that many people in our communities are doing important, under-appreciated work in social service and social action. They are doing important work that is often taken for granted and under-appreciated.
It seemed appropriate to us to honor such individuals and their work for the community. Some of these local heroes are well known in the community: some are known mostly behind the scenes. In all cases, we believe they exemplify the values of Ethical Culture in their lives and activities.
2015 Local Hero was Susan Barry (6-7-15)
Susan Barry & Friends.Susan Barry, our first honoree, was a long time language arts teacher at Maplewood Middle School. Teachers have deep and wide influence on their students, but we believe the ripples should go wider. Ms. Barry has organized a Model United Nations program that is designed to be accessible to all types of students. The program has received ACHIEVE grants explicitly to make the program available to students of all economic groups. The first year in operation, the club had 13 members and attended one conference. The next year, 47 members attended two conferences.
In 2015, Ms. Barry taught a semester elective in Model UN to a total of 60 students. The club attended conferences and had training sessions. It also raised funds and commemorated Human Rights Day by researching human rights violations throughout the world. Students wore placards that day that told the story of a human rights violation somewhere in the world. They celebrated Red Hand Day in commemoration of child soldiers throughout the world by researching specific stories of child soldiers and sharing that information with other classes in the building, and they had a totally "red" bake sale and sent the money they raised to the UN Human Rights Council.
Ms. Barry, a graduate of Montclair State University with a Master's Degree in Student Personnel Services from MaryGrove College, never hesitated in her choice of a career. She knew from 9th grade that she wanted to be a teacher. She calls herself "one of those few lucky people who found her niche and was able to stay there. Who could ask for more?"
It seems to the Social Action Committee of the Essex Ethical Culture Society that Ms. Barry exemplifies a creative and enthusiastic commitment to making the world a better place.
Susan Barry retired from Maplewood Middle School, but continued to work on the Model UN Program with the students there.
The Social Action Committee's 2016 Local Hero Award
went to Widney Brown (May 22, 2016)
The 2016 Local Hero Honoree was Widney Brown. We honored her leadership at Physicians for Human Rights; her support of our Essex Ethical Culture Society; and her efforts to spread good will and respect for gender differences in her neighborhood.
Widney Brown is the Director of Programs, New York, for Physicians for Human Rights. She oversees PHR's research, investigations, monitoring and evaluation, documentation, advocacy, and capacity-building projects. Prior to joining PHR, she served as the senior director for international law and policy at Amnesty International's Secretariat in London. She was responsible for Amnesty International's strategic litigation program, standard-setting initiatives, international justice program, advocacy in global and regional intergovernmental settings, and policy development. Before Amnesty International, she worked at Human Rights Watch for nine years during which time she served in a variety of roles, including as deputy program director, where she was responsible for overseeing the work of both regional and thematic programs.
Locally, she has spoken for us at the Ethical Culture Society. She also has, in her own backyard in Maplewood, quietly supported and eased the coming out of young people, and has spread good will to the children who attend a Jewish Day Care Center near her home, explaining gender issues in a way they can understand. We honor her both for her engaged, neighborly presence in our community, and for her work for all of us at the national and international level.
2017 Local Hero Was Ingrid S. Hill (May 14, 2017)
Employed in higher education for over 36 years, Ingrid Hill worked as Associate Director of the Educational Opportunity Program at Seton Hall University and has taught college courses in the Department of Psychology, Department of African-American Studies and the Educational Opportunity Program. She has served as chair, co-chair, representative, advisor and member on numerous committees and councils. Moreover, she has presented workshops and seminars on education, youth leadership development, male/female relationships, diversity, community empowerment, crime, delinquency, violence and cross-cultural counseling.
Ms. Hill is also a long-standing member of the People’s Organization for Progress where she presently serves as both Corresponding Secretary and Vice Chair of Internal Affairs, and she has served both as the coordinator of the 381-day Daily People’s Protest Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality, and Justice, and as chair of the People’s Conference on the Fight for Jobs, Peace, Equality, and Justice. She is also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Leadership New Jersey. Ingrid has served as Vice President of the New Jersey Association of Black Psychologists, member of the Statewide Coordinating Committee for the Conferences on Reparations, and as Northeastern Representative in a nationwide study regarding the issues of testing and its implications for African Americans.
Ingrid Hill can be seen working for social justice at most of the important events and demonstrations in our region.
2018 Local Hero Award To Labor Lawyer,
Activist, and Musician Bennet Zurofsky (June10, 2018)
Bennet Zurofsky has dedicated his life to advancing the causes of labor, peace and social justice as a lawyer, an activist, and as a musician and founder and leader of the Solidarity Singers of the New Jersey State Industrial Union Council.
For thirty-five years, he has practiced law in Newark, devoting himself to unions, employees, and the Constitution. Presently a solo practitioner, he was previously the Managing Partner of Reitman Parsonnet, PC, where he entered the private practice of law under the tutelage of the late Sidney Reitman. Over the years, his primary practice has been the representation of many international and local unions. He has also helped hundreds of unrepresented employees in efforts to obtain justice from their employers.
When he is not in his office or in a court room, you can frequently find him on a picket line, supporting worker and community struggles, working for peace and responsible government, defending free speech rights, or raising fighting spirits as the Director of the Solidarity Singers of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council. Mr. Zurofsky also regularly provides pro bono representation and advice in support of activists working for progressive change throughout New Jersey. He is particularly known for assisting demonstrators when they stand their ground and exercise their free speech rights in the face of police hostility. His current pro bono activity includes: serving as General Counsel to the New Jersey Poor Peoples Campaign and providing on going advice and representation to many groups that are part of the New Jersey Resistance to the Trump Administration.
As a litigator, some of his notable victories have included: defending the constitutionality of the New Jersey Community Right to Know Act against a challenge brought by the chemical and pharmaceutical industries; obtaining public deportation proceedings for a post 9/11 detainee who the Department of Justice had declared subject to a secret trial; and eliminating sexually discriminatory "obstacle course" testing for municipal police officers. He was also instrumental in ending unconstitutional conditions of confinement in the jails and the juvenile detention center of Newark and Essex County through my service as Special Master for the United States District Court. He has also been Chairman of The New Jersey Supreme Court's District Ethics Committee for Essex County.
Many also know him as a performing musician since the age of 15. He sings and plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and various drums and percussion instruments. Since 1995, he has appeared almost exclusively with the Solidarity Singers of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council, which he directs. For more than a decade, he was a member of the Board of Trustees of Sing Out Corporation, which was founded by Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson and others in 1951, the same year that Zurofsky was born. He has been honored to serve as the President of several non-profits, including Community Access Unlimited and the Folk Music Society of Northern New Jersey.
He lives in Maplewood with his wife Susan J. Vercheak, who is Assistant General Counsel, Utility Affairs, for Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., and was formerly Chief Deputy Attorney General of the New Jersey Division of Law's Public Utilities Section. They are the parents of adult twins, Hannah and Sam.
2019 Local Hero Award Went to Cate Lazen (May 12, 2019)
The 2019 aware went to Cate Lazen. The Committee deeply respects her twenty-five years of experience designing and facilitating educational and therapeutic experiences that empower people of all ages in schools, homes, communities and workplaces. We particularly want to honor her as the founder of Arts Unbound, which helps people of all ages living with disabilities to express themselves and earn money through the visual arts. And as the founder of the arts-based urban renewal movement called ValleyArts, which redefined the former hat factory area of Orange, NJ, as an arts destination, stimulated the local economy, activated community development, beautified blighted streets and provided after school programs for underserved youth.
Cate Lazen is an Educational Psychologist, School Social Worker and Clinician who partners with individuals, children and families who are dealing with academic, behavioral, developmental, social or emotional challenges at home or at school; divorce or marital/family conflict; trauma, crises, grief or loss.
She currently works in the South Orange/Maplewood, New Jersey school district providing psychotherapy, social/emotional skills training, advocacy and parenting support.
2020-21 Local Hero Award to Nancy Zak (September 26, 2021)
This year's Local Hero is Nancy Zak is a Newark resident who has been working for Ironbound Community Corporation as a community organizer for over 35 years. She has been involved with a variety of citywide issues, including affordable housing, tenant rights, city budget issues, the right to speak, preserving the library, planning, zoning and environmental issues. She was a member of the first class of Rutgers Gus Henningburg Fellows, sponsored by the Institute of Ethnicity and Culture. Over the years, she has received many awards, including the Newark Fire Department Community Service Award, Wynona Lipman Award, the City of Newark, The Challenge of Caring Award from the East Ward Councilman, Power 15 Award (Newarks' Most Influential Grassroots Leaders), the EPA Environmental Quality Award, and the Newark Public Schools Excellence Award for Partnership with the Community (elected by parents).
On the neighborhood level, for ICC, she has been active in toxic waste clean up, neighborhood planning and many other quality of life issues for and with Ironbound residents. She published a tri-lingual neighborhood newspaper, Ironbound Voices, for over twenty years.
Two proud accomplishments are coordinating a successful park preservation effort for Riverbank Park, the 100 year old Olmsted park which was threatened with demolition, through a volunteer community group called SPARK (Save the Park at Riverbank) and helping to shepherd the new Riverfront Park to completion (2012-13). Nancy lives in Newark with her husband, Newark native Arnold Cohen, and her daughter Beth.
2022 Local Hero Award to Cecilia Zalkind (September 25, 2022)
Cecilia Zalkind Receiving Local Hero 2022 Award from Meredith Sue Willis, Social Action ChairThe Social Action Committee of the Ethical Culture Society of Essex County is presented its 2022 Local Hero Award to Cecilia Zalkind, president and CEO of Advocates for Children of New Jersey .
Cecilia Zalkind has an extensive background in public policy advocacy for children. Her 25 years in leadership roles at ACNJ have helped produce key policy advances in child welfare, early care and education and health care in New Jersey. She has led important coalitions such as the Early Care and Education Coalition and the New Jersey BUILD initiative that have advanced high-quality early care and education in the state. Cecilia has argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court on preschool standards in Abbott v. Burke, the landmark educational equity case, and on the issue of permanency for foster children in several child welfare cases. Cecilia serves on various national leadership committees, including the national Children's Leadership Council. Cecilia Zalkind joined ACNJ in 1984 as public policy director and became executive director in 2001. While at ACNJ, she served as an adjunct professor of family and adoption law at Seton Hall Law School. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from New York University and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School.
2023 Local Hero Paula Rogovin (Sunday, October 15, 2023)
Paula Rogovin is a teacher, writer and Activist for Environmental Peace and Justice.
She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Bank Street College of Education. She spent 44 years as a teacher in the New York City Public Schools, retiring in 2018. Among her many teaching responsibilities was first grade at the Manhattan New School, P.S. 290.
She is the mother of 3 adult sons and the grandmother of 6.
She has also written several books to assist educators in developing social justice curriculum:
Apartheid is Wrong, A Curriculum for Young People (United Nations Center Against Apartheid)
Why Can't You Behave?: The Teacher's Guide to Creative Classroom Management, K–3 (Heinemann, 2004);
The Research Workshop: Bringing the World into Your Classroom (Heinemann 2001);
Classroom Interviews: A World of Learning (Heinemann, 1998).
Always a social activist, Paula was a founding member of Parks for Kids NYC. She began a movement with others in New York City in 2015 that resulted in the passage of legislation (April 2021) banning pesticides in city parks and playgrounds. She assembled scientists, policy makers, and activists, and her students went down to City Hall to call for the end of harmful pesticide use and attracted the attention of City Council Members. Her organization is now working to educate the public on alternatives to pesticides in the parks.
Paula also co-founded Educators Against Racism and Apartheid; the Teaneck (NJ) Peace and Justice Vigil; the Coalition to Ban Unsafe Oil Trains; and the Don't Gas the Meadowlands Coalition (working to stop proposed fracked gas power plants).
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