Human Rights Activist Wins Award

Isabel Garcia, a Tucson human-rights activist received a $150,000 prize from a cultural foundation for her community work. Pima County’s legal defender, Garcia, was awarded the Lannan Foundation’s Prize for Cultural Freedom for 2008. Garcia is a co-founder of Derechos Humanos, an organization that defends immigrant rights and works to publicize conditions on the U.S-Mexico border.

Garcia is the co-chair of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization based in Tucson, Arizona, that promotes respect for human and civil rights and fights the militarization of the border region in the American Southwest. She is also the legal defender of Pima County, Arizona. Ms. Garcia has been at the forefront of immigrant and refugee rights since 1976. As a lead speaker on behalf of Derechos Humanos, Ms. Garcia holds press conferences and interviews, hosts media crews, leads demonstrations, weekly vigils, symposiums, and marches to draw attention to the unjust policies and inhumane treatment of immigrants. She works to counter anti-immigrant hysteria and to change stereotypes and misinformation about immigrants. According to Ms. Garcia, “Immigration policy has been a total failure and needs to be changed. It has not prevented people from attempting to cross the border but has put the lives of thousands of men, women, and children in serious danger. Their deaths are the direct result of U.S. policy.” Ms. Garcia has received many awards for her work, including the 2006 National Human Rights Award from the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos.

KJ