Courage Prize
United States Senator Russ Feingold spent eighteen years as a Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, and before that ten years as a State Senator from Middleton. In his nearly three decades as an elected official, Feingold has earned a reputation for taking principled stands regardless of the potential political consequences. He is best known for the historic McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which sought to decrease the power of money in politics. Since leaving the Senate, Feingold has founded Progressives United, whose mission is to ensure that voters — rather than rich donors — decide elections. In addition to The Ridenhour Prize for Courage, Feingold is a recipient of the 2011 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
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Howard Zinn, the posthumous 2010 recipient of The Ridenhour Courage Prize, was recognized for his determination to showcase the hidden heroes of social movements throughout history, his refusal to accept the history of only the powerful and victorious, his steadfast belief in the potential for a better world, his unflinching moral stance on fighting whatever he perceived was wrong in society, his fight to inspire students to believe that together, they could make democracy come alive, and, in the words of his former student Alice Walker, "his way with resistance."
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Bob Herbert, 2009 recipient of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, was recognized for the overall distinction and fearless truth-telling of his reporting in the New York Times. A champion of the under-reported story, Herbert provides moral clarity and a sense of outrage to his ongoing depiction of injustice.
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Bill Moyers, 2008 recipient of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, is the host of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. From his service as one of the original organizers of the
Peace Corps to his founding of Public Affairs Television, Moyers has dedicated his life to
ensuring that the media work to preserve and strengthen our democracy.
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President Jimmy Carter, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, is the 39th President of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. As First Citizen, Jimmy Carter has consistently defended the public interest and acted on his passion for social justice.
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Gloria Steinem, 2006 recipient
of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, is the co-founder of Ms.
Magazine and one of the most important voices and thinkers
of the women’s movement. Her courage, spirit and activism
have helped drive and define feminism.
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Seymour Hersh, 2005 recipient
of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
in a series of articles for The New Yorker.
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Daniel Ellsberg, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Courage Prize, leaked a 7,000-page document known as the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that victory in Vietnam was far from certain, despite government assurances to the contrary.
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Documentary Film Prize
Budrus, the inaugural recipient of The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, is honored for its moving account of a West Bank village, Budrus, that used nonviolent resistance to unite a divided people and alter the course of Israel’s Separation Barrier. Refusing to allow the wall to destroy his village, Palestinian community organizer Ayed Morrar and his 15-year-old daughter Iltezam formed an unlikely coalition of local Fatah and Hamas members, Israeli supporters, and women and girls, to protest the barrier’s route. As one New York Times review put it, “[Budrus] raises some of the most difficult and contested questions surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, notably the ability of each side to understand the other and the role of popular, nonviolent struggle in bringing it to an end.”
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Book Prize
Wendell Potter, the 2011 recipient of The Ridenhour Book Prize, won for Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Healthcare and Deceiving Americans, his damning account of how America’s health insurance industry manufactures distortion and fear. Potter, who walked away from his lucrative job as head of communications for healthcare giant CIGNA in May 2008, found he could no longer participate in a system that placed profits ahead of patient care, and courageously spoke out against what he had seen and participated in during his thirty-year career.
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Joe Sacco, 2010 recipient of The Ridenhour Book Prize, won for Footnotes in Gaza, a work of profound social significance, and one that explores the complex continuum of history. At a time when peace in the Middle East has never seemed more elusive, Sacco's illustrations bear witness to the lives of those who are trapped by the conflict. This marks the first time that the Ridenhour judges have awarded the prize to an illustrated book.
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Jane Mayer, 2009 recipient of the 2009 Ridenhour Book Prize, won for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into A War on American Ideals, a damning indictment of how the United States made self-destructive decisions in the wake of 9/11 that not only violated the Constitution and American values, but actually hindered the pursuit of Al Qaeda.
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James D. Scurlock, 2008 recipient of the Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Maxed Out: Hard Times in the Age of Easy Credit, his disturbing account of America’s unsustainable relationship with debt, revealing the vulnerability of the average person to the predatory and unethical lending methods of banks and credit card companies.
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Rajiv Chandrasekaran, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, an exemplary work of reportage that takes us behind the barricaded walls of Baghdad's Green Zone.
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Anthony Shadid, 2006 recipient
of the Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Night
Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s
War, a moving account of everyday Iraqis caught in the crossfire
of international conflict.
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Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, 2005
recipient of the Ridenhour Book Prize, chronicles a decade in the
life of one family in her novel Random
Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx,
a haunting account of the day-to-day realities of urban poverty.
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Deborah Scroggins, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Emma’s War: An Aid Worker, Radical Islam, and the Politics of Oil – A True Story of Love and Death in the Sudan. It is both the riveting story of a British aid worker and the local warlord she marries, and a revealing look at Sudan: a world where international aid fuels armies instead of the starving, and where the government is locked in battle with other groups over oil.
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Truth-Telling Prize
Thomas Drake, 2011 recipient of The Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was a senior official at the National Security Agency (NSA) who blew the whistle through the proper channels and exposed massive waste, fraud and abuse as well as illegal and unconstitutional behavior at the hands of NSA management post-9/11. While the Bush administration targeted him as part of a wasteful criminal “leak” investigation into those who revealed Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, suspended Drake’s security clearance and led him to voluntarily resign from the NSA, the current administration has been even more aggressive. Drake was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Espionage Act in April 2010 in order to silence him and send an ominous message to future whistleblowers, that not only could you lose your job, you could lose your very freedom. He is due to begin trial on June 13, 2011.
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Matthew Hoh, 2010 recipient of The Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, was the State Department official who resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan. At a time when Afghanistan was still looked at as the "good war," Hoh came forward, very publicly and at great risk, to question the war's fundamental rationale.
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Thomas Tamm, 2009 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was a former Justice Department lawyer who exposed the existence of a secret warrantless wiretapping program to The New York Times. Tamm imperiled his own future liberty to preserve the liberties of all Americans.
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Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, 2008 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was a former JAG officer who, while stationed at Guantánamo Bay, was the first person to release the names of the prisoners at the detention camp. He was recognized for his profound loyalty to the United States and its enduring constitutional principles.
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Donald Vance, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was an American contractor in Iraq who was detained by American troops and held at the notorious Camp Cropper for over three months before being released without explanation. He was recognized for coming forward to tell his story and call for accountability.
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Rick Piltz, 2006 recipient of
the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, is a science policy expert who
served for a decade in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office.
There he witnessed Bush administration efforts to manipulate and
censor the communication of scientific findings on global climate
change. He was recognized for revealing this to the press and public.
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Kristen Breitweiser, 2005 recipient
of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, is a 9/11 widow and activist.
She was honored for her role in pressuring official Washington to
provide a public accounting of what went wrong on September 11th.
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Joseph Wilson, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was an ambassador to two African nations and the senior American diplomat in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. He was recognized for challenging the assertion in President George Bush’s State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to purchase significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
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