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“Yesterday, May 4^th, was Jane Jacobs’ birthday. Today we are celebrating two individuals who follow the Jacobsean priniciple of upholding the needs of living communities in the urban, built environment,” said Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. “And as we approach Mother’s Day, I’m reminded that Robert Moses dismissed Jane Jacobs and her fellow protesters of the Lower Manhattan Expressway as ‘nobody but a bunch of mothers.’ With Peggy Shepard and Alexie Torres-Fleming we have two more mothers and extraordinary citizens who, like Jane, are bold activists who have successfully taken their principles to the streets.”

Rockefeller Foundation Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership

Peggy Shepard, 61, is the executive director and co-founder of West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT). WE ACT has been a leader in the effort to publicize and combat the historic practice of locating environmentally harmful facilities in working-class communities of color.

When Shepard co-founded WE ACT in 1988, in a classic Jane Jacobs strategy, she organized her neighborhood, the residents of Harlem, to demand a commitment from the City to repair the North River Sewage Treatment Plant, a site that had been emitting noxious pollutants. WE ACT won a $1.1 Million settlement of its lawsuit against the City, as well as a monitoring role with the Natural Resources Defense Council in the enforcement of the city-state consent agreement on a plan to fix the North River plant. Under Shepard’s direction, WE ACT also led a program to map and document the rate of air pollutants and asthma in Harlem and used this research to push the MTA to adopt system-wide diesel retrofit technology and the early use of cleaner fuels to achieve what is one of the cleanest bus fleets in the nation.

Peggy Shepard has been at the forefront of the environmental justice movement for more than twenty years. Her pioneering work has been recognized as a model for communities around the country. From January 2001 to 2003, Ms. Shepard served as the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; she currently serves as the co-chair of the Northeast Environmental Justice Network.

Rockefeller Foundation Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism

Alexie Torres-Fleming, 43, is the founder of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) in the South Bronx. In addition, she is the co-founder of the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, a coalition of local groups that is “confronting the legacy of Robert Moses” by campaigning to replace the Sheridan Expressway with affordable housing and green spaces.

Torres-Fleming’s work exemplifies Jacobsean principles–generating creative use of the urban environment and providing neighborhood leadership to solve common problems. Her leadership in her community dates back to 1992, when she helped lead a march to protest the drug-dealing and violence plaguing the South Bronx neighborhood where she grew up. The drug dealers retaliated by burning down her parish church, a building that she and the protestors had been using as their headquarters. This attack, far from discouraging Torres-Fleming, emboldened her to become even more involved in her old neighborhood. She moved back to the South Bronx from Manhattan and founded YMPJ, a faith-based, community development organization that aims to empower local youth. Using education and community development, YMPJ has helped a generation of Bronx children discover that through advocacy, community organizing, journalism, environmentalism, and the arts, they can play an active role in shaping and improving their neighborhood. This fall, the group will open “Concrete Plant Park” on the site of an abandoned concrete plant on the Bronx River.

Alexie lives in the South Bronx with her husband and two children, a few blocks from the housing project where she grew up. Alexie remembers watching the burning of the Bronx from her bedroom window as a young girl. Thanks in part to her work, Alexie’s neighbors now have a view of a healthier and greener neighborhood.

Peggy Shepard will be given the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership, and Alexie Torres-Fleming will be given the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism. Along with the Medal, Shepard and Torres-Fleming will each receive $100,000. The Medals will be awarded to Shepard and Torres-Fleming at a ceremony on September 8^th at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Visit www.rockfound.org for more information.