2026 Dignity, Community, and Power Award Gala Honorees
Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez is currently serving her seventeenth term as Representative for New York’s 7th Congressional District. In the 119th Congress, she is the Ranking Member of the House Small Business Committee, a senior member of the Financial Services Committee and a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
She has made history several times during her tenure in Congress. In 1992, she was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 1998, she was named Ranking Democratic Member of the House Small Business Committee, making her the first Hispanic woman to serve as Ranking Member of a full House committee. Most recently, in 2006, she was named Chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee, making her the first Latina to chair a full Congressional committee.
Nydia has been more than just our Congresswoman – she’s been our Luchadora. She has championed our work since our founding years in Bushwick – mentoring our leaders, helping us secure financial support, and standing with and fighting alongside our members, always.
She has represented our people and our neighborhoods with authenticity, care, and an unwavering moral compass, pushing against all odds for a progressive agenda in Congress. Nydia is retiring from Congress this year and we can’t wait to celebrate her decades of leadership and her countless contributions to our organization, our communities, and to all New Yorkers at our gala.
Peter L. Markowitz is the Associate Dean of Equity in Curriculum and Teaching, Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law, Co-Director for the Center for Immigration Innovation, and is the founding faculty member and co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic. The clinic focuses on the intersection of immigration and criminal law and on immigration enforcement issues. It provides deportation defense representation to individuals and represents community-based and national advocacy organizations on impact projects.
It’s impossible to count the lives that have been impacted by Peter’s practice, teaching, and innovation in the field of immigration law. Peter and his clinic have played a critical role in creating new programs to ensure more immigrants have representation including creating the nation’s first public defender system for detained immigrants (the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project); developing the concept of detainer discretion (sanctuary laws); developing the first national immigration fellowship program (the Immigrant Justice Corps); and initiating the nation’s first full-service in-house immigration unit located in a public defender’s office (at The Bronx Defenders).
He has been a close partner in our work—acting as co-counsel defending immigrant families from fraud and a thought partner in our organizing, at every level of government, in our fights to establish protections for immigrant New Yorkers.
Maria Hinojosa is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, professor, and the founder of Futuro Media Group. A trailblazer in journalism, she has spent nearly 40 years carving out space in traditionally exclusive newsrooms, amplifying marginalized voices, and shedding light on overlooked stories to offer a more complex and accurate portrait of American society.
Since becoming the first Latina hired at NPR in 1985, Hinojosa has continuously pushed the boundaries of mainstream media, challenging dominant narratives and ensuring that diverse experiences and social injustices are reported with depth and authenticity.
A dedicated mentor and educator, Hinojosa has helped shape the next generation of journalists through her role as the Distinguished Journalist in Residence at Barnard College, her alma mater, where she has taught since 2019. She is the author of four books, including Crews: Gang Members Talk to Maria Hinojosa, Raising Raul, and the critically acclaimed Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, as well as its young readers’ edition, Once I Was You: Finding My Voice and Passing the Mic.
You’ve undoubtedly heard Maria’s excellent stories throughout her career – from her Pulitzer Prize winning podcast series Suave to her many pieces documenting the lives and challenges of immigrant communities in this country. Maria has transformed the way our stories are covered, and helped reshape narratives in ways that reaffirm the humanity of immigrants, working-class people and other marginalized communities. We have felt her empathy, curiosity and care first-hand each time she has interviewed us and our members and told their stories.