Editor’s note: Below is the speech that Deborah Weinstein, CHN’s Executive Director, prepared for the Coalition on Human Needs’ Human Needs Hero reception on July 24, 2025. You can watch the Hero’s panel and part of the closing remarks here.

You’ve heard such meaningful, generous-spirited remarks about why we’re here today. 

And you know and live this, yourselves, every day. 

The Coalition on Human Needs is not just proud, but replenished by this opportunity to bring all of us together this evening. Thank you for being here. This 21st Human Needs Hero award is different – we want to celebrate the community of legal justice champions – too numerous to honor each individually – and to recognize their vital role, in these perilous times of threats to our democracy. The legal justice heroes we celebrate today are keeping our most basic values ascendant and aloft – (and because we are nothing if not literal at the Coalition on Human Needs, a large Statue of Liberty is inflated, to represent those aloft values ). 

At the same time, because of the perils we face, we need to stand together as a human needs community, and pool our strengths to work together – dedicated to the essential values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness –– what’s that you’re saying, Lady Liberty? 

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…”

She is offering the welcome that this nation is built upon. And we know that we cannot keep our nation strong without building beyond that welcome to secure by law the ongoing protections that our people need. She also knows what we don’t need – “Keep… your storied pomp!” she tells us – she’s not a fan of pompous military parades; she’s not a beacon for billionaires. 

At a time when the executive branch has seized power to deny millions of our people health care, food, jobs with labor protections, affordable housing, education, contrary to our nation’s values and shockingly often contrary to law, we must all work together. Our legal justice heroes are working tirelessly to slow and stop the administration’s illegal acts – they lift the lamp with unflagging determination.

Our nation is so fortunate for the tireless service of legal champions including the National Immigration Law Center and the National Women’s Law Center, on our panel today.

There are so many others: Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, ACLU, Center for Law and Social Policy, Public Justice, Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality, National Employment Law Project – many here today, many others in our hearts. 

Our service providers and nonprofits, with leadership from the National Council of Nonprofits, are joining in – to expose the harms happening to real people in their communities – joining lawsuits, informing the public and public officials. Our faith leaders are joining in, lifting up those in need in communities across this country and calling us to live – and fund – our values. Our policy experts are joining in – to show how cuts and restrictions hurt and how policies and funding to meet needs strengthens us. Our organizers are joining in – helping more and more people to understand what’s at stake and to create opportunities for people to show up and speak out. 

So we’re all in this together – all essential human needs and human rights advocates. 

And, while today we are specially highlighting the work of those taking powerful lawbreakers to court – we know we must all join with them. We celebrate and support the legal justice champions. They are protecting the rights we are afforded in the Constitution. And so, in keeping with CHN’s aforementioned literal approach – we present, first to our panelists and then to all of you, all cherished heroes, a very practical way to help protect the Constitution – the Constitution cozy! We give you a copy of the Constitution, which you don’t need, comfortably protected by this neoprene Constitution cozy, which is labeled Rights Protector, because you are. And when your Constitution is safe at home or office, you can use it to keep a drink cold when you go out to demonstrate in the blistering heat.

But wait – there’s more! Look on the other side, and you’ll see not only the CHN logo, but a slip of paper with a QR code – click on it and you’ll hear what you’re hearing today, but what we want you to carry with you when times are tough – the applause of your peers, supporters, and allies. 

That applause is our way of saying THANK YOU – yes, we know the nation faces grave dangers, and in particular, millions of people face those dangers. The work ahead is hard. But we’ll lift our lamps together, we’ll lift our voices together, and as soon as CHN’s Board Chair Ellen Teller closes us out, we’ll lift our glasses and our shrimp together.