1999 Rolling Stone Magazine Brick Award

View video coverage of the award (coverage created for the March of the Americas). Requires Quicktime 4.

DO SOMETHING and ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE

Name South Florida Farmworker As America's Best Young Leader

Lucas Benitez wins $100,000 Do Something BRICK Award National Grand Prize

for Efforts to Secure Employment Rights, Wage Increases for Farmworkers

NEW YORK, NY -- The national youth leadership organization Do Something and Rolling Stone Magazine have named 23 year old farmworker Lucas Benitez as America's Best Young Community Leader for his efforts to secure employment rights and higher wages for farmworkers in South Florida. Benitez, who with his fellow farmworkers exposed two slave labor operations, negotiated the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years and collected more than $100,000 in unpaid back wages for migrant workers, received the prestigious $100,000 Do Something BRICK Award national grand prize at a Do Something ceremony on Thursday, October 28, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean and businessman and philanthropist Ted Forstmann were also honored for their community activism at the event, which was sponsored by Rolling Stone.

"Lucas is a powerful example of how young people can transform America's communities," said Andrew Shue, the actor who co-founded Do Something in 1993. "We believe in the power of young people to change the world."

Selected from among 500 applicants nationwide, Benitez was one of ten BRICK Award winners honored at the Do Something gala. The nine other winners each received a $10,000 grant from Do Somethings in recognition of their community-building efforts. Benitez accepted the Do Something BRICK Award national grand prize after walking from Washinton DC to New York City as part of a march that began on October 1st to raise awareness about poverty in America.

"My parents always worked hard, and they gave me a sense of pride in the work that you do with your hands," says Benitez. "My father cannot read or write, but he is a good teacher. He taught me to respect people for who they are, and not for the wealth or power that they may possess."

As Co-Director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Benitez leads education and organizing initiatives, serves as a spokesperson for the group's labor action campaigns and oversees leadership training and a Labor Action Rights Program to improve farmworker rights. Benitez uses an approach to community education and organizing called "popular education," an idea born in Latin America and the Caribbean that engages members as equal participants who reflect and plan community action together. Benitez says his motto is simple: "We are all leaders."

"Just as people struggled to change heir working conditions in the mines and factories throughout the country, we too must change the conditions of our work so that we can earn a living wage, live in decent housing and be treated with dignity and respect," Benitez says.

The son of peasant farmers from rural Guerrero, Mexico, Benitez started working in the fields at the age of 16 to help support his parents and 5 younger siblings. He worked picking tomatoes, peppers, watermelons and oranges in North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers after seeing a poster for an organizational meeting at a local church. In addition to all of his community work, Benitez continues to work in the fields.

"As a farmworker, I truly had no reason to believe that I would one day meet with governors and former US presidents, with Cardinals and Bishops, with labor and community leaders from across the country as I have over the past three years," Benitez says. "Throughout all this, I still work in the fields. I don't want to leave farm work only to have others end up suffering in my place."

Do Something launched the annual BRICK Award in 1996 as a way to honor and financially support the best young leaders in America. Since the program's inception, Do Something has awarded more than $700,000 in grants to 40 young leaders who have measurably strengthened their communities. Do Something BRICK Award winners are selected based on a series of essays and a weekend of interviews before a panel of veteran community leaders in New York City. The judges evaluate the applicants' leadership and entrepreneurial skills, long-term vision for their community and the measurable results of how their efforts have created lasting, positive change.

"The Do Something BRICK Award honors and supports outstanding young leaders who are building better communities brick by brick," Shue explains. "We want young people to understand their power to catalyze positive change and give them the tools to take action."