March 2012 – The Department of Sociology is proud to announce that Laurel O’Gorman, a student of our M.A. program, was presented with the Youth Activism Award at the Jack Layton Award for Social Justice 2012 inaugural banquet last Thursday, March 1st.
Laurel’s relentless social justice campaigns are an inspiration to her peers and professors at Laurentian University. In 2009, Laurel helped to organize Laurentian’s 233 graduate teaching assistants, who joined the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), in March of the following year – an historic first. Shortly thereafter Laurel was elected President of CUPE Local 5011 and launched into a successful first set of negotiations with a ratified contract the following year.
A single mother of two children, Justice and Jonathan, Laurel participated in Sudbury’s ‘Occupy’ movement, one of the smallest and feistiest in the country. Last fall, she joined a student contingent that bussed to a rally in Toronto. She was publicly attacked in a Globe and Mail column by Margaret Wente, who wrote: ‘‘Ms. O’Gorman is in a fix. But I can’t help wondering whether she, and not the greedy Wall Street bankers, is the author of her own misfortune.’’ Laurel responded with a wry sense of humour and keen wit and she took on the Globe’s challenge with vigour and delight.
During his lifetime, Jack Layton was known for his dedication to social justice and his love of Tommy Douglas’ well-known aphorism ‘‘Courage, my friend; `tis not too late to build a better world.’’ Laurel is a social justice fighter and follows in these deep footsteps.
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