“Who is my Neighbor? Fear and Family in a Polarized World”  4th ANNUAL BENEFIT DINNER for First Friends

Wednesday, May 4, 2016, 7:00pm, The Richfield Regency, 420 Bloomfield Avenue, Verona, New Jersey

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Guest Speaker and Honoree Sister Simone Campbell, Director of NETWORK, A Social Service Justice Lobby & Creator of The Nuns on the Bus

Sister Simone Campbell was born in Santa Monica, California. She joined the Sisters of Social Service, an international Roman Catholic religious congregation in 1964. In 1977, Campbell received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Davis, School of Law. The following year she founded the Community Law Center in Oakland, California to provide legal services to the working poor and worked as lead attorney for 18 years. Between 1995 and 2000, Sister was the General Director of her religious congregation.

Since 2004, Sister Simone has served as executive director of NETWORK. She was invited to attend the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act in acknowledgment of her effective work in support of the law’s passage. In 2012, Sister created the Nuns on the Bus project, leading a group of religious sisters on a bus tour across the U.S. Nuns on the Bus aimed to draw attention to work of the sisters with the poor and to protest planned cuts to safety net programs. In honor of her advocacy, in 2014, Sister Simone was awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, which commemorates the 1963 encyclical of Saint John XXIII. She was also awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award and the Defender of Democracy Award from the international Parliamentarians for Global Action. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, The Daily Show with John Stewart and the Colbert Report. She has been the keynote or featured speaker at numerous gatherings, including the 2012 Democratic National Convention.