Labor Arts

The Clara Lemlich awards for social activism celebrate the lives of incredible women whose many decades of brilliant activism have made real and lasting change in the world.
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The 2025 Honorees
Bev Grant is a musician, photographer, filmmaker, single parent, grandmother and activist. Winner of the2017 ASCAP Foundation Jay Gorney award, the 2017 Labor Heritage Foundation Joe Hill Award and the 2022 Brooklyn For Peace PathMaker to Peace award, Bev Grant grew up singing and playing in Portland, Oregon in a band with two of her sisters.
She moved to New York City in 1962 and worked full time as a clerical worker until 2007 while devoting herself to topical songwriting and social activism. She joined New York Radical Women and NY Newsreel (now Third World Newsreel) in 1967. A book of her black and white photographs, Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972 (2018) includes documentation of the 1968 Miss America Beauty Pageant protest, the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast for children programs and the Moratorium Against the
Viet Nam war.
She formed her band The Human Condition in 1971, featured on the Grammy-nominated Best of Broadside collection, and recorded The Working People Gonna Rise and Kulonyaka. She was founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus from 1997 until she retired in 2022, producing two cds.

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Xinhui Li
2025, Second Prize - Visual Arts
Hunter College

“My work Spine of Steel is a watercolor painting that takes a construction worker as its visual focus. By capturing a moment of his labor, I make visible the individual effort behind urban construction—effort that is often overlooked. Through my brushstrokes, I highlight the dignity of work, using this to deeply interpret the spirit of Labor Arts…”

For the complete entry, past and present winners, and more information, visit laborarts.org/contest/2025/introduction/

Imani Anthony
2025, Third Prize - Non-Fiction
New York City College of Technology

“I work for Children of Promise, a summer camp/after school program for kids who have incarcerated parents. According to their website, children of promise was founded by Sharon Content in 2009, in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York to strictly meet the needs and concerns of children who are left behind by their parents. Bedford Stuyvesant is a predominantly black neighborhood where the crime rate is slightly higher than other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and mainly in poverty…”

For the complete entry, past and present winners, and more information, visit laborarts.org/contest/2025/introduction/