Eva Castillo of Manchester received the First Amendment Award at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications on Monday night.
Castillo, herself an immigrant from Venezuela, is the founder and longtime director of the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees. She was recognized for a lifetime of organizing and advocating on behalf of others who came to the United States.
She created the New Hampshire Chapter of Welcoming America, an organization dedicated to the promotion of understanding and positive integration between immigrants and the communities they move to, and she’s a member of Manchester’s Police Commission.
Union Leader Corp. is a sponsor of the award, which was presented at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown.
The judges who bestowed upon Castillo the First Amendment Award cited her “commitment to exercising First Amendment freedoms on behalf of New Hampshire communities whose voices are often underrepresented, as well as her public advocacy for the rights of immigrants.”
Castillo sat stoic, flanked on either side by her husband, Jean, and her son, Gibran. When she took the stage, she energized the sold-out crowd.
In accepting the award, Castillo told the audience that the rights of all people must be protected, and speaking out against injustice is paramount.
“These are not easy times. Our First Amendment is under attack,” Castillo said.
She remembered back to her home country, where the social and political environment changed drastically after Hugo Chavez rose to power, winning the Venezuelan presidency in the 1998 election.
“I come from a country where they started by closing the radio stations and the TV stations and the newspapers that did not agree with the government. Look where we are now,” she said.
Castillo cautioned the audience not to relinquish First Amendment rights.
“The rights are on paper. That piece of paper is not worth anything if you don’t put them into practice,” Castillo said.
Describing advocacy as a “team effort,” Castillo praised those who worked alongside her for many years, some of whom were in the audience on Monday night.
“I see so many people and so many organizations that have joined their voices to speak up against the terror that ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is giving in our community,” she said. “Against the deportations and the violations, the blatant violations of the civil rights of my people.”
She called on citizens to defend immigrant communities in New Hampshire.
“We need to hold our representatives in D.C. accountable for finally doing something. We benefit from the high level of immigrants, yet we refuse to give them status,” Castillo said. “We have a sub-class of people here in this country — modern day slavery.
“Let’s practice what we preach. Immigration reform for everybody and abolish ICE,” she added.
Brodsky honored
Howard Brodsky received the Quill & Ink Award for his “longstanding commitment to advancing First Amendment education in New Hampshire.”
Brodsky, co-founder of CCA Global Partners in Manchester, told the audience of the circumstances that led to the creation of the Brodsky Prize, which honors a New Hampshire high school journalist for their efforts.
His son Jeff Brodsky died in 2023. Jeff Brodsky’s passion for journalism began while at Manchester High School Central, where he was co-editor of The Little Green. Dedicated to transparency and the foundations of journalism, Jeff Brodsky fought and won a battle against the school’s administration to keep the paper in print.
“I am truly deeply, deeply grateful to receive the Quill & Ink Award. But I have to say that tonight’s award is really not an award for me, it’s an award for my son, Jeff,” Brodsky said. “He was the journalist and he knew it was so important — what he did in school and after school.”
Jeff Brodsky’s first love was journalism, his father said.
“Student journalism reminds us that the free press doesn’t begin at a major national newspaper, or a television network, or a national publication. It begins in a high school newsroom and that basic knowledge. It begins with a young person saying, ‘Something doesn’t seem right, and I want to ask why,’” Howard Brodsky said. “And it depends on whether we, as adults, have the courage to let young people ask that question and the freedom to pursue the answer.
“Jeff believed passionately in that freedom and I believe the greatest way that we can honor him, his memory, is to make sure the next generation of journalists has the same opportunity that he had — to question, to investigation and to speak the truth to power,” he added. “To understand that an open government and a free society depends on their voices.”