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Last updated on Sunday, February 24, 2013
(BLOOMINGTON) - The City of Bloomington Human Rights Commission (BHRC) has announced the winner of its 12th annual Human Rights Award: long-time local attorney and activist Guy Loftman.
"Guy's commitment to racial and gender equality, to peace efforts and to voting rights, among others, makes him more than deserving of this award," said Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, an Indiana University professor who directs the Interracial Community Project and serves on the BHRC.
Loftman was chosen as a tribute to his decades of work with various civil and human rights issues. As the IU student body president in the late 1960s, he was a champion of students' rights and women's rights, fighting the sex discrimination that was rampant on campus at the time.
As a student, Loftman also campaigned against the Vietnam War, helping to organize an IU chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). His anti-war efforts continue to this day, as he joins others to protest the war in Iraq every Wednesday at the Monroe County Courthouse.
Loftman is an active member of the Monroe County branch of the NAACP and has worked with the organization to study racial biases in arrests and sentencing in Monroe County. After the organization's report, "Race and Criminal Justice in Monroe County," was published in 2003, the American Bar Association called the study "a national model for community relations."
Byron Bangert, chairperson of the BHRC, will present the award to Loftman at the City of Bloomington Common Council meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 20 in City Hall's Council Chambers, 401 N. Morton St. For additional information contact Barbara Toddy, the City's human rights secretary, at (812) 349-3429.
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