TORONTO – The Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) has won the 2022 Atkinson Good Fight Prize.
The prize was first awarded in 2017 on the 75th anniversary of the Atkinson Foundation. It’s awarded every five years and focuses on campaigns, coalitions and networks, rather than one organization or individual, and the long struggle for justice described by former Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson as “the good fight.”
Over the last decade, the TCBN has built community power to fight for an infrastructure development process that includes those too often displaced by projects and excluded from their economic benefits, states a post on the foundation’s Facebook page.
They’ve negotiated job opportunities, apprenticeships and other community benefits like child care as part of major projects, including the Finch West LRT, Eglinton Crosstown LRT, West Park Healthcare Centre and Casino Woodbine.
“We’re inspired by TCBN’s ambition and progress,” states an article by Colette Murphy, CEO of the Atkinson Foundation, on the foundation’s website. “Executive director, Rosemarie Powell, and her team have always expected more than poor quality, low-paying jobs supplemented by inadequate services for their communities. They’re building community power to leverage infrastructure spending and create real economic opportunities for persistently excluded Black, Indigenous and other racialized people.”
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