The 2026 Tribute to Change will be held Thursday, June 11, 2026, at Vie (600 N Broad St), from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. This year’s theme is “Resist, Rise Up, and Reimagine.” We’ll honor the leaders and grassroots groups who are meeting this moment with courage—organizing their communities, taking bold action, and imagining a just future we all deserve.

The deadline to buy tickets has been extended through midnight, Tuesday, June 9! Come be inspired, and make a clear statement that you stand with grassroots movements building power across our region.

To download a PDF about sponsorship benefits, click here.

Meet the 2026 Honorees

Paul Robeson Lifetime Achievement Award

This award is given to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to social change throughout their lifetime. 

David Acosta

Some are born to do it. Consider David Acosta—organizer, activist, artist—who, after emigrating from Colombia, was leafletting for the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement as a teenager, laying down a foundation for a lifetime of radical social change work. Name a social justice movement in Philadelphia from the past five decades, and you’ll find David’s fingerprints.

During the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic spread through Philadelphia’s LGBTQIA+ communities. “It was transmitted among gay men unknowingly because the education wasn’t there. It was transmitted among injection drug users. It was a taboo subject,” David recalls. While the crisis was minimized, stigmatized, and ignored by the federal government, David responded to a need he saw in his own community of queer Latinx people by founding the prevention program GALAEI in 1989.

“I had a lot of doors closed, but I was persistent, and those doors either opened, or I kicked them open,” David says. “Eventually people realized this is important work, it’s in our communities, it’s happening, we’re being impacted, we need to do something.”

Beyond GALAEI, David’s organizing around the HIV/AIDS crisis led him to co-found Prevention Point Philadelphia, a pioneering harm reduction and health services organization, and then to drive change from within government as the City of Philadelphia’s Coordinator of HIV/AIDS Prevention Programs.

David’s liberation ethos is shaped by his artistic vision: “When I was 13, I decided I am going to be a poet, and so I took that very seriously and have continued that practice for over 50 years.” More than a decade ago, David co-founded Casa de Duende, a grassroots arts organization dedicated to uplifting immigrant, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ artists whose work advances social justice. “We know that art does have the power to heal,” David says. He has connected art to campaigns as well, co-editing the “Save Chinatown” anthology that channeled the citywide resistance to placing a 76ers arena in Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

“You do the work because you want to change both your own conditions, [and] in changing our own conditions, we change the conditions of other people,” David reflects. “Find what needs doing in the community, roll up your sleeves, and do it. The work is meaningful, significant, and it will have an impact. You may not see it right away, but it will.”

Cheri Honkala

For more than four decades, Cheri Honkala has transformed survival into a movement for human rights and collective action to end homelessness and poverty. In 1994, when thousands of people in Philadelphia had nowhere to live, Cheri realized that thousands of houses sat vacant. Her solution was to move people into those houses. “Nobody should live on the streets or not have access to a bed,” she says. Cheri co-founded Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) with five other women in 1991, and in 1994 they organized 20 homeless families to occupy HUD-owned vacant houses across the city.

Tactics like these have earned Cheri countless arrests, and scorn from politicians. For Cheri, the playing field is unjust. “There’s multi-million budgets, there’s nonprofits all over the place, and there’s nothing for people,” she says. “Every night in this city, homeless people have to do the homeless shuffle.”

As co-founder of the KWRU and Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (also known as the Poor People’s Army), Cheri’s vision of liberation casts poverty not as a personal or policy failure but a human rights issue—a condition we should refuse to tolerate anywhere. “[This work] is about caring about the people that live next door or in Haiti or Mexico or Gaza. Caring that they have a place to sleep, something to eat, and a humane existence.”

Cheri’s answer is people; better yet, an army, to make visible and demand what people need. She says, “When a section of the population has been told to ‘go someplace and die,’ that’s a declaration of war. We had to set up an army. We feed, clothe, and house people. … We’re not a charity; you have to give back, you have to commit to your own political education and to wanting to change the world.” The Poor People’s Army brought her organizing, and the movement she sparked, to a national level.

Cheri’s message of love, mobilization of power and resources, and centering political education is key to sustaining the inter-generational and multiracial Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. As Cheri says, “We teach the politics of love, and that love is an action word. … We’re educated, we’re organized, and our goal is to recruit, multiply, and create another kind of world—because it’s possible.”

Trailblazer Award

This award is given to an outstanding leader in community organizing who has helped pave the way for others. 

Blanca Pacheco

Blanca Pacheco has been a trailblazer in her work for Latine immigrants and all immigrant communities throughout the Philadelphia region for two decades. As co-director of New Sanctuary Movement (NSM), an interfaith grassroots group that organizes immigrant justice campaigns across class, nationality, and immigration status, she says: “We bring people together with the same goal. We all believe immigrants deserve to live a life with dignity.”

Faith is central to her work—for Blanca, tapping into the power of faith is a crucial way to build people power. “Faith spaces are the spaces our folks trust the most; it anchors people in their resilience. Faith has power. Churches have power. We want to work in places that can heal. We deal in that power.”

While fighting ICE’s onslaught of violence, intimidation, and displacement, Blanca’s organizing with NSM has built momentum for the community demands of preserving Philadelphia’s sanctuary status, the release of detained immigrants, and reigning in the City’s collaboration with ICE. It culminated with the passing of ICE Out restrictions in April 2026, which cement some of the strictest anti-ICE legislation in the country. It’s resistance work, but Blanca’s vision of liberation is expansive and transcendent. As she says, “I don’t want to be resisting—it feels obligatory, it’s not a choice. I want to help my people do other things to live better and enjoy life.”

Blanca builds power through accompaniment, deportation defense, and fighting to keep families together; she’s also a leader in a statewide campaign to make driver’s licenses available to all. She connects the dots through political education and resources to mobilize immigrant communities toward action.

Through it all Blanca is building a movement that lifts up that expansive vision of people’s lives. “As an immigrant, [it’s important] to think of us as full human beings with skills, with dreams, with agency to make decisions for our lives. The ‘immigrant’ part is a tiny part of our identity. Our lives didn’t start when we crossed the border or when we overstayed our visas. We hold knowledge and resilience. We hold a lot more.”

Emerging Leader Award

This award is given to an emerging leader who is beginning to make their mark as a community organizer. 

Cierra Freeman

For Cierra Freeman, her life’s work is part of her heritage: “My grandmother fought for North Philly youth from her station as an art teacher and activist. My mother was always helping others to overcome some societal or systemic injustice in a 1:1 fashion. My aunt does disability policy work at the State level. I am carrying the tradition of the women in my family born before me.”

From an early age, she learned the power of social justice—a member of one of the first cohorts of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools, she spent a summer at the Alex Haley Farm in high school for a formative crash course in Black political education. Today, she puts what she’s learned to work, building power and community for families, neighbors, and people of marginalized genders across Philadelphia.

Since 2017, Cierra has been in a leadership position at the Womanist Working Collective (WWC), where she co-created a resource redistribution program during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also co-organized with M.A.S.S (Mutual Aid Solidarity & Support) at that time, with dozens of other BIPOC Philadelphian mutual aid mobilizers, fundraising and distributing thousands in support. Since then, she’s developed a Guaranteed Income Pilot Program for caregivers. “The resistance of the corporate cis-hetero patriarchy is that we won’t stand inside those binary lines. It’s reimagining the future in every single way possible, collectively, caring for ourselves as we care for others.”

Drawing on experience as an organizer with the Philadelphia Parents Coalition and the Philadelphia Home and School Council, in 2020, Cierra entered co-leadership of the Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition (BSNC) and in 2023 established it as a hub for community organizing. In response to a proposal to co-locate the Cecil B. Moore Library with a private housing development, Cierra and the coalition mobilized neighbors and won an additional $8.3 million (for a total of $10.2 million) commitment from the city to rebuild the library as a fully public resource, becoming BSNC’s flagship campaign.

Cierra’s vision is people-centered: “Gone are the times for incrementalism. The scope of work must be revolutionary for the trying times that we’re in.” Her journey started in her own backyard, but the connective tissue stretches back generations. As she says, “This is spirit-led work for me.”

Victory is Ours Award

This award is given to a community organization, union, or campaign that has advanced movements for racial and economic justice. 

Juntos

Juntos is a lifeline for Philadelphia’s Latine immigrant communities, especially now in the face of increased systemic violence by the federal government. Juntos organizes actions for policy change for the protection of Philadelphia’s immigrant communities, including the long fight for the city to end its relationship with ICE. “Our community has been living under deep attacks and deep devastation for a very long time. These systems just keep getting more efficient in their brutality, and we’re committed to fighting them until they no longer exist,” says Juntos executive director Erika Guadalupe Núñez.

That fight just led to a landmark victory: Alongside a powerful coalition of allies, Juntos mobilized hundreds of people across the Philadelphia region and won some of the strongest local anti-ICE laws in the country. ICE agents are now banned from using unmarked vehicles or concealing their identity with face coverings and must show a badge. Local government and police are prohibited from collaborating with ICE. And for the first time, immigration and citizenship status is a protected class under the City’s Fair Practices Ordinance.

In addition to this major policy win, Juntos has spent recent months mobilizing community members in neighborhoods in Philadelphia through Know Your Rights trainings, accompaniment, and building power through political education and community solidarity. At this critical inflection point, Juntos’ demonstration of radical care is creating a crucial support system so immigrants not only survive, but organize, lead, and thrive.

As Erika says, “I believe that at one point in my life there will not be immigrant detention because at one point in my life there wasn’t. … Kings eventually fell. That will happen again.”

Lift Every Voice Philly

“It’s important that children are treated like people, because they are people. They’re growing, they’re learning the world,” says Siani Bolling, a founding member of Lift Every Voice Philly (LEV), a Black-led, multiracial grassroots community group that organizes public school parents and caregivers in Philadelphia. From humble beginnings at Bryant Elementary, LEV Philly now boasts chapters at more than a dozen schools in the School District of Philadelphia. LEV mobilizes its base of parent leaders to build better lives for their children.

LEV’s recent Campaign for Joy in Schools made headlines by successfully pushing the school district to adopt a “joy agenda,” reimagining the role of joy, creativity, and wellbeing in public education. As a result, in February 2026 the district guaranteed bathroom breaks, access to clean drinking water, and recess for all students, and eliminated half days, silent lunches, and collective punishment in pursuit of joy and wellness. Previous campaigns have ensured that schools hire full-time nurses.

Siani states: “We give parents a voice. Parents are experts for their children. Nobody knows their children better than a parent does, and it should be essential that the school district listen.”

In light of recent news of the district’s plan to close schools due to budget deficits, LEV’s organizing is even more urgent. LEV’s latest campaign is pushing its network of parents to demand $75 million from the City to keep 550 essential school workers employed in the face of these looming cuts.

“We are building long-term parent power,” Siani says. “Once we get a win, we will keep going. We will keep fighting.”

Robin Hood Was Right Award

This award is given to an individual or group making an outstanding contribution to social change philanthropy in the Philadelphia region. 

Artists for Immigrant Rights

Over the past year, as surveillance, intimidation, and attacks on immigrant communities intensified, many groups and local organizers stepped up to protect their neighbors. Inspired by this urgent resistance movement, a group of artists, photographers, and activists came together to form Artists for Immigrant Rights (AIR). “We see ourselves standing in solidarity with immigrants, expressing that by actually raising money to support them and their work,” says Bob Brand, one of AIR’s key organizers.

Across art sales and town halls, AIR has activated hundreds of people using art and generosity toward funding grassroots groups that are mobilizing immigrant communities for action.

Through AIR’s community fundraising partnership, Bread & Roses has made $100,000 in rapid response grants so far to local groups who are fighting attacks on immigrants and building community power, with more grants to come.

AIR’s simple, approachable invitation to do something is resonating with people across the city. Katie Tackman, who helped found AIR, told the Inquirer in a recent story about AIR’s photo sales, “We are a sanctuary city. We need to support our immigrant neighbors … I feel like art and photography is such a good way to get people interested in the topic.”

In addition to the urgent political needs that ground AIR’s fundraising, it’s a personal mission as well. Rodney Atienza, a photographer dedicated to documenting social justice movements who has participated in AIR sales throughout its debut year, says: “It means a lot to me because my parents are immigrants.”

The grants to immigrant-led groups made possible through AIR’s vision are making an impact in a time when despair is easy to feel. “We are in a world of so many people being scared now; fear only buys you more repression. They know you’re afraid, they can do anything they want,” says Bob. “[If] they know you’re going to stand up for your neighbors and yourself, it’s a fight—but it’s a fight we can win.”

About Tribute to Change

Tribute to Change brings together people who care about social justice in the Philadelphia region to connect with each other, to celebrate recent victories, and to raise money for the next chapter of the story of grassroots change.

Sponsors

As of 6/11/2026

Event Accessibility

In preparation for this year’s Tribute to Change, we wanted to share some details about the event and venue accessibility.

• Masks are not required, but they will be available at the registration table.
• Temperature-controlled indoor space.
• Covered outdoor courtyard area.
• Fully ADA compliant.
• Close to multiple public transportation stops for easier access.
• Valet parking is available free of charge. 
• The program video will be closed-captioned.
• A limited number of large text program booklets will be available.
• There will be an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter on-site.
• A Spanish-speaking interpreter will be available on-site upon request. If you would like this accommodation, please let us know by emailing tribute@breadrosesfund.org by May 28.

Explore past events here.