Big Night Out!

Big Night Out!, Manhattan Country School’s annual spring benefit, will be held on Saturday, April 27, 2019. The event features the Living the Dream Mentor Award ceremony, dinner, dancing and an online auction. Revenue from BNO! helps MCS raise the $2 million needed to sustain its sliding-scale tuition program each year.

2019 Living the Dream Mentor Award Honorees

Each year, Manhattan Country School honors excellence and leadership in progressive education, arts and sciences, social and environmental justice, and community activism with its Living the Dream Mentor Award. This year, we honor the following individuals who exemplify MCS' vision and mission by defending liberty and advocating for the legally vulnerable:

Ana Maria Archila, 
Co-Executive Director, The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD)

Ana Maria Archila is a leading voice for racial and economic justice and immigrant rights. She helped build the CPD into one of the largest community organizing networks in the country. Notably, CPD and its affiliates have played a major role in the national movement to increase the minimum wage and create family-sustaining jobs resulting in raises for millions of workers.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)'s Immigrants' Rights Project (IRP) Team

In March 2018, the ACLU's IRP sued the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The suit exposed the Trump administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy revealing that some 2,600 children had been forcibly separated from their families seeking asylum at the U.S. border. A federal court in San Diego subsequently issued an injunction holding the practice of family separation unconstitutional and mandating reunification.

Lee Gelernt '75, 
Deputy Director, ACLU's IRP; Director, IRP's Access to the Courts Program

Lee Gelernt is one of the most influential immigrant rights' lawyers in the U.S. Since joining the ACLU in 1992, Gelernt has argued dozens of civil rights cases at all levels of the federal court system, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anand Balakrishnan, 
Staff Attorney, ACLU's IRP

Anand Balakrishnan is a graduate of Yale Law School. As a mentor, he has provided law students with key lessons about civil liberties and hands-on litigation experience. 

Dan Galindo, 
Staff Attorney, ACLU's IRP

Dan Galindo is a graduate of Stanford Law School. Before joining the ACLU, he worked as a public defender at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. 

Judy Rabinovitz, 
Deputy Director and Director of Detention and Federal Enforcement Programs, ACLU's IRP

Judy Rabinovitz joined the ACLU in 1988 and has devoted her career to litigating class action and impact cases on a variety of issues affecting the rights of immigrants.

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