Home Community Community News Merle Levine to be honored for her lifelong dedication to social justice

Merle Levine to be honored for her lifelong dedication to social justice

Activist, advocate, and educator Merle Levine of Greenport is the recipient of the 2016 Helen Wright Prince Community Award. Courtesy photo

Merle Levine is the very embodiment of what it means to be an activist for social justice.

When it came to standing up for the rights of people who couldn’t stand up for themselves, Levine was the one to roll up her sleeves and get to work.

For her lifetime of social justice activism and advocacy, Levine, now 92, is being honored with the Helen Wright Prince Community Award from the Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force tomorrow evening during a ceremony at the Peconic Community Center. The event begins at 6 p.m.

Levine worked tirelessly on behalf of women, minorities and the poor, locally and nationally.

“She has been so committed to our community, to advocating for others
and being a voice for social justice,” said Southold Anti-Bias Task Force co-chairperson Sonia Spar. She cited in particular Levine’s successful efforts to get the town to change the zoning in the predominantly African-American neighborhood around Church Lane in Cutchogue to prevent commercial development there.

Spar said Levine embodies the “very important tenets of the Jewish faith,” expressed by first-century BCE elder Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

“She has lived out the command to heal the world, to leave it a better place than you found it,” Spar said.

Levine, who lives at Peconic Landing in Greenport said in an interview today she is honored to be selected for the Helen Wright Prince Community Award. The award was created in 2014 to posthumously honor Prince, known for the kind of passion Levine has for achieving social and economic justice for minorities. Prince, longtime teacher at the East Cutchogue migrant camp, died in 2013 at age 101.

“It was important to step up,” she said today. “Somebody has to speak up for women and minorities.”

Reflecting on her battle over the zoning on Church Lane, she said simply, “There was a need and we talked and I got involved.”

Involvement has always been not just a part of Levine’s life, but who she is at her core.

When asked what it was like growing up as Levine’s child, her daughter, Deborah Laurel, laughs heartily.

“Well, my very first memory is folding flyers for Adlai Stevenson,” Laurel said, chuckling.

“My mom was always very politically active,” Laurel recalled.

In addition to raising a family of five children — five children born in six years — taking them to museums, music lessons, dance classes and sports, Levine went back to school and became a social studies teacher, her daughter said. She taught high school social studies and later became principal of Northport High School. “She inaugurated all kinds of programs to make sure no one was left behind,” Laurel said.

Levine was always involved in the community, from the PTA, to starting a daycare center and being active in Democratic politics. She served as president of Community Action Southold Town and was secretary of the town’s Anti-Bias Task Force.

“She has alway been full of energy and passion,” Laurel said. “She never did anything for recognition or acclaim. She saw a need and jumped in to take care of it — whatever that entailed.”

Levine was always outspoken, and was an ardent writer of letters to the editor on diverse topics.

Levine was ahead of her time, Spar said today. Her fearlessness in standing for justice and speaking out against bigotry is especially important today, she said.

“We live in a very challenging time, a time when bigotry, bias and prejudice are coming to the surface in our society,” Spar said.

“To have someone like Merle as a role model, a community member instrumental in making this a bias-free community is so, so important. We need these role models, these heroes.”

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Denise Civiletti
Denise is a veteran local reporter and editor, an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a “writer of the year” award from the N.Y. Press Association in 2015. She is a founder, owner and co-publisher of this website.