Peace activist Leslie Cagan was honored by the Peace Action Fund of New York State on Sept. 30 for her decades of commitment to promoting peace and bringing attention to climate change, LGBTQ equality, reproductive freedom, racism, and other issues.
Cagan, who received a Gay City News impact award in 2022, received the 2024 William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Peacemaker Award. The award comes seven years after Cagan received a Peacemakers to Peace Award from Brooklyn for Peace, which is an affiliated ally of Peace Action New York State. In the last year, Cagan has been engaged in the movement for a cease-fire in Gaza in the wake of tens of thousands of deaths in the Israel-Hamas war.
Cagan served from 2002 to 2009 as the national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, which was made up of 1,400 member groups opposed to the Iraq War, and maximized her strong organizing and coalition-building skills to help pave the way for events such as the October 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
She has also made a political impact through her work on the lesbian/gay commitees behind the presidential campaign of Rev. Jesse Jackson as well as on the successful 1989 mayoral campaign of David Dinkins.
In 2021, Cagan reflected on her identity as a lesbian woman in a Gay City News article she wrote about her experience attending the 29th annual Dyke March. She recalled several memories — including in 1967-68 when she was a New York University student protesting the war in Vietnam — but also explained how the Dyke March held even more personal significance for her because it was where she went on a second date with her late partner, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. They later recognized the Dyke March as their anniversary.
“Being at this year’s Dyke March was also about something else for me,” Cagan wrote at the time. “Yes, I missed Melanie through it all, but the strongest emotion of the evening was the thrill of seeing all of those young people with all of their passion and energy carrying forward the power and joy the Dyke March has always embodied for so many.”.
