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Charley Horwitz Memorial Loan Fund
Honor the memory of an amazing person by providing funds to be loaned out time and again to Haiti’s ti machann (women street vendors)
Learn about this remarkable person in this essay about Charley written by Leigh Carter, Fonkoze USA Executive Director…
The first time I met Charley was in the fall of 1996. I was in Port-au-Prince attending an award ceremony, and in walked Charley Horwitz as the leader of what he would often lovingly refer to as “a highly disciplined delegation,” of 19 people from the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture (BSEC).
It was Charley’s first trip to Haiti. He and BSEC colleagues were bravely visiting to assess the situation in Haiti for themselves, to interview and possibly partner with some of Haiti’s then burgeoning and promising grassroots organizations.
Charley always said that Fonkoze, Father Joseph, and Anne Hastings made an indelible impression on the members of the BSEC delegation that fall. Upon their return to Brooklyn, they promptly went to work in support of Fonkoze. Charley became a founding and enthusiastic Board member of Fonkoze USA, and secured funding and partnerships that remain important to our organization to this day. BSEC became one of the first organizations to invest in Fonkoze’s revolving loan fund.
I was blessed to be a friend of Charley in the last decade of his life. Charley was a humble person, and it wasn’t until I got to know him better that I realized how rich and impressive his life’s work had been. From the civil rights movement in Mississippi, to his work as an attorney for migrant farm and New York workers, to Brooklyn Parents for Peace, Charley was about much more than Fonkoze.
In the profile Charley wrote himself for the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement website, he says that “I regard my work in Mississippi as the most significant and enriching experience of my life.” Yet, he also expresses regret in that “while we helped people build a political movement, we failed to build an economic counterpart” to that movement. Charley then admits that his work with Fonkoze enabled him to understand the importance of just that. As Father Joseph always says, “ political democracy is one thing, but it is meaningless without economic democracy.”
I’d like to end with some quotes from Fonkoze’s message to Charley presented at his retirement celebration, just a year before we lost him altogether to brain cancer…
…From Chicago where he grew up and nurtured his broad, penetrating intellect, to Mississippi, where he engaged his passion for civil rights in the 60’s (and met his beautiful and equally committed wife, Carol), to his long-time home in Brooklyn, Charley continues to bring that mixture of humane intellect and passionate activism to his important work in Haiti…and around the world.
Thank you Charley. May the Fonkoze Family always represent your spirit.
Charley’s family and friends, in partnership with Fonkoze, want to continue to build the loan fund in Charley’s name – a fund that Fonkoze will use to make solidarity loans to Haiti’s women street vendors. To make a tax-deductible donation to the Charley Horwitz Memorial fund, simply mail your tax-deductible donation to Fonkoze USA, 50 F Street NW, Washington, DC, 20001 or donate now online.