Liberty Medal meets rebel rocker: Bono

The National Constitution Center announced yesterday that it will award the 2007 Liberty Medal to the singer and social activist Bono for his efforts to combat poverty in Africa, and to the advocacy group DATA he helped create.

The choice of a shades-wearing rock star is a marked departure for the 18-year-old award: Most winners have been senior statesmen.

Bono "holds no official office whatsoever," National Constitution Center president Joseph M. Torsella said at a news conference yesterday, but his activism "proves that the office of 'citizen' is the most important in the world."

Bono, who lives in Ireland, and representatives of the Washington-based DATA (for Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) will accept the medal and its $100,000 prize Sept. 27 in a public ceremony at the center. They did not attend yesterday's announcement.

Born Paul David Hewson in Dublin in 1960, Bono formed the band that would become U2 in 1976 and is its lead singer and songwriter. U2 has sold more than 140 million albums and won 22 Grammy Awards.

In 2002, Bono helped found DATA to raise awareness of the poverty and illness ravaging much of Africa and to influence government policy, including debt reduction, toward that continent.

"They challenge the world's richest nations to do better by Africa, and challenge African nations to do better by their own people," said Torsella, who called Bono "the ultimate civic entrepreneur - but on a global scale that the Founders could have only imagined."

Bono, who said he would donate his share of the prize money to DATA, was the first choice of the Constitution Center's board of trustees, Torsella said.

Mayor Street, who has presented the award in years past, said yesterday that he thought giving the award to Bono would "attract the notice of young people who might not have paid much attention in the past" to the Liberty Medal.

Nearly all 23 previous recipients were government officials. Last year's medal went to former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

In a message to the Constitution Center, which confers the Liberty Medal and selects recipients, Bono called the Sept. 27 ceremony "a great excuse to go back to Philadelphia," where in 2004 he launched the ONE campaign to combat poverty.

"I don't suppose there are enough Liberty Medals to go around," he added, but said he thought ONE's 2.4 million members - many of them young and pledged to public service - "should all be wearing one, too."

Bono, 47, also helped organize the internationally televised Live 8 benefit concert in 2005 on 10 stages around the globe, including outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Although the Constitution Center took over administration of the medal just last year, both were conceived during the 1987 bicentennial celebration of the U.S. Constitution.

The Liberty Medal was created in 1988 by We the People 2000 and first presented in 1989 to Lech Walesa, founder of the labor movement Solidarity. It honors those who have "demonstrated leadership and vision in the pursuit of liberty of conscience or freedom from oppression, ignorance or deprivation."

Subsequent winners have included former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Two organizations - Doctors Without Borders and CNN International - have also won the medal. James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick, discoverers of the structure of DNA, received the award in 2000. Six recipients have subsequently won the Nobel Peace Prize.

2006: Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush

2005: Ukrainian President Viktor A. Yushchenko

2004: Afghan President Hamid Karzai

2003: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

2002: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

2001: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

2000: Scientists James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick

1999: South Korean President Kim Dae Jung

1998: Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, chairman of the 1998 Northern Ireland peace talks

1997: CNN International

1996: Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan's King Hussein.

1995: Sadako Ogata, U.N. high commissioner for refugees

1994: Czech President Vaclav Havel

1993: South African leaders F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela

1992: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall

1991: Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez and the French medical and human-rights organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

1990: Former President Jimmy Carter

1989: Polish labor leader Lech Walesa

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To see Bono's speech when he accepted the Chairman's Award at the NAACP Image Awards in March, go to http://go.philly.com/bono

See more on the Liberty Medal and past winners via http://go.philly.com/libertymedal EndText