Meet Ashley Casale. Ashley is a young woman who organized a peace march that started in May 2007 in San Francisco and ended four months later in Washington DC raising awareness and inspiring support coast to coast. Or Chad Knutsen, a student who when the military recruiters came to his high school last year, stood beside them in the hall handing out information on what awaited them in Iraq to counter-balance the propaganda the recruiters were laying on his peers. Or Whitney Prose, the founder and driver of Plan-It Earth: a student led movement to clean up the environment. She’s introduced recycling and all manner of sustainabilty practices to her Otterbein College campus and the broader City of Westerville, Ohio.

Ashley, Chad and Whitney are just three of the young people recently nominated for The Brave Nation Hero Award. This Brave Nation is a new video collaboration between The Nation and Brave New Films. I blogged about the project recently so check that out for the background and watch the trailer. The project’s public debut is this Sunday, June 1, with the release of a conversation between Van Jones and Carl Pope, after which a new video will be released each Sunday for five straight weeks leading up to a live event in Los Angeles on July 13.

Here I just wanted to encourage people to nominate a deserving activist making a difference under the radar. The Brave Nation Award was designed to celebrate the next generation of progressive activists, those poised to take us into the future. Help us find them. Submit your stories via videos, photo, essay, photo-essay, painting…whatever conveys the life changing work being done in your community. Include a link to your video, photo, etc. in the submission form here. The nominee needs to be thirty years old or younger. The deadline is June 22.