2025 Annual Celebration

Disability Rights Maine will be hosting our annual celebration again this October! This year, we will come together in solidarity for disability rights and consider how to navigate the next phase in the disability justice movement.

When:

October 9, 2025

5:30: Reception and Silent Auction

6:30: Keynote and Awards

Where:

Hilton Garden Inn, 5 Park Street, Freeport

Accessibility Information:

DRM strives to make all events inclusive and accessible for all attendees. The event space is ADA accessible, and ASL and CART will be provided. DRM asks that attendees refrain from wearing scented products. DRM provides masks at all agency-sponsored events and will make masks available to all attendees. We also ask that individuals please refrain from attending if they are feeling unwell.

Requests for accommodations can be made when purchasing a ticket or by contacting Julia Endicott at jendicott@drme.org or 207-626-2774, ext. 212.

Scholarship tickets are available! If cost is a barrier to attendance, please contact Julia Endicott.

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2025 Honorees

David Webbert, a white man with glasses and gray hair. He wears a gray suit and a red tie.

Keynote

David Webbert, Esq.

David Webbert is a public interest lawyer, standing up for human rights in Maine and nationwide. He is the managing partner of Johnson & Webbert, LLP, the largest workers’ and civil rights law firm in Northern New England. David has been recognized in the Congressional Record for his contributions to the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and he has played a leading role in expanding the scope of disability rights and remedies in the Maine Human Rights Act both through legislative changes and court victories. He has been listed five times as one of only five Maine lawyers on Super Lawyers annual list of the Top 100 lawyers in New England. The Chambers USA guide to leading lawyers listed David as the top attorney for employees in Maine, describing him as “in a league of his own” for “pure courtroom horsepower.”

David has won many precedent-setting civil rights cases at trial and on appeal, including winning basic health care rights for persons with HIV, two of the largest jury verdicts in Maine for disability discrimination in employment, a ruling for wheelchair access to the balcony in a hotel room, a jury verdict of $3 million in a wrongful termination discrimination case, class action and multi-plaintiff settlements of $12 and $5 million, individual case settlements of over $1-2 million, an academic freedom jury verdict of $805,000, a free speech verdict for the President of the Portland NAACP, a landmark ruling upholding a claim of family responsibilities discrimination against a mother of triplets, and fair housing cases reported on nationwide.

David graduated magna cum laude from both Yale College and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. David clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and practiced for 5 years with one of the best law firms in D.C. where three current U.S. Supreme Court Justices have also worked. He has won awards from the ACLU of Maine and DRM, where he served as the President of its Board of Directors. He is the President of the Maine Employment Lawyers Association.

Attorney Change Agent Award

Christopher Northrop, Esq.

Christopher Northrop graduated from law school in 1989 and began his career representing indigent and low-income clients in North Carolina. Four years later, he moved to Maine where he narrowed his practice to focus on the defense of and advocacy for system-involved youth. In 2006 Chris left private practice to develop and launch Maine Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic (now the Youth Justice Clinic), a program he directed for 16 years. He was appointed as the Director of Clinical Programs at Maine Law in 2022. During his time as director, he helped build Maine Law’s Rural Practice Clinic. Last fall Chris stepped down from his duties in Portland, retired (sort of), was conferred Emeritus status, and moved to Fort Kent to serve as the supervising professor for student attorneys in the Rural Practice Clinic. Throughout his professional life, Chris has served on a number of non-profit boards, task forces, committees, advisory groups, and other organizations dedicated to increasing access to justice for youth and others facing systemic barriers.

Vickie, a white woman with shoulder length gray hair, wears a rimmed hat and a green shirt.

Helen M. Bailey Advocacy Award

Vickie McCarty

Vickie is a recenty retired policy analyst of the Consumer Council System Council of Maine She has also been a member and past chair of DRM’s PAIMI Council. She has worked with other peers and allies in helping to create policies and positive systemic changes relating to Maine’s Mental Health system which includes leveraging the valuable skills, talents, and contributions of Maine’s recovery community. During her long career as a social justice advocate, Vickie was an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer working in a CAP agency sharing with others how to best utilize commodity foodstuffs and later with folks who were guests at the Greater Bangor Area Shelter. She passionately believes in open communication and education as stepping-stones to creating effective social justice opportunities for all.

Equal Access for All Award

Maine Public

Maine Public is Maine’s premier, independent media resource, dedicated to creating exceptional opportunities for the communities it serves to engage with critical issues, compelling stories, and quality entertainment. Maine Public is renowned for creating award-winning programs, as well as airing content from PBS, NPR, and other independent producers. Formed in 1992, Maine Public is an independently owned and operated nonprofit organization with office and studio locations in Bangor, Augusta, Lewiston, and Portland, Maine. For more information, visit mainepublic.org.

Champion of Justice Award

Senator Anne Carney

Sen. Anne Carney lives in Cape Elizabeth, where she and her husband, David Wennberg, raised their three children. Sen. Carney graduated from the University of Maine School of Law, cum laude, in 1990. Sen. Carney received a B.A. from Haverford College and has a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard University.

In 2018, Sen. Carney was elected to the Maine House of Representatives, where she served on the Labor and Housing Committee. She was elected to the Maine Senate in 2020, where she represents South Portland, Cape Elizabeth and part of Scarborough. Sen. Carney serves as Senate chair of the Judiciary Committee and as a member of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee. She has sponsored bills to increase access to justice throughout Maine, to protect access to services for survivors of domestic violence and other crimes, to maintain a healthy environment and to preserve access to advocacy services for individuals with serious mental illness.

Sen. Carney practiced employment, civil rights and municipal law at Norman, Hanson & DeTroy, LLC, for 17 years. She then served as In-House Volunteer Attorney with Pine Tree Legal Assistance for 8 years, providing free legal representation to low-income Mainers and others who lack access to our legal system, including women sexually assaulted at work, migrant farmworkers subjected to terrible conditions and people who lost work because of their religion or because they were pregnant.