Photo: Ben Goldstein

Aliya Latif
28, CIVIL-RIGHTS COORDINATOR, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS

“Am I speaking too fast? I have a tendency to do that,” says Aliya Latif from CAIR’s uptown office. It’s no wonder the civil-rights lawyer is in a rush: She fields complaints and asserts the rights of Muslim New Yorkers who have experienced discrimination. CAIR’s 33 national chapters processed exactly 2,467 incidents last year—“a 25.1 percent increase over the year before.”

The New Jersey native works on cases “that run the gamut from extremely egregious situations to more basic ones.” In one recent incident, a Muslim woman was denied her right to wear a head-covering in her DMV license photo (CAIR gave her an affidavit declaring that the law prohibits such treatment, and her application was processed), and in another, a Pakistani man was beaten by brass-knuckle-wearing, epithet-spewing youths in Brooklyn (his assailants were charged). “I don’t have a chance to think about burning out,” says Latif. “You just keep going, ’cause that’s what you have to do.”

Photo: Ben Goldstein

Jeff Johnson
34, “SOCIAL ARCHITECT,” OWNER OF MEDIA COMPANY TRUTH IS POWER

It takes 30 seconds of conversation with Jeff Johnson to get why he’s built a career around talking. A commanding voice and the capacity to speak in off-the-cuff sound bites—when asked, “Is charisma learned or genetic?,” his split-second response, “Charisma is natural, but it’s nothing without wisdom, which is learned”—make him well suited to inspire people to effect social change. It also helps that he’s pissed off—about the prison system, the black church and the state of education in the U.S., just to start with. “I don’t want to go to another candlelight vigil or march about violence,” he growls. “Singing ‘Kumbaya’ doesn’t solve things when people don’t have jobs and are undereducated. That’s what causes violence. I want us to be more scientific about how we address these issues.” Johnson speaks at schools and churches and is in the process of founding My Nation: The Center for Research and Action. He also owns for-profit company Truth Is Power, which helps artists build nonprofit organizations. “Institution-building is the most important issue,” he says. “Organizations in the U.S. have passion and integrity but are underfunded. They need fund-raising, think tanks or media institutions to support them. For me, that’s paramount.”

Photo: Ben Goldstein

Thomas Sze Leong Yu
28, DIRECTOR OF HOUSING DEVELOPMENT, ASIAN AMERICANS FOR EQUALITY

Thomas Yu is a housing Robin Hood. The Harvard grad regularly swoops into the real-estate market and buys valuable properties. Then he makes them available to the poor. “Recently, we took studios on the Lower East Side that would go for $2,000 a month and rented them for $250,” Yu says. “We try to make the place more livable by expanding the apartment’s layout. Then we refurbish it, take out the lead paint and asbestos…and keep the rents low.” Yu heads up the citywide housing operation of AAFE, in addition to directing a lower-Manhattan–focused subsidiary called Downtown Manhattan Community Development. He’s also on local Community Board 3 and sits on the Parks Department Committee, aiming to redevelop public spaces, too, which he believes should serve as New Yorkers’ “living rooms.” Yu’s drive is partly personal: “My family was homeless in Hong Kong, and I lived in public housing for almost my entire childhood,” he says. “Affordable and safe housing is one of the biggest factors in someone’s stability.”