 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| program |
2007 speaker bios
(h-q)
| speakers (a-g) |
Robin Hahnel is professor of economics at American University, where he has taught radical political economy for over thirty years. Together with Michael Albert he developed the alternative to capitalism known as "participatory economics." His most recent books are Panic Rules! Everything You Need to Know About the Global Economy (South End Press, 1999), The ABCs of Political Economy (Pluto Press, 2002), and Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation (Routledge, 2005). He is a life long activist who currently works with the Southern Maryland Greens.
Andrea Hairston is Professor of Theatre and Afro American Studies at Smith College, where she teaches playwriting, and African, African American, and Caribbean theatre literature. A playwright, director, actor, and musician, she is the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre and has produced original theatre with music, dance, and masks for over twenty-five years. Her plays have been produced at Yale Rep, Rites and Reason, the Kennedy Center, StageWest, and on public radio and public television. Her speculative novel, Mindscape (Aqueduct Press 2006) is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick award 2007.
Jack Hammond is the author
of Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador
(Rutgers University Press) and Building Popular Power: Workers' and
Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution (Monthly Review).
He teaches sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a leading theorist in the field of urban studies whose influential books include A Brief History of Neoliberalism; The New Imperialism; Paris, Capital of Modernity; Social Justice and the City; Limits to Capital; The Urbanization of Capital; The Condition of Postmodernity; Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference; and Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. Harvey has also taught at Johns Hopkins and Oxford, and was a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics.
Dalia Hashad is Amnesty International’s Director of the USA Program. She is a co-host on the radio program, Law and Disorder. Previously, Dalia was the Arab, Muslim, South Asian Advocate for the ACLU, focusing on civil liberties and human rights abuses post-9/11. She was a human rights legal advisor in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As chairperson for CALPIRG, Dalia tackled issues including the weakening of environmental laws, hunger and homelessness, campaign finance reform, and cuts to federal financial aid. Dalia received a degree in environmental policy from the UC—Berkeley and in law from NYU.
Salah Hassan is Chair of the Department of History of Art and professor of African and African Diaspora art history and visual culture at Africana Studies at Cornell University. He is also a curator and art critic. He is founder and editor of NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, for which he serves as consulting editor for African Arts and Atlantica. He authored and edited several books including Unpacking Europe, Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art, and Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists.
Tate Hausman is the Co-Director of DotOrganize. He is an online strategy consultant for progressive campaigns and organizations, helping clients like Dean for America, SEIU, Sierra Club and IAVA figure out how technology can further their goals. He has served as online director for two congressional races (John Hall, Donna Edwards) and associate online director for one gubernatorial race (Arianna Huffington), and he ran an online/offline urban voter project in 2004 (Slam Bush).
Howie Hawkins is a member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. He recently ran for U.S. Senate as a candidate for the Green Party.
Chaia Heller taught ecological philosophy and feminist theory at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. She has been involved in the ecology, feminist, anarchist, and global justice movements as an activist, educator, and writer. Heller received her Ph.D. in anthropology from UMass, Amherst. Her dissertation explores the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms in France based on research funded by the National Science Foundation. Currently, she is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature (Black Rose Books).
Judy Hellman teaches political and social science at York University in Toronto.
Doug Henwood edits the Left Business Observer (www.leftbusinessobserver.com), a newsletter he founded in 1986, and hosts a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York. He's the author of Wall Street (Verso, 1997) and After the New Economy (New Press, 2003). He's currently in the early stages of a book on the American ruling class, whoever that may be.
Christoph Hermann is a senior researcher at the Working Life Research Institute in Vienna and lecturer at the University of Vienna. He is co-cordinator of a joint European research project on Privatisation of Public Services and the Impact on Employment, Productivity and Quality (www.pique.at) and a member of the research network Privatisation and the European Social Model (www.presom.eu).
Aaron Hess is a graduate student in American Studies at Columbia University who has written for Counterpunch and the International Socialist Review. He has worked as a researcher and trade union activist in 1199 SEIU.
Sander Hicks is founder of Soft Skull Press, and Vox Pop, a media company, bookstore, and coffeehouse in Brooklyn. The 2002 film Horns and Halos documents Hicks' attempts to get the truth out about G. W. Bush. His book, The Big Wedding (Vox Pop, 2005), reveals several key insights into the 9/11 attacks. In Flatbush, Brooklyn, he runs Vox Pop and edits The New York Megaphone, Vox Pop's muck-raking newspaper.
Michael Hirsch is a New York City-based journalist and union staff writer. A member of the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America and of its steering committee, he is also an editorial board member of the socialist periodical New Politics and the DSA quarterly Democratic Left. Hirsch writes on labor, urban politics and business issues.
Nancy Holmstrom is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Rutgers University, Newark. She has published numerous articles on core political philosophical concepts including freedom, exploitation, rationality and human/women's nature. She edited The Socialist Feminist Project: A Reader in Theory and Politics and co-edited Not For Sale: In Defense of Public Goods. She has been a political activist all her life.
David Hookes has degrees from Cambridge University, Kings College London, University of Westminster, and is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Liverpool University Computer Science Department. His research interests include physics, political economy, computer networks, and the scientific foundations of Marxism.
Robert P. Horstemeier became interested in flying saucers during his childhood in the 1950s. He has been active for many years in organizations interested in UFOs but has maintained a critical distance from their claims, which he regards as originating in extraterrestrial expectations engendered in science fiction and in the fantastic portion of the popular science literature.
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh is Professor
of Economics at Drake University, Iowa. His most recent publication is The
Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006). He
has previously published one book, Soviet Non-Capitalist Development:
The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (1989). His published papers concern topics
that include long waves of economic expansion and decline, economic crises
and restructuring policies, currency-trade relations, NAFTA and labor, Third
World debt, determinants of presidential economic policies, the political
economy of war and military spending, and the roots of conflict between
the Muslim world and the West.
Matt Hrutkey is an Iraq war veteran who served at Ft Drum,
and is an IVAW organizer.
Huang Xiaowu, assistant professor and Ph.D. candidate at Tsinghua University, specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literature. She is an editor of Foreign Theoretical Trends, sponsored by the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. Her current research concerns the history of modern Chinese thought. Her articles have appeared in a Series of Books in Chinese Modern Literary Studies (2006), and Studies on Literature and Arts (2007).
Peter Hudis has published widely
on issues in Marxian and Hegelian theory and is co-editor of The Power
of Negativity and The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. He is national
co-organizer of News and Letters Committees and teaches philosophy at Oakton
Community College.
Jörg Huffschmid is a professor of political economy and economic policy at the University of Bremen, specializing in financial markets and European integration. He is also a coordinator of the scientific network European Economists for an Alternative Economic Policy in Europe (www.memo-europe.uni-bremen.de). A member of the Advisory Board of the National Jobs for All Coalition (New York) and of ATTAC Germany, Professor Huffschmid has written extensively on major current social and economic issues.
Jonathan Hutto is on active duty with the Navy, in Norfolk, VA and an organizer of the Appeal for Redress, which has been signed by 1,000+ active duty GIs.
Forrest Hylton is a researcher at New York University and author of Evil Hour in Colombia and co-author with Sinclair Thomson of the forthcoming Revolutionary Horizons: Popular Struggle in Bolivia.
Hussein Ibish is Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). He has made over 3,500 radio and television appearances, has written for the LA Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, and was Washington correspondent for the Daily Star (Lebanon). Ibish is editor and principle author of two major studies of hate crimes and discrimination against Arab Americans. He is the author, with Ali Abunimah, of The Palestinian Right of Return and “The Media and the New Intifada” in The New Intifada. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UMass, Amherst.
Ruth Indeck is the coordinator of Economy Connection, the speaker/resource bureau of the Union for Radical Political Economics.
Anne Jaclard, a feminist and Marxist-Humanist, writes on revolutionary movements and theory for the newspaper News & Letters. She serves on the organizing committee of The New SPACE (New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education) in NYC, where she is also active in solidarity work and dialogue with grassroots civil society movements in Acheh, Indonesia, and feminist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Latin America.
Mazibuko Jara
is a member of the Cape Town District Executive Committee of the South African
Communist Party (SACP). He is an activist and researcher in human rights,
HIV/AIDS, lesbian and gay equality, community development, promotion of
co-operatives, alternative economic transformation, and land and agrarian
reform. He was recently expelled from the Party's Young Communist League
after serving as its deputy national secretary. Mazibuko currently works
as the Research Director of the Ikhwezi Institute, a newly established a
progressive, black-led think tank and as Co-Managing Editor for Amandla
Publishers.
Saru Jayaraman graduated from Yale Law and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 1992 she founded Women and Youth Supporting Each Other (W.Y.S.E.), a national organization dedicated to building critical thinking and leadership among young women of color. As Attorney/Organizer at the Workplace Project, a Latina/o immigrant worker-organizing center, she created The Alliance for Justice. Together with workers from Windows on the World, she founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an immigrant workers' center focused on organizing restaurant workers. A professor at Brooklyn College and NYU, she co-edited The New Urban Immigrant Workforce.
Badili Jones, long-time activist in LGBT, Black Liberation and Green movements and member, National Executive Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization/ Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.
Brian Jones studied Acting and Directing in Brown University’s Department of Theater, Speech, and Dance. Brian Jones has toured across the country as Marx in Howard Zinn’s one-man play Marx in Soho since 1999. He recently lent his voice to the audio recording of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival. A teacher in Harlem, he is a member of the United Federation of Teachers, Teachers for a Just Contract, and the International Socialist Organization.
Ria Julien is nonfiction editor at Seven Stories Press and a former member of the Mondragon Parecon and Arbeiter Ring Collectives in Winnipeg, Canada.
Stan Karp was a public high school teacher in Patterson, NJ. Currently Director of the Secondary School Reform Project for New Jersey's Education Law Center, he works on reforms that grew out of the Abbott case, a landmark state court decision regarding funding for poor, urban schools. Karp edits the journal Rethinking Schools and writes widely on No Child Left Behind, school reform, and educational policy. His articles have appeared in Z Magazine, Education Week, Radical Teacher, and New Politics. He co-edited several books including Funding from Justice: Money, Equity and the Future of Public Education.
Leili Kashani is a Ph.D. student in the joint program in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. She has been a student council member at The International Society for Iranian Studies, and is a senior editor at Arab Studies Journal.
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz's work alternates theory-making and practice. A pioneer in women's studies at UC-Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D., she has also worked as an anti-rape organizer, and as founding director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Her writings on violence, racism and anti-semitism are widely taught and anthologized. Her newest book The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism comes out this April. She has twice been named a Visiting Distinguished Professor. Currently she teaches in Comp Lit at Queens College.
Marc Kehoe is a painter, filmmaker, and performance artist. His short films have shown at The Times Square Show, The Mudd Club, Club 57 and other venues. He performed in "Kapusta Descending" and other hybrid evenings at the Kitchen Center for Video Dance and Music. He produced The Wild, Wild World of Jeff Turtletaub for Lower Manhattan Cable Television, is a member of the Coney Island Hysterical Society, and created an experimental film festival in Vermont. "A Courbet," Kehoe's homage to Gustave Courbet, showed at NY’s Seventh and 2nd Gallery.
Brian Kelly is a Pace University student and member of Students for a Democratic Society.
Michael Kimmel is one of the founders and National Spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). The founding editor of the scholarly journal Men and Masculinities, and author or editor of twenty books about gender issues, he teaches at SUNY Stony Brook and lectures around the world supporting gender equality.
Laura Kipnis is the author of The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability (Pantheon, 2006). Her previous book was Against Love: A Polemic (Pantheon, 2003). She teaches at Northwestern University.
Jennifer Klein is a Professor of History at Yale University and author of the award-winning For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton, 2003).
Andrew Kliman, author of Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, which has just been published in paperback by Lexington Books, is professor of economics at Pace University. He is also an organizer of and teacher at The New SPACE (New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education) <http://new-space.mahost.org> and co-editor of Critique of Political Economy (www.copejournal.org), a new online journal. Many of Kliman's writings are available on his website, (http://akliman.squarespace.com).
Moogy Klingman was a founding member of Todd Rundgren's Utopia. He is co-author of "(You Gotta Have) Friends," Bette Midler's theme song, also heard in Shrek. Moogy's songs have been recorded by Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Barry Manilow, and Carly Simon. He played and recorded with rock legends Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Luther Van Dross, Jeff Beck, Bo Diddly, Phoebe Snow, Cindy Lauper and Thelma Houston. He wrote the musical Joe Homeless while co-host of WBAI's Listener's Action on the Homeless. Recently he appeared in the feature film The Rodnees.
Joel Kovel is the Editor-in-Chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism. His two most recent books are The Enemy of Nature (Zed) and Overcoming Zionism (Pluto).
Michael R. Krätke is professor of political economy at the University of Amsterdam. He is a collaborator on the MEGA (Complete Works of Marx and Engels) and the Historical Critical Dictionary of Marxism, and regularly contributes to several Left journals and reviews in Europe. He’s the author of many articles and several books on Marxist political economy, the history and actual state of the world economy, public finance, international money and financial markets, welfare states, and social policy in Europe. He’s also a Counselor for several international organizations (ILO, FAO, WHO) and the EU.
H.J. Krysmanski is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Muenster. He is a member of the scientific council of Attac and of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He has a large body of publications in class analysis, cultural and media studies, and power structure research. He is also the author of numerous documentaries on German national television.
Deepa Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming 2007), which is about the power of the working class to impact the media and society in progressive ways. Her most recent articles on the Danish cartoon controversy and Islamophobia, “Danish Cartoons: Racism has No Place on the Left” and “Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics,” originally published by Monthly Review Zine, have been circulated around the world.
David Laibman is Professor of Economics at Brooklyn College and The Graduate School, City University of New York. He has been active with the Marxist quarterly, Science & Society, for 34 years, and editor of the journal since 1990. He is the author of Value, Technical Change and Crisis (M. E. Sharpe, 1992); Capitalist Macrodynamics (Macmillan,1997); and, most recently, Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human Potential (SUNY Press, 2007), as well as numerous articles in Marxist political economy and social theory.
Radhika Lal is an economist with a specialization in political economy and trade issues. Over the years, she has taught economics, worked with a number of civil society organizations on issues related to economic policy, technology and advocacy and given talks and participated in panels organized by the Asia Society, the Asian Writers Workshop, UN University-INTEC, as well as colleges in the NYC area on a range of economic, social, political and cultural issues.
Joanne Landy is an editor of New Politics, and co-Director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy. Landy calls for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, supports resistance to the U.S., and opposes the victory of those elements of the resistance organized to impose a repressive, extreme authoritarian regime on the Iraqi people. Domestically, Landy advocates independent politics, believing it is suicidal for progressive movements to continue to support the Democratic Party. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Progressive, The Nation, New Politics, and In These Times.
Lauren Langman is a professor of sociology at Loyola University of Chicago. He has long worked in Marxian critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. His most recent book is: Trauma Promise and Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation with Devorah Kalekin. His forthcoming book is The Carnivalization of America.
Marnia Lazreg is a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY. She is a member the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. She has published extensively on feminist theory, gender in the Middle East, cultural movements, social class, human rights, development, and colonial history. Her publications include The Emergence of Classes in Algeria: A Study of Colonialism and Social Change and The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question. Her latest book, Twilight of Empire: Torture and Identity, will be published by Princeton University Press.
Elana Levin is the Communications Manager of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan progressive think tank. DMI uses the lens of the middle class squeeze to analyze domestic policy. Elana runs the highly regarded DMIblog, where grassroots organizers weigh in on the policy issues they face every day and engage in a conversation with readers that range from policy experts to laypersons. DMIBlog.com and DMI’s Netroots Advisory Council have become a model other organizations have turned to for their innovative dissemination of progressive ideas and grassroots voices.
Norman Levine, Executive Director of the Institute for International Policy in Phoenix, Arizona, is currently working on a multi-volume study of the Marx-Hegel relationship. The first book of this series, Divergent Paths, was published in January 2006, and the second volume, The Invisible Hegel, will be completed in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007 Prof. Levine will spend two months in Berlin conducting research at the MEGA project.
Mark Levinson is a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute and is co-director of the Institute’s Agenda for Shared Prosperity project. A former chief economist for UNITE-HERE and AFSCME’s DC 37 in New York, Levinson is book review editor for Dissent magazine.
Queen Mother Dorothy Benton Lewis is Co-Chair of International Affairs Commission of N’COBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America). She is a researcher, writer, and lecturer on reparations and related issues. Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa Ohema aka Dorothy Benton Lewis has been a constant voice for Black Reparations since the 1960s when she co-founded and led several organizations: Restitution for Involuntary Servitude, Inc. (Alaska, 1968); the Black Reparations Commission (Maryland, 1978); the African National Reparations Organization (New York, 1982); the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (Washington, DC, 1987), and the N’COBRA Legal Defense, Research, Education Fund (2004).
LeShane Lindsey is a labor organizer for 1199 SEIU United Health Care Workers east and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the New York Chapter of the Black Radical Congress.
Meaghan Linick is a freshman at Pace University in New York City. She has been a member of Students for a Democratic Society since September 2006 and has been organizing on campus since then with issues such as the free speech battles and the effort to form a Free Student Union.
Ana López is a long time community activist in NYC. She teaches at John Jay College of the City University of New York in the Puerto Rican and Latin American Studies Program.
Karen Lopez is a Latina from San Francisco, CA by way of Colombia. She has been involved with struggles in various arenas including youth, people of color, immigrants and workers. She has traveled through Mexico learning about different social movements. Currently, she is a community organizer at Brooklyn for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE).
Patty Lovera is the assistant director of Food & Water Watch. Patty works on food issues, especially meat inspection and mad cow disease, country of origin labeling, and dairy issues. Patty has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Lehigh University and a master's degree in environmental policy from the University of Michigan. Prior to Food & Water Watch, Patty was the deputy director of the energy and environment program at Public Citizen, and the research associate at the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.
Michael Löwy, born in Brazil, has lived in France since 1969. He is emeritus research director in sociology at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. A prolific author of many books in several languages, his latest English publications include: The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx (Haymarket Books, 2005) and Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's “On the Concept of History” (Verso, 2005).
Stephanie Luce, teaches at the Labor Center of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Fighting for a Living Wage (Cornell University Press, 2004).
John Mage is an Officer and Director of the Monthly Review Foundation.
Audra Makuch is an Organizing Coordinator for Service Employees International Union. She has been involved in the union movement for the past five years and recently moved to New York City from California. She is from Connecticut and loves ponies.
Sadatu Mamah-Trawill is an Organizer with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and professor of anthropology at Columbia University and the Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is the founding Director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, Uganda, and was President (1999-2002) of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa. Mamdani is an expert in African history, politics, and international relations. His most recent publication is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (Doubleday, 2004).
John F. Manley is Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Stanford University. He is currently working on a comparative analysis of western welfare states.
Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, Founding Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and editor of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society. He is the author of numerous books, including Black Leadership, Black Liberation in Conservative America, Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Radicalism and Resistance, Beyond Black and White, The Crisis of Color in Democracy, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990, WEB DuBois: Black Radical Democrat, Black American Politics and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.
Erwin Marquit is an emeritus professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
Randy Martin is Professor and Director of the Program in Arts Politics at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He has published a number of books including Socialist Ensembles: Theater and State in Cuba and Nicaragua (Minnesota), On Your Marx: Rethinking Socialism and the Left (Minnesota), and Financialization of Daily Life (Temple). His An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management is just out from Duke University Press.
Josh Mason is the News Editor for the financial and economic news and analysis website: www.globalmacroscope.com.
Jack McCallum has been a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 26 years. In 2005 he was elected to the writers' wing of the Basketball Hall of Fame. His articles have appeared in Best American Sports Stories and he is the author of nine books and the co-author of two sons.
John McDonagh is a cab driver, comic and political activist. He is founder, producer and host of Radio Free Eireann, a weekly WBAI radio show. He has performed his cabbie comedy at such venues as Caroline’s, The Comic Strip, The Cinema Arts Center, and Rocky Sullivan's pub. As an activist, he organized the "Cabbies Against Bush" campaign during the 2004 Republican Convention and works with Veterans Against the Iraq War. He has been editor of the Irish People Newspaper, and started an Irish radio show in Perth, Australia.
Michael Menser is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College/CUNY. He has published on technoscience, anarchism, architecture, and the global justice movement. His most recent work is on anticapitalist transnational participatory democracy. He has participated in the World Social Forum (SF), the NYC SF, and is a member of the Northeast organizing committee of the US Social Forum (set for June 2007 in Atlanta).
Edward Mercado is Venezuelan and part of the Bolivarian Revolution. Currently he is one of the coordinators of the US-Venezuela Bolivarian Exchange Network (USVEN), a people to people approach that seeks to increase understanding of the Bolivarian Revolution as a participatory democracy seeking to transfer the power to the people. USVEN works directly with grassroots organizations in both countries to design each delegation to match interests of the groups or organizations. He is one of the founders of the Cincinnati Bolivarian Circle, begun in 2001, and worked as the communications coordinator for the Venezuelan Information Office.
Cinthia Mercante is an eight year Army veteren and the Coordinator of the Different Drummer GI project, Ft. Drum, N.Y.
Walter Benn Michaels is the chair of the English department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A literary theorist, his books include The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History, Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism, and The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism.
Stephen Mikesell is an anthropologist who has worked in the western United States, Nepal, and Southwest China. He has been grappling with issues of the nature of the state, grassroots democracy, and class struggle. He also has been involved in community radio and biointensive agriculture.
Paul Mishler is a labor educator and historian currently working at Indiana University's Division of Labor Studies. He is the author of Raising Reds: Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps and Communist Political Culture. He is a member of the Science & Society editorial Board.
Claude Misukiewicz is assistant editor of Monthly Review.
Benjamin Moldenhauer is a Bremen, Germany-based cultural scientist, editor and cultural organizer. He has been part of the editorial board of the German literature magazine Stint since 2005 and of the German internationalist magazine alaska. He curates the conference series On Rules and Monsters: Horror and Transgression. Currently, he is writing a dissertation on the theory and history of the horror movie.
Andrea Montagni is Vice-President of the National Steering Committee of the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL) and a secretary of Florence's Camera del Lavoro. His political activity began in the 1970s in the student and unemployed movements, and then with the supermarket chain Esselunga. In 1991 he became National Secretary for the university sector. He is a member of the CGIL's "Labor and Society" grouping and the author of numerous articles on the job crisis of the universities, sustainable development, the centrality of labor to human rights and on left strategy in general.
Suren Moodliar is a coordinator for the North American Alliance for Fair Employment (NAAFE) and was a coordinator of the Boston Social Forum.
Frank Morales, Episcopal priest, squatter, writer and researcher, focuses on US military domestic operations. His articles have appeared in Covert Action Quarterly, Global Outlook, and World War 4 Report. Morales lives in NYC/LES and is Associate Minister at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery.
Nilda Morales is an organizer for Make the Road by Walking.
Rosalind Morris is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Recent and forthcoming publications include "The Mute and the Unspeakable: Political Subjectivity, Violent Crime, and ‘the Sexual Thing’ in a South African Mining Community," in Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, edited by Jean and John Comaroff (University of Chicago Press, 2006); “Legacies of Derrida,” Annual Review of Anthropology (Vol. 37, 2007); “The Miner’s Ear,” Transition Magazine (Spring 2007); “The Age of Dinosaurs,” /nor (Spring 2007); and “Imperial Pastoral,” Representations (Fall 2007).
Curtis Muhammed is a member of the New Orleans Survivor Council and a founder of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund.
Ananya Mukherjea is an assistant professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She is a on the board of CUNY's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Mario Murillo, Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Hofstra University and a radio journalist, is the producer and conductor of Wake Up Call, WBAI. He is author of Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization.
Deborah Mutnick is Professor of English at Long Island University. She is the author of Writing in an Alien World: Basic Writing and the Struggle for Equality in Higher Education and has been a member of the Science & Society editorial board since September 2001.
Immanuel Ness teaches at the Center for Worker Education of the City University of New York, Brooklyn College Graduate Division. He writes on labor unions, global migration, class struggles, and revolutionary movements.
Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and Professor of Sociology, at New York University. She is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (University of California Press, 2002), Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (University of California Press, 2003), and What to Eat (North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006). Many of her published articles, media interviews, and reviews of her work are posted at www.foodpolitics.com.
Nicola Nicolosi came to Milan at the age of 16 as a Sicilian immigrant. He worked first on a new left newspaper and then in city government. He was elected to Milan's Board of Public Employment and, in the mid-80s, became national coordinator for public employment for the trade-union left "Council Democracy" before joining the CGIL's (Italian General Confederation of Labor) National Board of Public Office. After several top positions with the union in Lombardy, he went to Rome in 2006 to become National Coordinator of the CGIL's "Lavoro e società" grouping and CGIL Director of European Affairs.
Marsha Niemeijer is a staff writer and organizer at the Labor Notes East Coast Office. She was a graduate student in Political Science at York University. As an active member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, she served on the executive board during her Local's 11-week strike in the Fall/Winter of 2000. She has been working with the Transnationals Information Exchange since 1995, and coordinates the TIE international and cross-border programs with Teofilo Reyes. Marsha covers longshore workers (ILA/ILWU), UE, Telecom/CWA, Canadian and European labor, as well as international economic issues.
Jennifer Nordstrom is the Project Associate for the Reaching Critical Will project. Prior to joining Reaching Critical Will in 2005, Jennifer was the International Coordinator at Global Action to Prevent War. Jennifer worked to create links among conflict prevention, disarmament, gender and peacekeeping communities with the belief that civil society is the emerging global superpower required to reign in governments. She is also part of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Yusuf Nuruddin is a visiting assistant professor of Africana Studies at the University of Toledo. He is a frequent contributor to Socialism and Democracy, as well as a member of its editorial board. His research on African-American Muslims appears in other journals and edited collections. He is also the managing editor of a forthcoming journal, Timbuktu: Contemporary Islamic Thought of the African Diaspora.
Mary E. O'Brien, M.D., has been a practicing physician in NYC for almost 30 years. After her graduation from Harvard Medical School, she did her residency at Columbia Presbyterian in Internal Medicine For the next ten years she was the Director of the St. Luke's ER and an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. She now does outpatient primary care at Columbia University. She is on the executive board of the NY Metro Physicians for a National Health Program and runs their Communications and Media Committee.
Tom O'Donnell (Ph.D. Michigan, nuclear physics) has written and lectured widely on the global oil order, and on U.S., E.U. and Middle-East affairs (see: http://TomOD.com). He teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor at the Center for Middle East and North African Studies (CMENAS), the Residential College, and the Michigan STS Program. He has lectured at The University of Algiers and teaches summers at The New School's Graduate Program in International Affairs. Dr. O'Donnell is currently writing a book on The New Globalized Oil Order and the Middle East.
Richard Ohmann's most recent book is the Politics of Knowledge, in which he links the privatization of the university with parallel assaults on public K-12 schooling. He has also experienced high stakes testing and No Child Left Behind as a member for the past seven years of the Mohawk Trail Regional School District's school board in Massachusetts. He is on the editorial board of the Radical Teacher and on the steering committee of the MLA Radical Caucus.
Susan O’Malley is Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and Professor of Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate School. She also teaches at CCNY’s Center for Worker Education. She is past chair of the CUNY Faculty Senate and currently a Community College Officer of the PSC, the CUNY union. Her latest book is Custome Is an Idiot: Jacobean Pamphlets on Women (2004). She is on the editorial board of Radical Teacher and the steering committee of the MLA Radical Caucus. Her current research is on women’s brass bands from the 1890s to 1914.
Mostafa Omar, an Egyptian-American activist and writer, has been involved in the anti-war movement and the fight for Arab and Muslim rights since September 11, 2001. Prior to this, he was active in many social justice movements, including the struggle for Palestinian rights. He is a contributing author to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Books). Today, he is active in Adalah: The MidEast Justice Committee, formed in response to Israel's war on Lebanon, which continues to link the wars and occupations in the Middle East. He is also a member of the International Socialist Organization in NYC.
Martin Oppenheimer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University. He is on the Critical Sociology Editorial Board. His latest book is The Hate Handbook (Lexington), and he is currently working on immigration issues.
Carlos Orellana is an organizer for the Civil Service Employees Union (CSEA) in Westchester and Putnam counties.
Ozgur Orhangazi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Roosevelt University Chicago. He has recently completed his Ph.D. thesis “Financialization of the U.S. Economy and its Effects on Capital Accumulation: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Rupal Oza is the chair and advisor of the Women’s Studies program at Hunter College, CUNY. Her book, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization was just released from Routledge, New York and from Women Unlimited, India. Current projects include organizing with construction workers in New York City, tracking the rise of Hindu rightwing movements in India and the US, and a joint project with Rabab Abdulhadi on India and Palestine.
Nieves Padilla is Head of Workplace Organizing for Make the Road by Walking.
Leo Panitch is Professor of Political Science at York University, Canada and co-editor of the Socialist Register. He is the author of many books including Renewing Socialism (2001).
Christian Parenti is a correspondent for The Nation and is author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (New Press, 2004). He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics in 2000. His two previous books are The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror (Basic Books, 2003) and Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (Verso, 2000). He has been a Soros Senior Justice fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow at the CUNY Graduate School's Center for Place, Culture, and Politics.
Patty Lee Parmalee is the author of Brecht's America and other writings on such topics as East Germany. She has taught at UC-Irvine, Cal State Long Beach, and Ramapo College New Jersey. She has also reported for The Guardian and served in leadership positions in Students for a Democratic Society and New American Movement. Currently, she is Coordinator of Save the Ridge, an environmental activist organization in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York, and serves on the editorial board of Capital Nature Socialism.
Michael Pelias is co-managing editor of Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. He teaches philosophy and film studies at Long Island University-Brooklyn.
Canek Peña Vargas is a member of Estacion Libre and has traveled to Chiapas to study Tzotzil and assist in research in autonomous clinics. He is currently editing a collection of Zapatista communiqués and speeches from 2001-2006, entitled The Speed of Dreams (City Lights Press, 2007).
Bill Perkins is New York State Senator of the 30th District, representing Harlem and the West Side.
Cynthia Peters has explored gender and sex and sexuality (among other topics) in her writings on ZNet and other progressive media outlets. Currently, she teaches union-based adult education, and is a freelance writer and editor. She is also active in the anti-war movement and other community-based struggles.
Elizabeth Phillips is Principal of P.S. 321 where she has experienced first-hand the problems with No Child Left Behind. She is a Mentor Principal in the NYC Leadership Academy and has taught in the Reading and Writing Project sponsored by Teachers College.
Frances Fox Piven, political activist and scholar, is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her recent books include Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006), and The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush’s Militarism (2004). She also co-authored several books with Richard Cloward, including Why Americans Still Don’t Vote; Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare; and Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. She is the current president of the American Sociological Association.
Thomas Ponniah is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University, where he teaches courses in social theory, globalization, and development. He is the editor of the first book of proposals from the World Social Forum: Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum. He is a member of the Network Institute for Global Democratization—one of the founding organizations of the WSF.
Deborah Poole is a Professor of Anthropology and director of the Program of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is the co-editor of Anthropolgy in the Margins of the State and author of Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World.
Nomi Prins is an author, journalist, and Senior Fellow at Demos, a NYC-based public policy think-tank. Her Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America was chosen as a Best Book by The Economist, Barron's and The Library Journal. Her latest is Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking Your Pocket (whether you voted for them or not). Before journalism, Nomi worked as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and at Bear Stearns in London. Besides television and radio appearances, she has written for The New York Times, Newsday, Fortune, The Guardian, The Nation.com, Left Business Observer, and LaVanguardia.
| speakers (a-g) |