speaker bios
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speakers (a-g)

speakers (h-q)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Elizabeth Ramey is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is completing a dissertation on the political economy of U.S. food and agriculture. She is currently a visiting instructor at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA.

Maia Ramnath is a long-time activist on issues including global economic justice, anti-war, on-campus labor rights, and Palestine solidarity. She can currently be found at the University of California at Santa Cruz where she seeks solace on the airwaves of the Free Radio Santa Cruz collective from the throes of finishing her PhD dissertation in history, on anti-colonial radicalism in the South Asian diaspora.

Tarso Luís Ramos is director of Research of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank analyzing the US Right. He has been a researcher and writer about right-wing movements since 1991. As director of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project he led efforts to counteract anti-union and anti-environmental campaigns in the western US. From 2000-2005 he directed Western States Center’s racial justice program, which resists racist public policy initiatives and supports the base-building work of progressive people of color-led organizations.

Peter Ranis is Professor Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and York College. He is the author of Argentine Workers: Peronism and Contemporary Class Consciousness and Class, Democracy and Labor in Contemporary Argentina. His latest publication in Working USA is entitled “Eminent Domain: Unused Tool for American Labor.”

Jack Rasmus teaches Politics and Economics at Saint Mary's College of California and Santa Clara University. His books include The Political Economy of Wage and Price Controls and The War At Home.

Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). He has led CCR in its aggressive legal fight against the post 9/11 violations of civil liberties by the Bush administration. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that went to the Supreme Court where a major victory was won in June 2004. CCR recently filed a suit against Blackwater for the killings at Nisoor Square in Iraq.

Audacia Ray is a blogger (WakingVixen.com), video podcast host (LiveGirlReview.com), author (Naked on the Internet), porn director/producer (The Bi Apple), and erotic art curator (Arena Studios). She was executive editor of $pread for three years.

Fernando Reals is a Puerto Rican and Colombian anti-imperialist activist and popular educator who teaches in a NYC public school. Reals had been a long-term volunteer with DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving, a South Asian immigrant-justice organization - and is a member of SPIN - September 23rd Pro-Independence Network, a network working in the spirit of Comandante Filiberto Ojeda Rios to unite and strengthen Puerto Rican pro-independence organizations and movements.

Jan Rehmann is a co-editor of the German Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (HKWM) and teaches philosophy and social theories at Union Theological Seminary and at the Free University in Berlin. His most recent book was Postmoderner Links-Nietzscheanismus. Deleuze und Foucault. Eine Dekonstruktion (Argument-Verlag: Hamburg, 2004).

Jessica Rechtschaffer is a New York City activist. She has an M.A. in religious studies from Columbia University.

Resistance in Brooklyn is a study group and intergenerational collective of anti-imperialist whites in and around NYC that formed in 1992. Three things that define our core practice and beliefs: antiracist movement building, solidarity with liberation movements, and political prisoner support.

Patricia Blau Reuss has been the Senior Policy Analyst for the National Organization for Women since 2002. Before that she directed the D.C. office of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund for over ten years. She serves as a veteran legislative and issue strategist, coalition builder, progressive political activist and grassroots organizer for women's, civil and reproductive rights. She has been an activist on behalf of women's rights for thirty-five years and was a major force behind the 1994 passage of the $1.62 billion Violence Against Women Act.

Revolution & Evolution in the 20th Century is a study group conceived in the 1960s revolutionary upsurge. James and Grace Lee Boggs' Evolution and Revolution in the 20th Century became the one of the seminal texts of the New Left. Seeing personal transformation growing out of political revolution, Evolution is a careful study of political rebellion of the 20th century and where the movement is headed.

Jean Rice has been homeless for twenty-five years. He picks up cans for recycling and engages in constitutionally protected activities such as panhandling. Rice is an avid student of history and was incarcerated in Attica from 1963 to 1965. Rice has been an active leader of the Civil Rights Committee of Picture the Homeless since 2001. Through his work with the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary, and as a leader of Picture the Homeless, Jean has been instrumental in building a coalition of faith communities to support homeless resistance to poverty and racism.

Rob Richie has directed FairVote since 1992. He is co-author of Every Vote Equal about establishing a national popular vote for president and Whose Votes Count, about the case for proportional voting and instant runoff voting. His writings have appeared in seven additional books and many newspapers and magazine. He has been a guest on C-SPAN, NBC News, CNN, FOX, Bloomberg News and MSNBC and has addressed annual conventions of the American Political Science Association, National Association of Counties, National Association of Secretaries of State and National Conference of State Legislatures.

Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX, is a longtime activist in movements concerned with gender, racial and economic justice. His support of reproductive rights and lesbian/gay rights has made him a target of conservatives in the denomination, who unsuccessfully tried to strip him of ordination. His efforts to articulate a progressive vision of Christianity have also generated controversy, leading to an ongoing struggle at the national level to create more space in the denomination for churches with non-traditional theology and politics.

Rainer Rilling is a member of the Department of Policy Analysis at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin and a professor of sociology at the University of Marburg. He is a member of the scientific advisory of ATTAC Germany. He has published in the fields of political communication, international relations, and peace and conflict studies. His recent publications include “Imperiality” in Capitalism Reloaded, Hamburg 2007, Debating Multitude: Ten Notes (2005) and Power and Property (2004).

Amy Richard is a feminist activist, writer, and organizer. Richard co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, a national organization for young feminist activists between the ages of 15 and 30, which she led for a decade. She wrote her first book, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, with Jennifer Baumgardner, published in October 2000. Together they recently completed their second book, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, and also created a lecture agency, Soapbox Inc: Speakers Who Speak Out.

Ignacio Rivera is a Queer Trans- Entity, Black Boricua performer, activist, sex educator and sex worker. As a sex worker ze is a Pro-dom and is working in the adult film industry. Ze is the founder of Poly Patao Productions. P3 is dedicated to producing sex-positive workshops, performance pieces, films, play parties, and educational opportunities. Ignacio is also one of the founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice, a progressive non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.

Juan Antonio Ocasio Rivera is an activist and social worker in the New York City area.

Selena Roberts became a senior writer for Sports Illustrated in January of 2008 after more than 11 years with The New York Times. Prior to her position as sports columnist beginning in 2002, Roberts had served as The Times’ Olympic and tennis writer, as well as the beat reporter for the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets. From 1994 to 1996, Roberts covered the Minnesota Vikings for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. She is the author of A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game.

Robert Robinson is the Housing Campaign and Rent Subsidies Campaign Leader for Picture the Homeless, which he joined in January 2007. A native New Yorker and college graduate, in 2004, Robinson experienced his first bout of homelessness as a result of being laid off in Miami after over a decade on the job. He returned to New York, where he became an advocate for the homeless and a leader in the New York City Coalition for the Continuum of Care (NYCCoC), the governing body of the NYC shelter system. Robinson is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Right to the City NYC.

Adriana Rocha is a program officer at New York Foundation, which supports groups in New York City that are working on problems of urgent concern to residents of disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods.

Len Rodberg is Chair and Professor of Urban Studies, Queens College, and Research Director and Treasurer of Physicians for a National Health Program, Metro-New York chapter.

Rogers was one of the first New Yorkers to be trained by the Olinsky Foundation as a community organizer. Rogers has worked as an instructor, researcher, lecturer, and organizer. Rogers has had several articles published as a freelance writer and as an entrepreneur he has been the owner of several businesses — a shipping company and a literary research firm in Harlem. Rogers joined Picture the Homeless as a member in June of 2004. He is the past President of the Council of Black Catholics for Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens.

Heather Rogers is a journalist, author, and filmmaker. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Utne and Architecture. Her first book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, traces the history and politics of household garbage in the United States. Her 2002 documentary film, also titled “Gone Tomorrow,” screened in festivals around the globe.

Nancy Romer is Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College and executive director of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership. She is University-Wide Officer of the PSC and has been studying grassroots organizations in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Laine Romero-Alston has been the Director of Research and Policy at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center since September 2002, where she coordinates the implementation of community-based, participatory research and policy initiatives in partnership with grassroots organizations throughout New York City. Romero-Alston has a specific interest in the application of research as an effective tool to further the organizing and advocacy efforts of communities traditionally and systemically marginalized. Laine also worked for four years as a community organizer in Mexico City.

Troy Rondinone is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University. His areas of interest include working-class history, economic history, and radical studies. He has written about the impact of Wal-Mart in Connecticut, the effect of nationalism on media representations of the Pullman Strike, and the power of Civil War memory on popular understanding of late 19th century labor conflict. He is working on studies of professional boxers in mid-twentieth century America and of nationalism during the Pullman Strike. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Connecticut History.

Stephanie Rooker is the founder of Party for the People (PftP), a free public event designed to build community awareness and engagement. Born and raised in the mountains of rural Virginia, Rooker began performing music as a small child. She studied classical voice throughout high school and at Oberlin College, where she also earned a degree in ethnomusicology, focusing on the music of the West African Diaspora. After moving to New York in 2004, Rooker began studying jazz voice and piano. She continues to compose, blending a range of styles into her originals and arrangements.

Fred Rosen is a NACLA staff member based in New York and Cuernavaca, Mexico. He is the editor of Empire and Dissent in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2008).

Loretta Ross is the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a network founded in 1997. She was National Co-Director of the April 25, 2004 March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in US history, with more than one million participants. Between 1996 and 2004, she was the Founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta. She is the co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, with Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, and Elena Gutiérrez (2004).

David F. Ruccio, who teaches in the Department of Economics & Policy Studies at the University of Notre Dame, is the editor of Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society.

Chris Rude is an independent writer and researcher who lives and works in New York City.

Lisa Rudman is Director of National Radio Project. NRP (not NPR!), produces the Making Contact series each week, and broadcasts on over 200 non-commercial radio stations. NRP trains and collaborates with grassroots groups to make media and to get their voices heard to an ever-broadening audience (broadcast and Internet). Rudman’s roots in independent media activism go back to PCTV in the early 1980s. She has contributed programming to Deep Dish, Free Speech TV and other outlets. She founded the Women's Desk at National Radio Project, and NRP's Welfare Radio Collaborative.

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Maliha Safri is an assistant professor in the economics department at Drew University. She finished her dissertation on the political economy of immigration in the US, and is currently working on related projects such as remittances, employment, and household dynamics. Recent work includes a paper in progress with co-author Julie Graham on globalized aspects of remittances, and the specific household and class consequences for senders and receivers. Other forthcoming projects include a paper on subjectivity and the theory of the gift, as well as contemporary Pakistani and Afghan interactions.

Viviane Saleh-Hanna is a professor of Crime and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Coptic and Palestinian in origin, Canadian in citizenship and Pan-Africanist in her heart, she identifies as an activist scholar. Prior to moving to the United States, she lived in Nigeria and worked with prisoners in Nigeria, Ghana and the Gambia. Her book Colonial Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria is the first publication on prisons in West Africa and the first publication to provide an in-depth look at the life inside African prisons. More recently, her scholarhsip and activism have focused on the role black music plays in black liberation struggles and the fight against modern slavery through mass incarceration.

John Sanbonmatsu is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He is the author of several journal articles, as well as of the acclaimed book The Postmodern Prince: Left Strategy, Critical Theory and the Making of a New Political Subject (Monthly Review Press 2005).

Eric Sawyer is a founder of ACT UP and Housing Works, the largest provider of housing, care, services and advocacy for people with AIDS in the USA. He is a Board member of Physicians for a National Health Program, Metro-New York chapter.

Jeremy Scahill is an unembedded, international journalist. He is a correspondent for the national radio and television show Democracy Now! and a frequent contributor to The Nation. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. His first book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, is a New York Times best seller. Scahill has reported extensively from Iraq, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, exposed the presence of Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans. His work has also appeared in The Progressive, In These Times, and Z Magazine.

Danny Schechter is an author, filmmaker, and blogger whose 2006 documentary, “In Debt We Trust,” spotlighted the perils of subprime lending and the broader menace of the American “credit and loan complex.”

Helen Scott is an associate professor at the University of Vermont where she teaches postcolonial studies in the English department and Women and Gender Studies program. She is currently a union delegate for United Academics: AFT-AAUP. She has published articles in Callaloo, International Socialist Review, Journal of Haitian Studies, Postcolonial Text; has chapters in anthologies including Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies, and Haiti: Writing Under Siege; and a book, Caribbean Women Writers and Globalization: Fictions of Independence, published by Ashgate. She is the editor of The Essential Rosa Luxemburg newly published by Haymarket Books. Originally from Britain, she has lived in the US since 1988 and is a long time socialist activist who frequently speaks on panels and at rallies against war, and for labor and immigrant rights.

Ron Scott is a television producer, a founding member of the Detroit Black Panther party, a spokesperson for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, and host for the weekly talk show “For My People.”

Thomas Seibert is a political philosopher. He works for the leftist relief organization Medico International, as well as being a member of the Federal Council of ATTAC Germany, an activist of the Interventionist Left (IL), and member of the editorial board of the magazine Fantômas. His latest publication is Truth, Event and Real Movement: On the Deconstruction of Subjectivity, Philosophy, and Politics (2007). He has an article in Socialism and Democracy(forthcoming, 2008) called “New Commonplaces after Heiligendamm.”

Micol Seigel is Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research and teaching focuses on prisons and policing, state discipline and surveillance, cultural politics, transnational connections, and race in the Americas, particularly the U.S. and Brazil. She is an abolitionist and organized with Critical Resistance-South from 1999-2003 and CR-Los Angeles from 2003-2007.

Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou was the founding National Coordinator for Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq and the Interfaith Worker Justice Center for New Orleans. He is an Associate Fellow in Religion and Justice at the Institute for Policy Studies. Rev. Sekou serves as Senior Community Minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York. His forthcoming book, Gods, Gays, and Guns: Religion and the Future of Democracy (Ig Publishing) will be published in April 2009.

Aarti Shahani is a co-founder of Families for Freedom, a multiethnic organization of families fighting deportation.

Dave Shukla is a researcher and activist in Los Angeles. He has organized at the local and national levels of Students for a Democratic Society with the UCLA chapter. In conjunction with the School of Public Affairs at UCLA, he and David Wallechinsky are currently developing a model for mass participation and engagement with institutional design and policy formation for each agency and program in the federal government.

Cleo Silvers is a former member of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords Party, and the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement. She has maintained a 4.0 GPA while working fulltime and graduated with a BA from Cornell University’s partnership program with the National Labor College, in June 2007.

Charlene Sinclair is a student at Union Theological Seminary, former director of National Campaign for the Center for Community Change, and an organizer in Poor People's movements.

Marina Sitrin is a dreamer, teacher, student, and militant. She is the editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, an oral history of the autonomous social movements in Argentina. (Spanish edition Chilavert 2005, English edition AK Press 2006) Marina has traveled extensively in Latin America, spending time with the various new social movements. She is currently writing and editing a book, Insurgent Democracies: Latin America's New Powers (City Lights Press 2008).

Michael Slater is deputy director of Project Vote, the country's premier nonpartisan voter registration organization. His work focuses primarily on enforcing the rights of low-income and minority Americans to register, vote, and have their votes counted. In the past several years, Slater has contributed to the passage of election legislation in half a dozen states, helped lead a successful effort to overturn laws in seven states restricting voter registration, and edited or authored numerous publications on election policy. Slater has thirteen years of community, labor and faith-based organizing experience.

David N. Smith holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and, since 1990, has taught sociology at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Marx, critical theory, sociological theory, genocide, prejudice, and authoritarianism.

Michael Steven Smith is an attorney practicing injury litigation in New York City. He is the co-host of the WBAI radio program Law and Disorder. He is on the boards of The Center for Constitutional Rights, The Left Forum, and The Brecht Forum. He has written Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer and Lawyers You'll Like, and most recently edited two books by William Kunstler.

Richard Smith wrote his dissertation on the transition to capitalism in China and has written on this and related topics for the New Left Review, Monthly Review, The Ecologist, Against the Current and other publications. He is working on a book on capitalist development and China’s ecological collapse.

Alan Snitow is an award-winning filmmaker whose PBS documentary “Thirst” (with Deborah Kaufman) and its follow-up book (Wiley, 2007) exposed how the corporate drive to control water has become the catalyst for community resistance to globalization. Snitow and Kaufman's earlier PBS films dealt with organizing high-tech workers ("Secrets of Silicon Valley") and with Black-Jewish relations ("Blacks and Jews"). Snitow is on the board of Food and Water Watch. He is currently working on a film about Jewish power and identity in America.

Ingar Solty is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at York University in Toronto. He is also Politics Editor of Das Argument. Together with Frank Deppe et al., he is co-author of The New Imperialism (2004). His articles have appeared in Das Argument, Z, Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung, Socialism & Democracy, Capital & Class and Sozialismus, covering a broad range of themes in international political economy, US and European politics, political theory, and political aesthetics. His doctoral research focuses on the changing relationship between conservatism and neoliberalism and conservative and socialist post-neoliberalism strategies.

Mia Son teaches in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Kangwon National University, Korea. Son’s recent work explores the application of Marxist theory to the area of worker’s working conditions and health.

Chris Spannos is on the staff of Z and the editor of Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century (May 2008).

Spiritchild is a rhythmic poet with and leader of the hip hop jam band Mental Notes. Spiritchild is Founder & Chair of Movement In Motion, an artist & activist collective and Creative Consultant for Eyes Infinite Films.

Stephen Steinberg teaches in the Urban Studies Department at Queens College and the Ph.D. Program in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is author of The Ethnic Myth and Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. His most recent book, Race Relations: A Critique, was published in September by Stanford University Press.

Lynn Stewart is an attorney who began providing political defense of those criminalized by New York State (Anti-Springbok, May 19 Communist, Black Panther, Black Liberation Army, Weather Underground, Ohio 7, Richard Williams, Larry Davis, Ahmad Ajaj, and Nasser Ahmed). In 2002, she was arrested for aiding terrorism and last year was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist (her client, Sheikh Omar Rahman). She is currently awaiting a decision from the Court of Appeals on the constitutionality of her appeal.

Edwina Stokes is an educator and graduate student at Long Island University.

Nova Strachan is a member of Mothers on the Move (MOM), a social justice community organization based in the South Bronx, organizing to build a just society where there is equal economic, social and political opportunity for all. Strachan was born and raised in the South Bronx, where she has been a N.Y.C.H.A resident all her life. She currently works with MOM in hopes of building unity and power among all residents in the struggle against gentrification all over NYC. Strachan is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Right to the City NYC.

Amy Sugimori is Executive Director of La Fuente, a tri-state worker and community fund working to bring together organized labor and community partners around immigration and worker rights issues. Its project in New York City is the New York Civic Participation Project. She is an attorney and previously worked with the National Employment Law Project specializing in rights of low-wage workers.

Chyng Sun’s forthcoming documentary “The Price of ‘Pleasure’: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships” investigates the production, content, and consumption of pornography. She explores its personal and social effects on American citizens in our increasingly pornographic culture. The issue of pornography combines all the issues the Left has been fighting against: sexism, racism, big media corporations, and commodification/alienation under capitalism. Sun's two previous documentaries are left critiques of media domination and representations, “Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power,” and cultural imperialism and the war on terrorism, “Beyond Good and Evil: Media, Children and Violent Times.”

Yan Sun is Professor of Political Science at City University of New York's Queens College and Graduate Center. She is the author of The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism: 1976-1992 (Princeton University Press, 1995) and Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Cornell University Press, 2004). She has also published numerous professional articles on China's post-Mao economic transition, political ideology, corruption, and comparative studies of Chinese and Russian reforms.

George Szamuely was born in Hungary and educated in England. He was an editor at The Times (London) and The Times Literary Supplement (London) and as a U.S. editor for The Sunday Telegraph (London). He has been affiliated with a number of think tanks, including the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute. A former columnist at New York Press and at Antiwar.com, he has written for many publications, with a special focus on the Balkans. He writes for Counterpunch and is currently writing a book on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, titled An International Disgrace.

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William K. Tabb taught economics at Queens College for many years, and economics, political science, and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization (Columbia University Press, 2004), Unequal Partners: A Primer on Globalization (New Press, 2002), and The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2001).

Michael Tanzer is President of Tanzer Economic Associates, Inc., which since 1969 has specialized in consulting to Third World governments in the oil, energy and mineral areas. He is the author of scores of articles on the political economy of oil and natural resources, and five books, including The Political Economy of Oil and the Underdeveloped Countries, The Race for Resources: Continuing Struggles over Minerals and Fuels, and Energy Update: Oil in the Late Twentieth Century (with Stephen Zorn).

Nyong'o Tavia is currently an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at New York University where he teaches courses on black diaspora performance, cultural studies, social and critical theory. Nyong'o received his B.A. from Wesleyan University. Nyong'o was the 2004 runner-up for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Award given by the American Studies Association annually for the best doctoral dissertation written in the field of American Studies. His book, The Amalgamation Waltz, will appear in 2009.

Meredith Tax has been active on the Left and in the US and global women’s movements since 1967. She has participated in organizations including Bread and Roses in Boston, the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, and CARASA. She is President of Women’s WORLD, a global free speech network of women writers, and author of The Rising of the Women, a history book; the novels Rivington Street and Union Square; and Families, a children’s picture book that was the object of a Christian Coalition censorship campaign.

Makani Themba-Nixon is Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting community-based media and policy advocacy to advance equity and justice. She previously directed the Grass Roots Innovative Policy Program (GRIPP), a national project to build local organizing to address institutional racism in welfare and education. She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention and author of Making Policy, Making Change. Her latest book, co-authored with Hunter Cutting, is Talking the Walk: Communications Guide for Racial Justice.

Liz Theoharis is co-founder and Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary, where she is studying for a doctorate in New Testament Studies. Theoharis is also the Co-Coordinator of the University of the Poor and certified for ordination in the Presbyterian Church USA.

Kaitlyn Tikkun is an independent photojournalist with a focus in environmental, healthcare, queer, and local community activist issues. She is a member of the Callen Lorde Community Health Center Transgender Community Advisory Board, and has lobbied for transgender rights via the Federal Citizens Health Care Working Group. Her current projects include a free queer and genderqueer dating site, and a photo-documentary book on people who self-injure.

Hillel Ticktin is Editor of the journal Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory and Emeritus Professor of Marxist Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Ticktin is the author of many books and articles on Marxist political economy, particularly on the USSR, former Soviet Union, South Africa, finance capital, and the nature of capitalist decline.

Victor Toro, a founder of Chile's MIR, is now an activist for the human rights of immigrants. He has lived in New York for twenty-five years, founded Vamos a la Peña del Bronx, and is currently fighting his own deportation order. His case is rescheduled for August 15, 2008.

Nkenge Toure has been a community advocate for Human Rights issues that impact women and children for the past thirty-five years. In 1978 she created Rape Awareness Week. While living in Washington, D.C., Toure served on the Rape Protection Act Committee, successfully changing the district’s Rape Law. A feminist, teacher, organizer, and a former member of The Black Panther Party, Ms. Toure is committed to promoting the human rights of all people. She has been the radio host for Pacifica Radio’s WPFW program In Our Voices for the pat twenty years.

Rebecca Traister covers women in media, entertainment, and politics as a staff writer for Salon.com. She has also written for The New York Observer, Elle, New York Magazine, Glamour, Vogue, and The New York Times. She lives in Brooklyn.

Marie Trigona has reported from Argentina for numerous media outlets around the world. A writer, radio producer, and filmmaker, her work focuses on labor struggles, social movements, and human rights in Latin America. Her writing has appeared in publications including Z Magazine, ZNet, NACLA, Monthly Review and many others. She collaborates with video and direct action collective Grupo Alavío (www.agoratv.org).

James Trimarco's writing includes journalism, cultural criticism, and a body of science fiction stories that explore the intersections between power, freedom, and technology. He is a long-time volunteer at the community arts group ABC No Rio and the art director at the Left Forum.

Nicole Trujillo-Pagán, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and the Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies at Wayne State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her current research includes the Latino recovery workforce in New Orleans and Latino workers and subcontractors in the construction industry. She also volunteers at the workers' center (Centro Obrero) in Detroit, Michigan.

Jerry Tucker is a former UAW International Union Executive Board member and co-founder of the UAW New Directions Movement. He is a member of the National Steering Committee of U.S. Labor Against War and co-convener of the Center for Labor Renewal. He currently coordinates the Solidarity Education Center.

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Max Uhlenbeck is an organizer living and working in New York City. He is part of the Left Turn magazine editorial collective and works at the Brecht Forum as their development coordinator.

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Judith Van Allen has been a scholar-activist for more than forty years. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for African Development, Cornell University. She is working on a book on the political economy of women’s rights and the prospects for feminist “popular democracy” in Botswana in the context of similar struggles within Southern Africa.

David Van Arsdale is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hartwick College and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Joseph S. Murphy Institute of CUNY. He is currently working on a book about temp workers in the global economy. An article entitled “Agencia de Empleos: 3 Days of Temping in New York City” is forthcoming in volume 17, issue number 2 of New Labor Forum.

Eleni Varikas is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Paris VIII.

Alejandro Velasco teaches Latin American Studies at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He holds a B.A. in history from Boston College and an M.A. in history from Duke University, where he is completing a dissertation on the street politics of Venezuela before Hugo Chávez. His work draws from and intervenes in literatures on social movements, urban culture, and democratization, and has won major funding support from the Social Science Research Council, the American Historical Association, and the Ford and Mellon Foundations, among others.

Carlos Vilas is an Argentine political scientist and author of The Sandinista Revolution, Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Markets, States, and the Revolutions in Central America, La dominación imperialista en Argentina, Derecho y Estado en una economía dependiente and other books. He was an advisor to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s and has worked for the Kirchner government in the area of social development.

Ziga Vodovnik is an anarchist writer living in Slovenia. He is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his teaching and research is focused on anarchist theory/praxis and social movements in the Americas.

Tamara Vukov has been active in a range of autonomous social movements, independent media and media arts in Montréal over the past fifteen years, recently including Solidarity Across Borders, the People's Commission on Immigration Security Measures, and the Volatile Works collective. In collaboration with the Global Balkans activist, media and solidarity network, she is currently filming a documentary on the impacts of the postwar neoliberal transition in Serbia to be completed in 2009. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Media@McGill center for critical media research in Montréal.

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Asbjorn Wahl is a Norwegian labor activist and theorist who, for over two decades, has been a prominent figure in the trade-union movement. He is currently working as the national co-ordinator of the Campaign for the Welfare State and as an adviser to the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees. Wahl is a member of the co-ordinating committee of the European Network for Public Services and Forum Social Europe, which is an informal network for progressive trade unionists. Wahl has written extensively about the Norwegian Left Party and its current government participation.

Alan Wald, a pre-eminent scholar of U.S. literary radicalism, has authored eight books and numerous articles. His two most recent books are Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left (2002) and Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade (2007).

Rodrick Wallace is a research scientist in the Division of Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric institute. He is the author of many books and peer reviewed papers, and the recipient of the Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His work focuses on population health and its dependence on public policy.

Victor Wallis, managing editor of Socialism and Democracy, teaches in the Liberal Arts department at the Berklee College of Music. He writes frequently on ecological issues for Capitalism Nature Socialism and has co-edited three special issues of S&D: Radical Perspectives on Race and Racism (2003), Hip Hop, Race, and Cultural Politics (2004), and Socialism and Social Critique in Science Fiction (2006).

Wang Xinyan teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Wuhan University and is the author of numerous studies of Marxism and China (in Chinese).

Dorian Warren is on the political science faculty at Columbia University.

Jerry Watts teaches English and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Bill Weinberg is editor of the electronic journal World War 4 Report and author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, AlterNet, New America Media, and NACLA Report on the Americas. He is also co-producer of the “The Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade” on WBAI. Weinberg has also been active in international solidarity campaigns in Central and South America and the Middle East, helping to found the National Organization for the Iraqi Freedom Struggles.

Alison Weir is a journalist and founder of If Americans Knew, an organization that provides information on topics of importance that are substantially misreported or unreported in the US media. The organization's primary focus is on Israel-Palestine.

Suzi Weissman is Professor of Politics at Saint Mary's College of California. She sits on the editorial boards of Critique and Against the Current, and hosts a weekly drive-time radio program (Beneath the Surface) on KPFK in Los Angeles. She is the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope (Verso, 2001) and has edited Victor Serge: Russia Twenty Years After (Humanities, 1996) and The Ideas of Victor Serge (Merlin Press, 1997).

Seth Freed Wessler is a research associate at the Applied Research Center, a public policy institute advancing racial justice through research, advocacy, and journalism. ARC publishes ColorLines Magazine, a national magazine on race and politics. At ARC, Wessler has done research on health access, child welfare and immigration policy, and has written on immigration and national security policy for ColorLines. He is currently investigating the intersections of immigration, incarceration and child welfare policies.

Dominic Wetzel is a graduate student at the CUNY Grad Center, and has been involved with a variety of activist projects, including Queer Fist. He is currently working on his dissertation "Resisting Secularism: Fundamentalism, Disenchantment and the Troubled State of Modernity."

Billy Wharton is an organizer with the Socialist Party USA – NYC Local. He is the former chief steward of the Graduate Student Employees Union/CWA Local 1104, was an active participant in CUNY student movement of 1990s, and has completed internships with the AFL-CIO Union Summer and the Association for Union Democracy. He has been active in anti-war movements opposing the bombing of Yugoslavia, sanctions against Iraq, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Susan Wilcox is the Co-Executive Director of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a Harlem-based organization serving Black and Latina/o youth. Bro/Sis offers holistic and comprehensive guidance, support, and love for counteracting the adverse circumstances of their members' lives. Through exploring knowledge of self and issues of social justice, and by participating in rites of passage, community organizing, and international study activities, young people are helped to develop into critical thinkers empowered to create change in their communities.

Nona Willis-Aronowitz is a freelance journalist. She has written about culture, politics, and women's issues for publications like Salon, the Village Voice, and the New York Observer. She lives in New York City.

Greg Wilpert is a German-American sociologist, with a Ph.D. from Brandeis University, and freelance writer, who lives in Caracas, Venezuela. He edits the website www.venezuelanalysis.com, a site that provides regular news and analysis on Venezuelan society and politics. He is author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The Policies of the Chavez Government (Verso Books, 2007).

Patricia J. Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University. She writes The Nation column, "Diary of a Mad Law Professor." Her books include The Rooster's Egg (1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (1997), and Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (2004).

Ora Wise co-founded the Palestine/Israel Education Project (PEP), inspired by popular education models of movement building. PEP teaches a course at a Bushwick high school and facilitates multi-media workshops in high schools and youth groups nationally, connecting the history of Israel/Palestine to the historical and current struggles against racism and colonialism in the U.S. Wise is also getting her masters in Jewish Education, is the Education Director at a synagogue in Brooklyn, and is coordinating simultaneous study groups in four cities as a project of emerging international network of anti-Zionist Jews.

Naomi Wolf wrote an international bestseller, Beauty Myth, and has recently written The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. The book shows how events since 9/11 parallel the steps taken in the 1930s by fascist dictatorships.

Max Fraad Wolff is an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, New School University. A freelance researcher, strategist, and writer on international finance and macroeconomics, his work appears regularly at the Huffington Post, The Asia Times, PrudentBear.com, Seeking Alpha, and The Indypendent.

Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His numerous publications include Knowledge and Class (with Stephen Resnick), Bringing it all Back Home (with Harriet Fraad and Stephen Resnick), and most recently New Departures in Marxian Theory (with Stephen Resnick).

Elizabeth Anne Wood is a feminist sociologist and sex worker rights advocate. She is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College and co-founder of SexInThePublicSquare.org where she writes about sex and culture.

Susan L. Woodward is professor of political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and senior fellow, FRIDE, Madrid. A specialist on the Balkans, her current research is on transitions from war to peace, state failure, and post-war state-building. On the faculties of Northwestern University, Williams College, and Yale University, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, 1990-1999, and head of the Analysis and Assessment Unit for UNPROFOR in 1994, her writings include Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Brookings Press, 1995), and Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990 (Princeton University Press, 1995).

Haja Worley works with Project Harmony Gardens. His father was a sharecropper in Virginia and his mother grew up in the South; in the South, everyone had a garden and, when Worley’s parents moved to the North, they brought their love of growing fresh fruits and vegetables with them. Located off of 122nd Street in Harlem, Worley brings the gift of a Black Panther Party’s servant of the people dedication to the liberation of the land and the human spirit through his activism.

Julia Wrigley is a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Class Politics and Public Schools and also of Other People's Children. She recently published (with Joanna Dreby) a study of fatalities in child-care in the American Sociological Review and is interested in how child-care can be made both safer and better. She is currently working on issues related to class dynamics in caregiving relationships. She is currently serving as Acting Provost at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Wu Xinwei is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Wuhan University and a Visiting Scholar at Purdue University (2007-08), where is he working on Gramsci and language.

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Eddie Yuen is a writer, teacher, archivist, radio producer, and activist. He is the co-editor, with George Katsiaficas and Daniel Burton-Rose of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement (South End Press). He teaches in the Urban Studies Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Gary Younge is a columnist and correspondent for The Guardian and the Alfred Knobler fellow for The Nation. He has written extensively from Southern Africa and throughout Europe, and is author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South (1999), and, most recently, of Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States (2006).

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Dave Zirin, Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, has been called “an icon in the world of progressive sports,” and Robert Lipsyte says he is “the best young sportswriter in the United States.” He writes regularly for SLAM Magazine, The Nation, and for the Los Angeles Times op-ed page. He also has an online column on Sports Illustrated’s website, si.com. Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports (Haymarket Books) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (New Press).

Slavoj Žižek writes everything from reflections on Lenin's polemics to Levi blue jeans ads. Žižek's work has appeared in the The New York Times, New Yorker, The Guardian, as well as the feature length film, Žižek!. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Michael Zweig is a professor in the Department of Economics at the SUNY Stony Brook, where he is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life. His works include What's Class Got to Do with It?, American Society in the 21st Century, and The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret. He produced the film Meeting Face to Face: The Iraq-U.S. Labor Solidarity Tour. For his writings and information on the June 2008 conference, How Class Works, to be held in Stony Brook, see www.workingclass.sunysb.edu.