Hakima Abbas is a revolutionary. When she closes her eyes, she can see, taste and feel the warmth of liberation in the breeze. She aspires to tending the land, dancing with the ocean and be surrounded by the laughter of children.
Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson. He is co-editor of this volume along with Ajamu Nangwaya.
Kate Aronoff is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer, the Communications Coordinator for the New Economy Coalition, and a co-founder of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, Dissent and The New York Times.
Ajamu Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the US and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the US for more than 25 years. Baraka was the Founding Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) from July 2004 until June 2011. Ajamu served as the Green Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2016 election. He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch.
Sara Bernard is a former Grist fellow, wilderness junkie, and globetrotter.
Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a Los Angeles-based writer who is the author of No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant (2014) and Reparations…Not Yet: A Case for Reparations and Why We Must Wait (2015). Thandisizwe is committed to infusing radical Black feminist/womanist politics within revolutionary nationalism, which she believes is key to destroying capitalism patriarchy and white supremacy, has been informed by the political thoughts and/or practice of Aminata Umoja, Assata Shakur, Pearl Cleage, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Queen Mother Moore, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Claudia Jones, Ida B Wells and the “Amazons” of Dahomey.
Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, advocating a mixture of market socialism and worker ownership.
Bruce A Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. He served seven years on the board of a 480 unit housing cooperative in Chicago, and now lives and works near Marietta GA. He can be reached via this site’s contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
Laura Flanders is an English broadcast journalist living in the United States, who presents the weekly, long-form interview show The Laura Flanders Show.
Kamau Franklin has worked as a community activist for over fifteen years in New York City and is now based in the US American south. In addition to his work as an activist attorney, he is a leading member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an organization dedicated to human rights advocacy and building grassroots institutions in the Black community. The organization works on various issues including youth development, fighting police misconduct, and creating sustainable urban communities. Kamau has helped develop community cop-watch programs, freedom school programs for youth and alternatives to incarceration programs.
Katie Gilbert lives in Chicago. She has written for Al Jazeera America, the Atlantic, Pacific Standard, and others.
Sacajawea “saki” Hall is a radical Black feminist activist, mother, birth-worker, educator and journalist who loves crafting. She sees her life’s work as engaging in the collective struggle for African liberation, human rights and social transformation. She is a native Lower East Side New Yorker who migrated to Jackson, Mississippi, in December 2013 to help advance the Jackson-–Kush Plan. She is a founding member of Cooperation Jackson.
Chokwe Lumumba (August 2, 1947—February 25, 2014) was an attorney and politician, affiliated with the Republic of New Afrika and serving as its second vice president. He served as a human rights lawyer in Michigan and Mississippi. In 2013, after serving on the City Council, he was elected as Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, as Edwin Finley Taliaferro, and was raised there, attending local schools.
Rukia Lumumba is Founder of the People’s Advocacy Institute and campaign manager for the successful Committee to Elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba for Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Rukia Lumumba is a transformative justice strategist and community organizer. Named a “New Activist” by Essence Magazine and an “Emerging Leader” by the Congressional Black Caucus, the daughter of community justice icon the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba and Nubia Lumumba, Rukia continues the Lumumba family’s rich history of advancing issues and initiatives that elevate the legal, economical, health and educational rights of individuals, families and communities.
Ajamu Nangwaya, PhD., is an educator, organizer and writer. He is a lecturer in the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. Ajamu is co-editor with Dr. Michael Truscello of the recently published anthology Why Don’t The Poor Rise Up? Organizing the Twenty-First Century Resistance. He is co-editor of this volume along with Kali Akuno.
Jessica Gordon Nembhard, PhD is Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies, John Jay College, City University of New York, and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, Penn State University Press, 2014.
Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author. He works at the Center for Pan-African Development, Positive Action Center
Michael Siegel is a civil and human rights lawyer who lives in Austin, Texas.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin Magazine.
Makani Themba-Nixon is executive director of the Praxis Project, a media and policy advocacy center based in Washington, DC.
Jazmine Walker is from Jackson, Mississippi, and currently lives in Washington, D.C. As a native southerner, she is committed to strengthening southern leadership and organizational capacities. Jazmine is committed to strengthening leadership and organizational capacities to increase communities’ effectiveness and deepen the impact of their work. Her vision is to build resources across social justice movements and develop alternative economies that dismantle systematic oppression that harms and excludes communities of color.
Elandria Williams is on the Education team at the Highlander Research and Education Center, a social justice and movement leadership, strategy and cultural center, where she has worked since 2007. Elandria helps co-coordinate the Economics and Governance program at Highlander and is a co-editor of Beautiful Solutions. Beautiful Solutions is a project that is gathering some of the most promising and contagious stories, solutions, strategies and big questions for building a more just, democratic, and resilient world. Elandria also serves on the boards of the Southern Reparations Loan Fund (SRLF), US Solidarity Economy Network, Appalachian Studies Association, is a founding member of the Black Immigration Network and on the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table. Highlander also is an anchor for the Media Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) and doing some work around Movement Technologists.