Confirmed Speakers 
** Affiliations listed for identification purposes only **
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Special Guests from the struggles rocking Egypt today! Download flyer for Saturday night rally - "Class Struggles & Resistance in the Middle East." |
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| Laila al-Arian Laila al-Arian is a journalist and the daughter of Sami al-Arian, a Palestinian professor who was imprisoned more than five years ago by the U.S. government, most of the time kept in solitary confinement, for speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli apartheid state. Laila has been an active campaigner and spokesperson on her father's behalf. |
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Anthony Arnove Anthony Arnove is the author of the acclaimed Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal and the editor, with Howard Zinn, of Voices of a People's History of the United States (Seven Stories). He is also editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (South End/Pluto). An activist based on Brooklyn, New York, he is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books, and is a member of the National Writers Union and the International Socialist Organization. He also has contributed to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Books) and has written for Z Magazine, the Nation, In These Times, Monthly Review, and other publications. |
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Alan Bean Alan Bean is the executive director of Friends of Justice, a criminal justice reform organization formed in response to the infamous Tulia, Texas, drug sting of 1999, in which over half of Tulia’s Black males were arrested and convicted on the uncorroborated word of a corrupt and racist undercover narcotics officer. Bean, a local Baptist minister, played a key role in organizing to expose the Tulia travesty and working to free the defendants. Bean became a key organizer to free the Jena 6, Black high school students facing criminal prosecution for defying racist injustice in Louisiana. |
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Barbara Becnel Barbara Becnel worked for 13 years with Stanley Tookie Williams, death row prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, to edit and publish his award-winning series of books for at-risk children. She co-produced the award-winning TV film Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story, based on her partnership with Stanley Tookie Williams. She was Stan's advocate and friend, and organized an international campaign for clemency until he was killed by the State of California on December 13, 2005. She witnessed his execution. |
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Moazzam Begg Moazzam Begg was born 40 years ago in Birmingham to secular Muslim parents. His mother died when he was six, and his father sent him to the Jewish King David school in Birmingham , because he thought it inculcated good values. In his 20s Begg became more interested in politics – Islamic politics. He never fitted one dogma neatly – conservative when it came to family values, leftist when it came to issues of equality. read more |
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Dr. John Carlos In 1968, John Carlos became one half of perhaps the most famous (or infamous) moment in Olympic history. After winning the bronze medal in the 200-meter dash, he and gold medalist Tommie Smith, raised their fists clad in black gloves in a display of "black power." It was a moment that defined the revolutionary spirit and defiance of a generation. He told Dave Zirin in a 2003 interview, "You got to step up to society when it's letting all its people down." |
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| Justin Akers Chacón Justin Akers Chacón, a socialist and activist, is a professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies in San Diego, California. He is the co-author (with Mike Davis) of No One is Illegal He has contributed to the International Socialist Review and the book Immigration: Opposing Viewpoints. |
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Paul D'Amato Paul D'Amato is the managing editor of the International Socialist Review and author of The Meaning of Marxism (Haymarket Books). He writes a biweekly column for Socialist Worker, also called The Meaning of Marxism. |
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Samuel Farber Samuel Farber is a long-time socialist born and raised in Cuba. He is the author of numerous works on that country including The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered published by University of North Carolina Press. |
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Lawrence Foster Kenneth Foster came within hours of his scheduled execution in August of 2007 before winning a commutation of his sentence from the Texas Governor. Lawrence Foster, Kenneth’s grandfather, was a critical part of the Save Kenneth Foster committee that organized events and protests that galvanized support for Kenneth. During the decade Kenneth was on death row, Lawrence always spoke out at rallies and demonstrations, not just for Kenneth but for others and for an end to the death penalty. |
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Josh Frank |
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| Phil Gasper Phil Gasper teaches at Notre Dame de Namur University in California. He is editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Roadmap to History's Most Important Political Document (Haymarket Books, 2005), a contributor to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Books, 2002), and The Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Lynne Reinner, forthcoming). His column Critical Thinking appears in the International Socialist Review. He is currently editing a collection of Lenin's and Bukharin's writings on imperialism and war. |
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Amira Hass Amira Hass lives in Ramallah in the West Bank, where she covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, making her the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live among the people about whom she reports. The child of Holocaust survivors, Hass was born in Jerusalem in 1956 and studied history in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. After working as a teacher, she started her career in journalism in 1989 as a staff editor at Ha’aretz and began writing about the Palestinian Territories in 1991, undaunted by danger and criticism from both Israelis and Palestinians. She moved to Gaza in December 1993 after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements and settled in Ramallah in the West Bank in 1997. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege and Reporting From Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land. Hass is the recipient of the 2005 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize. Her work has been widely translated and published internationally. In Spring 2008, Haymarket Books published the diary of her mother’s time in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, with a new foreword and afterword by Amira Hass: Diary of Bergen-Belsen. |
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Dahr Jamail Dahr has spent a total of eight months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the Middle East, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. He writes for the Inter Press Service, the Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with the Nation, the Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com Web site and his popular mailing list to circulate his dispatches. |
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Adrienne Kinne Adrienne Kinne was an Arabic linguist who served in a U.S. Army military intelligence unit. She served on active duty from 1994 to 1998, then with the Army Reserve from 1998 to 2004 and was activated from 2001 to 2003. On May 13, 2008 she revealed that the US had listed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as a possible target prior to its attack that killed two journalists in 2003. Her disclosure casts further doubt on Pentagon claims that the killings were accidental and that US tanks were returning fire. She also disclosed that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq. Today, she is the northeast regional coordinator for Iraq Veterans Against the War. She works as a research health science specialist for a VA Medical Center. |
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Paul Le Blanc Paul Le Blanc has been involved in anti-war, anti-racist, and social justice efforts, as well as the labor and socialist movements, since the 1960s. Professor of History at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, his books include Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (1990), From Marx to Gramsci (1996), A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (1999), Rosa Luxemburg: Reflections and Writings (1999), and Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience (2006). He has just edited Lenin: Selected Writings on Revolution, Democracy, and Socialism, to be published by Pluto Press later this year. |
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| Marlene Martin National Director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Marlene Martin has been organizing against the death penalty for a decade. Her articles appear in Counterpunch, The New Abolitionist and the International Socialist Review. |
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Camilo Mejía The first U.S. soldier to go public with his refusal to fight Bush's war in Iraq, Camilo Mejía was sentenced to a bad conduct discharge and one year of hard labor. Mejía participated in the invasion of Iraq. After a two-week furlough last October, he refused to return to his unit because he believed the war was unjust, arguing that "no soldier should go to Iraq and give his life for oil." Since his release in February 2005, Camilo, a member of IVAW, has organized tirelessly against the war in Iraq. He has written a forthcoming book, Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejía. |
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Mohammed Omer Mohammed Omer is an award-winning journalist living and working in Gaza, Palestine. He writes and photographs the impact of the U.S.-sponsored Israeli occupation. His reporting appears on the BBC, in the Independent (UK), New Statesman, electronicintifada, Democracy Now! and elsewhere. You can see some of Mohammed's writings and photos on his blog at www.rafahtoday.org. |
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Jeffery St. Clair Jeffrey St. Clair is the co-editor, with Alexander Cockburn, of the political newsletter CounterPunch, and a contributing editor to the monthly magazine In These Times. His reporting specializes in environmental and military issues. In 1998, he published his first book, with Cockburn, Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, a history of the CIA's ties to drug gangs from World War II to the Mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras. This was followed by A Field Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (with James Ridgeway), Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond, Al Gore: a User's Manual, and Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature. He is co-editor, with Josh Frank, of the forthcoming Red State Rebels. |
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Yusef Salaam Yusef Salaam was released from prison in 2002, after serving serving six and a half years in prison for a crime he did not commit. In 1989, five Black and Latino youths were accused of brutally raping a woman as she jogged in New York's Central Park. Police claimed that confessions and evidence proved the five's guilt, and the press ran a frenzied campaign calling the accused a "teen wolfpack." Yusef Salaam was one of the five who were sentenced from five to 11 years in prison. Thirteen years later, the five were exonerated. The case collapsed when it was revealed that it was based on coerced confessions and fabricated evidence, and that DNA testing pointed to another suspect. |
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Jeremy Scahill Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning investigative journalist. His book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (his first book) is number 9 on the New York Times bestseller list. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and television show Democracy Now! Scahill has reported extensively from Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Nigeria. |
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Ahmed Shawki Editor, International Socialist Review and author of Black Liberation and Socialism. His articles include "Between Things Ended and Things Begun" and "80 years since the Russian Revolution." |
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Sharon Smith Sharon Smith writes a biweekly column Socialist Worker called "Which Side Are You On?", and she is author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States and Women and Socialism. She has also authored several articles for the International Socialist Review, and many of her articles appear in Counterpunch. |
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Mark Steel Left-wing British comedian Mark Steel has performed as a stand-up since 1983, and has written and performed four popular series for television and radio, and he writes a weekly column for the Independent. He is author of Vive la Revolution: A Standup History of the French Revolution (Haymarket, 2006), and Reasons to Be Cheerful (Simon & Schuster, 2002). |
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Salam Talib Salam Talib is a journalist and computer engineer from Iraq who is currently attending graduate school in San Francisco. Independently and in collaboration with Dahr Jamail and other freelance journalists, he has filed hundreds of stories with Free Speech Radio about the situation on the ground in Iraq. His writings have been featured in The Nation, Common Dreams, and Antiwar.com. Since the most recent invasion of Iraq began, Salam has also been active designing databases for numerous NGOs which work with disabled Iraqis, and he recently worked to build a wheelchair factory in Iraq, with an NGO cooperating with Whirlwind Wheelchair of San Francisco State University to help disabled Iraqis. |
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Dave Zirin Dave is a radical sports editor, writer and columnist for Nation.com, and a columnist for SportsIllustrated.com, the Progressive and other media. He is author of What's My Name Fool?, The Muhammad Ali Handbook and Welcome to the Terrordome. His columns and articles can be found at www.edgeofsports.com. Howard Zinn said of Zirin, "It is so refreshing to have a sports writer who writes with such verve and intelligence, who also has a social conscience,and who refuses to keep those parts of his life separate." He is author of the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the US. |
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