// Contributors

Aarti Shahani

Aarti Shahani is an organizer and political commentator. She co-founded and for five years co-directed Families for Freedom, the nation’s first defense network by and for immigrants facing deportation. Aarti is an adjunct professor at New York University, and a researcher with the non-partisan criminal justice institute Justice Strategies. She was the lead author of “Local Democracy on ICE,” a groundbreaking report on the fusion of civil immigration and criminal law enforcement. Her work has been documented in the congressional record, and cited by media included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Arizona Republic, Univision, PBS, the Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, and the Los Angeles Times. Aarti has published articles with Columbia University Press, the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Color Lines, El Diario La Prensa, Caribbean Life, The Progressive, New American Media, and LeftTurn. She regularly comments on immigration for Democracy Now! She has received the New Voices Fellowship from the Ford Foundation; the Charles H. Revson Fellowship from Columbia University; the Union Square Award; and the Public Service Fellowship from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was raised in Flushing, Queens.

Upgrade Contributions:

Democracy off ICE (November 2009)

How & Why Latino Netroots Activists Targeted Lou Dobbs (January 2010)

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Ai-jen Poo

Ai-jen has been organizing immigrant women workers in New York since 1996. From 2000-2009 she served as the first staff and Lead Organizer for Domestic Workers United, an organization of nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in New York organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build a movement to end oppression for all. DWU helped to organize the first national meeting of domestic workers organizations at the US Social Forum in 2007, which resulted in the formation of the National Domestic Worker Alliance. Ai-jen also serves on the Board of Social Justice Leadership, the Labor Advisory Board at Cornell ILR School, and the editorial board of the New Labor Forum. She is currently on a writing sabbatical.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

Organizing With Love (February 2010)

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Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Bill got his start in the labor movement as a rank & file member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America. Combining labor and community work, he was also involved in ongoing efforts to desegregate the Boston building trades. He served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. Bill’s union staff experience also included the Service Employees International Union, where his last position was Assistant to the President for the East and South. He served as the Organizational Secretary/Administrative Director for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Prior to the Mail Handler’s Union, Bill was an organizer for District 65-United Auto Workers in Boston, Massachusetts. From January 2002 through April 2006 he served as the President and chief executive officer of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for policies in favor of the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Bill received his undergraduate education at Harvard University and his Masters from Brooklyn College-City University of New York. He has authored numerous articles published in a variety of books, newspapers and magazines. He is also the co-author of the pictorial booklet: The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941. He is the co-author, with Fernando Gapasin, of the book Solidarity Divided (University of California Press, 2008) which examines the crisis of organized labor in the United States. He also serves as the executive editor of BlackCommentator.com (www.blackcommentator.com). Bill was the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York. While in Boston, Bill served as an adjunct faculty member with the Labor Studies Program of the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Upgrade Contributions:

What We Need To Do (October 2009)

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Cindy Wiesner

Cindy Wiesner, is a queer working class Latina originally from Hollywood, CA. A community activist and organizer for the last 20 years. She has organized with HERE (Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union) Local 2850 and POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights). She worked as a trainer and organizer for GenerationFIVE. Has served on the boards of the Youth Empowerment Center, Women of Color Resource Center and GenerationFIVE. Cindy was also the leadership development director at the Miami Workers Center and currently is the political coordinator for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). She represents GGJ on the National Planning Committee of the US Social Forum and also on the Hemispheric Council of the Americas Social Forum and the International Council of the World Social Forum.

Upgrade Contributions:

On the 2010 Social Forum (March 2010)

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David Harvey

David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital for nearly 40 years.

Upgrade Contributions:

Organizing Towards the Anti-Capitalist Transition (March 2010)

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Gihan Perera

Gihan Perera is a nationally recognized progressive strategist, community organizer, and leader in the US social justice movement.. He is co-founder and Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center, a community organizing institution for low-income Black and Latino communities in South Florida. Gihan also serves as Chair of Right to the City, a national alliance across eight urban centers of the U.S. dedicated to expanding human rights and democracy in the city. Perera is a regular contributor to The Miami Herald and The Huffington Post and featured in national publication and events exploring urban poverty, racial disparities, civic engagement and social justice in the U.S.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

Get in the Game! (December 2009)

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Hashim Yeomans-Benford

Hashim is currently a lead organizer at the Miami Workers Center. Before moving to Miami in 2006 he was actively engaged in campus organizing at Emerson College in Boston. In addition to his paid political work, Hashim engages in various revolutionary spaces with comrades from Miami and around the country.

Upgrade Contributions:

Rooted in Love (February 2010)

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Kristin Campbell

Kristin Campbell is a founding member of the Coalition to Save the Libraries, a multi-racial organization whose goal is to build power in working neighborhoods across Philadelphia by putting grassroots leaders, who use their library branch as organizing bases, in conversation with one another. Although she was born and raised in Philadelphia, from 2002-2006 Kristin engaged in anti-war, global justice and student-labor organizing on New York University’s campus in New York City. She is currently involved in grassroots fundraising work with the Media Mobilizing Project, an organization that facilitates communication and grassroots media production among local organizations fighting for the interests of poor and working people in Philadelphia.

Upgrade Contributions:

Engaging the Crisis (March 2010)

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Makani Themba-Nixon

Makani Themba-Nixon is executive director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance equity and social justice. A nationally known organizer and trainer, she has published numerous pieces on race, media, policy advocacy and public health, including Making Policy, Making Change, Media Advocacy and Public Health (co-author) and Talking the Walk: Communications Guide for Racial Justice.

Upgrade Contributions:

We Need a New Division of Labor (January 2010)

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Marisa Franco

Marisa is the Lead Organizer with the Right to the City Alliance, a national alliance of grassroots organizations working for urban justice. Prior to working at Right to the City, Marisa worked as an organizer at POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) in San Francisco where she focused on building the Women Worker’s Project. Marisa was one of the authors of Towards Land, Work and Power: Charting a Path of Resistance to U.S.-led Imperialism. Marisa also worked briefly with Domestic Workers United in New York City.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

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Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan is Strategic Initiatives Coordinator of Movement Generation. Movement Generation provides in-depth information and analysis about the global ecological crisis and facilitates strategic planning for action among leading organizers from organizations working for economic and racial justice in urban communities of color. Prior to her work with MG, Michelle was Co-Director of the School of Unity and Liberation, a movement-building training center based in Oakland, California. Prior to that, she worked for more than a decade towards food justice in working-class communities of color. Michelle co-founded and served as director of the Center for Food and Justice in Los Angeles from 1997 through 2001, helping to develop farm-to-school programs nationally and organizing campaigns for food justice in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Michelle was also a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She is the proud mama of two amazing kids.

Upgrade Contributions:

Window to a New World (January 2010)

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Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat is a Palestinian attorney and activist. She is currently an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University. Most recently she served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives. Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Noura received a New Voices Fellowship to work as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where she helped seed BDS campaigns nationally as well as support the cases brought against two former Israeli officials in U.S. federal courts for alleged war crimes. Prior to attending law school, she helped launch the divestment campaign along with the Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley. Noura holds law and undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. She has worked and studied in Israel and Palestine: she interned at Adalah: The Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; studied at Hebrew University ; and volunteered in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Lebanon. She has helped to organize several national conferences including AMWAJ-Arab Women Arising for Justice and the U.S. Palestinian Popular Conference. Noura has appeared on Fox’s “The O’ Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Politically Incorrect,” MSNBC, and Al-Jazeera International. Her forthcoming publications include: “Litigating the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Politicization of U.S. Federal Courts” in the Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law and “Arabiya Made Invisible: Between the Marginalization of Agency and the Silencing of Diseent” in a Syracuse Press anthology. In February 2009 she participated in a National Lawyers Guild fact-finding mission to Gaza.

Upgrade Contributions:

Solidarity Beyond Rhetoric (December 2009)

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Roberto Lovato

Roberto Lovato is a New York-based writer with New America Media and a frequent contributor to The Nation Magazine. He’s also written for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Der Spiegel, Utne Magazine, La Opinion, and other national and international media outlets. He has also appeared as a source and commentator on English and Spanish language network news shows on Univision, CNN, PBS and other programs and made a recent appearance on Bill Moyers Journal. On the creative electronic front, Roberto has produced programming for NPR, Pacifica and the Univision Television Network, where he helped develop and produce Hora Cero, one of that networks first documentary series about immigration in the United States. Prior to becoming a writer, Lovato was the former Executive Director of CARECEN, which was the largest immigrant rights organization in the country. You can find him posting regularly on media, migration, politics and other issues at his blog, Of America.

Upgrade Contributions:

How & Why Latino Netroots Activists Targeted Lou Dobbs (January 2010)

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Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin Kelley is currently a professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. A long-time scholar of social movements with a focus on radical African American working class struggles, Robin Kelley has pioneered a vibrant and open approach to Marxist theory and social movement history. His best-known books include: Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990), Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (1994), Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997), Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002) and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009). Resisting the pull towards the ivory tower, Robin has maintained close relationships with grassroots organizations rooted in working class communities of color around the country.

Upgrade Contributions:

Finding the Strength to Love and Dream (February 2010)

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Steve Williams

Steve Williams is the founder and Co-Director of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), a San Francisco-based membership organization of low-income and working class African Americans and immigrant Latina women fighting for racial, gender and economic justice. Before beginning to work with POWER, Steve cut his teeth as an organizer with the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness and the Philadelphia Union of the Homeless. In addition to his organizing work with POWER, Steve has been active in various efforts to re-build and strengthen the Left in the United States. In 2005 with three of his POWER co-workers, Steve authored Towards Land, Work and Power: Charting a Path of Resistance to U.S.-led Imperialism, a political economy and strategy primer for conscious organizers.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

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Terry Marshall

Terry Marshall has been involved in youth and social justice struggles for the past 13 yrs with Direct Action experience from 1998 Student Take over of Roxbury Community College in Boston to people of color formations in Seattle 1999 and RNC 2000. In 2005 he founded the Hip-Hop Media Lab, an intermediary that uses culture and new media to organize social networks. Today Terry is the Lead Youth Organizer for the Healthcare Education Project (1199SEIU), a Blogger for the Octavian Principle and enjoys being a heretic of the Left.

Upgrade Contributions:

It’s All About Hegemony (December 2009)

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Tiffany Yeomans-Benford

Tiffany Yeomans is currently a senior at Florida International University. She is Women’s Studies major with a minor in Sociology, and a certificate in Africa and African Diaspora Studies. In spring 2007 through spring 2008, she served as President for Iota Iota Iota, and the organization was responsible for the beginning of Feminist Film Nights, The Jackie Payne Event, and I love the F-Word Women’s Studies Conference of 2008, at Florida International University. Currently Tiffany is a member of the Women and Youth Organizing Committee of the Miami Workers Center. This year she he has been asked to sit on the executive board for the Women’s Emergency Network, as the first young Latina to have this honor.

Upgrade Contributions:

Rooted in Love (February 2010)

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Willie Baptist

Willie is a formerly homeless father who came out of the Watts uprisings, the Black Student Movement, and working as a lead organizer with the United Steelworkers. He has 40 years of experience organizing amongst the poor including with the National Union of the Homeless, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, the National Welfare Rights Union, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, and many other networks. Willie serves as the Poverty Initiative Scholar-in-Residence and is the Coordinator of the Poverty Scholars Program.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

It’s Not Enough to be Angry (November 2009)

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Harmony Goldberg

A founding member of SOUL: School of Unity & Liberation in Oakland, Harmony Goldberg has run left political education programs for grassroots organizations in the Bay Area and New York City for more than a decade. She is currently a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and she continues to support grassroots organizations and the broader left as a popular educator, writer and facilitator.

Upgrade Contributions:

Left Strategies from the Grassroots Roundtable (October 2009)

E-mail:

harmony@ organizingupgrade.com

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Sushma Sheth

Sushma Sheth is a communications strategist and organizer. In 2001, she returned to her hometown to join the Miami Workers Center, an emerging grassroots organizing and progressive strategy center. She jump started the strategic communications program, directed staff and programs, as well as convened regional coalitions to move progressive initiatives in Miami. Sushma was awarded the 2002 New Voices Fellowship and named 2007 Miami Fellow and “Top 25 Power Women of Miami” in 2006. Currently, Sushma is a graduate student as a 2009 Soros New American Fellow at the Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Kennedy School. She supports social movements and institutions, including the national Right to the City Alliance, as a strategic communications and planning consultant, writer, and facilitator.

E-mail:

sushma@ organizingupgrade.com

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Joseph Phelan

Joseph Phelan has been active in left movement work for the last decade. Originally from New York he cut his teeth in the global justice movement as an activist and agitator, was grounded in organizing in the CUNY student movement, and now builds the capacity of grassroots leaders to tell their own stories to the world as the Communications Coordinator for the Miami Workers Center. And he wants to win.

E-mail:

joseph@ organizingupgrade.com

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Watch out for future pieces from incredible leaders and organizers including:

Adrianne Shropshire & Ng’ethe Maina

James Mumm

Maria Poblet & Adam Gold

…and many more!

// Contributors

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Ai-jen Poo

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Bill Fletcher, Jr.

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Cindy Wiesner

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David Harvey

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Gihan Perera

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Hashim Yeomans-Benford

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Kristin Campbell

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Makani Themba-Nixon

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Marisa Franco

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Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan

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Noura Erakat

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Roberto Lovato

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Robin D.G. Kelley

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Steve Williams

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Terry Marshall

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Tiffany Yeomans-Benford

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Willie Baptist

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Harmony Goldberg

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Sushma Sheth