Category Archives: Events

LOVE IN ACTION’S LIST OF ACTIVISTS, WHISTLEBLOWERS, MUCKRAKERS/ JOURNALISTS & LOCAL ACTIVISTS

(This is only a partial listing. Links will be added later, and any typos will be corrected. At the time of this posting, we are on our way to the parade.)

Activists

Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change, or stasis. Various forms of activism range from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing businesses, rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, and hunger strikes.

Susan B. Anthony (1820 – 1906) – Quaker suffragist, women’s rights activist, abolitionist, temperance advocate, convicted for voting in 1872, along with E.C. Stanton wrote/presented what became the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote) in 1920.

Judi Bari (1949 – 1997) – environmentalist, labor leader – organized wildcat strike for postal service, feminist/protected abortion clinics, principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging ancient redwoods in CA that united timber workers and environmentalists, severely injured in Oakland by pipe bomb placed in her car (unsolved), Vietnam & Central American war protester, wrote Revolutionary Ecology: Biocentrism & Deep Ecology.

Medea Benjamin (1952 – ) co-founder of Code Pink (anti-war/social activism) and Global Exchange (fair trade alternatives), CA Green Party Senate candidate, created Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad to monitor war’s effect on civilians, author of 10 political books, her most recent is Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (2012).

Daniel Berrigan (1921 – ) – Jesuit priest, counterculture peace activist, and poet. He was arrested for non-violent protest against Vietnam War and sentenced to six years in prison. He went to Hanoi with H. Zinn to “receive” POWs. Berrigan helped destroy 378 draft board files (Catonsville Nine) and was sentenced to three years in prison. He helped begin the Plowshares Movement. He damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood on documents (2 year sentence). He protested Central American intervention, the Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War, but he supported Occupy Movement.

Philip Berrigan (1923 – 2002) – brother of Daniel Berrigan, WW II veteran, Josephite priest, Civil Rights Movement activist: marches, boycotts, Vietnam War protester. He was one of Baltimore Four who occupied Selective Service Board, poured blood over records. He was a member of: Catonsville Nine and Harrisburg Seven. He organized the Catholic Left that initiated: the DC (DowChemical) Nine who protested napalm production, the Milwaukee 14/the New York Action/ the Chicago 15/ the Boston Eight/ the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, and the Buffalo Five (draft board protests). He joined the Camden 28 who protested J. Edgar Hoover’s treatment of protestors. He married Sister Elizabeth McAlister, founded Jonah House (war resistance), was a member of the Plowshares Movement, was imprisoned for hammering on Warthog warplanes, and served a total of 11years in prison for civil disobedience. He authored five books about his activism.

Grace Lee Boggs (1915 – ) – PhD, author of five books, lifelong social activist and feminist, subject of 2013 documentary American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. Although Chinese-American, she married an African American and focused on struggles in the African-American community in Detroit.

Tangerine Bolen – founder and executive producer of Revolution Truth, a citizen-driven first amendment campaign inspired by WikiLeaks. She is a lead plaintiff along with Chris Hedges and six other co-plaintiffs in civil lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act which gives the president the power to hold any US citizen anywhere indefinitely without charge or trial. She’s a supporter of the Occupy Movement.

Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) – a Mexican-American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, along with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the United Farm Workers Union. His non-violent unionism created a moral cause with nationwide support. He popularized “Si, se puede.” He and the NFWA led a strike of CA grape pickers who marched from Delano to Sacramento. The strike lasted five years.

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980) – suffragette, socialist, pacifist, established the Catholic Worker Movement
that provided direct aid for the poor and nonviolent direct action on their behalf. Editor of
Catholic Worker newspaper from 1935 to 1980.

John Dear (1959 – ) Jesuit priest, author of 30 books, has popular lecture circuit. He founded DC Schools Project for Salvadoran Youth. He was arrested for civil disobedience at the Pentagon (1984) and for Plowshares disarmament action in NC (1993) for which he was imprisoned. He’s director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, peace delegations to Iraq and peace conferences with Israeli/Palestinian peace activists. He organized the People’s Campaign for Nonviolence and formed Pax Christi New Mexico. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and performed an act of repentance at Los Alamos. He was arrested at a drone protest and participated in the Gaza Freedom March. He has been arrested over 75 times[1][2] in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice and nuclear weapons. Peace and nonviolent commitment: He founded Bay Area Pax Christi, a region of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, and began to arrange for Mother Teresa to intervene with various governors on behalf of people scheduled to be executed on death row. Throughout the years, John Dear was arrested in scores of nonviolent civil disobedience actions against war, injustice and nuclear weapons—from the Pentagon to Livermore Laboratories in California. Immediately after September 11, 2001, he served as a Red Cross coordinator of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center in Manhattan, and personally counseled thousands of relatives and rescue workers. From 2002-2004, he served as pastor to five parishes in the high desert of northeastern New Mexico, and founded Pax Christi New Mexico, a region of Pax Christi USA. In 2006, he led a demonstration against the U.S. war in Iraq in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2009, he joined the Creech 14 in a civil disobedience protest at Creech Air Force base against the U.S. drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was arrested and put in the Clark County, Nevada jail for a night. He was later found guilty but given time served.

Eugene V. Debs (1855 – 1926) – union leader, founding member of IWW, five time candidate of the
Socialist Party. He helped found the American Railway Union, called for a nationwide Pullman Strike, and served six months in prison for defying court injunctions.

Margaret Flowers, M.D. – pediatrician who left her medical practice in 2007 to advocate for single payer health care. She co-directs ItsOurEconomy.us. She has organized protests for health care, peace, and economic justice, and has been arrested for non-violent resistance.

Larry Gibson (1946 – 2012) renowned anti-mining environmentalist from West Virginia who spent
most of his adult life opposing mountaintop coal mining. Attempts on his life and offers of millions from mining companies to stop his activism did not deter him.

Vincent Harding (1931 – 2014) – African American historian and social activist in the Civil Rights
Movement who knew and wrote about Martin Luther King. He was co-chair of Veterans of Hope Project and Mennonite House, and worked as counselor/reconciler for anti-segregation campaigns of SCLD, SNCC, and CORE. He drafted King’s anti-Vietnam speech.

Julia Butterfly Hill (1974 – ) – environmental activist and tax redirection advocate best know for living
in a 180 foot redwood named Luna on two 6 x 6 platforms for 738 days (1997-1999) to prevent loggers from cutting it down. Pacific Lumber finally agreed to preserve Luna and all trees within a 200 foot buffer zone. Donations to her cause were used for research into sustainable forestry. Hill became a motivational speaker, author, and co-founder of Circle of Life Foundation and the Engage Network to promote social change.

Dolores Huerta (1930 – ) – labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm
Workers along with Cesar Chavez. She directed the Delano grape strike that led to a 3 year
collective bargaining agreement and was arrested 22 times in civil disobedience strikes. She was beaten with batons by San Francisco police during a peaceful protest against Bush’s policies. Proceeds from her suit went to farm workers. Her two year tour to promote the Feminization of Power led to a significant increase in women as political representatives.

Mother Jones (1837 – 1930) – Irish American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent
labor and community organizer after her husband and four children died of yellow fever. She organized mine workers against mine owners and coordinated strikes. She co-founded the IWW and organized a Children’s March to protest lax enforcement of child labor laws. She was arrested twice but eventually met with Rockefeller who introduced child labor reforms.

Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) – author, political activist, and lecturer. A member of the Socialist Party and the IWW, she campaigned for woman’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, pacifism, birth control,
and people with disabilities.

Kathy Kelly ( 1952 – ) – Chicago peace activist, author, founder of Voices in the Wilderness and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has traveled to Iraq 26 times and has been arrested more than 60 times. She supports victims of military bombardment and inmates of US prisons.

Dr. Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968) – pastor, activist, orator, humanitarian, and leader of the Civil
Rights Movement and its use of nonviolent civil disobedience. He helped found the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Birmingham protests,
and the March on Washington. He received the Nobel Peace Prize. His focus expanded to
poverty, segregated housing in Chicago, and opposition to the Vietnam War. He was
assassinated while working on the Poor People’s Campaign.

Winona LaDuke (1959 – American Indian (Anishinaabe tribe) activist, environmentalist, and economist who ran for vice president under the Green Party in 1996 and 2000. She directs White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth. She helped found the Indigenous Women’s Network and works to regain reservation land lost in the 19th century. She is of Anishinaabe background on her father’s side and Jewish background on her mother’s. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the Green Party of the United States, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader.

James Lawson (1928 – ) – activist and university professor, and leading theoretician/tactician of nonviolence within the American Civil Rights Movement. He has been training activists in nonviolence since the 1960s, including the Nashville Student Movement and the SNCC.

Thomas Linzey – environmental lawyer who did legal internship at the EPA and has led the fight against environment-destroying corporations; co-founder and executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF); co-author of Be the Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community. He created the Democracy School in 2003 and helped draft the Ecuadoran constitution that grants nature the inalienable right to exist.

Joanna Macy (1929 – ) – an environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is the author of eight books; one of the world’s leading sustainability educators,she is an adjunct professor to three Bay area graduate schools.

Keith McHenry – author, artist, and co-founder of Food Not Bombs, he and his nationwide network of supporters have fed the hungry for free for 30 years. Arrested in San Francisco for “making a political statement,” he spent two years in jail. He wrote Hungry for Peace – How You can Help End Poverty and War with Food Not Bombs. He writes about other social justice issues as well.

Michael Nagler (1937 – ) – academic and peace activist. As a UC Berkeley professor, he founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. He co-chairs the Peace and Justice Studies Association and is on the advisory board of the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FIPP-USA). He is currently president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education and writes for New Clear Vision.

Bill Moyers (1934 – ) journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary for Johnson 1965 – 1967 and as a network TV news commentator for ten years. He has been very involved in public broadcasting, producing award-winning documentaries and news journal programs. He is a trenchant critic of the corporate news media.

Bill Moyer (not to be confused with the other Bill Moyer) is the founder of Backbone Campaign and has been involved in too many projects to enumerate at this moment. (Come back later, we’ll post more. We like Bill.)

Bill Moyer (September 17, 1933 – October 21, 2002), was a United States social change activist who was a principal organizer in the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He was an author, and a founding member of the Movement for a New Society.

Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005) – an African American civil rights activist. In 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger after the white section was filled. She was arrested for violating Alabama segregation laws and thereby became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. She was fired from her seamstress job and moved to Detroit. From 1965 – 1988, she was the secretary /receptionist for John Conyers, an African American US Representative.

Peace Pilgrim (1908 – 1981) – aka Mildred Norman, was a spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist, vegetarian activist, and peace activist. After a spiritual awakening following long meditation, she adopted the name Peace Pilgrim in 1953 and walked back and forth across the United States for the next 28 years in her blue tunic which read Peace Pilgrim. She had no money or backing so she walked until given shelter and fasted until given food. Friends of Peace Pilgrim, an all volunteer, non-profit organization, has published over 400,000 copies of Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in her Own Words and a million copies of her booklet Steps Toward Inner Peace.

Laura Poitras (1964 – ) – documentary film director and producer. She and Glenn Greenwald met Edward Snowden in Hong Kong to document his leak of NSA data. In 2013, she and Greenwald won the George Polk Award for national security reporting related to NSA disclosures.

Pancho Ramos Stierle – came to the US from Mexico to study astrophysics at UC Berkeley but left the doctoral program in protest when he realized his work would be used for nuclear weapons development. He was arrested while meditating during the dismantling of the Occupy Oakland Camp, and was turned over to Immigration and Customs custody rather than being released on bail. His activism focuses on human rights, nonviolence, restorative justice, moving past youth violence, immigration, permaculture/urban farming, and the development of a gift economy.

Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) – was an African American leader for civil rights, socialism, pacifism/non-violence, and gay rights. He initiated a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge segregation on interstate busing and helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen the leadership he saw in Martin Luther King. He promoted the philosophy of nonviolence he had observed while working with Gandhi’s movement in India and became a civil rights strategist from 1955 – 1968. He was a chief organizer of the March on Washington. He promoted the integration of unions and the unionization of African Americans. In the 1970s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay rights.

Pete Seeger (1919 – 2014) – was a folk singer and activist. Members of his group the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged singing protest music in support of disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, and environmental causes. He popularized the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” that became the anthem of the civil rights movement.

Cindy Sheehan (1957 – ) anti-war activist whose son Casey was killed in Iraq War. She conducted
extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside Bush’s Texas ranch called Camp Casey.
She ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008 and authored Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey
Through Heartache to Activism.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902) – suffragette, abolitionist. Her declaration at the Seneca Falls
Convention in 1848 was the start of the women’s rights movement that supported: parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce, birth control, and women’s suffrage. She supported the temperance movement. Author of The Woman’s Bible.

Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013) – computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and Internet Hacktivist.
He helped develop the web feed RSS, Creative Commons, web.py, and the social news site Reddit (his company Infogami merged with Reddit). He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 to learn more about online activism. As a Harvard research fellow, he studied institutional corruption and founded Demand Progress to oppose online piracy. After downloading academic articles to share with everyone, he was arrested and charged with computer fraud. This led to $1 million in fines and a potential 35-50 year prison sentence. Two days after the prosecution rejected his counter-offer, he hanged himself.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) – author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, historian, and transcendentalist. His essay Civil Disobedience was an argument for disobedience to an unjust state that influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. As an abolitionist, he delivered lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law, defended abolitionist John Brown, and participated in the Underground Railroad. He opposed the subjugation of Native Americans.

Sojourner Truth (1797 – 1883) – was an African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Born into slavery in NY and sold several times, she escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son who had been sold to an Alabama slave owner after NY had emancipated slaves, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She wrote about gender inequalities (“Ain’t I a Woman?”) and recruited black troops for the Union Army.

Stephanie Van Hook – is Executive Director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in CA and serves as the Director of Conflict Resolution service for the Green Shadow Cabinet. She has written numerous political articles.

Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931) – was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the US, showing readers that it was often a way to control or punish blacks under the guise of rape charges. She was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician, and traveled internationally on lecture tours.

Kevin Zeese (1955 – ) – has been a leader in the drug policy reform and peace movements (Democracy Rising, an organization that opposed the Iraq War) and in efforts to ensure a voter verified paper audit trail. He was a Maryland Green Party nominee for a US Senate seat. He was chief counsel for NORML in 1980 and its executive director from 1983 – 1986. He helped stop the spraying of herbicides on marijuana and became an advocate for medical marijuana. He is currently president of Common Sense for Drug Policy. He has worked to disbar lawyers who wrote memos used to justify torturous interrogations.

Whistleblowers

A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization.

William Binney – a formerly high-placed NSA intelligence official turned whistleblower who resigned in 2001 after more than 30 years of service. He spoke out on the NSA’s data collection policies and communication intercepts. He feels the NSA is in deliberate violation of the Constitution.

Erin Brockovich (1960 – ) is a legal clerk/environmental activist who built a case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company of California in 1993. The case alleged contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium, a chemical used to fight corrosion in the cooling towers. It percolated into the ground water and made residents sick. The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million.

Thomas Drake (1957 – ) is a former senior executive of the NSA. In 2010, the government alleged he “mishandled” documents to punish him for whistleblowing. He had disagreed with the choice of an intelligence collecting tool that violated privacy (violation of the 4th Amendment) and cost more than the alternative. The NSA later called the tool an expensive failure. Drake had given the Baltimore Sun some unclassified information for an article on waste, fraud, and abuse at the NSA. The FBI raided Drake’s home and his computers, documents and books were confiscated, but he was never charged with leaking classified material. He was indicted on lesser violations that could have led to 35 years in prison, but the charges were dropped at the last minute. Drake reportedly inspired Edward Snowden to leak information.

Sibel Edmonds (1970 – ) – a former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. She was fired for accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, suppressing intelligence, and endangering national security.

Daniel Ellsberg (1931 – ) – a former military analyst, he released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and other papers in 1971. It was a top secret study of government decision-making during the Vietnam War and it caused a great deal of controversy. The FBI illegally wiretapped Ellsberg and there was evidence of a break-in that led to the Watergate trial. Charges against Ellsberg were dismissed.

Brenda Hill – A jury found she did not slander the company that took her home away from her and then slapped her with a punitive $1.2 million slander suit. She had exposed the company’s failure to file official acknowledgments in home purchases and pay real estate excise taxes on those unrecorded sales. In response, Washington state passed a law in 1989 to protect whistleblowers with immunity from civil damages.

John Kiriakou (1964 – ) a former CIA analyst, was the first government official to confirm the use of
waterboarding of al-Quaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique. In 2012, he pled guilty to disclosing classified information about a fellow CIA officer and was convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act even though he never told the reporter the guilty officer’s name. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. CIA veterans have asked Obama to commute the sentence.

Private Chelsea Manning (1987 – ) born Bradley Edward Manning, was assigned in 2009 to an Army unit in Iraq as an intelligence analyst. Finding the intelligence data very disturbing and something the American public should know about, Manning blew the whistle and released a large amount of data to WikiLeaks: classified documents about the Baghdad airstrike and the Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, diplomatic cables, and Army reports. Her confidante, Adrian Lamo, turned her in. She was convicted in 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act, but evaded the most serious charge of aiding the enemy which could have led to a death sentence. She was sentenced to 35 years confinement with the possibility of parole in 8 years, and dishonorable discharge. She was held in solitary confinement with extremely harsh treatment from July 2010 to April 2011. Her long sentence shows how vulnerable whistleblowers are.

Jesselyn Radack (1970 – ) – a national security and human rights attorney with the Department of Justice, she disclosed that the FBI committed an ethics violation in their interrogation of John Walker Lindh (the “American Taliban” captured in Afghanistan) by not having an attorney present. She alleged that the Dept. of Justice tried to suppress that information. Lindh’s father had hired an attorney but Lindh was never told that. Ashcroft said he was Mirandized and hadn’t chosen a lawyer. Radack’s file was purged of all but three emails, including the one that states interviewing Lindh is not authorized by law. Radack’s disclosure of the retrieved emails may have led to a reduced sentence for Lindh. The Justice Dep’t. retaliated with a 15 month criminal investigation of Radack, even though no charge was ever specified, and that cost her her private sector job.

Karen Silkwood (1946 – 1974) – was a chemical technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to the health and safety of workers in an Oklahoma nuclear facility. In the summer of 1974, she testified to the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns. For three days in November, she was found to have high levels of contamination on her person and in her home. That month, while driving to meet a journalist and a union official, she died in a car accident under unclear circumstances. The jury found Kerr-McGee liable for Silkwood’s plutonium contamination.

Edward Snowden (1983 – ) – in 2013, Snowden disclosed thousands of classified documents that he acquired while working as an NSA contractor. He flew to Hong Kong where he released them to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, then revealed his identity in a video filmed by Poitras and published by The Guardian. The DOJ charged Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. His US passport was revoked so he remained stranded in the Moscow airport for 39 days as he applied to 21 countries for asylum. Russia finally granted him one year of temporary asylum. Snowden’s leaked documents uncovered the existence of numerous global surveillance programs run by the NSA.

Muckrakers/Journalists

The term muckraker refers to reform-minded journalists who write largely for popular magazines and online journals and continue a tradition of investigative journalism reporting; muckrakers often work to expose social ills and corporate and political corruption.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914) – a California journalist who worked for three San Francisco newspapers, Bierce took on the railroad giants. His muckraking campaign against Central Pacific Railroad, which controlled much of California”s economy and politics, went on for thirty years. In 1896, he covered the funding bill debate in Congress during which railroad officials attempted to avoid repaying millions of dollars in government loans.

Nellie Bly (1864 – 1922) – Nellie Bly was the pen name of journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane who conducted an expose in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. A pioneer in her field, she launched a new kind of investigative journalism.

Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) – In 1967, he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals. He came to be associated with the New Left and was arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. He has been a prolific writer of searing political criticism most of his life.

Amy Goodman (1957 – ) – In 1998, Goodman and Jeremy Scahill documented Chevron Corporation’s role in a confrontation between the Nigerian army and villagers who had seized oil rigs. Chevron helicoptered the Nigerian Navy and police to the oil platform occupied by villagers accusing Chevron of contaminating their land. Two protesters were killed and 11 were wounded. Their documentary on this won the George Polk Award. When President Clinton called her at WBAI in a get-out-the-vote message in 2000, she and a colleague challenged him for 28 minutes with questions about Leonard Peltier, racial profiling, the Iraq sanctions, Ralph Nader, the death penalty, NAFTA, Cuba, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clinton called her hostile and combative.

Juan Gonzalez – (1947 – ) – a progressive broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. He has been a columnist for the New York Daily News since 1987 and frequently co-hosts Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
Glenn Greenwald (1967 – ) – lawyer, journalist and author. He was a columnist for Guardian US and for Salon.com from 2007 – 2012. He became widely known and received the George Polk Award after The Guardian published the first of a series of reports on global surveillance based on classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden. The series won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Chris Hedges (1956 – ) – a renowned political journalist and author, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at the New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. He writes for Truthdig and is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. He has published 11 books on politics and religion.

Beau Hodai – a former In These Times staff writer, he is the founder of DBA Press, an online news publication. In 2010 – 2011, he provided research to the AFS Committee, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Private Corrections Working Groups. He has been on radio and television, and has partaken in two documentaries.

Michael Moore (1954 – ) – filmmaker, author, social critic, and political activist. He is the director and producer of numerous film exposes. His works criticize globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, US presidents, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism.
Greg Palast (1952 – ) – New York Times best-selling author and freelance journalist for the BBC and the British newspaper The Observer. his work focuses on corporate malfeasance, labor unions, and consumer advocacy groups. He uncovered evidence that Florida rigged the ballots during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968) – authored 27 books, some of which were controversial, particularly Grapes of Wrath. His New Deal political views, negative portrayal of capitalism, and sympathy for the plight of workers led to a backlash against him. In Steinbeck’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, published in 1961, he examines moral decline in America. The critical outcry when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 caused him to stop writing.

Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944) – was a teacher, author, and journalist. She was one of the leading muckrakers of the progressive era. She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies. She is best known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company. It was listed as #5 of the top 100 works of 20th century American journalism. She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade.

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) – Named the father of American literature, Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, narrative, and social criticism. Twain’s works have been subjected to censorship mostly because of his usage of the colloquial language of the time which is in some cases offensive today.

Howard Zinn (1922 – 2010) – historian, author, playwright, and social activist. He wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling A People’s History of the United States which tells the real story of American history not found in textbooks. He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements and labor history.

Local Activists:

Marleny Alfaro, Carol Brown, Rick Brown, David Cortez, Claire D’Gaia, Kathleen Dudley, Sigrid Erika, Dariel Garner, Jeanne Green, Peter Harris, Marilyn Hoff, Lyla Johnston, Kate Keely, Josie Lenwell, Pat McCabe, John Olivas, Dianne Pola, Patricia Yousra Morningstar, Winter Ross, Rivera Sun, and many more.