Kali Akuno is co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a network of worker cooperatives and community-led programs including the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust. Kali served as the Director of Special Projects in the mayoral administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. He is the co-editor of Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, MS and the author of numerous articles and pamphlets including “The Jackson-Kush Plan: the Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy,” “Until We Win: Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Era,” “Operation Ghetto Storm: Every 28 Hours report,” and “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities for Self-Defense.” He was also Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network, the Executive Director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Since August 2021, Kali has been working as Racial and Environmental Justice Coordinator at the Institute for Social Ecology. kaliakuno@gmail.com
Emma Bell is Professor of Contemporary British Politics at Savoie Mont-Blanc University in Chambéry, France. She has published widely in the UK and France on authoritarianism in the British State in journals such as the Observatoire de la Société Britannique, Race and Class, Theoretical Criminology and Socialism and Democracy. She is the author of Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism (Palgrave 2011) and Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition (Palgrave 2015) and a founding editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance. Her current research focuses on new forms of democracy and challenges to state authoritarianism. emma.bell@univ-smb.fr
Mat Callahan is author or editor of five books including The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975 and A Critical Guide to Intellectual Property. His recent projects include the republication of Songs of Freedom: The James Connolly Songbook; the recording and publication of Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook; and the launch of the multimedia project Songs of Slavery and Emancipation, which includes a book (University Press of Mississippi 2022), an album of song recordings, and a film. info@matcallahan.com
Keti Chukhrov is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow). Her books include To Be—To Perform: “Theatre” in Philosophic Critique of Art and Pound & £ and Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism. keti.chukhrov@gmail.com
Michael Dennis is Professor of American History at Acadia University, Canada. A Historian of US social and economic history, he has written widely on the impact of the New Economy on the American South in the late 20th Century. He is the author of The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). michael.dennis@acadiau.ca
David B. Downing is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is Just Theory: An Alternative History of the Western Tradition. downing@live.iup.edu
Brian Drolet was Executive Director of Deep Dish TV (2004-17) and director of Internet programming and special events at Free Speech TV (1999-2001). At Deep Dish TV, he co-produced “Shocking and Awful,” a 12-part television series on the Iraq War, and several documentaries on the Middle East as well as live television coverage of the massive anti-Iraq war demonstrations. He co-produced satellite coverage of the World Tribunal on Iraq (Istanbul, 2005) and live TV and Internet coverage of Winter Soldier 2: Iraq and Afghanistan (2008). Previously he was a producer at the Voyager Company where he developed the CD-ROM “Live from Death Row: Mumia Abu Jamal.” bdrolet2013@gmail.com
Barbara Epstein is Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her publications include The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism and Cultural Politics and Social Movements (edited with Richard Flacks and Marcy Darnovsky). bepstein@ucsc.edu
Jesse Harasta is an associate professor and Program Director of International Studies at Cazenovia College in New York. He is an active member of the DSA San Antonio Chapter, though he was formerly of the Syracuse chapter where he took an active role in international solidarity organizing, including with Armenia and Artsakh in 2020. jesseharasta@gmail.com
Ti Lamusse works in the areas of incarceration, human rights, and alternatives to prisons. His research involves both critical investigations into the current state of the New Zealand prison system, as well as analysis of justice alternatives to imprisonment. His PhD research examines what Aotearoa without prisons could look like, providing detailed analyses of the possibilities and pitfalls for a justice system without prisons. His Masters Thesis, “Grieving Prison Death,” examined coronial inquiries into deaths in New Zealand prisons and received Roger Oppenheim Memorial Prize in Sociological Research for the best MA thesis in the University of Auckland Sociology Department. ti.lamusse@vuw.ac.nz
Tony McKenna’s journalism has been featured by Al Jazeera, Salon, The Huffington Post, ABC Australia, New Internationalist, The Progressive, New Statesman and New Humanist. His books include Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist Perspective (Macmillan), The Dictator, the Revolution, the Machine: A Political Account of Joseph Stalin (Sussex Academic Press), Toward Forever: Radical Reflections on History and Art (Zero Books), The War Against Marxism: Reification and Revolution (Bloomsbury) and The Face of the Waters (Vulpine). tonecold61@yahoo.com
Thomas Muhr is Integrated Researcher at ISCTE-University Institute Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Portugal, and Honorary Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. Since the award of his PhD in 2009, funded by a competitive UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) scholarship, Thomas has held research and teaching positions at universities in Austria, Germany, Pakistan and the UK. Thomas’s academic interests revolve around the political sociology and human geographies of globalization, development and education. t.muhr2@gmail.com
Doug Norberg is a lifelong activist: a student activist in the 60s with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), active participant with SNCC and Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an anti-draft resister against the Vietnam War, a filmmaker/director/producer of “Viva la Causa, A History of Chicano People” and of other films of people’s struggles against imperialism, an organizer of transit workers, and a revolutionary internationalist/anti-capitalist activist. dcnberg@gmail.com
Dr. Saeed Rahnema is an award-winning professor of Political Science and Equity Studies, now retired, from York University. He was the founding director of York University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. In his homeland Iran, he taught and worked as a member of the executive of the Industrial Management Institute in Tehran. He has also served as an officer of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as a director of the Middle East Economic Association (MEEA), and as a member of editorial boards of several journals. He is a frequent commentator in Canadian and international media on issues related to the Middle East and Islam. He is the author of several books and numerous articles in English and Persian on topics such religious fundamentalism, secularism, diaspora, and multiculturalism. srahnema@yorku.ca
Joseph G. Ramsey is a scholar-activist and organizer, based in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He teaches English and American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and is host and co-producer of the Shelter & Solidarity: A Deep Dive with Artists and Activists podcast. Joe has edited four book-length anthologies, including the Works & Days volume, “Scholactivism: Reflections on Transforming Praxis,” and is presently at work on a book-length study of the critical communism of Richard Wright. His writings have appeared in Black Agenda Report, Portside, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Jacobin Magazine, Slate, Red Wedge, Counterpunch, and Mediations, as well as Cultural Logic and Socialism and Democracy, where he is an editorial board member. jgramsey@gmail.com
Kevin T. Sharp is a labor lawyer and graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law. He has published previously on labor law. kevin-sharp@uiowa.edu
Helena Sheehan is an academic philosopher, historian of science, and writer on communication studies, politics, and philosophical (particularly Marxist) subjects. Sheehan is a retired (Professor Emeritus) communications lecturer at Dublin City University and has been a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of five books including Marxism and the Philosophy of Science. helena.sheehan@dcu.ie
Joel Sronce is a writer and organizer from North Carolina. His work has been featured in Jacobin, Socialist Worker, Piedmont Left Review, Third World Resurgence, INDY Week, Triad City Beat, and more. He also co-founded a documentary production team dedicated to amplifying the struggles of workers in the South. The first film, “What Binds Us to This Place,” was released in April, 2020. He moved to Philadelphia late in 2021, but his political home and heart haven’t left Greensboro, NC. joel.sronce@gmail.com
Kurt Stand was active in the labor movement for over 20 years including serving as the elected North American Regional Secretary of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers. In 1997, he was arrested and served 15 years in prison on charges of having committed espionage for the GDR, charges he unsuccessfully contested at trial and upon appeal. After his release, he worked at the Busboys and Poets bookstores in the DC Metropolitan area where he also helped facilitate the Metropolitan Labor Council’s Bread & Roses monthly cultural programs. Kurt recently left the bookstore world to go to work for Progressive Maryland as their Reentry Campaign lead, a continuation of organizing he has done as part of the community of returning citizens, since coming home. Kurt is an active local member of DSA (which he joined in 1983) and serves as a Portside Labor Moderator. kurtstand@gmail.com
Jack Grimley Ward is an independent researcher based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. jward24@qub.ac.uk
Damien Winczewski is mainly interested in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy as well as contemporary socio-political thought, with particular focus on issues such as ideology, war and politics, globalization, violence, and militarism. He also deals with the visualization of these issues in culture, especially in popular culture. He has published in Science & Society, Studies in East European Thought, and Film International. damian.winczewski@gmail.com
