Authors
These authors contribute regularly to the LA Progressive on issues of political, social, and cultural consequence. Other writers contribute single or occasional articles. Contact us via our Contact Form if you’re interested in contributing an article or becoming a regular columnist. Click photos for individual author archives.
Dick Price is Editor of the LA Progressive. With his wife Sharon, he publishes several other print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. He has worked in publishing as a writer, editor, and publisher for a quarter century. In earlier releases, he was a cab driver, bartender, construction worker, soldier, and farmhand, and for many years helped operate a nonprofit halfway house for homeless alcoholics and addicts. Follow @DickandSharon
Sharon Kyle is a former president of the Guild Law School and is the publisher and co-founder of the LA Progressive. For years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Ms. Kyle was a member of several space flight teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she managed resources for projects like Magellan, Genesis, and Mars Pathfinder. Sharon also sits on several boards including the Board of Directors of the ACLU and is on the editorial board of the BlackCommentator.com. Follow Sharon on Twitter @SharonKyle00
As a husband and wife team, Sharon Kyle and Dick Price publish several print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. Sharon serves as Publisher for Dick & Sharon's LA Progressive and Dick serves as Editor. Follow @DickandSharon
Melina Abdullah is Professor and Former Chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles and immediate past campus president and current Council for Affirmative Action Chair for the California Faculty Association (the faculty union). Dr. Abdullah earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Political Science and her B.A. from Howard University in African-American Studies. She was appointed to the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission in 2014 and is a recognized expert on race relations.
James Preston Allen is the founding publisher and executive editor of RLnews He has been involved in community affairs for more than 40 years in the Los Angeles Harbor Area.
Nancy J. Altman is a writing fellow for Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Her latest book is The Truth About Social Security. She is also the author of The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works!
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). His D.Phil in Modern History is from the University of Oxford. He may be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.
Andrew Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he received his PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University, he taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins. His new book is The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory.
David Bacon is author of Illegal People-How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (2008), and The Right to Stay Home (2013), both from Beacon Press. His latest book is In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte, University of California Press, Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2017. This article is based on a presentation given to a webinar organized by Global Exchange and the California Trade Justice Coalition, an affiliate of the Citizens Trade Campaign.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, whose work comes to us from CommonDreams. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years. Described as "one of America’s most committed -- and most effective -- fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and called "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, Medea has distinguished herself as an eloquent and energetic figure in the progressive movement.
Martin Bennett is Instructor Emeritus of American History at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) in Sonoma County California and a Research and Policy Analyst for UNITE HERE 2850, a union representing restaurant, hotel, gaming, and food service workers in the East and North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. For contact information please see: https://martinjbennett.org.
Frida Berrigan is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood. She is a TomDispatch regular and writes the Little Insurrections column for WagingNonviolence.Org. She has three children and lives in New London, Connecticut, where she is a gardener and community organizer who is now running for mayor as a member of the Green Party.
Brian Biery is a community organizer, documentary photographer, and Adjunct Professor of Advocacy/Social Justice at Pacific Oaks College. His world view has been shaped by serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and by engaging his community on social justice issues for over 20 years.
Bill Blum is a former judge and death penalty defense attorney. He is the author of three legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam ("Prejudicial Error," "The Last Appeal" and "The Face of Justice") and is a contributing writer for California Lawyer magazine. His nonfiction work has appeared in such publications as Crawdaddy magazine, In These Times, The Nation, The Progressive, the ABA Journal, the Orange County Register, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and Los Angeles magazine.
Treva Brandon Scharf is a Los Angeles based writer, fitness professional and dating expert. Treva began as a copywriter at BBDO New York, and has since branched out into blogging, screenwriting, reality TV programming, and public speaking. As a dating expert, Treva imparts wit and wisdom about being single, dating, and finding love later in life at her blog, The Late Blooming Bride. She also dispenses dating tips and advice at Huffington Post, BetterAfter50, MidlifeBoulevard, and OlderDatingUK, among other publications.
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are WebofDebt.com and PublicBankingInstitute.org.
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.
Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. She received a PhD in African Diaspora Studies in 2016 from the University of California, Berkeley. Her areas of specialization include race and political economy, Black political theory, antiblackness and anti-radicalism, and Black radical thought. https://www.charisseburdenstelly.com/
Melinda Burrell is a humanitarian aid worker who studies polarization and trains on the neuroscience of communication and conflict. She is on the board of the National Association for Community Mediation, which offers resources on cross-divide engagement.
Unapologetically Black, Jasmyne Cannick has developed a strong national following for her willingness to tell it like it is on uncomfortable and hard to discuss issues around race, politics, and society. Jasmyne is proud of her reputation for bringing attention to stories and issues that would have gone under-reported, overlooked, or just ignored.
Jeff Cohen was an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College and founder of the media watch group FAIR. In 2011, he cofounded the online activism group RootsAction.org. He is the author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.”
Marjorie Cohn reports from Truthout. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. She testified before Congress about the Bush torture policy. Her books include The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.
Julia Conley began her journalism career on PBS's weekly news analysis show Bill Moyers Journal, first as a production assistant and eventually producing interview segments for veteran journalist Bill Moyers. She has written for the quarterly women's magazine A Women's Thing, and joined the Common Dreams staff in 2017.
Jessica Corbett reports for Common Dreams, which she joined as a staff writer in 2017, after working for publications in New York City and Chicago, including Rolling Stone, The Nation, In These Times, VICE, and Fusion.
Priti Gulati Cox (@PritiGCox) is an artist who uses thread and food as media to expose the patterns of an occupied planet.
Stan Cox is the author of The Green New Deal and Beyond (2020) and the upcoming The Path to a Livable Future: Forging a New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, both from City Lights Books.
Berry Craig is an emeritus professor of history at the West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and a freelance writer. He is a member of American Federation of Teachers Local 1360, the recording secretary for the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO, webmaster-editor for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO and a member of the state AFL-CIO Executive Board. He is working on his ninth book on Kentucky history--this one on Kentuckians at Pearl Harbor. He is a native of Mayfield, Ky., where he lives with his wife of 41 years.
Lenore Daniels, a retired college lecturer, has a doctorate in Modern American Literature with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class). Her published articles and essays has appeared in The Ocean Perspective, Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety Newsletter, The Platteville Journal, The City Capitol Hues, Woodstock International, Socialism and Democracy, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Black Commentator, The Canadian Women’s Studies, The Griot, and The Americana.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School.
Mark Dempsey is a former Realtor and member of a Sacramento County Planning Advisory Council who tries to maintain his sanity and still live in Sacramento County -- described by a former Supervisor as the county most under the influence of development interests in the state. This was not a contest we would have liked to win.
Cheryl Dorsey is a retired LAPD sergeant who is a much sought after police expert and social advocate.As such, she is a frequent commentator on CNN, HLN, Fox News. She provides candid, honest and unique perspective on issues making national news with a level of credibility that is effective, relevant and irrefutable. For more visit www.sgtcheryldorsey.com and follow Twitter @sgtcheryldorsey.
Steve Early is a long-time labor activist, member of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, and author, most recently, of Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Beacon Press, 2017). His new book describes environmental justice campaigning in Richmond, California, where Chevron operates one of the largest refineries in California. Early can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.)
W. D. Ehrhart received the Purple Heart Medal and the Navy Combat Action Ribbon for his service in Vietnam. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Swansea. His most recent book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland, 2019).
Dan Embree graduated from West Point in 1963; served as an infantry officer in Germany and Viet Nam 1964-68; co-founded Concerned Academy Graduates 1970; witnessed for defense in Westmoreland v. CBS 1985; earned a PhD in English UC Berkeley 1981; retired as professor from Mississippi State University, 2004; and now lives in Berkeley and Mountainair, New Mexico.
Tom Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a former executive with experience in health care, benefits, and risk management, finance, and information technology. He is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and hosts The Breakdown, which is broadcast on We Act Radio in Washington DC.
Jodie Evans has been a community, social and political organizer for the last 30 years. She has used her skills,for the protection of the earth, to give voice to communities and people who go unheard and unseen, in the area of human and civil rights, to protect the rights of women, to raise the minimum wage for farm workers, to protect dolphins, in El Salvador in the early 80's and with Zapitistas since '94.
Mark P. Fancher is an attorney and writer, who publishes with the Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at mfancher[at]comcast.net.
Pasadena-based freelance journalist James Farr is the host of “The Conversation.Live,” a hyperlocal online show he created in September 2017.
Frank A. Fear is professor emeritus, Michigan State University, where he served as a faculty member for thirty-year years and worked in various administrative positions for nearly twenty years. Find him on Twitter @frankfear and on Tumblr, “For the Public Good.” Frank also writes about issues that intersect sport and society. You can read him at The Sports Column.
Christina Fialho is the founder & president of Rewrite the BiLine. She also is an award-winning social entrepreneur, attorney, and activist who has been advocating for LGBTQ+ issues, immigration detention abolition, and other social justice causes for nearly two decades. In 2020, Christina was awarded the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, which honors leaders under the age of 40 who have made a positive change on a broad public policy issue or challenge. She also is a recipient of the James Irvine Leadership Award, an Ashoka Fellowship, and an Echoing Green Fellowship. When she is not working to change the narrative on bi+ people, you can find her advising nonprofits, foundations, and purpose-driven companies.
Laura Finley, associate professor of sociology and criminology, earned a BA in Secondary Education (1994), an MA in Education and Professional Development (1999), and a Ph.D. in Sociology (2002), all from Western Michigan University. The courses she teaches include introduction to criminology, theories of deviance, critical issues in criminal justice, sociology of violence, elite and organized crime, and perspective consciousness and social justice.
Bill Fletcher Jr. is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Follow Bill on Twitter @BillFletcherJr
Margaret Flowers, MD is a Maryland pediatrician and mother of three. She has practiced medicine in hospitals and in private practice. In 2007 she stopped practicing medicine to start advocating full-time for a state and federal single payer health care system. She has organized and participated in numerous campaigns to promote fair trade, a new economy, and investment in peaceful public infrastructure.
Glen Ford was the Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report; co-founder, America's Black Forum (TV); former White House, Capitol Hill, State Department correspondent; and was a Certified Elder of the Black Journalism Tribe. The LA Progressive was fortunate to have known him. His intellectual prowess added much to the LA Progressive. Glen Ford passed away July, 2021.
Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region.
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His latest book is Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-revolutionary politics (Bloomsbury in 2023). His website is www.henryagiroux.com
Ariel Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK. She holds a bachelor's degree in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University and a masters degree in Social Work from State University of New York, Binghamton. Before being banned from entering Israel in June 2018, Ariel used to travel to the West Bank one to two times per year to work with Palestinian individuals and organizations on the ground in their struggle for freedom and justice.
Eric A. Gordon was Director of the Arbeter Ring (Workmen's Circle) in Southern California from 1995 to 2010. He is the author of Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, and co-author of Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson. A book of his translations from Portuguese (Waving to the Train and Other Stories, by Hadasa Cytrynowicz) appeared in 2013.
Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua and Cruel and Usual: How Welfare “Reform” Punishes Poor People .
Suzanne Gordon is an American journalist and author who writes about healthcare delivery and health care systems and patient safety and nursing. She is the author of Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans.
Mack Green is a retired neuropsychologist and current activist for progressive causes. He is a member of Lighthouse Writers in Denver, Colorado. As a young man he served two tours of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Marines and received two purple hearts. He is a member of Veterans for Peace and lives in Colorado.
A certified Physician Assistant (PA-C), navy veteran, and mother of two, Leslie Gregory is a longtime Portlander and social justice activist focused on healing those affected by everyday racism. She believes in the importance of taking a dynamic approach to teaching racial justice through health practices. Leslie is an experienced antiracist facilitator and conflict facilitation mediator.
Mel Gurtov is Pofessor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University (Oregon) and (from 1994 to 2017) Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, an international affairs quarterly. He has published over 20 books on the international politics of East Asia, US foreign policy, and human-security issues. His latest book is Engaging Adversaries: Peacemaking and Diplomacy in the Human Interest (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), which focuses on strategies of engagement, with case studies of US relations with Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and China, as well as Israel-Palestine.
Paul Haeder has been a journalist since 1977. He's covered police, environment, planning and zoning, county and city politics, as well as working in true small town/community journalism situations in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico and beyond. He's been a part-time faculty since 1983, and as such has worked in prisons, gang-influenced programs, universities, colleges, alternative high schools, language schools, as a private contractor-writing instructor for US military in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Washington.
Tom Hall is a family lawyer in West Los Angeles. He is from Boston, and was raised in Friends Meeting at Cambridge (Quakers) to think that religion was a progressive force. During the Vietnam War, he organized draft counseling centers and worked with groups training people in techniques for disciplined nonviolent demonstrating. After the war, he became just another yuppie working to make a comfortable life. The Bush administration shocked him back into social concerns. Tom can be reached at ProgBlog@aol.com
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and author of more than 25 books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Farrah Hassen, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is the Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She wrote her Master's thesis in 2007 on Syria and the Iraq War at American University's School of International Service.
Tom Hastings is co-coordinator of the undergraduate program in Conflict Resolution at Portland State University. He is a former member of the Governing Council of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and is on the boards of both the IPRA Foundation and the Oregon Peace Institute, as well as the Academic Advisory Council of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
Charles D. Hayes is a self-taught philosopher and one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning. He spent his youth in Texas and served as a U.S. Marine and as a police officer before embarking on a career in the oil industry. Alaska has been his home for more than forty years.
Born in New York City in 1944, Michael T. Hertz has lived and worked in California, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and France -- mostly as a lawyer and law professor. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Pomona College, he spends his time presently writing fiction, blogging and commenting on the Internet, traveling, doing photography and digital art, making wine and beer, baking bread, doing water and land aerobics, and tending his garden.
Steven Hill is chief editor of @DemocracySOS. He is a political writer and author of seven books, among them “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy,” Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Ageand Raw Deal: How the Uber Economy and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers.
Steve Hochstadt is emeritus professor of history at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and author of Sources of the Holocaust (2004) and Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich (2012), both from Palgrave Macmillan. He also blogs for the History News Network. All of his columns can be seen at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com. Many have been collected in his forthcoming book, Freedom of the Press in Small-Town America: My Opinions.
Ari Honarvar is the founder of Rumi with a View, dedicated to building music and poetry bridges across war-torn borders. Her award-winning novel "A Girl Called Rumi" tells the story of a 9-year-old Iranian girl's struggles against the regime.
Sikivu Hutchinson is a writer, educator, and director. Her books include Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical, White Nights, Black Paradiseand the new novel Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe(March 2021). She is the founder of the Women’s Leadership Project, Black Skeptics L.A. and a co-facilitator of the Black LGBTQI+ Parent and Caregiver group
H. Patricia Hynes is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health and current Chair of the Board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice. She has written and edited seven books, among them "The Recurring Silent Spring." She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, the environment, and public health. Her new book, Hope, But Demand Justice, is available from Haley’s Publishing.
Gary Karasik, a 1970s graduate of San Francisco State’s Creative Writing program, has written features and columns for magazines and periodicals including the Tampa Tribune, Tallahassee Democrat, Miami Herald, and Los Angeles Times. While submitting freelance articles, he has also worked as a professional diver, magazine editor, and computer technician. In the early 2000s he started myITguy, a Los Angeles-based company that provided computer1support services exclusively for California-based non-profits. Now retired, he writes about progressive issues.
Garrison Keillor did “A Prairie Home Companion” for forty years, wrote fiction and comedy, invented a town called Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, even though he himself grew up evangelical in a small separatist flock where all the children expected the imminent end of the world.
Kathy Kelly is a peace activist, pacifist and author. She is one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq more than twenty times, notably remaining in combat zones. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. Ms. Kelly lives in Chicago.
Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., is a pioneer Gay Liberationist and has spent the past 50 years on the frontlines as a gay community organizer in Los Angeles and nationally. Contact: donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program
Michael T. Klare is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, including the just-published, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books).
Dee Knight is the author of A Realistic Path to Peace, due to be published this year. His political memoir, My Whirlwind Lives, was published last year by Guernica World Editions.
Robert C. Koehler, a Chicago reporter and editor for over 30 years, proudly calls himself a peace journalist. He has won numerous awards for his writing and, since 1999, has written a nationally syndicated column on politics and current events for Tribune Media Services. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, has recently been published by Xenos Press. He can be reached at koehlercw@gmail.com.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK, KPFA, and affiliates.
Mark Kreidler is a California-based writer and broadcaster, and the author of three books, including Four Days to Glory.
Wade Kyle is a long-time educator in Los Angeles, who has also taught in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. He is active in United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), California's Teachers Association (CTA) and in Democratic Party activities. Wade also serves as LA Progressive's community editor. He works tirelessly on education, labor, and environmental issues.
Rev. Peter Laarman is a retired minister who formerly led Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles.
Winona LaDuke is an internationally acclaimed author, orator and activistm. She is is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations. A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities with advanced degrees in rural economic development, LaDuke has devoted her life to protecting the lands and life ways of Native communities. In 1994, Time magazine named her one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and in 1997 she was named Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of nineteen books, beginning with the acclaimed "Diet for a Small Planet." Most recently she is the co-author, with Adam Eichen, of the new book, "Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want."
Journalist Peter Laufer is the James Wallace Chair Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon and the author of several books including Dreaming in Turtle: A journey Through the Passion, Profit, and Peril of Our Most Covet Prehistoric Creatures & Up Against the Wall: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border
Wim Laven, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice, teaches courses in political science and conflict resolution at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and is on the Governing Council of the International Peace Research Association.
Diane Lefer's books include The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation, co-authored with Colombian exile and torture survivor Hector Aristizábal; the crime novel Nobody Wakes Up Pretty, described by Edgar Award winner Domenic Stansberry as "sifting the ashes of America's endless class warfare" and, most recently, her historical novel The Fiery Alphabet, which tells a woman's adventurous life-story against the backdrop of the 18th-century tension between Enlightenment values and religious faith.
Robert Lipsyte, a TomDispatch regular and author of the memoir An Accidental Sportswriter, was a sports and city columnist for the New York Times, a correspondent for CBS and NBC News and the Emmy-award winning host of WNET’s nightly public affairs show. His 1975 goodbye-to-all-that (before he came back), SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, has just been reissued by Rutgers University Press with a new introduction.
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, David A. Love, JD, is a lawyer and journalist based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. His blog is davidalove.com.
Kary Love is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters, including some desperado nuns, in court for decades and will on occasion use blunt force satire or actual legal arguments to make a point.
Jeff Mackler is the National Secretary of Socialist Action and twice its U.S. presidential candidate. He is a founder and Administrative Committee member of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is a National Steering Committee member of the Assangedefense.org, the Director of The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal/Northern California and a founder of the Northern California Climate Mobilization. He can be reached at socialistaction.org or at jmackler@lmi.net
Mike Males, UC Irvine social ecology Ph.D. graduate, is senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and co-founder of YouthFacts.org.
Julianne Malveaux, PhD (JulianneMalveaux.com) is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Social Action Commission of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and serves on the boards of the Economic Policy Institute as well as The Recreation Wish List Committee of Washington, DC. Her latest book is Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy.
John Marciano is Professor Emeritus, SUNY Cortland. His American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration? (Monthly Review Press) will be released in July. John Marciano attended the first SDS March against the American War in Vietnam on April 17, 1965—and was a founding member of the SDS chapter at SUNY Buffalo.
Joe Mathews is California & innovation editor of Zócalo Public Square, a Little League coach, and a fourth-generation Californian who was raised in Pasadena, he also was a staff writer at the Baltimore Sun and Wall Street Journal. His work appears in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and other newspapers and magazines.
Andrea Mazzarino co-founded Brown University’s Costs of War Project. She is an activist and social worker interested in the health impacts of war. She has held various clinical, research, and advocacy positions, including at the Veterans Affairs PTSD Outpatient Clinic, with Human Rights Watch, and at a community mental health agency. She is the co-editor of the new book War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alfred W. McCoy is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and most recently In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Dispatch Books).
Judith Lewis Mernit writes about energy, the environment, economic justice and public health from Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in High Country News, Sierra Magazine, Yale Environment 360, TakePart, The Atlantic and the LA Weekly.
Alan Minsky is a lifelong activist, who has worked as a progressive journalist for the past two decades. Alan was the Program Director at KPFK Los Angeles from 2009-2018; and has coordinated Pacifica Radio’s national coverage of elections. Before that, Alan was one of the founders of LA Indymedia. He is the creator and producer of the political podcasts for The Nation and Jacobin Magazine, as well as a contributor to Commondreams and Truthdig.
Rev. Irene Monroe is a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School. One of Monroe’s outreach ministries is the several religion columns she writes - “The Religion Thang,” for In Newsweekly, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender newspaper that circulates widely throughout New England, “Faith Matters” for The Advocate Magazine, a national gay & lesbian magazine, and “Queer Take,” for The Witness, a progressive Episcopalian journal.
Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University. His most recent book is An Age of Progress?: Clashing Twentieth-Century Global Forces (2008). For a list of all his recent books and online publications, including many on Russian history and culture, go here: https://sites.google.com/view/waltergmosspublications1999ff/home
Bobbi Murray has reported on politics, economics, police reform and health-care issues for Los Angeles magazine, L.A. Weekly and The Nation.
Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,” serves on the Boards of Beyond War and the War Prevention Initiative.
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports.
Holly Ober is an anthropologist who writes about faculty research in engineering, business, economics, sociology, anthropology, and gender & sexuality studies for the University of California, Riverside.
Rob Okun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, writes about culture, politics and social change. He is editor-publisher of Voice Male a magazine chronicling the profeminist men's movement.
Joseph Palermo is Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento. Professor Palermo's most recent book is The Eighties (Pearson 2012). He has also written two other books: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson, 2008).
John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. After growing up in Florida and Georgia, he moved north as a teenager, and began a lifelong leftward migration. He’s been writing primarily for LA Progressive since 2008. He continues to live in central Pennsylvania.
John Perry is a writer based in Nicaragua and writes on Central America for the Nation, the London Review of Books, openDemocracy, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and other outlets.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner and veteran Planners Network member who reports on local planning issues for City Watch LA, which published an earlier version of this article. Please send any comments or corrections to rhplatkin@gmail.com.
H. Scott Prosterman is a writer, humoristm and editor living in Berkeley, California. He was born in the '50s, came of age in the '60s, thrived in the '70's, barely survived the '80's and regrouped in the '90's." He holds a B.A. w/Honors from Rhodes College; an M.A. from The University of Michigan.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s independent political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based full-time freelance writer and author. He was named after legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow because of his TV exposes of Sen. Joe McCarthy and majored in Cinema at Manhattan’s Hunter College.
Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, 2020.
Dr. Roger Ray holds masters and doctoral degrees in divinity from Vanderbilt University as well as a bachelors in philosophy from Murray State University. He was a 2004 Merriell Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. His most recent books, Progressive Faith and Practice and Progressive Conversations, have led to many invitations to speak both in the United States and in Great Britain.
Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written 18 books, including his most recent, The System: Who Rigged It, and How We Fix It. Currently, his articles are published with permission from Robert Reich.
Jamala Rogers is the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. She is a board member and columnist for Black Commentator.
Sara Roos publishes RedQueenLA and the Los Angeles Education Exchange.
Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.
Randy Shaw is the Director of San Francisco's Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the Editor-in-Chief of the online daily newspaper "Beyond Chron." He is the author of three books, "Beyond the Fields", "The Activist's Handbook", and "Reclaiming America".
April M. Short is an editor, journalist and documentary editor and producer. She is a writing fellow at Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Previously, she served as a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Santa Cruz, California’s weekly newspaper. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Salon and many others.
Lance Simmens is a writer on contemporary political issues, having spent the past forty years in senior level positions with two US Presidents, two US Senators, two prominent Governors, the US Conference of Mayors and the US Senate Budget Committee. Over the past 20 years he has focused primarily on environmental issues and has delivered over one hundred presentations worldwide on behalf of Al Gore's Climate Reality Project.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the last two Democratic National Conventions. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is active with the Taskforce on the Americas and other organizations including Syrian Solidarity Movement and the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. Rick has researched and written articles challenging the trend toward corporatization of higher education.
Billy J. Stratton is originally from Eastern Kentucky, the son of a coal miner. He earned a PhD in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona and currently teaches contemporary Native American/American literature, film, and critical theory in the Department of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. A paperback edition of his book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books) was published earlier this year. His website is NickTurse.com.
Robin Urevich is a journalist and radio reporter whose work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Las Vegas Sun.
Ted Vaill, a Los Angeles lawyer and filmmaker, grew up in a Republican family (who all would be Democrats today given the extreme rightward shift of the Republican Party in recent years), and is the descendant of an immigrant (who arrived in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620).
Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest.
John V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch and others.
Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman’s radio show are Green Power & Wellness podcast at prn.fm 2-3pm Eastern time Thursdays, and California Solartopia broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica 90.7FM Los Angeles, Thursdays 6:30-7pm Pacific time.His 20 books include SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US, A Glimpse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit and The Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to the Trumpocalypse to Rebirth, all at www.solartopia.org.
Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq. is founder and president of the seven-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). Mikey was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in U.S. Defense by Defense News. Mikey represents over 71,000 active/retired/reserve servicemembers, is a USAFA Honor graduate himself, and formerly worked in and for the West Wing as legal counsel in the White House.
Jan D. Weir is a trial lawyer who has advised international corporations, banks, accounting firms and Lloyds of London that insured auditors. He has taught business law at the University of Toronto, and is the co-author of The Essential Concepts of Canadian Business Law (available on KOBO). He discuss how the superrich use unrecognized methods for the upward transfer of wealth in the tax, corporate and banking areas on Medium.com, and Twitter@JanWeirLaw.
Stephanie Williams is executive editor of the IE Voice and Black Voice News. A longtime champion for civil rights and justice in all its forms, she is also an advocate for government transparency and committed to ferreting out and exposing government corruption. Stephanie has received awards for her investigative reporting and for her weekly column, Keeping it Real. Contact Stephanie with tips, comments. or concerns at myopinion@ievoice.com.
Lauren Windsor is the executive director of American Family Voices, a partner in Democracy Partners, and the executive producer of the political web-show The Undercurrent, which focuses largely on money-in-politics corruption, Wall Street reform, and climate change.
Marcy Winograd is a blogger, activist, and public school teacher in Los Angeles. You can follow her on twitter: marcywinograd
Cal Winslow is Director of the Mendocino Institute and a past Fellow in Environmental History at the University of California, Berkeley. He was trained at Antioch College and Warwick University, where he studied under the direction of the late Edward Thompson. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at Aardvark?
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City.
Ken Wolf is an author and professor emeritus of history at Murray, Ky., State University.