Speakers

Anthony Arnove is the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal and co-editor with Howard Zinn of Voices of a People's History of the United States, a companion volume to Zinn's classic book. He is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review and on the board of Haymarket Books.

Ashley Smith is an activist and member of the International Socialist Organization based in Vermont. He is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review to which he is a frequent contributor. His writing has also appeared on ZNet, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch and Socialist Worker. He helped found the Burlington Anti-War Coalition and is a member of the National Writers Union.

Brian Chidester is a member of the International Socialist Organization in Providence, RI. He teaches high school French and Spanish in Bristol, RI, and is a member of the Bristol-Warren Education Association. He has done numerous translations for Obrero Socialista and International Socialist Review.

Charles Peterson is a student leader at Umass-Amherst active in a variety of grassroots struggles, a contributor to SocialistWorker.org and a member of the ISO.

Deepa Kumar is a professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of the book Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007). She has written several scholarly articles on the media and the "war on terror" which have appeared in national and international journals. She also writes about Islamophobia and Political Islam and is a regular contributor to several alternative media publications including the International Socialist Review, Monthly Review Zine, Znet and SocialistWorker.org.

Fred Magdoff is professor of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont in Burlington and a director of the Monthly Review Foundation. He is coauthor with Harry Magdoff of “Approaching Socialism,” in the July–August 2005 issue of Monthly Review.

Helen Scott is an associate professor at the University of Vermont where she teaches postcolonial studies in the English department and Women and Gender Studies program. She is currently a union delegate for United Academics: AFT-AAUP. She has published articles in Callaloo, International Socialist Review, Journal of Haitian Studies, and Postcolonial Text; has chapters in anthologies including Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies, and Haiti: Writing Under Siege; and a book, Caribbean Women Writers and Globalization: Fictions of Independence, published by Ashgate in 2006. She is the editor of The Essential Rosa Luxemburg, published by Haymarket Books in 2008. She is co-author with Paul LeBlanc of an anthology of Luxemburg’s writings forthcoming from Pluto Press. Originally from Britain, she has lived in the US since 1988 and is a long time socialist activist.

Jennifer Roesch is a longtime activist and member of the International Socialist Organization in New York City. She is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review. Her articles have been featured in the ISR as well as CounterPunch and Socialist Worker.

John Riddell has translated and edited six published volumes of documents on the history of the revolutionary workers movement between 1907 and 1921. His new two-volume annotated translation of the Communist International's Fourth Congress (1922) is planned for release by Historical Materialism Book Series in 2010 and subsequently by Haymarket Press. John is author of "Clara Zetkin and the Struggle for the United Front," to be published in International Socialist Journal in November. Based in Toronto, he is co-editor of Socialist Voice (www.socialistvoice.ca).

Hayes was born and raised in Harlem and in 1968 became a member of the Black Panther Party. In August of 1971, he was arrested for “acting in concert" at a murder scene of a policeman. Hayes was sentenced to death, and was one of the five New York State death row inmates awaiting execution at the time of the Supreme Court’s 1972 Furman vs. Georgia decision abolished the death penalty. His sentence was commuted to life with parole. Hayes was paroled in 1991 and since then has become a spokesman against the death penalty. He has spoken at several colleges and universities and is a member of the international abolition organization, Hands Off Cain. Lawrence is the Co-Founder of Campaign To End The Death Penalty. Lawrence has dedicated his life to ending the death penalty and feels that, "Life should be held above death; there is no excuse or reason to kill anyone, anywhere."

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties and World Special Coverage. She is on the Board of Directors of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.

Malalai Joya rose to fame in December 2003 when, as an elected delegate to the Constitutional Loya Jirga, she spoke out publicly against the domination of warlords. Since then she has survived four assassination attempts, and travels in Afghanistan under a burqa and with armed guards. Her newly published book, A Woman Among Warlords, has been widely praised; Noam Chomsky has written that it “leaves us with hope that the tormented people of Afghanistan can take their fate into their own hands if they are released from the grip of foreign powers”.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on US business and government dynamics. His work has appeared at Asia Times, MotherJones.com, TomDispatch, and ZNet, and in Against the Current, Contexts, International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker and Z magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo).

Nagesh Rao is an assistant professor of English at the College of New Jersey. His articles on imperialism, globalization and culture have appeared in MRZine, Postcolonial Text, South Asian Review, Race and Class, the International Socialist Review and Socialist Worker. He is the editor of Exile: Conversations with Pramoedya Ananta Toer by Andre Vltchek and Rossie Indira (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Paul D'Amato is the managing editor of the International Socialist Review, a columnist for Socialistworker.org, and the author of The Meaning of Marxism (Haymarket Books)

After growing up in the Persian Gulf, Rayyan Ghuma moved to the United States in 2005 to attend the University of Maryland, College Park. While at UMD, Rayyan organized as part of the anti-war movement through a local chapter of the Campus Anti-war Network. She has participated in several national anti-war demonstrations and has been active in challenging the scapegoating and imprisonment of Arabs and Muslims as part of the so-called ‘war on terror.’ Rayyan has also been involved in the struggle for immigrant rights, the fight to end the death penalty, and the movement for LGBT liberation. She is currently organizing with the Host Committee for the National Equality March in Washington, DC. She attends Howard University School of Law and is an active member of the International Socialist Organization.

Saadia Toor teaches sociology at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. She is a member of the Action for a Progressive Pakistan and the Women’s Action Forum (Pakistan) and has been a member of the Pakistan Mazdoor-Kissan Party. Her academic research focuses on the relationship between culture, politics and gender/sexuality in South Asia, especially Pakistan. Her book on culture and politics in Pakistan is forthcoming from Pluto Press.

A prolific essayist and commentator on books and ideas, Scott McLemee writes the weekly column "Intellectual Affairs" for InsideHigherEd.com and contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Bookforum, and The Boston Globe, among other publications. In 2004, he received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. He is the editor of C. L. R. James on the "Negro Question" (University Press of Mississippi, 1996) and the co-editor (with Paul Leblanc) of C. L. R. James and Revolutionary Marxism: Selected Writings 1939-1949 (Humanities Press, 1994).