Luke Anderson is an activist from the UK and author of the best-selling book Genetic Engineering, Food and Our Environment. Since 1997 Luke has worked with environmental, social justice, and farming groups around the world focusing on grassroots resistance to genetic engineering, patents on life, and global economic institutions such as the WTO and the World Bank.
Juliette Beck coordinates Public Citizen’s California Water for All Campaign, which aims to protect the world’s water from corporate takeover. For the last eight years, she has organized grassroots coalitions to challenge corporate globalization and advance the rights of workers, communities and the environment. Prior to joining Public Citizen, Juliette coordinated Global Exchange’s Economic Rights Program, confronting abuses of corporate power and undemocratic global economic policies, as well as the California Fair Trade Campaign, and she was a leading organizer of the historic protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2000.
Diane Beeson is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Services, California State University, Hayward. Diane is a medical sociologist who, over the last three decades, has conducted studies on the experiences of women and families undergoing prenatal diagnosis and other forms of genetic testing. Her articles have been published in numerous professional journals and anthologies
Jessica Bell is an organizer for Rainforest Action Network and works on efforts to organize protection of forests. She is involved with the GE Trees Campaign opposing the introduction of GE Tree plantations.
Neil Carman serves on Sierra Club’s Genetic Engineering committee and has been speaking about the hazards of genetic engineering since 1996. He represents Sierra Club on the Stop Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign opposing field trials and GE tree plantations.
Maurice Campbell is convener of the Community First Coalition, an internationally recognized group fighting on the frontlines for community environmental justice and civil rights. He helped design and facilitate the new Citywide CBO (Community Based Organization) to coordinate and distribute jobs citywide for community people. His passion is for an ecologically balanced economically supportive environment with responsible and equal sustainability and ownership for the people of Southeast San Francisco with full regard to their civil rights and to environmental justice as the best defense against gentrification.
Ignacio Chapela is Assistant Professor of Microbial Ecology at the Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, and the founder of The Mycological Facility, Oaxaca, a facility dealing with questions of natural resources and indigenous rights, based in and run by indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Prof. Chapela’s publications span from the academic to various media collaborations with journalists worldwide, including documentaries and news media. He is a Board member with the Pesticide Action Network, the Council for Responsible Genetics, and an Advisory Board member for The Sunshine Project, a citizen’s initiative around questions of biosafety and biowarfare.
Jaime Castillo represents the state of Puebla on the governing council of Mexico’s National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA), a federation of some 3,400 local peasant unions throughout the country (www.unorca.org.mx). UNORCA coordinates the North America Section (Mexico, USA and Canada) of Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), the global alliance of peasant, family farm, indigenous and landless people’s movements, and is a founding member of the “El Campo No Aguanta Más” (“the countryside can’t take it any more”) coalition of Mexican farmer organizations calling for the cancelation/renegotiation of the agriculture chapter of NAFTA. UNORCA and Via Campesina were central players in the protests that led to the collapse of the WTO negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, in September of 2003, and Jaime was a key organizer of the protests.
Anne-christine d’Adesky is an HIV science journalist and Executive Director of WE-ACTx (Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment). She is a veteran AIDS journalist, author and documentary filmmaker who has covered HIV treatment and research issues since 1984 and also focuses on human rights issues. Her new book, Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS is available this month, and provides a comprehensive field review of global progress in delivering HIV drugs, care and programs in resource-poor countries and settings.
Marcy Darnovsky is the Associate Executive Director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland. She has taught courses on the politics of science, technology, and the environment at the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University. She has over forty publications to her credit, and has worked as an activist in a wide range of progressive political movements.
Michael Dorsey is a member of Dartmouth College’s Faculty of Science, based in the Environmental Studies Program. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment; Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His primary research is on the political-economy of biodiversity conservation and management, as well as the development and deployment of biotechnologies. Michael has worked on a wide variety of sustainable development and environmental concerns for many years around the world.
Alexandra Gorman is the Director of Science and Research for Women’s Voices for the Earth, where she coodinates their toxics campaign including a watchdog program that monitors and comments on industrial acitivties related to toxic chemicals. For the past two years, she has been fighting a proposed Biosafety Level 4 lab at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. Alexandra holds a Masters degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana and a B.A. From Amherst College.
Dr. Robert Gould is an Associate Pathologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose, California. He has served as the President of San Francisco Bay Area Physicians for Social responsibility since 1989 and has also served as President of the National Board of Directors of PSR.
Edward Hammond is the Director of the Sunshine Project, an international non-profit organization that works to prevent the hostile use of biotechnology. He leads Sunshine Project research on the US biodefense program and “non-lethal” biochemical weapons and is a member of the Pugwash Study Group on the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions. From 1995-1999, he was program officer for the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI, now the ETC Group).
Adrienne Johnson is a San Francisco public school teacher, member of United Educators of San Francisco (SF teachers union) and a member of the International Socialist Organization.
Van Jones is the National Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC), an organization that challenges human rights abuses in the U.S. criminal justice system. Van’s efforts have won honors including: Global Leader for Tomorrow, 2002; Ashoka Fellowship, 2000-03; Kerry Kennedy Cuomo “Human Rights Defender,” 2000; Reebok International Human Rights Award, 1998; Rockefeller Foundation “Next Generation Leadership” Fellowship, 1997-99. He has served on the board of the Media Alliance in San Francisco and was the founding board president of We Interrupt This Message, a non-profit organization that helps low-income people and people of color get more fair coverage from the mainstream media.
Antonia Juhasz directs several programs with the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) including Alternatives to Economic Globalization, Globalization and Water, and Media Outreach. She is co-author of the upcoming second edition of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: a Better World is Possible and also the author of the IFG publication; “Does Globalization Help the Poor?” Antonia’s current work focuses on highlighting the relationship between the military invasion of Iraq and the expansion of corporate globalization policies.
Anamaria Loya is the Executive Director of La Raza Centro Legal where she focuses on strengthening the agency’s infrastructure and grassroots community empowerment strategies. Anamaria also works with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, specializing in bilingual education, affirmative action, racial and gender equality, and disability rights. In 1994, Anamaria joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) where she challenged the implementation of Proposition 187, as well as provided advocacy regarding affirmative action programs and policies in the state.
Le’a Kanehe is an Indigneous rights attorney with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation and works with the Native Hawaiian community on issues related to biopiracy and biocolonialism, especially the protection of Indigenous knowledge, biological resources, and human genetic material from the impositions of western intellectual property rights. At the international levels, she has participated in the Convention on Biological Diversity meetings on access to genetic resources and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues advocating for the recognition of human rights of Indigenous peoples.
Andrew Kimbrell is a public interest attorney, activist and author involved in numerous areas of technology, human health and the environment. After working eight years as the Policy Director at the Foundation for Economic Trends, Kimbrell established the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) in 1994 and the Center for Food Safety (CFS) in 1997. Kimbrell has written several books, given numerous public lectures, and has been featured on radio and television, has lectured at dozens of universities throughout the country and has testified before congressional and regulatory hearings. In 1994, the Utne Reader named Kimbrell as one of the world’s leading 100 visionaries.
Nora Kramer is a founder of Bay Area Animal Rights Network. She has led local workshops on animal rights and vegetarianism and coordinated countless demonstrations promoting more compassionate treatment of animals. Nora also runs a humane education program called The Empathy Project, which brings respect for animals, the environment, and other people into Bay Area classrooms.
Charles Margulis is a former genetic engineering campaigner with Greenpeace and currently a Sunshine Project board member. He is the Communications Director for the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland-based advocacy and action organization founded to protect the public from environmental and consumer health hazards.
Anuradha Mittal, a native of India, is the author and editor of numerous articles and books including America Needs Human Rights, The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance, and Voices From the South: Third World Speaks Out Against Genetic Engineering. Her opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, and The Nation. She has founded a new policy think tank, The Oakland Institute, after spending nearly a decade at Food First and serving as its co director.
Ulysses J. Montgomery is the founder and CEO of Kwanza Investment Company, LLC and Arko Engineering, LP, using engineering, construction, management, and financing systems to facilitate the generation of capital ownership by low and moderate-income families. Ulysses has managed the development of a broad range of projects in the US, Africa, and the Middle East and was the primary consultant to the Festac Village, Lagos, Nigeria, and to the Fillmore Community Development Association, Inc, San Francisco, California, among others. In association with Michael Strausz, he recently developed a plan for Hunters Point residents to own and develop the former naval shipyard in San Francisco for the benefit of the community.
Inga Olson is the Program Director at Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment in Livermore, California. She leads the organization’s public education campaign on the proliferation hazards of the Bush Administration’s plan to collocate biowarfare agent facilities and nuclear weapons at Livermore and Los Alamos Labs. Inga is also a member of the legal team that at has filed a major federal lawsuit to compel a review of the government’s plan to operate advanced bioweapons agent facilities.
Evan Thomas Paul is a paper campaigner with Forest Ethics and also focuses on opposing genetically engineered (GE) trees. He works to protect endangered forests by transforming the paper and wood industries in North America and by supporting forest communities in the development of conservation-based economies.
Gabe Quash is a board member of the San Francisco Vegetarian Society and activism coordinator for the Bay Area Vegetarians. As the founder of VegVideo, Gabe also produces a public-access show about factory farming that airs in at least 15 cities across the country. He advocates veganism as a way to make daily choices that reduce animal suffering, take responsibility for our own health, and pursue a course of environmental sustainability.
Jesse Reynolds is the Program Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit information and public affairs organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies. He obtained an MS in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California at Berkeley as a US EPA Fellow. While there, he helped organize Students for Responsible Research, which monitored the impact of large-scale funding for research on genetically modified crops
Silvia Ribeiro is a researcher and program manager with the ETC Group, based in Mexico. She has a background as a publisher, journalist and environmental campaigner in Uruguay, Brazil and Sweden. She has extensive experience in social and environmental advocacy. Silvia has produced a number of articles related to biodiversity, genetic resources, intellectual property and biopiracy, among other issues
Peter Rosset is an agroecologist and rural development specialist, and is Global Alternatives Associate at the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) in Berkeley, and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management (ESPM) of the University of California at Berkeley. He is the co-author of the revised edition of World Hunger: Twelve Myths, and has written extensively about the risks of genetically engineered crops.
Hope Shand is Research Director of the ETC Group (formerly known as RAFI), a civil society organization based in Canada. Hope is based in Carrboro, North Carolina. Working with both the ETC Group and RAFI over the past 20+ years, Hope has written extensively on the topic of agricultural biodiversity, corporate concentration and the social and economic impacts of emerging technologies. She is the author of Human Nature: Agricultural Biodiversity and Farm Based Food Security.
Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist and world renowned author on biotechnology, traditional agriculture and the politics of globalization. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi, India and the Navdanya project and seed farm in her native Dehra Dun. She is the recipient of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award, and her most recent books are Water Wars and Stolen Harvest.
Jeffrey Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception, an acclaimed introduction to the health hazards of genetically engineered foods, and director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, based in Fairfield, Iowa. He has traveled in five continents, briefing world leaders and the public on the documented risks of genetically modified foods and crops and reaching millions of people through extensive media interviews. He has worked with non-profit and political groups on this issue for nearly a decade and served as vice president of marketing for a GMO detection laboratory.
Skip Spitzer is the Corporate Accountability Program Coordinator at the Pesticide Action Network North America. Skip has worked for almost 25 years as an activist on a wide range of social and environmental issues. Before joining PANNA in 1998, he taught sociology at California colleges. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative.
Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising and eight other books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality. She teaches Earth Activist Trainings that combine permaculture design and activist skills, and works with the RANT trainer’s collective, www.rantcollective.org that offers training and support for mobilizations around global justice and peace issues. www.starhawk.org.
Clarence Thomas is a 3rd generation longshoreman, and former Secretary/Treasurer of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) Local 10 in San Francisco. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Central Labor Council of Alameda County, and the California Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University where, with his classmate Danny Glover, he led one of the longest student strikes in US history, seeking the establishment of Black & Ethnic studies departments and increased enrollment of students of color.
Jim Thomas is a Researcher with ETC Group (formerly RAFI) based in Oxford UK. Formerly an international campaigner with Greenpeace on GM crop issues, Jim now spends much of his time monitoring the implications of new technologies, particularly nanotechnology. He has written about nanotech and genetic engineering for several press and magazines as well as organized workshops and seminars including the first ever European conference on societal implications of nanotechnology, held in the European Parliament in Brussels. Jim also writes a monthly column on nanotech issues for The Ecologist magazine.
Brian Tokar is the Director of the Biotechnology Project at the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont. He is the author of The Green Alternative and Earth for Sale, and has edited two volumes on the politics of biotechnology: Redesigning Life? (Zed Books, 2001) and the new collection Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade and the Globalization of Hunger (Toward Freedom, 2004, www.genetraders.org). His articles on environmental issues, emerging ecological movements, and resistance to genetic engineering have appeared in Z Magazine, The Ecologist, Earth Island Journal, Wild Matters (formerly Food & Water Journal), Toward Freedom, and many other publications, and he has lectured across the US and internationally on these and other topics.
Gregor Wolbring is the founder and director of the International Centre for Bioethics, Culture and Disability (http://www.bioethicsanddisability.org). Dr. Wolbring is a thalidomider and is on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Department of Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary, as well as the John Dossetor Health Ethics Center, the University of Alberta. He was recently appointed to the executive of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. He is also a board member of the ETC group, the Edmonds Institute and the Canadian Centre of Disability Studies.
Adam Wolpert is the co-director of the International Communities Program at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), Occidental, California. He is also a painter and Director of the Arts Program at OAEC. Adam has lectured on sustainable community and led painting workshops at many West Coast venues. Adam also offers workshops on group process and organizational structure in many OAEC trainings and courses. He studied for two years in Florence, Italy, at the classical atelier, Studio Cecil-Graves, and received his MFA at UC San Diego. His painting has been widely exhibited throughout California.
Dr. Susan Wright received a B.A. and a M.S. in physics from Oxford University and the University of Michigan respectively and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University. She is currently a consultant in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University and a Research Scientist at the University of Michigan
