July 7, 2004 Press Release

The Boston Social Forum is pleased to announce some of its major convocation speakers

Jim Hightower - Publishes the populist newsletter, "The Hightower Lowdown," which currently has over 100,000 subscribers and is the fastest growing political publication in America. His newspaper column is carried by over 75 independent newspapers, magazines, and other publications. He is author of the New York Times Bestseller, “Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen our Country and its Time to Take it Back.” He broadcasts daily radio commentaries on over 100 commercial & public stations, on the web, on Armed Forces Radio, Radio for Peace International, One World Radio, and Sirius Satellite Radio.

Rabbi Michael Lerner - Co-founder of the Tikkun Community, which is dedicated to both the outer transformation needed to achieve social justice, ecological sanity, and world peace, and inner healing as well. In 1986 he launched TIKKUN Magazine, a Bimonthly Jewish and Interfaith Critique of Politics, Culture, & Society. He is author of “Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation.”

Dennis Brutus - A poet, teacher, and freedom fighter. He was Born 1924, in Zimbabwe, of South African parents. His work centers on his sufferings as well as those of his fellow blacks in South Africa. He is professor emeritus in the Dept. of African Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Angela Davis - A radical black activist best known for her arrest as a suspected conspirator in an attempt to free George Jackson from a courtroom in Marin County, California, on August 7, 1970. She was eventually acquitted of all charges, but was briefly on the FBI’s most wanted list as she fled from arrest. She ran for U.S. Vice President on the Communist Party ticket in 1980. She has written on women and politics.

Diane Dujon - Editor of "For Crying Out Loud, Women's Poverty in the United States," a book that brings the voices of welfare moms, activists, and advocates, as well as scholars together, in a powerful challenge to the current attack on the poor. Dujon moves the focus of debate away from eliminating welfare to eliminating poverty. Diane is a longtime welfare rights organizer, writer and former welfare recipient. She is an administrator at the College of Public and Community Service, University of Massachusetts. She works on National Up and Out of Poverty campaigns, and is involved with Boston Jobs for Peace, the Women's Institute for New Growth and Support, the National Welfare Rights Union, and Survival News.

Guglielmo Epifani - A top leader of the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL). CGIL, Italy's AFL-CIO, is leading the defense of Europe's enviable employment rights and standards.

Walden Bello - A professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines, and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. He is the author of many books, and numerous articles on Asian economies, political systems, and security issues (i.e. Z Magazine article “The World Bank and the I.M.F.”) His most recent book is “The Futures in the Balance – Criticizing Globalization.”

Paul Farmer - Medical anthropologist and physician who has dedicated his life to treating some of the world’s poorest populations, in the process helping to raise the standard of health care in underdeveloped areas of the world. A founding director of Partners In Health, an international charity organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty, Dr. Farmer and his colleagues have successfully challenged the policymakers and critics who claim that quality health care is impossible to deliver in resource-poor areas.

Shujaa Graham - An exonerated death row inmate, prisoner rights activist, and member of the original Black Panther Party. Spoke at European Social Forum against the death penalty.

Granny D (Doris Haddock) - A 94-year-old activist who won national attention and acclaim when she walked 3,200 miles across the United States to promote campaign finance reform in 1999 and 2000

Gyung-Lan Jung - A Korean peace activist and conflict resolution worker. She works for a nuclear-free Korea and a nuclear-free Northeast Asia.

Dr. Elehah Koolaee - Iranian peace activist and former member of the Iranian Parliament.

Winona LaDuke - A longtime environmentalist and Indigenous rights activist. She is Founding Director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a reservation-based land acquisition, environmental advocacy and cultural organization. She is Program Director of Honor the Earth, a national Native foundation, a former board member of Greenpeace USA and co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network. LaDuke was Ralph Nader’s Vice Presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections. She is the author of the novel "Last Standing Woman" and "All Our Relations.”

Eric Mann - The lead organizer of the Labor/Community Campaign to Keep General Motors Van Nuys Open that stopped GM from closing the auto plant for ten years. He is a founding member of the Strategy Center and of the Bus Riders Union (BRU), sits on the BRU Planning Committee, and teaches at the Strategy Center’s National School for Strategic Organizing. He is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, and has been a civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, labor, and environmental organizer for 35 years. He is author of L.A.’s Lethal Air: New Strategies for Policy, Organizing and Action, and Taking on General Motors: A Case Study of the UAW Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open.

Ruba Eid - A young Palestinian woman who graduated from Concordia University (Canada) with a major in Economics. She became involved in defending Palestinian human rights through working with many Canadian associations struggling to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and improving people's living conditions such as MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinian), SPHR (Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights), and the CPF (Canadian Palestinian Foundation). In the midst of the current Intifada, she returned to Palestine to contribute building a Palestinian society based on democracy and social justice. She joined the Democracy and Workers' Rights Center where she currently puts her expertise in the service of workers' rights and the democratization of the Palestinian society through the advancement of labor education and democratic unions.

Rita Arditti - Chicana and Latina cultural studies professor. Author of the book, “Searching For Life. The Grandmothers Of The Plaza De Mayo And The Disappeared Children Of Argentina.”

Manning Marable - A professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, and History at Columbia University. He has published nearly 20 books on the Black American experience, and written over 250 journal articles. Since 1976 he has written a political commentary series—“Along the Color Line,” that appears in over 400 newspapers & journals worldwide. He is director of the newly established Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University.

Akinbode Oluwafemi - A tobacco control advocate and representative of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action.

Margaret Prescod - Member of the Wages for Housework Campaign and founder of Women of Color in the Global Women’s Strike. She is active in focusing attention on the issue of violence to sex workers.

Sonia Sanchez - A professor since 1977 at Temple University in Philadelphia. She currently teaches in both the Women’s Studies and English departments. She writes poetry volumes, has done several plays, and has done considerable writing for children. Her latest poetry volumes are more specifically feminist in orientation. Her more celebrated volume, “Homegirls & Handgrenades,” published in 1984, is a collection of autobiographical prose poems. It received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Sandra Steingraber - Ecologist, author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. She is the author of Post-Diagnosis, a volume of poetry, and coauthor of a book on ecology and human rights in Africa, The Spoils of Famine. She has taught biology at Columbia College, Chicago, held visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, Radcliffe/Harvard, and Northeastern University, and served on President Clinton’s National Action Plan on Breast Cancer.

Rae Street - A longtime peace and anti-nuclear activist, working at the grass roots both locally and internationally. She was a founder member of CADU, the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, in Manchester, Britain. She is an active member of CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in her own village and with friends across Britain and the world. Currently she is Vice President of IPB, the International Peace Bureau.

Achin Vanaik - An independent scholar, former journalist, and political commentator. He is currently visiting lecturer at the Academy of Third World Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. He lives in New Delhi and is against the nuclearization of India.

Maude Barlow - An Ottawa based activist, writer, policy critic, and outspoken crusader for Canadian sovereignty and citizen’s rights. She is the Volunteer Chairperson for the Council of Canadians, a non-profit, non-partisan organization of over 100,000 Canadians. She is also a Director with “The International Forum on Globalization” and co-founder of the Blue Planet Project. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books. Her latest book, co-authored with Tony Clarke, is Blue Gold, The Battle to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water which has been published in 10 countries.

Registration for the Boston Social Forum is $30 ($15 low income) in advance, and $40 ($20 low income) at the door. For more information go to: http://www.bostonsocialforum.org email: info@bostonsocialforum.org or call: 617-338-9966.