Contributors

Catherine Albisa is Executive Director of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative in New York City.

Robert Alvarez is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental and energy policies. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Science Magazine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Technology Review and The Washington Post.

Sarah Anderson is the Director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is co-author (with John Cavanagh and Thea Lee) of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2004) and numerous studies and articles on the global economy.

Nan Aron is the President of Alliance for Justice in Washington, D.C., a national association of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women’s, children’s and consumer advocacy organizations.  She is the author of Liberty and Justice for All: Public Interest Law in the 1980s and Beyond (Westview Press, 1989).

Dean Baker is an economist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. Among his numerous articles and books is The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she directs the New Internationalism Project. Her recent books include Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer (Olive Branch Press, 2008) and Ending the Iraq War: A Primer (Olive Branch Press, 2008).

Angela Glover Blackwell is the founder and chief executive officer of PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity.  She co-chaired the Center on American Progress Task Force on Poverty.

Earl Blumenauer has represented Oregon’s Third Congressional District, which includes Portland, since 1996. A former member of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Blumenauer now serves on the Ways and Means Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change.

Robert L. Borosage is the President of the Institute for America’s Future and Co-Director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future, both in Washington, D.C. He is a Contributing Editor at The Nation magazine.

Kate Bronfenbrenner is Director of Labor Education Research at Cornell ILR. A former organizer and union representative with the United Woodcutters in Mississippi and SEIU in Massachusetts, her most recent publication is the edited volume, Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital through Cross-Border Campaigns (ILR Press, 2007).

John Cavanagh has been the Director of the Institute for Policy Studies since 1998. He is the co-author of twelve books and numerous articles on the global economy, most recently (with Robin Broad) Development Redefined: How the Market Met its Match (Paradigm Publishers, 2008).

Oscar Chacón is Executive Director of the National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC), a Chicago-based group that seeks to improve the quality of life for Latinos and Latino immigrants in their communities, both in the United States and in countries of origin. Until December 2006, he served as Director of Enlaces América, a project of the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.

Chuck Collins is Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good and the Working Group on Extreme Inequality. He is a contributor to Ten Excellent Reasons Not to Hate Taxes (New Press, 2008).

Stuart Comstock-Gay is the Director of the Democracy Program at Démos: A Network for Ideas and Action. Démos is a New York-based public policy and advocacy center for democratic values.

Charlie Cray is Director of the Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, D.C. He is co-author of The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2004).

Sheila Crowley has been the President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition since 1998. NLIHC is a research and policy advocacy organization solely dedicated to ending the affordable hosing crisis in the United States and led the eight-year campaign that resulted in the enactment of legislation to establish the National Housing Trust Fund in 2008.

Martha F. Davis is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy at Northeastern University. She is co-editor of Bringing Human Rights Home (Praeger, 2008), a three-volume series chronicling the U.S. human rights movement.

Karen Dolan is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and Director of its Cities for Peace program, working with citizens, national peace and human needs organizations, locally elected officials and federal lawmakers.

Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and directs the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. He co-chaired the Center on American Progress Task Force on Poverty.

Carroll L. Estes is Professor of Sociology, founding Director of the Institute for Health and Aging, and past Chair of the Dept. of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the Univ. of California, San Francisco. She is past President of The Gerontological Society of America and The American Society on Aging. Among her twenty-four books are Social Policy and Aging (Sage, 2001) and the forthcoming Social Insurance, Social Justice, and Social Change (Springer).

John Feffer is Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the editor of Power Trip: U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11 (Seven Stories Press, 2003) and the author of North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy & the Korean Peninsula (Seven Stories Press, 2003).

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is Executive Editor of Black Commentator and Co-Founder of the Center for Labor Renewal. He serves as Director of Field Services & Education for the American Federation of Government Employees in Washington, D.C. His new book is Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice (Univ. of California Press, 2008).

Maria Foscarinis is founder and Executive Director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty in Washington, D.C., the legal arm of the national movement to end and prevent homelessness. She is a primary architect of the landmark McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act; has litigated to enforce critical legal rights of homeless people; and written widely on homelessness and poverty.

Kim Gandy is serving her second term as President of the National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C., elected by the group’s grassroots members in 2001 and 2005. An attorney, she oversees NOW’s multi-issue agenda, which includes: ending sex discrimination, advancing reproductive freedom, promoting diversity and ending racism, stopping violence against women, winning LGBT rights and ensuring economic justice.

Jaime Grant is Director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. For six years, she directed the Union Institute’s Center for Women, the nation’s only academic women’s center dedicated to collaborations between scholars and activists.

Mark Greenberg is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and previously directed CAP’s Task Force on Poverty. He is Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

Jim Harkness is President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis. Before joining IATP he lived for sixteen years in China, working on rural development and sustainability issues.

Chester Hartman is Director of Research at the Poverty & Race Research Council in Washington, D.C. and an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His recent books include There Is No Such Thing As a Natural Disaster: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina (Routledge, 2006), A Right to Housing: Foundation for a New Social Agenda (Temple Univ. Press, 2006) and City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2002).

Farrah Hassen is the 2008 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She has been writing about and researching U.S.-Syrian relations and the Middle East for the past five years.

Simon Heller is Legal Director for the Alliance for Justice in Washington, DC, a national association of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women’s, children’s and consumer advocacy organizations. He is responsible for their Judicial Selection and Justice Watch Projects, as well as their broader Access to Justice Program.  Before coming to the Alliance, he was a reproductive rights litigator at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. Her latest books are Taking Back America: And Taking Down the Radical Right (Nation Books, 2004), co-authored with Robert L. Borosage, and Dictionary of Republicanisms: The Indispensable Guide to What They Really Mean When They Say What They Think You Want to Hear (Nation Books, 2004).

Alan W. Houseman has been Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy since 1982. CLASP is a public policy organization that focuses on improving the lives of low-income persons, reducing poverty and advancing racial equity.

Tomás R. Jiménez is an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.

Barbara B. Kennelly is President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, following her seventeen years as Member of the U.S. Congress from Connecticut, where she served as ranking member of the House Ways & Means Subcomm. on Social Security. In 2006, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appointed her to the Social Security Advisory Board.

Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers for African American Children (Jossey-Bass, 1994).

Saul Landau has been with the Institute for Policy Studies since 1972 and is currently Vice Chair of its Board. His newest book is A Bush and Botox World (AK Press, 2007). His most recent award-winning film is We Don’t Play Golf Here.

Erik Leaver is Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He has been writing about and organizing around the Iraq War for the past six years.

Nicole Lee is Executive Director of Transafrica Forum in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, she was the Managing Director of Global Justice, a Washington advocacy group focused on HIV/AIDS and child survival policy.

Gerald LeMelle is Executive Director of Africa Action in Washington, D.C. He formerly was Deputy Executive Director for Advocacy at Amnesty International (USA) and Director of African Affairs with the Phelps-Stokes Fund.

Ben Lilliston is Communications Director at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis and editor of IATP’s Think Forward blog.

Bart Lubow is the Director of Programs for High-Risk Youth and a Senior Associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore.

Eric Mann is Director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles and a veteran of CORE, SDS and the United Auto Workers. His forthcoming book is The Twenty-Five Qualities of the Successful Organizer.

Ben Manski is a Wisconsin attorney and Executive Director of the national pro-democracy group, the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution in Madison, WI.

Marc Mauer is Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based national non-profit engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy. His book Race to Incarcerate (New Press, 1999) was a semi-finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and he is co-editor of Invisible Punishment (New Press, 2002), a collection of essays examining the social costs of incarceration.

Patrice McDermott is Director of OpenTheGoverment.org, a coalition of journalists, consumer and good government groups, environmentalists, library groups and others united to make the federal government a more open place in order to make us safer, strengthen public trust in government and support democratic principles. She is the author of Who Needs to Know? The State of Public Access to Federal Government Information (Bernan Press, 2007).

Dedrick Muhammad is the Senior Organizer and Research Associate for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies. He formerly was National Field Director for Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and Coordinator for the Racial Wealth Divide Project of United For A Fair Economy. He is author of the report “40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream”.

Douglas W. Nelson is President and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore.

Miriam Pemberton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, writing and speaking on demilitarization issues for its Foreign Policy In Focus project. She leads a group that produces the annual “Unified Security Budget for the United States.” With William Hartung of the New America Foundation, she is co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Publishers, 2008).

Manuel Pérez-Rocha is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs an advocacy and research project, “The Security and Prosperity Partnership and the NAFTA Plus Agenda.” He works in coordination with the Alliance for Responsible Trade in the United States and is a member of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade.

Frances Fox Piven is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among her many books are Regulating the Poor (Vintage, 1993); Poor People’s Movements (Vintage, 1978); Why Americans Still Don’t Vote (Beacon Press, 2000); and Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

Sam Pizzigati, an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, edits “Too Much,” an online weekly on excess and inequality. His most recent book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality That Limits Our Lives (Apex Press, 2004), won an “outstanding title” of the year rating from the American Library Association.

Ron Pollack is Founding Executive Director of Families USA in Washington, D.C., the national organization for health care consumers. He also was Founding Executive Director of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and Dean of the Antioch University School of Law.

William Quigley is a human rights lawyer and Professor at Loyola Univ. New Orleans College of Law. His new book is Storms Still Raging: Katrina, New Orleans and Social Justice (Book Surge Publishing, 2008). He has advocated with organizations and individuals in New Orleans for thirty years.

Miles Rapoport is the President of Démos: A Network for Ideas and Action. He served for fourteen years in Connecticut state government, as State Representative from 1985 to 1994, and as Secretary of the State from 1995 to 1999.

Marcus Raskin is Co-Founder and Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and currently directs its Paths for the 21st Century project. He was a member of the special staff of the National Security Council in President Kennedy’s Administration, as is the author of over a dozen books.

Janet Redman is a Research Associate for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies.  She is the author of the recent reports “World Bank: Climate Profiteer,” and “Dirty is the New Clean”.

Michael A. Replogle is Transportation Director for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., and President/founder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. A civil engineer, sociologist and planner, he has been a consultant to The World Bank, Environmental Protection Agency and many state, local and foreign governments

Jon Rynn is a regular contributor to the blog for Grist Magazine. He holds a Ph.D in political science from the City Univ. of New York.

Rebecca Sawyer served as a Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Policy Institute during the Summer of 2006. She is currently a graduate student in the joint MBA/MPP program at the University of Maryland.

Daniel Scheer is a junior at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Ben Scott is Policy Director at Free Press in Washington, D.C., where he oversees all governmental and legislative affairs for the country’s largest public interest organization working exclusively on communications policy. Before joining Free Press, he was a Legislative Aide to then-U.S. Congressman (now U.S. Senator) Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Rinku Sen is the President and Executive Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC) and Publisher of ColorLines magazine.  She has written extensively about immigration, community organizing and women’s lives for a wide variety of publications including Third Force, AlterNet, tompaine.com, Race, Poverty & the Environment, Amerasia Journal, and ColorLines.

Amy Shannon is a consultant for non-profit organizations, and former Associate Director of Enlaces America.

Cynthia Soohoo is Director of the Domestic Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City.

Nancy Starnes is Senior Vice President for the National Organization on Disability (NOD) in Washington, D.C.

Betsy Taylor is President of 1Sky, a Takoma Park, MD-based national campaign of over 100 diverse organizations working to ensure that the next President and Congress enact bold policies at the scale of the climate change problem.

Sanho Tree is a Fellow and Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. The project works to end the domestic and international “War on Drugs” and replace it with policies that promote public health and safety as well as economic alternatives to the prohibition drug economy.

Dorian Warren is Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Affiliate at the Inst. for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia Univ. His most recent work is the co-edited collection Race and American Political Development (Routledge, 2008).

Emira Woods is Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and serves on the Board of Directors of Africa Action, Just Associates, Global Justice, and the Financial Policy Forum. She is also on the Network Council of Jubilee USA.

Daphne Wysham is a Fellow and Board member at the Institute for Policy Studies.  She is founder and director of its Sustainable Energy and Economy Network.  She serves on the board of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, is on the advisory board of the Carbon Free Nuclear-Free Alliance, and co-hosts the one-hour weekly broadcast of Earthbeat Radio, which airs on 50 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.