SPEAKERS’ BIOS

Rae Abileah is a CODEPINK National Organizer and coordinator of CODEPINK’s Middle East campaigns. She supports CODEPINK women to speak truth to power and build skills for creative, successful, vibrant organizing.

Lawrence Boxall is an anti-war activist, a member of Jews for A Just Peace and Stopwar.ca, as well as being a veteran of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa.

Mordecai Briemberg is a veteran activist, writer and broadcaster whose quintessential sixties experience was as one of the SFU 7 teachers purged for their challenging the status quo.

Gary Cristall is a long time socialist activist and cultural worker who works with musicians and teaches arts administration at Capilano University. He lived in Chile in 1972-73.

Cynthia Flood is a left-wing feminist activist and writer of fiction- short stories and novels.

Nadia Habib teaches at York University in Toronto where she was voted ‘best lecturer of 2010.’ Her research is on Egyptian cultural life and national identity formation. Of Egyptian background, she follows events there with passion.

Ben Isitt is a professor at the University of Victoria. He has just published his latest book on the radical trade union movement in BC in the post war period- Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-72 (University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Gary Jarvis is a trade union activist and radio broadcaster, born in England and now living in Vancouver. He is also active in StopWar.ca.

Fiona Jeffries is a longtime social justice activist who teaches Communication Studies at SFU. Her focus includes social struggles against the political use of fear, feminist politics, contemporary urban social movements, and the role of communication practices in the production of alternative globalizations.

David Lester is a multidisciplinary artist whose music is performed by Mecca Normal. He has just published a graphic novel – The Listener – that, among other things, examines the relationship between art and politics.

Fred Magdoff is the author of What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know About Capitalism and The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences with John Bellamy Foster. He is a professor emeritus of plant and soil science, and writes regularly for Monthly Review on the world’s economic and environmental crises.

Bill Moore-Kilgannon is the Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta. Previously he was ED of the Parkland Institute, and was Director of Campaigns and Communications of the Council of Canadians. He was coordinator of the Global Visions Festival and is also a documentary filmmaker.

Garth Mullins is an activist and artist. His band Legally Blind and his solo work carry on a tradition of politically committed art.

Derrick O’Keefe is a writer and social justice activist. He is the former editor of rabble.ca, and is now the co-chair of StopWar.ca and of the Canadian Peace Alliance

Andrea Pinochet is the child of Chilean exiles who fled Chile after the 1973 coup. She has found her own way to social and political activism.

Peter Prontzos immigrated to Canada as a Vietnam War resister. He has been a peace, environmental and social justice activist. He has written for many periodicals and is working on a book about the human condition. He teaches political science at Langara College. Of Greek extraction he has visited and followed events there closely

Jeff Schutts is a history professor at Douglas College. He served in the US Army and is now active in the war resister and international peace movements.

Gary Teeple teaches sociology at SFU where he is also Director of the Morgan Centre for Labour Studies. His publications go back almost forty years. He has recently co-edited Relations of Global Power: Neoliberal Order and Disorder, Co-edited with Stephen McBride, University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Rex Wyler is best known as a founder of Greenpeace and an environmental activist ever since. He is the author of the definitive biography of the group.