Contributors

 

Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and Director of Research and Marketing for Cutting Edge Capital. He has authored, coauthored, or edited eight books. He helped co-found BALLE, which represents 22,000 local businesses in North America in 80 communities, and is now a Fellow there.

Anne Beech is managing director at Pluto Books and a member of the Radical Booksellers Alliance.

Patrick Chalmers is a journalist and author of Fraudcast News — How Bad Journalism Supports Our Bogus Democracies.  You can listen to him talking about Fraudcast News in a “pop-up” interview from last year’s Rebellious Media Conference.

Will Simpson is one of the founding members of The Easton Cowboys.  He is author of Freedom Through Football: The Story Of The Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls which will be published by Tangent Books this summer

David Boyle is the author of a range of books about history, social change, politics and the future including Money Matters: Putting the Eco Back Into Economics and Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash.  He has been editor of a number of publications including Town & Country Planning, Community Network, New Economics, Liberal Democrat News and Radical Economics.  He is a fellow of the New Economics Foundation.

Lizzy Willmington is a member of Craftivism Wellington

Keith McHenry is an artist and author who helped start Food Not Bombs in Massachusetts in 1980. He has recovered, cooked and shared food with the hungry for over 30 years. He has been arrested for his involvement with Food Not Bombs, spending over 500 nights in jail and at one point faced life in prison. He has traveled all over the world speaking at colleges, books stores and cafes while sharing free vegan meals with many of the over 1,000 Food Not Bombs groups active around the world. When he isn’t on the road Keith lives in Taos, New Mexico, tending to his garden, writing, painting and helping coordinate logistics for the Food Not Bombs movement.

Rob Hopkins is co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Totnes. 

Franco Iacomella is the Executive Director of the P2P Foundation.  He blogs here.

Ian Westmoreland is an activist at Transition Heathrow.

scott crow is a community organizer, writer, strategist and speaker who advocates the philosophy and practices of anarchism for social, environmental, and economic aims.  or over almost two decades he has continued to use his experience and ideas in co-founding and co-organizing numerous radical grassroots projects in Texas, including Treasure City Thrift, Radical Encuentro Camp, UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism), Dirty South Earth First! and the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist influenced organization in modern U.S. history to date.

Charlotte Du Cann is a writer and community activist, working with the Transition Network and the Dark Mountain Project. An ex-journalist, she now edits several community blogs, This Low Carbon Life, The Social Reporters Project and the OneWorldColumn. Her book 52 Flowers That Shook My World – A Radical Return to Earth i(Two Ravens Press) will be published on August 1. You can find a selection of recent writings on http://charlotteducann.blogspot.com.

Clare Joy and Naomi Glass are members of OrganicLea.  The Hawkwood growing site is open for anyone to visit, to participate in project stories, and to join a guided site tour on the last Sunday of every month from 12-4pm. More information at www.organiclea.org.uk.  You can also read their Growers Blog.

Sam Bailey is an MA student from London, currently studying Photography and Urban Cultures at Goldsmiths University. He has also worked for and with a variety of charities, student projects and youth organisations, primarily focused around access to education and providing sport and youth services to disadvantaged young people. He has been working with Football Beyond Borders for over two years and was the joint project leader of Football Beyond Borders: London 2011.

Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor at the New School for Social Research, and a part-time professor of philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. His many books include Infinitely Demanding, Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity, The Book of Dead Philosophers, and most recently, The Faith of Faithless published by Verso.  

Katherine Darling works for the Plunkett Foundation which helps rural communities through community-ownership and advice.

Nik Gorecki is a co-manager at the long-standing radical booksellers Housmans Bookshop in King’s Cross, London.

Brian Van Slyke’s adventures in the popular education and cooperative economics movements began in 2005 when he founded a record label that soon became a worker collective. In 2007, he facilitated a participatory class at a community-learning center for teens in Massachusetts about starting cooperatively-run record labels. That experience cemented his dedication to democratizing education for democratizing our workplaces, economy, and society. Since then, Brian has designed workshops, curricula, board games, and other educational resources on topics ranging from people’s history to co-ops and social change movements. Brian is a member of the worker-ownedcooperative The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), which designs participatory educational resources for social and economic change. He can be reached at: brian AT toolboxfored DOT org

Jason Cridland is the Joint Coordinating Editor of Dorset Eye, a citizen-led media hub in Dorset that is due to be launched in late Spring. He is also a part time lecturer in a further education college and editor of the website The Ultimate Shambles.

John Stewart has campaigned on environmental issues for more than 30 years.  Most recently he chaired the coalition which defeated plans for a 3rd runway at Heathrow.  In 2008 he was voted by the Independent on Sunday as the the UK’s ‘most effective environmentalist’.  He blogs for STIR about aviation activism.  

Essential Trading Co-operative is a worker-owned organic food wholesaler based in Bristol. It supports strikers with food and pallets for fire wood, and also sponsors the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls.

McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory and most recently The Beach Beneath the Street. He teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York City. The Beach Beneath the Street is available from Verso.

John Gledhill is the Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include the books Casi Nada: Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo and Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics.

Dan Hind was a publisher for ten years. In 2009 he left the industry to develop a program of media reform centred around public commissioning. His journalism has appeared in the New Scientist, Al Jazeera online and Lobster. He is the author of two books – The Threat to Reason and The Return of the Public. Return of the Public is the winner of the 2011 Best Book of Ideas prize at the Bristol Festival of Ideas.

Matthew Steele works part-time as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, incubating food cooperative start-ups at universities and consulting with existing cooperatives. He also works part-time as a food ethnographer through the University of Pennsylvania, studying and documenting the local food movement, specifically market creation in areas of low access. Matt facilitated the creation of the University of Washington Student Food Cooperative (UWSFC) before moving to Philadelphia to focus on community development in North Philadelphia in conjunction with the work of his partner, Fernando Montero, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alberto Toscano teaches sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Fanaticism: A History of an Idea, and an editor of the journal Historical Materialism.

George McKay is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Salford, UK. He has written extensively over the years about alternative cultures and music, the cultures of radical politics and social movements, in books like Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (1996), DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain (editor, 1998), Glastonbury: A Very English Fair (2000) and Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (2005). His latest book, Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism & Rebellion in the Garden, was published in May 2011 by France Lincoln. His next, Shakin’ All Over: Rock, Popular Music and Disability, is published by the University of Michigan Press in 2012. He maintains a website at http://georgemckay.org

David Graeber teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People, and Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire. He has written for Harper’s, The Nation, Mute, and The New Left Review.

Debbie Clarke has worked at Unicorn for nearly 8 years, after originally having planned to stay 6 months. She has lived in Manchester most of her life and is involved in several community food projects locally. ‘I still love working at Unicorn after all these years, and although it’s been nearly 8 years I still regularly get a buzz when I’m reminded what a great job we do and how proud I am to be part of it’.

Rashmi Rangnath is a Staff Attorney and the Director of the Global Knowledge Initiative at Public Knowledge. Her current focus is on copyright and patent law issues.

Amy Clancy is a graduate student in Architecture at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales. She works and resides in Leeds and is an active participant in the Really Open University. More information can be found on the Really Open University blog http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com

Ben Price is Project Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) based in Pennsylvania, U.S. A. He can be contacted at BenGPrice@aol.com.  For information on Democracy Schools, contact The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund info@celdf.org. 

Dan Glass is an activist / writer / presenter / mischief maker and a critical-campaigning trainer. Recent winner of ‘UK youth climate leader‘ (Guardian) and ‘new role model’ (Attitude Magazine) for bridging LGBTQ and environmental justice movements. Dan is a Plane Stupid activist, So We Stand co-founder and coordinator of The Glass is Half Full action-lab. For 10 years Dan has revelled in creating militant and cheeky ways to be a thorn in the side for those destroying the planet and duly sticks himself to Prime Minsters in 10 Downing Street, occupies airports, dances with old ladies blighted by flightpaths and regularly speaks about and helps facilitate a range of trainings from organising political trials, anti-oppression, direct action and is currently organising the 2012 Summer Activism School in Social Justice Community Organising. Contact Dan on alright@theglassishalffull.co.uk.

Mat Callahan is a musician and author from San Francisco, now residing in Bern, Switzerland.  He composed and performed music with seminal world-beat band, The Looters, whose success led to the founding of the artists’ collective Komotion International. He is the author of three books, Sex, Death and the Angry Young Man, Testimony, and The Trouble With Music. He can be contacted at: info@matcallahan.com or http://www.matcallahan.com

Dr Mark Everard’s new book Common Ground: The Sharing of Land and Landscapes for Sustainability is published by Zed Books, London. You can find out more about Mark’s other books and work at http://www.markeverard.co.uk

Michael Newman trained as a science teacher to deliver the then newly created national curriculum,attended the Speakers Conference on Citizenship in 1990. He has also worked at A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School for over 11 years as teacher and then houseparent, facilitating the children’s campaign to save the school in 1999, and organising events with them ever since to share Summerhill’s history and philosophy with other children and educationalists.  For the past six years he has been a school project worker for active global citizenship working with primary and secondary schools in Tower Hamlets and London, working on children’s and human rights, local democracy, sustainability, ICT, community cohesion, and co-operative enterprise.

Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University. She is the co-editor of Alain Badiou’s On Beckett and his Political Writings. Nina has published widely on topics including Iran, humanism, vintage pornography and Marxism. Her book One Dimensional Woman is published by O-Books.  She also blogs at Infinite Thought

Wu Ming 1 is a member of the Wu Ming Foundation, grew up in the lands between Ferrara and the Adriatic Sea which are depicted in his story, and blogs at www.wumingfoundation.com

Gabriel Kuhn is an Austrian-born writer and translator, currently living in Stockholm, Sweden. He publishes on a variety of subjects, including anarchism, subculture, and sports. Among his most recent books are Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics (PM Press, 2010) and Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics (PM Press, 2011).

Stephen Duncombe is Associate Professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications of New York University where he teaches the history and politics of media.  He is author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy and the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader.

Maxwell Tremblay writes for Maximumrocknroll, plays drums in the band SLEEPiES, and is a doctoral student in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.

Roger Peet is an artist and a printmaker. His work tends to focus on the contemporary crisis of biodiversity and what can and can’t be done about it. He is a member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, a group of North American artists producing socially and environmentally engaged artwork. You can see his work at Too Sphexy.

Guppi Bola came into food justice activism after having a brainwave with her partner-in-crime Casper Ter Kuile on Brighton beach. She gets fired up by the environmental and health impacts of the food industry, but has enjoyed exploring new food based campaign tactics after helping run the Create Justice Through Food programme earlier this summer. Guppi’s academic background is in public health, her “spare time” is spent on activism.

Bethan Graham started thinking more consciously about food after dicing what felt like a thousand onions in the Wales neighbourhood kitchen in the Kingsnorth Climate Camp in 2008. Since then, she has been involved in community kitchen and food growing projects in Leeds and Swansea, and has recently moved to London.

David Bollier is an independent commons scholar who works with the Commons Strategy Group and blogs at Bollier.org.  He is the author of ten books, most recently Viral Spiral:  How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own www.viralspiral.cc.

Marianne Maeckelbergh is lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, Netherlands. She has 15 years experience as an activist, organising and facilitating exactly the decision-making processes that lie at the heart of her study. Her book The Will of Many is available from Pluto Press.

Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized network of 26 artists committed to making print and design work that reflects a radical social, environmental, and political stance. We believe in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. To this end, we produce collective portfolios, contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets.  You can  find them at Justseeds

Transition Heathrow aims to bring to light the environmental damage and misery future airport expansion at Heathrow will bring to local residents and businesses.  Their objective is to build permanent and sustainable communities within threatened areas to offer and show a viable alternative to the bulldozing of green spaces, houses, lives and history. Grow Heathrow welcomes visitors & volunteers. For more information visit Transition Heathrow

Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. They are the first organization of their kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model that vastly increases their educational community outreach, help them to recruit volunteers, decentralizes fundraising sources, and provides local jobs that also train young community organizers.  You can see the work they do at Planting Justice

Envision Spokane aim to build an economically and environmentally sustainable community through     democratic self-governance.  To learn more about their Bill of Rights go to Envision Spokane and The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Dan Piraro is a cartoonist who has won 11 awards for Bizarro.  For his animal rights-themed cartoon, he won the Humane Society’s Genesis Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of 2002.  His work can be found at Bizzaro

Brandon Jourdan is an award-winning independent filmmaker, journalist, and writer. His film, the July War, is based on the 2006 war in Lebanon and the consequences of the war. Jourdan has contributed to the NY Times, CNN, Babelgum, Reuters, Deep Dish TV, Democracy Now!, the Independent Media Center, Now with Bill Moyers, Foreign Exchange, and Free Speech Television. He is currently based in the Netherlands, where he is working on a film about reactions to the financial crisis.  He blogs at Brandon Jourdan