Independent Voices for the 21st Century

The speakers listed below are available to speak at colleges, universities, union halls, religious institutions, community associations and anywhere else people can be gathered together. These speakers are "long distance runners," people who have given of their lives for decades in the ongoing struggle for justice and human liberation in the United States and worldwide.

The Independent Progressive Politics Network is pleased to make these people available for your group. For futher information please see the bottom of the page below the speakers list

Long Distance Runners Still Running and Speaking Out:

Soren Ambrose is Policy Analyst at 50 Years is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Justice.  Mr. Ambrose became interested in economic justice issues while working in Nigeria, where he learned that the IMF and World Bank were at the root of Africa's poverty.  He returned to Chicago to devote more time to these issues, becoming a part-time activist with the 50 Years Is Enough Campaign's Chicago Coalition, eventually becoming its coordinator.  In 1995 he moved to D.C. to work with the Nicaragua Network, a leading member of the 50 Years Is Enough Network.  Much of his work was devoted to analyzing economic issues and mobilizing activists to oppose the policies of the IMF and World Bank.  He is now employed by both the Nicaragua Network and as a policy analyst at 50 Years is Enough.  He also helped create the Alliance for Global Justice, which brings together eight progressive non-profit organizations under one umbrella.

• IMF/World Bank Policies and Structural Adjustment

• International Trade and Africa

Elaine Bernard is Executive Director of the Trade Union Program at Harvard University. Before moving to Boston in 1989, Bernard was the Director of Labour Programs at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia and President of the British Columbia wing of Canada's labor party, the New Democratic Party. She lectures and has conducted courses on a wide variety of topics for unions, community groups, universities and government departments in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Japan, Australia and Europe. She is a founding member of the Labor Party in the U.S. and the New Party and a supporter of independent labor political action.

• Democracy in the U.S.: Why Unions Matter
• Building Social Solidarity and Social Unionism
• Labor Law Reform: Beyond the Wagner Act
• The Politics of Health Care Reform
• What's Wrong with GATT and NAFTA and What We Can Do About It

Anne Braden is a writer, editor and organizer who has been active in Southern civil rights, civil liberties, peace and labor movements for the past 50 years. From the 1950s until the mid-1970s she worked with the southwide Southern Conference Educational Fund. In 1975 she co-founded and now co-chairs the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC), a multi-issue, multi-ethnic network of people working in their communities against racism, war, economic injustice and environmental destruction. She also works with the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Kentucky Rainbow Coalition and the Racial Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches.

• The Role of Whites in the Struggle Against White Supremacy: 1619 to the Present
• Five Decades of Struggle for Social Justice in the U.S.
• The Grass-Roots Movement Against Environmental Destruction
• Class and Race: Where They Intersect
• The Concept of Whiteness: Myths and Realities

Dennis Brutus is an internationally-known poet whose works center on his sufferings and those of his fellow blacks in South Africa under apartheid. He taught English and Afrikaans in South Africa for 14 years. His outspoken protests against apartheid led to an 18-month prison term, as well as his being banned from teaching, writing, publishing, attending social or political meetings, and pursuing studies in law. He has lived in the United States since the early 1970s. He has published eleven books of poetry and numerous articles on social and political issues.

• Apartheid and Racism in Africa
• Africa in the Global Economic Order
• Mobilizing Student Activism

Vinie Burrows began her career as a child actress on Broadway with Helen Hayes. After six Broadway shows, disillusioned by the quality of roles offered to actors of color, Ms. Burrows branched out to create, produce and direct her own solo productions. She now has a repertoire of seven completely different one-woman shows which have been sponsored on more than 5,000 college campuses. Two of the more well-known are "Walk Together Children," an exploration of the African-American experience, and "Sister! Sister!," which celebrates the triumphs and trials of women around the world. She has been honored by the Actors Equity Association, the National Organization for Women, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and the Working Theater. She has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Presents, the Hallmark Hall of Fame and As the World Turns.

• The Situation in Southern Africa: Political, Economic, Social and Cultural
• The Status and Condition of Women: An Historical Overview and Events Since Mexico City, Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing
• Non-Governmental Organizations at the United Nations: Their Increasing Strength, Credibility and Restiveness
• The Role of Ethnicity, Tribalism, Education and Poverty in the International Struggle Against Racism and Racial Discrimination

Leslie Cagan has been a tireless organizer for 30 years: from the Viet Nam war to racism at home, from nuclear disarmament to lesbian/gay liberation, from fighting sexism to working against U.S. intervention. Leslie's coalition and organizing skills have put hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in many of the country's largest mobilizations and countless smaller public protests. Wrapping up seven years as the Director of the Cuba Information Project, Leslie coordinated the U.S. delegation to the World Youth Festival held in Cuba in the summer of 1997. She serves on the steering committee of the Same Boat Coalition in New York City, is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence and is on the board of the Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation.

• Why I Call Myself a Socialist
• U.S.-Cuba Relations: An Overview
• Coalitions and Alliances: Why We Need Them, How They Work, Why Are They So Hard to Maintain?
• The Power and Limitations of Identity Politics

Marilyn Clement is Executive Director of the U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. WILPF's goal is to empower women to work together for peace and justice. She was formerly Executive Director of Health Care: We Gotta Have It!, a national women's campaign dedicated to acquiring a single- payer, universal health care plan for the United States. Working through EMPOWER, a small consulting firm, she helped to organize the WILPF Peace Train to the IVth International Women's Congress in Beijing in 1995. She also worked with the African National Congress to organize their largest conference just prior to the setting of elections in that country. She was formerly Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights for 12 years, Associate Director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, and worked as a researcher in Atlanta for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC.

• The Cassini Space Launch and Beyond to Nuclear Warfare in Space
• The Multilateral Agreement on Investments: Fast Track Must be Slowed and Stopped
• The War on Drugs and Its Effects on Latin America
• Social Security: Don't Gamble It Away on a Riverboat or on Wall Street

Ron Daniels has been a leading figure in some of the most significant progressive political movements of the last three decades. He was a leader of the National Black Political Assembly in the 1970s, Executive Director of the National Rainbow Coalition and Deputy Campaign Manager for the Jesse Jackson for President campaign in the 1980s and an independent candidate for President in 1992. He was a member of the Executive Council for the historic Million Man March and Day of Absence in 1995. His weekly column, Vantage Point, appears in more than one hundred newspapers nationwide. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including the CBS, ABC and NBC nightly news, the Donahue show, the Maury Povich show, BET's Our Voices and BET Tonight, CNN's Both Sides with Jesse Jackson and Inside Politics, and NPR's Talk of the Nation. He is currently Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and National Chairperson of the Campaign for a New Tomorrow.

• Finishing the Unfinished Democracy: A New Covenant for a New Society
• From Montgomery to Memphis: The Transformation of Martin Luther King
• No Sell-Out. . . Malcolm X
• The Case for Reparations for Blacks in America
• Beyond the Lesser Evil: Building an Independent Progressive Party in the U.S.

David Dellinger has been a non-violent activist, teacher, writer and editor for 60 years, since the late 1930s. He spent three years in prison in the 1940s for refusing to register for the draft. He was Chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and a defendant in the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial in 1969-1970. He is the author of six books and numerous articles. He has traveled and spoken in Europe, Asia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central America and the Middle East. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the magazine Toward Freedom.

• The Movement Against the War in Vietnam
• Prison as an Educational Experience
• Practicing Revolutionary Nonviolence in a Violent World

George Friday is a co-founder of Wholeworks, which works with grass-roots community organizations to provide leadership and skills training ranging from strategic planning and organizing to fundraising, marketing and community building. She worked as a fundraiser for National Peace Action in the latter half of the 1980s and as Development Director of the Piedmont Peace Project in North Carolina in the first half of the 1990s. She is a board member of the Grassroots Policy Project, the Center for Voting and Democracy and the New World Foundation and is on the Advisory Committee of the Campaign for Human Development. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the Federation for Industrial Renewal and Retention for four years.

• Exorcising the Money Demon and Doing Successful Fundraising
• Beyond Tolerance and Inclusion to Genuine Shared Leadership
• Community-Based Economic Development

Ted Glick is the National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network. He has been working to create a mass-based independent political party since the mid-1970s. In 1971 he was named as a defendant in the Harrisburg 8 "Kissinger kidnapping" conspiracy case; all charges against him were eventually dropped. In 1973-1974 he co-founded and was a national coordinator of the National Campaign to Impeach Nixon. He has been a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based community activist since 1979 on issues of tenants rights, unemployment, racism, neighborhood development, environmental protection and economic justice. Since 1992 he has fasted for 12 days each October and is a coordinator of a national Peoples Fast for Justice network working to rename "Columbus Day" Indigenous Peoples Day and help gain Leonard Peltier's freedom.  He has just published his first book, "Future Hope: A Winning Strategy for a Just Society."

• The Progressive Third Party Movement in the U.S. 
• A White Man's Perspective on Dealing With and Overcoming Racism and Sexism
• From Injustice to Justice: A Winning Strategy for Changing U.S. Society

Victoria J. Gray-Adams was chosen in 1964 to be one of three national spokespeople for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, along with Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine.  MFDP was a third party formed to unseat the all-European American Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.  She has lived in Virginia for many years working on community issues and with the United Methodist Church.  Her personal motto is, "Life shrinks or expands in direct proportion to the courage with which we live it."

• The Mississippi Movement and Its Lasting Impacts
• The Southern Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's
• Racism/Colorism: What Is, What Might Have Been, What Still Can Be

Merle Hansen, a retired farmer, still owns land purchased by his grandfather in 1905. He worked with Fred Stover, President of the Iowa Farmers Union and a leading farm policy authority, who made the nominating speech for Henry Wallace, Progressive Party candidate for President in 1948. Hansen was involved in farm protests during the 1950s through the 1980s. He was President of the North American Farm Alliance in the 1980s, a coalition of over 30 groups. The NAFA promoted unity between farmers and nonfarm progressives in the U.S. and abroad. Hansen was one of Jesse Jackson's agricultural advisors and gave a nominating speech for him at the 1984 Democratic Party Convention. He continues to be active in Nebraska and nationally in the farmers and progressive movements.

• The Role of Farmers in the Struggle for Justice and World Survival
• Corporate Control of Food and the Need for Land Reform
• On the Need for Economic Democracy With Political Democracy

Howie Hawkins has participated in independent political efforts since 1967 and the U.S. Green Party movement since its beginning in 1984. He is active in community-based peace, ecology and economic justice movements and campaigns for public office, most recently as the Green Party Mayoral candidate in Syracuse, N.Y. in 1997 and for Congress in 1998. He is Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives and community organizations in Central New York. CommonWorks serves as a poor/working people's chamber of commerce, providing technical assistance to cooperatives and advocating public policies that support economic democracy instead of corporate welfare. His articles have appeared in many progressive publications, from Against the Current to Z Magazine, and he is the Politics Editor for Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought.

• Greens Parties in the U.S. and Around the World
• Left Green Politics: Socialists, Anarchists, Ecologists and the Next Left
• The Road to Power is Through the Cities: Building Progressive Majorities in Metropolitan Regions
• Grassroots Democracy and Proportional Representation
• Eco-Socialist Visions and Community-Based Economic Organizing

Connie Hogarth was a founder and Director of the Westchester Peace Action Coalition from 1973 to 1996. She was a national leader of SANE and SANE/Freeze, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Women for Racial and Economic Equality and the National Rainbow Coalition. She was a founding organizer in 1977 of the National Mobilization for Survival and an anti- nuclear activist against the Indian Point, Shoreham and Seabrook nuclear power plants. She has traveled to Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Middle East, Vietnam and the Soviet Union as part of efforts to promote peace and justice.

• Three Decades of Grassroots Activism: Where Do We Go Next?
• Living Under the Shadow of a Nuclear Menace
• The Role of Women in the Peace and Justice Movement

Arthur Kinoy is a Co-President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, National Co-Chair of the National Committee for Independent Political Action and Director of the National Center for Public Interest Law at Rutgers Law School. In the 1950s he was Associate General Counsel of the United Electrical Workers Union and then in private practice represented many witnesses before the McCarthy Committee and the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the 1960s he was one of the lawyers for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Conference Educational Fund and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He has appeared before the Supreme Court seven times, winning all of the cases he has argued. His book, Rights on Trial, the Odyssey of a People's Lawyer , was published by Harvard University Press and has been translated into Japanese and published in Japan.

• The 1950s: McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee
• The Role of Lawyers in the Struggle for Social and Economic Justice
• The 1960s Southern Civil Rights Movement
• On the Need for a Mass Party of the People

Karren Kubby has been a community activist in Johnson County, Iowa since 1979. Subscribing to a philosophy of democratic socialist feminism, Karen has been a member of the Socialist Party, USA since 1980. She served for three consecutive four-year terms on the City Council in Iowa City. Karen has worked locally on a variety of issues including opposition to registration for the draft, standing on picket lines with local labor unions, environmental protection, affordable housing, the Nestle boycott, reproductive rights and many others. She has played a leading role in IPPN's National Slate of Independent Candidates task force, conducting workshops for candidates and campaign workers in different parts of the country. Karen is a potter and beadworker.