THE CONTRIBUTORS
Ramona Africa
Ramona Africa is the Minister of Communication for the MOVE Organization; a group of revolutionaries founded by John Africa with a focus on natural law. Ramona Africa is the sole adult survivor of the May 13th 1985 bombing on the MOVE home in Philadelphia.
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar who currently holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. Prior to joining the Kirwan Institute, Alexander was an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, where she directed the Civil Rights Clinics. For several years, Professor Alexander also served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement. In 2005, Michelle Alexander won a Soros Justice Fellowship, which supported the writing of her first book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Esther Armah
Esther Armah is a radio & tv host, playwright and award-winning international journalist. In New York, she hosts Wake Up Call, WBAI 99.5FM’s morning show and is a regular commentator and guest host on GRITtv with Laura Flanders and MNN’s Ancestor House with Camille Yarbrough. Esther has written extensively on African Diaspora issues for The Guardian in London, Essence magazine in the US and West Africa magazine in Africa and Europe. The themes of her written work are reflected in the issues portrayed in Armah’s four New York stage plays, Can I Be Me? Forgive Me? Entitled! and SAVIOUR? Esther is the creator and moderator of ‘Afrolicious: an Emotional Justice Arts and Conversation’ series in New York. A global citizen, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Vincent Harding
As one of the icons of the civil rights movement, activist and author Dr. Vincent Harding was a friend and colleague of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and worked with Coretta Scott King to establish the King Center in Atlanta, serving as its first director. A distinguished theologian and historian, he is the award-winning author of several books, including ‘There is a River’, ‘Hope and History’ and ‘Martin Luther King; The Inconvenient Hero.’ Harding was professor of religion and social transformation at Denver’s Iliff School of Theology from 1981 until his retirement in 2004. In 1997, Dr. Harding and his wife Rosemarie founded Veterans of Hope, an initiative on religion, culture and participatory democracy that emphasizes nonviolent and grass root approaches to social change.
Van Jones
Van Jones is an award winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. In 2011, he launched, with others, Rebuild the Dream, the hub of the American Dream Movement. Van is also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior policy advisor at Green For All. At Princeton University, Jones holds a joint appointment as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 2009, Van Jones served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House and is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs. The Green-Collar Economy.
Dr Julianne Malveaux
As the 15th President of Bennett College, Dr. Julianne Malveaux has been the architect of exciting and innovative transformation at America’s oldest historically black college for women. Dr. Malveaux has long been recognized for her progressive and insightful observations. She is a labor economist, noted author, and colorful commentator.
Dr. Malveaux’s popular writing has appeared in USA Today, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ms. Magazine, Essence Magazine, and the Progressive. Julianne Malveaux has been described by Dr. Cornel West as “the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country.” Her contributions to the public dialogue on issues such as race, culture, gender, and their economic impacts are shaping public opinion in 21st century America.
Linn Washington, Jr.
Linn Washington Jr. is a journalist and journalism professor. He writes a weekly column for the Philadelphia Tribune focused primarily on social justice issues. Washington is a co-founder of the online newspaper This Can’t Be Happening – where he writes regularly on topics involving the news media, the criminal justice system and racism. Washington has won many awards for investigative reporting and editorial writing during his journalism career spanning three-plus decades. As an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University, Washington co-directs the award-winning Philadelphia Neighborhoods.com, a hyper-local news website featuring multi-media content from urban communities. Washington is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program. He holds a BS in Communications from Temple University and a Masters in the Study of Law from the Yale Law School.