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2008 Peace Conference - Presenter Bios
Conference Schedule | Break Out Sessions | Conference Main Page
Keynote Speakers |
Friday 7:00 p.m. |
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Bob Wing has been an activist, writer and editor in national and international struggles, especially racial justice struggles, since 1968. He currently works with the Community Coalition, a black-Latino grassroots organization in South Central Los Angeles. Wing was previously founding editor of the antiwar newspaper War Times/Tiempo de Guerras and of ColorLines, a national magazine of race, culture and organizing, and a leader of United for Peace and Justice. read more
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Saturday 2:00 p.m. |
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Medea Benjamin, a powerful and charismatic force in human rights activism, has struggled for social justice in Asia, Africa and the Americas for over 20 years. She is the Founding Director of the human rights organization Global Exchange.
Benjamin is a leading activist in the peace movement in the United States and helped bring together the groups forming the coalition United for Peace and Justice. She is also the co-founder of Code Pink: Women for Peace, a women's group that has been organizing against the war in Iraq... read more |
Workshop Presenters |
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Gary Baran is a Certified Trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication (www.cnvc.org) and was executive director of the Center from 1998 until 2006. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a member of the board of directors of the Oregon Network for Compassionate Communication. |
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Peter Bergel is the Executive Director of Oregon PeaceWorks. He is also the founding editor of The PeaceWorker newspaper, currently in its 20th year of publication. He is a veteran peace, anti-nuclear and civil liberties organizer, continuously active on these issues since 1961. He also serves on the Board of the Shundahai Network, which works on anti-nuclear and Native rights issues in the Great Basin. |
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Leah Bolger is a 20-year veteran of the Navy. She retired in 2000 at the rank of Commander. In January 2006, she founded a chapter of Veterans for Peace in Corvallis and has served as its president since that time. She is a full-time political activist and has recently joined the Board of Directors of Oregon Peace Works. |
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Jessica Campbell is a student activist who first became involved in justice issues when she organized her peers to remove corporate advertising from Cottage Grove High School. She has since organized two successful walk-outs for peace and immigrant rights, served as a Cottage Grove City Councilor, and worked with several organizations around Lane County. Jessica sits on the Board of Directors for the Rural Organizing Project and the National Advisory Board for Not Your Soldier. |
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Louis Carosio is a Psychologist Associate in private practice in Eugene, Oregon. He has provided individual and couple’s therapy, workshops, retreats, and classes in meditation, applied spirituality, wilderness quests, and energetic healing for 25 years. He is a long time student of Buddhism, mind-body therapies, energy psychology, and the spiritual quest. To find out more: radiantlifecenter.com. |
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Leah Coakley grew up in South Carolina and moved to the Tacoma, Washington to work as a community health educator for Planned Parenthood. She has volunteered for Food Not Bombs and resisted at the ports of Tacoma and Olympia. She has presented workshops on sexuality, and consent. Leah serves as a victim advocate for the Sexual Assault Center of Pierce County and is an active member of Tacoma SDS and Tacoma IWW. Her current interests are de-gentrifying Tacoma and compiling a radical history of South Carolina. She enjoys vegan cooking and is learning the cello. |
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Rev. Ed Conrad, senior minister of Unity of the Valley spiritual community, has been a long time student of many spiritual disciplines. With over 20 years in ministry in various capacities, Ed is also trained in peacemaking for spiritual communities and churches, as well as being a gifted speaker, retreat facilitator, and workshop presenter. In addition to Eugene, Ed has served spiritual communities in Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Georgia. |
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Patrick Edelbacher is an organizer and folksinger from Tacoma, WA. In high school, his suspension was the foundation of a victory ACLU free speech movement in which activists were suspended for anti-war organizing. Since then he has been a member of Tacoma Students for a Democratic Society and
the Industrial Workers of the World. He was involved with the Port Militarization Resistance actions in Tacoma and Olympia and was one of thirty-seven arrested at the Port of Tacoma protests. |
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Dave Fidanque has worked for the ACLU of Oregon since 1982 and has been its Executive Director since 1993. Since 2006, he has been Chair of the ACLU Executive Directors Steering Committee, which makes him the key point of contact between the National ACLU and its 53 affiliates and National Chapters around the country. He speaks frequently about the erosion of civil liberties since 2001 and what ACLU is doing nationwide to restore the Constitution. |
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Dan Goldrich, Professor, political science, UO, retired. Fields: Latin American and US-Latin American politics, political economy, human rights, environmental politics, globalization and alternatives: relocalization. Since 9/11/01, work with Progressive Responses, Community Alliance of Lane County, to generate local debate and criticism of US foreign policy, the Global War on Terror, and the limits of militarism; getting on to the Big Picture: the challenges of global warming,declining oil/gas resources, and relocalization. |
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Ibrahim Hamide, a Muslim born in Bethlehem, is President of the Eugene Middle East Peace Group, serves on Eugene's Human Rights Commission and is a board member of Lane Interfaith Alliance. He is also co-founder of the Inter-Religious Committee of Peace in the Middle East. |
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Mark Harris is an American maroon griot mugician, college instructor (Ethnic Studies, Addiction) and Interim Chief Diversity Officer at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. He is an award winning journalist. |
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Katie Heald became an activist as a student at the New School in NYC. She has organized with UU youth, puppetistas and Iraq veterans, and has worked on peace and justice campaigns and events in Washington, DC, Atlanta & Ft. Benning, GA, Crawford, TX and Ft. Lewis, WA. Katie became a founding member of the PDX Peace Coalition in 2007 after being the full-time organizer of the 20,000-person march on the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. |
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Jerry Kendall is a member of the Lane Interfaith Alliance, Lane Institute of Faith and Education, and the Eugene Taoists. His interests include the emergence of Living Spirit in political and environmental change. While interfaith in nature, he employs Taoist and Buddhist perspectives in exploring the need for change. |
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John Lenssen is a consultant and adjunct faculty member at the University of Oregon and Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He was formerly the Leader of the Access and Equity Team at the Oregon Department of Education. Prior to that he served as an administrator in the Educational Opportunities Program at Oregon State University and the Office of Minority Affairs at the University of Washington. |
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Carol Melia is dedicated to social change through building community and supporting direct action. She is a seasoned trainer of nonviolent civil disobedience, organizer of many actions and events, including the Iraq Body Count Exhibit. She has been a mental health worker for 26 years. She is a musician and mother, now working full time to stop war. |
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Noah Mrowczynski is a senior at the University of Oregon and will be graduating this spring with a degree in sociology. He spent 8 years in the Army and National Guard, attaining the rank of SGT, and is a combat veteran of the Iraq war. He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and is looking to form a chapter of IVAW in Eugene. He is also active with the Committee for Military Counter-Recruitment. |
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Barbara Nixon is an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, currently serving the Methodist Church in Junction City. She hosted GODTALK, the progressive radio program in 2006-07, promoting the interests of peace and justice, the wisdom of interfaith conversation and the importance of solid, critical religious thinking. |
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Joseph Orosco is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University and Director of the OSU Peace Studies Program. He teaches classes in Latino/a and Latin American thought, with an emphasis on Mexican culture, history, and immigration to the United States, in both the Philosophy and Ethnic Studies departments at OSU. Joseph has written on the political theory of various figures, including Josiah Royce, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Cesar Chavez. He is currently completing a book on Cesar Chavez's theory of nonviolence. He serves as a faculty advisor to MEChA and the Centro Cultural Cesar Chavez at OSU and is a founding member of the OSU Faculty and Staff for Peace and Justice. |
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Agnes Pilgrim is the oldest living member of her tribe, the Takelma Indians, originally from Southern Oregon. Agnes is a world renowned spiritual leader, member of the Historic Society and keeper of the Sacred Salmon Ceremony. http://www.forthenext7generations.com/view_media.html
http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/
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Guadalupe Quinn is a long-time community activist working for human rights, particularly racial and economic justice, worker rights and immigrant rights. She emigrated from Mexico in 1951 and grew up in California. Quinn is a leader in CAUSA, Oregon's immigrant rights organization. She has been active with many groups in the community including Educación y Justicia para la Raza, Eugene Human Rights Commission, ACLU, Amigos and 4J's Equity Committee. Guadalupe's favorite quote is “One only becomes real at the point of action.” |
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Lauren C. Regan, Executive Director and Attorney for the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a grassroots 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is a public interest attorney specializing in environmental law, civil rights and criminal defense. She is also the founder and executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a nonprofit organization that strives to protect and educate the public as to their civil liberties and constitutional rights. |
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Vip Short, D.C., has been a nonviolence trainer for more than 30 years. He has served on the boards and staff of national peace organizations, and helped to create several enduring nonviolence campaigns to eliminate nuclear weapons. Vip is a father and holistic physician. |
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Carmen Xiomara Urbina is currently the Parent, Family and Community Coordinator for Eugene School District 4J and former Executive Director of Centro LatinoAmericano. Currently she is the President Elect of the City of Eugene City Club, Former Chair of the City of Eugene Human Rights Commission, Lane Community College Budget Committee Member, and was appointed by the Governor to the Medicaid Advisory Committee. She also served as a board member to the Governors Racial and Ethnic Health Task Force and served from 1999 to 2003 and continues to be an active and vocal health care advocate. She has also served as a voting member of the Oregon HIV Care Coalition. She is Board Member of Educacion and Justicia para la Raza,CAUSA, the Diversity Action Committee for the University of Oregon and the Diversity Committee for the College of Education at the University of Oregon. |
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Mary Christina Wood is Philip H. Knight Professor of Law, Morse Center Resident Scholar (2006-07) and Luvaas Faculty Fellow (2007-08) at the University of Oregon School of Law. She teaches property law, natural resources law, public trust law, federal Indian law, public lands law, wildlife law, and hazardous waste law. Professor Wood is a co-author of a leading textbook on natural resources law (West, 2006) and has published extensively on climate crisis, natural resources, and native law issues. She is a frequent speaker on global warming issues and has received national and international attention for her sovereign trust approach to global climate policy. Professor Wood is currently working on a book entitled, Nature’s Trust: A Legal Paradigm for Protecting Land and Natural Resources for Future Generations. |
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