- Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of community organizing. - Mother Jones
Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Jones, was a prominent American labor and community organizer, and Wobbly. - Tom Hayden
Thomas Emmett "Tom" Hayden (born December 11, 1939) is an American social and political activist and politician, most famous for his involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the father of American actor Troy Garity. - Jane Addams
Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935) won the Nobel Peace Prize and was a founder of the U.S. Settlement House Movement. Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was the eighth of nine children born into a prosperous miller family. She was first cousin twice removed to Charles Addams, noted macabre cartoonist for The New Yorker. Addams was educated in the United States and Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in Rockford, … - Ella Baker
Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 - December 13, 1986) was an African American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s. She was a behind-the-scenes activist whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, including: W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. - Grace Ross
Grace Ross (Worcester, Massachusetts; born 6 June 1961) is a former Green-Rainbow Party co-chair and 2006 Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. Ross is a member of the State, and Administrative Committee's of the Green-Rainbow Party. Ross grew up in New York, but moved to Miami to attend Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, before coming to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, where she obtained a BA in psychology and a master's degree in education. - Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael (June 29, 1941 - November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. - Medea Benjamin
Medea Benjamin is Founding Director of Global Exchange. For over twenty years, Medea has supported human rights and social justice struggles around the world. Medea is a leading activist in the peace movement and helped bring together the groups forming the coalition United for Peace and Justice (see www.unitedforpeace.org ). She is also the co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a women's group that has been organizing creative actions against the war and occupation of Iraq. - Mark Schauer
Senator Mark Schauer (D- Battle Creek, Senate Democratic Leader) has much the same view, saying, "The violence in the Darfur region of Sudan has gone on for several years, but without proper funding this horrible situation would decrease and hopefully be extinguished. For this reason, I support Senate Bill 0555 which would keep state funds in the retirement investments of state employees away from businesses with interests in Sudan." - Wade Rathke
Wade Rathke is the founder and Chief Organizer of ACORN and SEIU Local 100. He began his career as an organizer for the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) in Springfield, Massachusetts. After working with the NWRO, he left for Little Rock, Arkansas, to found a new organizing effort designed to unite poor and working class families around a common agenda. - Ernesto Cortes
Ernesto Cortes is a community organizer affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS). Cortes is known primarily for his efforts in organizing COPS in San Antonio, Texas, though he also influenced the development of other IAF affiliates in Houston, El Paso, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and New York City. Cortes is currently the director of the Southwest Region of the IAF. - Sam Smith
Sam Smith (born 1937) is an American journalist and political activist who was an early pioneer in alternative media. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the US Green Party. Several times a week, Smith publishes an email news digest, "Undernews", which is widely read. Smith was born in Washington DC into an Episcopalian/Quaker family. He grew up in Philadelphia where he was educated in Quaker schools. - Ed Fallon
Ed Fallon is an American politician from the U.S. state of Iowa. A Democrat, he was a candidate for Governor of Iowa and served as a member of the Iowa General Assembly from 1993 to 2007. The son of a member of the U.S. military, Fallon was born in Santa Monica, California in 1958, but spent the majority of his formative years living in Massachusetts. After dropping out of Marlboro College in Vermont, he spent several years traveling around Europe. - Joe Szakos
Joe Szakos started the Virginia Organizing Project in 1995. He has experience organizing both rural and urban communities. Szakos worked extensively with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth before heading up the VOP. Among other projects, he and his wife, Kristin, just finished a book on community organizing, WE MAKE CHANGE: COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY DO — AND WHY, which will be published by Vanderbilt University Press in early 2007. - Michael Gecan
Michael Gecan is a community organizer in New York affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. He was trained in part by Saul Alinsky. He is lead organizer for East Brooklyn Congregations and other New York based organizations. He is the author of "Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to Citizen Action" (Anchor Books, 2004). ISBN 1-4000-7649-8. - Kim Bobo
Kim Bobo is a religious and workers' rights activist, and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice. She is widely quoted in newspapers and broadcast media as an expert on worker justice issues. - Bob Lee
Bob Lee was a high-ranking and influential advisor to Fred Hampton in the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Lee graduated from a class taught by Saul Alinsky for those who were interested in working as community organizers. He was a catalyst in forming the original "Rainbow Coalition" of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, and other grass roots organizations, and was a principal facilitator in its operation. - Robert F. Williams
Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 - October 15, 1996) was a civil rights leader, author, and the president of the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter in the 1950s and early 1960s. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in the American South and organized armed resistance against white supremacy. - Jill Stein
Jill Stein (J-Lexington) is a physician and Green-Rainbow Party activist residing in Lexington, Massachusetts. She serves on the boards of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and MassVoters for Fair Elections, and has been active recently with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. - Tom Gaudette
Tom Gaudette (1923-1998) was a community organizer who worked in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. Originally a businessman, Gaudette became interested in neighborhood organizing through his Catholic Church activism. Gaudette helped form a neighborhood group, along the lines of those organized by Saul Alinsky, on the far west side of Chicago called Organization for a Better Austin. OBA was concerned with poor schools and neighborhood decline. - Aaron Dixon
Aaron Dixon (born January 2, 1949) is an American activist and former captain of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. In 2006, he ran for the United States Senate in Washington state on the Green Party ticket. - Grace Abbott
Grace Abbott (November 17, 1878 - June 19, 1939) was an American social worker who specifically worked in advancing child welfare. Her older sister was social worker Edith Abbott. Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska. Abbott graduated from Grand Island College in 1898. Before embarking on her future career in social work, she worked as a high school teacher in her home town through 1906. In 1902, she started graduate studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. - Ellen Gates Starr
Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940) US social reformer and activist. Starr was born in Laona, Illinois and was a student at the Rockford Female Seminary (1877-78) where she met Jane Addams. Starr taught for ten years in Chicago before joining Addams in 1888 of a tour of Europe. While in London they were inspired by the success of the English Settlement movement and became determined to establish a similar social settlement in Chicago. - Peter Kellman
Peter Kellman (b. 1945) is an anti-war activist, author, and American labor union leader and activist. He is president of the Southern Maine Central Labor Council, and a member of the executive board of the Maine AFL-CIO. Among a number of other positions he holds, Kellman is also a researcher with the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). POCLAD is a project of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA). - Lloyd Monserratt
Lloyd Monserratt, was born in Los Angeles, California, the eldest son of Ecuadorian immigrants Carlos and Olga Monserratt. His father was an architect and named his eldest son after Frank Lloyd Wright. Monserratt graduated with honors from Saint Francis High School in La Cañada. He was an Eagle Scout. A graduate of UCLA, Lloyd was a leader in the student movement, as a student commissioner, and later as student body president. - Alejandro Plaz
Alejandro Plaz Castillo is a founder of the Venezuelan volunteer civil association, "Súmate". Plaz is a Venezuelan engineer and management consultant, who holds three Master’s degrees (two from Stanford University), and was a Senior partner for McKinsey & Company in Latin America, before taking a leave of absence to co-found "Súmate" with María Corina Machado. - Juanita Tate
Juanita Tate (1938 - July 5, 2004) was a community activist who advocated green space for the poor citizens of South Los Angeles, California. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and relocated to the city of Los Angeles in the early 1980s. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she led the Concerned Citizens of South Central in opposition to a waste incinerator that was proposed for area. - David Clohessy
For the last 14 years, David Clohessy has served as the national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the nation's largest and oldest self-help group for clergy molestation victims. In that role, he has traveled and spoken extensively, helping to set up local support groups in more than 50 cities. Clohessy was one of only four survivors to address all of America's Catholic Bishops at their historic meeting in Dallas in 2002. - Marguerite Durand
Marguerite Durand was a French stage actress, journalist, and a leading suffragette. Born into a middle-class family, Marguerite Durand was sent to study at a Roman Catholic convent. After finishing her primary education, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris before joining the Comédie Française. In 1888, she gave up her career in the theatre to marry an up-and-coming young lawyer, Georges Laguerre. - Zilphia Horton
Zilphia Horton (1910-1956) was American musician, community organizer, educator, Civil Rights activist, and folklorist. She is best-known for her work with her husband Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School where she is generally credited with turning such songs as "We Shall Overcome", "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," "We Shall Not Be Moved, " and "This Little Light of Mine" from hymns into songs of the Civil Rights movement. - Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson was a writer, teacher, landscape designer, and community activist. Born in Ottawa, Illinois, Wilson grew up in Oakland, California. In 1977, he moved to Canada, where he lived and worked in Toronto, Ontario. Wilson advocated restoring indigenous plant species to the urban landscape, thereby promoting urban biodiversity and reconnecting urban dwellers with the natural history of the place in which they live. - Chika Sylva-Olejeme
Chika Sylva-Olejeme (b. Chikantukogu Udogu Okonkwo Olejeme , October 22, 1968) is the founder of International Peace Institute, a diplomat and peace advocate. - María Corina Machado
María Corina Machado Parisca is a founder of the Venezuelan volunteer civil organization "Súmate", along with Alejandro Plaz. In 2003, "Súmate" led a petition drive for a constitutional presidential recall of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "The Wall Street Journal" says she faces conspiracy charge stemming from a $31,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy for "non-partisan educational work". - Maud Nathan
Maud Nathan (October 20 1862 - December 15 1946) was an American social worker, labor activist and suffragist for women's right to vote. She came from a prominent New York family, descended from Gershom Mendes Seixas, minister of New York's Congregation Sherith Israel during the Revolutionary War. Her sister was the author and education activist Annie Nathan Meyer and her cousins the poet Emma Lazarus and Supreme Court Judge Benjamin Cardozo. - St. Elmo W. Acosta
St. Elmo W. Acosta was a native of Jacksonville, Florida and enjoyed a long career of public service to the people of Jacksonville. Although he was a noted city commissioner, state legislator, and city parks commissioner, he will always be known as the man who championed the cause of a pedestrian and automobile span across the St. Johns River for the people of Jacksonville. Now known as a city of bridges, he pushed through the funding for the first for the people. - Christopher Kolade
His Excellency Dr Christopher Kolade, CON (born in Erin – Oke, Osun State Nigeria in 1932) completed his secondary school education at Government College, Ibadan after which he studied at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone. - T. R. M. Howard
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (b. March 4 1908, Murray, Kentucky - d. May 1 1976, Chicago, Illinois) was an African American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, surgeon, and entrepreneur. He was a mentor to Medgar Evers and Charles Evers, head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. He was also president of the National Medical Association. - Steve "pablo" Davis
Steve "Pablo" Davis born Paul Meier Klienbordt, 1916 in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,USA. Davis is an American artist, life-long communist activist and Detroit community organizer. He is the last living member of the team of artists who worked with Diego Rivera on the "Detroit Industry" mural which is in the central courtyard, Rivera Court, of the Detroit Institute of Arts. - Levy N. Rivers
Levy has 35 years of experiences in sales, marketing, training and planning, concentrating in the areas of leadership, business and civic development. Levy is the Master Coach and Principal Consultant of Phronêsis Inc consulting and its coaching network. - Karen Lattea
Karen has been on the Sojourners staff since 1983, serving as Managing Director, Executive Editor, and Managing Editor prior to her current position. As Director of Administration, she focuses on the administrative, human resources, hiring, and internal communications aspects of Sojourners and Call to Renewal.
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