Hal Fales
Hal Fales is the co-director of the Greenfield outpatient clinic of ServiceNet, a local social service agency which provides mental health, residential
and other social services in Hamden, Hampshire and Franklin Counties.
Hal received his PsyD from Antioch New England Graduate School and
has been a practicing therapist since 1976. Hal is also active in the
West Cummington Church and has been involved in progressive political
campaigns for most of his adult life.
Peter Greenwald
Peter is a Managing Director in the Quantitative Management
Department at Babson Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of
MassMutual. Peter's area of work is called asset liability
management and involves the use of computer models to evaluate the
risk associated with changes in interest rates as it pertains to the
funds for which he is responsible. Peter has been with MassMutual for
22 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Amherst
College and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts. He is a
Chartered Financial Analyst and member of the CFA Institute, an
organization of investment professionals.
Jen Kern
Since 1993, Jen Kern has worked in ACORN's national office, providing research
support for local ACORN organizers nationwide on issues from
insurance and banking discrimination to jobs, education and minimum
wage. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and
moderate-income families, with over 200,000 members in over 100
cities. For the last ten years, Jen has worked exclusively on the
living wage issue as director of ACORN's Living Wage Resource
Center, a national clearinghouse and organizing support center for
living wage activists. The Resource Center closely monitors
developments in the living wage movement and provides campaign
materials, training and organizing strategy and support to the labor,
religious, community coalitions that continue to emerge and build the
living wage movement.
Michael T.
Klare
Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace
and World Security Studies, based at Hampshire College in Amherst,
Massachusetts. Before assuming his present post, he served as
Director of the Program on Militarism and Disarmament at the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. (1977-84). Professor
Klare has written widely on U.S. defense policy, the arms trade, and
world security affairs. He is the defense correspondent for The
Nation, a Contributing Editor of Current History, and recently
authored the book: Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Metropolitan
Books, 2004). Professor Klare serves on the board of directors of the
Arms Control Association, and the advisory board of the Arms Division
of Human Rights Watch; he is also a member of the Committee on
International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Stephanie Luce
Stephanie Luce is an Assistant Professor at the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She received her PhD in Sociology at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, with an emphasis in political and
economic sociology. She researches low-wage labor markets, with a
major emphasis on the living wage movement, and is co-author with
Robert Pollin of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy.
Stephanie is also a staff economist at the Center for Popular
Economics and on the editorial board of Against the Current. She is a
member of Jobs with Justice, and a long-time activist in the labor
movement and third party politics.
Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad teaches International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford,
CT. He is the author of eight books, two of which were chosen by the
Village Voice as books of the year: Karma of Brown Folk, and
Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the
Myth of Cultural Purity. His most recent books are Darker
Nations: The Rise and Fall of the Third World, and Keeping Up
with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare. He is on the board
of the Center for Third World Organizing, the co-founder of the Forum
of Indian Leftists and writes every month for Frontline (Chennai,
India), ZNET and Little India, as well as occasionally for
Counterpunch. He is also in the collective of the Valley War
Bulletin in Northampton.
Beth Spong
Beth Spong,
Bill Strickland
Bill Strickland is on the faculty of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of
Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
and is also on the board of the Rainbow Coalition. Bill's long
involvement in the Civil Rights movement has included the Presidency
of the Northern Student Movement and northern coordinator of the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Congressional Challenge. He
acted as consultant on the award-winning PBS civil rights documentary
series Eyes on the Prize as well as for the PBS film W.E.B. DuBois: A
Biography in 4 Voices. He is also author of Malcolm X: Make It
Plain, the companion volume to the film.
M. Sue Thrasher
Sue Thrasher is the Coordinator of the Five College
Public School Partnership in Amherst, Massachusetts. She holds a
doctorate in Educational Policy and Research from the School of
Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is an
adjunct faculty member for the School of Human Services at
Springfield College. She is a former member of the staff and Board of
Directors of the Highlander Research and Education Center in
Tennessee. She is a co-founder of the Institute for Southern Studies
and served as its first Director. She has worked with the Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and was a recipient of a
research fellowship from the Center for the Study of Civil Rights and
Race Relations at Duke University. She is an author of the
collaborative volume, Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the
Freedom Movement, and has contributed to several volumes on oral
history, including Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of
Grassroots Activism in America 1921-1964.
Cate Woolner
Cate Woolner worked at Franklin Community Action
Corporation for nearly 15 years as the Director of the Mediation and
Training Collaborative, the Director of Staff Training and
Development, and, most recently, the Director of Human Resources.
Cate has a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Brandeis and a
Master's of Counseling Psychology from Antioch Graduate School of
Education. She has many years of community activism and has
especially focused on addressing racism and multi-culturalism in
presentations, workshops and writings. Cate is an experienced
mediator and facilitator as well as organizational consultant.
