CSTI 2001 - August 2

Thursday, August 2 through Sunday, August 5

REED COLLEGE, PORTLAND, OREGON

Photo 2001 Trainer

Photo 2001 Trainers

LIZ ACCLES has been working as a welfare rights advocate at the Community Food Resource Center in New York City since 1991. In 1999 she founded the "Welfare Made A Difference" National Campaign, which works to change public opinion and public policy relating to welfare issues through the sharing of personal stories of former and current welfare recipients, which challenge the stereotypes and illustrate the direct impact welfare policies have on families needing assistance.

ROBIN ACREE is a former AFDC welfare mom, and has 10-15 years experience as a grassroots community organizer and an advocate and activist for local, state and national welfare reforms. In 2000 she incorporated Grass Roots Organizing (GRO), a non-profit group of public assisted mothers from central Missouri who fight injustice and currently works as Lead Director/Grant Developer and also does work with the Welfare ENGINE as their National Field Organizer.

RUTHALICE ANDERSON is Finance Administrator at Western States Center. She has many years experience, working as Financial Manager at Basic Rights Oregon and Oregon Fair Share. She has also previously been both a teacher and a writer. She is also the Board President of Oregon Action.

RAÚL AÑORVE is the co-founder of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California and now serves as the executive director. His practice in popular education dates back to 1984 where a group of parents and youth taught him the fundamentals of hope through learning and teaching.

MOIRA BOWMAN is a trainer and field organizer at Western States Center, where her responsibilities include helping to coordinate the Dismantling Racism Project. Moira has extensive background and experience in dismantling oppressions training and curriculum development.

JOELLE BROUNER is a community organizer for Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA) in Seattle, WA. She is widely involved in the disability community in Washington and is a strong proponent of a cultural understanding of disability and the independent living movement. She also works to combat sexual violence and encourage positive sexuality within the disability communities.

CHERYL BROWN is Outreach and Organizing Coordinator at Good Jobs First. Previously, she was an organizer at the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network and Save Our Cumberland Mountains, and worked on the 50 Years Is Enough campaign with the Development Group for Alternative Policies (DGAP). She also has experience with coalition-building, popular education, trade, globalization, and economic and rural development issues.

ALEJANDRO "Blu" CANTAGALLO, as a board member for the Prison Moratorium Project, Blu has been organizing for a little over 5 years and has been conducting trainings for organizers and community members for the last 2. He was born and raised in Queens, NY and has worked for SASU (Student Association at SUNY) and USSA (United States Student Association).

RONAULT LATANG SAYANG CATALANI (POLO) was born the second of four sons to his Manado mother and Catalan father in the Dutch East Indies. After his family was expelled in 1960, they emigrated to Oregon in 1966. He has been in Asian and Latino community law and civil rights practice since 1983 and is an essayist for Oregon Public Radio, Asian Reporter, and the Seattle International Examiner.

JEAN COLMAN started as an Organizer at Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition (WROC) in 1987. She moved into administrative tasks in 1990 and continued to organize until 1998 when WROC hired a full time Organizer. She continues to work with WROC's Policy Committee ensuring that parents have current information about state and federal welfare and family policy. She also works with WROC's Organizers and leaders on leadership development work. Jean has lived in Seattle for 25 years.

SHURNICE DAVIS is a recent graduate of the Girls in Action for Power (GAP) leadership development program at Sisters in Action for Power. She is 17 years old and has just started her first year as a youth intern. She has been a member of Sisters in Action for Power for four years.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ECONOMIC JUSTICE PROJECT (EEJP) is based at AGENDA, a grassroots community organization in Los Angeles, and works to build the long-term capacity of environmental and economic justice organizations and networks nationally by providing community organizing training and strategic facilitation.

JOE ERVIN is the State Network Director for the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), is a policy analyst and advocate with extensive experience working with legislators and organizations such as the Alliance for Retired Americans and the National Council of Senior Citizens and the National Council. He has lobbied Congress on issues of concern to the elderly, and has served as Legislative Director for Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX).

TORRI ESTRADA is a non-profit consultant working with community based organizations on environmental justice issues. He has over 10 years of experience in providing strategic research, policy analysis, and training for community groups and local residents on land use, community development and environmental advocacy. He is former project director of the Urban Habitat Program.

TERENIE FAISON has been a member of Sisters in Action for Power for almost four years, and is currently a youth intern. As a 17 year old board member she has been key in building and strengthening the organization in the community.

LEE FLINN is an organizer for the Idaho Women's Network. She has worked on many issues, including fighting anti-gay initiatives, supporting reproductive rights, working for economic justice, and is part of Western States Center's dismantling racism regional training team.

PAULA FORBIS is Co-Director of the Toxic-Free Neighborhoods Campaign of the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), which is based in the San Diego/Tijuana region, and is one of the oldest, most effective environmental justice organizations in the country. She is a community activist and attorney, and has worked for the past eight years on issues of air toxics pollution and incompatible land use.

SHARON GARY-SMITH is a long-time civil rights, human rights, and women and girls activist. As a consultant to national and regional nonprofits, she specializes in capacity-building, board and staff development, managing diversity, and strategic planning. In addition to having held a number of management and volunteer positions in the nonprofit and business sectors, she has served as an Oregon Health Services Commissioner (craftors of the Oregon Health Plan); as a member of Planned Parenthood of Columbia-Willamette, on the national NARAL board of directors and as former chair of Western States Center's board.

CATALINA GARZON is the current coordinator if the Leadership Institute for Sustainable Communities, a project of the Urban Habitat Program (UHP). The Leadership Institute aims to provide leaders from low-income and communities of color with a space to build skills, shared analysis and cross cutting strategies to transform the regional dynamics driving disinvestment and displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Catalina has experience in multicultural leadership development, popular education and policy advocay on environmental justice, land use planning, and community development issues. Her prior experience includes working at Nindakin: People of Color for Environmental Justice, an affiliate of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice.

HARMONY GOLDBERG is the 25 year old co-founder and executive director of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), which is working to develop a new multi-racial generation of young organizers, especially young women, young people of color, queer and low-income youth. SOUL strives to support the growing youth movement by designing political education, organizing trainings and providing technical assistance programs.

SHANTHI GONZALES is a member and leader in Californians for Justice. She first became involved in CFJ during the affirmative action campaign in 1996 when she was a high school student. Since then, she has graduated from college and been involved as an organizer, trainer, and activist with CFJ. She is currently studying to be a teacher.

DR. ANITA GOTTLIEB is president of Gottlieb & Associates, a policy and management consulting firm serving non-profits, government agencies and educational institutions, including AARP, ChildrenÕs Defense Fund and Syracuse University. She has held executive leadership positions for Washington College, American University, Defenders of Wildlife and as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Human Resources in the U.S. House of Representatives. She holds a doctorate in Public Administration and an MBA.

LEAH HENRY-SLANEY is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho. She serves as board President of the Women of Color Alliance, which is engaged in removing the "S" (squaw) word from place names in Idaho, is a board member of the Western States Center and has extensive experience in monitoring and writing articles on the anti-Indian movement in the region.

ANDREW HIMES is the executive director of Project Alchemy, new organization that helps justice groups use technology as a tool for social change. He has provided technology assistance to various grassroots organizations and progressive foundations over the past few years. Before 1998 he was director of Internet publishing at Microsoft, and earlier spent several years as a grassroots organizer in Alabama.

DAN HOROWITZ is Program Director with Project South. For the last 10 years he has worked as a labor and community organizer with a special focus on human rights education.

CHARLES HUDSON is Public Affairs Manager for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), which provides policy and technical coordination for its member tribes in salmon restoration efforts and for the protection of treaty-reserved fishing rights. He is a graduate of Washington State University and is a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, North Dakota.

SHANEVA JACKSON is a 15 year old youth intern at Sisters in Action for Power. As a four-year member, she has played a central role in organizing young and adult women to promote transit equity in Portland.

VICTORIA JEANS-GAIL has nearly 25 years not-for-profit accounting experience, both as a consultant and employee. Her work has been with newly forming, small, medium and large organizations. Currently she is director of accounting at River Network.

ARIANNA JIMENEZ is a program associate involved in research and designing and delivering curriculum at Just Economics. Her current projects include examining the impact of regional issues on social and economic equity for low income people of color and also analyzing ways that researchers, organizers and educators work together. Prior to working at Just Economics, Arianna organized health care workers with SEIU, Local 415 and also organized in New York City.

WALDA KATZ-FISHMAN is professor of sociology at Howard University and Board Chair of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide. She serves on the board of Ecumenical Program on Central America & the Caribbean and has helped to develop popular education tools that help transform society.

KIM KLEIN is an internationally known fundraising trainer and practitioner. She is the co-publisher of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal and the author of the now famous Fundraising for Social Change and the recently published Fundraising for the Long Haul.

JEANNIE LAFRANCE has been the Outreach Program coordinator for Bradley-Angle House, a Portland based domestic violence program, for 10 years. She facilitates workshops on domestic violence and dismantling racism and is also the founder and director of Act for Action, an organization that uses theater as a tool for social change.

MATTHEW LATTERAL is Executive Director of Netcorps,an organization which works to help progressive grassroots groups use appropriate communication and information technology and also trains college students to become the next wave of technically savvy nonprofit leaders. Matthew has over twelve years experience in the world of nonprofit and higher education technology planning, assistance and management.

GREG LEROY is Director of Good Jobs First (GJF), a project of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. GJF is a national resource center working to make economic development subsidies more accountable and effective, and provides research, training, testimony, consulting, referrals and media assistance. Greg has over 20 years of research, consulting and writing on economic development issues such as plant closings and the effective use of development subsidies.

NG'ETHE MAINA is the Organizing Director for both the work that AGENDA does in South Los Angeles as well as the work of AGENDAÕs county-wide formation, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance. He has been at AGENDA since 1993 and has also headed their police accountability organizing and worked on the anti-affirmative action campaign in CA. He became involved in political work while in college and participated in the Center for Third World OrganizingÕs Minority Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP) where he learned the basics of grassroots community organizing.

ISAAC MARTIN currently works in south east L.A. with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE). For two years, he has organized around environmental justice issues, and worked with the youth component CBE, youth for environmental justice (youth-EJ).

SELENA MASON is Administrative Director at Western States Center. She has a Masters degree in business administration and over eight years experience in budget and finance.

AKILIAH MONIFA is a media trainer/public relations strategist at the Independent Media Institute's SPIN Project in San Francisco, California. She is also a free-lance journalist, a former press officer, lawyer and law professor.

TIM MOONEY is the Associate Nonprofit Advocacy Counsel at the Alliance for Justice, a national association of public interest advocacy organizations in Washington, D.C. Tim's work includes monitoring Congressional changes that affect 501(c)3's (such as campaign finance reform) and teaching workshops on the laws and regulations of political advocacy and lobbying. Before joining the Alliance, Tim was legal counsel for Columbia Riverkeeper and X-Pac in Portland, Oregon.

SAMANTHA MOSCHECK is a Program Manager at Project Alchemy and recently moved to the Pacific Northwest from Tennessee, where she worked for a labor-community coalition. For the past three years, she has been a tech consultant for social justice groups and has mainly focused on planning and designing websites, assessing and upgrading offices, and training staff and leaders.

NELSON MOTTO was born in El Salvador and raised in East Los Angeles, and has been organizing day laborers since 1999. He now coordinates the Fashion District day laborer center to prevent further exploitation of day laborers.

MARIA MOYA is the Co-Director of the Toxic Free Neighborhood Campaign of the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) , where she works takes the lead on community organizing and leadership development. She has years of experience working on addressing the issue of environmental justice and health impacts associated with environmental pollution and health-related issues within the Latino community in San Diego.

OPEN HAND is a non-profit self-defense school committed to providing physical, verbal and emotional self-defense training to under-served youth and women. Open Hand believes that to create meaningful individual safety we must simultaneously develop an analysis and resistance to institutional oppression.

YVONNE PAUL is currently an organizer for Californians for Justice. Although now based in Los Angeles, her political organizing roots are in Salt Lake City.

AMARA HAYDÉE PÉREZ is the Director of Sisters in Action for Power, a community-based, intergenerational organization that promotes racial, gender and economic equity through grassroots leadership development and direct action issue campaigns. Amara has worked to develop the girl's leadership model designed by Sisters in Action for Power to promote intergeneration organizing.

LISA KLEVEN is an Information Activist with ImpactResearch's environmental justice team. Her research assists mining activists examine companies and industries, investigate political and regulatory issues, and develop campaign strategies turning knowledge into action.

TERRIE QUINTEROS is currently the Services Coordinator at Women's Intercommunity AIDS Resource (WIAR). A 29-year old Latina, Terrie has been facilitating anti-oppressions and anti-domestic/sexual violence workshops since 1989.

KATE RHEE is Co-Coordinator of the New York Prison Moratorium Project, a youth-led organization fighting prison expansion in New York. She is also one of the conference planners for Critical Resistance/Northeast.

ANDY ROBINSON is the author of Grassroots Grants: An Activist's Guide to Proposal Writing. He's worked with social change organizations for 20 years in more than 30 states and has raised more than $4 million in grants and donations. His forthcoming book is Selling Social Change: How to Earn Money from Your Mission.

DAVID ROGERS is a trainer and field organizer for Western States Center. Along with other responsibilities, he helps to coordinate and develop the Centers' Dismantling Racism Project. He has over eight years of training and organizing experience.

KATHLEEN SAADAT is a long-term activist, trainer and facilitator on issues of racism, sexism and human rights. She has been awarded numerous honors for her regional and national work including the Bannerman Fellowship, a prestigious award given to activists of color for their contributions to furthering social justice in their communities.

BRIGETTE SARABI is Director of the Western Prison Project, a regional organization working to build the grassroots prison-activist movement.

JEROME SCOTT is Director of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide. He is a recipient of the Bannerman Fellowship recognizing organizers of color and was a labor and community organizer in Detroit and Chicago before relocating to Atlanta.

ANDREA SMITH (Cherokee) was a founding member of the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations. She was the former women of color caucus chair for the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault and coordinated the Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color conference. She is also a founding member of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and serves on the steering committees of Critical Resistance and Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment.

SABRINA SMITH currently coordinates the organizing projects and alliance work of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance. She has been with the Alliance since 1997 as the Lead Organizer for the West Los Angeles Organizing project, and has also played a role in the subsidy accountability campaign with DreamWorks studi.os. She began organizing in college through the U.S. Student Association and was also the Director of Field Organizing for the University of CA Student Assocation, where she organized students to resist the UC Regents attacks on affirmative action.

ABDI SOLTANI is the Executive Director of Californians for Justice. He has worked as an organizer in CFJ's campaigns on affirmative action, bilingual education, juvenile crime, and minimum wage. Previously, he worked at the Center for Third World Organizing.

LEON SOMPOLINSKY, a member of DataCenter's ImpactResearch Team, is an Information Activist specializing in economic justice issues. He applies the discipline of "competitive intelligence" — finding, analyzing and using information about the opposition — to inform negotiating tactics and strategically guide campaigns.

JON STAHL is a Program Manager at ONE/Northwest (Online Networking for the Environment), where he has spent the past five years helping hundreds of environmental groups use technology in smart, appropriate ways. Of late, Jon has focused on ways activists can use technology to enhance grassroots organizing efforts.

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN is Executive Director of Oregon NARAL, and the former campaign manager for the No on 9 campaign, which defeated an anti-gay statewide ballot measure in November 2000. She has organized for the past 10 years in the Pacific Northwest.

ELLEN TENINTY has over two decades of experience as a community organizer and economic educator and is the founder of three economic justice organizations. She is known for her skill at making complex ideas accessible to all, and is currently a Senior Trainer for Just Economics. She is also in a dance group and on a soccer team

OVITA THORNTON is the regional Regional Electoral Reform Director for Democracy South, where she does research and organizing for electoral reform. Her previous experience includes working as a field organizer on welfare reform, camapaign finance reform, and living wage for the Georgia Urban Rural Summit and also at the NAACP National Voter Fund where she coordinated voter registration and voter participation.

LINDY WALSH has been working with non-profit administration for over 20 years. Her experience has been with a variety of organizations with different social change missions as well as varying financial and staff sizes.

ERIC WARD is Executive Director of the Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, a Western States Center board member and an advisor with the Home Alive project.

LESLIE WATSON is a consultant specializing in event coordination, meeting facilitation, program development, strategic planning and diversity training. In addition, she serves as the national spokeseperson and director of the Campaign for Access and Reproductive Equity (CARE 2000), a program of the National Network of Abortion Funds, consisting of a coalition of 150 national, state and local organizations focusing on reproductive access for low-income women, women of color, and young women. She currently worked as the Director of Multicultural Programs and the Black Church Initiative of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

JAMES WILLIAMS is founder of the IntroSpect Development Group and Director of the Center for Progressive Leadership, which teaches personal and organizational leadership development nationwide. He has been involved in community struggles for police accountability, equitable jobs, civil rights and environmental control for more than twenty years.

STEPHANIE WILSON is Executive Director of the Fannie Lou Hamer Project, which seeks to make democracy real for communities of color that are often disenfranchised by privately-financed elections. She is a prominent national spokesperson on the issue of campaign finance reform, and is a long-time organizer for Michigan Citizen Action.

DEXTER WIMBISH is Regional Organizing Director for Democracy South, a multi-issue regional coalition working on campaign finance reform in twelve Southern states. He has also served as Deputy Director of the Center for Democratic Renewal and has practiced civil rights law with a focus on assisting progressive community based organizations.

SALLY YEE has 20 years experience working in the social justice movement as an organizer and educator on reproductive rights, women's health and education issues. She currently is doing education reform organizing and works as a consultant on dismantling oppression.

THALIA ZEPATOS is a veteran organizer, campaign manager and trainer with over 20 years experience in fighting the Right. Author of Women for Change: A Grassroots Guide to Activism and Politics, she is currently Communications Director for River Network.

Sign up for the CSTI listserv - The List - and the connections, networks, sharing and spirit of CSTI can last all year.