CSTI 2002 Trainers

JUAN ARGUMEDO studied law and social work in Guadalajara, Mexico, and was a social worker in rural Mexican villages before coming to the U.S. in 1988 as a farmworker on berry and cucumber harvests. In 1994, Juan began working with the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation based in Woodburn, OR, and took on the job as staff coordinator for Voz Hispana Causa Cesar Chavez in 1998. Voz Hispana is an independent committee that coordinates voter education forums on Oregon ballot initiatives and is expanding its voter organizing work for 2002.

JEARLINE BORDERS is a leader of LIFFT (Low-Income Families Fighting Together), a grassroots organization in Liberty City, Miami. She has been a domestic worker for most of her life and is a 47-year resident of Liberty Square Housing Development. Over the past 2 years, she has played a central role in building LIFFT and organizing to defend her community against gentrification.

JO ANN BOWMAN, former State Representative in Oregon, is a longtime criminal justice reform activist and notable public figure. She currently serves on the board of Western States Center, Western Prison Project and as 2nd Vice President for the NAACP AK/OR/WA State Conference.

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.

DEVIN J. BURGHART is the director of the Building Democracy Initiative of the Center for New Community. Based in Chicago the Center for New Community is a faith-based organization whose mission is to build democratic communities for justice and racial equality. The Center’s Building Democracy Initiative is developing a lasting commitment to counter organized racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other forms of organized bigotry in the Midwest, through exposure, education, and organizing.

MELANIE L. CAMPBELL is the executive director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Inc. NCBCP is a non-profit, non-partisan, membership organization dedicated to increasing African American participation in the democratic process. With over 15 years of experience, Melanie is a civic leader, political strategist, activist and community servant.

CITIZEN ALERT is a statewide grassroots environmental organization founded in 1975 in response to federal government plans to dump high-level nuclear waste in Nevada. Citizen Alert has become the cornerstone of grassroots activism in Nevada by cultivating a network of aware and active citizens. Their active membership includes ranchers, educators, scientists, labor, miners, Native Americans, the media, environmental and social justice groups.

MARTHA DOMINGUEZ is a mother and steering committee member of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). She is active in building the organization through regular member recruitment, and has participated in "POWER University" and ongoing political education and skills trainings.

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

TERENIE FAISON became a member of Sisters in Action for Power at 12 years old. Now at 18, she attends PSU full time while working as an Intern at the organization--running membership meetings, developing other girls’ leadership and conducting organizing training across the country.

DEB FURRY is deputy director of Technical Assistance for Community Services (TACS) in Portland, OR, and brings 15 years' experience as a nonprofit Executive Director in both Washington DC and Boston. Deb is a skilled trainer and consultant who has worked with non-profits across the country, leading board retreats, strategic planning sessions, developing fundraising and volunteer recruitment strategies for small to mid-size non-profits, and providing coaching assistance and guidance to executive directors.

ALICIA GARCIA, twenty years old, is a student at Chemeketa Community College. She is working to reform or repeal Oregon’s 1994 Measure 11 as part of Latinos Unidos Siempre, a youth organization. She also serves as LUS’s representative to the Oregon Criminal Justice Reform Network. Measure 11 created mandatory minimum sentences for a wide range of offenses and is sending a flood of youth into Oregon’s prisons.

ANDREA GARZA is Southwest Regional Program Coordinator for YouthAction, a national organization that develops the capacity of community groups to involve young people in community organizing efforts. An 18-year-old Chicana, Andrea previously organized with Casa de Colores in Brownsville, Texas, where she was a founding member of their youth project, Esperanza Unida. She served on the YouthAction board of directors for two years before joining the staff and is also a member of Young Women United.

GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA is an artist and writer who works in performance, spoken word, poetry, video, computer art and other mediums. Born in Mexico, he arrived in the US in 1978. His work explores trans-cultural identity, racial stereotypes, sexuality, colonialism and current politics such as NAFTA and anti-immigrant initiatives. For several years Gómez-Peña has been working with "living (and dying) dioramas" that parody and subvert colonial practices of displaying "the Other", such as the displays used in Museums of Natural History and Anthropology, the Freak Show, the Indian Trading Post, the border ‘curio shop’ and the porn window display. He is author of The New World Border, which won the American Book Award, and several other books. He is one of the editors of "High Performance" magazine and " Drama Review" and has received numerous awards for his performance work.

IMPACTRESEARCH: A PROGRAM OF THE DATACENTER uses their Information Activists to work to build a more successful movement by providing on-call research and analysis, referral and consultation to social justice organizations, and enhances the movement's research capacity through on-going collaborative projects and skill sessions.

INSTITUTE OF POPULAR EDUCATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (IDEPSCA) is a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles that promotes self-development and self-generating projects based on popular education methodology. IDEPSCA's methodology is based on organizing to educate, and while educating, working to organize.

ASHLEY JONES at 14 years old is in the Girls in Action for Power (GAP) Program at Sisters in Action for Power. GAP develops the leadership and organizing skills of girls ages 11-18.

KATE KAHAN is executive director for WEEL (Working for Equality and Economic Liberation) an activist organization focused on poverty issues in Montana, the West and the nation. WEEL works to ensure that those who experience poverty are part of the political process. Kate has been an activist in Montana for 8 years, primarily working on issues relating to women and girls. She is the only parent of a 9-year-old and survived welfare while obtaining her bachelor's degree in women's studies.

JEANNIE LAFRANCE has over a decade of experience in the area of domestic violence. She currently facilitates workshops on dismantling racism and is also the founder and director of Act for Action, an organization that uses theater as tool for social change.

NICOLE LEFAVOUR grew up in rural central Idaho and has spent the past ten years organizing on nuclear waste and weapons issues, wilderness management, water quality, fair lending, state budget and tax policy, and a variety of anti-oppression and human rights issues. She is an educator and board member for the Ada County Human Rights Task Force and the co-coordinator of Your Family, Friends & Neighbors' Speak Out Idaho Project which educates and organizes Idahoans to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights and equality.

DEBRA MAAS is currently an Associate Trainer with the Midwest Academy. She has 10 years of experience building membership and developing leaders with Citizen Action organizations in 12 states on a variety of social and economic justice campaigns. Debra has also worked with the AARP for several years training volunteers and staff in direct action organizing, message development and fundraising.

SIREESHA MANNE is Communications Coordinator for YouthAction, a national organization based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A 25-year-old queer-identified South Asian, Sireesha is a member of Young Women United, a group of young women of color organizing around the issues of health and violence. She also coordinates a community newsletter through the Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center and has worked at Planned Parenthood.

YOLANDA MATOS received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Lehman College in New York City. She is working with women on domestic violence providing both information and services to Latino women, women of color and women living in rural areas. She has developed and implemented curricula on many issues including Domestic Violence and Diversity Trainings. She is a certified Federal Law Enforcement Trainer.

HOLLY MINCH is the new project director of the SPIN Project. She has assisted countless groups nationwide with media skills training and strategic support. SPIN helps grow the capacity of grassroots groups to shape public opinion and win positive media attention.

LEN NORWITZ is the director of Western States Center’s Money in Western Politics Project and the Western Progressive Leadership Network. Len is a community, labor and political organizer with 24 years of experience. He has worked on staff at the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, Oregon Fair Share and Oregon Public Employees Union.

OPEN HAND is a non-profit, self-defense organization 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.

AMARA HAYDEE PEREZ is executive 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 girls’ leadership model designed by Sisters in Action for Power to promote intergeneration organizing.

TERRIE QUINTEROS is the Domestic Violence Specialist for the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. Terrie has been a facilitator of anti-oppression workshops since 1989 and works closely with the Dismantling Racism Project of Western States Center.

MATT REMLE is an organizer for the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice in Seattle, WA. Matt is also the primary organizer of the emerging Northwest Network for Environmental & Economic Justice, a coalition of people of color and indigenous groups addressing environmental racism in the Pacific Northwest.

SUSAN REMMERS has served as a political activist at the local, regional, and national level for over 15 years. She has worn almost every hat within non-profit organizations from volunteer to director and has a small business management background. She is currently Executive Director of McKenzie River Gathering Foundation, an Oregon-based foundation funding progressive social change work and Chair of the Funding Exchange, a national network of 16 progressive foundations throughout the United States.

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 new book is Selling Social Change: How to Earn Money from Your Mission.

TONY ROMANO is a co-founder and the organizing director of the Miami Workers Center (MWC). The MWC initiates and develops grassroots organizations focusing on developing strong, conscientious leaders. He has been organizing in the Southeast for 10 years and previously was a union organizer.

JUNE ROSTAN just completed her 15th year as the director of the Southern Empowerment Project, a group that trains people in community organizing and grassroots fundraising and now organizes recent Latino immigrants. She has learned much from the people she has worked with — from women coal miners to organizers and leaders in unions and community groups to new immigrants.

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

RENEE SANCHEZ is a queer woman of color who has worked with local and national organizations including Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation, Western States Center, Community Alliance of Tenants and Critical Resistance as a trainer and community organizer. Currently, Renée is an organizer with the California Nurses Association, teaches self-defense in San Francisco and is a law student at The New College of California.

DELISA K SAUNDERS has been involved in communications and community activism for more than 20 years. As the deputy director for People For the American Way Foundation's field department, she is involved with efforts to organize among activists, community leaders, clergy and state legislators from all 50 states. She directs the civic participation program, which includes a training program for ministers on voter education, participation and protection. She also manages the Partners for Public Education program, a joint project with the NAACP

MARIO SIFUENTEZ, a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of Oregon, is a life-long activist who has worked on issues ranging from farmworker rights to the repeal of the Drug Provision of the Higher Education Act. He is currently working on two projects: the history of Mexican Americans/Chican@s in the Pacific Northwest, and the Prison Industrial Complex. Mario is a board member of the Oregon Students of Color Coalition.

YALONDA SINDE is executive director of the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice (CCEJ) in Seattle, WA. Yalonda has been an organizer on issues of environmental racism and injustice, low income housing, globalization and other social justice issues for the last 8 years. She has raised the profile of environmental justice issues in the Northwest and is active nationally.

ANDREA SMITH (Cherokee) was a founding member of the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations. She is the former women of color caucus chair for the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault and coordinates 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 the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment.

SALLY SMITH is an organization and resource development consultant who works with boards and staff of nonprofit agencies in board and staff development, conflict management, facilitation, strategic planning, and diversity in the workplace. She has a degree in Counseling Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.

ERIC WARD is the executive director of the Seattle-based Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, a Western States Center board member and an advisor with the Home Alive project. Home Alive is a Seattle-based anti-violence project that offers affordable self defense classes, provides public education and awareness and leads local community organizing efforts.

CINDY WIESNER is director of organizing for People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a community based membership organization in San Francisco that organizes low-wage and no-wage workers to fight for full employment and living wages. Cindy has worked at POWER for three years and has developed the group’s political education curriculum. She has extensive experience in union, community and political organizing.

ELISHA WILLIAMS is in the Girls in Action for Power (GAP) Program at Sisters in Action for Power and attends Ockley Green Middle School. GAP develops the leadership and organizing skills of girls ages 11-18

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