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Plenary Speakers
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Keynote Speaker Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on 650 radio and television stations in North America. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! In its “Pick of the Podcasts.”
Goodman and her brother, journalist David Goodman, co-authored the NY Times bestseller Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back, and the New York Times bestseller The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. Their forthcoming book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, will be published in April, 2008. She writes a weekly column (also produced as an audio podcast) syndicated by King Features, for which she was recognized in 2007 with the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting.
Goodman’s reporting on East Timor and Nigeria has won numerous awards, including the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. She has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Project Censored.
Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR stations, low power FM, College and Community Radio stations as well as Public Access TV and PBS stations, and on both TV satellite networks -- DISH Network channel 9415 Free Speech TV, 9410 Link TV, and on Direct TV channel 375. Democracy Now! is also available at democracynow.org.
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Plenary Speaker Father Roy Bourgeois
Fr. Roy Bourgeois was born in Lutcher, Louisiana in 1938. He graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology.
After college Fr. Roy served as a Naval Officer for four years--two years at sea, one year at a NATO station in Europe, and one year of shore duty in Vietnam. He received the Purple Heart.
After military service, Fr. Roy entered the seminary of the Maryknoll Missionary Order. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972, and he went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA grad General Hugo Banzer.
In 1980 Fr. Roy became involved in issues surrounding US policy in El Salvador after four US churchwomen--two of them his friends--were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Roy became an outspoken critic of US foreign policy in Latin America. Since then, he has spent over four years in US federal prisons for nonviolent protests against the training of Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
In 1990, Roy founded the School of Americas Watch, an office that does research on the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Each year the school trains hundreds of soldiers from Latin America in combat skills - all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
The School of the Americas Watch, located just outside the main entrance of Fort Benning and in Washington, DC, informs the general public, Congress and the media about the implications of this training on the people of Latin America.
Roy has worked on and helped produce several documentary films, including 1983's "Gods of Metal" about the nuclear arms race and 1995's "School of Assassins." Both films received Academy Award nominations.
Fr. Roy was the recipient of the 1997 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Award.
In December of 1998, Roy testified in Madrid before Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon seeking the extradition of Chile's ex-dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
In June 2006, Roy testified before the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva.
From 2002-2007, Roy made fact-finding trips to Iraq, Iran, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Central America.
Father Roy travels extensively, giving talks at universities, churches, and groups around the country about U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and Iraq.
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Youth Plenary Speaker Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is a minister, community activist, and one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life. Firmly grounded in his Caribbean and Louisiana roots, Rev. Yearwood is a fierce advocate for the human and civil rights in the 21st century. A powerful and fiery orator, Rev. Yearwood works diligently and tirelessly to encourage the Hip Hop generation to utilize its political and social voice.
He currently serves as President of the Hip Hop Caucus in Washington, D.C. The Hip Hop Caucus is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that inspires and motivates those born after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Rev. Yearwood is known for his activist work as the National Director of the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign in which he organized a coalition of national organizations and grassroots organizations to advocate for the rights of Hurricane Katrina survivors. More recently, Rev. Yearwood has become an important figure in the peace movement as an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration. He was an Officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and recently led a "Make Hip Hop Not War" national tour to engage more young people in the movement for peace.
Rev. Yearwood was a co-creator of the 2004 campaign "Vote or Die" with Sean "Diddy" Combs. He was also the Political and Grassroots Director for Russell Simmons' Hip Hop Summit Action Network in 2003 and 2004, and a Senior Consultant to Jay Z's Voice Your Choice.
Rev. Yearwood, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He earned his undergraduate degree from University of the District of Columbia in 1998 and was awarded a Master of Divinity from Howard University in May 2002. Rev. Yearwood has been seen on CNN, BET Tonight, MTV, BBC, C-Span, and Hardball with Chris Mathews and featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times and VIBE.
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Plenary Speaker Ruby Nell Sales
Ruby Nell Sales is a deeply committed social activist, scholar, public theologian and educator. She is an excellent public speaker and preacher who has spoken and preached in churches and other venues around the country.
Ruby attended Tuskegee Institute, Manhattanville College, and Princeton University. Most recently, in 1998, Ruby received a Masters of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the Absalom Jones Scholar and she received the Social Justice Award upon graduation.
While studying at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Ruby became involved in the Southern Freedom Movement (commonly known as the Civil Rights Movement). She became a student volunteer with the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Lowndes County, Alabama. As a volunteer, she worked alongside local Black people on a Freedom Summer voter registration drive.
Those were terrible and violent days in “Bloody Lowndes County.” One day, Ruby was arrested with other SNCC volunteers and local young Blacks for protesting against a company store system that robbed local black sharecroppers. On the day that they were released, Jonathan Daniels, a white seminarian and SNCC volunteer, walked to the corner store with Ruby and two others to purchase sodas for members of the group who had also been released. As they approached the steps of the store, Tom Coleman a local white man shot at them. Jonathan pushed Ruby out of the range of the bullet and he was killed instantly while saving her life. Unnerved and unable to speak significantly for seven months, Ruby was determined to attend the trial of Daniels' murderer, Tom Coleman, and to testify on behalf of her slain colleague.
Upon leaving the Southern Freedom Movement, Ruby resumed her formal education. She later formed two organizations, Black Women’s Voices and Images and Women of All Colors, that provided common spaces for women to come together to preserve and promote their voices and their lives. Her training as a seminarian coupled with her life experiences prepared Ruby to launch the SpiritHouse Project in 2000.
As a social activist, Ms. Sales has served on many committees to further the work of reconciliation, education, and awareness. She has served on the Steering Committee for International Women's Day, Washington, D.C., the James Porter Colloquium Committee, Howard University, Washington, D.C., the Coordinating Committee, Peoples Coalition, Washington, DC. the President's Committee On Race, University of Maryland, and the Coalition on Violence Against Women, Amnesty International, Washington, DC. She was a founding member of SAGE MAGAZINE : A Scholarly JOURNAL ON BLACK WOMEN. Ms. Sales received a Certificate of Gratitude for her work on Eyes on the Prize. Additionally, she is part of the Veterans of Hope documentary Series and was featured in Broken Ground: Film on Race Relations in the South, Broken Ground Productions. In 2000, Dan Rather spotlighted Ms Sales on his American Dream Segment. In 1999, Selma, Alabama gave Ms. Sales the key to the city to honor her contributions there.
From 1991-1994, Ms. Sales also founded and directed the national nonprofit organization Women of All Colors, dedicated to improving the overall quality of life for women, their families, and the communities in which they live. Women of All Colors organized a weeklong SisterSpeak that brought more than eighty Black women together to set a national agenda.
Throughout her career, Ms. Sales has mentored young people and provided support and venues for performing artists. Currently, Ms. Sales is the Director of SpiritHouse, which she also founded in 2000 for the purpose of building a just and non-violent world through the arts, spiritual reflection, and attention to public policy. SpiritHouse has emerged as cutting edge and highly respected national voice on peace and justice Issues. SpiritHouse houses the Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Institute for Justice that trains a new generation of activists.
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Plenary Speaker Michael Nagler
Dr. Michael Nagler has devoted his life to exploring nonviolence as an alternative to war. Professor Emeritus of Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder and former chairperson of the University's Peace and Conflict Studies program, Nagler has become one of the world's most widely respected peace scholars and activists.
Prof. Nagler has spoken and written widely for campus, religious, public and special interest groups on the subject of peace and nonviolence for many years, especially since 9/11. He has consulted for the U.S. Institute of Peace and many other organizations and is President of the board of METTA: Center for Nonviolence Education and of PeaceWorkers, and on numerous other boards, and has recently co-founded Educators For Nonviolence (info@efnv.org). He has worked on nonviolent intervention since the 1970's and served on the Interim Steering Committee of the Nonviolent Peaceforce.
In addition to his many articles on peace and spirituality, he is the author of America Without Violence (Island Press, 1982), The Upanishads (with Sri Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, 1987) and most recently The Search for a Nonviolent Future (Inner Ocean Publishing) which won the 2002 American Book Award and is being used in many courses as well as reading groups around the country (Italian translation appeared in 2005; pending in Korean and Arabic).
Michael Nagler is a student of Sri Eknath Easwaran, Founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, and has lived at the Center's ashram in Marin County since 1970.
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