Global Struggles Against the IMF and World Bank

Teach-in Biographical Sketches

Plenary Speakers

Chie Abad - Philippines / Saipan / U.S.
Global Exchange
Chie Abad spent six years as a garment worker on the Pacific island of Saipan, in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Marianas. During that time, she endured sweatshop conditions, working 14-hour shifts for the Sako Corporation, which makes clothes for the Gap, among other major U.S. retailers. As Chie attempted to organize Saipan's first garment worker union, the management began an intense campaign of intimidation and threats against the formation of a union. As a result, Chie's year-long work contract was not renewed. She then decided to come to the United States in order to expose this brutal reality to the American people and government rather than return to home in the Philippines. Chie now serves as a spokeswoman for Saipan’s garment industry workers, collaborating with U.S. organizations on a lawsuit that hopes to improve living and working conditions on the island.

Maria Atilano – Mexico
Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade (RMALC)
Ms. Atilano is a social worker, educational communicator and political scientist. She has been an activist in civil and social organizations for more than 20 years. She was the co-founder of schools for promoters and social workers and civil associations that work for well-being and social development, popular education, human rights, gender, public policy, democracy and peace. She has been involved in pacification processes in Chiapas and with the Mexican indigenous movement (National Indigenous Congress). Ms. Atilano has written articles about education, well-being and social development, democracy and peace. She has been an invited professor in various universities in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, The Dominican Republic and Germany, to mention a few. She was a distinguished recipient of the "Gabino Barreda" medal for University Merit by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in recognition of her teaching work. She has participated in forums, seminars, congresses and mobilizations against neoliberal globalization, in Germany, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Morocco, Japan, Belgium and others. Atilano is a member of the National Council of the Citizen Movement for Democracy and is the Executive Coordinator of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade (RMALC), in which she has participated since its founding. She is RMALC's representative to the methodology team of the Mexican organizing committee in the campaign against the FTAA.

John Bell, U.S.
ACT-UP Philadelphia
John Bell is a decorated Vietnam Veteran, and has been HIV-positive since January 1989. He spent time as an addict and alcoholic, but has been clean and sober since August 1995. In 1995 Bell joined an HIV education program called "Project T.E.A.C.H." (Treatment Education Activist Combating HIV), which led to his involvement with ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) Philadelphia. In the course of his fight for the right of poor people in the U.S. to affordable medicines, Bell learned about other poor people around the globe who did not have access to medicines. He identified a common dynamic in the various parts of the world: corporate greed took precedence over the lives of people, the wealthy got medicines but the poor got nothing. Bell has been organizing with ACT-UP for seven years, and works with hundreds of HIV-positive inmates in Philadelphia’s jails.

Janneke Bruil, Netherlands
Friends of the Earth International (FoEI)
Janneke Bruil is co-coordinator of the International Financial Institutions Programme of the international environmental federation Friends of the Earth International. She has a Masters in International Relations with a specialization in environment and ‘development’. Researching and campaigning, she spent time in Africa and Latin America. Currently she is a member of the Advisory Council of A SEED Europe and a drummer in the Amsterdam samba band ‘Rhythms of Resistance’.

Dennis Brutus - South Africa / U.S.
Jubilee South Africa
Dr. Brutus is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Black Community Education, Research and Development at the University of Pittsburgh. He is perhaps the best-known African poet writing in English, although his books were banned for many years in his home country South Africa. Dr. Brutus is a long-time activist whose tireless work for a non-racial South Africa got him shot in 1963 and an 18-month jail term with hard labor. His on-going work for justice and peace saw him become a member and supporter of both the Jubilee movement and the 50 Years Is Enough campaign at their inceptions. He now splits his time between the U.S. and South Africa, and will be arriving from Johannesburg and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Camille Chalmers - Haiti
Haitian Platform for Advocacy of Alternative Development (PAPDA)
Camille Chalmers is Executive Director of the Haitian Platform for Advocacy of Alternative Development (PAPDA). PAPDA isa coalition of nine organizations and networks working on public policies, educating, and lobbying with many other organizations to find alternative solutions to problems at the local, regional and national levels. Chalmers is Professor of Social Planning/ Administration/ Sociology of Organizations/ Mathematics and Statistics applied to economics and management at the University of Haiti in Port-au-Prince. He served as Cabinet Chief for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in exile (August 1993-August 1994). He has also lived and worked in both France and Panama.

Marie Clarke – U.S.
Jubilee USA Network
Marie Clarke is the National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network. She has been involved in the Jubilee movement since 1998. Marie was previously a co-director of Quest for Peace at the Quixote Center where she did grassroots development work in Nicaragua and domestic and international advocacy work. Marie has lived in developing countries for 12 years.

Nora Cortiñas - Argentina
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Linea Fundadora
Nora Cortiñas is a leader of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Linea Fundadora, an organization of mothers of the disappeared in Argentina, and has been active in the organization since its founding in 1977. As a leading human rights organization, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Linea Fundadora, has presented a moral voice to the social and economic struggles of Argentina. Nora has represented the Mothers in international forums, including the World Social Forum and other speaking tours. She is a member of Jubilee South in Argentina and currently teaches a human rights course at the University of Buenos Aires.

Kevin Danaher - U.S.
Global Exchange
Kevin Danaher is a co-founder of Global Exchange, the noted human rights organization based in San Francisco. Kevin is well known for his dynamic speaking style aimed at encouraging people to expand their political vision and take charge of their lives. He goes beyond mere analysis of international events to provide motivation and viable ideas for action. Danaher received his PhD in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has written or edited eight books dealing with U.S. foreign policy and the global economy, including the landmark 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.(1994) and his most recent book, Ten Reasons to Abolish the World Bank and the IMF.

Demba Dembele - Senegal
Forum for African Alternatives
Demba Dembele is Director of the Forum for African Alternatives, as well as an economist and researcher with the National Coalition of Development NGOs (CONGAD) in Senegal. Dembele and the organization he represents work to challenge corporate globalization and its institutions, in addition to promoting alternative economic and social policies throughout Senegal and Africa. He coordinated “Dakar 2000: the Pan-African & International Conference on the Cancellation of Third World Debt”, held in Dakar, Senegal in December 2000. Demba has written extensively on international trade and finance, as well as on African economic integration. He is also a member of the African Coordination of Jubilee South and sits on the South Council of the 50 Years Is Enough Network. In addition, Demba Dembele is a founding member of the World Bank Bonds Boycott International Coordinating Committee.

Marie Dennis – U.S.
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Marie Dennis is the Director, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Vice President, Pax Christi International Executive Committee, Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the Chair of the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and IMF, a U.S. coalition of Catholic and Protestant organizations and institutions, which has given particular focus to the debt crisis and the impact of structural adjustment programs. She is a Board Member of the Washington Office on Latin America, Sojourners magazine, the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, the Latin America Working Group, the Maryknoll Center for Mission Research and Study. Marie has a Masters in Moral Theology from Washington Theological Union; degree from Trinity College, Washington D.C.; graduate study at American University. She is a mother of six; member of Assisi Community, Washington D.C., a Catholic community of religious and lay, women and men, families and single people who are intentional about simple lifestyle and the work for social transformation.

Vanessa Dixon - U.S.
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - Washington, DC
Vanessa Dixon works as International Representative at SEIU. She continues to lead the union of interns and residents at DC General Hospital, the capital city’s only public hospital -- despite its closure through a highly-controversial privatization in 2001. Dixon was one of the most visible leaders of the struggle to prevent privatization of this unique public resource, founded by Frederick Douglass. The city council voted unanimously to oppose the move, but was over-ruled by the combination of Mayor Anthony Williams and the “Control Board,” a Congressionally-appointed body which controlled the city’s finances until very recently. Dixon points to the similarities between rampant privatization of health care in the U.S. and the programs forced on impoverished countries’ health care systems by the IMF and World Bank. The accomplishment of the privatization of DC General through an unelected council also mirrors the undemocratic nature of development in much of the Global South.

Michael Leon Guerrero - U.S.
South West Organizing Project - Albuquerque, NM
Originally from Guam, Michael Guerrero is currently the co-Director of the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) which has been doing community-based organizing across New Mexico for more than 20 years. SWOP works primarily in communities of color organizing people for local struggles, but always emphasizes the global context of such issues. He is also the Co-Chair of the Coordinating Council of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. Much of his recent work has focused on human, environmental, legal, women’s and workers’ rights in the U.S.-Mexico border region, and he is one of the key organizers of the annual Border Mobilization -- a convergence of activists at several different key points along the border on October 12, an event which is assuming increasing importance in U.S. and North American global justice organizing.

Stella Iwuagwu – Nigeria
Center for the Right to Health
Stella Iwuagwu is the executive director of Center for the Right to Health, based in Lagos, Nigeria. The Center for Right to Health advocates for people with HIV/AIDS, taking a holistic approach that is inclusive of human rights protections, care and treatment.

Carola Kinasha - Tanzania
Tanzania Gender Networking Program (TGNP)
Carola Kinasha, born in a small Tanzanian village close to the Kenyan border, is a musician, researcher, and activist. Inspired to activism as a young woman by schoolmates from Soweto, South Africa, she is currently involved with a variety of NGOs such as the Marcus Garvey Foundation, and strives to inform people of the dangers of natural resource privatization and other issues of globalization affecting Tanzanians. She also works with different women’s organizations to ensure women’s rights and recognition of their contributions to society. Carola holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Dar-Es-Salaam.

Bongani Lubisi - South Africa
Anti-Privatisation Forum / Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee
Bongani Lubisi is 27 years old. He is a full-time activist. He has never worked for a wage since he finished high school due to the high unemployment rate in South Africa. He worked for a few years as an HIV/AIDS trained caregiver attending to patients at the local clinic. Bongani is a founding member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. He is currently the SECC organiser. He knows (has to!) Soweto like the back of his hand for this job. He was born in Sun Valley, Pimville, one of the oldest areas in Soweto. He is a single parent raising his 6 year-old daughter Siphesihle on next to nothing. He participated as a field worker in the Wits University municipal services project research on the electricity crisis committee. Bongani is a socialist. He speaks as much as he sings. He is always at the lead of SECC and APF marches and demonstrations. He spent 11 days in jail in April this year together wth 86 others after the storming of the Johannesburg mayors' house by angry Sowetans fighting against cut-offs and evictions. Bongani learnt about electricity in the SECC's operation Khanyisa and can connect anyone who gets off for payment default. He is a young lion of Soweto.

Ricardo Arnoldo Navarro Pineda – El Salvador
Friends of the Earth International (FoEI)
Dr. Navarro is the President and Executive Director of CESTA and the President of Friends of the Earth International. FoEI is a federation of over 70 environmental institutions from the same number of countries. An engineer by training, he has published several books on ecology, energy and alternative modes of transport in Latin America. Has also been the editor of the journal, ECONCIENCIA and has authored over 200 editorials in national newspapers. Dr. Navarro was the Goldman Environmental Prize recipient in 1995, and received the Global 500 Roll of Honor that same year. Dr. Navarro has presented in 65 countries in America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Samuel Nguiffo - Cameroon
Center for Environment and Development (CED)
Samuel Nguiffo is founder and Executive Director of the Center for Environment and Development (CED), Friends of the Earth Cameroon. A lawyer by training, Nguiffo has devoted himself to stopping the liquidation of the region's forests for short-term profit. The fight against the infamous Chad-Cameroon pipeline is one of his main occupations. In 1999, Mr Nguiffo won the Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots environmentalism.

Njoki Njoroge Njehu – Kenya/U.S.
50 Years is Enough Network
Njoki Njoroge Njehû was born and raised in Kenya. She grew up learning from a grassroots activist mother, Lilian Njehû, who is a church-based community activist who inspires and challenges her to fight for justice. She is director of the 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition of over 200 women's, environmental, faith-based, youth, development, grassroots, policy, labor, social- and economic-justice organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She has testified before the U.S. Congress, on African debt; the IMF's Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) which administered structural adjustment programs; and on the role of the African Development Bank in addressing, debt, HIV/AIDs and other crises facing Africa.

Oscar Olivera - Bolivia
Coaltion in Defense of Water and Life
Oscar Olivera is the Executive Secretary of the Cochabamba Federation of Factory Workers and spokesperson for the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life, known in Bolivia as La Coordinadora. He led the protests against the privatization of Cochabamba’s water system, which had caused a 200 percent increase in the price of water. In response to the exemplary struggle and resistance to the privatization plan, which was actively promoted by the World Bank and the multinational corporations poised to profit from it, the Bolivian Government declared martial law and Olivera was forced into hiding. However, Olivera emerged in April 2000 and negotiated an end to the water privatization scheme with the Bolivian Government, making Cochabamba the first major victory against the global trend toward water privatization. La Coordinadora also won significant reforms to water management rules, which included and respected the demands of Bolivia’s rural populations. He continues to lead La Coordinadora in developing a water system that relies neither on corrupt government management nor on multinational corporations. For this, Olivera was the Central/South American recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize (2001), and was awarded the Letelier-Moffitt International Award in 2000.

Asume Osuoka - Nigeria
Environmental Rights Action (ERA)
Asume Osuoka works with Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian-based human rights advocacy organization that focuses on environmental issues. For over a decade, he has been active in the struggle for democracy and popular participation in Nigeria. Asume and ERA have been deeply involved with affected communities throughout Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in their struggle to resist the violence of the oil and gas mining companies, as well as the state and international financial institutions that support them, such as the World Bank. Asume also coordinates Oilwatch Africa, an active network of organisations working to build solidarity and organise exchanges among communities and groups confronting the oil and gas industry in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Mohau Pheko - South Africa
Gender and Trade Network in Africa
A leading voice for gender and workers’ rights in South Africa, Mohau Pheko represents the Africa Trade Network. She came to international prominence through her contributions to the civil society meetings in Seattle at the 1999 World Trade Organization summit.

Shelly Rao - Fiji
Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy (ECREA)
Shelly Rao is the coordinator of the Economic and Social Justice Program at the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy (ECREA) in Suva, Fiji. The program aims to address the impacts of national economic policies on the lives of the ordinary person. ECREA works in partnership with groups in the garment industry to fight for safe conditions, a clean workplace, just wages, and child care. They also have community developers who work directly with communities in identifying problems and possible solutions at the local level. And through the Information & Community Program, ECREA distributes research on these issues to the local communities. ECREA is also involved in regional work, such as the Pacific Network on Globalisation, campaigning and sharing information with other Pacific organisations. Shelly also serves on the International Coordinating Committee of Jubilee South for the Asia-Pacific region.

Aderito Soares - East Timor
Sahe Institute for Liberation
Aderito Soares is the founder and former coordinator of Sahe Institute for Liberation in East Timor. He focuses on popular education and community development with philosophy of liberation theology. He is also founder of the East Timor Jurist Association and an executive board member of La'o Hamutuk (the East Timor Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis). He is a former member of East Timor's first parliament and a former advocacy coordinator for Elsam, one of Indonesia's premier human rights organizations. Aderito worked there for 3.5 years on indigenous peoples issues, West Papua, and Kalimantan. He also founded a pro bono legal aid office in Timor and is a former lecturer at University of East Timor.

Robert Weissman – U.S.
Essential Action
Robert Weissman is co-director of Essential Action, and editor of Multinational Monitor magazine.

Workshop Presenters and Resource People

Katrina Abarcar is National Organizer of the World Bank Bonds Boycott at Center for Economic Justice in Washington, DC. Katrina has been a grassroots organizer for almost a decade. Her main focus has been empowering immigrants and people of color to defend and advance their rights in schools, communities, and the workplace.

Nancy Alexander is Director of Citizens Network on Essential Services. She did groundbreaking investigation into World Bank’s Private Sector Development Strategy that revealed the institution’s -- and the U.S. government’s -- agenda for more rapid and deeper privatization in the poorest countries.

Soren Ambrose has worked with the 50 Years Is Enough Network in one capacity or another since shortly after its founding in 1994, when he joined its Chicago branch and finally found a good excuse not to write his dissertation on Nigerian literature. He now works also with New Voices on Globalization, a joint project of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, Essential Action, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Jobs with Justice, designed to broaden and deepen the media coverage of the Global Justice Movements.

Rudolf Amenga-Etego is a prominent lawyer and civil society figure in Ghana. As an active student leader in the pro-democracy movement during the repressive Rawlings regime, Rudolf was jailed without prosecution several times during the 1980s. He currently works with the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) in Ghana as the coordinator of their Globalization Response Program, which was established as a response to the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank polices with the poor and disadvantaged in Ghana. He is also one of the founders of the Ghana National Coalition Against the Privatization of Water (National CAP of Water) and serves as the National Campaign Coordinator for the Coalition. They have been instrumental in raising public awareness about the water policies set by the World Bank -- policies which led to a 95% increase in water rates in 2001 in Ghana.

Frances Bartelt is a member of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Campaign in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Frances is one of the leaders of the successful effort to get the Milwaukee city council to adopt the World Bank Bonds Boycott in March 2002. She is currently coordinating the statewide effort to get the State of Wisconsin Investment Board to boycott World Bank Bonds.

Taieb Belghazi is a professor of Cultural Studies and a member of the Culture and Development research unit at the Faculty of Letters, University Mohamed V, Rabat. He received a Ph.D in critical and cultural theory from Cardiff University, Wales, working under the supervision of the philosopher Christopher Norris. He has written on the politics of identity, globalization, postmodernism, civil society, social movements and cultural development. His most recent publications include a co-authored book on social movements: Collective Action and the Mobilization of Resources (Rabat-Konrad Adenauer)and a co-edited book on Global/Local Cultures and Sustainable Development 'Rabat-Konrad Adenauer). He is a member of the UNESCO International Panel of Reading for all.

Wendy Call is a writer and political organizer who divides her time between Boston and southern Mexico. She recently completed a two-year Institute of Current World Affairs fellowship, living and working Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. While there, she wrote a series of articles chronicling how indigenous communities in southern Mexico and Central America are organizing themselves to face increased corporate intervention in the region, though the “Plan Puebla Panama.”

Francisca Cortez, 20 year old member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, has spoken extensively across the country about her experience picking tomatoes and participating in the Taco Bell boycott. Francisca was a key organizer for the nationwide Taco Bell Truth Tour in March of 2002. The CIW is a worker-led community organization based in Immokalee Florida, the heart of Florida's tomato and citrus industry that fights for a fair wage for the work we do, more respect on the part of our bosses and the industries where we work, the right to organize on our jobs without fear of retaliation an end to the abuse of undocumented workers, especially those being held in modern day slavery. The CIW is leading the movement to boycott Taco Bell, partnering with students and other global justice activists to call on this multi-billion dollar corporation to accept their responsibility as a major purchaser of tomatoes picked by workers from southwest Florida for the sweatshop conditions under which those tomatoes are picked.

Jason Ford is ASEJ's Northeast Links Program Coordinator, which documents and analyzes, and educates how corporate globalization is affecting the environment and working communities in the Northeast US, and links these struggles to communities wrestling with similar issues in the Global South. Through popular education and organizing Links supports community-based initiatives resisting this negative fallout and advocating for sustainable economic alternatives. A core campaign within Links is building an alliance between the labor, environmental, and global justice movements in the Northeast US.

Sara Grusky is a midwife and college professor turned activist. She coordnates the International Water Working Group with Public Citizen's Water for All Campaign.

Dr. Vineeta Gupta’s career spans fifteen years of work as both a village doctor and a human rights activist in India. She joined Punjab Civil Medical Services in 1987 to provide immunization, family planning counseling, maternal and child health care, and health education to the residents of rural areas and urban slums. During her tenure there, until 1999, she published numerous articles for Indian medical journals on the health problems she encountered most frequently in the people she served, including tuberculosis, anemia, malnutrition and heart disease. Dr. Gupta became convinced that the privatization of health care services in the Punjab was linked to the decline in the health of the women and infants she saw in the course of her practice. She is now challenging the World Bank-funded Punjab Health Systems Corporation hospitals for raising the user fees they charge the poor for medical care. In 1999, Dr. Gupta founded and began full-time work as the General Secretary of the human rights organization Insaaf International. Based in Punjab, the group advocates for the social and economic empowerment of women, especially in the field of health, and builds relationships with similar organizations throughout the developing world. Dr. Gupta is a founding member of the World Bank Bonds Boycott International Coordinating Committee, a member of the South Council of the 50 Years is Enough Network, and a Board member of Center for Economic Justice.

Shalmali Guttal is an experienced economic justice advocate working with grassroots organizations in Southeast Asia. She is partly U.S.-educated, and followed up her time in this country by moving to Laos for ten years. Speaks English, Thai, Lao, and more than one Indian language.

Wenonah Hauter directs the Critical Mass Energy and Environemnt Project at Public Citizen and is currently working non-stop to turn around the pending water privatization in New Orleans.

Onecimo Hidalgo is co-director at the Center for Economic Research and Social Action (CIEPAC) in Chiapas, Mexico. Trained as a sociologist, Hidalgo has wide-ranging experience in indigenous community organizing in Chiapas, as well as in mobilizing Mexican and international support for just economic and social policies. CIEPAC focuses on the effects of military repression and the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO) on the people and land of Chiapas. Hidalgo also organizes around the impact of biotechnology, and CIEPAC recently hosted a conference on the impacts of biotechnology on the environment and indigenous communities attended by several hundred Central American civil society organizations. In addition, Onesimo has been instrumental in establishing and strengthening an inter-American network of civil society groups, the Convergence of Movements of Peoples of the Americas (COMPA).

Nunu Kidane, Bay Area Jubilee/Africa Advocacy Network (ADNA). Nunu is a native of Eritrea with12 years experience working with local NGOs in the Horn of Africa and in Southern Africa. She is an activist on Africa policy issues, and currently serves as Communication Facilitator for the Africa Advocacy Network (ADNA).

Jennifer Krill is Old Growth Campaign Director for Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in San Francisco. In 4 years at Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Jennifer has directed the organizing effort whic led to over 600 demonstratios against Home Depot a;nd other retailers of old growth wood. As a result of this markets campaign, over 25% of the US wood arket is commited to save endangered forests. Through Jennifer, RAN became a founding member of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment (ASJE), the landmark collaboration between forest activists, locked-out Steel Workers, and other labor organizers.

Beckie Malay is the Treasurer of the Freedom from Debt Coalition. She can speak about illegitimate/odious debt, the Asian experience with globalization, and Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) sometimes referred to as “globalization’s dirtiest secrets”. The FDC is one of several issue-based coalitions formed in the Philippines in the aftermath of the 1986 EDSA uprising that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship. The Freedom from Debt Coalition is committed to a broad framework for its work and strategic program which includes human development; equity (including gender equity); economic rights and economic justice; democratizing the economy; working for a sustainable economy; humane, equitable and sustainable growth; pressing the government/ state towards its proper role; promotion of economic sovereignty and national self-reliance; and fighting for beneficial global economic relations among nations. The FDC effort supports the worldwide campaign to cancel the debts of the poorest countries even though the Philippines is not counted to be among them. Beckie is also active in the Manila-based secretariat of Jubilee South, the international coalition of over 40 debt and reparations campaigns in the Global South.

Clemente Martinez is an engineer from the social and environmental advocacy organization in Nicaragua called Centro Humboldt. He has worked actively with a broad coalition to improve access to safe and affordable water and to stop privatization.

Jesús Albeiro Martínez Castrillon is General Secretary of SINTRASEMA, a Colombian public sector worers union in Antioquia and affilliated with the International Metalworkers Federation.

Mzonke Mayekiso is president of the National Association of Residents and Civics Organizations (NARCO) in Johannesburg, including Alexandra Township where Mayekiso served as the former organizing officer of the Alexandra Civic Organization. After spending two years in prison for his resistance to the apartheid system, Mayekiso became a member of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1992. Since the democratic elections of 1994, the ANC has governed South Africa with a commitment to neoliberal policies that have not empowered disadvantaged communities such as the townships. These policies, which are promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, include the privatization of essential services. As a result, Mayekiso continues to struggle for social and economic justice, and to build a democratic and just South Africa.

Sarah Mtembu is treasurer of National Association of Residents and Civics Organizations (NARCO) in South Africa, and a founding member of the Alexandra Action Committee (AAC), which actively organized township residents in the fight to improve urban conditions during the 1980s. She launched the AAC’s yard, street, and block committees throughout Alexandra Township, which have strengthened democracy by advancing a clearer understanding of the urban conditions that affect Alexandra’s residents. Mtembu was also an involved member of the Alexandra Civic Organization, serving in various executive committees. Joining the African National Congress in the early 1990s, she was especially active in the ANC Women’s League. Sarah Mtembu has never abandoned the fight for social justice, despite repeated intimidation and harassment against her and her family.

Rt Rev. Peter Njenga is the Bishop of Mt. Kenya South of the Anglican Church of Kenya is the former Provost of All Saints’ Cathedral in Nairobi, and has been a consistent and outspoken advocate for economic and social justice in Kenya. He has been particularly active in raising awareness of and productively addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis, police brutality, gender oppression, and economic policies that hurt the impoverished. He is patron of the Interfaith Group Kenya, which was the lead sponsor of the East African Seminar on Debt, held in Nairobi in July 2001, drawing participants from nine countries in the region.

Oduor Ong’wen is director of EcoNews Africa and chairs the Kenyan Association of NGOs. He is a well-known analyst of macroeconomic policies and their impact on Africa, and was one of the lead authors of the Africa Trade Network’s position in advance of the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization, major parts of which became the official African position in the negotiations. He participated in the PRSP process in Kenya, and will present his observations on that exercise in meetings and workshops in Washington.

Daisy Pitkin is Campaigns Coordinator for Campaign for Labor Rights, an organization that works to inform and mobilize grassroots activists in solidarity with major international anti-sweatshop struggles. CLR has been called the "grassroots mobilizing department" of the anti-sweatshop movement. It educates about and advocates against the underlying causes of the global sweatshop.

Rick Rowden currently serves as the researcher on IMF and World Bank Policies at RESULTS Educational Fund, which is the research arm of the US citizen’s based lobby group, RESULTS. Prior to this post he taught in the global studies department at CA State University at Monterrey Bay. He also taught Political Science at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He has an MA and BA in International Relations from San Francisco State and has done field research in Uganda, El Salvador and Napal. His specialization is first-world-third-world relations. He is an expert on structural adjustment programs and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process.

Jon Sohn is an International Financial Institutions Campaigner at Friends of the Earth-US. Jon focuses his work on project and policy campaigning involving Export Credit Agencies like the Ex-Im Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. In addition, Jon recently coordinated the first ever global warming lawsuit which targeted OPIC and Ex-Im on behalf of FoE and Greenpeace members harmed by the impacts of fossil fuel emissions. Jon received a B.A. in US History and a B.A. in Communications from the University of Michigan; and a J.D. from Lewis & Clark, Northwestern School of Law in Portland Oregon with a certificate of specialization in Environmental and Natural Resources Law. During law school he worked as a legal fellow at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya.

Nick Salter is the World Bank Campaign Coordinator with the Sierra Student Coalition. He currently is helping to coordinate several bonds boycotts with SSC college groups all over the country. Nick is a senior at Cherry Creek High School in Denver, CO.

Mara Vanderslice Outreach Coordinator of the Jubilee USA Network. Mara was previously Jubilee’s lead organizer for the Rocky Mountain region, a board member of Jubilee 2000, and later a member of the board of Jubilee USA Network. She has traveled extensively in Latin America, including Colombia, Cuba and Nicaragua.

Hildebrando Velez works for the Colombian organization CENSAT, which is a member of the international federation of Friends of the Earth International. His specialization is energy sovereignty for sustainable societies, and he plays an important role in the Latin American energy platform. Mr. Velez has a degree in Industrial Sociology and a Masters in Philosophy. Has always been engaged in environmentalism and labor unions. Convinced of the strength of union, he has participated in several organizations and platforms.

Neil Watkins is coordinator of the World Bank Bonds Boycott at Center for Economic Justice in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the steering committee of the 50 Years is Enough Network.

Monica Wilson is with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), a network with over 275 members in 62 countries.

Nathan Wyeth is the Chair of the Sierra Student Coalition's Student Action on the Global Economy Program. This program includes campaigns on free trade, corporate accountability, and World Bank funding for extractive industries and fossil fuels. He's a student in Washington, DC.

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