Author List

Aislinn Pulley is an executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, founded out of the historic 2015 reparations ordinance for survivors of Chicago police torture. Aislinn is also a lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago. She was an organizer with We Charge Genocide, a founding member of Insight Arts and a member of the performance ensemble, End of the Ladder. She is a founder of the young women’s performance ensemble dedicated to ending sexual assault, Visibility Now, as well as the founder and creator of the urban youth magazine, Underground Philosophy.

Aislinn Pulley is an executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, founded out of the historic 2015 reparations ordinance for survivors of Chicago police torture. Aislinn is also a lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago. She was an organizer with We Charge Genocide, a founding member of Insight Arts and a member of the performance ensemble, End of the Ladder. She is a founder of the young women’s performance ensemble dedicated to ending sexual assault, Visibility Now, as well as the founder and creator of the urban youth magazine, Underground Philosophy.

Alex Macmillan is a social studies teacher with Guilford County Schools, and a member of the NCAE.

Alyx Goodwin and Todd St Hill are founding editors of LEFT OUT Magazine, an emerging print and online magazine covering Black politics and culture. Help them to publish and sustain their work by donating to LEFT OUT Magazine. Follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Amber Farrell is an organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago

Amber Jean is a queer Black organizer and member of the Black Abolitionist Network in Chicago.

Amy Sonnie is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).

Anderson Bean is a North Carolina based activist and author of the book The Communal State: Venezuela’s struggle for participatory democracy in a time of crisis, forthcoming from Lexington Books.

Anthony Moser lives in the McKinley Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Kate and their two kids. He works as a software developer and a musician and organizes with Neighbors For Environmental Justice. If you want to search city data yourself, he built BetterDataPortal.com.

Aryssa is a born-and-raised Chicago Southsider and member of the Black Abolitionist Network, working to defund CPD.

Barbara Smith is an independent scholar, socialist and lifelong freedom fighter. She was co-founder of the Combahee River Collective. Her pivotal writings include Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith, Home Girls, All the Women are White, and All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave and so many more, including many op-eds in the past few years. Through her activism over these many years, she has been a foundational contributor and definer of Black feminism.

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a racial justice, labor, and international activist. He is the author of the book They're Bankrupting Us!: And 20 Other Myths about Unions.

Bobby Quellos is a Chicago-based lefty architect, a member of 33rd Ward Working Families and parent of a CPS student.

Breanna Bertacchi is a research professional, a member of United Neighbors of the 10th Ward, and a resident of South Chicago.

brian bean is a member of the Rampant editorial collective and an editor and contributor to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction from Haymarket Books.

brian bean is a member of the Rampant editorial collective and an editor and contributor to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, from Haymarket Books.

Brian Jones is an American educator, scholar, activist, and actor, and currently the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He has contributed chapters to several books on issues of racism, inequality, and Black education history, most recently to Black Lives Matter At School: An Uprising for Educational Justice.

Caitlin Quinn is a teacher in Chicago.

Carlos Enriquez is a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. He currently serves as the chapter’s Campaigns Coordinator and is on the Executive Committee.

Charisse Burden-Stelly is an assistant professor of Africana Studies and Political science at Carleton College and is currently a visiting scholar in the Race and Capitalism project at the University of Chicago. She is also the coauthor with Gerald Horne of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and also co-author of the forthcoming book, Organize, Fight, Win: Three Decades of Black Communist Women's Writing.

Charlie Aleck is a member of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, and a revolutionary socialist and activist in Chicago.

Charlie Post is a long-time socialist who teaches sociology at the City University of New York and is active in his faculty union.

Damon Williams is an organizer, media maker, educator, facilitator and hip-hop performing artist. Damon is the co-founder and co-director of #LetUsBreathe Collective and co-creator of AirGo Media which produces a weekly podcast and radio show.

Dana Blanchard is a member of the Rampant editorial collective.

Dana Blanchard is a member of the Rampant editorial collective.

Daniel La Spata is a democratic socialist who was elected alderman in 2019 to Chicago’s 1st Ward.

Daphna Thier is a socialist and organizer based in Brooklyn, as well as a member of the DSA National Political Education Committee. She writes occasionally for Jacobin Magazine, and is a contributing author of the volume Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

Demetrius Noble (better known as D. Noble) is an activist, teacher and radical cultural worker. He currently serves as a professor in the African American & Diaspora Studies department at University of North Carolina Greensboro. His work has been published in The African American Review, The Journal of Pan African Studies, The Journal of Black Masculinity, Works and Days, Cultural Logic, Red Wedge and other leftist digital and print publications.

Dennis Kosuth has been a nurse for 13 years and a socialist and workplace activist for over 2 decades. He’s a proud member of both National Nurses United and the Chicago Teachers Union. @Dennis_Kosuth

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is the policy director and a senior research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies and teaches American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos. She is the coauthor, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, of “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans.

Donna Murch is an associate professor of history at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and a member of the Executive Council of the American Association of University Professors–American Federation of Teachers. She is the author of Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, which won the Phillis Wheatley Prize. Her next book Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Movement for Black Lives is forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

Dorothy Holmes is a leading fighter in the movement to end police violence. She has spent the last five years marching, organizing, and speaking out all around the city, across the country, and internationally, alongside a growing network of family members of loved ones killed by police.

Elizabeth Lalasz is a registered nurse at Stroger Hospital in Chicago, a steward with National Nurses United, and delegate to the upcoming 2020 California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Convention. She contracted COVID-19 and then returned to work on a COVID-only unit that primarily served people incarcerated in Cook County Jail.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is a demographer specializing in mortality, racial inequality, and historical infectious disease. She is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota.

Elliot Frank is a writer living in Chicago. His work has appeared in the South Side Weekly and Chicago Review of Books, and he also organizes for tenants rights with the Chicago Tenants Movement.

Emma is an abolitionist involved in Chicago organizing to stop Line 3.

Eric Kerl is a Kentuckian living, working, organizing, and writing in Chicago. He is the author of White Bred: Hillbillies, White Trash, and Rednecks against White Supremacy, forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

Eric Kerl is a Kentuckian living, working, organizing, and writing in Chicago. He is the author of White Bred: Hillbillies, White Trash, and Rednecks against White Supremacy, forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

Erik Wallenberg is a PhD candidate in History at CUNY Graduate Center, Acquisitions Editor of Science for the People, and a long-time Palestine solidarity activist.

Erik Wallenberg is a PhD candidate in History at CUNY Graduate Center, Acquisitions Editor of Science for the People, and a long-time Palestine solidarity activist.

Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago and curator of the Black Freedom Lectures discussion series. She is the author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, and the novel for young readers Maya and the Robot. She is the coauthor with Nate Marshall of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks and has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Champions and Ironheart series.

Fae Robertson is a revolutionary socialist organizing with the DePaul Socialists and a senior at DePaul University studying history and political theory.

Frank Chapman, along with Angela Davis, led the re-founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in 2019. As Field Organizer of the Chicago chapter of the Alliance, he launched the movement to demand community control of the police through legislation for an elected civilian police accountability council (CPAC). He is the author of: The Damned Don’t Cry: Pages from the Life of a Former Prisoner and Organizer, and will be releasing his second book soon on Marxism-Leninism and the Black liberation struggle in the U.S.

Geoff Guy is a rank and file union member and organizes for housing justice with Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Philly-based writer and organizer and author of We Created Chávez, Building the Commune, and Decolonizing Dialectics. His next book, A World Without Police, will be published next year by Verso Books.

Glenn Allen is a longtime political activist in Chicago and a licensed health-care worker in Northwest Indiana.

Guy Miller is a lifelong socialist and retired United Transportation Union member.

Haley Pessin is a socialist based in Queens, NY. She is a member of 1199 SEIU and Legal Workers Rank & File (LWRF).

Hy Thurman is a co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization and author of Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes From the Struggle at the Edge of the Rainbow (Regent Press).

Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque is a stateless Rohingya refugee from Myanmar. He is a college student, human rights activist, and writer.

Jackson Potter is a co-founder of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators in 2008, current co-chair of CORE, trustee for the Chicago Teachers Union and a history teacher at Back of The Yards High School.

the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing) and co-author, with Hilary Moore, of No Fascist USA!: The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today's Movements (City Lights Books).

Jasson Perez organizes with DSA Afro-Socialists & Socialists of Color Caucus, and is a senior research analyst at the Action Center on Race and the Economy focusing on the areas of police violence, mass incarceration, and economic inequality.

Jaunita Benson is a Black anarchist and social science researcher living in (so-called) Chicago.

Jayda Van is a Chicago-based activist and organizer. She is a founding member of the Pride Without Prejudice Collective and member of Defund CPD. She is a former recording secretary of Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

Jeanne Theoharis is distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College, and the author of many books on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, including The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.

Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a leading voice on issues of educational equity, the school-to-prison pipeline, standardized testing, the Black Lives Matter at School movement, and social justice unionism. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, an author, public speaker, organizer, and ethnic studies teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School—the site of the historic teacher boycott of the MAP test in 2013. Jesse is the coeditor of Teaching for Black Lives, and is the editor of the book More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. He is also an organizer with Social Equity Educators (SEE), a rank-and-file group of Seattle educators working for social justice in public schools.

Joe Allen is the author of The Package King: A Rank and File History of United Parcel Service.

Jonah ben Avraham is a socialist labor activist and member of Jewish Voice for Peace in Columbus, OH. Follow him on Twitter at @thatrednjb.

Jonathan Ellis is an Atlanta-based socialist activist who is passionate about food justice, Black liberation, and internationalism. He is a member of Community Movement Builders.

Justin Akers Chacón is a professor of US history and Chicano studies in San Diego, California. He is the coauthor with Mike Davis of No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence at the U.S.–Mexico Border and author of Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class as well as the forthcoming The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border from Haymarket Books.

Keith Rosenthal lives in New York City and is the editor of Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell from Haymarket Books.

Ken Barrios is a revolutionary socialist. He is a member of the DSA and 33rd Ward Working Families.

Ken Barrios is a revolutionary socialist. He is a member of the DSA and 33rd Ward Working Families.

Kevin Moore is an educator, member of the Chicago Teachers Union, activist, organizer, DJ, and power nap enthusiast based out of Chicago.

Khury Petersen-Smith is a researcher who studies and writes about U.S. empire, Black liberation, Palestine, and decolonization. He is a co-founder of Black 4 Palestine.

Kristen Kelley is a founding member of Chicago’s chapter of the Coalition to Close Concentration Camps.

Lauren Bianchi is a teacher and activist in Chicago. She is a founding member of Chicago for Abortion Rights.

Leila Al Shami is an activist and writer. She is co-author of 'Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War' (Pluto Press 2016/2018) She is currently active with the 100 Faces of the Syrian Revolution campaign.

The Libertarian Socialist Collective in Chicago (LSC) is a network of communists who works where possible with other leftist tendencies but forwards its own distinct vision for a future without capitalism.

Lindsey Bailey is a clinical social worker who lives in the 16th ward. She provides social work consulting services through ReStorying Consulting Cooperative and is a co-founder of Centro Sanar, a local mental health program offering free services located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Malak Hijazi is a Palestinian English literature graduate from Gaza.

Mandy Medley is a socialist feminist organizer and a worker-owner at Pilsen Community Books in Chicago.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is a political science graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His previous articles have been published in The Humanist Magazine, Z Magazine, and ROAR Magazine.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is a political science graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His previous articles have been published in The Humanist Magazine, Z Magazine, and ROAR Magazine.

Mark Clements is a long time Chicago activist and organizer and a Chicago police torture survivor.

Melissa Rakestraw has been a United States Postal Service letter carrier for 25 years in the Chicago area. She is a trade union activist and a socialist organizer.

N. Jolras is an abortion provider in Chicago.

Nisha Adari is a writer and activist based in Chicago.

Noreen McNulty is a socialist, abolitionist organizer in Chicago and a member of Únite Little Village.

Rampant Magazine is grateful to have interviewed a researcher with No Space for Hate (NSFH) Research Division, a collective of activists, scholars, students, and data analysts who monitor the activities of white supremacists in the United States. At present, their work involves collecting, analyzing, and publishing information about how white supremacist organizations in the Midwest are making inroads into American politics.

Olivia Curry is a member of Black Lives Matter Chicago Accomplices

Oskar Stolz is a member of the Berlin-Neukölln Left Party and the marx21 network, and has been active for many years in various social movements in Germany.

P.B. Richter is a reporter based in Chicago. His writing covers city politics and workplace issues.

Patty Krawec is an Anishnaabe Ukranian activist, co-host of the podcast Medicine for the Resistance, and host of the online book club Ambe: A year of Indigenous reading. Patty is a writer and speaker and for 16 years was an active union member and social worker. Her work now centers on examining and disrupting social and political narratives of power. Her first book, which deals with the untangling of Christian colonialism, will be published by Broadleaf Books in 2022 and other writings have been published by Rampant Magazine and Sojourners. You can find her on twitter @gindaanis and her website daanis.ca

Peter Drucker, a longtime LGBTIQ and socialist activist, is the author of Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism (Haymarket). He lived for years in New York and California but has been in the Netherlands since 1993.

Rachel Cohen organizes with Chicago Feminist Action and is a member of the Rampant editorial collective.

The Rampant Editorial Collective is a group of Chicago-based organizers, writers, and editors.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a prolific and award-winning author and the Gary B. Nash professor of American history at UCLA. He is the author of many books, including Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and his current book project is titled Black Bodies Swinging: An American Post-Mortem.

Rory Gilchrist is a freelance agent provocateur working in sustainability, public health and planetary health whose writing has also appeared in Chicago DSA’s Red Star Bulletin. They are a campaign coordinator for Democratize ComEd and serve on the steering committee of DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group.

Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez is Chicago's 33rd Ward Alderwoman and a Puerto Rican mother, educator, organizer, and community artist.

Sam Stroozas is an independent journalist and writer for Rebellious Magazine.

Samer Owaida is a community organizer and a research assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Samhitha is a queer Nebraskan born of the South Indian diaspora, and a social science researcher interested in studying race, organizing, and education systems with a focus on abolition.

Sami Adnan is a leftist political activist from Iraq. He co-founded Workers Against Sectarianism in Baghdad. Now, he plays an active role in advancing the work of the October Uprising Committee to bring activists together and make their voices heard inside and outside of Iraq.

Sean Larson holds a PhD in German studies from NYU and is a member of the Rampant editorial collective.

Sean Larson holds a PhD in German studies from NYU and is a member of the Rampant editorial collective.

Shana Richards is a Professional School Counselor in Guilford County Schools. She currently serves as the vice president of the NCAE Student Services Division and Student Services Director on the GCAE exec board. She’s a proud wife to Brandon and mommy to BJ and Brent.

Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist organizer and writer and alum of Students for Justice in Palestine. She has organized, given talks, and written on the Syrian uprising, Palestine, anti-imperialism, and Middle East/North African solidarity. She has been published in the International Socialist Review, Jacobin, Socialist Worker, and other publications. She is a contributor to Palestine: A Socialist Introduction.

Snehal Shingavi is associate professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin. He is a long-time social justice activist and has participated in a number of campaigns and movements, including: the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Third world Liberation Front, the Association of Graduate Student Employees/UAW local 2865, Students for Justice in Palestine, Friends of South Asia, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Green Party, the Campus Antiwar Network, the Texas State Employees Union/CWA local 6186, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Stop the Cuts Coalition, Occupy Austin, the People’s Task Force, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Symone Baptiste is a filmmaker and member of the DSA LA chapter and also the DSA Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus.

The Sprout Slate is a collection of DSA members running for delegate seats to the DSA national convention. You can find out more about Sprout Slate here.

Todd Chretien is a high school Spanish teacher, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the editor of NoBordersNews.org. He spoke to Dr. Murch on July 13 for Viento Sur.

Todd St Hill is a Chicago resident, organizer, co-founder of the forthcoming LEFT OUT Magazine, and writer, contributing to the Chicago Defender, Jacobin, and Socialist Worker, covering police misconduct, militarization of law enforcement, environmental racism, the history of the Black radical tradition in the Caribbean, and the history of Black labor struggle.

“Troy Bolton” is a former Urban Labs employee who has become increasingly distressed by the Crime Lab’s dogmatic commitment to pro-policing research methods.

Turquoise LeJeune Parker is a teacher in Durham Public Schools, the NEA Director for North Carolina educators, proudly represents as a North Carolina Central University graduate, and her favorite role is being wife to Donald Parker III.

Tyler Zimmer teaches philosophy at the University of Chicago and is a member of the Chicago Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is on the Rampant editorial collective.

Wafa Mustafa is an activist, a journalist, and a survivor from detention. Mustafa comes from Masyaf, a city in the Hama Governorate, western Syria. She left the country on 9 July 2013, exactly a week after her father was forcibly disappeared by the regime in Damascus. She moved to Turkey and began reporting on Syria for various media outlets. In 2016, she moved to Germany and continued her interrupted studies in Berlin where she studied Arts and Aesthetics at Bard College and graduated in Spring 2020. In her advocacy, Mustafa covers the impact of detention on young girls and women and families.

Zama is a Chicano from rural Illinois and member of Amazonians United Chicagoland. Zama can be reached via an email at zamaorganizer@gmail.com.

Zoe Albion is a Jewish socialist activist and bug enthusiast in Chicago, IL.