Our People

Dr. Alfredo Carlos is an Assistant Professor in the Labor Studies department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He proudly grew up in the LA/LB Harbor area in an immigrant working class family and community, which has informed his education and given him purpose to struggle for economic and racial justice in solidarity with working people trying to live with dignity. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine where he specialized in the fields of Political Economy, and American Racial and Urban Politics. He earned his M.A. in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach with a focus in Comparative Politics and International Relations and has a B.A. is in History and Chicano Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

His Research Interests revolve around Political Economy; Labor and Inequality; Economic Democracy and Worker and Community Ownership; Mexican, Chicano and Latino Politics; Racial and Ethnic Politics; Immigration; Social Movements; Postcolonial and Critical Theory;

He is the co-author of The Latino Question (Pluto, 2018), which was named “Best Book in Latino Politics” in 2019 by the American Political Science Association and is working on several articles and books on the Latino Working Class.

Andrew Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies coal and development in the Navajo Nation. His latest publications highlight the consequence of colonial water laws on indigenous nations and the political economy of green transition within reservation economies. His current work is on extraction, energy, and notions of resource curse among tribal governments.

David Cobb is a “people’s lawyer” who has sued corporate polluters, lobbied elected officials, run for political office himself, and been arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. He believes we can– and must – provoke and win a peaceful revolution if we are to survive.

David serves as Advancement Manager for the Wiyot Tribe’s Dishgamu Community Land Trust and as Co-Coordinator of the US Solidarity Economy Network. He also serves on the Steering Committee of the Green Eco-Socialist Network, as an advisor to the California Progressive Alliance, and is a leader of the California Public Banking Alliance.

David ran for Attorney General of Texas in 2002, pledging to revoke the charters of corporations that routinely violate the law. In 2004 he was the Green Party nominee for President of the United States, and his demands for recounts in multiple states helped to launch the election integrity movement that ended the advance of electronic (black box) voting systems. In 2010 he helped to co-found Move To Amend and co-authored a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the illegitimate court-created doctrines of corporate constitutional rights and money equals speech. In 2016 he served as campaign manager for the Jill Stein/Ajamu Baraka presidential campaign.

Diana is an urban planner and critical cartographer based in Berkeley, California working to create health, affordable and safe communities by addressing disparities. She previously worked at Advancement Project California, Ralph andGoldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and T.R.U.S.T. South Los Angeles Community Land Trust. Diana has a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) from UCLA and a BA in Urban and Regional Planning with a Geographic Information Sciences Minor from California State University Northridge.

Emily is Co-Director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which is seeking to create an engine for new, community-based job creation in Springfield, Massachusetts. Wellspring’s goal is to use anchor institution purchases to create a network of worker-owned businesses located in the inner city that will provide job training and entry-level jobs to unemployed and underemployed residents through worker-owned cooperatives. She also serves as Coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network. An economist by training, Emily served as the Director of the Center for Popular Economics from 2004 to 2013. Prior to that, Emily taught economics at Smith College, worked as the National Economic Justice Representative for the American Friends Service Committee and, in Northern Ireland, founded a popular economics program with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Haley Roeser (she/they) is a researcher, social practice artist, DJ, and culinary artist based in Los Angeles. Their work centers around infrastructures of care and draws upon creative and structural interventions as means of disruption. She recently graduated from UCLA with a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning and a Certificate in Gender Studies.

Linda Quiquivix PhD, is a geographer and popular educator based in Chumash lands. She places her university training at the service of under-resourced communities who seek clean water, land, and tools to build and strengthen their collective autonomies.

Marshall Trammell is a percussionist from the post-Max Roach continuum. He conducts his arts practice as a service to community interests beyond the stage. A mid-career, multidisciplinary, visionary artist keenly focused on investigating social practices, sense-making, and aesthetic technologies embedded in indigenous design principles and weaponizing culture, Trammell is an Improvisor & Music Research Strategist. Born in the early 1970’s, Trammell grew up marveling at the deep ridges the Ko’olau Mountain Range in Kaneohe, on Oahu, Hawai’i, experiencing the many narratives embedded in folkloric arts, crafts and complimentary tales. Today he performs research and political education internationally from a platform for embodied social justice vernacular, organizational strategy, & alternative infrastructure development.

Mike Strode is a writer, urban cyclist, facilitator, and solidarity economy organizer with the Kola Nut Collaborative residing in southeast Chicago. The Kola Nut Collaborative is Chicago’s only time-based service and skills exchange (otherwise known as a timebank) providing an open platform for mutual aid, community organizing, and network weaving. The Collaborative develops programming to support Chicago-based organizers in facilitating non-monetary exchange networks through practices like the Offers and Needs Market. He is a Program Manager at Open Collective Foundation and serves on the boards of the US Solidarity Economy Network, New Economy Coalition, South Deering Manor Community Association, and Dill Pickle Food Co-op.

Rev. Sekou is an author, documentary filmmaker, public intellectual, organizer, pastor and theologian. A graduate of St. Louis Soldan High School, Rev. Sekou has deep ties to the region. He began his ministry at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, where Michael Brown’s funeral was held. He has been on the ground in Ferguson for months on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation — the country’s oldest interfaith peace organization. Rev. Sekou was a 2014 Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Education and Research Institute at the time of Michael Brown Jr’s killing. He published a collection of writings, Gods, Gays, and Guns: Essays on Religion and the Future of Democracy (Campbell & Cannon Press, 2012). Based on his in-depth reporting on the London Riots in 2012, Rev. Sekou has a forthcoming book entitled Riot Music: British Hip Hop, Race, and the Politics of Meaning (Hamilton Books, 2015).