Speakers who are currently on tour addressing a variety of topics include:

Dahlia Wasfi, MD	Monica Vaughan
Omoyele Sowore	Antonia Juhasz
No More Deaths: Immigration Speaker	Mary Anne Hitt
Mike Fox and Sílvia Leindecker	Kevin Danaher
Khulood Al Zaidi	Carmencita Chie Abad

Wasfi, MD, Dahlia

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born in 1971 and spent her early childhood in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, until she returned with her family to the United States in 1977. Dr. Wasfi graduated from Swarthmore College in 1993 with a B.A. in Biology, and in 1997 graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In February/March of 2004, after years of separation, Wasfi visited Iraq to see her family in Basrah and Baghdad. She journeyed to Iraq again for a 3-month visit in 2006. Based on her experiences, she is speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi people and the need to end the occupation.

• The Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq & Need for Withdrawal of U.S. Troops
• The Sanctions' Impacts on Iraq's Medical System
• The Human Toll of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
• Depleted Uranium: Iraqi & U.S. Victims
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Iraqi & U.S. Victims
• Blind Patriotism: A Thin Veil for Racism
• Status of Healthcare in Iraq Today

Vaughan, Monica

Monica Vaughan is a Global Exchange organizer in the Pacific Northwest working on Climate issues. Monica speaks about the global and local impacts of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), provides updates on the proposals in Oregon & informs audiences on how to take action. Energy infrastructural decisions in Oregon impact the local environment, Oregon communities, fossil fuel exporting countries around the world, and anyone impacted by climate change. There are currently three proposals for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) importation facilities in Oregon, with hundreds of miles of proposed pipelines cutting through public forests, rivers and private property in rural Oregon and Southern Oregon. Monica is organizing Oregonians to take action to stop new fossil fuel development and pressure our government to move towards clean energy.

• What is Oregon's Energy Future?
• Taking Action on Climate Change
• The Movement Against Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Development, and for Clean Energy

Sowore, Omoyele

Omoyele Sowore is a Nigerian who has spent the last 15 years working to promote human rights and democracy in Nigeria, and to stop the militarization and violence that multinational oil companies have brought to his country. In 1989, he took part in student demonstrations protesting the conditions of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $120 million to be used for a Nigerian oil pipeline – the IMF loan conditions were to reduce the number of universities in the country from 28 to just 5. In 1992 at University of Lagos, Sowore led 2,000 students in protest against Nigeria’s notorious kleptocracy. Police opened fire, killing seven. Sowore was arrested, interrogated and beaten, but he refused to back down in his struggle for decent education in his country. He’s been imprisoned eight times and tortured, but he remains committed. “We've had supposed democracy for six and a half years and people still can't eat,’ he says. ‘Who has benefited? There's no basic health care. We don't have running water. We don't have electricity, no basic education…Shell and Chevron are among the biggest corporations in the world and they have benefited only a few people, the clique that runs the country. The Niger Delta area is polluted, occupied and heavily militarized. People get killed on behalf of the major oil companies everyday, that cannot be right.”

• Oil Exploration, Human Rights & Global Governance
• Youth empowerment & Student Activism
• A Call for Peace: The Non-Violent Struggle for Human Rights and Justice in Nigeria
• Oil & Human Rights in Nigeria: A Voice from the Frontlines

Juhasz, Antonia

Antonia Juhasz is a policy-analyst, author and activist living in San Francisco. She is a Fellow at Oil Change International and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. Juhasz is author of The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. Juhasz's new book, The Tyranny of Oil: the World's Most Powerful Industry, and What we Must do to Stop It, will be released by HarperCollins Publishers in September 2008. Juhasz is an expert on all aspects of international trade and finance policy with a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University, a Bachelors Degree in Public Policy from Brown University, experience as a Legislative Assistant to two United States Members of Congress, and over ten years of work in the field. She is a passionate writer and speaker who conveys complex information in a manner that is both accessible and motivational to others.

• The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time
• Corporate Globalization and the War on Iraq
• Global water privatization and commodification
• The San Francisco Anti-War/Peace Movement
• Challenging corporate globalization in all its evil forms

Immigration Speaker, No More Deaths:

Driven by economic inequality, thwarted by ill-conceived US border policy, and the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert, more than 2000 men, women, and children have died trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States since 1998. No More Deaths works to provide water, food, and medical assistance to migrants walking through the most deadly portions of the Arizona desert; to monitor US operations on the border and work to change US policy; and to bring the plight of migrants to public attention. Volunteers spend months in the Arizona Sonora desert providing lifesaving humanitarian assistance to migrants. To their speaking engagements, they bring on-the-ground stories about the real impacts of U.S. immigration and trade policy.

• The Humanitarian Cost of the US-Mexico Border.
• Distributing Humanitarian Aid in the Borderlands
• Free Trade and Immigration

Hitt, Mary Anne

Mary Anne Hitt is the executive director of Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit organization that brings people together to solve the environmental problems having the greatest impact on the central and southern Appalachian Mountains. The organization works with communities across Appalachia to tackle two major causes of climate change: mountaintop removal coal mining and the construction of new coal-fired power plants. She grew up in the mountains of east Tennessee, just outside Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

• Climate Change
• Mountain Top Removal and Coal-fired Fuel Plants in the Appalachian Mountains

Fox and Sílvia Leindecker, Mike

Sílvia Leindecker is a Brazilian documentary film maker, a philosopher and independent photographer who has shot for the Spanish news agency EFE, Germany's Politik magazine, and numerous independent projects, advertisement and film productions. Michael Fox is a freelance journalist, translator, reporter and documentary film maker based in South America. He is a former staff reporter for Venezuelanlaysis, a radio correspondant for Free Speech Radio News, and his articles have been published with Yes Magazine, Earth Island Journal, NACLA and The Nation online. Last year, Michael and Sílvia helped to co-found the internet Radio Venezuela en Vivo, which broadcasted live coverage from Venezuela's Constitutional Reform Referendum. Based in between Venezuela and Brazil, Michael and Sílvia have for many years been researching and covering the growth in the region's participatory democracy- cooperatives, Brazil's participatory budgeting and Venezuela's communal councils. Michael's and Sílvia's first full length documentary film "Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas" is set to be released in September 2008. It takes viewers across the Americas to attempt to answer one of the most important questions of our time: What is Democracy?

• Venezuela en Vivo
• Participatory Democracy and Cooperatives in Venezuela and Brazil
• Brazil's participatory budgeting and Venezuela's communal councils
• Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas

Danaher, Kevin

Described by The New York Times as the "Paul Revere of globalization's woes," Dr. Kevin Danaher's analytical expertise, sense of humor and blunt eloquence make him an exceptionally dynamic speaker. Dr. Kevin Danaher is a co-founder of Global Exchange (1988), founder and Executive Co-Producer of the Green Festivals (2001), and Executive Director of the Global Citizen Center (2004). Dr. Danaher has spoken at universities and for community organizations throughout the U.S. He conducts workshops on issues ranging from the dynamics of the global economy to how we can replace the power of transnational corporations with local green economy networks. A longtime critic of the so-called "free trade" agenda, Dr. Danaher explains how we must work with other countries to reduce poverty and inequality if we want the cooperation of the world's people in ending terrorism. Dr. Danaher is the author and/or editor of numerous books, including his latest, "Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots".

• Building the Green Economy
• People's Globalization vs. Elite Globalization

Al Zaidi, Khulood

After fleeing her native Iraq in 2005, Khulood Al Zaidi recently arrived in the United States after living in Jordan for over three years. Khulood received her BA in Linguistics from the University of Wassit, Iraq. After graduating from University, Khulood developed an expertise in the field of human rights, with an emphasis in women and refugee rights. In Iraq, she founded an organization providing training and legal support to Iraqi women. At that time she traveled to the U.S., as the youngest member of a delegation of Iraqi women, who met President Bush and Condoleezza Rice. In 2005 Khulood fled to Jordan, where she lived for more than three years. In Jordan, she was an organizer for a school for Iraqi refugee children. She continued her activism around human rights. Just this year, Khulood arrived in the United States and is living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

• The Iraqi Refugee Situation in Jordan and the United States
• The Impacts of the Occupation of Iraq

Abad, Carmencita Chie

Carmencita "Chie" Abad speaks from personal experience about the hardships endured by millions of workers in sweatshops around the world. Chie spent six years as a garment worker on the Pacific island of Saipan, a U.S. territory. She endured wretched conditions, frequently working 14-hour shifts in order to meet arbitrary production quotas for her employer, the Sako Corporation, which made clothes for the Gap and other retailers. When she tried to organize a union, Chie was met by fierce resistance from management and eventually lost her job. She now lives in the U.S., where she educates Americans about the inhumane factory conditions occurring worldwide, including on U.S. soil. Chie was instrumental in forcing 26 major retailers to settle a lawsuit in September 2002 to improve conditions in Saipan. Her story is an inspiring example of how people can win if they stand up for their rights and the leadership she offers from her years as of organizing within the anti-sweatshop is empowering.

• Sweatshops and the Global Economy
• Sweatshop Labor in the Garment Industry
• Tour of Sweatshops in San Francisco's Mission District