Ailecia Ruscin
Ailecia Ruscin is an anti-racist, white 29-year old from Alabama who currently lives in Lawrence, KS. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in American Studies and enjoys the fun job of being a Women's Studies instructor at the University of Kansas. Aligned with feminist and anti-racist movements, she has been involved in many activist projects over the last ten years. She was one of the founding members of Lawrence's radical infoshop: Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library; she runs the gender theory reading group for Lawrence's Queer as Fuck organization; she helped organize the 2001 North American Anarchist Gathering, the 2001 Plan Z: Strategy Conference for Wimmin and Trannies, the 2000 Southern Girls Convention; and she has participated in and/or organized dozens of anti-war rallies, feminist marches, anti-globalization demonstrations, gay pride parades, and more recently, protests supporting immigrant and migrant rights. As an artist she photographs people, landscapes, and bands and has recently started making videos. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The daughter of a Sri Lankan father and a Irish-Ukrainian mother, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha was raised in Worcester, Mass, a rust belt city in central New England. The author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR, 2006), she is a frequent contributor to Bitch and Colorlines magazines and has had work anthologized in Colonize This!, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Femme, and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World. She teaches writing to LGBT youth at Supporting Our Youth Toronto and is one of the organizers of the Asian Arts Freedom School, a writing and activist education program for Asian/Pacific Islander youth, as well as producing the Browngirlworld series of queer/trans POC spoken word shows. In 2003 she edited and distributed Letters from the War Years: a queer/trans poc antiwar zine. She is currently collaborating on Blood Memory: A Sri Lankan Storytelling Project with sister queer Sri Lankan artists Marian Yalini Thambynayagam and Varuni Tiruchelvam, and finishing a memoir, as well as working with The Revolution Starts At Home collective to produce a zine/book on partner abuse in activist communities. Mordecai
Mordecai is a 3 years strong resident of Los Angeles, California where she works as a writer and most recently has participated in the many actions and marches against HR 4437 and other anti-immigrant policies and attitudes. Beginning in '98, in NYC, she organized actions as part of Fed Up Queers (FUQ) focusing on AIDS activism, Sex Workers Rights, the gentrification of downtown, and anti-NYPD/Giuliani work regarding everything from post-Diallo accountability to making the park a safe space for queers. Mordecai also helped collectively build up (literally) Bluestockings (a feminist bookshop in NYC), was an organizer of Queeruption in NYC and continues to work as an organizer of Olympia, Washington's Bi-Annual HomoAGoGo festival. "By Day" Mordecai writes and produces shows for MTV, where she is currently developing a reality show on the world of pro girl skateboarders. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The daughter of a Sri Lankan father and a Irish-Ukrainian mother, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha was raised in Worcester, Mass, a rust belt city in central New England. The author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR, 2006), she is a frequent contributor to Bitch and Colorlines magazines and has had work anthologized in Colonize This!, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Femme, and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World. She teaches writing to LGBT youth at Supporting Our Youth Toronto and is one of the organizers of the Asian Arts Freedom School, a writing and activist education program for Asian/Pacific Islander youth, as well as producing the Browngirlworld series of queer/trans POC spoken word shows. In 2003 she edited and distributed Letters from the War Years: a queer/trans poc antiwar zine. She is currently collaborating on Blood Memory: A Sri Lankan Storytelling Project with sister queer Sri Lankan artists Marian Yalini Thambynayagam and Varuni Tiruchelvam, and finishing a memoir, as well as working with The Revolution Starts At Home collective to produce a zine/book on partner abuse in activist communities. Joshua Breitbart
Joshua Breitbart began working on Clamor in late 2001 when he was living in Ann Arbor, and collaborated on the project as Consulting Editor through thick and thin until the end of 2004. He has continued to develop Allied Media Projects, the non-profit he started with Jen and Jason, focusing on the Allied Media Conference, which will be moving to Detroit in 2007. He founded Rooftop Films, a summer film series in his native Brooklyn that is now one of the largest film festivals in New York City. He was an organizer in the Indymedia network from 2000-2005. In 2005 he moved to Philadelphia to become the Communications Director of Media Tank. He recently launched The Ethos Group to advise governments and community organizations how to get the most from new wireless broadband technology. You can read about his work on his blog, A Civil Defense. Kpoene' Kofi Bruce
Kpoene' Kofi Bruce is a California transplant who is totally obsessed with indie fashion, zines, and redefining what it means to be a"queer" and "feminist". Her label, Mignonette, has been featured in the Washington Post, Bust Magazine, and Dirtypop. Kpoene' recently founded a networking collective for crafty business owners, the Ladies Independent Design League. She is part of the RiffRAG, Tooth and Nail and Secrets Between Girls Collectives and has lectured on zines and identity at the University of Maryland, Middlebury College, and Sarah Lawrence, and parts of her thesis, "We Don't Need You: Zines and Feminism Outside the Mainstream" have been reprinted in Bitch Magazine, Off Our Backs and Mahogany Magazine. KP lives in Brooklyn but you can visit her here. Tre Vasquez, AKA Rigomortis
Tre Vasquez, aka Rigomortis, was born & raised in Aztlan ( 5-2-0, what?). He currently works as a youth educator/organizer in the Bay. When he is not busy puttin it down in the classroom, he is puttin' it down on the mic using hip hop as a tool to mobilize and get folks hyped on some freedom of mind. He has toured nationally with the Sex Worker's Art Show 2004 and 2005 performing music and spoken word about survival as a young 2spirit person in the underground economy. He is also part of a projekt called "The We That Sets Us Free: Building a World without Prisons" a compilation CD honoring the works of artists and prisoners who reprezent and work for the freedom to be thru the abolition of prisons. Also check him out on myspace. Alex White
Alex White has been involved in the Atlanta community for the past 7 years. Active in community development and social empowerment, she often hesitates to label myself an "activist" because she believes that fighting for what affects you and those you care about is something we all do. Her main focus is working with young people to help facilitate ways for them to experience their true selves and the richness of their potential. She is very committed to the lives of women, and specifically women and girls of color, though she is committed to building self-esteem and empowerment for all, and identifies with anyone who is a victim of oppression. She has worked for the last six years in non-profit social justice workplaces. Brian Bergen-Aurand
Transitioning from his former position as Sex and Gender Editor at Clamor to Advisory Board Member, Brian makes his home in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife, Anne, and their dog Riley. He has been a writer and teacher for fifteen years, and cannot see that combination ending as long as his bicycle and legs make it through another Midwest winter. Believing all writing is tied to ethical and political demands, his focus in the classroom and on paper is to building community and opening the spaces that make us human. He can most often be spotted toting collections of rabbinical literature, stacks of Almodovar DVDs, and books of sexually explicit photography to and from the library. These are the invaluable research he is tying together in his book on cinema, ethics, and idolatry entitled Seeing and the Seen. This book is inspired by a commitment to examine all the options we have for thinking otherwise than the gender and sexuality we are made to participate in at every step in our daily lives. When he is not writing, teaching, or riding his bike, Brian spends most of his time dreaming of returning to Bellapais in North Cyprus, where the billiard tables are much faster and the Halloumi cheese much fresher. Joanne Smith
Joanne Smith is a Haitian American Social Worker, born in New York and currently residing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In 2001 she was awarded a community fellowship by Open Society Institute, George Soros Foundation, and founded Girls for Gender Equity, a grassroots organization committed to the physical, psychological, social and economic development of girls and women. Through education, organizing and physical fitness, Girls for Gender Equity encourages communities to remove barriers and create opportunities for girls and women to live self-determined lives. gabriel olga khougaz sayegh
gabriel olga khougaz sayegh, 30, directs the State Organizing and Policy Project of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national organization working to end the war on drugs.gabriel is a contributor to the anthology, Letters from Young Activists (Nation Books, 2005), and together with his brother Malakkar Vohryzek, publishes the zine, “prisoner within.” He lives in Brooklyn, New York. |
