SPEAKER
BIOS
The following are the bios of speakers
and panelists in alphabetical order by first
name. Other bios will be added as they become
available:
Abbas Hamideh
is a Palestinian organizer, born and raised in Puerto Rico.
He is a member of Al-Awda's media committee. He is a former
member of Al-Awda New York and a founder of Al-Awda Cleveland.
Dr. Ahlam
Muhtaseb is a Palestinian assistant professor
and researcher of public relations and media studies at
California State University, San Bernardino. She is an active
member of Al-Awda San Diego.
Akram Alayassa
is a former political prisoner and activist with Addameer
Prisoner Solidarity Group in Ramallah. He is ex-president
of Bethlehem student union.
Alia Hasan
is an organizer with Al-Awda Los Angeles and co-founder
of the student chapter of Al-Awda at UCLA. She is currently
in her third year of graduate school at UCLA.
Amanda
Levin is an organizer with Solidarity for
Palestinian Human Rights and the Coalition Against the Deportation
of Palestinian Refugees, a Canadian group fighting for recognized
status of 100 Palestinians claiming refugee status in Canada.
She currently lives and works in Montreal.
Ban Al-Wardi
currently serves the ADC LA/OC Chapter as elected president
and the ADC National Board as an elected Board Member. She
is a member of the Free Palestine Alliance (FPA LA) and
the National Lawyers Guild, LA Chapter. Ban currently works
to serve the Los Angeles Immigrant community as an Immigration
Attorney and Immigrant Rights Advocate.
Charlotte
Kates is an organizer with Al-Awda New York
and New Jersey Solidarity - Activists for the Liberation
of Palestine. She is a third year law student at Rutgers.
Edward Sweed
earned his B. S. from Temple University in Philadelphia,
and a Masters from San Diego State University. Now retired,
Mr. Sweed was a high school teacher of filmmaking. His students
won local and state awards. He also has taught film courses
in the extension programs at three local universities. He
uses his filmmaking skills to promote justice and peace.
Congressman Filner in Washington used his video, "The
Stones Will Cry Out," which depicted the effects of
the harsh 1996 immigration law. More recently, he co-founded
Alternate
Focus which produces and broadcasts weekly Middle East
related documentaries on public access stations in San Diego
and New York.
Elias Rashmawi
is national coordinator of the National Council of Arab
Americans (NCA) and member of the steering committee of
the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. He is vice president of the
Greater Sacramento area chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC) and member of the national steering committee
of the Free Palestine Alliance (FPA). Elias is a longtime
activist in the Palestinian and Arab community and member
of Al-Awda Northern California. In 1997, he was issued a
permanent deportation order by the Israeli High Court indefinitely
barring his return to Palestine.
Dr. Fayeq
Oweis is a lecturer in the Humanities Department
at San Francisco State University. He is also an accomplished
artist who was involved in the design of the recently unveiled
Arab Cultural Mural in downtown San Francisco. He also created
a design for the mural at the main entrance of the first-ever
Arab American National Museum currently under construction
in Dearborn, Michigan. Oweis is also the author of Elements
of Unity in Islamic Art. He is an expert on the work of
political cartoonist Naji al-Ali, his characters, symbols,
and relevance.
Dr. George
Bisharat is a Professor of Law at Hastings
College of the Law in San Francisco, where he teaches criminal
procedure and practice, law in the Middle East, and anthropology
of law. He earned a Ph.D. and a J.D. from Harvard University,
worked as a public defender in San Francisco, and writes
frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.
Haithem
El-Zabri is a Los Angeles-based Palestinian-American
activist focusing mostly on Internet and media activism.
Haithem holds a Masters degree in Communications in Digital
Media from the University of Washington in Seattle, and
has developed several Palestine-related websites, including
PalestineOnlineStore.com,
Alaqsaintifada.org,
RachelCorrie.org,
and PalestineCalendar.org.
In addition to Al-Awda, he is active with Palestine Media
Watch, the Palestinian National Initiative (Al Mubadara),
Women in Black - Los Angeles, and If Americans Knew.
Dr. Hatem
Bazian is a native Palestinian who immigrated
to the US in pursuit of higher education. His twenty years
of experience as a Palestinian activist have earned him
the role of a local media spokesperson on Middle East issues.
He currently teaches at UC-Berkeley where he graduated with
a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, specializing in Islamic Law
and the history of Muslims in Jerusalem. Dr. Bazian has
also authored numerous articles on various aspects of the
Middle East. In the past, he has also played a significant
role in the civil rights, anti-Apartheid, and affirmative
action movements at Berkeley. Dr. Hatem Bazian holds a Ph.D.
in Islamic Studies. He teaches Arabic and Maliki Fiqh at
the Zaytuna Institute. Dr. Bazian is the Director of Al-Qalam
Institute of Islamic Sciences, Berkeley.
Jaber Suleiman
has been engaged in the Palestinian struggle for a long
time. He was a researcher and a writer with the Palestinian
Planning Center in Beirut, Lebanon through the seventies
and eighties. He is a cofounder of Aidoun (Returnees) Group
in Lebanon and Syria.
He is a refugee who lives in Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon. Jaber,
along with others in Aidoun, played an important role in
exposing Khalil Shekaki's bogus survey in Lebanon in 2003.
He has been with the international coalition for the right
of return since its founding in 2000. He is a strong proponent
of, and a writer on the necessity of unifying the discourse
and organizational structure of the ROR movement world-wide,
at least at the level of community-based organizations and
groups.
Dr. Jess
Ghannam is Board Member of the Gaza Community
Mental Health Program, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
and Chief of Medical Psychology at the University of California
San Francisco. He is a grassroots activist and member of
Al-Awda San Francisco and Al-Awda's international executive
committee. He currently serves as the president of the San
Francisco American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Dr.
Ghannam travels every three months to Palestine where, over
the past 12 years, he has established clinics in Gaza City,
Jabaliyah, Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah under the auspices
of the Gaza Community Mental Health program.
Jody Bong
is an attorney and member of the National Lawyer's Guild,
the International Solidarity Movement, and Al-Awda San Diego.
She currently serves as co-chair of Al-Awda San Diego.
John Parker,
West Coast coordinator of the International Action Center,
was only 18 when he organized his first union election--at
a small steel plant in New Jersey. He has worked at a variety
of other jobs, including teaching at a public school in
Newark, N.J. for 3 years. Parker
went to Sudan with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
and visited that country's main pharmaceutical plant after
it was demolished in 1998 by a U.S. missile strike. He has
been to Iraq and seen the terrible effects of sanctions
on the people there, especially children. Parker
appeared on television broadcasts from the former Soviet
Union targeting a youth audience there. He has written many
articles on a variety of international and domestic political
developments and has been published in Covert Action Weekly
Magazine. After moving to Los Angeles with his family several
years ago, he became a leader in the anti-war movement there
and was a founding member of ANSWER in Los Angeles. He helped
organize and chair several large rallies against the U.S.
war in Iraq and worked hard to mobilize anti-war forces
to support the 80,000 grocery workers on a strike/lockout
against three giant southern California food chains. For
this effort he received an award from United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 770.
Jordan Flaherty
is a writer and organizer based in New Orleans. His writing
has appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including
The Village Voice, New York Press, Counterpunch, Labor Notes,
Radical Society, and in the South End Press book Live From
Palestine. He is also an editor of the award-winning publication
Left
Turn Magazine and is a member of the groundbreaking
Big Noise Tactical
Media Collective. He has worked as a union
organizer and cofounded several activist coalitions, including
New York City's Direct
Action Palestine and New
Orleans Palestine Solidarity. Since January of 2002,
he has helped to recruit, train, and fund more than 100
activists for solidarity delegations to occupied Palestine.
He has also organized several speaking tours on Middle East
justice, and has collaborated with local
activists in almost every US state. In addition to his work
as a writer and organizer, he is currently helping to coordinate
the Wheels
of Justice Tour and festival director of the New
Orleans Human Rights International Film Festival.
Dr. Laila
Al-Marayati is an American of Palestinian
descent who frequently speaks about the rights of Palestinians.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of KinderUSA,
a charity whose primary focus at this time is on addressing
the health and educational needs of Palestinian children
living in the West Bank and Gaza. Dr. Al-Marayati's articles
have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago
Tribune, on Beliefnet and elsewhere throughout the United
States. She has appeared on local and national television
and radio programs, addressing issues of concern to Muslims
in America. Dr. Al-Marayati is a Board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist
in private practice in Southern California.
Lamis Deek
is a Palestinian organizer born in Nablus, Palestine and
raised in New York. She is a member and elected co-chair
of Al-Awda New York and the National Council of Arab Americans,
and founder of BLS Muslim Law Students Association. Lamis
is a practicing attorney in the field of criminal defense
and civil litigation, working towards her PhD in Political
Science. With Al-Awda and other organizations, she is trying
to establish an Arab immigrant & refugee center.
Lara Kiswani
was a long-time activist with the SJP at the UC/Davis, and
the Third World Forum. She is a founding member of the NCA
and a member of the FPA and ADC/SF. She is currently managing
the NCA's office in Davis, California.
Maad Abu-Ghazalah
is a Palestinian-American who was born in Nablus, Palestine.
He received a Bachelors Degree in Mathemtatics from the
University of Notre Dame, a Master's Degree in Computer
Science from the University of Virginia and a Law Degree
from Santa Clara University. He served as President of the
San Francisco Chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee and is a current board member of San Francisco's
Arab Cultural and Community Center. Her ran for U.S. Congress
in 2002 and received the 2nd highest percentage of any third
party candidate in a contested Congresssional race that
year. He has written several articles on Palestine including
"The ZNN Dictionary" which was published in Al-Ahram
Weekly.
Mahmud Ahmad
is a Palestinian born and raised in exile. He has been an
activist and organizer in the Arab community for Arab, Arab-American
and Palestinian rights; anchored with the Right of Return
for over half his life. He is an advocate of immigrant and
indigenous rights, communities and people of color, and
anti-war and social justice activist. Mahmud is a member
of A.N.S.W.E.R., Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism,
Arab-American Community Center of Chicago, National Council
of Arab Americans and Al-Awda.
Dr. Manal
Swairjo is an American-Arab of Palestinian
origin. She was born in Gaza, Palestine and emigrated to
the United States in 1989 where she studied and worked.
She obtained her doctorate in Biophysics from Boston University
in 1995 and is currently a research assistant professor
at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla. Besides a career
in science, Swairjo is active in various human and civil
rights forums. She is a current member of the San Diego
chapter of Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
She is a former board member of the San Diego chapter of
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (1999-2000),
and a former member of the Arab-American Advisory Committee
to the San Diego Chief of Police. She is the author of columns
and essays on Arab culture and literature in US and other
publications.
Mark Gonzalez
is a Hip Hop Theatre playwright, HBO Def Poet, performance
lecturer has been commissioned to perform his productions
for Cornell University, the Cali (IE) Hip Hop Theatre Festival,
members of the United Nation, Congress, and conferences
across the United States. Throughout the year Mark teaches
critical social reflection and literacy through spoken word
at various universities, high schools, and youth prisons.
In 2003, Mark traveled to Palestine to document firsthand
the struggle of the Palestinians for social justice. From
these writings and dialogues, he has compiled several performance
pieces and a Hip-Hop Theatre play; the result is a daring
and innovative way of promoting social justice through Hip-Hop
culture. Comments can be directed to humanwrites@gmail.com
Michael
Shahin is author of the National Lawyers
Guild 2003 Right to Return and 2004 Divestment resolutions.
He was the recipient of a Haywood Burns Fellowship in 2003
and spent the summer working in Ramallah at Addameer Prisoners
Support Association and the Mandela Institute. Michael graduated
from Loyola Law School-Los Angeles in 2004. While attending
law school, he was a Staff Member of the Loyola Law Review
and a Board Member of Loyola's Chapter of the National Lawyers
Guild. He also studied at Birzeit in Occupied Palestine
in 1999 and at the China University of Political Science
and Law in Beijing China in 2002. He also was an extern
for Hon. Judge Dickran Teverizian, Federal District Court,
and Hon. Samuel L. Bufford, Federal Bankruptcy Court. Michael
is a member of the Free Palestine Alliance and a collective
which produces "Radio Intifada: Voices from Kolkota
to Casablanca" on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.
Mohammed
Abed is a Palestinian student organizer
with Al-Awda Wisconsin and active with its divestment campaign.
He is currently a graduate student in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin.
Muna Coobtee
is a Palestinian activist from Los Angeles, CA. She is a
member of the Free Palestine Alliance and serves as its
representative on the Los Angeles steering committee of
the International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop
War and End Racism). The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition organized
the largest mass demonstrations against the war and occupation
of Iraq. Muna frequently speaks and writes about the centrality
of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation in the
anti-war movement. She is also a founding member of the
Party for Socialism and Liberation and a contributor to
"Socialism and Liberation" magazine.
Musa Al-Hindi
is an Arab from Akka (Acre), Palestine. Born and raised
in Lebanon, he has been active on issues related to Palestine
and social justice since 1977. Musa is a member of Al-Awda,
the Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the Palestinian
Right of Return Congress.
Nader Abuljebain
is an Arab American activist of Palestinian origin,
born as a refugee in Kuwait, and immigrated to the USA in
1990. He is past president and current board member of the
Los Angeles Orange County chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. He is a member of the national steering committee
of the Free Palestine Alliance, a founding member of the
National Council of Arab Americans and Al-Awda and its 2005
convention host committee. He is a speaker about Arab and
Palestinian issues in general, and Zionism and the Right
to Return in particular. His highly acclaimed book entitled
"Palestinian History in Postage Stamps" was published
by the Institute of Palestine Studies and the Welfare Association.
He is very involved in preserving Arab Palestinian cultural
heritage. Nader is also a labor union officer.
Nadia Keilani
was born in Baghdad, Iraq. She immigrated to the United
States at the age of nine. She is an anti-war activist,
former board member of the San Diego County Chapter of the
ADC, and current member of Al-Awda San Diego. She is a practicing
attorney.
Najla Ahmad
holds a Bachelor Degree in Sociology from Birzeit University.
Her experience includes working at the Woman Center of Birzeit
University as a research assistant, and at the JLA's Jerusalem
office which provides free legal assistance to special cases.
As a researcher, she collected data on the effects of war
on families in Palestine. She also conducted case studies
and wrote reports on road blocks, checkpoints, house and
land confiscations, and house demolitions, and on attacks
by Israeli settlers on plants, homes, people and schools.
Dr. Rami
Kishek is a Palestinian residing in the
DC-Metro area. He is currently active in several human rights
groups, including Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return
Coalition - Washington, DC Chapter, and Students for Justice
in Palestine at the University of Maryland. Rami was born
and raised under occupation, and has witnessed the violence
of the occupation first-hand.
Randa Jamal
is a Palestinian organizer born in Ramallah. She is a member
and co-chair of Al-Awda New York. She previously worked
with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, and she participated in
a humanitarian delegation to Iraq in 2000.
Rhoda Shapiro
is a long-time political activist in New York, Los Angeles
and San Diego. Her concerns with the Zionist occupation
of Palestine began in the 1950's when news of the Palestinian
refugee camps that were a direct consequence of the imposition
of the European
settler state in 1948 began to reach the US. Since the 1970's
she has been active in Palestine solidarity work. From 1982-89
she was one of the founders of the Central America Information
Project which focused on media reporting of the struggles
being waged in Central America and the Caribbean. She was
the West Coast Coordinator of the Let Nicaragua Live! campaign
that raised humanitarian aid money for the Sandinista government.
She has been a fund raiser for non-profit organizations
devoted to social justice. She is a co-founder of Al-Awda
San Diego and serves on the steering committee of Al-Awda-Media.
Richard
Becker is a founder and member of the National
Steering Committee of the International ANSWER-Act Now to
Stop War and End Racism-Coalition. He has traveled extensively
to Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere on fact finding missions.
He co-produced the videos "Blockade: The Silent War
Against Iraq," "Genocide by Sanctions" and
helped produce the video "Palestine Fights for Freedom."
He co-authored "The Children Are Dying", and was
a contributing author to the book "Challenge To Genocide:
Let Iraq Live." Becker was a member of the Bay Area
Anti-Apartheid Network Steering Committee for several years.
He has written many articles and commentaries on Middle
East and other affairs, and has been interviewed by numerous
national and international media, including ABC World News,
McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, CNN, BBC, Asahi Shimbun, Pacifica
National News, AFP-French Press Agency, the New York Times,
San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Los Angeles Times
and others. He has been a speaker at hundreds of campus
and community forums in the United States, Canada, England,
Japan, Greece, Yugoslavia, Jordan and other countries.
Sahar Francis
is a Palestinian lawyer who has worked for many years with
Palestinian prisoners. She is the lawyer for the majority
of Palestinian political prisoners. She is one of the foremost
advocates on behalf of prisoner rights in Palestine.
Salah Michael
Tahan holds the position of Vice President
with CALTROP Engineering; His parents, lived in Lebanon
after being forced to leave Al- Bassa, Palestine, in 1948,
he is actively involved and committed to the community in
the Inland Empire. In 2003/2004, he held the position of
the President of the Fontana Area Chamber of Commerce, where
he has been actively involved in the Chamber for 5 years,
serving on a number of committees. At the age of 31, he
has been the youngest President of the Fontana Area Chamber
of Commerce. He is very active in the American Arab community
in Southern California, where he serves as the Vice President
for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Southern
California. He has been a speaker, panelist, and presenter
on a number of local, state, and community forums addressing
the American Arabs issues and challenges.
Samera Sood
has been a member of many progressive humanitarian organizations
such as Palestinian American Women's Association for twenty
years and running, vice-chair Palestine Solidarity Committee,
and a board member of the Los Angeles/Orange County chapter
of The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Sami Bazzi
will be graduating in May 2005 from the University of Southern
California with two bachelor's degrees in international
relations and economics. A first generation Lebanse-American,
he studied in Cairo for five months in spring 2004 and worked
at a youth center in Shatila refugee camp in summer 2004.
Along with several other students, Bazzi spearheaded the
Students for Justice in Palestine organization at USC and
has been working with students across California to build
a network of student activists around the question of Palestine.
Sami is a member of Al-Awda Los Angeles.
Dr. Saree
Makdisi is Professor of English Literature
at UCLA. In addition to having published books and articles
on British literature and culture, he has also written extensively
on contemporary Arab cultural politics and the question
of Palestine, in venues from Critical Inquiry to the London
Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times.
Vernon Bellecourt
is a principal spokesman for the American Indian Movement
and a leader in actions ranging from the 1972 occupation
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington to the 1992
Redskin Superbowl demonstrations. He is Co-founder and first
Executive Director of the Denver AIM Chapter. His involvement
at Wounded Knee in 1973 led to a Federal indictment. He
is a special representative of the International Indian
Treaty Council and helped organize the first Treaty Conference
in 1974. He was jailed for throwing his blood on the Guatemalan
Embassy to protest the killing of 100,000 Indians. He was
elected to a 4-year term in his White Earth tribal government
and developed a model program for the spiritual education
of Indian prisoners. Vernon is President of the National
Coalition on Racism in Sports & Media and recipient
of the City of Phoenix, Martin Luther King Human Rights
Award 1993.
Dr. Zahi
Damuni is co-founder of Al-Awda, The Palestine
Right to Return Coalition, and currently serves on Al-Awda's
coordinating and executive committees. He also serves as
Al-Awda's national treasurer and leads the organization's
chapter in San Diego. Before relocating to the west coast,
he was active with Al-Awda Pennsylvania. At that time, he
was a tenured professor in the Department of Cellular and
Molecular Physiology at Penn State College of Medicine.
Currently, he is involved in biotech research.
Dr. Zeina
Zaatari earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology
with an emphasis in Feminist Theory from the University
of California at Davis. She earned an MA in Anthropology
at Iowa State University and a BA in Sociology at the American
University of Beirut. Zeina conducted fieldwork with women’s
groups and women activists in South Lebanon detailing their
life histories and the ways they negotiated their work in
civil society of a post-war country. For the past three
years, she has been teaching courses on women of the Arab
and Muslim worlds, on gender and sexuality as well as religion
and society. Zeina is a founding member of the Radical Arab
Women’s Activist Network and the National Council
of Arab Americans. She also serves on the board of the American
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco, California.
Zeina also serves on the Transnational Task Force of INCITE:
Women of Color against Violence. She was born and raised
in South Lebanon. Currently, Zeina works as a Program Officer
for the Middle East and North Africa at the Global Fund
for Women.
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