Christa Bruhn PhD
BIOGRAPHY: Christa Bruhn PhD is the award-winning author of Crossing Bridges: The Search for Dignity in Palestine.
CONTACT: https://christabruhn.com/
Sheri Carter
BIOGRAPHY: Sheri's parents came to Madison in the 1950's. Her mother was the first African American RN in Madison and worked at the Veterans Hospital for 35 plus years. Her father was the first African-America stone mason and bricklayer. In 2015, Sheri was one of the first African American woman elected to the Madison Common Council in 156 years and the first African American woman to be elected to Common Council President. Sheri has always focused on working across various ideological lines and bringing people together. There is always room for compromise.
Paul DeMain
BIOGRAPHY: Paul DeMain, Ojibwe/Oneida, is board chair for the environmental organization Honor The Earth. Former managing editor and CEO of Indian Country Communications, News from Indian Country, and former producer for Indian Country TV, based on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation in northern Wisconsin. "I am called Paul DeMain, but my name is Skabewis in the Ojibwe language. I take the title ‘The Messenger.’ I speak for things that don’t have a voice. I speak for the water, and for our natural world that is impacted by water."
Patty Loew
BIOGRAPHY: Patty Loew is Professor Emerita in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the inaugural director of NU's Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (retired). She's a documentary producer, and former broadcast journalist in public and commercial television. A citizen of Mashkiiziibii (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), Patty is the author of four books: Native People of Wisconsin, which is used by 20,000 Wisconsin school children as a social studies textbook; Teachers Guide to Native People of Wisconsin; Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal; and Seventh Generation Earth Ethics, a collection of biographies. Her outreach work focuses on Native American youth and digital storytelling.
CONTACT: patricia.loew@northwestern.edu
John Nichols
BIOGRAPHY: John Nichols is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books on media and politics. He is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times.
CONTACT:
Website: https://www.thenation.com/authors/john-nichols/
Book: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3082-the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-democratic-party
X: @nicholsuprising
Bryan G. Pfeifer
BIOGRAPHY: Bryan G. Pfeifer (B.A. Journalism, Africology, UW Milwaukee / M.S. Labor Studies UMass Amherst) is a member of the United Steelworkers 2-232-2. Pfeifer, a longtime labor and community organizer, has written extensively about the right-wing Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation and its ongoing racist, union busting austerity attacks on poor and working people in Wisconsin and beyond. Pfeifer has also assisted K-12 and higher education workers forming and building their unions in Detroit, Kansas, Virginia, San Antonio, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. Pfeifer's photography of union and community events is published and shared internationally and he is a Co-Host of We Rise Fighting! Labor Podcast with Ric Urrutia.
Sheila Plotkin, MC
BIOGRAPHY: Sheila Plotkin is secretary of WGN. In 2015, she founded the open records website We the Irrelevant, Formerly Known as We the People, featured in the 2020 Twelve Letter Films documentary, Can You Hear Us Now? Sheila has been a Raging Granny since 2013, and in 2022, post-Dobbs, she created Ursula the Angry Uterus who has become the Grannies treasured mascot.
CONTACT: We the Irrelevant wetheirrelevant@gmail.com
Can You Hear Us Now?
Ursula the Angry Uterus angryursula@gmail.com
Nicholas (Nick) Ramos
BIOGRAPHY: Nick Ramos is a lawyer, advocate, and community organizer who is currently serving as the fourth Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
Prior to joining the Democracy Campaign, he served as the Wisconsin Voter ID Coalition Coordinator with VoteRiders, a non-partisan organization that works to ensure that all eligible voters have access to photo ID in order to cast their ballot and have it count. At VoteRiders, he built and maintained partnerships with over 70 organizations across Wisconsin, developed Voter ID Clinics to assist Wisconsinites with IDs, birth certificates, and social security cards, and created a statewide provisional voter follow up program to help Wisconsin voters cure their ballots.
Gloria Reyes
BIOGRAPHY: Gloria Reyes, a life-long Madisonian, is a former police officer, deputy mayor, deputy director of the Dane County Department of Human Services, CEO of Briarpatch Youth Services, former member of the MMSD Board of Education, and currently deputy county manager of the Safety and Justice Service Team in Ramsey County MN. In 2023, she was awarded the 365 Leadership Community Choice Award for Woman of Excellence.
CONTACT:
Art and Dawn Shegonee
BIOGRAPHY: Art Shegonee is a member of the Menominee & Potawatomie Tribes of Wisconsin. He was named Ambassador to Indian Summer Festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He and his wife, Dawn, are both Global Artists, Activists & Co-Founders since 1989, of the world renowned Call for Peace Drum & Dance Company. They represent seven Multicultural Dance Company Directors, coming together in performing a circle dance of unity called, "Dancing the Dream, A New Hope For Humanity."
They have been promoting cross cultural understanding through performance art in the US and around the world. The Company holds letters of endorsements from Dr. Arun Gandhi; former Congressman John Lewis; President Bill Clinton; Charlotte Black Elk; and Former Mayor of Madison, WI, Paul Soglin.
CONTACT: callforpeace@callforpeace.org
Rev. John Stanley
BIOGRAPHY: Rev. John Stanley is the current chair of the Wisconsin Grassroots Network and chair of the DPW Progressive Caucus. John assumed the WGN chair in 2023 when Nate Timm, the founder of WGN was no longer able to participate due to a stroke. John was unanimously elected chair thereafter, overseeing the successful 15th Annual Grassroots Festival at Lawrence University in Appleton WI on May 2, 2024, and providing support and guidance for the Oct. 19 Celebrate Democracy rally.
CONTACT: alwayssinging3@hotmail.com