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Author Bios

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Aina Marzia

Aina Marzia is a 16-year-old independent journalist based in El Paso, Texas. A multi-lingual cricket fan and avid Twitter user, her journalistic work has appeared in The Austin Chronicle, …
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Johanna Wald

Johanna Wald is a writer/researcher and former director of strategic planning at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
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Zach Despart

Zach Despart is a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. He investigates power — who wields it, how and to what ends — through the lens of Texas government. He …
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Joyce Kendrick

Joyce Kendrick is the Southwest Ohio co-leader of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She lives in Middletown, Ohio.

Julia Luz Betancourt

Julia Luz Betancourt is a Puerto Rican writer, journalist and mutual aid organizer based in New York.
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Taylor Riley

Taylor Riley is a public health researcher and organizer with Defend the Defund in Seattle. 
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BJ Last

BJ Last organizes with the Seattle Solidarity Budget and is a business analyst with over a decade of budgeting experience.
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Angélica Cházaro

Angélica Cházaro is a Seattle-based writer, professor and movement participant. She organizes with the Seattle Solidarity Budget and Shut Down King County Jail coalitions.
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Melanie Brazzell

Melanie Brazzell is a scholar, organizer and a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Their work focuses on the past, present and futures of the …
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Shirley Leslie

Shirley Leslie is the national development director of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization that seeks to build an international movement to end the prison-industrial complex by challenging the belief that …