Author Bios

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.

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 …

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 is a Puerto Rican writer, journalist and mutual aid organizer based in New York.

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

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

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.

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 …

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 …

Beenash Jafri is an assistant professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of California, Davis.