2009 Media Democracy Day - Chicago
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn Ave., Chicago

Panelists, Resource Persons, Facilitators

VERONICA I. ARREOLA is a professional feminist, mom and writer. She
started blogging due to a case of post-election depression in late
2000. Since then she has contributed to a long list of blogs including
Kenneth Cole's AWEARNESS, WIMN's Voices, Work it, Mom! and her own
Viva la Feminista.

Veronica lives on the north side of Chicago with her partner of over
15 years and their school age daughter. Her writing has been featured
in Ms., Bitch, Alternet, RH Reality Check, NPR.com and the Guardian. 


MIKE BARR received a BA in History from Aurora University and completed
2 years of graduate study in journalism at NIU.  He completed 2 years in
acting school and has appeared in over 40 movies, TV shows and
commercials and one play. He was a Principle Researcher, Rocky Mountain
Arsenal Superfund lawsuit, Denver Colorado, the largest environmental
lawsuit in U.S. Historyand has also produced videos of the Arsenal
investigation.  He was a principle Researcher, Congressional Quarterly,
Washington, D.C., for Politics In America, also produced video of
seminars in government and special events.  He was Campaign manager Sen.
Eugene McCarthy 1992 Presidential race.  Over the last 4 years he
produced over 80 programs for Public Access TV and over 200 YouTube
videos.


MARCIA BERNSTEN promotes justice, peace and the environment though her
work as a founding or board member of several organizations that are a
part of Illinois Coalition for Justice, Peace and the Environment
(ICJPE) where she is a representative to of the standing committees and
as a facilitator in the Peace Justice and Environment Project.


BILL BIANCHI is the chair of Progressive Democrats of America-Chicago
and the author of a study on education through media,  Schools of the
Air: A History of Instructional Programs on Radio in the U S. 


JOEL BLEIFUSS is the editor of In These Times, where he has worked as
an investigative reporter, columnist and editor since 1986.


KAREN J. BOND is a media justice advocate and management consultant, is
Executive Director of the "National Black Coalition for Media Justice". 
She came to Evanston, Illinois from North Carolina to complete a degree
in biology at Northwestern University. 
This started four years of campus activism.  She then went on to a
marketing career in middle and upper management with several
multinational corporations, including IBM and Xerox, where she won
numerous awards of merit.  She now works nationally as a speaker,
trainer and organizer to help the poor and working class public gain a
sense of its own power regarding such issues as equal access to media
resources, government accountability and the role of public broadcasting.

Karen has worked closely with the Federal Communications Commissioners
and members of Congress to resolve media policy concerns.  As a panelist
at the Federal Communications Commission's hearing on media ownership
consolidation, she testified with regard to the impact of FCC policies
on the Black community.  She also organized a unique meeting of fourteen
black leaders with an FCC Commissioner to help shape a regulatory
framework which will allow for better representation of marginalized and
dissenting viewpoints in media.

In addition to her Executive Director role, she is also a business
management consultant.  She has had extensive formal training on the
topic of institutional racism, and consults with major institutions on
designing structures to better serve the needs of their culturally
diverse workforce and client populations.  She handles media and public
relations for numerous events and personalities.

ESTELLE CAROL is a graphics designer.  She is one of the founders of Oak
Park Coalition for Truth and Justice (OPCTJ).  She has been active in the
CWLU Herstory Project, www.cwluherstory.org.  Her design firm is WebTrax
Studio, www.webtraxstudio.com 


LARRY DUNCAN in 1983 founded Committee for Labor Access (which produces
Labor Beat cable tv series, on cable in Chicago since 1986, and Labor
Express radio show). Labor Beat is on as a series in over 9 metropolitan
areas. Received Center for New Television Visionary Award in 1995. "Best
known public access labor tv series in the country" (Alliance for
Community Media). Member National Executive Board of Union Producers and
Programmers Network (UPPNET), former editor UPPNET Newsletter. Rank-and-
file member of Chicago Typographical Union Local 16/CWA 14408. Produced
"Action Motown '97" documentary shown on WTTW in 1997. 


JEANETTE FOREMAN is a lawyer, educator, political advocate and community
activist.  She has her own law firm, JEANETTE FOREMAN AND ASSOCIATES in
Chicago. A pioneer in the emerging field of assisting low and moderate
income African American and minority adults develop their own
entrepreneurial micro businesses, beginning in the mid 80s she helped to
develop and implement training, technical assistance, lending tools, and
innovative financial literacy and savings programs which became model
programs. Working with local and national legislators, policy makers,
unions, bankers, politician, and community activists, she created and
implemented key legislation, policies and programs such as micro business
incubators, wbe-mbe work set-aside ordinances, and peer lending program
which helped minority and women owned small and micro business flourish
as well and gain national attention and respect. An active leader in the
micro business field, she has served on the Board of Directors of
national micro-business industry organization, Association of Enterprise
Opportunity (AEO) and was a founding member, Board leader and policy Chair
of the statewide micro business organization in Georgia, the
Georgia Micro-Enterprise Network, (GMEN)

In recent years she has focused her work on media education, policy and
civic engagement advocacy projects which strengthen young adults and
grass roots organizations. As a College professor at Clark Atlanta
University, Columbia College and Georgia State University she taught
media, business and civic issues with the objective of engaging the
students across disciplines in hands-on advocacy and participation in
real-world discussions so that their viewpoints would become a part of
what shaped public opinion.

An avid believer in the need for a free and independent media in order to
preserve the power of ordinary citizens in a self governing democracy,
Dr. Foreman has been a leader in developing projects and organizations
which advocate for a free and independent media which is accessible and
easily used by all citizens. She has served on a number of boards,
organizations and projects which champion and protect independent media
and journalism and citizen political access including: CAN_TV, Chicago's
Public Access . . . political and legislative organizer, community support
organizer; People TV, Atlanta's Public Access Cable TV station . . . Board
Chair and Chair of their Youth Media component- Fuel Media; National Hip
Hop Political Conference- Board advisor . . . Chicago Local Planning
Committee; WRFG- Community Radio- Board Member- Chair/organizer- Southern
Media Justice Coalition- Organizer, Coalition of alternative media - Youth
Media Justice Project- Organizer/Director- media education and advocacy
project: Prometheus Radio Project- National Board member.  


BOB GALLIE a community organizer and has worked with community and labor
media access projects.  He is aboard member, Labor Beat.  Gallie is a co-
founder, Chicago Media Action, Citizens Committee on the Media.


MARIA GAMBOA . . . A long time activist dating back to 1970's as an ardent
Chicana nationalist who came to accept the necessity for a more encompassing
theory and class-based analysis to achieve social change. Her work
experience has been related to social issues such as in public education,
gang and youth work and employment training for unemployed workers. 
Maria is co-founder of CAMI, Comite Anti-MIlitarization (committee against
militarization) in 2004. CAMI has been working to combat the aggressive
military recruitment of our youth and working to educate and empower the
Latino community to stand firmly against the war in Iraq.


JEREMY GANTZ is Web editor of In These Times, editor of Working In These
Times, and a freelance writer and editor. 

A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, he
worked as a reporter for The Cambodia Daily in 2007. After graduating from
Carleton College in 2004, he lived in Sri Lanka on a Fulbright scholarship,
studying the intersection of ethnic politics and public education.

He got his start in journalism in eastern Massachusetts, working for the
Memorial Press Group, now part of GateHouse Media. While at MPG, he worked
as a layout and copy editor, reporter and monthly music columnist. 

His articles have appeared in Chicago-area newspapers, the Onion's A.V.
Club Chicago, and Shore magazine, where he is a contributing editor. When he
travels, he blogs relentlessly at Xanadu's Travelogue, which has captured
his thoughts on Australia, New Zealand, India and Cambodia. 


KEVIN GOSZTOLA is a citizen journalist who publishes his writing regularly
to OpEdNews and Open Salon and he is a 2009 YP4 Fellow.  He is a documentary
filmmaker completing a Film/Video degree at Columbia College in Chicago.
He currently is working with a crew on a web-based documentary project on
Renaissance 2010 and Chicago Public Schools. On Columbia College's campus,
he helps organize events and programming with a humanities/social sciences
group known as Critical Encounters. He is currently working with the group
to plan a media summit for Chicago in April 2010.   


BOB KOEHLER has a Chicago journalist for over 30 years. For at least the last
five of those years, he has been a self-proclaimed peace journalist.
Currently he writes a nationally syndicated column on politics and current
events . . . which he calls "part political brawl, part secular prayer" . . .
for Tribune Media Services. This column, which can be found at
commonwonders.com, is ten years old. Koehler worked throughout the 80s as a
reporter, editor and columnist for the (mostly) late, great Lerner Newspapers
chain, covering much of the North Side of the city . . . and at the same
time, covering the whole planet, which passed through his beat. For the last
14 years he was an editor at the Chicago Tribune syndicate, Tribune Media
Services. In May of 2009, the company told him he had greater things to
accomplish and conferred on me the status of free human being, which in
pessimistic circles is called being laid off. I'm still writing my column but
now he is also devoting a great deal of my time to researching the phenomenon
of Restorative Justice, which seeks to heal rather than punish after harm has
been done, and which he sees as part of a larger shift in human consciousness
toward peace. He has won numerous writing and reporting awards in his career,
at both the national and local levels. I have taught writing at the college
and high school levels and is a passionate believer in everyone' s right to
his or her own voice. He is a poet, a widower, a single dad and an unrepentant
peacenik.  But he believes peace is only possible if we create it ourselves.


ALICE KIM is an activist, writer and cultural organizer. She is Director of
The Public Square, a program of the Illinois Humanities Council. She is also on
the Board of Editors of In These Times magazine, the Advisory Board of the
Children and Family Justice Center, and a founding member of the Stanley Tookie
Williams Legacy Network. A former recipient of the Ford Foundation's Leadership
for a Changing World Award for her work to end capital punishment in Illinois,
she  participates in local and national efforts to create street peace, reform
the criminal justice system, and promote the arts within movements for social
justice. 


ANDREW LEHMAN is an entrepreneur who runs a website design firm and also
explores new mediums for organizing and sharing information. He was instrumental
in the creation of the Peace, Justice and Environment Project and has also
created additional sites neoteny.org and Shiftjournal.com. 


MICHAEL MARANDA advocates and organizes around media policy issues and the
public use of technology. He fights for digital literacy, access and equity as a
director of CTCNet Chicago, founding chair of the Illinois Community Technology
Coalition, and co-founder of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance. As president
of the Association For Community Networking (AFCN), Michael promotes local and
regional networking as the foundation of the global community information and
communications technology (ICT) movement. Michael bridges community media and 
technology sectors locally through Let? Talk Media networking events. 

He established Get Illinois Online [GIO] as the center of statewide dialogue and
as a rallying cry for broadband deployment proponents of all stripes. Among
community technologists, he actively applies the principle of Movement as Network,
opening space for cross-sector dialogue and partnership.

An avid proponent of community-owned and driven solutions, Michael is dedicated
to promoting cooperative solutions and creative support structures in the non-
profit/voluntary sector. Michael is a co-founder of NPOTechs, a Chicago volunteer
network bringing open source and free technologies to non-profits.  A New York
native, Michael resides with wife and two children in the Hyde Park neighborhood
of Chicago, dreaming of finishing his Ph.D. in Sociology.. 


JOAN MCGRATH is a staff member at Columbia College with a passion for media
democracy.  At Columbia she helped organize a staff union which is getting close
to finalizing its first contract with the college.  She has been an anti-war
protestor and activist for social justice since her college years at UIC in the
1980s." 


KEVIN O'DONNELL is Deputy Director of Communications for the Service Employees
International Union, Local 1. For the past three years Kevin has been helping
janitors, security officers, and food service workers in Houston, Cincinnati,
Indianapolis, Columbus and in other U.S. cities to tell their story of trying
to survive on poverty wages in the media. Kevin is the author of "It's the
Message, Stupid!," an editorial for the November 2009 issue of In These Times.

 
MITCHELL SZCZEPANCZYK is a software developer, radio show host, TV producer,
and political activist.  As a longtime organizer with Chicago Media Action (CMA),
Mitchell has worked on CMA campaigns around the Federal Communications Commission
and corporate media concentration, public access television, public radio and
television, community internet initiatives, network neutrality, and the U.S.
digital television transition. 


TIM WAIS is an experienced New-Media designer and marketing professional working
on creating stronger cultural connections, with humanist goals. through grassroots
social networking solutions.  He is the founder of the not-for-profit . . .
HumanThread.net, and founder of Jungle of Cities (an original music performance
group), Member of Soka Gakkai (Value Creation) International and board member of
Yes I Can Jam (Youth outreach program) 


HARVEY WELLS is a native of Chicago.  While a sophomore at SIU, Southern Illinois
University, he helped start the campus radio station, WIDB and worked there through
his graduation.  Upon graduation, he helped start a new commercial radio station
in the Carbondale Illinois area, WTAO-FM, where he did a daily radio show and in
1974 became the station's Program Director.

Wells left Southern Illinois in 1975 and became an air personality at Chicago radio
station WXRT-FM.  In 1976, he added the title of Music Director.  In 1977, Wells
moved to NBC-owned WKQX-FM, where he was the station's Assistant Program Director
and hosted the midday show on-air. 

When the station changed format in 1977, Wells returned to WXRT as a part-time air
personality and a fulltime salesperson.  Eventually, Wells gave up his on-air
duties to fully concentrate on sales and in 1982, he became the Local Sales Manager
of WXRT.

Over the next several years, Wells moved up to become WXRT's General Sales Manager
and then the station's General Manager.  In 1992, the new all-sports station,
WSCR-AM, signed-on and Wells added the General Manager role of the Score (as well
as gave the station its name) along with WXRT.  When CBS purchased WXRT and The
Score, Wells was promoted to Vice President and General Manager of talk radio
station WCKG-FM and country station WUSN-FM, while continuing his duties at WXRT.

In 2004, Wells was hired by locally-owned Newsweb Radio Company where he currently
is the Vice President and Group Station Manager for Newsweb's group of nine Chicago
area radio stations.  These include the four-station combination of WCPT-AM (820),
WCPT-FM (92.7-FM) WCPQ-FM (99.9 and WCPY-FM (92.5).  The stations are known
collectively as Chicago's Progressive Talk Radio.  The company also owns five other
radio stations in the Chicagoland area with a variety of ethnic and music formats.

Wells lives in Chicago and is married to former WSCR morning co-host, Anne Maxfield.
He has four children who range in age from twenty-seven to twelve years-old.  He is
a current member of the Radio Broadcasters of Chicago and a Board member of Friends
of the Parks as well as a former Cable Television Commissioner for the Village of
Skokie Illinois.


ANTONIO ZAVALA graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor's Degree in
Liberal Arts.  He studied journalism at Columbia College and Roosevelt University
in Chicago and graduated from the Institute for Minority Journalists at the
University of California at Berkeley, California. I have worked in Chicago and El
Paso, Texas.  Currently he is a correspondent for EFE News Service (Spain). He
covers the Latino community in Chicago and the rest of the state of Illinois.