Biographies of workshop presenters
Chris Blankenhorn
Chris Blankenhorn is a former Green Party US Co-Chair, Current Illinois Green Party Secretary, and Vice Chair of the Young Ecosocialists Education Committee.
Joe Bongiovanni
Joe is from the Green Party of Virginia and is a second-generation monetary reformer, studying money systems with his father for over 40 years. Joe serves on the Board of the Coventry Clean Energy Corporation. and is the co-founder and Director of the Kettle Pond Institute for Debt-free Money in Vermont. Joe is also on the Board of Directors of the Alliance For Just Money, Inc., and Chair its Legal Action Committee His deep background in money system understandings makes him an outspoken leader of this modern movement for Public Money.
David Cobb
David co-founded the Green Party of Texas, managed the Nader 2000 campaign there and in 2002 ran for Attorney General of Texas. In 2004, he was the Green Party nominee for President, forcing a recount in Ohio that helped launch the Election Integrity movement. In 2010, co-founded Move To Amend, a campaign for a constitutional amendment to abolish “corporate personhood”. Iin 2016, served as the campaign manager for the Stein/Baraka presidential campaign. David works at Cooperation Humboldt and serves on the Board of Directors of the US Solidarity Economy Network and the Collaborative Design Council of Transition US.
Trahern Crews
Trahern Crews is an activist with Black Lives Matter of Minnesota who has been a champion racial justice issues since 2013. Mr. Crews is the Chair of the Green Party of the United States Reparations Working Group, The Green Party of Minnesota and one of the Co Chairs of the Green Party of the United States. He is currently working with some members of the Saint Paul City Council on the Saint Paul Recovery act which is designed to secure reparations for the American Descendants of Slavery who reside in Saint Paul Minnesota.
Philena Farley
Philena Farley is the Treasurer of the Ohio Green Party & National Black Caucus . She has served as campaign treasurer for 2018 gubernatorial candidate Constance Gadell-Newton, and has volunteered and served in other capacities within the local county committees and National Black Caucus. She is also currently a delegate to the Green Party’s National Committee and a member of the National Media & Outreach Committees. She has also the Webmaster for Ohio Greens. She currently uses CiviCRM.
Mike Feinstein
Mike Feinstein is a co-founder of the Green Party of California, a former co-chair of the Green Party US (GPUS) and a former Green Mayor and City Councilmember in Santa Monica, California.
Since 1994 Feinstein has tracked and maintained the list of Greens running for public office across the United States. Today he does that work as Co-administrator of the GPUS Elections Data Base and as an advisor to the GPUS Coordinated Campaign Committee.
Margaret Flowers
Margaret Flowers is co-director of Popular Resistance and co-host of Clearing the FOG Radio. Flowers traveled on peace delegations to Iran and Venezuela last year and is a member of the Embassy Protection Collective that prevented the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC from being taken over as a part of a US-backed coup attempt. She is active with the Sanctions Kill campaign and the Peace Congress. Flowers is an outgoing national Green Party co-chair, a national delegate for Maryland and on the Maryland Green Party Coordinating Committee.
Holly Hart
Holly participates in local elections and policy, and ballot access. Her work has involved petitioning, event planning and media. Holly coordinated ballot petitioning in her state for Greens in presidential races (2000 to present), and assisted with ballot paperwork nationwide for several campaigns. Holly was included as the sole Green Party member as a panelist on a program featuring women in electoral politics, presented by the University of Iowa Women's Resource and Action Center.; and has served on IA Secretary of State's Voting/HAVA Task Force.
Haig Hovaness
Haig Hovaness, is a member of the Green Party of New York.
He also serves Secretary of the Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX).
Hillary Kane
Hillary Kane is the Treasurer of the Green Party of the United States and a member of the Coordinated Campaign Committee. She has served as campaign treasurer for three different candidates, and has volunteered and served in other capacities with several other prior Green Party campaigns. She is also currently a delegate to the Green Party’s National Committee and a member of the GPUS Finance and Fundraising Committees. She has also served as Chair of the Green Parties of both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
Margaret Kimberley
Margaret Kimberley is Editor and Senior Columnist at Black Agenda Report and a New York state Green Party member. Ms. Kimberley serves on the Administrative Committee of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and the Coordinating Committee of Black Alliance for Peace. She is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, which was published in February 2020. She wrote Cooperation Humboldt and the Solidarity Economy in Common Dreams in April 2020.
Michael O’Neil
Michael works in communications and strategy for the Green Party of the United States and the Green Party of New York. He has contributed to the National Coalition Against Censorship and the radical performance community Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.
Michael has served as staff on eco-socialist electoral campaigns in New York and in 2016 was hired as the Assistant to the Campaign Manager of the Jill Stein/Ajamu Baraka campaign, co-managing the campaign’s Brooklyn, NY office and producing events and livestreams. He resides in Syracuse, NY.
Sue Peters
Sue Peters is a Green Party of New York member of the Banking and Monetary Reform committee. She has had a 37-year career in technology. Her last 17 years was spent working for a Wall Street bank. She's been an active member of several monetary reform groups. She has given many public talks on the subject and spent over two years teaching a class on the book, THE LOST SCIENCE OF MONEY, by Stephen Zarlenga. Last spring Sue spent five months researching and writing a paper on the topic, Debt Drives War and War Drives Debt, soon to be up on the website of the American Monetary Institute.
AJ Reed
AJ (they/them) has worked on Green Party political campaigns since 2008, where they served roles; such as Media Coordinator, Advisor, and Campaign Manager. AJ also served as City Commissioner for the City of Sterling in Illinois as well as the Whiteside County Green Party Chair from 2008-2010.
Howard Switzer
Howard Switzer is a Tennessee architect and ecological design consultant. He ran for Governor of Tennessee twice and for Congress once and co-founded the “Moving the Money to Main Street Campaign” adopted by the Green Party US in 2007. He is a founding member of the Green Party of Tennessee, the Green Party of the United States, and the Banking and Monetary Reform Committee of GPUS.
Rich Whitney
Rich Whitney is one of the founding members of the Illinois Green Party and currently serves as its co-chair. He is also an active participant in the Green Party Peace Action Committee, the Peace Coalition of Southern Illinois, the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism, the United National Antiwar Coalition, and the Illinois Coalition Against Fracking. He is also a Green public official, serving as Vice-Chair for the Jackson County Mass Transit District.
Kevin Zeese
Kevin Zeese is a public interest lawyer who has worked for economic, racial and environmental justice. He co-directs PopularResistance.org which works to build the independent movement for transformational change. Zeese is an election integrity advocate who a co-founded TrueVote Maryland which led a successful campaign to end the use of paperless voting machines in the state. He has challenged the activities of the national Chamber of Commerce through StopTheChamber.org, as well as the activities of Karl Rove’s Americans Crossroads as part and seeking to overturn the Citizen’s United decision, including filing complaints against Justice Clarence Thomas, as part of ProtectOurElections.org.
