The 5th Annual Youth Conference on Political Activism"Our Future Is Not For Sale: Youth Organize For Global Justice"Keynote Speakers: Nancy Snow, is Assistant Professor in the College of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California and serves as Senior Fellow in the USC Center on Public Diplomacy where she is directing a research and teaching initiative on anti-Americanism and the American image in the world.
Dr. Snow is a frequent contributor to popular and online media about American persuasion and propaganda. Her appearances include CNN, ABC News, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Swiss Public Radio, Japanese Radio and TV, German Radio and TV, Voice of America and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She has written op-eds for the Los Angeles Times and Newsday, among other publications in scholarly journals including the Journal of Communication and Peace Review. She is a contributing writer to Common Dreams and O'Dwyer's PR Daily and founding faculty associate to The Academic Brain Trust, a partnership of Free Press and media policy makers and activists. She has served as a faculty associate to Media Channel, the Institute for Public Accuracy, and the Mainstream Media Project. Snow is the author of Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (Seven Stories Press, 2002), which is also available in Farsi, Korean, and Portuguese translation; and Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control Since 9/11 (Seven Stories Press, 2004), also available in Japanese translation. She is editor with Yahya Kamalipour of War, Media and Propaganda: A Global Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). Professor Snow's fourth book, America, the Beautiful?, is due out from Rowman & Littlefield in August 2006. Snow is also under contract with Routledge to edit The Public Diplomacy Handbook with Philip M. Taylor (University of Leeds, UK) for release in 2007. Recent chapters include "Public Diplomacy as Propaganda" in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays, Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell (Eds.), Sage, 2005; "Terrorism, Public Relations, and Propaganda" in Media, Terrorism, and Theory: A Reader, Anandam P. Kavoori and Todd Fraley (Eds.), Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; "Confessions of a Hollywood Propagandist: Harry Warner, FDR and Celluloid Persuasion," in Warners' War: Politics, Pop Culture and Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood, Martin Kaplan and Johanna Blakley (Eds.); "Brainscrubbing: The Failures of Public Diplomacy After 9/11" in Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, David Miller (Ed.); "Framing Globalization and Media Strategies for Social Change" in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement, Andy Opel and Donnalyn Pompper (Eds.); "The Social Implications of Media Globalization," in Media, Sex, Violence and Drugs in the Global Village, Yahya Kamalipour and Kuldip Rampal, (Eds.); "The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948," Peace Review; and "The Crisis in Mobility," in Invisible Crises, George Gerbner, Herbert Schiller, and Hamid Mowlana (Eds.). She also served as a public diplomacy advisor to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee overseeing changes in U.S. public diplomacy legislation since 9/11. Snow's research, writing, and public speaking center on U.S. foreign policy, American persuasion, influence, and propaganda, entertainment and media culture in American society, communications in the public interest, and the impact of global communications theory and practice on democratic participation and community development. She is a strong advocate for media accountability and alternative/independent media, a result of her experience as a member of the Board of Directors and Vice President of the Cultural Environment Movement (CEM), a national coalition of more than 150 community-based organizations united to advance gender equity and general diversity in media employment, ownership, representation and perspective. Web site: www.nancysnow.com  Greg Watson, is vice president for sustainable development and renewable energy at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. After the extraordinary accomplishments Greg made through the first phase of the Trust's development, he is taking the lead role on one of the most important renewable energy proposals in the nation working on education and outreach for the Cape Wind project. From 1995 to 1999 he served as Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Prior to that he has been with: Second Nature as its Director of Educational Programs; The Nature Conservancy's Eastern Regional Office as its Director; and Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture as Commissioner. Prior to that, Greg was the Executive Director of the New Alchemy Institute. In 1983, he was appointed Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology within the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Affairs, a post he held until 1989. From 1983 through 1986 he also served as Deputy Director of the Massachusetts Centers of Excellence Corporation. He became the first Director of the Massachusetts Office of Science and Technology in 1986. Greg serves on the board of directors of Ocean Arks International and the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture. He attended Tufts University where he majored in Civil Engineering. He also developed a self-directed program in Environmental Design Science at Campus-Free College in Boston. Read an interview with Greg Watson in Orion magazine: http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oa/02-3oa/Watson.html
 Jeff Cohen, writer, lecturer and media critic is the founder of FAIR, the national media watch group based in New York.He has appeared regularly on national television and radio. He has been a commentator/panelist on all three cable news channels, as a daily contributor on MSNBC in 2002-2003, a weekly panelist on the Fox News Channel's "News Watch" from 1997-2002, and a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" in 1996. He has been a talk radio host and a guest on such programs and outlets as "Larry King Live," "Today," "Donahue," "Crossfire," "Hardball," "Reliable Sources," C-SPAN and NPR. He was senior producer at MSNBC's "Donahue." Cohen wrote a monthly column for Brill's Content in 1999-2000. His op-eds have run in dozens of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Newsday, Oregonian and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He co-wrote the weekly, nationally syndicated "Media Beat" column (with Norman Solomon) for Creators Syndicate, 1992-1996; subscribing dailies included Arizona Republic, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Seattle Times. He is frequently quoted on issues of media and politics in national publications. Cohen is the co-author of four books - Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (1997) The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (1995) Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News (1995) Adventures in Medialand: Behind the News, Beyond the Pundits (1993) He has lectured at over 150 campuses from community colleges to Ivy League schools to historically black colleges to most University of California branches. In 1999, he was the Marsh Visiting Lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. In 2003, he was Communications Director of the Kucinich for President campaign. Prior to launching FAIR in 1986, Cohen worked in Los Angeles as a journalist and as a lawyer for the ACLU. His investigative articles and features ran in Rolling Stone, New Times, The Nation, Mother Jones and other publications. He was a board member of several civil rights groups, including the ACLU of Southern California and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference/L.A. Cohen lives in upstate New York. He is the proud father of two smart, beautiful daughters. Web site: www.jeffcohen.org  David Budbill, David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940 to a street car driver and a minister's daughter. He majored in Philosophy in college and has a graduate degree in Theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The Chicago Sun Times has described Budbill’s writing as "Wrenchingly real, fiercely emotional and unexpectedly funny." The Los Angeles Daily News says that David Budbill writes "with rare honesty, affection and grace--and with language so precise and descriptive you will know immediately you're soul-deep in something extraordinary." David Budbill’s newest book of poems, While We've Still Got Feet, was published by Copper Canyon Press in June of 2005. His latest CD, with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, is Songs for a Suffering World: A Prayer for Peace, A Protest Against War, (Boxholder Records, 2003). David's two-CD set, Zen Mountains-Zen Streets: A Duet for Poet and Improvised Bass with William Parker, was released in 1999 and is also available on the Boxholder Records label. Copper Canyon Press published Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse in 1999. Booklist chose it as one of the ten best books of poems for 1999. Garrison Keillor reads frequently from David’s work on NPR's The Writer’s Almanac. David was a participant in the 2004 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. David is also the author of Judevine: The Complete Poems, on which the play Judevine is based. Judevine, The Play, has now been produced more than 50 times in 23 states. San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Judevine won The Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Ensemble Performance in 1991. David’s other plays include Little Acts of Kindness, Two for Christmas and Thingy World! Budbill also wrote the libretto for, A Fleeting Animal: An Opera From Judevine, with music by composer Erik Nielsen, which premiered in 2000. David is the author of a novel, Bones on Black Spruce Mountain, originally published by The Dial Press in 1978, and reissued by Onion River Press in 2004, and a collection of short stories, Snowshoe Trek to Otter River, originally published by The Dial Press in 1976, and reissued by Onion River Press in 2005. He's also the creator and editor of The Judevine Mountain Emailite: an On-Line and On-Going Journal of Politics and Opinion, which is available on his website at: http://www.davidbudbill.com Recent interviews with David appear in The Sun, March 2004, in the Buddhist magazine Inquiring Mind, Fall 2004 and in The River Reporter's Literary Gazette July 2005. Among his prizes and honors are: a National Endowment for the Arts Play Writing Fellowship in 1991, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 1981 and The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award for Fiction in 1978. For the past 35 years David has lived in a remote corner of the mountains of northern Vermont.
Credit for Nancy Snows photo: Skalicky Photo Credit for David Budbill photo: Lois Eby |