In her professional life, she has taken stalled projects, sluggish organizations, and unworkable systems and turned them into smooth running, goal friendly, cooperative ventures. Laura’s level-headed leadership has been fully developed in the contrasting worlds of high finance and non-profit organizations; in small businesses and large corporations; in the public sector and the private sector. In her years as a professional financial systems manager, Laura mastered the intricate worlds of stocks, bonds, pension funds, and real estate mortgages.

Taking the initiative to go beyond the status-quo politics of vested interests, Laura participated in five international delegations to Canada and South America to study innovations in participatory democracy and new constitutions. As a committed citizen-activist, she worked in a range of volunteer and professional capacities to strengthen a coalition for alternatives to pesticides, prepare the unemployed for living wage work, and convert a navy base to civilian use.

These experiences strengthened Laura’s belief that traditional political leadership has had far too narrow a vision of the future, and that we need to return to people-centered values to re-build California as a beacon state of thriving communities, humane institutions, educated citizens, and sustainable lifestyles and businesses.

In her quest for institutional alternatives to the failing strategies of the nation’s two-party system, she served in numerous county and state-level leadership positions of the Green Party of California. In 2002 and 2006, she ran two high-achieving campaigns for State Controller.

Born and raised in Michigan, Laura was a scholarship student at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she learned “What’s good for General Motors” is not good for the U.S.A. She saw that huge corporations such as GM did not give back sufficiently to the neighborhoods they impacted. Housing, schools, the environment, and jobs were destroyed, not constructed. Laura learned that local businesses are the ones that create jobs and strong communities, and she has made it a priority to support them ever since.

In college she majored in foreign languages and was honored by election to the Phi Beta Kappa society in 1969 when she graduated from Wayne State University. She then mastered her professional skills in the world of finance, in business analysis, computer programming, and managing complex financial systems, and earned a Masters of Education at Antioch University.

California has been her home for more than 30 years. When she married, her daughter Natalia was born in Oakland. When her daughter was 12 the family of three went on a six-month trip around the United States, visiting 30 states in a vintage RV. While home-schooling their daughter, the family visited many historical and natural sites, and deepened their respect for America’s amazing beauty and diversity – both in nature and in people. Laura continues to enjoy living in Oakland – a city of far greater riches and promise than its mainstream media reputation leads the public to believe.

She is currently engaged to Charles Goodwin, a retired counselor in the juvenile probation division. That connection is a source of ongoing inspiration when young people approach them in a restaurant and say, “You counseled me when I was young, and now I’ve turned my life around.” Such experiences are important reminders that even tough situations can be changed for the better, and that everyone can be part of the new solutions we need.

Her values are the ones Californians share: optimism about the possibilities of the future; a safe and inspiring natural environment, affordable access to health care, a fair and world-class education system at all levels, and a belief that California can be a world leader in innovative solutions to complex problems in business, finance, and infrastructure.

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Former Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, until July 2007 he was a tenured Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado/Boulder, where he received numerous awards for his teaching, scholarship and service. Professor Churchill is currently suing the University of Colorado for violating his First Amendment rights by firing him in retaliation for his observations on 9/11.

Please Visit:

http://wardchurchill.net

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Paul, a former student of Noam Chomsky, became a Professor of Linguistics himself and remains a good friend and colleague of Professor Chomsky. Working with the NorCal branch of the International Solidarity Movement, Paul is very much a believer in and practitioner of Gandhi’s principles of non-violence. Paul was one of the 5 USA delegates aboard the Sfendoni, a ship of the Freedom flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.

When Israeli commandos boarded the Sfendoni in 2010, Paul non-violently resisted, refused to sign any papers without his lawyer and as a result the Israelis tased, tied-up, twisted his limbs, slammed his head into concrete repeatedly, and hit him with a flash bomb. Paul suffered multiple bruises, 2 black eyes, but refused to be treated by Israeli doctors as he did not trust them, especially since he suffers from Diabetes and needed special treatment and compatible medication. Paul was kept in prison for two days at Givon Prison, Ramle, Israel.

In Paul’s own words:

“The wrath of other nations might be a reasonable price for us to bear if Israel were pursuing a policy of peace with justice. It is not. Israeli policy is and always has been to apply pain and suffering to get what it wants, whether by torturing and killing humanitarian aid volunteers, by maintaining its cruel blockade against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, or by making millions of Palestinians homeless, confiscating their lands, and destroying lives.

Neither Americans nor Israelis would stand still for such treatment, so why should Turks, Greeks, Palestinians or anyone else? Why should Israeli thugs be allowed to push around and abuse ordinary citizens anywhere?

Once again, Paul returns to Gaza as an American Delegate as part of the 2011 Freedom Flotilla along with other passengers such as US Ambassador Samuel Hart, William Jimbo Simmons – American Indian Movement leader, Joe Meadors – US Veteran and survivor of the USS Liberty, and Sister Patricia Chaffee – a Dominican Sister.

PAT CHAFFEE is a Dominican Sister. She has been active in human rights advocacy for thirty years. She visited the West Bank in 2006 and Gaza in 2009. In 2010 she participated in the aborted Gaza Freedom March, marooned in Cairo. Her motive for joining the flotilla is to tell the people of Gaza that she is opposed to her country’s oppression. She is committed to nonviolence, under any circumstances.

JOE MEADORS is an American former U.S. Navy signalman, who survived Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, June 8, 1967, which killed 34 Americans and wounded 174, including Joe. He is married to Jean Meadors; they live in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is a member of the U.S.S. Liberty Veterans Association. In 2010, he was a passenger on the Sfendoni in the Gaza Freedom flotilla with Ambassador Edward Peck, captured by the Israelis, and released.

JIMBO SIMMONS is a member of the Choctaw nation and of the Leadership Council of the American Indian Movement West (AIM-WEST), which resists colonization, respects traditional knowledge and self-determination, and raises awareness on issues that concern Indians of the Americas, from racism to protection of sacred sites, the rights of the child, treaties, political prisoners, police brutality, immigration and militarization, climate change and the United Nations General Assembly “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He is in solidarity with Palestinians and all indigenous peoples that are subjected to expulsion and ethnic cleansing.

Please visit:

http://www.FreePalestineMovement.org

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