The Bioneer Plenary Presenters

 The Bioneers Plenary Speakers will present live in San Rafael, CA October 19,20 & 21. Their 30 minute presentations will be shown via DVD at the Northland Bioneers Conference, November 2-4. Many are followed by Facilitated Participant Reflection in the theatre.

PLAYING SATURDAY AT THE NORTHLAND BIONEERS CONFERENCE:

JAY HARMAN (SATURDAY 9:30A)
Designing the Next Golden Age: A Progress Report
Award-winning inventor, entrepreneur and CEO of PAX Scientific, Jay Harman, offers us examples of highly efficient technologies inspired by natural systems that can help us create prosperity without degrading the biosphere.

bio:
Jay Harman (www.paxscientific.com) is a naturalist, entrepreneur, award-winning inventor, and author of numerous patents in lightweight, high efficiency marine craft design and in friction-reduction technologies. CEO of PAX Scientific, a Marin county engineering R&D firm that uses streamlining geometries and biomimetic approaches to design energy efficient, quiet, and ecologically friendly technology, Harman is also on the boards of PAX Water Technologies (water and wastewater treatment solutions) and PAX Mixer (mixer technology for a variety of industries, including fermentation, food manufacture, and energy production).

JUDY BACA (SATURDAY 12:00P)
“The Interactive Digital Mural: A Tool for Social Reconciliation from the Local to the Global”
The world-renowned Los Angeles muralist and community arts pioneer discusses the power of public art to help transform societies.

bio:
Judith F. Baca, a world-renowned painter and muralist, community arts pioneer, scholar and educator, has been teaching art in the UC system (including at UCLA) for 20 years. She was the founder of the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into the now legendary 30-year community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in 1976. She continues to serves as SPARC's artistic director and focuses her artistic energy in the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital/Mural Lab.

JUDY WICKS (SATURDAY 12:35P)
"Local Living Economies: A Just and Sustainable Alternative to Corporate Globalization"
Entrepreneur and activist Judy Wicks tells her story of moving beyond responsible business practices within her company to working cooperatively with other entrepreneurs and citizens to build whole economies based on love of nature and community - a movement that has taken on greater urgency with the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil.

bio:
Judy Wicks (www.whitedogcafe.com), owner/founder of Philadelphia's 24-year-old White Dog Cafe, is a national leader in the local, living economies movement. Co-founder/co-chair of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), founder of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, and president of White Dog Community Enterprises (a nonprofit dedicated to building a local living economy in the Philadelphia region), Judy has won numerous awards, including the James Beard Foundation's Humanitarian of the Year and the Living Economy Award from Business Ethics Magazine.

JOHN ABRAMS (SATURDAY 4:00P)
"Thinking Like Cathedral Builders"
In these pivotal times business needs bold new stories. Equal doses of freedom, hope, outrageous behavior and long term thinking, says author, design/builder and community activist John Abrams, can open the way to a durable and successful future

bio:
John Abrams is the cofounder and CEO of South Mountain Company, a 32-year-old employee owned design/build and renewable energy company on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (winner of Business Ethics magazine's 2005 National Award for Workplace Democracy). John is the author of The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place and roams far and near to speak and teach about Good Business. Close to home, he concentrates on re-localizing the economy, solving the affordable housing crisis, and inventing a positive future.

VAN JONES  (SATURDAY 4:35P)                                                                           "Toward A Green Growth Alliance: Birthing A New Politics" It is the chief moral obligation of our time to build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. To succeed we must carry our spiritual, cultural and economic movements into the electoral arena to transform politics and forge a green "New Deal" coalition," so that those kids who are now prison fodder will instead help create a zero-pollution economy, harvest the Sun and heal the land.

bio:                                                                                                               Van Jones (www.ellabakercenter.org), an activist working to combine solutions to social inequality and environmental destruction, founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which promotes alternatives to violence and incarceration, in 1996. He has won many honors including a Reebok Human Rights Award and an Ashoka Fellowship, and has served on the boards of many groups, including: the National Apollo Alliance, Social Ventures Network, Rainforest Action Network and Bioneers. The City of Oakland has adopted the Ella Baker Center's "Green Jobs Corps" proposal, and Van is pushing to create the first-ever Green Enterprise Zone in Oakland.

PAUL ANASTAS (SATURDAY 5:30P)
"Green Chemistry: From Here to Sustainability"
The "father of green chemistry" explains that if we are to move toward a sustainable civilization, major changes have to take place in the nature of our products, processes and systems. Green Chemistry looks at the materials that are the basis of our society-from clothes to housing to communications to agriculture to energy-to ensure they will become as benign as possible to the planet and all its inhabitants.

bio:
Paul T. Anastas, Ph.D., widely considered the founder of "green chemistry" during his work for the U.S. EPA and as director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program, is a professor at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and also serves as the director of Yale's Center for Green Chemistry. Formerly director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. and assistant director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Anastas has published widely, including the books Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, and the seminal Green Chemistry (as co-author). He has won countless prestigious awards, serves on numerous boards, and is a Special Professor in several universities around the world.

MAJORA CARTER (SATURDAY 8:00P)
"Green the Ghetto"
One of the leading figures in the Environmental Justice Movement, founder of the groundbreaking organization, Sustainable South Bronx, offers us her vision of what we must do to green our inner cities so that all of us can reclaim our birthright: to live in healthy communities with clean air and water and access to open spaces.

bio:
Majora Carter (www.ssbx.org), born, raised, and residing and working in the Hunts Point section of New York's Bronx, has long fought to improve the quality of life in her environmentally challenged community. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001, and has had remarkable success, creating riverfront parks, fighting to demolish underused expressways, implementing environmental stewardship training programs, and pushing for a major project, the South Bronx Greenway (now under construction), securing over $20M in funding. Majora's vision, drive and tenacity earned her national recognition as a major figure in the Environmental Justice movement and a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship.

EVON PETER (SATURDAY 8:35P)
"An Indigenous Perspective on How to Survive the Next Hundred Years"
The chairman of Native Movement and former chief of the Neetsaii Gwich'in from Arctic Village in northeastern Alaska dives into traditional knowledge, spiritual understanding and common sense as tools for helping to heal and transform humanity.

bio:
Evon Peter, the chairman of Native Movement and former chief of the Neetsaii Gwich'in from Arctic Village in northeastern Alaska, has served as the co-chair of the Gwich'in Council International and on the executive board of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. Evon is an advocate of Indigenous Peoples' rights, youth activism and a balanced world, and is active as a speaker, strategist, writer, and organizer. His experience includes work with United Nations and Arctic Council forums representing Indigenous and environmental interests. He is also featured in the 2005 award-winning feature film "Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action."

EVE ENSLER (SATURDAY 9:05P)
"V to the 10th"
The award-winning playwright and world-renowned women's rights activist Eve Ensler discusses the extraordinary global trajectory of the "V-day" movement over the last decade and her visions for the next ten years: helping women all over the world obtain peace, power and pleasure.

bio:
Eve Ensler (www.vday.org), an award-winning playwright, performer and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues (translated into 45 languages and performed in over 112 countries). Eve's other plays include Necessary Targets, Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures, The Good Body, and most recently The Treatment. Eve is the founder/artistic director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised over 40 million dollars in 8 years, and is also the author of: Insecure At Last: Losing It in A Security Obsessed World.

EDWARD TICK (SATURDAY 9:40P)
“Return of the Ghost Dancers: Modern War's Devastation...and Healing”
Ed Tick, who has been working with survivors of war, violence and trauma for over 30 years, will present a survey of the true extent and costs of human and environmental devastation due to modern technological warfare, the resulting spiritual and ecological crises, and the possibility of healing individuals, nations and the planet through spiritual, cultural and community transformations.

PLAYING SUNDAY AT THE NORTHLAND BIONEERS CONFERENCE

WALLACE J. NICHOLS (SUNDAY 12:05P)
"A Brave New Ocean or an Ocean Revolution?"
Space-based research and new deep sea technologies have resulted in an explosion of information about the ocean. To change our destructive course we must harness this knowledge, make it accessible to everyone and creatively communicate what the state of the oceans means to the future of life on our planet.

bio:
Wallace J. Nichols, Ph.D. (www.wallacejnichols.org) is a scientist, ocean activist, author and a dad. He's senior scientist at the Ocean Conservancy and a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences. He works with many non-profit organizations, youth, fishermen and researchers around the world to build an Ocean Revolution. He's especially fond of sea turtles.

CAROL BEBELLE (SUNDAY 12:40P)                                                                                                             "Culture And Re-building...Re-membering New Orleans/Re-weaving its Social and Cultural Fabric"                                                                                      Renowned community activist, poet and cofounder of the Ashe’ Cultural Arts Center, dedicated to the saving and re-birth of New Orleans’ rich legacy, Carol Bebelle discusses the cultural, social and creative mandates for the re-building of New Orleans that will respect the city’s bonds of connection and community.

bio:                                                                                                                               Carol Bebelle (www.ashecac.org), is New Orleans based writer, producer and arts and social activist. She is a co-founder and co-director (with artist Douglas Redd) of the Ashé Cultural Arts Center (also dubbed “Efforts of Grace” by Jerome Smith, a local New Orleans Civil Rights Movement legend). Located in the Central City area of town, the Ashé center has become an incredibly important focal point and hub for a wide and very diverse range of community activities, organizations and initiatives from "undoing racism" workshops to teacher trainings, art exhibits to theater productions. It has even witnessed both police department award programs and remembrances of Black Panther Party standoffs with that very same police force! From community-planning meetings to family gatherings, celebrations of births and marriages to funerals, to the annual community remembrance of ancestors lost in the Middle Passage (the "New Orleans Maafa commemoration”), it all happens there.

CHARLOTTE BRODY (SUNDAY 5:15P)
How Chemicals Are Changing What It Means To Be A Woman (or a man)
...and what women and men can do to change chemicals. Commonweal's Charlotte Brody, an organizer for civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, peace and environmental health since 1964, explores how chemicals are creating disease and disorders and how solutions are being created to regain health and democracy.

bio:
Charlotte Brody (www.commonweal.org) is the executive director of Commonweal, a Bolinas, California based organization that works on health and environmental issues. She was a founder and executive director of the Health Care Without Harm Campaign, the organizing director for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, the executive director of a Planned Parenthood affiliate in North Carolina and coordinator of the Carolina Brown Lung Association, an occupational safety and health organization focused on cotton textile workers. A registered nurse and mother of two, she has been an activist and an organizer since 1964.

WINONA LaDUKE (SUNDAY 5:50P)
"Seeds the Creator Gave Us"
The indigenous struggles to protect their food sovereignty, restore their food systems, and protect their cultures and foods from genetic modification.

bio:
Winona LaDuke, from the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, is a two time Green Party U.S. vice-presidential candidate, the mother of five, and program director of Honor the Earth, a Native American foundation working on environmental and energy issues. Founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winona has worked for over 20 years on indigenous land issues and is the recipient of a wide array of prestigious awards, including, most recently, the International Slow Food Award. She has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues and is the author of five books, including: Last Standing Woman, All Our Relations, and most recently, Recovering the Sacred.

KA HSAW WA & KATIE REDFORD (SUNDAY 6:20P)
Earth Rights: Linking Human Rights and Environmental Struggles in the Age of Globalization
Katie Redford and Ka Hsaw Wa, co-founders and directors of EarthRights International, will discuss their work from the jungles of Burma and the Amazon to U.S. courtrooms to hold corporations accountable for human rights and environmental abuses committed in the name of development. They will focus on EarthRights’ landmark lawsuit Doe v. Unocal, and their work to raise the voices of indigenous people in international forums through their model training program, the EarthRights Schools.

bio:  Ka Hsaw Wa (www.earthrights.org), the co-founder and executive director of EarthRights International (ERI), is a member of the Karen ethnic nationality of Burma. He was one of the student leaders in the 1988 nationwide student uprising for democracy and freedom, and has been a human rights activist since he fled Burma in 1988. As well as managing and directing the overall operations of EarthRights International, Ka Hsaw Wa coordinates a grassroots field staff that has successfully documented human rights and environmental abuses within Burma. The evidence collected has served as a cornerstone in the groundbreaking lawsuit against Unocal and in the decision of the International Labor Organization to pressure Burma’s brutal regime. Ka Hsaw Wa has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, Reebok Human Rights Award, Whitley Fund for Nature/Sting and Trudie Styler Award for Human Rights and the Environment, and the Conde Nast Environmental Award for his work in defense of human rights and the environment. Ka Hsaw Wa splits his time between the U.S. and Southeast Asia.