Rose M. Brewer, PhD is The Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor and past chairperson of the Department of African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Departments of Sociology and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. An activist scholar, Professor Brewer publishes extensively on Black radical feminism, political economy, social movements, race, class, gender and social change. She was a founding board member of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide; a past board member of United for a Fair Economy, and a founding member of the Black Radical Congress. She is the Principal Investigator of the Humanities Without Walls study, “Environment Justice Worldmaking.” And, she is the 2024-2025 President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). As a core organizer of the 2007, 2010 and 2015 US Social Forums, the struggle for social transformation in those Forums centered the environmental justice fights of Frontline Communities. Indeed, her commitment is to change the world for people and the planet. 

Born in Chicago of African and Native heritage, Louis Alemayehu, a multicultural elder, developed his poetic skills and musical sensibilities as a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s. He believes that poetry is a tool for healing; his performances are lyrical twinings of jazz, chant, poetry and song with art-as-ritual, often performed ceremonially. He teaches Environmental Sustainability in Minnesota at the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs, and facilitates the creation of Permacultural farms and early childhood schools in rural West African villages.

Yuichiro Onishi teaches in the Department of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (NYU Press, 2013) and co-editor of Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (Palgrave, 2019). His writings on Afro-Asian internationalism and radicalism appear in various edited volumes, most recently Black Transnationalism and Japan (Leiden University Press, 2024) and Citizen of the World: A History of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Late Career and Legacy (Northwestern University Press, 2019).

Sutirtha Lahiri is a Ph.D. student at the conservation science program. He holds a bachelor's in Science from University of Delhi and an MSc in wildlife science from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India. He subsequently held a research position at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. Hailing from Assam, Sutirtha's research interests are tied to the Northeast of India. He has conducted ornithological research on Hornbill nesting ecology, vocal behavior of Drongos, as well as bioacoustic monitoring of bird communities in grasslands. For his Ph.D., he is keen to understand how and whether fragmented populations of grassland birds are connected. He is also keen to study how floodplain grasslands shape, and are in turn shaped, by humans. He intends to combine his training and experience in ecology with interests in ethnographic research to have a holistic understanding of a complex socio-ecological system, and contribute to both biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

Kowsar Mohamed (she/her/ayada) is a social scientist and graduate researcher at the University of Minnesota, where she is pursuing a PhD in Natural Resources Science and Management. Her research focuses on integrating Afro-Indigenous knowledge, cultural design, and technology to develop equitable approaches to natural resource management. Drawing on her background in environmental justice and economic development, Kowsar seeks to center historically underrepresented voices in natural resource management through community-centered and culturally responsive methods. Currently, Kowsar is contributing to the Water Values Project at the Center for Changing Landscapes, where she engages Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color in the Twin Cities to explore their relationships with water. As part of this work, she administers surveys and provides Somali translations to ensure greater accessibility, helping to amplify the voices of Somali-speaking community members and integrate their perspectives into urban water management.

Jessica Tran is a fourth year PhD student in Natural Resources Science and Management. Her research focuses on the Tar Creek Superfund Site in Oklahoma, and how one environmental justice organization uses collaboration and research in their advocacy efforts. Over her career, Jessica has worked for community organizations spanning Arizona, Alaska, and her home state of Massachusetts.

Phoebe Young (she/her/hers) is a Saginaw Chippewa descendant born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a PhD candidate in the American Studies program and a part of the department& First Critical Indigenous Studies cohort. Her doctoral work, "Feeding Our Future: Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Anishinaabe Youth Education", considers how food sovereignty offers pathways for Indigenous epistemologies in history education for Native youth. Her research is in conversation with and informed by her work at Dream of Wild Health, a Native-led nonprofit organization in the Twin Cities dedicated to Indigenous food sovereignty, where she worked for six years. She now works at the Midwest Environmental Justice Network, supporting grassroots participatory grantmaking and network building for over sixty environmental justice orgs across the region. She is passionate about building healthy futures for our Native youth, and is interested in how we heal through our foods and our stories.

Too Black is a poet, scholar, organizer and filmmaker who blends critical analysis with biting sarcasm. He has headlined various stages and events including the historic Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, Princeton University, and Johannesburg Theater in South Africa. He is the co-author of the book Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits. His words have been published in online publications such as Black Agenda Report, Left Voice, Blavity and Hood Communist.

He is currently the host of the Black Myths Podcast, a podcast debunking the BS said about Black people, was the producer for The Last Dope Intellectual, an unapologetically radical Black web show hosted by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly and Dr. Layla Brown, and is a member of the Defense ommittee to Free the Pendleton 2-- a committee dedicated to the freedom of Indiana political prisoners John “Balagoon” Cole and Christopher “Naeem” Trotter. He is also the co-director of the documentary film The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.