Tostadas and Insurgentes: Gender and Indigenous Perspectives of the Zapatista Struggle

“Tostadas and Insurgentes” will be a conversation with Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Hilary Klein, Amrah Salomon Johanson, and Marina Sitrin on the recent women’s Encuentro in Chiapas, and on the state of the Zapatista movement. This panel will be the first in a new monthly series of panel discussions on critical contemporary topics presented by The Global Commons Foundation.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a longtime activist, university professor, and writer. In addition to numerous scholarly books and articles on histories and issues of indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, she has published a trilogy of historical memoirs: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso, 1997), Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 (City Lights, 2002), and Blood on the Border: a Memoir of the Contra War (South End Press, 2005).

Hilary Klein lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked as an activist and community organizer on a number of issues including immigrants rights, affordable housing, and violence against women. She lived in Chiapas from 1997 - 2003 working with women's cooperatives in Zapatista communities and is currently writing a book about women's participation in the Zapatista movement.

Amrah Salomón Johnson is a formerly homeless high school dropout who became an activist after attending community college in her mid twenties. She has worked on issues such as anti-sweatshop campaigns and workers rights, education access, housing, environmental justice, immigrant rights, human rights, and international solidarity efforts. Her current focus is on Latino / Chicano political organizing in the Bay Area and issues for mixed race activists. She is a current graduate student in San Francisco State University's Ethnic Studies program.

Marina Sitrin is a dreamer, teacher, student, and militant. She is the editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, an oral history of the autonomous social movements in Argentina (Spanish edition Chilavert 2005, English edition AK Press 2006). Marina has traveled extensively in Latin America, spending time with the various new social movements, most recently in Chiapas where she attended the third, women's, encuentro of the Zapatistas. She is currently writing and editing a book entitled: Insurgent Democracies: Latin America's New Powers (City Lights Press 2008)

The Global Commons Foundation creates and supports platforms for discussion, reflection, and action on urgent contemporary issues, particularly privileging perspectives from the Global South. GCF works to nurture and sustain an evolving global commons of critical, innovative, and imaginative responses to the political, ecological, social, and cultural crises of today’s world, emphasizing dialogue across discipines and practices, and across geographies, cultures, and economies. The Global Commons Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, based in San Francisco. For more information: http://www.globalcommonsfoundation.org