Extinction Rebellion US

To spark and sustain a spirit of creative rebellion, which will enable much needed changes in our political, economic and social landscape, we endeavor to mobilize and train organizers to skillfully open up space, so that communities can develop the tools they need to address the deeply rooted problems of the United States. We work to transform our society into one that is compassionate, inclusive, sustainable, equitable and connected.

Timothy Morton

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He has collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Jeff Bridges, Sabrina Scott, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. He co-wrote and appears in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges. He is the author of Being Ecological (Penguin, 2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), eight other books and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. His work has been translated into 10 languages. In 2014, Morton gave the Wellek Lectures in Theory.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. She is active in efforts to broaden access to environmental science education for Native students, and to create new models for integration of indigenous philosophy and scientific tools on behalf of land and culture. She is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge.

Dr. Kimmerer has taught courses in botany, ecology, ethnobotany, indigenous environmental issues as well as a seminar in application of traditional ecological knowledge to conservation. She is the co-founder and past president of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Kimmerer serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Nature and Humans. Of European and Anishinaabe ancestry, Robin is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. Dr. Kimmerer is the author of numerous scientific papers on the ecology of mosses and restoration ecology and on the contributions of traditional ecological knowledge to our understanding of the natural world. She is also active in literary biology. Her essays appear in Whole Terrain, Adirondack Life, Orion and several anthologies. She is the author of “Gathering Moss” which incorporates both traditional indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives and was awarded the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing in 2005. Her latest book “Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants” was released in 2013 and was awarded the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. She has served as writer in residence at the Andrews Experimental Forest, Blue Mountain Center, the Sitka Center and the Mesa Refuge.

She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.

la paperson (Wayne Yang)

The work of Wayne Yang (who sometimes writes as la paperson, an avatar that irregularly calls) transgresses the line between scholarship and community, as evidenced by his involvement in urban education and community organizing. He was the co-founder of the Avenues Project, a non-profit youth development organization, and also the co-founder of East Oakland Community High School. He also worked in school system reform as part of Oakland Unified School District’s Office of School Reform. An accomplished educator, Dr. Yang has taught high school in Oakland, California for over 15 years and is a recipient of the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award.

Dr. Yang writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing, particularly from underneath ghetto colonialism, often with his frequent collaborator, Eve Tuck. Currently, they are convening The Land Relationships Super Collective, editing the book series, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education, and editing the journal, Critical Ethnic Studies. He is interested in the complex role of cities in global affairs: cities as sites of settler colonialism, as stages for empire, as places of resettlement and gentrification, and as always-already on Indigenous lands.

Nicholas Gervasi

Nicholas Gervasi, AIA, is a licensed architect, writer, preservationist, and educator.

He is a Project Architect at Terreform ONE and Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York City College of Technology. He previously worked for Gensler & AYON Studio in New York, NY, Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative in Cleveland, OH, and Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio in New Orleans, LA. In 2014, through a grant from the Columbia University Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, he investigated microalgae as a source for wastewater treatment and biofuel production as a Visiting Climate Researcher at the Climate Impacts Group under Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His writings have been published in the Charrette, Clog, de-arq: Revista de Architectura, Int|AR, Infection, Journal des Rêves, and TRANS-Media.

He earned an M.S. in Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation; M.Arch and B.Arch at Tulane University. He is licensed in the State of Ohio, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, and LFA.

Peder Anker

Professor Peder Anker’s teaching and research interests lie in the history of science, ecology, environmentalism and design, as well as environmental philosophy. He has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and been a visiting scholar at both Columbia University and University of Oslo. With Louise Harpman and Mitchell Joachim, Professor Anker is the co-author of Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned (Prestel, 2014), a showcase of design research as it relates to visionary architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, and ecological planning. He is the author of From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design (Louisiana State University Press, 2010), which explores the intersection of architecture and ecological science, and Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order of the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2001), which investigates how the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Anker’s current book project explores the history of ecological debates in his country of birth, Norway. He received his PhD in history of science from Harvard University in 1999. Links to his articles and up-to-date information about his work are available at http://pederanker.com.

Mitchell Joachim

Mitchell Joachim, PhD, Assoc. AIA, [jo-ak-um], Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Formerly, he was an architect at the offices of Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. He has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships with TED, Moshe Safdie, and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT. He was chosen by Wired magazine for “The Smart List” and selected by Rolling Stone for “The 100 People Who Are Changing America”. Mitchell won many honors including; LafargeHolcim Acknowledgement Award, ARCHITECT R+D Award, AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, 1st Place International Architecture Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability, Architizer A+ Award, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time magazine’s Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities Car. He’s featured as “The NOW 99” in Dwell magazine and “50 Under 50 Innovators of the 21st Century” by Images Publishers. He co-authored four books, “Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities,” “XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design,” “Super Cells: Building with Biology,” and “Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned”. His design work has been exhibited at MoMA and the Venice Biennale. He earned: PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, MArch Columbia University.

Winona LaDuke

Winona LaDuke is an eco-economist, speaks and writes nationally and internationally on the issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice with Indigenous communities. She is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth. Through word and deeds, she works to protect Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, and No is Not Enough. Her new book, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal was published in September 2019. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, a Puffin Writing Fellow at Type Media Center and is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Carol Bebelle

Carol Bebelle (a.k.a. Akua Wambui) is a native New Orleanian and a proud product of the New Orleans public school system. She received her undergraduate degree from Loyola University in sociology, and her master’s degree from Tulane University in education administration. She spent nearly 20 years in the public sector as an administrator and planner of human service programs. In 1998, she cofounded, with Douglas Redd, the Ashe Cultural Arts Center in Central City New Orleans. Ashe Cultural Arts Center, spotlighting African and African American culture and art, is dedicated to using culture as a strategy for human development, equity, and justice. During her 21-year term of leadership, ending in 2019, she successfully led the organization to a place of national prominence.