MAX AJL is a fellow at the University of Tunis/MECAM, a Senior Fellow in the Department of Conflict & Development Studies at Ghent University, and a researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty & the Environment. He researches climate politics, Tunisian national liberation, agrarian politics in the Arab region, and Arab-North African intellectual history. He is an editor at Agrarian South and Journal of Labor and Society. He has written for Journal of Peasant Studies, Globalizations, Review of African Political Economy, and Monthly Review. He is the author of A People’s Green New Deal (2021). He has been active in anti-war and anti-Zionist work and does popular education around agrarian issues.
JARIBU HILL is a Civil and Human Rights Attorney. She is an author and international spokesperson on Civil and Human Rights topics. In support of the human rights struggles of workers across the globe, she has traveled to Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Through her organization, Attorney Hill has provided legal representation and advocacy for hundreds of workers in Mississippi. Her efforts have led to the adoption of “Zero Tolerance Against Hate” policies being implemented in workplaces across the state. Hill also won an important judgment against the Ku Klux Klan in Pelion, SC, and has assisted MS Delta parents in their fight for school equity. Hill is the recipient of the coveted “Gloria” Award, named for Gloria Steinem. She is a Skadden Fellow and the recipient of the R. Jess Brown, the highest award given to a Mississippi Lawyer by the Magnolia Bar Association. Jaribu was a legal observer and cultural artist during the Women in War Crimes Tribunal, held in Tokyo in December 2000, and the author of the poem, Haunting Mirrors, written to honor Comfort Women and other victims of sexual slavery. Excerpts from this poem were made part of the important judgment rendered during the Tribunal.
CHAUMTOLI HUQ is a leading expert on employment and labor law, migration and human rights with a focus on social movements in the US and South Asia and the founder/Editor of an innovative law and media non-profit focused called Law@theMargins. Huq has devoted her professional career to public service, focusing on issues impacting workers in the US and South Asia. Along with holding leadership roles at Legal Services of NYC and MFY Legal Services, she also served as Director of the first South Asian Workers’ Rights Project at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the first staff attorney to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. From 2014 to 2015, she was a Senior Research Fellow with the American Institute for Bangladesh Studies (AIBS) where she researched the labor conditions of garment workers after the Rana Plaza building collapse. She has produced a documentary on her work in Bangladesh called Sramik Awaaz: Workers Voices, and has also created a digital archive of her work on tea workers in called Chai Justice.
RAJ PATEL is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He is a James Beard Award winning activist and New York Times bestselling writer. He is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and co-director of the documentary feature The Ants & The Grasshopper. He has testified about food and hunger to the US, UK and EU governments, and his book on the food system, Stuffed and Starved, has been translated into a dozen languages.
ROB ROBINSON was a cofounder and member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land Movement and is currently a Special Advisor at Partners for Dignity and Rights (formerly known as NESRI). After losing his job in 2001, he spent two years homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. He is a regular guest lecturer at the City University of New York Graduate Center and several University Law Schools throughout the US and Canada. He was appointed an adjunct professor of Urbanism at New School in September 2021. He is a long time board member of the Laundry Workers Center. On March 24th, he was named the 2023 winner of University of Dayton Oscar Romero Human Rights Award.
