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Peoples' Summit List of Speakers

Walden Bello

An Akbayan Representative in the 14th Congress of Republic of the Philippines, Bello is also a senior analyst of the NGO Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.

Tim Stevens

Active in struggles against racism and for civil rights since the 1960s, Stevens served for a number of years as President of the Pittsburgh NAACP. He is currently the Chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP).

Robert A. Enholm

Robert A. Enholm is the Executive Vice President of Citizens for Global Solutions, a national membership organization founded in 1947 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., whose vision is to create a world in which nations work together to respond effectively to critical global issues. This broad vision embraces human rights, peace and security, arms control, climate change, and international development, all of which are best addressed through global cooperation and effective global institutions. Citizens for Global Solutions educates and advocates for positive U.S. leadership in global institutions addressing all of these issues.

Privilage Haangandu

Haangadu is Debt Program Officer with Jubilee Zambia and the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Lusaka, Zambia. The Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection is a research, education and advocacy team that promotes study and action on issues linking Christian Faith and social justice in Zambia and Malawi.

Molly Rush

A co-founder of the Thomas Merton Center, Rush served as one of its central staff organizers from 1974 to 2005. In 1980 she was – along with Daniel and Philip Berrigan and other religious pacifists – one of the Plowshares Eight, symbolically beating the nose cone of a nuclear missile with hammers in protest against the threat of nuclear war.

Maria Somma

Health Care Organizing Coordinator for the United Steelworkers, Somma has had a long history with organizing starting with her experience as a teenager where she spent a summer at a women’s peace encampment on the outskirts of London next to a US airbase stocked with nuclear weapons. After attending college, Somma transitioned to working with student activists at the University of Illinois.

Leo Gerard

In his first full term as United Steelworkers International President, Leo W. Gerard has launched a wide range of new initiatives that have brought more than 350,000 workers into the union's ranks — a sixty-percent increase.

Leia Petty

A student activist in Brooklyn, NY and recent graduate of Brooklyn College, Petty began student organizing in Portland, OR during the global justice movement and helped mobilize students to shut down the WTO meetings in Seattle, Washington in 1999. She spent the following years organizing in different groups and campaigns for workplace justice, gay marriage, against the death penalty.

John Tarka

President of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, Tarka also serves as Executive Vice-President of the American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO and chairman of the AFT's K-12 Program & Policy Council. He received a bachelor's degree in English, St. Vincent College; master's degree in teaching, University of Pittsburgh.

John Canning

Lifelong resident of Pittsburgh’s North Side (not to mention husband, father, and grandfather), Canning has been a neighborhood activist for many years. In addition to being involved in North Side United, he is a member of the North Side Leadership Council. He is also a Justice and Witness team member of the Western Pennsylvania Association of the United Church of Christ.