Sandy Grande (Quechua) is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Theory at the University of Connecticut with affiliations in American Studies, Philosophy, and the Race, Ethnicity and Politics program. Her research and teaching interfaces Native American and Indigenous Studies with critical theory toward the development of more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. She was recently awarded the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship (2019-2020) for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2021. She has also published numerous book chapters and articles including: Accumulation of the Primitive: The Limits of Liberalism and the Politics of Occupy Wall Street, The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies; Refusing the University in Toward What Justice?; "American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power," Harvard Educational Review; and, "Red-ding the Word and the World" In, Paulo Freire's Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. She is also a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock, a group of scholars and activists that forwards the aims of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she has provided eldercare for her parents for over ten years and remains the primary caregiver for her 92-yr. old father.

Dylan Rodríguez is Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. He was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars in 2020 and is President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021). He recently served as the faculty-elected Chair of the UCR Division of the Academic Senate (2016-2020) and as Chair of Ethnic Studies (2009-2016). After completing his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley in 2001, Dylan spent his first sixteen years at UCR in Ethnic Studies before joining Media and Cultural Studies in 2017. Dylan's thinking, writing, teaching, and scholarly activist labors address the complexity and normalized proliferation of historical regimes and logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial violence in everyday state, cultural, and social formations. He conceptualizes abolitionist and other forms of movement as part of the historical, collective genius of rebellion, survival, abolition, and radical futurity. What forms of shared creativity emerge from conditions of duress, and how do these insurgencies envision—and enact—transformations of power and community?

Nerdeen Kiswani is a Palestinian organizer from New York City. She is the founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime - United for Palestine, a community organization revitalizing the revolutionary spirit of the Palestinians in exile in pursuit of liberation. "Within Our Lifetime is not only a name, but a promise, a motivational cry, a rally, and a call to action. It is the steadfast belief that no matter what obstacles we will face, victory of the oppressed is inevitable." Through WOL, Nerdeen has spoken for the Palestinian cause at events nationwide and worldwide, building solidarity with oppressed nationalities fighting for liberation.

Nerdeen is a 3L at the CUNY school of Law, where she is the president of Students for Justice in Palestine. Currently she interns with the National Lawyers Guild International committee working on a campaign to revoke U.S. settler zionist charities of their tax exemption status. Nerdeen has organized successful campaigns on and off campus from organizing rallies with tens of thousands of attendees to most recently leading efforts to pass a resolution by the student government of CUNY Law to cut all ties and divest from all israeli institutions and organizations and all corporations that service the occupation. The resolution also defends the right for Palestinians to resist and calls to protect Palestinian speech CUNY-wide. In 2021 Nerdeen led a campaign that successfully defeated a proposal to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism which it equates with antizionism.

Leo is a founding member of Mexicanos unidos, a Mexican-led, anti-imperialist organization. Its objective is to organize the Mexican diaspora and build power, not only to resist, but to triumph over exploitation, dispossession, discrimination, and all other forms of oppression we face — always in solidarity with all oppressed masses. Our main organizing vehicle is Plaza Tonatiuh, which was created to assist us in base-building out of Sunset Park. Every Sunday, starting at 11AM, plaza participants get a chance to raise funds for their sustenance, support other working-class households, and build revolutionary consciousness.

MTL+ is the collective that facilitates Decolonize This Place (DTP) an action-oriented, decolonial formation, and call to action organized around six strands of struggle: Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers, de-gentrification, and dismantling patriarchy. Organizing, research, aesthetics, and action are rooted in interconnected struggles that are anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-patriarchal, and anti-capitalist. The university, museum, and city are sites of struggles and organizing. They are sites of refusal, sabotage, infrastructure, sanctuary, play, exit. Let them be sites of training in the practice of freedom. When we breathe we breathe together.