SOLIDARITY BEYOND BORDERS:

United States

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi is an activist and scholar at San Francisco State University where she focuses on Palestine, Arab and Muslim communities and their diasporas, race and resistance studies, transnational feminisms, and gender and sexuality studies. She is the founding Director of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program and co-founding Editorial Board member of Islamophobia Studies Journal.

United States

David Adler is a political economist and General Coordinator of the Progressive International. Previously, David served as foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign for US president, policy director of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), and the coordinator of its Green New Deal for Europe campaign. His research and writing have been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs, among others.

United States

Angélica Salas is an immigrant from Durango, Mexico who became CHIRLA’s Executive Director in 1999. In her role she has grown CHIRLA, spearheaded ambitious campaigns to expand immigrant rights, and helped found organizations and coalitions to advocate for immigrant workers, youth, and families. Her achievements include: winning in-state, financial aid and grant programs for California’s undocumented students, establishing day-laborer centers that become national models, winning drivers’ licenses for undocumented drivers, decoupling local police departments from immigration enforcement, expanding access to immigrant legal services and winning Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Colombia

Leonardo Luna is a member of the Congress of the People as a delegate of the Social and Popular Mass Political Movement of the Central East of Colombia. A social communicator and journalist from the Central University, Master in Human Rights from the Technological and Pedagogical University of Colombia, popular educator and member of the musical group Golpe Sudaka, activist and human rights defender in the Bogotá savannah with grassroots organizational processes, and part of the civic strike committee, project coordinator of the Rosa Luxemburg International Foundation in Colombia and with extensive experience working on the narco-paramilitarism in Colombia.

Cuba (Video)
Izett Samá Hernández is a pastor, theologian, researcher, writer, and nurse. She graduated with a degree in Nursing from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Havana (1996). Hernández also has a degree in Theology from the Evangelical Seminary of Theology of Matanzas (2004). She is currently the General Coordinator of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center, in Havana, Cuba. Hernández is also a Pastor in the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in the town of Los Palos, Nueva Paz municipality, Mayabeque province.

Rev. Karlene Griffiths Sekou is an international human dignity and rights advocate, cultural strategist, organizer, and public speaker. She anchors her work in healing justice, Afro-indigenous knowledges, embodiment, spirituality, and solidarity across movement diasporas. Her work in cultural regeneration pivots from capitalist, hierarchical individualism towards co-creation and co-sovereignty that honors multiplicity, cooperation, and interdependence. Her passion and curiosity as a scholar in religious studies centers ritual and performance aestheses within social movements, and the formation of political identity. She is Founder and Executive Director of the Dignity Project International, and Director of Healing Justice & Global Village for Black Lives Matter Grassroots.

Moderator

Claudia De La Cruz is a popular educator, community organizer and theologian, Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of The People’s Forum in New York City. For over 20 years, she has been committed to movement building, and has actively participated in the creation of collective grassroots spaces and political education processes in working class communities, particularly in Washington Heights and The South Bronx. Claudia is part of a long tradition of radical organizing in immigrant communities and solidarity work connected to Latin American and Caribbean popular movements.