Ernesto Aguilar, born and raised in Houston, is a media worker and organizer who has been active in many movements, including founding a variety of groups focusing on everything from reproductive rights to international solidarity movements and police accountability. In the early 1990s, Aguilar cofounded the Black Fist collective, which focused on issues of race in the anarchist movement and was allied with groups like the Federation of Black Community Partizans, the precursor to the black anarchist formation Black Autonomy International. The Black Fist collective convened with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin the Anti-Authoritarian Network of Community Organizers conference in Atlanta in 1994. Aguilar was also involved in the formation of the Anarchist Black Cross Network and in web development for the anarchist newspaper Onward. In 2001, he founded the Anarchist People of Color e-mail list and website, illegalvoices.org, from which emerged nearly a dozen autonomous regional US collectives identified as APOC. APOC supporters held a 2003 conference at Wayne State University in Detroit. Aguilar continues to organize with a variety of groups and is the founder and editor of People of Color Organize, a website on political activism, theory, and practice.

Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as System Operator of Z Magazine’s website: ZCom (www.zmag.org). Albert’s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to cofounding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, and so on. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of Go. Albert is also the author of numerous books. Most recently these include: Remembering Tomorrow (Seven Stories Press), Realizing Hope (Zed Press), and Parecon: Life after Capitalism (Verso). Many of Albert’s articles are stored in ZCom and can be accessed there, along with hundreds of other Z Magazine and ZNet articles, essays, interviews, and other materials.

William D. Armaline was most recently a professor (now retired) of teaching and learning and the founding director of the Center for Innovative and Transformative Education at Bowling Green State University. Throughout his thirty-five-year career in education, he has been an activist/teacher/scholar working with colleagues in higher education, in the public schools, and in communities at large to reconceptualize schooling structures concomitantly with transforming pedagogical practices. His current work is a critical and personal reflection on schooling reform, replete with the dreams and ambitions of someone who saw (and to an extent still sees) education as a potential vehicle to liberation.

William T. Armaline is a multidisciplinary scholar in “Justice Studies” at San Jose State University. His recent research focuses on systemic racism and human rights abuses through the institutionalization and incarceration of marginalized populations. His scholarship also includes work on radical political economic theory, human rights theory and practice, and the development of critical pedagogies. Rather than making selective contributions as an “activist,” William “puts in work” as a way of life.

John Asimakopoulos is executive director of the scholar-activist Transformative Studies Institute (TSI) and associate professor of sociology at the City University of New York, Bronx. He is also editor in chief of Theory in Action, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal, and is working with TSI to establish a new free and progressive university operated by scholar-activists. John’s work focuses on labor, globalization, and social theory championing the formation of counter-ideology, independent working-class media and educational institutions, and direct action. John’s interest in the working class stems from his parents, who obtained only third-grade educations. They worked as landless farmers in Greece and later as immigrant factory workers in the United States. Early on in life, John observed that his parents’ hard work was never rewarded, which pushed him to think of social justice. Ever since, he has dedicated his life to promoting equality and social justice for all people.

D. T. Cochrane is a father, partner, and PhD student. His research interests are business history, theories of value and accumulation, and business disruption movements. His dissertation is on De Beers and the changing role of diamonds in the United States in the 1940s.

Uri Gordon is an Israeli activist and academic. He is the author of Anarchy Alive! Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press). While completing his doctoral research at Oxford, he organized with community initiatives and anti-capitalist networks in the UK and Europe including Indymedia, Earth First, and Dissent. He now teaches environmental politics and ethics at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and is active with the Negev COexistence Forum for Civil Equality and Anarchists Against the Wall. His research continues to focus on grassroots sustainability, radical peace-making, and anarchist politics. He is also active as a facilitator, trainer, and translator.

Robin Hahnel is visiting professor in the Department of Economics at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and professor emeritus at American University in Washington, DC. His most recent books are Green Economics: Confronting the Ecological Crisis (M.E. Sharpe 2011), Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation (Routledge 2005), and The ABCs of Political Economy: A Modern Approach (Pluto 2002). With Michael Albert he is co-creator of an alternative to capitalism known as “participatory economics.” Robin has been active in numerous progressive movements and organizations for over forty-five years.

Caroline Kaltefleiter is professor of communication studies and women’s studies as well as a founding member of the Anarchist Studies Initiative (ASI) at the State University of New York, Cortland. She has written numerous articles and conference papers on anarchist studies, do-it-yourself culture and the riot grrrl movement. Recent works include: “Anarchy Grrrl Style Now: Riot Grrrl Actions and Practices,” “Riot Grrrls and Bois: Gender Contestation in (Trans) Zines and Performance Sites of Resistance”; and “Juno and Diablo: Cinematic Riot Grrrls and the Cultivation of a Liberated Girlhood.” Kaltefleiter calls herself an activist first then an academic. She was a member of the Riot Grrrl Washington DC chapter and remains committed to Riot Grrrl through zines and correspondence. Her current research interests include youth culture capitalism, post-feminism, and popular culture. She is currently finishing a forthcoming academic text nearly two decades in the making on the Riot Grrrl movement, that privileges an inside/out perspective.

Ruth Kinna teaches political theory in the School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. She is coeditor, with Laurence Davis, of Anarchism and Utopianism (Manchester University Press, 2009), author of The Beginner’s Guide to Anarchism (Oneworld, 2005 and 2009), and has written a number of articles on anarchist writers and activists. She is currently working on two anarchist projects: an edited collection, Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red with Dave Berry, Saku Pinta, and Alex Prichard (to be published by Palgrave), and a research companion to anarchism for Continuum Books. She is a member of the Anarchist Studies Network and editor of the journal Anarchist Studies.

An anarchist for over twenty years, Iain McKay has been involved in many anarchist groups in the UK. He is currently a member of the Black Flag editorial collective, Britain’s leading (and longest-lasting) anarchist magazine. In addition, he has produced An Anarchist FAQ, which summarizes and explains anarchist ideas and history and an introduction to and evaluation of Kropotkin’s ideas on mutual aid (both published by AK Press). He also writes on a host of issues for Black Flag and Freedom, as well as on websites (primarily Anarchist Writers). He has recently edited and written the introduction to Property is Theft!, the first comprehensive anthology of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s writings (published by AK Press).

Jeff Monaghan is based in Ottawa, Canada. He does paid work for a small communications company and cares for a fleet of rusty bikes. He is a member of Ottawa’s Exile Infoshop collective and Books to Prisoners-Ottawa. He plays drums in a couple of sloppy “punk rawk” bands and spends his spare time with his loving partner Ange and their kid.

Scott Nappalos is a registered nurse living in Miami, Florida. Scott has been active in movements against the war and for environmental justice, anti-racist and anti-sexist organizing, and popular media. An active member of the Industrial Workers of the World for ten years, Scott continues to work on autonomous workers struggle in healt care, and other industries. Scott has served as a trainer for the IWW’s training program as well as a member of the Organizing Department Board and the International Solidarity Commission. Scott has worked on solidarity campaigns with popular and revolutionary movements in Iran, India, El Salvador, Mexico, and Haiti. Scott’s writings have appeared in The Industrial Worker, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, and Turbulence. Scott is a cofounder and a member of the editorial collective of Recompositions: Notes for a New Workerism, an online journal of autonomous workers’ struggle and organization. Presently, he is completing a collection of his writings on political organization, popular struggles, the problem of revolutionary consciousness, complex systems theory as a methodology for revolutionaries, and revolutionary strategy. Scott is one of the founding members of Miami Autonomy and Solidarity, a revolutionary political organization founded in 2009 and active in popular movements and committed to building praxis and strategy for political struggle in our time.

Anthony J. Nocella, II, award-winning author, poet, community organizer, and educator, teaches at Hamline University as a visiting professor of urban education. Nocella focuses his attention on urban education, peace and conflict studies, inclusive social justice education, environmental education, disability pedagogy, queer pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, critical pedagogy, anarchist studies, critical animal studies, and hip-hop pedagogy. He has taught workshops in mediation, negotiation, and strategic social movement building, and has assisted a number of legal committees in North and South America. He has provided expressive and experiential education workshops to nongovernmental organizations, prisoners, incarcerated youth, and students in middle and high schools, representing organizations such as Alternative to Violence Program, Save the Kids, and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), in hopes of increasing the peace and providing skills to revert violent conflicts to nonviolent transformation. He is on more than a dozen boards, including the AFSC, Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS), and the Central New York Peace Studies Consortium. Nocella has written scholarly articles in more than two dozen publications, cofounded more than twenty active socio-political organizations, four academic journals, and is working on his fifteenth book on the subject of urban education. His latest publication is Hollywood’s Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and Cultural Crisis (2010), coedited with Richard Van Heertum, Benjamin Frymer, and Tony Kashani.

Wayne Price has been involved in revolutionary socialist organizing and theoretical work for over forty years. He has evolved through anarchist-pacifism and dissident Trotskyism to revolutionary class-struggle anarchism, hopefully learning from his many mistakes. He worked as a special education teacher and as a school psychologist and earned a doctor of psychology degree. For years he was active in antiwar activities and in oppositions within the teachers’ union. He writes regularly for www.Anarkismo.net. He has authored two books, The Abolition of the State: Anarchist and Marxist Perspectives and Anarchism and Socialism: Reformism or Revolution?

Deric Shannon is a US anarchist organizer who lives on the East Coast. He is a coeditor of Contemporary Anarchist Studies (Routledge 2009) and coauthor of Political Sociology: Oppression, Resistance, and the State (Pine Forge 2010). When not writing and reading, he’s playing music with friends or organizing for a livable future.

Chris Spannos is an activist, organizer, and anti-capitalist. He has worked as an embroidery machine operator, social service worker, sailor, and cook. From 2006 to 2011 Chris was full-time editor and system administrator at ZNet. He currently lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City. He edited the anthology Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21^st Century (AK Press 2008) and is interested in the theory and practice of autonomy. He is founder and editor of the online magazine the New Significance (thenewsignificance.com).

Marie Trigona is a writer, video maker, radio producer, and translator whose work has been inspired by international anarchist working-class history and anti-imperialist struggles. Her work focuses on labor, human rights, community media, and social movements in Latin America. She has collaborated with the direct action and video collective Grupo Alavío. Trigona’s writing has appeared in publications including Z Magazine and ZNet, NACLA, Monthly Review, Canadian Dimension, The Buenos Aires Herald, Left Turn, Americas Program, Upsidedown World, Dollars and Sense, and dozens of other media outlets. She is a correspondent at Pacifica’s “Free Speech Radio News,” a worker-run news program aired on nearly 100 stations in the United States. Currently Trigona studies at the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Buenos Aires.

Dr. Richard J White is a senior lecturer of economic geography at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. To date, Richard’s main areas of research have focused on rethinking “the economic” in economic geography, exploring the geographies of commodification, and mapping the limits of capitalism in contemporary society. As an anarchist geographer Richard is also actively engaged with anarchist praxis focused on harnessing post-capitalist/heterodox economic futures. Richard is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, and is currently serving on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy and Theory in Action, The Journal of the Transformative Studies Institute. He can be contacted at Richard.White@shu.ac.uk.

Colin Williams is professor of public policy in the Management School at the University of Sheffield in the UK. His interests are in re-representing and constructing alternative economic practices beyond the market economy. His recent books include Informal Work in Developed Nations (Routledge, 2010), Re-thinking the Future of Work (Routledge, 2007), A Commodified World? Mapping the Limits of Capitalism (Zed, 2005) and Community Self-Help (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004). He can be contacted at: c.c.williams@sheffield.ac.uk .

Abbey Volcano, a member of the Workers Solidarity Alliance and Queers without Borders, currently lives in Connecticut. She is presently writing on reproductive freedom and normative violence. Abbey only loves a handful of things more than she loves graphic novels: organizing for a less boring and fucked-up world, kitties, her family, and fantasizing about moving to Madrid and becoming an oil painter.

[1] Thanks are due to Nate Hawthorne, Gayge Operaista, and Zach Blue for helpful comments on this introduction.

[2] One recent Rasmussen poll found that only 53 percent of Americans favor capitalism over socialism, down from just a year and a half before when 70 percent favored capitalism. While leaving the terms “capitalism” and “socialism” undefined is problematic for such a survey, particularly in an age of Glenn Beck style red-baiting, this loss of faith in capitalist fundamentalism in Americans tells us that a good portion of the population just might be open to alternatives—provided we are willing to broadly sketch them out. See Rasmussen, “Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism,” http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2009/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism (accessed October 10, 2010).