Assembly

DENZEL CALDWELL is a community organizer and movement economist that was born, raised and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to his upbringing in a community-oriented household, his work as an organizer and study of economics began when he read the unpublished words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the King Archives at the Atlanta University Center. He currently serves as the electoral justice researcher and educator at the Highlander Research and Education Center, and is an organizer for the Nashville Economic Justice Alliance and the Black Nashville Assembly. His favorite activities are martial arts, reading and travel.

EDGAR FRANKS is the Washington State Campaign and Political Director for the independent union Familias Unidas por la Justicia where he works with union leadership and allies in the development and implementation of the Just Transition framework that centers food sovereignty and worker organizing in innovative models of participatory democracy, such as People’s Movement Assemblies and Tribunals. Edgar has strong farmworker roots in Skagit County, WA where he grew up. Edgar honed his organizing skills supporting the formation of the first independent farmworker union in WA State since 1986.

MARISA HOLMES is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of the book Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This Is Just Practice (2023). She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. Currently, she teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University.

MICHAEL HARDT teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author of several books with Antonio Negri, including Empire. His most recent publications are The Subversive Seventies and, with Sandro Mezzadra, Bolivia: Beyond the Impasse.