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SPEAKERS, FILMMAKERS & PERFORMERS • 2023
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April 28
Samantha Saldana is a lens-based interdisciplinary artist whose scholarship explores community social justice issues, identity, family relationships, and intersectionality. Saldana is a graduate of the Visual and Public Art Dept. at CSUMB and is currently an MFA candidate in the Photography Program at San Jose State University. Saldana’s work engages accessibility to arts education, advocacy, and mentorship opportunities. A recent body of work explores narrative relationships within marginalized communities and the social and cultural expectations of Latinx millennials.
April 29
Ryne Leuzinger is an Associate Librarian at CSUMB and has also served as a lecturer in Global Studies, Sociology and First Year Seminar where he teaches a course on social movements. He has been actively involved in the local union, the California Faculty Association, and currently serves as Chapter President, a role that involves advocating for fair working conditions and wages for CSUMB faculty. He has been an activist on labor issues prior to becoming a faculty member at CSUMB which included participating in the historic protests in Madison, WI in the spring of 2011 which opposed the union busting Act 10 bill. Ryne is an undergraduate alumni of the political science program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
April 29
Jason Rabinowitz is the principal officer of Teamsters Local 2010, and President of Teamsters Joint Council 7 in Northern California, with decades of experience and activism in protecting the rights of workers. In his decade at the Local, Jason has led the charge in transforming the Union into a powerhouse for workers' rights in California, increasing membership from 29 percent of the workforce to more than 80 percent for the first time in the Local's history.
Lucía Alvarado Cantero is a Costa Rican born documentarist who explores the intersections of education and filmmaking. In March of 2021, in the midst of a pandemic and a doctoral program, she became a mom and quickly realized institutional barriers make the balance between family and career almost impossible for women. Alma Mater explores the experiences of three activist mothers in the fight for better conditions and opportunities for student parents as part of the 2022 Academic Workers Strike at the University of California.
Jack Davies is a labor organizer and PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness at UCSC. He is Unit Chair of the Santa Cruz chapter of UAW Local 2865.
Sarah Mason is a writer, organizer, and PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a head steward in her union, UAW 2865.
Yael Bridge is a documentary filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She produced Left on Purpose, winner of the Audience Award at DOC NYC. Most recently she produced Saving Capitalism starring former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in Business and Economics. She is currently working on a film about the resurgence of socialism in America. She holds an MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University and an MA in Media Studies from the New School.
Yoni Golijov produces non-fiction films and installations. Most recently, he produced Laura Poitras's feature All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, winner of the 2022 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film documents legendary artist and activist Nan Goldin and her fight against the Sackler family. Golijov is a Sundance Producer Fellow, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee, and an NBC Original Voices Fellow.
James W. Russell is an American academic and author of nine books on race, class, and labor. He has taught at several schools in the US, Mexico and the Czech Republic. Throughout his career, Russell has combined social activism with scholarship. As a student, he was arrested during the 1964 Tulsa civil rights lunch counter sit-ins and led a campaign that resulted in the desegregation of the Sand Springs, Oklahoma public schools. He was the first editor of New Left Notes, the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society. Later, as a professor, he was co-chair of a rank-and-file advocacy group that initiated a union campaign that won significant public employee rights.
April 30
Mike Stout worked at the Homestead mill the final 10 years and was the last grievance representative and chairman representing the entire mill workforce between 1981 and 1987. He has been a labor, environmental, and antiwar activist for more than 50 years as well as a professional recording artist for 30 years, with more than 16 CDs and 150 original songs recorded, which can be found on his website at mikestoutmusic.com.
May 1
Fred Glass was the communications director for the California Federation of Teachers for nearly thirty years before retiring in 2017. During that same period he taught labor history at City College of San Francisco, where he continues to teach part-time. He wrote and directed Golden Lands, Working Hands, a ten-part video series on the history of the California labor movement, shown on most public television stations in California. His book, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement, was published by the University of California Press in 2016. A short animated cartoon he wrote and directed, with the voice of Ed Asner and animation by Mike Konopacki, Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale, received a million YouTube views in 2012 and was the subject of unhappy Fox News commentary. His most recent video, We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day, is being screened at Reel Work 23. Fred is a member of AFT Local 2121 and serves on the State Committee of California DSA.
May 2
Jake Krakovskyis a puppeteer, playwright, actor, director, educator, and Yiddishist based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He received a BA in Theater Studies from Emory University, and studied physical theater at the Accademia dell'Arte. He leads workshops and coaches performers of all ages in acting, puppetry, clown, improvisation, commedia dell'Arte, Shakespeare, and ensemble devising.
May 3
Giovanni Guidelli is an Italian actor and director. He has taken part in several movie productions and as lead role in a TV serial. He started acting when he was ten years old.
Adolfo Ruiz is a design educator and filmmaker. His work explores how cultural memory, lived experiences and oral history may be embodied through time-based media. He is currently Assistant Professor of Design and Storytelling at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada.
Enrique Berumen García was born in the Republic of East Los Angeles in Califas, Aztlán. He studied at the International School of Film and Television in Cuba; he holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz and a M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He was a professor in the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at Cal State U - LA. He currently resides in Simón Bolivar&rquo;s La Patria Grande—somewhere between the Andes and the Sierra Maestra.
May 4
Ray Cancino is Executive Director of Community Bridges, a major local non-profit social services provider of access to transportation, healthy food, health care, senior adult day health care, crises support, case management services, early education, grade school tutoring, and classes in breastfeeding, nutrition, parenting, and literacy.
May 5
Woody Rehanek was a farmworker and organic truck farmer in Washington State for 18 years. He worked as a special class teacher in Pajaro Valley USD for 18 years. He is a member of Safe Ag Safe Schools and CORA (Campaign for Organic & Regenerative Agriculture). He’s lived in Watsonville for the past 24 years.
Kathleen Kilpatrick has been an advocate for social and environmental justice for over 50 years, and worked in health care for 45, both in varied ways. She got a NIOSH grant to add Occupational and Environmental Health study to her Nurse Practitioner program at UW in the mid 90’s, and worked as a nurse on two pesticide exposure assessments of children in eastern WA orchard communities. She took a school nurse job with PVUSD with the desire to work with farmworker families, and got her wish. Plus, she got to join a union, PVFT! Since her retirement, she has been active with SASS, and is a founding member of CORA.
Yanely Martinez is an organizer with Safe Ag Safe Schools.
Mark Weller is the Organizing Director for Californians for Pesticide Reform, a statewide network of 200-plus organizations united to reduce pesticide harms. He previously worked for several unions in the Monterey Bay region, organizing community and political support for workers. Mark has a B.A. in Political Science from University of California San Diego, an M.A. in Sociology from San Jose State University, and is co-author of Dollars and Votes: How Business Campaign Contributions Subvert Democracy.
May 7
Amy Reid is a filmmaker whose work examines the intersections between gender, national identities, and labor. By exploring observational approaches and expanding upon formal cinematic notions of time, structure, and narrative, her work questions how labor is constructed in the filmic form. She has participated in selected screenings nationally and internationally. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cooper Union before graduating with an MFA in Visual Arts from UC San Diego and recently completed the Whitney Independent Study program in New York. Currently, Reid began a doctoral program in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she has been awarded a multi-year fellowship through the Feminist Media Histories Initiative.
May 8
Carl Bidleman is a storyteller who has built a 36-year career as an award-winning producer, director, writer, photographer, editor, filmmakaer, and media executive in broadcast, digital and print. He has worked for commercial and public television stations, major foundations, a civil rights organization, and is currently a partner in a media production company. He served on the board of directors of the Oceanic Society for over a decade.
Jaeger & Reid: Some of the best discoveries are made by accident and that's what happened in the fusion of the musical talents of Judi Jaeger and Bob Reid. They unwittingly found that perfect harmony while standing next to each other at a music camp jam in the summer of 2015. Their musical spark quickly caught fire and was noticed by those around them—and the successful collaboration between Jaeger and Reid was born. They were both raised in musical families, Judi near Montreal and Bob a 4th generation Californian. See jaegerreidmusic.com.
Santa Cruz Peace Chorale is a mixed-voice community chorus with a mission to promote local and worldwide peace and social justice through singing, and to enlighten as well as to entertain. The group presents an occasional concert in addition to singing at community events, soup kitchens, and street demonstrations. The chorus is open to all singers without audition and is run by its members.
Aileen Vance is a member of American Federation of Musicians, Local 1000. She is a singer, songwriter, song leader and choral director. A long-time Santa Cruz resident, she shares Pete Seeger’s dedication to &lddquo;thinking globally and singing locally,” which she does masterfully as director of the Santa Cruz Peace Chorale for over 21 years and at her regular community sing-along events. See aileenvance.com.
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