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SPEAKERS, FILMMAKERS & PERFORMERS • 2026
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April 26
Pauline Greenlick has worked in education for over thirty years teaching students with special needs. After her retirement from teaching, she pursued a new passion as an independent filmmaker and has produced over 120 films capturing and preserving stories of “hidden” marginalized people in Uganda who have survived homelessness, gender violence, acid attacks, extreme poverty, and civil war, and, in Pittsburgh, the stories of members of the Battle of Homestead Foundation, of which she is Vice-President. Greenlick also makes music videos with Mike Stout, a former union steel worker, who is a well-known Pittsburgh music composer, performer and writer. She is Treasurer of Carnegie Screenwriters and member in the Women in Film and Media organization supporting women filmmakers.
May 2
Daniel Draper is a Liverpool-based filmmaker. His debut film, Nature of the Beast, about then Labour politician Dennis Skinner, was released across UK cinemas in 2017. Since, Daniel has produced and directed an additional five feature documentaries and continues to explore place, identity, class and politics through his current and forthcoming work.
May 3
Quyên Nguyen-Le is a queer Vietnamese filmmaker born to boat refugee parents where Chumash and Tongva lands meet in Los Angeles, California. Quyên’s film work focuses on the ways histories are deeply felt in the quotidian everyday. Committed to the spirit of documentary films merging out of third world social justice movements, Quyên’s work in this genre transformed their artistic practice into one deeply rooted in the ethics of making films within community. See quyennl.com
May 6
Paul Ortiz is a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of African American and Latinx studies as well as oral history. In his forthcoming book, A Social Movement History of the United States, he is especially concerned with the ways that working people have created social movements in efforts to democratize society from the time of the American Revolution to the present. Formerly a professor at UCSC when he helped found the Reel Work Labor Film Festrival, Ortiz’ current students at Cornell rate him as awesome, caring, and passionate about labor history.
May 9
David Crawford is a Business Agent for Teamsters Local 853, currently representing Bakery, Transportation and Package Division members in 14 different locations. He actively represented 1,200 UPS members in Santa Cruz, San Jose, Sunnyvale, and San Jose Airport UPS centers during the 2023 negotiations. A 19-year veteran at UPS, he joined the Teamsters in Watsonville as a part timer for the twilight shift, promoted to Driver in the Santa Cruz County area for 17 years, and served as Shop Steward for 4 years.
Dana Frank taught labor history at UC Santa Cruz for 35 years and was the founding director of the UCSC Center for Labor and Community. She is the author of seven books, including, most recently, What Can We Learn From the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People and Collective Action in Hard Times, and, with Howard Zinn and Robin D.G. Kelley, Three Strikes. Her writing has also appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, and elsewhere, and she is a regular guest on Democracy Now! Dana is a member of AFT Local 2199 Retiree Chapter and long active in Honduras solidarity work and, now, local immigration support work.
May 10
Oddett Garza is from Kingsville, Texas, later moving to Austin. Her first feature, Second Impression, won the audience award for best narrative feature at the San Antonio Film Festival. Oddett is currently working on a documentary series aimed at preserving the Tejana experience. She grew up surrounded by amazing women whose stories were often overlooked. Her mission is to preserve the narratives that history has too often erased.
Lauren Stoles is a historian and filmmaker based in Ottawa, Canada. Growing up in Peterborough and completing her undergraduate degree in Southwestern Ontario, Stoyles developed a passion for delving into the stories of Canadian communities. Her work centers the relationship between labour history and women’s activism.
Emmett Hopkins is the Transportation Policy Manager at the Climate & Community Institute, where he works with members and partners to advance a new vision for mobility that centers justice across the transportation supply chain. Emmett previously worked as Operations Director at Climate Mobilization Project and led CMP’s intersectional organizing for transportation.
Fermina Stevens is a citizen of the Western Shoshone Nation and a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone. She resides in Elko where she was born, attended school, and raised her family. Fermina served a three-year term as Elko Band Council Chairperson and council member for the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone. She works for the Western Shoshone Defense Project, an Indigenous led non-profit where she advocates for land and treaty rights to protect land and water quality for future generations. Through this work she has knowledge of the energy transition in Nevada, nationally and internationally.
Marcie Pedraza is a 4th generation union worker and a member of United Auto Workers Local 551 at Ford Chicago Assembly Plant where she has been a union electrician for 23 years. In her union, she is a delegate for the skilled trades committee and recording secretary for the women’s committee. She is a graduate of and instructor for the Regina V. Polk Women’s Labor Leadership conference, a program that has trained women labor leaders for over 3 decades. She is a community organizer passionate about environmental justice, and as board member of the Southeast Environmental Task Force is fighting corporate polluters for a cleaner neighborhood.
Dr. Dustin Mulvaney is a Professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Environmental Studies at San José State University (SJSU). He is a Fellow with the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, and Fellow with the Climate + Community Institute. His research includes work on just transitions, solar energy commodity chains, natural resource development, and circular economy. Dustin’s areas of expertise, research and writing are on land use change, life cycle assessment, recycling & waste, and the environmental justice impacts of energy technologies, supply chains, and infrastructures, with extensive emphasis on the life cycle impacts of solar photovoltaics and lithium-ion batteries.
May 11
Bev Grant grew up singing and playing in Portland, Oregon, where she began her performing career as a child in a band with her two sisters. After moving to New York City, she devoted herself to topical songwriting and social activism, notably in her band The Human Condition. Bev is the founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus. Her song “We Were There” has become an anthem of women in the labor movement. She is a proud member of American Federation of Musicians, Local 1000.
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 “thinking globally and singing locally,” which she does masterfully as director of the Santa Cruz Peace Chorale for over 22 years and at her regular community sing-along events. See aileenvance.com.
May 16
David Paul is a retired health worker, long-time activist in solidarity with anti-imperialist movements in Latin America, member of the Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network, Venezuela Solidarity Network, Task Force on the Americas, and DSA International Committee Cuba and Venezuela Working Groups. He has traveled to Venezuela and served as an election monitor there.
Mark Ginsburg is a retired professor of Comparative Education and Latin American Studies. For many years his scholarship and activism have focused on Cuba, but in recent years he’s given attention to Venezuela. He is a member of the Venezuelan Solidarity Network and the DSA International Working Group on Venezuela and Cuba.
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