Chester Hartman is Director of Research for the Washington, DC-based Poverty & Race Research Action Council, for which he was founding Executive Director from 1990-2003. He is also Founder and former Chair of The Planners Network, a national organization of progressive urban planners. He currently serves on the Long Term Community Planning Task Force of Governor Blanco’s Louisiana Recovery Authority. His most recent books are City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco (Univ. of California Press, 2002); Between Eminence and Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning  (Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, 2002); A Right to Housing: Foundation for a New Social Agenda (Temple Univ. Press, 2006); and Poverty & Race in America: The Emerging Agendas (Lexington Books, 2006).

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. His research and teaching focus on twentieth century African-American protest, particularly during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. His published works include "Organizing for More than the Vote: The Political Radicalization of Local People in Lowndes County, Alabama, 1965-1966," which appears in Groundwork: The Local Black Freedom Movement in America. At present, he is completing a book project that investigates the freedom struggle in Lowndes County and the making of Black Power.

Avis Jones-DeWeever is the Director of Poverty, Education, and Social Justice Programs at the Washington, DC-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Her work examines the causes and consequences of poverty on the well-being of low-income women and families while identifying effective programmatic strategies that result in poverty reduction. Jones-DeWeever has authored or co-authored numerous publications, including “Before and After Welfare Reform: The Work and Well-Being of Low-Income Single Parent Families”; “When the Spirit Blooms: Acquiring Higher Education in the Context of Welfare Reform” (Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy); and “Saving Ourselves: African American Women and the HIV/AIDS Crisis” (Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy). A highly sought-after speaker, Jones-DeWeever’s policy perspectives have been distributed through a variety of media outlets, including CNN, ABC News Now, National Public Radio, BBC Radio International, and the New York Times. Her areas of expertise include poverty in urban communities, inequality of educational opportunity, and the impact of welfare reform on women and communities of color.

Peter Marcuse is a lawyer and planner who is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University. He has also taught in both West and East Germany, Australia, the Union of South Africa, Canada, Austria, and Brazil. He has written extensively on housing, urban development, the history of planning, the ethics of planning, racial segregation, and globalization. His most recent books are (with Ronald van Kempen) Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order? (Blackwell, 1999) and Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space (Oxford University Press, 2002). He is currently much involved in the debates about the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks and the implications of the “war on terrorism” on urban development globally. His most recent work has been on issues of sustainability, the role of the state in housing development in less developed countries, and on globalism as an extension of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism. He has been President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and chaired the Housing Committee of Community Board #9, Manhattan, in New York City.

Wade Rathke is the founder of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and has been its Chief Organizer for more than 35 years. The national organization is headquartered in New Orleans, and he has been part of the ACORN team responding to the cataclysmic changes being wrought since the storm and helping direct the fight day to day. The ACORN headquarters are in Fauborg Marginy on Elysian Fields Avenue. Rathke and his family live in the Bywater neighborhood. Both areas were fortunate to not be flooded.

Gregory D. Squires is a Professor of Sociology, and Public Policy and Public Administration, and Chair of the Department of Sociology at The George Washington University. Currently he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Woodstock Institute, the Advisory Board of the John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center in Chicago, and the Social Science Advisory Board of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. He has served as a consultant for civil rights organizations around the country, including HUD and the National Fair Housing Alliance, and as a member of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council. He has written for several academic journals and general interest publications, including Housing Policy Debate, Urban Studies, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, New York Times, and Washington Post. His recent books include Urban Sprawl (Urban Institute Press, 2002), Organizing Access to Capital (Temple University Press, 2003), Why the Poor Pay More: How to Stop Predatory Lending (Praeger, 2004), and Privileged Places: Race, Residence, and the Structure of Opportunity (with Charis E. Kubrin, Lynne Rienner, 2006).