Staff

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is founder and publisher of Daily Kos, the largest progressive community site in the United States. He is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics and The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump. He is also author of Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era, and American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right. He is a past columnist at The Hill and Newsweek.

Moulitsas was born on September 11, 1971, in Chicago, IL. The son of a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, Moulitsas spent his formative years in El Salvador (1976-1980), where he saw first-hand the ravages of civil war. His family fled threats on their lives by the communist guerillas and settled in the Chicago area.

After high school, Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army (1989-92) as a 13P – Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist. He trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and served the remainder of his three-year enlistment in Bamberg, Germany. While he entered the Army as a Republican, he abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment.

Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German. He subsequently earned a J.D. at Boston University School of Law (1996-99) before deciding that it would be a cold day in hell before he ever worked as a lawyer.

After law school, he worked as a project manager at a web development shop in San Francisco when, in 2002, he started Daily Kos. Moulitsas flirted with political consulting in 2003, but that didn’t last long, and he has focused on Daily Kos full-time since early 2004.

In addition to running Kos Media, LLC, which includes Daily Kos and Civiqs, Moulitsas is also a co-founder and former board member of Vox Media. He’s an avid pianist and composer.

Moulitsas is ridiculously in love with his wonderful son, Aristotle, born on November 2003 and vivacious daughter, Elisandra, born on April 2007.

Will was born a Midwestern river rat in 1973. He grew up on a steady diet of corn, fried catfish, and basketball. After getting a B.A. in journalism, he moved to Colorado, where he fell in love with full moon descents down Loveland Pass on a snowboard and finally discovered good American beer. His wife convinced him it was a good idea to move to the Bay Area. On his first visit, he knew she was right and took a mental note to listen to her always. His previous jobs include booking bands, working in record stores, selling advertising, accounting for very large numbers, and finally settling on a career in the book biz after relocating to Berkeley in 2000. In 2006, he helped usher Glenn Greenwald’s How Would a Patriot Act? on to the New York Times Best Sellers list and began to handle some tasks on the business side of Daily Kos. He’s now President of Kos Media and has reverted to drinking American macro-brews. He lives in Oakland with his wife and son, who is now growing up on corn, fried catfish, and basketball.

Susan Gardner is a native Southern Californian, born in 1958. She attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and returned to California to work for the Riverside Press-Enterprise Company as editor and publisher of one of its large community weekly newspapers during the 1980’s. After taking a decade and a half off to raise a family, she returned to politics and writing via Daily Kos several years ago and became a contributing editor in 2006. She’s also been a freelance editor and writer, general manager of a special education curriculum company and the exhausted mother of four children. She lives in Berkeley, California.

In 2009 and 2010, she served as a Fellow in the Poynter Institute’s Sense-Making project, a Ford Foundation-funded program that is studying the integration of new media and democratic values.

As a longtime political junkie, Barbara Morrill became a community member at Daily Kos in 2004. She was named as a Contributing Editor in 2007, joined the Daily Kos staff as Associate Editor in 2009 and became Managing Editor in 2011.

David Nir has served as political director of Daily Kos since 2011 and leads the site’s acclaimed elections coverage, found at Daily Kos Elections. Every weekday, Daily Kos Elections publishes its highly regarded newsletter, the Morning Digest, which covers every competitive race around the country and goes out to over 50,000 subscribers via email, plus countless more on the web.

David is responsible for the site’s candidate fundraising program, which raised more than $2.2 million—based on an average donation of just $8—for 50 different candidates and causes endorsed by Daily Kos in the 2013-14 election cycle. He also publishes the site’s race ratings for Senate, House, and gubernatorial contests and oversees the site’s polling projections, which were the most accurate predictions published by any analyst in 2014.

Prior to joining Daily Kos, David ran the Swing State Project, a blog devoted to horserace election coverage that he founded in 2003. David, born in 1977, is also a former patent litigator, a lifelong New Yorker and Democrat, and a die-hard Mets fan.

Craig Hunter got his start in journalism writing obituaries for a daily newspaper in southwestern Connecticut, a “dead beat” that taught him to report vibrant details meticulously. He soon moved on to live subjects, covering cops, courts and local governments in the state, and then transitioned to technological support and editing.

Craig spent most of his career at The New York Times, where he first specialized in equipping correspondents, editors and visual journalists with cutting edge communications and computing equipment. He went on to serve as an assistant editor on the Science Desk (with a special interest in the search for life “out there”) before finishing his career at the Times as deputy media editor. Prior to joining Daily Kos, Craig was the editor of Climate Central, overseeing its editorial staff and directing its coverage of global warming.

When he’s not immersed in the news, Craig still rejoices in the details: restoring old houses, creating podcasts, and exploring the American South.

According to her mother, Emily Epstein White’s first word was “book” and she’s had a love for storytelling and the written word ever since. Graduating with a BA in History and Political Science and a minor in Journalism from the University of Rochester, she got her start writing for local Philadelphia newspapers like the Main Line Times and Main Line Life. After moving to NYC she continued writing for sites like TravelChannel.com and CityEats.com while working as a copyeditor in book publishing for HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster by day and as a standup comic by night. These days she calls Oakland her home. When she’s not copyediting the news you can find her traveling to help cover stories of social and political unrest in places like Ferguson or Baltimore for This Week in Blackness, performing standup, or raising her incredibly precocious daughter with her husband.

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Erika was born and raised in Southern California. She skipped her high school graduation ceremony after landing a summer internship on Capitol Hill with Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress. Erika studied print journalism at Boston University, and got to tromp around snowy New Hampshire in 1996, stalking doomed presidential candidates like Bob Dole and Lamar Alexander. After college, she wrote for newspapers including The Oregonian, The (Allentown) Morning Call, the Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Bee and the Orange County Register. Erika covered diverse topics including health, real estate, immigration, and education. She is thrilled to be working at Daily Kos after taking some time off to be a stay-at-home mom. Erika lives in Orange County with her husband, two children, and a warring cat and puppy. In her spare time she travels, binges on Netflix, and runs half marathons—preferably in costume.

Gabe Ortíz is a writer and activist focusing on immigration, LGBT, and Latino issues. Prior to joining Daily Kos in 2017, Gabe was the Digital Editor of America’s Voice and America’s Voice Education Fund, an immigration reform advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. His work in immigrant rights activism was spurred by his personal experience as a first-generation American in an immigrant family. A graduate of San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies, Gabe’s writing has been featured in outlets like Univision, the Washington Post, and PRI. When he’s not busy working, he’s probably tweeting while enjoying a glass of wine.

As a Daily Kos contributing editor, Michael Lazzaro —a.k.a. ”Hunter”—has gained a reputation for passionate, explorative, and offbeat progressive writing. His wide-ranging essays and editorials are alternately probing and combative, provide stirring defenses of progressive and liberal ideals, and frequently explore the underlying dynamics of the progressive and liberal online communities themselves.

An Internet consultant who currently makes his home in rural Northern California with his wife, child, and a varying assortment of animals, Michael helped design and build some of the very first e-commerce sites on the emerging World Wide Web.

Jeff first got involved in politics when he led a protest against George W. Bush on his elementary school playground on Election Day in 2000. In college, he became involved in more useful political activities, first campaigning for the Democratic ticket in Louisiana in 2008 and 2010 (the latter as president of Tulane University’s College Democrats), later interning on a special election campaign in his native Santa Clara County, California. He also used the time to earn a B.A. in political science and a master’s in modern European history. Jeff currently lives in Boston.

As Elections Editor at Daily Kos, Jeff is the lead writer of the Morning Digest, Daily Kos’ roundup of key campaign news that gets published each weekday. Jeff is also responsible for the site’s ambitious quadrennial venture to calculate the results of each presidential election for all 435 congressional districts and for the state legislative districts in all 50 states.

Writing from her home in Idaho, McCarter focuses on legislative and policy issues for the site.

After a stint working for then-Rep. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in both his district and Capitol Hill offices, McCarter obtained a Masters degree in Russian studies from the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She worked as a writer and instructional designer at UW before signing on full time with Daily Kos in 2007.

Kelly Macías is a writer, educator and activist whose work focuses on race, gender, identity, communication and conflict. She has worked with organizations in the non-profit, education, government and international sectors and has worked in 15 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. She has a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from Nova Southeastern University and can often be found working out her own life’s conflicts on her yoga mat. Her work has been featured in Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, The Feminist Wire, The Baltimore Sun, Twenties Unscripted, Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism, Teaching Peace Through Popular Culture and The Qualitative Report.

Kerry Eleveld covered Barack Obama for four years for The Advocate, first on the campaign trail and then at the White House, interviewing him three times including once in the Oval Office. Her 2015 book, “Don’t Tell Me To Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency,” explores the political tipping point on LGBT issues during Obama’s presidency.

Eleveld has worked as a journalist in different media for 20 years and earned a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley in 2003. Since she began covering LGBT issues in 2006, Eleveld’s work has won: “Best News Article” in 2006 from the American Veterans for Equal Rights; second place for “Coverage of Election/Politics” in the 2007 New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest; first place in the 2007 “Excellence in News Writing” category as well as the 2010 Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for “Excellence in LGBT Media” from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association; the 2011 “Outstanding Digital Journalism Article” for her weekly View from Washington column from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and third place for “Excellence in Opinion/Editorial Writing” from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association in 2013.

Eleveld’s work has appeared in Salon, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and Politico. She has also offered insights about political developments to news outlets such as PBS NewsHour, MSNBC, CNN, SiriusXM, The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Associated Press.

Laura Clawson, born at the very end of 1976, graduated from Wesleyan University, has a PhD in sociology from Princeton, and has taught at Dartmouth College and the Princeton Theological Seminary. Politics were always an important part of Laura’s life - her early memories include a strike picket line, a gay pride march, and untold Democratic Socialists of America potluck dinners. She participated in the first AFL-CIO Union Summer and other political activities during college, but was not part of an active political community in 2003 when, with great relief, she discovered Daily Kos, which ultimately propelled her back into real-world political action. From 2008 to 2011 she was senior writer at Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. She is the author of I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers.

Mark Sumner is the author of 33 books including both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent publication was “The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature.” He’s a past winner of Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In addition to the books, he’s written many short stories and articles. One series of his books was the inspiration for the television series “The Chronicle.” In his five decades, he’s been a writer, coal miner, programmer, geologist, project manager, and perpetual student. He lives with his wife in a log cabin at the end of a long gravel road and practices hard at becoming a grouchy old hermit. He’s worked on campaigns for thirty years, and has never risen higher than knocker on doors and maker of annoying phone calls.

Matt is a member of the Daily Kos Elections team. His first exposure to elections came when he was one of three students to vote for John Kerry in his 3rd grade class mock election in 2004, and he’s been hooked ever since. Prior to joining Daily Kos, Matt was a research intern for Sports Illustrated NFL writer Andy Benoit. He graduated from Rutgers University in 2018 with a degree in Political Science and currently lives in suburban New Jersey. When he’s not pouring over elections results and maps, Matt loves watching sports (especially the NFL and NBA) and spending way too much time playing Fortnite.

Meteor Blades is the on-line moniker of Timothy Lange, born in 1946. He has been politically active since 1964 when he participated in voter registration in Mississippi with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Freedom Summer. He was involved as an organizer in Students for a Democratic Society and, for 16 years, as a member of the American Indian Movement. He was incarcerated at the Industrial School for Boys in Golden, Colorado, for 23 months and spent 13 months at a federal prison camp for refusing the draft.
His most serious political campaign work was in third-tier paid positions for Pat Schroeder and Tim Wirth during their first election efforts in 1972 and 1974, respectively.

In 1973, together with 14 other women and men, he co-founded and served on the board of the Boulder Valley Clinic, one of the nation’s first nonprofit abortion providers, which remains in operation today. He has been a reporter, editor and publisher for both alternative and mainstream publications, finishing his three decades in journalism at the Los Angeles Times. Over the years, he has broken stories about U.S. involvement in Guatemalan genocide, “Star Wars” technology, federal “Crisis Relocation” plans, leaking uranium mills and other environmental disasters, including destructive development in coastal Bali. He now lives just south of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Judicial Affairs Editor Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza brings more than ten years’ experience across politics, journalism, and law acquired across five continents. Most recently, she served as a Fellow at the Center for American Progress, focusing on civil rights. There, she produced work that shaped the debate around now-Justice Neil Gorsuch’s stance on LGBT rights during his confirmation hearing.

Buckwalter-Poza joined the Office of James Carville as an associate in 2005. In that capacity she consulted on international political campaigns and co-authored a book with Carville: 40 More Years. Buckwalter-Poza went on to serve as Director of Polling and Analytics at the Progressive Accountability Office, a project of the Center for American Progress and Media matters, and Deputy National Press Secretary at the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 presidential election.

Buckwalter-Poza graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School. She completed clerkships on the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a contributing writer on law for Pacific Standard and has been published by CNN, NPR, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Yale Law Journal’s Forum, among others, and appeared on MSNBC.

Stephen Wolf grew up as a teenager during the Iraq War, which sparked his passion for politics. A North Carolina native with a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina, he enjoys conducting statistical analysis of election results and making maps above all else. Stephen’s work has also appeared in The New Republic, and he frequently focuses on the issues of redistricting, voting rights, and election reform. He writes the weekly Voting Rights Roundup for Daily Kos and often publishes maps and analysis of the impact of gerrymandering.

Adam Bonin is an attorney in solo private practice in his native Philadelphia. A participant in online communities since the mid-1980s, Adam represents this site in legal and regulatory matters, and in that capacity achieved a major victory before the Federal Election Commission in 2006, securing significant new rights for speakers on the Internet to engage in online political speech and advocacy. He contributes stories to the front page dealing with campaign finance matters and legal issues generally.

Adam is a graduate of Amherst College and The University of Chicago Law School, where Barack Obama was his election law professor. Adam serves on of the board of directors of Netroots Nation, for which he served as chairman from 2008-14, as well as the boards of the Garces Foundation and the Jewish Social Policy Action Network. In his spare time, he blogs about pop culture and miscellany at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago.

Armando is a long time member of the Daily Kos community. He is a mild mannered lawyer practicing in New York. He enjoys sports, especially Florida Gators sports. He writes about the law, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, politics and foreign policy.

Bill Harnsberger, 47 going on 12, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, hometown of both the guy who wrote “Dixie” and ‘Center Square’ Paul Lynde—which explains a lot. In 1975 he and his family fled the oppressive Ford regime by moving to Düsseldorf, Germany, after which two popes died in rapid succession. Harnsberger was not charged in the incidents but was forbidden from ever again throwing lawn darts on European soil. In 1980, sensing that Ronald Reagan was poised to make everything right with the world again, he moved back to the Buckeye State, where he became the gayest Eagle Scout on record and graduated Summa Cum Leave This Campus Immediately from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. He then spent seven years programming radio station WGER-FM in Saginaw, Michigan, and another 14 as senior copywriter at a Portland marketing company. He currently lives and loses arguments with Michael, his partner of 18 years. Bill started posting his weekday Cheers & Jeers column on Daily Kos in 2003. Some say he is not well.

David Akadjian has designed sales, negotiation, and communication training for some of the top companies in the world. He also writes about economics and how to have political conversations with the people you know (without killing yourself). His work has also been featured in The Huffington Post, Alternet, Popular Resistance, TruthOut, Raw Story and The Washington Spectator. The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy is his first book.

After lurking on Daily Kos for more than a decade, David started contributing in 2015 during the run up to the U.K.’s parliamentary elections and then just kept covering foreign elections. The following year he helped start Daily Kos’ International Elections Digest, which he helps write each month. He also occasionally writes about domestic legislative and electoral politics when inspiration strikes.

When there isn’t an upcoming foreign election, David works at the AFL-CIO, writing legislative and electoral materials for members of its affiliate unions. He has previously worked for Senator (then aspiring Congressman) Gary Peters, the DCCC, American Bridge, and House Majority PAC. David is also on the board of Washington, D.C.’s LGBT soccer club, Federal Triangles.

David Jarman was an editor at the Swing State Project (under the nom de blog Crisitunity), and with SSP’s orange-ification in 2011, is now a contributing editor at Daily Kos Elections. Like many other Daily Kos writers, he went to law school and then somehow never got around to practicing; he is, however, co-author of several somewhat-interesting real estate law textbooks. In the interest of full disclosure, his last employment as a paid political professional was canvassing on behalf of Mike Kopetski in 1990 in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

A participant in online communities since the early 80s, David found Daily Kos some time back in mid-2003 and has stuck around ever since. A non-practicing attorney, a former Capitol Hill aide and Hotline staff writer (back when Chuck Todd was an intern), David now works in marketing so that he will not be eligible to answer telephone surveys. He has developed a particular interest in lending to the discussion the procedural knowledge he gained from C-SPAN immersion therapy during his days on the Hill, and as a result holds the world record for Longest Online Series on Parliamentary Maneuvers that Didn’t Happen, namely, the Senate’s “nuclear option.” David is married to a moderate Democrat who once helped launch FOX News, and worked for the parent company of Eagle/Regnery Publishing, though in fairness, she was young and needed the money. The children are being raised as Democrats, so there is no need to call the authorities.

Daniel Donner is frequently flabbergasted by the behavior of Americans, and in desperation, he’s turned to digging deep into the polls to try to figure out what people are thinking and why. Standardized career testing in high school suggested cartography for a career, but sadly the guidance counselor had never before heard the term. Adrift in the academic system, after collecting several degrees, the appeal of an interminable future writing grant proposals paled compared to the joys of changing diapers and wiping snotty noses. Dan likes living where the trees are the right height, cooking, and the gratuitous use of color.

A true-blue DFH, Dan grew up in Pennsylvania and joined the Army after high school, serving in Germany and Vietnam. Courtesy of the GI Bill, he graduated from Penn State and then taught high school in his home state. Dan moved to Arizona more than 30 years ago and earned a doctorate from Arizona State University, on track to be a professor. Serendipity intervened and he fell into a job with an educational foundation, where he stayed 20 years. Dan has served on more than 50 boards and commissions – for national parks, museums, government agencies, universities, human rights groups, and other community organizations. Now semi-retired, and flunking retirement, he continues to teach, lecture, and publish on community development, environmental history, and sustainability. Dan lives in downtown Phoenix, but can often be found hiking and camping in the state’s majestic mountains and deserts. “Mother Mags” is a tribute to the family dog, who passed away the week Dan signed up at Daily Kos in 2005. At least we were able to share Randy Johnson’s perfect game, and boy-howdy did we dance.

Denise Oliver-Velez is currently an adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, she currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley on a small farm with her husband, dogs, cats and roosters; growing garlic and roses, and spending time with her hobby of African-American genealogical research, when she isn’t blogging.

She has worn many hats in her life, before becoming a blogger at age 60.

She has been a political activist and community organizer, was in the Civil Rights movement, women’s movement, AIDS activism movement and was a member of both the Young Lords Party and the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She worked in community media and public broadcasting for many years and was a co-founder and program director of Pacifica’s first minority-controlled radio station, WPFW-FM, in Washington DC. She was the coordinator of CPB’s Minority and Women’s Training Grant Program and was the executive director of the Black Filmmaker Foundation.

She has published ethnographic research as part of several HIV/AIDS intervention projects and is working on a book on the women of the Young Lords Party with co-author Iris Morales.

Denise is an active participant in several Daily Kos communities as a co-editor of Black Kos, and is an editor of Latino Kos and HIV/AIDS Action.

Egberto Willies is a political activist, author, political blogger a member of the coalition executive committee of Move To Amend (MTA), vice president and member of the board of directors of Coffee Party USA, a CNN iReporter with over one million page views, a Spirit Award honoree for CNN iReport, a frequent contributor to HuffPost Live and host of the Internet radio shows, “Politics Done Right” and “Move To Amend Reports.” He is a self-employed software developer, web designer and mechanical engineer who lives in Kingwood, Texas.

Egberto is an ardent liberal who believes tolerance is essential. His favorite phrase is “political involvement should be a requirement for citizenship.” He believes that we must get away from the current policies that reward those who simply move money/capital and produce nothing tangible for our society. He believes if a change in policy does not occur, America will be no different than many oligarchic societies where a few are able to accumulate wealth while the rest are left out because it is mathematically impossible to catch up.

Frank Vyan Walton was born in the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, just one year after his “We chose to go to the moon” speech that inspired America to aim higher and reach further than any other nation, the year that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held his historic march on Washington for the rights of all and gave a speech that would be known very differently had not Mahalia Jackson shouted to the Reverend, ‘Tell Them about ‘The Dream’ Martin!” , the year that a certain Time Lord first made his appearance on the BBC and inspired many more to dream even further than could have been otherwise imagined.

He grew up in the long concrete abyss of South Central Los Angeles, among the warring factions of the Hoover Crips, the Bloods and the LAPD, watching militarized SWAT units emerge in response to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (daring to exercise their Second Amendment rights publicly while decrying both gang and police violence).

His professional career began with working in the IT division of Northrop Grumman Corporation on their “Black World” project to develop the airborne version of what Tom Clancy’s Hunt For Red October called the “ultimate first strike weapon,” the B2 stealth bomber. After leaving Northrop to become a contracting IT consultant for the state of California in the mid-‘90s, he began to write and debate on the early ARPANET and Usenet, while learning to play guitar, bass, and lead sing in various L.A., and then Sacramento rock bands. Returning home to L.A. after the George Bush and Enron-wrought financial crash, he first found, joined, and began writing about public affairs on DailyKos in 2005, inspired by the blog of an active-duty Iraq war veteran. He’s been making a lot of noise ever since, both on Daily Kos and through projects such as online site building tool, SuperEShops.com, and on his debut solo CD, “Re-Evolutionize,” released in 2008.

Georgia Logothetis is a strategist specializing in citizen lobbying, online advocacy and digital marketing. She began her political career as a blogger during the 2004 election and was later selected to be a Contributing Editor at DailyKos.com. In the spring of 2006, she was profiled in the Chicago Reader as “one of the most influential bloggers on the Internet.” As an attorney and organizer, she takes particular interest in the topics of campaign finance reform and voter protection. During the 2010 election, she served as Director of New Media for the Giannoulias for Senate campaign. She currently serves as Associate Director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council.

Along with DHinMI, Trapper John and Meteor Blades, Greg Dworkin, M.D., b. 1954, is a member of the class of 2004, although he’s been active on the site since pre-Scoop days. Areas of special interest include polling data, Iraq and bird flu.

Dr. Dworkin is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwiki.info) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links, presented in four languages and accessed from six continents. One measure of the success of the site is the 2 million visits and 10 million page views recorded since its inception, indicating a robust visit depth by its viewers. Flu Wiki has been cited for excellence by diverse sources such as Science magazine and the Harvard Business Review, and linked by local public health departments, NGOs and media sources. Dr. Dworkin has lectured on the topic of Flu Wiki and the internet at the UCLA School of Public Health and been invited to present at the Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Conference 2007 (jointly sponsored by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on Flu Wiki’s volunteer community projects.

Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years. He serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces. He holds academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Allied Health Science at Quinnipiac College. His clinical areas of expertise include respiratory illness in the pediatric population, and the implementation of asthma education programs for the public and for health professionals. He has also served on Connecticut’s statewide asthma task force and authored articles on various aspects of pediatric asthma care. He is the Course Director for the American Heart Association’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support course administered through the Danbury Hospital Community Training Center.

Dr. Dworkin received his S.B. in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his medical degree from Albany Medical College. His internship, residency, chief residency and pulmonary fellowship were completed at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, which examines the president’s rhetorical attempt to transform our national identity by making it fully and equally inclusive of all Americans.

He is professor of Historical Studies at Empire State College of the State University of New York. His initial research area was Austria-Hungary, and his first book was Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Supraethnic Austrian Identity, 1846-1918 .

Ian has published articles in Newsday, The Daily News, The New Republic, In These Times, The Post-Star, the Huffington Post and at Truthout, among other outlets. But he has been proud to call Daily Kos his blogging home since 2004. Ian is an active member of the Black Kos community, and was thrilled to be part of a Black Kos panel at Netroots Nation 2012.

Born in Queens and raised in Smithtown, Long Island, Ian has resided in New York City since 1999. Most importantly, he is a doting father of two girls and a husband who is grateful to his wife for understanding why he spends so much time on Daily Kos.

Jake McIntyre was born in 1976 and raised in Buffalo, City of No Illusions, where he attended the high school that beat Tim Russert’s alma mater 17 straight times in football. During the course of a generally undistinguished undergrad career at Cornell, Jake worked a number of dead-end summer jobs, which brought him to the realization that the labor movement was the only buffer between contemporary American society and Dickensian England. After Cornell, Jake moved to Honolulu, where he discovered love and the law. In 2001, he relocated to DC (along with fiancee and law degree), where he today works for a midsized labor union. He has a lovely wife, a beautiful son, and he is increasingly confident that the Bills will win a Super Bowl in his lifetime.

James Lambert, a team member of the Daily Kos Elections crew, became an editor at the Swing State Project in 2006, when he was promoted straight from the comments section to the front page by an apparently desperate David Nir. In addition to his time served at the helm of SSP, James worked as a research intern at Talking Points Memo in New York and as the online coordinator for the Alberta Liberal Party. James is a lawyer by training and currently works in the field of alternative dispute resolution as an adjudicator in Edmonton, Alberta.

Jon Perr is a technology marketing consultant and writer based in Portland, Oregon. He has been blogging about politics, the economy, taxes, health care, national security, foreign policy and other issues since 2004.

Jon has long been active in Democratic politics as an organizer and advisor. His past roles include co-coordinator of MassTech for Robert Reich (2002), recruiter of tech executives to support Al Gore for President (2000) and President Clinton’s call for national education standards (1997), as well as field staffer for Gary Hart for President (1984).

An executive with over 25 years of experience in end-user software, web services and mobile applications, Jon now helps his companies with corporate communications, product strategy and marketing plans. He previously served on the management teams at Ximian (later acquired by Novell), Vendavo, Intellisync (later acquired by Nokia) and Claris (now FileMaker).

Jon’s writing also appears at Perrspectives and Crooks & Liars. His work has been cited in newspapers, magazines and blogs, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Slate, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The Hill, Politico and other leading publications.

RIP

Laurence Lewis is a native Oregonian and lifelong resident of the West Coast. Always active in politics, he stuffed envelopes while in grade school, walked precincts for local candidates while in junior high, and his first paying job, in high school, was on a Congressional campaign. His first became a professional writer with a five-word poem in Rolling Stone. He writes poetry, music, all manner of drama and fiction, and also spends a lot of time with cameras.

Born in 1967, Mark E. Andersen is a U.S. Army Veteran who served during the cold war, spending two years in Wildflecken, Germany. During time spent at OP Alpha, he watched the Soviets watch us watch them (exciting duty!). He then spent the remaining two years of his time with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky.

His first experience writing was right out the the US Army in English 101, when a professor told him that he would never pass her class (he did, with a C-). That experience stopped him from writing for a good 15 or so years. He returned to school much later in life, received his Bachelor’s in 2006, and an MS in Professional and Technical Writing from the University of Wisconsin – Stout in 2012.

Mark credits his dad, a Teamster, for putting the fire in his soul for the rights of workers and the downtrodden. Both of Mark’s parents were children of the depression and instilled much of their generation’s values in him. He is the single father of a son. He joined the Daily Kos community in 2006.

Propane Jane is a pseudonymous social commentator and prominent Twitter activist focused on issues of racial and socioeconomic justice. When she isn’t starting metaphorical fires online, she serves the nation’s largest uninsured population in Houston, Texas, as an emergency and addiction psychiatrist. She is a devoted wife, mother, daughter, friend, and physician, with a passion for seeking truth and purveying light.

Shanikka is a middle-aged denizen of the California ‘Hood who some refer to as a whirling dervish since she’s always going a mile a minute. For more than 20 years, she has spent her working days as a lawyer while moonlighting as a lay philosopher, spiritual activist and – since 2004 – political blogger.

After spending most of her career representing commercial and government clients, Shanikka now concentrates exclusively on pro bono service to clients in need. Her practice emphasizes the right of the poor, working and middle class to be secure in their homes. She is also known on her California home turf as a community activist and public official.

Shanikka’s blogging has evoked her steadfast commitment to economic and racial justice while addressing a variety of subjects. Law and legal ethics, housing, economic policy, religion and spirituality, womanism and politics are regular themes. Continuing the focus of her college years, she has emphasized the role of unconscious racism (particularly American anti-Black racism) in politics and society at large. She is conscious of the need to try and propose solutions when addressing problems.

Shanikka has been a regular poster at DailyKos since 2004 and was a panelist at Netroots Nation ’10 and ‘12. She was previously a front pager at My Left Wing and the editor of her own blog (now inactive), Ma’at’s Feather, named after the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice, and order. Just to keep it real when it comes to Ma’at, she works on keeping her heart light as a feather as much as possible in her spare time through gaming, vegetable gardening and being a doting wife, mother and grandmother. That being said, she loves nothing quite so much as a fierce night on the dance floor.

Sher Watts SpoonerSher Watts Spooner has spent more than 30 years as a reporter and editor at one national weekly and three daily newspapers in three states. She has covered and edited everything from education to politics to health care and is a self-admitted political and media junkie. You might have seen her diaries at Daily Kos under the user name Molly Weasley, chosen after the Weasley mom totally kicked butt in the seventh Harry Potter book.

Sher is now a free-lance writer and editor, and handles social media for a volunteer tutoring program in Chicago. She is also the author ofThe Political Blogging Murder, the first installment of the Political Murder mystery series, and working on the sequel, Off With His Talking Head.

You can read her website, including the historical and often quirky “political murder of the day,” at http://politicalmurder.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @SherSpooner.

Stephen DarkSyde is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. As the scope of incompetence and malfeasance in the Bush Administration and the wider Neoconservative Republican Party became evident throughout 2003, Stephen began reading and writing on blogs. In short order, he rejected the existing incarnation of the GOP and joined forces with progressive bloggers. He still considers himself a political neophyte, and tends to write mostly about science and science policy, with only occasional forays into political commentary. Today, he lives in Florida near the Kennedy Space Center with his lovely wife Mrs. “DS,” a cat named Kali, and a dog named Darwin.

Steve Singiser, who now must own the fact that he is in his 40s, was born and raised in suburban Los Angeles, California. Great social studies teachers in his youth led him to a love of both history and politics. After flirting with a career in broadcasting, Steve elected to join them as a teacher instead. For many years, he has been a History and Government teacher at an L.A.-area high school; he also served as the head coach of its award-winning track and field program for a decade. Steve’s specialty is elections and campaigns, and he once won a CNN-sponsored election prediction contest in 1998. He makes his home in southern California with his wife, Kristina, and their two children, Cody and Makenzie. When not discussing politics, he is an avid sports fan and music fan who isn’t sure whether to be proud or ashamed to admit to having nearly 12,000 songs on his iPod.

Born in 1949, part of the post-war baby boom, Susan was one of the hippies that marched on the Democratic National Convention when it was held in her home town of Chicago in 1968. Her first taste of activism was not to be her last.

Moving to San Francisco in 1973, she had to do the job thing, which was pretty boring, as it was in the property/casualty insurance industry, and was only marked by her being the first woman (in every position she held). A beneficiary of the feminist movement, she paid it forward by becoming a crisis intervention counselor for victims of sexual trauma at San Francisco’s Central Emergency Hospital.

Her job took her to Southern California, where she met and married her husband of 30 years, twelve of which were spent traveling the country, playing professional tourist. It was while volunteering at Joshua Tree National Monument (now Park) that they fell in love with the Mojave Desert and bought a home there in 1994.

Shortly afterwards, Susan rallied the citizens of her new hometown to save the local library, facing budget cuts that would have limited hours. A lifetime avid reader, the thought of library cutbacks was simply not acceptable—150% of the target was raised in four months.

Later, she and her husband repeatedly lobbied Congress for a DOD earmark to fund prostate cancer research under the guidance of the National Prostate Cancer Coalition, and she became a founding board member of the California Prostate Cancer Coalition.

When not indulging in her love of travel, Susan can be found reading and writing in her desert home, carefully supervised by her cats.

Brian McFadden has been drawing the alt-weekly comic strip “Big Fat Whale” since 2001. It currently appears in The Boston Phoenix and Portland Phoenix, and has been featured in the Cleveland Scene/Free Times, Gayzette Denver, Chico Beat, Buffalo Beast, and many other publications over the past decade.

Since June 2011, he’s been drawing “The Strip,” for the New York Times’ Sunday Review, which replaced the venerable Week in Review section.

He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Eric Lewis is a cartoonist who lives in New York City. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Readymade Magazines, as well as in the Environmental Defense Fund Newsletter.

The original art for one of his New Yorker cartoons was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum. Also, one of his political cartoons was shown and read aloud on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Eric’s weekly political strip, Animal Nuz, appears exclusively on Daily Kos.

Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist and writer best known for her weekly comic “Slowpoke,” which appears in alternative newspapers around the nation. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Ms. Magazine, LA Times, Nickelodeon, and NPR.org. In 2010, Jen received a Grambs Aronson “Cartoonist With a Conscience” award, part of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism given out by Hunter College. She has also won several awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Her most recent book is Slowpoke: One Nation, Oh My God!

In 2008, Jen traveled to Denver to blog and cartoon the Democratic National Convention for her local paper, an experience that left her hankering to commit further acts of journalism. Among other side projects, she writes and illustrates occasional travel articles for The Oregonian. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she currently lives in Portland, OR. Jen is the 2014 winner of the Herblock Prize for excellence in editorial cartooning.

Keith Knight is the award-winning creator of three comic strips, the auto-biographical “K Chronicles”, the socio-political single panel “(th)ink, and “the Knight Life”, a daily strip distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

He is a recipient of the Comic-Con Inkpot Award, a Harvey Award and several Glyph Awards, and is a regular contributor to MAD Magazine. He also enjoys good BBQ.

Lalo Alcaraz is the creator of the syndicated daily comic strip, “La Cucaracha,” and is a visual artist, satirist and writer based in Los Angeles. A prolific political cartoonist, Lalo is winner of five Southern California Press Awards for Best Editorial Cartoon, and a bunch of community and government awards for being a real swell fella. He drew editorial cartoons for The LA Weekly from 1992-2010 and now draws syndicated editorial cartoons in English and Spanish for Universal Uclick. Lalo’s books include “Latino USA: A Cartoon History, 15th Anniversary Edition” (2012 by Basic Books), “Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons On Immigration, (2005) “La Cucaracha.” (2004) He’s the founder and co-host of KPFK Radio’s satirical talk show, “The Pocho Hour of Power,” heard Fridays at 4pm in L.A. on 90.7 FM & kpfk.org. Lalo is a graduate of San Diego State University (BA in Art) and UC Berkeley (Master’s in Architecture). Señor Alcaraz is a producer and writer on the Fox animated TV show “Bordertown,” executive produced by Seth MacFarlane, and a consultant for the upcoming Pixar Dia de Los Muertos themed film, “Coco”, slated for 2017. He’s working on all kinds of TV projects, so cut him some slack if his comics are late. Lalo’s work has appeared almost everywhere, because the guy’s been doing this for 25 years already, sheesh.

ulitzer Prize-winner, Mark Fiore, who the Wall Street Journal has called “the undisputed guru of the form,” creates animated political cartoons in San Francisco, where his work has been featured on the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site, SFGate.com, for over ten years. His work also appears on Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com and NPR’s web site. Fiore’s political animation has appeared on CNN, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, Salon.com and cable and broadcast outlets across the globe.

Beginning his professional life by drawing traditional political cartoons for newspapers, Fiore’s work appeared in publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times. In the late 1990s, he began to experiment with animating political cartoons and, after a short stint at the San Jose Mercury News as their staff cartoonist, Fiore devoted all his energies to animation.

Growing up in California, Fiore also spent a good portion of his life in the backwoods of Idaho. It was this combination that shaped him politically. Mark majored in political science at Colorado College, where, in a perfect send-off for a cartoonist, he received his diploma in 1991 as commencement speaker Dick Cheney smiled approvingly.

Mark Fiore was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 2010, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2004 and has twice received an Online Journalism Award for commentary from the Online News Association (2002, 2008). Fiore has received two awards for his work in new media from the National Cartoonists Society (2001, 2002), and in 2006 received The James Madison Freedom of Information Award from The Society of Professional Journalists.

Matt Bors is an editorial cartoonist and comic journalist living in Portland, OR. He has reported from Afghanistan and is the artist for the graphic novel War Is Boring. Matt is the 2012 winner of the Herblock Prize for excellence in editorial cartooning.

Ruben Bolling is the author of the weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” which is distributed by the Universal Uclick Syndicate to many newspapers.

Bolling won a 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award from The Society of Professional Journalists, for Editorial Cartooning. “Tom the Dancing Bug” is a five-time winner of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Award for Best Cartoon, and two-time nominee for the Harvey Award for Best Comic Strip.

Ruben Bolling has authored three “Tom the Dancing Bug” compilation books, and has had original comics published in such publications as The Village Voice, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Harper’s. He’s a co-host of Gweek, a BoingBoing.net podcast on popular culture, and is a frequent speaker about cartooning, humor and creativity at schools, universities and events. One of “Tom the Dancing Bug’s” popular recurring characters, “Harvey Richards, Lawyer for Children” has been sold to New Line Cinema, and Bolling is currently working on television projects.

Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife (a professor of modern political history at Yale University) and their seven year old son. His weekly cartoon, This Modern World, has appeared in Salon.com and approximately 80 papers across the country, including theVillage Voice, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and thePittsburgh Post Gazette. His cartoons have also been featured in New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, Esquire, The Economist, and numerous other publications. He was awarded the first place Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning in 1998 and again in 2003. He has also been awarded the first place Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Journalism, the first place Society of Professional Journalists’ James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and the Association for Education in Journalism Professional Freedom and Responsiblity Award. He is the author of eight cartoon anthologies and one children’s book, and in 2009 collaborated with the band Pearl Jam to create the artwork for their latest release,Backspacer. Dan is the 2013 recipient of the Herblock Prize for excellence in editorial cartooning.

Neeta Lind (aka navajo) is the Director of Community Building at Daily Kos, a position she has held since 2013. Neeta is responsible for developing projects to maximize the political effectiveness of our most valuable resource, the Daily Kos Community. She promotes the participation of Daily Kos users by creating and supervising various communities and community activities in order to build their engagement and participation on and offline. Neeta graduated from the University of Utah in 1982. She traveled extensively working in the fashion industry from 1982 to 1999. Since 1999, she has worked in the tech world at start-ups in Silicon Valley, where she lives.

Neeta is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She has been interested and involved in American Indian issues and progressive politics for many years. She has been active at Daily Kos since 2004 and has attended every Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation annual meeting since they began in 2006. In 2005, Neeta founded and currently manages SFKossacks, one of the first Daily Kos regional groups. She also formed and manages a community building series at Daily Kos that posts every morning at 7:30 AM Pacific. This series provides a forum for the development, formation and promotion of other Kossack regional groups. She is also the manager of Partners & Mentors, a group of Daily Kos volunteers who review first comments of new users and provide welcoming information to those new users. In 2010, Neeta’s blogging on American Indian topics caught the attention of Keith Olbermann, who focused two segments of “Countdown” on the winter ice storm disaster in South Dakota that devastated the Lakota Reservations. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised to help the affected tribes as a result. Neeta is the founder of Native American Netroots, an online forum raising awareness about the political, social and economic issues affecting American Indians. She has led the American Indian Caucus at Netroots Nation every year since 2006 and she is the co-editor of First Nations News & Views.

Chris Reeves has been a member of the Daily Kos community since 2004, and served as a multi-state leader for the Daily Kos community since 2013. Chris’ background has spent the last decade working with, and helping Democratic State Parties recruit, fund, and build their infrastructure. He currently serves as a member of the DNC representing Kansas, and is a member of the DNC’s Rural Council. At Daily Kos, Reeves work covering the Kansas and Missouri State houses has been cited by Columbia Journalism Review as an example of on the ground reporting of the financial difficulties in those states. He and his wife of nearly 20 years are proud parents to two children, and advocates on behalf of the mentally and physically disabled.

Colleen DeLaney (aka smileycreek) has been an avid member of the Daily Kos community since 2008. Her political education began at age 15 when she canvassed her neighborhood for Nixon but changed sides by election day and never looked back. She graduated from UC Riverside and earned her Master’s degree from Five Branches University.

Colleen helped revive the dormant Welcome New Users series and has taken part in organizing and regularly contributing to other popular community groups including Top Comments, New Diarists, New Day, Connect! Unite! Act! and has been a welcoming member of the Partners and Mentors team since its inception.

Colleen lives in the foothills of northern California with her husband paradise50 (who is equally addicted to Daily Kos) and a rotating troupe of rat terriers.

Chris Bowers joined Daily Kos in 2010 to build the email activism program, which he still manages. During his tenure, the email activism program has grown from small, one-person operation into one of the largest and most effective in the entire progressive space.

Chris started out in politics helping to organize a union for graduate student employees at Temple University in Philadelphia. After spending time working with the AFL-CIO in Chicago, IL, he became an editor at MyDD.com in 2004. In 2007, he co-founded OpenLeft.com.

Chris grew up in Liverpool, NY, and spent most of his adult life in Philadelphia, PA and Washington, DC. He currently lives in Rochester, NY with wife, Natasha Chart, and son, Linus Chart.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Alona has a demonstrated commitment to fighting for liberty and justice for all.

Prior to joining Daily Kos, Alona held positions at several progressive advocacy organizations, most recently as the MacArthur Justice Center at St. Louis’ civil rights litigation specialist. She served as the ACLU of Missouri’s communications and development associate before, during and after the Ferguson Uprising; there, she supported the litigation and legislative teams’ efforts to protect protestors’ and the media’s free speech rights, fight for LGBT marriage equality, and end racial profiling in policing, to name a few. In 2017, she was elected the affiliate’s youngest board member.

During her four years with the National Employment Law Project in Washington, D.C., Alona had the privilege of promoting and raising funds to sustain many workers’ rights initiatives, including “Ban-the-Box”and living wage campaigns.

She successfully completed the New Leaders’ Council- St. Louis Chapter’s fellowship in 2017 and is a St. Louis American Foundation 2018 Young Leader Award recipient.

Alona is a proud graduate of Howard University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology. She is a trap yoga enthusiast and sings R&B music wherever and whenever she can.

Amanda’s political career started in 2004 when she left a Cornell University research lab for Vermont. She found herself knocking on doors asking people to support the Democratic National Committee and their candidates. She soon traveled around the country asking voters to get out and vote in that critical Presidential election.

Since than she has helped elect members Congress and pass legislation to help fund environmental conservation and protect natural resources. She has worked for the founders of Ben and Jerry’s and their non-profits; TrueMajority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. She most recently was the Chief of Staff to former Governor of Vermont, Democratic National Committee Chairman and Presidential candidate; Howard Dean.

Amanda lives in Waterbury, VT with her boyfriend and dog, Jake. When she is not working you can probably find her outside – skiing, hiking, running or swimming – or enjoying a Vermont beer and some local cheese.

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Aurora had their first exposure to local politics while working with the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in college. While in grad school at Indiana University Bloomington, they ran the library for the LGBTQ+ Culture Center, providing education and resources to students and community members. Following library school, they worked for several years in Open Access scientific publishing, advocating for adoption of OA for disseminating research findings to the public

Aurora now lives in Oakland, where they pass the time drawing, jogging, and talking to all their faraway friends online.

Candelaria Vargas is from Stockton, California and has deep San Joaquin Valley roots. She previously worked on digital communications, organizing, and local capacity-building for the California Democratic Party. Candelaria’s diverse background includes numerous political campaigns as well as nonprofit communications, fundraising, and community organizing.

As a granddaughter of migrant farmworkers, a former foster child turned valedictorian, and a survivor of childhood trauma, Candelaria is driven to leverage her education and work experience to empower families and help reconstruct systems that marginalize communities.

Candelaria is also a board trustee for Stockton Unified School District, Area 7. When Candelaria isn’t working, canvassing, phone banking, or organizing, you can find her backpacking across the globe with her daughter Athena and husband Max, experimenting in the kitchen, training for her next 10k, or enjoying a glass of red wine.

A third-generation Los Angeleno, Christine holds a BA from Fordham University and an MFA from New York University, where she was a Starworks Fellow and later, a Professor of Creative Writing. Before pursuing her Master’s, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art developing family-oriented multicultural programming and events for college students. A poet, she has worked at several international journals including Guernica Magazine, The Offing, and Washington Square Review. You can read her own writing published in Narrative Magazine, Pleaides, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. In addition to Daily Kos, she is a Producer to a poetry podcast called Commonplace, where she strategizes special episodes to locate and discuss the overlap between literature and politics, tackling topics such as the hurdles of undocumented writers, climate activism and environmental poetics, and more. When she’s not at DK, she’s probably watching basketball, reading, fermenting various foods, eating anything avocado-smothered, or hiking with her partner and her border collie, Agent Dale Cooper (you can call him Coop for short).

Huiying Bernice Chan is a creative writer and community organizer from New York City with roots in the Toisanese diaspora. Huiying graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College with a B.A. in ethnic studies and education. Their organizing career began as a student spearheading a movement for ethnic studies that resulted in the creation of the college’s first Asian American Studies Program, multicultural house, and ethnic studies tenure-track faculty hires. Huiying has since organized with Seeding Change, a center for Asian American movement building, and worked on housing justice campaigns to address gentrification in immigrant communities in NYC. In 2016, Huiying was awarded a fellowship to travel to Chinatowns in eight countries around the world, researching and documenting global stories of migration and resilience across the diaspora. They have presented their work at universities and conferences internationally.

As a poet and creative non-fiction writer, Huiying is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, American Education Research Association, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and Random House. A proud water sign, they are in love with swimming, cultivating community at open mics, and scuba diving into a life that is oceanic.

Irna Landrum is a child of the bayou, a lover of large bodies of water, and a non-swimmer. She was born and bred in the New Orleans metro, with deep family roots in Vacherie, Louisiana. She graduated from Hampton University with a bachelor’s in political science and from University of Minnesota Duluth’s Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership (MAPL) program. For 13 years Irna has made her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she worked as an educator, a labor organizer, and an electoral campaign organizer, before establishing a career as a place-based organizer focused on community planning and leadership development in Saint Paul’s historic Rondo community. She has spent the last two years organizing low-income residents in South Minneapolis for economic justice. Irna is also a skilled workshop facilitator and trainer who works to challenge oppressive dynamics inside of social justice movements.

Irna is a recipient of the prestigious Emerging Writers Fellowship at the Givens Foundation for African American Literature. She is a public artist, collaborating most recently with Minneapolis vocalist Mankwe Ndosi and Bedlam Theatre in Saint Paul. Her work as a writer, artist, and organizer is driven by a profound belief in the power of community and connection. She believes we’re all far more connected than we believe. Irna once acted in a piece in which she married the entire audience every night. She has approximately 500 spouses in the Twin Cities.

Trying to find myself in you, and loving her fiercely. #RadicallyLovingColoredGirl

Born and raised on the Gulf Coast in Alabama where she currently resides with her daughter, Kimm joins the long list of JDs who have found their way to Daily Kos. She works on our activism team with our clients and partners in the leads generation program.

Kimm’s background is vast. She has worked as a consultant and project manager for organizations focused on improving the lives of women and girls of the African diaspora. She also has a background in consumer advocacy and working in legal aid–including advocating for low-income residents affected by the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill. As she began working directly with communities and organizations, she loved it, was inspired and believed the impact of her work was really effective in this capacity–politics and activism.

She has a strong commitment to improving the lives of women and girls from marginalized communities globally and works with other activists. In 2009, she launched what is known today as SheSpeaksUP! using social media to connect women of diverse backgrounds creating spaces for discussions on intersectionality and hosting virtual book club meetings with authors. In 2015, Kimm was included in a story in Essence Magazine’s “Enhance Your Career with Tech.” In her spare time, she likes to write, travel and listen to stories of other people while learning from them.

Michael grew up in the North Country of upstate New York. He was (and still is) a giant nerd with an unhealthy appetite for comic books—especially Chris Claremont-era X-Men stories—local craft beer, and all things Madonna. He studied journalism at St. Michael’s College in Vermont and was Political Director at Howard Dean’s Democracy for America before joining Daily Kos. There, he oversaw the organization’s endorsement program, field operations, and online campaigns, including fundraising.

Today, Michael lives in Portland, Maine, with his dog Ezekiel.

Born and raised in a union family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mike has always been fascinated by progressive politics and social movements. With a focus on building power at the local level, for several years he served as Co-Chair/Elections Chair of Progressive Dane, guiding various issue and electoral campaigns in the Madison, Wi/Dane County region.

Since then Mike has worked in various roles for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and YWCA Madison, in leadership positions with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Wisconsin New Leaders Council and as contributing writer for various publications, primarily writing on racial and economic justice. Before joining Daily Kos, he worked for Tony Evers campaign for WI Governor, focusing on building relationships with grassroots organizations and communities of color.

A lifelong Badgers/Packers/Brewers/Bucks fan, Mike currently resides in the hostile territory of the Chicago area. In his spare time, he plays and watches soccer, visits museums (while providing snarky commentary about their exhibits), and milly rocks to Banda at block parties.

Monique began organizing as a career while attending college—working on city and statewide issues and for progressive candidates ranging from former Ashland City Councilor, Cate Hartzell to Oregon’s current Governor, Kate Brown. For the 2010 election, she organized voter registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts on over 100 campuses resulting in more than 70,000 registered voters.

She joined Daily Kos after three years with Democracy for America where she trained, recruited and developed activists, organizers and candidates in grassroots tactics and strategy. A faithful Texpatriot, Monique currently resides in Oregon and in her downtime you will find Monique playing Trivial Pursuit with her grandparents, baking or hiking the glorious Pacific Northwest.

Paul Hogarth grew up in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago, where he lived down the street from Barack Obama. While attending college at UC Berkeley, he started a “Wellstone for President” website in 1997 to recruit the Senator to run. After graduating, Paul was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board—and worked at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a housing non-profit in San Francisco.

He started reading Daily Kos in 2003, while volunteering on Howard Dean’s campaign. After finishing law school in 2006, Paul became the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron—a blog that covers news and politics ignored by the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote extensively for years about affordable housing, state & local budget battles and the Proposition 8 fight. In 2009 and 2012, he organized campaign volunteers who traveled to Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington to pass marriage for same-sex couples.

Paul lives in San Francisco with his baby-grand piano, and is a die-hard Giants fan.

Rachel was born in the Buckeye state, in southwestern Ohio, where her progressive world view was formed during her childhood and solidified after the 2004 elections. She followed the Script Ohio to a BA in Political Science and Mass Media Communications for Social Issues, which believe it or not, was a field of study at The Ohio State University that she did not have to make up.

Rachel served as field director for Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, working on electoral and issue politics on campaigns in OH, KY, IN, TN, DE, PA and VA. After working in the field, she moved her organizing work online as organizing and communications manager at the Media and Democracy Coalition where she worked on communication rights, media and technology policy.

Rachel has also worked with the New Organizing Institute as a teaching fellow and has held various volunteer positions, including campaign network chair at WIN- the Women’s Information Network and a 2012 fellowship with the DC Chapter of the New Leader’s Council.

Rachel has volunteered for many Ohio politicians, including Mary Jo Kilroy, Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland. While running field campaigns, she worked on uncoordinated campaigns for too many endorsed candidates to list.

Sarah Hogg is a queer femme feminist with a deep love for abortion funding, practicing radical tenderness and community care, and progressive politics. Sarah got her start in organizing at James Madison University, where she worked on President Obama’s reelection campaign - and the rest is history! Since then, Sarah has worked for numerous progressive political candidates and reproductive rights organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.

Sarah currently lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. In addition to her work with Daily Kos, Sarah serves as the Vice Chair of the Carolina Abortion Fund, where she’s found a radical, loving home in the South. She is also a soprano in the North Carolina Master Chorale. When Sarah isn’t at work, helping people fund their abortions, or singing, you can find her reading, drinking chai, and looking up adoptable dogs on Petfinder with her partner.

Steven is from Newport News, Virginia and has deep Southeast Virginia roots. He previously worked in field operations for several political and issue based campaigns along the east coast. As the son of an immigrant, he is acutely aware of the issues marginalized communities face on a daily basis. Steven’s background is in computer science. However, he has a pretty large politically active family and has always been active in progressive politics. He made the full time transition into politics 5 years ago. He is also a dual German and American citizen.

Steven’s mission it to fight socially and economically deprived everyday.

Jason Libsch is a technologist with a deep love for the creative and expressive aspects of information technology. He studied computer science at Wesleyan University and pursued a Masters in Art and Technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. As an Exhibit Developer at the Exploratorium he crafted new media and embedded electronics into exhibits which provide visitors access to inspiring natural phenomena. After working at the museum, he moved on to the internet startup world where he served as Software Architect, Technical Lead and Founder at venture backed startups, and from there to the design world as Directory of Digital Development. If he’s not online, he is in the shop in his basement soldering up circuit boards or fumbling his way through woodworking projects.

Adrian began his career working at Symantec in Santa Monica after high-school and transitioned early to an operations specialty. As an Engineer he values discussion on design and workflow. Adrian feels sentimental about pre-social-media internet, 90’s alternative rock and coastal life.

Andrew loves turning raw data buried in spreadsheets, text files, and databases into a compelling story through data visualization. He is a firm believer that effective data visualization can empower and enlighten. He is the co-author of a book on D3.js, his weapon of choice, and also organizes the D3.js Meetup in Austin,TX. After graduating with an engineering degree, Andrew held several data-centric positions in the manufacturing and tech industries. He has spent the last several years moonlighting in data visualization, focused mainly on open government data in Austin. He is beyond excited that his passions have converged here at the Daily Kos.

Born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in the suburbs of the Motor City, Anne has mid-western roots with California branches. She earned a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in photography from Mills College in Oakland, California and an M.B.A from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Before joining Daily Kos, she held a series of positions in the Tech and Finance industries in the Bay Area and New York City. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Bram Swenson, Still seeking the answer to the age old question “What makes a man?”. Finding his calm and center via paternal responsibilities, and Songs of the Whale; Though sometimes he finds himself wondering if his teenage children are in fact Nihilists. Strongly preferring Aeropress Coffee to any Sarsaparilla. Never losing his briefcase, and always keeping it full of fresh Rubies, Pythons and JavaScript. Approaching DevOps as a natural, zesty enterprise since the late 90’s. Consistently professing the values of abiding to best practices. Previously known to have dabbled in pacifism, giving it up having been unable to control his extreme distaste for the Eagles. Now I’m just rambling. Ah hell, I’ve done introduced him enough.

Originally from Augusta, GA, Brandon studied Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and then entered the world of digital creativity through NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He is passionate about critical approaches to technology and politics, but believes that lasting transformation must be driven equally by culture. In his spare time, Brandon can be found dancing Cuban salsa, training capoeira, practicing the piano, or watching European soccer.

Casey is an infrastructure and network engineer based out of North Carolina. While not pulling apart random bits of broken electronics and trying to fix them or making parts on a 3d printer, he works behind the scenes on the bits of the internet that you don’t see. He has 15 years of experience making servers and networks faster, more resilient, and easier to use to make sure all the cat gifs get to you as quickly as possible.

After a few years of lurking on Daily Kos and Street Prophets, Catherine finally took the plunge and signed up at the very end of 2008 as peregrine kate. It didn’t take her long to get deeply involved, particularly after a serious health crisis in early 2011 upended her life. Motivated to reach out to a community that would become an important part of her support and recovery, peregrine kate founded the Monday Night Cancer Club in 2011 and the Motor City Kossacks in 2012. She was honored to be a Democracy for America scholar to Netroots Nation 12, in Providence, thanks in large part to the efforts of Daily Kos members who helped her secure the necessary exposure and votes. When NN14 happened in Detroit, she was happy to return the favor by volunteering on the host committee and sponsoring two panels about her beloved and beleaguered hometown. She has been a Daily Kos State Leader for Michigan since the summer of 2015.

A lifelong resident of Michigan, mostly in or near Detroit, Catherine has had a varied work life. Her jobs along the way have included short stints as busgirl, janitor, assembly line worker, day care provider, and women’s self-defense instructor. Longer term, she held positions with the National Lawyers’ Guild, Detroit Chapter, and a pilot legal-services referral agency for people with HIV/AIDS in the early 1990s. More recently, she spent almost twenty years in academia, teaching courses in composition, argumentation, U.S. history, politics, and women’s studies both before and after obtaining her Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. Her latest job was as a union organizer of non-tenure-track faculty at a Research I institution.

Catherine is the mother of two daughters, one an attorney living and working in Detroit and the other a college undergraduate living at home. During most of their childhoods, she was a single mother. Currently, she is the co-chair of her county’s Democratic Party Precinct Organizing Committee and a member of the county party Executive Board. In her copious spare time, she likes to garden, go birding, sing in choirs, and travel.

After graduating from the California Institute of Technology in Engineering & Applied Science, Elaine Lindelef began her career working as a staff engineer on NASA’s Mars Observer Camera, a next-generation lightweight low-cost orbital digital camera, which was launched aboard NASA’s Mars Observer and Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. As part of Altadena Instruments, a small leading-edge engineering firm with an active consulting relationship with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, she developed innovative packaging and structural designs for a variety of small, light, and sophisticated prototype instruments both for NASA and commercial applications.

When the World Wide Web emerged as the world’s next platform, she helped found one of the first companies to build Web applications, back in the days when the first half of the sale was explaining what the internet was. Since then, she has come to love the power of databases and information technology as tools to help people communicate, problem-solve, and share information. She brings a firm philosophy to any project that technology is made to serve people, not vice-versa.

Elaine lives in Northern California, in a place where you can see the stars at night. She has served as a member of her local school board, and is also an accomplished sculptor.

John Glass started out as a teacher of English and journalism at the high school level, but he made a career switch in 2009 when he became a software developer. He loves building things for the internet and, in hindsight, finds it hard to believe that it took him until he was in his forties to figure out that writing code is what he should be doing with his life. His interests include progressive politics, boardgames, and spreading his love for free and open source software. He lives with his wife and two boys in the Santa Cruz mountains.

An erstwhile adventure-seeker, Joshua Morris was born and raised in middle Tennessee. As a child, he was fortunate to have access to a Panasonic Senior Partner with 128K of RAM. Starting with BASIC at the age of 11, he then branched out to dabble in C, Java, and eventually Ruby. With a burgeoning interest in politics, he became the first man to major in Women’s Studies at Purdue University. Thereafter, he relocated to California to pursue a career in software.

In 2008, he spent a year in Tokyo studying Japanese language and culture.

Joshua has a reputation for innovative and sound code. His most noticed project on Github is “skadi,” an open-sourced, Python-language game replay file parser for the popular online game “Dota 2.”

Born in 1987, Kelli is a proud Detroit native and works as a Project Manager with Daily Kos. She relishes opportunities to convene like-minds, create and implement strategy and looks forward to working with partners to make real change possible.

Since receiving her BA in Sociology from Columbia University in 2009, she has been involved in a variety of spaces doing work focused on reproductive health and social justice. From clinical research to policy advocacy and organizing, from education and capacity building to consulting for a racial justice organization, Kelli’s unswerving dedication to underserved communities radiates as the underlying motivation for her work. Eight months after leaving New York to volunteer with community-based organizations in Haiti and Guatemala, Kelli finally realized her long time dream of moving to Los Angeles where she gleefully checks the weather each morning with a smile on her face.

In her free time, she enjoys solving esoteric acronyms, watching bad horror movies and writing short stories. Her gender pronouns are she/her/ella.

Latoya AllenLaToya Allen is a 2 time college drop out who started picking up programming books in 2012. Since then she has worked at Rails shops who prioritize best practices, testing, and the use of functional programming.

LaToya has worked with organizations such as Girls Who Code, Girl Develop It, ChicagoRuby, and WindyCityRails, to make tech more inclusive. In the past, she has spoken at conferences, such as Write/Speak/Code, and RailsConf.

LaToya is also the founder of SheNomads. When she’s not working, LaToya can be found traveling, kickboxing, writing, or playing around with her favorite programming language, Clojure.

Meagan Waller is a software developer based out of the Tampa Bay area, with a passion for making the tech industry more empathetic and inclusive. Having studied fine art education before beginning her career in software development, Meagan carried that passion for teaching into her new profession. As part of the Girls Who Code program, she taught weekly classes on JavaScript to a class of high school girls at the Chicago Tech Academy. She has given multiple talks around the country, from learning how to cope with failure and foster safe learning environments to how to build a custom Ruby web framework using Rack and hand-rolled middleware. She’s also been published in Model View Culture, a woman-owned publication focused on the intersections of culture, diversity, and technology. When she’s not writing code, she’s probably re-watching an episode of Buffy, reading comics, or taking her miniature Australian Shepherds, Ada and Toki, to the dog park.

Nate Jackson started his programming career in Chicago, when Obama was still a senator. The campaign in 2008 ignited his interest in progressive politics. He then saw how much could be accomplished with good technical leadership supporting informed policy and campaigning. Since that time, he has built numerous products for companies and startups, but was most excited to join Daily Kos in 2016.

Nate has a passion for clean code, and simple system architectures. He mostly programs in Ruby and Javascript, but likes to explore functional languages in his spare time. Nate lives with his wife and two dogs in a small town near Portland OR. When he’s not working they enjoy restoring their victorian house, and taking long hikes with their dogs.

Susan is a distributed systems engineer straddling technical operations and engineering helping make data and service infrastructure operationally manageable at scale. Over the last eighteen years she has worked on algorithmic trading systems, market data software, multi-tenant service oriented architecture, and continuous delivery. Susan likes bad pop music, abstract mathematics, and Orange Is The New Black (the latter far too much).

Valerie grew up in rural North Carolina where her love of computers started around 5 th grade when her mom purchased a Commodore 64 for her and her siblings. After creating her first BASIC program, she was hooked. Fast forward several years and languages later, Valerie realized her gifts were in breaking code, more than creating it. Throughout her career, Valerie has held positions within Government-contracting areas from Software Tester, Systems Admin, Integration Engineer and Systems Engineer.

Valerie is passionate about uplifting and encouraging others through the power of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. In 2014, she started STEMoneers, a free STEM-focused summer program for youth in disenfranchised areas of North Alabama, where she and other volunteers provide activities, resources and educational materials to highlight professional fields accessible with STEM knowledge. Valerie believes a STEM education should be available to every child regardless of any economic, societal or environmental barriers.

Valerie also serves as a mentor with Women’s Economic Development Council and as a board member with The Cornerstone Initiative non-profit. In her downtime, she enjoys taking black & white film photographs and making prints in her traditional darkroom.

Valerie has BS and MS degrees in CIS. She is married and the mother of two young adult children; her son serves in the US Army Reserves and her daughter is an art major in college. Valerie resides in Huntsville, AL.

Wai Lee Chin Feman grew up in the suburbs outside of Boston. His first encounter with programming was in high school, where he struggled through an introductory course. He occasionally wrote computer programs in college, where he studied mathematics and philosophy, and started programming professionally after graduation.

Wai Lee has worked with a wide variety of platforms, and is enthusiastic about Functional Programming; he firmly believes that elegance plays a crucial role in writing correct software. He has spent most of his career building e-commerce platforms, but is always looking for ways to use software to tangibly improve people’s lives.

When he isn’t writing code, you can find Wai Lee reading science fiction, running, baking, or traveling.

Yi was born and educated in China. After graduating from Nankai University, he moved to the USA for a Masters degree in Computer Science. Yi is a Senior Software Developer in leading and contributing to projects designed to enhance system functionality and end-user productivity. He is passionate about the quality of software he builds.

Yi likes outdoor activities, he plays soccer regularly, and travels around to see the nature’s beauty.

Joseph is a seasoned software engineer raised on the edge of the Midwest but now resides in the Seattle area. He has built applications and systems across many industries (retail, consumer, education, semiconductor, analytics) and is interested in user experience, APIs, distributed systems, state machines, and data visualization. After living a majority of his childhood in poverty, Joseph is dedicated to blending his professional and personal interests in order to help others along their own paths and to affect change against the decades of erosion to our social safety net.

Faith is a California native who comes from a long line of journalists and liberals. In 2010 she graduated from UC Berkeley and has been lucky enough to work at Daily Kos since 2009. She’s also an accomplished short story writer and novelist and plays in the band Dark Beach. She lives in Richmond, California with her husband, daughters, and cat.

Jennifer began reading Daily Kos in 2004 and became a Contributing Editor in 2007. She’s previously managed many Daily Kos events, including The Big Tent at the DNC convention in 2008. In recent years she’s been focused on finding interesting content for Daily Kos’ growing audience, helping to start the trending news department at Daily Kos.

Jennifer is from Kansas City and can often be found in the stands, cheering on the Kansas Jayhawks and Sporting KC.

Though currently based in Southern California, Jessica Sutherland is a proud native of Ohio, where she grew up wide awake in a sleepy southwest suburb of Cleveland. After graduating with a BA in Mass Communication (with minors in marketing and graphic design) from Cleveland State University in 2006, Jessica then relocated to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Since earning her MFA in 2010, Jessica has worked in development and production for the studio arms of companies like Amazon and Yahoo!, among others, and was a member of the founding team of The Establishment.

In 2013, she co-founded Homeless to Higher Ed, a nonprofit mentorship program dedicated to normalizing the college experience for homeless students aged 18-24. Beyond her work with H2H and Daily Kos, Jessica also is a frequent speaker and presenter at educational conferences.

When she’s not working, Jessica can be found baking elaborate desserts that she immediately gives away to other people, yelling at a television about Cleveland sports teams, and/or playing with her absolutely perfect dog, Lucy McClane. (Yes, that’s a Die Hard reference.)

Born in 1975, Walter grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. He went to Central Park East, in east Harlem, a part of the coalition for essential schools–created by Deborah Meier. Walter graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997 (the class gift at the time was a free e-mail account). After college he worked as a photographer, a Photo Editor and finally an Editor at MTV Books. Joining the Daily Kos feels like coming home to his radicalized formative years, where marches, police misconduct, attacks on education and labor, are all worth fighting for because the people you are fighting with are right and can use logic and humanism to do so.

Marissa Higgins is a queer writer and editor based in DC. Before joining the Daily Kos, she was an editor for Green Matters and Distractify. She previously wrote for Bustle and the Daily Dot. Her freelance work appears in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Slate, NPR, Teen Vogue, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere.

Common themes in her work include income inequality, queer issues, women’s health, and how food intersects class and culture. Her personal essays have appeared in Guernica, Salon, Racked, Catapult, and beyond. Her essay on food, poverty, and grief, which originally appeared in Catapult, was selected as a winner of the Best American Food Writing 2018. She is working on a book of essays.

Featured writer Dartagnan has a background in English literature, journalism and law. He has been involved as a volunteer in various Democratic campaigns for local and national candidates since handing out leaflets for Gary Hart in 1984, and he began writing personally about social and political issues around the age of thirteen. He generally worships at the altar of Joseph Conrad and Joan Didion.
The common thread—if there is one—running through all his work is a visceral distaste for bullies in whatever form they manifest themselves. He is seriously thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to write for everyone who comes here for perspective, information and support.

When he is not writing or otherwise working, he can often be found in front of a stove cooking something novel or exotic, usually with a glass of wine within a predetermined radius. A near-native Pennsylvanian, he divides his time between the East Coast, his family, and his smartphone.

First Amendment is a pseudonymous for a longtime political activist, who experienced the impact of the social safety net rescuing his family from poverty. He was raised by a single mother, who taught him the importance of fairness and social justice in our society. He’s currently semi-retired and still fighting back against those who want to leave the less fortunate behind.

Leslie Salzillo is a writer, activist, artist and former music publisher. She began contributing to Daily Kos in 2012 after helping create the national boycott against Rush Limbaugh that caused over 3,000 sponsors to pull ads from his “hate radio” show. The boycott cost him ratings, stations, millions in revenue, and his dominant voice on air.

For 25 years Salzillo has marched and lobbied in DC for womens rights. Her goal in writing/activism is to give voice to the voiceless and expose American detriments like Donald Trump, GOP, racism, sex trafficking, and election hacking. She rallied with Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays, and marched with the likes of President Obama and John Lewis in remembrance of Bloody Sunday. She met and still supports Hillary Clinton and sat in court and marched with Rev. William Barber. In 2015, Salzillo experienced a life highlight when she when met Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

Her art has been shown in the U.S. and France. Several pieces commissioned by author Dan Ariely bring attention to human rights. Using her her B.S. Degree from MTSU, she started a music publishing company helping artists like Garth Brooks break through, while securing over 300 songs with artists including Bonnie Raitt, Fatih Hill, Heart and Etta James. For 10 years Salzillo produced The Songwriters Benefit to Prevent Child Abuse with the last show bringing in legendary songwriters to perform at the Ryman in Nashville.

Her writing, art and music send out messages to the public giving her a sense of “doing,” but her family and loved ones—are her lifeline.

SemDem is a pseudonymous activist/writer who works deep within the military industrial complex in Orlando. He is an Air Force Security Forces veteran, and served in a Pentagon-designated combat zone in the Middle East. He ran a political blog in Florida until he became a Featured Writer for DailyKos in December 2015. @theSemDem is known for shining the spotlight on outrageous corruption–in particular, the conservative meth lab that is his home state. He subscribes to the belief that it is the job of every journalist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He is honored to be writing alongside some of his biggest heroes on this site fighting for change.

Will Johnson is the senior vice president for advertising strategy at DailyKos. Prior to joining DailyKos, Will held a similar position at Talking Points Memo. Earlier in his career, Will served as the vice president of sales at NGP VAN, the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations, where he led the sales team in an expansion of their digital footprint among top tier political campaigns. Before joining NGP VAN, Will served as a senior director at Bully Pulpit Interactive where he helped lead new business and strategic initiatives for the firm’s non-profit and political clients. Prior to joining BPI, Will was a director of partnerships and business development at Change.org, where he secured more than $15 million in client revenue that was instrumental in helping the firm receive a multi-million dollar venture capital investment. Throughout his career, Will has relied on a broad background in the public, private, and non-profit sectors to help clients engage in the digital space.

Jonaya is a Bay Area native with an expansive amount of experience in the fine art of administrative magic. She has a knack for process improvement, seeking out inefficiencies and finding ways to make things better. She has supported organizations in education administration, procurement, project management, marketing, event planning, and contract administration.

Jonaya is a fan of local sports teams and when she is not working—she might be found with a dog & a beer cheering from the grandstand, creating art, writing poetry, hiking, or exploring near or far.

Carolyn Fiddler is a spokesperson for Daily Kos and directs the organization’s external and internal communications. She also writes This Week in Statehouse Action, a newsletter covering state-level politics and elections nationwide. For media inquiries, please contact press@dailykos.com.

Fiddler has worked in state politics for the better part of a decade, most recently as the national communications director at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). She previously worked as political communications director for The Atlas Project and as a strategic communications specialist with the American Federation of Teachers after her initial stint at DLCC as communications director and a couple of years with Media Matters for America, where she was director of external affairs. Fiddler graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Arkansas with a B.A. in international relations and political science, and she received her J.D. from the College of William & Mary. Prior to law school, Fiddler worked for the Democratic Party of Virginia. She’s from a small town in Virginia you’ve never heard of, and her comic book collection is probably bigger than yours.

Bouapha Toommaly, a Bay Area native— by way of Laos and Thailand— has spent over 20 years in a variety of national and local social change, social service, and governance organizations as an agent of change. Bouapha began her career as a Youth Organizer at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), where she worked with young women in the Laotian community to organize around environmental justice issues in Richmond, CA. While with APEN, she led the organization of the youth component of the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 2002 in Washington DC. After the summit, she stayed in DC to work on trade and agriculture issues, focusing on the impacts of free trade agreements on small/minority farmers and farm workers within the Rural Coalition.

Bouapha has also worked on various political campaigns including the 2004 Kerry-Edwards Victory Campaign, the 2006 Ronald V. Dellums Oakland Mayoral campaign and most recently the 2008 Obama-Biden Presidential campaign. In recent years, she discovered the love for gardening and her green thumb which she continues to develop via the prolific urban garden on her balcony. She’s constantly on the lookout for more seeds to grow and plants to give away less there’s no more walking room on the balcony. On her off time you will most likely find her either in her garden, watching the Warriors, or sipping a glass of wine with friends.