High School Program | New York City Speakers
A Sampling of the Speakers Available for your Classroom:
The following organizations, filmmakers and activists are available to speak to classes in the New York City metropolitan area. For schools outside of New York City, Program Manager Jen Nedbalsky can offer some tips on finding appropriate speakers in your area.
Organizations:
Break the Cycle
Break the Cycle is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage, educate and empower youth to build lives and communities free from dating and domestic violence.
Campaign for Fiscal Equity
Founded in 1993, The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation, is a coalition of parent organizations, community school boards, concerned citizens, and advocacy groups. We seek to reform New York State's school finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. Our efforts will also help secure the same opportunity for students throughout the state who are not currently receiving a sound basic education.
Educational Video Center
Educational Video Center is a not-for-profit media education center that teaches documentary video and media literacy to youth, educators and community organizers. EVC's mission is dedicated to the creative and community-based use of video and multi-media as a means to develop the literacy, research and public speaking and work preparation skills of at-risk youth.
FIERCE!
FIERCE! is a community organizing project for Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Queer, and Questioning (TLGBTSQQ) youth of color in New York City. We are dedicated to exploring and building power in our communities through a mix of leadership development, artistic and cultural activism, political education, and campaign development while taking care of ourselves and each other. We take on the institutions that perpetuate transphobia, homophobia, racism, ethnic conflict, gender bias, economic injustice, ageism, and the spread of HIV, STIs, STDs, and other mental and physical health crises - that make daily survival a terrifying challenge for many TLGBTSQQ youth. FIERCE organizes against the injustices of the criminal "justice" system, housing, employment, education, and healthcare systems.
Global Action Project
Since 1991, Global Action Project (G.A.P.) has provided media arts and leadership training for thousands of young people living in underserved communities, from New York to Croatia to Guatemala to the Middle East and beyond. Our mission is to provide youth with the knowledge, tools, and relationships they need to create powerful, thought-provoking media on local and international issues that concern them, and to use their media as a catalyst for dialogue and social change.
Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth
Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth (LIGALY) is a bi-county (Nassau and Suffolk) not-for-profit agency which offers education, advocacy, and social support services to Long Island's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) youth and young adults, and all youth, young adults, and families for whom sexuality, sexual identity, gender identity, and HIV/AIDS are an issue.
New Immigrant Community Empowerment
New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) is a cross-cultural, non-profit organization that uses organizing, advocacy, and public education to ensure that new immigrants are active, informed, and influential in civic, governmental and public affairs. Central to NICE's mission is challenging the access gap between recent immigrant communities and government, seeking systemic solutions to improving immigrants' voting rights, full language access, health care, and workplace protections under local, state and federal laws.
Prison Moratorium Project
The Prison Moratorium Project is a Brooklyn- based organization dedicated to the abolition of all prisons. Part of the larger anti-prison movement, it seeks a revolution in thinking about crime and punishment, rather than just reforms to an already broken system that is currently locking up more than 2 million people, most of whom are poor Black and Latino men. Prison Moratorium Project (PMP ) founded in 1995, is comprised of activists, community members and formerly incarcerated people.
Paper Tiger Television
Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) is an open, non-profit, volunteer video collective. Through the production and distribution of our public access series, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the corporate control of mainstream media. PTTV believes that increasing public awareness of the negative influence of mass media and involving people in the process of making media is mandatory for our long-term goal of information equity.
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn our grief into action for peace. By developing and advocating nonviolent options and actions in the pursuit of justice, we hope to break the cycles of violence engendered by war and terrorism. Acknowledging our common experience with all people affected by violence throughout the world, we work to create a safer and more peaceful world for everyone.
Witness
WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice. Over the past decade, WITNESS has partnered with groups in more than 60 countries, bringing often unseen images, untold stories and seldom heard voices to the attention of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- catalyzing grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change.
Ya-Ya Network
The Ya-Ya Network is a citywide anti-racist, LGBTQ-friendly network staffed by young activists. We work with other youth, adult allies, youth programs & activist organizations. We help groups & individuals connect. We share information & resources & we support the work that other groups are doing. All to build a stronger voice for young people in the movement for social & economic justice.
Filmmakers and Activists:
Kelly Anderson
Director, Every Mother's Son
Kelly Anderson is an award-winning independent producer and director of
documentary and narrative films/videos. Her most recent production is
EVERY MOTHER'S SON, a documentary for ITVS about mothers whose children
have been killed by police officers and who have become national
spokespeople on the issue of police brutality, which she produced and
directed (with Tami Gold) and edited. EVERY MOTHER'S SON premiered at
the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Audience
Award, and aired on PBS' national P.O.V. series, which garnered it a
nomination for an Emmy Award in the category "Outstanding Individual
Achivement in a Craft: Directing."
Michael Bochenek
Human Rights Watch
Michael Bochenek is deputy director of the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, and has been with the division since 1998. He has researched and written on detention conditions for youth, child labor, treatment of migrant children, discrimination against gay and lesbian students, and the use of children as soldiers.
Anthony Giacchino
Director, Camden 28
Anthony Giacchino has been working as a producer in television and documentary filmmaking since 1994. The Camden 28 is the first feature-length documentary he has directed. Anthony has also produced studio-based content and documentaries for The History Channel. As a freelance producer for the network, he has produced THC's Sunday-morning talk shows, HistoryCENTER and Hardcover History, as well as its primetime series History vs. Hollywood and a variety of specials covering topics from the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC to the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
Tami Gold
Director, Every Mother's Son and Another Brother
Tami Gold is an educator and visual artist who began working in media in the
early 1970's in the Newsreel Film Collective of the anti-Vietnam War movement. She became a filmmaker when she was 20 years old (over 30 years ago) in hope that her films could have an impact on social change. Many of Tami's documentaries have been broad/cable cast on PBS and HBO. For over 17 years she has had the wonderful opportunity to share her experiences and educate young media makers at Hunter College (CUNY).
Rachel Grady
Director, The Boys of Baraka
The co-director of the critically acclaimed documentary "The Boys of Baraka," Rachel is a private investigator turned filmmaker. Grady has produced and directed numerous non-fiction films for The Discovery Channel, A & E and Britain's Channel 4. She has directed several films that focus on a mental illness including "Mad Justice," a verité documentary that looks at the troubling fate of mentally ill parolees and "Ward 2 West," shot on location at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Hospital on New York's Ward's Island. She also was the Series Producer for "TX" an eight part series for VH1 filmed entirely in a drug rehab. She is currently co-directing her second documentary feature, "Jesus Camp." Rachel is the co-founder of Loki Films.
Mie Lewis
Human Rights Watch
Mie Lewis is the Aryeh Neier Fellow with the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch and the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mie conducts research and advocacy concerning the U.S. juvenile justice system. Previously, as a New Voices fellow, Mie represented survivors of human trafficking, advocating for their rights as immigrants and workers. Mie has served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Judge Susan Y. Illston of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and has also served a clerkship at the Legal Advisory Section of the International Criminal Court, Office of the Prosecutor. Mie earned her J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School in 2000.
Alison Maclean
Director, Persons of Interest
Born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, Alison Maclean began her career making a number of short films, including "Kitchen Sink" (1989), which won eight international awards.Her first feature, "Crush" (1992), staring Marcia Gay Harden, was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1999, Alison directed the critically acclaimed "Jesus' Son" starring Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton, which won the Baby Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Her film "Persons of Interest" is included in the Human Rights Watch International High School Program.
Tara Mateik
Director, Toilet Training
Tara Mateik is an artist and educator living in New York City. As the founder of the Society for Biological Insurgents, or SBI (pronounced /spi/), an embryonic cell organization that seeks to overthrow institutions of compulsory gender, Mateik released mutinous biological agents in his work. Mateik's radical passion is partly inspired by his celebrated work with Paper Tiger Television, a well-established non-profit video collective. As Coordinating Director at PTTV Mateik advocated for alternative media production and distribution initiatives that worked to demystify and democratize media. His video works include Toilet Training: Law and Order and in the Bathroom (with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project), Operation Invert and PYT.
Bernadine Mellis
Director, The Forest for the Trees
Tobias Perse
Director, Persons of Interest
Tobias has written for television and magazines, including Rolling Stone, where he was an editor for four years. In 1999 he directed a documentary, "BALD."He is currently developing a documentary about one of the "Persons of Interest" detainees who was deported to Palestine shortly after the film was completed.Tobias is writing the screenplay adaptation of Martin Clark's novel, "The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Live." He co-wrote "Not Iris" with Alison Maclean. His film "Persons of Interest" is included in the Human Rights Watch International High School Program
Clara Pressler
Human Rights Watch
Clara Presler works as the Associate for the HIV/AIDS Division at Human Rights Watch. Previously, she was an intern in HRW's Women's Rights Division. Clara worked for the League of Conservation Voters' grassroots presidential campaign in 2004 as Field Director in Portland, Oregon. Additionally, Clara has wide experience in the classroom-she led Spanish classes for college students for three years and assistant taught in a Montessori elementary school and day care.
Cleo Silvers
Cleo Silvers is a life long revolutionary and defender of working people, the poor and oppressed. Cleo is a former member of the Black Panther Party, The Young Lords Party , The Black Workers Congress she is currently with the Committee for Workers Self Defense and Workers to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Cleo began her years as an activist and community organizer in 1966, when she learned through a baptism of the fires of the struggles in the 1960's, just what it means to commit your life to fighting to change a society that is conceived out of injustice and oppression. She is now fighting for the freedom of many of her comrades who fought along with her and were captured and incarcerated. All of them victims of the vicious CointelPro plot by the government. Cleo now in her early fifties still believes that revolution is the only solution. She urges our youth to study more to learn more to fight more effectively and to win the change we need for a better life for every person living on the planet.
Bennett Singer
Director, Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
Bennett Singer is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and book editor. He and
co-director Nancy Kates spent five years researching and producing Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Singer served as a producer/director of With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America and as an Associate Producer for the Emmy- and Peabody-winning Eyes on the Prize II (both broadcast nationally on PBS). For eight years, he was Executive Editor of TIME Magazine's Education Program, where he developed print and video materials for use in high school classrooms.
Jessica Stern
Human Rights Watch
Jessica Stern is a researcher in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program of Human Rights Watch. She has been a policy analyst, community organizer, researcher and author on LGBT rights, women's rights and poverty for organizations such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Urban Justice Center, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. She was a founding collective member of Bluestockings, the only women's bookstore and feminist community center in New York City. She was the Ralph Bunche Fellow in Amnesty International's LGBT Rights Program, where she researched
for and co-coordinated the development of the report Stonewalled: Police Misconduct against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the U.S. She sits on the Board of Directors of Queers for Economic Justice, an organization that works at the intersection of queer liberation and economic justice. She joined Human Rights Watch in the fall of 2005 and recently co-authored the HRW report "Family Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under U.S. Law".
Catherine Tambini
Director, Farmingville
Catherine Tambini's credits include co-producing the Oscar-nominated documentary, "Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse," producing director Richard Kaplan's "Varian and Putzi: A Twentieth Century Tale," and the off-Broadway play, "Two Good Boys." Tambini has also worked as a production manager on HBO's "Connie & Ruthie, Every Room in the House," and on the documentary, "Best Man." She assisted in the production design of such well-known Hollywood films as "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," "True Colors," "Steel Magnolias," and "The Secret of My Success."
Blanca Vasquez
Advisor, Every Mother's Son and Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'Que To Lo Sepas (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know)
Blanca Vazquez is an adj. assistant professor in the Film and Media Studies Department at Hunter College, City University of New York. She has been a researcher, interviewer and advisor on various film projects including "Every Mother's Son" (Tami Gold and Kelly Anderson); Rosie Perez's "Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'Que To Lo Sepas (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know); St. Clair Bourne's "Gethsemane" (working title, about a prison ministry) and was associate producer of the "La Operacion" (Ana Maria Garcia), about the mass sterilization of women in Puerto Rico. Blanca worked as a researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College for 15 years and was founding editor of the CENTRO Puerto Rican Studies journal. She teaches Representation of Race and Myth and Image at Hunter.
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