Meet the Fasters
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- Dr. Bob Edgar
President and CEO of Common Cause, Former General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ
Length of Fast: 1 day
Dr. Bob Edgar was named President and CEO of Common Cause in May 2007 and is leaving his post as General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, the leading U.S. organization in the movement for Christian unity. The Council represents 45 million congregants of 35 churches, and works to overcome poverty, protect the environment, foster interfaith understanding and build international peace. He previously served as president of the Claremont School of Theology.
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- Ted Glick
Coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council
Length of Fast: open-ended
Ted Glick is the Coordinator of USCEC. He was a co-founder in early 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the “USA Join the World” campaign leading up to December 3rd actions in Montreal and around the United States during the United Nations Climate Change conference. He has been active in the progressive social change movement since 1968, including involvement in the Vietnam War draft resistance movement, as co-founder and coordinator of the National Campaign to Impeach Nixon, as a community organizer in Brooklyn, N.Y. and northern N.J. and as national coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network.
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- Jim Lyons
Vice President for Policy and Communications of Oxfam America
Length of Fast: 1 day
Before joining Oxfam, Jim Lyons was the Executive Director of the Casey Tree Endowment Fund, a DC-based not-for-profit committed to restoring the city’s tree canopy. He led the growth and development of this organization into one of the nation’s largest urban conversation and ecological restoration NGOs. Earlier, Jim served in the Clinton Administration as Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the Department of Agriculture. The many highlights of his time in that position include drafting titles of the 1990 Farm Bill, co-chairing an interagency effort to develop the Clean Water Action Plan, assisting in the restructuring of the Department of Agriculture, promoting national conservation and environmental leadership at the USDA, and facilitating major land acquisitions for the national forest system. Jim has been teaching at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies since 2001.
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- Ibrahim Adbil-Mu’id Ramey
Director of Human and Civil Rights, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
Length of Fast: 1 day
Ibrahim Abdil-Mu-id Ramey, a native of Norfolk, Virginia, is the Director of Human and Civil Rights work for the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a national Islamic advocacy organization. He serves as a board member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship and the Temple of Understanding (an interfaith organization promoting dialogue and cooperation among diverse religious traditions), the Muslim Women’s Institute, and the Climate Crisis Coalition. He is also a Vice-President of the Steering Committee of Religious Non-Governmental Organizations at the United Nations.
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- Jean Stokan
Policy Director for Pax Christi USA
Length of Fast: 1 day
Jean Stokan is the Policy Director for Pax Christi USA, the National Catholic Peace Movement. Pax Christi USA is the U.S. section of Pax Christi International, the global Catholic peace movement with consultative status at the U.N. Pax Christi USA’s membership includes 800 parishes, 700 religious men’s and women’s congregations, 400 local chapters, 120 Catholic bishops, and reaches more than a half million Catholics each year.
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- Rabbi Warren Stone
Environmental Chair of the Central Conference of Rabbis
Length of Fast: 1 day
Rabbi Warren Stone is known nationally as a Jewish spokesperson on the environment. He serves as the Environmental Chair of the Central Conference of Rabbis and represented World Jewry at the Kyoto UN conference on Climate Change in 1997. He has co-chaired the Religious Campaign on Forest Conservation and the Religious Coalition for Creation Care. He serves as Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in the Greater Washington, D.C. area since 1988.
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- Mike Tidwell
Director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council/Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Length of Fast: 3 days
Mike Tidwell is director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council and Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He is the author, most recently, of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities.
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- Diane Wilson
Fourth Generation Shrimp Farmer, co-founder of Code Pink and author of An Unreasonable Woman
Length of Fast: open-ended
Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, began fishing the bays off the Gulf Coast of Texas at the age of eight. By twenty-four she was a boat captain. In 1989, while running her brother's fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors, Diane insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into the bay.
Her work on behalf of the people and aquatic life of Seadrift, Texas, has won her a number of awards including: National Fisherman Magazine Award, Mother Jones's Hell Raiser of the Month, Louis Gibbs' Environmental Lifetime Award, Louisiana Environmental Action (LEAN) Environmental Award, Giraffe Project, Jenifer Altman Award, and the Bioneers Award. She is co-founder of Code Pink, a women's grassroots peace group, and Texas Jail Project, an organization she co-founded after being jailed 20 times for civil disobedience. TJP seeks to change the way the 254 jails in Texas are ran. Wilson continues to fight for social justice and recently published her first book on activism in Texas: An Unreasonable Woman.
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- Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.,
President of the Hip Hop Caucus
Length of Fast: 1 day
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is a minister, community activist, and one of the most influential people in Hop Hop political life. A powerful and fiery orator, Rev. Yearwood works diligently and tirelessly to encourage the Hip Hop generation to utilize its political and social voice. He currently serves as President of the Hop Hop Caucus in Washington, D.C. The Hop Hop Caucus is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan, organization that inspires and motivates those born after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Rev. Yearwood is known for his activist work as the National Director of the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign in which he organized a coalition of national organizations and grassroots organizations to advocate for the rights of Hurricane Katrina survivors. More recently, Rev. Yearwood has become an important figure in the peace movement as an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration. He was an Officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and recently led a “Make Hip Hop Not War” national tour to engage more young people in the movement for peace.
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