The Coordination Team meets every month to plan and oversee the implementation of the Membership’s decisions and its work-plan. In doing so, the Team forms groups, sub-groups, or teams charged with carrying out specific functions and launch national short-term campaigns that are not necessarily outlined in the work-plan. Meetings of the team are open to all Radical Elders, who may participate but not vote.
Coordination Team Members
Sam Anderson
Sam Anderson is a retired Mathematics and Black History professor who has taught math, science and Black History at various New York City metropolitan colleges and universities for more than forty years. He is also an author of books on science, technology and the history of slavery like The Black Holocaust for Beginners. He has also been active in the Civil Rights/Black Liberation Movement since 1964… and has combined his activism with his scholastic work via numerous community based organizations and Black Studies Departments.
Maritza Arrastia
Maritza Arrastia has worked since 1984 as a Freirean popular educator in community based programs, and currently at a community college in NY. She first practiced Freirean education when she was a militant of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party involved in political education. She covered sterilization abuse in Puerto Rico when she was a reporter for the PSP’s Claridad newspaper in the 70s, and this led to being one of the founders of the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA), a group that helped wage a successful campaign to pass City guidelines and later a NYC law, to curb sterilization abuse in NY. More recently, she was active in Occupy Sunset Park. She served on the board of May First Movement Technology (MFMT) for many years. She was one of the initiators of the Radical Elders political project and firmly believe we elders have key roles to play to create the world where everyone lives well and not just the few live better.
Ellen Barfield
Ellen Barfield currently serves on the national boards of Veterans For Peace, the War Resisters League, Military Families Speak Out, and the Center on Conscience and War, and heads VFP’s Baltimore Phil Berrigan Memorial chapter, and on climate issues works primarily with the anti-fracking/FERC restructuring group Beyond Extreme Energy. She also is involved in anti-racism, Nicaragua solidarity, and peace organizing in her home town on stolen Piscataway land now called Baltimore, MD.
She spent 4 years in the US Army, 1977-1981. She wondered why so many US troops were in those nations so very long after the hot wars there, which curiosity led her to activism challenging the absurdly huge number of US bases worldwide, nuclear weapons, and militarism in general, and its massive theft from human needs.
As she has for nearly 40 years, she supports struggles for justice challenging racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other oppressions. Ellen has participated in peace delegations to and solidarity work with Palestine, Iraq, Korea, and Nicaragua.
Betty Davis
Betty Davis I have been a warrior in the struggle for community control of education every since the NYC school strike in 1967. I was a social worker and an educator. I was, along with Ralph Poynter and Lynne Stewart, founder of The New Abolitionist Movement because as everyone knows, “Cats don’t educate mice, they eat them.”
This organization grew out of the movement to support the Ocean Hill Brownsville Community Control struggle and the rest is history., I am dedicated to the institutions of the public school system because as Frederick Douglass observed, ‘education and slavery are incompatible. I was proud to serve as financial administrator and fundraiser.
The entire movement of the sixties was based on the belief that our children are the future and it is the duty of each generation to guarantee the future of the ones who come after them. I believe as the Cree people believe, we must make our decisions and our actions with the intention of guaranteeing a positive impact unto the 7th generation.
Marilyn Frankenstein
Marilyn Frankenstein is a retired professor, College of Public and Community Service (UMass/Boston), whose work focused on teaching quantitative reasoning as vital to understanding and acting to create a more just world. She is currently compiling a summary archive of her work as an activist academic; and, is active in BDS Boston; July26.org Cuba solidarity coalition; and, HEART (Wholistic Emergency Alternative Response Team), an alternative to policing created by The Black Response/Cambridge.
Sally Jane Gellert
Sally Jane Gellert, a resident of Bergen County, N.J. (on occupied Lenape land) is active in civic education and advocacy. She is a member of InterOccupy, and helped organize the Occupy Wall Street gatherings in 2013 (Kalamazoo) and 2014 (Sacramento). Currently she maintains Occupy Bergen County’s social-media presence, was a founding member of the Bergen Unitarian Universalist Relief Group (BUURG) and through Occupy Sandy New Jersey headed up the Bergen County Long-term Recovery Group’s advocacy committee. Sally was deputy team lead of Messaging for Voter Choice New Jersey (working on ranked-choice voting) and is chairperson of the Lackawanna Coalition, a rail-passengers’ advocacy group, and is part of the web-maintenance teams for Northern NJ Jewish Voice for Peace, National Radioactive Waste Coalition, Democracy Watch News, the Ida B. Wells Media Defense Network, Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community (also cochairperson and newsletter editor for that group), the Lackawanna Coalition, and Radical Elders.
Lois Helmbold
Lois Rita Helmbold is the daughter of a Pennsylvania Dutch, evangelical, fundamentalist, rural, country preacher and a Polish coal miner’s daughter. Teaching at an impoverished HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in rural Mississippi in the late 1960s compelled her to a lifelong commitment to racial justice. She has been an activist in anti-war, feminist, LGBT, and racial justice movements. She headed women’s studies at San Jose State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing appears in feminist, labor, lesbian, and historical scholarly and popular journals. Making Choices, Making Do: Survival Strategies of Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression (Rutgers UP, 2023) illustrates her political and intellectual commitments. Despite three degrees in history, she was only allowed to teach US history outside the US: in Tokyo, Japan and Izmir, Turkiye as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer. Colleagues, comrades, friends, lovers, and students have propelled her along the path of working as an ally and co-conspirator. She creates and exhibits political quilts and practices tai chi. She lives in Oakland, California.
Alfredo Lopez
Alfredo Lopez, a revolutionary organizer and activist for a half century, has been a leader of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party in the U.S.; organizer of many actions, campaigns and demonstrations (including the 1974 Day of Solidarity with Puerto Rican Independence in Madison Square Garden); a founder of May First Movement Technology; author of six published books and one of the founders of Radical Elders.
Dorotea Manuela
Dorotea Manuela is an Afro Boricua Radical Elder and former RNP (Registered Nurse Practitioner); Community health and occupational medicine, is a long standing anti racist and liberation warrior for over 50 years. Her experience and activities have included: Cofounder of MassCOSH /Massachusetts Coalition on Occupational Safety and Health (conducted successful campaign “Right to Know” which led to legislation); Labor organizing and administration (NYC – Columbia University. Boston Area – Boston University and Harvard University as well as workers in local companies. Co Founded a Women of Color Reproductive Rights Coalition. Developed culturally and linguistically appropriate health programs. Have also organized events including Lolita Lebron Centennial Celebration and Welcoming of released Boricua (Puerto Rican) Freedom Fighter Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera.
Kevin Norton
Kevin Norton is a musician based in New Jersey: a composer, performer and educator for over 35 years. As a composer he has written for jazz bands, chamber groups and movie soundtracks. His compositions can be heard on over 20 CDs (and he has performed on maybe 100 recordings) As a performer he has worked with Milt Hinton, Anthony Braxton, Joëlle Léandre, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Pat Irwin and Connie Crothers. As a community activist, Kevin is or has been a member of The Leonia (NJ) Peace Vigil, COFIA (Community of Friends in Action: working for immigrant workers in North New Jersey), Radical Elders, the North New Jersey chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (NNJ-DSA) (working groups: Immigrant Justice, Mutual Aid, CREW (Committee of Radical Education Workers) amongst others) and POP (People’s Organization for Progress). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Norton
Angel Román
Angel Román is a member of the Venceremos Brigade challenging the U.S. blockade of Cuba; Board member of Cumbe Center for African and Diaspora dance which champions the legacy of culture and resistance; Member of NYC Labor Chorus singing about worker struggles and social justice; Retired municipal worker fighting against privatized Medicare plans; Was board member of a credit union, community health center, and Center for Puerto Rican Studies.