BRIEF BIOS OF DELEGATION MEMBERS
VISIT TO U.S. AND IRANIAN MISSIONS TO THE UNITED NATIONS
FEBRUARY 25, 2011

Joanne Landy is Co-director of the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy. CPD advocates a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy -- one that encourages democratization, justice and social change. The Campaign sees movements for peace, social justice and democratic rights, taken together, as the embryo of an alternative to great power politics and to the domination of society by privileged elites. Founded in 1982, the Campaign opposed the Cold War by promoting "detente from below." It engaged Western peace activists in the defense of the rights of democratic dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and enlisted East-bloc human rights activists against anti-democratic U.S. policies in countries like Nicaragua and Chile. Recent CPD campaigns include: support for the democratic revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia; New York Review of Books letter to Iranian officials in defense of human rights leader Shirin Ebadi and support for Iranian trade unionists; Opposition to the U.S. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Gaza statement entitled “No More Blank Check for Israel!”

Dana Balicki is an organizer, writer, artist/designer currently living in Brooklyn. For the past 6 years she worked for the grassroots peace organization CODEPINK Women for Peace, wearing many hats as Campaign Director, Communications Manager and more. She co-led a delegation of women to Iran and organized solidarity volunteer workcamps in New Orleans post-Katrina. She midwifed the 2005 book Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism and co-organized a fifty-city outreach/book tour. She has been interviewed for numerous documentaries, articles and books on the peace and social justice movement in the United States and been interviewed by NY Times, BBC, CNN, GritTV, MSNBC, Fox Business, Huffington Post, Al-Jazeera English and others. Dana also served for 2 years on the Steering Committee of United for Peace and Justice. Currently, she is working on a stage adaptation of Alice Walker's essay Overcoming Speechlessness about Ms. Walker's travels through Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Israel/Palestine, to be presented on March 23, 2011 at the Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival.

Nader Hashemi is an Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute. His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future (Melville House, 2011). www.naderhashemi.com He is an Iranian-Canadian from a family with a history of pro-democracy struggle before and after the 79 revolution

Bill Henning is Vice President of Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of America, which includes some 10,000 members. He has been a consistent activist on issues of international labor solidarity for more than thirty years. He was the Coordinator of the Labor Committee Against Apartheid, worked with the Labor Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in El Salvador, the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, and was a founding member in 2003 of US Labor Against the War. In addition, he chairs the Boards of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the Working Theater. He also teaches labor studies as an adjunct at the City College of the City University of New York.

Madelyn Hoffman has held the position of Executive Director of New Jersey Peace Action, a 54 year old grass roots disarmament organization dedicated to non-violent resolution of international conflict, since August 2000. In 2005, she traveled to Afghanistan with Global Exchange on a women's delegation called "Afghanistan: Women Making Change." Madelyn Hoffman graduated cum laude from Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut and received an MPA from Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She is currently an adjunct professor of Political Science teaching American National Government at William Paterson University and the County College of Morris. 

Kathy Kelly is Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She traveled to Afghanistan three times, in 2010, with small delegations intent on learning more about conditions faced by ordinary people in Afghanistan, a country afflicted by three decades of warfare. Voices for Creative Nonviolence has been working closely with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in search of non-military solutions to end the war. 
     In 2009, she lived in Gaza during the Operation Cast Lead bombing; later that year, Voices formed another small delegation to visit Pakistan, aiming to learn more about the effects of U.S. drone warfare on the civilian population and to better understand consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan. From 1996 to 2003, Voices activists formed 70 delegations that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 "Shock and Awe" bombing. 
     She was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and spent three months in prison, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning's military training school.
     She and her companions at the Voices home/office in Chicago believe that non-violence necessarily involves simplicity, service, sharing of resources and non-violent direct action in resistance to war and oppression.

Bitta Mostofi is an immigrant rights attorney in the Immigration Law Project of Safe Horizon, representing among others, victims of violence and asylum seekers. In 2008 and 2009 she has served as supervising attorney of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at NYU law school. Bitta has served as legal advisor for the civil rights organization the council on American Islamic Relations-New York. She is a long time human rights and social justice activist. Bitta has participated in anti-war and anti-sanctions campaigns, and was a co-coordinator for the Voices in the Wilderness; Iraq Peace Team in 2002 and 2003. In 2002 Bitta traveled to Iraq to protest U.S. led sanctions and war.
     Bitta is a co-founder of the organization, Where Is My Vote, New York. Through demonstrations, teach-ins, writing, petitions and creative resistance, WIMV-NY works to strengthen the efforts of Iranian peoples in their struggle to further social and political rights and to raise international awareness about human rights abuses and violations of international law that negatively impact civilians in Iran.

Rosemarie Pace is Director of Pax Christi Metro New York (PCMNY), a regional chapter of the international Catholic peace movement. She is also a member of the local group, Pax Christi Queens. Rosemarie has been involved in Pax Christi since 1987. She has helped develop several of PCMNY’s educational programs, including First Steps: A Christian Conflict Resolution Process, From Conflict to Common Ground: A Conflict Resolution Process for Catholic High Schools, Through the City to the World: Field Trips for a Social Conscience, and Just War/Just Peace. In 2009, she initiated the Queens Unity Walk that has become an annual event involving African American Methodist-Episcopal, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Quaker, Sikh, and Unitarian Universalist congregations. She holds a Doctorate in Education from St. John’s University in New York City and an Advanced Professional Diploma in Religious Education from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. She taught in elementary school and at the college level for many years before becoming staff at PCMNY.

Danny Postel is the editor of The Common Review, the magazine of the Great Books Foundation, and is Communications Coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization that campaigns for the rights of low-wage workers. He is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran (2006) and the co-editor, with Nader Hashemi, of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future (2011). He is a member of Chicago's No War on Iran Coalition, and in 2007 he traveled to Iran as part of a civilian diplomacy delegation with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Azadeh Shahshahani is Executive Vice President and International Committee Co-Chair for the National Lawyers Guild. She is the Director of the National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. The current focus areas of the project include: immigration detention, racial profiling and local enforcement of immigration laws, governmental surveillance, discrimination faced by Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities, immigrant access to higher education, and language access in the court setting.
     Azadeh previously served as Interim Legal Director for the ACLU of Georgia. Before her move to Atlanta, she worked with the ACLU of North Carolina as Muslim/Middle Eastern Community Outreach Coordinator. She is Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Committee on the Rights of Immigrants (of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section); Chair of Georgia Detention Watch; and Vice Chair of Refugee Women's Network. She is also one of the Founders of Human Rights Atlanta and currently serves on its Coordinating Council.
     Azadeh was born in Iran and moved to the United States at age sixteen.

Stephen R. Shalom is a professor of Political Science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, where he is also the Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice. He obtained his doctorate from Boston University, his Master's from Northeastern University, and his Bachelor's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among his books are The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neocolonialism; Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing US Intervention After the Cold War; and Which Side Are You On? An Introduction to Politics. He is also the editor or co-editor of Socialist Visions; The Philippines Reader; Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community; and Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. He serves on the editorial board of New Politics. He is a professor of Political Science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, where he is also the Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice. He obtained his doctorate from Boston University, his Master's from Northeastern University, and his Bachelor's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among his books are The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neocolonialism; Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing US Intervention After the Cold War; and Which Side Are You On? An Introduction to Politics. He is also the editor or co-editor of Socialist Visions; The Philippines Reader; Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community; and Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. He serves on the editorial board of New Politics.