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Labour Peace Forum Presenters
| Deborah Bourque | Patricia Buriticá | Barb Byers | Antonia Juhasz | Manuel Montero | Abdullah Muhsin |
| Thulas Nxesi | Nancy Romer | Shaher Saed | Ingo Schmidt | Jinny Sims | Steven Staples | Kent Wong |
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Since 1995 she has managed The House of the Working Women, a project-organization designed to create jobs and opportunities for women head of families and those who are self-employed. The project has created more than 300 direct jobs and courses for more than 200 women in politic leadership and human developmentas well as skills training in a large variety of jobs. In 1995 the Colombian Congress granted her the Policarpa Salavarrieta Honour Award in recocognition of her social work and union leadership towards women. Patricia Buriticá helped organize and promote the International Women's March in New York in 2000 and the Women and Peace Conference in Stockholm in 2001. Following the peace conference, she helped found the Columbian Woman's alliance for peace initiatives known as Alianza de Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombianas por la Paz (IMP). The alliance consists of 25 social organization including: Colombo-African women, union workers, farm workers, academics, young and indigenous women. The alliance participates actively in the different peace-process scenarios and in the consolidation of the democracy in Colombia. She helped organize the Women's March Against War—described as "the great journey of mobilization to Bogotá"—in July of 2002 that brought 40.000 women from all over Colombia to marched together. As a Commissioner representing Civil Society on the CNRR since 2004, Patricia Buritica, has been working on integrating women victims of the civil war into the decision making processes relating to reconciliation and the reconstruction of the social networks of Colombia. In 2003 She promoted the creation of Polo Democratico Independiente, the strongest center left party in Colombia and one of the three main political groups and is a member of its board of directors. The focus of her political life has been the promotion of the participation of women in all arenas of public decision-making. She is currently striving to increase the number of women elected at the local and national level and seeks to increase the capacity of women to function effectively in decision making positions. In 2005 Patricia Buriticá was nominated for the Peace Nobel Price, in recognition of the exemplary work she has done, by the Swiss project 1000 women one Nobel Prize. |
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s a policy-analyst, author and activist living in San Francisco. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies Juhasz is an expert on all aspects of international trade and finance policy with a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and experience as a Legislative Assistant to two United States Members of Congress. Juhasz was the Project Director of the International Forum on Globalization - an alliance of 80 leading international scholars, economists, researchers, writers and activists representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries. She is a passionate writer and speaker who conveys complex information in a manner that is both accessible and motivational to others. |
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First elected national president in 2003, Moist has been a member of CUPE since 1975. He worked for 10 years as a national staff representative, and a further 10 years as president of CUPE 500 representing 5,500 municipal workers in Winnipeg. He also served six years as president of CUPE Manitoba. A strong advocate for quality public services, Moist has led the union in its fight against privatization. Under his leadership, CUPE’s work in rebuilding strong communities has intensified. The union is on the front line defending public health care, building stronger communities and municipalities and playing a key role in the fight for quality public child care. Moist serves as a vice-president of the 3 million-member Canadian Labour Congress. He is a governor of the Labour College of Canada and a board member of the Canadian Labour Market Productivity Centre. Moist has served as vice-chair of the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation; co-chair of the Premier’s Economic Advisory Council in Manitoba; treasurer of the United Way of Winnipeg; director of Misericordia Health Centre; director of the Winnipeg Library Foundation; and has been an executive member of the Manitoba Federation of Labour for 20 years. Moist is CUPE’s fifth national president and the first from Western Canada. He is an active member of the New Democratic Party. He has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Manitoba, where he studied Canadian history and political science. |
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Manuel Montero is Director of the Americas, Department of Foreign Relations of the Cuban Workers Confederation (ctc), the representative body for all trade unions in Cuba. He is a veteran of the Cuban Literacy Campaign teaching literacy to peasants in the Mountains of Pinar del Río province beginning in 1961. He worked as a factory machinist for 15 years before joining the Foreign Relations Department of the ctc in 1973. |
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Born in 1959 in Eastern Cape in South Africa, Thulas Nxesi became a founder member of the National Education Union of South Africa (NEUSA) in 1985, after graduating from Fort Hare University with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1987, Thulas Nxesi completed both his Higher Education Diploma from the University of South Africa and his Bachelor of Education from the University of the Witwatersrand. From 1985 to 1990, Thulas Nxesi taught geography at the Ikusasa Senior Secondary School, Tembisa, Gauteng, South Africa. He became the school s head of the social sciences department in 1988. Thulas Nxesi’s experiences in trade unionism started in 1985, when he became chair of the Tembisa branch and PWV region of NEUSA. In 1988, he became its national General Secretary. In 1990, he led NEUSA in national unity talks culminating in the formation of SADTU—the first national, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic teachers union, uniting a number of racially—and ethnically—defined organisations across the country. He was Assistant General Secretary of SADTU from to 1990 to 1995, and has been its General Secretary since 1995. Under his leadership, SADTU launched an organized recruitment strategy, establishing union structures nationally, provincially, regionally and at branch level. Membership increased from 30,000 to 220,000 between 1990 and 2000. From 1990 to 1994, Thulas Nxesi led campaigns for full and equal trade union rights for educators and public sector workers, and took SADTU into the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Thulas Nxesi s success as a teacher union leader in South Africa led to his election to the EI African Regional Committee and to the EI Executive Board. He was a Vice President of EI from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, Thulas Nxesi was elected President of Education International at its World Congress held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. |
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Nancy Romer is Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College of the City |
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In high school, Jinny was deeply involved in community service, was an avid competitor in fencing, and earned a black belt in judo. When she graduated, a career in teaching was far from Jinny’s mind. She was accepted into the Royal Air Force, but her goal of becoming a pilot was dashed when it was discovered she was half an inch too short. So, she headed to the University of Victoria at Manchester, where she completed her B.Ed. with a double major in history and English. At university, she met her husband of 34 years, Stephen Sims. She recalls that in those days cross-cultural relationships were so rare that “we’d bring traffic to a halt when we passed by!” Jinny started teaching full-time right after graduation. She worked both with highly academic students and with those in a juvenile prison. “I loved working with all those kids. I ran the youth club, the judo and fencing teams, the multicultural club, all kinds of activities,” she said. “In those days when you went into teaching you totally lived it. We were young and there was lots of energy and excitement.” Jinny’s involvement with the union movement began with the National Union of Teachers in Britain, and continued after she emigrated to eastern Canada in 1975. Two years later, the Sims family moved to Nanaimo, where Jinny taught Social Studies and English. She also worked as a guidance counsellor, sometimes coping with a case load of up to 350 students. She was also a district resource teacher for the Steps to Maturity program in Nanaimo. “I love teaching and I enjoy working proactively with student councils, on citizenship and leadership issues,” she says. “I’m able to relate to kids and they feel very comfortable talking to me.” When B.C. teachers began their drive to unionize, Jinny got deeply involved in the first round of local bargaining. “I was hooked by the unfairness of some aspects of our collective agreement,” she said. She served on the executive of her local union and a variety of committees, including Status of Women and the Program Against Racism. She was also a local area representative for four years. Jinny was elected President of the Nanaimo District Teachers’ Association in 1992, and held that position until 1995. She was involved in all aspects of local bargaining, including arbitrating the class size language. In 1998, she was elected as a member-at-large of the provincial Executive Committee, in 1999 was elected second vice-president, in 2002 was elected first vice-president and in 2004 was elected president. “Teachers’ working conditions and students’ learning conditions are intricately interwoven and we must continue to make teaching ‘do-able,’” she says. Jinny has two children: Keeran, 28, and Michael, 22. As well, she’s the proud grandmother of Emily, 8, and Jacob and Jessica, three-year-old twins. |
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The Polaris Institute is widely credited as playing a key role in preventing the Canadian government from joining the U.S. missile defence program in 2005. Steven is a frequent contributor to journals, magazines, and conferences, and is often called upon to comment on defence and public policy-related issues by the national and international news media including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Time, CTV National News and CBC Television's The National and the BBC. He is regularly invited to appear before federal government committees and departments to speak about defence and foreign policy issues, including the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, and the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Standing Committee on Finance. His years of work with popular organizations, including the Council of Canadians, has made him well-known amongst civil society organizations, and he speaks regularly to audiences in Canada and the United States, and around the world. Born in the Maritimes and a long-time resident of Vancouver, Steven now lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children. He holds a Bachelors of Education (Hon. History) from the University of New Brunswick. |
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University of New York. She is University-Wide Officer of the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, American Federation of Teachers local 2334 which represents 18,000 faculty and professional staff. She serves on the Executive Council and is the chair of the PSC's Peace and Justice Committee. She represents the PSC on the national steering committee of US Labor Against the War and represents USLAW on the national steering committee of United for Peace and Justice. She is co-convenor of (East Coast) Educators to Stop the War.
Updated: 23 June 2006
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