Lisa Fithian:  

kers and immigrants as needed. Most recently Lisa help coordinate the large Justice for Janitors strike in Houston, TX during the fall of 2006. Lisa and her collective--Root Activists Network of Trainers (RANT) has providing training and organizing support to many of the global justice mobilization around the world since the Shut Down of the WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999. These have included protests against the IMF and World Bank, the FTAA, Free Trade Area of the Americas, the G8 with trainings in France, Scotland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Canada and the US. After 9-11, Lisa continued her work in the global justice movement while helping the anti-war movement get off the ground. Lisa has been active since 2002 in the leadership of United for Peace and Justice, serving as a National Co-chair from 2002-2004. Lisa was actively involved in supporting Cindy Sheehan in her encampment outside of Bush’s ranch, and helped coordinate the Bring Them Home Now Tour, in which three RV’s/caravans traveled different routes across the country to a National Anti-War Mobilization in Washington DC on Sept. 24, 2005. This began just as Hurricane Katrina hit. One of the vehicles--the Veterans for Peace bus broke off to provide support, while the tour participated in over 200 events in 56 cities in 28 states in 21 days. After the mobilization in Washington, Lisa returned to Austin, her current home, but then left to go to New Orleans in early Oct 2005. Lisa spent the next year organizing and building Common Ground Relief, an organization consciously using race and class privilege to move volunteers and resources to the most neglected and marginalized communities in New Orleans, to help prevent what could be the largest gentrification project in US history. Lisa Fithian is 46 years and is back in Austin, still organizing against the war and building a grassroots peace and justice movement committed to radical social change.