How we understand the world shapes how we can change it.

My work bridges scholarship and grassroots organizing, bringing together theory and practice to better understand how power operates, and how it can be transformed.

I’m interested in how ideas move into structures, and how political commitments become durable systems that can hold over time.

Movement, Organizing & Political Work

Activism has been central to my life.

I began organizing in Los Angeles during the Iraq War with African American Women United for Peace & Justice. A decade later, I became a founding organizer of the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, where we worked to reframe debt from an individual moral failure into a collective political condition.

I conceived and launched the 1T Day campaign, developing its strategic frame and coordinating its execution as a national intervention. That work helped catalyze the formation of Strike Debt, bringing together organizers, researchers, and educators to build an ongoing project of political education and action.

From there, we launched Rolling Jubilee, a direct-action initiative that abolished millions of dollars of medical debt and extended Occupy Wall Street’s political life beyond the encampments.

I also co-authored The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual and Shouldering the Costs, translating complex financial systems into accessible tools for political education and organizing.

Teaching, Media & Public Scholarship

I’ve been an adjunct professor of sociology, teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The New School, including courses such as The Sociology of Debt.

Alongside teaching and writing, I’ve contributed to progressive media as a columnist for Tidal Magazine and as co-host of WBAI’s Pacifica Morning Show.

In 2015, I traveled to Occupied Palestine with fellow filmmakers and organizers to document resistance and liberation struggles—work that further shaped my understanding of power, narrative, and international solidarity.

My writing has appeared in Social Text, South Atlantic Quarterly, Tikkun, In These Times, and other outlets, and my work and commentary have been featured on Democracy Now!, MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, The Laura Flanders Show, and The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann.

Across teaching, media, and public scholarship, my focus has remained consistent: making complex systems legible, politicized, and actionable.

Intellectual Focus

My academic background in philosophy, media studies, and sociology informs how I analyze power, communication, and culture in a rapidly changing world.

I study how technological change reshapes social life—and how movements, institutions, and media systems respond.

Across movements, academia, and media, my work centers on a core question:

How do we build systems that allow people and institutions to act on their values—without losing clarity, sustainability, or care?

Education

I studied philosophy at Dartmouth College, film in Columbia University’s MFA program, and hold master’s degrees in Media Studies from The New School and Sociology from The New School for Social Research.

Closing

Across each chapter of my life—activist campaigns, academic teaching, media work, and public scholarship—my work has been rooted in a simple belief:

Lasting change requires both justice and care—transforming how we build, connect, and create value together.