2008 Speakers

For more than ten years Alan Siporin was National Public Radio's primary reporter for Oregon stories, informing a national audience about numerous issues, including the fight for the ancient forests, anti-war efforts, gay rights struggles and hate crimes. He served as NPR's analyst during President Clinton's Forest Summit. Later, Alan’s commentaries aired on NPR as well. He's written for the New York Times and wrote a regular editorial column for The Eugene Weekly. Alan served as moderator for Oregon's Gubernatorial Debate in 1994 and has moderated numerous community forums.

Ann Wright grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, and attended the University of Arkansas, where she received a master’s and a law degree. She also has a master’s degree in national security affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. After college, she spent thirteen years in the U.S. Army and sixteen additional years in the Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. She is airborne-qualified.

In 1987, Col.Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone, the largest evacuation since Saigon. She was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the Embassy there in December 2001.

Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world.
During the 1990s, Annie visited countries throughout Asia to track exported waste from the U.S. and Europe. She documented her findings in many articles and testified before the U.S. Congress in 1992 on the issue of international waste trafficking, in an effort to ban US waste exports to the Third World.

Ari Lesser is the king of radical political hip hop.  Ari says that Eugene is ground zero for the hip-hop revolution of conscious lyrics sweeping the nation.  Ari’s music is brilliant, attaining deep insight into hippy culture, as well as more recent American culture.   He often satirizes mainstream rap with “ignorant songs” that are profane, chauvinistic, hedonistic, and sarcastic in an attempt to lay bare the absurdity of popular themes of sexism, racism, violence and drug abuse.  Rhythm and parody are powerful tools.

Bill Bradbury grew up in Chicago, and moved to Bandon, Oregon in 1971.  In Bandon, he owned and operated a small business before beginning his career in government.  He served in the Oregon legislature for 14 years representing portions of Oregon's south coast as a State Representative and as a State Senator.  He also held the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate President.

Bruce H Lipton, Ph.D., bestselling author of The Biology of Belief, is a cellular biologist and former Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine.   His pioneering research on cloned stem cells at Wisconsin presaged the revolutionary field of epigenetics, the new science of how environment and perception control genes.  Later research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine revealed the nature of the biochemical pathways that bridge the mind-body duality. His book, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness Matter and Miracles, an LA Times Bestseller won Best Science Book of the Year by USA Book News in 2006.

Carl A. Hammerschlag is a master storyteller and internationally recognized author, physician, speaker and healer. A Yale-trained psychiatrist; he has spent more than twenty years working with Native Americans. He is an expert on how to survive in rapidly changing cultures. Now one of the worlds leading proponents of Psychoneuroimmunology (mind-body-spirit medicine), he is a faculty member at the University of Arizona Medical School. He is a faculty member at the Univ. of Arizona Medical School, and founder of the Turtle Island Project, a non-profit, multidisciplinary organization whose programs integrate the principles of mind/body/spirit medicine with Native American rituals and ceremonies.

Panel discussion – GI resistance in the NW.  GI resistance is what ended the Vietnam war and the GI resistance movement is alive and growing to end the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. 

Join powerful activist Chanon Suarez-Diaz and Eric Salazar from the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Seattle chapter #8. 

U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, U.S. Deputy Ambassador, cabled a letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq stating that without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the invasion and occupation of a Muslim, Arab, oil-rich country would be a disaster. 

Charla's skills were inially chiseled in the boardrooms of CNN, ABC, and CBS before she found her passion. Raised in the spiritual arms of the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming, Charla brings a unique perspective that honors ancient traditions as well as modern day expression of shamanism. For more than forty years Charla has served at the side of many prominent medicine people of many nations as she assisted them in providing their wisdom teachings to help us through these tumultuous times. In the acclaimed documentary series she produced, Quest of the Earth Keepers, she weaves healing stories with prophecies of our native ancestors.

Dakota Belle Witt has been very in love with the Eugene Poetry Slam for over 5 years now.  She has served in the Eugene Poetry Slam as a coach during their amazing showing at the National Poetry Slam in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2005 and then as a team member during their historic win at the first ever All Oregon Slam in 2006.  Poetry has taken her from London to Canada to New York and back again but most recently you may have seen her on in the Northwest's foremost queer women’s music festival Out/Loud right here in good ol' Eugene on the Wow Hall stage.  She also just recently graduated with a BA in Theatre Arts from UO. Country Fair is probably her favorite thing ever, right after mean cats and fairy tales.  
more at www.myspace.com/dakotabellewittpoetry

David Haenke is an activist and bio-regional homesteader - specializing in land trust, appropriate technology, and cooperative economics.  A major evolution in the bioregional movement can be attributed to the organizing skills of this homesteader and appropriate technology activist.  He published Ecological Politics and Bioregionalism, describing regenerative agriculture, appropriate technology, renewable energy sources, cooperative economics, land trusts, and ecologically-based health policy.  David is co-founder of the first bioregional congress – still going strong 28 years later, providing a template for others.  His focus is on the politicization and institutionalization of bioregionalism.  David remains dedicated to ecological economics and planet Earth, and could be considered the “Johnny Appleseed” of the bio-regional movement.  Check out some of David’s writings at: »

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Diane Albino left San Francisco and Berkeley in 1970 to escape the political turmoil and returned to Oregon in pursuit of a healthy quiet life.  Her goal was a self-sufficient lifestyle.  She soon discovered that the political issues of Oregon were inescapable, clear cutting and destruction of ancient forest, herbicides and land use planning.  Many years later – and Diane has tales of the past & thoughts for the future.

Inspire at the Spirit Tower – This stage gets ‘hoppin’ with conscious music, poetry and  dance. This is a participation venue where the line between audience and performer is often blurred. The house band, Iana, Ishi, Tim McGlaghlin, Matt Calkins, and Sam Berrett of Eleven Eyes and Jesse Ogle of Disco Organica, invite YOU the Country Fair passerby to take the stage and mic. They specialize in improvised back up as YOU sing or say your heart speak or song. Special guests include Anba Tierra, Lafa Taylor, Marv Ellis, Martita Santiago and Flamenco Chico, live art by Colin, Breakdancing by Raw Action Crew, Papa Kadubi and many more artists you won’t want to miss, including YOURSELF.

Friday:
Inspire at Spirit Tower
High energy liberation of the spirit. Live poetry, music, word, hip hop, dance, art and celebrating all life.

Saturday:
Inspire at Spirit Tower

“Izzi Tooinsky is an amazing original... He's got the moves of a wrestler and the heart of a philosopher." - Ken Kesey
"...the most popular international solo artist in our history, drawing enormous crowds wherever he appeared." - Warana Festival, Brisbane Australia

Izzi Tooinsky is the Little Giant Theatre. His unique traveling show has appeared everywhere from Wales to Washington, Tanzania to Tennessee., Australia to Alaska and beyond. Izzi is the only performer alive today who has both the skill and the imagination to carry on the ancient and honorable traditions of combining two great arts, jugglery so bold as to amaze the mind and stories so enchanting as to captivate the heart.

Janet Bates
Songwriter, Singer, Social Activist

Passionate, politically astute singer-songwriter Janet Bates uses her golden gift to help make a difference in the world.  With her evocative three-octave contralto vocals she writes songs that seek to make the world a better place.  Janet builds upon what musicians before her have done in previous decades: making the world sit up and pay attention.

In the spirit of Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger, and recalling the lilting voice of Joan Baez, Canadian Janet Bates brings her talented songwriting and simply lovely vocals to the task of conveying to the forefront of public awareness, the issues of environmental degradation, the politics of war, and social justice for people around the world as well as in her adopted home, the U.S.A.