Toward Freedom is a news and analysis publication offering a grassroots perspective on world events. We cover global politics, protest movements, government and corporate abuses of power, human rights, and other pressing topics. With writers and readers based around the globe, TF has worked for social justice through investigative and progressive journalism since 1952.

 

EDITOR

Julie Varughese joined Toward Freedom in May 2021. She brings 20 years of experience in journalism, having worked at local newspapers and later delving into social media, communications, and broadcast journalism. She has served in an advisory role for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) since it was founded in 2017. Julie also is a co-coordinator of BAP’s Solidarity Network, made up of non-African allies who support BAP’s mission. She’s been active in movement spaces in New York City and Washington, D.C.

 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS


TF President Robin LloydRobin Lloyd
, President

Robin Lloyd is a filmmaker, director of the video production company Green Valley Media, and active in the peace and justice movement in Burlington, Vermont. Her grandmother, Lola Maverick Lloyd, was one of the many founders of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Robin has been touring with a performance piece featuring Lola, “Talking with Our Grandmothers.”

 

Rebecca Kemble, Vice President and Treasurer

Rebecca Kemble is the past President of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and CICOPA North America, the sub-regional body of the worker cooperative sector of the International Cooperative Alliance. She is also served on the Executive Board of CICOPA worldwide.  Rebecca has been a worker-owner at Union Cab Cooperative since 2000 where she works as a taxi driver and has served on many democratic governance and management teams.  She was elected as Alder on the Madison City Council in 2015  and served three terms through 2021. Rebecca has written for The Progressive magazine, and is a founding member and editor at the Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative. She produced the 2018 film The Eagle and the Condor: From Standing Rock With Love directed by Kahsto’serakwathe Paulette Moore. Rebecca earned a PhD (a.b.d.) in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

Jacqueline Luqman, Secretary

Jacqueline joined Toward Freedom‘s board in March 2022. co-hosts the weekday radio show, “By Any Means Necessary,” on Radio Sputnik as well as the weekly Black Power Media show, “Luqman Nation.” She also is the organizer of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Black Alliance for Peace and is an organizer with Pan-African Community Action. Besides all that, Jacqueline is the moderator and member of the Board of Social Action of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. Jacqueline is a Pan-Africanist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revolutionary who focuses on political analysis of domestic and international politics affecting working-class, poor and colonized peoples.

 

Gerard ColbyGerard Colby

Gerard Colby is the former President of the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981. His work has been published by national news outlets such as The Los Angeles Times, the North American Newspaper Alliance/United FeaturesThe NationIn These TimesThe American Writer, and Toward Freedom. He is the author of Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Prentice Hall, 1974, Lyle Stuart Inc, 1984) and an updated 2016 e-book edition at Open Road Publisher’s Forbidden Bookshelf. A recently updated e-book edition of Colby’s and Charlotte Dennett’s Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, a documented history of what was behind the genocide of Amazonian Indians(Harvard Professor John Womack lauded it as the definitive history for the region in covers), is also available through OpenRoadmedia  and Amazon Books. He was the co-recipient of the National Press Club’s Press Criticism Award for his contribution to the best-selling Into The Buzzsword: The Myth of the Free Press (Prometheus, 1994, ed. Kristina Borjesson), which also won the New York Public Library Award for best book in social science and the Independent Publishers Award for best book in 1994. He has lectured around the USA and Brazil, including the American Anthropology Association’s annual meeting, and taught political science, international economics and the political economy of Central America at Burlington College and Johnson State College in Vermont. Colby currently serves on the editorial committee of Toward Freedom’s board and on the board of the Henry Demarest Lloyd Fund for Investigative Journalism.


Dorie Wilsnack

Dorie Wilsnack has worked with international and US peace and human rights organizations as an organizer, nonviolence trainer and fundraiser. Her work has included Balkan Peace Team, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League, American Friends Service Committee, and ACLU of Vermont. Her newest endeavor is Radical Roots Genealogy, a project that helps people research and learn about their ancestors though a social change and social justice lens. She serves on the Advisory Committee for the International Nonviolence Training Fund. She’s appreciates Toward Freedom for the wide variety of international stories that it shares, and for the links it builds between people in Vermont and supporters of social justice around the world.

 

Eric Agnero

Eric joined Toward Freedom‘s board in May 2022. He is a journalist and political analyst from the Ivory Coast, specializing in U.S.-Africa affairs. At CNN, he covered the 2010-11 Ivorian post-electoral crisis as a West Africa correspondent. He also has reported for Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Having experience in corporate and state-run media outlets has helped Eric understand the gap they leave behind for ordinary people. Aside from his journalistic experience, Eric has worked as communications director at the African Union. Having first moved to Vermont in 2012, he recently returned after several years working for organizations in Africa. Eric now is involved in community media projects with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Media Factory, CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement.

 

Fatuma Bulle

 

Dave Dellinger – Emeritus Chair (1915-2004)