Susan (Susie) J. Erenrich is a social movement history documentarian. She uses the arts for social change to tell stories about transformational leadership, resilience, and societal shifts as a result of mobilization efforts by ordinary citizens. Her career in nonprofit/arts management, civic engagement, community organizing and community service spans more than four decades. She has diverse teaching experience at universities, public schools, and community-based programs for at-risk, low-income populations; has edited and produced historical audio recordings and anthologies; and has extensive performance, choreography, and production experience. Susie holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. She is the editor of The Cost of Freedom: Voicing a Movement After Kent State 1970; Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement; Kent & Jackson State 1970-1990; co-editor of Grassroots Leadership & the Arts for Social Change (a volume in ILA's BLB series); and co-editor of A Grassroots Leadership & Arts for Social Change Primer for Educators, Organizers, Activists & Rabble-Rousers. She was the producer/host of Wasn't That A Time: Stories & Songs That Moved The Nation, a live community radio broadcast that ran on WERA.FM for five years and is now available on-demand.
Debra DeRuyver is the Communications Director of the International Leadership Association. Previously she was Internet and Information Project Manager, Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance and Electronic Communications Coordinator, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland. She is ABD in American Studies from the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). At UMCP, she co-founded the Cyberculture Working Group and taught one of the first web-based distance education classes on campus, a senior seminar on electronic publications and virtual exhibitions. She also designed and taught a junior seminar on online activism and an Intro to American Studies course that used dance to explore identity, culture, and struggle in America. In 2001, her website analyzing online public history won the National Council for Public History's graduate student project of the year award and she published on the same topic in American Quarterly. Debra served as co-chair of the American Studies Association's Students Committee (1997-1999) and was active in student government when she attended California State University Fullerton (MA, American Studies) and the University of Michigan (BA, English Literature).
Si Kahn has worked for 57 years as a professional civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. He began his organizing career in 1965 in Arkansas with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, more popularly known as SNCC, the young people's wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. During the War on Poverty, he served first as a VISTA Volunteer and later as Deputy Director of an eight-county community action agency in rural Georgia, where he coached the first racially integrated Little League team in that part of the state.In the 1970s, he worked with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky and was an Area Director of the J.P. Stevens Campaign for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). These historic labor struggles are portrayed in the movies Harlan County U.S.A. and Norma Rae.In 1980, Si founded Grassroots Leadership, a national Southern-based progressive organization committed to community, civil rights and labor organizing. He served as its Executive Director for 30 years, stepping down on May Day 2010. In 2020 he cofounded folkVOTE to bring the power of music and musicians to the overall campaign to register voters and get out the vote.Si's musical body of work includes18 albums of his original songs; a collection of traditional labor and civil rights songs recorded with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp; Good Times and Bedtimes, an album of songs for children; five albums of his songs by other artists; and the songs and/or scripts for seven musicals. His musical Mother Jones in Heaven is currently touring nationally. He's been inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame, joining such legendary artists as Doc Watson, Etta Baker, Uncle Dave Macon, Emmylou Harris, and Dolly Parton.His most recent books are Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists and Quiet Lovers of Justice and The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, the latter co-authored with public philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, his long-time partner and spouse.
