Emil DeGuzman is a founder of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley, where he was involved in the Third World Strike to establish a Third World College in 1968-69. He later taught at both UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. As a community organizer, he worked with the United Farm Workers to build a family health clinic for elderly Filipinos in Delano, California and was a leader in the eight-year battle to stop the eviction of elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants from San Francisco’s International Hotel. In 2005, as President of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, Emil helped open a new $30 million International Hotel with subsidized senior housing as well as a community space. He currently works for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission as a mediator and investigator in fair housing and public accommodations dispute resolutions.

Laurens Grant is a multi-Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose credits include serving as co-producer for two four-hour series for PBS: the recently released Latin Music USA: The Chicano Wave and the Emmy-winning Slavery and the Making of America: Seeds of Destruction. Grant was also coordinating producer for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s The Murder of Emmett Till, which was honored with a Sundance Jury Award, Primetime Emmy and a Peabody Award for Best Documentary. The U.S. Department of Justice re-opened the Emmett Till murder case in part due to the film’s previously unpublished eyewitness accounts and research. Grant has produced and directed films for A&E and The History Channel, and has directed projects in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and in America’s inner city high schools. Prior to her work in documentary film, she worked as a foreign correspondent, heading up the Reuters bureau in Panama.

Marc Grossman was Cesar Chavez’s long-time press secretary, spokesman and personal aide. He currently serves as spokesman and communications director for the Cesar Chavez Foundation. Until Chavez’s death in 1993, Grossman continued working closely with the legendary farm labor leader on all his major speeches, writings and news events. Grossman, 61, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history from the University of California, Irvine in 1972, and a master’s degree in journalism at U.C.L.A. in 1973. He began his activism with the UFW in the late 1960s as a grape boycott organizer. Grossman is working on a book project about Chavez from the perspective of the people who knew him the best: his close family and friends.

Carol Ruth Silver is a San Francisco lawyer and former politician. She was a Freedom Rider arrested and incarcerated for 40 days in Jackson, Mississippi. She was among those elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and allegedly also targeted by fellow Supervisor Dan White in the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Her current pro bono interests are opposing the U.S. Drug War as a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and working to bring education through technology to Afghanistan through Master Teachers by Satellite for Afghanistan (MTSA) and other organizations.