Elizabeth Whitney – A wonderful performance artist whose work is both fun and consequential.  She led a performance activism workshop at the Petit Jean Performance Festival in Arkansas that we participated in.  It ended up being a turning point for The Composters with regards to aligning our intentions and feeling the work we do is called for and necessary.  Her current projects include shows about interracial queer relationships and beauty queens and orange juice.  She’s been a womentor to us – an inspiration. http://www.elizabethwhitney.com/

Lois Gibbs, she was 27 when she discovered her son’s school and thus her community where built on top of a toxic dump – an underhanded deal – she works tirelessly and faced emense obstacles – even being shot at – she followed in the footsteps of Rachel Carson – the mother of the modern day environmental movement.  Lois is considered the mother of the Superfund and she now runs the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, http://www.chej.org/ an organizations that helps and supports those taking action in their community against toxic environments.  She started a movement that eventually involved the president and enacted legislation that made it illegal for corporations and the governments to effect communities with their pollution.

Paul Hawken. Author of The Ecology of Commerce. More and better—costs a lot. Paul Ehrlich and Bill McKibben. Asks us why we don’t see nature as capital? The business of nature is invaluable--pollination and decomposition would cost us 33 trillion dollars annually as Bill McKibben explains in his book Deep Economy—the bees and the soil are doing a lot and anyone like Hawken who gets that word out we respect.

Sarah Weddington. Lawyer who won Roe v. Wade. Author of A Question of Choice. Theweddingtoncenter.com She enacted the preachings of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to be the law of the land. Ariel Gore—agency and motherhood.