Staff/Volunteers

Board

lilian cartwright

Lillian Cartwright graduated summa cum laude from Queens College and received an MA from the University of Illinois and PhD. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She studied art in New York (Art Students League and Pratt Institute) and in California (San Francisco Art Institute). She was Dean of Academic Affairs at California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley (now Alliant University) and also taught there. She recently edited an issue of World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research on Creative Art Spaces. She will be presenting in Paris in May 2018 at a conference on WORDS THAT KILL sponsored by the American University in Paris and the Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide.
Lillian uses her deep knowledge of the academic world to provide advice on the format, goals and results of all Grassroots Institute classes. She has participated in all the courses that the Grassroots Institute has presented over the past three years.

Carrie Durkee has an MA in Education and taught at Mills College. After a long association with the Alliance for Democracy, she oversaw much of the groundwork for Measure F in Mendocino County directing our state and federal politicians to “enact resolutions calling for an amendment to the United States Constitution to establish that 1) only human beings and not corporations are endowed with constitutional rights and 2) that money does not constitute speech and political contributions can be regulated.” It passed with 75% of the vote.
She held a series of study groups during the Measure F Campaign to help people understand the reality of corporate power. Those Study Groups led to the first Grassroots Institute course Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power. She co-taught the affiliated course entitled Citizenship in an Age of Corporate Power as well as The Common Good: Strategies and Solutions in the spring of 2017 that included movement, music and more. Here is a link to an overview of that course. Carrie is now co-facilitating the course Building an Economy for Our Common Good: Mapping the Solidarity Economy in Mendocino County.

Carrie durkee

margaret koster

Margaret Koster has a Masters in Social Work. She has long been involved with the national Move to Amend effort to pass the 28th Constitutional Amendment “to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.”
She co-directed the Measure F campaign in Mendocino County, which directed our state and federal politicians to “call . . . for an amendment to the United States Constitution to establish that 1) only human beings and not corporations are endowed with constitutional rights and 2) that money does not constitute speech and political contributions can be regulated.” It passed with 75% of the vote. Margaret has co-taught the course Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power as well as the course Building an Economy for Our Common Good: Mapping the Solidarity Economy in Mendocino County.

Michael St. John has a PhD. in economics from UC Berkeley, has taught economics at San Francisco State and Hayward State, and consults with clients on regulatory issues through his company, St. John & Associates, LLC, a member-owned, member-managed limited liability company. Michael helped initiate and then co-taught the first Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power course. He also co-taught the affiliated course, Citizenship in an Age of Corporate Power. Together with Jim Tarbell, Michael is creating and planning to teach a course on Economics: Dismal Science or Prescription for Happiness. He also teaches an ongoing course on non-violent communication, and mediates family, business, and property disputes.

MIchael St. john

Jim Tarbell

Jim Tarbell first wrote about corporate power in Washington, DC during the Vietnam War while working for a Republican Congressman and earning an economics degree from American University. He co-published the Northern California magazine Ridge Review and authored two books, I Came Not Alone about globalization in Latin America in the 1970s and Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire with Roger Burbach. He co-founded the radio program Corporations and Democracy and edits Justice Rising, Grassroots Solutions to Corporate Rule for the Alliance for Democracy.
He began teaching Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power in 2015 and is now co-facilitating the course Building an Economy for Our Common Good: Mapping the Solidarity Economy in Mendocino County. He also wrote the Study Guide for the course on Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power.