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About Dollars & Sense People

A democratic and non-hierarchical collective of radical economics graduate students and faculty founded Dollars & Sense in 1974. Today, D&S is still governed by a collective, rather than a board of directors. Collective members write for Dollars & Sense, and the collective meets weekly to read submissions and edit forthcoming articles. The meetings regularly spark spirited discussions of economic topics among collective members. The collective also helps manage the D&S organization, getting a full course in non-profit publishing in the process. Dollars & Sense also has five staff, several interns and office volunteers, and associates (who are less active than collective members).

Dollars & Sense Staff

Dan Fireside, book editor joined the D&S staff in July 2004 after receiving a masters in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. He has worked for many years on human rights and community development issues relating to Latin America, and has spent several years in Guatemala and Peru. He currently lives in Somerville, MA, with his wife Lisa Rivera and their daughter Ximena Rivera Fireside. He documents the things he worries about at Worried Dad. Dan's articles in Dollars & Sense include Burlington Busts the Affordable Housing Debate.

Amy Gluckman, magazine co-editor, joined the staff of D&S in June 2002. Before that, she taught social studies and math at alternative high schools in Somerville and Lowell, MA, and teacher preparation at Salem State College. She has created and led economic literacy workshops for low-income adults and created labor-focused social studies curriculum materials for high-school students. With former D&S editor Betsy Reed, she co-edited Homoeconomics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life (Routledge, 1998). Amy's articles in Dollars & Sense include Gay Marriage Blues and Testing ... Testing ... One, Two, Three: The Commercial Side of the Standardized-Testing Boom.

Linda Pinkow, development and promotions coordinator, joined the D&S staff in June 2007, where she oversees all fundraising, advertising, public relations, and coalition-building. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor's degree in English and Sociology at Brandeis University. Linda also has extensive experience in print and broadcast journalism and communications, as a writer, editor, researcher, and media activist. Since 1995 she has been News Director at WMBR, the all-volunteer, campus-community radio station at MIT, and currrently co-hosts a weekly talk and music program called "What's Left." Linda is author of "Acting in the Big Picture" (an article about the START study guide program, in the November/December issue of D&S), and Globalized Resistance.

Paul Piwko, business manager, joined the D&S staff in May of 2007. He is co-author (with former D&S intern Sarah Bromley) of Dropkick Murphys: Friends of the Working Class. We will post a more detailed bio of Paul soon!

Chris Sturr, magazine co-editor, joined the staff in July of 2005, after several years on the D&S collective. He taught at the college level for several years; his research focused on the prison crisis and the history of prison reform in the United States. His media activism has included reporting for WMBR (MIT's radio station), participating in the Boston Independent Media Center, and co-producing a weekly two-hour radio program, Unwelcome Guests. His current projects include coordinating the Political Economy of Prisons article series and improving the D&S website. Chris's articles in Dollars & Sense include Fidelity and Genocide, "Military Spending and the Cost of the Wars" (July/August, 2006), The Penal Welfare State, and (with Amy Offner) Flattening Appalachia.

Dollars & Sense Interns

Editorial:

Alissa Thuotte

The Dollars & Sense Collective

Faisal Chaudhry is an attorney and a graduate student in history at Harvard University. His article Minding the Timor Gap appeared in the July/August 2006 of D&S. He is currently on leave from the collective while he does research and has fun in London.

Chuck Collins is co-founder of United for a Fair Economy, a Boston-based group organizing against widening inequality in the United States, and Responsible Wealth, a national network of business people, investors, and affluent Americans who are concerned about deepening economic inequality and are working for widespread prosperity. Chuck works part-time on estate tax advocacy, writing, and research. He has a B.A. in History & Economics, Hampshire College (1984) and a Masters in Community Economic Development, University of Southern New Hampshire (1987). Chuck's articles in Dollars & Sense include: Balancing State Budgets: Who will Pay? and The Wealth Gap Widens. He is also the co-author of several books, including Economic Apartheid in America, Wealth and Our Commonwealth, and Robin Hood Was Right.

Ellen Frank teaches economics at Emmanuel College. She writes and speaks widely on international economics and on US economic policy. Ellen is the author of The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation about Deficits, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America, and of many articles in Dollars & Sense including: Dr. Dollar: Measures of poverty, Dr. Dollar: Radical vs. liberal economics, The Great Stock Illusion, Social Security Q&A, Making Patients Pay: U.S. Health System Puts Profits First.

Liv Gold is a former D&S intern; she joined the collective in June of 2006. Her most recent day job involved working with robots, but she began a masters program in journalism this fall. Her article on tourism and military-based environmental destruction in Vieques, PR, appeared in the November/December 2006 issue of D&S.

Ben Greenberg is a freelance journalist and author of the blog Hungry Blues. He recently joined the staff of Physicians for Human Rights. He was a guest co-editor of D&S's March/April 2006 special issue on Katrina, which included several interviews Ben conducted with activists from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in addition to a feature article by Ben, Gone to Mississippi.

Tyler Hauck is a former D&S intern; he has been a collective member since August of 2005.

Mary Jirmanus joined the D&S collective in March of 2006. Her "Letter from Abroad" about her time in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 appeared in the September/October 2006 issue of D&S.

Toussaint Losier is the Program Coordinator of groundWork USA, an organization supporting environmental justice activism in South Africa. Living in Roxbury, he is active in prison education, tenants rights, unemployed workers organizing and international solidarity work. He is also a freelance photographer and journalist.

James McBride is a former D&S intern; he joined the collective in April of 2006. He co-authored a D&S article, "Medicare D Gets an F" (November/December, 2005) with James Woolman.

John Miller is a professor of economics at Wheaton College. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California and has served as an Economic Consultant to the Southeast Asia Office of Oxfam America. In 1995 he was awarded a J. William Fulbright Scholarship and spent the year as the Southeast Asia Regional Research Scholar of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. John is co-author of Which Way to Grow? Poverty and Prosperity in Southeast Asia. He has written numerous articles for D&S and has also contributed to publications like the Guardian and the Review of Radical Political Economics. His areas of interest include the Federal Reserve, unemployment, tax policy, and macroeconomic and budget issues. In addition to editing Real World Macro, John has written numerous articles for D&S including: What's Good for Wal-Mart..., Taxing Wealth Swedish Style, Outing Alan Greenspan, Free, Free at Last and Dollar Anxiety.

Laura Orlando is a civil engineer and executive director of the ReSource Institute for Low Entropy Systems, a nonprofit organization working on public health and environmental issues in the US and abroad. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Boston University and associate director of the Program for the Ecology of Human Systems at the B.U. School of Public Health. She is co-editor of Toward Sustainable Sanitation (May 2001), and has published articles in the Women's Review of Books, Dollars & Sense, and In These Times. Her articles in D&S include: Industry Attacks on Dissent: From Rachel Carson to Oprah and Sustainable Sanitation: A Global Health Challenge

Larry Peterson is a regular contributor to the D&S blog, most recently in a series of posting under the heading "The Dull Compulsion of the Economic." He recently wrote an article on Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank for the July/August issue of D&S, and he is currently working on a feature article on recent developments in labor law. Larry is a member of the Union for Radical Political Economics, but pays his bills by working as an underlaborer for corporate America.

Smriti Rao joined the D&S collective in March of this year; she teaches economics at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. She is currently working on feature article for D&S on economic and political changes in West Bengal.

Dave Ryan is an urban planner who has focused on affordable housing and homelessness. He has lived in New York, Boston, LA, and the Bay Area, and recently returned to LA as an associate with Polis Consulting. He wrote Bringing Them All Back Home: Housing in New Orleans, six months after the storm for D&S's March, 2006 special issue on Katrina.

Adria Scharf was co-editor of D&S from July 2002 until July 2005. Before that, she worked as a senior researcher and trainer at Ownership Associates, Inc. She is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her writing has been published in Dollars & Sense, Left Business Observer, Journal of Employee Ownership Law and Finance, and Washington Housing Quarterly. Her many articles for the magazine include Space Wars: An Interview with Bruce Gagnon, and Scripted Talk: From "Welcome to McDonalds" to "Paper or plastic?" employers control the speech of service workers. She is now director of the Richmond Peace Education Center, in Richmond, Va.

Sam Tracy writes about the intersection of transportation and ecology, and sometimes various other things as well. Following on various obscure fanzine efforts, he first cut his teeth with movement politics as Managing Editor of the Auto-Free Times in 1998. His first bicycle repair manual, How to Rock and Roll, published in 2001, has at last fallen out of print. Its updated and vastly more complete successor, Bicycle! A Repair & Maintenance Manifesto appeared March 2006. Sam joined the D&S collective in September of 2005.

Ramaa Vasudevan teaches economics at Barnard College. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at the New School University in spring of 2006. She has recently taken over D&S's "Ask Dr. Dollar" column, and answered a reader's query on the relationship between unemployment and inflation in the September/October issue of the magazine.

Jeanne Winner is an activist in the Boston area. She has been active in local organizations devoted to housing, labor, and welfare issues since the early seventies. Her undergraduate degree is in the History of Science. She earns an unquestionably modest living working as a secretary and editor at local universities. Her articles in D&S include The Social Relations of Health and Disease.

Some Dollars & Sense Associates

Randy Albelda is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She has written numerous articles over the years for D&S, including What's Wrong with Welfare to Work and What Welfare Reform Has Wrought. She is also author of numerous books, including Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination, Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, Economics and Feminism, Mink Coats Don't Trickle Down: The Economic Attack on Women and People of Color and Alternatives to Economic Orthodoxy.

Marc Breslow is a former editor of Dollars & Sense. His many articles for the magazine include: George Soros: Beware Market Fundamentalism, The Fake Federal Budget Surplus, I Want My Ford Explorer! But Can the World Afford Cheap Gas?, Merger Mania Continues and Minimum Wage, Maximum Benefit?.

Jim Campen is a professor emeritus of economics at the UMass-Boston and was a member of the D&S collective from 1974 to 1982. He is now executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, which "exists to raise awareness of abusive credit and lending practices and to call for re-regulation of the industry." (Check out this video of Jim on Fox Business News. He faces down the hosts quite well.) His many articles for D&S include: Giving the Nod to Conglomerates and A Law that Works.

Thea Lee is policy director and chief international economist at the AFL-CIO, where she oversees research and strategies on domestic and international economic policy. Previously, she worked as an international trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and as an editor at Dollars & Sense. She is co-author of A Field Guide to the Global Economy, published by the New Press. Her research projects include reports on the North American Free Trade Agreement, on the impact of international trade on U.S. wage inequality, and on the domestic steel and textile industries. She has testified before several committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on various trade topics. She serves on several advisory committees, including the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Worker Rights Consortium, United for a Fair Economy, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Arthur MacEwan is a professor of economics at UMass-Boston, and one of the founders of D&S. He is author of Neo-Liberalism or Democracy?: Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century, Debt and Disorder: International Economic Instability and U.S. Imperial Decline and Instability and Change in the World Economy. His many articles for D&S include: New Man at the World Bank, Is It Oil? and Why CEO Salaries Skyrocket.

Amy Offner was the first book editor at D&S, and is currently a graduate student in history at Columbia University. The articles she has written for D&S include Innovative Labor Strategies: Ten Campaigns to Learn From.

Chris Tilly was a member of the D&S collective for over twenty years. He teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. His numerous articles for D&S include Geese, Golden Eggs, and Traps: Why Inequality is Bad for the Economy, Next Steps for the Living Wage Movement, and Part-Time Work and Temporary Work: Flexibility for Whom?. In addition to editing Real World Micro, Chris is author of several books, including: Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America, Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities, Glass Ceilings, Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market and Work Under Capitalism.

A forum on Economic Justice and African-American Communities, held at the Community Church of Boston in September of 2006, honored Chris's many contributions to Dollars & Sense over the years.

Thad Williamson was a member of the D&S collective for several years; he now teaches political science at the University of Richmond. He has also served as a consultant to the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives in Washington. He is author of What Comes Next? Proposals for a Different Society; co-author (with Gar Alperovitz and David Imbroscio) of Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era; and author of More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much to So Many. He has written articles for a number of publications, including Tikkun, Cross Currents, Review of Radical Political Economy, In These Times, and The Nation. He has also written many articles for D&S, including: Interview with Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Capital Stability and Local Democracy and Global Economic Inequality.