Andy is a former resident of Springfield, Ohio. He graduated from Springfield’s North High School in 1998 and went on to serve three years with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division before attending Evergreen State College and becoming a journalist with Indymedia.org.  In December 2001, he went to Israel with a pro-Palestinian activist group pushing for an end to Israeli occupation. The following summer, he went to Colombia, South America, to study nonviolent resistance, and to Northern Ireland.

Casey is an anarchist from the Kansas City area who was charged with slashing the throat of the Dean of Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley. This occurred when the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, was scheduled to give a talk at the college. In February 2011, the state declared him to be incapable of standing trial, which means he was forced to stay locked up in a mental institution pre-trial until June of 2013. He was sentenced to 12 years on each of three counts – assault, and two armed criminal action charges – and seven years on a second count of assault.

Ron is a former 60s civil rights activist. In 1969, he was among the students at St. Paul Central High School who demanded Black history courses and organized actions against racist teachers. He was also instrumental in helping to integrate college campuses in Minnesota. During this period, he began to look toward revolutionary theory and engage in political street theater with other young Black revolutionaries in the city of St. Paul.

Mumia is an award-winning journalist and was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Philadelphia, PA. He was a vocal supporter of the MOVE organization and has struggled for justice and human rights for people of color since he was at least 14 years old- the age when he joined the Party. He left the party to become a radio journalist where he made waves defending the rights of black and brown people. In 1981, he was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists Philadelphia Chapter.

Arrest

Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two FBI agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge indian Reservation.

Peltier's indictment and conviction have been the subject of much controversy; Amnesty International placed his case under the "Unfair Trials" category of its Annual Report: USA 2010.

The Shootout