Arti Walker-Peddakotla (she/they)
Chair
Arti is a William H. Hastie Fellow at University of Wisconsin Law School and a long time movement organizer. Arti’s legal scholarship focuses on Abolition and Movement law, Municipal and State law, and Tech and Privacy law. Prior to receiving the Hastie Fellowship, Arti was a 2022 Soros Justice Fellow. Arti served in local elected office from 2019-2022 as an Oak Park Village Trustee. As a local elected official, and cofounder of community organizing group Freedom to Thrive Oak Park, Arti organized abolitionist efforts in Oak Park, IL to fight against the use of carceral technology, defund the police, and remove police from schools. Arti served in the U.S. Army on active duty from 2000-2006, and is a disabled veteran. Arti currently serves on the board of AboutFace: Veterans Against The War, is an advisory board member of Lucy Parsons Labs, and serves on the Public Safety Steering Committee for Local Progress.
Zack Henson (he/him)
Co-Chair
Zack is a longtime member of About Face and excited to work as a member of the board. His journey to this point has been a long one. After graduating college, Zack worked as a quantitative analyst in the financial sector for several years until he became disillusioned with a predatory industry. Wanting something exciting and believing that the US military could be a force for good, he joined Army Special Forces in 2011. After latching onto the notion that low intensity wars done properly would prevent large wars executed catastrophically, he realized he was wrong. After two deployments in Iraq and central Africa, he began to see how everything in the west’s foreign policy repertoire, from well-meaning NGOs to remotely executed drone strikes, were tools for enforcing a system of colonial domination characterized by starvation wages and violent suppression. Returning home, Zack quickly worked his way through several movement organizations before landing on About Face as a political home.
Since joining About Face, Zack has participated in direct action campaigns, provided training for the organization’s base, and has previously served on staff. He is a security engineer with experience in offensive, defensive, and research oriented cybersecurity. In addition to working in this field professionally, he has also worked with movement organizations to improve their security and train members in how to protect themselves. Zack lives in New York City with his wife, two children, and dog.
Daniel Lakemacher (they/he)
Treasurer
Coming Soon!
Jessica Girard (she/they)
Secretary
Jessica has been educated in community organizing across unceded Alaskan lands for the last decade focusing on climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty. Her political home is with Native Movement and was a cofounder and Executive Director of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, Alaska Just Transition Collective and Defend the Sacred Alaska. Jessica is an auntie of the Northern Irish diaspora raised South of Boston on Wampanoag Lands, and holds a graduate degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University. She served in the U.S. Air Force on active duty from 2000 – 2010, including three tours during OIF. After witnessing the lack of response to Hurricane Katrina, Jessica has made a commitment to lifelong decolonization and in this moment is focusing on connecting to her ancestry through ceremonies to center joy while navigating grief ensuring her relations and organizing are grounded in a place of healing not harm.
Siri Margerin
Siri Margerin holds the civilian ally seat on the Board. She has worked extensively with About Face: Veterans Against the War since the beginning. She is the coordinator of the Bay Area GI Rights Network and organizes the Full Picture Coalition to bring veterans and youth into Bay Area schools to talk on issues of militarization and the MIC. She is a mother, animal lover and an artist.
Clare Bayard (he/she/they)
Clare has organized in grassroots movements for collective liberation for 25 years, and worked with About Face since 2005 as a civilian supporter. Clare has built over a dozen organizations, coalitions and networks, and trained thousands of activists in organizing skills, strategies, and direct action to dismantle militarism and white supremacy and construct multiracial democracy in the U.S.
Connecting struggles against U.S. empire at home and abroad is the heart of Clare’s political work. Clare comes from a family with several generations of veterans, is active in the War Resisters International Network and served in board and staff positions at the War Resisters League for over a decade.
Spending years working in community safety as a crucial part of demilitarization led Clare to train as a somatic healing practitioner supporting survivors of war, state violence, and sexual assault. Clare’s writing on G.I. resistance and anti-racist organizing has been published widely including the Guardian UK, Z Magazine, Alternet, Common Dreams, The Hill, and the recent anthology We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st century America.
Kathleen Hernandez (she/they)
Kathleen is honored to be serving as an ally board member on the About Face board dedicated to dismantling militarism and endless wars while building social justice alliances and secure communities of care tethered with justice and joy. She became a civilian organizer and supporter for About Face (IVAW) just after its inception in 2004. As an ally serving on the About Face Board of Directors, they bring energy, compassion, and a plethora of skills to the organization.
Kathleen is committed to transformational work and advocacy. This includes their own identity, power and ideologies. As an abolitionist and antimilitarist, she supports the right to exist in spaces that are anti-racist, principled, non-oppressive queer and other spaces engaged in the dismantling of gender violence, settler colonialism and white supremacy policies and institutions. Kathleen recognizes and reject the violence of all her relatives by using her voice, feet and power to speak up with care & respect for others & themself. They advocate for differently abled activists and people and engage in deepening their understanding of intersectionality as an ally member serving on the board.
As a grandmother and an abolitionist organizer, they support migrant and at risk families including those with veteran intersections, through working as an Unarmed Civilian Accompanier in Mexico, Colombia & the USA and as as a National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer. This work interfaces with Unified US Deported Veterans and Al Otro Lado among others. Kathleen is active family member of Dignity And Power Now: an abolitionist group supporting all incarcerated people, their families and communities including the coalition Justice LA (Abolitionists dismantling prisons, jails and police – imaging & creating communities based on an economy of care not punishment).
Kathleen works volunteering with the United Teacher’s Los Angeles Human Rights Committee, Co-founder of MLK Coalition of Greater LA, Equity On Fire (Advocating for an all inclusive fire service free of systemic discrimination & harassment.), Veterans For Peace and the working group VFP Be The Change Book Club – (ways in which colonization, racism, gender bias & other biases show up in our lives & in our activism.), Alanon Parent Focus 12 Step Program.
They reside in unceded Tongva land Topanga Canyon – situated in western Los Angeles County, CA in the Santa Monica Mountains along a riparian ecosystem. Kathleen gives thanks for this opportunity to share some of her story and to serve.
Ramon Mejía (he/him)
Ramon enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 18 to support his family and in 2003 participated in the initial invasion of Iraq. This experience led to self-reflection and becoming an outspoken advocate and organizer against U.S. wars and the growing militarization of our communities. Over the last decade, as a member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, Ramón has had the opportunity to join international delegations to build with, deepen his commitment, and learn alongside communities in Guåhan, Chile, Cuba, Palestine, and Philippines. Ramón earned his Bachelor of Arts in History & Religious Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Currently, Ramón is the anti-militarism national organizer at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.
Sol (they/them)
Sol is a former union organizer/researcher and semi-medically retired policy analyst. In their teens, they made the mistake of joining the Army seeking a way out from part-time retail gigs and no education prospects. They deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and it was in Afghanistan that they began to radicalize against the military. It was clear that every narrative pushed by the government at that point was a lie, this wasn’t about “terrorism”, and that nobody deserved whatever the US was plotting.
Coming back to the US, Sol wanted to do anything that was opposite of their prior experiences. They ended up with an Innocence Project, working on various social policies, did finally end up in school, and stumbled across About Face while getting involved in a case of a veteran being deported. At this point, Sol had wanted nothing to do with veterans outside of professional environments, but the members of AF presented them with something they’d never experienced – a community with shared experiences and shared values. Since then, Sol has taken part in various occupations, blockades, protests, community defense work, and community education work prior to becoming a board member.
Matt Howard
Coming Soon!