Pablo Benson-Silva, Johanna Fernández & Monxo López

Teaches at Museum of the City of New York - Public

Pablo Benson-Silva is an activist, organizer, and researcher born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico that moved to New York City more 14 years ago. He has been involved in many projects that span from Occupy Wall Street, the Puerto Rican Mutual Aid Network, Fearless Cities, and the worker cooperative movement. He is also a partner at Movement Netlab, a think-do-learn tank on network social movements. Since summer 2017, Benson-Silva has served on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and is director of membership for the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives. He studied sociology at the University of Puerto Rico and at the New School for Social Research and more than occasionally dabbles in teaching.

Johanna Fernández teaches 20th Century U.S. history, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). She is the author, editor, and co-editor of multiple books and journals, including Young Lords: A Radical History (February, 2020) and Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (2015). She directed and co-curated the exhibition ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and Loisaida Inc. Fernández’s writing has appeared in many publications including Al Jazeera, The New York Times, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. Her awards include the Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship of the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.

Monxo López (moderator) is a researcher, educator, cartographer, and South Bronx-based urban activist. He is currently a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, and was a Mapping Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Spaces. He is also a founding member of South Bronx Unite (a local environmental justice organization), as well as a founding and board member of the Mott Haven/Port Morris Community Land Stewards, the local Community Land Trust. López holds a Ph.D. in political science from CUNY’s Graduate Center. He grew up in Puerto Rico, and currently lives in Mott Haven, the South Bronx.