Jeff Conant

Jeff Conant is a writer, educator, and social justice activist with a focus on international development and ecology. As the coordinator and lead author of A Community Guide to Environmental Health (Hesperian Foundation, 2008), he spent most of a decade collaborating with grassroots development initiatives in many countries to develop popular education materials addressed to the needs of under-resourced communities. As a researcher and independent journalist he has published articles and contributed to reports on water privatization, resource colonization, food sovereignty, ecological sanitation, environmental injustice, and related issues.

His book, A Poetics of Resistance: the Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency (AK Press, 2010) examines the cultural politics of the Zapatista movement of Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on the Zapatistas’ persuasive use of symbolic language and colorful imagery to bring their struggle to the world’s attention.

He is a coordinating committee member of La Red VIDA (the InterAmerican Network for the Defense of the Right to Water), a permaculturalist, and sits on advisory boards of several non-profit organizations.