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Veteran journalist Bill Press sits down for an in-depth conversation with progressive organizer, feminist, and political strategist Heather Booth.

Heather Booth is one of the country’s leading strategists about progressive issue campaigns and driving issues in elections. She started organizing in the civil rights, anti-Vietnam war and women’s movements of the 1960s. She founded JANE, an underground abortion service in 1965, before Roe, which is the subject of an HBO documentary titled The JANES, and Hollywood film, Call Jane. Booth was the founding Director and is now President of the Midwest Academy, training social change leaders and organizers. She has been involved in and managed political campaigns and was the Training Director of the Democratic National Committee.

In 2000, she was the Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase African American election turnout. She was the lead consultant, directing the founding of the Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2005. In 2008, she was the director of the Health Care Campaign for the AFL-CIO. In 2009, she directed the campaign passing President Obama’s first budget. In 2010 she was the founding director of Americans for Financial Reform, fighting to regulate the financial industry. She was the national coordinator for the coalition around marriage equality and the 2013 Supreme Court decision. She was strategic advisor to the Alliance for Citizenship (the largest coalition of the immigration reform campaign).

She was the field director for the 2017 campaign to stop the tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires She directed Progressive and Seniors Outreach for the Biden/Harris campaign. She has been a consultant on many other issues and with many other organizations.  She is a member of the consulting firm Democracy Partners.

A film about her life in organizing, “Heather Booth: Changing the World” has been shown on PBS/World Channel stations around the country.

Bill Press began his career as a political insider and media commentator on KABC-TV and KCOP-TV, both in Los Angeles. Over the years, he has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mike Award. He also served as aide to California Governor Jerry Brown and was Chair of the California Democratic Party from 1993 to 1996.

The former co-host of MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press, CNN’s Crossfire and The Spin Room, Press has built a national reputation on thought provoking and humorous insights from the left side of the political aisle. Press is the author of ten books and is the host of the twice-weekly “The Bill Press Pod”; – available on Google, Apple, Spotify, or Tune-In. He’s a member of the White House press corps. He also writes a weekly column for The Hill and a weekly syndicated newspaper column distributed by Tribune Media Services.

This event will be in-person at Hill Center and streamed live on our Facebook page.