MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is an American activist and journalist and was a member of the Black Panther Party until October 1970. He left the party and became a radio reporter, eventually becoming president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Despite evidence pointing to his innocence, he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. After numerous appeals, his sentence was commuted in 2011 to life imprisonment without parole. During his imprisonment Abu-Jamal has published books and commentaries on social and political issues.

NOAM CHOMSKY is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and laureate professor at the University of Arizona.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS is an American political activist, academic, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She was a professor (now retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department and a former director of the university's Feminist Studies department. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex.