Annual Meeting 2012 Speakers

Keynote Speaker:  K.A. Owens

K.A. Owens is a long-time member of KFTC. He has served the organization in many capacities including Jefferson County representative to the Steering Committee, and on the Executive Committee as vice chair, chair, and now serves as immediate past chair. He has been a leader on issues of economic justice and has served on the KFTC Economic Justice Committee for many years. As chair of KFTC he served on the Land Stewardship and Conservation Task Force of the Kentucky legislature. 

K.A. Owens is also co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a civil rights organization headquartered in Louisville. He is a former member of the Coordinating Committee (Board of Directors) of the Fairness Campaign and is still on the Leadership Council of that organization. He is a former board member of the Democracy Resource Center. He was a cofounder of Citizens Against Police Abuse, an organization dedicated to police reform and ending police brutality. 

He is a veteran community and political organizer. In 2008 he was recognized by the Louisville Metro Council for outstanding community service. He earned an honorable discharge from the Kentucky Air National Guard and the United States Air Force Reserve. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a Master’s degree in Humanities with a concentration in Civic Leadership from the University of Louisville. He is a native of Louisville.

K.A. will give the keynote address on Saturday at 1:15 p.m.

Workshop Guest Speakers 

Michael Aldridge

Michael Aldridge, executive director of the Kentucky ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), began working on issues of justice and equality at the community level doing volunteer work throughout college and then within the city of Louisville.  The Louisville community has a rich history of civil rights and social justice leadership, and Michael was fortunate to reap the benefits of his predecessor’s knowledge and wisdom.

Michael went on to take leadership positions within several non-profits serving on the Board of Directors for the Fairness Campaign, the Development Board of Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the ACLU of Kentucky.  After a stint as the Finance Director for the NO on the Amendment Campaign he became the development director for Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, leading grassroots fundraising and community building efforts throughout the state.

Michael is currently the executive director of the ACLU of Kentucky where he leads a six-person staff team and a twenty-two member Board of Directors in implementing the organization’s litigation, legislative and educational programs around civil liberties issues. Michael graduated from Centre College in 1993 with a B.A. in Art & Religion.

Tona Barkley

Tona Barkley is originally from Paducah and now lives in rural Owen County. She is retired from Kentucky Educational Television (KET) where she served as communications director. As a member of Frankfort Climate Action Network, she helped coordinate Lighten Up, Frankfort! – the group’s household carbon reduction project. In 2010, she ran for the board of directors of Owen Electric Cooperative. Tona serves as vice chair of the Demand Side Management & Renewable Energy Collaborative, which is making recommendations to the East Kentucky Power Cooperative for progress in energy efficiency and renewable energy. A devoted grandmother, she makes quilts and paintings and plays old-time music.

Ivy Brashear

Ivy Brashear is a fifth-generation Perry Countian, whose ancestors settled the Left Fork of Maces Creek before the Civil War, and whose family still lives on that land today. She is currently a graduate student in the Community and Leadership Development program at the University of Kentucky, where she works as a blogger for The Rural Blog at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. She is a board member for the Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development, and an alumnus of the Hazard Herald newspaper in Hazard, Ky. All of which boils down to this: She is passionate about the region, and will work until her last breath to lift it up and help it reach its full potential. 

Scott Douglas

Scott Douglas is a native of Nashville, TN and attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where he co-founded the University’s Black Student Union in 1967. Residing in Birmingham since 1976, he served under the leadership of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Anne Braden as Executive Director of the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice from 1984-1989. He was Southern Regional Program Officer for the Partnership for Democracy Foundation from 1989-1992. Scott is also a former Secretary of the Germania Park Neighborhood Association. After a stint as the first Environmental Justice Grassroots Organizer for the Sierra Club, Scott became Executive Director of Greater Birmingham Ministries. GBM is a multi-faith, multi-constituency and multi-racial organization that provides emergency services to families in economic crisis while working with congregations and low-income residents to reclaim communities, identify and fill gaps in social service infrastructures and build community confidence in self-governance through inclusive, participatory, transparent, and democratically accountable civic and voter engagement.

Scott is a former board member of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and currently serves on the boards of the Progressive Technology Project, the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama and the PushBack Network. Scott has written articles on social and racial justice for Southern Exposure, Howard Law Journal, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Scott is an alumnus of Leadership Birmingham and Leadership Alabama, a founding board member of the Alabama Association of Nonprofits and a 2011 MIT Mel King Community Fellows Program graduate.

Scott is a member of Saint Paul United Methodist Church (Rev. Marcus Singleton, pastor) where his wife, Lynn, a retired Birmingham teacher, directs the Senior and Homeless Ministries. Scott and Lynn have one adult son, Frederick, who resides in Nashville.

Dana Loustalot Duncan

Dana Loustalot Duncan is a community worker, writer, and photographer who recently returned to Kentucky & the Southeast after several years living in the Middle East and Turkey. She currently lives in Louisville and works as the community liaison for Americana Community Center, which works to improve the lives of refugees, immigrants, and low-income families in the city.

Chris Hartman

Meta Mendel-Reyes

Tanya Torp

Carla Wallace

Zoe Wilcher