Eric Mann is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles and a founder of the Bus Riders Union. The Strategy Center is a “think tank/act tank” that trains organizers and initiates high visibility environmental justice, mass transportation, and civil rights campaigns. The BRU is the largest mass transportation group in the U.S. and the subject of Haskell Wexler’s feature length documentary: Bus Riders Union. The Center’s National School for Strategic Organizing has more than 100 graduates who work in LA and throughout the U.S.
 
Mann has been a civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, labor, and environmental organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality (field secretary), Students for a Democratic Society (New England regional organizer, national officer), and the United Auto Workers (ten years on auto assembly lines, coordinator of the UAW Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open.)
 
Mann served 18 months in Massachusetts prisons for his participation in militant demonstrations against the Vietnam War. He then worked with the Soledad Brothers and Attica Brothers defense committees.
 
Upon the death of George Jackson, author of Soledad Brother, Mann wrote his first book, Comrade George: An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson published by Harper and Row.
 
He has written six books, Comrade George, Taking On General Motors, LA’s Lethal Air, Dispatches from Durban, The 2004 Election, and Katrina’s Legacy.
 
He is the co-host of the weekly radio show, Voices from the Frontlines, on KPFK Pacifica 90.7FM in Los Angeles. He has published more than 200 articles that have appeared in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, Boston After Dark, Worldwatch, Socialist Register, Black Agenda Report, Black Commentator, AhoraNow, and The Nation.
 
Mann was a delegate to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. He was chosen by the NGO’s to address the world governments at the summit to challenge U.S. policies.