Roger Hickey
| Hometown: | Washington, DC |
| Interests: | An Economy for All, Health Care for All, New Energy, Quality Education, Real Security, Social Security, The Big Con, Take Back America, Invest In America, Progressive Vision, Revitalizing Democracy |
| Honors: | 5 |
Roger 's Bio
Roger Hickey is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, an organization launched by 100 prominent Americans to expand the national debate about America's economic future. The Campaign seeks to empower working Americans, middle-class families, and the poor to make their voices heard in support of a populist economic agenda and an expansion of democracy. Recently, Hickey organized and helped to lead a national coalition of citizen leaders known as Americans United to Protect Social Security.
A decade ago he was one of the founders of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that looks at economics from the point of view of working Americans. Hickey served as the EPI's Vice President and Director of Communications, helping to establish the international reputation of the Institute and injecting the work of progressive economists and analysts into the headlines and news programs of the mass media, into the debates of political leaders, and into the hands of citizens and workers fighting for economic change.
A graduate of the University of Virginia, Hickey began his career in the 1960s as an organizer for the Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee and the Southern Students' Organizing Committee. In 1972 he went to work for Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam as a producer for the UNSELL THE WAR CAMPAIGN, a million dollar volunteer TV, radio, and print advertising campaign with creative and production labor donated by the advertising community on the West Coast.
In 1973 Hickey joined with others to help found the Public Media Center in San Francisco. As Media Director he coordinated production and media placement of TV, radio, print campaigns and conducted publicity efforts for consumer, labor, women's, and environmental groups. He won the first successful FCC ruling requiring Fairness Doctrine broadcast spot advertising response time to counter pro-nuclear utility advertising.
From 1975 to 1984 Hickey was the media director for the National Center for Economic Alternatives, in charge of all aspects of public education for this economic research group set up to encourage public discussion of new economic ideas.
In the early 1980s Hickey organized and ran Consumers Opposed to Inflation in the Necessities (COIN) a coalition of national labor, consumer, minority and environmental groups to support a progressive program to control inflation.
