Abby Martin

 Martin was born in Pleasanton, California. She graduated from Amador Valley High School in 2002. She was fascinated by journalism when her old high school boyfriend joined the military following the September 11 attacks in 2001. "I did not want him to go to war, or even being a part of one," she recalls. "I began to critically ask 'What is really going on in the world?" When she was an undergraduate at San Diego State University, she began to question what she called the "selling" of the Iraq War by the media. She earned an undergraduate degree in political science, and minored in Spanish. She volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, but was disillusioned by the paradigm of left-right. The concept suggests that people are more likely to separate themselves into ideologic opposites. Martin was an investigative journalist at a San Diego-based news site before moving to Northern California.