CHRISTOPHER SCHEER

• Former staff writer at left webzine AlterNet.org
• Co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq
• Son of National Lawyer Guild attorney Anne Weills
• Son of Marxist columnist Robert Scheer

The son of former Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, Christopher Scheer is a teacher of debate, history, and English Language Development at Skyline High School in Oakland, California. He was formerly a staff writer and Managing Editor of the leftist webzine AlterNet.org. Prior to that, he edited another leftist webzine, WorkingForChange.com, which is funded by the Tides Foundation’s Working Assets Grantmaking Fund. He also spent several years as an editor at the San Francisco Examiner, and he did some writing for The Nation and the Los Angeles Times.

Scheer was born in the late 1960s in Berkeley, California, where he was raised by his divorced mother, Anne Weills. When her son was about two years old, Weills co-founded The Red Family, a Maoist commune of urban guerrilas which trained its members in the use of explosives and firearms and called for the creation of "liberated zones" in the United States. Weills would later become a board member and attorney with the National Lawyers Guild.

In 1995 Scheer worked with movie director Oliver Stone as a creative consultant on the script for the film Nixon.

In 2003 Scheer and his father co-authored, along with AlterNet.org editor Lakshmi Chaudhry, the book The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq. To promote the book, Christopher Scheer appeared as a guest on numerous sympathetic media outlets, including the national radio show Democracy Now! hosted by Amy Goodman.