AKA AWKWORD
DEI hire | Intersectional Proletariat / President / CEO, A Thousand Words / Publicist, @realcatbrooks.bsky.social / Fractional CMO / Ethical Brand + Nonprofit + Political Strategist / Award-Winning Tech + Media + Justice Journalist (NWU) | aka awkword.bsky.social Visit his website thisisawkword.com and Bandcamp
#TenForJustice: The Road to Abolition • Founded 2020 • Harm Reduction + Decriminalization + Decarceration + Reparations + Dual Power + Mutual Aid + Community Defense + Transformative Justice • www.tenforjustice.com RETURNS SOON!
Labeled “Antifa militant” by Andy Ngo and “quite profound” by Chuck D of Public Enemy, AWKWORD has fought for justice and equality through protest song, political organizing, digital strategy and street journalism for nearly a quarter century. He is a co-founder of TEN DEMANDS, co-creator of Ten For Justice: The Road to Abolition, founding member of Our United Left, and former strategist/content creator for the Marianne Williamson and Cornel West/Melina Abdullah presidential campaigns.
Raised by an activist mother radicalized during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras, AWKWORD converted from troubled graffiti artist and Nazi destroyer — angry and acting out at the world’s injustices — to productive organizer at 16, when he collaborated with the Anti-Defamation League to establish what would become his (predominantly Christian, conservative) high school’s annual Diversity Day. That year, he also created his school’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, and spoke for the first time at the town’s Martin Luther King Day celebration.
At Vassar College, AWKWORD served as co-chair of the Student Activist Union, co-founded the Justice Group, and earned his degree in Sociology, with a focus on the intersections of race and class, the prison industrial complex, and houselessness and the politics of public space.
Since the early 2000s, AWKWORD has organized with rapper Pharaohe Monch and anti-gun violence nonprofit Guns 4 Cameras; lobbied New York State Congress for the repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws; sued New York State to reinstate the 2020 Democratic Primary and add Bernie Sanders back on the ballot; worked pro-bono at Green Haven maximum security prison, an alternative-to-incarceration center and a number of teen centers, after-school programs and homeless shelters; created rap songs and videos used or sponsored by Occupy Wall Street, the New York Civil Liberties Union, The Ocean Project, and the union movement in Wisconsin; presented on abolition, labor organizing and Hip Hop education as a keynote and guest speaker for adults and students; and served as strategic consultant to Songs for Good, Deaf DAWN, New Leaf Vegans, and Guns 4 Cameras.