Inspired by her own lived experience, Cat Brooks has spent her life organizing to bring an end to unjust systems built into the societal status quo.

She serves the People in the fight for justice, collaborating with State Assembly members to pass transformative legislation around criminal justice reform. Raising her daughter in West Oakland, she works to comfort families who have lost loved ones to state violence and mentors young people in civic activism and theater. She brings with her the combined forces of compassionate grace, resilient tenacity, and laser-focused vision; all of which are rooted in, and nurtured by, the fierce love of her late activist mother and ignited by an unjust system that incarcerated her father instead of providing him healthcare support to fight his addiction.

Born into a mixed-race, working class, union family in segregated Las Vegas, NV, Cat learned about what it means to fight from her mother, who was on the forefront of the domestic violence movement and from her father, who was the first Black stagehand with IATSE Local 720 on the strip. She was only 8 years old when her father’s struggle with substance abuse landed him in a Nevada Correctional Facility. She learned how to stay strong from her mother who raised her on very little income in a series of one bedroom apartments in the deserts of Las Vegas. Her eighth year was important in another way - it was the year she found and fell in love with - the theater. Theater would be a grounding force for Cat. It would literally, “save her life.” The training and performances sustained her throughout her school years and led her toward a Bachelor’s Degree in theater from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. After graduation, she studied briefly with the National Royal Studio in London before moving to Los Angeles to pursue her dream to become an actress.

What happened next would change her life forever: She was hired as communications coordinator for Community Coalition, an organization founded by now Congresswoman Karen Bass. In many ways, this role prepared her for everything that would follow. Not only did she build her skills as a communications professional, she gained vital “on the ground” political training as an organizer and advocate around community concerns such as: educational equity, land use, foster care, re-entry for ex-offenders, and Black-Brown solidarity. One of her early successes came as part of a citywide coalition that fought for and passed a resolution that required the Los Angeles Unified School District to adopt the “A-G” curriculum which is required by the University of California system to ensure that students have acquired sufficient general subject matter knowledge prior to entering college. Following that success, Cat was asked to move to Oakland as Media Outreach Manager for The Education Trust-West to support the passage of a similar resolution in the Oakland Unified School District. Cat played a leadership role in fostering a grassroots partnership with the community to successfully agitate and advocate for the passage of that “A-G” resolution as well and in the process, developed, in partnership with parents, a platform for statewide organizing that empowered families across the state to advocate for quality education for their youth.

Cat’s leadership has always been informed by and in collaboration with impacted communities. She played a central role in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant and is the co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) whose mission is to rapidly respond to and ultimately eradicate state violence in communities of color. With APTP she shepherded the development of a “First Responders” process which provides resources and training for a rapid community-based response to police violence. This model is currently being replicated across the state of California and the country. APTP has also launched Oakland and Sacramento’s first and only non 9-1-1 response to mental health crisis with a participant centered and driven model called Mental Health First (MH1) and is working on a model of non law enforcement response to domestic violence with survivors (of which Cat is herself) and frontline DV workers.

Cat also successfully navigates the “halls of power” offering her considerable skills to the work of negotiating the passage of critical legislation like AB 392 which changed the Use of Force policy in California for the first time in 150 years and SB 1421 which cracked open police records for community and journalists on confirmed cases of excessive use of force - chipping away at California’s ironclad Peace Officers Bill of Rights. Additionally, Cat is one of the leading national voices of the movement to redirect resources from law enforcement and toward community processes for public safety; having launched the DefundOPD movement in Oakland in 2016. Cat currently serves as the Executive Director of The Justice Teams Network, a network of grassroots activists providing rapid response and healing justice as a balm to all forms of state violence across California.

In the midst of the flurry of political activity and organizing that is her life, Cat still finds time to ground herself in art. She is an award-winning artivist, resident playwright, director and actress with The Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland and 3 Girls Theater in San Francisco and host of Law & Disorder on KPFA. Her one-woman show, ‘Tasha about the in-custody murder of Natasha McKenna in the Fairfax County Virginia Jail, will have its world premiere at Z Below in San Francisco in February 2023.

Cat’s current focus is harnessing the righteous rage of the streets into tangible alternatives to militarized police departments and a violent carceral state. Alternatives like Mental Health First, that move beyond aggressively begging the state for concessions and instead, firmly root power in the hands of the People to dramatically and definitively evolve their material living conditions from that of surviving to thriving.