Honoring Joe Brooks & Liberation Ventures’ Wise Council
There is incredible power in intergenerational organizing. If we’re going to make reparations for Black people a reality in our lifetime, we must do the hard and necessary work of building on ramps for young people to enter our movements, while simultaneously honoring the wisdom of our elders. We must ensure that the contributions of our elders, both past and present, are acknowledged and celebrated, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but so that we can build on their successes, learn from their mistakes, and take this movement farther than it has ever been.
The elders of the Black reparations movement have been fighting for decades, and their work stands on the shoulders of the generations before them. Many had parents and grandparents with firsthand experiences of slavery, Jim Crow, and the perils and accomplishments of the movement for Black liberation.
At Liberation Ventures, we continually seek opportunities to honor our elders in different ways. One small, yet meaningful effort LV has implemented over the last year is to establish a Wise Council. Our Wise Council consists of Joe Brooks, Mary Francis Berry, and Omowale Satterwhite: three giants who dedicated their lives to this work. Throughout the year, these three outstanding beings have guided and challenged us with their brilliance, humor, and support. As the year comes to a close, we wanted to highlight them and share our gratitude for their support.
In January 2024, we were heartbroken to find out Joe Brooks passed away. Joe was an advisor to LV since the organization’s inception. Even before we were officially fiscally sponsored by PolicyLink, Joe encouraged us to host “brown bag lunches” with the PL staff on a monthly basis to talk about reparations, share progress on how our concept was developing, and learn from each other. Joe never missed a brown bag lunch. Later that year, he advised the interview process for our first hire, and continued to cheer us on as we got off the ground. Joe believed in LV, and that belief was grounded in decades of work with elders in the reparations movement, learnings from his time with the Republic of New Afrika, and journey through many sectors in pursuit of equity and justice. We will forever be indebted to Joe for his counsel, his encouragement, and the grounded yet hopeful perspective he brought to every conversation. We will miss him dearly.
Joe Brooks was Senior Fellow at PolicyLink and was with the organization since its founding in 1999, serving as a senior adviser to the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color team. Prior to working for PolicyLink, Joe held a number of roles across the racial and economic equity field. He was a faculty member of the inaugural black studies departments at two universities: University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. Joe was a board member of the Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR), co-chair of the Oakland-based African American Latino Action Alliance, and a board member of the Urban Habitat Program, where he previously served as chair for 15 years. He held a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree in business and economics from San Jose State University. Joe was a mentor to scores of young people, a commentator about politics, policy, and history, and he liked to dance in his spare time. To learn more about Joe, read PolicyLink’s ode.
In addition to Joe, we’d like to take this opportunity to honor Mary and Omo, who have been vital life lines of knowledge, perception, and innovation.
Since her college years at Howard University, Dr. Mary Frances Berry has been one of the most visible activists in the cause of civil rights, gender equality and social justice in our nation. Serving as Chairperson of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Berry demanded equal rights and liberties for all Americans during four Presidential administrations. A pathbreaker, she also became the first woman to head a major research university, serving as Chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Berry’s publications on American law, history and public policy have considered reparations for slavery, constitutional racism, child care and women’s rights. Since 1988, she has been the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, History, and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Berry has written over a dozen books, including My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations and many more.
Omowale Satterwhite is an organizational and community change consultant who completed a B.A. degree at Howard University, a M.S. degree at Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. degree at Stanford University. Omowale is the President of Leadership Incorporated, a nonprofit consulting firm focused on building capacity for social change in communities of color. During his career as a nonprofit management consultant, Omowale has assisted more than 1,200 organizations in 120+ cities and 40+ states. From 1979 to 1983, Omowale was the lead organizer and campaign manager for the movement to incorporate the City of East Palo Alto. He now serves as Co-Manager of the East Palo Alto Community Archive, a five-year project to collect, share, promote, celebrate, and preserve the unique history of the East Palo Alto community for future generations.
Thank you Joe, you will always be in our hearts. And thank you to Mary and Omo, for your lifelong commitment to Black liberation.
