Josh Healey is an award-winning writer, performer, filmmaker, and creative activist. The co-founder and co-executive producer of Offsides Productions, he has created digital series and comedic campaigns with Daveed Diggs, Sarah Silverman, W. Kamau Bell, and more that have reached over 15 million viewers and amplified social movements across the U.S. Healey is the lead writer and executive producer of The North Pole, an acclaimed political comedy web series about gentrification, global warming, and gluten-free donuts. A regular performer on NPR’s Snap Judgment, he has been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and his 13-year-old nephew Brian Silverstein’s Youtube page, where it has at least 27 ‘likes.’
At the age of 21, Healey co-founded the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin, the first full-scholarship hip-hop arts program in the nation. He then served as program director for Youth Speaks, leading spoken word programs across the Bay Area and the country. Author of the poetry collection Hammertime, Healey has performed at the San Francisco Opera House, the National Poetry Slam, Second City Comedy Club, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Arab Cultural Center, and grimy house parties from coast to coast. He has performed and led workshops at UC-Berkeley, Harvard, New York University, and over 200 colleges, high schools, and conferences across the country.
Back when he was relatively young, Healey received the Mario Savio Young Activist Award, delivering his acceptance performance in front of 10,000 people at Occupy Cal. He was the first-ever Artist in Residence for Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. Recently he was named one of the Grist 50 leading artists and activists — something which made his mother very proud until she asked him if it came with health insurance. Healey also served as the Culture Shift Director for Movement Generation, producing innovative shows, comedic videos, and creative interventions from the frontlines of the climate justice movement in the Bay Area and beyond.
His most recent projects include the Normal Ain’t Normal digital series with Rosario Dawson and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and the feature documentary Fantastic Negrito: Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?
Born and raised in Washington, DC, Healey these days eats his daily bagel in Oakland, CA.
PERFORMANCE
As a poet, comedian, storyteller, and event host, Healey has performed at poetry slams, comedy clubs, world-class opera houses, grimy house parties, and venues all the way from the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City to the Queer Cultural Center in San Francisco. He has shared the stage with Amiri Baraka, Jesse Jackson, Beau Sia, Brother Ali, Invincible, Patricia Smith, Martin Espada, Immortal Technique, Danny Hoch, Chuck D, and too many high school battle-rappers to count.
POLITICS
A community organizer at heart, the first time Healey ever spoke in public was at an anti-war rally in DC after 9/11, when he was seventeen years old. Since then, he has worked with social justice organizations leading campaigns for racial justice, immigrant rights, labor solidarity, peace in the Middle East, and many other human rights issues. Healey has coordinated rallies, conferences, and innovative workshops with groups like Jobs with Justice, United Students Against Sweatshops, Jewish Voice for Peace, Marriage Equality, Ella Baker Center, Youth Together, and the Oscar Grant Foundation.
MEDIA
Amplifying alternative voices in the mainstream conversation, Healey is a contributing editor for Tikkun magazine and a regular columnist for The Progressive. Founding co-host of The Cipher Zone
radio show on WORT in Madison, WI, Healey can now be heard regularly on KPFA in the Bay Area. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, ColorLines, Alternet, Upworthy, Heeb, Culture Strike, and Sojourners. His first international interview was with Al-Jazeera. Shalom.
EDUCATION
Who liked school growing up? Not this kid. It wasn’t until he became a youth organizer himself that Healey realized the power and potential of cutting-edge educational practices. Combining the liberation pedagogies of Paolo Freire and Afrika Bambaataa, Healey co-founded the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin. Bridging hip-hop and the academy, First Wave is the country’s first full-scholarship program for young spoken word & hip-hop artists. Through Youth Speaks and the Brave New Voices national network, Healey spread a youth-centered educational model in cities and schools throughout the Bay Area and beyond. He has lectured and led teacher trainings at UC-Davis, University of Illinois, and schools across the country.