The Basics
Josh Healey is a nationally recognized writer, performer, and activist for the twin causes of laughter and liberation. A cultural organizer, Healey has shared stages and picket lines with Amiri Baraka, Naomi Klein, and Flavor Flav — before the reality show. He is the author of the poetry collection Hammertime.
Born and raised in Washington, DC, Healey has performed and led artistic and activist workshops at universities, high schools, and conferences across the country. He is the co-founder of the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin, the first college hip-hop arts program in the nation.
Healey has been featured in the New York Times, Al-Jazeera, and is a regular contributor to Snap Judgment on NPR. He has shared his work at UC-Berkeley, Harvard, the National Poetry Slam, the Wisconsin Book Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and the Arab Cultural Center. In 2011, he received the Mario Savio Young Activist Award, delivering his acceptance speech and poem in front of 10,000 people at Occupy Cal.
Healey currently lives in Oakland, CA, where he recently finished his tenure as program director at Youth Speaks. Now an independent artist, educator, and organizer, he continues his work to empower the beautifully diverse communities across the Bay Area and these crazy United States.
The Fuller Picture
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
An organizer at heart, Healey’s first public speaking 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 equality, workers’ and immigrants’ rights, peace in the Middle East, and many other human rights issues. Healey has coordinated rallies, teach-in’s, and strategy sessions with groups like Jobs with Justice, United Students against Sweatshops, Jewish Voice for Peace, Marriage Equality, Ella Baker Center, the Justice for Oscar Grant movement, and many more.
Media
Committed to promoting alternative voices in the mainstream conversation, Healey is a contributing editor for Tikkun magazine and an online columnist for The Progressive. Founding co-host of The Cipher Zone on WORT radio station in Madison, WI, Healey can now be heard regularly on KPFA, 94.1FM in the Bay Area. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Huffington Post, Sojourners, Wiretap, Youth Outlook, and the Wisconsin State Journal.
Education
Who liked school growing up? Not this kid. It wasn’t until Healey became an artist that he realized the power and potential of cutting-edge educational practices. Rooted in the liberation pedagogy of Paolo Freire and Afrika Bambaataa, Healey co-founded the ground-breaking First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin. With First Wave, he bridged the gap between grassroots hip-hop culture and academic scholarship, creating the country’s first full-tuition scholarship program for young spoken word and hip-hop artists. Since then, he has given performances and presentations at UC-Berkeley, Harvard, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois-Chicago, and hundreds of high schools across the country. Through Youth Speaks and the international Brave New Voices network, Healey spread a youth-centered educational model in schools throughout the Bay Area and cities around the world.