Cat Brooks, Executive Director
Cat Brooks is an award winning actress and playwright. In her role as an artivist, she is also the KPFA co-host of UpFront and resident playwright and actress with The Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland and 3 Girls Theater in San Francisco. As an organizer, she played a central role in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant, and spent the last decade working with impacted communities and families to rapidly respond to police violence and radically transform the ways our communities are policed and incarcerated. She is the co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) and the Executive Director of The Justice Teams Network. Cat was also the runner-up in Oakland’s 2018 mayoral election, facing incumbent Libby Schaaf.
Guadalupe Rocio Chávez, Healing Justice Organizer
Guadalupe Rocio Chávez is a queer abolitionist therapist, grower and maker of flower and plant medicine, and the Healing Justice Organizer for JTN. They are currently building out an abolitionist California statewide Healers Network to respond to and create alternatives to state sanctioned violence. Guadalupe has spent the past 8 years training communities and creating healing justice programs for families impacted by carceral state violence. They are most excited about sharing sacred medicine making and earth based rituals as an essential part of Abolitionist movements.
James Burch, Policy Director
James Burch is the Policy Director for the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Justice Teams Network, and the President of the National Lawyers Guild, Bay Area. In 2007, he worked for the Southern Center for Human Rights where he investigated human rights conditions in GA and AL prisons, jails, and court systems. James left in 2009 to study civil rights law at Georgetown. After graduating, James moved to the Bay Area where he worked with the Frisco 500 before joining APTP’s Black Leadership Committee and assuming the role of Policy Director.
Annie Banks, Network Director
Annie Banks (she/her) is an organizer, artist, and mama of two, living in the village of Huichin, on Ohlone territories, in East Oakland with her partner. Annie grew up on Lkwungen and WSANEC territories in so-called “Victoria, BC, Canada”. She is the Network Director at the Justice Teams Network and volunteers with the Anti Police-Terror Project as the Director of Fundraising.
Megan Reed, Grant Writing Coordinator
Megan Reed is a Bay Area native, who has been a grant writer and development director for ten years, with grassroots and start-up non-profits focused on environmental injustice, climate change, educational equity, healing justice and social justice.