Cat Brooks facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Cat Brooks
Cat Brooks at a 2018 fundraising event
Personal details
Born	1975/1976 (age 49–50) Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Residences	Oakland, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Cat Brooks is an American activist, writer, poet, and theater artist. She is known for her work helping communities and fighting for fairness. She also ran for mayor of Oakland, California, in 2018.

Early Life and Education

Cat Brooks was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her mother was an activist who worked to stop nuclear weapons. She often took Cat to protests when she was a child.

Cat studied theater at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She earned her bachelor's degree there.

Her Work as an Activist

After college, Cat Brooks studied acting in London. Later, she moved to Los Angeles and worked in the entertainment industry. In 2002, she joined a group called Community Coalition. Here, she focused on making education and justice fairer for everyone.

Fighting for Justice

After a young man named Oscar Grant was shot by a police officer, Cat Brooks became very active. She started organizing protests against police violence. She helped create a group called the Anti Police-Terror Project. She also worked for the Bay Area National Lawyers Guild. Cat Brooks became an important organizer for the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2015, she was arrested while protesting a ban on night-time marches in Oakland. This ban was put in place by the mayor at the time, Libby Schaaf.

Running for Mayor

In 2018, Cat Brooks decided to run for mayor of Oakland. She ran against the current mayor, Libby Schaaf. During her campaign, she held meetings to get ideas from the public. She wanted to know what local policies people thought were important. She also supported getting rid of a law called the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

After her mayoral campaign, Cat Brooks went back to her job as a co-host. She worked on a radio show called UpFront on Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley. Her part of the show later became a one-hour program called Law And Disorder.

Creative Works

Cat Brooks also writes plays. Her one-woman show, Tasha, is based on the story of Natasha McKenna. Natasha McKenna died while in police care.

Personal Life

Cat Brooks lives in West Oakland. She has a Black father and a White mother.

In a recent legal case, Cat Brooks and Rasheed Shabazz were the main people who sued Thompson-Reuters. This lawsuit was about privacy. It claimed that the company collected and shared people's information without permission. The lawsuit said this information created a "360-degree view" of people's lives.

In October 2024, a settlement was reached in this case. Thompson-Reuters agreed to pay $27.5 million to California residents who applied. They also agreed to make it easier for people in California to remove their personal information from their databases.

Electoral History