AWKWORD

AWKWORD

2 songs 1 albums

Labeled an “Antifa militant” by Andy Ngo, AWKWORD has fought for justice and equality through protest song, political organizing, digital strategy and street journalism for nearly a quarter century. He is a co-founder of TEN DEMANDS, co-creator of Ten For The Road to Abolition, and an original member of United Left.

Raised by an activist mother radicalized during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras, AWKWORD converted from troubled graffiti artist and Nazi destroyer — angry and acting out at the world’s injustices — to productive organizer at 16, when he collaborated with the Anti-Defamation League to establish what would become his (predominantly Christian, conservative) high school’s annual Diversity Day. That year, he also created his school’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, and spoke for the first time at the town’s Martin Luther King Day celebration.

At Vassar College, AWKWORD served as co-chair of the Student Activist Union, co-founded the Prison Reform Group, and earned his degree in Sociology, with a focus on the intersections of race and class, the prison industrial complex, and homelessness and the politics of public space.