Socialism 2026

Steff Reed is an award-winning musician, cultural organizer, scholar, and liberation theologian whose work uses music and faith as tools to build cultural resistance, political consciousness, and collective liberation. Reed is a GRAMMY-nominated music educator whose collaborations span: serving as the Sunday School Director at Judson Memorial Church; cultural organizing and song leading with the Kairos Center for Religion, Rights, and Social Justice; collaborating with the Songs in the Key of Resistance (SKOR) collective; co-leading and performing with the Dream Defenders People’s Choir; contributing to the book We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from the Freedom Church of the Poor, and more. A critically acclaimed independent artist and Billboard charting songwriter and producer, Reed’s music has been featured by AFROPUNK, Rolling Stone, and Humans of New York. He organized and led a book talk with Joy James for her book Confronting Counterinsurgency at The Word Is Change, and served as an organizer for Dr. Cornel West’s 2024 presidential campaign. His work spans labor, eco-justice, immigrant rights, Palestinian liberation, and other interconnected struggles, using music to build collective identity, deepen political consciousness, and sustain movement energy. Reed is a 2025 graduate of Union Theological Seminary’s (UTS) Master of Arts in Social Justice program (MASJ), where he studied with Cornel West and received the Adelante: Prophetic Leadership Award. In 2026 he completed his second master’s degree at Union, a Master of Sacred Theology (STM), focused on social ethics, culminating in his thesis, The People's Revolutionary Gospel: Maoist Cultural Theory and Revolutionary Art in Collective Identity Formation and Political Struggle in the Oakland Chapter of the Black Panther Party. He is a recipient of the Robert E. Seaver Scholarship for Worship and the Arts and an Innovative Preaching and Eco-Justice fellow with Karenna Gore's Center for Earth Ethics. His formation also includes training at the Highlander Research and Education Center, shaping his approach to popular education, cultural organizing, and movement-building.