There was a time we were very close. We lost touch over the past couple of years but I’ve always been in your corner. Always watching. Always rooting for you. You always had my love. Loved seeing your genius and humor flourish from a distance. So very proud of you.
Kind, loving, passionate, so fucking funny, brilliant, quick wit, breezy, pure light. ✨
I’m absolutely gutted by the news of your sudden death. This world is cruel and unfair.
I love you forever Michael Brooks.
I love you Michael. I’ll never forget you and what you taught me and how you made me feel. I will miss you for the rest of my life. Rest well.
On Sunday July 26, 2020, a group of Wellesley alums got together on Zoom from across the world to reminisce about our dear friend Michael Brooks, who suddenly and tragically passed away on July 20, 2020, from an unforeseen medical condition.
Photo provided by Nayantara Mukherji ‘06
The world knows Michael Brooks as a renowned political commentator, particularly in progressive leftists spaces, speaking on everything from workers’ rights to fighting for the Brazilian government to release former president Lula from his incarceration. He spoke often on the show The Majority Report and had his own show as well, The Michael Brooks Show.
To us however, he was Mikey. This guy that hung out with us on the Wellesley College campus for intermittent periods of time between 2004 to 2007. Mikey was one of those rare cis-men on campus – he wasn’t hanging around because he was dating anybody nor because he was hoping to find someone to date. He was our friend (though there were some crushes from time to time). And he was just always there. He came to campus for weeks or even months at a time. He rotated through all of our dorm rooms, sleeping on our floors, eating off of our meal plans, getting us to check out books for him from the Clapp Library (and sometimes forgetting to return them), and regularly attending our shows and events.
He was always reading an esoteric book (that was often much more intellectual than the books assigned to us in class). He engaged with the books’ ideas passionately, but was never pretentious. He had other passions, too, that he pursued: meditation, Buddhist thought, comedy. And to us international students, he was a brilliant guide to U.S. politics — he obsessively rewatched Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and correctly predicted that he would one day be president. Mikey, for all intents and purposes, went to Wellesley. He was our Wellesley brother. And he was a devoted real-life brother, as well — all of us remember with how much love and care he spoke of his sister, Lisha.
Photo provided by Nayantara Mukherji ‘06
Some of our fondest memories from Wellesley center around a table in Tower dining hall shared with our friend Mikey. We might not remember exactly what was said, but we remember laughing so hard our sides hurt until the dining hall closed and we were unceremoniously kicked out. Recounting our memories of Mikey made us laugh so hard, we were literally in tears (like the one about his outrage with the CVS in the Ville not carrying the latest organic crystal deodorant).
It came as no surprise to any of us that Mikey became so successful. He was possibly the most ambitious person we had ever met, which is saying something, because there were so many ambitious people we knew at Wellesley. The thing about Mikey’s ambition, however, was that it was tempered by his own brand of hilarious self-deprecation and by the deep insecurities that he wasn’t afraid to share with us. Mikey taught us that it was ok, perhaps even a good thing, to be vulnerable with the people you care about. This was a tough lesson for us to learn, since most Wellesley students would rather drink a gallon of lead laced water from Lake Waban than admit that maybe we have no actual fucking clue what we are doing with our lives.
Mikey was not just personally ambitious, he was driven to encourage others to succeed alongside him. He made us feel like we were capable of anything. At a time in our lives when we felt the expectations of others so incredibly acutely- from parents, from professors, from the flags festooning campus celebrating “Wellesley Women Who Will Make a Difference in the World,” Mikey’s encouragement felt different. Mostly because he wanted us to succeed on our own terms and not on anyone else’s. He encouraged us to be iconoclasts with our futures. Only by breaking down the monumental expectations others had set for us, would we be able to pursue the things deep inside of ourselves that we barely even recognized as who we were at the time but that have become so essential to our identities now.
It’s near impossible to condense a life like Mikey’s to a write-up like this. He would probably be laughing at our attempts and telling us that we didn’t give near enough attention to how handsome and hilarious and intelligent and amazing he was (which is true, he was all of those things).
During our Zoom call, a regret that all of us shared was that we had lost touch with Mikey over the last few years; and, if we are truly honest, we had lost touch with one another. We know that many of you reading this may not have known Mikey, but we are sure that you know someone from Wellesley or from your life who made a huge impact on you. During the pandemic, we find ourselves reaching out to friends that we fell out of touch with, reconnecting with ease, regardless of the circumstances of why we had disconnected in the first place–call it pandemic forgiveness. Throughout the pandemic, we have wanted to do the same with Mikey, but then are painfully reminded that we cannot. But in our own way, we have reconnected with him. He brought us back together, and through our collective memories of our time together, we remember Mikey. We miss you Mikey. You will always be our Wellesley brother. We love you.
