Denzel Burke is a community builder, facilitator, organizer, and the co-director/co-founder of the REAL Youth Initiative, a peer navigation program, that develops revolutionary consciousness and builds community, with currently and formerly incarcerated youth to work towards the abolition of prisons and the conditions that (re)produce them. He is also a consultant for the Justice 20/20 Network and an Ambassador Fellow for the Illinois Prison Project. Upon his release from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice in July of 2019, Denzel began studies at Chicago State University and co-facilitated, 32 convenings inside the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice with Northwestern University Bluhm Legal Clinic, interviewing incarcerated young people about how they would reimagine the juvenile justice system and co-published a report at the conclusion of the project. Denzel then connected again with the Bluhm Legal Clinic and a collective of abolitionists, to launch the Final 5 Campaign, which he served for a year before launching the REAL Youth Initiative. Today, the REAL Youth Initiative runs programming for youth in facilities across the state of Illinois and provides community reentry programming to young people as they come home. Denzel currently lives in Northbrook and plans to receive a PhD in Africology and African American Studies.