Wade was born in 1944 in Little Rock and raised in Dallas before entering the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied Political Science and Psychology. In 1963, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired him with the vision of the Beloved Community and he became immersed in the civil rights, human potential, anti-war, counter culture, and other movements of the era.
In 1968 he dedicated his life to community organizing, studied at Pacific School of Religion, and moved to San Francisco in 1970, where he worked with numerous social and political issues, including food and housing cooperatives, a cultural center, mental patients rights, public transit, national antipoverty policy, the Iraq war, the Obama campaign, and Occupy. Since 2004, he has convened a series of workshops exploring how the progressive movement might be more effective and self-published two books presenting draft conclusions. After working for non-profits for 20 years, he worked part-time as a cab driver for 30 years. Now retired, he edits TransformTheSystem.org.