Is Michael McDowell
The Next MLK Of 2015 ?
Q: Your protest made national news how did this happen ?
A: I’m a community artist doing a lot in the community through spoken word, theater, musical theater, abstract art. I work with the Harrison Neighborhood Association, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, and do a lot of art for Take Action Minnesota. A lot of my paid work is community organizing in transportation and economic development, so I’m making sure that all of the development coming into lower income communities is actually benefiting them, making sure they have a say in what comes in especially on the north side of Minneapolis and east side of St. Paul. In addition to that, I actually do Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and have been organizing with them off the MOA shutdown, the highway shutdown. A lot of work is that and traveling a lot, mostly centered around community and making sure that we’re all working towards each other’s liberation because we’re all in this together.
Q: How/When did you get into community
work ?
A: Well, I actually fell in love that’s how it became a passion. The woman who I fell in love with works with Take Action Minnesota, I started off doing art there doing spoken word pieces, etc. and eventually the girl that worked there asked me on a date and it just blew up from there. We’ve been together for 2 years. She’s the one who got me involved in organizing because you know when you like someone you want to be interested in what they do too, she’s an organizer and so I started to come to training and meetings and was like ‘Oh my god, this is so relevant to my life I should be doing this!’ It just happened.
A lot of it was taking the time to understand community organizing and how relevant it was to me. My father was in prison and a lot of the organizing I was involved in was around the criminal justice system. It was what I was passionate about because my father went through that on a drug charge and he would work at the polls to help count, but was never able to vote. For my whole life, he would always tell me, ‘You gotta vote!’ That was very hard for me to see someone be so passionate about democracy and voting and have it taken away from them, but they’re still there doing something about it even though they can’t vote.
Photographer | NK Photography
Interview | Nancy Vang