The man who first taught me to organize, Michael Evans, died on March 30th. Mike had not been feeling well, went to the doctor and was given a terminal cancer diagnosis and died six weeks later.
In our last conversations he had two concerns, spreading the fundamentals of organizing to more people, and ensuring his beloved wife had the financial support needed to cover some unexpected bills.
Mike was an itinerant organizer; moving from place to place to organize people who wanted to fight. He organized workers in the Midwest, tenants in Seattle, working class neighborhoods in Indianapolis, congregations in Louisville, and homeless people in Kalamazoo.
Three years ago he joined the team at Addition, where I work. At age seventy, he knocked on doors four nights a week, and by day could be found doing one on ones across Southwest Michigan - reporting back with an intoxicating enthusiasm and reveling in the possibilities in the people he met.
In his 71st year, he organized against great resistance to win, a landmark EPA consent decree to clean up the water and replace lead pipes in Three Rivers, Michigan- fifteen miles from the farm he grew up on.
When I arrived at hospice for what would be our last visit, Mike asked for something to write with and a caregiver returned with a handheld dry erase board and marker. It was hard to see him so much weaker than the day before. He struggled to keep food down and was unable to sit up for more than a minute.
Still, he gathered himself, motioned for the dry erase board and slowly wrote, “Power Over” and “Power With.” And with little energy, in a voice so thin I hardly recognized it, said, “George, we have to help people understand this. If people only think of power in the way they experience it now - as abusive and pushing them around – we’ll never win. But, if people get a taste of power with, then we have a shot.”
Four days later, Mike died.
I likely would not have become an organizer if not for Mike. There were few resources on organizing in Southern Indiana and while a few of us were succeeding at getting low income people together to speak out, we were not winning and didn’t know why. Then I heard Mike speak at a meeting in Indianapolis, and he seemed to know how to organize, so I asked if he would come down and explain it to us. He didn’t hesitate. And when he laid it out, it all made so much sense. Beautifully simple and revelatory all at once. Thank you Mike!
Mike organized at a time when the pay was ridiculously low, there were few to no benefits, and more than once he had to forgo pay altogether because the funding was not there. In between organizing jobs, he worked as a day laborer or at Speedway gas stations to keep some money coming in, but always with an eye toward getting back to organizing, to building “power with.”
A few of us, including Adam Kruggel (who was also first taught by Mike), are trying to honor his last wishes. That starts by raising some money to help his wife with some big bills, including a busted furnace. Please consider contributing to honor this organizer with a big heart, who was organizing and teaching until the very end.