What was your early exposure to poetry? Who are some of your early literary influencers?
My mom introduced me to poetry and fiction when I was around 7. She treated the library like Disneyland. Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein, DMX, KRS-One, Styles P, Nas—they’re all poets that birthed me.

When and why did you begin writing poetry?
I was about 7. Initially it was for school, but I would then start to write my own work that I would keep to myself mostly.

Can you talk a little about how you “learned to breathe”? What keeps you grounded and centered in your daily life?
I think a lot of times people who have the privilege of describing a side of their life that isn’t traumatic don’t because trauma sells. People enjoy seeing black people suffer. I couldn’t be removed from my city, walking through nature every weekend, and spending time to nurture my family and still have 100 percent of my writings reflect a context that I’m not completely living in. It’s just respect for people who have to endure the reality of certain things. Have I experienced the gamut of oppression in many ways? Yes. But I’ve been blessed, too.

I learned to breathe by accepting that today was going to be “today” and that there was nothing I could so about that. So with that said, I’ve been giving energy to the smaller parts of life that I took for granted. My family has made that easier.

I read private affirmations every day. I don’t think they’ll end oppression, but I need to remind myself often that I’m worthy and capable of walking this path laid before me.

Islam, more than anything, provides the regimen to stay grounded. The state of mind and soul it requires leave little room for second-guessing my purpose.

You write a lot about our wounds and the monsters we feed but also nourishment through love and faith. How intentional was it to strike this balance, as you were writing and compiling pieces for this book?
This was important because I felt like I was growing into a space where I could only draw inspiration from pain. For me, I was intentional about this project being a source of light.

You earned a master’s degree in social work and write about societal issues, like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Do you see your poetry as a form of civic engagement or activism? Do you see it as another source for healing?
I believe art, when set to the right intention, can capture the emotions of the people it connects with. In a world that is constantly pushing to become numb and indifferent, poetry is one of our last vanguards against soullessness.

On that note, what do you get from reading poetry that you don’t get from reading other genres?
I’ve always been intrigued with language. In particular, I’ve always been amazed with the efficiency and depth in great writers’ work. Poetry is heat seeking missiles drafted for the heart. The fact that you are only given a small space to make a world come alive will always be significant for me.

DeRay Mckesson is tired. He tweeted he’d been “cursed to sit next to the drunk man” flying back from the West Coast as he wrapped up a five-week, 22-stop, cross-country book tour. Arriving at Ida B’s Table for a morning interview and photo shoot, the 33-year-old activist is punctual and polite, but his distinctive, high-pitched voice is softer than usual. Nonetheless, he’s ready to discuss his role in the Black Lives Matter movement and his recent call-to-action memoir, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope. Brief recap: Mckesson garnered national attention live-tweeting the Ferguson, Missouri, marches following the killing of Michael Brown Jr. by a white police officer, and he checked in at No. 11 (along with fellow protestor Johnetta Elzie) on Fortune’s list of the “World’s Greatest Leaders” in 2015.

Jet-lagged or not, Mckesson cogently breaks down the structural racism that plagues cities such as Ferguson and Baltimore, as well as the foundational ideas that built and sustained that inequality. That preternatural ability to communicate—with composure and conciseness—is how the Baltimore native became an overnight cable news go-to.

“When we think about white privilege, it is the recognition that people benefit from things that they personally did not work for,” he begins, addressing a subject covered on his book tours. “When we think about white supremacy, it is the idea that white is better, that white is the norm, is the standard, that it is more worthy. And then, we think about ‘whiteness,’ and it is the culture that idea births.”

On the road, Mckesson was interviewed by the likes of MC Hammer, former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, and The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah. He has a million-plus followers on Twitter, has hosted celebrities from John Legend to Katy Perry on his weekly show, Pod Save the People, and he gets invited to parties by Beyoncé. But here’s the weird thing: While Mckesson was born here and lives here, he draws only a small crowd to his book signing later tonight at Baltimore Soundstage.

“I don’t mean this in a good or bad way, I just don’t come across him,” says Sean Yoes, Baltimore AFRO editor and author of Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories from One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities. He may be a national civil rights figure, but Mckesson is not a conspicuous presence in Baltimore two years after his bid for the city’s highest office. “Maybe I’m just in my own lane—I hadn’t thought about him in months, at least,” Yoes continues. “He’s kind of in a no-man’s land here.”

The protests in Ferguson after Michael Brown’s death began a little more than four years ago, but it is easy to forget the timeline, the details, and the next 400 days of activism that helped set the stage for the uprising in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. Several days after officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Brown in August 2014, Mckesson, then a 29-year-old Minneapolis public school administrator, headed to Missouri to see the unfolding situation for himself. He live-tweeted his mundane drive to his then-modest 800 followers while also seeking a sofa to sleep on once he reached Ferguson. The second night he was there, police tear-gassed demonstrators. “That was the moment I became a protestor,” he says.

In collaboration with Elzie and Brittany Packnett, both St. Louis-area natives, Mckesson took to social media to document the confrontations with the Ferguson police department’s militarized response. They also used their online platforms to launch the Ferguson Protestor Newsletter, which became both a resource for—and an alternative to—the establishment media, which they saw misrepresenting the protests as violent.

Identifiable in his ubiquitous royal blue Patagonia vest, which he basically has not taken it off since, Mckesson became the most recognizable face of the Black Lives Matter movement. In fact, the vest remains so intertwined with his political brand that it has its own Twitter handle.

After Ferguson, Mckesson joined similar protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, following the death of Alton Sterling; New York following the death of Eric Garner; North Charleston, South Carolina, following the shooting of Walter Scott; and Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. (In one memorable interview here, he repeatedly pushed back against CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who tried to get a patient Mckesson to condemn the behavior of protestors. “You are suggesting this idea that broken windows are worse than broken spines,” Mckesson responded.) Since then, along with Packnett and policy analyst and data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe, Mckesson helped create the police reform initiative Campaign Zero and its associated website, mappingpoliceviolence.org, which tracks the people killed by police in the U.S. “The numbers are flat, not down at all,” he notes, with a mixture of frustration and disbelief.

As he chronicles in some of the best chapters of his book, Mckesson was born in West Baltimore, later moving with his father, a recovering drug addict, and his sister to Catonsville. It was in Catonsville, he says, that he first became aware of poverty and the inequity in education.

After college at Bowdoin in Maine, he taught in New York City through Teach for America before returning to Baltimore for three years to work for a nonprofit after-school educational initiative and the city school system. He then spent 16 months in Minneapolis as senior director of human capital for their school system before leaving for Ferguson. He has received death threats and has been sued by police officers. In turn, he has sued Fox News and commentator Jeanine Pirro for alleging he incited violence. Along the way, the Obama White House invited him to a policy discussion, and he joined the speaking roster at Creative Artists Agency, whose clients include Joe Biden and Will Smith. Oh, and he gave commencement speeches at The New School and the Maryland Institute College of Art. In other words, it has been a roller coaster.

“You are suggesting this idea that broken windows are worse than broken spines.”

As the threats and lawsuits attest, Mckesson has also become a lightning rod. Much of the fire directed his way derives from mere hate from the other side. But there has been—and remains—resentment and criticism among those who normally would be considered allies. Broadly, the accusation is that he raced in front of cameras and put himself forward as a spokesman for a movement he did not begin.

Kaysonya Wise Whitehead, a Loyola University professor who teaches a course on the Black Lives Matter movement and hosts a current events program on WEAA, is not a Mckesson fan. “Black Lives Matter is a social movement, a civil rights movement, and it’s a slogan—it is something to stick on the bumper of car,” Whitehead says. “It’s all those things. But the people who created the hashtag and pushed it forward have been scrambling to get in front of it ever since. The fact that the white media rallies around someone does not make him or her a leader. Has DeRay been a leader on these issues locally? No, it’s The Algebra Project, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Baltimore Bloc, Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, among many others, that’s been doing the work.”

Mckesson’s last-minute entry into the Baltimore mayoral race in 2016—an announcement made in coordination with The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian—gave detractors additional fuel.

“It’s one thing to be able to show up to an event in a major mainstream media moment,” Dayvon Love, public policy director for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, told Slate after Mckesson’s announcement. “It’s a different thing to get people from Baltimore to go to Annapolis for a hearing on police reform on a Tuesday at 1 in the afternoon.”

“It was opportunistic,” Anthony McCarthy, a former spokesman for the past three Baltimore mayors, says of Mckesson’s bid. “There was already one of the strongest fields in a long time.” That said, Mckesson did receive support from Morgan State professor Lawrence Brown, who is at work on a book about Baltimore’s history of segregation and housing discrimination. “What have those other establishment candidates accomplished?” Brown argues, suggesting an outsider is needed to bring real change to City Hall.

Mckesson, who received 2 percent of the vote, takes exception to the criticism. He highlights the year he spent opening and overseeing a West Baltimore after-school center with the nonprofit Higher Achievement and leadership roles when he was a Catonsville High School student with the city’s Safe & Sound Campaign and the grant-making nonprofit Youth As Resources. “For all this talk about ‘ending the gatekeepers,’ there are places where people’s identity is rooted in deciding who is and who isn’t able to do [activism] work, and Baltimore is one of those places,” he says.

This past election season, he stirred more controversy by endorsing fellow Teach for America alum J.D. Merrill, son-in-law to former Mayor Martin O’Malley, over longtime Baltimore civil rights leader Jill Carter for a seat in the state Senate (Carter won). Meanwhile, Mckesson says he doesn’t know if he’ll run for office again or how long he’ll stay in Baltimore. Current plans revolve around his national podcast and Campaign Zero, which he says will be publishing new data soon about police complaints and police union contracts.

Erin Hodge-Williams, former executive director of the nonprofit Higher Achievement, has known Mckesson since he was a teenage youth organizer. “He pours himself into everything he does,” Hodge-Williams says. “The traction he got [after Ferguson] surprised me, but I think the blue vest, for example, is ingenious. Is it branding? Yes,” she continues. “But I think it’s brilliant. Trump is on Twitter all the time stirring up nonsense. DeRay strategizes how to make his voice heard, too, but that’s because he wants to talk about policing and prison reform and social justice. He stays true to his message, and that makes all the difference in the world.”

Whether it makes a difference in Baltimore may be another matter.

You might have seen FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture’s Monument Quilt installation in Washington, D.C., or on its tour around the country, but the newest project from the local art-activism nonprofit brings their work back to Baltimore—and into the palm of your hand.

It all started with a monthly event called Thrive, launched by FORCE’s Gather Together survivor collective in February 2017 as a skill-share series for those affected by sexual and domestic violence. Each month, survivors can attend a workshop to learn a healing art, craft, or other self-care activity from local artists and advocates.

At May’s event at local performance space WombWork Productions, artistic director Mama Kay used healing theater techniques to show attendees the power of sharing one’s story and helping others tell their own.

Thrive, distills the teachings from each skill-share workshop into exercises and actions that readers can use on their own time. “This is something that people can keep around as a reminder to allow space for grounding, for healing, for whatever it is we need at any given time,” says Hannah Brancato, co-founder of FORCE.

Past skill shares have included writing self-affirmations, reiki healing, and rethinking the sex talk. After Shawna Murray-Browne, owner of integrative healing practice Kindred Wellness, facilitated a workshop on QiGong, the healing cousin of martial art tai chi, she included guidelines for a breathing technique followers could practice at home.

“Folks who are survivors of sexual violence, as well as domestic violence, oftentimes are having conversations about trauma, but not so much about how unresolved or unspoken or unexplored pain might be stored in the body,” says Murray-Browne. “I had the privilege of supporting and helping to create a toolbox of resources for survivors to not only master themselves, but to support one another.”

The first volume of Thrive is out now, and Gather Together’s second round of monthly Thrive events is well underway, this year hosted at either the FORCE studio at Motor House or in the facilitators’ own spaces. The end result will be a second volume that not only brings another year of skill shares and wellness activities to a wider audience, but also acts as a directory of people and places to turn to for healing resources throughout the city.

Until then, Thrive can be purchased or downloaded as a free PDF. “It’s not like right after a crisis you just get over it—it’s something we’re all dealing with for the rest of our lives,” Brancato says. “Part of healing for survivors is being together in a community. We’re creating an opportunity to talk about it.”

Last Saturday, Notre Dame of Maryland University hosted the second iteration of the Women of the World (WOW) Festival, a one-day event that featured a full schedule of panels, performances, workshops, and activities addressing the challenges and accomplishments of women and girls today. As a panelist, I had the opportunity to attend the event, hear from incredible activists, and reflect on the conversations and sessions throughout the day.

Since its launch in 2010 by Southbank Centre artist director Jude Kelly, the WOW Festival has become a visionary movement fighting for gender equality across the globe. It has reached nearly two million people in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Pakistan, to name a few. And while it’s only been two years since the festival was first held in Baltimore, it’s been a huge success, bringing in famed speakers and attracting large crowds.

Maricka Oglesby, WOW Baltimore curator and producer, explains that Kelly thought the university was the perfect place to host the event, especially as the last standing all-women’s college in Maryland. “We have similar missions of transforming the world, and this is how it comes about—through sharing ideas, concepts, and experiences,” Oglesby says.

The festival kicked things off on Saturday morning with just that. In the opening keynote speech, Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, touched on topics like the misconceptions surrounding the campaign and the importance of listening to sexual assault survivors’ stories. But what was most inspiring—and necessary—is how the movement has created a space for women of color to come forward and share their own stories of abuse. “People from different identities have to take ownership of this movement and stand up,” Burke explains. “That’s how we grow.”

In fact, this theme of inclusivity and intersectionality was evident throughout the entire festival. The program was refreshingly diverse, offering sessions led by or involving minority women.

One such was called “Self-Care for Women of Color,” a workshop that focused on the barriers preventing women of color from utilizing self-care practices. In a small mock café space, a large group of minority women of all ages shared their thoughts on what self-care looks like—from getting mani-pedis to taking mental breaks—and what prohibits them from successfully integrating these practices in their daily lives—from generational stress to the exhaustion of navigating through a predominantly white workplace. Across the room, a young woman raised her hand and boldly chimed in the conversation, summing up the experience that many women of color go through. “We assume we’re good, but that doesn’t always mean we are,” she says. “There’s a lot of expectation for us to work 10 times harder to prove ourselves to the rest of society.”

In another session, the conversation about intersectionality materialized into a board game. Natalie Gillard, assistant vice president of Multicultural Experience at Stevenson University, facilitated a 90-minute crash course about structural inequality through Factuality, a board game she created. Participants played a Monopoly-style game where each person selected a character with intersecting identities such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. The players moved across the board with a series of fact-based advantages and limitations based on these intersections.

“The groups were clearly affected by the statistics and directives,” Gillard reflects. “I saw people who were playing on the more privileged side—like those who played rich, white, male, heterosexual characters—act more jovial, while those on the opposite side felt increasingly frustrated.”

Structural inequalities were not only discussed on a domestic level, but also an international one. In the panel “Activism Beyond Borders,” I joined three women activists who used their privilege and knowledge to assist women oppressed in their societies through the lack of education and proper healthcare.

Several sessions also offered safe spaces to talk about topics like sex and transgender identities. In the Sex Café, attendees debunked myths about sex, love, and relationships with Vanessa Geffrard, founder of VagEsteem. Meanwhile, in “Transgender Activism: On Our Own Terms,” Monica Stevens, founding member of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, explored how transgender and non-binary people interact with societal definitions of womanhood.

“The festival was engaging,” describes Chinwendu Nwokeabia, a junior Notre Dame student. “I had the chance to talk about aspects of womanhood that I don’t get talk about often. I appreciate the inclusivity and diversity, and some of these individuals have left a lasting impression on me.”

At the end of the day, attendees shuffled back to the main auditorium to hear Roxane Gay, acclaimed writer and cultural critic, discuss timely topics with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom. The relaxed conversation covered matters including the pressures on black and brown creators, Bill Cosby’s conviction, and even Kanye West’s tweets. The two brought everything full circle, reiterating the power of women’s voices, the existence of oppression, and the importance of supporting and mentoring other marginalized people.

As a young woman of color, I left the event empowered and inspired to continue the conversation about gender equality. I realized that representation does matter. Seeing and hearing from courageous minority activists made me believe that I, too, can make a difference in this fight for solidarity.

The Chesapeake in Focus: Transforming the Natural World

Tom Pelton (Johns Hopkins University Press)

In this book, Pelton, one the country’s leading environmental journalists, offers us a wealth of knowledge about the Chesapeake Bay, collected from his more than two decades of reporting on this ecological, cultural, and historical treasure (you may also know him from his show Environment in Focus on WYPR). His book is part history of the bay’s watershed region, part political history of its preservation, and, to a lesser extent, part personal history, as Pelton draws gorgeous imagery of scenes he’s experienced as an avid kayaker on the bay’s waters and tributaries. In total, he paints a compelling portrait of what it is he wants to preserve. Divided into four sections (The Waters, The People, The Wildlife, and The Policies), the book covers a lot of ground, from Baltimore’s sewage issues to the over-harvesting of wild oysters. The highlight, perhaps, comes toward the end, when Pelton proposes 10 realistic steps for bay restoration. We should listen to him.

Art-Activism: The Revolutionary Art, Poetry, & Reflections of Aaron Maybin

Aaron Maybin (self-published)

Some may know him as a former NFL linebacker. Others know him as an arts educator and activist. In his debut book, Baltimore’s Aaron Maybin combines his artwork—paintings, drawings, and photography—with his poetry and short essays, which are gritty and raw but also vibrant with an almost palpable energy. The works serve as Baltimore-centric meditations on what it means to be an activist, and Maybin’s voice is both vulnerable and strong as a black man born and raised here. He quickly moves from politics to religion to class to race, not only acknowledging current problems faced by local African Americans but also offering solutions and alternatives for a brighter future through grassroots efforts. Portions of the book act as anthems for a community that is rising up to meet the challenges they face, so that their children and children’s children might one day live in a better world.

On the first Thursday in January, Aaron Maybin emerges from a bitter, blustery afternoon into the calm and warmth of Teavolve, a spacious, low-key cafe in Harbor East. He settles into a corner table in the restaurant’s rear, the effect of his lean, but imposing, 6-foot-4-inch frame softened by his casual manner. A three-hour conversation over tea and sandwiches offers a respite from the Arctic blast, but not from the storm of attention that Maybin has recently helped create.

Barely 24 hours earlier, he had tweeted a 45-second video in which he’s seated in front of a gaggle of grade-school kids. What’s the day been like today? he asks the room. The answer is an immediate, echoing chorus of young voices: Cold. Cold! Very very very very very very cold.

The setting was the library at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School in West Baltimore, one of many rooms at Henson that had no heat on a day when temperatures in the city topped out at 30 degrees. “It’s the same school Freddie Gray went to,” Maybin says, “which gives some context to what the dynamics are.” Thanks to Maybin’s nearly 27,000 Twitter followers, the video—along with a GoFundMe page he promoted that raised more than $80,000 to purchase space heaters for the school and winter gear and other much-needed items for its students—quickly went viral. Over the coming days, similar heating issues were reported at as many as 60 city schools. “Baltimore teachers have been talking about these issues for years,” Maybin says, “but it took somebody that used to play in the NFL to put a video out there of kids sharing how they feel.”

Maybin’s perspective resonates because he is both—a former first-round NFL draft pick and a teacher, among a handful of other identifiers. Those kids at Matthew A. Henson were his kids, students in the art classes he teaches three days a week. He is unique in having the platform of a celebrity and the insight of an insider; on that frigid January day, he felt compelled to use both. “I don’t think he came to work that day to make a statement,” says G. Travis Miller, the school’s principal. “He’s from this area, so he has a connection to this school. He’s a guy that is successful, and he’s part of this community. It makes him much more of an asset.”

Maybin might not quibble with the word asset, but the self-described “art-activist” is generally leery of any title placed on him by others. The new year already figured to be a busy one for the 29 year old, whose book, Art-Activism, a self-published collection of his visual art and writing, was released in November.  “I’m not a politician, I’m not a preacher. I’m one of the people,” he says. “I don’t want to be a leader. I just want to be an example that we should all be doing something.”

It’s a fitting declaration for someone who has never been very good at sitting still.

As a child, Aaron Maybin was so active that “people didn’t like babysitting me.” His father says he can’t remember a photo in which his son is sitting still. “He was very busy,” Michael Maybin says—busy enough that by the time Aaron reached grade school, doctors wanted to prescribe him Ritalin. Michael decided against it.

“My argument, and resistance, was based on their argument that he [apparently] wasn’t able to concentrate on anything,” his father says. “That wasn’t the case with him.” Maybin grew up in West Baltimore, where his father worked as an inspector and spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department, and his mother, Constance, worked in insurance. Before he excelled on the playing field, Aaron was drawing and sculpting, immersing himself in the act of creation. His parents would buy 500-sheet reams of oversize drawing paper from a neighborhood store that sold surplus school supplies. Aaron made short work of them. (He says his father’s longtime friend, acclaimed Baltimore artist Larry “Poncho” Brown, was one of the few babysitters he’d behave for because he had access to a treasure trove of art supplies.)

“We’d be sitting watching TV,” his father says, “and all of a sudden Aaron would just erupt—jump up, run someplace, and come back with pencil and paper. You couldn’t even keep aluminum foil in the house, because he would take it and make sculptures.”

Long a way to channel his energy, art for Maybin became therapy in 1995, when his mother, pregnant with his younger sister, died in childbirth. Aaron was six. Later that same year, Michael Maybin moved his young son and newborn daughter out of the city to Howard County, where they essentially integrated their neighborhood. Michael remembers Klan literature appearing in mailboxes on their street, and Aaron says there were certain houses where he quickly learned he wasn’t welcome. It was, Michael Maybin says, “a year of tremendous transition for us.”

Throughout, Aaron painted and sculpted and drew. When he was 11, he completed a 40-by-50-foot wall mural in Southwest Baltimore, a drawing of three hands of different hues placing bricks in a wall. He won a number of art competitions. But around that time, his size and athleticism began to set him apart: he excelled in baseball and basketball, ran track, and, when he was a high school sophomore, nearly made the state final in wrestling. But it was on the football field that he dominated, developing into one of the state’s best prep players as a defensive end at Mount Hebron High School. Coveted by many of the nation’s top college programs, he ended up at Penn State, the school his father had briefly attended years earlier.

He spent three years in State College, double majoring in communications and integrative arts and, by his junior year, developing into an All-American pass rusher. He left Penn State a year early, and in 2009 he was a first-round draft pick of the Buffalo Bills. But his pro career never blossomed as expected, and after just four NFL seasons (plus a single game in the Canadian Football League), Maybin announced his retirement in May 2014. He was 26 years old. Suddenly, he had the means and the time to turn his lifelong passion, the thing that had sustained him through childhood tumult and professional disappointment, into a career. The football player with the interesting hobby could finally be what he’d really been all along—an artist, with ample motivation, and without constraints.

Aaron Maybin never really left Baltimore. From his art to Project Mayhem, the nonprofit foundation he started during his playing days, he has always remained rooted in, and inspired by, his hometown. His interest in education, and in the inequity inherent in the system, stems from his own transition from the city to the suburbs. “When I got to Howard County, it was like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve been treated bad my whole life,’” he says. “To go from having 10-year-old textbooks, no computers, classes of 30, 40 kids. . . . When you actually see how other people grow up, what they have access to and what you were forced to endure, it’s like a slap in the face.”

And so, while he poured himself into his painting—creating bold, colorful portraits of black revolutionary leaders, memorializing the likes of Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland, or commemorating the 2015 Uprising—he ensured his impact would be more than symbolic. Today, he teaches those art classes at Henson Elementary; he also works part time at The Children’s Home, a juvenile facility in Catonsville, where he runs art therapy sessions with girls and young women, many of whom are survivors of abuse and trafficking.

Those are only the scheduled gigs. With Maybin, so much of his work seems to be in response to the challenges that arise within and around his community. He was on the streets during the riots that followed Gray’s death, documenting the anger with interviews and photos. He was in that classroom in January, using his social media platform to illuminate the struggle of his students as they shivered through a school day. And over the next two weeks, he helped coordinate and pick up donations, organized a packing event at the Downtown Cultural Arts Center, and ended up at Wal-Mart with those GoFundMe organizers buying carts full of supplies. (Given the surplus from the GoFundMe, which was initially set for $20,000, Maybin and the other organizers expanded their shopping list to address needs throughout the city school system. He tweeted videos from the shopping trip, including one in which his fellow organizers, both women, giggle as he loads a cart full of feminine pads.)

It’s the sort of work a guy who was making NFL millions just a few years ago could probably pawn off on others. But that’s not Maybin’s way. “To have staff members who go above and beyond, any principal loves to have that, so he was already a top-shelf guy to me,” says Miller, the principal at Henson Elementary. “This just puts an exclamation point on it.”

It’s worth noting that none of this—the pesky details of organizing, of loading up shopping carts, all the relentless “above and beyond” that his principal so appreciates—seems to bother Maybin. Which is not to say he’s unaffected: You can see and hear the frustration as he talks about the root causes, be they political or cultural, of the poverty, violence, and lack of resources endemic to so much of the city, its schools in particular. But while he is well-versed in the causes, he is more interested in solutions, in whatever form they might take: from collecting and distributing space heaters and winter coats to addressing issues through his art.

And his book: Art Activism mixes dozens of Maybin’s paintings and drawings with his poetry and prose, both reflections on injustice and exhortations for his brothers and sisters to lift themselves up. It’s years in the making, and he’s proud of it. 

“The hood loves this right now,” he says of his book. “The people that I see everyday, they’re not gonna read Ta-Nehisi Coates. They’re not gonna read Frantz Fanon or James Baldwin. But they’re gonna read that.”