Caught up in the civil rights movement in Boston at age 13, Michael Ansara spent decades as an activist and organizer. He was a regional organizer for Students for A Democratic Society, Chair of the ’69 Harvard Strike Committee, spent ten years organizing against the war in Vietnam, became a community organizer, was director of Mass Fair Share, worked on voter registration efforts and numerous political campaigns. He owned and operated several companies. In the last 15 years he has been a co-founder of Mass Poetry, a writer of poems and essays, a board member of Indivisible Massachusetts and an organizer of Together for 2020 This essay is based on a memoir in progress. His essays and poems have appeared in Solstice, Ibbetson Street, Salamander, MidAmerica Poetry Review, Muddy River Poetry Review and Vox
