As CEO of the Minnesota Humanities Center, former MN Commissioner of Human Rights Kevin Lindsey also makes time to help bring attention to clean energy initiatives while supporting the next generation of Black attorneys.
Kevin Lindsey has recently become a board member of Fresh Energy. The organization’s mission is to “shape and drive bold policy solutions to achieve equitable carbon-neutral economies,” according to its website. Lindsey has only been on the board for a couple of months but is impressed by the organization’s efforts to educate people on the climate crisis and global warming.
“We need to bring a greater sense of urgency to the most significant issue that we face,” Lindsey says. Though corporations are incentivized to move to environmentally friendly practices, it’s “just not moving quickly enough,” he says.
Fresh Energy has identified two sector-wide approaches, agriculture and heavy industry, to move the dial on climate change. Lindsey hopes that the Minnesota Humanities Center can help educate people by creating platforms to engage them in dialogue.
In partnership with the local community leaders, the Humanities Center created We Are Water, an exhibit that travels to cities, communities, and indigenous nations across the state.
“From a philosophical standpoint, [we are] trying to get people to understand that there is a connection, a throughline to everyone’s action,” he says.
Through science, personal narratives, and history, the exhibit examines the significance of water across the state and catalyzes constructive conversations. This dialogue allows individuals to make and consider changes at a local level.
Dialogue also draws much-needed attention to important issues: “When we talk about the instability of hurricanes, abnormal temperature change in parts of the country…if we don’t pay attention, I fear it might be too late for us to be able to do anything about it.”
Attention to the issues drives public policy. Minnesota’s political landscape doesn’t lend itself to much in the way of far right-wing climate change deniers, which Lindsey says makes dialogue on sustainable practices easier.
“But let’s not kid ourselves,” he says. “The congressional delegation in Minnesota is split half Republican, half Democrat. It’s not as if everybody is all singing from the same hymnal.”
When Lindsey is not serving on the board of Fresh Energy or leading the Humanities Center, he serves as president of the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers (MABL). Over the last decade, they have not seen the gains they had hoped for toward efforts to increase the number of African Americans going to law school and becoming attorneys.
Legislation sponsored by Senator Bobby Joe Champion enabled MABL to provide financial support for college students seeking careers in law. With it, MABL helps lower the cost by paying for the LSAT and an LSAT preparatory course for students.
“Just getting your foot into the door can be very challenging before you start paying law school tuition,” Lindsey says. “This funding not only helps break the barrier of cost, it also increases the chances of youth seeing people they can relate to in the industry.
“My dad graduated with an accounting degree, but he did so after he retired,” Lindsey explains. “My mom worked her way up at Motorola and did very well there.”
Even coming from a middle-class upbringing, “It was a challenge to see or think of myself as an attorney,” he says. I had a false view of what it meant to be an attorney from what I saw on TV.” Exposing youth to what a law degree can do for them creates pathways to diversity in law professions.
“We feel very confident we will have some of the students that will be enrolled in law school within this first cohort,” thanks to the funding, says Lindsey. “I don’t want to jinx them by any means, but I feel fairly confident given what I saw over the summer from them.”
On November 16, MABL will hold their Still I Rise gala at The Fillmore Minneapolis. It features Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson; Camille Davidson, Mitchell Hamline School of Law’s first African American woman to serve as dean; and Duchess Harris, chair of American studies at Macalester College.
The Still I Rise program was derived from a recent political discussion. “The idea was coined by one of the presidential candidates talking about what are Black jobs,” says Lindsey.
“We thought that this would be a good example of being able to showcase and highlight three individuals in their excellence, Black women as it relates to Black jobs that are held within those professions.”
Lindsey says that when those in law do not include people from different economic, political, and social backgrounds, “[It] can be an agent which inhibits people from being seen full within the law.”
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.