Mike has also been a community leader and advocate who consistently joins teaching and writing with political activism. His organizing in New Jersey beginning in the early 1980’s helped found half a dozen organizations advocating to end homelessness and the housing crisis. The organizations he helped found include, but are not limited to the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless, New Jersey Right to Housing and Brand New Day, a housing development agency. Mike has continued to serve on a number of agency boards to help lead them through the politics of austerity and neglect.
In addition, Mike has been the treasurer, first vice president and legislative representative of the faculty/staff union for CUNY the PSC. In those roles he has helped to shape the unions political agenda, develop organizing campaigns and provide fiscal oversight. He has served on the PSC’s Executive Council for twenty-one years. The PSC during this period has evolved into a powerful advocate for CUNY and public higher education nationally.
To write, read and teach inside a university without a dedicated, grounded political practice is a barren project. Mike has consistently chosen to ground writing and teaching.to his continuing political work. He is firm in the belief that a political practice is the best window into many of the urgent social questions, topics and dilemmas today. This political work has shaped Mike’s writing and teaching about public higher education, homelessness, non-profit agencies and the political economy of the welfare state.