For Roxxanne O’Brien feeling fear means ‘something needs to be done’
By David Pierini staff reporter
Roxxanne O’Brien has taught herself science and how to cut through the smoke in halls of power to fight industrial pollution.
She has brought fierce mettle to foreclosure reform, police brutality and education equality. And now she is summoning the resolve to take on something new – rest.
“I’ve been saying that for a while,” O’Brien said. “Within the next week or two, I will force myself to set a date (to rest).”
Roxxanne O’Brien turns anger into action as an activist and community organizer. Photo by David Pierini
Anyone who has worked alongside O’Brien or experienced the take-no-prisoners tone of her messaging understands how hitting the pause button will be a challenge for her.
O’Brien accepts the labels of activist or community organizer, but insists first that she is a mother who just wants her three kids to be safe when they leave the house. She says she is, second, a neighbor worried about the people in her Folwell neighborhood who bear some of the Northside’s heaviest burdens, including air pollution from largely unfettered industry nearby.
For more than a decade, O’Brien has led residents in a fight with Northern Metals Recycling, whose metal shredding operation led to toxic emissions and elevated levels of lead and other particulates in the air. The company agreed to pay a large settlement and other fines in 2017 and move its shredding operation out of North Minneapolis. Before it could open a new facility in Becker, Northern Metals was accused by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency of falsifying measurements from on-site monitors.
The Pacific Street facility was finally shut down in 2019, but it was allowed to continue to store scrap metal. This past April, scrap metal and other materials caught fire at Northern Metal, sending large plumes of toxic smoke in the air.
One month later, O’Brien led her Northside group, Community Members for Environmental Justice, in a rally out in front of the Northern Metals building calling for the city to, once and for all, shut down the facility.
“She has been a steadfast advocate and actively engaged in standing up for community,” said former state Rep. Raymond Dehn, a Northsider, who first met O’Brien at a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency hearing several years back regarding Northern Metals’ operation permit. “She’s been at this a long time. You really have to be in it to impact change and there are times when you get knocked down or moved back and you keep fighting because you believe in this type of work.”
O’Brien is the daughter of a former teacher who worked with troubled youth and was constantly attending and facilitating meetings. Her mother was a community organizer, O’Brien said, before the role had a name.
She taught her daughter how to understand how racism’s tendrils cling to so many facets of life.
“My mom knows a lot about history, especially European history.” O’Brien said. “That was one of the things she would always say, ‘If you want to understand racism, study European people.’”
From her mother, O’Brien also learned to “speak what you know. Say more as you learn more.”
O’Brien came to understand air quality standards and the types of particulates sent into the air by the shredding operation at Northern Metals. But for her, the pollution on the Northside began as, and remains a human story.
“Environmentalists talk a lot about the environment and rarely talk about communities destroyed,” said O’Brien who was a 2013 Bush Fellow. “I understand that the glaciers are melting is a serious issue, I understand how climate change affects animals. My main focus is my block and neighborhood and people who are struggling. Our community was trying to garden when I started but the high lead levels meant a (greater) chance of getting cancer if they ate out of their garden. OK, that’s a problem.”
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in 2019 released the “Life and Breath” report, which concluded neighbors and communities of color suffer from respiratory illness at greater rates than other parts of the state.
O’Brien with Taisia Cleveland, left. Cleveland wants to follow in O’Brien’s footsteps and, already, has been active with Community Members for Environmental Justice. Photo by David Pierini
The report concluded that deaths due to air pollution are 45 percent higher in high poverty areas and 33 percent higher in communities of color. Rates of hospitalization for respiratory problems were more than 65 percent higher in neighborhoods with poverty and a majority of color.
O’Brien says her neighborhood is part of a section of Minneapolis that has the highest rate of asthma in the state.
O’Brien does not want to be the lone voice. She has worked equally hard on educating people within the community, driving them to meetings and encouraging them to speak.
“Roxxanne is extremely crucial in highlighting the harm Northern Metals has created in North Minneapolis and has spent countless hours organizing our community around this problem,” said State. Rep. Fue Lee (DFL-59A), represents one-half of North Minneapolis. “She remains to be a critical piece to ensuring our families and neighbors’ voices are heard at city hall and the state capitol.”
O’Brien understands she is considered fearless but says she feels afraid every time she speaks. She does it anyway. Worry makes her organize and, “I use the fear and go towards it. Fear is an indication something needs to be done. There’s something I can do instead of feeling hopeless.”
She is one of the leaders of the Tactical Lab at Juxtaposition Arts where she teaches young artists ways to engage community that can bring about change. Her lab has done community survey work around Upper Harbor Terminal and the Blue Line light rail extension, which will bring train travel and stations to North Minneapolis.
She keeps an eye on what talents each student has and tries to pull the leader out of them. She reminds them of the importance of being part of the conversation with the analogy, “If we’re not at the table, we’re for lunch.”
This summer is a theme of Black Joy for the Tactical Lab and part of the mission is to bring positive vibes to spaces where people might be hurting.
O’Brien is molding a protege in Taisia Cleveland, 19, who is one of her lab students. Cleveland described herself as awkward and antisocial but has grown comfortable with her voice and engaging people in the field thanks to O’Brien.
“She’s training me to do what she’s doing,” Cleveland said. “She wants young people to speak up and take the mantle. You can’t care about what other people think. You’re not helping the world by shrinking yourself. I had to push my fears aside because I care about this work so much.”
Therein lies the difficulty for O’Brien if she is to commit to a break. She says she hates knowing the truth. The weight of it, she says, takes a toll on her heart.
O’Brien says her friends and neighbors have her back and they will ultimately hold her accountable for some much-needed self-care.
“I want somebody to take me to a barbecue, play a game of dominoes,” she said. “I just want days like everybody else. Something inside me won’t let me stop.”