Barry Nelson, Organizer
What happens when we trust the path beneath our feet? Opportunity opens and opens again and though it may not take you where you or others expected you to go, the journey ends up being “just right.”
For Barry Nelson, as a farm boy growing up near Kathryn, North Dakota, the massacre of student protesters at Kent State University two weeks before his high school graduation became an important signpost on his life journey. Barry has had a lot of roles at NDHRC: founder, board member, executive director, lobbyist, fundraiser and envelope-stuffer and cheerleader. Today, his title is Organizer and though he has retired from his long career as a social worker, his work for human rights and on behalf of the Coalition continues full time.
Barry’s career road was a confluence of paths, rather than a straightforward journey. It included lots of project-based and distance learning education, a 70’s experiment that is not often remembered, though it was a change agent for those that took part. But the rights of youth figures prominently in the work he has done, as well as the resettlement needs and challenges for refugees who’ve come to North Dakota.
Though encouraged and even pressured to make higher education his field, Barry said, “academics were always circumvented by life events,” and the practical needs of people consistently won first place. Social work was his field and it taught him that, almost always, it is the systems that are broken, rather than the people. He collaborated to design programs, challenge and change those systems, such as a resettlement model that did foolish things like placing a single Vietnamese man in Katherine ND, far from others of his countrymen, then expecting him to make a successful transition. One such action involved bringing refugees to a legislative hearing where person after person said “this bill is targeting me” and explained why resulting in the egregious bill being pulled by the committee and turned into a study resolution and in “new Americans who found their voice and their power.”
Though he has moved on from direct service in social work, Barry’s work on behalf of NDHRC continues and his institutional memory and organizational skills are a cornerstone on which the Coalition continues to build and to grow.
