CHANGEMAKERS

Magdalena Kaluza: Direct Action

By GAEA DILL-D”™ASCOLI
Reprinted with permission from Minnesota Women’s Press

“By sharing vulnerability, we build deeper relationships. We need deep relationships to face what”™s coming ”” floods, heat waves, climate refugees.”

The story of Magdalena Kaluza starts with their parents. Their mother is a white American woman of Polish and French-Canadian descent with family ties in the Iron Range, who went to Guatemala to study Spanish. Their father is of Mayan K”™iche”™ mixed race (mestizo) who played the guitar and grew up in the midst of the revolution. Both parents were working towards social justice and solidarity before Kaluza was born.

Kaluza”™s day job is working at Take Action Minnesota, which allows them to deepen community ties through storytelling while engaging in social justice work.

In 2019, Kaluza applied to Power of Vision, an arts organization based out of Hope Community in Minneapolis. It enabled Kaluza to listen to and tell the stories of the Phillips neighborhood, as well as support tenants in the Corcoran neighborhood.

At the same time, Kaluza was supporting tenants in the Whittier neighborhood as they fought to claim their buildings from a landlord who charged high rents without maintaining the buildings.… Read the rest “CHANGEMAKERS”