GPHC

Senator Mike Johnston 

By Joan Wallach and Arthur Rosenblum

There are thirty-five senators in the Colorado State Senate. Only one of those senators, Senator Mike Johnston, who represents Park Hill and much of northeast and far northeast Denver has a community office in their district. Johnston’s office is located at 5405 E. 33rd Ave., across the street from the burned-out Holly Shopping Center in a former restaurant that reflects the wear and tear in this part of the neighborhood.

By unexpectedly placing his office at a location that is associated more with gang violence than with wine bars and pricey homes, Johnston is making the statement that he wants to be a part of this community and help change it, not just represent it. For much of his life Johnston has been in places where one wouldn’t expect him to be. When Johnston was an undergraduate at Yale University, he spent almost every day after class mentoring a dozen adolescent boys who lived in low income public housing.

“Obsession with Civil Rights”

Johnston explains that he’s had a “life long obsession with civil rights.” He was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Eagle County, where the image of the Kennedys was a constant presence and public service was a “deep family value.” Signing on with Teach For America, Johnston sought out Mississippi because it was a “mythical place in the civil rights movement” and because of the legacy of the tragedies that occurred there. He jokes that his greatest fear was that he would be assigned to a teaching position in neighboring Arkansas rather than Mississippi.

 “It was in Mississippi,” Johnston says, “that I first got a handle on race relations.” Enough of a handle that Johnston wrote a highly regarded book about his experiences, In the Deep Heart’s Core. “While the formal barriers to segregation were removed in the south,” Johnston observed, “there was still a profound denial of access to opportunity.” And the answer to this condition, Johnston learned, was a quality education. “It doesn’t matter where you are sitting on the bus if you can’t read the street signs.” Johnston realized that “education is the civil rights issue of my generation,” and he sees K-12 education as the “pipeline” to an economically secure future.

With a dedication to education and a desire to influence educational policy, Johnston left the Delta for a graduate program in educational policy at Harvard. The former philosophy major, always looking at the bigger picture, viewed over-arching social issues such as tax and housing policies as having a profound impact on education. That realization led Johnston to Yale Law School. (It should be obvious by now that our new senator is as intelligent as he is committed to social justice).

Academics and Supports

After law school, and knowing that he would not work as a lawyer, Johnston returned to Colorado. Again landing where one would not expect him to be, Johnston became the principal at both the Joan Farley Academy, attended by residents from five different residential treatment centers with extraordinary emotional and academic challenges, and the Marvin Foote Center, a school with students from the Colorado Department of Youth Corrections.

In these settings Johnston refined principles and practices that brought unexpected success to his students and a growing belief in the capacity of young people to overcome “horrific circumstances that no one should survive.” By focusing on academic skills and not treatment, these schools saw their largest graduating classes.

One young women told her teachers about a relative who had sexually abused her for several years and returned to her home the previous night. Johnston and her teachers helped her avoid allowing those circumstances to overwhelm her. Johnston explains, “The harder the life circumstances, the more important it is to perform. … There’s a belief in the world that you can’t do this,” Johnston said, “while there is a belief in this school that you can do it.”

In addition to making academic achievement the dominant part of the culture of the schools, Johnston, a modest man, also learned that attracting and keeping a good staff is essential to a school’s success. These are skills he’s cultivated with great success.

Johnston next took his talents and principles to the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts (MESA) in Thornton where the culture of high expectations and strong supports helped 100 percent of the 2009 graduating class win scholarships to four year colleges. MESA’s success was measured by the graduation and college admission rates, but the essence of that success was embodied in the day-to-day culture of the school that emphasized the celebration of students’ talents, their accountability to themselves, their teachers and their fellow students, and an appreciation for those who supported them.

The success of MESA students brought national attention to the school and its principal, and Johnston’s advice was sought by presidential candidate Barrack Obama whose recent speech to the nation’s students was to a great degree a reflection of Mike Johnston’s beliefs. Johnston has also advised our US senator from Denver (Michael Bennett), Governor Bill Ritter and the leadership of the Colorado General Assembly.


From Practitioner to Policy Maker

Last spring when State Senator Peter Groff was appointed to a position in the Obama administration, Johnston acted on plans to leave MESA, seek Groff’s seat and work to influence the public policies that impact our schools and children so powerfully. The Democratic Party selected Johnston for the vacated seat and he is already working on interim legislative committees and planning for the legislative session that begins in January.

The social justice values that guided Johnston’s career as an educator are shaping his approach to public office. The power and influence of lobbyists at the state capitol cannot be overstated. To counterbalance that influence, Johnston is forming nine policy advisory committees that roughly correspond to the nine committees in the senate. Johnston’s committees will be comprised of practicing professionals and lay people knowledgeable in the different focus areas, be it education, health, justice or others. These committees will develop policy papers for Johnston and advise him on proposed legislation and issues that might be served by new legislation.

In addition,  Johnston is forming outreach committees comprised of community members throughout his district who will serve as both conduits of information from their communities to the senator, and carry information from the state house back to the community. As with the placement of his office on Hudson Street, Johnston’s intention is to be an active part of the community he represents and have residents of the community an active part of his senate office.

Johnston is acutely aware of the challenges of much of his district, its income, education and health disparities. While he believes that “the American narrative has always been about equality, ... the great promise of equality is not fulfilled in this neighborhood.” With a focus on these issues, Johnston hopes to be a “positive force for change.”

Johnston is entering the next phase of his evolution from practitioner to policy maker with an appreciation of the need to bridge the two and complete “the arc of belief in what’s possible.”

Since a trip to Ireland two years ago, where Johnston had the experience of “coming home,” even though he didn’t have strong cultural ties prior to the trip, Johnston appreciates his kinship with the historic civil rights struggle of the southern Irish against a more powerful England. It was there that Johnston realized that his passion for equality and social justice are deeply rooted in him. “I learned that social justice is in my DNA.”

Senator Johnston said “I will never presume to know what it’s like to be a third generation sharecropper or an undocumented immigrant. What I know is who I am and I know I can help.”

Senator Mike Johnston can be reached at the State Senate at 303-866-4864 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it He also welcomes visitors to his community office at 5405 E. 33rd Ave.