Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz, Director – University of Minnesota - Center for Urban & Regional Affairs’ (CURA) – Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Program (*NLO)

Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz

Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz (He/Him/His) (Also known as “Ish” for short) has over 30 years of leadership and organizing experience for reparative racial justice, social justice, and economic justice. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts in Human Services with a Sociology minor.

In college, he studied sociology, psychology, social movements, while being an organizer at the University of Minnesota – Morris campus student-led anti-racism campaign against the 1993 Halloween incident involving 3 members of the wrestling department reenacting a historical crime as a prank against two African American out of state students.

During and after college, he participated in AFL-CIO Union Organizing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Illinois Red Cross Disaster Services Response & Capacity Building in marginalized statewide and became an Emergency Services Director/Multiple County lead for the Rockford Illinois Red Cross.

After Union Organizer and Emergency Services directorships, he worked in Education organizing and engagement for the State of Minnesota Higher Education Services (MHESO) Department and their statewide AmeriCorps program. 

In the early 2000s, he decided to move into the Saint Paul’s South Como / North End area and was later hired into Directorship at the city’s official neighborhood association, District 6 South Como / North End, where he engaged with neighbors in Environmental Justice and Land Use planning issues.

After District 6 from 2005 - 2013, he would later work as the Economic Development Organizer and Director for North Minneapolis’s Harrison Neighborhood Association to further organize with leaders in the areas of Undoing Racism organizing, Land Use planning, Economic justice, and Community Benefits Agreements / Economic Development Scorecard planning.
At Harrison, he organized a racial diverse community of 3000 residents to demand enforceable community-driven benefits as 2 billion dollars of new development, light rail development, displacement was taking place in their backyards through the City of Minneapolis and multi-state developer during an 11-year campaign. The 11-year campaign meant holding elected officials accountable, hundreds of community leaderships meeting, organizing business leaders, land use planning clinics, undoing racism workshops, environmental justice base building & actions, research meetings, thousands of hours of door-knocking & outreach in five different languages with partnering organizations, BIPOC representation strategizing, and community narrative development.

For more than two decades, “Ish” has served in multiple leadership positions in community healing work, community grant work, relentless struggle for reparative racial justice for BIPOC communities, training hundreds of community leaders, and conducting one on one To organization wide technical assistance to small grassroots organizing groups, to University departments, To Neighborhoods To statewide conferences.
Ish’s University of Minnesota Center for Regional and Urban Affairs (CURA) Department involvement began in 2004 when he graduated from the Twin Cities Training Program for Neighborhood Organizers, later serving as a Grant Advisory Committee member for CURA’s community-based funding. He joined CURA staff in 2015, leading initiatives promoting reparative racial justice, issue-based community organizing, community-centered leadership development, economic equity, while developing CURA’s first issues organizing and systems change 3 month long, Free-to-Community training through its new Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Program (*NLO) with Ned Moore.

To This Day, CURA’s Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Program’s “Neighborhoods Now” provides training and organizing assistance to support local leaders in identifying and tackling community organizing issues, and in building vital communities that value full participation and embody racial equity and economic justice.

Presently, Ish and his colleague Ned Moore continue to offer Neighborhoods Now – Minnesota-wide and have been recruited recently to work with organizations in Los Angeles-California, Connecticut, Illinois, and Kansas. New To date, the program has seen nearly 500 graduates, and Ish has continued to coach, meditate, support and mentor dozens of program alumni and community partners.

Ish lives and loves the City of Saint Paul, is a parent, dancer, volunteer, loves music, Oat milk-Yum!, and is passionate about standing alongside People who believe Community Organizing “…..Moves at the Speed Of Trust” (Adrienne Maree Brown – Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds – 2017).