13 Facts About Mike Alewitz

Mike Alewitz grew up in a segregated post-World War II housing development surrounded by working-class Irish and Italian families.

Mike Alewitz moved back to Cleveland as a teenager, and attended Cleveland Heights High School in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where he graduated in 1968.

Mike Alewitz enrolled at Kent State University, where he was as a founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam.

Mike Alewitz was a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater and was the socialist candidate for student body president at the time of the Kent State shootings in 1970.

Mike Alewitz was an eyewitness to the shootings, with some of his close friends counted among the victims.

Police arrived and arrested Mike Alewitz, who was then barred from returning to the university.

Mike Alewitz later served as National Chairman of the Committee of Kent State Massacre Eyewitnesses and was subpoenaed to testify before the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest, known as the Scranton Commission, where he spoke extensively about the shootings.

Mike Alewitz joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1968 and the Socialist Workers Party in 1970.

Mike Alewitz was active with the group in Texas, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New Orleans, Virginia, Boston and Newark, New Jersey.

Mike Alewitz served as a member of the SWP until his expulsion in 1987, but remained active in the socialist, anti-war, and labor movements.

Mike Alewitz has traveled throughout the world creating public art on themes of peace and justice.

In 1999, Mike Alewitz was named a Millennium Artist by the White House Millennium Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.

Mike Alewitz's art has been the subject of documentary films, including 2005's Breaking Walls, which followed Alewitz on a trip to the Middle East and examined the ways in which his murals have shaped conversations about the role of art in society.