Kamal Johnson

View fullsize

Born in: Westchester, NY

Moved to Hudson in the early 1990s

Current Jobs: Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood, First Ward Alderperson, running for mayor 

Mad passions: Working with Hudson’s youth and promoting self-care

What he’s reading now: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler

A Moment of Truth

Kamal Johnson was 17 years old, a “wild kid” and feeling lost. His father had died when he was 8 and his mother had wrestled with addiction, leaving her four sons to look after each other during his school years. His oldest brother had played the father role until he was incarcerated for a 9-year term on drug charges, leaving the remaining three brothers at home. Even with his mother now clean and working multiple jobs, money was tight. He was struggling in school, unable to focus. He worked a paper route for the Register-Star and served as a peer counselor at Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood, where he got his first experience in public speaking. But his grades were terrible and he was told he wouldn’t be able to graduate. He was thinking about selling drugs to make money.

One day he went to visit his oldest brother in prison. 

“I sat across from him at the table and I was telling him, ‘I don’t know what to do, we need to make money. I don’t want us all to be under one roof and a burden.’ And he said, ‘I can teach you how to sell drugs and I can teach you the game. You could be just like me.’ And I had an epiphany in that moment. For the first time in thirteen years I started crying and he was just looking at me. And he said, ‘what’s going on?’ and I said, ‘I don’t want to be like you. I don’t want to be in here.’ I went back to school and still didn’t have a direction but I knew I didn’t want to live the street life.”

Finding a Way Forward

Thanks to the intervention of Miss Howe at Hudson High School, Kamal joined a program where he worked with elementary school children. “I had such a pull with the kids and I felt like this is where I belong. I thought, maybe I want to be a teacher. But I still felt like that might be too lofty of a goal for me.”

Todd Smith, who was then head of the Youth Center and gym teacher Pat Malloy appreciated Kamal’s ability to connect with young people and the Hudson Youth Center became a place where he received guidance and encouragement and a chance to mentor. “There was a kid there who reminded me a lot of me. The kid said, ‘we don’t have role models that look like us, so what do I care? There’s no black doctors or lawyers in our neighborhood. All we have is the drug dealers.’ I had to do something different.”

During his senior year, his history teacher persuaded him to take what turned out to be a college entrance test, and he started applying himself to class work and was back on the graduation list. After high school, however, he was adrift again. 

Some of his friends decided to enroll at Columbia Greene Community College and Kamal joined them. By the time he finished his Associates Degree he had a 3.75 GPA and was still thinking about a teaching career. After doing some substitute teaching he decided this wasn’t the right fit, but he knew he still needed a four-year college degree to move forward. The night before college orientation at SUNY New Paltz his house was raided again. This time it was his next oldest brother, who was arrested and sent to prison for 7 years. 

“I thought maybe this is a sign, maybe I should stay home to take care of my younger brother and my mom. She said, ‘If you quit school I’ll quit my job. Just go try it out.” He loved orientation but on the way home an oncoming vehicle rammed his car. He wondered if this was another sign that he should stay home. “My mom said, ‘We’re going to get you to that school. You have to do something different, no matter what it takes.’ I had a great experience there and that’s where I got this real love of politics.” 

By graduation he also had a child on the way and he wanted to offer her a different kind of parenting than what he’d had. “I didn’t have a father and I watched my mom struggle. I don’t want to pass down oppression.”

Creating a Life in Local Politics

People in the community started asking Kamal to run for local office but he didn’t feel like people wouldn’t take him seriously. But in 2016 the filthy, deteriorated state of the Hudson Youth Center pushed him into action. “This is one of the places that literally saved my life, that gave me a direction. This can’t be the standard that we are showing our kids.” He offered to gather up a community group to work for free and went to the Common Council with a list of needed repairs as well as ideas for new youth programming. “They said, ‘well it’s not that simple, and you have to be at the table. You have a lot of great ideals but it doesn’t work the way you think it does.’ I said, how does it work? Tell me know it works and I’ll be a part of it.”

Kamal and his friends had already started a group they called AHOD. “So it was All Hands on Deck. Whatever we’re a part of, we have to make sure we’re getting the best out of it. We’re going to pull people in, get things together. A whole community approach.” His friends pushed Kamal again to run for local office and he decided to run for First Ward Alderman.

He launched his campaign as a moderator for a town hall about the DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative). “People were afraid about the DRI. Some people called it the gentrification grant. People heard that this thing’s coming and it’s going to fix stuff up, and tourism was already scaring the people that lived here. It was fear due to lack of transparency.”

After winning his seat at the table as First Ward Alderman, Kamal saw that in addition to working on the issues he campaigned on, he could serve as a role model for other young people in Hudson, encouraging them to get more politically involved. 

The Mayoral Race

“This is what I want to do as mayor—come in with a list of goals—this is what I said I was going to do, and this is what I’ve done, and be transparent with the public about that. And also be able to say: I tried to do this, I couldn’t do it, but how can it get done a different way? And I’m not afraid to say that or to ask for help. You’ve got to be a leader. You have to put people in place who can do the job.”

Kamal wants to focus on the opportunities that could come with the DRI. While the city is already working with consultants at The Chazen Companies to implement the grant, he feels the community needs to have input along the way. “You can’t rely on an outside group to understand all the issues in a city. We need a leader who is going to be at the table and represent the people, so I want to be that.”

The DRI could create jobs for people in Hudson as plumbers, electricians and in construction, but the city would have to ensure that there are a sufficient percentage of women, minorities, and veterans to qualify for those jobs. “Local people have to be trained and certified, so that we have local people owning their businesses, and after the DRI is done, they have a talent they carry into the future. We have a shortage of all those professions and it’s a good living.”

Kamal also wants to prioritize the waterfront. “I know we have to focus on getting the LWRP (Local Waterfront Revitalization Program) passed and coming up with a unified urban development plan so that we have real access to the waterfront as citizens and not just private people draining the resources that we have down there.” 

On the housing front, Kamal hopes he can work directly with Galvan Initiatives, one of the largest owners of currently vacant properties. “I think they need to come to the table and give us a vision and I think you do that by recognizing some of the good that they’ve done. As a community it would make people feel a lot better if we knew that there is some kind of plan and that we can be a part of it. They would look less like the evil empire. So you have to put pressure on them to say: this is what the public wants and we have a say in our community. And you can’t be afraid to say that.”

Kamal hopes he can show people that in his 34 years he has gathered enough experience from his life challenges and his community organizing to make a positive difference for Hudson. “We can’t keep telling young people to step up in leadership positions, and then when they do, we panic. Doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results is insanity.”