Ask Wednesday: Madison Kimrey on being politically active (and other things)

Child of the Movement

Edited by Morris Dean

Madison Kimrey entered the news with a splash when her petition to meet with North Carolina Governor McCrory got so many signatures it couldn't be ignored. On August 31, she was even interviewed by Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC ("Meet Madison Kimrey, 12-year-old voting rights activist"). And most recently she has been invited to create a video for the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl. Home-schooled Madison also writes a blog, Functional Human Being.
    Moristotle & Co. is honored to be able to publish this interview with Madison. [Our questions are in italics.]

Madison, tell us about your roots.
    I was born and raised here in Burlington. My dad was too. My family here goes back many generations and includes a former mayor of our town.

How close to 9/11/2001 were you born?
    I was two months old on 9/11. My mom says she held me that entire day and we watched the news.

How have you learned about 9/11, and what does it mean to you?
    I’ve learned the most about it from documentaries. 9/11 has come to mean to me that even though there are people out there who want to make us be afraid, we can be brave and free.

You are being home-schooled. Tell us about that.Who are your academic mentors?
    I’m a member of the Davidson Young Scholars program. It’s a national program serving kids who score in the top 10th of the top 1% on both intelligence and achievement tests. With that, I have access to many opportunities and people. There are so many resources out there. I do a mix of online classes and self-study. Math is not my best subject and my math teacher is very important to me. I’m glad I’ll have her for geometry this year. Other students are some of the most important contacts I have. I know a lot of very intelligent kids. We learn a lot from each other. When you do what you love and take it seriously, you also get to meet a lot of great adult mentors too.
    Home-schooling for some kids might mean sitting at the table while mom does lessons with you, but it’s never been that way for me. Like any other parents, if I get stuck on the homework, my parents help me find where to look for the answer. My mom helps other people find the resources that are right for them, and she’s shown me to do that pretty well for myself.

How is your mom involved helping people find resources?
    She's a consultant. She would tell you she works for coffee. Say you're thinking about home-schooling, or you are already home-schooling, or you want to enhance what your kid is doing in school. My mom helps people find the right resources for them.

You must do a lot of reading and writing. How do you manage your time?
    My schoolwork is usually done in 3-5 hours on a typical day. Now that I’m working on high school credits, some of the work takes longer. It’s nice that some of my work is flexible, but I have to stay on top of it or it will get out of control.

What’s the best book you have read? Do you have a favorite author?
    Harry Potter will be my favorite book series until I die. I’m really into Edgar Allan Poe right now.

Have you done dance, music? Theater?
    I danced for 7 years. I did competitions, and dance ate up most of my evenings and weekends for a long time. I really loved it, but once I got started in theater, I was hooked. I’ve been doing it seriously for about a year now. I have learned so much in that year. I have lots of adult mentors in the theater world. There are a lot of really intelligent, creative people in that world.
    A few months ago, I was a terrible singer. I am not exaggerating that at all. Thanks to my voice teacher, Miss Tami, I’ve made a lot of progress over the last three months.
    I just finished shooting my first film ever. It's a short film titled Little Red Riding Hood and directed by Kevin Wilson, Jr. It’s a reversal of the Trayvon Martin story that gets people thinking about race and justice. I want to do more of those. My dream role on stage right now is Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I want to direct one day too. That’s a huge goal for me.

What do you mean by “reversal” in that first film?
    The reversal is that a white girl who is on the way to deliver medicine to her grandma and is shot by a black man because he thinks she is threatening and suspicious.

Do you have a favorite historical period that intrigues you and demands your attention? What’s intriguing about it?
    My 12-year-old answer is, I like Greek Mythology because it’s cool. I missed one question on the National Mythology Exam. I was very disappointed in myself for not getting a perfect score. Unfortunately, I don't remember what the question was.

Have you traveled much? Does it appeal to you?
    I love to travel. I’ve been to several major cities. I’ve hung out at Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, and University of Nevada. I want to go to New York City and California. I have a friend in New Zealand. I would love to see New Zealand and Australia. I would love to study abroad. It’s something I’m starting to talk over more seriously with my parents. One of my mom’s friends has a son my age in Germany right now. He picked up enough German in three days to have a conversation. He’s also learning French, a language he doesn’t know, in German, another language he’s just learning.

How did you become a political activist?
    My best friend lives in Florida. A children’s museum down there expected a mom he knows to pay extra to renew her family membership because they refused to recognize her wife as a second parent on the membership. We usually visit Florida once or twice a year, so we timed our visit around a demonstration being held there against the museum. My friend and I both went. It was fun, not in the reason we were there, but because there were different kinds of people standing up for the same idea. It really felt good to stand up for what I believe in.
    This was happening when Moral Mondays started, and going to my first Moral Monday was the same kind of experience of interacting with many different people, only on a much larger scale.
    And social media give you a chance to see the little things people are doing that add up to make a big difference. Seeing those little things get started and watching people get behind ideas is an inspiration.

Madison on her way
to be interviewed on MSNBC

When did you start blogging? What got you started?
    I think I was 7 when my friend and I started making little gaming blogs. I never thought of myself as a writer. That was something that was always a possibility in the future. After I went to Florida for the demonstration, Zack Ford wrote about it on Think Progress ("Children’s Museum That Discriminated Against Gay Couple Demands Apology For Backlash"). I thought I would see what happened if I wrote about that experience too ("What I Did on My Summer Vacation"). Have a Gay Day published it on Facebook, and a lot of people read it and liked it. So I kept writing about issues I had a strong opinion about. Now I have thousands of readers. One of the things I think is really cool is that I have both young people and adults reading my blog.

You told us last week that you made up a special email ID to annoy some bigots you ran into on the web. Please tell us about that—it sounds like fun.
    When I returned from Florida and wrote my story, the bigots down there didn’t like it. They tried to say I was brainwashed. Sound familiar? So I went at it with them on Facebook. They didn’t like me standing up to them, so someone reported my Facebook account because I was under 13. I wrote about that too, and once again, a lot of people read it. Those bigots actually did me a huge favor, because that’s how I ended up using Twitter. Twitter is how I keep up with what’s going on in the world and in my state.

    One of my friends has two moms, so I pretty much always knew there were people out there who were uncomfortable with that idea. My first experiences with bigotry came from hearing other kids using the word “gay” as an insult. At first, I really didn’t know what to do about it, but I knew I didn’t like it. One day I told one of them that he was not to use that word that way in my presence anymore. I think I was about 7 or 8 years old. That’s the key, I think, to ending this kind of bigotry in my lifetime. People just have to stand up to it and say, “That is NOT okay!”
    I have a friend who I’ve known since I was about 6. She used to think gay marriage was wrong. I don’t think it was me alone who “converted” her but knowing me and being introduced to some of my gay friends has been an eye-opener for her. Her attitudes have been transformed from learning that attitudes like that cause teenagers to turn to drugs, alcohol—even suicide, because they are bullied by others for simply being who they are, and from learning that there are those of us who won’t stand for her promoting hate.

“Grown-up activities” have come early to you. Do you ever feel that your childhood was too short? Have any regrets?
    I think it’s ridiculous for anyone to assume that I’ve been somehow robbed of my childhood. This is a kind of ignorance and insecurity from adults that kids like me are used to, unfortunately. It hurts us. My mom’s friend Carolyn has a website called "Hoagies Gifted" where adults and kids can find information about being gifted and how to help gifted kids.
    When I was little, I used to try to play games with the other kids. But my games were too involved and had too many rules, and the other kids couldn’t keep up with them. I wasn’t trying to do this on purpose. I was just trying to have fun. If I didn’t know a lot of other kids like me, I would probably have had a pretty miserable childhood thinking I didn’t fit in anywhere. Contrary to popular belief, when kids like me get together, we don’t sit around and discuss particle physics. We have giant pillow fights. Sure, some of the rules might connect to particle physics if that just happens to be someone’s passionate interest, but most of the smartest kids (and adults) I know are really silly and playful people.

You told us that sometimes you just hang out with your dog. Tell us about him or her.
    Watching the news and reading about all the hate in the world can get depressing at times. Wookie always cheers me up. We got him from the animal shelter, and before he came to live with us he lived primarily outside. The previous owner said he was hyper and barked a lot. Really, he’s so happy all the time and the most loving dog ever. He’s always glued to me. He sits in my lap at the computer when I write my blog posts and sometimes he tries to type himself. He needs a few spelling lessons. As a lot of people say about their rescue dogs, I really think he rescued me.

Do you eat meat? Has knowing Wookie given you second thoughts?
    I do eat meat. I have considered becoming a vegetarian. It’s something I think about a lot, actually. There are lots of ways to help animals without being vegetarian. I think people make that mistake with a lot of things. They think because they can’t or don’t want to do everything, that means they do nothing. Even just dropping off one can of cat food at the animal shelter is helping an animal in need.

What do see yourself becoming, or doing? Is any vision of a “life’s work” emerging?
    My standard answer to what I’m going to be when I grow up is that it hasn’t been invented yet. Really, I think of my life in terms of what I want to be doing right now and how I can get there. The future will happen. The more people you get to know and find out about how they got where they are, the more paths you see are open to you. You have to be willing to take a chance and not be afraid of failing. That’s hard for me and a lot of people, I think.

What questions do you wish we had asked because you would really like to talk about them or let us know?
    One thing I really want people to know is that MoveOn had no idea about my petition to meet with Governor McCrory until I got many signatures on it. All these people saying I’m a prop for MoveOn have no idea what they are talking about. Most people wouldn’t have read about my petition or seen it on the news if a lot of friends hadn’t shared it in those first few days. One of the first groups that helped me get the word out was the Christian Left. Any success I have achieved is because of regular citizens supporting an idea. Not everyone who has offered support to me are liberals either. I’ve had many really conservative people in my life who have said they are proud of me and are glad I’m encouraging young people to stand up for what they believe. I also have a lot of people in my life who may disagree with me on issues like women’s rights but are supporting my efforts to secure the ability of 16-to-17-year-olds to pre-register to vote.

[Madison has also written an article on Moral Monday for Moristotle & Co. It will be published next Tuesday.]
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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