Meet Mike Martin

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Martin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mike , thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us today. We’re excited to dive into your story and your work, but first let’s start with a broader topic that might be stopping many of our readers from pursuing their dreams – haters, nay-sayers, etc. How have you managed to persist despite haters and nay-sayers that inevitably follow folks who are doing something unique, special or off the beaten path?

My work is connected to gun violence prevention, but not how most people think of it. Its not legislative advocacy work. I work with an organization that encourages people to trade their tools that foster violence for tools that foster creation and life. We are known for turning guns into garden tools. But we do this with a survivor centered approach. We invite them into the process of turning swords into plowshares. We also train or introduce people to skills that help them navigate conflict without harming others or themselves. This largely happens in dialogue skills and conflict facilitation. But also at the anvil while make a garden tool from a gun with someone who has been impacted by gun violence.

In a country where there are over 400 million guns, its not uncommon for our work to be criticized as too small. Too small as in what does turning one gun into a few tools matter when a gun is made every 3 seconds? Or too small because the work is insignificant, like that feeling a bully tries to pander to others instead facing it with help.

I’m always asked questions that are based in this “too small” thinking. They don’t mean it like the trolls do. My story doesn’t have gun violence in it. (It does now through my work).

When someone donates a gun that was used in the suicide of a loved one, or a teacher gets rid of their AR-15 after another mass shooting in the news, or 5 years after donating an AK-47, a donor donates his handguns – you realize your work isn’t too small. That so many of us don’t want to live in a country that is okay with this culture of gun violence. It always comes back to the work with survivors. To be able to help a person pick up a hammer and be a part of making something that cultivates life instead of death is almost indescribable. The best way to communicate what its like to witness this is to participate in it. Even then, each persons story of gun violence is different, each instance feels different. It holds the paradox of grief and hope, loss and celebration.

Its hard to contain the empowerment it give people. To be a part of something that is literally transforming a gun to a garden tool, but also doing work internally to help people process stages of grief, is deeply profound. These experiences keep me grounded in the mission. That even if i stopped now, it will have made a significant impact for many. Remembering these stories and experiences make it easier to persist. Especially remembering what every survivor has to do to persist every day. Surely I can keep doing this.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

The nonprofit organization I work for is RAWtools. It gets its name from turning “WAR” around. Our mission is to Disarm Hearts, Forge Peace, and Cultivate Justice. You can find our work at rawtools.org and on facebook/instagram @rawtoolsinc. Events and items we make can be found there.

I come from a Mennonite faith tradition that is considered a historic peace church. Nonviolence is a big part of my work and my faith. Its from here that RAWtools roots its work. So much of this work is about transformation. Literally at he anvil in transforming guns into tools, but our work is also about connecting that to transformation we need to do within our own selves to bring about peace in our world. Whether that world is our home or neighborhood or larger spaces, we all have a space we occupy and can affect change. For some of us its plenty of work to focus on ourself in this stage of life and that’s more than okay.

My work matters to me personally as a father father of 2 sons. i pray they never have to experience gun violence, but I also want them to know they have the agency to imagine and enact a better world.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I think the first thing I had to be okay with was failure. I’m also a baseball fan and a good batting average till means you failed 7/10 times. This helped me wrap my head around how we can grow through failure. Each success or failure will inform the next, but you can’t get to what’s next without that learning experience.

None of us are alone and whatever “success” is for us, will always be connected to others. The more I understand this, the less competitive i am and the more collaborative i become. Life and work and play doesn’t happen with out some sort of co-labor with others.

My work with gun violence survivors has led me to trust knowledge from people forced to the margins. To accept my social location as a very privileged space is to also accept that my social location is more likely to give me information that fosters my privilege instead of transforming it to work for others.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann. While the book is based in Christian tradition, this quote from it crosses barriers:

“We need to ask not whether it is realistic or practical or viable but whether it is imaginable. We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and co-opted by the royal [American] consciousness that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.”

I have seen so many dreamers get blunted by the retort “The world doesn’t work that way.” Yes, we need to be aware of the obstacles our world ahs created, but we cannot lose the motivation to transform our world for the better. For this we have artists to thank for their gifts of allowing us to imagine something else. My work doesn’t exist without artists leading the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rawtools.org
• Instagram: @rawtoolsinc
• Facebook: @rawtoolsinc