NAACP Award Recipient and Local Activist Remembered
Columbus City Councilmembers
Shannon Hardin and Jaiza Page mourn the loss of community and social justice
activist MarShawn M. McCarrel II.
McCarrel,
23, passed away on February 8, 2016. He was found on the steps of the Statehouse.
“The untimely
loss of any life has a devastating impact, especially when so many were
positively impacted by the deceased,” said Hardin who participated in a few of McCarrel’s
programs.
“Today,
we acknowledge and celebrate the life of MarShawn McCarrel, another member of
our community gone too soon, but one whose impact in the City of Columbus will
not soon be forgotten. I offer my condolences to his family and Bev Staples.”
Beverlyn
“Bev” Staples is another fixture in the community who worked with McCarrel on
numerous homeless issues.
McCarrel co-founded Pursuing Our Dreams (POD) providing youth programming
throughout the city and Feed the Streets, a campaign that gives food to the homeless.
Every month for the past two years, 20 to 30 volunteers and friends work to
deliver home-made lunches to homeless people in different areas of the city.
“MarShawn was a
beautiful young man who had recently received the NAACP Hometown Hero Award for
his work with POD and Feed the Streets
to fight homelessness and hunger,” said Page who also knew McCarrel.
“He was a model
of selflessness, which makes the thought of him suffering in private all the
harder to accept. While the flame of his life has been extinguished, the impact
of the light he has brought into the world is undeniable,” Page continued.
In a 2014
interview, McCarrel reflected on an event at Westgate Park he helped organize,
“It was
beautiful to me, it was like family,” he said. “In city life, we might not know
our neighbor for years – community is not just folks occupying space, it’s
building relationships.”
Once referred
to as the “Pied Piper of Selflessness,” MarShawn McCarrel, II, will certainly
be missed.
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