A Little Bit About Me
Hi, my name is Michael Neil and the fight for progressive reforms such as environmental protection, worker power, and the environment is personal. Born in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, CO, to a homemaker and mom-turned Medicaid family advocate and an adjunct professor of Judaic Studies and the History of the Modern Middle East, I grew up in what otherwise would have been deemed a comfortable middle class childhood were it not for the fact that I was born with a congenital birth defect called Spina Bifida and acquired upper body spasticity due to medical malpractice. Over my lifetime, I have had over eighteen surgeries, most of them before the age of five. While much of my early childhood was spent at doctors and in surgery and, eventually, therapy, I never had to worry about my family paying for these bills because I was on Medicaid for my first eighteen years of life and knew I just had to focus on healing.
Beyond the hospital, my family, especially my Mom, was intent on providing me with every experience possible that was available to my able-bodied peers. As a product of a family with two much older half-brothers with a PhD and an MD/PhD, a father with a JD, and a mother with a bachelor's degree, education was a given in my family and I started my education within the realm of Denver Public Schools. Homeschooled for two years to avoid some of the ableist barriers of elementary school, I then attended the University of Denver-affiliated Ricks' Center and University of Denver High School, where the importance of civic education and civic action was further instilled, including a mandatory project in American Government to volunteer on a campaign...in my case the 7,800 vote loss of Colorado State Treasurer and Lieutenant Governor to eventual Governor Bill Owens. Bitten by the political bug, I continued to work on campaigns as I attended Colorado College courtesy of a Boettcher Scholarship received out of a combination of talent and good fortune. While at Colorado College, I participated in our Amnesty International chapter, Queer-Straight Alliance, Environmental Action Committee, Feminist Collective, and helped co-found Colorado College Fair Labor to create the circumstances for a living wage for our culinary and janitorial workers, all while getting my BA in History-Philosophy and minor in Modern Revolutions and volunteering for candidates such as the Honorable Ken Salazar and Michael Merrifield, helping to register over two hundred voters in the latter race that was decided by a little over a hundred votes.​
Upon my graduation from Colorado College, I returned to Denver to attend the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver courtesy of a Mellon Fellowship. After finishing coursework, I returned to volunteering for the Democratic Party of Denver, balancing volunteering for the Center on Rights Development, the Task Force on Modern Slavery, and Sexual Assault Awareness Week at DU with joining the Diversity and Outreach Committee of the Denver Democratic Party, volunteering to defeat numerous anti-choice ballot initiatives, attempting to unionize the janitorial and cooking staff at the University of Denver, and completing my dissertation on the philosophical concept of who is a community member or citizen, especially with regard to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
After my dissertation and living on my own near the University of Denver, I learned how inequitable the constructed world can be for someone with a major disability, perhaps, oddly, for the first time. I fully understood that I have a disability. With this realization, I joined the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center as a volunteer ADA Compliance Investigator, as well as being appointed to the Disability Benefits Support Contract Committee (later renamed the Colorado Disability Funding Committee), where we creatively raised money and disbursed it in grants to disability-related projects.
Most importantly, I became an uncompensated volunteer citizen lobbyist for the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, which I still do today in addition to Democratic Party work in my precinct, on Diversity and Outreach, and on my state and county Platform. As a citizen lobbyist, I not only fought for healthcare expansion and affordability, including single-payer healthcare, but also the right to live in the freest possible accommodations, accessible and affordable housing, clean environmental policies, and a criminal justice system that does not burden or target those with "abnormal" responses to police and lowers barriers for fair access to the justice system for those without access or means, especially people with disabilities and communities of color.