Anyone who meets Brian Benford and Duke Ellington, his faithful therapy dog, senses that he radiates love for his community while fighting for justice. A three-time Alder for the City of Madison, former president of the Equal Opportunity Commission, community leader, and now full-time social worker for the UW Odyssey Project, Benford spends every day searching for ways to empower those around him.
Even as a toddler, Benford recalls feeling bathed by family love yet conscious of evil racism. “Being born in the epicenter of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee in 1959, I was exposed to great and courageous civil rights leaders like Father James Groppi, Mayor Frank Ziedler, Vel Phillips, and others. I ate free breakfast with the local Black Panthers and learned to sing Black Power anthems. My father, a Milwaukee police detective, instructed them on firearms training and self-defense.”
When his mother, a former jazz singer, moved the family 60 miles outside of Milwaukee in 1968, Benford became the first black child in a Fort Atkinson school in over 100 years. He compares that experience to being a fly in a bowl of milk and quips he may be one of the only black men who can dance a polka.
Benford points to his five children as his greatest treasures but recalls battling poverty when they were younger. Sometimes to pay the rent he sold his blood or went without power in his apartment, experiences that make him empathize with families struggling paycheck to paycheck. Jobs he held at the Neighborhood Center, Operation Fresh Start, the Respite Center, Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS), and elsewhere allowed him to serve families lovingly, but increasingly he sensed something missing from his own life. “I felt like an outsider. I’m preaching to my kids that to reach your full potential, educational pathways are so important—but I didn’t have a degree.”
Benford found a pathway back to college through the UW Odyssey Project (odyssey.wisc.edu), a free jumpstart humanities program for adults facing economic barrier. He went on to earn not only his UW-Madison bachelor’s degree in 2018 but then his Master’s in Social Work in 2020 at the age of 60. He says that having the Odyssey team behind him, saying “Oh, no, we’re not giving up on you,” kept him motivated to finish. “The Odyssey Project instilled in me that I can be a lifelong learner. Odyssey has given me and countless others the hope, support, and guidance needed to reach our educational goals. Living in a city that falsely prides itself on being welcoming and livable, I am reminded every day by the Odyssey Project of the importance of treating others with love and helping them find their voice.”
Calling Madison “a city with horrendous racial disparities” that led him to feel “a slow-burning anger” in his soul, Brian Benford sought political office as one way to make a difference. He served as Alder on the Madison City Council for three different terms. “I carry the thousands of people that I have served over the last 30 years—as an advocate, educator, and activist—in my heart as I take office. Together, we can forge a new, socially just, and equitable City of Madison!” he announced when re-elected in April 2021.
For the past six years, Brian Benford has served as Success Coach for the UW Odyssey Project, working as its social worker and greatest cheerleader. “I feel extremely fortunate to give back to a program that was life transformative for me,” he says. “Odyssey directly demonstrates that everyone should have access to free, quality education. We live in a community that has some of the worst racial disparity gaps in education, within our criminal justice system, income, housing, etc. Odyssey’s holistic programming helps to alleviate some of those disparities. I would sum up Odyssey’s success with one word: Love!”
In addition to helping with Odyssey, Onward Odyssey for alumni, and Odyssey Junior, Benford participates in Odyssey Senior. In a creative piece called “Where I Am From,” he reviews his life: “I was nurtured and loved by calloused hard and soft perfumed hands. Spoon fed toxic masculinity and saddled with blistering lies in what it is to be a man. A child of the woods and inner-city alleys inhabited by dusty and brown, always yearning for my cathedral that was the woods. Recovering Catholic who followed not worshipped Jesus as any role model of a true activist social worker. Because of my skin color, at an early age, I learned to carry the yoke of racism, accepting that in this life I could never break these invisible shackles and chains.”
In another piece, Benford points to cancer as changing his view of masculinity: “My liberation began as I sat in my hospital room after surgery to remove cancer from my body. Not yet knowing if I was going to survive, I began to think morbidly of adjectives I would like on my tombstone: kind, caring, loving, funny, strong, nurturing, fearless, tenacious, and giving. As I sat on my bed at Meriter, I had an epiphany that these words had nothing to do with gender. It was in that moment I began to question what a ‘real man’ was.”
At age 66 and cancer free, Benford has no intention of retiring any time soon because of his continued passion for bringing greater justice to his community. “If I could leave a legacy for the City of Madison, I would give all of my millions, time, and efforts to bring a Family Scholar House to Madison. Imagine that there were beautifully and intentionally designed short-term apartment learning communities where single parents could live rent free, along with all the wrap around supports needed, so that they could complete a degree. I envision a benevolent developer and donors coming together to create a FSH model (https://familyscholarhouse.org) that incorporates students, seniors, and youth aging out of foster care together under one roof. The inner-generational benefits of having all of these groups together could greatly improve the lives of all residents.”
Improving the lives of all residents of his community by giving love and demanding justice: Brian Benford has indeed discovered the meaning of being “a real man.”
