Actor Michael K. Williams, who died of a suspected heroin overdose Monday, devoted himself to serving to protect metropolis children safe from violence when the five-time Emmy nominee wasn’t performing on hit TV exhibits like “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire.”
“Brooklyn is mourning one in every of its native sons,” the borough’s president and Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams tweeted shortly after news broke about the East Flatbush native’s passing.
“Michael K. Williams used to be a generational skills and a tireless advocate for social justice. As Omar in The Wire, he once stated ‘in most cases who you are is ample.’ Michael used to be always unabashedly himself — and he can be deeply overlooked,” Adams wrote.
The 54-year-veteran — for the time being a 2021 Emmy Award nominee as handiest supporting actor in a drama for “Lovecraft Nation” — used to be came across ineffective in his luxury Williamsburg penthouse Monday afternoon.
Williams founded the nonprofit Making Teenagers Take hold of that affords opportunities to kids who’re liable to getting fascinated by gun violence.
The activist actor, who grew up in public housing in East Flatbush, testified at a Metropolis Council hearing closing year to make stronger NYPD reform.
Legend Young, a literacy advocate, also praised Williams’ charitable work.
“I broken-all the system down to be on personnel at one in every of the rather a pair of organizations Michael K. Williams supported, and he used to be the one massive title you might possibly also always depend to narrate up,” Young tweeted.
“He shared his time, skills, and spirit with these children, and the affect of that can now not be overstated,” she added.
Williams also donated his time to 1 more formative years community called Operation Who Counts.
“We are taking part our formative years, we give them the resources and the funds to blueprint our block,” Williams stated on the “Functional Idiots” podcast closing tumble.
“Our formative years are taking part their blocks to procure voted, to be counted in the Census. We play music. We had a marching band. It’s communal, and it’s so comely,” he stated.
Williams penned a column that ran in newspapers across the country after George Floyd’s loss of life to advertise the work of any other anti-violence formative years nonprofit, NYC Collectively.
That community “engages formative years and officers to reimagine solutions to community complications, lessening the need for dilapidated legislation enforcement intervention,” he wrote.
