Joe Selvaggio, social change agent who started Project for Pride in Living, dies at 87

In 1968, Joe Selvaggio, a young civil rights activist who had just resigned from the priesthood to work on social justice causes, got a job on the assembly line at a Honeywell plant in the Twin Cities. But he was aghast to learn he was making anti-personnel bombs that the United States was using in the Vietnam War, which he opposed.

“Here was this committed peace activist actually working on something that would maim and kill people in Vietnam,” Selvaggio wrote years later.

He quit the job. But by the mid-1980s he was supporting Honeywell’s efforts to buy and renovate housing in the urban core and praising the company for its contributions to the community.

“If this was 15 years ago, I would be blockading the Honeywell plant with the arms protesters,” Selvaggio told former Star Tribune reporter Neal St. Anthony for his 1987 book on Project for Pride in Living (PPL). “I wish Honeywell would convert their production to other projects, like their computer and building controls. But I also work with Honeywell. They’re important to the community.” Honeywell spun off its military business in 1990 to Alliant Techsystems.

Selvaggio, whose values and staunch advocacy for social justice for years made him a prominent figure in the Twin Cities, died Aug. 13 at his Minneapolis home. He was 87 and had developed Parkinson’s disease.

For a quarter-century, Selvaggio led PPL, a nonprofit he helped launch to improve the lives of poor people. The organization, which employs 200 people, has since rehabbed thousands of homes for low-income and working-class families and provided employment training and job placement for those who needed help. It also runs two alternative schools.

Selvaggio lobbied many of Minnesota’s prominent business leaders and largest corporations to financially back his projects. Although he never made more than $50,000 a year, he wrangled a free membership to the Minneapolis Club — a venerable private club for some of the Twin Cities’ wealthiest people — so he could twist their arms for financial support.

“He was a great salesman, and he did it in such a positive and constructive way,” said James Campbell, retired chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota. “You were just compelled to step up and do whatever Joe wanted to do.”

Former Minneapolis City Council Member Steve Cramer, who replaced Selvaggio as executive director of PPL in 1995, said Selvaggio’s charisma made him a great fundraiser. Cramer said businesspeople would tell him that if Joe was around, they had to keep their hands on their wallets.

“They called him the philanthro-pest,” said Paul Williams, PPL’s current president and CEO. “He was very persistent, going downtown and pushing business leaders to give back, to invest in the community.”

Selvaggio was born in Chicago, the son of an Italian immigrant father and first-generation Italian American mother. After attending Marquette University in Milwaukee, he entered the Dominican order and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1965. He spent three years serving churches in low-income neighborhoods, including Holy Rosary-Santo Rosario in Minneapolis.

Selvaggio left the priesthood in 1968 and married schoolteacher Phoebe Yeager. According to St. Anthony’s book, “Selvaggio wanted to assist in social action more than he wanted to administer the sacraments.”

He worked on a national grape boycott in support of striking California farmworkers, and became local co-chair of the antiwar group Clergy and Laity Concerned. He helped start The City, a neighborhood place for young people, which eventually became Change Inc., a nonprofit that today runs programs for low-income children and families.

Selvaggio “knew how to deal with delinquents like nobody’s experience,” said Jim Nelson, former director of Change Inc. “He had excellent relationship skills.”

With the support of several local businesspeople, Selvaggio started Advocate Services Inc. to lobby for civil rights and equal housing and protest the Vietnam War. About 100 people sent Selvaggio $2 to $25 a month to cover his work and living expenses.

After a speech in 1971 at St. Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis, he met Ted Pouliot, who operated an artificial flower and interior design business. They developed the idea of rehabbing deteriorating homes in the inner city, which evolved into PPL.

Two years after Selvaggio divorced Yeager, he married Rosario Escanan, a Filipina human rights activist whom he helped immigrate to the U.S. at a time when the Philippines was under martial law. “Two of my friends disappeared and I assumed they were killed,” Escanan said.

Selvaggio founded the One Percent Club, recruiting wealthy Minnesotans to pledge 1% of their net worth every year to charities of their choice. He helped Steve Rothschild start Twin Cities R!SE, an antipoverty program, in 1993, and he started MicroGrants, a nonprofit that makes small grants to low-income “people of potential,” in 2008.

Rothschild, a retired General Mills executive vice president, said Selvaggio “saw needs that weren’t being addressed and he did something about it.”

Selvaggio suffered from several age-related ailments and had recently decided to stop eating, drinking and taking medications “in an effort to go out on his own terms,” said his son, Sam, of Minneapolis.

Besides his wife and Sam, Selvaggio is survived by sons Ricardo and Rizalina, both of St. Paul, and 10 grandchildren. Services were held Saturday at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis.

In 2003, Selvaggio co-authored with Jim Stowell a book about his experiences, “In the Streets/In the Suites.” That same year, the History Theater in St. Paul produced a play, “Joe,” about Selvaggio’s life.

“There are many Joes,” Stowell wrote. “Saint Joe; Demon Fundraiser Joe; Bad-Taste Joe ... Organizer Joe ... Protester Joe ... Whiner Joe; Relentless Joe. But let us never forget, Generous Joe — Joe the little guy with a very big heart.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly characterized the formula used for the One Percent Club. Members pledge 1% of their net worth annually to charity, not 1% of their annual income.