Benjamin Daniel Swenson

life story

Loving Son, Brother, Grandson, Uncle, Nephew, Cousin, Union Organizer, Activist, Traveler & Friend

Miss you, cherish the time we had, wish you were still here, and look forward to being together again when our time comes

memorial service

Benji's Memorial Gathering for family, friends & the recovery community

August 11, 2022

Fish Lake Pavillion 14900 Bass Lake Rd, Maple Grove, MN 55311, USA

We invite you to come join us on Thursday, August 11, for Memorial Service at 5, with plenty of time for visiting before and after from 4-8pm. The pavilion building is ours for the day and is air conditioned and comfortable, and right at the beach.

Please share this information to others who know or have known Benji over the years, as we would love to connect or visit with you at the memorial.

Please reach out by email to mom Lisa if you have ANY questions or concerns or just want to connect - lswenson61@comcast.net

Benjamin Daniel Swenson - "Benji"

Benjamin Daniel Swenson, Born May 21, 1986 in St. Louis Park, MN; left this world for the next on June 10, 2022 in St. Paul, MN

Survived by parents Lisa & Dan Swenson; brother Mike Swenson (Alesha); grandparents LuJean Swenson, Doug & Ramona Hall; aunts Solvei Wilmot (Todd), Ann Hall, Sarah Yaeger; uncles J Mark Swenson, Tom Hall (Laurie), Aaron Yaeger (Natalie); baby nephew Colton Swenson; cousins & other family, fellow travelers in recovery, & friends.

Preceded in death by Grandpa Roger Swenson, Grandma Jan Hall, and Cousin Andrew Swenson.

A Short Story of Benji's Life

Benji was born in Minneapolis on May 21, 1986, & lived with mom, dad, and younger brother Mike in Minneapolis until late 1993 when the our family moved to Fairmont, MN. In Aug 1995, our family moved once again, to Brooklyn Park, where Dad & Mom still live now. Benji attended Osseo area schools (Orchard Lane Elementary and then Northview Jr High) before moving to Minnehaha Academy for 9th & 10th grades, and then auditioned & was admitted to the Perpich Arts High School in 2002, graduating in 2004 with a focus in vocal performance.

Benji was always fascinated with 'old people', kind of an old soul himself, always asking what it was like to be old, very motivated by social interaction with family and later his friends. At Granny's 100th Birthday Party, he asked her what it was like to be 100, and became very concerned about her sanity when she jokingly told him there was no way she could really be THAT old.

Childhood was busy with neighbors, relatives, friends, nursery school, sunday school, then REAL school, studying piano and violin. He loved to sing, and got to sing his FAVORITE SONG "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" at the church talent show when he was about 3! Later, while the family lived in Fairmont MN ‘93-’95, he played Bing Crosby as an 8-year-old, lip-synching to the song "Pennies from Heaven" while ladies with umbrellas danced around him - as part of a fundraiser variety show for the historic Fairmont Opera House! Ben enjoyed playing rec sports of various types when young, and as he grew, he grew to favor travel, music, and acting. He understood politics and that people needed to become involved, and he wrote a letter to Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson when he was 7 years old, received a letter back in response, and immediately asked to go buy a frame so it could hang on his bedroom wall. He also marched with Darlene Luther campaign in the elementary school years in Brooklyn Park. He wanted to travel the world and live in New York. His favorite musical instrument evolved to become his voice, and he had a strong talent for both singing and language/acting.

Benji traveled to Australia as a 12-year-old with People to People, and to France with the French Club his sophomore year of high school, and fell in LOVE with New York City after getting to travel there with friend Sarah and family during the teen years. He also enjoyed traveling to Mexico more than once (one time on a family spring break vacation, we were delighted to coincidentally travel with our next door neighbors/friends the Polansky's on the same flight!). He also visited Dominican Republic, as well as many car trips around the states with mom & dad, and other trips & visits with Grandma & Grandpa Swenson to AZ and Jamestown & Fargo, ND. He and brother Mike were fortunate to get to travel many areas of the United States with Grandma & Grandpa Swenson while young, and he spoke of those times often.

Benji graduated from the Perpich Arts High School in 2004, and moved to New York City’s Upper West Side, where he completed his Associates Degree in Broadway Performance at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in 2016. Oh what fun and excitement his life was for many years! Working at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble, he got to meet so many famous people, and interesting folks of all types, and then was a singing waiter on the Hudson Bay Dinner Cruise Line - also very exciting, and he had lots of spending money because of big tips. He lived in a number of areas (Brooklyn, Harlem, Upper West Side, even in a fancy Park Avenue doorman bldg for about a year), and worked many interesting jobs from 2004 until 2013, when he came back to Minnesota.

Along the road of adult life, living was at times exciting & euphoric and other times hard & tragic, as he struggled with finding his way in the world and what he considered to be his 'adult' self. Benji often felt either “on top of the world” or very depressed, afraid, anxious and overwhelmed.

He became an activist with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and for a long time peacefully protested whenever not at work, and when the brutal police "cleanouts" of Zucotti Park occurred, he was there peacefully protesting and trying to help & protect belongings of homeless & other folks camping there from being intentionally destroyed by police.

During one of the many raids by police, he was brutally stripped, thrown into a paddy wagon, and beaten by police, and had to be hospitalized. The city later had to compensate him monetarily, but they could not erase the trauma, and the repercussions of that trauma haunted him the rest of his life, and he worked very very hard to rid himself of his terror of the police.

During the Occupy movement, he hosted people who were protesting along with him & needed a place to stay, in the large Brooklyn Apartment he had rented with roommates. While living there, Benji invited as many as he could who had no place to be, to stay there, have some clean water, food and a shower, etc. They named his apartment “Gay Squat”, and Occupy Wall street donated furniture, clothing and computers to them. He found out that his landlord was a true slumlord who was poisoning tenants by refusal to fix the poisonous lead water as required by law, and then he rallied ALL tenants of the building to legally withhold rent & pay it to the court each month so the landlord would NOT get it until he remedied the poisonous water. The same Occupy Wall Street attorney, who had gotten him the settlement after he was beaten by police during the Zucotti Park police violence against peaceful protestors, made sure all in the building had plenty of drinking water, thanks to Benji’s work. Benji himself later was compensated monetarily for the harassment he endured by hired thugs who were always posted outside the building watching him, but that did not erase the trauma of those many weeks/months, and that trauma endured in his psyche as well.

His final work before coming back to Minnesota was cooking at a Food Relief station on Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy had devastated it. So many people weredesperately trying to hang on to THEIR property while aid to actually REPAIR was withheld from them, & many found they had not insurance enough to repair their homes, and were protesting at the risk of being forced out of THEIR homes by REFUSAL to provide Hurricane Sandy relief, meaning wealthy investors could & would likely seize their (now) prime oceanfront properties. He lived there a few months, camping with the rest of the crew, as his physical health and psychological condition continued to deteriorate.

During his adventurous young life, he became addicted to alcohol and then other substances, thinking they helped him with relief of crippling anxiety, major depression (and PTSD after being beaten by those who were supposed to serve and protect him). His life became one of wild emotional ups and downs, and he was often miserable.

Finally he was ready to return to us in Minnesota 'for good' in 2013 and began his addiction & mental illness treatment journey, a journey that lasted the rest of his life other than a few months here and there when he was not in a treatment facility.

He and we loved the times that he enjoyed some sobriety & especially when he was able to feel calm and peaceful for short periods along the way, but his co-occuring anxiety, panic disorder, major depressive disorder all kept worsening, and with every relapse and new treatment, a bit of his spirit & energy seemed to dissipate.

For a time over 2014-2015, he had a partner named Wes, and they rented a place together. During that period, he worked selling furniture at an Uptown MPLS store, and was delighted to have Louise Erdrich visit the shop often and converse with him about literary things. He joined mom and Cindy K at the FIRST Minnesota Bernie Sanders rally in 2015, bought a car, but soon began to severely struggle again psychologically, began to self-medicate again, lost the partner, the apartment, the car, and again became miserable.

From sometime late in 2015 into 2016, he spent months with Grandma & Grandpa Swenson & Uncle Mark in Fargo, attending various treatments there as well, before returning to Minnesota again and starting again in the addiction treatment cycles here.

He had a good stretch of calm sobriety in 2017 and a really great memory he spoke of often was attending the Queen concert (With Adam Lambert) in summer of 2017 Mom, Mike, and Alesha.

2018 was a year in which he was happy and proud to be hired as a lead waiter in the upscale restaurant of the new Intercontinental Hotel built adjoining the MSP Airport. He worked hard to get his restaurant coworkers together to unionize, and they did! He was so proud of leading that, but then relapse hit again, he needed treatment, and never was able to work there again. Thankfully, his bosses kept him on the private insurance he had there for the nearly 2 years he was treated in California, with many stretches of sobriety that he was grateful for, even though he could not maintain.

From late 2018 - 2020, he was in California in various treatments as well that were covered by the insurance provided by his last employer, and for a while did feel well and really loved being near the ocean and Los Angeles. Dad & Mom were both able to visit while he lived there, and he also got to spend some time with Uncle Tom & Aunt Laurie.

In October 2020, he came back to Minnesota for good when a Los Angeles friend bought him a plane ticket after some scary time relapsing, and then he spent the rest of his life in various treatments, never eradicating the awful anxiety, depressive episodes, periods of mania, and a new diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder.

From that point our Benji had very few periods of happiness, but was always so grateful when he did feel good, and always ALWAYS wanted to visit with us as he could.

In early 2022, he was civilly committed with the blessing of family, because we his loving family were assured that civil commitment was meant to ensure his medical & psychological conditions WOULD be treated with a goal of (1) a return to mental/emotional health for independent life, OR (2) recognizing and setting up appropriate support through life, if it became apparent that a consistent state of mental health was not possible for safe independent living. The reality of his life once under the civil commitment, however, was different.

We watched his mental & physical health decline, trips to emergency rooms and psychiatric units increase, learned that “stabilize” means giving a bunch of tranquilizing meds until one appears calm, then release to yet another addiction-only treatment center, watched as he was placed into places we had never heard of UNTIL he was under commitment, with no provisions for exercise, no privacy, no quiet space to even sit alone once in awhile, no necessary individual therapy to help heal his co-occurring mental illnesses & trauma, no communication between therapists and meds prescribers, and a general lowering of help and support, the very opposite of what he needed.

The healthcare & treatments he received under civil commitment did not seem therapeutic for any human being suffering as he did with the conditions that he had been committed for. Mom continued to try to advocate without success.

On June 8, he waited patiently with mom for 3 hours to be admitted to Emergency Room for crisis psychological care, then was frightened by ER doctor who was not gentle nor kind, and decided to leave as encouraged to by this doctor. He went back to his sober house rather than have to put on orange scrubs, because at that time he was feeling afraid of the orange scrubs, and the doctor would not back down.

On June 9, he woke up sad and anxious, but determined to attend his afternoon outpatient session at a treatment center called Evergreen, and he did so, and stated that he was 'feeling good' (according to staff).

Talking with him a little while as I was heading to bed on the 9th I was a bit concerned about him, and after hanging up I called Ramsey County 911 for Medical Safety check and I let him know they were coming, and he assured me he was “fine” but he did not sound good. I decided to go over there in the morning if he still was not doing well, but our sweet son died in his bedroom at the sober house just after midnight on June 10.

We will miss Benji forever, feel his presence, and look forward to being with him again when it is our time..

Benji quoted in Occupy Wall Street Article Nov 2011

Another activist, Ben Swenson said he was "shoved" out of the park in a small group. "They shoved us out in rounds," he said. "I was in the first round, the police came in and said take out your tents and leave the park immediately. I was moving around trying to tell people what was happening, but then they pushed us out in groups." He said he was hit on the head by a police baton, but believes it was by mistake. "Well, they said sorry," Swenson said.

https://youtu.be/T3AoDasmvLY

Another Quote of Benji - Occupy Wall Street Nov 2011 - Police clearing of Zuccotti Park

"I was in the first round," said Ben Swenson, who was stood beside a police barrier about 50m south of Zuccotti at 3am Tuesday. "I was moving around [the camp] trying to tell people what was happening, but they had little sections of the park and pushed us out by force." The onset of cold weather in New York over the past two weeks, coupled with the sense of permanence the protest had started to develop, had led to an increase in the number of tents, with more than a 100 counted last week. By daylight on Tuesday none remained.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/15/occupy-new-york-police-supreme-court