He received the Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey for his efforts to stem the tide of inner city violence through the establishment of the gun-buyback program in Boston.
MacDonald lives in Brooklyn, New York and devotes his time to writing and public speaking on topics ranging from "Race and Class in America" to "Trauma, Healing, and Social Change."
His efforts extend internationally, as demonstrated by his Fulbright Scholarship at Queen’s University in Belfast, where he introduced storytelling methodologies to empower grassroots organization.
With All Souls, MacDonald writes a memoir about his life growing up in the Old Colony housing projects in South Boston, a predominantly white Irish Catholic neighborhood.
The book often mentions Whitey Bulger, a gangster and FBI informant in Southie, who brought the drug trade into the neighborhood, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of young people leading to suicides, murders, and overdoses.