When I was a child, I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for what I had that other people did not, and wondering about my responsibility for addressing the problems of others and of the planet. During high school, I volunteered at a homeless shelter. I was obsessive about not littering, turning off the…
What responsibilities do we have to one another? The answer seems to vary based on whether we regard the “other” as inside or outside our group. For those inside our closest groups, we have compassion; we make sacrifices. Outside our groups, too many of us look around, judge others, and close ourselves off. We recognize…
The voice pulses through tinny speakers and echoes from the surrounding buildings: "Chicago is a hellhole." We hear it over and over, ad nauseam: "Chicago is a hellhole." Volume rising and falling, increasing and abating, the message remains the same: "Chicago is…" "STOP!" I feel the crackle of visceral anger protected through verbal response. I…
Every spring, I welcome the sight of the tulip stalks pushing through the newly thawing soil. They are a sign that warmer temperatures are returning, willing to stick their metaphorical necks out as the days start to lengthen. But because they are so early to the eventually raucous party that is springtime, they run a…
Police have killed more than 1000 people per year in the US every year for the past decade. This is a per capita rate of 33 people killed by police violence for every 10 million population, and the rate is higher for our Black residents. Police killings per capita happen at less than half that…
Why does it hurt you that a child who was born biologically male wants to be called Sophia and wear stereotypically female clothes? How does that affect you or your children? How does it change your life? Why does it hurt for your children to hear a story about a family with two dads or…
Do you want to know the truth? Or do you want your truth accepted by others? Are you seeking, or are you asserting? Are you speaking, always working The angle, searching for the advantage? You wear your certainty like a badge of honor, But pretending you understand what you do not Will not prove your…
When you tell me something works, I ask, "Who for, by what measures, and at what cost?" Stock buy-backs, smelting furnaces, corporate bailouts, and CAFOs work for some of us but not the sum of us. If your bargain saves me a dollar on a pork chop but costs me my soul, was it worth…
In our culture, we venerate power. Perhaps many cultures do, but ours seems particularly fascinated with it. When we see a problem, we tend to approach it through domination. We place international struggles in the frame of military conflict. We immediately handle social problems like crime through increases in policing. Parenting is viewed through the…
I can’t imagine my own child living far from home, forced to work to provide for their own living or to send money back to us so that we can survive. Packaging chips, baking granola bars, cutting meat, doing whatever is required by the adults who are their guardians, whether in their best interest or…
“Back the Blue.” “All Cops Are Bastards.” Both of these slogans generalize a particular conclusion about police. Either we reflexively defend or attack all individual police officers. I can’t agree with statements that define everyone in a particular group as the same. Police officers make mistakes. They break the law. They are honorable. They care…
Entwining 