Morning, 2016 3 weeks until Election Day If you haven't yet, please check out the previous part of this piece. It was a painful morning, the kind when you wake up and remember a truth that you wish could have stayed buried. The kind when your first optimistic view of the day is suddenly bulldozed…
Darkness, until 2016 4 weeks until Election Day What is the purpose of rest? Is it to reenergize ourselves for the struggles ahead? Neuroscience suggests that during sleep, our brains reorganize our neural pathways and remove toxins. We process our emotions through dreams and file away memories and learning. Our bodies heal and our muscles…
This piece also appeared in a slightly different form in the Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal on Wednesday, October 7, 2020. In August, a resolution came before the Oak Park Village Board that would have reduced funding for the police department. The “Freedom to Thrive” resolution did not specify how that reduction would take place,…
She is dead and her killers walk free. They murdered Breonna Taylor in the dead of night, in the supposed safety of her home, in her own bed. They fired more 32 times through her apartment door, without care for who was behind it. In essence, these police officers charged and convicted her of her…
On Friday night, I heard the news -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. I momentarily felt disbelief, and then a surge of anger. Congressional Republicans would surely use her passing as an opportunity to jam through a right-wing justice. That would further skew the Supreme Court, which may decide on and influence the processes…
I read a book. I eat a good meal. I travel with my family. I dig into a challenging task at work. I take a walk in nature. Which of these things bring me happiness? Which create joy? The relationship between these two emotions is a complicated one. There are experiences that bring me happiness,…
There are 55 days until the election on November 3, 2020. 55 days to shift the outcome, to change the narrative. This is not just about Trump. This is about moving our national story toward one of community, of support, of justice. What can we each do in those 55 days? We must answer that…
This essay is also published in the local Oak Park newspaper, Wednesday Journal. Every action has an equal, opposite reaction. It is a law of physics, and we have taken it as a law of racial progress in this nation. Whenever Black people have won some small advancement, we white people have lashed back against…
This essay is a remix of some of the ideas I pondered earlier in my series of essays: Racial development, Antiracist white identity, Racial agency, and Antiracist competencies. I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the white son of white parents -- a teacher and an engineer. My parents, my sister, and I…
As humans, our brains are attuned to expect the worst. This adaptation has helped us thrive in the world as it is. We look for the negative effect, the deficit, the problem that needs addressing so that we can survive. We also have developed a tremendous intellect, an ability to manipulate abstract information, to extrapolate…
Entwining 