They say he stowed away on a boat,Alone at fourteenRunning from the famine or toward an opportunity,We can't be sure.What we do know is thatHe didn't have to get in line, or wait ten years, or prove his worth.He just showed up and,Though despised by his new countrymen,They took him in,And eventually he became one…
Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was this past weekend, and it is estimated that about 100,000 people attended. Clearly many people believed in the power of his words. Some have called him a martyr – likely many of the people in that crowd believed that. But that evaluation depends entirely on how you judge those words.…
Brutally gunned down in broad daylight as he fled for his life from government officials tasked with ripping him from his family. Killed in a justifiable act of self defense as he tried to murder law officers in the enactment of their authorized duties. How can we look at the same event and see it…
Oak Park, Illinois, the community where I live, recently initiated a campaign called “Make REAL Change, Not Spare Change”. The “spare change” they refer to here is giving donations directly to people who are panhandling or soliciting on the street, whereas the “REAL change” is giving money indirectly to local nonprofit organizations to then support…
The national turmoil about antisemitism and Israel’s attacks on Gaza has come home to Oak Park in a series of recent events. At the end of the OPRF school board campaign, the Democratic Socialists of America handed out a flyer calling one of the candidates, Nate Mellman, an “Israel-first Zionist fanatic,” said he is “an…
Last Saturday, I joined 30,000 people in Chicago’s Loop and 5 million across the country protesting the Trump administration’s policies and actions. We decried the administration’s deportation of immigrants, targeting of students for their free speech, gutting of federal programs including education and health, persecution of transgender youth, and so many other harms. It was…
If I boy screams in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a difference? What if the boy screams and one person is close but they pretend they didn’t notice? What if a hundred thousand boys, girls, children, people howl in anguish but the rest of us ignore their…
It is natural for us as humans to seek security. We are motivated to find every opportunity for ourselves and our families to be safe. When we encounter difference, we are primed to see that difference as a threat to our security, and we react accordingly. Immigrants are, by definition, different. They have come to…
I stilled my nerves to sleep on and off through the night, but the third time I woke up, I thought I saw sunlight creeping in under the window shade. “Maybe it’s morning,” I thought, checking my bedside clock and seeing 5:40am. “I can’t wait any longer,” I decided, climbing out of bed and stumbling…
November 5 approaches. Everyone knows this date – the marker for our nation to decide between Harris and Trump. In reality, we may not know the results of the vote for days or weeks after that, but the importance of the day is seared into our minds. Still, I am concerned that our focus on…
Entwining 