At the beginning of each new session of the Oak Park Village Board, the board members vote to re-adopt the village's 50-year-old Diversity Statement. In the past year, a citizen commission had updated this statement, turning it into an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Statement. Rather than adopting this new statement at the first meeting of…

This post builds on concepts from my previous posts "Racial development: a proposal for white people" and "Antiracist white identity". In my post on antiracist white identity, I emphasized that we must learn from history to develop our own vision of ourselves, mapping our personal journeys toward racial justice. To take an active role in…

I am a hypocrite. In the last week, I have continually advocated for the Global Climate Strike, writing about it on this blog, posting about it on social media, and organizing an event connected to climate change at my workplace. I take public transportation for my job as a leadership coach in Chicago schools whenever…

I step out the front door of our building. It is a warm, late-summer day, the grass is thick and green and the flowers are in full bloom -- pinks, purples, yellows. Our daughter takes off, yelling, “Dad, race me!” and I run after her, holding back a little so that she reaches our front…

This post builds on concepts from my previous post "Racial development: a proposal for white people". I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the child of a teacher and an engineer. My parents, my sister, and I lived on a winding street near the top of a hill, close enough to Milwaukee for…

If you haven’t yet read it, please first check out Part 1. Global climate change is an unimaginable threat to us, to our descendants, and to our planet. As human beings, our brains evolved to consider the challenges facing us locally, in the present and the immediate future. Our brains find it much more difficult…

Global climate change. Just the three words are enough to make my soul shrink a bit. Global -- affecting the entirety of our huge planet. Climate -- the long-term temperature and weather systems of that planet, changing only on a geological time scale. Change -- I’m someone who generally likes things to stay as they…

Listen to "5 years after Ferguson" here. We're still shooting down Black men with no accountability, And flood the streets with guns that inevitably kill but weSay that's the price we have to pay for liberty.We claim this is the land of opportunity.We starve our neighbors and we need their laborsBut when they come we put…