A commemorative plaque placed near where the 29th Street Beach in Chicago used to be located. One hundred years ago, on July 27, 1919, a 17-year-old Black boy named Eugene Williams went to the 27th Street Beach in Chicago on a hot summer day to cool off with his friends. They were playing, laughing, and…
How do we break down mass incarceration?
Today, we think that racism is someone else’s doing, that white supremacy is the work of those who marched in Charlottesville in August 2018. We may go so far as to acknowledge that our current president is a racist and white supremacist. But we white people don’t connect these labels to ourselves or to our…
A triumph, but not yet transcendence
Yesterday, the US Women's National Team won the World Cup in the world's most popular sport. They accomplished this awash in superlatives…most Women's World Cup titles, first team (men's or women's) to win back-to-back titles since the 1930's, most goals scored by a team in a World Cup, and the list goes on. Women’s soccer…
We ask for blessings
We ask for blessings. God bless our family. God bless our marriage. And most of all at this time of year, we ask that God bless America. We ask for blessings because many of us have seen evidence of God’s favor in our lives – financial resources, educational opportunities, safe homes and communities. We believe…
America’s concentration camps
Let’s call the “migrant detention facilities” we are operating at the border what they really are, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done – concentration camps. The horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in their death camps were an abomination beyond what anyone else has perpetrated before or since, but the Nazis were not the only ones…
Simpler
It is simpler to look away. It is simpler to think of all the seeming complications of my day-to-day life: leading a workshop for my job, doing chores at home, spending time with our daughter, thinking of how we might rest and recuperate this summer. It is simpler to look away. It is simpler to…
A 19th-century model for white allyship
William Lloyd Garrison, a 19th-century white abolitionist, was, in today's language, an accomplice in the struggle for Black liberation. The biography All on Fire, by Henry Mayer, tells the story of Garrison's role in the crusade against slavery. As an activist, he railed against the white supremacist ideas built into our nation's founding. As a…
“When They See Us” told me a story I barely knew. It also told me about my whiteness.
When a white woman named Trisha Meili was brutally raped in Central Park in 1989, the public, the press, and the police were looking for someone to blame. The police identified Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise. They were interrogated for dozens of hours, in some cases without their parents,…
Sharing experiences, sharing emotions
Today, riding on the el, I ran into a student who graduated from the school where I used to be principal. He said I had allowed him to transfer into the school when other schools were not letting him in, and he thanked me for giving him that opportunity. He said he now has a…
What are we willing to do for equity in our local communities?
At the May 20th Oak Park Village Board meeting, two competing documents arrived for the board’s approval. The Community Relations Commission provided an updated Oak Park Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Statement at the request of the board. And three board members -- Trustees Deno Andrews, Simone Boutet, and Dan Moroney -- shared their own updated…
Entwining 