The May 15 article "Acting Out" in the Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal details the negative view that the teachers at Oak Park middle schools have of the climate at their schools. For the past 16 years, I have been an educator, including a teacher, assistant principal, and principal in Chicago and the suburbs. What…
Opening
This post was the first one I wrote for my new blog, Burning Down, Raising Up. We white people designed a capitalist machine that generates comfort and complacency for ourselves by consuming the bodies of Black people, exterminating Native people and raping their lands, and drawing power from the labor of Latinx, Asian, and other…
A look at the numbers on Van Dyke’s sentencing
I originally wrote this as a Facebook post and brought it over to the blog after I started it in May 2019. Yesterday, Jason Van Dyke, convicted by a jury of his peers for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery, was sentenced to just 6 3/4 years in prison for his crimes. With…
Why is fear a justification when fear stems from bias?
I originally wrote this as a Facebook post and brought it over to the blog after I started it in May 2019. It is unbelievable, but all-too-believable, that the judge in the cover-up trial for Laquan McDonald’s shooting ruled today that the three officers are not guilty. These officers claimed that Laquan McDonald was approaching…
We need convictions
I originally wrote this as a Facebook post and brought it over to the blog after I started it in May 2019. Prosecution and defense have rested in the trial of the three officers who are alleged to have covered up Jason Van Dyke's killing of Laquan McDonald. As in Van Dyke's trial, the defense…
Entwining 