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…
Who is to blame for a school’s culture?
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 