This piece also appeared in a slightly different form in the Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal on Wednesday, October 7, 2020.  In August, a resolution came before the Oak Park Village Board that would have reduced funding for the police department. The “Freedom to Thrive” resolution did not specify how that reduction would take place,…

This essay is also published in the local Oak Park newspaper, Wednesday Journal. Every action has an equal, opposite reaction. It is a law of physics, and we have taken it as a law of racial progress in this nation. Whenever Black people have won some small advancement, we white people have lashed back against…

Across this country, an uprising has been ignited by the murder of George Floyd -- one in a long line of unarmed Black people killed by police officers. And yet the tinder for this fire comes from so many sources -- the legal, educational, health, and financial systems that marginalize Black people in this country…