Our family tells a story that, in 1848, my great great grandfather Patrick stowed away on a boat from Ireland to the USA at the age of 14. This was during what we call the Irish Potato Famine but which the Irish called the Great Hunger. During this time, more than 10% of Irish people…
Everyone knows that our political system is broken. Scratch that – almost everyone knows that our political system is broken. Mmmm, I’ll try again. What looks broken to most of us is actually working very well for a select few. That about does it. Our government is set up to protect the interests of wealthy…
I feel our humanity leaching away with each passing day. I feel it seeping from our collective body with each preschool teacher detained in front of their students. With each person dragged from their car and hauled off to a detention center. With each door ICE agents knock down without a warrant. With each person…
When we walked out into the field at Grant Park, Chicagoans and their neighbors of all kinds surrounded us – young and old; Black, Latine, white, Asian, Native, and Middle Eastern; straight, gay, lesbian, bi; cis and trans; and on and on. They carried signs, dressed in costumes, held their children’s hands. We listened to…
Those who hold power create labels and boxes for others to advance their own interests. During slavery, white slaveowners grouped those they enslaved into categories of "field slaves", "overseers", and "house slaves". They deemed "house slaves" most docile, fit to be around women and children. They were given certain privileges that those who worked in…
Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was this past weekend, and it is estimated that about 100,000 people attended. Clearly many people believed in the power of his words. Some have called him a martyr – likely many of the people in that crowd believed that. But that evaluation depends entirely on how you judge those words.…
Oak Park, Illinois, the community where I live, recently initiated a campaign called “Make REAL Change, Not Spare Change”. The “spare change” they refer to here is giving donations directly to people who are panhandling or soliciting on the street, whereas the “REAL change” is giving money indirectly to local nonprofit organizations to then support…
The national turmoil about antisemitism and Israel’s attacks on Gaza has come home to Oak Park in a series of recent events. At the end of the OPRF school board campaign, the Democratic Socialists of America handed out a flyer calling one of the candidates, Nate Mellman, an “Israel-first Zionist fanatic,” said he is “an…
Last Saturday, I joined 30,000 people in Chicago’s Loop and 5 million across the country protesting the Trump administration’s policies and actions. We decried the administration’s deportation of immigrants, targeting of students for their free speech, gutting of federal programs including education and health, persecution of transgender youth, and so many other harms. It was…
It is natural for us as humans to seek security. We are motivated to find every opportunity for ourselves and our families to be safe. When we encounter difference, we are primed to see that difference as a threat to our security, and we react accordingly. Immigrants are, by definition, different. They have come to…
Entwining 