thought experiments
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Some articles get my goat and don’t let go. Last year I read an interview with a roundtable of CEOs at major food banks around the country. The headline quote was, “we have power, let’s use it wisely.” I want to unpack that! The panelists, well-meaning or well-intentioned,
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Everything changes. We can’t change that fact any more than we can stop the rotation of the earth. Most organizations feel designed for permanence. They have boards of directors and succession plans ready for when new people fill old roles. They have a set mission, standing meetings, agenda templates,
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I talked to my mom earlier this week. She’s the director of a professional organization that is starting to lose steam. She’s led the organization for decades through highs and lows and excellent conferences. Their membership numbers are in decline. Engagement among members is down since covid and
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“As president,” Kamala Harris announced in the throes of her presidential campaign. “I’ll establish a student loan debt forgiveness program,” she wrote. “For Pell Grant recipients,” she continued. “Who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.” Student loan forgiveness is a bold plan. It’s
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This post is narrated! Listen below… I hate being othered! My brown skin is often the first thing a person notices about me. I was once in the office (when people worked in offices together) talking to a friend (when people did that too). A coworker we both knew approached
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No matter the activist circle you’re in, everyone wants to bring about change. How do we create the conditions for the world we want to see? Most groups try to court people where they are. If our change includes something the public wants, and we make it somewhat easy
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this post is narrated! listen below… I’m still reading through the work of critical liberation theory. I shared my first reading on the topic a couple weeks back. Critical liberation theory was first proposed by Love, DeJong, and Hughbanks in 2009. In it, they articulate theories of liberation. They
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I went for a walk last week. I wasn’t having a particularly good day and needed to go out into the world to help clear my head. I bought a paper from a local vendor. The sun was shining. It’s been cooler than usual here, but I like
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There are no safe harbors. Week after week, day after day, we feel the erosion of our rights and liberties. The protections many of us have long enjoyed are going away. The people who lead our institutions chose to preserve them and themselves over us. We suffer, as so many
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Why don’t we have a template for implementing racial equity practices? I get this question every now and then. I totally understand: we seek to upend an entrenched way of life that has persisted for more than 400 years. That’s a lot to take on! To some extent
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I’ve been living in isolation in the bedroom of our apartment for almost two weeks now. The isolation is protective: I haven’t transmitted the virus to anyone, not my husband or our cats. I’ve only made a few jaunts into the outside world while my unwanted virality
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Another week, another horrifying massacre. Any one of these events should have been enough to grind our country to a halt. Instead, there have been 212 mass shootings in america this year, more than one per day. More than one million people are dead from covid in america, almost a
