With a dedicated career helping children and families adversely impacted by immigration, homelessness, abuse, and oppressive systems in South America, Europe, and his native Milwaukee, Luke serves as Director of Program Design and Community Engagement at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children’s Wisconsin.
As an award-winning Senior Columnist for the Milwaukee Independent, Reggie Jackson covers a range of African American issues. He is also a Consultant with Nurturing Diversity Partners, and volunteers as Head Griot for America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) in Bronzeville.
REGGIE JACKSON: 7x Award Winner in Best Column categories from the Milwaukee Press Club
As a teacher for over twenty years, Dominic Inouye helped students to develop their reading, writing, critical thinking, and, most of all, their voices. He worked as The Pfister Hotel Narrator, a one-year appointment, and currently manages the ZIP MKE project that photo documents the city to promote cultural understanding.
Dominic Inouye: 2x Award Winner in Best Column category from the Milwaukee Press Club
Dr. Kenneth Cole is a Licensed Psychologist who has spent the past two decades helping members of the community in developing the ability to bring about positive change for their lives, and empowering those individuals to advocate for themselves.
Kenneth Cole: 2x Award Winner in Reporting categories from the Milwaukee Press Club
Pardeep Kaleka is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, published author of The Gifts of Our Wounds, award-winning columnist with Milwaukee Independent, and a clinician specializing in utilizing a trauma-informed approach to treat survivors and perpetrators of assault, abuse, and acts of violence.
PARDEEP KALEKA: Winner in Best Blog category of the 88th Annual Milwaukee Press Club Awards
John Pavlovitz: Winner of Best Blog at the 89th Annual Milwaukee Press Club Awards
Recent Columns
An open letter to MAGA: History will not remember you as patriots but as a cult that betrayed liberty
To those still clutching their red hats, still chanting in arenas, still calling yourselves “the real America.” You’ve lied to yourselves for so long, you’ve forgotten what truth sounds like. So let me speak it plainly, without apology: You are not patriots. You are...
No badges or warrants: How unidentified masked men are kidnapping people off U.S. streets with impunity
Federal agents in unmarked uniforms, wearing face coverings and offering no visible form of identification, are detaining civilians in American cities under legal justifications that do not withstand constitutional scrutiny. These operations, increasingly common in...
Revere’s ride: Remembering the night 250 years ago when lanterns lit the Revolution at Old North Church
On April 18, Heather Cox Richardson was invited to speak at the anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, which happened 250 years ago. Here is what she said on that day. Two hundred and fifty years ago, in April 1775, Boston was on...
Trump escalates public resistance to harsh ICE raids in L.A. into a political crisis of his own making
Flatbed train cars carrying thousands of tanks rolled into Washington DC on June 8, in preparation for the military parade planned for June 14. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)...
When all seemed lost: How the story of Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis” revived national hope
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” – Thomas Paine, “The American...
Freedom is not the right to hate: Why MAGA’s claim of religious liberty is a shield for cruelty
In the America that Donald Trump built, and the Supreme Court has blessed, religious belief is no longer a personal right. It is a bludgeon. It is a cloak used to shield cruelty. It is a sword drawn against anyone who fails to conform to White Christian power....
American inhumanity: Why accomplices to collapse chose cruelty over conscience and ignore the cost
There was a time when the moral compass of American society pointed, however imperfectly, toward justice. Atrocities abroad and injustice at home would evoke outrage, public pressure, and political consequences. For all the contradictions and hypocrisies in American...
Weaponized rhetoric: How “redistribution of wealth” became a racist attack line during Reconstruction
In the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, as the South lay shattered and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to claim their rights, a new political weapon emerged among White elites desperate to maintain control. It was the accusation of a “redistribution of...
From Mao to MAGA: How Trump’s decade of political chaos echoes China’s Cultural Revolution
China descended into chaos under the direction of its own leader in 1966. Mao Zedong, facing diminished influence after the Great Leap Forward’s disastrous failure, launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution. It was framed as a purge of...
