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
Dreams of Civil Rights: Why Americans are still fighting the same fights a hundred years later
On August 19, 1920, the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by the narrow vote of 50 to 49. A mirror of the Fifteenth Amendment protecting the right of Black men to vote, the new amendment read: “The right of citizens of...
From Irpin to Milwaukee: The price we still pay after six months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
As recent as August 17, just seven days short of six months after Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion to seize Ukraine began, two dozen bodies of unknown residents were discovered in the city of Bucha. Placed in freshly dug graves, their headstones were...
Reggie Jackson: What you don’t know about hate may kill me
I once had a dream that I was attacked while giving a presentation about the history of racism while I was in a rural community in northern Wisconsin. I think it came from a fear family members had about my safety doing the work I do. It is one of those dreams that I...
Escaping from Russian Terror: A reminder that war in Ukraine is not over as families seek safety in Milwaukee
For my assignment as a war correspondent in Ukraine I had the privilege to work with Yaroslav, who was my videographer and also provided security for my team. Near the end of my work, I had the chance to visit his hometown of Berezhany near the Polish border. I had a...
I am not a crook: When Nixon preferred to step down as America’s president rather than admit his own guilt
Early in the morning on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard at the Watergate Office Building in Washington DC, noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but when he went on the next round, he found...
Why the Sikh Temple massacre remains an inconvenient example of Milwaukee’s caring and complicity
For my parents generation, I remember the TV news would always ask people where they were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For my generation, in the early years of the new millennium, the question TV news asked was where were we on September 11 when...
Reggie Jackson: The Myth of America as a land of Representative Democracy
“The United States is a representative democracy…voting in an election and contacting our elected officials are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy.” – The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) I’ve grown tired of...
Reggie Jackson: No guarantee of freedom when courts and lawmakers fail to protect our rights
“It has blatantly ignored all law and precedent and usurped from the congress and the people the power to amend the Constitution and from the congress authority to make laws of the land. Its action confirms the worst fears of the motives of the men who sit on its...
January 6 hearings: The truth may not be enough to prove democracy is still a viable form of government
The July 21 public hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol brought to its logical conclusion the story of Trump’s attempt to overturn our democracy. After four years of destroying democratic norms and gathering...
