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
How the Supreme Court continues dismantling democracy where Trump’s January 6 attack failed
At the June 23rd hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, we heard overwhelming proof that former president Trump and his congressional supporters tried to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential...
Reggie Jackson: The racial imbalance of Milwaukee’s 2022 Residential Property Assessments
There has been little said by most elected officials about the readily apparent racial imbalance in the latest assessments of home values in Milwaukee. Overall, the city wide increase was 17.77%. By far the largest increases were in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods,...
Reggie Jackson: Reflecting one year later on the significance of Juneteenth becoming a Federal holiday
“It should be a paid holiday and not just a check-the-box holiday added to your calendar. You really have to be meaningful and authentic in order to be impactful.” – Rosa Nunez, the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the law firm Foley Hoag “I say it...
General Order Number 3: How the news of freedom became a rallying point for enslaved Black Americans
Today is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement on June 19th, 1865, in Texas that enslaved Americans were free. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of...
Fulfilling Juneteenth: Why many Black Americans are still awaiting Emancipation after 157 years
On June 19th 1865, Federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to declare the emancipation of all Americans, of every slave being freed. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued two-and-a-half years earlier by President Lincoln, but as a result of the geographic...
Moving the nation forward by investing in ordinary Americans was what created our strong economy
While most eyes have been on the leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision, the Biden administration has continued its work to move the country forward, demonstrating that investing in ordinary Americans creates a strong economy. Since the 1980s, Republicans have...
The constant trauma of mass shootings: When an unbroken chain of acceptable violence leaves us numb
I am rarely at a loss for words. However, I found myself struggling to process the horrific violence over the past few weeks. It is generally fairly easy for me to take a pause, think deeply about events and then put my thoughts down in an article. I wish this was...
Why one massacre after another is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority
A gunman murdered at least 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24. For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not...
The War on Children: Maybe Republican politicians would passionately protect kids if they were guns
It is a real shame that school children are not guns. If school children were guns, Conservatives would treat them with kid gloves. They would be ever so careful with their words so as not to cause offense to those who love them. They would exercise the rarest of...
