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
Action Follows Faith: What Christians should do when their Church remains silent about Racism
Sunday is coming. Soon, millions of Americans will find themselves in the houses of worship that dot nearly every corner of this country; disparate buildings where they’ll gather under the banner of religion, of faith, of goodness. Whether set in trappings that are...
Pardeep Kaleka: The need to build a systematic strategy that prevents mass shootings
A few years ago, when I asked my wife if she would like to take the kids to see a movie, she informed me that she doesn’t like patronizing theaters. When I asked her why, her response was not surprising. But it did make me think about how many more people felt the...
Cruelty Sickness: Our shared fatigue after four ferocious years of the ongoing Culture War
I am a collector of stories. I watch people, I listen closely to them, I eavesdrop on their conversations in person and on social media, and I look for the patterns to try and understand what’s happening to us as a nation. I’ve tried to put my finger on how I’m...
Elite Rule: The idea of allowing only “better” people to vote was first proposed by wealthy slaveholders
Commentator Kevin Williamson published a piece in National Review on April 7 justifying voter suppression by suggesting that “the republic would be better served by having fewer, but better, voters.” Representatives, he says, “are people who act in other people’s...
A “White America” First Caucus: When the party of Abraham Lincoln becomes the party of Jefferson Davis
News broke on April 16 that a number of pro-Trump House Republicans, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), are organizing the “America First Caucus,” which calls for “a degree of ideological flexibility, a...
And another one gone: What Daunte Wright’s shooting teaches us about reform efforts
“My heart is literally broken into a thousand pieces and I don’t know what to do or what to say. But I just need everybody to know that he is much more than this.” – Daunte Wright’s mother, Katie Wright During the most anticipated trial of police arguably since...
Seeking racial justice in court: On trial is also our fundamental principle of equality before the law
At about 2:00 in the afternoon on April 11, a white police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, after what seems to have been a routine traffic stop turned up an arrest warrant. The following day, on April 12,...
When lawmakers fall weirdly out of step with their party’s history and the will of the country
I spent much of April 5 thinking about the Republican Party. Its roots lie in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in spring 1854, when it became clear that elite southern slaveholders had taken control of the federal government and were...
A tragic cost of failure: Proof that the federal government has a role in combatting the pandemic
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people across the world, including about 675,000 people in the United States. And yet, until recently, it has been elusive in our popular memory. America’s curious amnesia about the 1918 pandemic has come to mind...
