In December 2024, I attended the National Symposium for State and Local Reparations in Evanston, IL. I typed up seven pages of notes, with links to many phenomenal organizations, but here are some key takeaways. For more information, FirstRepair has a lot of resources on their website; we have some on ours at cureparationscoalition.com
Reflections on Whiteness
I wrote an article called “Reflections on Whiteness: Integrating Upward Bound in the 1960s” and published it in Schools: Studies in Education 21:2(Fall 2024). Thanks to editor Andy Kaplan for his support. Here’s the abstract: Upward Bound (UB), created in 1965 to provide educational enrichment for low-income youths, had to be racially integrated. In 1966, […]
Courage and Tenacity, Alabama Version
If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs. ~Mary McLeod Bethune I’d never been to Alabama before our trip in November 2024. Actually I’ve hardly spent any […]
Youth Advocacy and Action
In 2015, I drafted a manifesto, “Youth Advocacy and Action (Y2A).” I did not want to start another organization or youth program, but I wanted to be clear what I was looking for in work collaborating with youth. This manifesto is indebted to a number of scholars, activists and organizations that appear in another blog […]
ReGeneration Fund
My family started the ReGeneration Fund, through the Community Foundation of East Central Illinois (CFECI) to support young people working toward racial, economic, and environmental justice locally. The ReGeneration Fund can grow from its current modest size to greater potential if others contribute as well. Go to the CFECI website if you would like to […]
Mutuality between campus and community?
In preparation for Sounds Like Community, an online event that the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center has been organizing ever since the pandemic started over a year ago, I thought I would (re)post these lists of Tips and Tricks that were collaboratively generated in 2014 when I had a fellowship at the University of Bristol in […]
Examining White Supremacy, Again
Places of Intervention, Spaces of Possibilities
Seeing Poorly. Feeling a Lot.
My eyesight has deteriorated in my sixties. Those times when I cut a thread with blunt scissors, it unwinds as I try to insert it into the eye of a needle. The needle has an eye and my eyes can barely see it. The thread bends and goes off to one side or the other […]
Panicky Pandemicky Thoughts
Readings and Listenings and Recollections Bambara, Toni Cade. “An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara.” By Kay Bonetti. Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara. Ed. Thabiti Lewis. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. 35–47. Campt, Tina. Listening to Images (Duke UP, 2017). https://www.dukeupress.edu/listening-to-images Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and […]
