Author: Reggie Jackson

Emmett Till was 14-years old when he was kidnapped thirty-seven miles from my hometown in Mississippi in 1955.

“They are not our friend, believe me. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” – Donald Trump, disparaging Mexicans in 2016 After several mass shooting incidents in a few short weeks, I find it incredibly difficult to wrap my head around the current state of mind of the United States. Much of what will be written in the coming days and weeks will be about gun control in the wake of these tragedies. I believe there is a deeper structural issue that continues to go unaddressed. Racism and hatred are being...

“We moved to the areas where we have the highest incidents of bad driving and without giving out too much information, we really hit those areas hard.” – Ray Banks, Milwaukee Police Assistant Chief For years my wife and I had a running joke that whenever we returned to Milwaukee from an out-of-town trip we were guaranteed to see someone doing something stupid within five minutes of being back in town. Invariably it was true. In most instances it was related to someone driving. Little did we know that this inside joke would reflect the trend we see, without...

Not long ago I began to more actively pay attention to the city I’ve spent most of my life in. I began to see things that had been right in front of me for years that I simply found no reason to pay close attention to. My mind is wired in such a way that I notice patterns. I don’t understand why that is the case, but it has helped me to see things that other people don’t necessarily see. There are things that are right in front of us everyday that we mostly ignore or pay little attention...

Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not...