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
Return to Ukraine: A trauma loop of travel from Milwaukee to a country still at war a year later
Return to Ukraine: This feature is part of an original Milwaukee Independent editorial series that recorded news from areas across Ukraine, including Milwaukee's sister city of Irpin, from June to July of 2023. It was the second time in the span of a year that the...
Abandoning Kids: Why Republican-dominated state legislatures are pushing to weaken child labor laws
“Banning abortions. Burning Books. Children in factories. Do Republicans want to engineer an uneducated and indentured workforce? At least if little kids are working on assembly lines, they won’t be shot in schools.” – Wisconsin Activist,...
Theology shaped by race: Why it is time for American Christians to kiss a White Jesus goodbye
Growing-up I lived with an image of Jesus. I am talking about a literal picture that inhabited our family room, my Catholic school hallways, and the homes of many of the Christians I knew. With angular features, blue eyes, and flowing golden hair this Jesus was calm,...
Rule of law regarding Trump: Holding an ex-president legally accountable for Constitutional wrongdoing
“DONALD TRUMP UNDER ARREST, IN FEDERAL CUSTODY.” It was quite a chyron from CNN on June 13, marking the first time in the history of the United States that a former president has been charged with federal crimes. And in this case, what crimes they are: the willful...
Why President Biden’s unifying leadership stands in vast contrast to Trump’s ineffective terror tactics
Three years ago on June 2, 2020, days after then–Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, Martha Raddatz of ABC snapped the famous and chilling photograph of law enforcement officers in camouflage,...
Political charlatans: Why Conservatives who pretend to be Christian is the real American “Drag Show”
Cue the lights. Strike up the band. It is showtime again in America. Every single day they brazenly parade around in front of us: in our neighborhoods, on our timelines, in our school board meetings, in stores in front of our children. They shamelessly don their...
What fear does: How a steady diet of Culture War rhetoric produces a terror of anything different
The Conservative Republican movement in America is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people; the emotional net result of being weaned for decades on a steady diet of culture war rhetoric, targeted disinformation, racial stereotypes,...
Reggie Jackson: Remembering that the Declaration of Independence was a “Woke” Manifesto
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of...
Only real Americans: How the Republican Party’s ideology became one that explicitly rejects democracy
The man authorities have identified as the shooter who murdered eight people and wounded at least seven others at a mall in Allen, Texas, on May 6, Mauricio Garcia, appears to have been a White Supremacist. He sported Nazi tattoos and wore a patch on his vest that...
