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
Plymouth Myths: How Abraham Lincoln reinvented Thanksgiving amid the bloodshed of Civil War
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, but not for the reasons we generally remember. The Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest celebration together at Plymouth in fall 1621, but that moment got forgotten almost immediately, overwritten...
Reggie Jackson: History teaches us that ignoring the elephant in the room will not make it go away
“My children, you are permitted in time of great danger to walk with the Devil until you have crossed the bridge.” – Old Balkan proverb Those words are an example of how and why people consistently ignore things and make alliances with evil forces in...
Scripture as a weapon: How the Confederacy’s biblical justification of oppression still echoes today
The twisted interpretation of Christianity by pro-slavery advocates in the Confederacy is one of the most troubling and insidious chapters in American history. To defend the indefensible institution of slavery, Southern theologians and politicians clung to a highly...
Once upon a Tuesday: A political parable about running with scissors in America
Once upon a Tuesday … there was a schoolhouse in a small rural town where some young children spent their time learning in class, while others goofed around at play. Every morning semi-trucks would roar by the schoolhouse without regard to the speed limit or the...
Legacy of Gettysburg: The 2024 election echoes Lincoln’s concern that a divided nation could endure
For three hot days, from July 1 to July 3, 1863, more than 150,000 soldiers from the armies of the United States of America and the Confederate States of America slashed at each other in the hills and through the fields around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. When the...
Hollow Patriotism: Reconciling the honor that veterans are due with the disrespect of their service
In the aftermath of the 2024 election, as Americans reflect on Veterans Day, a familiar narrative emerges across the nation as it has every year since it was first observed in 1919, before being recognized as a Federal holiday in 1954. There are genuine and heartfelt...
A history of hope: When the past can offer comfort in the fog of election despair
I know people are on edge, and there is maybe one last thing I can offer before this election. Worried people ask me how I have maintained a sense of hope through the past fraught years. The answer, inevitably for me is in our history. If you had been alive in 1853,...
It can happen here: The rise of an American dictator and the public support behind Trump’s cruelty
On September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers,...
Endorsing Kamala Harris: A champion of the freedoms that American veterans fought to preserve
Milwaukee Independent has never endorsed a political candidate in its history, and it may never do so again. However, as major editorial boards like those of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times buckle under the weight of fear surrounding Donald Trump, the...
