I was at a conference in Jamaica on April 29 twenty-five years ago when news of the Los Angeles uprising broke. With an American colleague I watched TV images of burning cars and looting after a majority white jury acquitted police officers who were caught on video beating Rodney King, a black motorist.  Twenty-four years earlier, the Kerner Commission Report, […]

Last week I spent two hours in conversation with five friends in Washington, DC. All are experienced in various types of interracial and interfaith dialogue and community building work. All are searching for appropriate responses to the current post-election polarization. Two run programs on university campuses where they said people are “having a difficult time talking with each other….they realize […]

As a new president is sworn in, the towering figure of the Republican Party’s first occupant of the White House will watch over the inaugural proceedings from his seat at the other end of the Mall. What wisdom would he share with us? In accounts of Abraham Lincoln’s sojourn in Washington, especially Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Godwin, his […]

Final day at the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Summit The final day of the TRHT Summit starts with a presentation by Manuel Pastor, Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, who directs the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California. He lays out some of the major cleavages in the country. One […]

Day 3 at the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Summit  After a day focused on personal racial healing and relationship building, we focus today on healing the wounds of our society that result from our inherited belief in a racial hierarchy. David Williams from Harvard’s School of Public Health shares data showing the devastating impact of racism on health outcomes […]

Day 2 at the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Summit  “Our beliefs are shaped by the stories we hear,” says Gail Christopher as we embark on a “day of healing” at the TRHT summit. “Today is about stories…When we form a circle we suspend the hierarchy…we are not here to judge but to create a safe and sacred space.”  We […]

Day 1 at the Truth Racial Healing & Transformation Summit “In Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation the power of love is leveraged to transcend the power of fear,” says the visionary leader of this initiative, Dr. Gail Christopher, senior advisor and vice president at  the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She is speaking at the opening of a summit that has convened […]

As the full dimension of the Trump victory became apparent, a veteran strategist remarked, “My crystal ball has been shattered…Tonight data died.” After a sleepless night, I struggled like many others to come to terms with the shocking turn of events. How was it possible that someone so unqualified for the presidency could defeat the most qualified candidate in decades? […]

Mother Teresa once remarked that the “greatest disease in the West…is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” She went on to say that the poverty in the West is poverty of loneliness, but also of spirituality.  Physical poverty is real in America. In a city like Richmond nearly 40% of our children experience it every day. And 15 million children […]

It is just 10 am but the mercury has already climbed to 85°F as we arrive at our favorite little beach where the York River estuary spills into the Chesapeake Bay. On a grassy park area, Latino boys are playing soccer. Under the few big shade trees large family groups – Latino, African American and Asian – prepare the mid-day […]