Design
Last week I had coffee with two friends from my days teaching and helping lead the learning and organizational change graduate program at Northwestern University. One - Beth - is Head of School at a private Montessori school in the Boston area. Beth is an amazing leader; she gets results and creates
Thinking out loud
I am building off of the first part of my last post: Update on Evanston environmental justice. And folks who give a f*ck. Since that post was published, a second person - Alex Pretti - was murdered by federal agents. The feds lied about what actually happened, refused cooperation with local
Environmental equity
A lot has happened in the past several weeks on the environmental justice front and I want to document the moment as we move deeper into 2026. But I also do not want to ignore the current state of life as the US devolves into an autocracy. Minneapolis is under
Community listening
I'm going to take a break from this writing routine until early January. During 2025 I posted almost every week - 49 posts, amounting to 52K words - and it's been a great positive experiment. I plan to continue writing in 2026. But I want to create some
Community listening
I'm sitting here today contributing work on several things with the environmental justice folks in Evanston: A grant application, comments on a draft report from the Evanston Environmental Equity Investigation, and communications plans with a subcommittee team of a new coalition. It's a long way from
Community listening
My eyes are now tuned to see power in the ways in which we organize to do work. Sometimes power is visibly obvious to everyone involved. Sometimes it is more nuanced. Often, it exists in ways that seem reasonable and rational. Until we start to question underlying assumptions; why is
Thinking out loud
I don't remember exactly when I first read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. But it must have been in high school (1972 or '73), probably during my days as a budding young journalist and editor of my high school newspaper. That was when I first started
Environmental equity
This is my updated effort to craft an overview of environmental justice - what it is, what it means in Evanston, and potential paths for the future. What do we mean by environmental justice? Environmental justice recognizes that our history of racial discrimination leads to current and on-going environmental, health
Environmental equity
I recently attended two half-day working sessions of the Evanston Environmental Justice (EJ) Coalition. The sessions were designed to inform a strategy for this new organization as it moves into 2026. I was geeked for a number of reasons. This was front-row observation of community coalition building with
Protest
In January when I started this journey to connect more deeply with my local community, I could not have imagined we'd be where we are today. In my little space in the world, everyone feels the impact of ICE immigration kidnappings and the collateral damage it leaves. People
Community listening
My former teaching partner and friend Teresa Torres is off on a new venture - the Just Now Possible podcast, where Teresa takes a dive deep with folks who use AI as part of the digital products they design and build. A recent episode focused on ZenCity, which provides an AI-
Community listening
Last night I attended the 4th (and final) workshop that is part of Evanston's Environmental Equity Investigation (EEI). (See past post about EEI: The limitation of relying on a single style of community meetings) I'm thinking about this event in terms of lessons to be learned