I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan. Which has a complicated racial history, to be generous. Take a moment to explore its 40+ year segregationist mayor, Orville Hubbard. A whole different world from what Dearborn is known as today: a majority Middle Eastern/North African suburb of Detroit. I really never
A couple of blocks away from my home is a church that has a spire atop it. The spire reaches 10 or 12 stories. In the past several weeks we've been watching the renovation of that spire. Two guys, removing old panels piece by piece, replacing them with
This story from our local news outlet caught my attention in large part because of the "we're just putting stickers on the board" quote. It came from a resident participating in a community listening session, run by consultants, designed to gather early insights into how to
This past week I had the opportunity to officially launch a new publication project as part of the Evanston Environmental Justice Coalition. I'm pulling together a team of folks to publish the first edition of what we hope to be a biannual publication on the state of environmental
On July 14, I officially opened a project for the Evanston Environmental Justice Coalition: Producing the first edition of a new biannual publication on the state of environmental justice in Evanston. The start-up edition project will take 3 months beginning in September. The publication I envision should have voice
When I started this journey I defined community listening as three elements; * How a group facilitates listening to the community members it serves. * How a group helps community members make sense of what it is learning. * How a group facilitates co-creating solutions with the community members it serves. One
Build community connections and power. Grow more trees, plants and food. Nurture parks and open spaces. Make transit options green, safe and accessible. Invest in affordable, sustainable housing. Eliminate man-made environmental hazards. Reduce waste, increase reuse and sharing. Design severe weather safeguards. These draft statements are designed to define
When I first started exploring community listening, I worked at defining what it means. To me. And while I keep adding nuance to the language I use, it basically boils down to three things. How we listen with other people, how we make sense of what we are all hearing,
A few things I just want to get into writing. Variation on thinking about thinking tasks. This came in conversation with Tom Mulhern (a co-conspirator) about a very draft design of a one-hour facilitated session to engage small neighborhood groups in conversation about potential environmental equity actions. The
This is thinking-out-loud about work-in-progress. The context is my effort to help design a local environmental justice curriculum. "Curriculum" in a very loose sense. What I am working on is a set of learning activities that are connected, but not scripted. Sort of a
When we think about how we listen to folks who live in our communities, we likely think about meetings. Special community meetings. Or projects that include community engagement meetings as one step in a larger project plan. But projects and stand-alone meetings have flaws. They are designed and facilitated
One of the bits of wisdom I learned as an educator was to think about the design of a course as guided by a kind of story. The basic arc of the story in my case always started by first defining a big, complex challenge, then exploring some ideas, each
Design
Let's start with a fictional account about a real meeting to illustrate thinking about thinking tasks in the design of community listening activities. You live in a close-knit neighborhood and recently felt a nudge to learn more about local efforts that impact climate change. Your 3rd grade
Community listening
My professional background integrates learning, knowledge-sharing, design, and change. Much of the work centered on listening to folks who experience the impact of solutions designed to address workplace challenges. Then learning how to design better solutions with them, rather than for them. In 2025 I began exploring community listening
Community listening
Note: This is a long post - much longer than I usually write. But it lays out the full current state of the work I am doing, and how I think about community listening, co-creating local solutions, and learning what those activities mean for environmental equity in my home city.
Thinking out loud
I've been reflecting a bit on moments that move, that create a shift. It's challenging to identify those moments in real time. Only looking back do you recognize the shift. Which means: If you wish to make change, you probably need to create a lot of
Thinking out loud
The end game for this curriculum: Folks have the power and resources to invent their own ways to create healthy neighborhood communities. I started thinking about this curriculum as involving two types of folks: Those who live in the neighborhoods impacted by historical injustice and environmental inequities. And those who
Thinking out loud
I recently started reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (science fiction is now my favorite holiday from current news and events). A moment in the story stood out. Genly Ai is a human envoy sent out to convince another human world to join an
Thinking out loud
At the upcoming April 2026 meeting of Environmental Justice Evanston I am due to propose a curriculum for leadership development. The desired outcome is to increase the number of people who can lead environmental equity efforts in Evanston. This need comes together for a couple of reasons. The Evanston environmental
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