Category: Features

Power to the People: A Way Forward After the US Presidential Election

As we reflect on one of the most consequential U.S. elections in our lifetime, emotions are running high. This election brought us a choice between division and polarization or unity and inclusion. The contentious and divisive rhetoric surrounding the campaign was such that no matter who the winner was it would require some healing and a plan forward. Let’s commit to cultivating spaces where everyone can belong, empowered by our shared humanity.

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Power to the People: We Can’t Afford to Ignore Education

I began my professional career as a middle school teacher in Washington, D.C., teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in a public school in a low-income neighborhood. While in graduate school, I studied the ins and outs of the public education system with a particular focus on urban schooling. Though my student teaching experience was in a rural Georgia high school, I figured that teaching in D.C. couldn’t be that much different — kids are kids, after all, and good teaching is good teaching.

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Power to the People: The Reversal of Roe v. Wade and IVF — Where Does Choice Really Lie?

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, conversations around reproductive rights have been reignited with a fire we haven’t seen in years. People are asking tough questions like, What does autonomy over our bodies truly mean in this country? And who gets to decide? While much of the conversation has centered around abortion, the ripples of this decision extend far beyond the abortion clinic. They reach into the private and often hidden realms of those like me who have experienced infertility and relied on reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization (IVF). Suddenly, choices we thought we had control over feel fragile and precarious.

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Power to the People: History Repeats Itself in the Fight for a Multiracial Democracy

The impending U.S. presidential election looms large in the minds of many around the world as a fight for democracy. We are being reminded once again of just how fragile this experiment is: to be a democratic society that purportedly stands for freedom, equity, and justice. At the heart of the struggle is race. The fight for a multiracial democracy in the U.S. has been marked by violent clashes and systemic attempts to maintain white male domination, most notably since Reconstruction, a period after the Civil War when the U.S. government tried to address both the destruction of slavery and the preservation of the nation. Sadly, history continues to repeat itself.  

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Power to the People: Don’t Believe the DEI Lie

Do you consider yourself a discerning person? Someone who isn’t easily swayed by pundits or propaganda and can see right through prepared talking points or an agenda? Excellent. Then I will let you in on a dirty little secret about DEI that some people don’t want you to know: You have already benefitted from DEI programs and policies, and you might not have even realized it.

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What Pride Means Today: History to Know for a Brighter Present and Future

It was my honor and pleasure in recent weeks to join colleagues and our contributing writers in reflecting on the question: What does Pride mean to you today? As I imagined this series, I considered the ways that my answer to this question has shifted over time, how that has related to other cultural changes and political developments, and how it has been anything but linear. My colleague Sarah Rimmel and I also discussed this topic on a recent episode of The Inclusion Solution LIVE podcast.

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What Pride Means Today: Escaping a Cage of My Own Making

When I was about 7, I asked my mother: “Mom, what’s a homosexual?” Neither my mother nor I knew at that moment that a homosexual was, among other things, me. So, my mother answered as best she could: “Well, Eric … a homosexual is a man who loves men the way he ought to love women, or a woman who loves women the way she ought to love men.” Needless to say, I didn’t come out to my mom for quite a while after that.

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What Pride Means Today: Community Care and Creativity

I know I will never fully understand the lived experience of the tragedies that preceded my lifetime, and I am grateful for the times I have been challenged to truly sit in recognition of and empathy with the lived experiences of queer and trans elders across many intersections and identities. A queer millennial comic I admire mused on a podcast: “I never experience homophobia — or barely.” The Midwest and the world at large have changed a lot since the 1980s. While I can point to several exceptions, generally, I am fortunate enough to know what she means.

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Racial Justice at Work: Practical Solutions for Systemic Change

Racial Justice at Work book cover

Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit

Inclusive Conversations: Fostering Equity, Empathy and Belonging Across Differences

We Can’t Talk About That At Work! (Second Edition)

Cover of the book We Can't Talk about That at Work (Second Edition) by Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N Reese

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