what government is meant to do

what government is meant to do

When he died, his successor said he felt as though “the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” Harry Truman was speaking of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Their tenure began at a time when, around the world, economic downturn led to unemployment, poverty, institutional failures. Populism was on the rise. The beginnings… Read more »

Celebrating universal resource access

Celebrating universal resource access

Like fragments shored against our ruins – I celebrate the commitment of public resources to universal access via the Chicago Public Library. This winter we convened to champion the 81 Club – an initiative the Chicago Public Library Foundation hired us to support in 2023. The 81 Club puts a Chicago Public Library card into… Read more »

Now is the time to speak

Now is the time to speak

The list of forbidden words keeps growing, building on itself. Driven by memos, fear, ‘getting ahead of it,’ word of mouth advice, by experience… The scrubbing of RFPs, web sites, bios, resources and toolkits. It’s comprehensive, exhausting, and terrifying. Meetings with people whose urgent right to live is in question, people who are watching themselves… Read more »

a call to action on behalf of girls

a call to action on behalf of girls

2024 Indiana Girl report When the heads of six Girl Scout Councils sat down with the Executive Director of the Girl Coalition of Indiana, Mackenzie Pickerrell, they were discouraged by the disparities they saw between what girls and their young peers experience.  The 2023 Indiana Girl Report showed that girls experience bullying twice as often,… Read more »