This month, I joined colleagues for an Initiatives of Change fellowship call when we reflected on the life of Mary McLeod Bethune, the pioneering educator and civil rights activist. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, she became one of the most important Black educators and civil and women’s rights leaders of the twentieth century. In 1904 she started the Daytona […]

In 2001, the University of Michigan published Intergroup Dialogue: Deliberative Democracy in School, College, Community and Workplace.  With case studies edited by David Schoem and Sylvia Hurtado it offered one of the most comprehensive reviews of the role of dialogue as an essential tool for healthy democracies. A chapter by Karen Elliott Greisdorf describes the early formation of the Initiatives […]

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Richmond’s first “walk through history.” On a sweltering June 18 afternoon, people from 50 cities and 25 countries joined Richmonders of all backgrounds to mark places that had been too painful or shameful to acknowledge. The walk was the highlight of the Healing the Heart of America conference, “an honest conversation on race, reconciliation, […]

A recent op-ed in the Daily Beast by Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Ian Marcus Corbin, a philosopher at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Fellow at the think tank Capita, declared, “The left needs a spiritual renaissance. So does America.” The writers point to the failures of neoliberalism – rampant consumerism, economic inequality, loss of community – as the […]

In 1849, Henry Brown escaped from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, by arranging to have himself mailed in a crate to Philadelphia. Henry “Box” Brown as he became known, was among some fifty-five men owned by William Barret who had sold Brown’s pregnant wife and child to another slave master. Most of the men worked in Barret’s tobacco factory. Brown’s story […]

Incidents of people of color, particularly Black men, meeting their death at the hands of police occur with heartbreaking frequency. This week, I took part in a deeply moving Zoom call with some of the Initiatives of Change USA network in a dozen cities, including alumni of the Community Trustbuilding Fellowship and Caux Scholar programs. The expected agenda for the […]

When my siblings and I were children in the UK, one of our favorite people was Paul Petrocokino. He was a tall, very gifted musician, who was a passionate promoter of Handel’s music and composed in his style. Paul, whose father was Greek, and his American wife, owned a 17th century English country manor with extensive grounds in Hertfordshire where […]

Sports can spring surprises. On the first day of the FIFA World Cup, Saudi Arabia astonished the football world by defeating Argentina. Although Argentina recovered to qualify for the final 16, two other highly rated teams were eliminated: Belgium was stunned by Morocco; and Japan defeated Spain (although Spain still qualified) and knocked out Germany in the process. There will […]

I was going to write about racism or threats to our democracy. But instead, this blog is about one person. A man who is truly at peace with himself and lives to share that peace with others. Leroy can be found most days outside a garage where I take my car for oil changes or inspections. He sits on a […]