Category: news
-
Experience Matters
Another article I wrote for the Undocumented blog has now been posted. “Many church members are too afraid to come to church anymore.” I was attending a meeting of ministry leaders when the well-respected Hispanic pastor stood to share. He told us how the police had begun parking near their church building on Sunday mornings,…
-
Trayvon, Dr. Land, & the “Myth” of Racism
My latest article for Leadership Journal’s blog has been posted. On an unseasonably warm Saturday in late March, my 3-year-old son and I took the train from our Chicago neighborhood to a rally downtown for Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African American teenager who was killed in Florida a month earlier. The protest itself was predictable:…
-
The Los Angeles Riots
Los Angeles burned while I was in ninth grade. Less than a year earlier my family had left a decade of life in South America for our new home just 60 miles from that sprawling and simmering city that would soon explode. Tomorrow marks twenty years since the riots began, ignited by the acquittal of…
-
Trayvon Martin, Patience and Self Reflection
My friend Dr. Vincent Bacote, a theology professor at Wheaton College, offers helpful perspective on Tayvon Martin’s tragic death. While many changes have occurred in the 150 years since the Civil War began, race consciousness remains in our social and cultural DNA like a stubborn mutation, rendering it difficult for us to truly and consistently…
-
“He called for help.”
Michael reflects soberly and sorrowfully on the appalling murder of Trayvon Martin. I didn’t want to think about how similar Trayvon Martin is to the vision I have for my son. He was a boy, enjoying life, getting good grades, collecting admiration from teachers; he was loved by his family, who over and over called the…
David W. Swanson 