When Protest Meets Power There are moments when sports become about more than the game itself. They can reveal deeper truths about power, money, race, and who is welcomed into the room after the protest ends. Colin Kaepernick became one of those moments when he began protesting racial injustice and police brutality during the national
Colin Kaepernick, Jay-Z, and the Price of Partnership Read More »
The Part We Often Miss When people get into disagreements, there is one big thing we tend to miss, and that is perspective. We become so focused on defending our position that we forget the other person is looking at the same situation through a different set of eyes. There is an old idea that
Change the Perspective, Change the Conversation Read More »
One Powerful Word There are certain words in the English language that seem to become larger when you place the name of God beside them. One of those words is grace. I have heard that word in church all my life, but the older I get, the more I understand that grace is much deeper
Grace: When God Moves Toward Us in Love Read More »
My Car Is Private, But It Is Not Legally My House I understand why somebody sitting behind the steering wheel might say, “This is like my home, and I do not want to get out.” A vehicle can feel deeply personal because we spend so much of our lives inside one. We keep our belongings
The Dog Does Not Erase What Happened Before the Sniff Read More »
The Argument on the Side of the Road I watched an exchange between a driver and a Border Patrol agent that reminded me how easily people can talk past one another when constitutional rights are involved. The driver kept insisting that the agent had to articulate the reason for stopping him right there on the
You May Not Have to Tell Me, But You Still Have to Have a Reason Read More »
When Somebody Plays Both Sides Listen to me, because this is one of those lessons that can hit your spirit if you have lived long enough to recognize it. One of the most dangerous people in your life is not always the person who openly dislikes you. Sometimes it is the person who claims to
Love Everybody, But Watch Who Gets Access Read More »
Seeing Through Somebody Else’s Eyes One of the hardest things to do during disagreement is to genuinely try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. A lot of people hear that advice and immediately think it means giving in, but that is not what I am talking about at all. Listening to somebody
Listening Without Surrendering Yourself Read More »
Carry Your Own Light Here is something from American history that ought to make us stop and think about what surveillance really means. In 1713, New York City adopted a law regulating the nighttime movement of enslaved Black and Indigenous people over the age of fourteen. The ordinance said that if they were outside more
From the Lantern to the License Plate: A Long History of Watching Who Moves Read More »
A Tampa Story Hiding in Plain Sight You want to know something remarkable about Tampa history that many people walk past every day without ever knowing. A woman who was born enslaved went on to become a landowner along the Hillsborough River, right in the heart of what we now call downtown Tampa. Her name
Madame Fortune Taylor: The Black Woman Whose Name Tampa Almost Forgot Read More »
The Vote and the Consequences There is an old saying that elections have consequences, but sometimes folks do not understand those consequences until they come knocking at their own front door. In the case of American farmers, that front door may lead straight to a barn, a soybean field, a cattle pasture, or a tractor
When the Vote Comes Home to the Farm Read More »