Community leaders were gathered for breakfast, working through small talk before the real conversation started. A large regional institution had convened the room, with one of its senior executives on hand to field questions directly. The morning had already covered a lot of ground: institutional history, community investment figures, workforce pipelines. Then someone read the question submitted ahead of time, the one everybody in this region has asked in some form for years:

There is a well-known systemic issue of communication across Greater Milwaukee. We are not good at sharing information with each other. This affects trust and creates barriers to well-being. What can this institution do to share information more proactively and intentionally with community partners?

The executive — sharp, well-meaning, sitting on top of an organization that puts billions of dollars into this state every year — paused. And then she said, more or less, that she wasn’t sure there was a systemic issue. She didn’t know. She turned the question back to the room.

Two more people tried to answer it. A nonprofit leader talked about channels — email doesn’t work for everybody, text doesn’t work for everybody, mailers reach more people than either. Another named the deeper layer underneath that: something about trust, about how information sometimes functions as a way of holding power, about needing to think beyond organizational walls. Good instincts, both of them. Neither landed on the actual diagnosis.

By the time the microphone got to me, I’d been sitting with this question for thirty years.

The Misdiagnosis

Here’s what almost everyone reaches for first: communication is a tactics problem. If people aren’t getting the message, you add more delivery mechanisms. More newsletters. More text alerts. More community forums. More radio spots.

Watch how this plays out inside the very same event. By the end of the morning, the institution’s own team — competent, resourced, clearly caring about the outcome — closed out their remarks on this exact question with a list: community councils, advisory boards, town halls, newsletters, text messages. All real. All representing genuine effort and genuine dollars. None of it touching why the information doesn’t move through this region in the first place.

This is the tell. When a multibillion-dollar institution with a dedicated community partnerships team, a VP of community engagement, and dozens of staff devoted to this exact relationship still answers “why can’t we communicate” with a channel list, the problem isn’t that the institution hasn’t tried hard enough. The problem is that channels are the wrong unit of analysis entirely. You can multiply channels indefinitely inside an unchanged culture and get the same result: more paint on the same walls, more mail through the same locked doors.

A communication problem gets solved by adding channels. A culture problem gets solved by changing what the culture rewards, expects, and normalizes as a matter of course. Those are not the same project, and mistaking one for the other is why this “well-known systemic issue” stays well-known and stays systemic, gathering after gathering, initiative after initiative, for as long as anyone in that room has been doing this work.

The Actual Diagnosis

Here’s what I told the room, and what I want to say more slowly here.

If you want to solve this with excellence — and I mean that as a real conditional, because you can choose not to pursue excellence, plenty of institutions do, and if that’s the choice, none of the rest of this applies — you have to treat it as a culture change issue. Not a communications issue. Not a marketing issue. A culture change issue, with a culture change rubric.

The culture of this region is siloed and segregated. Not only across race — across sector, across discipline, across public and private, across education and law and social justice and every kind of institution in between. It is the operating culture of the place. It’s structural, inherited, and largely invisible to the people standing inside it, because everyone experiences their own sector as reasonable and everyone else’s as the one that’s hard to reach.

This is the part that took me thirty years to see clearly, and it’s the part I most want other leaders to sit with: when people talk about “the silo,” there’s almost always an other in mind. Nonprofits think government is the silo. Government thinks community organizations are disorganized and hard to coordinate with. Large institutions think community leaders are informal and unpredictable partners. Community leaders think large institutions are opaque bureaucracies that show up once a year and disappear. Everybody is right about the sector they’re describing, and everybody is simultaneously inside the exact dynamic they’re diagnosing in someone else.

That’s not a communication failure between well-intentioned parties. That’s culture. Nobody designed it on purpose. No single institution owns it. And that’s precisely why it survives every new initiative aimed at fixing it — you cannot solve a structural, ownerless problem with a tactical, single-institution solution, no matter how well-funded.

This is the same argument underneath “Milwaukee Is a Culture-Change Project,” and underneath why the Levine Index matters more as a diagnostic than as a scoreboard. The numbers tell you the outcome. They don’t, by themselves, tell you the mechanism. The mechanism is a regional operating culture — rigid, hierarchical, siloed by design if not by intention — that produces bad outcomes reliably, year after year, regardless of which individual actors are in the room trying their best.

Why This Is a Business Problem, Not Just a Justice Problem

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to leave this as a moral appeal — institutions should communicate better because it’s the right thing to do for the community. That’s true, but it’s not the argument that changes behavior inside a large system, and it undersells what’s actually at stake.

Here is the sharper version: whichever institution treats this as culture change instead of communications strategy gets a real, measurable competitive advantage. Better intelligence about what’s actually happening on the ground. Tighter feedback loops between what an institution assumes people need and what people actually need. Deeper trust, which eventually shows up in the metrics that matter to the institution’s own bottom line — retention, referral, reputation, outcomes.

One detail from that morning gives an accidental case study in what this can look like when it’s done right. A recurring group of people kept falling through the cracks of one of the institution’s core services — missing appointments, dropping out of a program, ending up back at square one — and the institution didn’t respond by sending them a better-worded reminder text. Someone restructured the actual process: embedded a dedicated staff person with that population, whose entire job was understanding why people kept falling out and building the support that prevents the next fall. That’s not a communication fix. That’s a structural fix that happens to produce better communication as a side effect, because it removes the reason the information wasn’t flowing in the first place.

That’s the difference between a culture-change move and a comms-strategy move, in miniature. One redesigns the system. The other narrates the unredesigned system more loudly.

What the Rubric Actually Requires

If a regional culture-change rubric for information and trust exists, it has to include at least these commitments, and I’d argue they’re not optional if the goal is genuinely excellence rather than the appearance of effort:

Named ownership without blame. The silo has no single villain and no single owner, which means every institution’s honest starting posture has to be “we are also inside this,” not “we are trying to reach people who are inside this.” That’s a harder sentence to say out loud in a public forum, which is exactly why almost nobody says it.

Radical over-communication as a floor, not a strategy. Hitting every channel — newsletters, texts, radio, town halls, neighborhood gatherings, word of mouth — isn’t the solution to a culture problem. It’s the baseline cost of operating honestly inside a culture you already know is siloed. Institutions that treat channel-multiplication as the finish line have confused the floor for the ceiling.

Structural embedding, not campaign timing. Culture change doesn’t run on a grant cycle or a quarterly initiative. It shows up in how staffing decisions get made, how funding gets structured, whether data gets shared across institutional lines by default or only after months of relationship-building and legal review. A “Communication Initiative” that ends when the grant ends was never a culture-change effort. It was a campaign wearing culture-change language.

Back to the Room

I don’t say any of this to single out one institution, and it would be a mistake to read it that way. This one convened the room. It asked the hard question out loud, on the record, in front of dozens of community leaders who could have easily made it regret doing so. That’s not nothing, and in a region this siloed, showing up and asking is itself a small act of counter-culture.

But that’s exactly why the moment is worth sitting with. If a multibillion-dollar institution, with a dedicated team whose entire job is community partnership, sitting in a room full of the people best positioned to answer the question — if that institution still defaults to a channel list when asked point-blank why the region can’t communicate with itself, then the diagnosis isn’t obvious. It has to be supplied. It doesn’t emerge naturally from good intentions, adequate funding, or genuine care, all three of which were present in that room in real quantity.

That’s the opening for regional leadership right now — community leaders, civic organizers, institutional partners, anyone standing at the intersection of more than one of this region’s silos. Not to criticize the institutions doing the convening, but to bring the framework they don’t yet have. Somebody has to walk in already knowing that the walls aren’t communication problems. They’re culture. And culture only changes when enough people start naming it as culture, out loud, in the room, instead of reaching for the nearest newsletter.

Leadership means overcoming fear and hesitancy — and there are at least two kinds worth naming. There's the fear that immobilizes in a crisis. And there's the fear that touches us at our personal weak spot, the fear that doesn't stop us cold but leaves us stalled, stagnant, unwilling to move.

This past weekend I had the chance to preach at one of the oldest Black churches in the state of Michigan — Chain Lake Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1838. It's also my wife's home church, the church where we got married in 1992.

A Church on the Underground Railroad

There's something that settles into you standing in a pulpit that old. Chain Lake sat on the Underground Railroad. Sojourner Truth walked through those doors. So did Frederick Douglass. So did Booker T. Washington. That's not a plaque you read and move past — that's a cloud of witnesses you're standing inside of.

And it made me think differently about fear and leadership, because the leadership those three had to exercise wasn't leadership in the way we usually mean it in a boardroom or a nonprofit budget meeting. It was life-and-death leadership. Real courage, real bravery, worked up with a fraction of the resources we take for granted now. I'm not minimizing what we carry today — our crises are real to us. But theirs was a different tier entirely, and it required a whole lot more faith than most of us will ever be asked to summon.

That's worth sitting with, because leadership always requires some faith. It takes us toward what is hoped for, but unknown. Every leader — pastor, president, manager, teacher — is walking toward an outcome they can't fully see. Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington just had to walk a lot further into the dark than most of us ever will.

Two Kinds of Fear in Leadership

My Sunday sermon, "A Faith That Fights Fear," was built on two texts — Psalm 27:1 and 2 Timothy 1:7 — and both map directly onto leadership.

The first kind of fear is the fear that comes when we're dealing with the unknown — the things that arise in the public sector, the private sector, the religious sector, the nonprofit world. Revenue problems. Funder issues. Customer or client issues. Banking issues. Employee issues. Things that can rise to such a level that we become temporarily immobilized.

Psalm 27:1 says: *The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?* Faith helps us remember that tomorrow still comes, and that there are still things to do to move forward, even in situations that feel insurmountable. But here's the leadership point underneath the faith point: we have to remember that we are the leader, and we have to act within the sphere of our leadership — our power, our influence, our responsibility. The leader does not have the luxury of not leading.

The second kind of fear doesn't immobilize us outright — it stalls us. It's the fear that shows up as uncertainty, timidity, or an emotional response out of proportion to the moment. 2 Timothy 1:7 names it directly: *God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.* The word for fear there is connected to timidity, insecurity, even cowardice — and the response to it is to remember three things.

Power

As leaders, we have to move — and we cannot be shy about exercising our power. We have the power to lead, the power to influence, the power to chart a course, the power to give direction, the power to correct, the power to push through. All of it. We cannot let timidity stop us from exercising the leadership power we've actually been given.

Love

This one runs deep, and it's not easy. From a pastoral perspective especially, our task is to care for and be concerned about the people we lead — even in the moments we're dissatisfied, disappointed, discouraged, or genuinely frustrated by someone who follows us. My task is still to lead and direct them. If we operate out of the wrong spirit — spite, revenge, indifference — we fail at the thing we're actually there to do, which is to coach and guide. Love doesn't mean the absence of accountability. It means we don't let disappointment push us into a reactionary space. And this matters beyond the individual relationship — the spirit and tone we bring sets the health of the whole community we're leading, whether that's a congregation, a team, or a classroom. It establishes the culture.

A Sound Mind

Last, and just as critical: we have to do our work. Our research. Our critical analysis. We can't be swayed by every casual thought, every newest fad — though that's not to say we shouldn't explore what's new. It means we bring our critical thinking to bear on it rather than getting swept along by it. The people who follow us are relying on the fact that we've put in the time and done the diligence in our decision-making. Not perfection — leaders rarely have the luxury of perfect decisions — but sound decision-making, disciplined enough to trust. That's not something we can hand off to someone else. It's ours to carry.

What I Carried Out of That Pulpit

In both kinds of fear — the kind that freezes us and the kind that stalls us — the task is the same: don't let the chaos, the crisis, or the concern of the moment cause you to be immobilized or to act impulsively. Remember that you are the leader. And as a leader, you have an obligation to position yourself — and the people you lead — for healthy decisions.

That's what I carried out of a 188-year-old pulpit this weekend, preaching from a place where so many people did so much, with so much less, to make a difference in so many lives. Which, when I think about it, is always the opportunity leadership gives us.

Before he raised a single stone, gathered a single leader, or spoke a single word of vision to the people of Jerusalem, he did something we consistently skip in community building, in church leadership, in education reform, in almost every discipline where we claim to want change: he went out at night, alone, and walked the broken walls. He looked at what was standing, what was rubble, what was salvageable, and what was gone. Only after that unglamorous, unhurried assessment did he move to plan, to organize, to build.

That order matters. Every serious change-management tradition says some version of the same thing. Jim Collins built Good to Great on the idea that you cannot get to greatness without confronting the brutal facts of your current reality. John Kotter's work on leading change starts not with vision but with urgency — and urgency requires an honest look at where you actually stand. Nehemiah got there first, and he got there by walking the wall in the dark before he said a word to anyone.

I've spent thirty years doing something like that walk here in Milwaukee. And in an earlier piece, I named what I think is a recurring, quiet illness in our institutions: we don't survey the terrain carefully enough before we act. And when we do get the data, we often fail to use it. We commission the study, we hold the forum, we print the report — and then we go right back to doing what we were already doing.

James Baldwin said it best — "nothing can be changed until it is faced." I love this city. I've given thirty years to it and I'm not going anywhere. But loving a place and being honest about a place are not in conflict. In fact, I'd argue you can't really do the first without the second. So before I get to what's hopeful — and there is a lot that's hopeful, and I'll get there in pieces to come — I want to walk the wall first, the way Nehemiah did, and look plainly at what the data says.

The Levine Index

If you want the most rigorous, most honest mirror available for how Black communities are actually faring in America's largest cities, the place to start is what I call the Levine Index. Marc Levine, professor emeritus and founding director of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee's Center for Economic Development, built it at the request of the African American Leadership Alliance MKE (AALAM), with support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. The first edition, in 2020, synthesized thirty indicators of Black community well-being — employment, income, poverty, health, and more — into a single composite score for each of the nation's fifty largest metro areas. The 2024 update expanded that to forty-four indicators, giving us the fullest picture yet.

Here's the part that should trouble us as much as the findings themselves: not enough people know this index exists. It doesn't get the circulation it deserves. Milwaukee, in particular, tends to shy away from it — Levine's findings are hard to sit with, and I think that's exactly why they get buried instead of discussed. Levine himself hasn't softened it for public comfort. When the 2020 findings came out, he described Milwaukee's numbers as "the archetype of modern-day metropolitan racial apartheid and inequality." That's not a headline someone put on his work — that's how he characterized it himself. If people don't like how directly he writes, that's a separate conversation. The data is the data.

And the data, both times, says the same thing. In 2020 and again in 2024, Milwaukee ranked dead last — 50th out of the nation's 50 largest metro areas — on the composite index of African American well-being. Not near the bottom. Last. And not by a little: Milwaukee's 2024 score put it well behind even the next-worst cities, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. On fourteen of the forty-four indicators that make up the index, Milwaukee ranked either last or second-to-last in the country. Black median household income here is the lowest of any of the fifty metros — less than half of what it is in top-ranked San Jose. The Black poverty rate, 30.1 percent, is the highest in the nation.

People who love this city, the way I do, get tired of that headline. Some feel embarrassed by it. I understand that. But the data doesn't lie, and it doesn't have to tell the whole story to tell us the part we need to hear. It's not the whole truth about Milwaukee. It is a truth we cannot keep sidestepping.

To be fair to the data itself: the 2024 report also points to some real, if modest, "green shoots." Between 2017 and 2022, Black median household income in Milwaukee rose for the first time in thirty years. Poverty ticked down slightly. A higher share of Black Milwaukeeans hold high school and college degrees than five years ago. None of that moved Milwaukee off the bottom of the rankings — but it's worth naming, because this isn't about wallowing. It's about seeing clearly, in both directions.

We can't hide from where we stand. We can't sugarcoat it. We can't point to one improving metric and declare the picture fixed. We cannot fix what we will not face — and if we're serious about fixing this city, the Levine Index is where that work has to start. It's the baseline. It names metrics that can move. It gives us something to measure ourselves against, year over year, so "progress" means something more than a good feeling.

Why I'm Starting Here

I'm going to be writing about this city, and this region, for a while — about what's broken and, just as much, about what's working and what's possible. But I wanted the first word to be the hardest one. Not because I think Milwaukee is beyond hope. Because I think the opposite, and I think hope that hasn't looked honestly at the wall isn't hope — it's denial wearing hope's clothes.

Nehemiah didn't walk the wall because he'd given up on Jerusalem. He walked it because he hadn't. That's the spirit I'm writing from.

Get familiar with the Levine Index if you aren't already. We're going to come back to it.

Photocredit: Miranda Taylor

August 6, 2026 was the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. I had the occasion to stand at St. Mark AME Church in Milwaukee — a congregation founded in 1869, and considered the oldest Black church in the state of Wisconsin — to deliver the keynote for Day 1 of the Voting Rights Act 3 Days of Action, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County. The theme of the evening was “The Vote is Sacred: Honoring the Past, Protecting the Future.” My topic was simple to state and hard to sit with: Voting Rights, Then and Now.

Here is the message: be faithful, be fearless, and be focused.

And here is why those three words are the only honest response to what follows.

An Unbroken Line of Voting Violence

There is a continuous, unbroken line of violence running through the history of the vote in this country. Not intermittent violence. Not violence confined to a single era we can safely locate in the past and close the book on. An unbroken line — one that starts before the country had a name for what it was doing, and one that, in a different form, is still being drawn today.

I want to walk that line all the way down, because I think most of us know pieces of it — Selma, maybe Colfax if you had a good history teacher — but very few of us have ever seen it laid end to end. Once you see it end to end, you can’t unsee the pattern. And the pattern is the point.

1780s. Free Black men voted in New Jersey, under laws that did not yet mention race at all — just property. It didn’t take long for white residents to notice that Black men were using that door. By 1807, New Jersey had rewritten its own constitution to insert the word “white” and take the vote back — from free men, and from free women too, since New Jersey had also allowed some property-owning women to vote.

Write this pattern down, because you will watch it repeat for the next two hundred years: Black political progress is met with violence and legal reversal. Not sometimes. Not usually. Every time.

Through the 1830s and 1850s, with no vote secured, Black communities built the infrastructure anyway — the AME Church, the Colored Conventions Movement, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin Delany, Maria Stewart, David Walker — building the argument for citizenship before they had the ballot in hand, because they understood the ballot was coming and intended to be ready for it.

Here in Wisconsin, in 1849, voters approved Black male suffrage by referendum. The people had voted for it. State officials simply refused to enforce it — a refusal that stood until Ezekiel Gillespie, turned away at a Milwaukee polling place in 1866, took his case to court and won confirmation that Wisconsin’s Black suffrage predated the Fifteenth Amendment by years.

1863. The Emancipation Proclamation, arriving only after — and alongside — some of the most profound violence this country has ever produced against itself. Black enlistment in the Union Army marked, for the first time in the nation’s history, the emergence of mass Black political power. And almost as quickly as that power arrived, mass violence arrived to try to kill it.

1870. The Fifteenth Amendment ratified. Mass Black voter registration. Mass Black officeholding — Black men sitting in state legislatures and in Congress for the first time in American history. Real power, won through blood, through war, through faith in something none of them had ever seen exist.

Then the counterattack.

1873, Colfax, Louisiana. Somewhere between 60 and 150 Black men massacred after a contested election, most of them killed after they had already surrendered.

July 1876, Hamburg, South Carolina. Six Black militiamen killed in a deliberate act of election-season terror. That same year, in nearby Ellenton, Black state legislator Simon Coker was shot in the head while praying for mercy. Between 30 and over 100 Black lives were lost — in South Carolina, the very first state to secede from the Union.

From the Fifteenth Amendment to Colfax to Hamburg is ten years. Ten years. That is how long the window stayed open before organized violence forced it shut again.

Then came the compromise — and I do mean compromise in the ugliest sense of that word, not unlike the Bush v. Gore resolution over a century later, in that both settled a disputed national election through a deal cut above the heads of the people the deal would actually cost. The Compromise of 1877 resolved a contested presidential election by trading the presidency for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South — troops that had been the last real check on organized violence against Black voters. Black political power was the pawn in that trade, and everyone involved in cutting the deal knew it.

It didn’t stop at the negotiating table. One year later, in the very next election, Red Shirts beat Republican voters in broad daylight in Fairfield County, South Carolina. On Edisto Island — a thousand Republicans to fifty Democrats — the polls simply never opened that day. They didn’t need another Colfax. They had already won.

By the close of the century, the violence had done its work well enough that the law could take over. Mississippi’s 1890 constitution — poll taxes, literacy tests, “understanding clauses,” grandfather clauses, white primaries, “good character” requirements left to the discretion of a white registrar — became the model copied across the South. By 1896, registered Black voters in Louisiana had fallen from 130,000 to 1,300. Even the era’s legal “victories” weren’t full victories: Plessy v. Ferguson locked in “separate but equal” until 1954.

And the killing never fully stopped, either. November 1920, Ocoee, Florida — voter-registration organizer July Perry lynched on Election Day, his entire community burned to the ground behind him. 1946, Georgia — Maceo Snipes, a World War II veteran, shot dead the day after he cast a vote; days later, two Black married couples lynched at Moore’s Ford for encouraging their neighbors to vote. 1955, Mississippi — Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith murdered for registration work; Gus Courts shot and driven from the state for the same. 1961, Mississippi — Herbert Lee shot dead by a sitting state legislator for helping register voters; the witness pressured to lie about it murdered two years later after admitting the truth. 1963, Jackson, Mississippi — Medgar Evers shot in his own driveway. 1964, Neshoba County, Mississippi — Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner murdered, giving the world what it would come to call “Mississippi Burning.” 1965, Alabama — Jimmie Lee Jackson shot by a state trooper while shielding his own mother, dead eight days later; marchers beaten bloody crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday; Rev. James Reeb beaten to death; Viola Liuzzo shot dead by Klansmen on an Alabama road.

That is the cost. That is the price. That is the arithmetic behind August 6, 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was finally signed into law.

Calling It What It Is

Every single attempt to advance human dignity and voting rights in this country has not simply been met with bad words. It has been met with violent acts. We call the result the Voting Rights Act. I think we should call it what it actually is: the Violence Reduction Act. Because some of the most violent episodes ever committed on American soil against American citizens have been committed over exactly this question — who gets to have a say in how they are governed.

And when the killing subsided — and it did subside, thank God, though never to zero — the underlying resistance did not go anywhere. It didn’t repent. It regrouped, and it got craftier. Since the 1970s: racial gerrymandering, vote dilution, felony disenfranchisement, voter roll purges, polling place closures, voter ID laws, early voting cutbacks, rollbacks of Souls to the Polls Sundays. Every one of these tools does, quietly and administratively, what a mob used to do with torches. That is not an exaggeration. That is a description of function.

Then the last major legal guardrails came down. 2013, Shelby County v. Holder, gutting the preclearance requirement that had forced states with the worst histories to get federal approval before changing their voting rules. Within twenty-four hours of that ruling, states began moving on laws that had been sitting blocked, ready and waiting. They were prepared. They had a plan.

April 29, 2026, Louisiana v. Callais, gutting what remained of Section 2 enforcement — the last significant federal tool for challenging racial discrimination in voting through the courts. The response, again, was immediate.

Same fight. Different weapon.

What This Actually Requires of Us

Here is the part of this history that isn’t just hard — it’s also, genuinely, good news, and I don’t want it lost underneath everything above it: it is tough today, but it is not as tough as it was. Nobody reading this is being lynched this week. There was no multicultural coalition standing beside our ancestors in the way we can stand beside each other now. They had none of what we have — no degrees most of them were legally denied, no resources most of them never touched, no technology they could not have imagined in their wildest theology. We have each other, in daylight, in numbers, with the law — however weakened right now — still partly intact.

Which means the honest conclusion isn’t despair. It’s obligation.

If the goal is to honor the past and protect the future, then we have to go further than they did. We have no excuse to be smaller than our ancestors were. They organized under threat of death for two hundred years. We can organize faithfully, fearlessly, and with focus for as long as this current fight takes — for this generation, and for the one behind us.

Be faithful — not as a feeling, but as a discipline. Show up for every election, not just the ones with a presidential name on the ballot. Show up for the school board seat and the county board race nobody’s watching, because that is exactly where organized opposition has been quietly winning for years while the rest of us were watching the news.

Be fearless — because the people on the other side of this fight are counting on our exhaustion. They are counting on despondency doing, slowly, what violence used to do quickly. Don’t hand it to them.

Be focused — because Dr. King already gave us the assignment: those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war. That means structure that outlasts a single election cycle. That means a plan, not just a feeling.

Our ancestors had far less than we have. And they did more than we’ve done.

We have more. So let’s do more.

Faithful. Fearless. Focused.

ISector does not make a difference. We’ve seen quiet closing in banking, education, non-profits, healthcare, social justice, etc. It’s pervasive here.

After thirty years of watching the same thing happen — the same institutions fold without a fight — I started seeing it as a quiet closing. OIC, gone. CYD, gone. Legacy Bank and North Milwaukee State Bank, two Black-owned banks, both gone. Programs built to carry our young men of color, quietly defunded. And too many people are culpable: too many watched, and observed, while programs and institutions died.

When these places falter, the first explanation reached for is always money. And money is real — under-resourced communities are under-resourced for reasons that are neither accidental nor fair, and I will never pretend otherwise. But after thirty years of studying one city, I've become convinced that money is most often the symptom and not the disease. Pour funding into a place that cannot hold itself accountable, and more often than not you simply fund the dysfunction more comfortably. The deeper failure is rarely a failure of resources. It is a failure of nerve.

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to hear that as a complaint about individuals — as if the problem were a handful of cowardly people in a handful of bad rooms. It isn't. What I'm describing is closer to an operating system than a character flaw. It is the water the fish doesn't know it's swimming in. In the city I know best — and I offer it as a proxy for a great many legacy cities like it — timidity is not the exception. It is the norm, the ambient culture, the default setting that shapes how boards behave, how agencies behave, how nonprofits and banks and even churches behave. People who are personally brave, who have fought for everything they have, will sit in a meeting and watch a plainly wrong thing go unaddressed — because the culture has taught them that raising it is what makes you strange. Naming the problem is what marks you as the outsider. Not the problem itself.

That reframe matters more than it might seem, because it changes the strategy entirely. If the issue is a few bad actors, you replace them. If the issue is the operating system, replacing people changes nothing — the new people inherit the same defaults. You are no longer solving for a person. You are solving for a culture. And you cannot shame a culture into courage.

Here is the part that took me longest to understand. We tend to treat the barriers in front of our communities as logistical — a transportation problem, a funding problem, a scheduling problem, an information problem. And those barriers are real. But underneath almost every logistical barrier I have ever worked on sits a psychological one, and the psychological barrier is the one that actually stops people. Access is psychological before it is logistical. You can move the clinic three blocks closer, make the form shorter, hold the meeting at a better hour — and still watch people not come, because the true obstacle was never the distance or the form or the hour. It was fear. It was a story someone had already been told about whether a place like that was for a person like them. Solve only the logistics, and you will be baffled by how little moves.

When you sit with all of this long enough, there is a temptation to despair — to conclude that the apathy is in the air and the water, that it has infected everyone, that the whole place is sleepwalking. I feel that pull more weeks than I'd like to admit. But despair is just timidity wearing a more sophisticated outfit. It, too, is a way of not fighting.

So what is the alternative? Not motivation. Not another round of inspiration that fades by Thursday. The alternative is method.

The discipline I keep returning to is one I think of as recon before rebuild, and I take it, without apology, from Nehemiah. For those who don't know him: Nehemiah was an Old Testament leader, gutted by the news that the walls of his city lay in ruins. He didn't let the grief sink him — he took the burden and the pain and turned them into the fuel that rallied a demoralized people to rebuild the walls. But before he organized anyone, he did something easy to skip past: he rode out at night, quietly, and surveyed the rubble. He counted the gaps. He mapped what was still standing before he ever lifted a stone. That sequence is the whole thing. Most rebuilding efforts fail not because people won't work, but because they start swinging hammers before they've done the reconnaissance — before they know what assets are already there, what still stands, who is already doing the work, and what foundation they are actually building on.

Those two motions — counting the gaps and seeing what still stands — are the whole of honest reconnaissance, and most of us are willing to do only one. Some people can only see the ruin; others can only see the promise. Real recon requires the stomach for both.

The first motion is the painful truth, and in my city we are fortunate — if that is the word — to have it documented with a rigor that leaves no room for comfortable denial. Dr. Marc Levine, founding director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, has spent years building indices of African American and Hispanic well-being that measure how our communities fare against the nation's largest metropolitan areas across dozens of indicators: employment, income, health, incarceration, the conditions facing our children. I will not soften the findings. Milwaukee ranks dead last among those metros on the well-being of its Black community, and not by a little — and on some measures, Black Milwaukee is worse off now than it was four or five decades ago. Anyone serious about moving this city has to sit down inside those numbers before doing anything else. Too many won't. They arrive with energy and a plan and no reconnaissance, and their good intentions break against a reality they never surveyed. You cannot rebuild a wall whose breaches you refuse to count.

But if the deficit data were the whole story, the only honest response would be despair — and I have already told you what I think of despair. So there is a second motion, and it is just as disciplined: the mapping of what still stands. I have had the privilege of doing exactly this kind of asset reconnaissance through the BLEST Hub — the Black and Latino/a Ecosystem and Support Transition Hub. Dr. Rob Smith and I conceived and co-founded it at Marquette University's Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach; Dr. Gabe Velez joined shortly after and worked with us to build it into the research engine it is today. Its central instrument is an ecosystem map: a visual inventory of the nonprofits, schools, government offices, grassroots groups, and coalitions that surround Black and Latino/a young people as they move from middle school toward college and stable work — and, just as important, a map of how those actors connect to one another. That last part is the whole point. A deficit study counts what is missing; an ecosystem map reveals the connective tissue that is already there — the relationships and partnerships that a numbers-only account renders invisible. Where the well-being indices count the breaches in the wall, the ecosystem map shows what is still standing, and who is already holding it up. Both pictures are true. Both are reconnaissance. And you are not ready to build until you have done both — until you can hold the devastating index in one hand and the map of living assets in the other, and refuse to set either one down.

I have learned to distrust any plan that begins from scratch, because almost nothing begins from scratch. The relationships exist. The buildings exist. The people who showed up during the last crisis are still reachable. The work you did years ago left a map, if you'll bother to read it. Recon before rebuild is the refusal to insult the ground you're standing on by pretending it's empty.

Even the work I am proudest of originating did not begin in a vacuum. It came as an answer to a question someone else had the wisdom to ask — a request that reached me only because of what others had invested in me years before.

And once the reconnaissance is done, there is a second discipline — one of the hardest for good-hearted people to accept. You go with who'll go. You do not wait for everyone to be ready. Readiness is not the precondition for movement; movement is what eventually produces readiness in others. The people willing to move now are worth more than the larger crowd waiting to be convinced, because when the willing ones move, they become the visible proof that something is happening — and the visible proof is what finally draws the hesitant. You cannot drag a whole city across the line at once. You can move the ones who'll move, and let their motion do the recruiting.

None of this requires the absence of fear. I want to say that plainly, because the myth of the fearless leader does real damage. I am often afraid. I am afraid of what it costs to be the one who names the wrong thing in the room. But I've made peace with a harder arithmetic: I am also afraid of what happens if I don't. And between those two fears, only one of them ends with anything getting built.

The quiet closing is quiet because no one contests it. That is its whole power — and also its only weakness. It cannot survive being named, resisted, and outlasted by people who have counted the rubble, who know what still stands, and who have decided to build with whoever will pick up a stone.

We don't have to accept the concession. We can stay on the wall. We can also do the recon and agree to rebuild while programs and institutions while there is still time. The needs are still here.

Don’t quit. Let’s rebuild these walls.

One of the disciplines I’m trying to develop is paying attention to how ideas evolve.

Recently, Mahir Ahmed shared a thoughtful post on LinkedIn. During the discussion, Isaac Rowlett referenced my article on Segregated Information and connected the framework to the conversation.

What caught my attention wasn’t simply that Isaac mentioned the article. It was that he found the framework useful enough to apply in a discussion I wasn’t leading.

One of the ways we can know a framework is beginning to develop is when other people begin using it to interpret problems, ask questions, or explain their own experiences. At that point, the idea is no longer confined to the page. It begins to enter public conversation.

Watching that exchange also pushed my own thinking another step forward.

In my original essay, I argued that one of Milwaukee’s greatest challenges isn’t simply residential segregation, educational segregation, or economic segregation. Those realities are well documented. Beneath them lies another, less visible challenge. It’s something I’ve been calling attention to with increasing frequency over the years—what I now describe as “Segregated Information.”

Communities possess different knowledge.

Neighborhoods know things that institutions do not.

Government agencies have information that rarely reaches residents.

Nonprofits often solve similar problems without knowing what others have already learned.

Faith communities serve the same city while operating in parallel.

Researchers generate valuable insights that never become common knowledge.

The result isn’t simply poor communication.

It is fragmented civic intelligence.

When information remains isolated, collaboration becomes more difficult, innovation slows, and communities often solve the same problems repeatedly instead of building on one another’s work.

As I reflected on the LinkedIn discussion, another thought emerged.

The first article primarily described the problem.

The next step is beginning to describe the opportunity.

If segregated information is part of the problem, then integrated information must become part of the solution.

That sounds simple, but I believe it has significant implications.

For decades we’ve focused on integrating schools, neighborhoods, housing, and economic opportunity. Those efforts remain essential.

But perhaps we should also become intentional about integrating information.

What if churches, nonprofits, businesses, neighborhood organizations, researchers, philanthropies, and government agencies viewed themselves not as separate repositories of knowledge but as contributors to a shared body of civic intelligence?

What if one of our greatest untapped resources isn’t creating more information—but connecting the information we already possess?

Perhaps one of the highest forms of leadership today is helping communities learn together.

That is where I believe this framework is leading.

Increasingly, I’m convinced that communities don’t simply suffer from a shortage of resources. They often suffer from disconnected knowledge.

Breaking down information walls may prove to be one of the highest-leverage strategies available for strengthening communities.

I’m grateful to Isaac Rowlett for recognizing the framework and introducing it into a broader conversation, and to Mahir Ahmed for creating the discussion that helped move my thinking forward.

Frameworks don’t emerge fully formed.

They are observed, tested, challenged, refined, and expanded over time.

This one is still developing.

And I suspect its most important applications are still ahead of us.

A Leadership Challenge

If we want stronger communities, we need more than shared goals.

We need shared knowledge.

We need systems that allow ideas, experience, research, and lived wisdom to move across neighborhoods, institutions, and sectors instead of remaining trapped within them.

Integrating information may prove to be one of the most important forms of community organizing in the decades ahead.

A way to think about it:

• Segregated Information → the structural problem.

• Fragmented Civic Intelligence → what communities experience because of that problem.

• Integrated Information → the strategic response.

Nehemiah of the Bible would have fit modern times well. He was a builder. He was an architect. He was a visionary. He was a governor. He was focused.

But, before he was anything of those things, he wept.

He wept for his people.

He wept for his city.

That is easy to miss.

Most of us remember Nehemiah as a builder. A leader. An organizer. A strategist. A man who helped rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in fifty-two days.

But before there was a plan, before there was a speech, before there was a wall, there were tears.

Nehemiah was in Susa, serving as cupbearer to the king. He was not living among the ruins. He was not struggling to survive in Jerusalem. He was close to power, living in relative comfort, doing what he was supposed to do.

Then he asked a question.

How are the people?

How is Jerusalem?

That question changed his life.

His brother reported that the survivors were in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and its gates had been burned with fire.

When Nehemiah heard this, the text says he sat down and wept.

He mourned.

He fasted.

He prayed before the God of heaven.

Before God rebuilt Jerusalem, God broke Nehemiah’s heart.

That is often how purpose begins.

Not with applause.

Not with a title.

Not with a platform.

Sometimes purpose begins with the thing that breaks your heart and will not let you go.

Everybody does not cry over the same thing. Everybody is not burdened in the same way. Some pain belongs uniquely to you. Some concern keeps showing up in your prayers, your dreams, your conversations, your quiet moments, because God has placed it on your heart.

That does not mean no one else cares.

It means God may be calling you to respond.

Nehemiah’s tears were not weakness. They were revelation.

They revealed what mattered to him.

They revealed what God was stirring in him.

They revealed where his comfort would no longer be enough.

Many of us want to rush past our pain. Especially men.

We are trained to be strong, steady, dependable, and unmoved. We are told not to let anybody see us sweat. We are taught to carry the weight for our families, our churches, our communities, and our people.

And much of that strength is good.

But sometimes we carry burdens without ever allowing ourselves to grieve. We lead, organize, provide, protect, plan, and fight, while never sitting still long enough to admit:

I am hurting too.

Nehemiah teaches us not to rush past the tears.

He does not immediately organize.

He does not immediately strategize.

He does not immediately call a meeting.

He sits down.

He weeps.

He mourns.

He fasts.

He prays.

There is wisdom in that order.

Pain by itself can produce despair.

Pain with God can produce purpose.

Nehemiah takes his pain to God, and in prayer the burden begins to become direction. His grief does not disappear, but it is transformed. The man who began as a cupbearer becomes a rebuilder.

That is what God can do.

God can take what broke your heart and turn it into the place of your assignment.

God can take your tears and show you where to build.

God can take your burden and reveal your purpose.

But Nehemiah also teaches us that we cannot remain in mourning forever.

At some point, the builder has to rise.

At some point, faith has to move.

At some point, purpose has to walk.

At some point, the wall has to be rebuilt.

Jesus shows us the same pattern in Gethsemane. He agonized. He prayed. He asked that the cup might pass. Yet He reached the place where He could say, “Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.”

The pain was real.

But so was the purpose.

And through His pain, the world was changed forever.

Somewhere, God has given each of us a wall.

A family.

A ministry.

A neighborhood.

A child.

A community.

A wound.

A calling.

A burden that will not let us go.

Do not despise the tears.

Do not rush past the pain.

Do not assume that because it hurts, God is absent.

Sometimes the very thing that breaks your heart is the place where God is calling you to build.

Rise, Nehemiah.

Rise, church.

Rise, people of God.

Let us rebuild the wall.

The challenge is not that Milwaukee lacks assets. The challenge is that we often fail to see them together.

Every Wednesday morning, I spend time with a small group of leaders working at the intersection of health, faith, community engagement, and public life.

Recently, we started by talking about flood recovery.

We ended up talking about the future of Milwaukee.

That was not the agenda.

The conversation moved through food access, neighborhood partnerships, churches, voter engagement, health fairs, community organizing, and data systems. At first glance, those seem like separate topics.

They are not.

As I listened, I found myself reflecting on Nehemiah.

Most people remember Nehemiah for rebuilding the wall.

What often gets overlooked is what happened before the rebuilding.

Nehemiah did not arrive in Jerusalem and immediately start issuing instructions.

He first sought clarity.

He surveyed the city.

He assessed conditions.

He took stock of what remained.

Before rebuilding came reconnaissance.

That struck me because, in many ways, that is what our conversation became.

Not a discussion about what Milwaukee lacks.

A discussion about what Milwaukee already possesses.

There is a tendency in public life to speak about communities primarily through their deficits.

What is missing.

What is broken.

What has been lost.

Those realities matter. They are real. They deserve attention.

But they are not the whole story.

Milwaukee possesses extraordinary assets.

Churches.

Neighborhood organizations.

Community leaders.

Health advocates.

Block clubs.

Residents who care deeply about their neighborhoods.

Relationships built over decades.

Institutional knowledge accumulated through years of hard work.

The challenge is not that these assets do not exist.

The challenge is that too often they exist in isolation from one another.

For years I have argued that one of the greatest costs imposed by segregation and fragmentation is not merely separation.

It is disconnection.

Communities pay a fragmentation penalty.

Organizations work hard but often work alone.

Leaders build relationships that remain confined to particular circles.

Knowledge is accumulated but not always transferred.

Networks are created but not always connected.

The result is that communities can become asset rich while remaining system poor.

As the conversation continued, we found ourselves discussing databases, voter engagement systems, church networks, neighborhood associations, and community partnerships.

At one point I found myself increasingly frustrated.

Not because people were not working.

Quite the opposite.

People have been working for decades.

The frustration came from realizing how often we are forced to rebuild infrastructure that should already be standing.

How many times must we recreate systems?

How many times must we rediscover information?

How many times must we start over?

Those are not merely operational questions.

They are leadership questions.

They are stewardship questions.

They are community questions.

Nehemiah’s challenge was not simply rebuilding walls.

It was organizing people around a shared understanding of reality.

The wall was broken.

The city was fragmented.

The people were discouraged.

Before he could mobilize action, he had to establish clarity.

He had to help people see what was actually there.

That lesson feels increasingly relevant.

The future of Milwaukee will not be built solely through new programs, new grants, or new organizations.

Those things have their place.

But I am increasingly convinced that part of the work before us is helping communities see themselves more clearly.

To recognize existing strengths.

To identify existing relationships.

To understand existing assets.

To connect efforts that are already underway.

In other words, to conduct our own reconnaissance.

This has long been part of the work we do through GLUE.

We often describe it as connecting the air and the ground.

The air is vision.

The ground is reality.

The work is connecting the two.

That begins with understanding the terrain.

Understanding who is already present.

Understanding what is already working.

Understanding where the gaps actually are.

Only then can meaningful rebuilding begin.

The good news is that Milwaukee is not starting from scratch.

The churches are here.

The organizations are here.

The leaders are here.

The relationships are here.

The knowledge is here.

The question is whether we can see them clearly enough—and connect them intentionally enough—to build what comes next.

Nehemiah understood something that leaders in every generation eventually learn.

Before rebuilding comes reconnaissance.

Before strategy comes clarity.

Before movement comes understanding.

The walls may be broken.

But the bricks are still here.

This week, during one of our regular leadership conversations, we found ourselves talking about caregiving, clinic closures, Medicaid cuts, food insecurity, housing instability, and the quiet exhaustion settling over so many families and community organizations.

But underneath all of those topics was a deeper issue:

What happens when systems lose contact with the people they are supposed to serve?

That question has been at the center of my work through GLUE for nearly two decades.

In fact, I recently reposted an old GLUE diagram from 2008 — a reminder that some of the core challenges facing Milwaukee and Great Lakes cities today are not new. The language evolves. The technology changes. The crises shift shape. But many of the underlying structural problems remain remarkably consistent.

One of the central ideas behind GLUE has always been what I call:

The Air and the Ground

The “ground” is where life is experienced directly.

It is:

- the caregiver trying to keep a parent alive,

- the church helping people with food and gas,

- the clinic trying to stabilize patients,

- the family trying to hold onto housing,

- the organizer responding to immediate crises,

- the student lost inside a broken bureaucracy.

The ground is immediate.

Human.

Urgent.

But then there is the “air.”

The air is where systems operate.

It is:

- governance,

- policy,

- law,

- budgets,

- funding formulas,

- institutional leadership,

- regulations,

- data systems,

- media narratives,

- and political power.

The air determines what resources move.

Who gets protected.

Who gets ignored.

What survives.

What disappears quietly.

Most people spend their lives operating primarily in one realm or the other.

Some live entirely on the ground:

responding to emergencies,

solving immediate problems,

keeping people alive.

Others operate almost entirely in the air:

speaking in abstractions,

attending meetings,

producing reports,

moving policy,

or managing systems from a distance.

But communities break down when the air loses touch with the ground.

That is when:

- clinics close quietly,

- vulnerable people disappear into bureaucratic cracks,

- students get misadvised and pushed out,

- caregivers become invisible,

- churches become emergency welfare systems,

- and institutions continue functioning administratively while communities deteriorate socially.

One of the striking things about this week’s discussion was realizing how many people in Milwaukee are functioning as informal emergency infrastructure without recognition, protection, or support.

Caregivers.

Churches.

Community health workers.

Small nonprofits.

Organizers.

Families.

Everybody is improvising.

And increasingly, many of us are recognizing that compassion alone is not enough.

Compassion without structure eventually becomes exhaustion.

That realization is changing the conversation.

For years, much of our work in cities like Milwaukee has focused on responding to crises after they happen. But we are entering a season where we must also focus on understanding and redesigning the systems producing those crises in the first place.

That means:

- institutional accountability,

- legal strategy,

- governance reform,

- public policy,

- systems mapping,

- communications infrastructure,

- and stronger bridges between community experience and institutional power.

This is why the “air and ground” framework matters.

Communities need people who can see both.

People who understand the human realities on the ground —

and the systems operating in the air.

Because ultimately, the future of cities like Milwaukee will depend on whether we can reconnect the two.

The air.

And the ground.

Two months ago, we highlighted a major milestone in Detroit:

A record-high 83.2% graduation rate—evidence that sustained progress is possible, even in cities facing deep, historic challenges.

(We previously reflected on that progress here is a link to the story: [Detroit Story])

This week, a column by James E. Causey brings us back to Milwaukee—with a different (but not surprising) kind of headline.

• Low reading proficiency.

• High absenteeism.

And a simple but important idea:

What if we created stronger incentives for students to attend school?

At first glance, the question might feel narrow—and the statewide politics of race, class and urban vs. urban vs rural almost assures it will be controversial.

But beneath it is something much more important.

Milwaukee is not just asking how to improve attendance.

Milwaukee is asking how to re-engage its students.

The Problem Beneath the Problem

This is not a new challenge for Milwaukee.

It is a persistent, long-standing issue—one the city has wrestled with for years and decades, without a sustained, coordinated response at the scale required.

The perennial data continues to reflect that reality:

• Too few students are reading at grade level

• Too many students are chronically absent

These are not isolated issues (we could stretch further into math scores and suspension rates but will hold that for another article.

They are deeply connected.

Students who are not present cannot learn.
Students who are not engaged will not persist.

And when those patterns persist across thousands of young people, the result is not just an education gap—

It is a systems-level failure.

Why the Incentive Idea Matters

Causey points to a model already in motion in Detroit:

Students are incentivized to attend school—financially and structurally—and attendance has improved.

That matters.

Because it reframes the issue.

Instead of asking why aren’t students showing up?

It asks: What would make school worth showing up for?

That shift—from blame to design—is significant.

Incentives are a meaningful part of the conversation—and they point us in the right direction.

They also open the door to a broader question:

How are our systems designed to support student engagement in the first place? (A question all of our public education institutions are wrestling with in real time.)

What Detroit Actually Shows Us

As we’ve noted in prior reflections on Detroit’s recent progress, improvements of this scale are rarely the result of a single intervention.

Detroit’s gains reflect something more fundamental:

Alignment.

• Alignment between schools and student supports

• Alignment between policy and practice

• Alignment between expectations and resources

• Alignment between institutions and community realities

Incentives may be one piece of that system.

But they are not the system itself.

Milwaukee Already Has the Pieces

This is what makes this moment so important.

Milwaukee is not starting from scratch.

The city already has:

• A public school system

• A strong public library network

• Community-based organizations

• Faith institutions

• Cultural and civic assets

• Good “bones” in an initiative called MCubed, a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee Public Schools

Even the infrastructure referenced in the current conversation—library access, community partnerships, engagement strategies—already exists in some form.

So the issue is not the absence of ideas.

A Complicating Reality We Must Acknowledge

At the same time, this work is unfolding in a challenging environment.

Across the country—and here in Milwaukee—political headwinds are causing many public institutions to step back from targeted strategies designed to close equity gaps, particularly those focused on Black and Brown boys and young men — names are changing, budgets are shrinking and commitments are in question.

That reality matters.

Because the students most impacted by absenteeism and literacy challenges are often the same students those strategies were designed to support.

Pulling back from that work does not eliminate the need.

It simply makes alignment more difficult—and more urgent.

As part of its role as a local backbone for My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, Milwaukee will be exploring this tension more deeply in the months ahead—working to understand how to continue advancing outcomes in a shifting policy environment.

A Clearer Frame for This Moment

The central challenge is not the absence of ideas.

It is the absence of alignment across systems, institutions, and efforts.

At GLUE, focused on innovation in cities of the Great Lakes, we operate from a key premise:

The programs, institutions, and efforts already exist—
they are simply not connected and well aligned.

That is the work.

And that is the opportunity.

A Better Question for This Moment

The current conversation is centered on incentives.

That’s a meaningful place to begin.

But it is not the full question.

The better question is:

What would it take to align Milwaukee’s systems around student success?

That includes:

• Attendance incentives

• Literacy strategy

• Family support systems

• Safe and reliable access to school

• Community-based engagement

• Clear pathways though institutions

• Clear accountability across institutions

And most importantly:

A shared commitment to outcomes with deep commitment between institutions and community.

A Regional Opportunity

This is not just a Milwaukee story.

Across the Great Lakes region—Milwaukee, Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland—cities are facing similar challenges.

And in some cases, demonstrating meaningful progress.

That creates a powerful opportunity:

To learn across cities.
To adapt what works.
To move faster together than any one city could alone.

Closing

The question raised by James E. Causey is an important one:

How do we get students to show up?

It deserves attention.

But it also opens the door to a larger question:

How do we build a system worth showing up to?

If Milwaukee can answer that question—through alignment, coordination, and shared responsibility—the impact will extend far beyond attendance.

It will shape literacy.
Opportunity.
And the long-term future of the city.

The moment is here.

The pieces are already in place.

What happens next depends on whether we can bring them together.

Closing Note

Appreciation to James E. Causey for continuing to elevate this conversation. Read his article here: MPS has abysmal reading scores and truancy. Here’s a remedy

This reflection was prompted by a colleague at Milwaukee County who raised a question about public awareness. It’s worth noting: the County has been more intentional than most public institutions in disseminating information and creating feedback loops–often working against the grain of the broader culture.

Beyond Segregated Neighborhoods

We often talk about Milwaukee as one of the most segregated cities in America.

We point to neighborhoods.
We point to schools.
We point to disparities in health, income, and opportunity.

All of that is real.

But after more than 30 years working across public systems in this city, I’ve come to believe something else:

Information may be the most segregated resource of all.

What Segregation Really Does

When we think about segregation, we usually think about where people live.

But segregation also shapes:

• What people know

• When they know it

• And whether they are positioned to act on it

Information about programs, policies, procedures, and resources exists.

But it rarely penetrates with the breadth or depth necessary for people to:

• access it,

• trust it,

• or organize around it.

So even when resources exist…
Even when policy shifts happen…
Even when investments are made…

The impact is uneven–because awareness is uneven.

This Is Not About Blame

This is not a finger-pointing exercise.

It’s a systems observation.

In a segregated city, networks are fragmented.
Trust is uneven.
Institutions and communities are often disconnected.

So information doesn’t flow cleanly–it pools, stalls, and circulates within silos.

What Change Management Teaches Us

One of the disciplines we can draw from is change management.

John Kotter, a leading scholar in the field, makes a critical point:

Leaders consistently under-communicate by a multiple–often by a factor of 10 or more.

Even in well-functioning organizations, communication falls short.

So what happens in a city like Milwaukee (and likely other deindustrialized Great Lakes cities)–with decades of structural segregation, fragmented systems, and uneven trust?

The communication challenge isn’t just present.

It’s amplified.

A Paradox in Plain Sight

Milwaukee is not lacking in communication channels.

We have:

• A major daily newspaper

• Black newspapers

• Hispanic media outlets

• Radio stations serving specific communities

• Social media networks

• Public officials who reflect the communities they serve

And yet–

Information is still unevenly distributed.

Not because people don’t care.
Not because institutions aren’t trying.

But because the structure of the city itself disrupts the flow of information.

Why This Matters

If information is segregated, then:

• Access to opportunity is segregated

• Participation in decision-making is segregated

• Even the ability to respond to crises is segregated

And perhaps most importantly:

Our ability to coalesce–to move together–is limited.

You cannot build collective action on uneven awareness.

Toward a Different Approach

If we’re serious about change–real change–then communication cannot be treated as an afterthought.

It has to be treated as core infrastructure.

That means:

• Reaching beyond traditional channels

• Repeating messages far more than we think is necessary

• Translating policy into everyday language

• Meeting people where they are–not where we assume they are

And most of all:

Designing systems where information flows across boundaries–not just within them.

Final Thought

Milwaukee’s challenges are often framed in terms of resources, policy, or politics.

But beneath all of that is something more foundational:

Who knows what–and when.

Until we address that, we will continue to see well-intended efforts produce uneven results.

Because in a segregated city,
even information doesn’t move freely.

Reflections on the Road to Jerusalem

On a hazardous Sunday morning, when weather warnings might have reasonably kept many people at home, the sanctuary at Progressive Baptist Church was still filled with praise.

There is something powerful about a congregation that gathers anyway.

Something sacred about people who choose presence — even when conditions are uncertain.

That theme — presence — became the doorway into a deeper reflection on the journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem.

Because as the Gospel narrative moves closer to the cross, everything intensifies.

The miracles intensify.

The crowds intensify.

The expectations intensify.

And so do the pressure and persecution.

This is not accidental.

It is the unfolding of purpose.

Presence Creates Pressure

In John 11, Jesus arrives in Bethany after Lazarus has already died.

This is a troubling text if we read it honestly.

Jesus had been informed.

He knew the urgency.

He loved Lazarus, Martha, and Mary.

Yet he did not move immediately.

By the time he arrives, grief has already taken hold.

Funeral rituals have begun.

Hope feels buried along with the body.

And yet, paradoxically, it is the very presence of Jesus that creates new pressure.

Mary and Martha both say essentially the same thing:

“Lord, if you had been here…”

Presence creates expectation.

Expectation creates pressure.

When people believe you carry power — spiritual, emotional, institutional, or social — they will often press you to act according to their timeline.

But divine purpose is rarely synchronized with human anxiety.

Pressure Reveals Purpose

What appears to be delay is often preparation.

Jesus is not indifferent.

He is intentional.

He declares:

“This sickness will not end in death.

It is for God’s glory…”

The pressure surrounding Lazarus’ death becomes the stage upon which resurrection power will be revealed.

And this is true in our lives as well.

Pressure is not always a sign that something is wrong.

Sometimes pressure is evidence that something significant is about to be revealed.

Families feel pressure.

Churches feel pressure.

Cities feel pressure.

Leaders feel pressure.

But pressure can refine purpose.

It can force clarity.

It can deepen faith.

It can expose systems that are more invested in control than in truth.

Power Revives Dreams

Standing outside the tomb, Jesus weeps.

Slow down to take in this moment. This moment matters.

Before demonstrating divine authority, he demonstrates divine empathy.

He is not a distant miracle worker.

He is a present Savior.

Then he speaks the words that change everything:

“Lazarus, come forth.”

A man wrapped in burial cloths walks back into the world of the living.

Families are restored.

Hope is revived.

Dreams are resurrected.

This is not merely a private miracle.

It is a public sign.

Locally, it changes a household.

Regionally, it reshapes belief.

Nationally, it heightens tension.

Prophetically, it accelerates the journey to the cross.

Power does not simply solve problems.

Power disrupts narratives.

Testimony Invites Persecution

John’s Gospel makes clear that after Lazarus is raised, many believe in Jesus.

But belief is not the only response.

Fear spreads among religious authorities.

Political calculations begin.

Strategies of containment emerge.

Some systems do not celebrate breakthrough —

they interrogate it.

Transformation often reveals the insecurity of institutions that are more invested in preserving their authority than in embracing truth.

This dynamic is not limited to ancient Jerusalem.

It plays out in boardrooms.

In civic life.

In denominational structures.

In community movements.

When truth emerges, people must decide whether to testify or to retreat.

One of the most powerful moments in the Gospel comes from another healing story, when a formerly blind man simply declares:

“One thing I do know — I was blind, but now I see.”

He refuses to capitulate.

He stands calmly on his testimony.

There is power in that.

The Road to the Cross

The raising of Lazarus is not just a miracle story.

It is a turning point.

From this moment forward, the opposition becomes organized.

The timeline toward crucifixion accelerates.

Presence has created pressure.

Pressure has revealed purpose.

Purpose has demonstrated power.

Power has provoked persecution.

This is the rhythm of redemptive leadership.

It is also the rhythm of faithful living.

If we follow Christ seriously, we should not be surprised when moments of breakthrough are followed by moments of resistance.

The cross is not a detour in the story.

It is the destination.

But so is the resurrection.

Faith for the Journey

On that Sunday morning, the sermon concluded not only with reflection but with response.

The doors of the church were opened.

An altar call was extended.

A young man named Quran stepped forward to accept Christ.

In that moment, the ancient story became present reality again.

A life was being raised.

A future was being rewritten.

A testimony was being born.

This is why the Church gathers.

This is why the Gospel still matters.

Because the same Christ who stood outside Lazarus’ tomb still calls people into new life today.

And for those of us walking our own road to Jerusalem — whether in ministry, leadership, public service, or personal struggle — the lesson remains:

Stay present.

Endure pressure.

Trust purpose.

Walk in power.

Stand firm through persecution.

The story is not over.

Last week, I participated in a community gathering hosted by James Causey and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled Behind the Gun: The Milwaukee Gun Owners Safety Summit.

The event took place at Prince Hall and brought together a wide range of voices — journalists, firearm safety instructors, violence prevention practitioners, faith leaders, public sector representatives, and residents deeply concerned about the future of our city.

What struck me most was not simply the topic.

It was the room.

Resource tables lined the space. Organizations large and small. City and county departments. grassroots initiatives. Individuals with lived experience. People who spend their days — and often their nights — trying to interrupt violence, support families, mentor young people, and stabilize neighborhoods.

This was not symbolic participation.

These were practitioners. Builders. Responders. Conveners.

Among those present were representatives connected to Prolific Arms and Advanced Safety Consultants, 414 LIFE, the City of Milwaukee’s Office of Community Wellness and Safety, Running Rebels and Black Men Organizing, the Milwaukee Fire Department, WAVE Educational Fund, Mothers Against Gun Violence, Safe & Sound, Heal the Hood, Bridge Builders Milwaukee, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, and others.

Each table represented a different strategy. A different philosophy. A different access point into prevention. But collectively they reflected something that I see repeatedly across Milwaukee.

We have extraordinary talent.

We have extraordinary commitment.

We have extraordinary presence.

What we are still learning how to do — consistently and at scale — is work together in ways that match the urgency of the challenges we face.

The Ecosystem Is Real — and So Is the Challenge

Milwaukee does not lack effort.

There is a significant number of committed players operating across the landscape. Milwaukee County continues to invest in violence prevention strategies and partnerships. The City of Milwaukee’s Office of Community Wellness and Safety has built new frameworks and initiatives. The Medical College of Wisconsin is deeply engaged in research and public health approaches to violence. Credible messenger programs and community-based organizations are doing daily street-level intervention work.

Activists, pastors, mentors, organizers, and neighborhood leaders are carrying enormous responsibility in their communities.

In many ways, we are building an impressive ecosystem.

But ecosystems only reach their full power when they function as systems.

The real opportunity for Milwaukee is not simply launching more initiatives. It is strengthening the connective tissue between the ones that already exist.

That is not easy in a city and region that has long been shaped by segregation, institutional silos, fragmented governance, and cultural mistrust. These patterns do not only affect violence prevention. They shape how we approach education, health, housing, workforce development, and civic life more broadly.

Breaking through that culture will require intentional collaboration, shared learning, and a willingness to move beyond organizational identity toward collective impact.

Encouragingly, efforts are underway across sectors to do exactly that.

Lessons From Other Communities

I do not claim to be an expert in violence prevention.

But I do spend a great deal of time thinking about what success could look like for Milwaukee.

Through my involvement with the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, I have had opportunities to learn from communities across the country that have been recognized for making measurable progress at the population level.

More than fifty communities have received certification through that work. Within that broader group, four communities have emerged as model cities for demonstrating sustained progress using population-level data.

One of the most frequently cited examples is Newark, New Jersey.

Leaders there point to a dramatic reduction in violence over time — including a decrease in homicides of more than 50%, with some analyses placing the reduction closer to 55%.

In conversations with practitioners and civic leaders in Newark, one distinction has surfaced repeatedly. Their progress was not driven by a single intervention or isolated initiative. It was shaped by a long-standing culture of collaboration among public agencies, community organizations, researchers, funders, and residents.

They shared data.

They coordinated strategies.

In some cases, they aligned — and even shared — funding streams.

At one point, the Newark Police Department transferred a portion of its budget to support the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. Black and brown community leaders had also spent years building trust and continuity across institutional boundaries.

Milwaukee’s context is different. Our ecosystem is developing in its own way. But the underlying lesson remains relevant: sustained collaboration is often a defining feature of communities that successfully move the needle on violence at scale.

Moving From Conversation to Continuity

Spaces like the March 7 summit matter because they help build awareness and relationships.

They also remind us that prevention work cannot be episodic.

Later this month, Black Men Organizing will host Part Two of an intergenerational conversation on conflict resolution and violence prevention. This year-long series intentionally focuses on cultivating dialogue between adults and youth — strengthening understanding across generations and creating opportunities for shared leadership.

Additional topics in the series will include men’s health and wellness, Black wealth and economics, and youth and education (including an April 18 conversation focused on prostate health and its impact on families).

Similarly, Milwaukee County and partners will continue community conversations on violence prevention and intervention strategies as we move toward the summer months.

These gatherings are not solutions in themselves. But they are part of the infrastructure required for solutions to take hold.

What I Took Away

Leaving the summit, I did not feel discouraged.

I felt challenged.

Milwaukee is full of people who care. Full of institutions attempting new approaches. Full of community leaders who are willing to convene difficult conversations and sustain long-term work.

Our greatest weakness may also be our greatest opportunity.

If we can continue strengthening how we work together — across generations, sectors, and neighborhoods — the collective power already present in this city could become transformative.

The talent is here.

The commitment is here.

The question before us is whether we can align our efforts in ways that produce lasting change.

That work is not easy.

But it is possible.

And many people are already doing their part to make it real.

One of the most surprising chapters in the Gospel of John is chapter 9.

It should be a celebration.

A man who had been blind from birth encounters Jesus. Jesus heals him. The man washes his eyes and returns seeing. It is one of the clearest signs of Jesus’ ministry—fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Isaiah that the Messiah would bring recovery of sight to the blind.

This is the kind of moment where people should be shouting, praising, and rejoicing.

But that’s not what happens.

Instead of celebration, the chapter fills with suspicion, interrogation, fear, and eventually violence. By the end of the story, the man who was healed is thrown out of the synagogue.

All because Jesus healed him.

John 9 teaches us a hard truth: when the light shows up, not everyone celebrates.

Some people cannot handle the light.

The Miracle

Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. The disciples immediately ask the question that people often ask when they see suffering:

“Who sinned?”

Jesus rejects the premise.

“This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Then Jesus heals the man.

The man goes from blindness to sight. It is a moment that should have brought joy to the entire community.

But the reaction is strange.

People begin questioning whether the man is even the same person.

“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”

Some say yes. Others say no.

No celebration. Just confusion.

Sometimes God can do something unmistakable—and people still refuse to see it.

When the System Feels Threatened

Eventually the healed man is brought before the Pharisees.

Now the problem becomes clear.

Jesus healed him on the Sabbath.

Instead of celebrating the miracle, the religious leaders start protecting the system.

They interrogate the man.
They question his parents.
They apply pressure.

The parents are afraid to speak openly because the leaders had already decided that anyone who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue.

Fear enters the story.

And fear silences people.

The Power of a Testimony

The man who was healed cannot answer every theological question they ask him.

But he does not need to.

He simply says:

“One thing I know: I was blind, but now I see.”

That line has echoed through churches for centuries.

It is the power of testimony.

You may not be able to answer every argument.
You may not be able to explain every detail.

But no one can take away what God has done in your life.

When Truth Becomes Dangerous

The more the man tells the truth, the more hostile the leaders become.

Eventually they insult him and throw him out.

Think about how tragic this moment is.

This chapter should have been a celebration.

Instead, the community becomes hostile toward the very evidence of God’s work.

Why?

Because truth sometimes threatens power.

Light sometimes exposes darkness.

And when that happens, people who are invested in the darkness often react with anger instead of humility.

I’ve Seen This Before

John 9 is not just an ancient story.

It still happens.

Sometimes when truth shows up, people celebrate.

But sometimes truth threatens someone’s position, reputation, or authority.

And when that happens, instead of joy, you see:

• denial

• intimidation

• pressure

• gaslighting

• exclusion

I have seen this dynamic play out in my own life.

During my thirteen years at Milwaukee Area Technical College (an institution with incredibly potential), there were moments when real transformation was possible—moments when systems could have shifted in ways that would have opened doors for students and communities that had long been overlooked. Those moments required courage. They required leaders willing to embrace what I often call productive disruption—the kind of disruption that challenges the status quo in order to produce something better.

But too often, the transformational opportunity was set aside.

Not because the ideas were wrong.
Not because the need was unclear.

But because real change can threaten existing structures, and institutions sometimes choose stability over transformation.

John 9 reminds me that this pattern is not new. When the blind man received his sight, the miracle should have been celebrated. Instead, the system began asking questions designed not to understand the miracle, but to protect itself from its implications.

That tension between transformation and institutional self-protection has existed for centuries.

When light exposes what needs to change, people have a choice: celebrate the transformation or defend the structure.

The Part of the Story We Should Never Miss

After the leaders throw the man out, something beautiful happens.

Jesus goes and finds him.

The system rejected him.

But Jesus received him.

The chapter begins with Jesus meeting the man in his blindness.

And it ends with Jesus meeting him again after he has been rejected.

That’s the gospel.

When the world pushes you out for telling the truth, Christ still comes looking for you.

The Question the Story Leaves Us With

John 9 forces every reader to ask a question.

Who are we in the story?

Are we the healed man who stands on what God has done?

Are we the fearful parents who stay silent?

Or are we the religious leaders so committed to being right that we refuse to see what God is doing?

Because the light is still shining.

The question is not whether the light is present.

The question is whether we are willing to see it.

If this reflection was meaningful to you, consider sharing it with someone who needs encouragement today.

On the day war was formally announced, I posted a short, blunt, and rhetorical question:

“Murdered Citizens in Minneapolis.

Pedophilia in the Epstein Files.

Now, War in Iran.

This is Winning in USA???”

The point was not subtle.

If those are the headlines — murder, scandal, war — then the claim of “winning” deserves examination.

The question was rhetorical, but the moment was not.

The Dialogue That Followed

The thread filled quickly. Most responses leaned in the direction of my concern. That is natural within any network of relationships.

But not exclusively.

A handful of voices defended decisive action. They argued that removing a regime figure associated with repression and proxy warfare represents strength and deterrence. That escalation, in this view, may prevent greater violence.

Others raised concerns about legitimacy, unintended consequences, diplomatic breakdown, and whether such action — especially if undertaken without broad deliberation — risks deepening instability rather than resolving it.

These were not shallow reactions. They reflected competing theories of power.

And that is where the divide lives.

Competing Theories of Power

One theory holds that decisive strength prevents greater harm. Remove destabilizing actors. Impose cost. Demonstrate resolve.

Another theory holds that legitimacy, institutional process, and multilateral alignment preserve long-term stability. Escalation without broad deliberation risks accelerating instability rather than containing it.

Both claim to seek safety. Both claim to seek peace.

The disagreement is about how those ends are achieved.

Escalation and Consequence

Since that post, major outlets have confirmed that Iran’s Supreme Leader has been killed in joint U.S.–Israeli strikes. Iran has declared a national mourning period. Bombing operations are continuing.

Multiple outlets are also reporting that a girls’ elementary school in Minab was struck, with more than 100 students killed and dozens more injured.

Murder. Scandal. War. Civilian death.

These are not abstractions.

They are consequences.

The killing of a sitting head of state represents a profound rupture in regional dynamics. The reported deaths of children deepen the moral weight of this moment.

Some will argue that removing a long-standing authoritarian leader justifies the risk. Others will say that civilian casualties fundamentally alter the moral calculus.

What cannot be denied is that we are no longer discussing posture.

We are living in consequence.

What This Clarified

Listening to the responses in that thread clarified something important.

What we were doing — debating, probing assumptions, articulating principles — is precisely what should happen in Congress before actions of this magnitude are taken.

Regime decapitation.

Regional destabilization.

The killing of children.

The risk of retaliation.

These are not personal instincts. They are national decisions.

They deserve deliberation in a chamber where intelligence is tested, dissent is aired, arguments are sharpened, and second- and third-order consequences are weighed publicly.

We may not always trust the quality of that deliberation. We may not always like the outcome. But a flawed deliberative process is still more accountable than insulated executive escalation.

When consequences are this irreversible, democratic guardrails are not procedural formalities.

They are safeguards.

If we are now living with the consequences of war, then the constitutional process surrounding that decision matters more — not less.

Where I Stand

My position has not softened.

I disagree strongly with this administration. I believe its conduct has degraded, diminished, and denigrated the reputation of the presidency. That erosion will not be repaired quickly.

But serious disagreement does not eliminate the need to understand how others reason. Nor does it remove the responsibility to insist on constitutional process when the stakes involve war and irreversible loss of life.

The consequences of war are immense and should never be underestimated.

And when a nation crosses thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the question is not simply who supported or opposed the action.

The question is whether the decision process was worthy of the gravity it carries.

We often talk about literacy as an academic concern. Rarely do we talk about it as a power concern.

Two of the most aggressively withheld rights in American history were the right to read and the right to vote. That was not accidental. Reading literacy and civic participation have always been gateways to power.

But literacy is more layered than we usually admit. I increasingly see three distinct strands of literacy that must converge if communities are going to exercise power effectively: reading literacy, historical literacy, and civic literacy. When those three strands converge, communities develop what I am calling Power Literacy.

Reading Literacy

Reading literacy is the ability to decode, comprehend, and interpret text. It is the foundation of independence.

If you cannot read fluently, you struggle to interpret contracts, understand policy, navigate systems, avoid exploitation, or compete professionally. Reading literacy determines whether someone can access opportunity on their own terms.

But reading literacy alone is not enough.

Historical Literacy

Historical literacy is not memorizing dates or reciting biographies during Black History Month. It is understanding legal history, institutional development, structural exclusion, movement strategy, economic power shifts, and policy evolution.

It is recognizing patterns.

When you are historically literate, disproportionate discipline of Black students may still trouble you — but it does not catch you unaware. You recognize precedents. You recognize recurring structures. You recognize that reform language without structural leverage rarely sustains change.

History does not just tell us what happened. It teaches us how power moves.

Civic Literacy

Civic literacy is the ability to understand how systems function — how school boards operate, how budgets are written, how compliance agreements are monitored, how ordinances are passed, and how elections influence policy.

Civic literacy turns awareness into influence. Without it, frustration accumulates. With it, institutions move.

When the Strands Converge

Reading literacy builds comprehension. Historical literacy builds context. Civic literacy builds navigation.

Together, they build what I am calling Power Literacy — the integrated ability to read, interpret, and strategically engage the language and movement of power.

Power Literacy includes understanding how individuals exercise authority, how institutions consolidate or diffuse influence, how organized communities generate leverage, how disorganized communities lose leverage, how movements sustain momentum (or fail to), and how timing, procedure, and coalition-building shape outcomes.

The language of power is specific. It includes budgets, statutes, board procedures, consent decrees, data reporting, electoral timelines, and governance structures.

If you cannot read the language of power, you cannot exercise it.

Two Local Illustrations

First, consider open-access educational institutions.

In Milwaukee, educational institutions such as Milwaukee Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee have made significant restructuring decisions affecting multicultural and community-facing infrastructure. These decisions have moved forward with limited sustained community input, student input, or alumni input.

When institutions that exist to serve communities restructure without robust stakeholder engagement, it exposes a civic gap.

Institutions often move without fully integrating stakeholder input — not always because leaders are malicious or indifferent, but because systems are structured to respond most clearly to organized, sustained leverage. Power responds to structure.

Second, consider disproportionate discipline of Black students in K–12 public school systems.

Recent reporting in cities such as Milwaukee and Buffalo continues to highlight disparities in student discipline. These patterns persist even in environments where prior oversight agreements and reform commitments have existed.

This is not new. And yet measurable structural change often remains limited.

Parents care deeply. Communities care deeply. But without civic literacy — understanding oversight mechanisms, budget authority, governance structure, electoral cycles, and compliance enforcement — concern does not automatically convert into leverage.

Awareness alone does not move systems.

In both cases, the deeper question is not simply what institutions did, but whether communities possess the coordinated civic capacity to shape what institutions do next.

Segregated Information

Another quiet challenge in many cities is what I would call segregated information.

Processes exist. Oversight mechanisms exist. Public comment structures exist. Board agendas are published. Budget drafts are available. But that information is often siloed, technical, and unevenly distributed.

When information is segregated, power is segregated. Until information flows more freely — and communities are trained to interpret it — institutional accountability will remain uneven.

A Historical Reminder

There was a time when literacy and power were inseparable in Black communities. Reading circles led to voter registration drives. Church meetings doubled as civic academies. Freedom Schools were not only about reading — they were about political formation.

Education was not separated from leverage.

We have often separated them. That separation has consequences.

What This Means Now

For decades, literacy in communities of color has been framed as academic deficiency. What if the deeper deficiency is institutional fluency? What if the real gap is not passion, but Power Literacy?

Communities do not lack concern. We often lack structured civic training in how institutions actually move.

Until reading literacy, historical literacy, and civic literacy are intentionally braided together, we will continue reacting to decisions rather than shaping them.

Power responds to structure.

Communities that organize their literacy organize their leverage. Communities that separate literacy from power will continue reacting to decisions made without them.

If we are serious about durable change, we must braid reading literacy, historical literacy, and civic literacy into something stronger.

Power Literacy.

That is not a slogan. It is infrastructure.

This reflection grows out of recent public conversations in Milwaukee about literacy, history, and civic engagement. Walter Lanier leads Great Lakes Urban Empowerment (GLUE) and Black Men Organizing (BMO) in Milwaukee.

The Bible never asks God’s people to pretend the world is not happening.

In fact, Scripture regularly names the political powers, rulers, and empires of its time—not to center them, but to locate God’s work within real history. Faith is not formed in abstraction. It is forged amid pressure, threat, and competing voices.

Matthew’s Gospel introduces Jesus’ early life this way:

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod…”

That detail matters.

Jesus is born quietly, humbly, almost unnoticed—but not outside the reach of power. The manger is still warm when the world begins to rush in.

Power Reacts When New Life Appears

Herod is not disturbed because a child is born.
He is disturbed because new life always threatens insecure power.

When the Magi ask publicly, “Where is the one who has been born king?” the text tells us that “Herod was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” Light has entered the room, and awareness follows. Power reacts.

This pattern is not ancient history. It is perennial.

Power becomes dangerous when it cannot tolerate the presence of new life or new ideas. When leaders feel threatened, they often turn to manipulation, secrecy, and violence—not because they are strong, but because they are afraid.

Scripture names this not so we fixate on it, but so we are not naïve.

Discernment Is Not Passive

The Magi are often remembered for their gifts, but their most important contribution is their discernment.

They listen.
They observe.
They pay attention.

Herod speaks the language of worship, but his intentions are deadly. He invites cooperation while plotting destruction. This is the world rushing in—layered, complex, deceptive.

And then something crucial happens:

“Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their country by another route.”

Discernment leads to action.

An important leadership skill in chaotic moments is knowing which voices to follow—and which voices to reject. Not every invitation is trustworthy. Not every instruction deserves obedience.

Sometimes wisdom looks like taking another way.

God Speaks Before Danger Manifests

After the Magi leave, the danger intensifies. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream with urgent instruction:

“Get up… take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.”

This is not abstract spirituality. This is survival-level obedience.

God reveals the threat before it fully manifests. God speaks not only to worshipers, but to protectors—to parents, to leaders, to those responsible for others.

Joseph does not debate. He does not delay. He listens—and he moves.

Quiet moments prepare us for the noise we cannot avoid.

Leadership Is Formed Before the Crisis

Before the world rushes in, leadership is formed in quiet places.

The manger.
The dream.
The listening heart.

This is true spiritually, but it is also true organizationally, civically, and personally. The leaders who survive turbulent seasons are not always the loudest or the fastest. They are often the most attentive.

They have learned to listen before they have to react.

A Word for This Moment

We are living in a season where the world is rushing in—politically, socially, globally. Power is loud. Fear is contagious. Distraction is constant.

The Gospel does not tell us to ignore this reality. It tells us to discern it.

Listen carefully.
Do not panic.
Do not be naïve.
And do not confuse noise with authority.

God is still speaking.
The question is whether we are still listening.

Closing Reflection

As we move forward—into new seasons, new responsibilities, new uncertainties—this remains the invitation:

When the world rushes in, listen for the Lord.
And when God speaks, take the way that preserves life.

A Leadership Reflection on Matthew 1:18–25

Advent places us in a strange tension. We are invited to celebrate while still waiting, to sing of joy while carrying uncertainty, to speak of hope while living amid unfinished stories. It is a season that does not rush resolution, and Scripture does not pretend otherwise.

Matthew’s telling of Joseph’s story honors that tension. Before angels speak, before clarity arrives, before the child is named, Joseph finds himself in the wilderness—not a geographic one, but a moral and emotional one. He is confronted with information he cannot reconcile, consequences he cannot avoid, and decisions he cannot delay.

Joseph does not know this is Christmas.

That detail matters. It reminds us that faithful leadership rarely begins with certainty. More often, it begins with responsibility under incomplete information.

The Wilderness of Decision

Matthew describes Joseph as faithful to the law, yet unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace. That single sentence holds enormous weight. Under the law, Joseph had the right to protect his reputation publicly, to accuse Mary, and to be vindicated in the eyes of the community. Justice, narrowly defined, would have supported him.

Yet Joseph chooses restraint.

This is not passivity. It is disciplined righteousness. He refuses to weaponize his legal standing at the expense of another’s dignity. His decision to put Mary away quietly reveals a leader willing to absorb personal cost rather than amplify harm.

Here lies Joseph’s conundrum: to act lawfully would protect himself, but to act mercifully would require sacrifice. Leadership often lives in that space—where every option carries loss, and faithfulness is measured not by outcome, but by posture.

Before the Word Comes

Scripture tells us that after Joseph had considered this, God speaks. That ordering is instructive. Joseph does not wait for divine instruction before engaging his moral imagination. He thinks. He reflects. He weighs his responsibility carefully.

His plan is not a bad plan. It is simply incomplete.

This is where many leaders find themselves: doing the best they can with what they know, while sensing that clarity has not yet arrived. Advent reminds us that this space is not failure—it is formation.

Sometimes the wilderness is not where faith collapses, but where it is refined.

Another Word in the Wilderness

God speaks to Joseph not in public spectacle, but in a dream—after exhaustion, after contemplation, after rest. The word comes quietly, yet decisively. “Do not be afraid.” What Joseph feared most was not uncertainty; it was the cost of obedience.

The word reframes everything. What seemed like disgrace is revealed as divine purpose. What appeared as disruption becomes vocation. Joseph is invited not only to stay, but to name—to claim responsibility for a future he did not initiate but is now called to steward.

This is often how God leads: not by bypassing confusion, but by meeting us within it.

Obedience Without Applause

Joseph wakes up and obeys. There is no recorded debate, no explanation offered to others, no attempt at public vindication. His obedience is quiet, thorough, and costly. He acts without applause.

That may be the most countercultural aspect of this text. Leadership formation today often rewards visibility, speed, and certainty. Joseph models something different: restraint, patience, and trust.

Integrity, as Joseph shows us, often costs us before it clarifies us.

A Word for Leaders in Advent

Many leaders are navigating wilderness moments right now—holding responsibility without resolution, making decisions without affirmation, leading faithfully without knowing how the story will end.

Joseph’s story reminds us that:

• Leadership often unfolds before clarity arrives

• The most faithful move is not always the loudest one

• Another word can come, even in the wilderness

Advent does not demand that we resolve everything before we rejoice. It invites us to trust that God is with us in the waiting—and that quiet obedience can still move the story forward.

Sometimes faithfulness is simply staying present until the next word comes.

Advent has a way of slowing us down—whether we want it to or not.

This season arrives every year at a moment when many of us are tired, uncertain, and carrying more than we planned. The calendar tells us to celebrate, but our lives often tell a different story. We are navigating unanswered questions, unresolved problems, and a persistent sense that clarity has not yet arrived.

What I’ve been noticing—pastorally and personally—is that many people are not lacking faith. They are living in perplexity.

Perplexity is different from having a problem. A problem is concrete. It has edges. It can often be named directly. Perplexity is what we feel when we don’t yet understand what God is doing, when the path forward isn’t clear, and when waiting feels heavier than acting.

Scripture makes room for this.

In Luke 1, Mary is not rebellious or faithless—she is confused. She asks a simple, honest question: “How can this be?” Elizabeth, on the other hand, has lived with a lifelong problem—years of disappointment and unanswered prayer. God meets them both, but not in the same way and not on the same timeline.

What’s striking is this: joy shows up before resolution.

Mary doesn’t receive all the details. Elizabeth doesn’t immediately receive the full story. But both receive a word from God—and that word becomes enough to sustain them. Peace does not come from having every answer. It comes from hearing God speak and trusting that God’s promises are not fragile.

This is where Advent teaches us something countercultural.

We are trained to move quickly, solve efficiently, and resolve tension as fast as possible. But some seasons do not require movement. They require stillness. Some moments are not about fixing what’s broken, but about trusting what God has already spoken.

Praise, in this sense, is not denial of reality. It is recognition of faithfulness. It is not pretending that problems don’t exist; it is choosing to magnify God even while those problems remain unresolved.

And waiting—waiting is not passive. Waiting is often the work of faith. It is the discipline of trusting when trusting is not easy.

Advent reminds us that God does not bypass confusion. God meets us there. God is present in the in-between spaces—between promise and fulfillment, between prayer and answer, between perplexity and peace.

So if you find yourself waiting this season, unsure of what comes next, you are not failing. You may simply be standing at the threshold where faith is being formed.

From perplexity to peace.

From problems to praise.

A quiet invitation

As you move through this week, resist the urge to rush clarity. Create space to listen. Be still long enough to hear the word God may already be speaking—and trust that it will be enough for now.

“In the Wilderness: God With Us, God For Us, God Through Us”

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SCRIPTURE FOUNDATION

• Luke 3:1–7 — God’s Word bypasses powerful people and comes to John in the wilderness.

• Isaiah 11:1–10 — Hope rises from unlikely places; a new world of peace is coming.

• Matthew 1:23 — “Emmanuel… God With Us.”

• Genesis 12:1–3 — We are blessed to be a blessing.

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1. GOD WITH US — Presence in the Wilderness

John the Baptist meets God not in a palace, but in a wilderness.

We often meet God the same way.

Wilderness can look like:

• Grief

• Loneliness

• Uncertainty

• Depression or heaviness

• Family challenges

• Financial strain

But the message of Advent is this:

God is with you — right where you are.

Not far away. Not waiting for you to get stronger.

Right here. Right now.

Reflection Question:

Where in your life do you most need to feel God’s presence today?

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2. GOD FOR US — Purpose in the Wilderness

God did not meet John to leave him discouraged.

God met John to prepare him for purpose.

And the same is true for you.

• Your wilderness is not wasted.

• God uses hard seasons to reveal calling.

• You were known before you were born.

• Your struggle may become your testimony.

God is not against you. God is for you — shaping you, strengthening you, preparing you.

Reflection Question:

What might God be preparing you for in this season?

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3. GOD THROUGH US — Mission After the Wilderness

Once John received God’s Word, he moved.

He preached.

He testified.

He blessed others.

He prepared the way.

God’s work in us is meant to become God’s work through us:

• A word of encouragement to a neighbor

• A prayer for someone struggling

• A testimony of what God brought you through

• A simple act of kindness

• A willingness to forgive

• A commitment to serve

God does not need perfect people — just willing people.

Reflection Question:

Who might God want to reach through you this week?

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A SIMPLE ADVENT PRAYER

“Lord, thank You for meeting us in our wilderness.

Strengthen us with Your Word.

Show us our purpose.

And use us to bless someone else.

Be God With Us, God For Us, and God Through Us.

Amen.”

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A FINAL WORD FROM PASTOR LANIER

You may feel alone, tired, or uncertain this Advent season — but God is near.

Just as God met John in the wilderness, God is meeting you in yours.

Hold on to hope.

Hold on to your testimony.

God is not done working.

~ wjl 

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