Spirit in Action

Racial Color-Blindness & Diversity Training can't get us to MLK's Dream, but maybe Race-Conscious Parenting can. Jennifer Harvey is the author of Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America, with both practical & philosophical guidance for those who would like to make the dream real. Jennifer's Ph.D.

In the land of "he who dies with the most toys wins" and where we're taught that more-and-more possessions will make us happy, it's hardly a surprise that hoarding is of epidemic proportions.

While the nation & the state have veered into conservative and even regressive social directions, there has been refuge & hope locally in the Eau Claire City Council, which included a strong progressive majority as of spring, 2018. Even while others were dragging their feet, work was proceding locally on sustainability, reducing the incarceration system, and increasing responsiveness to citizen concerns.

Too many people ignore the power of local government to transform the most crucial aspects of our world, focusing only on our national government. A groundswell of local activism tilted the county board of Eau Claire, WI, in the progressive direction, and the lessons & possibilities are promising around the country. We speak with 3 recent members of the board of supervisors about their experience & motivations: Martha Nieman, Sandy McKinney, & Don Mowry.

Ecologist Huda Alkaff is a founding member and director of Wisconsin Green Muslims, a volunteer environmental justice group based in Milwaukee. She uses her advanced education and her Muslim faith to educate others and forge interfaith collaborations in the service of sustainability.

Throughout his career, Dwight L. Wilson has held many jobs: educator, administrator, chaplain. In each role, he worked to advance equality, opportunity and understanding. He continues this work in his carefully researched historical fiction series Esi Was My Mother, which follows the lives of an enslaved black family from 18th century Africa to the American Civil War. He strives to portray triumphant examples of black stories that will make history come alive for readers.

Host Peterson Toscano visits with 3 Evangelicals fighting climate change, Kyle Meyaard-Shaap, Corina Newsome, & Rev. Josh Gibson. Comic creation, Tony Buffusio from the Bronx, talks climate change in the Bible. Scientist Dr.

Selika Ducksworth-Lawton is Professor of History at UW-Eau Claire and an educator & activist, raising awareness and working for our civil rights. From a rural black Louisianan upbringing, Selika has an incisive perspective on race & cultural dynamics in the USA.

Bias & prejudice are hard-wired in us, we've got the studies to prove it, so what can we do about bias, hate, & division? In Our Search For Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart by Howard J. Ross we explore the mind, our behavior, & our possibility of acting better than we're programmed for.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Eastern, Jewish, Non-affiliated

Robert Friedman, founder of Prosperity Now, & author of A Few Thousand Dollars: Sparking Prosperity for Everyone, says, "Given a chance, low-income people do amazing things and can be, not just beneficiaries, trainees, employees, but entrepreneurs, home-owners, college material, skilled workers, creators of wealth".