Equality

Kristin Lems is insightful, determined, compassionate, and talented, and sees our world with eyes honed by the experience of living in Iran, Algeria, & Mongolia, the last 2 as a Fulbright scholar. She's founder of the National Women’s Music Festival in Champaign-Urbana (this year in Middleton, WI), and got Dr Demento's attention with her music, including the very clever Mammary Glands. Kristin is a professor of ESL/Bilingual Education at National Louis University with their flagship campus in Chicago.

The women's rights effort in Egypt looks different from that of the USA, with some overlap, addressing things like FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and child marriage, but also economic, employment, & other civil rights. Reda Eldanbouki is the founder & executive director of the Women’s Center for Guidance and Legal Awareness (WCGLA), working to ensure that women enjoy all of their human rights. Reda has faced attacks & violence because of his support for women & women's rights.

Barbara Luetke recently retired after 10 years as the Outreach & Literacy Coordinator at the Northwest School for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children and decades more in the field. She's written a number of textbooks in that field.

In Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls, Monique W. Morris orchestrates a vision of ways forward for the healing of the black & brown girls in the USA. Drawing on the science & the art of human change, Monique identifies the obstructions, & spot-lights the ways over, around, & through them.

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.

Many myths, misconceptions, & motivations have kept the USA mired in racism for centuries. Margaret L. Andersen helps move us in productive directions with her new book, Getting Smart About Race: An American Conversation.

Two powerful, and badly neglected, forces in our national history around race are featured in Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up To Change a Nation by author & educator Anna Mae Duane. The 1800's debate between two students of the NY African Free School, James McCune Smith & Henry Highland Garnet, echoes to current issues.

Hellen Lunkuse Waiswa Tanyinga is a women's (and human) rights pioneer in Uganda and the founder of the Rape Hurts Foundation. At the age of 11 she was raped while doing the tradtionally female job of hauling water, and she transformed that pain into healing & power for herself, women, and all abused people.

We need a vision of the better world in order to energize our drive to it, and Martin Schoenhals does an amazing job of providing a scientifically-based vision in Work, Love, & Learning in Utopia - Equality Reimagined. He is a cultural anthropologist who has taught at several universities, including Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and, currently, Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina.

Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, by Chuck Collins, is an excellent and persuasive look at wealth inequality by a man who gave away his inherited wealth when he was 26, and finds common ground and allies across the income spectrum. Chuck is a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies.