What happened to Takeoff is a tragedy. Takeoff was young with a great deal of talent and passion for music. An entire life ahead uncertain of the possibilities but arguably, they were endless. …

Immediately after graduating college, I spent the summer interning with the St. Louis City Fire Department in their ride-along program. St. Louis city fire’s work schedule is 24-hour shifts on and 24-hours off. …

On April 29th, 2014 in Waseca, Wisconsin a concerned citizen called 911 to report that she noticed a young man in an unusual manner walk through her backyard and into a storage locker nearby. When officers arrived to the storage locker to investigate the 911 call, they found seventeen-year-old John…

“My tv still works. I don’t know how. It has a bullet in it.”

Author notes. On Monday I published a piece titled, Just 10 minutes… In response to the publication a reader asked, “if we are to address gun violence as a health crisis what is the diagnosis?” Below is my attempt to answer that question. The underlining diagnosis is historical racism: slavery…

Last night’s incident at the Oscars captured the attention of the entire world — or at least my social media channels made it feel that way. After watching reruns of what happened and then today watching Will Smith’s acceptance speech for Best Actor, I immediately remembered a physical altercation from…

I have for many years been of the strong opinion that writing from a place of anger is foolhardy. The fear is that the anger would cloud how I articulate my thoughts and structure my sentences. The fear is that the reader would liken me to a madman versus an…

Last Tuesday morning I found myself sitting in the waiting room of a local neighborhood muffler shop. A typical mom and pop car repair waiting room with a handful of mismatched chairs, a small tv blaring daytime commercials, tile floor with a third of the tile missing, and brown wooden…

Earlier this week the above photograph was trending on twitter and other social media platforms of Kyle Rittenhouse selecting which jurors would be removed from the jury pool of his homicide trial. It’s a fascinating photograph that I am sure will soon be utilized in school textbooks across the country…