Upstander Reflections

Preface: Last week when confronted with the news of the mass arrests of undocumented workers in Mississippi and subsequent separation of families in the process; I was appalled at the double standard of “justice” in our nation. Pundits flooded the airways with support for one side or the other. Most of it sounded like BS to me.  I struggled to formulate a response that properly magnified the absurdity of the situation. However, an idea came to me late one evening last week. Below is a satirical news article I wrote that attempts to highlight how unjust and unproductive raids like last week’s are in curbing illegal immigration.         Nearly 700 Corporate Executives Detained in Landmark Immigration Raid  -Mike Walsh  Sobbing, eleven year old Madeline Wynne spoke to the camera. “I need my Dad… he’s not a criminal!”   Madeline’s father was arrested along with nearly 700 other corporate executives charged with ...

It’s summer, and that means road trips. We’ve taken a couple long trips to West Virginia and Northern Wisconsin but mostly we have just been tooling around to various places closer to home like beaches, pools, parks and family-friend houses. Call us old fashion (not a stretch for me, I know) but we don’t bring our own music. We don’t use a phone. We don’t have playlists or mixtapes. We don’t even use the CD player. We just listen to the radio. Sure we have our favorite stations when we’re close to home but we also just like to press scan to see what comes up. In the middle of places like Ohio, Indiana or Wisconsin it’s often some evangelical Christian not so politely or subtly letting us know that we’re going to hell. We take that as a good reminder and then we move on to the next station. One time here in Chicago, I popped into a store for a minute and when I came back the kids were listening to Polish rap. Nate liked it so… Leah, Maddie and Nate getting goofy in the b...

Sniffling, Nate, my five year old said, “I want to be Spider-Man for Halloween but I can’t.” Even though it was the middle of June and I have no idea why he was thinking about Halloween, I responded. “Of course you can. Why couldn’t you?” He went on to explain that Spider-Man, the new one from the movie, Into the Spiderverse , has dark skin and fuzzy hair and, unless Nate can change his skin color and hair texture, he can never be Spider-Man.  Spider-Man AKA Miles Morales.  Half African American half Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn.   I will let that soak in for a minute.  People of color have been having conversations like these with their children for years but for me, a White guy raised in the 80s and 90s, this is new.  My childhood was a good time to be Mike Walsh. From the Life Cereal commercials starring a kid named Mikey who looked a lot like me that “likes it,” to Mikey Walsh, the main character and saver of the neighborhood i...

The economy is stronger than it’s been in years. ISIS no longer holds territory in the Middle East and we have less troops fighting in foreign wars than any time since 9/11. On paper our country seems more stable at home and abroad then it’s been in a generation. So, why would I title this post crisis?      2012… Long before Trump started his run for the presidency he seemed to have a theory on what gets votes and consolidates power. Chaos and crises. He ran an election on it, and won. Drain the swamp! Build the wall! Lock her up! Think about it. 2015-2016 was a time of relative stability. The recession was over. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were winding down. Times were good, considering. Yet, chaos and crisis won, even though there was no chaos and crisis. The “swamp” is not drained. The wall is not built. Hillary Clinton is not behind bars.   The game plan has not changed since he took office. He has sowed crises everywhere, b...

One thing that I have learned in my career as a high school teacher is that I should never try too hard to catch someone doing something wrong. I find that when I do, I tend to miss everything else that’s going on. For example, let’s say a student is on her phone in my classroom but she is concealing it in her bag. I know she is on her phone but I also know that this is a difficult crime to prove. If I accuse her of being on her phone, all she has to say is, “no, I was looking for my pencil.” What do I do then? Empty her bag? Check her phone and hope that something she was doing had a timestamp on it so I can prove she was using it at the exact time I accused her of using it? As the meme says, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”        If I concentrate too much on this infraction, my teaching suffers. Learning suffers. Or, maybe, I miss some blatant infraction that is occurring on the other side of the classroom. So, what do you do, Mr. Walsh? D...