Robert C. Koehler

Robert C. Koehler

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Articles by this author

If the fascist . . . tendency that lurks in him and in the situation that surrounds him does come out more fully, he will obviously be aided by the ever more imperial presidency that was created in the decades before he left Trump Tower for the White House. (Photo: Rudi Riet/Flickr/cc) Views
Thursday, November 08, 2018
The Issues That Won't Go Away
How much real change manifested itself in the 2018 midterms? How deeply does the outcome reflect the American soul? Apparently, about 113 million Americans, basically half the electorate, felt compelled to vote in the midterms, revved up either by intense opposition to or support for Donald Trump...
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“This pattern of violence and demeaning of ‘the Other’ has become so deeply embedded in the culture of the U.S. that only a true consciousness transformation will undermine its prevalence in both major political parties.” (Photo: Don Juan Moore/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Mass Murder and American History
“Screw your optics, I’m going in .” This is bigger than hate, this latest mass shooting, last weekend, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which, oh my God, 11 more innocent souls died at the hands of a home-grown terrorist. The president’s anti-immigrant tweets may have been in...
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Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Why Do Only Some Lives Matter?
What would it take for everyone’s life to matter as much as Jamal Khashoggi’s? I ask this question over at the edge of the news, looking for a doorway into the human conscience. Consider: “The U.S. sold a total of $55.6 billion of weapons worldwide in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 — up 33...
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What he’s describing here is a profound social shift, only partially because it seems to curb the rights of the relatively wealthy to live the way they want —from zooming cross-country in their gas-guzzling SUVs to taking a private jet to Saint Barthélemy. (Photo: Mitchell Barnett Architect PC) Views
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Climate Change and Collective Salvation
In the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, as white male privilege reclaims its desperate grip on our future, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report comes out, informing us that we haven’t got much future left in which to avoid . . . I mean implement . . . serious change...
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The sexual assault accusations aren’t his only disqualifying actions. Like Carswell and Haynsworth, his political and judicial record indicate obeisance to beliefs that should not control the nation’s future.(Photo: Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, October 04, 2018
From Carswell to Kavanaugh
These words did in G. Harrold Carswell nearly five decades ago: “I am Southern by ancestry, birth, training, inclination, belief and practice. And I believe that segregation of the races is proper and the only practical and correct way of life in our states. I have always so believed and I shall...
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But beyond the guilt or innocence of the nominee, America’s culture of shame is being torn to shreds as women like Jeanne Woods simply come forward with their stories. (Photo: Alejandro Alvarez/@aletweetsnews/Twitter) Views
Thursday, September 27, 2018
The Curse of Eve
This is so much bigger than Brett Kavanaugh, or the outcome of his nomination. Women are suddenly opening their secret wounds. Their trauma — often many decades old — is becoming, for the first time, public. So are their tears. Enduring a sexual assault is only the beginning of the journey through...
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We respect your sincerity, Ma’am, but please get out of our way. We can’t let unreliable lady memories complicate matters. We’re pushing a serious political agenda here. (Photo: Getty) Views
Thursday, September 20, 2018
The Accusation That Wouldn't Go Away
Sexual assault is such a nuisance, not only, but especially, for Republicans. Here’s the Wall Street Journal editorial board, attempting, with gentlemanly politeness, to dispense with Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh as quickly as possible: “Yet there is no...
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As Jackie and Patricia explained, possible reparations include talking to kids in schools, writing letters to people harmed, doing work in the community gardens — and maybe getting that high school diploma, opening a bank account, getting a decent job. (Photo: Thomas Hawk/flickr/cc) Views
Thursday, September 06, 2018
What Healing Looks Like When Justice Restores
“This isn’t rocket science,” Jackie Ingram said, humorously downplaying her involvement in the Restorative Justice Community Court , a pilot project of the Cook County Circuit Court, which has brought a new, healing-focused system of justice to her community this past year. My thought in that...
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"But we the people have not surrendered. We were outmaneuvered, gerrymandered, removed from the voting roster, but we have not surrendered." (Photo: AP/Bill Ingraham via Flickr) Views
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Reviving the Spirit of ’68
I was a hippie/bicycle delivery boy living in San Francisco when the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago fifty years ago, so I absorbed the chaos, the police riot, from half a continent away, but I knew with absolute certainty that the nation was changing and I was part of it. We...
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"Forests are shrinking at a startling pace — every year, we lose a swath of forest the size of Massachusetts." (Photo: Andy Porter/cc/flickr) Views
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Recreating the Wilderness
The science gets ever more dire. The politics runs the other way. We’ve claimed hold of the planet, but cluelessly, like the sorcerer’s apprentice. Welcomed to the Anthropocene: the age of humanity intertwined with nature. “Climate change is not a problem we have to make go away, in a sense that...
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