Chicago city planner and racial equity public speaker
Kelwin’s Big Ideas
Upcoming Speaking Events
American College of Physicians Internal Medicine meeting
Chicago, Marriott Marquis, April 27, 2022
Kelwin Harris is a city planner and civic engagement professional based in Chicago helping cities and civic leaders create more equitable communities. He’s a public speaker on anti-racist policy systems and solutions.
This is a lecture by Dr. Timuel Black that I recorded in Chicago on my iPhone on Feb. 9, 2019. He was 101 years old. Dr. Black was a Chicago civic leader, organizer, and scholar who shared his wisdom publicly until the end of his life. In this lecture, he illuminates life in the shadows and offers a first-person account of the community formed by segregation and the parallel economic and social institutions that sustained Black Chicago during the Great Migration. Dr. Black’s grandparents were slaves and he became a king. Rest in Power Brother Black!
After recently writing about how Hip Hop music got us through the Covid-19 pandemic, I dug deep into my own crates for this next one. I was a Chicago rapper in the 90s (the golden age of Hip Hop), fully immersed in the culture – with a knapsack on my back, shell-toe Adidas on my feet, and notebooks full of rhymes written in graffiti. I went by the name “24K” (long before the current “24KGoldn” rapper – not saying he bit the name but just saying…just saying). On June 17, 1994 I finished a demo tape with two audio engineersContinue reading “A Demo Tape and a White Bronco – Hip Hop: I Still Love H.E.R.”
With the recent passing of the rapper DMX, I reflected on how the pandemic brought new attention to the importance of music to get people through tough times. I recently spoke with El Da Sensei of the 90s Hip Hop group, Artifacts. I asked him what he thinks about the state of Hip Hop today. He told me simply, “I don’t”. Well said, but I should expect nothing less from one of Hip Hop’s finest golden-era lyricists. He went on to say how most Hip Hop music nowadays sounds the same and lamented the lack of originality. Anyone who knows me knows how muchContinue reading “How Hip Hop and Soul Music turned a Pandemic into a Soundtrack”
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Kelwin 