Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create

Topic: Wake Up Running: Race, Power, and Democratic Space

Presenter(s): Walter E. Fluker

In Wake Up Running: Race, Power, and Democratic Space, I will read from the introduction of my new manuscript, Wake Up Running: Theo-Ethical Reflections on Democratic Space, and reflect on a personal confrontation over a parking space to expose the deeper racial, political, and spiritual fractures shaping American life. This everyday incident becomes a metaphor for the contested and unequal distribution of space, dignity, and power in a nation haunted by the legacies of slavery, structural racism, and white backlash. Tracing historical patterns from Reconstruction through the election of Barack Obama and the rise of Trumpism, reveals how efforts to reclaim democratic space often provoke reactionary forces seeking to reassert dominance. The piece meditates on the ethics of recognition, the culture of meanness, and the soul-crushing weight of systemic injustice. Yet, through a juxtaposition of groaning and hope—grounded in Howard Thurman’s vision of the “growing edge” urges a re-commitment to moral and spiritual resilience. Ultimately, the call is to wake up running, to resist despair, and to embody an active, hope-filled struggle for a more just and inclusive democracy.

About the Presenter(s)

Walter Earl Fluker is a renowned scholar, speaker, and consultant specializing in ethical leadership. He serves as Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership at Boston University, where he previously held the Martin Luther King, Jr. Chair, and currently leads as Distinguished Professor of the Howard Thurman Center at Hartford University for Religion and Peace. Dr. Fluker is also the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and founder of Walter Earl Fluker & Associates, Inc., an organization dedicated to ethical leadership education and consultation. Fluker has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious 2023 Roosevelt Institute Freedom of Worship Award. He was celebrated alongside other distinguished laureates such as Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the late Ady Barkan, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, and Tracie Hall, former Executive Director of the American Library Association. Fluker is married to Sharon Watson Fluker, and together they are the proud parents of four children and grandparents to seven.