Kendrick is executive director of the Cory Glenville Community Center. He has worked with the Greater Hilltop Area Shalom Zone in Columbus serving people in poverty and engaging in advocacy through direct action such as food distribution, low-income housing and job training.
As the pastor of the historic Cory United Methodist Church in the Glenview neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, I have seen firsthand the immense value of physical spaces. Our church has been a beacon of hope, a sanctuary for activists and a platform for advocacy during the civil rights movement of the 20th century. The walls of Cory UMC have borne witness to the enthusiasm of passionate leaders and the birth of transformative ideas. In a society increasingly engrossed in digital realities, we must remember the significance of the tangible.
Our focus may have shifted towards developing sophisticated virtual platforms and augmented realities. Still, we must pay attention to physical surroundings – the spaces that foster human connection, house our history and serve our communities. We must recognize the power of place-making and the importance of civic engagement in shaping these spaces.
There is an urgent need to preserve places that foster opportunities for human interaction, self-sufficiency and a healthy community. Historic preservation, however, extends beyond merely saving old buildings, although that in itself is crucial. It is about preserving the stories within these structures, the narratives of our past that shape our present and future.
Historic preservation is at the heart of environmental justice, racial equity and human flourishing. Post-industrial cities are nursing the wounds of disinvestment and historical redlining; we must view these old edifices not as relics of a bygone era but as vessels of potential and abundance.
These places matter because they give life to our stories. "There are stories in these bricks," I thought as I observed our front steps' careful, selective demolition. Each brick, fired in giant kilns by the companies that built our cities, is a testament to the industry and ingenuity of our forebears. Each tells the story of the brick masons whose skilled hands shaped our streets and created our physical world.
These bricks bear the echoes of the congregations that gathered within their walls, the communities that envisioned places where people could debate ideas freely, share dreams and build a future for generations. They are living testaments to the adaptive reuse of our architectural heritage, a key to preservation-based economic development.
Places matter. Stories matter. They are the physical embodiment of our collective history, the tangible anchor to our shared past. They remind us of our journey, the struggles faced, the victories won, the dreams realized. They are the silent witnesses to our evolution as a society, our growth as a community and our potential as a people.
Over the years, my involvement with the Bridge Alliance's leadership initiatives has significantly deepened my understanding of the importance of place and story-sharing. The programs are a tapestry of diverse experiences, ideas and perspectives, exposing me to unique narratives from various communities across the nation. Engaging in meaningful dialogues, sharing experiences and brainstorming solutions to common issues, I've been privileged to witness the power of shared stories in shaping our understanding of place.
Like the bricks of Cory, our stories and experiences highlight a particular place's unique challenges and opportunities, further emphasizing the significance of preserving these physical spaces —the Bridge Alliance's learning exchange helps us discern that every place has a uniqueness to celebrate. Stories build bridges between communities, foster unity and promote understanding. They are reinforcing belief in the power of places and the stories they hold.
As a spiritual and civic leader, I'm committed to preserving and transforming our historic spaces and championing the cause of placemaking and civic engagement. Let us remember the value of our physical world in the age of virtual realities. Remember that in our quest for technological advancement, we must stay in the bricks and mortar that ground us in our shared history and humanity. Because places matter, so do the stories and people that result from them, making the community a reality.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.