In this episode, Andre and Todd discuss their different views on the threat of racial violence, whether anyone is capable of being pushed to violence, what’s behind the caution that Andre brings to Black-white relationships, and how canceling each other’s views and experiences impedes our ability to have open, honest conversations about race.
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Berwyn Collaborative: Understanding Community Needs
Dec 11, 2024
“We have good people here, and if we have help highlighting our good people, we can connect more, collaborate more, be more creative, and resist harder,” said Berwyn resident Isabel Gonzalez Smith.
On a breezy November Saturday afternoon, members of the Cook County suburban city, had the opportunity to meet with local journalists and be heard at the Liberty Cultural Center in Berwyn, IL.
The listening session was part of the Berwyn Collaborative: Understanding Community Needs, an engagement initiative led by News Ambassadors (NA) in partnership with Cicero Independiente, WBEZ, and Illinois Latino News (ILLN).
The project aims to actively engage residents through surveys and events rather than assuming what they need or want from local news coverage.
“We don’t see the public as an audience,” said Hugo Balta, publisher of ILLN and director of solutions journalism & DEI initiatives at The Fulcrum, who attended the event. “They are collaborators who help shape our news coverage. This project assists us in better understanding what issues matter most to the impassioned people of Berwyn.”
Irene Romulo is the Development and Community Engagement Coordinator for Cicero Independiente, and has played a pivotal role in helping the team navigate the cultural landscape of Berwyn. Romulo hopes this project can help enhance Cicero Independiente’s coverage of the area.
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“We want our news and information to meet the needs of Berwyn residents, we want to reach them in ways that work best for them,” said Romulo. “To be able to do this, we need to take the time to understand the needs of the people who live there.”
The Berwyn Collaborative seeks to understand the needs of Berwyn residents through community engagement by canvassing, sending out local news surveys, and hosting the community listening session. Once the needs of the community are better understood, the collaborative will produce solutions-based stories so that community needs can be met with solutions.
The project’s philosophy is founded on the ideas of Solution Journalism (SJ). Instead of simply highlighting something going wrong, the emphasis in SJ reporting is on how people are moving forward, building up, or responding to an issue.
Solutions Journalism can be loosely defined as “a specific reporting strategy to uplift solutions and common ground, not focused on problems, but on what people can do about them,” said Shia Levitt, director of News Ambassadors. “And then bringing local communities tools that can solve those problems.”
Shia Levitt and the NA team work with young journalists to foster stories shaped in solutions journalism or a depolarization reporting strategy in order to improve coverage of contentious issues. Project director Shia Levitt and the News Ambassadors team have brought solutions journalism or depolarization reporting methods to about 100 student journalists in seven states, impacting more than a half dozen communities across the country. The stories are not meant to be ‘hero worship’ feel-good pieces.
“Instead, solutions journalism stories are rigorous evidenced-based stories on how a response to a problem is working, or really what ways it’s working and what ways it is not,” said Levitt. Stories have to include “what are the limitations of a response someone is trying, and what are the insights and lessons learned that can help others trying to solve that problem in another place.”
Berwyn residents brought a vast range of emotions and opinions to the listening session. A particularly recurring theme was a frustration towards what they perceive to be a normalized culture of corruption amongst certain groups of locally elected officials. Participants also pointed out that there is a lack of transparency when it comes to government spending in Berwyn, and that the community needs a more detailed explanation of how money is allocated by the city council, and how building codes and regulations are decided upon.
“The vast majority [of Berwyn residents] are working class folks, and they don’t have time, and I speak with them personally, to go to the city council meetings or the school board meetings,” said Tomasa Ambriz, Berwyn Township Trustee. “Having someone that you can trust to give you adequate and accurate information at the end of those meetings, it’s vital.”
Many attendees stressed that the lack of accessible and transparent information about city governance is what allows for corruption and mismanagement to take place.
Another common theme was a strong community connection between the residents of Berwyn. One listening session group brainstormed ways in which the community can use grass roots efforts to address representative challenges.
“So we have to be careful about balancing new ideas with old ideas,” said Nester Zaualo, a social work student and Berwyn resident. “And give space for new voices and new ideas and some change, and I think that we have to also support each other in our individual roles [in that process].”
Zaulao also emphasized the importance of having a more detailed statistical framework about representative issues in Berwyn so that, based on those statistics, organizers can set specific short and long term goals.
“You’re talking about advocacy, you’re talking about change,” said Zaualo. “You have to have the numbers to back it up, you have to have the facts. If not, there’s only so much that’s going to happen with your emotions and passion, because I have my own emotions and passions. What’s going to cut through all that is data.”
The event culminated after months of canvassing and surveying the Chicago metropolitan community.
Preliminary survey results show residents want more bilingual resources, transparent information about the increased costs of living in Berwyn, and more police accountability. Residents also said they wanted more transparent news coverage, including positive news about their community.
The next chapter in the reporting project will continue in the new year when reporters will use on-the-ground canvassing, surveying, and listening session feedback to pitch and produce solution journalism-based stories about the Berwyn community.
The Berwyn Collaborative: Understanding Community Needs project is made possible thanks to the generous support of The Listening Post Collective.
Illinois Latino News (ILLN) will be recruiting fellows for the second leg of the Berwyn Collaborative: Understanding Community Needs project in the 2025 spring semester. If you’re a student (2-4+ year college/university) in good standing, and are interested in learning more about participating in the initiative, please email them at info@latinonewsnetwork.com.
Krippner is a solutions-based, investigative journalist who studied at the Northwestern Medill School of Journalism. His work brings to light and analyzes solutions to complex issues in various communities, and he extends local analysis to wider societal trends.
This story was originally published by the Latino News Network
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Hegseth is the wrong leader for women in the military, warn women veterans and lawmakers
Dec 11, 2024
Originally published by The 19th.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Pete Hegseth tries to persuade senators to support him to lead the Department of Defense in the Trump administration, several lawmakers, women veterans and military advocates warn that his confirmation could be detrimental to women in the military and reverse progress in combating sexual assault in the Armed Forces.
Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in the Army National Guard, was named by President-elect Donald Trump on November 12 as his pick for defense secretary. Since then, Hegseth has been the subject of a number of allegations of sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. The most recent spate of news stories have detailed allegations, which Hegseth has denied, related to excessive alcohol consumption and appear to be the main topic of concern on Capitol Hill.
“It's just been very troubling to see how unconcerned many members of Congress are with men who are accused of sexual assault," said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. While the House does not vote to confirm Cabinet nominees, Hegseth met with Republican House members on Wednesday to shore up support.
“The issue that apparently, I heard, came up in his meetings was his alleged alcohol abuse,” she said. “But I guess his abuse of women doesn't seem to bother as many folks."
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Credible allegations of impropriety have often been cause for withdrawal or disqualification. Hegseth is one of a number of Trump’s Cabinet-level nominees who face accusations of sexual misconduct.
In 2020, Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to a woman who filed a police report accusing him of raping her in 2017 at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. No charges were filed against Hegseth in connection with the encounter, which he and his lawyer maintain was consensual. The New Yorker and other outlets have reported on additional allegations that Hegseth mismanaged funds and abused alcohol while leading two veteran-focused nonprofits, and that his colleagues at Fox News witnessed him drinking to excess while he was a weekend co-host at “Fox and Friends.” Hegseth has strenuously denied those claims, including in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, and told Megyn Kelly in an interview on her SiriusXM show that he wouldn’t drink alcohol as defense secretary.
Representatives for Fox News and the Trump transition did not immediately return requests for comment. Several of Hegseth’s current and former Fox News colleagues, including current “Fox & Friends Weekends” co-host Will Cain, have spoken up in his defense.
“The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown,” Hegseth wrote in the Journal. “They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity. That is the only thing they are right about.”
Democratic women serving on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees argued that Hegseth getting confirmed would not only undercut years-long bipartisan efforts in Congress to address sexual assault and abuse in the military but also the armed services’ efforts to recruit more women.
“This is very concerning,” said Escobar, a Democrat. “We have been trying to address recruitment for a long time, and women are a key component of that. This is the last thing we needed, and it is my hope that those members of the Senate who are committed to these reforms and who know how important women are in the military will have very candid conversations with him, and he will drop out.”
Nearly 1 in 4 women in the military report having experienced sexual assault and more than half report harassment, according to a 2016 analysis of articles published in the peer-reviewed journal Trauma, Violence and Abuse. The vast majority of incidents go unreported, according to the RAND Corporation, which provides research to the U.S. Armed Forces. In 2018 alone, about 6,000 sexual assaults were reported to the Department of Defense, but surveys suggested more than 20,000 service members were sexually assaulted. And amid a broader military recruitment crisis, a 2020 government study found that women were leaving the military at higher rates than men and citing sexual assault as a major factor.
Michelle Simpson Tuegel, a Texas-based lawyer who does not practice in the military justice system but has represented survivors in several high-profile sex abuse cases, said Hegseth’s nomination marks “a scary moment” for women service members.
“I get calls every year from women who have faced sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, I’ve represented people on the bases when I used to do criminal defense,” Tuegel said. “There's a lot of violence on our military bases.”
Reports of sexual assault in the military have risen by an estimated 25 percent since 2018, according to the military’s own data, which include both anonymous surveys and formal reports.
Military justice reform advocates have gained ground in recent years, particularly in regards to how military sexual assault and harassment investigations are handled. After the end of World War II, one Supreme Court ruling — known as the Feres doctrine — barred service members from suing the government over any injuries incurred while on active duty. Though typically applied to cases of medical malpractice, this ruling had expanded to include sexual assault allegations. However, the high-profile murder in 2020 of Vanessa Guillén, a soldier who was sexually harassed by a supervisor and violently murdered while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, acted as a catalyst for reform. Guillén’s death led to major changes in the National Defense Authorization Act, guaranteeing that certain crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence would be prosecuted outside the chain of command.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a veteran, called it “insane” that Trump would nominate someone like Hegseth after the “decades” of efforts within the Armed Services.
“There are simply too many reasons proving that Pete Hegseth is not the right person to lead our military men and women, and he will not have my vote,” she said in a statement to The 19th. “Republicans confirming him to this position wouldn’t just be an insult to our men and women in uniform—it would be dangerous for our national security and military readiness.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey was a student at the Naval Academy 30 years ago as part of the first class of women eligible for combat ships. She served for nearly a decade, including a stint in London when she worked for a Navy fleet commander overseeing the deployment of troops to Iraq, at a time when she said the culture was not great for women.
When young women interested in the service academies come to her office, Sherrill said, “they're not interested in going into a force as second-class citizens, and they're not interested in being given special treatment.”
“What they want is the challenge that all people that go into our military service want. What they want to do is to serve the public, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to make sure that people here can sleep at night,” said Sherrill, who is also running for governor of New Jersey. “And so, why you would ever put someone in charge that didn't respect that, that didn't respect the service of about 20 percent of our armed forces, is shocking to me.”
The implications stretch beyond the ranks of the Armed Forces, said Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, who served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve. Changes that enabled women like her, Sherrill and others to serve in the military put them on the path to public service in Congress, she said.
“They served because we made some real reforms that mattered in how women are able to serve and what kind of roles they're able to serve in,” Houlahan said. “And I think it's not a coincidence that you then see those people, decades later, showing up in places like Congress, because they've had equal opportunity.”
The U.S. Senate vets and confirms the president’s nominees to Cabinet posts and other high-level positions. In some ways, Hegseth’s nomination and the scandal surrounding it are not new. The first time a new president’s initial Cabinet nominee was rejected was in 1989 when the Senate failed to confirm John Tower, former President George H.W. Bush’s pick for defense secretary, after he was accused of being an alcoholic womanizer.
Then Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman at the time, led the charge against Tower’s nomination on the grounds that his character was unfit for the position.
“The committee is also concerned about the personal example the secretary of defense must set for efforts of the Department of Defense to end discrimination toward, and any sexual harassment of, women. … Mr. President, leadership must be established from the top down,” Nunn said during the 1989 Senate debate.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, has made it a priority of his tenure to combat sexual assault in the military, establishing a commission early on to make recommendations to the military. Meanwhile, Hegseth has signaled a different set of values and priorities when it comes to women and people of color. He wrote a book arguing that military standards have been lowered for women, that “America’s white sons and daughters” are walking away from the military because of ideology that is too “effeminate” and that diversity, inclusion and equity efforts are bad for national security.
“I’m straight up just saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles," Hegseth said in November during a podcast interview. “It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more lethal. It has made fighting more complicated.”
On Wednesday, Hegseth mounted another lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill, meeting with several key Republican senators. GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran and a sexual assault survivor herself who has been outspoken against sexual assault in the military, posted on X that she had a “frank and thorough” conversation with Hegseth.
His mother, Penelope Hegseth, is also doing a media tour on behalf of her son after The New York Times reported on an email she sent him in 2018, in the midst of his contentious divorce from his second wife, excoriating Hegseth as an “abuser of women.” It is against military law to commit adultery, which could result in dishonorable discharge. Penelope Hegseth, who said she since apologized for and disavowed the contents of the email, took to Fox News with her hopes that lawmakers, “especially our female senators,” to “not listen to the media and that you will listen to Pete.”
Houlahan said she’s using the influence she has as a woman veteran in Congress to register her concerns with her colleagues in the Senate about Hegseth’s nomination.
“To the degree I can, I'm trying to have conversations, and directly have conversations with my Senate companions, to do my best to explain that I am really worried about this,” she said. “And I'm hoping that me being really worried is an indicator, a canary in the coal mine, of other people who are worried about it, who don't have the voice that I have.”
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Listening in a time of disinformation
Dec 10, 2024
The very fabric of truth is unraveling at an alarming rate; Howard Thurman's wisdom about listening for the sound of the genuine is not just relevant but urgent. In the face of the escalating crisis of disinformation, distortion and the unsettling normalization of immoral and unethical practices, particularly in electoral politics and executive leadership, the need to cultivate the art of discernment and informed listening is more pressing than ever.
Thurman, a theologian and civil rights leader, understood that a more profound, authentic sound can guide persons toward justice, compassion and truth amidst the cacophony of life. Thurman believed sincerely in the spiritual discipline of listening. More specifically, listening for the genuineness in sound — truth. Such sound or truth is imminent from within ourselves and reverberates in the world around us. In the face of lies, manipulation and the erosion of ethical standards, especially in the current presidential transition, Thurman's admonishment to listen for the genuine remains a beacon of hope and a practical strategy for resistance and transformation.
How do we listen for the genuine in such a fraught and confusing time? First, commit to honesty and truth-telling, even when difficult or uncomfortable. This means seeking out credible sources of information, fact-checking and being willing to question and challenge false or misleading narratives, especially those who seek to justify their l behavior.
Second, it is helpful to listen intently to and amplify the voices of those historically marginalized and silenced. The authentic sound of justice and equity often comes from the edges and fringes of society, from those who have the most to lose when the truth is distorted and ethics are abandoned. By centering the perspectives and experiences of the most vulnerable, we can gain a greater sense of what is truly at stake in this moment. This is a humane responsibility we all share and a powerful source for encouraging change.
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Listening to the genuine is about more than just absorbing information or perspectives. Genuine listening is a powerful tool that catalyzes discernment and action, enabling listeners to distinguish between the proverbial noise and the deeper sound of truth and moral rightness. This type of attentiveness is not a passive process. On the contrary, genuine listening is an active intellectual exercise that provokes critical thinking, ethical reflection, compassion and integrity, empowering us to make a difference.
Acknowledging the sound of the genuine also warrants a thoughtful and intentional response or action. When we hear the ring of truth, it demands that we not only recognize it, but that we mobilize in some way. This might mean challenging or correcting the inaccuracies and misinformation that surround us, whether in our personal conversations or in the public discourse. It could involve advocating for policies and practices that align with ethical standards and promote justice and equality. At times, it may even call for engaging in diverse forms of activism, from signing petitions and attending marches to contacting our elected officials and volunteering our time and skills to causes that matter.
Listening to the genuine and then acting in response has the potential to give way to a different kind of body politics and society — one that is grounded in plausible and substantiated premises, rather than lies and propaganda. A society built on the genuine would be one that upholds morality and ethics at its core, rather than self-interest and greed. It would be a society that shows a deep and abiding concern for the collective good of all people, recognizing that our individual well-being is inextricably tied to innumerable others.
In this kind of society, we would work together to address our shared challenges and to build a future that is more just, equitable and peaceful for all. I concur with Thurman that listening for the genuine sound is both spiritual and political. This particular approach to activating auditory perception is a way of tuning our hearts and minds towards the deep. Listening to the sound of the genuine is a means of radical resistance to inhumane, immoral and antidemocratic forces.
In the crucible of this moment, revisit Thurman's wisdom, like me. Listen and seek out sounds of the genuine, within and without self. Allow truth to serve as a compass in the face of disinformation, authoritarianism and acceptance of flawed efficacy.
Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
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Selfish Biden has given us four years of Trump
Dec 10, 2024
It’s been a rough go of it for those of us still clinging to antiquated notions that with leadership and power should come things like honesty, integrity, morality, and expertise.
One look at any number of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks and it’s clear those things no longer matter to a great number of people. (Hell, one look at Trump himself and that’s painfully, comically obvious.)
But these long-gone vestiges of a forgotten America, one in which criminals don’t get to be president and sex offenders don’t get Cabinet posts, got another blow Sunday night when the outgoing president went back on his word and pardoned his son.
President Biden, after insisting he wouldn’t, signed a “full and unconditional pardon” for any offenses his son Hunter had committed, which includes lying about drug use when buying a handgun, tax evasion, and other charges.
The defenses of Biden’s craven last-minute flip-flop came rolling in from many on the left who’d previously spent years wagging their finger at Trump’s nepotism and clear corruptibility.
But the pardon didn’t go over well with many others, including some Democrats who still seem to at least know the value of appearing to care about honesty and hypocrisy.
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But for those of us who simply believed the whole point of Biden was to save us from Trump and Trumpism, it was just the latest in a long line of disappointments from a man who turned out to be a lot more self-interested than he promised.
In 2020, many of us voted for Biden not because we liked his policies, but because he was qualified, decent, and had the best chance of stopping Trump.
And importantly, Biden signaled over and over again that he would serve only one term, and that mattered. After all, we weren’t voting for a lifetime of Biden or Democratic policies, but merely a means to an end: get Trump out for good.
As early as 2019 he indicated to aides that he wouldn’t run again, and as recently as July 2024 he acknowledged that he’d initially run with the expectation that he’d “pass it on to somebody else.”
Not only did he run again, he effectively shut out a Democratic primary. Then, even with dismal polling numbers, an obvious decline in his mental and physical faculties, and his own party members begging him to drop out, it would take months before Biden would do the right thing and step aside.
While Vice President Kamala Harris ran as good a campaign as she could have in these circumstances, Biden’s obstinance hardly gave her a shot.
But it wasn’t just Biden’s selfish decision to run again that ushered Trump back into the White House where he was never supposed to be. It was his policies, too.
Eager for an early win, Biden ignored warnings about inflationary policies from a slew of economists — in his own party — and signed a massive stimulus package that sent prices soaring. The inflation rate was 1.4% when he came into office, peaked at a painful 9.1%, and is now down to 3.3%.
Then, he ignored a chance to lower prices when he decided to not only maintain Trump’s tariffs, but hike them an additional $18 billion, an average annual tax increase on U.S. households of $625.
For the purposes of politics, Biden also rolled back Trump’s approval of the Keystone Pipeline, a project that Biden’s own Energy Department estimated would have created up to 60,000 jobs and generated an economic impact of up to $9.6 billion.
Also for the purposes of election-year politics, Biden forgave $175 billion in student debt— a cost passed on to taxpayers when many were struggling to pay for basic needs.
For political reasons, too, he undid Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and opened the border to a flood of asylum-seekers — and countless others who would take advantage of our intentionally broken immigration system. For months he insisted there was no migrant crisis, until he tried to reverse the order — again, in an election year.
Most importantly, these policy decisions on the economy and immigration didn’t work. Americans felt the effects of them everywhere. But secondarily, they most certainly inured to the benefit of Trump
While Biden is obviously not the existential threat to democracy that Trump is, he showed us that he wasn’t, in the end, willing to put country over party, or country over himself. Biden was motivated by politics and personal grievances, hubris and partisanship.
While that hardly makes him unique, it does make him a failure at the one thing many of us elected him to do: He was meant to save us from Trump, and instead he seemingly did everything he could to invite him back in.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
©2024 S.E. Cupp. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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