In this episode of the "Collage" podcast, Rev. F. Willis Johnson interviews Rev. Aaron Rogers, director of the St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Ferguson, Mo.. Their conversation acknowledges the forthcoming 10-year remembrance of Michael Brown's death and the Ferguson uprising. Johnson and Rogers discuss the "pilgrimage" that introduced them to one another and impacted their vocational endeavors.
Oksana Masters of Team United States celebrates after winning gold in the Para Cross Country Skiing Sprint Sitting Final on day four of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium on March 10, 2026 in Val di Fiemme, Italy.
If you’re a sports fan, you likely watched coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. But will you watch the Paralympics when approximately 665 athletes are expected in Italy to compete in the Para sports of alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ice hockey, snowboarding, and wheelchair curling?
The Paralympics, so-called because they are “parallel” to the Olympics, stand alone as the globe’s premier sporting event for elite athletes with disabilities. According to the International Paralympic Committee, 4,400 disabled athletes competed in the 2024 Paris Summer Games in track and field, swimming, and twenty other sports.
Worldwide, viewers consumed 763.3 million hours of dedicated live coverage during the 2024 Paralympics, an increase of 83 percent from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. Yet audience viewership still far underperforms when compared to the Olympics.
As a scholar who teaches about and studies Paralympic sport, and who makes films highlighting Paralympic athleticism, I know why: I’ve seen how often Para-sport can be mistakenly viewed as an inspirational spectacle of athletes “overcoming” disabilities, displaying courage and resilience, but ultimately performing at a lower level than able-bodied athletes.
The reality is that the Paralympics are inspirational, but for different reasons. It’s elite sport at its most essential: focused athleticism, hard-core competitiveness, and record-breaking performances. And to watch it closely is to encounter some of the most complex questions sport has to offer—about fairness, performance, technology, and the body itself. For these reasons, the Paralympics offer a spectator experience that’s less about overcoming and more about mastery with diverse bodies.
For one, the Paralympics make us re-think who counts as an athlete. At the Paralympic Games, athletes with disabilities are missing limbs, they sometimes lack eyesight, and may use assistive devices such as wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs. Yet the athletes in our films view their disabilities as the fact that made possible their world-class Paralympic performances, rather than as impaired bodies defined by the able-bodied world.
Showcasing these athletes’ elite performances also raises important questions about how we define “excellence” in sports. In the Winter Paralympics, you can see double amputee skiers race at speeds up to 80 miles per hour on the same courses used by Olympic skiers. Meanwhile, sitting biathlon athletes will pole their way through courses ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 miles. Lower extremity amputees incorporate a variety of strategies to maintain and manage balance, all while attending to the intensive muscular demands of the solely upper body activity.
These unique bodies demonstrate unique athletic risks and skill demands—reason alone to watch the Paralympics. Excellence in Para-sport is not about overcoming impairment but about maximizing skill execution within the constraints and possibilities of a specific embodied configuration.
At the Paralympics, the question of fair competition pushes the boundaries of how we think about the fundaments of competition. Each Paralympic athlete is assessed by a team of experts who determine the level of function, ensuring that athletes compete against those with similar physical capacity but potentially different disabilities. Decisions about who competes against whom determine medals, funding, and careers. The result is a sporting environment in which fairness is not a questionable assumption but an ongoing negotiation, providing Paralympic audiences with a transparent view of the risks, challenges, and thrills of elite sport.
Yet, the assistive devices that some Paralympians require are sometimes scrutinized as “cheating” or unfair, as 2024 Paralympic high jump gold medalist Ezra Frech has experienced. But carbon-fiber blades, customized racing chairs, and auditory balls are not considered cheating in the Paralympics; they are part of the sport, just as specialized swimsuits, speed skates, and ski jumping suits are elsewhere.
And that’s part of what makes the Paralympics so valuable. It makes bodily differences visible by forcing us to ask difficult questions: What counts as an advantage? Where do we draw the line between technology and talent?
What goes without question is that the Paralympics offer viewers a powerful and expanded view of bodily possibilities and bodies of many configurations as athletes aim for the beautiful and superhuman performances that attract us to watch sport in the first place. Watching the Paralympics won’t just change how you see disability. It will change how you see sport itself.
Susan G. Zieff is Professor of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University and an independent filmmaker.
People carrying flags, marching in the nation's capital.
I believe democracy is a powerful form of government that can serve the common good. We are a better country for having multiple pathways to make our voices heard—for the right to vote, the right to petition our government, the right to free speech, and the promise of equal protection under the law. These are the core pillars of American democracy. But anyone who has been paying attention knows that those pillars are cracked. And too often, those fractures run straight through the lives of LGBTQ+ people.
According to the Kettering-Gallup Democracy for All Project, a survey released by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in partnership with Gallup, Americans’ satisfaction with US democracy is in freefall—roughly half of what it was four decades ago. Despite broad agreement with democratic ideals, most Americans believe democracy is performing poorly in the United States. Among those least likely to say democracy is working are LGBTQ+ people, with just 10% reporting that it is functioning well compared to 24% of Americans in general. As a transgender journalist who has covered the increasingly brutal and undemocratic assault on LGBTQ+ rights in this country, that finding comes as little surprise.
The Pillars of Democracy Are Failing LGBTQ+ People
So when one asks why only 10% of LGBTQ+ people say democracy is functioning well, one need only look at those pillars and ask how well they are actually holding for the people who most depend on them. Take the right to equal protection under the law. For LGBTQ+ people, equal protection has been steadily cast aside by the government meant to uphold it. When transgender youth are denied equal protection through health-care bans—handwaved away by the Supreme Court to justify laws designed explicitly to target and restrict us—what is equal about that? When passports are restricted by the federal government, and the Supreme Court ignores the unequal treatment inherent in that, the cracks widen. And when courts allow LGBTQ+ foster children to be placed with families that oppose their identities—exposing them to the risk of conversion therapy—how can anyone seriously argue that this pillar of democracy is still standing strong?
Or take the right to freedom of speech—something the far right now claims to champion and is foundational to any functioning democracy. We cannot change minds if we are not allowed to say what is on our hearts. Yet every day, we see new assaults on the speech of LGBTQ+ Americans, paired with the privileging of speech that denies our identities. College professors are fired for teaching LGBTQ+ topics. Universities that once supported transgender people are told they must accept draconian restrictions on what can be promoted or supported on campus. States move to ban drag—including family-friendly drag—and to pull books from library shelves across the country. In Alabama, policymakers have demanded that positive depictions of transgender people be prohibited, while negative portrayals remain fully permissible. And in Montana, I watched my own wife, Zooey Zephyr, who represents Montana’s 100th House District in the Montana House of Representative, have her microphone shut off on the House floor for daring to speak plainly about the harm anti-transgender laws inflict on young people’s lives. It would seem this pillar, too, has weaknesses.
And what of the right to petition our government? Surely this pillar still stands—at least in theory. Yet for LGBTQ+ people, its weaknesses are impossible to ignore. As a transgender journalist, I have covered countless hearings where virtually no one testified in favor of bills restricting transgender rights, while scores showed up to oppose them—only for lawmakers to disregard every speaker and pass those bills anyway. We have watched handpicked members of the Florida Board of Medicine take testimony from anti-trans witnesses then cut off supporters of transgender people with a dismissive “you have our email,” denying them a chance to speak. Public comments opposing draconian anti-trans policies are now routinely ignored altogether. Even the act of petitioning our government—one of democracy’s most basic promises—has become another cracked pillar that LGBTQ+ people recognize all too well.
The Impact of Voter ID Laws
Which brings us to one of the most foundational rights of all: the right to vote. It is among the core guarantees of American democracy. So what does it have to do with LGBTQ+ people, and how do we see cracks in this pillar as well? Strict voter ID laws have already thrown the legal status of driver’s licenses into question for voters in states like Florida and Kansas. The Williams Institute has estimated that hundreds of thousands of transgender voters live in states with strict ID requirements and could face disenfranchisement due to mismatched documents. In 2020, the Human Rights Campaign reported that “an issue with meeting voter identification requirements prevented 24% of LGBTQ adults, 35% of LGBTQ people of color, [and] 42% of transgender people from voting in at least one election in their lives.” Nearly half, 46%, of transgender people of color said they did not vote in one or more elections specifically because their ID listed an incorrect gender, name, or photo. Even this most fundamental pillar of democracy is fractured for LGBTQ+ people.
Making Life Unlivable
Meanwhile, as democracy weakens, the lives of LGBTQ+ people continue to grow harder under the weight of policies that explicitly target us. Transgender people face new restrictions on their legal documents. LGBTQ+ students are denied the ability to learn about themselves in schools. State legislators and public officials openly consider reviving bans on same-sex marriage while continuing to vote against basic equality. Between bathroom bans, health-care bans, sports bans, and countless other intrusions into daily life, LGBTQ+ people, and transgender people in particular, experience a government shaped by the erosion of basic principles, increasingly directing its power toward making our lives more difficult.
So when the Kettering-Gallup Democracy For All Project reports that just 10% of LGBTQ+ people believe democracy in America is functioning well, the finding is not surprising. LGBTQ+ people are the canary in the coal mine of American democracy. When our faith collapses, it is because we are living first with the consequences of democratic failure. And that should alarm everyone else. The same anti-democratic tools used to silence, exclude, and erase the most marginalized are never confined to one group. They are rehearsed on us, normalized through us, and then expanded outward—until anyone who falls out of favor with those seeking to consolidate power finds themselves standing under the same cracked supports.
A Call for Solidarity
Recognizing that these pillars are cracked does not mean American democracy is dead. The structure has not collapsed—at least not yet. Transgender and queer people are among the many marginalized communities who noticed its failures first, and we have been among the first to do the work required to keep it standing. You will find trans people leading the protests to protect those terrorized by ICE. You will find queer people defending the rights and dignity of the unhoused. And you will find LGBTQ+ people organizing politically at every level, from local school boards to national movements. We are still fighting for democracy. Democracy will survive if our allies can recognize that attacks on the most vulnerable are attacks on democracy itself and join our fight.
Erin Reed (she/her) is a transgender journalist based in Washington, DC. She tracks LGBTQ+ legislation around the United States for her subscription newsletter, ErinInTheMorning.com.
This article was originally published as part of From Many, We, a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that highlights the insights of thought leaders dedicated to the idea of inclusive democracy.
Claiming Contested Values
Claiming Contested Values: How Fairness, Stability and Freedom Can Help Us Build Demand for Transformative, Structural Change, produced by the FrameWorks Institute, explores how widely shared yet politically contested values can be used to strengthen public support for systemic reform. Values are central to how advocates communicate the importance of their work, and they can motivate collective action toward big, structural changes. This has become especially urgent in a climate where executive orders are targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and some nonprofits are being labeled as threats based on their stated missions. Many civil society organizations are now grappling with how to communicate their values effectively and safely.
The report focuses on Fairness, Stability, and Freedom because they resonate across the U.S. public and are used by communicators across the political spectrum. Unlike values more closely associated with one ideological camp — such as Tradition on the right or Solidarity on the left — these three values are broadly recognizable but highly contested. Each contains multiple variants, and their impact depends on how clearly advocates define them and how they are paired with specific issues.
Fairness is the most consistently effective value for building support for structural change. When framed around system design, power imbalances, and the causes of inequity, it helps people understand how laws and policies shape outcomes. Stability can also support progressive narratives when framed as the goal of system redesign rather than a call to preserve the status quo. Freedom is the most challenging value to use because it easily triggers individualistic interpretations, but it can be powerful when explicitly tied to system design and collective conditions.
Across all three values, the report recommends leading with a shared value, explaining how current systems violate it, and showing how redesigning those systems can better uphold it. This approach helps audiences connect values to policy and understand why transformative, structural change is necessary.
Click HERE to read the report.
About FrameWorks: The FrameWorks Institute is a non-profit think tank that advances the mission-driven sector’s capacity to frame the public discourse about social and scientific issues. The organization’s signature approach, Strategic Frame Analysis®, offers empirical guidance on what to say, how to say it, and what to leave unsaid. FrameWorks designs, conducts, and publishes multi-method, multidisciplinary framing research to prepare experts and advocates to expand their constituencies, to build public will, and to further public understanding. To make sure this research drives social change, FrameWorks supports partners in reframing, through strategic consultation, campaign design, FrameChecks®, toolkits, online courses, and in-depth learning engagements known as FrameLabs. In 2015, FrameWorks was named one of nine organizations worldwide to receive the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Learn more at www.frameworksinstitute.org
One of the barbershops participating in the Barbershop Books program.
Barbershop Books, an organization whose award‑winning literacy programs celebrate, amplify, and affirm the interests of Black boys while inspiring kids to read for fun, has spent more than a decade transforming everyday community spaces into joyful reading hubs. That mission was on full display this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when the organization partnered with a neighborhood barbershop in the Bronx—Flava In Ya Hair—to offer free haircuts and free children’s books to local families.
As families examined stacks of Dog Man, Fly Guy, Captain Underpants, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, barbershop owner Patrick shared that growing up, reading was associated with negative school experiences and used as a punishment at home. “Go in your room and read!” he said.
As a father of young children, Patrick now sees reading differently. He pointed out how beat up Pete the Cat looked. “I had never heard of the book,” he said, “but all the kids love it. You can tell because it’s all torn up.”
This barbershop owner tells a very different story about Black boys and reading than the narrative communicated by national test scores. His experience also highlights what America gets wrong in supporting Black boys on their reading journeys.
When people learn about Barbershop Books’ work creating child-friendly reading spaces in barbershops in New York City, Philadelphia, and other cities, they inevitably ask the same question: How do you choose your books? They often lean in, as if waiting for top-secret information, but my answer is always the same simple response. We ask Black boys what they like to read. We buy the books they recommend. And then we distribute those books to our national network of barbershops.
For many adults, this sounds obvious. But in practice, it’s rare. At a time when schools and families have more data about children than ever before, one thing is often missing from book lists curated for Black boys: direct input from the boys themselves. When you search “book lists for Black boys” online, you’ll rarely see titles like Pete the Cat, Dog Man, or Captain Underpants.
When curation starts and stops with parts of Black boys that adults can see, such as their skin color, books can become small windows and circus mirrors that distort how boys see themselves and understand the world around them. Barbershop Books serves many boys who enjoy reading but who don’t consider themselves readers because the content that most interests them isn’t affirmed by the adults in their lives. My only ask is that if a Black boy asks for a specific book, give him that specific book. If he can’t read it yet, read it to him. And if there’s another book you think he might like, read him that book too.
Carefully curated titles that center and celebrate Black boys and Black history are essential. At a time when children’s access to books is increasingly shaped by adult fear and politics, we must continue to lift up Black authors and illustrators who tell stories that recognize the full humanity of Black boys, their diverse lived experiences, and the history that shapes their present realities. There is space in Black boys’ relationships with stories for joy and silliness, imagination, and curiosity. There’s also room for conversations about history and the many times when humanity has failed to exercise humility, empathy, and compassion. There’s room on Black boys’ bookshelves for Pete the Cat, Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, Bud, Not Buddy, and One Piece.
Black boys are navigating literacy challenges that are too often framed narrowly as skills deficits with little consideration for the conditions that fuel America’s worsening reading motivation crisis. What child or adult wants to be tortured with wack stories or stories read wackily? As a former kindergarten and first-grade teacher, I can confidently say that teaching reading isn’t easy. However, children can’t read more and get worse at reading. So, the question we should all be asking ourselves is what inspires kids to read for fun?
For more than a decade, Barbershop Books has focused on cultivating Black boys' reading identities by partnering with barbershops to make reading feel possible, enjoyable, and worth choosing. In these male-centered cultural hubs, Black boys feel welcomed, affirmed, and supported. Beyond their entrepreneurship and artistry, many barbers serve as mentors and role models who make reading visible and normalized rather than forced.
The Barbershop Books program isn’t just a good idea or a feel-good story. It works. A two-year evaluation led by NYU education professor Dr. Susan Neuman, funded by the William Penn Foundation, found that Black boys in barbershops with the Barbershop Books program are significantly more likely to be observed reading than boys in shops without it. When asked how they saw themselves, boys most often identified as gamers, followed by basketball players. But in participating barbershops, Black boys were just as likely to identify as readers as they were as basketball players. This matters because when boys identify as readers, they read more for fun and perform better in school.
Black History Month invites us to reflect on legacy, resistance, and possibility. One way to honor America's many freedom fighters is by protecting Black boys’ right to joy, curiosity, and agency. And sometimes it takes the form of a book about a blue cat and his four groovy buttons.
Alvin Irby is the founder and executive director of Barbershop Books, the 2025 Grand Prize winner of the Wharton School’s Lipman Family Prize at the University of Pennsylvania. His writing on literacy and education has been widely syndicated, reaching millions of readers.
