Podcasts about in virginia

The Trump administration recently announced a plan to keep the FBI headquarters in the District, reversing a decision made by the Biden administration in 2023 to move it to a new building in Prince George's County. Maryland lawmakers are now considering next steps to fight the abrupt turnaround. U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents a large portion of Prince George's County, joins the show to discuss. Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court this week cleared the way for the White House to move forward with slashing the federal workforce. We ask Rep. Ivey what is being done for locals who might be at risk of losing their jobs.President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law late last week, which includes significant cuts to Medicaid coverage. In Virginia, one estimate suggests that 332,000 residents will lose their health insurance. Virginia Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, who represents a large portion of Loudoun County, gets behind the mic to discuss what he heard from his constituents at a recent townhall. We'll also ask about immigration; Virginia has seen one of the sharpest spikes in ICE arrests in the country.D.C.'s Ward 8 residents are heading to the polls for a special election to fill the seat on the D.C. Council. Despite federal bribery charges and expulsion by his colleagues, former councilmember Trayon White is the frontrunner for his old seat. WAMU's Senior D.C. Politics reporter Alex Koma joins Kojo and Tom to break down the race. He'll also share the latest updates on the D.C. Council budget, expected to be released early next week, and the debate over the RFK Stadium.Send us questions and comments for guests: kojo@wamu.orgFollow us on Instagram: instagram.com/wamu885Follow us on Bluesky: bsky.app/wamu.org

Matt, hey, my friends, welcome to the off the wire podcast. My name is Matt Wireman, and with over 25 years of coaching experience, I bring to you a an integrated approach to coaching where we look at mind, body and soul. So this being my little corner of the universe, welcome we cover everything from spiritual formation or the interior life all the way to goal setting and how to make your life better with life hacks, and I cover everything in between. So whatever it fits my fancy, I'm going to share with you, and I'm so thankful for your time, and I hope this episode helps you. All right. Well, hey, welcome, welcome to another episode of Off The Wire. This is Matt, still I haven't changed, but I do have with me, my friend. Really proud to call him a friend. And from seminary days, Dr Josh chatro, who is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement at Beeson. That's a mouthful. Josh, well done. And then he is also, they just launched a concentration in apologetics at Beeson, which is really exciting. They got a conference coming up this summer. Is that also an apologetics Josh,its own preaching and apologetics? Okay? Awesome.And, and largely, you're also, you're also part of the Tim Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, and then also a, they call them fellows at the Center for Pastor theologians as well. That's right, yeah. And you in, you have been at Beeson for a couple years, because prior to that, you were at a you were heading up. And what was it largely an apologetics group, or was it, was it more broad than that in Raleigh?Yeah, it was. It was much more expansive than that. Evangelism and apologetics is part of what we were doing, but it was the Center for Public Christianity, okay? It was also very much in the work and faith movement. And I was also resident theologian at Holy Trinity Anglican in Raleigh. We were there for five years,excellent and and you don't know this because you don't keep tabs on who bought your book, but I've got every one of your books brother, so every every book you put out, and I'm like, I love this guy, and I'm gonna support him and buy his book. So it started all the way back, if you remember, with truth matters, yeah. And I use that book for one of the classes that I built here where I teach. And then then I want to go through the Litany here and embarrass you a little bit. And then it goes to apologetics, at the Cross Cultural Engagement, telling a better story, surprised by doubt. And then one that you just released called the Augustine way, retrieving a vision for the church's apologetic witness. So do you write much on apologetics? Is that kind of your thing?Yeah, I've written a few books on that.So why? Like, what is it about apologetics that has really captured your heart, in your mind and like, as opposed to just teaching theology, yeah, it's a certain it's a certain stream. If folks are first of all, folks are curious, like, What in the world is apologetics? Are you apologizing to folks? Like, are you saying I'm sorry?Well, I do have to do that. I'm sorry a lot. That's a good practice. That's not quite what apologetics is. Okay. Okay, so we, one of the things I would say is, and when I meet, when I meet up with old friends like you, sometimes they say, What have you been doing? Because we didn't see this coming. And when we were in seminary together, it wasn't as if I was, you know, reading a lot of apologetic works. And so one of the things is,and you weren't picking fights on campus too much. You were always a really kind person. And most, most time, people think of like apologists as, like, real feisty. And you're not a feisty friend. I'm not. I actually, unless you start talking about, like, soccer and stuff like that, right? Yeah,yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I don't. I don't love, I don't love, actually, arguments I'd much rather have, which is an odd thing, and so I need to tell how did I get into this thing? I'd much rather have conversations and dialog and kind of a back and forth that keeps open communication and and because, I actually think this ties into apologetics, most people don't make decisions or don't come to they don't come to any kind of belief simply because they were backed into an intellectual corner. And but now maybe I'll come back to that in a second. But I got into this because I was doing my PhD work while I was pastoring. And when you do yourpH was that in in Raleigh, because you did your PhD work at Southeastern, right?That's right, that's right. But I was actually, we were in southern, uh. In Virginia for the first half, we were in a small town called Surrey. It was, if you know anything about Tim Keller, it was he served in Hopewell, Virginia for seven or nine years before he went to Westminster and then to New York. And we were about 45 minutes from that small town. So if you've read Colin Hansen's book, he kind of gives you some background on what is this, these little communities, and it does, does kind of match up the little community I was serving for two years before moving to another little community in South Georgia to finish while I was writing. And so I pastored in both locations. So these aren't particularly urban areas, and yet, people in my church, especially the young people, were asking questions about textual criticism, reliability of the Bible.Those are any topics forfolks like, yeah, something happened called the Internet, yes. All of a sudden now, things that you would, you would get to, maybe in your, you know, thm, your your master's level courses, or even doctoral level courses. Now 1819, year old, 20 year olds or 50 year olds had questions about them because they were reading about some of this stuff on the internet. And because I was working on a PhD, I was actually working on a PhD in biblical theology and their New Testament scholar, people would come to me as if I'm supposed to know everything, or you know. And of course, of course, when you're studying a PhD, you're you're in a pretty narrow kind of world and very narrow kind of lane. And of course, I didn't know a lot of things, but I was, I kind of threw myself into, how do I help people with these common questions. So it wasn't as if, it wasn't as if I was saying, oh, I want to study apologetics. I kind of accidentally got there, just because of really practical things going on in my church context. And and then as I was reading and I started writing in response to Bart Ehrman, who is a is a agnostic Bible scholar. Wrote four or five New York Times bestsellers, uh, critical of the New Testament, critical of the Bible, critical of conservative Christianity. I started writing those first two books. I wrote with some senior scholars. I wrote in response. And then people said, so your apologist? And I said, Well, I guess I am. And so that, yeah, so I'm coming at this I'm coming at this area, not because I just love arguments, but really to help the church really with really practical questions. And then as I began to teach it, I realized, oh, I have some different assumptions coming at this as a pastor, also as a theologian, and trained in biblical theology. So I came with a, maybe a different set of lenses. It's not the only set of lens. It's not the it's not the only compare of lenses that that one might take in this discipline, but that's some of my vocational background and some of my kind of journey that brought me into apologetics, and in some ways, has given me a little bit different perspective than some of the dominant approaches or dominant kind of leaders in the area.That's great. Well, let's go. Let's get after it. Then I'm gonna just throw you some doozies and see how we can rapid fire just prove all of the things that that are in doubt. So here we go. Okay, you ready? How do we know that God exists?Yeah, so that word no can have different connotations. So maybe it would be better to ask the question, why do we believe God exists? Oh,don't you do that? You're you can't, you can't just change my question. I was kidding. Well, I think, I think you bring up a great point, is that one of the key tasks in apologetics is defining of terms and understanding like, Okay, you asked that question. But I think there's a question behind the question that actually is an assumption that we have to tease out and make explicit, right? Because, I mean, that's, that's part of you. So I think sometimes people get into this back and forth with folks, and you're like, Well, you have assumptions in your question. So go ahead, you, you, you go ahead and change my question. So how do we knowthe issue is, is there is that when we say something like, you know, we people begin to imagine that the way Christianity works is that we need to prove Christianity in the way we might prove as Augustine said this in confessions, four plus six equals 10. And Augustine, early church father, and he's writing, and he's writing about his own journey. He said I really had to get to the point where I realized this is not how this works. Yeah, we're not talking about, we do not one plus one, our way to God.Yeah. And when is Augustine writing about When? When? So people are, yeah, 397,at. This point. So he's writing right at the, you know, right right before the fifth century, okay? And, and, of course, Augustine famously said, we have to believe to understand, for most believers, God is intuitive, or what? Blaise Pascal, the 17th century Christian philosopher He called this the logic of the heart. Or I can just cite a more contemporary figure, Alvin planeta, calls this basic belief that. He says that belief in God is a basic belief, and and for So, for for many believers, they would say something like this. And I think there's validity in this so is that God just makes sense, even if, even if they haven't really worked out arguments that they they say, Well, yeah, this God makes sense to me. Now I can kind of begin to explore that. I will in just a second, but I just want to say there's, for most of your listeners, it's something like, I heard the gospel and this and the stories of Jesus, and I knew they were true, right? And as kind of insiders here, we would say that's the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit is working, and God speaks through creation and his word, and people believe. And so that's that's why we believe now, of course, once we say that people have these kinds of intuitions, or as theologians would put it, this sense of God kind of built into them, I would want to say, as an apologist, or even as a pastor, just a minister, you don't have to be apologist to say this is that we can appeal to those intuitions and make arguments in many different types of ways. Well,hold on one second. Isn't that a little too simplistic, though? Because, I mean, you have the Greeks who believed in all the different gods, and the Romans who adopted those gods and changed their names and like, how do we assimilate that? You know, where, you know Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins famously say, Well, I don't, I don't believe in Zeus. So does that make me an atheist? It would have made me an atheist back in, you know, you know Roman and Latin and Greek times. So, so there's an intuition, but, but how do we delineate that? Well, that's not the right object of that intuition.Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have this intuition, you know, we could say Romans, Romans, one is pointing us to, this is what I would argue, this sense of God, and yet we're, we're fallen, according to the Christian story. And so even though we have this sense of God, we suppress that, and we worship false gods, or we worship the created, rather than the Creator. So the Christian story as a as a Christian, helps make sense of both the kind of why? Well, although we have this sense this, there's this common sense of God, it goes in many different directions and and I would argue that even if you deny kind of transcendence altogether, you're still going to have you're going to still make something kind of a god. You're going to you're going to want to worship something. And I think that's that's part of the point of Romans, one, you end up going to worship the created rather than the Creator. So does that get out what you're asking Matt or Yeah,I think so. I think sometimes the arguments that are real popular, even now is like, well, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't believe that God exists, just like I don't believe that Zeus exists, like, what's, what's the big deal? Why? Why are you so adamant that I believe in that God exists? Like to because I don't, I don't know that God exists because I don't see him. So how would you respond to somebody who says, Well, this Intuit intuition that that you say we all have, and that Romans one says we have, I just don't buy it, you know, because, I mean, I'm, I wouldn't believe that Zeus exists, because there's no empirical evidence to show me otherwise. So how would you respond to somebody that's equivocating or saying that, you know, Yahweh of the Old Testament, the God of the, you know, the God of the Bible is, this is just a tribal deity, just like Zeus is. So, how should we? Iwould, I would say so. So I think we can make kind of arguments for some kind of for transcendence. So there's ways to make arguments against naturalism. That's that's what's being promoted. And there's various different kinds of, you know. So sometimes these kinds of arguments that are in the Christian tradition are used to say, hey, we're going to prove God's existence using these arguments. I think I'm not. Are typically comfortable with the language of prove and how it's used in our context today, again, we get into the math, kind of two plus two equals four. Kind of thinking, yep. But I think a lot of those arguments are appealing to both intuitions and they they work much more effectively as anti naturalistic arguments. Not so much saying, Okay, we know a particular God through, say, the moral argument, okay, that we're but, but it's arguing against simply a naturalistic, materialistic. You know, even Evans, who's a longtime professor at Baylor, makes this argument that those, those types of arguments are really good against pushing back against naturalism. So plan again, has a famous argument that says, if naturalism and evolutionary theory are both true because of how evolution theory works, it's not about right thinking, but right action that you perform certain things to survive. Then, if both of those are true, you have no reason to trust your kind of cognitive faculties.Can you tease that one out a little bit? I kind of lost on that one. He said,What planet is arguing? Is he saying? Look, if, if all of our kind of cognitive faculties are just a product of evolution, okay? And by the way, not only does it's not just a plan. Ago makes this argument, it's actually kind of interesting figures who were like Nietzsche and others made this argument that basically, if, if evolution and naturalism is true that all we are is energy and manner and this product of evolutionary process, then we would have no reason to actually trust kind of our rationality, and that's what rationality is actually mapping onto reality. All of our our brains and our minds are really just producing certain conclusions to help us survive. So it would undercut the very foundations of that position. Now again, yeah, being able to observe, yeah, yeah. So, so with that, again, I think that's an example of an argument that doesn't so much. You know, say this is the Christian God. This supports the belief in Christian God. But what it does is it from within their own thinking. It challenges that. It undercuts their own way of thinking, which is what you're assuming and what you're kind of pushing back on, is a kind of naturalistic world. And I think we can step within that try to understand it and then challenge it on its own terms. And I think that's the real strength of planning this argument. What he's doing now, go ahead.Well, that's it, yeah, in his, in his, like, the the Opus is, uh, warranted. Christian belief is that what you're referencing the the big burgundy book.I can't remember where he makes this argument? Yeah, I can'tremember exactly. But like, if all your cognitive faculties are working, somebody who believes that God exists does not mean that they does not negate all of the other cognitive faculties that they're like if they're in their rational mind, that they have warrants for their belief. But, but that's what I what I think, where I'm tracking with you, and I love this is that even like, it still holds true, right? Like there's not one silver bullet argument to say now we know, like, that's what you were challenging even in the question is, how do you know that you know that you know that God exists? Well, you have to layer these arguments. And so this is one layer of that argument that even the Greeks and the Romans had a sense of transcendence that they were after, and they identified them as gods. But there's this other worldliness that they're trying to attribute to the natural world that they observe, that they can't have answers for, and that we can't observe every occurrence of reality, that there has to be something outside of our box, so to speak, out of our naturalistic tendencies. And so even that can be helpful to say, well, that kind of proves my point that even the Greeks and the Romans and other tribal deities, they're after something outside of our own experience that we can experience in this box. Yeah, that'sright. And there's a, I mean again, this, this argument, isn't intellectually coercive, and I don't think any of these are intellectually coercive. What I mean by that is you can find ways out. And so the approach I would take is actually called an abductive approach, which says, Okay, let's put everything on the table, and what best makes sense, what best makes sense, or what you know, what story best explains all of this? And so that way, there's a lot of different angles you can take depending on who you're talking to, yep, and and so what one of the, one of the ways to look at this and contemporary anthropology? Psycho psychologists have done work on this, to say, the kind of standard, what we might call natural position in all of human history, is that there's there's transcendence. That's, it's just the assumption that there's transcendence. Even today, studies have been shown even people who grow kids, who grew up in a secular society will kind of have these intuitions, like, there is some kind of God, there is some kind of creator, designer. And the argument is that you actually have to have a certain kinds of culture, a particular culture that kind of habituate certain thinking, what, what CS Lewis would call, a certain kind of worldly spell to to so that those intuitions are saying, Oh no, there's not a god. You know, there's not transcendence. And so the kind of common position in all of human history across various different cultures is there is some kind of transcendence. It takes a very particular, what I would say, parochial, kind of culture to say, oh, there's probably no there. There's not. There's, of course, there's not. In fact, Charles Taylor, this is the story he wants to tell of how did we get here, at least in some secular quarters of the West, where it was just assumed, of course, there's, of course, there's a God to 500 years of to now, and at least some quarters of the West, certain, certain elite orsecular? Yeah? Yeah, people. And even then, that's a minority, right? This is not a wholesale thing, yeah.It seems to be. There's something, well, even Jonathan height, uh, he's an atheist, says, has acknowledged that there seems to be something in humans. That's something like what Pascal called a God shaped hole in our heart, and so there's this kind of, there's this deep intuition. And what I'm wanting to do is, I'm wanting in my arguments to kind of say, okay, given this as a Christian, that I believe we have this sense of God and this intuition of God, these intuitions, I want to appeal to those intuitions. And so there's a moral order to the universe that people just sense that there is a right and wrong. There's certain things that are right and certain things are wrong, even if a culture says it is, it is, it is fine to kill this group of people, that there's something above culture, that even there's something above someone's personal preference, that is their moral order to the universe. Now, given that deep seated intuition, what you might call a first principle, what makes best sense of that, or a deep desire, that that, that nothing in the universe seems to satisfy that we have. This is CS Lewis's famous argument. We have these desires, these natural desires for we get thirsty and there's there's water, we get hungry and there's food, and yet there's this basically universal or worldwide phenomenon where people desire something more, that they try to look for satisfaction in this world and they can't find it. Now, what best explains that? And notice what I'm doing there, I'm asking that the question, what best explains it? Doesn't mean there's, there's not multiple explanations for this, but we're saying, What's the best explanation, or profound sense that something doesn't come from nothing, that intelligence doesn't come from non intelligence, that being doesn't come from non being. Yeah, a deep sense that there's meaning and significance in life, that our experience with beauty is not just a leftover from an earlier primitive stage of of evolution. And so we have these deep experiences and intuitions and ideas about the world, and what I'm saying is particularly the Christian story. So I'm not, I'm not at the end, arguing for just transcendence or or kind of a generic theism, but I'm saying particularly the Christian story, best, best answers. Now, I'm not saying that other stories can't incorporate and say something and offer explanations, but it's a, it's a really a matter of, you know, you might say out narrating or or telling the Gospel story that maps on to the ways we're already intuiting about the world, or experiencing or observing the world.Yeah, so, so going along with that, so we don't have, like, a clear cut case, so to speak. We have layers of argument, and we appeal to what people kind of, in their heart of hearts, know, they don't have to like, they have to be taught otherwise. Almost like, if you talk to a child, they can't, they kind of intuit that, oh, there's something outside, like, Who created us? Like, who's our mom? You know, like, going back into the infinite regress. It's like, okay, some something came from nothing. How does that even how is that even possible? So there has to be something outside of our. Experience that caused that to happen. So, so say you, you go there, and then you help people. Say, help people understand. Like, I can't prove God's existence, but I can argue that there are ways of explaining the world that are better than other ways. So then, how do you avoid the charge that, well, you basically are a really proud person that you think your religion is better than other religions. How, how could you dare say that when you can't even prove that you're you know? So how? How would you respond to somebody who would say, like, how do you believe? Why do you believe that Christianity is a one true religion? Yeah, um,well, I would say a couple of things. One is that, in some sense, everyone is staking out some kind of claim. So even if you say you can't say that one religion is true or one one religion is the one true religion, that is a truth claim that you're staking out. And I think it's fine that this for someone to say that they just need to realize. I mean, I think they're wrong, but I think they're they're making a truth claim. I'm making a truth claim. Christians are making truth so we're, we all think we're right, and that's fine. That's fine, but, but then we but then once you realize that, then you're not saying, Well, you think you're right, but I just, I'm not sure, or it's arrogant to say you're right. I think, of course, with some some things, we have more levels of confidence than other things. And I think that's the other thing we can say with Christian with as Christians, it's saying, Hey, I believe, I believe in the resurrection. I believe in the core doctrines of Christianity. It doesn't mean that everything I might believe about everything is right. It doesn't even mean all my arguments are are even 100% always the best arguments, or I could be wrong about a particular argument and and I'm also not saying that you're wrong about everything you're saying. Okay, so, but what we are saying is that, hey, I I believe Jesus is who he said he was, and you're saying he's not okay. Let's have a conversation. But it's not, rather, it's not a matter of somebody being air. You know, you can hold those positions in an arrogant way. But simply saying, I believe this isn't in itself arrogance, at least, I think how arrogance is classically defined, yeah. And what is this saying? I believe this, and I believe, I believe what Jesus said about himself. And I can't go around and start kind of toying with with, if I believe he's Lord, then it's really not up to me to say, okay, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, kind of take some of what he said, but not all of what he said. If you actually believe he rose from the dead and he is Lord and He is God, then then you take him at his word.What is it, as you think about cultural engagement, cultural apologetics that you've written on like, what is it in our cultural moment right now where people you say that thing, like Jesus said, You know, he, he, he said, I'm God, you know, not those explicit words, right? That's some of the argument. Like, no, but you look at the narrative he did, and that's why he was going to be stoned for blasphemy. That's why all these things. But that's, that's another conversation for another day. But, and then you talk to someone, you're like, Well, I don't believe he was God. I don't believe His claims were. Like, why then do you do we oftentimes find ourselves at a standstill, and people just throw up their hands like, well, that's your truth, and my truth is, I just don't, like, just don't push it on me. Like, why do we find ourselves in this? And it's not new. I mean, this is something that goes back to, you know, hundreds of years ago, where people are making arguments and they're like, Well, I just don't know. So I'm gonna be a transcendentalist, or I'm gonna be a deist, or I'm gonna whatever. So how do we kind of push back on that a little bit to say, No, it's not what we're talking about. Is not just a matter of preference, and it's not just a matter of, hey, my truth for me and your truth for you. But we're actually making it a claim that is true for all people. Like, how do we kind of encourage people to push into that tendency that people have to just throw up their hands and say, whatever? Pass the piece, you know? Well,okay, so I think let me answer that in two ways. One's philosophically, and then two are practically. One philosophically. I do think it's, you know, CS Lewis was on to this, as he often was way ahead of the curve on certain things, but on an abolition of man. When he talked, he's talking about the fact value distinction and how we've separated. You know, you have your facts, and then everything you know, where, classically, you would kind of recognize that courage, you know, is a virtue, and that's, it's a, it's a, it's also a fact that we should pursue courage and rather than just my preference of kind of and so there's actually. Be this, but now we have, well, that's a value, kind of courage, and say you should do something, but it's, it's, that's your value and and so we have this distinction between facts, which is, follow the science, and then values over here. And as that has opened up. You have both a kind of, on one hand, a very, very much, a people saying in a very kind of hard, rationalistic way, you know, science has said, which, that would be another podcast to kind of dive into that more science is good and, yeah, and, but science doesn't say anything. So I'm a fan of science, but it doesn't say anything. We interpret certain things, but, but so you can kind of have a hard rationalism, but you also combine with a kind of relativism, or at least a soft relativism that says, Well, this is my truth, because values become subjective. So that's the philosophical take. But the kind of practical thing, I would say, is they need people. One of the reasons people do that is because, it's because they've seen kind of these to reference what you're talking about earlier this hey, this person's coming in wanting to talk about my worldview, and it just becomes this fierce, awkward encounter, and I don't want anything to do with that type of thing, like I don't, I don't want to go down the dark corners of of the Internet to have these, to have these intellectual just like Charles Taylor says, a lot of the kind of arguments are, I have three reasons why your position is untenable. He says something like untenable, wrong and totally immoral. Now, let's have a conversation. It just and so it's kind of like, no thanks. I don't think I want to have that conversation. You do you. And so there's, there is a part that, culturally, something is going on which needs to be confronted. And Lewis was doing that work, and a lot of philosophers have followed him in that but there's also a side of of maybe where our own worst enemies here, and the way that we try to engage people, and where we start with people, and we think, Okay, let's start in this kind of, you know, apologetic wrestling match with people. And a lot of times, people are just looking to cope. People are just looking to survive. They have mental health issues going on, and they don't want another one to pop up because of the apologist. And so they're just looking to try to skirt that conversation and get to feeding their kids or dealing with their angry neighbor. And so we've got to kind of take stock on kind of where people are at, and then how to engage them with where they're at. Now I'm going to apologize. I think all of those arguments are helpful in a certain context, but a lot of times, we've been our own worst enemy, and how we try to try to engage so what I what I encourage students and ministers to do is is start talking about people's stories, and you know how life is going and where what's hard, and asking really good questions, and kind of having a holy curiosity and and often, I was in an encounter with a guy who came up to me after a kind of a university missions thing, and he was an atheist, and he wanted to talk about the moral argument. And I was happy to do that for a few minutes, but then I just asked him. I said, what you know, what do you love to do? Tell me about yourself, and where do you really find joy in life? And he looked at me, and he started to tear up, and he said, You know, I'm really lonely right now, you know, go figure this moment in our world, the kind of fragmented world we live in. And he said, what's really meaningful to me is my is my pet, because he provides solace. And there's this moment where, of course, I mean, here's an atheist wanting to show up at a Christian event, right? And because Christians were nice to him, and he's deeply lonely, and we got to have a pretty meaningful conversation about, you know, the benefits of following Christ in the community, communion with not only God, but with others, yeah, but if I would have just left it at, let's go to the more we would have never got there. But it took me kind of asking the question, which is, in essence, what I was trying to ask is what, I didn't put it like this, but what are you seeking? What are you really after here? And where are you really getting joy in life, and what's going on? And I if we can learn to go there, I think we'll have much more productive conversations. And then just kind of, I heard chatro talk about the, you know, ontological argument. Now let me throw that out there at somebody. I think that's why apologists and apologetics have sometimes been given a bad name. But if you. Actually look at the tradition, the the larger tradition. There's so many resources, and there's so many people, apologists, doing lots of different things, that I think gives us kind of way to actually engage people where they're at.Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Well, I It reminds me, I believe it was Schaefer who talked about the the greatest apologetic, at least his time, and I think it stands true even now, is welcoming people and being hospitable towards people, welcoming the questions, not looking at folks as adversaries, but fellow pilgrims. And then you welcome them into that space, into that community. And then they're they see that, quite frankly, the faith works. The Christian ethic actually works, albeit imperfect, by imperfect people in imperfect ways. But you know, as we go through pain and suffering, as we go through, you know, elation and disappointment, like there's still a lot that that we can demonstrate to the world through our testimony that it works. You know, so to speak. So I'd love to hear you kind of help walk us through how the Christian story tells a better story about pain and suffering, because that's that's a fact of every person listening is that there's some modicum of pain and suffering in their life at any moment. And then you look at the grand scale of the world and all these things, but just even we can go down to the individual level of the why is there pain and suffering in my life and in the world and, you know, in general. But I like, like for you to just kind of riff on that for a little bit for us, to helpus, yeah. And in some ways, this question, and the apologetic question is a kind of real, a snapshot into the into what we're talking about with, how do we respond to that? Not just as Okay, an intellectual question, yeah, yeah, but it's also a profoundly experiential question. And there's youmean, you mean, and how, in the moment when you're saying, in the moment when somebody asks you the question, not getting defensive, but being being willing to listen to the question, Is that what you mean by that? And yeah,well, what I mean is, that's certainly true. Matt, what I was really thinking, though, is how this is not just something kind of an abstract, intellectual question. Oh, okay, but it's a profound experiential and there's different angles that we might take into it. But I mean, as a kind of snapshot or a test case in our apologetic is, I think there's ways to answer that question that are sterile, that are overly academic, and I and that also, I would say, rushes in to give an answer. And I would want to argue that Christianity doesn't give an answer to evil and suffering, but it gives a response. And let me make, let me explain that, yeah, is, is an answer. Tries in the way I'm using it, at least tries to say, I'm going to solve this kind of intellectual problem, and the problem of evil and suffering in the world, of why a good God who's all powerful would allow the kind of evil and suffering we see in the world is, is one that we might say, Okay, now there's the problem. Now let me give the solution. And this is often done, and we've you maybe have been in this if you're listening into a certain context where a kind of famous apologist says, Here is the answer, or famous Christian celebrity says, Here is the answer to evil, and this solves all the problems, until you start thinking about it a little bit more, or you go home, or three or four years, and you grow out of that answer and and so I think we need to be real careful here when we say we have the answer, because if you keep pushing that question back in time, or you start asking questions like, well, that that bullet that hit Hitler in World War One and didn't kill him? What if the God of the Bible, who seems to control the wind and everything, would have just blown it over and killed Hitler. It seems like maybe it could have been a better possible world if Hitler, you know, didn't lead the Holocaust. Okay, so, so again, I think, I think pretty quickly you begin to say, Okay, well, maybe some of these theodicies Don't actually solve everything, although I would say that some of the theodicies that are given things like free will, theodicy or or the kind of theodicies that say God uses suffering to to grow us and develop us. And I think there's truth in all of that, and there's but what it does. What none of them do is completely solve the problem. And so I think that there's value in those theodicies in some extent.Hey, did you know that you were created to enjoy abundance? I'm not talking about getting the latest pair of Air Jordans or a jet plane or whatever that this world says that you have to have in order to be happy. Instead, I'm talking about an abundant life where you are rich in relationships, you're rich in your finances, but you are rich in life in general, that you are operating in the calling that God has for you, that He created you for amazing things. Did you know that? And so many times we get caught up in paying our mortgage and running hither and yon, that we forget that in this world of distractions that God has created you for glorious and amazing things and abundant life. If you would like to get a free workbook, I put one together for you, and it's called the my new rich life workbook. If you go to my new rich life.com my new rich life.com. I would be glad to send you that workbook with no strings attached, just my gift to you to help you. But here'sthe thing, here's what I want to go back to with a question. Is that the Odyssey as we know it, or this? And what I'm using theodicy for is this, this responsibility that that we feel like we have to justify the ways of God, is a particularly modern phenomenon. I think this is where history comes and helps us. Charles Taylor talks about this in that the kind of way we see theodicy and understand theodicy was really developed in the middle of the 1700s with figures like Leibniz, and then you have particularly the Lisbon earthquakes in the middle of the 18th century. And that was this kind of 911 for that context. And in this 911 moment, you have philosophers being saying, Okay, how do we justify the ways of God? And are trying to do it in a very kind of this philosophical way to solve the problem. But from for most of human history and history of the West, of course, evil and suffering was a problem, but it wasn't a problem so much to be solved, but it was a problem to to cope with and and and live in light of, in other words, what you don't have in the Bible is Job saying, Okay, well, maybe God doesn't exist. Or the psalmist saying, maybe God doesn't exist because I'm experiencing this. No, they're ticked off about it. They're not happy about it. They're struggling to cope with it. It is, it is a problem, but it's not, then therefore a problem. That says, well, then God doesn't exist. Yeah. And it didn't become a widespread kind of objection against God's very existence, until certain things have happened in the kind of modern psyche, the kind of modern way of imagining the world. And here is what's happened. This is what Charles Taylor says. Is that Taylor says what happened is kind of slowly through through different stages in history, but but in some sorry to be gloved here, but it's, it's a very kind of, you know, long argument. But to get to the point is, he says our view of God became small, and our view of humans became really big. And so God just came became kind of a bigger view of version of ourselves. And then we said, oh, if there is a reason for suffering and evil, we should be able to know it, because God's just a bigger kind of version of us, and he has given us rational capacities. And therefore if we can't solve this, then there must not be a god. That's kind of where the logic goes. And of course, if you step into the biblical world, or what I would say a more profoundly Christian way of looking at it is God. God isn't silent, and God has spoken, has given us ways to cope and live with suffering and ways to understand it. But what he what he doesn't give us, is that we're going to he actually promises that, that we're not going to fully understand His ways that, that we're going to have to trust Him, even though we can't fully understand why he does what he does in history all the time. And so this leads into what, what's actually called. There's, this is a, this is a weird name if you're not in this field, but it's called skeptical theism. I'm a skeptical theist. And what skeptical theists Are you is that we're not skeptical about God, but we're skeptical about being able to neatly answer or solve the problem of evil. But we actually don't think that's as big of a deal, because, simply because. I don't understand why God, God's simply because I don't understand God's reasons. Doesn't mean he doesn't have reasons. Yeah, yeah. Andso just beyond your the your finite, uh, temporo spatial understanding of things, right? Like you don't understand how this horrible situation plays out in a grander narrative,right? So it's Stephen wickstra. He had this famous argument. I'll riff off of it a little bit. I mean, just metaphor. He says, if you have a if you have a tent, and we go camping together, Matt and and I open the tent and say, there's a giant dog in there. And you look in there, there's no dog, you would say, Yeah, you're either crazy or a liar. But if I open the tent and say there's tiny bugs in there, and they're called no see ums, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't be in a position to know. You wouldn't be in an epistemological position to know whether there's a bug in there or not. So you would simply have to decide whether you're going to trust me or not. And then, you know, the claim of the non Christian might be, well, yeah, why would I trust the God given the kind of crap that I see in the world? And I would say, well, a couple reasons. One is most profoundly because God has entered into this world. He has not sat on the sidelines. So even though we don't fully understand it, he has in the person of Jesus Christ, he has suffered with us and for us. So this is a God who says, I haven't given you all the answers, but I have given you myself. And that's I think both has some rational merit to it, and profoundly some intellectual merit to that. I'd also say that the Christian story actually gets at some deep intuitions, kind of underneath this challenge or this problem. It was CS Lewis, who was an atheist in World War One, and and he was very angry at God because of the evil and violence and his his mom dying at an early age, and was an atheist. But then he realized that in his anger against God, that he was assuming a certain standard, a certain kind of moral standard, about how the world should be, that there is evil in the world and that it shouldn't be so, and this deep intuition that it shouldn't be so that certain things aren't right. Actually, you don't have if you do away with God's existence, you just you have your preferences. But in a world of just energy and matter, why would the world not be absurd? Why would you expect things not to be like this. Why would you demand them not to be like this?So a deeply embedded sense of morality that can't be explained by naturalism is what you're getting, yeah?That that we have a certain problem here, or certain challenge with not fully being able to answer the question, yeah, but they have, I would say, a deeper challenge, that they don't have even the kind of categories to make sense of the question. So that's those are some of the directions I would go, and it's first stepping inside and kind of challenging against some of the assumptions. But then I'm as you, as you can tell, then I'm going to say how the Christian story does make sense of these deep intuitions, our moral intuitions, that are underneath the problem, or the challenge of evil and suffering. And then also going to Jesus in the Gospel. And the Gospel story,one of the questions I had on our on the list of questions was, how do we know the Bible is true? But I want to delve into more of this understanding of doubt and how that plays, because you've written a lot on this. But I'd like, could you just direct us to some resources, or some folks, if folks are interested in, how do we know the Bible is true? I'm thinking real popular apologist right now is Wesley. Huff is a great place to go. But are there other like, hey, how do I know that the Bible is true? Because you keep appealing to Christianity, which is in for is the foundation of that is the Bible. So could you give us a few resources so people could chase those down.Peter Williams has written a couple little good books on the Gospels. AndPeter Williams Williams, he's in Cambridge, right, orTyndale house, over there and over the pond. And he's written a book on the Gospels. And I can't think of the name, but if you put it on the internet, it'll show up. And the genius of Jesus as well. Okay, little books, and I think both of those are helpful as far as the Gospels go. Richard, Richard balcom is really good on this, Jesus and the eyewitnesses. As well as a little book that most people haven't heard of. It's a, it's an introduction to the Gospels in that off in an Oxford series, which is, you know, kind of a brief introduction to the Gospels. And he, especially at the very beginning, he gives us John Dixon, who's at Wheaton now, has written a lot of good books on on on this. And it's got this series called skeptics guide to and it does both Old Testament and New Testament kind of stuff. So that little series is, is really helpful. So those are some places I would start. And in my books, I typically have, you know, chapters on this, but I haven't, haven't written, you know, just one book, just on this. The early books, truth matters and truth in a culture of doubt, were, were engaging Bart airman. But really, Bart airman not to pick on on Airmen, but just because he was such a representative of a lot of the the views that that we were hearing, he ended up being a good kind of interlocutor. In those I would just say, I know you didn't. You just asked for books. And let me just say one thing about this is I, I think if you are trying to engage, I think if you take the approach of, let me prove the Bible, let me take everything and just, yeah, I don't think that's the best way. I think you often have to give people some you know, whether it's, you know, the beginning of Luke's Gospel, where he's saying, This is how I went about this. And I actually did my homework to kind of say, this is at least the claim of the gospel writers say, and then, but the real way that you you come to see and know, is you have to step into it and read it. And I think one of the apologetic practices I would want to encourage, or just evangelistic practices, is is offering to read the gospels with people and and working through it. And then certain things come up as you read them, apologetically that you'll, you'll want to chase down and use some of those resources for but I think often it's, it's saying, hey, the claims are, at least that, you know, these guys have done their homework and and some of the work Richard welcome is doing is saying, you know, the Gospel traditions were, were were pinned within the lifetime of eyewitnesses and this. And so that's some of the work that that balcom has helpfully done that kind of help us get off the ground in some of these conversations.Would that be your go to gospel Luke or, like, if you're walking with players, or a go to like,some people say more because of the shortness or John, I I'm happy with them. Allfour should be in the canon. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think a couple other books I'm thinking of Paul Wagner's from text from text to translation, particularly deals with Old Testament translation issues, but then text critical pieces, but then also FF. Bruce's canon of Scripture is a real, solid place to go, if people are interested in those big pieces, but those, I mean, yeah, Richard Bauckham work was really helpful for me when I was like, How do I even know, you know the starting place is a good starting place. So, yeah, thank you for that. Sowhat the challenge is, people have got to make up their mind on Jesus. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where I want to kind of triage conversations and say, Hey, I know the Bible is a big book and there's a lot going on. First things you gotta make a call on. So that's where I'm going to focus on, the Gospels. That'sgreat. No, that's great. Well, you know, a lot of times you, and you've mentioned this earlier, that sometimes in our attempts to give reasons for our faith, we can come to simplistic answers like, Okay, this is, here you go. Here's the manuscript evidence, for example. Or, hey, here's the evidence for the resurrection. Oh, here. You know, this is pain and suffering, Romans, 828, you know, having these quick answers. And I think it stems from a desire to want to have a foundation for what we stand on. But a lot of times, and I think what we're seeing in our culture, and this is not anything new, this topic of deconstruction is not really a new topic is, you know, it's what's been called in the past, apostasy, or just not believing anymore. But now it's gotten a more, you know, kind of sharper edges to it. And and I would love for you to you know how you would respond to someone who is deconstructing from their faith because it didn't allow for doubt or because they were raised in perhaps a really strict Christian home. So how would you respond to somebody who says, I don't I don't like the. Had answers anymore, and I don't, you know, it's just too simplistic, and it doesn't, it's not satisfying. So how would you, because I encounter a lot of folks that are in that vein, the ones who are deconstructing, it's, it's not, you know, there's definitely intellectual arguments, but there's something else in back of that too, I think. So I'd love to hear you just kind of, how would you respond to someone who is deconstructing or has deconstructed in their faith?Yeah, yeah. And of course not. In that situation, my first response it's going to be, tell me more. Let's, let's talk more. I want to hear, I want to hear your story. I want to hear your deconversion story, or where you're at and and to have some real curiosity. Rather than here, let me tell you what your problem is. And let me tellyou, yeah, you just don't want to believe because you got some secret sin or something. Yeah? Oh, goodnessno. I mean, it's right faith, unbelief and doubt is complex, and there's lots of forms of doubt. And we use that word I mean, it has quite the semantic range, and we use in lots of different ways. And of course, the Bible, by no means, is celebrating doubt. The Bible, it's, you know, that we is saying we should have faith. It calls us to faith, not to doubt, but doubt seems to be a couple things to say. We talk about, we talk about ourselves as Christians, as new creations in Christ, but we also recognize that we still sin, we still we still have sinful habits. We're still sinful, and in the same way we we we believe, but we can struggle with doubt, and that's a reality. And it seems to me that that doesn't mean, though, that then we celebrate doubt, as if doubts this great thing, no, but at the same time, we need to be realistic and honest that we do. And there's certain things culturally that have happened, because we now live in a pluralistic world where people seem very sane and rational and and lovely, and they believe radically different things than we do. And just that proximity, Peter Berger, the late sociologist, did a lot of work on this area. This is just it. It creates these kinds of this kind of contestability, because, well, we could imagine even possibly not believing, or kids not believing, in a way that, again, 500 years ago, you know you Luther was wrestling with whether the Roman Catholic Church had everything right, but he wasn't wrestling and doubting the whole the whole thing, yeah, God. So that creates certain pressures that I think we need to be honest about, and but, but with, and part of that honesty, I think, in that kind of conversation to say, Hey, you're not alone and you're not just simply crazy because you're you're raising some of these things because, I mean, that's in many ways, understandable. Yeah, okay, yeah. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's understandable. And I hear what you're saying, and I'm, let's talk about it now. The the kind of metaphor that that I use is to think about Christianity as a house. Of course, that's not my metaphor. I'm I'm borrowing from CS Lewis, who talked about Christianity as a house and in Mere Christianity, Lewis said he wanted to get people through non Christians into the hallway, and so he wanted to get them into the door so that they would and then they could pick up a particular tradition, they could enter a room. But his approach in Mere Christianity was to represent kind of the whole house. And what I think is happening in many cases is that people, now, I'm riffing off of his metaphor, people in the church. People have raised in the church, so they've grew up their whole life in the house, but it's actually in the what I would call the attic. And the attic as as I talk about it is, is in the house. It's, it's a Christian community, but it was, it was many times they're built out of a kind of reactionary posture against culture, without a deep connection to the rest of the house. It's kind of like, Hey, we're scared, and understandably so, the kind of decadent morality, certain shifts happening in the west with Can you giveus a couple examples of what you're thinking like? What would a person living in the attic like? What would their tradition kind of. Look like,yeah. So a couple of things. One in response to, in some cases, in response to the kind of intellectual movements, the kind of sex, secular and, you know, thinking they would say, you know, intellectualism is bad, that would be one response from the attic, like, don't worry about, you know, thinking. Just believe your problem is you're just thinking too much. So that would be one response, a kind of anti intellectualism. The other response is what I would call a kind of, depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I would call it a kind of quasi intellectual that, and that sounds harsh that I say what kind of mood I'm in, but a kind of quasi intellectual response, which is like, Oh, you want arguments. You want evidence. We'll give you two plus two equals equals God, and we'll kind of match, you know, fire with fire, and we can prove God's existence. And oftentimes, those kinds of apologetic reactions, I would call them, sometimes they're kind of quasi intellectual, because I don't think that's how the kind of bit we come to the big decisions. I don't think it's rational enough about a rationality about kind of what type of humans we are, and how we come to the big decisions and the big truths and and so I think that's one response, and that's why you have a kind of industry of apologetics sometimes. And the way they do it, I'm not saying in some ways it can be helpful, but in other ways, it can cause problems down down the road, and we've seen that at least, like, for instance, with the evil and suffering kind of conversation we were having before. If people say, actually, those arguments actually don't make, don't fully do what they were. We you claim too much for your arguments. Let's just say, like that. Okay, so that's one kind of, so there's a there's a kinds of, well, Christianity, in that side can kind of become this kind of intellectual, sterile work where you're just kind of trying to prove God, rather than this, than this way of life, where does worship come in? Where does devotion come in? What is And so very quickly it becomes, you know, this intellectual game, rather than communion with the living God. And so the emphasis understandably goes a certain way, but I would say understandably wrong goes a certain way, and that argument should be part of this deeper life of faith that we live and so we again, I'm wanting to say the motives aren't necessarily, aren't wrong, but where we get off because we're too reactionary, can go off. Let me give you one other ones. And I would say, like the purity culture would be another kind of side of this where we see a morally decadent culture of sexuality, and we want to respond to that we we don't want our kids to grow up believing those lies. Yeah, as as a friend of mine says, you know that the sexual revolution was actually and is actually bad for women, and we need to say that. We need to say that to people in the church, absolutely. But in response to that, then we create what, what has been called a purity culture, which, which has, has kind of poured a lot of guilt and have made have over promised again, if you just do this, you'll have a wonderful life and a wonderful marriage if you just do this, and then if you mess up, oh, you've, you've committed this unpardonable sin, almost. And so there's a lot of pressure being put on, particularly young women and then, and then over promising and so all of this,can people see that the House of Cards is coming down because they're like, Yeah, my marriage is horrible.It creates this pressure, right where you have to. You have to think a certain way. You have to behave this very kind of way. It's reaction to want to protect them. So again, I'm saying, Yes, I understand the reactions, yeah, and, but, but, and this is, I think, a key part of this, because it's not connected well to the rest of the house. It often reacts, rather than reflected deeply on the tradition and helps fit your way, the centrality of the Gospel, the centrality of what's always been, Christian teaching and coming back to the main things, rather than kind of reacting to culture because we're nervous, and doing it in such a way that, you know, well, people will begin to say, That's what Christianity is about. Christianity is really about, you know, your politics, because that's all my pastor is talking about, interesting, you know, and this is all they're talking about. So that becomes the center,even though the ethic is is, is, becomes the. Center, as opposed to the the philosophy and theology guiding the ethic, is that, would that be another way to put it, like how you live, become, becomes preeminent to, you know, wrestling with doubt and and trying to bring God into the space of your doubt and that kind of stuff is, that, is that?Yeah, I mean, so that, I think one of the things that the the early creeds help us to do is it helps us to keep the main thing. The main thing, it helps us to keep, rather than saying, well, because culture is talking about this, we're going to, you know, kind of in our churches, this becomes the main thing, is reacting or responding, maybe, whether it's with the culture and certain movements or against the culture, yeah. But if you're anchored to the kind of the ancient wisdom of the past you're you do have, you are at times, of course, going to respond to what's going on culturally, yeah, but it's always grounded to the center, and what's always been the center, yeah? And I think so when you're in a community like this, like this, the pressure of, I've gotta think rightly. I've gotta check every box here, yes, and oh, and I've, I've been told that there is proofs, and I just need to think harder. I just, you know, even believe more, even Yeah, if I just, if I just think harder, then I'll eliminate my doubt, but my doubts not being eliminated. So either I'm stupid or maybe there's a problem with the evidence, because it's not eliminating all my doubt, but this creates this kind of melting pot of anxiety for a lot of people as their own Reddit threads and their Oh, and then this, trying to figure all this out, and they're Googling all these answers, and then the slow drip, oh, well, to be honest, sometimes the massive outpouring of church scandal is poured into this, yeah. And it just creates a lot of anxiety amongst young people, and eventually they say, I'm just going to jump out of the attic, you know, because it looks pretty freeing and it looks like a pretty good way of life out there. And what, what I say to people is two things. Number one, rather than simply jumping out, first look what you're about to jump into, because you have to live somewhere, and outside the attic, you're not just jumping into kind of neutrality, you're jumping into cultural spaces and assumptions and belief. And so let's, let's just be just as critical as, yeah, the attic or house as you are will be mean, be just as critical with those spaces as you have been with the attic. So you need to explore those. But also, I'm wanting to give them a framework to understand that actually a lot of the ways that you've kind of grown up is actually been in this attic. Why don't you come downstairs, and if you're going to leave the house, explore the main floor first.And what would be the main floor? What would you say? The main floor?Yeah. I would say themain orthodox historic Christianity, like, yeah. Orthodox historic Christianity, Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, just kind of go into the Yeah. And whatI would say is, for instance, the apostle creed gives us kind of what I would call load bearing walls in the house. So it gives us the places where you don't mess like load bearing walls. You don't you don't knock those down if you're going to do a remodel, and, and, and. So you would recognize the difference between load bearing walls, walls that are central versus actual different rooms in the house, and how? Well, these aren't load bearing walls, but they're, they're, they're, they're how certain people in Christian communities, churches at particular times, have articulated it and and some of these, you could deny certain things, but you could, but those are more denominational battle lines, rather than the kind of load bearing things that you if you pull out the resurrection of Jesus, if you pull out the the deity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ, If you pull out the Trinity. So let's go back to the core. And if you're going to reject, if you're going to leave, leave on the basis of those core things, not okay. I've had these bad experiences in the church now, yeah, what I think this to kind of wrap this up on this is what often happens, or what can happen if someone says, Well, yeah, I've done that, and I still don't, I don't believe Okay, yep, that's going to happen. Yep. But one of the things I suggest, in at least some cases, is that the addict has screwed people up more than they realize, and that the way that they approach. Approach the foundation and the the main floor, it's still in attic categories, as in, to go back to our first question, well, I can't prove this, yeah. And I was always told that I should be able to prove it. Well, that's not how this works, yeah. And so they they reject Christianity on certain enlightenment terms, but they don't reject Christianity as Christianity really is. So people are going to interact with Christianity, I would say sometimes your people are investigating, say the resurrection, and reflecting more on on these central claims, but they're still doing it as if, if it doesn't reach kind of 100% certainty that I can't believe. And that's just not how this works.Yeah, that's, that's food for thought, because there, there's so many people that I interact with that I try to encourage. Like, yeah, your experience was really bad, like I'm affirming that, and that was messed up. That's not That's not Christianity, that is a branch on this massive tree trunk that stinks and that needs to be lamented and grieved and also called out as wrong. So I'm using another metaphor of a tree instead. But I love the because the house metaphor is something that you use in the telling a better story. Isn't that surprised bydoubt? Surprised by doubt? Yes, that's that's what we use, and we march through things, and we use that as, really our guiding metaphor through all the chapters. And that's what I would encourage if you're if you have somebody who's struggling with this, or you're struggling with this yourself, that's That's why a friend of mine, Jack Carson, that's why we wrote the book together, because obviously this is a we had a lot of friends and acquaintances and people who were coming to us and we weren't fully satisfied with all of the kind of works, yeah, that were responding and so this, this was our attempt to try to helppeople. Well, the book right after that was, is telling a better story. And one of the things I've really appreciated in your emphasis over the last few years has been, I would call a more humane apology, apologetic in that, you know, not giving into, okay, we're gonna give you want evidence. We're gonna give you evidence, as opposed to like, okay, let's just talk about being a huma

During the first week of June, patriots seize weapons from British regulars as they leave NY. In Virginia, they force the Royal Governor to seek refuge on a navy ship. For more details, check out Episode 69 of the American Revolution Podcast. https://blog.amrevpodcast.com/2018/11/episode-069-south-joins-war.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. A Domestic violence call In Virginia that escalated to three people being shot. And Police Officers fired upon. A Domestic Dispute call in Virginia turned into an Active Shooter. Where the suspect shot 3 people and also fired on Police Officers at the scene. This assault took place on a Thanksgiving. A former Chesterfield County Virginia Police Officer tells the story of the incident and their actions. It is also promoted across their Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , Medium and other platforms. Kyle "Ashley" Woods is our guest and he tells the tale. He talks about the tactical response and the reasons why they did what they did. Kyle also discussed the trauma response he experience, both during and after the incident. The Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and Podcast episode is available for free on their website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most major podcast platforms. “You train for it, you think you're ready for it… but when it actually happens, nothing prepares you for the real thing.” These are the words of former Chesterfield County Police Officer Kyle “Ashley” Woods as he recounted a Thanksgiving that turned into a violent and traumatic ordeal, not only for the victims but also for the police officers who responded to the call. In a gripping episode of the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and Podcast, Woods shares the harrowing details of a domestic violence call that escalated into an active shooter situation in Chesterfield County, Virginia. What started as a typical domestic dispute report quickly spiraled into chaos, leaving three people shot and officers dodging bullets at the scene. The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. Look for supporting stories about this and much more from Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and Podcast in platforms like Medium , Blogspot and Linkedin . A Holiday Marred by Violence The incident unfolded on a Thanksgiving, a time typically reserved for family and gratitude. But for Woods and his fellow officers, it became a life-threatening crisis. “A call came in, domestic in nature, nothing out of the ordinary on the surface,” Woods explained. “But the second we arrived, everything went sideways. Shots were already fired, people were already down. And then he turned on us.” Available for free on their website and streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms. Woods described the tactical response that followed, the quick decisions, the coordination, and the sheer intensity of responding under fire. He explained that while training prepares officers for high-pressure situations, the reality of being fired upon brings a level of psychological stress that lingers long after the gunfire ends. The Lingering Trauma Woods was candid about the aftermath, not just the physical toll but the emotional scars. “That day stuck with me,” he said. “Even after the reports were done, after the scene was cleared… the trauma didn't stop.” The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. As a result of his experiences, Woods developed a deeper understanding of how critical incidents affect not just victims and families, but first responders themselves. It's a perspective he brings to his podcast, Critical Incidents, where he now invites others to share their stories of trauma, resilience, and recovery. Domestic Violence and the Holidays: A Complex Picture Domestic violence can spike around the holiday season, a trend that many in law enforcement, including Woods, have seen firsthand. While some data suggests a decrease in calls to national hotlines during actual holidays like Thanksgiving or New Year's Day, crisis centers report a significant surge in victims seeking help from late November through January. You can listen to his stories and interview on our website for free in addition to platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and other major podcast platforms. Experts point to a combination of factors: heightened stress, financial pressures, family tensions, and increased alcohol consumption. All of these can contribute to volatile situations that sometimes explode into violence. “The holidays bring out both the best and the worst in people,” said Woods. “For many families, it's joy. For others, it's barely contained chaos. And sometimes, that chaos turns deadly.” The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. Understanding the Psychology of Mass Shooters Various groups have studied the psychological backgrounds of mass shooters. Research shows that many perpetrators have troubling histories, including severe childhood trauma and signs of emotional crisis prior to their acts of violence. According to The Violence Project, over 80% of mass shooters were in some form of crisis, and a majority had suicidal ideations before or during the attack. “These aren't just cold, calculated monsters,” Woods said. “Often, they're deeply broken individuals. Understanding that doesn't excuse the act, but it might help us prevent the next one.” Follow the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and podcast on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium and most all social media platforms. The Mission Behind Critical Incidents Founded by Woods, Critical Incidents is more than just a podcast. It's a platform for understanding how defining moments, from near-death experiences to frontline trauma, shape who we are. Each episode features candid conversations with individuals from all walks of life, including first responders, trauma survivors who have faced extraordinary challenges. The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. Woods explained, “This podcast is about connection. It's about understanding what people go through and how they come out the other side. Sometimes they're stronger. Sometimes they're still healing. But either way, their stories matter.” About Chesterfield County and Its Police Force Chesterfield County, located just south of Richmond, Virginia, is home to a diverse and growing population of over 364,000 residents. The Chesterfield County Police Department, founded in 1914, has a long-standing reputation for professionalism and community service, with approximately 500 sworn officers and over 100 professional staff members. The interview is available as a free podcast on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and podcast website, also available on platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most major podcast outlets. Despite its size and resources, no department is immune to the emotional toll of critical incidents like the one that occurred on that Thanksgiving Day. A Call for Awareness and Support Woods hopes that by sharing his story and those of others through The Critical Incidents Podcast, the public will gain a deeper understanding of the realities faced by police officers, trauma survivors, and anyone who's lived through a life-altering event. “The job is tough,” he said. “But it's the human side of these stories that needs to be heard. That's how we learn. That's how we heal.” The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. Do a search online to find the Critical Incidents Podcast. You can listen to the interview with him on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and Podcast, available for free on their website, also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most major podcast platforms. You can also follow them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and other Social Media Platforms. You can help contribute money to make the Gunrunner Movie . The film that Hollywood won't touch. It is about a now Retired Police Officer that was shot 6 times while investigating Gunrunning. He died 3 times during Medical treatment and was resuscitated. You can join the fight by giving a monetary “gift” to help ensure the making of his film at agunrunnerfilm.com . Your golden years are supposed to be easy and worry free, at least in regards to finances. If you are over 70, you can turn your life insurance policy into cash. Visit LetSavings.com , LetSavings.com or call (866) 480-4252, (866) 480-4252, again that's (866) 480 4252 to see if you qualify. Learn useful tips and strategies to increase your Facebook Success with John Jay Wiley. Both free and paid content are available on this Patreon page . Time is running out to secure the Medicare coverage you deserve! Whether you're enrolling for the first time or looking for a better plan, our experts help you compare options to get more benefits, lower costs, and keep your doctors, all for free! Visit LetHealthy.com , that's LetHealthy.com or call (866) 427-1225, (866) 427-1222 to learn more. Find a wide variety of great podcasts online at The Podcast Zone Facebook Page , look for the one with the bright green logo. Be sure to check out our website . Be sure to follow us on MeWe , X , Instagram , Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin and other social media platforms for the latest episodes and news. Background song Hurricane is used with permission from the band Dark Horse Flyer. You can contact John J. “Jay” Wiley by email at Jay@letradio.com , or learn more about him on their website . Get the latest news articles, without all the bias and spin, from the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show and Podcast on Medium , which is free. The Thanksgiving Shooting and the Police Trauma response. Attributions Chesterfield County Va. Police Department 12 News Violence Free Colorado Wikipedia NIJ Critical Incidents Podcast

David Waldman throws the news at us and dives for cover. Greg Dworkin tells us that the worst is by design, and he brings the receipts from around the world. Trump makes the world safe for White flight. Donald stopped the war between India and Pakistan using only his mind. He is now wishing the war in Gaza to end. Who's Ukraine? Maybe they got him coffee one time. South Korea's conservatives throw everything up in the air to see if it all falls into place. Germany wishes to ignore their far-right, but they are a noisy bunch. After 40 years, the Kurdish group PKK says, “Oh well, it was worth a try.” In Virginia, they have no one to blame but themselves but probably won't. So, Qatar is sending Trump a giant golden palace of a 747. Hey, can't a country give their buddy a thing without everyone suddenly questioning it? The White House said Ceci n'est pas une émolument, or something to that effect. Anyhow, Trump is only borrowing it until he keeps it... that's not “corrupt”, it's called “being smart”. You'd have to be a radical Left Trump hater to say otherwise. Trump said “tariffs”, setting off another sheep stampede. Time for another executive order to yell at another cloud, this time to demand that prices go down from up where they are. Drug prices should go down once the customer base passes away. James Bond still can rest easy, his car shopping remains tariff-free. Insult to Nazis, Steven Miller, is thinking about suspending habeas corpus, inspiring fantasies of abusing his corpus. David explains habeas corpus, as does just about everyone with a keyboard this morning. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka refused to take the bait at an ICE detention center, but that didn't keep them from arresting him. He's lucky they didn't send in Seal Team 6.

Homeschool freedom came under threat in Virginia earlier this year, and hundreds of families quickly stepped up to defend it—proving that the price of freedom is constant vigilance. In this episode of Homeschool Talks, Callie Chaplow, Director of Government Affairs for the Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV) joins Jim Mason, President of HSLDA, to discuss how families rallied at the Virginia statehouse to defend homeschool rights during an active legislative season, particularly families new to homeschooling! Join the conversation on how Virginia's homeschool community made their voices heard—and what we can all learn from their advocacy. “[This bill] was an attack on all homeschoolers. It [attempted to] change the homeschooling process and it added a whole bunch of requirements. [Homeschool families] rallied. In Virginia, about 40% of homeschoolers in Virginia were not homeschooling pre-COVID. That's a gravitational shift in culture of people who have never had to defend their homeschool freedom. This was an opportunity for all these new homeschoolers to really value what we have. And they did. People who had never been involved in the political process, never have come down to the Capitol, never written or called a legislator—they [rose up].”—Callie Chaplow

CCE-850ALast week I asked listeners of the podcast to let me know if they were tuning in, and sure enough, several of you did reach out! So, perhaps this Friday edition of the newsletter going out as a podcast will continue. Today's edition doesn't have any new information but instead is an audio summary of some of what has been going on with voices from some of the decision-makers.I'm Sean Tubbs, and this one's a bit of a puzzle to put together. In the print edition below you'll see new versions of a couple of the stories as I had to develop a new script. I have not included the images, but these podcasts will now have normal shout-outs. No more house ads!Two stories in this edition, both about Charlottesville's budget for FY2026:* City Council makes last minute decisions at final work session before tonight's vote on $265M budget* Council adopts $265.2 million budget after another conversation about transit fundingFirst shout-out: Plant Virginia NativesSpring is here and there's still time to plan for upgrades to your outdoors. You can take some time to get ready for spring! Check out Plant Virginia Natives!Plant Virginia Natives is part of a partnership with ten regional campaigns for ten different ecosystems across Virginia, from the Northern Piedmont to the Eastern Shore. Take a look at the full map below for the campaign for native species where you are in the Commonwealth. For the Charlottesville area, download a free copy of the handbook: Piedmont Native Plants: A Guide for Landscapes and Gardens.Plant Northern Piedmont Natives is for anyone who works with native plants, whether you are a property owner, private consultant, landscape designer, nursery operator, conservation group, or local government.(image)A summary of the April 10, 2025 Charlottesville City Council budget work sessionOne of the challenges of doing a podcast version at the end of a week is that I may have to rearrange two previous stories in order for the audio edition to make sense. That's the case this week with Charlottesville City Council's adoption of a $265.2 million budget for fiscal year 2026. That happened on April 14 at a special meeting.But before we get to that, we have to go back to the work session held on April 10.In Charlottesville, the budget process never really stops. In fact, it keeps on going up to the last minute of adoption. New items were added at the work session that had not previously come up.At the beginning of the April 10 work session, they learned about additional spending that can happen because new funding has been found since the beginning of the budget process in March.“We do have supplemental revenue over and above the proposed budget of $774,263,” said Krisy Hammill, the city's budget director.The driver of that change was an additional $700,000 increase in Business and Professional Licenses that had not been factored in.There were many numbers thrown around during the final work session. Before Council signed off on how to spend that money, City Manager Sam Sanders went through how $915,620 in “Council Discretionary Funds” would be spent to leave a balance of $440,406 to spend.“Kind of thinking that with all the volatility that we have in DC, there could very easily be a series of moments that come up and that this would give you the flexibility to make some decisions and how we could support gaps in what could happen based on decisions and how it actually lands in the community,” Sanders said.Staff codified a list of what Council had already decided to spend over the course of four budget work sessions.* $250,000 to the Blue Ridge Coalition for the Homeless to cover the costs of a federal grant not obtained because there was an error related to a recent leadership transition.* $162,000 to the Piedmont Housing Alliance to pay for the cost of staff who work on eviction prevention.* $50,000 in cash to the Piedmont Housing Alliance related to eviction prevention.* An additional $43,150 to the Boys and Girls Club for a total of $116,000 in the FY26 budget.* An additional $28,800 to Lighthouse Studios to fund two programs for a total funding of $40,000 in the FY26 budget.* An additional $6,000 to Loaves and Fishes to bring their total funding to $50,000 for FY26.* An additional $1,200 to Piedmont CASA for a total of $10,000.* An additional $6,600 to Live Arts for a total of $16,000.* An additional $7,100 to Legal Aid Justice Center for a total of $40,000* An additional $1,500 to SARA for a total of $25,000.* A total of $104,261 in capital improvement program funds will be redirected to the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial. Read this story for more information.At the meeting, Hammill handed out a spreadsheet that provided more details about other programs that were added to the list such as an annual payment to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. This was initially left out of the budget because the organization did not fill out an application through a portal called Zoom Grants.The payment to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center was $228,993 in FY2024 and $246,993 in FY2025. The organization is considered fundamental which means it no longer has to compete for funding through the Vibrant Community Fund process . The payment for FY2026 will be $228,200.“By not submitting through Zoom Grants, they didn't appear on the list, but they didn't know that they had to still submit through Zoom Grants,” Sanders said. “So we have some course corrections that we need to do there and making sure that everyone understands what they have to do still, even though they're in a non competitive round.”Sanders said there was a similar error with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. That government body is considered “fundamental” but also sought additional funding.“We have to have a conversation with them about their pursuits of funding going forward to your point they could be here and in the competitive rounds,” Sanders said. “I don't particularly care for that. I think that makes it double dipping.”Sanders said Deputy City Manager James Freas and the Office of Community Solutions are currently performing an audit of CRHA as a way of building a better working relationship.City Councilor Michael Payne, a member of the CRHA Board, called for a joint work session to plan for the likelihood of reduced federal funding for public housing units.At one point in the conversation, Council initially signaled a willingness to add an additional $16,000 to the United Way for their Prosper program. Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall made a pitch for the program at the April 10 meeting. The program had previously been called the Financial Resiliency Task Force.Another last minute item is $30,000 for the Tonsler League headed by former City Councilor and current CRHA Chair Wes Bellamy. The organization had expected that the City of Charlottesville would have received an additional $250,000 from the state government for operations, but Governor Glenn Youngkin recently vetoed that from the budget.“He received a $250,000 grant for this current year that ends in June,” Sanders said. “I am planning to check with him to see if. If he will expend all of that and avoid the risk of having to send anything back.”Council supported giving the Tonsler League $30,000.At half an hour into the final budget work session held three days after the final public hearing, Sanders asked Council if there was any other item they might want to fund and gave them the current balance.“The question that we are really posing at this point is, is there anything else that you all have been pondering?” Sanders asked. “Because we try to remind you that this is the end of the road and we are truly down to $394,000 that today, right now at this moment, is your Council Strategic Initiatives Fund.”That prompted Councilor Lloyd Snook to express a concern.“So we haven't even gotten to the fiscal year and we've already cut it down?” Snook asked.“That's correct,” Sanders said.Snook said he felt the process was not appropriate.“I find myself trying to figure out what possible process we're advancing here,” Snook said. “And the answer is it's still back to whatever anybody throws up against the wall at Council at the last minute. I just think that's a terrible way to do business.”Sanders said he understood Snook's concern.“I understand and appreciate the last minute nature of it and I'm not a fan of always doing that and I think in these, this, these two moments specifically, we can identify a way to bring you critical information so that you can have that presented to you and then you can make that determination on if you believe the item is ready to go forward,” Sanders said, adding that both Marshall and Bellamy could appear before Council to formally make a pitch.There were at least three Councilors who supported funding for Tonsler, but not yet for the Prosper Program.There was also a long discussion about increasing the number of transit drivers to 82 in order to restore service to pre-pandemic levels. This comment from Sanders finishes off that discussion and sets up a conversation for the future.“I think what I heard was that you are not going to attempt to unpack the budget at this late stage and find a way to make 82 drivers a reality,” Sanders said. “But what you are indicating is that you support the desire for added drivers and that you're looking to have us revisit that with you at some point in the future later in 2025 for the possible consideration of the use of one time funds for the bridge that would be required to get us to the next budget where we will realize the true cost.”Sanders also said he still wants to hold on to the $22.4 million surplus from FY2024 in case federal programs are cut.“The conversations that are being had in regards to SNAP and Medicaid are real in that they're big,” Sanders said. “And if those cuts were to occur, we will see a number of our constituency impacted directly by that.”Sanders said that while the city is blessed to have a large surplus, it will go very quickly if the local government picks up what had been a federal program.Tonight's meeting to adopt is not the end of the process. Because of a second advertising error, Council still has to hold a public hearing on the tax rates and that will take place at the next regular meeting on April 21. By law, Council cannot adopt those tax rates at that meeting and must wait at least three days. A second special meeting will be held on April 24.I had hoped to tell you more about the next three items by going back to the audio, but I've got to get to the next set of stories:* Sanders had an update on a potential low-barrier shelter. The General Assembly's version of the budget had $1.5 million going to the City of Charlottesville for this purpose, and Youngkin cut this in half. The budget has not yet been finalized and Sanders said Senator Creigh Deeds is still trying to make the case to restore the funding.* Sanders said he believes the city would need to provide operating funds to any grocery that sets up at 501 Cherry Avenue.* There is still a possibility that the city might provide funding for UVA's affordable housing project at 10th and Wertland. They will be asked to submit a request as part of the next funding cycle this fall.Second shout-out: Piedmont Master Gardeners seek items for Green Elephant SaleIf you are cleaning out your garage or basement this winter and have garden implements or yard ornaments you no longer need, the Piedmont Master Gardeners will take them off your handsThe Piedmont Master Gardeners are seeking donations of new and used garden tools, hoses, decorative items, outdoor furniture, and virtually anything else that can be used to maintain or enjoy a home landscape. From February 1 through April 30, these "Green Elephant" donations may be dropped off at 402 Albemarle Square between 10 a.m. and noon on Wednesdays or Saturdays. The Master Gardeners are not able to accept plastic pots or opened chemicals.The Green Elephants will be offered for sale to the public during PMG's Spring Plant Sale, scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 3, at Albemarle Square Shopping Center. Proceeds will support the many free and low-cost horticulture education programs the Piedmont Master Gardeners offer to the community.To arrange a pickup of large items or for more information, contact the Piedmont Master Gardeners at greenelephant@piedmontmastergardeners.org.(image)Council adopts $265.2 million budget after another conversation about transit fundingCharlottesville City Council adopted a $265.2 million budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 at a special meeting on April 14 but not before another review and summary from City Manager Sam Sanders. He had introduced a $264,474,183 budget on March 4.“Things have changed a little bit, as it always does, from the proposed date to your adoption date,” Sander saidThere have been five budget work sessions and two public hearings on the document itself, but yet to come is a public hearing on the tax rates for 2025.“What I'll point out to you just in basic highlights, is that the revenue expenditure at this time has now risen to $265,248,446,” Sanders said.The tax rates have not changed for 2025, but another year of growth in assessments has resulted in more revenue. The assessor's office reported an average of a 7.74 percent increase in late January.One spending change in the budget is an additional $600,000 for Charlottesville Area Transit which partially came out of a push for local advocates.“We added a transit mechanic to help with operations,” Sanders said. “We are also maintaining fare free service across the system and absorbing the absence of the flexible federal funds because those funds are now not available to us as they have been.”Other highlights:* There's $5.4 million over the next five years for sidewalk repair and construction* There's $12.7 million in spending on affordable housing initiatives in FY26* The FY26 budget is the first to apply to a fourth collective bargaining unitCity Councilor Michael Payne asked about the status of a $22.4 million surplus from FY2024. Sanders made the decision to keep the amount in reserve and Council has so far agreed. The idea is to keep the money available while a new era for the federal government continues to settle in. He also said he has been meeting with nonprofit groups who have been making presentations on funding they have lost from the federal government.“So they are first trying to recoup what they've spent and hope that they might actually get some continuation,” Sanders said. “So that is beginning to build. We're beginning to see that finally the city organization itself has not incurred a loss. But we still continue to monitor just believing that it's just a matter of time. It's not a matter of if, it is actually a matter of when.”A generally-held practice in municipal budgeting is to not use one-time money such as surpluses to hire staffing.“Something like staffing is not ideal because we can't guarantee that funding to occur year to year,” said City Councilor Natalie Oschrin.The conversation went back to transit. The City of Charlottesville owns Charlottesville Area Transit and has full control of its operations. Albemarle County and Charlottesville have entered into an entity called the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority but so far that is entirely about planning for transit operations.Albemarle Supervisors vote to join Regional Transit Authority, December 15, 2024Charlottesville joins regional transit authority; Council holds first reading on federal transit allocations, December 28, 2024Charlottesville Area Transit has no independent board of directors which makes Council the sole authority over its operations. There had once been an advisory body made up of citizens but that was eliminated sometime during the pandemic.An advocacy group called IMPACT made up of various churches has been pressuring Albemarle and Charlottesville to increase the amount they spent on transit to hire additional drivers. Their specific number has been 82, a number believed to enable Charlottesville Area Transit to increase service.“The solution to long wait times is very straightforward: we need more bus drivers,” reads their website. “Right now, Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) has budgeted 67 drivers. Getting to wait times of half an hour will require at least 80.”In Virginia, cities and counties are completely independent of each other. There are regional services such as that provided by the Rivanna Water and Service Authority, but localities have to adopt budgets independently.IMPACT's public event was held on April 8, over a month into the budget process for Charlottesville and about six weeks after Albemarle County Executive Jeffrey Richardson introduced that locality's budget.At their work session on April 10, City Council indicated they wanted to support IMPACT's request but the timing is not right for the existing budget. They agreed to hold conversations about how to get there shortly after the budget is adopted.Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston and Charlottesville City Council were the two members of Council who went to hear from IMPACT at what they call the Nehemiah Action.“The commitment that the two of us made was to try to get something for this coming the fiscal year that we're working on now, which means some sort of amendment or whatever,” said City Councilor Brian Pinkston.Several members of the group were in attendance at the meeting and Pinkston addressed them directly from the dais and encouraged them to get involved earlier in the budget process.“I want people to know that this is not the end,” Pinkston said. “We heard you last week, we're working on it. And what you're hearing now is the sort of public outworking of the conversations that need to happen.”For over four years of reporting on transit issues, take a look at this tab on Information Charlottesville.Council adopted the budget after a final explanation of last minute changes such as $30,000 for the Tonsler League to help keep it going after Governor Youngkin vetoed an anticipated $250,000 from Virginia's budget.Council will hold a public hearing on the tax rate for 2025 on April 21 and then will hold a special meeting on April 24.Postscript for #850AToday's edition was intended to have additional audio but I ran out of time. Also the podcast edition can be less than half an hour long. The version that airs on WTJU has to be at least 29 minutes long. There was no radio version last week so I'm going to put another story or two in that version from #846-A. Behind the scenes I have quite a bit of organization that allows me to seemingly produce more content than entities with budgets that are much larger than mine. One day there will be more of everything. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

In Virginia, a man is charged with murder after a stranger was found bleeding on a woman’s couch in a quiet home near Linden. A car thief in Texas crashes a stolen Dodge Charger into a ditch, mocks a neighbor, and then runs away. Drew Nelson reports.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Plus Can AI Pick You March Madness BracketLike this? Get AIDAILY, delivered to your inbox, every weekday. Subscribe to our newsletter at https://aidaily.usApple's AI-Powered Siri Update Delayed—Is It Falling Behind?Apple just hit pause on its big AI-powered Siri upgrade, pushing it to "next year." Meanwhile, rivals like Google and OpenAI are sprinting ahead. Critics say Apple's playing it too safe, while fans hope the delay means they're cooking up something worth the wait. Either way, Siri's still stuck in 2024.AI-Powered Robots: Racing Ahead, But Can They Deliver?Researchers are in a mad dash to create AI-driven robots that can handle real-world tasks. But here's the kicker: while AI brains are advancing fast, giving robots the physical skills to match is a whole different ballgame. The challenge? Teaching robots to navigate our unpredictable world safely and effectively.AI Unveils Hidden 'Bubbles' in the Milky WayAstronomers have used artificial intelligence to uncover massive, previously hidden bubble structures in the Milky Way. These colossal formations, extending tens of thousands of light-years, are thought to result from ancient energetic events, such as supernovae or activity from the galaxy's central black hole. This discovery offers new insights into the dynamic processes shaping our galaxy.AI Picks My March Madness Bracket—Can It Beat the Odds?Curious about how artificial intelligence would fare in predicting the NCAA tournament, a CNET writer used AI to fill out their March Madness bracket. Leveraging machine learning algorithms and historical data, the AI made its selections. The experiment aimed to see if AI could outperform traditional methods and intuition in forecasting game outcomes.AI's Energy Problem: Data Centers Are Draining Power FastAI's boom is turning data centers into energy hogs, with some now using more power than entire cities. In Virginia, rising AI demand is stressing power grids, pushing companies toward nuclear and natural gas solutions. The big question: Can AI's future be sustainable, or is it on a collision course with the climate crisis? Russo Brothers Used AI for 'The Electric State'—Here's WhyIn their latest Netflix film, The Electric State, directors Joe and Anthony Russo incorporated AI technology for voice modulation. Joe Russo mentioned that using AI in filmmaking is becoming more common, even though many in Hollywood are hesitant to acknowledge it. He believes that AI, currently in its generative state, is well-suited for creative applications, despite its limitations in more critical tasks. The film, starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, is set in a retro-futuristic 1990s and follows a teenager's journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape.

In Missouri, a young woman was arrested in connection to the death of her one-year-old child.In Massachusetts, a woman was found shot to death outside of her apartment. Police announced that a suspect has been captured and charged.In Virginia, law enforcement responded to reports of shots fired and found a man and woman suffering from gunshot wounds in a car.We have new and updated information on the case of Gordon Laakso, the Wisconsin man accused of killing his wife over the weekend.Consider joining PLUS+ at swordandscale.com/plus

In Virginia, a man called law enforcement for an incident involving his girlfriend. Upon their arrival, they found a woman dead in a back bedroom of a home.In North Carolina, a man called 911 and reported that he had killed his girlfriend in their apartment at a storage facility.In Ohio, police officers found a man broken down on the side of the road. Upon contacting the man, he fled from the scene and later made some deadly admissions after he was captured.In New Mexico, police responded to a home after receiving reports of a shooting and found one victim. Before the shooting occurred, the victim had been arrested on multiple counts of child abuse, leaving many to wonder if the two cases were connected.Consider joining PLUS+ at swordandscale.com/plus

On this episode: Not every law or amendment makes it to the ballot overnight. In Virginia, proposed constitutional amendments must pass through two legislative sessions—with an election in-between—before voters have their say. This year, lawmakers are considering measures on abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and restoring voting rights for individuals with felony convictions, but their fate might depend on what happens in the next election. Hear us break down Virginia's amendment process, explore similar systems in states like Pennsylvania and Nevada, and explain how legislative action today shapes the choices voters will see in future elections.  Learn more about how this process works in VA: https://news.ballotpedia.org/2025/01/27/virginias-two-session-rule-for-constitutional-amendment-house-of-delegates-election-could-affect-the-future-of-proposed-amendments-on-abortion-marriage-and-voting/  Sign up for our Newsletters: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia_Email_Updates  Stream "On the Ballot" on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have questions, comments, or love for BP, feel free to reach out at ontheballot@ballotpedia.org or on X (formerly Twitter) @Ballotpedia. *On The Ballot is a conversational podcast featuring interviews with guests across the political spectrum. The views and opinions expressed by them are solely their own and are not representative of the views of the host or Ballotpedia as a whole.

Emotions are running high this week. But while things remain disheartening on the national stage, we're still celebrating wins on the state and local level. In Virginia, for instance, Democrats just won their special elections for the State Assembly. Not only that, but they won by even bigger margins than expected. And in Ohio, Amanda's husband Casey has been working hard on a law that helps kids access hearing aids. Last week, the bill was finally signed into law.These are the kinds of stories that get missed in the 24/7 coverage of the Latest Terrible Thing That Trump Said. Progress is still happening. We just need to look closer to home.This week, we're joined by A'shanti Gholar, the president of Emerge, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office. She's surprisingly upbeat and hopeful — or maybe it shouldn't be so surprising. Despite our painful losses on the national level, Emerge had 570 candidates on the ballot last year with close to a 70% win rate. That's so many amazing women who are now in office, working to improve their communities.Whether you want to watch next week's inauguration or not, just like whether you want to keep consuming national political news, is completely up to you. We need to take care of ourselves and our mental health if we want to keep showing up for our families and communities over the next four years. Just know that there are over 520,000 elected offices in this country and change is possible at all levels. The power of the “new girls network” is only growing.Speaking of the inauguration and emotions running high, nobody keeps us calm like Heather Cox Richardson. She'll be joining us for a live virtual event on Inauguration Eve to help put things into perspective and remind us that small groups of people can change history. You can click here to learn more and RSVP for that event, and if you can't make it live, you can hear Heather in the next episode of The Suburban Women Problem.For a transcript of this episode, please email theswppod@redwine.blue. You can learn more about us at www.redwine.blue or follow us on social media! Twitter: @TheSWPpod and @RedWineBlueUSA Instagram: @RedWineBlueUSA Facebook: @RedWineBlueUSA YouTube: @RedWineBlueUSA

In Virginia, authorities in Halifax County announced the arrest of a man for the 2017 murder of his wife.In Massachusetts, first responders were called to a home for a reported medical emergency. They found an elderly man who was the victim of an assault.In New York, authorities announce the arrest of a woman for a suspected double murder in early November.Consider joining PLUS+ at swordandscale.com/plus

Stigall has been at it a full 24 hours explaining to various media outlets all that occurred in Pennsylvania to make Donald Trump the 47th President of the United States. Now he reflects on what he feels Trump's historic win means in practical terms for average voters. Did "too big to rig" work as a strategy to stave off potential fraud? How much better or worse is election integrity this time around and how do we fix it now that Trump has won. Heritage Foundation Election Law Reform specialist Hans Von Spakovsky says Trump has the power to make a permanent fix now. In Virginia our friend Daniel Turner explains how Trump kept it close and why energy policy must be Trump's day one priority to begin bringing down the cost of everything Americans buy. And a very happy and hoarse Sonny Joy Nelson - Trump 2024 media director - was live from the victory after party with President Trump and gives us the behind the scenes details of what went on in the hours leading up to Trump's historic victory speech in Florida early this morning. Plus, liberal tears and tantrums from last night's broadcasts. -For more info visit the official website: https://chrisstigall.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisstigallshow/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisStigallFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.stigall/Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/StigallPodListen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/StigallShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have updated information on the case of Jennifer Gledhill, the woman accused of killing her husband, Matthew Johnson, in Utah. In Virginia, a married couple is found dead in their rental space. It wouldn't take long for investigators to identify a suspect. In New Mexico, police responded to a home after a neighbor reported hearing gunshots. When they arrived, they found a man exiting his home holding a gun. He then made a disturbing statement.Consider joining PLUS+ at swordandscale.com/plusCheck out our merch store at store.swordandscale.com

In Virginia, a man falls victim to a crypto scam, losing his life savings to a trusted online acquaintance who wasn't who he seemed to be, in what is known as a pig butchering scam. A young man from Tennessee tries to apply for a real hitman job on a fake website. Drew Nelson reports.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Connecting the Dots with guest former Governor L. Douglas Wilder, we cut right to the chase: forget the polls, the hype, and identity politics—what really matters in the 2024 race is what the candidates have done and what they're going to do. Former Governor Wilder doesn't hold back as we dive into the hard truth: track records and real actions are what voters should care about. From public safety to education, we tear through the noise and focus on what's truly at stake. If you're not asking what these candidates have delivered, you're missing the point. Buckle up for a no-nonsense conversation that flips the script on political analysis Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!   Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!     Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00): The 2024 presidential race is shaping up as we sit here in early September. The Hill reports Harris v Trump polls Harris has a 4% lead based upon 162 polls. If you're a Harris fan, that's great for the popular vote, but the number that matters is 270. What's behind these numbers? Let's find out Announcer (00:31): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:39): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue of force is what's the layout of the domestic political landscape and for some invaluable insight into this and some other issues. Let's turn to my guest. He continues to be one of the most astute political minds of our time. He's the 66th governor of Virginia, the nation's first elected African-American governor, former mayor of Richmond, Virginia, and he's the founder of the l Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. And a man that I am very proud to be able to a governor L. Douglas Wilder. Welcome to the show. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (01:56): Thank you Wilmer, and it's always good to be with you and always learn from you as well and share opportunities for us to spread to others who would look to what we say for guidance or correction or whatever it is they feel. I'm always privileged to be with you. Dr. Wilmer Leon (02:19): Well, sir, the privilege is mine. Thank you so much for those compliments. Before we get to your analysis of the upcoming election, talk a little bit about the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at VCU. It's my opinion that of all of your historic and significant accomplishments, this one is historic and significant. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (02:43): It is, and we have an excellent dean, Dean, Susan Gooden, who understands the importance of what we call government and public affairs. They understand what government is and as you and I discussed and have discussed on any numbers of occasions, that government, which is closest to the people is that which most affects the people at local government. Yes, we're concerned about who's going to be president, but who's going to pick up the trash, who's going to provide housing, and so we connect those dots between national elections, national government and local government and we involve the issues. We have a measure that she calls rise, a research Institute for social equity and it's very important, and that's distinguished from DEI talking about America and Wilmer. I don't have to tell you, you have no idea how many people are not aware of the history of America. Not just black history, but American history, which improves all of America's people. That's what we try to do at our school. We're critical, we're analytical and we hope to improve. Dr. Wilmer Leon (04:07): Your point about people not being aware of American history, and I'm going to get to the Wilder bite in just a minute because you did some surveys on some of those issues, but just the overall idea of teaching government in school, that is becoming harder and harder to find middle schools and high schools that are going to teach government in school. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (04:36): You'd be surprised or maybe not surprised to know that our governor, governor Glenn Young requested Syl from our schools as well as a couple of other schools in Virginia as to what is being taught relative to this history. The governor of the state of Virginia most will be able to approve himself singularly, not the boards of visitors, not the people who are the historians, but he wants to do it and we projected it. People have rejected it, and I think one of the reasons is people want more of a corrective history. Tell it all the good, the bad and the ugly, and then we can improve upon it. We can see what it is we may have done wrong. When I ran for office, I never ran as a black person. I ran as a person entitled to run because I fulfilled the obligations of the need to run for office age, residency, et cetera. And then I never have considered myself a black governor. The vast majority of people in this state are not black. Matter of fact, Virginia, when I ran, was the lowest concentration of black voters or black population of any of the southern states, but for whites voting for me overwhelmingly to the extent that they did not overwhelming in terms of the numbers, numbers but overwhelming in terms of precedent. I wouldn't be here talking to you today as the former governor or the former mayor or the former. Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:27): One of the things that I find incredibly invaluable is I get that you have a publication Wilder Policy Bites (06:36): And the most recent, which I think was released on the 25th of August is entitled Commonwealth Poll. Most Virginians agree, history of race should be taught in schools. One of the issues of education, I'm sorry, on the issue of education, 75% of respondents think the history of race should be a subject In K through 12, there were three bullets. That's the first one. The second one is about Gaza and Israel's military action. 39% said Israel was justified in taking action in Gaza. And the third point, a high percentage of Virginians agree that VCU President Michael Rouse should provide public accounting of money. I highlight those three because that's quite a diverse area of information and polling that you all are doing with your Wilder policy bites. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (07:33): Well, thank you very much. And policy bites put on by our school Dean Gooden and Dr. Robin McDougall handles the polling that we have put forth, but what you just cited was the illustrative of what the governor obviously doesn't know. The people want the things that you just described. They want to know about education, they want to know about the history. They want to know about what should or should not be taught. They're not asking the governor to tell teachers what to teach. Let the teachers who are trained to do the instruct our youngsters to let them know who we are as a people. And so in policy base, we also want to, and our polling, when you see the numbers of people, we, as I said, are not a purple state nor a blue state or a red state. We're a people state and that's why I've always been a little weary of polls because I wonder why no one ever call me. I thought of a poll and yet involving now with policy base and polling and knowing how fair that this poll is being conducted. Listen to the people and they'll tell you what you might not want to hear, but they'll tell you the truth. Dr. Wilmer Leon (09:07): I said, now let's turn to the current landscape. And I said in the open that the Hill has reported that Harris now has a 4% lead based on 162 polls, and we understand polls are no more than just a snapshot in a moment of time. But I also said that said, if you're a Harris fan, that's a very encouraging number, but the number that matters is two 70. So just give me first of all your overall thoughts of the political landscape as it stands before us right now. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (09:50): Well, as you know, there are those who vacillate from day to day in terms of what this group says, what this person says, as I see the political landscape now, it's a turnout election. By that I mean not notwithstanding what the poll says. Who's going to vote, who's going to get up, who's going to feel motivated, who's going to feel inspired? That's why even in our state, our last poll showed plus or minus three to four, and that was with Harris leading. But are those people going to get out? Are they going to go out? Are they going to vote supposed it rains? Suppose you're not having childcare, suppose any numbers of the things, how important is it for early voting (10:48): Were going to do that, so I wouldn't pay any attention to those polls as it relates to being comfortable. I would consider them in terms of being inspired to say, look, we can win. This is what I think it takes to win and go to the people. And I think in this case the debates do matter and this next debate or this first debate between Trump and Harris, it's going to be very telling. It depends on which one of them is going to be appearing to be presidential, which one speaks for a voice for the future and which one speaks for the people. Dr. Wilmer Leon (11:30): I was asked a couple of days ago for my opinion about the upcoming election and my answer was, well, we have two troublesome candidates. We have a former president with a well-established and horrible record. We have a sitting vice president with very little to show for her efforts up to this point, neither side up to this point is really articulating substantive policy. Trump continues with his personal attacks and invectives and running on this project 2025 agenda that he now wants to run from, and there's still no policy tab on the Harris-Walz website. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (12:12): It's one thing to tell us what you're going to do, but I say this to all of the people who tell me they want to run for office or that they want to be promoted further in office. What have you done? What have you fought for? What is your unfinished agenda? What will you continue to fight for? What is it that would make me want to vote for you? Give me some idea of the things that you tried to do that you haven't been able to get done, but that if you got elected you feel that you need more favorably inclined to do so because you'd have a greater following. Those are the kinds of things the public wants. They don't want to help get any sound bites of people coming out, I support this person or that person. What will you do to make me say that I can support you? That has to be an individual decision and that's why those who are running office, particularly this election, this is going to be a very trendsetting election because as you pointed out, you've got a history maker in the process with Kamala Harris and you've got a troublemaker who has been the president of the United States, which means don't take anything for granted, don't take these polls for granted because the only one that counts is the one that's taken on election day. Dr. Wilmer Leon (13:38): So the takeaway, one of the takeaways that I have from what you've just articulated is the fact that Vice President Harris is an AKA part of the Divine nine, which both of us are. The fact that she went to Howard, which both of us have done, and the fact that she can do the electric slide, which I can't do, but I know you're a pretty good dancer, none of that really should matter. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (14:06): No, the introductory, the question is the same thing we've been talking about here. What have you done? What are you trying to do? What will you be able to do that is of an interest to me and mine? What about public safety? What about housing? What about health or what about the expenditure of money, the high cost of living, the economy and all of those things? Tell me where you stand on those issues so that I can determine what's best for me and mine. And once that happens, then I'm in a better position to say, I've got to only vote for you, but I've got to get out and get others to do so too. See, enlisting my vote is one thing enlisting me to encourage others to vote is something else. That's what has to be done. Dr. Wilmer Leon (15:06): And this issue around Project 2025, a 900 page document, I read that about 140 people tied to the Trump administration helped to write the document and the former president wants to throw up his hand and say, Hey, I don't know anything about this. I don't know where this came from. This has nothing to do with me, and we know the power of the Heritage Foundation, so now all of a sudden, these 900 pages don't mean a thing. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (15:44): Well, it doesn not only not pass the smell test, it doesn't pass any test, and so I would think that disclaimer on behalf of the president would be something that he would be better advised to forget. Don't disclaim it if you claim that up to this point. Best thing you need to do is to say the things within that that you would change even now that it's been criticized or that you would stick to now that it's been criticized, but the disclaimer is not going to work. Dr. Wilmer Leon (16:19): One of the things that I've been saying about this document, because in some circles it seems to have just come up out of nowhere, I say to those who want to run around with their hair on fire, it's old wine in new bottles For the most part. It's not new. You go back and read Newt Gingrich's contract with America, go back and read Bill Clinton's reinventing government as we know it. The Democrats have played a role in a lot of this as the Republicans have, so I don't say that to diminish how horrific the document is, but history is very important and I think people need to understand the reality in which this document has come from. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (17:14): I agree with that, but I go back again to what I said earlier. People wan't plain and talk. (17:23): They're not interested in documents or treatises or platitudes or slogans, plain talk. They don't need what you are going to do about immigration. What are you going to do about the high cost of living? What are you going to do about our economy? How threatening is the situation in to immigration as it relates to what could happen to American interests in the Middle East? What is the status of America's continuing pouring money into the Ukraine when we don't see the results that we would like to see? These are not questions that need to be documented to death. They need to be answered simply. Dr. Wilmer Leon (18:16): I wrote a piece a while ago called You're with Her, but is she with you? And the point of the piece, and I say this very clearly in the piece, it has nothing to do with Kamala Harris and everything to do with us. What are we demanding of her and up to this point, again, all I get is she's an AKA, she went to Howard and she can do the electric slide, but we aren't demanding policy, and I've even had people tell me, policy doesn't matter. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (18:55): Well, again, I agree with you and I hate to keep saying that. Dr. Wilmer Leon (18:59): I don't mind it. Go ahead. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (19:00): I like saying it because it's good to hear somebody finally make some sense. Your question really is not what you're going to do for me or for you. What are you going to do for the people? Where have you derived that impetus? Where have you gotten what I would call the thriving interest to say change has to be made? What needs to change? What do you see as it relates to what you did as mayor of the city or what you did as senator? Rather what you did and what you're doing is vice president. That's another thing that Ms. Harris has got to be very careful of. You are a sitting vice president with a sitting administration. What has your administration been successful in doing? Yes, you've made some tie breaking hopes, but in breaking those ties, what have they done and accomplished to the extent that they need enrichment, they need restructuring or are there more things that need to be put on that table? Forget to pass as it relates to what has been done in terms of what you promised. Fulfill those promises. Show us what you can do, and if you had my support and support of the people in Virginia and support of people in all of the states, it could make a difference. Dr. Wilmer Leon (20:34): What do you say? Going back to the fact that there's not even a policy tab on her website, and I've had some people tell me, well, it's too early for that, that the sooner that she articulates policy, that gives the Trump side more time to attack it, to which I've said, well, if you articulate policy, if you understand the policy that you're articulating, then you should be able to defend what you've stated. You should welcome that attack because that'll give you the opportunity to expand the conversation. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (21:18): Couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more. Whenever I've taken a position as to an issue that I stand for, I prepared to defend it. If I had taken any one gun a month, we passed in my state and I was told I was crazy. We couldn't get it passed. We got it passed. We reduced crime, we reduced this proliferation of handguns, and even though I was criticized, we got it done and we set a model for the rest of the nation, those kinds of things. Second chance giving people who went to high school didn't get that degrees, give them a chance to come back to high school even though they might be 35, 40, come back and get your degrees. Those are the kinds of things that people see that make a difference. And don't try issues in sound banks or highfaluting language. Make it simple, make it plain, make it understandable, and if it is not defensible, then you shouldn't put it on the table and the sooner you put it on the table, they'll attack it. That's what you want, so you can defend it and defend it to the extent that it is a counter attack. They'll have to keep defending, defend Dr. Wilmer Leon (22:40): And in your defense of it, then if you are on your game, that enables you to expose them for what they, especially somebody like Donald Trump who doesn't understand power. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (22:54): Well. What it does further is to say, since you've attacked what I've said on this issue, Dr. Wilmer Leon (23:01): What are you going to do? Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (23:03): Where do you stand? Where have you stood? Then why are you all of a sudden now going to do something when all of this time you haven't? Dr. Wilmer Leon (23:14): You mentioned one gun a month in Virginia, and that brings me to the most recent shooting Appalachia High School. Colt Gray, a 14-year-old murder is accused of four counts of felony murder from a shooting in his school, and it's now reported that his father has been arrested and for having purchased the firearm for him, and the Republicans primarily still stand on these, to me insane opposition to simple common sense gun legislation. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (24:06): Well, some Republican representatives might feel that way, but I think the people in the communities, Republican, Democrats, independents and all, they want sensible legislation. They want reasonable controls. They want the right to defend themselves, and I think government constitutionally has to afford people that, right, but this doesn't mean you open the flood gates. There is no excuse in the world for this 14-year-old to have done what he did without the knowledge and the consent of his parents, and that's why the father is in court and he should be. Dr. Wilmer Leon (24:56): You just mentioned the people want sensitive, sensible gun law. An overwhelming number of Americans want the genocide in Gaza to end. An overwhelming number of people in the United States are tired of their hard earned tax dollars being wasted in Ukraine, but the legislators don't seem to be listening to the people Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (25:27): Couldn't agree with you more. That's why it's very important for those people who are in office, and that's why Ms. Harris, she has a difficult problem in dealing with that issue because the president of the United States is her partner. (25:48): She is his partner to that extent. So whatever is going on in Ukraine, whatever's going on there, look how we got out of Afghanistan, $85 billion worth of property. We left, left it. We left Americans. We didn't do it right. Now, having said that, if you didn't do that right then what makes people believe that you still have the expertise or the willingness to do what's right as it relates to those same issues in that part of the world? That's why Ms. Harris has got to step it up. It's difficult because she's inheriting a problem that has to be resolved. Dr. Wilmer Leon (26:36): One of the issues or one of the influences that many will say that she has particularly as it relates to Gaza, is APAC and apac. There was an article in the New York Times, I say it was around April that said they were boasting about committing $100 million to influencing the outcome of the primary elections. They were going to invest money to ensure that they deemed to be progressive Democrats. They that took anti-Israel policies for stances would not be reelected. Jamal Bowman fell victim to that and co bush fell victim to that. I didn't hear anybody from the cbc. I didn't hear anybody from the NAACP crying foul on the front end. Now they want to cry foul on the back end, and I say, you can't compromise for political expediency on the front end and then try to clean moral high ground on the back end. Your thoughts, sir, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (27:54): I think you need to go where the problem is. Go to Israel, look at the demonstrations that are taking place there. Look at what people are saying in Israel, Toya, we don't like your policies. They must change. Now, it's very difficult for us to sit back in America and to say, we're going to support this, that, or the other. When the prime minister of Israel is saying, we don't care what you say, I'm going to do what I want to do, even with some of his cabinet officials, sometimes more than just a handful of them, when you see the people in Tel Aviv, when you see them in Jerusalem, when they're saying, we cannot continue along the path, we're gone because this continuing unrest, this continuing wall, this continuing lack of safety is something that we cannot abide, and so that has to be resolved in Israel, but to the extent that we support the lack of resolve is not fatal, Dr. Wilmer Leon (29:10): And that point about how much we are contributing to the effort, and then Netanyahu tells us that, well, he's basically ignoring what's being said. My dad used to say, son, you can't ask me for my money and then ignore my advice. If you're going to take my money, you got to take my advice. And I just thought I'd, that just reminded me of something that my father would say to me, all smart man. There are a lot in the community that when we try to have a conversation about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump or Jill Stein in the Green Party or Dr. Cornell West, a lot of folks will say, well, if you don't vote for Kamala Harris, that's a vote for Donald Trump. I wrote a piece a while ago, the dangers of binary thinking in the African-American community that we've got to start to broaden our analysis and broaden our perspective. What do you say to those who will say, A, don't challenge her now because all you're doing is opening up the opportunity for a Donald Trump victory and to those who say, oh, well if you don't vote for her or if you're challenging her, then you're obviously for Donald Trump. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (30:36): Well, I've always looked at it as I've tried to describe today I vote for issues. I vote for who's the best on this, who's the best on that? (30:50): Who's the best on public safety? Who's the best on housing? Tell me not what you're going to do. Tell me what you have done. What have you tried to do? If you failed, why did you fail? What did you need more support for? You cited the losses of some of the people who've articulated certain issues, and yet by the same token, when they were articulating those issues that sometimes they were considered popular and they were victorious. They were leading the pack, but the Pack sometimes turns, and that's what we see on a regular basis in politics, so it's not a surprise, but you can never lose if you stay with the people, listen to them. It's a continuing thing. You don't listen today at election time and then again, until reelection time, listen and respond on a regular basis. Dr. Wilmer Leon (31:57): We seem to have lost an understanding of the idea of elected representative That seems now people don't seem to understand what the word representative means. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (32:14): Yes, they do. In too many cases it means represent yourself and that's what they are doing. In too many cases, I cite the example. In Virginia, particularly when I ran for the state Senate, the salary was $1,500 a year. We had no office, we didn't have a secretary, and we got I think $50 a year for stationary. That's changed Now in the representatives themselves, they can raise millions of dollars for their campaigns and put millions of dollars in their own pockets through artifacts, through indirect means, but all legal and so many people run for office for that reason to become further bettered or enriched personally and lacking the concern of the people. That's why I keep going back to it. I know it's like an old song. Listen to the people are ahead of leaders (33:32): Because they know where the rubber history road, they know where it doesn't hit the road. The rising cost of healthcare, the tremendous amount of money that's wasted in drug research, the amount of time it takes for the government agencies to approve drugs, and it is huge. It's big. It's money, money, money, and we finding that out. And so when you start saying Medicare for all, you're talking about a whole bunch of money and some people who will benefit from it and might not just be the people, it'll be some of those others who could say, I've got your Medicare in my pocket. Dr. Wilmer Leon (34:19): To your point in talking about the people, I think it was a French politician led Rollin, Alexandra drew Rollin who said, there go the people I must follow them for I am their leader. Yes, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (34:42): I thought it was. It made it very well been Dr. Wilmer Leon (34:45): Okay. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (34:46): The crowd charging the Bastille, Dr. Wilmer Leon (34:50): Right, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (34:50): And he said, where are those people going? After all, I'm their leader. Dr. Wilmer Leon (34:59): You also mentioned, you said you want to know from someone that's running for office. What have you done and what have you tried to do? And for me, in many instances, it's the tried to do that can be as important if what were you willing to fight for? I say that about Barack Obama all the time. People tell me, oh, well, Wilmer, you don't understand what he was up against. Wilmer. You don't understand all the opposition. I said, well, wait a minute. What did he go to the bully pulpit and demand? What was the hill he was willing to die on? I never understood that. I don't know that that was ever clearly articulated. Am I off base? Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (35:53): Well, I think to the extent that you don't try to do things just because you're going to be successful in doing it. It took me eight years, eight long years to get a national, to get a state holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Virginia was the first state in the nation to have a legislative holiday set aside for Dr. Martin Luther King. It wasn't New York, Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:28): The Commonwealth of Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia, the bastion of the Confederacy. They told me I was minute, lemme throw out one more data point. I think the largest slave holding state in the country. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (36:40): Exactly. Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:41): Okay. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (36:42): Okay. Presidents of Virginia owned slaves. Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:46): Well, presidents of the United States own slaves. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (36:48): Yes, presidents of the United States, right own slaves, but they were from Virginia. Right, right. (36:57): People said, when I put that bill in, they said, well, we didn't elect him to do that. No, you didn't. But I felt I was elected to do what I considered that was right and now old people, they cited all the time. Virginia was the first state to have a legislative holiday for Dr. King, and as I said, it wasn't the northern states, it was Virginia and I didn't do it. What would I benefit from it? What do I get from it? But King sacrificed so much he spoke to the need for people to come together to recognize that their differences could be set aside. And one of the things that I always remembered about him, he said, adding additional numbers is one thing, but you must remember in the column numbers will eventually end up at zero and you have to go to the next column. Dr. Wilmer Leon (38:02): Give me a little background on the process for the King holiday because I know for example, former congressman, the late Congressman John Conyers, he put a bill in every year to get a federal holiday for Dr. King. Did Congressman Congress come to you? Did you just decide for yourself, Hey, I'm going to do this? How did that process? Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (38:26): I did this on my own. Dr. Wilmer Leon (38:28): Okay. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (38:29): King and I separated by two days and birthday mine's the 17th, he's the 15th, and we separated in Age by very little, and I was just so impressed in terms of reading the kinds of things that he had done and what he was doing that I said, I'm going to put it in. So when I put the bill in, it said I was crazy. I would get the bill passed in the Senate and I said, wow. And then the House of Delegates would kill it. I then would get it passed in the Senate and the house a governor vetoed. I had to wait two years because you got to wait until another session before session that the Senator comes in. I got it passed in the Senate and the House again and another governor, Vito, that King holiday bill was vetoed by two governors in Virginia and all of this was taking place when I was a state senator. Yet I got it done because the people wanted it and now that we've got it, I don't want credit for it, but understand what King was involved with and what he meant. Not just parades and marches, but betterment of mankind and the lifting of the veil of ignorance and making certain that we had a better life for all. Dr. Wilmer Leon (40:08): As we wrap up this conversation, and thank you, you are always so gracious for me when I call you understand we're spiraling closer and closer to the 5th of November. What are the three most important things stand out in your mind about this upcoming election? If someone walked up to you as you're stepping out of ECU today and said, governor, I'm not going to vote in November. What are the three most important things? Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (40:45): Well then obviously you don't consider yourself a citizen. You don't consider yourself worthy of being considered a citizen and whatever's going to take place, you deserve it notwithstanding what happens to you. So you should never be in a position to complain about anything and so that extent don't vote. You're not doing me a favor. If you don't vote, you're not doing anyone else a favor. If you do vote, you do yourself a favor if you vote, if you don't understand that now you might know. Dr. Wilmer Leon (41:31): We're very fortunate in this country to where the transition in government doesn't result well, except for the last time with Donald Trump in the 6th of January usually doesn't result in public unrest. The transition of government is usually calm, so folks will say, well, my trash is going to get picked up. The stoplights are still going to work, and there's going to be milk at the grocery store when I go to get it. So there are those who say, it doesn't matter. It doesn't impact my daily life. And this is the last question. Your response to that mindset. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (42:08): You just described the three reasons why you should go. How does your trash get picked up? People have to make a decision and to put all those in place to pick your trash up food in the grocery store. How does it get there? Somebody has to decide that the store can be located there and zoned there for you to get invited and the other things spoke. Of the third one, the same thing local government is that which is closest to the people. National government is that which forms and shapes the local government. But if you don't vote, you hurt yourself. Dr. Wilmer Leon (42:51): Well, with that being said, sir, governor L. Douglas Wilder, thank you again. You are always so gracious. I greatly, greatly appreciate your joining the show today, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (43:04): Wilmer I'm always glad to be with you I count you as my friend. Dr. Wilmer Leon (43:08): Thank you, sir. Thank you folks. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You'll find all the links below in the show description. Remember folks, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out!! Announcer (43:50): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

TALK TO ME, TEXT ITEver wondered how a TV show can both captivate and disappoint? This episode opens with a spirited analysis of "Inventing Anna," where we dissect the portrayal of characters and share some candid critiques about the casting choices. We then introduce you to another series, "Palm Royale," lauding the standout performances of Kristen Wiig and Ricky Martin. But our conversation takes a sobering turn as we discuss a disturbing news story involving Diego Rodriguez Salvador, an illegal migrant accused of a heinous crime in Louisiana. Our emotions run high as we express the urgent need for severe legal consequences for such actions.Prepare to be both amused and bewildered as we recount two jaw-dropping stories. In Virginia, a handgun stored in an oven led to an alarming incident when it fired multiple rounds as the oven heated up, serving as a stark reminder of the critical importance of gun safety. Then, there's the incredulous tale of a woman slapped with a meticulous invoice from her sister after babysitting her child. The charges, ranging from toilet flushes to apple juice, totaled $72 and came with a stern payment deadline. These stories not only highlight the quirks and follies of human behavior but also spark important discussions on safety and family dynamics. Tune in for a rollercoaster of emotions and insights! Exit bumper Not A Democracy Podcast Network made by @FuryanEnergySupport the showTip Jar for coffee $ - Thanks Blog - Carol ReMarksX - Carol ReMarks Instagram - Carol.ReMarksFacebook Page - Carol ReMarks Blog

Many older Virginians may be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and not realize it, according to officials with the AARP. SNAP is a federal program that provides food assistance to those struggling to afford groceries. While the program is often referred to as "food stamps," it can benefit anyone age 50 and older who has a difficult time affording food. In Virginia, about 8.7 million households with at least one adult older than age 50 participate in SNAP. However, many others who are eligible for the program don't realize it, so AARP officials are encouraging those who aren't...Article LinkSupport the Show.

In this gripping episode of "Connecting the Dots," Dr. Wilmer Leon and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Jeter expose the Democratic Party's desperate reliance on voters of color to save them from political collapse.   Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube! Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   FULL TRANSCRIPT: Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:00): I have two questions. The first question, has the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the black hands that feed it? Here's the second question. Has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby taken advantage of Jon Jeter (00:00:25): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:32): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which a lot of these events occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. Black Agenda report has a piece entitled How the Democratic Party Committed Suicide by Biting the Black Hands That Feed It On today's episode. The issues before us are, as I stated at the top, has the party in fact committed suicide and has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby to advantage of for insight into this? (00:01:35): And for answers to these questions, let's turn to my guest. He's a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. He's the co-author of a Day Late and a Dollar Short, dark Days and Bright Nights in Obama's post-Racial America. His work can be found at Patreon as well as Black Republic Media. He's the author of this piece. He is John Jeter brother John Jeter. Welcome back. The pleasure is all mine, brother. Thank you for having me. You opened your piece as follows, the Democratic Party dug its own grave decades ago when it began trying to siphon voters from the Republican party or the GOP by appealing to conservatives and ignoring the needs of its strong base of African-American people. If political parties were prominent people, you'd have stumbled upon this obituary. Today, the Democratic Party, one half of America's longstanding ruling duopoly, and the author of political movements as disparate as Jim Crow and the New Deal died Wednesday, July 24. It was 196 sources said the cause was suicide following along illness. John, that's incredibly, incredibly creative. I've gone through the coroner's report. I can't make heads nor tails when it comes to the cause of Speaker 3 (00:02:58): Death. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:02:59): So what was the cause of death on July 24th? Speaker 3 (00:03:03): It sort of slit death by a thousand cuts, but slitting your throat a thousand times slowly over the years. Man, I really, that piece really meant something to me. I am, as I think you would say, you are a man of a certain age and I remember very clearly Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 88 campaigns for President. I remember the energy and the excitement. I remember, even though I was just in my teens and early twenties, I remember that it was electric, those campaigns. And then I remember Bill Clinton running for president and I voted for Bill Clinton. But I remember thinking, I remember holding my nose while I voted because I remember Bill Clinton lecturing Jesse Jackson about Sister Soldier lecturing black people going to black church, lecturing black people about how we have failed Martin Luther King. And I didn't quite understand it other than I thought, well, bill Clinton is like most white people I know, racists most, not all the most. (00:04:13): And I just wrote it off as that when I was a young journalist at the Detroit Free Press. Later, I got to Washington the same time as Bill Clinton In 1993, January of 1993, I got to the Washington Post, and it sort of dawned on me over the years, particularly as I heard democratic presidents and democratic candidates for President repeat these same tropes scolding black people. I remember, and I was in a very different place at this point, but I remember Barack Obama talking down the black people in a way that just really offended me, scolding black fathers for their failure to raise their kids when a study at that time had been produced, which showed that black men who are separated from their families are actually better parents, actually spend more quality time with their kids than any other ethnic group. Barack Obama telling a black church, I believe it was in South Carolina, that a good plan for economic development would be to stop throwing Popeye's chicken wrappers out of your car window, right? (00:05:23): Just the infantilization of the black voting block, black electorate. And it struck me that this is by design. They're talking to white people. And then this is only in the last few years where I read David Roder, the labor economist, labor, labor historian, I'm sorry, who wrote about the Reagan Democrats in Michigan, who we elected the blue collar white workers who we elected Ronald Reagan, president who crossed over to elect Ronald Reagan president. And how his polling showed that their main motivation was race or racism, I should say. They did not like black people. They defined black people as pulling down the party. And they divided Democrats as people who catered to blacks who were lazy welfare, all the tropes that were popularized by, built by Ronald Reagan. And it struck me that the Democrats in 92, the astrophysicists, I believe they talk about solar systems that are so distant, you can't see the sun, but you can tell by the movement of the planets that there is indeed a solar system by the movement of the stars and the planets that there is indeed a sun there, that it is indeed a solar system. (00:06:43): No one really wrote it down really. Although the poster Stanley Stanley, I can't remember his name now, but the post of the Greenberg for the Democrats, he came close, but we can see by their actions that the Democrats in 1992 especially were wrestling with how to win the White House after they had been exiled by 12 years of Republican rule. And they decided they chose between Jesse Jackson's campaign, which was trying to reunite that New Deal coalition, tenuous as it was, but it was still a new deal, coalition of black and white workers, and then Ronald Reagan's approach, which was to basically return to the old Southern Democrats, George Wallace, basically, and refusing to be out in worded right, keeping up this racist animosity and resentment. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:07:40): I think that was Strom Thurman who originally made that quote, I will never be. Right. Speaker 3 (00:07:45): Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. George Wallace took it to another level, and I think that that has been the Democrat's problem ever since. And you would think a child could have told them, this is not going to work well for you to antagonize purposefully your base, but this is the moment we're in where you see the Democrats, it's almost like a circus, a dog and pony show where Democrats spend four years openly denouncing or renouncing their black base and then in the election year trying to make up for it, trying to gin up the black vote. It is almost like this awkward dance that they're doing. And now we're seeing the culmination, because this has been going on pretty much for the last 30 years. I think Obama was the Navy or the Zenith, depending on how you want to look at it. But I think that it's really run its course. I think it's possible Kamala Harris can win this election, but even if that is the case after four years in office, the Democrats are a spent force. They can't continue this dance. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:08:52): So to those who would say, well, wait a minute, John, how can you say that the party is biting the hand that feeds it when you've had a President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, and they are set as we assume that when they come out of their convention in a couple of weeks, that Kamala Harris will be the nominee for 2024. So how do you answer those folks who say, well, they're not taking us for granted. Let's assume that she wins in November. They've had two African American presidents. We could talk about African Jamaican, but we'll just put Kamala in the box over 20 year span, Speaker 3 (00:09:48): And they've completely ignored, completely frustrated black demands, right? You think about Kamala Harris. Well, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:09:57): Barack Obama told us we didn't make any demands, which is why we didn't get anything. When he was asked that question. His answer was, you didn't demand anything. Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:10:06): And I would have to say, he's actually got to give the devil this dude. He was right on that one. Hey, look, the 2008, what they did, what the Democrats did in pushing Barack Obama passed Hillary Clinton was a stroke of genius. It really was. They had the perfect candidate to whip up to generate this black excitement, excitement in the black community, which at that same time, they were ripping off through these subprime mortgages, right, which were disproportionately aimed at blacks, black homeowners. And what they did by pushing Obama to the fore, the Democrats, I'm talking about bringing blacks, gin up the black vote, getting blacks excited about someone who at that point, Barack just didn't have much of a record for serving the black community. But he went on in his eight years in office to openly excoriate sc disappoint the black community. And in fact, I think you could argue that in terms of black people, I'm 59, I'll be 60 years old in January. (00:11:12): I would argue that Barack Obama has been the worst president in my lifetime for blacks. What I mean by that is the opportunity that he had in 2008 during the Great Recession, the opportunity that he had to actually begin to redistribute, and I'm not talking about socialism or communism. I'm talking about just redistributing wealth, just shaving off a portion of that onerous debt that many of us had accrued through these illegal, that's not my term, that's the FBI term illegal loans, fraudulent loans that the lenders made, and he could have shaved off proportion of that debt revived consumer buying power as we speak. We're talking, we're in the midst of the Wall Street, has seen a week really of decline. And the reasons, because Barack Obama set this in motion by not responding to the asset bubble in 2008, that asset bubble popped. (00:12:14): Usually how you deal with an asset bubble is you shave off a portion of the debt and you put people in jail to disincentivize a fraud, but you shave off a portion of the debt because that will revive buying power. Barack Obama didn't do that. He actually threw more money at the lenders. And so right now we don't have body power and who's leading that? African American. So I say that to say, to answer your question, that the blacks who have been candidates for high office, particularly for the White House, have been put there because they will participate. They will join in on this dance of scolding black people for the benefit of the white vote, and then doing this dance, this sort of vaudevillian kind of act where they, every four years talk about what they've done for the black community, what they're going to do for the black community, how much they love black people. (00:13:11): And I think it's run its course. I feel that it's run its course. And let me just end with this. And I really do believe that the legacy of Barack Obama, we've always had class tension within the black community. Now I think we're going to see the eruption of a real civil war, a real class war within the black community where the black elected officials are very much like conservatives and very much like white liberals. I think we're getting to a point now where we're going to see that the fault lines are very sharply drawn and the black elected officials, black celebrities, van Jones and Jay-Z and Bakari Sellers, that all these people are going to be seen as class enemies to the working class black community and the people who are its allies. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:13:57): A couple of things. One, you mentioned the asset bubble and former President Obama giving the money back, basically bailing out the banks and not bailing out the homeowners. And I remember because to your point, that would've been the move. Don't give the money to the banks, deal with the loans, and that way you would've enabled people to stay in their homes. You would've been able to maintain the integrity of a number of neighborhoods, even down to the level of public schools and public school budgets because they get their money from property taxes by maintaining the value of property. There are a whole lot of things, a whole lot of benefits that would've come from that action. Instead of giving the money to the banksters, give the money to the homeowners. And I remember a press conference where former President Obama was asked why he did it the way he did it. And his answer was, and I remember this very clearly, his answer was, I didn't expect the banks to do this. People were asking him, why hasn't the money that you've given to the banks been loaned out? Why hasn't that money been distributed to the communities in need? And he said, I didn't expect the banks to do that. I said, well, man, that's what banks do, Speaker 3 (00:15:23): And maybe you shouldn't have run for president if you don't have that kind of understanding of finance. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:27): Well, but that's the same guy that told the Banksters, I'm the one standing between you and the people with the pitch for us. Speaker 3 (00:15:32): Right? Right. And I believe it was in that same interview, I believe it was where he said that the reason he didn't bail out the homeowners who had been defrauded of their homes to these subprime mortgages, he said he didn't want to invite moral hazard. Well, moral hazard is exactly what he invited. But on behalf of the banks, not on behalf Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:52): Of, oh, see, I thought he said Merrill haggard not moral hazard. My bad. I thought he didn't like country and western music. I'm glad. I'm glad you straighten that out for me. And the other thing you mentioned about former President Obama, and what I assume we're going to see from Vice President Harris is they have, I call it menstrual diplomacy. They are being used to sell imperialism and neoliberalism. And because it's coming from them, because Kamala Harris was selling us invading Haiti along with Linda Thomas Greenfield and so many, but because it was black people selling it, then there must not be anything wrong with it. We must be able to go ahead and accept it because of who it is that's selling it to us. I want to read another paragraph from your piece wherein you write, you write, it's important, however, to view Biden as a vital organ to a larger body politic that finally flatlined after failing to address a chronic illness, akin say to a diabetic eating Big Max every day for the past 30 years, Biden does not in fact owe his failed reelection bid to senility, though his cognitive decline is apparent. (00:17:24): But to his party's strategic decision three decades ago, to compete with Ronald Reagan's, GOP for racist, white suburban voters, white suburban voters, by openly repudiating the Democrats electoral base of African-Americans. And that gets to what you just opened with. But I also think it's important for people to understand that by taking us for granted and by allowing ourselves to be taken for granted, the Democrats know we're not going anywhere. And so that enables them to speak to a lot of issues while actually appealing to that white middle class male voter because they don't want to appear to be a party that's too black. They don't want to appear to be a party that's catering to black people. John Che. Speaker 3 (00:18:23): No, that's exactly right. I think I ride with black people. I rock with black people. I will to the day I die, particularly the black working class. My father was a UAW member. And as much as the unions are fraught with racism, I still claim the working class. That's the class I was born into in the class I will die in. Although if I hit the lottery, I guess I'll be a Cadillac Communist at that point. Maybe. In Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:18:50): Fact, really quickly, really simply, the CIO was we got the AFL CIO because the A FL was racist and okay, Speaker 3 (00:19:03): Yeah, that's exactly right. And then the CIO turned racist. But that's another story. But no, this is really a choice that the Democrats made, which just shows how unimagined they were. If they had followed Jesse Jackson's model pulling more and more people, which by the way was what RFK planned to do before he was assassinated, was to pull more and more people into the tech, younger people, it's very conceivable they would've never have lost an election over the last 30 years. Right? It's very conceivable. We have 110, a hundred million voters at least every year who are eligible to vote, who don't vote. Pulling those people in more of those people in by giving them something to vote for would be a winning strategy, a sustainable strategy. The Democrats just relied on their own. They just reverted to reform, right? Racist Democrats like Bill Clinton, like Ben Pitchfork, Tillman, that's who they're, and they can't sort of snap out of that. (00:20:10): And so now they're stuck. They're stuck with this dance. It's very awkward dance, performative blackness. That's what Barack Obama is. That's what Kamala Harris, they perform, but they're not radical black political actors because if they were, and we have to bear some of the responsibility for this failure. We black people who have historically been the most sophisticated voters in the United States since they ran Barack Obama, we have for some reason forgotten that we have agency in this that if just sit and wait four years to go cast a ballot for whoever they put up for us to vote, that we might well be buried under a ton of ash, like some lost city of Pompeii or whatever. Because our parents and our grandparents knew much like they did in Chicago with Harold Washington, they faced the same dilemma. The Democrats just basically crapping on them and then asked them for their vote. (00:21:17): And they decided in 1982 that, oh, well, we'll just get our own candidate to run. And they got Harold Washington. They drove each other to the polls, they registered voters. They raised money even though they didn't have much. They raised money and they got him by the finish line right now, it won't look the same way now probably. But the point is that they used their imagination. They didn't just sit there and say, oh, well, this is who we got to vote for. They did something about, they demonstrated their own agency. We need to get back to that. But lemme just say this too, on that point, I do feel though that this isn't a way, a culmination of what Malcolm said when he said, I think there will be another civil war in this country, but it won't be black versus white. There'd be the haves versus the havenots. (00:22:01): And I believe we are getting closer to that. You see now these campus protests that emerged over the spring, which were led by the vanguard of which was Jewish people and Arab people and black people, I think that's going to be the coming revolution where we see what's happening in Gaza, rightfully so, has become the moral center of the universe. But that cause Gaza, which of course does not speak well with Kamala Harris, that cause I believe is going to intersect. We already see it intersecting with other causes. Cop city in Atlanta, right, the Jim Crow justice system. We see it intersecting with these other causes. That's how revolutions are born. So I say all that to say that I think that the Democrats are going to be on the wrong side of history. I think this deal, they struck this Carthage Genian peace deal that black Democrats have struck with the party. I think that it has run its courts and the people no longer have any use for it. I don't know if Trump or Ka Harris is going to be the next president, but I know that the American people are going to lose either way. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:23:12): And I think evidence to what it is that you've just articulated in terms of this confluence of interest between Jewish Americans, between Arab Americans and African Americans, we're seeing now how Republicans are taking control at the electoral board level, the local electoral board level. They are now denying elections. They are now failing to certify elections. And this is something that people need to pay very, very close attention to because they are gaining control of the apparatus itself. And when they get control of the apparatus itself, then that's going to make our challenges even that much more difficult in terms of challenges, in terms of electoral politics, is going to make our challenges even harder to be successful at when you have members of election boards that fail to certify elections, not because they find wrongdoing in the process, but simply because the candidate that they backed. Look at Donald Trump gave this speech. He was in Atlanta today, I think it was Sunday or Monday, and he's pointing to people in the crowd that are at his campaign rally who are members of the county Boards of Election, and he's applauding them and lauding them for how loyal they are to his efforts. Speaker 3 (00:24:48): Oh, wow. I did not realize that. And that's very dangerous because these elections, these presidential elections tend to be battles of attrition who can do more to turn to vote, which means that they're very slim margins. So I mean, if Donald Trump has a little bit of leverage with the elections board in Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia, you might as well hand the presidency over to him now. So this is something else. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:17): Well, and that's why he is saying, Christians, after this election, you won't need to vote. I mean, he is saying to people, oh, I've got this. I don't even need your vote. I've got this. And after this election, you won't need to vote. And that goes back to, and I think this went over the heads of a lot of folks. His key advisor, the guy that's in jail now went to jail. Speaker 3 (00:25:50): Oh, baton. Baton. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:51): Steve Baton said, our objective is the deconstruction of the administrative state. Steve Bannon was very, very clear about Trump's objective is to deconstruct the administrative state. And I don't think many people paid attention to that. And that is what we see with the January 6th attack on the Capitol with they're getting their talons into local boards of election with this whole project 2025, which isn't new. It's all wine in new bottles. But all of those things are culminating with the Donald Trump. Speaker 3 (00:26:44): Yeah, no, it's really a historic time. We don't know how it's going to turn out. But I mean, if you look at the situation on the ground and Nazi Germany, say in 1934, it'd be very similar to what we're seeing now with this demagogue clearly rising up. And then you see all the other parties in Germany, although we only have one here in the United States, you see all the other parties sort of seeding that ground to this demagogue and the people who support him. And that's shaping up here. And the Democrat, again, it could be an opportunity for the Democrats to actually say, okay, we're going to step in and we're going to restore democracy, but they don't really care about democracy. How do we know the same people who are complaining about January 6th? And the Trump supporters who wanted to overturn the election just announced that the winner of the election in Venezuela is the guy who came in second passed the post, right? (00:27:38): And then the silliness. Well, we believe that the election was stolen. The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter has called the elections in Venezuela, the freest and fairest he has ever observed. Correct. National lawyers, gu, when they're now, and they said, no, this election is fine, but we're going to say that this guy who's a conservative in a country that is 13% black, and probably half of them are of mixed race, we're going to say this white conservative went in there and over and basically beat the socialist party, the Olaine revolution that has been in power since 1998. And not just beat 'em, but beat 'em by 34 percentage points, I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:22): Believe. Now, I was calling this out months ago, and folks, you need to really understand this, and there are numerous, if you go to Oroco Tribune or you go to venezuelan analysis.com, you'll find plenty of articles on this. So the United States started backing the Russian, the Venezuelan conservative candidate, marina Machado Speaker 3 (00:28:50): Machado, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:52): And then she was convicted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court and found to have been basically an unregistered foreign agent. She was operating, I think, on behalf of Peru, I think it was Peru, against the interest of Venezuela. So they said, you are, because you have been operating as this agent for another country against Venezuelan interests, you can't run in the election. So the United States started backing her, knowing she couldn't run, and then they found the Gonzalez, the guy that replaced her, but he's basically her mouthpiece. And I was saying all along the United States is backing her, knowing she can't win, and then backing Gonzalez, knowing he can't win, so that when they lose, they will claim the election was fraud. And that's exactly, now here's the problem. So the United States goes in to Venezuela and they try to ment civil unrest the same way that Victoria Newland went into Madan Square. (00:30:12): That's right. And overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine leading us to where we are now in Ukraine. The difference between, or one of the differences between Ukraine and Venezuela, or a couple differences. One, the people are armed. There is a armed popular militia that when the bell rings, or as George Clinton would say, when the horn blow, you better be ready to go. They come in the street packing. In fact, we know this, when we had what we call the Bay of Piglets, about a year and a half ago, some American mercenaries tried to float their way into Venezuela, and they were stopped by a group of Venezuelan fishermen that arrested these guys damn near killed them, but exposed them for trying to come into the country to overthrow the government. So you've got a very strong citizen, heavily armed citizen militia in Venezuela. And here's the other thing. It's not about Maduro. No, it's about the Bolivarian revolution. Speaker 3 (00:31:28): That's right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:28): These folks are Speaker 3 (00:31:32): Right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:33): Ugo Chavez is the man. So they see Maduro not as Maduro. They see Maduro as an agent of the revolution. Speaker 3 (00:31:46): That's right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:47): I'll make one more statement about this because you know more about this than I do. I'm going to make this point. This is hyperbole, but I want to say they would say, Nicholas Maduro be damned. It's about the revolution. It's not about him as an individual. And so long as he stays true to the revolution, they will stay true to him. When they see him deviate, he's done. Speaker 3 (00:32:17): I could not agree with you more. I have not stepped foot in Venezuela in 20 years, although I talked to people who are still on the ground there every once in a while. I'm going to tell you something, man, I have never seen, and I've lived in South Africa, I've been through most of Africa, through half of South America. I've never seen France. Nan talked about the need for revolutions make to create the new man, the new woman, a different consciousness. I'm not sure I ever knew what that meant until I went to Venezuela. They really have a different consciousness. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I think a lot of that was Hugo Chavez. I mean, it really does come down, man. He was as brilliant. I've met Mandela, who I think highly of. I met Mugabi. I never met a man who's more charismatic, more powerful, more visionary than he was. (00:33:09): Robert, I met later in life. I don't know what he was like earlier. Same with Mandela. But Chavez was visionary, and I so have to say that so much of this revolution is doing his understanding. When the United States organized a coup in 2002, the people, they weren't as well armed. They didn't have the malicious then, although some of them had armed the people because the government, the news media, which was controlled by the wealthy, the oligarchs in Venezuela, they told the people that Hugo Chavez is on the beach and she would kicking it with Fidel Castro. The people had these hammer radios. They got on the ham radio and said, nah, that ain't what happened. He would never abandon us like that. I think he's a mirror for us. Let's go get 'em mostly with pots and pan. And you can look at, there's a documentary, I can't remember the name of the documentary. (00:33:58): It's black women who were in the front pots and pans, and look, you're going to give him back. Right? And they did. Right. It took a couple days. It took a little while, right? About two days, right. Cause like I said, they mostly just had pots and pan. But thank God back. Now, look, I think that the vote, which was the closest, it's been, I think in 28 and 20, 26 years now, the vote just a little bit beyond 50% from Mad Gerald. I think it was 53. I want to say it was like 53, 46 or something like that. Yeah, I saw 51 to 44, but something like that. But anyway, it's a diminished margin. I mean, they have had inflation. These sanctions have taken an effect. And I know the people I talked to on the ground, I lived in Ecuador for a year or so a few years ago, and you saw more and more people coming to Ecuador who were disillusioned with the BOLO volume revolution. (00:34:52): And these are people who would've been supportive, people who were of color, mestizos, no blacks, but mestizos. Anyway, so I do think that it's lost a little bit of its luster. But this is what I know, they did not put up a right wing candidate was talking about taking Venezuela back to what it was in 1989 before what they call, I think they called the characters Z. When the president basically told the Venezuela one day we're not going to convert to neoliberalism and ratchet up the bus prices and all that. And the next day they went to work and the bus prices had doubled. And so there was this ride, and that's what produced hug job is. So what I'm saying is that there's a of the Venezuelan voter, the average Venezuelan, I wish we had it here in the United States because they understand as Fred, I know you're going to get sick of me quoting Fred Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:35:47): Hampton. Right? I'll never get sick of you quoting Fred Hampton. Speaker 3 (00:35:50): But it's like the Venezuelans understand. I wish we understood it. I wish you peace if you willing to fight for it. The Venezuelans, they live by that, right? And so, I don't know. I can't tell you, the United States is very powerful, even though we're a diminished force, I can't tell you they'll always be able to hold off the United States, but they're going to have to fight them for Venezuela. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:36:10): So we started this with your piece, how the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the hands that feed it. And the way that we got to this discussion about Venezuela was a discussion about democracy and how Joe Biden tells us democracy is on the ballot. And Kamala Harris, the democracy is on the ballot. And Donald Trump democracy, we ought to protect democracy while we're going around the world, overthrowing democracies. That's why we're fighting in Vene in Ukraine because the United States overthrew the democratically elected government. We're trying to have regime change in Russia while the Russians, you can talk about their form of government, all you want to, it is democratic by their definition. And he was democratically elected. We can talk about Syria, we can talk about what they're trying to do in China as it relates to Taiwan. We can talk about what's going on in Gaza. We keep talking about we're defending democracy in Israel, democracy for who Speaker 3 (00:37:19): Democracy. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:37:19): You even have, there are even Jews in Israel that aren't a part of the Democratic. So that's how we, so, okay. I just wanted to kind of bring us all back to this vice President, Kamala Harris, and still use the word presumptive, because even though she got the vote she needed through the Zoom process, they're going to have a convention which I will attend as a journalist not carrying anybody's banner. Speaker 3 (00:37:56): You sure you don't have that vote blue? No banner who? Banner at home you going to take Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:38:03): No. So, okay, so now she has announced her running mate, and Tim Walsh has debuted as her VP pick in Philly. And my question to you relative to this, is the story that Harris selected Waltz to be her running mate, or is the story that she did not select Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, as the team gets ready to kick off its five state tour, which of those, and they both could be the story, but because we kept hearing that she was going to, A lot of people thought Shapiro was going to be the pick and the fact that they were kicking off in Philly, and now they're not awkward, but which one is the story? Speaker 3 (00:39:18): Yeah, that's a great question. I have to say, if I had to bet money, if I had to bet the farm, I would say that the Democrats are going to lose this election. But I do think Waltz is probably the best choice that she could have made. Shapiro would've been catastrophic, I think just because whether exactly, whether they want to admit it or not, Zionism is on the ballot, right? Right. We know Kamala has said she's a Zionist, right? We know she's had meetings with APAC in which she has asked for it not to be recorded. She is a Zionist. She supports Israel's right to defend itself when it has no such, right? No more so than the Nazis did in Germany. Anyway. So waltz, I think really Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:02): Minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I need to say. So folks can clearly understand that you are stating that Israel does not have the right to defend itself. That statement is based upon international law, Speaker 3 (00:40:21): Law, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:21): Law. Yes. You're not making this up, right. Kamala Harris coming out and saying, Israel has the right to defend itself as a prosecutor. She should know better because that's wrong. It is just, you might as well say the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. The world is not flat, even though when you stand out on the horizon, it looks that way. It ain't necessarily so, and the sun does not revolve around the earth. Speaker 3 (00:40:56): And the rest of the world knows this. Right? The Palestinians are an occupied people. You have the right to, that's why Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:02): They're called oppress occupied Speaker 3 (00:41:05): Territory's not right. International law. It's not international law. We'll Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:08): Continue, but I just want to be very, very clear on that point. Speaker 3 (00:41:12): Yeah. I just think it's so interesting though. I mean, it seems to me that their choice of, am I pronouncing his name right? Waltz? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:20): Waltz. Waltz. Waltz. No, WALZ. Speaker 3 (00:41:24): Wall. Okay. Waltz. Okay. I think it's a concession to the anti-Zionist protests that I still think are going to be a very big factor in this convention. Chicago is home to the biggest, the largest Palestinian population in the country. And Lord knows how many black people are going to come out and support because they're protesting their mayor there who did a mini, he's a Obama Mini me ran, left, and is governing, right? So it does seem like it's like the best choice. It gives them a shot. He softens their edges, Kamala's edges, the Biden Harris administration's edges in terms of Zionism. But it softens his edges. It doesn't eliminate, from what I understand, he still supports Israel, right? Absolutely. And I don't know. Look, one thing we have to be honest about now is that the media is very much complicit in this game that the Democrats are running, and that's what it is. (00:42:26): The media is very complicit in this. And so are they going to really ask the Harris ticket, Kamala Harris' ticket to tough questions? I don't know. But you'd have to assume that somewhere between now and November that they're going to be confronted in a very public fashion with this question though. Well, what are you going to do about Israel? And that's why I see them losing this race, if nothing else. And I know that foreign policy does not often decide a presidential election, but I think given the state of the first live stream genocide in history, which Daily is bringing these unbearable images into our homes, that combined with their failure to do anything for their black base, especially black men, I have a hard time seeing a path to victory for the Democratic party. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:43:19): Well, staying in that region. Another thing that folks, you got to stay tuned because these dynamics are changing minute by minute, Hassan Nala, the head of Hezbollah, came out and said, look, we are going to respond. Lemme take a step back. Secretary of State was telling us, Monday, 24 hours, 24 hours, and we expect that Iran is going to respond with man you Speaker 3 (00:43:57): Like he knows. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:44:00): So Cassandra Sharla comes out and says, well, we're going to respond, and now we don't care what the outcome is. He came out Monday in a very clear speech and said, we are going to respond. We're going in hard, and we don't care what you do. Anah in Yemen saying, please send missiles our way, because every missile you send towards us is a missile you can send in the Palestine. Now, this is the poorest country in the world, the poorest country in the world. They have shut down. I'm talking about Yemen. Yemen, they have shut down the Red Sea. You can't get nothing in or out of the Red Sea. There's a port in Israel called the Port of OT has gone bankrupt because Ansara Allah has been sending missiles into the port of ot, like 13, 1400 miles away. And they're saying, we welcome the fight. Look, that's some smoke you don't want, Speaker 3 (00:45:36): Right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:45:37): Because if we were in South central la, this would be the bloods and the Crips saying, I'm about that life. Speaker 3 (00:45:45): Right? Right. The ties and Hezbollah and Hezbollah, you know that about that life. They handed a behind whooping to Israel in 2006, which Israel's never forgotten, right? No. And the ties, I mean, man mean you talk about solidarity. I mean, they, they're what anybody who says they're a revolutionary aspires to be a revolutionary needs to look at. They have a picture. We can take the picture. Well, no, maybe don't take the picture Martin Luther King down, maybe put the Houthis right next to it everywhere kitchen. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:19): And see, they're not new to this game. Speaker 3 (00:46:23): No. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:24): When Anah, I believe means a helper of God, Speaker 3 (00:46:30): Know that, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:31): And I believe that comes from the time of the prophet. May peace be upon him. They traced their lineage that far back when he came through that region, they were assisting him. Speaker 3 (00:46:46): Oh, I did not know that. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:48): So when that's your psyche, when that's your North star look, when Mike Tyson tells you to stop kicking the back of his seat on an airplane, you might want to stop kicking his backseat back of his seat on airplane. Speaker 3 (00:47:02): You might consider doing what he says. Yeah. I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:05): Dunno if you remember that story. Yeah, Speaker 3 (00:47:06): I do. I do. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:07): When they had to carry that guy off of the plane Speaker 3 (00:47:10): And he got off lucky Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:13): Because he was able, he survived the assault. Speaker 3 (00:47:15): And I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:16): Don't mean assault in illegal term ass whooping. So anyway, anyway, all of this, I bring this up again, folks. I'm trying to connect these dots. We get into September and October, vice President Harris may be asking questions about the regional war that is ongoing, because that's where we're headed. That's what Israel wants. They are trying to bait the United States into a conflict in the region. And now you've got the supreme leader in Iran saying to Hezbollah, go ahead on, do what you got to do. He's not saying, pump your brakes. Partner saying, do what you got to do. And he's saying, do what you got to do, because we about to do what we got to do. Speaker 3 (00:48:17): We about to put in that work too. And I don't mean to be glib about it, man, this is a horrible thing that's happening. But you've got to look at it. Americans really need to look at it in context. Context. Wait minute. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:27): Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don't send your money yet, because there's a bamboo steamer that comes with this deal. Turkey Toa, Speaker 3 (00:48:34): Right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:36): Erwan is saying we in it too. He says, if we have to go in now, he can be a funny dude. Speaker 3 (00:48:43): Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:45): He is at least saying, oh, if we got to go in, we're going in. Speaker 3 (00:48:51): Yeah. This is a perfect storm. I mean, this is the worst perfect storm I've ever seen in my lifetime. You've got this on the one side you've got, and you really think about it, this revolutionary consciousness that has been strengthened and amplified by Israel's decision to commit genocide in front of cameras. And then when we say, yo man, that's the genocide. They say, what's your point? Right? This is the end of Israel. Your Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:49:22): Problem is, Speaker 3 (00:49:23): Yeah, exactly. As we know it, Israel, Israel will never go back to what it was on October 6th of last year. It just won't. Right? It's not going to happen. And the United States, I don't think it's going to go back to what it was on October 6th of last year, either what it's going to be, I don't know. But this is, we're really seeing the end of it, and you can see it in a couple things. One is the congealing of this resistance movement in the Middle East against the white settler colonialism of Israel and the United States and the West. You see it with the bricks whose GDP cumulatively has surpassed the United States. Russia, I believe, has said at reported, they're arming the Houthis. Right? They're arming the Houthis. I've read the, but I dunno if it's true or not, right? And then you've got the peace day resistance, a recession. (00:50:12): Oh, I didn't even think about that. Right? You've got, in the Sahel region in Africa, you've got this resistance is forming, and you've got all of Africa starting to sort of assert itself and say, wait a minute, why do we need these people who speak French, who speak English in here, telling us what to do? They claim to be the boss. Why do they take our resources out? Pay us nothing, take our resources out. You've got that congealing, and then you've got the peace state resistance. You've got that also in South America, although it's in bits and starts, the pink tides kind of a ebb and of flow. But then you've got the peace state resistance, which is what some economists and financial people believe is, at the very least, a very brave and very deep recession. And some people are saying, could be the greatest depression, the greatest depression that the world has ever seen. And there are numbers. I mean, United States has never been 35 trillion in debt. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:07): That Speaker 3 (00:51:07): Never Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:08): Happened against a $25 trillion GDP. Speaker 3 (00:51:11): I mean, come on, man. So we've got a lot of issues said Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:16): That, try to get a mortgage with that bank balance, Speaker 3 (00:51:19): Man. I was looking at the loans for, and then we've got credit card debt up the kazoo, and the average interest rate, I believe is 25% of these credit card rates. And we're dealing with all these, no, that's the problem. We're not dealing with these problems. We don't address, we don't face these problems. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:34): So all of that, I wrote a piece, you're with her, but is she with you? Yeah. And the piece is contrary to what many people want to say. It's not anti Kamala. It's pro us. Yes. The question in the piece is, what are you as an African-American community demanding from her? And we have just articulated a number of very important issues that are and will impact how much you pay for a pack of chicken wings, a gallon of milk, and a loaf of bread Speaker 3 (00:52:18): Question. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:19): So it's great that she's an AKA. It's great that she went to Howard. It's great that she can do what she do, but what does she stand for? What if you go to her website right now, zero policy, zero, not nary policy reference, Speaker 3 (00:52:47): But she has Megan, the stallion, twerking for Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:49): Her. Oh, well, then that gets my Speaker 3 (00:52:51): Vote. I'm just saying, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:53): Hey, I, amen. Speaker 3 (00:52:55): You know what, Earl? You know what Earl but said about black voters, right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:59): Go ahead. Speaker 3 (00:53:01): I dunno if I can repeat it here, but all we want is a warm toilet seat. A tight, tight, what was it? And a pair of shoe apparently to say, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:53:17): So here's folks, here's the question. Politics. We are so caught up in the politics of personality and the politics of phenotype. We are trying to defend, oh, Donald Trump said she isn't black. Who cares when a pack of chicken wings is $21 a pack, when organic, a gallon of organic milk is $12 a gallon. That matters to me. I drink organic milk. Why are we so caught up in that? When your tax dollars are funding genocide, when your tax dollars are paying the salaries and the retirement of Ukrainians, and you don't have a retirement plan, your pension plan went out the window 25 years ago. That's right. We're paying Ukrainian pensions and healthcare. And healthcare and education budgets are numeric representations of priority. Speaker 3 (00:54:36): That's right. That's right. A moral document, as King said. That's Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:54:40): Right. And we keep being told, we don't have the money. We don't have the money, but F sixteens just landed in Ukraine, which I'll say in the next 10 days will probably be blown into rubble. But we're sending F sixteens. So Lockheed Martin is happy. John Jeter, am I hating black women because I'm questioning policy issues related. Oh, we have to give her a chance. What did Barack Obama say when members of the Black Press said, you didn't really do anything for the black community, said you did not demand anything. Speaker 3 (00:55:34): Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:36): Frederick Douglas says, power yields nothing without demand. It never has. And it never will. That's Speaker 3 (00:55:43): Right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:44): But when I asked the question, well, what are you demanding? Oh, no, Wilmer. See, you have to give her a chance. Oh, here's the other. I'll make, explain. Now I'm going to turn it over to you. So you've got folks like Simone Sanders that say, well, she's been vice president for four years. Kamala has earned it. And then you say, but wait a minute. So while she was vice president, what'd she do? Oh, well, you have to understand that vice presidents, those jobs, their job description is really very vague, and you can't really expect, well, no. See, you can't have it both ways, Speaker 3 (00:56:23): Right? That's right. You Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:56:24): Can't tell me she earned it by being vice president. And then when I ask you, well, what did she do? You can't tell me. Well, she didn't do anything because vice presidents don't do anything. John Jeter. Speaker 3 (00:56:35): Yeah. We really need to raise our level of play. All Americans do, but particularly African Americans, because we have historically been the vanguard of this revolution, of the revolution in the United States, a progressive working class revolution. We need to raise our level of play. We need to deepen our understanding of politics. We need to do exactly as you say, we need to develop a list of demands, make them and stick to them. I'll try to say this very succinctly. I'm coming out with a new book in September next month, class War in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? I began the book talking about a political movement in the 1870s in the reconstruction period in Virginia where blacks were the majority of a political party called the read adjusters. Poor whites, mostly farmers and blacks in Virginia, who decided to team up and to the elites of both parties, Republicans and Democrats were trying to take their tax money and pay the bonds, the money that was loaned to Virginia by the wealthy, the aristocrats, the Confederates, the people who really were responsible for the war, the Civil War. (00:57:55): And they said they wanted to pay exorbitant interest rates 6%, which would be actually pretty low these days. This coalition said, no, we won't do it. So this group, the Readjusts, they lowered interest rates, they Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:58:07): Readjusted the loans. Speaker 3 (00:58:09): They spent this money on schools and things like that. They started feeling themselves, and the white party leader said, well, the blacks were saying, well, we want also, we want enter the whipping post. We want this and we want that. And the whites in that party, the adjusters didn't hear 'em. They didn't feel 'em, right? So they didn't do it. So the brother said, because it's just black men who voted at that time, although we know that their black women supported them in this. But black men said, okay, cool. So the next election, the readjust lost everything. And they realized, to their credit, they said, oh, they were serious. And so when they returned to power, they did everything the brother said, they eliminate the whipping votes. In the book, there's a point where they talk about the Patronist jobs. They handed out to blacks because black were 60% of this party. There's a postmaster who said, I think it was 1881. He said, my office is so full of blacks, or might have said colors at that time. My office is so full of colors. It looks like Africa in here, right? This is 1881. So I said, that's the same in Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:18): Virginia. Speaker 3 (00:59:18): In Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, right? 1881, people read this and they said, I was lying. I did not make it up. It is a true fact, as we say, right? We need to return to that mindset, that understanding. We need the people in Venezuela like the Houthis, like the Lebanese, the Hezbollah, Lebanon. We need to return to that level of understanding and raise our revolutionary metabolism. Look, man, as Fred Hampton said last time, I'll quote Fred Hampton today, if you say you want to do something revolutionary, but you say, I'm too young to die, you don't realize you are already dead. It's a lot of dead men walking in this country right Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:59): Now. John Jeter, my brother, thank you for joining me today. Speaker 3 (01:00:05): My pleasure, man. Always a pleasure. Dr. Wilmer Leon (01:00:08): Folks. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Go to that Patreon account. Help us out, please. This isn't cheap. We need you to make this work. Leave a review and share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Jon Jeter (01:00:58): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.  

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has signed an executive order that codifies the measures put in place by his administration related to ballot security and voter list maintenance. Ahead of the November presidential election, Youngkin said that Virginians should be confident in the state's election security. “The Virginia model for election security works," he said. "This isn't a Democrat or Republican issue, it's an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don't play games and our model for election security is working." Virginia uses...Article LinkSupport the Show.

Legal Eagles - The Wall Street Journal called out president Joe Biden after he laid out his plan to reform the Supreme Court. The WSJ said his plan would “make the Justices servants of the politics of the day.” In Virginia, Liberty University is being sued for firing Eleanor Zinski after he disclosed that he was a transgender woman, and Ken Paxton announced that they have secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company from using Texans data. Mike Donnelly and Will Chamberlain are today's legal experts. Josh Hammer - Tensions in the Middle East continue to rise. After attacks continue to escalate from both sides.Citizens are concerned with what's to come.In post election Venezuela, many are calling the race rigged. The polls in the lead up showed Nicolás Maduro was likely going to lose, yet he was formally declared a winner by the county's electoral authority.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Virginia's 5th district, vote counting is on hold for the federal holiday of Juneteenth, with a race too close to call. We have more on why it's the closest-watched race in the state. With foreign threats on the rise, the Senate is seeking to increase defense spending while the House looks to cut costs. Lawmakers are heading for a budget showdown. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles and Virginia State Police are joining local law enforcement agencies statewide to kick off the annual national 'Click it or Ticket' campaign to promote seatbelt use ahead of the Memorial Day holiday. The campaign runs through June 2 and aims to ensure drivers and their passengers are wearing seatbelts when they are on the road. The upcoming holiday weekend is expected to see significant traffic volumes, with 38.4 million people expected to travel by car nationwide – the most ever since AAA began forecasting holiday travel in 2000. In Virginia, more than one million...Article LinkSupport the Show.

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus called us to be wise as snakes and gentle as doves. But can we be gentle and wise when standing up for biblical principles and our voting rights as investors?It's the annual shareholder meeting season for public corporations, meaning companies will hear about their policies from investors. Jerry Bowyer joins us today with a biblical perspective on corporate engagement.Jerry Bowyer is the President of Bowyer Research and our Resident Economist here at Faith & Finance. He is the author of “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.” You can also read his insightful columns for World News Group. When you work with corporations and voting shares, are you helping Christians stand up for their “rights” in some way?Christians can advocate for their rights as corporate shareholders by putting shareholder proposals on the ballot if they own $2,000 worth of shares for three years. This enables them to speak at the annual meeting or delegate that to somebody else and present their questions and cases to the CEOs and executives. Through shareholder activism and proxy voting, there is a great deal of ability to "speak to kings" or address corporate leadership.How does proxy voting work and how can it impact a company?Proxy voting works similarly to how voting works for citizens. As shareholders, investors get to vote for members of the board of directors, just like citizens vote for members of Congress or the president. As shareholders, investors can attend the annual meeting and speak up if they own just one or even a fractional share, similar to how citizens can go to town hall meetings to voice their opinions.What are some differences in how one engages a corporation vs. a government agency?When engaging with government funds as investors, they are on the "our side" as the investor. They help governments engage properly when they are company investors, just like individuals invest through 401ks, ETFs, etc. Governments have a fiduciary obligation to invest for retirees' good and vote in a way that benefits them. With corporations, the engagement is more about holding them accountable and encouraging them to focus on their core business rather than politics or social issues.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:I just read the book “Home Equity and Reverse Mortgages: The Cinderella of the Baby Boomer Retirement” by Harlan Accola and have decided to move forward to do that, too. I contacted my bank, and they don't offer that service. Do you have any suggestions? In Virginia, specifically Richmond, are there banks that do this?My house loan is only in my husband's name, and I would like to know if I should put my name on it or leave it as is.I will be 65 in June and don't want to work until I fully retire. My job is gratifying but very stressful. I have no credit card bills or anything additional to the mortgage or car payment. My car payment is about $400 monthly, and I still owe about $18,000. Would it be in my best interest to take my additional monthly commission checks, typically put in savings, and put that toward paying the car off?Resources Mentioned:Home Equity and Reverse Mortgages: The Cinderella of the Baby Boomer Retirement by Harlan AccolaMovement MortgageRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) or Certified Christian Financial Counselor (CertCFC)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on the Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. Visit our website at FaithFi.com where you can join the FaithFi Community and give as we expand our outreach.

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Congressman Randy Weber is a public servant, proven conservative, former small business owner, and third-generation Texan representing the 14th District of Texas. In Congress, he serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest jurisdiction of any legislative committee in Congress. Weber also serves on the Science Space and Technology. For over 70 years, Randy Weber has called the Gulf Coast home - a place to start a family and build a business. Although juggling work and family takes great amounts of time and effort, Weber makes time to be an active member of his church and community. Weber built his air conditioning company, Weber's Air & Heat, in 1981 from scratch and grew his business by using what his grandfather used to call ‘good old-fashion Texas horse sense and a strong work ethic.' Like others who have successfully moved from business to public service, Weber's real-world experience in the private sector underpins his commitment to lower taxes, his contempt for wasteful spending, and his firm dedication to better schools. Prior to being elected to Congress, Weber served four years in the Texas State House. During his tenure, Weber served on the committees of Environmental Regulation, Public Education, and as Vice Chair of Border and Intergovernmental Affairs. While serving in the Texas House, Randy Weber authored landmark legislation to combat human trafficking and protect women, young girls, and boys - some as young as 12 years old. Weber has lived in a 20-mile radius all his life and has been married to Brenda Weber, a retired schoolteacher, for over 47 years. He is a graduate of Alvin Community College, and holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Houston at Clear Lake. Randy and Brenda have three children and eight wonderful grandchildren. He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.   GUEST OVERVIEW: Andrew Loposser is the President of APL consulting, Creator of The Political Playbook Substack. With nearly two decades of hands-on experience, Andrew has become a go-to expert in the realm of political campaigning, working closely with candidates across local, state, and federal levels. His journey has seen him collaborate with dozens of candidates, building a network rich with respected party leaders and dedicated activists. In Virginia's political scene, Andrew's influence is unmistakable. He proudly serves as Virginia's 8th Congressional District GOP Chairman and is the man behind 'The Political Playbook,' a weekly Substack publication that offers a deep dive into the nuances of the political world.    

Gaslit Nation launched in 2018 to help build the Blue Wave, which set up progressive infrastructure that expands today, including in states like Kansas. In Virginia in 2023, our community produced one of the largest phone banks for Sister District, helping to get out the vote, flipping the Senate, and helping elect Danica Roem, the first transgender person to serve in the state Senate. We also protected abortion rights from Posh Trump Glenn Youngkin. An early September 2023 Gaslit Nation episode highlighted the work of the States Project, which raised more money for Virginia than the Democratic Party. Why? Because grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left. We are the answer to the decades-long mission of the corporate-backed far-right to dismantle our democracy. No one is coming to save us but us. That's why our listeners are the least likely to be demoralized by the news that the Supreme Court will drag out Trump's January 6 insurrection case, the one Merrick Garland's DOJ already waited out the clock on, losing valuable time as the coup plotters like Trump and Bannon continue to mobilize their genocidal far-right army. Ivanka and Jared dine with politicians from both parties and continue to serve as anonymous sources for the media that, in return, tries to rehabilitate their (banana republic grifter) reputations. This week's bonus show, answering questions from our listeners, features a special focus on the murder of Nex Benedict, a gender-fluid trans teen killed by the incitement of hate and violence driven by Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and Oklahoma state school superintendent Ryan Walters, who appointed Raichik to terrorize vulnerable children and their allies. While the grief and anger over the lack of accountability are immense, there are solutions to what we can do, no matter if we live in a Republican-hostage state or a so-called blue state. Other questions from our listeners range from the latest news on the Havana Syndrome mystery and cover-up, must-see places to visit in New York, and whether George Santos will end up on Dancing with the Stars (he will!), and more. If you didn't hear your question answered this week, look out for it next week, as our Q&A continues. Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! Join the conversation with a community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit and get bonus shows, all episodes ad free, submit questions to our regular Q&As, get exclusive invites to live events, and more.    Show Notes:    Join Andrea at State Fair to help build our power in the states as a buffer against Russian-backed GOP fascism: https://linktr.ee/statefair   Human Rights Campaign President Asks for Full Investigations by DOJ and Department of Education into Brutal, Senseless Attacks Against Nex Benedict https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-president-asks-for-full-investigations-by-doj-and-department-of-education-into-brutal-senseless-attacks-against-nex-benedict   Contact the DOJ Civil Rights Division and file a report – you do not have to Include your name and contact information. LINK: https://civilrights.justice.gov/report/    If it's helpful, copy/paste and/or select the following information:   PRIMARY CONCERN: Discrimination at a school, educational program or service, or related to receiving education   WHERE: OWASSO PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1501 N Ash St., Owasso, OK 74055   WHEN: February 8, 2024   WHAT: Nex Benedict, a gender-fluid trans teen was killed by the incitement of hate and violence driven by Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and Oklahoma state school superintendent Ryan Walters, who appointed Raichik to terrorize vulnerable children and their teachers. The DOJ must take over the investigation of Nex's murder. Local officials and school staff failed her, including failing to call an ambulance when she had trouble walking after suffering a hate crime attack. The DOJ must open an investigation now.    You can also send Kristen Clarke, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the DOJ, a message over Twitter: @KristenClarkeJD @CivilRights    How you can support queer and trans kids in Oklahoma after Nex Benedict's death – The Advocate Link: https://www.advocate.com/news/how-to-help-trans-kids?fbclid=IwAR1KDpTCrqpohhRicaDP0cYQkGUZy9mj_zT7E0ZH30Yz282DmvgSGFylC7s_aem_AZIcTG7MHSnhJT6CkblIS6Y9nAQ3krE-taqnVCJswjJS2TJmpkTmq210J81PK3GrGJI&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#toggle-gdpr   Erin Reed on Substack – Erin in the Morning: Chaya Raichik Was Appointed To "Make Schools Safer" In Oklahoma; Now A Trans Teen Is Dead. Nex, a gender fluid trans teen is dead in Oklahoma. Their death comes after a year of transphobic bullying, in a school targeted by the biggest anti-trans influencers. When will it end? Link: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/chaya-raichik-was-appointed-to-make?utm_source=substack&publication_id=994764&post_id=141878010&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1xosvv   How LGBTQ Parents Can Protect Their Families After Dobbs – Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms and Other LGBTQ Parents: Know your legal rights including emergency hotlines to call. Link: https://mombian.com/2022/07/15/how-lgbtq-parents-can-protect-their-families-after-dobbs/   Moving Forward After Tragedy and Loss – Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms and Other LGBTQ Parents. Link: https://mombian.com/2024/02/23/moving-forward-after-a-week-of-tragedy-and-loss/   Davis Hammet's 2018 Twitter Thread on How Building the Rainbow House in Topeka, Kansas Led to Political Change – Twitter link: https://twitter.com/Davis_Hammet/status/1060958025731715072   Activist Davis Hammet speaks on the Topeka Equality House – Washburn Review. Link: https://washburnreview.org/48906/news/news-campus-news/activist-and-loud-light-founder-davis-hammet-speaks-on-the-topeka-equality-house/   “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture is a feature documentary that follows the story of tireless researchers who trace the origins of the anti-gay movement among Christians to a grave mistranslation of the Bible in 1946. It chronicles the discovery of never-before-seen archives at Yale University which unveil astonishing new revelations, and casts significant doubt on any biblical basis for LGBTQIA+ prejudice. Featuring commentary from prominent scholars as well as opposing pastors, including the personal stories of the film's creators, 1946 is at once challenging, enlightening, and inspiring. While other documentaries have been successful in their attempt to treat the symptom of homophobia in the church, 1946 is working to diagnose and treat the disease - Biblical Literalism” – 1946themovie.com   Summary of Vice News Investigation Into Sadist Groups Online Driven by Children, Targeting Children – Twitter link: https://twitter.com/VICENews/status/1759959890770956502   Keeping teens safe on social media: What parents should know to protect their kids A multipronged approach to social media management, including time limits, parental monitoring and supervision, and ongoing discussions about social media can help parents protect teens' brain development – APA.org. Link: https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/social-media-parent-tips   Congress to Examine U.S. Spy Agencies' Work on Havana Syndrome The C.I.A. and other agencies concluded that no hostile power was responsible for the mysterious ailments, a finding some whistle-blowers have challenged. – New York Times link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/us/politics/congress-to-examine-cias-work-on-havana-syndrome.html   Want to join us in pressuring Congress to pass aid to Ukraine? This easy new site helps you send a message to your reps in Congress. Be sure to make your voice heard through  helpukrainewin.com

Episode Summary:The Federal Writers' Project set out to create a series of books that held up a mirror to America, and chronicled communities that had long been ignored. Howard University professor Sterling Brown led the agency's effort to document African American history in a series of books. In Virginia, chemistry professor Roscoe Lewis led a small team to produce the first book in that national series, titled The Negro in Virginia. Lewis recruited a dozen Black writers and researchers across the state for a pioneering effort that recorded interviews with nearly 300 formerly enslaved people. They navigated a backlash from state editors and local officials. Against all odds, their book on Black life became a national Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and a milestone on the path to the Civil Rights movement.Speakers:Audrey Davis, historianJulian Hayter, historianGregg Kimball, historianKiki Petrosino, poetLinks and Resources:Photo essay about East End Cemetery by Kiki Petrosino and Brian Palmer in VQR“Unmarked” documentaryVirginia Humanities Q&A with David A. TaylorWashington Post article on Roscoe Lewis and The Negro in VirginiaAlexandria Black History MuseumReading List:The Negro in Virginia (Library of Virginia)White Blood by Kiki PetrosinoLong Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project by Catherine A. StewartTo Walk About in Freedom by Carole EmbertonThe Dream is Lost by Julian Hayter Credits:Host: Chris HaleyDirector: Andrea KalinProducers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James MirabelloWriter: David A. TaylorEditors: Ethan Oser and Julie ChalhoubStory Editor: Michael MayAdditional Voices: Skip Coblyn, Sherry Carter-Brownell, Robert Mirabello, James Mirabello and Danielle NanceFeaturing music and archival material from:Pond5Library of Congress National Archives For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorderProduced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Virginia Humanities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Energy News Beat Daily Standup, Stu Turley, discusses various energy-related news stories. In Virginia, legislation aims to fund electric school buses, though the allocated amount seems insufficient. New York proposes bills to transition to renewable energy, but concerns are raised about the financial burden on taxpayers. Iraq remains committed to an OPEC+ deal to cap oil output, despite challenges. Fervo Energy's geothermal drilling advancements show promise for rapid deployment. Japan sees the US as an appealing investment destination for energy exploration, particularly in natural gas and LNG. The podcast encourages engagement and highlights recent guests and plans for increased traffic on their website.Highlights of the Podcast00:00 - Intro01:28 - Virginia legislation would activate state program to fund electric school buses03:50 - New York State Proposes ‘Rapid Act' and Other Bill to Aid in Transition to Renewable Energy and Away From Natural Gas06:23 - Iraq Remains Committed to OPEC+ Deal to Cap Oil Output at 4 Million Bpd08:25 - Fervo Energy Drilling Results Show Rapid Advancement of Geothermal Performance10:04 - JAPEX SEES U.S. AS ‘ENTICING' DESTINATION FOR ENERGY EXPLORATION11:44 - OutroPlease see the links below for articles that we discuss in the podcast.Virginia legislation would activate state program to fund electric school busesFebruary 12, 2024 Virginia is on a roll transitioning to electric school buses. And that momentum could remain uninterrupted if legislators activate a precedent-setting but dormant initiative to tap into state dollars. Freshman Del. Holly Seibold has […]New York State Proposes ‘Rapid Act' and Other Bill to Aid in Transition to Renewable Energy and Away From Natural GasFebruary 12, 2024 Mariel AlumitGovernor Kathy Hochul's Executive Budget proposal (the Transportation, Economic Development, and Environmental Conservation budget bill (A.8808/S.8308)) includes two pivotal energy proposals: the Renewable Action Through Project Interconnection and Deployment Act and the Affordable Gas Transition […Iraq Remains Committed to OPEC+ Deal to Cap Oil Output at 4 Million BpdFebruary 12, 2024OPEC's second-largest producer, Iraq, is committed to its voluntary cut in the OPEC+ agreement and will produce no more than 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, Iraq's Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said […]Fervo Energy Drilling Results Show Rapid Advancement of Geothermal PerformanceFebruary 12, 2024Drilling operations at Fervo's Cape Station show 70% year-over-year reduction in drilling times and pave the way for rapid geothermal deployment PALO ALTO, CA (February 12, 2024) – Today at the Stanford Geothermal Workshop, Fervo Energy […]JAPEX SEES U.S. AS ‘ENTICING' DESTINATION FOR ENERGY EXPLORATIONFebruary 12, 2024TOKYO, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Japan Petroleum Exploration (Japex) 1662.T sees the United States as the most appealing investment destination for oil and gas exploration and production, despite political risks posed by this year's election, its senior managing executive […]Follow Stuart On LinkedIn and TwitterFollow Michael On LinkedIn and TwitterENB Top NewsENBEnergy DashboardENB PodcastENB Substack– Get in Contact With The Show –

In Virginia, an airline carrying seven passengers and two crewmembers made an ill -faded emergency landing, diverting and making an emergency landing on the Loudoun county parkway. Prosecutors once again charged the actor with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2021 shooting death on the side of the movie "Rust." What led them to bring back the criminal case nine months after initial charges were dropped.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In November of 1996, Cloverleaf Mall in Richmond, Virginia was the site of the still-unsolved double murder of Cheryl Edwards and Charlita Singleton, two mall employees found stabbed to death in the back office of the dollar store where they worked. In 2004, investigators briefly thought they'd uncovered new leads... that don't appear to have resulted in progress on the case. In the latest episode of Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, host Nat Cardona speaks with Scott Bass of the Richmond Times-Dispatch who extensively covered the mall's fallout from the double homicide and the impact it had on the surrounding community. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Hello and welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. I'm your host, Nat Cardona, and I'm happy to be back after a little bit of a hiatus. The last time you listened, I introduced you to the unsolved case of the Cloverleaf Mall stabbings in Richmond, Virginia. This week, I'm talking with Richmond Times Dispatch opinion editor Scott Bass, who extensively covered the mall's fallout from the double homicide and the impact it had on the surrounding community. Tell me a little bit about yourself, your career now and when you first laid your hands on this topic and coverage and what you were doing then, because I know it's like 15 plus years ago, right? As far as what you were. It was a long time. Right. I'm the Opinion Page editor at the Times Dispatch in Richmond. I've only been here for about a year. In essence, I've been a journalist in the Richmond area for almost 30 years now. Almost 30 years. So I've just kind of jumped around from place to place. I worked in magazine journalism for probably the bulk of my career. Richmond Magazine There was a publication here as an alternative weekly called Style Weekly, where I worked for about ten years. Prior to that, I worked at the Small Daily out in Petersburg, Virginia, the Progress-Index, for about two years. And then, oddly enough, I started my career as a business reporter for a monthly that a weekly business journal called Inside Business. And when the homicides took place in 96, I was I had just kind of started my career as a business journalist. Wasn't very good. Still learning. So most of my focus was kind of on the development side of things. In this particular mall was Richmond's first. The Richmond area's first sort of regional shopping destination was a reasonable shot. We didn't have anything like it, and it kind of replaced in the Richmond area, you know, in most a lot of cities where, you know, the main shopping district was downtown in Richmond, it was Broad Street. And Broad Street had the military roads. It had a big, tall Hammer's big, beautiful department stores. It's where everyone kind of collected during the holidays. It was the primary sort of retail shopping district. And then somewhere around, starting in the mid fifties, early sixties, shopping malls started to replace downtown retail districts as whites that not white flight, but as sort of the great suburban explosion took place after World War Two. Everyone moved out of urban areas into suburban the suburbs, and the retail sort of followed back. And this was Cloverleaf Mall was our first sort of big regional shopping destination that was outside of East Broad Street, downtown. And sort of a big deal. Yeah, we were a little late. Like Richmond was always kind of wait things. So, you know, this opened and the first mall Cloverleaf opened in 1972. But right about this time, within three or four years, several malls had been kind of built, were built right after Regency or excuse me, right after Cloverleaf Mall was built in 72, the Regency Mall, which was a bigger, much nicer facility. It was two stories that was built in 74 five. And then, oddly enough, Cloverleaf, which is located south of Richmond and Chesterfield County, which is sort of the biggest jurisdiction in our metro region, opened a second mall much further down the road, about three miles down the road from Cloverleaf, where there was nothing. It was a real tiny shopping strip with one anchor, and it did no business for several years. They used to call it the Chesterfield morgue. But it's interesting because just as an aside, you mall development really took off in the fifties after Congress kind of passed this as a law, basically making it, allowing developers to depreciate real estate development really, really quickly. And that was in 54. And that just jumpstarted mall development. And all of a sudden there was an explosion. Malls were built literally all over the country because it was very easy for developers to build a mall and get their money back paid off within a few years independent of how the mall actually was doing. From a retail perspective. So it just led to a proliferation of malls. And that's kind of what happened at Cloverleaf Club, which was the first. But there were several others that had built up not far away. And slowly but surely it was eagerness. It started E Cloverleaf to launch. This cloverleaf was sort of on the edge of Richmond or just across the border, and that's in Chesterfield from Richmond. And there's an interesting racial history, too, obviously, in Virginia we have independent cities, which means that our cities are actually they have separate governments from the counties next to them. Whereas if you go and everywhere else in the country, cities are tended to be centers of commerce that are part of another jurisdiction. In Virginia, we have independent cities, which means they have no connection whatsoever to the municipalities around them, which meant that in order for the city to grow, it had to annex the surrounding jurisdictions and its property residents. And this had been going on in Virginia. And, you know, the first part of the 20th century, the last one of the last big annexations and I think it might have been the last one was the city of Richmond, annexing about 23 square miles of Chesterfield County in 1970. Chesterfield County is just south of the city, sort of south and east. And they basically absorbed 23 square miles in about 40,000, 47,000 or so residents understanding that there was a racial backdrop here because this came a few years after desegregation and Richmond was sort of ground zero in massive resistance to segregation of integration in schools. And once that happened in the sixties, there was a white flight, a lot of white flight out of Richmond. People just white folks just left and they moved into Chesterfield and Henrico and some of the surrounding jurisdictions. The sort of last gasp for Richmond to sort of maintain some of its tax base occur in 1970 with the annexation. But it was also an attempt to sort of bolster the white political structure because most of the residents that they absorb were white. They were beginning to lose their political power. And that was a primary motivator for the annexation. The mall was built by Chesterfield Camp in Chesterfield County is kind of a big F-you to the city of Richmond. Like, okay, you can you took our land, you took our residents and we're going to build this big fancy mall and we're going to suck all the retail dollars out of the city into Chesterfield County. That's the way a lot of people read that. So it's just she has an interesting history there. The location was just across the city border, the border with Richmond and Chesterfield. They wouldn't even allow busses to venture into Chesterfield County because the idea was to allow busses to come into the county. We're going to be allowing black folks to come here and no one wanted that because there was a lot of there was this perception that once black residents moved in to Chesterfield County, then, you know, everything was lost. This was a difficult time for the Richmond region from a racial perspective, was not a healthy, healthy time or a place. So the mall had always had sort of this slight stigma attached to it in that regard. But in the very beginning, Cloverleaf Mall was really the center of fashion for a couple of years in Richmond. Everyone coalesced there. You know, the local department stores, which had they had stores all up and down the East Coast, Tom Heimer and Miller Roads that were founded here for hire was there. Railroads came a little bit later and Richmond really was for a period of time, kind of a center of retail innovation. This was in the seventies, sixties and seventies. A lot of the big, big format, big box stores kind of came out of Richmond and Circuit City best products. Back in those days. They were the kind of first to actually do big, big box retail. So it was an interesting time and an interesting place for Richmond because we had this history of sort of retail innovation in New York on the East Coast and in the south. And the mall came along. It was a brand new concept and everyone's letter to the mall that lasted for a few years until the other malls started showing up and duplicating those efforts. And it just kind of splintered the market. The homicides came, I guess it was 96. So several years later, the mall was in decline, had been for several years as a sort of suburban development, really took off in Chesterfield further out where around that other mall that built in that direction. So the mall completely mall was in decline, had been struggling. They had struggled to keep their department stores. They would leave, they would have new ones come in. It was difficult, but during the early nineties, things really started to take a turn. Richmond at that time was becoming known as one of the murder capitals of the U.S. during the crack cocaine epidemic, and a lot of people in the surrounding jurisdictions kind of looked at Richmond as this dangerous place to be and it was drug infested. You didn't want to go into the city. And Cloverleaf kind of was right on the edge. People kind of associated Richmond with Cloverleaf on some level. So it was in decline. People began to view Cloverleaf as a dangerous place or potentially a dangerous place. And then when the double homicides took place in 96, that was kind of the end of it. But a lot of the tenants at the mall decided not to renew their leases. The decline just accelerated and that was, I think, most people who are here in Richmond, you can recall this time period, would agree that that double homicide was kind of the nail in the coffin for Clover Moore, for lack of a better word. Sure. They only. We need to take a quick break, so don't go too far. See you all soon during your you know, your coverage of that and the decline and talking in the nineties, Do you have any recollection of what else was going on there? I mean, goofy things happen when there's like vacant stores and that kind of thing. I mean, there had but like, like what didn't what was going on inside a, I mean, murderous aside, like as far as trouble, whatever you want to label it as. There have been some, you know, some reports of, you know, teenagers walking around the mall intimidating, you know, shoppers, that kind of thing. The mall had changed in terms of the retail mix. So as as it became less of a destination and other malls had kind of cornered the market in more populous areas, the demographics around Cloverleaf were lower income. You know, there was a higher black population, higher Latino population, and you started to see a change in retail mix. So you didn't have some of the higher end retailers or the big chains had already kind of breaking. So the gaps, you know, the limited and those kinds of stores had kind of long had and left the place. So you ended up with smaller stores that didn't quite fill the spaces that had been originally, you know, it was designed for a larger footprint and it created more vacancies. And it became a place where, you know, people kind of viewed all that's at the mall is the low income, you know, mall for for people who don't have as much money. And the clientele kind of matched that. And that's the way a lot of people used. CLOVERLEAF But the vacancies were there. I mean, I don't know that it was anything I don't recall any any other major episodes. There had been, I think, another where every now and then there would be a report of someone who had been fired or a gun or a shooting or something like that. But it wasn't. But thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, I just didn't know if there was like other stuff going on there. It's more just like we don't go there because it's more. That's what made this case so bizarre, is because it was a state. It was a you know, I think they were both staffed at least ten times, from what I recall. And, you know, they they couldn't quite figure out sort of, well, who was this someone who was just passing through? Because it was kind of an it was right off of Chippenham Parkway, was close to the interstate. Could this been someone who was just passing through where they're looking around? Who knows? But the fact that they were stabbed multiple times kind of raised the question of it seemed personal. There was nothing I mean, not I mean, they scoured I mean, the police really did put everything into this, as far as I recall. And they just kept coming up empty. They couldn't that they had every lead that they had. There was a U-Haul at one point in the parking lot that it had been left unlocked with the lights on. I think that turned out to not be connected. They just they just got run into dead ends. And yeah, it's just bizarre. I have no one really ever I don't think that. I suspect today they are not any closer than they were. We know whatever happened in 2004 as a possible break in the case or we did, you know, obviously fizzled out. And it's been there almost 20 years since. So, yeah, it's definitely really. 30 years here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, from 24 for there to be like this possible break. But that was like the last that we've seen. Right. That's the most completely They gone now. They tore down that wall. Right. So, so 1990. So November 1996, these murders happened. I was your one style Weekly article that I first came across was, you know, eight years later in 2004. So when you were covering that, where where was the mall at at that time? Was it about like literally on its last legs or. Yes, it was. It was literally on this last legs. I mean, in terms of the other day, gosh, I can't recall who was actually if one of the department stores was still there. wow. Sears might have still been there in 2004. Okay. But I believe they were the last anchor. But yeah, at that point in time, I mean, you know, a lot of it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Chesterfield County had pegged it for redevelopment a few years earlier. And, you know, if you spend enough time talking about the mom and dad to your constituents and the news and with plans of what we're going to do to fix it, it kind of seals the enamel. Yeah. And by 2004, it was done. Okay. It was just a matter of who was going to pay for the redevelopment. Sure. And then on as an aside to that on the fringe, it really could never shake that. This is the place where two women were murdered and they still don't know what happened. True. Yeah. No, absolutely true. There was a real estate agent. Real estate agent or a commercial real estate broker. We followed all of this with me, and the story that I wrote made the comment that, you know, that was got death written all over it. And that was really true. Like no one wanted to touch them all. You couldn't get content to resign. It just had this perception of being in a bad area. There's some racial undertones to it, of course, but by that point it was so far gone that I don't think anyone reasonably thought it could be resurrected as a retail destination. Sure. And then do you have any idea how long that all in $1 store where they were murdered out? Like how long did that survive? Any clue after they were murdered? Yeah, I don't imagine a real oak. That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to every you know. Have you talked have you tried to talk to Jay Latham? I know that the feelers have been out with that. I he he would probably have more insight on that. Right. He's a great interview. Yeah. And he actually had he did two stints there. So he was I thought he was the original loan manager, but he came in I think 75 or six, 76 somewhere. There came a couple of years after they left and then came back and he was the manager at the mall where the homicides took place. And it was like a really crazy time period, really. He just returned five weeks before or something. He hadn't been there long, and they were in the process of trying to revive it. So he worked for a Think Simon Property group, which is either just purchased the mall or believe it and have to go back and check. But yeah he was with a group that had was they had taken it over and they were had hopes of sort of reviving and then that happened and yeah, changed his plans. So. Right, so what, what's there now. They had this sort of mixed use thing. It's, there's a big Kroger, one of the biggest doesn't have me, there's nothing exciting there. They basically replace it with a mix of retail and residential and Chester County had gotten involved in issuing health issue bonds to kind of pay for some of the infrastructure and got Kroger to build. I think at the time it might still be one of the biggest Kroger's in Virginia and it's just massive Kroger marketplace. And that was the big anchor. Well, interestingly, there is one little remnant of the mall still left, which is a tire shop that was part of the mall and it still has the old sixties and early seventies sort of architecture that refused to sell. And it's still there. And it's right in the middle of this sort of new development because they put him on kind of sticking out like a sore thumb. So you can appreciate. The entire place. Yeah, and it's exciting, but they're in the process of redeveloping the whole area now. You know, there's some stuff going to put it in a couple of ice skating rinks across the street and there's a big sort of office park that have been there for years. They're trying to interconnect their office park with some shopping district slash entertainment complex right next to it that's close to the mall. You know. This is like any to pop that in any city kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. What's different? Right. Well, what's the what's the demographics in the area now? It's still primarily it's not a high income. You know, the area of of just, you know, just was big is about 400 square miles. So it's a big, big footprint. The sort of the as the suburban development kind of shifted further out, you know, that there was sort of inner edge parts of both counties is just kind of, you know. The one last thing that pops in my mind here is, I mean, I know you weren't a crime reporter and you are not one currently, but just for more context, because we're I'm not there and I know that Richmond was at one time, you know, the murder capital, like you say. Are there more cases like this? Like I just I guess it's interesting to me that there's so little coverage of an unsolved murder of two women at a mall, something so public. And you know, seemingly random. And it's just like, is this? And I was just kind of one of those earmarked cases in the area that people like. Definitely. No, definitely remember like or other like tons of these. I just I just don't get it. I think at the time I mean the be just what I remember of this time period, you know, Richmond was I think two years early. We had 160 murder incidents in a city of less than 200,000 people. It was a problem. We had a higher murder rate. So it wasn't it didn't happen often in Chesterfield, the jurisdictions around the city. I mean, they always had it and we've always had issues, but not not 160 murders year. So when the Cleveland murders happened, I think it just kind of got lost a little bit. I was like, okay, it's there's a racial element to it. You know, if it were two white women, then there would be way more attention focused on it. That's just tends to be the case. And because these were minority women who were found stabbed to death and all that, people had stopped caring about at least those with political power and stopped caring about allowing it to sort of just kind of drift. That's quite a bit of that here. No, it's almost. Yeah. Is there anything else you just want to add about your realm of things in connection with cool relief? Yeah, I'm so, I mean, you know, I hope it's I hope it's enough for you to sink your teeth into. And I guess I'm not having a lot of information about the actual case itself. I know Chesterfield was very close to the vest about what they were, what they would release the police department was. So I recall just kind of during when I was reporting on this, just kind of being in my head against the wall because they wanted this to be out there. But they were very it was very difficult to get them to talk about some of the leads that they had and didn't have them. All that good stuff. You know, I think for me, just going back and looking at the the case itself, I was always fascinated with it. I mean, I'm I'm a local, you know, journalist, you know, So outside of Richmond, maybe you wouldn't care about such things. But, you know, there are there are so many different layers to it from understanding like the connection between annexation and sort of the racial history. There was always like another layer to it that maybe I didn't think about or didn't realize until I went back and looked at everything again. And that's all for now. Subscribe. So that you don't come back and you episodes cases are coming your way.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Virginia we have an election every year. This year is going to be one to never forget but ask yourself...have things gotten bad enough yet? Republicans did not show up for the election this year, and we did not provide all of the support to candidates that we should have. We are going to have to deal with the problems we are having, or these problems are going to deal with us. Things are bad on the world stage, and they are going to get worse. We have to participate, and we have to support our candidates. Here we go! Music-Scott Buckley-Monomyth, The Fury

In their 2021 book The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, Duke University professor of medical humanities Farr Curlin and philosophy professor Christopher Tollefsen argued that the Western approach to healthcare has shifted in recent decades from the pursuit of objective wellbeing to a consumer industry. In the process, doctors are increasingly seen as “service providers” whose main job is to help patients do whatever they want with their bodies. Just two years later, their analysis seems spot on.   For example, the healthy functioning of a woman's body during pregnancy is often treated and even labeled a “disease.” Same-sex couples, who have chosen inherently sterile sexual unions, sue and then lobby legislatures to redefine their inability to procreate as “infertility.” They act as if there's no difference between a man and woman unable to conceive due to some medical situation and a man and a man unable to conceive due to, well, reality.   This shift–from medicine as the pursuit of health to medicine as confirmation of our self-expression–is most evident in the transgender movement. In Virginia, a man who claims to be a woman is suing a county for placing him in the men's jail. He argues that prison officials should be legally bound to accommodate his gender dysphoria under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA was designed to address conditions in which a person was injured or disabled. In this case, a fully functioning and capable person is claiming “disability” because his local prison does not accommodate his individual wishes. The very existence of so-called “transgender medicine” is, in fact, a case in point. Hindering the body's natural development or cutting off healthy body parts in service of an inner sense of self is an abject perversion of medicine as a “healing profession.”  According to Curlin and Tollefsen, the way back to a healthy (no pun intended) healthcare system is by recovering the definition of health as “an objective bodily norm for all living organisms.”   [L]iving beings have characteristic bodily activities and tendencies, and these activities and tendencies determine what is appropriate—the norm—for them in regard to the well-working of their organic bodies.  Though that seems obvious enough, restoring this understanding of health requires that the “well-working of our organic bodies” is understood to be a moral good:   If health either is not real or is not good, patients have no intrinsic reason to choose health rather than other desired states; nor do physicians have any intrinsic reason to make health central to their practice and profession.  Of course, despite a great deal of moral confusion infecting medicine, an objective understanding of “health” remains uncontroversial in many areas. Physical pain is real. Hunger is real. Fatigue is real. Currently no one is demanding disability pay because they have to sleep at regular intervals when they'd rather not.  In the wake of the sexual revolution, doubts about the objectivity and goodness of health are aimed mostly at the makeup and function of our bodies that have to do with sex. That's not surprising given that the West has spent decades steeped in the idea that sexual activity can be disconnected from morality.  Once the normal and healthy functioning of human bodies are considered “oppressive” and “optional,” healthcare is reduced to a highly consequential and potentially fatal art project. Gone from the equation are all given, all purpose, and all moral limitations. If something can be done, and someone wants it to be done, then it should be done.   The biblical narrative, in contrast, describes human beings (and therefore human bodies) as created by God with purpose. This purpose implies the kinds of physical and moral norms that can undergird a stable understanding of health. The fall explains why things aren't as they were created to be, undergirding a helpful and objective understanding of “sickness” and disability.   The redemption provided in Jesus Christ aims at the restoration of God's creation, which means healing is possible. Thus, the work of medicine is a redemptive activity, with ethical possibility and moral boundaries. Medicine was built on this framework of reality and, without it, could devolve into a moral chaos, where up is confused with down, right with wrong, and health with “whatever we want.” Canada's so-called “Medical Assistance in Dying” program is the most obvious case in point. There's nothing about the program that is medical, or assistance, or about dying. Rather, it's a harm done to unburden us of having to care by killing the one who needs it.  In a more rational age, MAiD would be seen as the horrifying evil it is. But in ours, evil and destruction are seen as good. This is how a society runs toward death: not only by denying God but by denying the obvious realities of the world He created.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

It is early spring 1644, and Europeans are fighting Indians in New Netherland and Maryland. In Virginia, though, it is quiet. It has been twelve years since the Second Anglo-Powhatan war ended after a decade of fighting that began the day the sky fell, March 22, 1622.  On that date Opechancanough sprung his colony-wide ambush of the English settlements along the James.  Indian soldiers loyal to the Powhatan confederacy killed almost four hundred English and other European settlers on that day, and many more in the years that followed. But peace had come in 1632, and despite occasional crises that might have triggered war, the old chief had kept that peace.  We covered Opechancanough and the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in three episodes more than a year ago, “Who Was Opechancanough?,” “Opechancanough's War,” and “After the Sky Fell,” which are definitely useful background if you have not listened to them, or haven't listened to them in some time. The peace would end on April 18, 1644, and that is the story of this episode. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown Robert Beverley, The History & Present State of Virginia

On Tuesday, people across the country took to the polls and made one thing crystal clear: abortion rights matter to voters. In Ohio, voters passed an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, making it the seventh state to protect abortion access through the ballot box. In Virginia, voters elected a full pro-abortion rights majority in their state General Assembly, and in Pennsylvania, voters maintained a pro-abortion majority in their state supreme court. As we look to 2024, abortion rights will continue to be on the ballot, meaning that anti-abortion opponents may continue to chip away at voting rights as a mechanism to block the will of voters, using tactics like racial gerrymandering and voter intimidation. All voters deserve an equal opportunity to exercise their rights and participate in democracy. Today, we'll get an election results update from Jessica Arons, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, who has been working to secure victories for reproductive freedom at the ballot box. Then, we'll speak with Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, to talk about how her team is using a recent voting rights victory at the Supreme Court to fight battles all across the country.

Protests are breaking out across the country as a result of the Israel-Hamas war, with many supporting pro-Palestinian causes in major cities. The rhetoric has grown inflammatory both in these demonstrations and on Capitol Hill. Recently, Rep. Rashida Tlaib was censured by the House after promoting false narratives about the Hamas attack on October 7th. As the divide between Democrats widens on this issue, what could this mean moving forward? On the Rundown, Fox & Friends co-host and host of The Brian Kilmeade Show, Brian Kilmeade, joins to discuss why understanding the complex history behind the Israel-Hamas war is crucial before forming opinions and also discusses his new book hitting shelves, 'Teddy and Booker T,' which explores the allyship between Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington. When Democrats went to the ballot boxes on Tuesday, abortion was most certainly an issue on their minds. In the now-red state of Ohio, 56 percent of voters approved Measure One to amend the state constitution to preserve Ohioans reproductive health rights, including birth control and abortion. In Virginia, Democrats won full state legislative control, and in Kentucky, incumbent Democratic Governor Andy Bashear held onto his seat. In all of these results, pundits say abortion was a driving factor. GOP pollster and President of Maslansky and Partners, Lee Carter, joins the podcast to explain how this issue drove people to the polls and its potential impact on 2024. Plus, commentary by former Trump economic adviser and economist at the Heritage Foundation, Steve Moore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Thursday, November 9th, A.D. 2023. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com)  By Jonathan Clark Pakistan detaining refugees from Afghanistan Pakistan is detaining refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan in preparation for deportation. Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, there are now an estimated 1.7 million undocumented Afghans in Pakistan. International Christian Concern notes, “A significant number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan face severe persecution if forced to return. Many are Christians or members of other religious minority groups and fled the Taliban's fundamentalist Islamic rule in 2021.” Pakistan's forced deportations will likely affect refugees from Iran and Myanmar as well, where Christians face high levels of persecution. Pakistan is no friend to Christianity either, ranking 7th on the Open Doors' World Watch List of nations where it is most difficult to be a Christian.  European countries cracking down on illegal immigration Speaking of deportations, Nordic countries are stepping up cooperation to stem illegal immigration. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland agreed to set up joint flights to send migrants to a third country. The move comes as Nordic countries seek to cut refugee quotas and crack down on gang violence blamed on “irresponsible immigration policy and a failed integration.” Similarly, Germany is looking to reduce immigration and make deportations easier. In a change of policy for the country, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “We must finally deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.” Christian wedding photographer free to decline homosexual faux weddings In the United States, a Christian wedding photographer is free to run his business in line with his beliefs after a court settlement last Friday. Alliance Defending Freedom represented Bob Updegrove in a case against a Virginia law. The law required him to celebrate homosexual ceremonies or face a fine of up to $50,000. Updegrove's victory builds on a previous religious liberty case in Colorado known as 303 Creative that went before the U.S. Supreme Court.  ADF Legal Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said, “As the Supreme Court recently affirmed in 303 Creative, the government can't force Americans to say things they don't believe. This victory for Bob underscores how the 303 Creative decision will protect countless Americans from government censorship and coercion.” Senator Tuberville to Pentagon: Stop paying for abortion travel Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is taking heat from his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate for his protest against a Pentagon abortion policy. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the military started paying travel expenses for service members to get abortions. In response, Tuberville put a hold on mass military promotions in the Senate. The chamber can still approve military nominations one at a time, but there are over 300 military promotions before the Senate. Tuberville said he will continue the hold as long as the Pentagon keeps its abortion policy. Psalm 1:1, 2 says, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Thank Senator Tuberville for his pro-life stand. You can call (334) 523-7424. Or write Senator Tommy Tuberville at Frank Johnson Annex, One Church Street, Suite 500-B, Montgomery, AL 36104. Or send him an email through a special link in our transcript today at www.TheWorldview.com. Ohioans enshrined abortion into constitution; Virginia GOP lost House Voters across multiple states went to the polls on Tuesday with Democrats winning several elections. In Kentucky, Democrat Governor Andy Beshear won a second term, beating Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In Virginia, Democrats held control of the state's Senate while taking control of the House.  That obliterated GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin's hope of signing a ban on abortions after the 15th week of growth in the womb. In Ohio, voters said yes to Issue 1, an amendment that enshrines abortion in the state's constitution. Issue 1 will allow abortionists to kill babies up until birth. However, in Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves  won re-election for a second term. Reeves signed the anti-abortion bill that led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. South Africa Rugby team, with Christian players, won 2023 World Cup And finally, South Africa won the 2023 Rugby World Cup last month, defeating New Zealand in the final that was held in France. The South African team is the first to win the tournament four times. The team is also known for multiple Christian players. Siya Kolisi captains the team and often thanks Jesus on the field, during interviews, and through social media. Another player, Pieter-Steph du Toit, was the man of the match in the latest victory. He gave thanks to God in a post-game interview. Listen. REPORTER: “Well, Pieter, Congratulations! My goodness!  What a game that was. What an armed resolute that was. Tell me what is going through your mind right now.” TOIT: “Firstly, I'm going to give our Heavenly Father thanks for giving us the opportunity and for helping us as a team through this World Cup and for the whole campaign. It's an unbelievable honor and a privilege to play with this team and giving us the opportunity.” 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Thursday, November 9th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Protests are breaking out across the country as a result of the Israel-Hamas war, with many supporting pro-Palestinian causes in major cities. The rhetoric has grown inflammatory both in these demonstrations and on Capitol Hill. Recently, Rep. Rashida Tlaib was censured by the House after promoting false narratives about the Hamas attack on October 7th. As the divide between Democrats widens on this issue, what could this mean moving forward? On the Rundown, Fox & Friends co-host and host of The Brian Kilmeade Show, Brian Kilmeade, joins to discuss why understanding the complex history behind the Israel-Hamas war is crucial before forming opinions and also discusses his new book hitting shelves, 'Teddy and Booker T,' which explores the allyship between Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington. When Democrats went to the ballot boxes on Tuesday, abortion was most certainly an issue on their minds. In the now-red state of Ohio, 56 percent of voters approved Measure One to amend the state constitution to preserve Ohioans reproductive health rights, including birth control and abortion. In Virginia, Democrats won full state legislative control, and in Kentucky, incumbent Democratic Governor Andy Bashear held onto his seat. In all of these results, pundits say abortion was a driving factor. GOP pollster and President of Maslansky and Partners, Lee Carter, joins the podcast to explain how this issue drove people to the polls and its potential impact on 2024. Plus, commentary by former Trump economic adviser and economist at the Heritage Foundation, Steve Moore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Headlines: Yesterday's election results highlighted significant developments. Ohio voters passed an amendment to the state's constitution, affirming residents' rights to make their own reproductive decisions, including having an abortion. Ohio's 6-week abortion ban may be affected by this. Additionally, Ohio legalized the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use. In Virginia, Democrats won control of the state Senate, establishing a split government at the state level. Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear was reelected, while the Mississippi governor's race results were pending. In international news, the Israeli Defense Forces initiated a ground invasion in Gaza City, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested an "indefinite period" of security control in Gaza. The White House proposed a 3-day war pause in exchange for hostage releases, with Hamas expressing readiness to release foreign nationals. The third Republican primary debate for the 2024 presidential candidate is happening, featuring candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. On a concerning note, cases of syphilis in newborns in the US have risen significantly over the past decade. Lastly, data from European and Japanese research centers showed that October was the warmest on record, indicating a continued trend towards record-high temperatures and climate concerns. Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode: NY Times: Ohio Enshrines Right to Abortion; Kentucky Re-elects Democratic Governor NBC News: Israel-Hamas war live updates: Gaza ‘security responsibility' to be Israel's when conflict ends, Netanyahu says Axios: Biden tells Bibi 3-day fighting pause could help secure release of some hostages Ap News: 5 Republicans will be on stage for the third presidential debate. Here's who missed the cut  NBC News: Newborn syphilis cases have reached 'dire levels,' CDC says Axios: Earth has warmest October on record, new data shows Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage alongside Amanda Duberman and Bridget Schwartz Edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. In Virginia, Democrats swept legislative elections in a blow to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. As casualties mount in the Israel-Hamas war, calls are growing for attention to the more than 2 million civilians in the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Biden administration says it supports a narrow humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for the movement of humanitarian supplies but opposes a wider cease-fire. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the state of free speech on university campuses amid reports of a rise in antisemitism across the country. Ukraine claims responsibility for killing a Russia-backed official in Luhansk by a car bomb. Civil rights lawyers and equity advocates came together today to discuss the dangers that artificial intelligence poses to democracy and explore the steps that can be taken to protect vulnerable communities from the harmful misinformation, disinformation, and voter intimidation. Issue 1 supporters celebrate as Rhiannon Carnes, executive director, Ohio Women's Alliance, speaks at a watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, in Columbus Ohio. Ohio voters have approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. The outcome of Tuesday's intense, off-year election was the latest blow for abortion opponents. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) The post Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care – Wednesday, November 8, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. In Virginia, Democrats swept legislative elections in a blow to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. As casualties mount in the Israel-Hamas war, calls are growing for attention to the more than 2 million civilians in the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Biden administration says it supports a narrow humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for the movement of humanitarian supplies but opposes a wider cease-fire. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the state of free speech on university campuses amid reports of a rise in antisemitism across the country. Ukraine claims responsibility for killing a Russia-backed official in Luhansk by a car bomb. Civil rights lawyers and equity advocates came together today to discuss the dangers that artificial intelligence poses to democracy and explore the steps that can be taken to protect vulnerable communities from the harmful misinformation, disinformation, and voter intimidation. Issue 1 supporters celebrate as Rhiannon Carnes, executive director, Ohio Women's Alliance, speaks at a watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, in Columbus Ohio. Ohio voters have approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. The outcome of Tuesday's intense, off-year election was the latest blow for abortion opponents. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) The post Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care – Wednesday, November 8, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Election Day has arrived, and in many states, voters will be addressing ballot initiatives on abortion rights. In Ohio, voters will vote to decide whether or not to include women's right to abortions in the state constitution. In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin says, if reelected, he will pass a 15-week ban on abortion. Co-director of the Fox News Poll and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Daron Shaw, joins the Rundown to discuss President Joe Biden's recent polling, why the Mississippi governor's race is an indicator of the President's favorability amongst Black communities, and why these races may gauge the significance of abortion heading into the next election. For years, national security experts and government officials warned how dangerous TikTok could be, especially when it comes to the spread of propaganda and misinformation. Now, amid the Israel-Hamas war, critics are once again calling for a TikTok ban, alleging that the app is pushing anti-Israel content to undercut Americans' support for the U.S. ally. A former executive for the app Tinder noted that young Americans in high school and college are receiving a great deal of “wrong information” about the war from TikTok. Vice President at Cyabra, Rafi Mendelsohn, works on combating social media disinformation and bot networks. He joins the podcast to explain the disinformation campaign being waged against Israel and what people can do to avoid falling victim to bad information they find on social media. Plus, commentary by Fox Nation host Tammy Bruce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Election Day has arrived, and in many states, voters will be addressing ballot initiatives on abortion rights. In Ohio, voters will vote to decide whether or not to include women's right to abortions in the state constitution. In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin says, if reelected, he will pass a 15-week ban on abortion. Co-director of the Fox News Poll and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Daron Shaw, joins the Rundown to discuss President Joe Biden's recent polling, why the Mississippi governor's race is an indicator of the President's favorability amongst Black communities, and why these races may gauge the significance of abortion heading into the next election. For years, national security experts and government officials warned how dangerous TikTok could be, especially when it comes to the spread of propaganda and misinformation. Now, amid the Israel-Hamas war, critics are once again calling for a TikTok ban, alleging that the app is pushing anti-Israel content to undercut Americans' support for the U.S. ally. A former executive for the app Tinder noted that young Americans in high school and college are receiving a great deal of “wrong information” about the war from TikTok. Vice President at Cyabra, Rafi Mendelsohn, works on combating social media disinformation and bot networks. He joins the podcast to explain the disinformation campaign being waged against Israel and what people can do to avoid falling victim to bad information they find on social media. Plus, commentary by Fox Nation host Tammy Bruce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm Jerry Hoepner. I'm a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and co-facilitator of the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, Blugold Brain Injury Group, Mayo Brain Injury Group, and Thursday Night Poets.  I'm also a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Lauren Schwabish. In this episode, we'll be discussing Lauren's work on groups for parents with Aphasia and person-centered approaches to primary progressive aphasia interventions. Biosketch: Lauren Schwabish M.S., CCC-SLP is the owner of Neuro Speech Services, a private practice based in Northern Virginia, specializing in person-centered assessment and treatment of cognitive-communicative disorders related to stroke, brain injury, mild cognitive impairment, ADHD, and other neurologic and neurodegenerative conditions. Lauren received her Bachelor of Science degree with Honors in Communicative Disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds a master's degree in Communication Sciences from Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia and state of Maryland and is a certified member of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. She has over 23 years of experience working in hospitals and acute rehabilitation centers and is passionate about providing meaningful and accessible health education about the brain to patients, families, and health care professionals. Lauren is committed to empowering communities with evidence-based information and best practices in brain health behaviors.   Take aways: LPAA is vital to understanding what the client wants and needs from you as a clinician Parents with aphasia encounter many of the same challenges that all parents experience as they're raising small children but this is further complicated by aphasia While work and other community obligations may go on hold after aphasia, parenting doesn't go on hold People with aphasia who are in the process of raising children benefit from peers who understand what they're going through People with PPA are still connected to their family and kids and need support in navigating everyday conversations that are necessary to parenting and participating in their children's lives Group therapy provides a safe and supportive environment for people with PPA to find supports or relate to others that have similar experiences as them Learn how to be “a purveyor of hope” for individuals with PPA and their families Interview Transcript: Jerry Hoepner: Well, welcome, Lauren. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today. And I thought maybe it would be a good thing. If we kind of begin by introducing our readers to your experience as a speech language pathologist, and kind of what led you along this life path of participation approaches to Aphasia and that person centered approach which is really central to what it sounds like you do in your in your workplace setting. Lauren Schwabish: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of aphasia access and the podcast is on my it's on my feed routinely. So it's really an honor to be here. I am like I said, a speech language pathologist for 23 years. I started out in I worked in New York City in a really big city hospital. There was, you know 2 campuses, a thousand beds each. It was literally everything under the sun, and I think that was my first experience. In really getting to the heart of what a what drives a person, what a person is all about because I was so different from the population. I came from a different place. I had a different educational trajectory. You know, this was a city hospital that had, mostly an underserved population, and it was in New York City. So it was tremendously, culturally diverse and one of the things I recognized instantly was that the way I would sort of drive compassionate and effective care was to really understand who I was working with and so I think from the from the jump, you know, just really having the humility to say, I need to sit and listen and understand this individual so that I can support their recovery from you know stroke, trauma you know, sort of acute illness. That was something that really just ended up making sense. So that was sort of my foundation. And then I moved into acute rehab into a hospital in Northern Virginia, where I am now and really just found, even though I was in a sort of a very medical setting, that connecting with the individual was absolutely the most important thing, and it was how I really felt that I could you know, show others how to do effective therapy. So I didn't know that it was life participation approach, but it was just really about understanding what the person needed to communicate about and in the hospital it's a different setting than in the community where I am now in private practice. But 21 years later, when I started my own private practice, that's when I really found LPAA as a principal, and could start to put some of the theory behind what I'd been doing all along. Jerry Hoepner: Nice, you know. It's funny. I was just having a conversation before we started this conversation, with Tami Howe, who is going to be doing a future conversation about the role of environment and accessibility in communication with individuals, with aphasia. And one of the things that we kept coming back to is exactly what you said, just getting just spending time listening and getting to know who that individual is as a starting point for really recognizing authentically what that person's wants, needs beliefs, values-  all of those things are and I think that's just a wonderful starting point for thinking about life participation, because it's easy to jump straight into the therapy or the assessment pieces. But what we need most is just to put our listening ears on, and really find out who that individual is and what makes them tick. So wonderful place to start. Lauren Schwabish: Yeah, and I would say that sometimes, especially when you know thinking about that acute rehab or acute care setting when someone's, you know, potentially very limited in their life participation, what they can do getting to understand like you said their beliefs. You know. What were they doing before they got to where you are? What can they teach you about? It's really honoring their strengths and sort of who they are prior to this acute illness. And so you can see them as that individual and they oftentimes can tell you more about that than you could. They may be able to from the from the, you know, sort of compromise place that they're in and it just feels right, you know, that's the one thing I tell. You know, when I was in the hospital, and I was working with therapists were so concerned about productivity and so concerned about billing. And just oh, my gosh! I don't think I have time to do this, and for me it's like you have nothing but time to honor this aspect of it, because once you figure out what makes this person tick, what excites them? What kind of music they wanna listen to what they don't like, you know, that's the foundation. And it shouldn't be something that's an afterthought to the skilled, clinical, hard skills that you have. It's really the first step, and it just when it works, it works well. So I think people just have to know that they have to have the permission, right from their environment, from their you know department, their supervisors, their peers, that this is actually very much the most essential ingredient to being an effective therapist. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, and what a refreshing way to start. I'd like to say that all therapists in the acute care context and that's the context where I worked for many years. But I'd like to say that they all get that but you're right. People get caught up in the fact that we only have a few days with these people, and we have a little bit of time, and we don't necessarily have time to devote to finding out who that individual is but what you're saying is that's central to being successful in helping them move forward with anything. So I really appreciate that as a grounding starting point and it really makes sense why, we're going to have a conversation today about what we're going to have a conversation about. I know Lauren, we talked about a couple of different topics. One being your passion for working with parents, and the topic of parenting with aphasia and that might seem like a leap to talk about that, and person centered approaches to primary progressive aphasia but when we think about that grounding principle of meaning, the person where they're at finding out what they value, I think it's going to be easy for our listeners to tie those pieces together. Lauren Schwabish: Definitely cause it's ultimately about a family, right? And it's not just a person with aphasia, but the person with aphasia exists in some sort of family unit, whether it's a partner, a friend, neighbors, kids, grandkids. And so, yeah, one of the things I have been privileged to be in is those 2 spaces? So I think I think, yeah, we can tie them together. And also just to hear that what this looks like with kind of 2 different sort of different populations, you know, thinking about parents with aphasia where the prognosis is typically so favorable, right? It's just lots and lots of improvement. They're typically younger, you know, we're seeing gains and everyone feels fairly optimistic, and that person with Ppa is going in a different direction. Right? But person-centered approaches are vital for each. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, that I totally agree. Family is what ties these topics together, and I'm sure we can think of a whole bunch of other related little niches of therapy that are tied together by family as well. So I'm excited to jump into this conversation. And I'm gonna begin with talking a little bit about the topic of parenting with aphasia, just a really interesting and important topic. So why is it so important to have communication groups or parents with aphasia? Lauren Schwabish: I why, I would say I'm a parent, so I can, I could speak with experience, that parenting itself is a 24/7 situation. And so when you have a parent who's been very suddenly affected by aphasia it is the one task, you know, work goes on hold. And sometimes, you know, operations in the community go on hold because the person's recuperating. But parenting really doesn't ever stop you know, children with, you know, whose parents have had a stroke or brain injury. You know they're up in the hospital. They're part of the therapy process hopefully, and they're in the community, or they're back at home with that individual and so I do think it's really important to give people who are raising children, and I will say, you know, we have lots of people who have raised their children. They're still a parent with aphasia. But this is sort of specifying that these are people who are in the active process of raising younger children and those are the people that are in the communication group that I run through the National Phase Association. When I speak to those parents they really are. They are seeking a safe and compassionate environment to discuss how to raise kids right? And that can range from talking about, how do you discipline a kid when you have aphasia, how do you talk to the teachers that a parent teacher conference? You know, how do you engage? How do you re engage your parenting skills when they've been sort of taken over by family members necessarily. But how do you sort of reenter that role again? And I don't know that for the parents that come to my group. They don't have that in their own parenting community, right? So, the friends that they had who were parents prior to their aphasia. They're not necessarily the same fit as other parents who have aphasia. So, I think that the group environment that we've cultivated is that safe space to talk about, you know, and highs and lows of parenting. Let's face it. Parenting is really hard. So sometimes it's, you know. Everyone just wants a place to kind of vent and again when you're venting with aphasia, it's not always smooth, but it feels really good, just like parents who don't have aphasia. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, what a what a terrific summary. And in response to that question, I I'm just gonna go back to the one of your earlier statements, because I think this is so true. When we think about someone in the rehabilitation process work stops and the community services, and all of those kinds of things stop, or at least they change significantly. But parenting doesn't stop as a fellow parent I can. I can guarantee I've got kids who are in college and just outside of college, and parenting still doesn't stop, but to be in the thick of raising small children. That that's definitely a a unique challenge so speaking of that, what are the unique challenges and needs of a person with aphasia who's also raising a child. Lauren Schwabish: Yeah, you know, when I think about the things that the parents in my group have raised, it's really I mean, it runs the gamut you know some of it is how do you read a book to your child when you cannot read how do you, you know, manage things like. There's one gentleman who's awesome. He had a stroke when his youngest daughter was out, and I think she was like a newborn, or she was essentially an infant. And you know, how do you navigate watching them start out? He was joking kind of at the same level language wise and then she's just accelerating. And you know, how do you navigate that? So, as the child's language is growing? How do you facilitate your own child's language development. We've had one of our survivors is she's made tremendous progress. Many years since she had her stroke. She had a situation where her daughter within high school, and there was a child who committed suicide, and she said, I don't know how to talk about this with my child, but I know I need to right, and that kind of stopped me and my tracks as a parent of high schoolers to think. Gosh! This isn't so much about the aphasia. But how carefully we have to word a conversation like that. Right? So it's really having those serious high stakes conversations. And then some of it's, you know, not as heavy, not as hard. It's kind of how do you, How do you reintegrate yourself with, you know, kids at the playground. How does your kid explain aphasia to their friend who's coming over for a play date, you know. How do you ween a baby, you know, sort of like all different things. So this is where it's sort of like, is it a group for people with aphasia. Is it a parenting group? Well, it's kind of everything, because sometimes we just wanna kind of talk about stuff. And it's you know, last month we talked about, you know, if I gave you a plane ticket and you could go on vacation, you know, where would you go? And would you bring your kids or not? Which was fun. Some people were like, of course, it bring my kids, and some people are like, Heck! No, I'm leaving them at home. I'm going on vacation by myself. So it's really fun. It kind of is the group itself. We really start out with 2 principles, which is what is I have these little smiley face cards, you know what's making you happy and what's kind of a struggle, or, you know, making you feel sort of mad. And that's just a really nice place to launch from. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, wow, terrific. And one of the things I kept thinking when you described the loss of kind of kinship or a connection between themselves and other parents who don't have aphasia, who are a parenting, I'm wondering about the relationships between the different parents with aphasia and each other from a peer standpoint. And what that looks like. Lauren Schwabish: Yeah, one of the women. She's in North Carolina, and she found the group after it had been running for a couple of months, and she says every time she's like, I'm just so glad you guys are out here because I did not know that there were other people like me. So, some of it is just seeing that there's young people who also have aphasia, who are also raising kids. So, some of it's just that environment. One of the things that I think was the most incredible was there's a speech pathologist who's in Texas who runs or she's in a program that think it's sort of an inpatient rehab a residential program. It sounds incredible. She had 3 or 4 young parents with aphasia who had recently come there, and she logged on from that facility and those folks were able to see survivors from, you know, one year, 2 years, 5 years, 7 years. And so, some of it is be able to show people who are just learning, you know, just getting a couple of words. You know, may be able to say the name of their child. Maybe you know one or 2 word phrases to see and experience what recovery looks like. And that was amazing. And one of the women who is in the program has since discharged home. And now she logs on, and it's fun to see her recovering quickly. But I just think that sense of like, and you know we hear it all the time like you just have to keep going. It is a marathon, it is. It is arduous right? And so for them to have that support and the spectrum of recovery. I think that's one of the things that is the most meaningful. Because, you know, it's of course, post direct depression, anxiety, especially for a younger survivor who's not only lost you know their language abilities, but probably it's also facing the fact that they can't return to work. That was one of our topics a couple of months ago. It was someone who was like, yeah, I hope I can get back to work and then come to find out the whole group shared, you know what they used to do for work, and a large majority of them. In fact, I think all of them, you know, in addition to parenting being tough, is they've lost their careers. Which is also a challenging topic. But, at the other hand, some of those long-term survivors say, but you know what? Instead of working, I'm able of, you know, volunteer at my kids school. I'm cheering on the sidelines. I'm attending that concert, and she said, I don't know that I would have had that if I was working. So, you know, I think the silver lining aspect is great, too.   Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so critical. I mean, even outside of the the topic of parenting with aphasia, to have to see people who are at different points along the recovery. And maybe this will come up when we talk about primary, progressive aphasia, too. But, for example, one of the things that we see at aphasia camp is often that people will identify with someone who's a little bit further along in the journey, and they might take sort of a mentorship kind of a role just to be able to say, this is what's coming. And you know, things get better and a little bit easier to handle. It's so positive from that standpoint. But I've seen the reverse true as well to be able to say. You know, this is a person who's longer, or, you know, further along on their primary progressive aphasia journey, and to be able to just know. Okay, so this is coming and I can kind of ground myself and prepare myself for these things. I think there's something really valuable about being able to see that continuum like you described. So Lauren Schwabish: agreed. And just that sense, you're not alone. You're not the only one who has this experience. Jerry Hoepner: I'm interested. So I mentioned that sometimes there's these pairings of people along the continuum. Do you see those relationships growing? And do people connect with each other outside of group or have particularly close connections with someone within the group. Lauren Schwabish: Yeah, well, I think the group is pretty new. So, we're sort of cultivating that I would say, one of the things, though, is, there's one woman shared that now that her kids this was back in, I think August, her kids had gone back to school, and she was like, I don't know what to do with my time. And another survivor basically sent me a list of ideas. She's like a support group Guru. She attends some in the Uk, some here. She really knew of a ton of resources, and she sent those to me to pass on to this other individual. So that's probably a great example of, you know, one person wanting to really cheer on the other one. There's that same woman who offered the resources is lives in the Chicago land area, and we had a one person who moved to that area was really fun. She ended up giving us a tour of her house on our in our group, which is really great. But that was a connection we made where we said, Hey, you know what? What are you know, the the strokes, survivor communities like in that area in Chicago. So that was really neat, too. So I think you know anytime I feel as a facilitator when I have a chance to match someone to either to peer to peer, or just for resources. In general. You know, one woman is like, I really wanna read. She has a 14-year-old, and she's just like there's a lot of reading that goes on with like middle school and high school and so we were just sort of like troubleshooting together, you know, on the side, just hey, you know, here's an audio book that we might want to try or here's something you could pair with an audio book. So, you know, it's it's just we have a space to share how you're feeling resources, I think, become evident when you're in that supportive environment. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, absolutely. I think those are perfect great examples of that connection between people and that resource and mentorship that they can provide to one another one another. I was kind of internally laughing when you you mentioned the middle schooler with reading, because I was thinking about when your children reach high school and college, and they begin to pass you up in terms of knowledge and intelligence. That's a hard time for any parent. Definitely for someone with aphasia or we're even talking about how to handle like cell phones and social media and technology. And like you think of how fast pace. That is, I can barely keep up. How does someone who has, you know, issues, maybe even with like sensory overload you know where there's video games going on and when you're really at that point, and you have to say something how do you find the words, you know? And so actually, one of our, you know, again, longer term survivors like, you know what? I just text my kids. And we have a couple of emojis where they know what I'm saying, you know. So I think it's really neat. And that way, too. It's just sharing those examples of like modern day parenting. And what does it look like when you have aphasia? Yeah, that's fantastic. One of the things I was going to ask you about is the kinds of topics that come up. But you've shared a few social media and how to support someone with reading and all of those topics. But what other kinds of topics typically come up in these groups.   Lauren Schwabish: I think for the parenting group, it's really about, how do you keep your language skills going? Because I think a lot of these folks are, you know, not necessarily continuing to receive skilled interventions from speech pathologists. And so some of it is. Just try to like, how do I use my environment? Or how do I have strategies to sort of resume participation? There was one woman early on in the group, so it was a smaller group and she was going to meetings with her High School senior about college and graduation. And so we were sort of just coming up with, like, what are some words that you'd wanna have ready, you know, application. And you know, tuition. And so even just kind of brainstorming a way to support her participation in that. So that was something that came up. A lot of it is sort of what are your kids excited about? And I think that that's one of the things I always close that group with is gratitude. Just because it's such a wonderful it's brain, healthy activity. And almost universally the parents are talking about their kids. They're grateful for their kids. They're grateful that they got to you know that their kid was well behaved at school, or they're grateful that they got to go on vacation, or they're grateful that they want to swim meet. So sometimes it's also a chance to brag, you know, to really shine a light on the things that your kid is doing. You know, that's a fun thing to be able to do. And again, in a fast-paced environment, you know, when they're with their neighbors, or they're with the kids at, you know, other parents at school things just go quickly. And so when it's a time to just slow down, and we'll just sort of popcorn it around the Zoom group. Where everyone has a chance to just share something that their kid is up to and that's been really neat to one of our members is from Canada in BC, and so we didn't really know, you know, geographically where he was. So I was. You know we were looking at the map, and we were figuring out where everyone else is from, too. So sometimes it is just it's about that community and some hot topics that are coming up. Weather was one of them where everyone was talking about you know the wildfires where he was, or how do you, parents when it's so hot out. You know, it's really typical struggles. It's just, in a way, it's probably not that different from a normal parenting conversation. We just use language support and give people tools. They need to be successful contributors to that conversation. Jerry Hoepner: That's a pretty strong litmus test for being meaningful and person centered to be able to say, it's just the stuff that every parent talks about. Now, this is just a community that scaffolds that for people with aphasia, so that they are a part of those conversations and can be a part of those conversations I love that that's fantastic. Yeah, really wonderful. Well, knowing what you know now, and other, what other resources would you like to see available? To this community of individuals with aphasia from a parenting standpoint? Your wish list. Lauren Schwabish: We talk about this, my wish list. So one of the things that I'm I'm trying to, you know. It's hard because we only meet once a month. I wish we could meet, you know, more routinely, but is, of course, when you have kids it's really hard to plan, you know and get together. But we've talked about this over. Several different meetings is, what would we like to have available? I think certainly books or resources videos that are for parenting, about parenting that are aphasia friendly. So like, how do you, parent? You know a toddler? I know, I read books when I was raising my kids. You know, I read books currently about like teenagers and mental health. You know what resources are available that are aphasia friendly. And where can we find those books and do those books exist? And can we write those books? So some of it is just typical parenting advice but made aphasia friendly. That's something I would love to see. And we have a couple of different books that people have recommended, and I think we said we could link those in the show notes so people could try to. You know, find those. But of course, this is probably one of those moments where someone will get inspired and create them, you know, create that resource in the future. I would like to have some tip sheets again, based on what my parents in with aphasia, have recommended about how to engage in conversation in the community when it comes to parenting. So, for example, how do you talk to the pediatrician during a checkup? Right? How do you make sure that your voice is heard, that you can fulfill that role of parents versus someone who's just sitting in the room when there's you know, someone else speaking? How do you talk to a teacher at a parent-teacher conference? So some of it I think it'd be again scripts or recommendations or advocacy. I have a like we've all seen them sort of. I have aphasia, you know, cards, and we I've shared that with that group just to try to say, like part of your job is to be a presence in the school community, right? So like, how do you do that? So even like a guide? Again aphasia, friendly, something that would allow them to participate in these pretty routine parenting situations. And then I think, what I'd really love, and I don't know, you know. I hope someone out there is thinking about. This, too, is to think about how to record stories or videos with just those words of support. So that if you're out there and you have a young parent with aphasia on your unit in a hospital where you could go to Youtube, or you could go somewhere and say, Hey, you know what? Here's words of wisdom from people who've been where you are. If I could record a snippet of the conversations that we have, or the words of wisdom that one parent passes on to another. It would be so. I think, reassuring in a really scary time I think it would be inspiring. You know nothing that's too heavy a lift that doesn't need to be, you know, a feature like film, but just something that would be a collection of stories that someone could watch and just gain a little bit of sense of, okay, you know I'm not alone and people have done this before me, and they got better. And I can, too. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, that seems to be a recurring theme that I'm not alone, and I can connect with people that really get this. Yeah. II love your wish list, and I hope that some of our listeners are inspired to create those resources. And you know, as we were talking, II just couldn't help myself. I jumped on to Google Scholar, and I wanted to see what was out there for research in this area. There's not a lot, and I know that Molly Manning has written a little bit about this, and I think Brooke Ryan has done a little bit of work recently, but there's not a ton out there. So for all of you academics out there, too. Like what a terrific topic! For someone to research into, to learn more about this. So I'd love to get those testimonials and words of parents out there as well. So feel like we're just scratching the surface of this, and a lot of work needs to be done. But what a great kind of call to action! That the need for groups for parents with aphasia. So I really love, love that conversation, and thank you. Anything else that we're missing, or we should add, before we move on. Regarding. Lauren Schwabish: No, it's like, I said, running, the group has been wonderful. And I just think, if you even have 2 people, you know, it doesn't take like we have people from all over the country that come to the National Phase Association meeting once a month, you know, the second Wednesday of the month. But it doesn't take too much to operate it, you know, Zoom Link. And so I think even Matching, or you know, Peer matching someone else just to recognize that this is a very this is a population that's gonna live with aphasia for a long time, and you know they're the needs are high. And so even if you can think about a peer mentor, or some kind of connect in your greater community. You know, this is really a population that's thirsty for it, and they want it, and they will. They will pursue it on their own. Once you sort link them up together, and then hopefully, the rest of us can come up with some great resources to fulfill that. You know that that connection. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, excellent. And certainly, if there are people listening, thinking, what should I do? I want to do something related to parents. Wow! What an opportunity to step into! There's plenty of plenty of room for that support to go around. So really inspiring. Lauren, if it's okay, I'm gonna shift gears and talk about a very different conversation. But one that, we said, is definitely linked through that kind of family. Principle, family centered principle. And that's the conversation about person centered care for individuals with primary, progressive aphasia. Can you begin by just sharing a little bit about your perspective? What drives you, your underlying theories for this approach? Lauren Schwabish: Yes, and I will say, for my, you know, 23 years of experience. I am very new in the Ppa space, mostly because I was working in the hospital system, and that's not where these individuals are found, you know. So for me. Once I started my practice, and someone said, Do you treat primary, progressive aphasia. The answer was, of course, yes, but then it was very much a well, how right? How do I do this? And so diving into you know, all sorts of education. Looking at, you know, resources that are available. I've really appreciated some of the work on the raise framework in terms of really not thinking so much about all of the testing, but really thinking about what does this individual need to do? And how can I identify as much personally meaningful stimuli as possible, because that's the only thing we should be focusing on, right? So I think to that end also, it really clarifies what my approaches and forces me to be as efficient as possible, and then really be flexible. There's one gentleman in particular I'm thinking about where, you know, we've started out, and he didn't really require too much in the way of language support. So it was more like, what do you want to talk about and maintaining, you know, a multimodal language, practice opportunities. And then, as things have gone on and change, we've really run the gamut from like starting, you know, starting with an iPad, and you know, a higher tech, aac option, and then kind of seeing that that's not really going very well, or it is a little too challenging for this particular family, and then very quickly pivoting to something that's more accessible. So yeah, it's to me. It is it is a family centered situation, and you know it's interesting.I have a wonderful aphasia center near me, and I love them, and I refer everyone to them. But they are very much clear that Ppa and sort of that aphasia community center feeling doesn't really work well in their experience. And so I brought this, you know, again to the aphasia access community to, you know, at the Leadership Summit, and said, You know, how does this work? And it's just really complicated. And what you'd said earlier about, you know a family being able to look ahead and say, okay, this is what I want. I have found in the Ppa clients that I've had. They actually avoid that because I think they don't want to see it. It's too much, they've said, you know. And so I tried to be a little bit of a matchmaker. I had 2 gentlemen, both with primary, progressive aphasia, you know, scientists very loving wives, you know, really like they were so ideally suited to connect and it was almost like they didn't want to see this other individual, even though it would have been wonderful for them to connect there. I just found and this is probably happened in, you know, 75% of the cases I've had so far, they are reluctant to see someone else with. Ppa.   Jerry Hoepner: yeah, interesting and I think that's one of those challenging things where we have to like your principle of matchmaking, and where we have to think about how we get there, right? Because there's always things that we don't want to talk about, or we want to avoid to some extent. But there's always a a bit of us who knows there's a need for that, too, and finding ways to make that threshold of building those bonds and those relationships is definitely a part of that even if it doesn't start out with. Hey, talk about what primary progressive aphasia looks like further down the road, but just to be able to build some of those peer connections? Lauren Schwabish: and not know that, or know that you're not alone. I think that that idea that we talked about with families as well. So yeah. And what I found probably is a more successful avenue is really sustaining those family connections. So that's where I found that sometimes the community of course I want them to be able to see someone who's, you know, just as bright, who also has aphasia where things are changing. But what I found greater success in is looking to the sort of family as a community and saying, What can we really do in this contact, so that you can continue to, you know, ask your grandkids about, you know how school is going, or give advice to your you know newlywed son about you know life nowadays, you know. So, some of it is really trying to figure out how can I use those family connections? And then to me and anyone who knows Ppa knows it's so much about counseling. So really, being a provider of I would say hope and I think that that's one of the things that really is important is to say we can still have participation, meaningful life activities, even though things are getting to look a little different. And so the one family I'm thinking about. They have this beautiful vacation house on the bay in Ver. In Virginia, and you know they love to go on vacations like this is a family that lives a great life and they really feel that they have to kind of reel it in, because, oh, my gosh! You know Dad has aphasia, and you know what if? What if? What if? And my perspective is? No, we need to make sure he's still going on vacation. And here's a communication tool, so that you know we can do that safely. Or here's how we're gonna navigate his communication in that situation so that he can participate. And that's probably been a great source of creativity. And also kind of success. Is the family as community? Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, absolutely involving those family members and allowing them to make those connections, as it, you know, as if they're comfortable. And that principle of hope cannot be overstated right? Just how important that is to keep people engaged, because as soon as you start thinking about the downside that's when you want to just withdraw and kind of close in on yourself. But that hope is the light that people need to see in that moment. So completely agree. From your perspective, why is this person centered approach so crucial for a person with primary, progressive aphasia and their family. Lauren Schwabish: I think, as we see sort of the deterioration that comes. you know there's so many there's so much value. And really looking at who you're you know who you are. Who is this individual? And so, being able to remain connected to things. They are passionate about friendships they've had forever. You know things that really get them excited. I have a gentleman who is like a he was a food researcher, a food scientist, and he actually absolutely loved being in this professor role. And you know, all of a sudden. He's his family is, you know, very attentive, and they're, you know, bustling around and doing all these things for him, and he just lights up when he gets an opportunity to explain a scientific concept or look at a scientific journal, or attend a conference like we encouraged him to go, and he attended a conference, and we practice the names of the researchers he was going to meet. And you know questions he might be able to ask and I think so much of it is. You know we're looking at someone who's essentially fading away, and that's so scary. And so if I can say, who are you? You know what's important about you? What should I know? What should your family maintain? And then we build a communication support system around that I think it allows them to continue to see the individual, even though there's a neurodegenerative process. And so things like I had one client who wrote his own obituary, and in doing that he gathered all of his. You know he was he had a lengthy Cv. He had done all this wonderful work, and so it was a chance for him, and it was of his own request he wanted to do this and I just said, Let's go because it was a chance for him to relive his professional connections. It was a chance for him. Talk about you know, areas of study where he had contributed. So to me, it's really about preserving the identity and recognizing and being able to have a again a tangible communication book, memory book, whatever they want to call it. Practice words. You know, stimuli photos. Anything that really says this is who I am And so that remains a touchstone where families can say, you know, even if the level of support changes over time, we still can have that person and be that person. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, II think that's just another one of those grounding principles. I I'm not making fun of you. When I say this, you've said who I am or who you are multiple times. And and that focus on identity is so crucial. And I think another piece I've been really into reading work on personhood, and that idea that yep, this person is fading. Their cognitive and language abilities are changing but they're still intelligent human being inside. There's still someone who deserves your time and attention, and still has many of the thoughts and kind of knowledge of their life. I think really important for families, and anyone who interacts with them to just recognize that personhood and and that identity of who they are. Lauren Schwabish: it's also so easy to see what's going wrong or what could go wrong, that I think, also maintaining someone's competency and finding ways to reveal competency to families is so important. So like my one of my clients is much better at writing than he is at initiating verbal language, and so for him we haven't texting people right? And they are sort of like rolling their eyes like he's got his phone out again. And I'm like, yeah, cause that's how he's gonna communicate with you. And he will text me pictures and videos from family gatherings. And you know, it's really become a tool that shows his competence. And so you know, that's another opportunity. And why skilled intervention is so important even in the scheme of neurodegenerative disease is because there's always something that we can do to show that person and show what they're able to do. We just have to think of the way to do it. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. You came to Aura Kagan's principles of acknowledging and revealing competence in a time when someone is like you said, fading and and losing some abilities even more important that we hold onto those principles. So I'm really interested. What does that look like in a session? What do your sessions? How do they look? Lauren Schwabish: Yeah, it's every session looks a little bit different. Some of it is. I just want them to introduce themselves to me. And that's usually what I'll say is, you know I'm new to you. What can you show me? What can you tell me? And what can I look around in your environment. And I'm so fortunate in the private practice I've constructed is I'm a mobile therapist. And so I get to go to people's homes. And you know, even just being in that space can tell you so much and so you know, trying to really invite opportunities. Knowing how to ask the right questions. You know a lot of those carefully constructed open ended questions and then trying strategies here and there to see what really helps support someone's language. So I have one gentleman who he's he loves cricket and you know there's really no cricket on when I'm at his house but he and I have discovered over working together that having written notes as I'm listening to him, and I'm capturing, you know, content words and keywords he's able to say I write them down, and then he and I kind of have them on the table in front of us And so with cricket, He wanted to tell me. I said, I've you know I've played it like long ago. I really don't ever get to see it. What can you tell me? What can you show me? And then giving him a a vehicle to do? That drawing was a perfect way for him to show. You know, and this is a gentleman who's no longer writing. He's actually not really using any texting, or, you know, ipad, he has all of these devices. Unfortunately, not a lot of them are. Does he really feel comfortable if he could engage with them? But again, it's about what he would like to do. But a pen and paper was so effective and so with that, as he's drawing the sort of circles, and and you know the the lie out of the pitch of cricket. He's suddenly writing numbers, you know, and then he's able to point to those numbers and express those to me. So that's one version. One of the things that I talked about at the aphasia access summit and was really fun is looking at photos on the phone. So another gentleman the one with the big family, and he's always taking pictures. And so what we had discovered was this captioning strategy where I could just swipe up with him, and because his writing is a strength, he's then able to put in the names or events of family members into the photos. And that's been really fun. So that we're really trying to find that strategy where he can continue to use the stronger modality in the context of ample stimuli, because this guy takes pictures of everything. And then, as he's sort of declined a lot of it is trying to meet the needs of the family, so making sure that they know what communication supports are. Some of it's just thinking about safety, too. You know, making sure that right off the bat, this person has some sort of identifier on them. For stuff that's starting to get lost. How do we use technology, you know. Air tags and tiles and all those cool things. How do we maintain his independence and community? And that's been tricky lately is, you know, providing education resources related to driving. And how do we know when it's time to stop driving? You know these are sort of things where I have become just a trusted advisor to the family. And so, if I have a resource, I think that's important that we recognize our roles look so different in these sessions. And that's okay, because what we're doing is we're providing again, person center care trying to highlight what their priorities are and support the family. So that they can make that happen too. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely. Since the aphasia access summit that swiping up for the captions is something that I do quite a bit lot of my people. So I really appreciate that. I'm glad you brought that up again. Yeah, I feel like this has really brought us full circle, and with that emphasis on the family and the person as the core. Really. I mean family identity, and what that individual wants and needs to do what drives them. Seems to be at the core of these approaches, and that definitely aligns with what aphasia access and the life participation approach is trying to accomplish. So thank you for your insights and and creative ideas about this anything that we missed in terms of the discussion about primary, progressive aphasia or parenting. Lauren Schwabish: I will just say that as someone who's sort of like done this by my gut instinct. It's so wonderful when I can go to the research. Not so much for the parenting is like you said, there's you know I it's not a ton of ample of evidence body of evidence yet, but it is so reassuring to have access to meaningful research that really supports You know just an Lpa approach it as a clinician like boots on the ground. I've really valued that I've loved podcasts and resources. I've had access to in terms of counseling. I think validating that counseling is important. I'm grateful to the fact that you know we even payers like Medicare. You know that there's a space now for the role of a skilled speech pathologist to follow along and to perform therapy over the course of a neuro, degenerative condition. You know, I feel like sometimes I've heard. Oh, you know, I think I'm guilty of this when I was working in the hospital setting, and someone would come in with some sort of acute process but then there would be dementia. I really feel like I was like well, they can't learn, or you know they I was so dismissive of someone's capacity. And I have changed completely in terms of being able to say, you know what there's individuals I work with, whether it's Ppa or another dementia process. Just to be able to say there's always value in finding a communication system or communication tool to really allow that person to connect with whomever they want to and so I think the fact is that I'm in a community that, you know is is interested in that. I have a practice that is, you know, working well because of that I'm able to get paid by payers because of that. So I really think it's important for people to recognize that. We can fulfill such a valuable role and there's actually wonderful resources out there that will justify this approach. Jerry Hoepner: Totally agree. Yeah, there's always value in fostering participation. Whether that's going to help someone recover, or whether that's gonna help them. You know, in their in their decline gracefully, and to remain engaged as long as they can so totally agree. Well, thank you, Lauren, this has been a fantastic conversation. I know our listeners are gonna value your clinical insights. So thank you. And it's been really nice talking with you. Lauren Schwabish: Oh, it's been a joy. Thank you so much.   Jerry Hoepner: On behalf of Aphasia Access, thank you for listening to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. For more information on Aphasia Access and to access our growing library of materials go to www.aphasiaaccess.org. If you have an idea for a future podcast series or topic, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access.

Today is Good News Friday, which means we'll be working through David and Tim's stack of Good News articles. First one is about a girl who was persuaded by her school counselor to consider herself to be a boy. She won a lawsuit against the school, sending a message that these transgender policies won't be tolerated. The Biden border policy has changed to allow more southern border security. California's woke policy of banning government employee travel to conservative states and boycotting their products is failing as funds can't be appropriated. In Virginia a new Christian school as opened allowing parents a wholesome option for their children's education. Tune in, today, on Good News Friday!Support the show

Trump discussed sensitive nuclear info with billionaire Mar-a-Lago member - what else did he divulge? Will Gym Jordan as speaker strengthen the authoritarian "Red Caesar" movement or damage them? The Medicare Advantage Ripoff that Every American Should Know About Breaking Good News Alert! The federal court adopts a new congressional map for Alabama. Breaking Bad News Alert! In Virginia voters mistakenly listed as felons purged from the rolls - where is the investigation into this? Crazy Alert! Now we know how conservatives think children should be raised to not be snowflakes - they need to be beaten with a belt?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

​​Li Sumpter:So welcome back to another episode of Future Memory. My guest today is Jesse Hagopian. He is a Seattle-based educator and the author of the upcoming Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. Hagopian is an organizer with the Zinn Education Project and co-editor of the books Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice and Teaching for Black Lives. Welcome, Jesse.Jesse Hagopian:Oh, thanks so much for having me. Good to be with you. Li:Thank you for joining us. Well, I want to get started with some questions about your own education and how you got started. I was curious about what your own early education and high school experiences were like. As a youth, what ways did you relate to or even resist to your own classroom curricula? Jesse:I was very alienated from school growing up. I felt like it didn't really speak to me. I didn't feel like I was intelligent. I can remember very clearly a parent-teacher conference in third grade where the teacher brought us out into the hallway with me and my mom, and she took out my standardized testing scores and there was a blue line that ran through the middle that was the average, and then there was the dot far below that line that represented my reading scores.And I knew from that day forward until about halfway through college, I knew that I was not smart, and I had the test scores to prove it to you. And school just felt like a place that reinforced over and over again that I was not worthy, that I was not intelligent. And there was very little that we studied that was about helping me understand myself, my identity, my place in the world as a Black, mixed-race kid.And really, it was just a fraught experience, and I took quite a bit to get over that. I was sure I was going to fail out of college, that I wasn't smart enough to go to college. And I think that it was finally the experience of a couple of professors in college that showed that education could be more than just eliminating wrong answer choices at faster rates than other children, that it could be about understanding the problems in our world and how we can collectively solve those problems.And then I realized I did have something to contribute. Then I realized that I did have some perspectives on what oppression looks like and how it feels and what we might need to do to get out of it, and I was hungry to learn about the systems that are set up in our society to reproduce inequality. And that was a real change for me. But growing up, my mom would tell me, "You're good with kids. I think you're going to be a teacher." And I said, "That's the last thing I'm going to be."Li:Oh, really?Jesse:School is just so arduous, and why would I want to come back? And then she was right. I came back to my own high school. I came back to Garfield High School, where I graduated, and I taught there for over a decade now. Li:I think that's an amazing story, coming full circle to teach back where you got your first experiences in the classroom. And going back to that, I was wondering if you had any standout memories, like I did, with the actual content. You were saying you didn't relate to it so much, but I remember very clearly a moment with my mother coming to the school when I had a moment in the classroom around Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, things like that. Do you have any standout memories of content that really either made you feel excluded or exploited or any of these things that really stuck with you? Jesse:For sure. I mean, there are many experiences that I think shaped my approach to education throughout the years. I mean, one of my firsts is from kindergarten. I remember very clearly one of the boys called me the N-word. And I didn't really know what it meant, but I knew it was directed at me and not the other kids. So I went and told the teacher, but there was parent-teacher conferences going on and parents were coming through, prospective parents, to look at the school, and the teacher got just beet red in front of the parents and was very embarrassed that I had said this, and said, "Oh, yeah. We'll deal with that," and just sort of pushed it aside and never came back to it.And the message that I got was that I had done something wrong, like I had disrupted the education process and that it was wrong for me to have done that because nothing was taken care of. And that's something that still sits with me and I think guides a lot of my approach to how to handle situations in the classroom. And I can remember the first time I had a Black teacher and that I began to learn about Black history in sixth grade, an incredible educator named Faith Davis, taught us about ancient Egypt. And it was the first thing I really got excited about learning, and I was amazed by all these accomplishments that Black people had done.And then after that class, it just sort of disappeared for a long time, and I never learned about anything else that Black people had done, and it made me wonder, "Is that why I score so poorly on these tests? Because I'm Black? Because I don't see other people like me in the advanced classes? And maybe those aren't for us. Maybe it has something to do innately with my race." And that's such a disempowering feeling, and I wanted to ensure that no other kids had to go through that kind of humiliation. Li:No, that's a great point that you bring up because I think we had similar experiences. I was actually recently going through some old photos at my mom's house, and I came across my elementary school class photo, the classic one, everyone's lined up, shortest to tallest kind of thing. And there I was, the only Black child in a class of 25 white students. And I think at that young, innocent age, I didn't really understand what I was up against, and today's youth and teachers are facing so many challenges in the classroom today, things that I don't think either of us could have really imagined.And so, as I was exploring the amazing tools and campaigns that you've been authoring and spearheading, like Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and the Zinn Education platform of so many resources, I think, "What would my early school experience have been like if these tools were available?" Right?And I'm wondering, would you have thought the same thing? Because when I think about these amazing tools that are being offered, I just imagine, and we're not even talking about the digital stuff. I'm just talking about the things around critical race theory, these ideas, just about things that are showing a representation of Black folks. Like you said, even just having a Black teacher and what that meant for you. So even thinking about, what if the tools that you are all creating today were actually in your classroom back at Garfield when you were youth? Jesse:Oh, wow. That would've been incredible. I mean, at the Zinn Education Project, we have scores of free downloadable people's history lessons that center Black history and struggles against structural racism. And these lessons tell history from the perspective of people who have been marginalized, who have been pushed out of the centers of power. We look at the founding of America from the perspective of those who have been enslaved, not those who were doing the enslaving. We look at American history through the eyes of those who are organizing multiracial struggles for racial and social justice, not the ones that are trying to maintain segregation and hoarding wealth in the hands of the few.And I would've just lit up to be able to have a teacher say that your family's history matters, that struggles that your family went through shaped this country, and whatever semblance of democracy that we're able to hold onto in this country is the result of the Black freedom struggle and the result of multiracial struggles for social justice. Instead, we got the message in American government class that democracy is something that's handed down from those in power and those on high.I can remember, at Garfield High School, my American government teacher assigned a research project, and I did a project about J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director. And it was the only paper I think I ever really tried on in high school. I was very disengaged from school and didn't see any point in it, but this research project captured my imagination because I learned about some really despicable things that someone in power had done.I couldn't believe that J. Edgar Hoover had led a campaign against the Black freedom movement, had targeted Martin Luther King, someone who we're all supposed to revere, and yet our government was wiretapping and even trying to get him to commit suicide and some pretty despicable things. And I poured myself into the research and I wrote the best paper I had done up until that point, and she gave me a C with the notes that the claims I was making were unsubstantiated. Li:Wow. Jesse:And it's clear that she just didn't agree, that she didn't want to hear that a white man in power had misused it. And that was a strong message I got that some ideas are off-limits, and it doesn't matter how hard you work. If you go against what makes a white teacher comfortable, then there are consequences for that.And after that, I really didn't want to try anymore. I didn't feel like my opinions mattered, and I would've loved to have a teacher help me understand how we can live in a society that calls itself the freest nation on earth, and yet was based on enslavement of Black people and genocide of Native people, continued with Jim Crow segregation to where up through my dad's generation couldn't vote if you were Black.And then in our own generation, we have mass incarceration. And how is it that racism continues to change in focus and character, but is a constant in American society? And I wasn't able to learn that until much later, and I would've loved to have some of the resources that the Zinn Education Project provides today. Li:Yes, you and me both. Jesse:Yeah. Li:And that brings me to my next question about one of your ongoing campaigns is Black Lives Matter at School. And this year, the 2023 Creative Writing Challenge prompt was, "How can a school community support you in being unapologetically Black?" How might the young Jesse have answered that same question? Jesse:Wow. Well, the young Jesse would've been scared to answer that question. Li:Really? Say more. Jesse:I think that because I was so worried about what it meant to be Black and what that meant about my intelligence, that being unapologetically Black was very foreign for me for far too long. It was hard to come to loving my blackness, and it was a long road to get there. And I'm just so glad that the Black Lives Matter at School movement exists, because so many children like me who are scared to embrace their blackness because they're afraid that it could make them labeled as lesser, not as beautiful, not as deserving of love, not as deserving of care, and everything that all of our kids deserve.Now, these students are celebrated in our Week of Action that happens the first week of February every year, and also on our Year of Purpose. So every month, we're revisiting the principles of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and we're highlighting different aspects of the Black freedom struggle. And this would've been transformative in my life, helped me come to love my blackness much earlier. And I hope that for many thousands of kids across this country, they are having that experience. Li:I love that answer. Thank you. So Garfield High School in Seattle is where you actually attended school as a youth and were also a teacher for over a decade. It's the place where your role as an activist also took root. So history was made here, not just for you as an individual, but really locally and then nationally. So why do you think this was happening at Garfield? Why Garfield High School? And what's the culture and social climate of this school that made it such fertile ground to spark local protests and now national change? Jesse:Yeah. I love that question because I bleed purple and I'm a Bulldog to the core. Garfield is a special place to me, and I think the history of the school is a lot of the reason why it was a fertile ground recently for social change. Garfield High School is the school that the founder of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party graduated from in 1968, Aaron Dixon. Li:Wow. Jesse:It's the site where Stokely Carmichael came to speak as the Black Power movement was rising. And before that, Martin Luther King came and spoke at Garfield High School in his only visit to Seattle. It's the heart of the Central District, which was the Black neighborhood in Seattle that was redlined so that Black people could only live in that area. And for that reason, it developed a culture of resistance, and it's an important part of the Black freedom struggle throughout Seattle's history.And I think that in recent years, we've been able to revive some of that legacy in some of the struggles we've participated in. In 2013, we had a historic boycott of the MAP test, the Measures of Academic Progress test. And this was one of the myriad of high-stakes standardized tests that the kids had to take, and studies show that the average student in K-12 education now take 113 standardized tests. We used to take one in elementary, one in middle school, maybe a couple in high school, and now they're taking standardized tests just constantly.And this was a particularly egregious test that wasn't aligned to our standards. And finally, one educator at Garfield, Mallory Clarke, said she wasn't going to administer this test anymore, and she contacted me and wanted to know if I could help, and we began organizing the entire faculty at Garfield. And we called a meeting in the library and we asked everybody, "Is anybody getting useful information out of this test that's helping them with creating their curriculum?" And nobody found this test useful.And then Mallory said she wasn't going to give the test anymore, and who would join her? And we took a vote, and it was unanimous. Everybody said they were going to refuse to administer the test. And so, we organized a press conference in Mr. Gish's room, and we invited the media to come learn why we were going to refuse to give the standardized test, and one of the reasons is because of the legacy of standardized testing based in eugenics. Right? Li:Mm-hmm. Jesse:Standardized testing was created by open white supremacists. A man named Carl Brigham created the SAT exam out of Princeton University, and he was also the author of a book called The Study in American Intelligence, which was one of the Bibles of the eugenics movement. And the book concludes by lamenting that American intelligence is on the decline because we have more Black people than Europe does, and he fears that intermixing of the races will degrade the intelligence of Americans. And so, he created the SAT exam as a gatekeeper.And lo and behold, these tests prove that white native-born men were smarter than everybody else. Right? Well, they designed the test to show that, and then they get the feedback that they were looking for, and that's why people like W.E.B. Du Bois, Horace Mann Bond were some of the first opponents of these bogus IQ standardized testings that started to be grafted onto the public schools at the behest of the eugenics movement.And we knew this history. I'd read Wayne Au's book, Unequal By Design, that explained the racist history of standardized testing, and then we saw it playing out in our own school. We saw how English language learners would get low scores and it would make them feel deficient and unintelligent. But it wasn't measuring their intelligence. It was just measuring their proximity to white dominant culture, the English language, and not their intelligence. And we had so many examples of the way these tests were abusing kids, and we refused to do it. And the school district threatened the faculty of Garfield High School with a 10-day suspension without pay for the tested subject teachers in reading and math, and even our testing coordinator refused to administer the test. Jesse:Kris McBride was an amazing advocate for the MAP test boycott. And even the first-year teachers, who didn't have any tenure protections, none of them backed down. And at the end of the school year, not only did they not suspend any of the teachers because of the overwhelming solidarity we received from thousands of educators and parents and students, not only around the country but around the world, who had heard about our boycott, at the end of the year, they actually suspended the test instead and got rid of the MAP test for all of Seattle's high schools, and it was just a resounding victory. Li:Yeah. That's a triumph. That's a triumph for sure. Jesse:Yeah. Right? Li:And I was watching some of the news coverage, and it was just, like you said, quite a victory to have that test obliterated, really, just removed completely from the system, and also then making way for this idea of multiple literacies and ways of learning that are more just and equitable for all students. And I love to see that, like you said, it begins just with one person. Shout out to Mallory and everyone who followed that one teacher. And like you said, that's all it takes, but then just to see the students really take lead in their own way was a beautiful thing. Jesse:Yeah. Yeah. It was cool that the students, when they knew we weren't going to administer the test, they sent administrators in to try to get the students to march them off to the computer labs to take the test, and some of them just staged to sit in in their own classroom, refused to get up and leave, and then the ones that went just clicked the button on the computer through very quickly so the score was invalidated.So the BSU supported us and the student government supported us, and it was an incredible solidarity that emerged in this struggle. And it wasn't about not wanting assessment. I think as you said, we wanted more authentic forms of assessment, ones that could actually help us understand what our students knew. And we started doing much more performance-based assessments. Li:Right. Jesse:When you get your PhD, they don't want you to eliminate wrong answer choices at faster rates. They want to know, can you think? Can you create? Li:Right. Are you a critical thinker? Jesse:Right. Yeah. Can you critically think? Can you make a thesis and back it up with evidence? And so, that's what we began doing. We wanted to have kids develop a thesis. And it might not be at the PhD level, but it'll be at a developmentally appropriate level for them, and then back it up with evidence and then present that evidence to the class or to other teachers and administrators and defend their position, and that, I think, was a real victory for all of our students for authentic assessment. Li:And went down at Garfield. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Li:So another question I got for you. Part of the work of Monument Lab is to engage community in the current state of monuments and public memory in this country and beyond. Have you made any connections to this parallel movement to take down monuments that stand as symbols that continue to uphold oppressive systems and then honor the same false histories that you and your comrades are fighting in the classroom? Jesse:Yeah. Definitely. I think one of my favorite assignments I ever gave my students at Garfield was to research the debate over monuments around the country and think about, "How do we decide as a society who to honor, and who should be honored, and who shouldn't be?" And all the students got a big chunk of clay and they created their own monument to replace one that they thought was inappropriate. And so, many chose Confederate monuments or monuments to any slaveholders, including the hallowed Founding Fathers, that many of my students didn't hold in reverence given that they could have been owned by George Washington.And so, at the University of Washington, we have that statue of George Washington. Some people wanted to replace that with a statue of Aaron Dixon, who graduated from Garfield High School, founded the Black Panther Party, went to the University of Washington, and they felt far better represented our community as somebody who started the Free Breakfast Program in Seattle and who founded a free medical clinic that's still open to this day, just a few blocks away from Garfield High School, where many of our students receive free medical care to this day. Li:Oh, that's amazing. Jesse:So creating themselves some beautiful monuments to really honor the people that have made their lives better rather than just powerful people who imposed their will on our society. And I just think it was such an incredible moment in the 2020 uprising when all across the country, people said, "We are no longer going to honor slaveholders and perpetrators of genocide." It was incredible to see them dump the statue of Columbus into the Bay in Baltimore and teach the whole country a lesson, a history lesson about the genocidal attack of Columbus on Native people and how we need to find better heroes. Li:I like that. Find better heroes. You've dedicated a bunch of your recent efforts to resisting House Bills 1807 and 1886 introduced by state Republican Representative Jim Walsh. As you put it in your article that I read, these bills are designed to mandate educators lie to Washington students about structural racism and sexism, essentially forcing educators to teach a false, alternative history of the United States. Can you break down the basic proposals of these bills and their connection to, say, recent book bans, critical race theory, and resources like The 1619 Project? Jesse:For sure. Many people imagine that the attack on critical race theory is mostly in red states or it's just a product of the South. But instead, people should know that actually the attack on critical race theory originated from Christopher Rufo, who ran for city council in Seattle, and he is still a resident in Washington state, and that every state in the nation, except for California, has had a proposed bill that would require educators to lie to students about structural racism or sexism or heterosexism.And even in California, the one state that hasn't had a proposed bill, they have many local school districts that have one of these educational gag order policies in place that seek to coerce educators to lie to students about American history, about Black history, about queer history. And Washington state is one of the many states that has had proposed bills by Republican legislators that are trying to deceive students. They were so frightened of the 2020 uprising and all the questions that young people were asking about our deeply unequitable society that instead of working to try to eliminate that inequality, they just want to ban people from understanding where it comes from.So in my state, last year, they proposed House Bill 1886 that would make it illegal to teach about structural racism. And I found it deeply ironic that the House bill was numbered 1886, because that was the same year as a mob of white people in Seattle rounded up hundreds of Chinese people and forced them into wagons and hauled them to Seattle docks where they were placed on ships and illegally deported. And the chief of police helped this riotous white mob illegally, Police Chief William Murphy, and he never had faced any penalty for it. He was acquitted, even though this racist attack on Chinese people was carried out. Right?And our students have the right to learn about this. They should know that this happened in our city, and too many don't grow up learning the reality of that anti-Chinese attack. And then when hate crimes skyrocketed in our own era in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, you saw hate crimes increase by several hundred percent against Asian Americans, and people wonder why. There's a long history of this Yellow Peril narrative in American society that has labeled Asian Americans and Chinese Americans as the other, as dangerous, as dirty, and our students need to learn about that if they're going to overcome those racial divisions today. Li:And what would the passing of these bills mean for the next generation of youth and their futures, and their education? What's the status of these bills now? Jesse:Well, thankfully, the bill in Washington state did not pass, but they are proliferating around the country. 18 states have already passed bills that seek to coerce educators into lying about structural racism, denying the fact that our country was built on structural racism, of enslavement of Black people, and genocide of Native people, and the exploitation of labor of immigrants, hyper-exploitation of Chinese labor on the railroads and Latinx labor in farms, and they want to hide this history.And you saw it in Florida when they banned the AP African American Studies course. In Virginia, they're trying to rework the state standards to hide the legacy of structural racism and the contributions of Black people, and they are trying to send us back to the era of the 1940s and '50s during the second Red Scare known as the McCarthy era. In the McCarthy era, hundreds of teachers, thousands of teachers around the country were fired after having been labeled communist.And then the Red Scare had the overlapping Lavender Scare, which was the attack on LGBTQ people, and that was especially intense against educators, and Florida had a particularly pernicious attack on queer educators. They had the Johns Committee there that would interrogate teachers about their sex lives and then fire them, remove their teaching certificate so they could never teach again. And this is what people like Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida are trying to revive with the Don't Say Gay bill that has outlawed any discussions of LGBTQ people for the younger grades, and also his so-called Stop W.O.K.E. Act that imposes anti-truth laws on Black history.And in Florida now, it is a third-degree felony for an educator to be caught with the wrong book about Black people or about queer people in their classroom. You can get five years in jail and a $5,000 fine for having the wrong book. Thousands of books are being banned all over the country, and they are rapidly trying to bring us back to that Red Scare, Lavender Scare era where they could just label you a communist or today label you a critical race theorist and push you out of the classroom.So we're at a crossroads right now, where everybody has to decide, "Are we going to build a multiracial struggle to create a true democracy? Or are we going to submit to this fearmongering and this racial hatred and allow them to turn back the clock?" And I hope that people will value social justice enough to join our struggle. Li:I'm just blown away by all the things you're saying, and it's really powerful because I come from a family of educators. Both my father and my mother are educators. My brother and myself are both educators. So I see it not as a job, but like a vocation. And it really sounds like you and the folks that you're in community with, in solidarity with in Seattle and beyond are really making amazing strides and asking such critical questions that could determine the future of our country. Jesse:No doubt. Li:For me and so many other educators, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress were defining transformative works that greatly impacted my trajectory in the world. And I wanted to know, can you share what books or even creative works that inspired the path that got you where you are today? Jesse:Yeah. I love that question. Definitely those two books are at the top. Li:Oh, you like those books? Aren't they at the top? Jesse:I love those books. Yes. Li:I love them. Jesse:Yes. Li:I mean, and I'm sure you reread them because I'm always rereading those books. Jesse:Sure. Yes. I'm quoting them in the book I'm writing right now. So much of what I'm doing would not be possible without the theoretical framework that bell hooks gave us and that Paulo Freire gave us to understand how to use dialogic pedagogy to engage your students in a conversation, and educating isn't about filling their heads with what you know, the banking model of education, as Paulo Freire put it, right? Li:Right. Jesse:It's about learning from your students. Li:Right. That relationship between this... I learned so much from my students, especially now that I'm getting older. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. Li:You got to stay in the know with the youth. Jesse:Hey, the students created the greatest lesson plan of my lifetime when they organized the uprising of 2020. That was mostly young BIPOC folks that organized that uprising and taught the nation what structural racism is and taught many of their teachers that they needed to learn something about it and they needed to begin teaching about it. Right? That's where this whole backlash to critical race theory started.And I think that all of us in the struggle would do well to join in study groups around books that can help deepen our understanding of history and theory that will help us in these struggles to come. There are so many books that I could cite that have been pivotal to my understanding of the struggle. I mean, working at the Zinn Education Project, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States has been really important. Li:Yes. Jesse:So I think reframing who the subjects of history are and... Li:And the authors of history, right? Jesse:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I think that Jarvis Givens book, Fugitive Pedagogy, should be read by all educators. Li:Yes. I'm familiar, very familiar with that project, and it is super inspiring. Yes. Jesse:Yeah. I mean, that book is just a key that unlocks the truth about why we're in the situation we're in right now, where they're trying to outlaw education. Li:And all the overlapping systems, because you talked about that, like these intersecting oppressions and overlapping systems of oppression that are really creating something that it feels like it's impenetrable, but people are making strides. Jesse:Yeah. No doubt. And I would just say that the book, Fugitive Pedagogy, just gives you that history of how Black education has always been a fugitive project. It's always been a challenge to the power structure. It's always been verboten. And starting in 1740 were the first anti-literacy laws in South Carolina banning Black people from learning to read and write.Li:How about that? Right. Jesse:Why was that? Because in 1739, the Stono Rebellion happened. A man named Jemmy helped lead an uprising of enslaved people, and he marched with a banner that read "Liberty" as they collected more enslaved people along the way during their uprising, and this terrified the enslavers. And they not only wanted to kill all the people that were trying to get their freedom, they wanted to kill the idea of freedom. They wanted to kill the ability of Black people to ever write the word liberty again.And so, they imposed these laws to ban Black people from learning to read and write. And today's racists aren't so bold as to ban the ability for people to learn to read and write, but they do want to ban the ability to read the world, as Paulo Freire put it. They don't want us to be racially literate. They don't want us to understand how systems of power and oppression are maintained. And so, they're banning ideas now in the classroom. And once you understand the long history of the attacks on Black education, you can understand why it's happening again today. Li:And even through the digital divide, right? This idea of being disconnected from these resources that are so much a part of education today that Black and brown communities don't always have really makes a difference in the education that they receive and how they learn as well. Jesse:No doubt. I mean, that was emphasized during the pandemic, right?Li:Exactly. So much was amplified during the pandemic, especially that digital divide. Jesse:No doubt. No doubt. Li:So, Jesse, I want to think about the future and speculate. In the best-case scenario, maybe a utopian future for education in the United States. Teachers often have to draft a wish list for what they want, the resources, the needs they have for their classrooms as the academic year comes around. So thinking about what you would want, the three essentials that would be on your wish list for the classroom of the future.Jesse:Yeah. I love this question, because too often, images of the future are all about dystopias. Those are the movies and books we get, and there's not enough freedom dreaming about what's possible. Li:I love that. Shout out to Robin D. Kelley. Jesse:No doubt. Another essential book to read. Li:Yes. Jesse:So I think in the classroom of the future that provides a liberatory education for our youth, the first thing I think we might see is the breakdown of subjects and getting rid of these artificial divisions between the different academic disciplines. And so, school would look very different. Instead of going to math class in the first period and then language arts and then social studies, you might have a class called Should Coal Trains be Used in Seattle? Right? They were just debating whether we should allow coal trains to come through our city.So it would be based on a real problem that exists in your society, and then you would use math and science and language arts and social studies to attack this problem. You would want to learn about the science of climate change and the math that helps you understand the changing climate. Right? We would want to learn the history of coal extraction in this country, the toll it's taken on working people who are minors and the toll it's taken on the environment.We would want to use language arts to write speeches, to deliver your opinion to the city council about this. So we would have problem-posing pedagogy, as Paulo Freire put it, where the courses would be organized around things that the kids care about that impact their lives, and then we would use the academic disciplines in service of that.I think in addition to that, my second requirement for this liberatory classroom would be about wraparound services, so that when kids come to school, they also get healthcare. They also get tutoring services, dental care, mental health care, food for their families. And schools could be really the hubs of community where people have their needs taken care of and are invested in to support not just the students, but their families as well.And lastly, I think schools would be flooded with resources, so that instead of wasting trillions of dollars on the Pentagon so that the United States can go bomb countries all over the world and kill children and their families, we would take that money and flood it into the school system so that kids have all the state-of-the-art resources they need, from the digital equipment, recording equipment, music, art supplies, to funding the school nurse, to the auditoriums, and the music halls. I mean, you can imagine that the richest country on earth could have incredible resources for their kids if we valued education, if we valued our young people.Instead, so many schools in America today are falling apart. The first school I ever taught in in Washington, D.C., an elementary school, I had a hole in the ceiling of my classroom, and it just rained into my classroom and destroyed the first project that I ever assigned the students, their research project, and they never even got to present the projects. Li:No way. Jesse:And our kids deserve better than that. Li:Oh, they definitely deserve better than that. Right? Oh my gosh. Jesse:We're in a society where 81 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of humanity, and that wealth divide means that our kids go to schools that are falling apart, and we would transform that in a future society that's worthy of our kids. Li:Most definitely. And if I can, I wanted to add a fourth thing, because I remember something you said about performance-based assessment. Jesse:Oh, yeah. Li:And I think that would- Jesse:I should put that in. Li:... definitely be essential, right? Make sure you get that one in. But last but not least, my final question to you is, what's next for Zinn Education? And more specifically, what is next for Jesse Hagopian? Jesse:Oh, thank you. Well, I'm really excited about the June 10th National Day of Action. The Zinn Education Project has partnered with Black Lives Matter at School and the African American Policy Forum to organize the Teach Truth Day of Action on June 10th, and I hope everybody will join us on that day of action in organizing an event in your community. This is the third annual Teach Truth Day of Action, and the past ones have been incredible.People have organized historical walking tours in their community to highlight examples of the Black freedom struggle and sites that were important in the Black freedom struggle in their own communities or sites of oppression and racial injustice that students have the right to learn about in their own communities. Some people went to sites where Japanese people were rounded up and incarcerated during World War II. Some people in Memphis, Tennessee went to a site right on their school grounds where there was a race riot and many Black people were killed.In Seattle, we went by the clinic that the Black Panther Party started and gave that history and highlighted how, if the bill passed to deny teachers the right to teach about structural racism, we couldn't even teach about the origins of the health clinic in our own community. And so, there'll be many creative protests that happen on June 10th, 2023, and I'm excited to say we have more cosponsors than ever before.The National Education Association is supporting now, and many other grassroots organizations from across the country. So I expect hundreds of teachers and educators will turn out to protest these anti-truth laws, and I'll be right there with them all helping to organize it and learning from the educators and organizers, who are putting these events on, and hopefully helping to tell their story in the new book that I hope to be finishing very soon about this- Li:You're going to finish it. You're going to finish. This month, man. Jesse:Thank you. Li:This is your month. Jesse:I need that encouragement. Li:You got this. Jesse:I hope I finish it on this month. Li:Believe me. When I was so close to finishing my dissertation, everyone kept asking me, "Are you done yet? Are you done yet?" So I know, because I could see you cringe when I asked you that in the beginning. All I can say is, look, I mean, I'm just so grateful to have this conversation with you today. Thank you for joining me. And I also got to say, I'm sorry to say, Jesse, your mother was right. I think this was your calling. I think this might have been what you were set on this planet to do. Jesse:It feels that way now. Thank you so much. Li:Yes, indeed. So this is Monument Lab, Future Memory. Thank you to my guest, Jesse Hagopian. Jesse:Hey, I really appreciate you having me on. I just felt your warm spirit come across and brighten my day. Really great to be with you. Li:My pleasure. 

KVJ Best Of!- Think Fast, Regifting A Gift, FML, Fill In The Xmas Bleep, What Is Considered Cheating, Which is Better and What's In Virginia's Purse?

KVJ Best Of!- Think Fast, Regifting A Gift, FML, Fill In The Xmas Bleep, What Is Considered Cheating, Which is Better and What's In Virginia's Purse?