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If one theme threads through my reporting career, it's change.
How people make it. How people thwart it. How people ride its winds. How people fear it.
Today in The Ink, a very special conversation about change as experienced in all these ways. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
How people make it. How people thwart it. How people ride its winds. How people fear it.
Today in The Ink, a very special conversation about change as experienced in all these ways. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
It began with a message from the heartland -- Michigan City, Indiana.
@Vince_Emanuele is a community organizer there, and he wanted to interview me for his podcast.
But what actually ensued was the kind of two-way exchange that gives me hope that we will figure America out.
@Vince_Emanuele is a community organizer there, and he wanted to interview me for his podcast.
But what actually ensued was the kind of two-way exchange that gives me hope that we will figure America out.
. @Vince_Emanuele told me how he sees the problems of plutocracy and philanthropy playing out in Michigan City, where the company screwing you is also your benefactor.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
Which got me thinking about what kind of frames and ideas it will take to help people living such things to see the culprits and solutions more clearly.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
We talked about why Democrats struggle with working-class voters. @Vince_Emanuele offered a familiar diagnosis (union decline and right-wing policies) and a less-familiar one: the failure to combat "hyper-alienation" by building social bonds and trust.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
In a town that is overwhelmingly working-class, @Vince_Emanuele fears a local Democratic Party apparatus that is more and more professional and upper-middle class -- and out of touch.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
We talked about something I have constantly struggled with in the Trump years -- how to balance the need for being truthful about what was happening with the need to win other people over.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
Why, morally speaking, should I treat differently someone who pushes my kid on the street versus someone who voted for Trump? Those are two different ways of violating my kid.
But I know my attitude, which helps me cope, is not going to win people over. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
But I know my attitude, which helps me cope, is not going to win people over. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
And @Vince_Emanuele offered a very useful idea.
Stop trying to reconcile with Trump voters and have dialogue with them and heal.
Just do less-controversial local projects with people you disagree with, and begin to reweave the social fabric that way.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
Stop trying to reconcile with Trump voters and have dialogue with them and heal.
Just do less-controversial local projects with people you disagree with, and begin to reweave the social fabric that way.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
And @Vince_Emanuele shared his very real fear, in the view from Michigan City, that the levels of anger and resentment right now foreshadow real social breakdown and violence if we don't fundamentally change things.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
Which led to some reflections on something I've been thinking about a lot: How do we give those white people and men who are losing one way of being and seeing themselves -- rightly, thanks to progress -- how do we give them a "replacement ideology"?
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
This is tricky, because people justifiably feel they don't want fuss over folks losing privilege, since they've BEEN fussed over too long.
And yet attention to those psychic wounds is where the only hope of salvation of the American project would lie.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
And yet attention to those psychic wounds is where the only hope of salvation of the American project would lie.
https://the.ink/p/michigancity
That's just a sample of a conversation I was privileged to have with @Vince_Emanuele, and we're going to do more of these at The Ink.
Read the full thing here, and subscribe if you'd like to support this kind of dialogue and work. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
Read the full thing here, and subscribe if you'd like to support this kind of dialogue and work. https://the.ink/p/michigancity
