Recently I spoke w/ @AnandWrites about the need for institutions to take responsibility for their own role in America’s democratic decline. Like this. The @KCStar taking responsibility for its failures in reporting (or not) fairly & adequately on the Black community. https://twitter.com/jasonkander/status/1340656499929063424

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article247928045.html

This is not the first of this kind of broad self-accountability exercise by a newspaper. In 2004, the Lexington Herald-Leader apologized for its failure to report on the local Civil Rights Mvmt - publishing articles & developing film that had languished. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2004/07/05/paper-apologizes-for-civil-rights-coverage/21e1b48a-e504-46c4-9383-5bc046356a0b/

I explore in depth the need for institutions to engage in their own processes to confront their own accountability & complicity w/systemic racism & violence in my book On the Courthouse Lawn. The media gets particular attention. http://www.beacon.org/On-the-Courthouse-Lawn-P674.aspx

This post-Trump era requires a reckoning - a confrontation with the failures that have brought us to catastrophic democratic decline and human rights crises. Institutions must do this. Journalism, yes. But also the legal profession. The business community. The faith community.

This does not take the place of the legal process that MUST hold fully accountable those that broke the law. And there shld be congressional hearings & an official truth commn. But the inertia of institutions in confronting themselves is unacceptable. There’s work to do.