Show Notes
SPLC Florida Policy Director Jonathan Webber, senior staff attorney Ahmed Soussi and Deputy Legal Director for Democracy and Voting Rights Bradley Heard join Apathy Is Not an Option to explain how everyday people can still make their voices heard, even when faced with partisan redistricting and barriers to simply casting a vote. Then, Louisiana State Rep. Terry Landry Jr. speaks on how stepping into elected office has given him hope about the future of our democracy.
Apathy Is Not an Option is a production of PRX and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Nichole Hill and Mark Pagán are the senior producers and editors. Terence Bernardo handles sound design and mixing. I’m your host, Alexandria Beightol. For the SPLC, the executive producers are Cassandra Douglas and Julian Teixeira, with assistance from technical producer Neil Parekh and senior producer Jennifer Lazarus of Digimentors. From PRX Productions, the project manager is Edwin Ochoa, and the EP is Jocelyn Gonzales.
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More from Apathy Is Not An Option
The president and CEO of the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization, Janet Murguía of UnidosUS, joins Apathy Is Not an Option during Hispanic Heritage Month for a critical conversation on empowering Latinos at a moment when their access to political and socioeconomic opportunity is under attack.
The ballot initiative process can be used to pass laws when legislatures refuse to act, but in Florida, a new statute, HB 1205, is threatening the survival of this process — and the broader movement to protect U.S. democracy. Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Avner Shapiro and political science professor Daniel Smith break down the SPLC’s efforts to fight HB 1205 and protect direct democracy in Florida.
Andre Perry, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Community Uplift, joins Apathy Is Not an Option during Black Business Month to highlight the importance of Black entrepreneurship. Beyond simply celebrating Black-owned businesses, Perry pushes us to understand the systems that will enable Black entrepreneurs, and the communities that surround them, to truly thrive.
An expert in confronting “hard history,” professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries joins Apathy Is Not an Option for a conversation on the importance of engaging with the United States’ complete history — the good and the bad — during its 250th year. As the nation looks back on its past and imagines the future to come, Jeffries highlights why historical truth matters, what the Black freedom struggle teaches about democracy and how understanding the past can help us resist apathy in the present.
The United States’ 250th year is a time for celebrating, reflecting and looking ahead to envision the nation’s next milestones. Apathy Is Not an Option talks to the SPLC’s Rivka Maizlish about how to honestly reckon with the past on this important occasion, with further insight from professor Carol Anderson on learning from historical struggles to create a better future. That future will be shaped by young people like recent high school graduate Harper Walton-Mouw, who joins us to discuss what the 250th means to her generation.