The Upstander Ripple Effect Episode 10: Nuance in the Current Political Moment

Sometimes, episodes don’t go as planned. That happened with this shoot. Here’s why. It is early in the second Trump administration, and we have heard people express concerns about what they view as authoritarian actions. Some, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, have gone as far as to warn about parallels to Nazi Germany.

We wanted to address these issues with as much thought and careful consideration as possible. To do that, Jackie and Kevin invited Holocaust scholar and visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Sarah Crane to join them. Dr. Crane has perspective to offer on the comparisons between the current moment and 1930’s Germany. We thought we would get to our regularly planned content – a story from the archives and an upstander to highlight – but the conversation with Sarah went long, and we felt it was important enough that we didn’t want to cut it off.

We’ll have the stories we planned in the next episode.

We hope in the meantime, that this conversation will be helpful as we all engage in the important work of listening and questioning what it means to be an American, and members of a democracy in this moment.

“If fear is what’s driving us right now, let’s find out what people are afraid of, and let’s have a conversation. Let’s have a talk. Let’s talk about that first. Let’s lean into that courageously and have some honest conversations about, what is it that we’re really all scared about right now, and how do we push past that, overcome that fear, to get us to a place of productivity.” — Kevin Aldridge