On Second Thought: the AMERICAN DREAM issue

A PUBLICATION OF HUMANITIES NORTH DAKOTA

ON

09.19

2ECOND THOUGHT

the

AMERICAN DREAM issue

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CONTENTS 02 THE FOUR FREEDOMS FREEDOM OF SPEECH 08 An Open Letter to Colin Kaepernick

By Nate Boyer

10 An Open Letter to America

By Nate Boyer

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FREEDOM FROM WANT 16 Casey Gerald Takes Aim at the

American Dream An interview by Erin Vanderhoof

FREEDOM FROM FEAR 24 Having Compassion in the Face

of Bigotry

By Aparna Nancherla

FREEDOM TO WORSHIP 30 Faith in Each Other

By Kate Bischoff

08 24 “You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now. You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one to which you wake up every morning. Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance of becoming actual.” ― RICHARD RORTY, Achieving Our Country, 1998

36 Democracy As Disruption

By Mark Trahant 42 GameChanger Ideas

Festival Schedule

BRENNA DAUGHERTY GERHARDT

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

MARKETING DREAMS Since World War II, the American Dream has become the United States’ biggest export. Eleanor Roosevelt championed the cause when she began asking the American people, “What can we do to prepare young people to carry the American Dream to the world in the best possible way?” In the time since, behemoth corporations have embedded the idea into their global marketing strategies while the military has implemented a “hearts and minds” strategy as part of their defense planning.

Yet, the market for the American Dream at home is facing uncertainty.

According to a national poll conducted in February of this year by RealClear Opinion Research, a nonpartisan, public opinion research group, “Two-thirds of those surveyed believe the American Dream is under moderate to severe duress: 37 percent say it is ‘alive and under threat’ while another 28 percent say it is ‘under serious threat, but there is still hope’.”

At this year’s GameChanger ideas festival, we are going to explore the foundations of the American Dream. Together we will reflect on how we as citizens can ensure we are doing our part to live up to our ideals and make sure everyone has the opportunity to live out their dreams.

I hope you will join the conversation.

ON SECOND THOUGHT is published by Humanities North Dakota.

To subscribe, please contact us: 800.338.6543 info@humanitiesnd.org humanitiesnd.org Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

COVER ARTWORK BY Steve Stark

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In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedoms of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want…everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear…anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941

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THE FOUR FREEDOMS

Franklin D. Roosevelt gives a radio address regarding his state of the union message to Congress. Washington, D.C., January 11, 1944.

Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

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n January 6, 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his eighth State of the Union address, now known as the Four Freedoms speech.

The speech was intended to rally the American people against the Axis threat and to shift favor in support of assisting British and Allied troops. Roosevelt’s words came at a time of extreme American isolationism; since World War I, many Americans sought to distance themselves from foreign entanglements, including foreign wars. Policies to curb immigration quotas and increase tariffs on imported goods were implemented, and a series of Neutrality Acts passed in the 1930s limited American arms and munitions assistance abroad.

In his address, Roosevelt called for the immediate increase in

American arms production, and asked Americans to support his “Lend-Lease” program, which gave Allies cash-free access to US munitions. Most importantly, Roosevelt announced his

“a world attainable in our own time and generation,” and founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. vision for the world,

These freedoms, Roosevelt declared, must triumph everywhere in the world, and act as a basis of a new moral order. “Freedom,” Roosevelt declared, “means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”

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Where, after all, do universal rights begin? In small places, close to home (...) unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

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— Eleanor Roosevelt

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Sixth draft of Annual Message to Congress (Four Freedoms Speech), (pg. 18), January 6, 1941 Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential

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Eleanor Roosevelt addresses the UN General Assembly at the United Nations, July 1947. Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Library & Museum

LEGACY OF THE FOUR FREEDOMS

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call for human rights has created a lasting legacy worldwide. These freedoms became symbols of hope during World War II, adopted by the Allies as the basic tenets needed to create a lasting peace. Following the end of the war, the Four Freedoms formed the basis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Declaration was drafted over two years by the Commission on Human Rights, chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. It was adopted on December 10, 1948, and is one of the most widely translated documents in the world. Drawing on Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, the Declaration calls for all governments and people to secure basic human rights and to take measures to ensure these rights are upheld.

The Declaration has inspired numerous international human rights treaties and declarations, and has been incorporated into the constitutions of most countries since 1948. l Courtesy of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, find out more at fdrfourfreedomspark.org.

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Retired Army Green Beret Nate Boyer is the man who first convinced Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem. He believes it’s time to move beyond divisions and find a radical middle.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

NATE BOYER Nate Boyer is what many would deem a renaissance man. The former active-duty Green Beret, who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, is also a world traveler, a philanthropist and community leader, and a professional athlete as a former member of the Seattle Seahawks.

In addition to his military and football careers, Boyer has embarked on a wealth of colorful adventures and life-changing experiences: he has backpacked solo throughout much of Europe and Central America, worked for a year on a fishing boat in San Diego, gone fly fishing in Kamchatka in Russia, worked as a big brother and mentor for children diagnosed with autism, and volunteered at refugee camps in the Darfur region of Sudan/Chad border. Recently he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with a wounded veteran to raise money for clean water wells in Tanzania.

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“One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life is defend people I don’t necessarily agree with, because at the end of the day, what I fought for is those ultimate rights and freedoms. I don’t have to like them or agree with them, but that’s what I fought for.

And so I always will lean on the side of rights and freedoms.”

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Colin,

I’m a big fan. I’ve been pulling for you ever since I first saw you play in the 2012 preseason. I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and have been a die-hard 49ers fan as long as I can remember—growing up, I was Joe Montana for Halloween two years straight.

I proudly wore the red and gold for an afternoon when I had a tryout with the 49ers last spring. I ultimately ended up in training camp with the Seattle Seahawks, but I’ll never forget the one day I got to be a 49er.

I don’t know a lot, but I do know that I catch a lot of flak for expressing my opinions, something you are now very familiar with. I also know you support the military—“God Bless Our Troops” is written on the football that you and former 49er teammate Colt McCoy signed for one of the charities I work with. The football’s currently sitting in my parents’ house; my dad bid the highest at the charity’s auction.

Unfortunately, I also know that racism still exists in our country, as it does in every other country on this planet, and I hate that I know that. I hate the third verse of our national anthem, but thankfully we don’t sing that verse anymore. I hate that at times I feel guilty for being white.

In 2004, I witnessed genocide firsthand in the Darfur region of Sudan. The fact that hate and oppression still exist

AN OPEN LETTER TO COLIN KAEPERNICK

by Nate Boyer

Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it.

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at that level in our world really hurts me. I met countless young Africans who were enamored with America and the opportunities that exist here. Those people would have given anything to experience what I had grown up with, even just for one day.

I joined the Army upon returning to the U.S. because I believed people like that were worth fighting for. De Oppresso Liber (“To Free the Oppressed”) is the Army Special Forces motto, and the reason I wanted to become a Green Beret. I didn’t enlist to fight for what we already have here; I did it because I wanted to fight for what those people didn’t have there: Freedom.

I am in no way political, but I’m proud that we have an African-American president, and that I got to serve under him. Overcoming racism at home is a slow process, and we still have a long way to go, but most of us are trying. That’s what sets us apart from so many other places. In this country, no matter who you are, where you come from, what color you are, you can try.

During college football games, both teams usually wait

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in the locker room until after the national anthem. That always bothered me. Leading the team out of the tunnel while carrying the American flag meant a lot, but I still regretted not being out there to stand for that song.

The only time I got to stand on the sideline for the anthem was during my one and only NFL preseason game against the Denver Broncos. As I ran out of the tunnel with the American flag, I could feel myself swelling with pride, and as I stood on the sideline with my hand on my heart as the anthem began, that swelling burst into tears.

I thought about how far I’d come and the men I’d fought alongside who didn’t make it back. I thought about those overseas who were risking their lives at that very moment. I selfishly thought about what I had sacrificed to get to where I was, and while I knew I had little to no chance of making the Seahawks’ roster as a 34-year-old rookie, I was trying.

That moment meant so much more to me than even playing in the game did, and to be honest, if I had noticed my teammate sitting on the bench, it would have really hurt me.

I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot

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of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war.

Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it. When I told my mom about this article, she cautioned me that “the last thing our country needed right now was more hate.” As usual, she’s right.

There are already plenty people fighting fire with fire, and it’s just not helping anyone or anything. So I’m just going to keep listening, with an open mind.

I look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national anthem. I’ll be standing right there next to you. Keep on trying … De Oppresso Liber.

— Nate Boyer, August 30, 2016 Copyright © Nate Boyer 9

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA

by Nate Boyer

Dear Every Single American,

Every. Single. American. Including President Trump, Colin Kaepernick, and my brothers in arms overseas who are wondering, “what in the hell is going on back there?” I’m sitting in the same chair, in the same apartment that I sat in almost a year ago when I wrote an open letter to Colin Kaepernick. I was hurt when I saw him sitting on the bench during the national anthem, but I’m much more hurt now. Not by him, not by where we’re at now with the protests, but by us.

Simply put, it seems like we just hate each other; and that is far more painful to me than any protest, or demonstration, or rally, or tweet. We’re told to pick a side, there’s a line drawn in the sand, “are you with us or against us?” It’s just not who we are, or at least who we’re supposed to be; we’re supposed to be better than that, we’re Americans. This doesn’t even seem to be about right or wrong, but more about right or left.

Today it feels like this national divide isn’t even really about the anthem, or the flag, or kneeling, or sitting, or fists in the air. It’s not about President Donald Trump, it’s not about Colin Kaepernick, it’s not about the military, or even police brutality.

It feels like it’s about winning. That’s what makes America so great, our sheer competitiveness. We’re winners, and we won’t quit until victory is ours.

We see it in sports every day, we “live and die” by the outcomes of our teams. That desire to win at all cost is costing us greatly now among our neighbors. This winning mentality seems to have spilled over into an obsession with being right and

not willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, we were wrong. We repeat mantras to ourselves like, “no matter what I will never ever surrender.”

Earlier this week I sat down with a group of five combat arms and special operations veterans. The round table discussed our individual feelings on the flag, the anthem, and the players who knelt when it was played. We all had very different takes, but what surprised me most at the end of the discussion was that we all agreed on one thing. Colin Kaepernick and President Trump should be the ones uniting our country together. Wait...what? I know it sounds crazy, but maybe that’s exactly what we need to see.

Maybe that’s how we start to heal. Two men sit in a room and talk, simple as that.

That’s how it all started with Colin and I, neither of us knew that kneeling would be the result of our conversation. Colin wanted to sit, I wanted him to stand, and so we found a common ground on a knee alongside his teammates. I believe that progress and real change happens in this world when you reach across the divide, you build a bridge, you swallow your pride, you open your mind, you embrace what you don’t understand, and ultimately you surrender.

Now I don’t pretend to speak for everyone who fought overseas, many veterans rightfully disagree with my position. But I do feel that I echo the sentiments of most war fighters when I say that what we hope for more than anything right now in America is unity. To deploy overseas, train, live with, fight alongside, and ultimately defend foreigners that you have little in common with is 11

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Returning home to a country that is so divided, so judgmental, and so hateful of one another is almost as difficult to deal with as burying a fallen comrade.

truly a challenging task. But returning home to a country that is so divided, so judgmental, and so hateful of one another is almost as difficult to deal with as burying a fallen comrade. In fact we’re still losing our brothers in arms overseas right now and it’s hardly mentioned in the media; but that’s OK, we don’t risk our lives and sacrifice so much for fanfare or recognition. It’s not at all why we do what we do. We do what we do because you are worth it, because we love you.

I would love for those two leaders to have that conversation, but more than anything I just want us to love one another again. One great thing about freedom is that you get to choose every day how you treat your neighbor. This IS the best country in the world, but we can always do better. I’m laying it all out there because I have to, I swore to defend this land and its people, and I will die trying.

I know some people will hate this (we love to hate things these days), and I’ll get called a disgrace to the Green Beret once again. But I don’t care, the United States means more to me than any of that.

Over the past year I’ve come across veterans from various walks of life. We may actually be the most diverse sub-culture in America. Since I myself am a Green Beret, I want to share with you a couple of messages that were sent to me from men in my former unit. One of them is white, and one of them is black: “Hey brother. At first I was with you on the Kaepernick issue. However, I just stood in formation while one of our brothers was pulled off a plane with our nation’s flag draped over the coffin. I had to fight back tears as I saw the pain in the eyes of Staff Sergeant T’s wife and family. While I would like to sit here and tell you that I rose above it all, I have to be honest. My heart filled with rage. Rage for anyone who takes for granted the ideals and symbols that we fight and die for.”

“Hey Brother, this is J. I spent nearly 18 years in 10th Special Forces Group and wish I had an opportunity to meet a brother like yourself. I just want to say I appreciate your views on this national anthem and flag issue. I love our country, but at the same time I have to take the time to tell my sons to act a certain way out of fear for their lives when dealing with police officers. Most of my neighbors and friends here in MD are law enforcement personnel and will tell you they also have to act a certain way to avoid confrontation and situations that normally don’t occur for those that are not of color. Not all officers are bad, the majority I believe are good and poor training is attributed to some of these issues we hear of. I really just want to thank you for your taking the time out to understand and convincing him to take a knee and not sit out on what we have fought for. God Bless You Bro!” Different backgrounds, different experiences, different colors, but at the end of the day they just want the same basic things for their families.

So please, no more lines in the sand, not at home, not among our people. No more choosing sides, no more “for or against.” I believe our veterans will be called upon to lead the way in healing the world and solving its problems; right now our country needs that more than I can remember. So I’ll be here, standing in the radical middle, doing what I can to continue fighting for those that can’t fight for themselves. Let’s get this thing fixed together, you and me. I love you all with all my heart.

De Oppresso Liber — Nate Boyer, October 13, 2017 Copyright © Nate Boyer

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The American Dream has inspired people around the world for generations. Yet there is no

single definition that captures this unique aspect of American culture. For some people the dream is about upward mobility: owning their own home, starting a new business, or being the first in their family to go to college. For other people the American Dream is a way of life that strives toward freedom and justice. And there are those who see it as a concept that doesn’t live up to the hype.

What American Dream are you striving to achieve? What American Dream have you achieved? In a video clip of 30 seconds or less, tell us what your American Dream is (or isn’t... freedom of speech is another American ideal after all). If your dream was to own your own business, film yourself in front of yours. If it was to become a citizen, show us a photo from the day you became one. If it’s honoring your heritage as a member of a First Nation, show us what that means to you.

THE BEST VIDEO, AS VOTED ON BY OUR GAMECHANGER COMMUNITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE, WILL RECEIVE A $50 VISA GIFT CARD. HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR AMERICAN DREAM VIDEO: HUMANITIES

• Video must be shot in landscape orientation

N O R T H D A K O TA

• Limit your video to 30 seconds or less • Text your video to 701.226.2840 or email it to info@humanitiesnd.org • Include your first and last name and email address so we can give you credit and keep you updated • By submitting your video you give Humanities North Dakota permission to use your video in programming and marketing

HUMANITIES N O R T H D A K O TA we have ways of making you think

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Casey Gerald was the poster child for the American Dream, escaping a harrowing childhood to enter a new world of elite universities and secret societies. But as he climbed the social ladder, he saw how this hierarchy stifled those at the margins, and that “salvation stories” like his could be used to keep others from rising.

Now, he uses his platform to splinter the myth of the American Dream, illuminate inequality, and set forth a bold new direction for a generation navigating a fractured nation.

FREEDOM FROM WANT

CASEY GERALD Casey Gerald is the co-founder and CEO of MBAs Across America, a national movement of MBAs and entrepreneurs working together to revitalize America. He began his career in economic policy and government innovation at the Center for American Progress, and has worked as a strategist with startup social ventures including Reboot and The Future Project, as well as companies such as The Neiman Marcus Group. A native Texan, Casey received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was selected as the 2014 Class Day Speaker, and a BA in political science from Yale College, where he was a finalist for the Rhodes scholarship. An electrifying speaker, Gerald’s TED talk on the “Gospel of Doubt” has received over 1.8 million views, and he opened for President Barack Obama at SXSW. He has been featured on MSNBC, in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, and on the cover of Fast Company, which named him one of the “Most Creative People in Business.”

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According to a Center for Collegiate Mental Health report, depression is rising among young people heading to college at an alarming rate.

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asey Gerald went viral in 2016, for his TED talk “The Gospel of Doubt,“ in which

he discussed social inequality and his work connecting businessschool grads to entrepreneurs across the country. At the same time, he was in a rough moment; after losing a close friend to suicide and struggling with his purpose in life, Gerald shut down his nonprofit organization and moved away from New York City in search of some peace.

Gerald’s tale is undeniably inspirational: born into a broken family in small-town Texas, Gerald attended Yale on a football scholarship, got an M.B.A. from Harvard, started a nonprofit, and worked for a few prestigious companies, all by the age of 29. But his new book, There Will Be No Miracles Here, is like no other memoir by a conference circuit speaker. It is a literary and often dark look at the effects the national virtue of self-reliance can have on the people who live according to it, with particularly moving passages about the atmosphere of stress, pain, and racial divides on college campuses.

Gerald knew he wasn’t alone—according to a Center for Collegiate Mental Health report, depression is rising among young people heading to college at an alarming rate. Instead of suggesting policy solutions to the problems he identifies with the educational system or in business, Gerald said he is trying to bear witness to what is really happening in America’s most elite institutions.

CASEY GERALD TAKES AIM AT THE AMERICAN DREAM Interview by Erin Vanderhoof

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I wanted to take a reader right there into the center of human consciousness, as crazy and incoherent and associative as that is.

When did you decide you wanted to write a memoir?

Casey Gerald: I started it just because I knew something was wrong with me. I had done all these things, or achieved all these things, but I was very cracked up. . . I disappeared from New York, and moved to Austin to trace the cracks with words and try to deal. So I spent two years, not just writing the book, but on my own—a bit like a monk, but not holy. In some ways, it’s bizarre for it to be thrust into the world, but you have to do it. I surely would not have written the book just to hide it behind my own little door.

I knew early on that I didn’t want to write a standard memoir. Not because of any violent opposition, but I don’t buy the standard. I don’t think it works, this idea that you’re going to go chronologically from the beginning to end—this happened, that happened—and not have any confusion.

Personally, my mind is all over the place. Our minds are not linear, so it’s always seemed strange to me that personal narrative might be anywhere near coherent, let alone linear.

I thought a lot about Kendrick Lamar on Section.80—“I’m not on the outside looking in, not on the inside looking out / I’m in the dead fuckin’ center looking around.” That’s the perspective I wanted to take. I didn’t need to write one of these social studies of a marginalized person, even though I had grown up and lived grown as a poor black, queer, damned near orphan, I hadn’t lived on the margins of anything. So I wanted to take a reader right there into the center of a human consciousness, as crazy and incoherent and associative as that is.

That’s why the book seems more literary than many memoirs, like you used the tricks of the modernists to write it. Where that really kicks in is about a third of the way through.

The timeline interrupts and you 18

insert a dream. Where did that idea come from?

I had gone to trace my own cracks, and a few months into that exercise, one of my closest friends—like a little brother— committed suicide. He came to me in a dream not long after that. I had gotten to the part in the book where the typical Horatio Alger material pops up, but I couldn’t write that day, and I didn’t really know why. So I took a nap, aided by bourbon, admittedly. He came to me in the dream, and he was sitting in this diner. It was almost like he had come to explain to me why I was feeling the way he was. He said, “You know, we did a lot of things we wouldn’t advise anybody we loved to do.” I knew what he meant. So this book became a confession. It became my job to make plain: we’ve been prescribed a path to success—certain things we have to do or certain people we have to be—but the cost of that prescription is ourselves. So many of the ways we’re taught to live are killing us.

Oftentimes, it can seem selfindulgent to talk about elite universities—so few people actually attend them. And yet, they represent high achievement to so many people. How do you balance those ideas or justify the focus on the schools you attended?

The other day, I was talking to a DutchCongolese kid thinking about applying to Harvard Business School, and I said, “Listen, someone once said that business is to this age what the church was to the Middle Ages.” I tend to believe that. If that’s the case, a place like Harvard Business School is like the Vatican. What’s important to know is that if it is the church, it’s in desperate need of a reformation.

Every time I go back to Yale, every time I go back to Harvard, I’m reminded of my feeling that our elite quote-unquote educational institutions are committing malpractice. Every time I talk to young

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people who are there, I try the best that I can to stoke some kind of rebellion, which is the only reasonable response that any young person on any college campus should have at this moment. The prescription that has been given to the top students in America is toxic.

Yet you are very intellectual and seem to have benefitted a lot from your formal education. Are there any places you think are educating free people? If you had kids, where would you send them?

Well, first off, I would never have children.

And if you ever hear that I have, send the psychiatrist immediately, and have me institutionalized. I love kids, but I cannot justify bringing kids into this world. It gets me into trouble with my friends, but to be clear, I have nothing against children, but maybe something against the world.

But it does actually get to a deeper point, which is asking a question about whether I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater by being so hostile to educational institutions.

Part of what I’m trying to do with this book is help us to divest ourselves from the belief that our worth, our basic human value, is tied to institutions and spaces which were not designed for us to be free or to thrive.

The society is designed to make black children believe they are worthless, designed to make queer children believe they are worthless. It’s important that we work overtime to be very wary of tying our worth to the schools we go to, for the jobs we have, to the parties we get invited to after. It doesn’t only de-value the young people that might not go to Harvard, it also demeans the ones who do.

When I was [an undergraduate], there was an attack on campus. Somebody spraypainted “Nigger School” on a [wall], and this was unacceptable to a great many people. So these protests were organized . . . and I went.

The most iconic sign I saw that day said, “I Don’t Spend $50,000 a Year to Be Called a

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Nigger.” What’s interesting about [that] is that it shows that somewhere in this person’s subconscious was a belief that because they spend $50,000 a year, that in and of itself excluded them from being niggers. That’s not going to work—either all of us have to be niggers or none of us can be niggers for any of us to be free. That’s the intervention I’m trying to push with this book.

So, in the hypothetical horrific world where I have children, whether or not I send them to Harvard or not is a separate question from how do I, in a world that is not designed for them to behold a deep sense of their selfworth, how do I imbue that in them. That’s a much more interesting question for me than, Where do I send the kids to school?

What would you say to someone who feels trapped by the idea of success we have put forth? Or to someone who feels cracked up like you did when you started writing?

I don’t know how this is for anyone else, but I seem to go until I just can’t go any further. It wasn’t that I thought righteously, oh my god, this past is destroying me, and I want to go and be a good person. It’s that you feel the sadness, you feel small, and you feel miserable every day for a long period of time.

It’s much more primal than it is philosophical.

There is a line in the book that says, “I have a radio, and it only plays two stations: life and death. I turn the death off now that I know the sound.” This is why I meditate now—it’s a constant process of being in touch with how I feel. So often we’re told to ignore the fact that we’re miserable in our job, or with the plan we’ve set out to do, or in this relationship or whatever it is. We’re told to ignore it because in the long run, it will be worth it. I really reject that, and what this book is saying is if it’s death in the short term, it’s going to be death in the long term, too. l Copyright © Casey Gerald. Published by Vanity Fair. Reprinted with permission.

It’s important that we work overtime to be very wary of tying our worth to the schools we go to, for the jobs we have, to the parties we get invited to after.

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AMERICAN

DREAM OCTOBER 5, 2019

BISMARCK, ND

g a m e c h a n g e r n d . c o m

OUR MISSION Our Founding Fathers believed in the importance and the power of ideas to change people's lives. Our nation's history has been a great adventure in ideas. The GameChanger Ideas Festival was created to continue this proud tradition and provide people opportunities to engage with and debate life-changing ideas, because democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens.

OUR AUDIENCE The GameChanger Ideas Festival is for people who never want to stop learning and growing. People who value being part of a community of lifelong learners who thrive on seeing issues from multiple perspectives and believe in making thoughtful and informed decisions on critical issues. If you value curiosity and exploring topics you've never even thought about before, this event is for you. Police officers, school teachers, stay-at-home parents, engineers, mayors, business leaders—we are all students of life.

OUR THINKERS We invite people to our stage who challenge the status quo and strive to make changes to critical systems that honor our shared humanity. We believe that civil disagreement and debate are stepping stones for learning. The GameChanger Ideas Festival does not take political stances on issues. Instead we strive to offer a variety of viewpoints from people with both scholarly insight and hands-on knowledge. These aren't just people with good ideas, but people who have put their ideas to action in the real world.

ideas festival

OCTOBER 5, 2019 BELLE MEHUS AUDITORIUM BISMARCK, ND Tickets available at gamechangernd.com

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In a country divided by white nationalism and fear, Aparna Nancherla reflects on being a woman of color in comedy and urges Americans to remember that it’s our country’s “melting pot” that defines its greatness.

FREEDOM FROM FEAR

APARNA NANCHERLA Aparna Nancherla is a comedian and general silly billy. Her sense of humor is dry, existential, and absurd, with notes of uncalled-for whimsy. Think a wine you didn’t order.

You can watch Aparna as Grace the belabored HR rep on the Comedy Central show Corporate, or hear her as the voice of Hollyhock on Bojack Horseman.

She also has a half-hour special on the second season of The Standups on Netflix, as well as appearances on Late Night with Stephen Colbert on CBS and Two Dope Queens on HBO. Other acting credits include A Simple Favor, Crashing, High Maintenance, Master of None, and Inside Amy Schumer. Aparna was also named one of “The 50 Funniest People Right Now” by Rolling Stone. She also co-hosted the 2018 Women’s March Rally in NYC. In 2016, she released her debut album, Just Putting It Out There, on Tig Notaro’s label, Bentzen Ball Records, and recorded a half hour special for Comedy Central.

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HAVING COMPASSION IN THE FACE OF BIGOTRY

by Aparna Nancherla

F

or lack of a better cliché, I keep thinking I am

dreaming. Since becoming an adult, my dreams end up being mundane anyway, especially the ones I have after I hit “snooze” on my phone alarm. It’s always me running back into the house to grab my phone charger or whatever else the writers in my subconscious ripped straight from the minutiae gazette. But now, it’s the quiet replay of recent events without the comfort of the alarm jarring me awake again. The immediate aftermath of the election has passed, so the initial stages of grief, rage, sadness, and denial have washed over and evolved into an emotional purgatory.

All that remains are shreds of the paradoxical trifecta of outrage, hopelessness, and calculated acceptance. A previous sense of innocence has been lost.

I was born lucky, and continue to be in the cards the world has dealt me. I grew up in an upper middle class Northern Virginia suburb. It was a global place with plenty of diversity, since many diplomats, State Department, and World Bank employees regularly had stints in the area. I had opportunities both academic and extracurricular from a young age, and was encouraged to freely explore my interests. While my parents both emigrated from India to the States in the 1970s, I was born here in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. While childhood was a lopsided balance of embracing both my Eastern and Western cultural ties, I never felt like I couldn’t have both. Holding both simultaneously in no way qualified my identity as an American.

This past election cycle was the first time I began receiving tweets like “Go back to your country” and “If you don’t like it, 24

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“If you don’t agree with this agenda, you are not entitled to share this land.”

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America began as a great experiment, and it will continue as one, not by closing its doors and minds, but by keeping them open in spite of differences.

leave.” These would always be in response to any post that was anti-Trump or anti-Republican, but the underlying message was, “If you don’t agree with this agenda, you are not entitled to share this land.” It was the most polarized I’d ever felt politically from those with differing views.

Truth be told, I received the least of it. I wasn’t the victim of hate speech or physical assault. I didn’t feel newly unsafe walking on the streets, as compared to a woman in a hijab or a transgender person just trying to go about their day. This realization that bullying and ostracizing can be passively accepted, or worse, openly encouraged, led to reframing the entire country in my own mind. It’s one thing to feel like “an other” in demographic terms. For example, I am a woman of color in the white male-dominated field of comedy. But it’s another thing to be openly told that you are different and that makes you questionable. It’s like all the “wrong” examples you read about in kindergarten picture books about acceptance and the golden rule manifested into one self-assured movement.

I am always open to understanding someone else’s viewpoint. I would like to have empathy and compassion for those who may not necessarily agree with me, or see the world the same way. However, to me, America has always stood for welcoming those that feel they are Other.

The Statue of Liberty has those words etched on her very base. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .” We are the sum of our 26

parts—the oft overlooked working class denizens of the Rust Belt, the inner-city youth hoping to break themselves from repeating cycles of poverty and violence, refugees looking for asylum from war-torn countries, and little girls hoping to break new ground with their ideas for the world.

America began as a great experiment, and it will continue as one, not by closing its doors and minds, but by keeping them open in spite of differences. I know I am an idealist. I know I am sheltered. I know I am privileged, but I want these opportunities for others. The mixture of all the Others together is what makes this experiment great.

In that sense, there is subversive and untapped power in the melting pot. As many people as are preaching isolationism and xenophobia, there are an equal number, if not more, holding on to their convictions of acceptance.

We are at a rare moment where many progressive movements stand united against the encroachment on their liberties. America’s greatness is not based in a strident, unknown formula underwritten by white nationalism and fear.

History has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate we are not a perfect country. We still live with the dull ache of segregation and internment camps, and the new sting of mass shootings and situations like Standing Rock. That’s where action supplants inaction, and hope supplants fear, because to speak up is to represent both yourself, and others who may not be able to, whether it’s from threat, circumstances, hopelessness, or all three. For every American saying “Go home,” there are more saying “You are home.” You are not alone. You are not responsible. You matter. l Originally published November 28, 2016, on vice.com.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Educating the next generation of

THOUGHTFUL AND INFORMED VOTERS AT ONE OF THE MOST POLARIZING TIMES IN OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY, Humanities North Dakota is educating the next generation of citizens to understand and engage with our constitutional democracy through our award winning We the People program for high school and middle school students across North Dakota.

Findings show that We the People students are much more likely to: - Be inclined to participate in politics - Respect the rule of law - Follow politics and enjoy talking about government and politics - Critically consume political news - Be inclined to vote in presidential elections, local elections, and serve on a jury - Believe that it is their responsibility to be involved in their community - Feel that they could make their community better by working with others rather than individually - Become more tolerant of opposing political ideas

eeee I cannot express enough my gratitude. This has been by far the best professional development I have ever had the privilege to attend. The level of preparedness, the quality of instructors and mentors and all of the resources far surpass anything I ever expected!

– Darrel Casperson, We the People Summer Teacher Institute participant

By donating to humanities North Dakota, you support this critical effort to restore our democracy.

FIND OUT MORE AT HUMANITIESND.ORG

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FREEDOM TO WORSHIP

KATE BISCHOFF Kate Bischoff is an overly enthusiastic, sarcastic, and opinionated management-side employment attorney and human resources professional.

She works closely with management, HR folk, and technology companies to improve organizations and make it easier to recruit and retain talent through having easy-tounderstand policies, easy-to-use technology, and easy-to-explain compliance initiatives.

Prior to starting her own business, Kate served as the HR officer for Consulate General Jerusalem and U.S. Embassy Lusaka, Zambia.

Kate has been recognized by The New York Times, CNN.com, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio, and other journalistic sources as a leading authority on harassment, technology in the workplace, and employment law.

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FAITH IN EACH OTHER

by Kate Bischoff

“And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.”

These are the words of prayer shared by Franklin Delano Roosevelt the night of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. FDR’s purpose was to calm an anxious nation that sent 156,000 of its sons, brothers, friends, neighbors, and husbands to storm a beach in a foreign land to save Europe and our country from a fascist regime.

The impact of FDR’s words is not limited to that fateful day though. We all desire the recognition that we’re all in this together, that we must have faith in each other in furtherance of our common purpose. Yet, sometimes, it feels like the world is succeeding at pulling us all apart. We have to work harder to make sure it doesn’t.

How do we stick together? Show faith in each other? To start, we can look back at our founding fathers’ words, “All men are created equal.” We can debate whether the Founding Fathers really meant this given their behavior, or we can take the words at face value and dive into their meaning. What does it mean that “all men are created equal”?

Equality means we all have the same chance. It also means that we’re really not all that different. The color of your skin, the religion you choose to practice, the gender of the person you love doesn’t affect your value to your neighbor whether they are in Mandan or New York City. We all still want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our faith in each other means that we don’t hamper the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our neighbor either. They too can live free and be happy.

To make equality happen, we have to work against our brains. Because our brains are so good at helping us make decision shortcuts, our brains have developed biases against our neighbors. We may instinctively cross the street when we see a young black man in a hoody or avoid chitchat with a woman 30

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Our faith in each other means that we don’t hamper the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our neighbor. wearing a hijab while in line for the bathroom because of what we’ve seen in movies or on TV or heard from our friends and family. Logically, we know that a hoody or hijab doesn’t change who a person is or how they will behave towards us, but our brain made the decision for us. So, we have to outsmart our brains.

Working against our brain is incredibly hard. Because of those brain shortcuts, we have to slow down, see the external differences in each other, and consciously decide to treat each other with respect.

Because our biases help our brain make quick decisions, we have to slow the decision process down. In our fast-paced world driven by quick decisions, slowing down has become a near-constant struggle. Taking a beat or a breath when we’re faced with someone who does not look like us or how we think people should look takes practice.

Imagine, you’re at a stoplight. The car in front of you—driven by a fellow human—has a bumper sticker with the name of a candidate who you find detestable. When the light changes, are you more of less likely to honk if the car takes a few seconds to step on the gas? Or what if you’re walking into the grocery store and a young woman is struggling with her bags? Are you more or less likely to help her if she is covered in tattoos? We know that the bumper sticker and tattoos shouldn’t affect our behavior, but they do. The breath we need to take is to ask if the bumper sticker or the tattoos is changing how we should treat another human.

Once we’ve taken the breath, we need to see our differences. What makes us different is our experiences and relationships. Our skin color defines who we are because we have different experiences, privileges, and disadvantages because of it. Our religious beliefs may affect when, how, or whether we worship while for some their faith is a huge part of who they are. This applies to nearly every difference between two people, whether that be gender, sexual orientation, race, marital or familial status, etc.

We can’t pretend that we’re not all different. When we say we’re colorblind or don’t care about differences means that we don’t appreciate that we all are different. Seeing these differences appreciates what makes us all unique. However, our differences should not affect our approach to one another.

Logic tells us that we all have a heart, a family, friends, and people and things that we value. We also know that every person is deserving of our respect. Our differences should not affect our respectful treatment and kindness with each other. I will help the tattooed young woman when her groceries spill out over the parking lot, I will not honk just because the car has the hateful bumper sticker, I will not cross the street because of a hoody, I will say hello to my fellow bathroom-line waiters. The breath we need to take relies less on the shortcuts in our brain than the recognition of the difference and commitment to respect and kindness.

The commitment to respect and kindness also relies on our faith in each other. FDR wanted us all to believe that we could overcome the obstacle of the largest military invasion in history because we were in it together. He rightfully believed when we work together we can overcome obstacles to help each other be free and happy. This working together—even if we’re not fighting a war or a common enemy—ensures that we can all be different while achieving our goals of life, liberty, and pursuing happiness regardless of how elusive happiness might be. l 32

Our Founding Fathers believed in the importance and power of the humanities to change people’s lives.

Indeed, our nation’s history has been a great adventure in ideas. Humanities North Dakota was created to continue this proud tradition. Our mission is to provide people opportunities to engage with and debate lifechanging ideas, because democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens.

Established in 1974, Humanities North Dakota is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to providing lifelong learning opportunities to the citizens of North Dakota. We are not a state agency.

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Mark Trahant is editor of Indian Country Today.

MARK TRAHANT Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock, was appointed to lead Indian Country Today as a digital enterprise on March 1, 2018.

Indian Country Today moved its headquarters to the Walter Cronkite School for Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in downtown Phoenix. Under Trahant’s leadership, Indian Country Today is expanding into television with a news show that will soon be available through the PBS network.

He has been a professor at the University of North Dakota, the University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Idaho and the University of Colorado.

He is known for his election reporting in Indian Country, developing the first comprehensive database of American Indians and Alaska Natives running for office.

His research has been cited in publications ranging from The New York Times to The Economist. (And most recently, Teen Vogue.)

The election of 2018 was an extraordinary event, and Trahant launched a journalism initiative as a response: The first-ever live coverage of election night by more than 40 Native media professionals. Six hours of television programming was produced at the FNX studios in California, and viewers were able to get reports about the dozens of Native candidates running for office, including the election of the first-ever Native women to Congress and to a statewide office, Lt. Gov. of Minnesota.

Trahant has been a reporter for PBS’ Frontline series. His most recent Frontline piece, “The Silence,” was about sexual abuse by priests in an Alaska Native village.

He was the editorial page editor of the Seattle PostIntelligencer and has worked for The Arizona Republic, Salt Lake Tribune, The Seattle Times, the Navajo Times Today, and the Sho-Ban News.

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DEMOCRACY AS DISRUPTION

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by Mark Trahant

W

hen we are surrounded by chaos, it’s easy to get angry or somehow

be unsettled by it all. But there is another side: It’s just disruption. We are living in a time of change, fascinating changes that will define the next era.

Harvard Business School professor and disruption guru Clayton Christensen once described disruption as a force that displaces an existing market, industry, or technology and produces something new and more efficient worthwhile. It is at once destructive and creative.

Change is inevitable. We are always experiencing change, both slowly and quickly. Much of that change could be thought of as innovation. We get a new device, for example, that makes our work easier.

I have really seen this unfold in the newspaper business. I started a tribal newspaper when I was a teenager in the 1970s. The technology then had evolved so that a small newspaper could typeset in-house. We wrote our stories on an IBM Selectric. Then we typed them again into a composing machine. Strips of photo paper

would emerge, we would wax the back of the pages, place them on a board, and take a picture with a very large, room-filling camera. That picture would be used to make a metal plate. Then we would print a newspaper. A lot of money and people were required for that production.

A decade or so later that process was obsolete. We wrote stories on a computer and electronically that material was transferred to a layout page and ultimately went directly to the printer. Think of all the steps that were saved. We typed once, hit a few buttons, and then printed a newspaper.

All those new ways of doing things were great for the newspaper business. It did not take a lot of capital to start a small paper, and the money required was simply to hire and pay people, not the production of the product itself.

That was innovation. Better tools. An easier way to accomplish the task. And newspapers were rewarded with profits. One newspaper owner joked that owning a press was a license to print money forever.

But forever didn’t last very long.

The new tools didn’t change everything, and the newspaper world was soon to be hit by a disruptive force—the 37

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Nothing we could do could change the fact that we were looking at a generation of citizens who would not consume information by reading ink on paper. Disruption.

Internet. Newspapers went from being extraordinarily valuable enterprises to struggling, often debt-burdened institutions, in a relatively short time.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where I worked, was founded in 1863 – and ceased publication as a newspaper in 2009. That trend picked up across the country with newspapers giving up daily publication or going out of business altogether.

There were two things going on at the same time that destroyed our business.

First, the Internet was a better way for people to buy cars, look for jobs, or rent apartments. Online people could find exactly what they wanted instead of reading through columns of classified ads. Our way was more expensive and less efficient. Second, and just as important, a demographic wave crashed on our beach.

Young people did not connect with stories the same way that previous generations did.

We kept telling ourselves fibs: Oh, they’ll read when they get older, when they buy a house. Oh, they’ll read when they start voting. Nope. Nothing we could do could change the fact that we were looking at a generation of citizens who would not consume information by reading ink on paper. Disruption.

We knew this was happening. I was involved with several “reinvention projects.” We developed a team of people who were tasked with thinking through these changes and developing a strategy 38

and a response.

I had perhaps the wildest idea. One that was rejected immediately. I suggested that we give up on younger readers entirely and focus our printed news product on Baby Boomers. We are a huge generation.

We live for a long time. We could be good customers for, say thirty more years before the newspaper goes out of business.

Well, no.

The disruptive force was not technology. It was a change in the very core of how people thought about reading, advertising, and the work of journalism.

That disruptive force continues today with so many ramifications, ranging from “fake news” to social media.

I’d like to think that my Native American ancestors would have been cool with this disruption. We are, after all, a people of disruption.

There is new evidence that the First People hunted mastodons some 14,000 years ago using tools made of antlers.

Think of the scale of that enterprise.

Teamwork must have been an essential element in bringing down and sharing an animal that huge.

Then after a disruption, we learned to survive in other ways, hunting fish, buffalo, or in some places, growing food. We figured out what worked.

We are a people of disruption, and so now much of the change around us should be familiar territory—not the technology, but the ideas.

Indian Country Today is an example of at least attempting to embrace disruption.

We are building our news operation around the idea that the mobile phone is the most powerful news vehicle ever invented. Think about it. Our readers are always “connected” to news. They look at the phone every few minutes. Even better, they can use that phone to contribute content. It’s not one way, but a back and forth medium.

So what do our readers think about this? We are only a year-plus (the old newspaper went dark in 2017) into this experiment, but our growth is stunning.

Mobile users are now 80 percent of Indian Country Today’s readership. And among new readers that number is 95 percent mobile. Readers see this as the future.

Even better, Indian Country Today is reaching a younger audience. In the past month, the analytics show the 25-34 demographic group at nearly a quarter of Indian Country Today’s readership. It’s our number one age group. (How many in the news media can say that?)

This younger audience is important for two reasons. First, it’s essential that this age group be interested in news and public affairs, and, second, this is a critical cohort for advertisers. (Older readers are considered to have already made up their minds about products.)

We are also disrupting the business model, borrowing much of what we do

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from public television and radio. We are a nonprofit and raise money as part of our business—and that’s ok. It keeps our news free for everyone.

We even take this to an extreme. Indian Country Today has told tribal newspapers, radio stations, and TV enterprises that all of our content is for them to use freely. So a story published in Indian Country Today can (and is) showing up in a variety of tribal media, from the Sho-Ban News to the MHA Times.

In a previous era, we tried to protect content. It was exclusive. But when news moves at digital speed, that’s nonsense.

Disruption also means rethinking what medium we work in. Are we print?

Digital? Video? Those are questions that we cannot answer except to say, yes. The next generation of reporters will shoot stories on their mobile device post to our platform, and coming soon we will offer a video version of Indian Country Today on public television and radio stations.

And that media report will be consumed in so many ways. Many will watch on their phones, some will record on a video recorder and watch when convenient, and some will watch at the appointed hour on their local public television station. In this era of disruption, there is no one way to reach people except where they are.

Our most recent disruption was the last election. Six weeks before Election Day, we realized it was going to be an

extraordinary event. So we decided to create a five-hour live broadcast hiring Native American journalists from around the country to tell that story. We had reporters from Alaska to Washington, D.C. We had interviews with the first two Native American women that were ever elected to Congress, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-New Mexico, and Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, as well as two candidates for governor, Paulette Jordan, a Democrat running in Idaho, and Andria Tupola, a Republican in Hawaii.

Earlier this year I was speaking in northern Minnesota. A young Ojibwe woman came up to me and said she watched every minute of our election night coverage. She said she was crying because, for the first time in her life, the stories on her television were about what she wanted to know, news about the Native candidates.

My favorite story from election night: Peggy Flanagan, then the Lt. Gov.-elect of Minnesota, had given her speech and was ready to leave the stage. Our reporter chased her into the basement saying “You can’t leave until you talk to Indian Country Today.” She did. Live.

The Flanagan interview by Mary Annette Pember was also a good example of how we stretched technology to make this work. We did not have access or the money for satellite trucks, but we wanted a two-way conversation with reporters and those running for office. We did this

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by broadcasting directly from a mobile phone. But if that’s not cool enough: A second phone, hidden on the reporter, with an earphone, was used so that the anchors in the studio could ask questions live. Disruption.

We will need to embrace disruption.

Name the issue: Climate change, election mechanics, education systems, health care —and all are calling for a second, third, or fourth look at the very nature of the problem.

Turning back the page to the newspaper world. My favorite comic strip was “Pogo” about an all-wise possum. The author, Walt Kelly, had the character say: “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.” That is disruption: figuring out how to take advantage of the chaos and make it something new. l

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The U.S. Citizenship test features 100 civics questions. Hopeful American citizens are asked up to 10 of these during an interview and have to answer six correctly to pass.

Would you become a U.S. citizen on the first try? Take our quiz to find out.

1. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?

2. How many amendments does the Constitution have?

3. Name one branch or part of the government.

4. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?

5. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?

6. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government.

What is one power of the federal government?

7. What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen?

8. When was the Constitution written?

9. Who did the United States fight in World War II?

10. Name one U.S. territory.

ANSWERS 1. speech, religion, assembly, press, petition the government 2. twenty-seven (27) 3. Congress, legislative, President, executive, the courts, judicial 4. the Speaker of the House 5. nine (9) 6. to print money, to declare war, to create an army, to make treaties 7. give up loyalty to other countries, defend the Constitution and laws of the United States, serve in the U.S. military (if needed), serve (do important work for) the nation (if needed), be loyal to the United States 8. 1787 9. Japan, Germany, and Italy 10. Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam

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HUMANITY IS MESSY AND SO ARE OUR OFFICES. Because of this, we occasionally misspell or omit a donor’s name. If you are the recipient of our human frailty, please let us know so we can learn from our mistakes and correct our errors.

RECENT DONORS Wisdom $25,000 and above

Lifelong Learning $100-$499 William R. Caraher Mark E. Clemons Marilyn G. Cunningham Robert Dambach Michele & Robert Daugherty In memory of Edward & Vivian Mashek Earl & Patricia Donaldson In memory of Andew D’Alessandro Melissa Gjellstad Nancy Guy & Greg Stites Thomas & Katie Hutchens Carol Kapsner Della & Wayne Martinsen Impact Foundation Randy & Bridgette Readel Elizabeth Sund Teresa Lyn Tande Stephanie Weyrauch

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800-338-6543 info@humanitiesnd.org humanitiesnd.org

On October 5, 2019, join us as we explore the American Dream. Should it continue to be the standard against which all Americans measure

GAMECHANGER: AMERICAN DREAM 2019 SCHEDULE

themselves? How do we define what achievement

October 5, 2019 9am – 5pm Belle Mehus Auditorium Bismarck, ND Schedule subject to change.

For tickets more details and the most current schedule, visit gamechangernd.com 42

looks like?

During a presidential address in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated “Four Freedoms” which he believed embodied the fundamental human rights that a functioning democracy would fight to protect. These freedoms represent the four cornerstones of the American Dream. These freedoms are:

Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. ​ Four GameChangers will take the stage to represent each of these freedoms and provide their insight into how Roosevelt’s vision has—or hasn’t—been realized.

Is there any way to create and uphold an American Dream that includes all of us, or should we hit the snooze button for a few more minutes?

8:00-9:00am Registration

2:00-2:15pm BREAK

9:00-9:05am

Opening Announcements

2:15-2:25pm Entertainment

9:05-9:25am

An Illustrated History of the American Dream

2:25-3:05pm

9:25-9:55am

FREEDOM OF SPEECH NATE BOYER

3:05-3:20pm BREAK

9:55-10:10am Entertainment

FREEDOM FROM WANT CASEY GERALD

3:20-3:35pm Entertainment 3:35-4:15pm

MEETING OF THE MINDS ALL GAMECHANGERS

10:45-10:55am Entertainment

4:15-4:25pm

GAMECHANGER AWARD UNITED TRIBES TECHNICAL COLLEGE/BISMARCK TRIBUNE

10:55-11:10am BREAK

4:25-4:40pm Entertainment

11:10-11:45am

4:40-4:45pm Closing

10:10-10:25am BREAK 10:25-10:45am

DEMOCRACY AS DISRUPTION MARK TRAHANT

FREEDOM OF WORSHIP KATE BISCHOFF

4:45-5:00pm

Meet & Greet/Signing

11:45-11:50am Announcements 11:50am-1:10pm LUNCH 1:10-1:20pm Entertainment 1:20-2:00pm

FREEDOM FROM FEAR APARNA NANCHERLA

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HUMANITIES NORTH DAKOTA WELCOMES LINDA STEVE TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

LINDA STEVE, DICKINSON Growing up in Minnesota, Linda Steve graduated from Moorhead State University with a bachelor of arts degree in accounting. She has been a Certified Public Accountant in Dickinson since 1981 and is now semi-retired in her private practice.

Steve has served as a member and officer of many boards of directors and committees, both state and local, including nonprofit and for profit organizations. She lists among her favorite those which expanded her interest in the arts and humanities. She has two adult children. Her interests include reading, traveling, exploring other cultures, and walking for exercise, as well as her morning coffee and politics.

Steve recently worked with Humanities North Dakota to establish a Think&Drink happy hour discussion series in Dickinson. Steve says, “Serving to bring the Think&Drink program to Dickinson has been just one small way that I can help promote the humanities in North Dakota.

Through the humanities we can open the minds of people to the world!”

We have ways of making you think.

HND Board of Directors

Staff

CHAIR Elizabeth Sund, Minot

VICE CHAIR Ann Crews Melton, Bismarck

Mark Clemons, Watford City Patty Corwin, Fargo Marilyn Foss, Bismarck Eric L. Johnson, Grand Forks Joan Locken, Oakes Leslie W. Peltier, Belcourt Carol Kapaun Ratchenski, Fargo Ken Schmierer, Ellendale Linda Steve, Dickinson Iris Swedlund, Velva Sarah Vogel, Bismarck

Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt, Executive Director Kenneth Glass, Associate Director Kayla Schmidt, Program Coordinator Elizabeth Ehlis, Intern

Humanities North Dakota is a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The humanities inspire our vision of a thoughtful, respectful, actively engaged society that will be able to meet the challenge of sustaining our democracy across the many divisions of modern society and deal responsibly with the shared challenges we currently face as members of an interdependent world.

800-338-6543 info@humanitiesnd.org

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AMERICAN

DREAM OCTOBER 5, 2019

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ideas festival