Georgia State’s Rialto Center for the Arts, GSUTV, the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) and the Narrating Justice Project have introduced “Crucial Conversations,” a statewide TV series of civil, nonpartisan discussions addressing racial equity and reconciliation.
The next episode of “Crucial Conversations” will air on GPB Channel 8.3 and Comcast/XFINITY Channel 246 at 8 p.m. on Sunday Oct. 11, with rebroadcasts at 11 p.m. and on Wednesday Oct. 14, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. The episode will also be available on YouTube @RialtoCenter.
When work on this concept began in fall 2019 as a collaboration of the Rialto Center, GSUTV, CMII and the Narrating Justice Project, the team envisioned racial equity, reconciliation and solutions as a primary area of discussion aimed at the Georgia State community, its Atlanta neighbors and the nation.
Douglas Blackmon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestseller “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” professor at CMII and former host of the nationally distributed “American Forum,” is anchor and moderator of the series.
“In the wake of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests over the past several months, and the sea-change of perspectives happening now, the urgency of a well-planned and executed, honest, substantive and widely accessible dialogue—prominently featuring the voices and concerns of Atlanta students and young people—is even more obvious—and crucial,” Blackmon said.
The series premiered Sept. 13. In Episode 1, Blackmon talked with former Georgia State students and Atlanta journalists Alahna Lark and Shonda Harper. From this dialogue came a frank discussion about the anxieties of African Americans and students, the responsibilities of white and Black citizens, the role of the university and a sense of where progress is being made. Episode 2 airs Oct. 11 and Oct. 14 and focuses on the use of police force, the aspirations of the “Black Lives Matter” protests, how laws could be changed to reduce police-citizen confrontations and whether trust can be restored between law enforcement and young Americans. This is an important conversation between two student activists and Black Lives Matter supporters: Georgia State undergraduate Aliyah Jones and Ph.D. candidate in Race, and Urban Studies at Georgia State, George Greenidge and the former deputy chief of the Atlanta Police Department, now head of the Georgia State Police Department, Joseph Spillane.
These episodes will air on GPB Channel 8.3 and Comcast/XFINITY Channel 246 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., and YouTube, the second Sunday and Wednesday each month.
— Darlene Hamilton, Rialto Center for the Arts. Click here for the original posting to the university News Hub.