Why mental health policy is personal and political

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has described mental health as “the defining public health crisis of our time.” He has used his position as a megaphone to highlight how the country is doing and where it falls short, particularly in the treatment of young people who are suffering.

It’s a complex topic worthy of discussion, and not just in May — Mental Health Awareness Month. How can the mental health of young people in America be protected from influences that could harm? Legislators are taking note; but is it enough?

Equal Time host Mary C. Curtis speaks with Julie Scelfo, executive director of Get Media Savvy, a nonprofit initiative devoted to fighting media chaos and fostering media literacy, about what is needed from policymakers and the public to tackle the youth mental health crisis and rebuild “our civic fabric.”

Many Americans really are thinking terrible things — and proudly saying them out loud

“You know why I love Donald Trump? He is the first one who says what everyone’s thinking.” Anyone who has covered Donald Trump through two presidential campaigns — one successful and one that ultimately flopped — has heard that explanation lots of times. I know I have.

When asked exactly which out-loud thoughts resonated, answers varied. But the folks I spoke with at rallies especially reveled in insults once considered, if not taboo, then too edgy to say out loud — about immigrants, city dwellers and Black NFL players who knelt to protest police brutality. Things like that.

I dutifully recorded what caused all the excitement among those who stood in long lines to hear and see their idol, though, ironically, many streamed out of venues large and small once Trump’s shouted litany of grievances stretched past the one-hour mark.

But I wondered just how many Americans could be included in the assumed masses who were thinking such thoughts and felt exhilaration when a presidential candidate spewed them so convincingly.

Turns out Trump’s schtick worked in 2016 and came close in 2020. And after a recent free-for-all town hall on CNN that saw a curated audience of his followers laughing and applauding as he dodged questions on respecting democracy and mocked a woman who convinced a jury that he was liable for defamation and sexual abuse, I’m worried if not surprised.

There are plenty of Americans on the same page as presidential hopeful Donald Trump, and that includes leaders in the Republican Party.

What once was transgressive now defines the GOP, with politicians falling over themselves to demonize and scapegoat.

Is former battleground North Carolina becoming a Florida clone?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina is a state on the verge. Of what? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Some residents are thrilled that the state seems to be politically falling in line with a bunch of its neighbors to the south, most recently with an abortion bill. Others, particularly those who felt protected in relatively progressive urban bubbles, aren’t happy with the shift and are vocalizing their displeasure.

To back up a bit, in the past few years, the state’s tint could reasonably have been described as a reddish shade of purple. You could see it in its Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, with moderate policies and a calm demeanor that shielded his resolve, and a competing state legislature with a Republican majority big enough to flex its muscles but still subject to a veto when it pushed too far right.

There were the occasional cautionary tales, as in 2016, when then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the infamous HB2, or as it was nicknamed, the “Bathroom Bill.” It was the state GOP’s response to a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance, particularly the part that said people could use the bathroom for the gender with which they identified.

That installment in the ever-present rural vs. urban culture clash attracted the national spotlight as well as late-night comics’ jokes. Both proved harsh.

When concerts — including “The Boss,” Bruce Springsteen — and beloved basketball tournaments were canceled, once-bold politicians backtracked and McCrory lost his reelection race to Cooper, who is now approaching the end of his second term.

But memories are short, especially after the 2022 midterms, when the stars and voters aligned for North Carolina Republicans.

While Democrats did better than expected nationally, Republicans held their own and even made gains in North Carolina. Ted Budd, who as a House member voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, won the U.S. Senate seat of the retiring Richard Burr, one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Donald Trump on an impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.

That’s a philosophical, if not party, change.

In the state General Assembly, Republicans won a veto-proof majority in the state Senate and came one vote short in the House. The state’s Supreme Court changed as well, with a 4-3 Democratic majority shifting to a 5-2 Republican advantage.

When Democratic state Rep. Tricia Cotham, months after her election in a blue district, donned a red dress for her April announcement of a switch to the GOP, any gubernatorial veto became vulnerable to an override.

A word about Cotham: Shocked constituents and folks who knew her when — meaning: all her political life — asked how someone who campaigned with support from those who supported LGBTQ rights, someone who spoke of her own abortion when she stood firm in support of reproductive freedom a few short years ago, who had said, as The Charlotte Observer pointed out, she would “stand up to Republican attacks on our health care” as well as “oppose attacks on our democracy, preserve fundamental voting rights, and ensure all voices are heard” could turn on a dime? Well, she explained, Democrats hurt her feelings; many feeling burned by the bait-and-switch are not quite buying it.

Attention, though, is now focused on a GOP agenda in overdrive, mirroring moves in Ron DeSantis-led Florida, with a few extras.

Why the rush, in a state with registered voters roughly split into thirds among Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated, and where elections up and down the ballot are always close?

Because Republicans can.

Sacrificing democracy to belong to a shrinking ‘club’

It was a scene both disturbing and expected: former President Donald Trump embracing one of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the intention of overthrowing the results of the 2020 election.

Micki Larson-Olson was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of resisting police as they tried to clear the grounds that day. Yet, apparently, there are no hard feelings against Trump. In fact, quite the opposite. After driving from Texas to the New Hampshire campaign stop of the current candidate and former president, Larson-Olson got emotional over the recognition, the photographic record of her meeting with him, and his autograph on her backpack.

“And he gave me the pen,” she said, according to a Washington Post report. That she belongs to a QAnon offshoot is also no surprise.

I understand.

She was thrilled to be a member of the club, one that is losing the culture and has been rejected at the ballot box, but needs to feel special, as special as the insecure little boys who once locked their ramshackle clubhouse before scrawling “no girls allowed” on the door.

All those Washington invaders who throw around the word “patriot” as they trash America’s ideals — all those “true believers” in election fraud myths, the Kari Lakes and Mike “My Pillow Guy” Lindells of the world, the veterans and police officers who found themselves on the wrong side of the law that January day — I suspect they realize in their heart of hearts that Joe Biden tallied the most votes in the last presidential election.

Their beef is where many of those votes came from.

Democratic candidates Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Biden may have won the presidency fair and square, but each failed to gain a majority of the white vote. That means a coalition of, in Trump loyalists’ eyes, “other” voters put them over the top — and that breaks the brains of a lot of folks.

A fantasy world of election-rigging schemes attempts to cover up their resentments, but instead it shines a spotlight on them.

Will Democrats raise the volume on expressing what they believe in?

Does this mean Democrats don’t have to be afraid anymore?

You know what I mean. Though Democratic politicians and the party itself stand for certain values and policies, sometimes, when they promote and defend them in the public square, well, they do it in a whisper. This is despite the popularity of many of these views, and despite the fact that the folks they are trying to persuade with cautious hedging were never going to vote for them in the first place.

It’s a problem Republicans traditionally have not had. No matter how extreme or unpopular the opinion, you have known exactly where they stand. Hit them with truth or logic, science or math, and you could bet they would double down. And it has worked; bluster and browbeating have the ability to drown out most everything else.

All that may be changing.

Equal Time: How Black women, America’s invisible ‘saviors,’ can rewrite the narrative

With Black women rising to prominence in politics, the arts and every field in between, it could be said that it is their moment in history. But dig deeper and the picture is far more nuanced. When expectations are high and mothers still counsel daughters to “work twice as hard” to succeed, what is the cost? Is there enough attention paid to the concerns of Black women all day, every day, and not just when they are called on to “save the world”? And does the current, sometimes toxic political climate create additional stress?

In this episode of Equal Time, host Mary C. Curtis talks with Inger E. Burnett-Zeigler, associate professor of psychology and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, whose clinical interests include stress management and wellness. Based on her own experience, extensive work and research, she offers advice on resources and services that can help everyone, especially Black women, show up for community and family, while paying attention to their own needs.

Fear should not be a deal breaker when debating tough topics

Is healthy debate a thing of the past? You know, when people can disagree without being disagreeable, respect one another and work toward a solution that might involve compromise.

You’d be forgiven for giving up on the concept or thinking it never existed, especially as discussions of what books should or should not be on school library shelves turn into school board shouting matches with teachers subject to interrogation or relegated to the sidelines. And don’t even try to have a civil chat on where COVID-19 may have originated or what could be the most effective treatment. That’s the best way to start a fight while ignoring the next pandemic that could be right around the corner.

That’s why it was interesting to talk with the directors of “The Big Payback,” which premiered on PBS in January. Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow didn’t exactly choose an easy topic as the subject of their documentary. The two are traveling across the country, with recent stops at historically Black colleges and universities in North Carolina, to foster debate and perhaps understanding of reparations, a topic that could charitably be called controversial and one that’s been making recent headlines.

The film spotlights the push by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, for HR 40, which would establish the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.” The bill, named after the post-Civil War broken promise of “40 acres and a mule” to the formerly enslaved, itself has a long history: It was first proposed in 1989 by then-Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who died in 2019.

In the film, the congresswoman’s fight on the federal level is paired with the ultimately successful effort of Robin Rue Simmons, a former alderwoman in Evanston, Ill., whose community advocacy targeted the very real racial discrimination in housing laws and policies — history that determined current disparities in her city, history that could be documented with facts and figures. That the solution eventually reached was criticized by some for its narrow focus, for being too much or too little or much too late, is also the point.

It was, however, a start for Evanston, and it happened only because of healthy debate.

Two visions of America’s past — and future

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” And just to make sure everyone in the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference and those watching at home got the message, former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated that last line: “I am your retribution.”

Trump revisited his “American carnage” 2017 inauguration speech to again paint a picture of an angry and divided America — with a promise to lead a charge into battle if elected.

On the same weekend, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that day on March 7, 1965, when marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge heading to the capital city of Montgomery for voting rights and for justice in the name of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson — who was killed by an Alabama state trooper — were met with violence from law enforcement as the world watched.

The result of the marchers’ resolve and sacrifice was the Voting Rights Act, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

“No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” Biden said Sunday. “We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth — of who we are as a nation.”

And, after renewing his call to strengthen those same voting rights citizens had demanded that day in 1965, Biden concluded: “My fellow Americans, on this Sunday of our time, we know where we’ve been and we know, more importantly, where we have to go: forward together.”

At CPAC at National Harbor, Md., last week, the speaker’s list included Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, whose followers attacked his country’s capital city after his loss; and Kari Lake, still in election denial about her own November defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race. Notice the theme?

Attendees could choose between sessions on “Finish the Wall, Build the Dome” or “No Chinese Balloon Above Tennessee,” but there was no room for a lesson on the American history made on that Selma bridge 58 years ago.

There’s no escape from any country’s complicated history

America is so invested in its exceptionalism that it sometimes seems to take any glance abroad as heresy. When even delving deep into America’s reality has become taboo for attention-grabbing politicians eager to whitewash the present and past, looking beyond our shores for both lessons and warnings is certainly a no-no. Me, I like to explore how other countries tell their stories and learn just what they think of ours.

That’s not to say I lean into criticism of my own country overseas. In fact, I seem to grow more defensive about America the farther I roam, sort of like when someone else talks trash about the family members you’re constantly feuding with and you reflexively jump in to sing their praises. I reserve the right to get cranky about America’s shortcomings — as a citizen who wants it to do better. But if anyone without skin in the game chimes in, I immediately start waving the Stars and Stripes.

It’s funny, though, how a recent trip to Portugal illuminated commonalities rather than differences in human nature when it comes to how countries build the stories they tell about themselves.

Looking for a relaxing vacation, I left a country embroiled in how history should be taught and memorialized, and traveled to one where similar debates are taking place.

Portugal is confronting how it represents the country’s involvement in the international slave trade, which spanned the 16th through 19th centuries, as well as 1960s and 1970s battles to retain control of colonies in Africa. How does any country decide which parts to highlight and which details it would rather gloss over or leave out altogether?

I visited castles and forts where conquerors and kings resided, opulent palaces, beautifully preserved. In Sintra, the brooding Castle of the Moors is a stalwart reminder of their rule over the region centuries ago. I stood next to the giant Monument to the Discoveries in Belem, a tribute to the country’s so-called Age of Discoveries, with Henry the Navigator at the prow and other names we learned in our own history books here — Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan.

It is an amazing and impressive structure, the backdrop for countless tourist photos, including mine.

But, of course, those discoveries that gathered wealth, so much from the trade in human beings, came at a cost. Are the enslaved and the free Black people who helped build the country just a footnote in the official story?

When tuneful nostalgia turns toxic: The old days weren’t good for everyone

When songwriters Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager penned “Everything Old Is New Again” decades ago, I wonder if they could have imagined the jaunty, oft-covered tune would one day be turned into a blueprint for some very dangerous doings.

In 2023, turning to the past to find solutions for present challenges is taking the country down roads far darker than the song’s images of mellow trumpets, Bacardi cocktails and “dancin’ at your Long Island Jazz Age parties.”

Today, those glancing “backward when forward fails,” as a verse explains, have landed on child labor and Jim Crow — not exactly the good old days. And the citizens of every age whose lives could be turned upside down don’t feel like singing.

In Iowa and Minnesota, bills working their way through the system float an idea that was abandoned when even the cruelest among Americans couldn’t stomach policies that permitted children to toil in sweatshops and on assembly lines, stealing time from education that might have led to brighter futures. Some of the work could possibly endanger their lives.

But what’s a country to do when there is need — the need for low-income families to earn more money and for businesses to fill hiring goals? Something once thought repugnant can look pretty seductive if the alternative, trying to level the playing field with empathetic policy, is out of the question. So, why not reach back to a time when inequality was the point, tolerated by those who benefited and ignored by those who didn’t feel the pain?

And by jobs, I’m not talking about babysitting or scooping ice cream.

“Legislators in Iowa and Minnesota introduced bills in January to loosen child labor law regulations around age and workplace safety protections in some of the country’s most dangerous workplaces,” The Washington Post reported. “Minnesota’s bill would permit 16- and 17-year-olds to work construction jobs. The Iowa measure would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants.”

What could go wrong? Well, the Labor Department has been taking an interest, with investigations already looking into how much industry is or is not protecting younger workers.

Those actions haven’t stopped other states from exploring ways to loosen regulations.

Such work will predictably affect poor Americans more than most. I hardly think wealthy kids would choose working in a meatpacking plant over an internship in a chosen field. Such internships or jobs with little or no pay have been nonstarters for a young person who has to help the family pay the bills.

And, in this country, with its persistent racial wealth gaps, minorities might no doubt disproportionately be the ones working longer hours in more dangerous jobs.

There’s nothing wrong with hard work. At a young age, my grandfather toiled on oyster boats off the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a job so tough that the move to the big city of Baltimore and the life of a longshoreman on the docks were an improvement. But in his time, he had fewer options. Young people today certainly do not, and shouldn’t be too broke to exercise them.

Considering America’s history, it’s no surprise that minorities might be the first to feel any rollback of rights. In Mississippi, separate and unequal seems the reason for changes in the court and criminal justice systems, changes that have Jim Crow written all over them.

“A white supermajority of the Mississippi House,” reported Mississippi Today, “voted after an intense, four-plus hour debate to create a separate court system and an expanded police force within the city of Jackson — the Blackest city in America — that would be appointed completely by white state officials.” State Rep. Edward Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, Miss., referenced a state Constitution that removed voting rights from Black Mississippi citizens when he said during the debate, “This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again. … We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.’”

This is a state where districts are so gerrymandered that bills can sail through the legislature with the votes of its white GOP members, and not a single Democratic one. With the state’s history of citizens attending separate schools and churches, of living in separate neighborhoods, of treating its Black citizens as children who need to be controlled, the proposed bill looks less like a return to the past than business as usual.

That’s the problem with fond longing for a rosy past that never was. It ignores the reality of those who survived only because of the hope of a brighter, safer, more equitable future.