Today’s hosts are Clarence Boone and Vernon Williams.

Vernon Williams is also director of ARTI, the Africana Repertory Theatre of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), and  a Communication and Community Strategist at IUPUI. Each year he and ARTI produces ONYXFEST, Indy’s first and only theater festival dedicated to the stories of Black playwrights.

Tonight, he is joined by those writers and directors, who will be showcasing their craft during this year’s OnyxFest 2021 productions which runs October 7th through October 16th. For more information, visit OnyxFest.com.

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Today’s broadcast is a replay that originally aired on September 16, 2019.

Hosts William Hosea and Roberta Radovich spoke with three leaders in Monroe County’s opioid addiction recovery community to discuss the ravages of the opioid epidemic hitting Indiana and 2019’s South Central Opioid Summit (September 24, 2019, 7:30AM to 6:00PM). Our guests were:

2019’s South Central Opioid Summit was held at the Monroe County Convention Center at 302 South College Avenue, Bloomington, IN It aimed to have specialists, professionals, community leaders, people with lived experience, and concerned citizens join together to discuss, learn, and share innovative and evidence-based approaches from across the Monroe County community.

The theme of the 3rd annual summit was “Working As One – The Year of Integration”. Guest speakers and panelists included three of the nation’s most highly regarded experts:

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Today on Bring It On!, hosts Clarence Boone and William Hosea speak with James T. Averhart, the National President at Montford Point Marine Association, Inc., and Joe Geeter, the former Present and current National Director of Publications at Montford Point Marine Association, Inc.

Montford Point Marine Association, Inc. is the organization for The Montford Point Marines Memorial. It is dedicated to the legacy of nearly 20,000 African-Americans who served in the Marine Corps but trained in the segregated training facility known as Montford Point Camp in Jacksonville, NC from August 26, 1942, until the camp was decommissioned on September 9, 1949. The memorial tells the story through architecture and sculpture. The memorial is located within the LeJeune Memorial Gardens in Jacksonville, NC.

As of June 25, 1941, racial discrimination in the defense industry or in government was prohibited with the signing of Executive Order 8802 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Owing to the threat of strike and a march on Washington, D.C. by the first African-American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the need for more recruits to fight WWII, President Roosevelt desegregated the armed forces and the federal government.

President Averhart, and former president Greeter, of the Montford Point Marine Association, Inc. explain more about the grand history of Montford Point and the role of African American soldiers in WWII.

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Today’s show is a rebroadcast from September 28, 2020.

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020, and Thursday, October 1, 2020, IU’s Department of History presented three events designed to bring together IU and the greater Bloomington community in a conversation focused on race, white supremacy, and voter suppression. 2020’s speaker for the virtual town hall meeting on Thursday, October 1, from 6 to 8 PM, was Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center. Beforehand on Wednesday, September 30, there was a Virtual Justice Fair (2 to 4 PM) and a Virtual Organizing Workshop (6 to 8 PM) with Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson.

On tonight’s rebroadcast, hosts Clarence Boone and William Hosea spent the hour with Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Dr. Amrita Myers to give an overview of some of the issues that will be explored in depth during the workshop:

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is a 34 year-old, Affrilachian (Black Appalachian), working-class woman, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. Ash-Lee is the first Black woman executive director of the Highlander Research & Education Center, a social justice leadership training school and cultural center founded in 1932. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, they help create spaces — at Highlander and in communities — where people gain knowledge, hope, and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. Ash-Lee is a long-time activist working against environmental racism in central and southern Appalachia – and has fought for workers’ rights, racial justice, women and LGBTQUIA+ rights, reproductive justice, international human rights, and led-intergenerational social movements across the South. She serves on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly and is a nationally recognized leader in the Movement for Black Lives.

Amrita Myers, Ph.D., is the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University. Her research focuses on issues of race, gender, freedom, sex, and power and the ways in which these constructs intersect with one another in the lives of black women in the Old South. Her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston (2011), examines the lives of free black women, both legal and de facto, in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1790-1860. Her second book, Remembering Julia: A Tale of Sex, Race, Power, and Place (2019),  examines the limits of agency, power, and privileges denied to black women through the exploration of the decades-long relationship of Julia Chinn, a woman of color, and U.S. congressman, senator, and one-term Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, a white man.

Recordings of  the virtual Defending Democracy events can be found here.

CREDITS: The hosts of today’s show are Clarence Boone and William Hosea.

This program was originally aired on December 14, 2020.

Hosts Clarence Boone and William Hosea spend the hour with Karen Freeman-Wilson, the two-term mayor of Gary, IN from 2012 to 2019 and the Attorney General of Indiana from 2000 to 2001. Fr. Mayor Freeman-Wilson was born and raised in Gary. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Freeman-Wilson has had a long and distinguished career of public service in Indiana. She served as a judge in the Gary City Court from 1995 to 2000 and it was there that she founded the first drug treatment court in the State of Indiana.  In 2000 she was appointed Indiana’s Attorney General by Governor Frank O’Bannon to serve the remaining eleven months of the term of Jeff Modisett.

After failing to win re-election in 2001, Freeman-Wilson went back to her work of creating greater access to drug rehabilitation services and more effective treatments. In 2001 she became the CEO of the nonprofit National Association of Drug Court Professional. In 2007, she also became a member of the board of directors for Hythian, Inc., the manufacturer of Prometa, a treatment for methamphetamine addiction, which she helped to have used in the Gary drug court on a trial basis.

Before becoming the first female mayor of Gary, Indiana, she also was the Executive Director of the National Drug Court Institute and the Director of the Indiana Civil Rights Commission. After losing her bid for a third term as the Mayor of Gary, IN, she became the CEO of the Chicago Urban League in 2019.

CREDITS: The hosts of today’s show are Clarence Boone and William Hosea, with additional hosting help from Vernon Williams.

Today’s hosts Clarence Boone and Liz Mitchell continue last week’s discussion about COVID-19 in the classroom. This week they focus the discussion on the medical and scientific level with guests, Tom Hrisomalos, MD, and Carol Weiss-Kennedy.

Tom Hrisomalos, MD is an infectious disease specialist with IU Health Southern Indiana Physicians. His medical school, infectious disease fellowship, and internal medicine residency were all completed at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine, critical care medicine, and infectious disease. Dr. Hrisomalos has been practicing medicine for over 35 years and is a key member of the IU Health South Central Region’s fight against COVID-19.

Carol Weiss-Kennedy is the Director of Community Health for the IU Health South Central Region and has worked for over 40 years in the health and wellness field. Other professional experiences include serving as Program Director of Adult Health and Cardiopulmonary Rehab for the Monroe County YMCA from 1981 to 2002 and then on to work with Occupational Health at Bloomington Hospital. Carol was integral to the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination process in Bloomington.

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Today’s show focuses on the controversies surrounding  COVID-19 vaccinations and mandatory masking policies within schools. There has been increasing attention on this issue with the recent rapid spread of  Delta variant within the United States which has caused rising hospitalizations mostly among the unvaccinated.  To tackle this issue hosts Clarence Boone and Gloria Howell speak with Dr. Jeff Hauswald, the Superintendent of Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC). Dr. Hauswald is also joined by MCCSC Trustee Board member April Hennessey from District One and Erin Cooperman who joined the MCCSC Board of Trustees in April of 2021 after being selected by the Monroe County Circuit Court. Ms. Cooperman is a lecturer in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington.

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Today’s show focuses on the legal woes of former POTUS Donald J. Trump and those in his MAGA (Make America Great Again) nation. Hosts Clarence Boone and William Hosea are joined by USMC Retired Major General Craig Timberlake and IU Constitutional Professor Joseph Hoffman to discuss the current state of the MAGA nation.

A laundry list of current discussion topics related to the “Big Lie” might read as follows:

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Today’s show is from our archived and was originally aired on June 3, 2019.

This show is devoted to the topic of divorce. Host Clarence Boone speaks with Bloomington family law attorney Michelle Gregory about the causes of divorce and various aspects of life after divorce, including: 1) the emotional and psychological toll divorce has on ex-spouses and children; 2) the financial costs and economic impact that particularly women can expect; 3) how to manage an amicable divorce, custody arrangement, alimony and property distribution; 4) the benefit of protective orders; 5) explanations about what are alimony payments, and how are they structured in Indiana, are provided;  and, finally, 6) a discussion about her successes with the remediation process.

Michelle Gregory has been practicing matrimonial law in Monroe County, Morgan County, Owen County, Green County and Lawrence County for nearly fifteen years. Attorney Gregory was awarded a full scholarship to Southern Methodist University, and she graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration in 1997.

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