Becky Monroe is a lawyer, a researcher, and an advocate for communities that have been victimized by hate crimes and discrimination. Currently, she is the Director of the Divided Community Project at the Ohio State University Moritz School of Law, where she offers free consulting to cities that are grappling with bias-motivated conflict and violence. She comes to this role after serving as Counsel and as Interim Director of the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, as a Senior Policy Advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council, and – most recently – as the Director of the Stop Hate Project at the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Becky was in Chattanooga to keynote the first of our PIVOT POINT forums, which are working to build stronger policy responses to hate in communities like ours, and we’re very grateful for the time she gave us. On the website for her current project it says: “By divided community, we mean a community with conflicts that could potentially polarize its residents, such that people stop listening, tensions simmer, and, in regrettable instances, some “final straw” incident triggers civil unrest and disorder. No nation, including our own, can escape such tests.”

Our conversation looks at some of the places where those tests are taking place in America right now -- and what we can all do to make sure we come through them stronger and safer.

Referenced in this episode:

"Hate Crime & Discrimination in Chattanooga: A Preliminary Assessment of Data and a Proposed Community Response." The Mayor's Council Against Hate, January 2020.