Democratic National Convention

• The sold-out installation event comes 6 months after the announcement of Dr. Haynes as Rev.
• Al Sharpton (NAN), Shavonne Arline-Bradley (NCNW), Dr. Michael Sorrell, Dr. Amos Brown, and Dr. Ron Daniels, among others.
• Tickets for the conference, which are $75 per person and inclusive of two meals provided throughout the day, are available for purchase online .
• The formal installation ceremony and the President's Inaugural Social Justice Conference is presented by Sound Design Studios, a Dallas based black owned production company.

• The three-day music festival, a first for Charlotte, will showcase more than 40 artists across three stages, spanning multiple genres and generations.
• "We're thrilled to support the ongoing effort to make our hometown of Charlotte a Music City in such a big way."
• Southern Entertainment, a national entertainment and production company based in Charlotte, N.C. is responsible for acclaimed music festivals across multiple states, including the sold-out Carolina Country Music Fest in Myrtle Beach SC and the Barefoot Country Music Fest in Wildwood, NJ.
• For more information about the Lovin' Life Music Fest, visit www.llmfclt.com .

• Sunak recently watered down his climate change mitigation policies, and refused to “speculate” on the future of rail project HS2.
• The Sunak government is seemingly unable to reverse a harmful narrative or maintain its own.
• But political leaders are successful when they present a grand narrative and find a way to connect themselves to it.
• Simply finding a bigger narrative is not enough – political leaders must be compelling characters within their narrative.

Contradictions in Sunak’s narrative

• The audience (in this case, the voting public) must feel able to personally connect with the narrative and the narrator.
• It is difficult to align yourself with a revival narrative, or an everyman narrative, from a position of privilege.
• It’s possible that Sunak’s wealth and privilege may render him singularly incapable of connecting to a bigger narrative at this moment in British history.

A narrative of decline

• As argued in an article in The Economist: “There is just one problem with this narrative.
• He may follow the example of Thatcher: when faced with a decline narrative, she chose not to reverse it but to embrace it – and blame it on her opponents.
• Whatever Sunak decides, reversing the narrative of an impending British collapse or leveraging decline to his advantage, his search for a grand narrative is already replete with incongruities.
• In the end, the stark realities outside Westminster may force him to acknowledge decline and his role within it.

• The late Daniel Ellsberg was a former government contractor who leaked the classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times.
• But perhaps the most lasting effect the publication of the Pentagon Papers had was on The New York Times, which had been a solidly pro-establishment newspaper.
• The Times almost chose not to publish the papers, since the editor and publisher worried about being sued or prosecuted by the federal government.
• But they also worried about ruining the international reputation of the U.S., which had reached new highs after World War II.

The conservative New York Times?

• I based this research on the journal of A.M. “Abe” Rosenthal, who was the top editor at the paper during this period.
• Rosenthal’s journal is held at the New York Public Library.
• To those who charge – wrongly – that The New York Times is a left-wing mouthpiece, it may come as a surprise that The New York Times of 1971 was a conservative institution, unwilling to make waves or make itself the story.
• The paper’s editorial and business leadership was also fairly politically conservative.
• None of the editors could “have won a prize in a flaming liberal contest,” he wrote.

Challenging the establishment

• The reputation of the entire nation was at stake, and this caused Rosenthal more worry than protecting the paper.
• Editors, executives and lawyers debated over whether stories about the papers could or should be published at all.
• For the Times, the Pentagon Papers stories were an early reform of many that would come under Rosenthal and his successors.
• They included expanded arts and cultural coverage, better treatment of women’s issues, and accountability measures such as a daily corrections box.