We Can Be podcast - The Heinz Endowments

In this second episode of a two-part series, Jewish community leaders share their distinct and moving perspectives of what happened on Oct. 27, 2018, when a lone gunman opened fire on worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Eleven people were killed in what would become the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in our nation’s history.   Host Gr...

The early morning of Oct. 27, 2018, began with promise, ethereally foggy with sunlight shining through the occasional crack in the haze to highlight the fall foliage.   Then, at 9:50 a.m., a lone gunman opened fire on worshipers at the  Tree of Life synagogue  in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, killing 11 people in what would become the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in our...

The story of Hazelwood is a familiar one: A vibrant riverfront community with an industrial past flourished until the late 1980s when the steel industry bottomed out, leaving longtime residents with a decimated economy.   But this archetypal American story is different, too, and the Rev. Tim Smith is a big reason why. As CEO of Center of Life and pastor of Keystone Church of Hazelwood , Tim has a...

San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz is the star of a grainy 8mm home movie that shows her as a toddler in her mother’s arms. Off-screen, her father asks what she wants to be when she grows up.    Her answer: “Alcalde de San Juan” – the mayor of San Juan.   She did indeed grow up to be the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the certainty she exuded as a small child flourished into a stro...

Jasiri Oronde Smith’s mom knew what she was doing when she chose the first name for her baby boy, the Swahili word for “brave.”    That baby grew up to be lauded hip-hop artist and activist Jasiri X .   As a co-founder of 1Hood Media , a collective of socially conscious activists who utilize art to raise awareness about social justice matters, Jasiri X is fostering a new generation of artists and...

In 1978, Lois Gibbs was a young mother with a child in a school that was found to be built over a toxic chemical waste dump site. Lois gained international attention and incredible momentum in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as she led the fight for environmental justice for children and families affected by the environmental disaster identified with the neighborhood where it occurred, Love Canal .  ...

“Flint is a story about what happens when the very people that are charged with keeping us safe care more about money or power than they do about you or your children,” says Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha.   Known as “Dr. Mona,” the pediatrician came to national prominence for exposing the water crisis in Flint, Mich., caused by high lead levels, and standing up to government officials who tried to downpl...

One of the most fundamentally important sentences for the United States of America is this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”   A single sentence. A mere 45 wo...

It is no understatement to say that Mustafa Santiago Ali is a superhero in the environmental justice world. He earned his stripes serving in the Environmental Protection Agency for more than two decades, becoming a founding member of the Office of Environmental Justice and, most recently, serving as senior advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization.   As winter 2017 lingered on...

The late-summer evening of Friday, Aug. 25, 2017, is forever etched in  Angela Blanchard ’s mind. National Weather Service maps showed increasingly ominous swirls of blue, green, yellow and red hovering over the Gulf of Mexico as the force of  Hurricane Harvey  amped to a top speed of 132 miles an hour.   The Category 4 storm wreaked havoc on Louisiana, Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize, saving its m...

For most of recorded history, the rules of power were clear: Power was something to be seized and then guarded at any cost. This "old power" was owned by a tiny fraction of humankind, and beyond reach for the vast majority of people.   But the ubiquitous connectivity of our world today is allowing something altogether new to occur, and makes possible an extraordinarily different kind of power: peo...

In the summer of 1972, The Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There” was a No. 1 hit, the Watergate scandal was in the news, and “The Godfather” was the top movie. Steve Shelton has his own vivid memory of that time: He was 12 years old, riding in the back of a pickup truck with a cast of characters from around his neighborhood on the way to bricklaying jobs.   And he loved it.   That camaraderie etch...

Rabbi Ron Symons grew up a few train stops away from vibrant, multi-cultural Manhattan in New York City. He now shares his world view of accepting everyone as part of his leadership role at the Center for Loving Kindness and Civic Engagement , an initiative of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh .   His journey has taken some eye-opening turns — including a 2014 arrest for standing u...

Illah Nourbakhsh’s journey began with his birth in Iran, and has since taken him around the world as a leader in robotics and artificial intelligence. The Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor and director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab stands out among roboticists for the projects he works on — most notably not Department of Defense programs —...

Tammy Thompson was nine when she and her family left a West Virginia coal mining town for the promise of a good-paying job and a new life in Pittsburgh. They shot through the Fort Pitt tunnels, where on the other end the golden bridges and sparkling lights of the city and its rivers burst into dazzling view.   Then it all went wrong.   As a third-grader, Tammy saw her family’s high hopes and finan...

“God writes straight with crooked lines” is a popular adage that has been used to describe the journey of Hamza Perez, and he good naturedly agrees. With a life story that’s movie script-worthy, Hamza has walked his path with humor, humility, music and openness. He is founder of the YA-NE (Youth Alliance of Networking and Empowerment) at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, co-founder of  Light of th...

Two Wilsons – Janis Burley Wilson and playwright August Wilson – have intersected in ways both meaningful and magical. The first Wilson is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, and the present-day Wilson is Janis Burley Wilson, who leads the August Wilson Center for African American Culture as its president and CEO.   Having grown up in August Wilson’s hometown, when Burley Wilson read...

All across the Untied States, cities that grew out of the industrial age were founded on the strength of immigrants who provided power to steel mills, gave rise to majestic buildings and infused life into its streets and neighborhoods.   While today’s immigrants encounter many of the same biases and obstacles that their predecessors faced, they have a champion in Change Agency  Founder and Directo...

Those living in rural towns where coal has long been the backbone of their economy and culture are often doubly hit with the realities of the shrinking industry: jobs are disappearing while the environmental and health aftereffects of mining adversely affect their mortality.   Veronica Coptis tells her story of being born in Pittsburgh, leaving for rural Greene County in the southwestern-most corn...

Actor/writer David Conrad  discusses why the most striking sound in an industrial town is silence, where his own creative plans will take him next and the integral role the arts play in the future of our communities and nation.   Actor (Wedding Crashers, Ghost Whisperer, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and writer (Pittsburgh Magazine columnist) David Conrad splits his time among a diverse slate of places...

Born in the Soviet Union and raised in Kazakhstan – with stops at a Wisconsin dairy farm and CNN and PBS News Hour along the way - Mila Sanina’s journey to leadership in the investigative news field is extraordinary. As Executive Director of PublicSource, Mila believes in the power of ideas, words and stories to change our brain chemistry and the character of our interactions with each other and t...

The role post-9/11 vets can play in bridging racial and cultural divides comes to light as Veterans' Breakfast Club's Nick Grimes talks about his journey with The Heinz Endowments ' Grant Oliphant in the inaugural episode of We Can Be. Learn about the misconceptions that post-9/11 veterans face, the culture shock they experience when returning home and why saying "thank you for your service" can b...