HARI SREENIVASAN: Good evening.
I'm Hari Sreenivasan.
Judy Woodruff is away.
On the "NewsHour" tonight: Russian intelligence operations continue to influence U.S. opinion.
Then: the history of Boston's longstanding racial problems and how they permeate everyday
life there.
And the woman leading tap dancing's renaissance talks history, tradition and how tapping evolves.
MICHELLE DORRANCE, Choreographer: So, inside of this tradition, which I want to always
honor, you have to define yourself, and define your voice as authentically yours.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
HARI SREENIVASAN: A record-setting blizzard has blanketed much of the Northeastern U.S.
in snow, while parts of the Midwest bundled up today for brutal windchills.
John Yang has our report.
JOHN YANG: The joys of a picturesque white Christmas quickly gave way to the reality
of digging out in subzero temperatures.
Windchill warnings or advisories were issued for parts of nearly a dozen states, from North
Dakota to Maine.
MAN: It's cold.
Cold is cold, and you got to adjust.
JOHN YANG: Erie, Pennsylvania, recorded its snowiest Christmas Day ever, 34 inches of
snow, overnight, another 19 inches on top of that.
Farther north, the wintry weather snarled post-holiday travels.
Snow blanketed roadways in Buffalo, New York, making for hazardous whiteout driving conditions.
At Boston's Logan International Airport, ice and strong winds caused delays.
A JetBlue plane made a treacherous landing there overnight, skidding on an icy runway.
STEVE CHISHOLM, Passenger: We were straight, and then all of a sudden it started fishtailing.
And, yes, and it started getting rough.
JOHN YANG: Passengers were shaken, but no injuries were reported.
In Chicago, some braved the freezing temperatures for a little winter fun.
SHERRI GREGORCZYK, Chicago: We're very happy that it snowed.
And it is cold, but when you're skating, it's not so bad.
JOHN YANG: Others heading back to work were prepared.
BARBARA JONES, Chicago: I got several layers on, about three pair of socks, boots, gloves,
mittens, I mean, the works.
QUESTION: Hot coffee?
BARBARA JONES: Yes, plenty of that.
JOHN YANG: There's no rest for the winter-weary.
Forecasters say the bitter temperatures across much of the Midwest and Northeast will likely
last through the week.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Three major cities are suing the Department of Defense for failing to report
service members who shouldn't be allowed to buy guns.
New York City, San Francisco and Philadelphia filed the federal lawsuit today.
The DOD has acknowledged the gunman in last month's Texas church massacre, a former U.S.
Air Force member, was able to buy several guns after it failed to enter his domestic
assault charge into the FBI's background check system.
The Justice Department's inspector general says the agency has systemic problems with
how it handles sexual harassment complaints.
The Washington Post reported that DOJ employees who acted improperly, including senior officials,
often received little punishment.
Some were even given bonuses or awards.
The agency said it's looking into those issues, and will respond to the inspector general
with recommendations.
The British Royal Navy said it had to escort a Russian warship through the North Sea as
it neared the United Kingdom's territorial waters.
The incident happened on Christmas Day, amid a recent surge in Russian vessels in that
area, including intelligence-gathering ships.
British officials warned the Russian ships could cut Internet cables under the sea to
disrupt communications.
In Peru, there's new fallout after the pardoning of an ailing former president convicted of
corruption and human rights abuses.
Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police overnight in Lima.
They held images of people killed in a bloody counterinsurgency campaign led by Alberto
Fujimori in the 1990s.
Speaking from his hospital bed today, the 79-year-old Fujimori made his first public
apology for the crimes.
ALBERTO FUJIMORI, Former Leader of Peru (through translator): I am aware I am aware that what
resulted during my administration, on one hand, was well-received, but I recognize that
on the other hand I have also disappointed other compatriots.
To them, I ask forgiveness from the bottom of my heart.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Peru's current president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, granted Fujimori a
medical pardon Sunday.
He had only served half of his 25-year-sentence.
Back in this country, retailers had their best holiday shopping season since 2011.
A new report out today from MasterCard said year-end retail sales jumped nearly 5 percent
over last year.
And on Wall Street, stocks took a downward turn, dragged down by losses in the technology
sector.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly eight points to close at 24746.
The Nasdaq fell 23 points, and the S&P 500 slipped nearly three.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": Race Matters -- The Boston Globe investigates how racism
still plagues the city; does God have a gender? -- the Church of Sweden moves to stop referring
to God as male; and much more.
Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is currently the subject of several
investigations.
But is Russia still mounting operations in the United States?
According to former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell and former Congressman Mike Rogers,
the answer is yes.
They write in a Washington Post op-ed that Russia's information operations in the United
States continued after the election, and they continue to this day.
We get two perspectives this.
Laura Rosenberger directs the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a program of the German
Marshall Fund that tracks Russian influence operations.
A foreign policy adviser to the most recent Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Laura
also served in the State Department during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
John Sipher is a 28-year veteran of the CIA who was based in Moscow in the 1990s.
He subsequently oversaw operations against Russian intelligence services.
He's now with the consulting firm CrossLead.
Laura, let me start with you.
You have built tools to start tracking these different accounts.
What have you found?
®MD+IT¯®MD-IT¯LAURA ROSENBERGER, Former National Security Council Staff Member: Yes,
we have built a tool that is actually tracking a network of Russian-linked Twitter accounts
that are pushing divisive content.
What we see is that a lot of what the messaging is that these accounts are pushing is really
about trying to turn Americans against one another, playing on existing divisions in
our society, but trying to pull us to extremes.
So it's playing on racial divisions, political divisions, issues like immigration that are
politically hot, and really trying to undermine the fabric of our democracy by pulling us
apart at the seams.
HARI SREENIVASAN: There is a narrative, before we go further, that is going to say that this
is all fake.
The administration is going to look at you and say, hey, you were a supporter of Hillary
Clinton, this is just a part of a grand conspiracy to weaponize the intelligence information
against the legitimacy of the president.
LAURA ROSENBERGER: What We see is actually a lot of the content that is being pushed
has absolutely nothing to do with the president, with any particular political party.
We see -- in fact, there was a Washington Post article today that talked about a fake
persona that the Russians have apparently created that is actually trying to push content
on the left and is really trying to insinuate themselves on that side of the political spectrum.
This is not an issue about party.
the intelligence community assessment was unanimous in its conclusion about Russian
operations.
And I think it's really important that we think about this in terms of how it's actually
trying to attack our democracy and really is about, you know -- could be turned against
any politician at any point in time when the Russians deem, you know, that it's useful
for them to attack that person.
HARI SREENIVASAN: John Sipher, Laura starting hinting at this at the end here.
What do the Russians gain by doing this?
JOHN SIPHER, Former CIA Officer: Well, I think part of the problem is that we tend to look
at this through solely a domestic lens.
The Trump administration looks at it as some sort of attack against them.
But, frankly, those of us who have been following the Russians for a long time realize that
they're the ones that are inconsistent here.
Their goal all along has been to harm the United States and to sow divisions between
the United States and its allies, sow confusion, and hurt democracy.
So, they have been consistent in what they have been trying to do.
I think there was a lot of opportunism for a lot of -- a variety of reasons of why things
came together in 2016 in the election that made us think it was about Clinton vs. Trump.
But, in fact, it's about hurting the United States.
So it's not surprising at all that they continue to go and continue to do these things.
And it's also not surprising because there's been nothing to push back against them to
make them stop doing this.
It's successful for them.
It's an asymmetric form of warfare that is cheap and easy, and it's a zero-sum game for
them.
Anything that hurts them helps them.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Laura, give me some examples that are not political of how the Russians
have been engaged in the conversation in the United States.
LAURA ROSENBERGER: So, folks may remember -- in fact, it's still ongoing -- the debate
about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games.
And, of course, what the players were protesting, are protesting, who are kneeling is about
police violence against African-Americans, often unarmed African-American men.
What we have seen is, when there was this debate that erupted around those protests
and whether it was appropriate, this is a real debate that was happening in American
society.
These are real issues that Americans are contending with.
But these networks that we track actually jumped on that, sought to amplify the debate
around it, but I think most importantly actually injected very hateful, extreme, sometimes
conspiratorial content into the conversation, you're trying to use the opportunity of people
who were heated and emotional about an issue, were following other content of other people
who were watching these debates happen, agreeing with people who agree with their underlying
political views.
But then these networks, these information operations were injecting this extreme content
into this conversation, really again trying to pull people at the seams or sow further
division.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So, John Sipher, what happens there?
Are we just talking about somebody actively trying to rip apart our fabric of society?
Does this cast America or American democracy or free speech in some sort of negative light
to the rest of the world?
JOHN SIPHER: Well, in fact, it does.
A good active measures campaign is what this covert propaganda, what the Russians call
this, is something they have been doing for decades, is not about creating these things
out of whole cloth, but finding weaknesses, finding fissures in society and stoking them
and going in there and pushing this.
So a lot of this is about our problems, our hyper-partisan nature, and our dysfunction.
And the only way we're going to be able to solve these kind of things is look at them
as a national security issue, not as a domestic political issue, work with allies in Europe
who have been facing this for a much longer time and have had more success with this,
working with some of the tech companies in a more proactive way.
I think the Snowden revelations a few years ago severed some of that relationship.
And we need to rebuild those things back here.
And then we need to think about learning more about cyber-deterrence and defense.
It's something that we have been fighting with for a long time and never really come
to terms with how to deal with those issues.
HARI SREENIVASAN: John, staying with you for a second, didn't the Obama administration,
as part of the handoff, kind of an 11th-hour tactic, say, here are a number of the things
that the CIA can do, take offensive measures, here are the things that you can do, handed
it off to the Trump administration, right?
JOHN SIPHER: Yes, that's my understanding.
And there's been some good reporting from The Washington Post and others on this.
I think there was a lot of hand-wringing.
And, frankly, it's understandable.
These are very hard issues.
Fighting covert propaganda with your own covert propaganda or cyber-tools is an issue we haven't
had to deal with and don't really know what the ramifications are.
How does that play back upon us?
But so far, the Obama administration and the Trump administration have not found a way
to make it clear to Mr. Putin that there is a price to pay for this.
And so as long as there's not a price to pay for him, something that threatens something
that he cares about, it's going to continue.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.
JOHN SIPHER: So, this is a domestic issue, a national security issue that this administration
is going to have to deal with for years to come.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, John Sipher, Laura Rosenberger, thank you both.
LAURA ROSENBERGER: Thank you.
JOHN SIPHER: Thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Race in America permeated much of the news this past year, whether it
was the deadly violence in Charlottesville, police shootings, criminal justice and the
tone of our politics, taking a knee in sports, or grappling with race in public memorials
and history.
Just before the end of the year, a major investigative series looked at the different ways that race
is coloring economic, political and cultural life in Boston.
William Brangham gets a sense of that, as part of our continuing coverage of Race Matters.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Boston is famous for a lot of great things, but it also has had a reputation
as one of the most racist cities in America.
That's due in part to horrible images from the 1960s and '70s, when white Bostonians
violently protested against the desegregation of the city's public schools.
Fast-forward to this past May, when Red Sox fans hurled repeated racist insults at visiting
Baltimore Oriole Adam Jones, prompting widespread criticism and an apology from the team.
So, does the city deserve this reputation?
That's the difficult question that The Boston Globe's Spotlight investigative team set out
to answer.
QUESTION: Is Boston racist?
MAN: No.
WOMAN: So, I can say yes.
MAN: Yes, there is some racism.
MAN: People might assume that.
WOMAN: We do have a lot of racism.
MAN: People in Boston are racists.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In a new seven-part series, its reporters examined racial disparities
in the city's famed universities, its hospitals, even the city's halls of power.
The series is called "Boston.
Racism.
Image.
Reality."
And I'm joined now by one of the reporters on that series, Akilah Johnson.
Welcome to the "NewsHour."
AKILAH JOHNSON, The Boston Globe: Thanks for having me.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, the very first line of your series reads, "Google the phrase most
racist city, and Boston pops up more than any other place time and time again."
So you guys set out to examine whether or not Boston in fact deserves this racist reputation.
How do you go about measuring racism?
AKILAH JOHNSON: Well, I mean, you tackle it from a variety of different angles, right?
So, in addition to anecdotal kind of evidence, the stories that people tell of their lived
experience, you begin to kind of look at different data streams that really talk about the disparities
in wealth and power in the city.
So, we're looking at, you know, who sits in the seats of power in corporate boardrooms
and college classrooms.
We're looking at admittance patterns at hospitals, just kind of a wide variety of things that
can really kind of provide some data-driven analysis to this issue.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You said -- and your series documents in a lot of those places, in hospitals
and schools and boardrooms, just as you describe, that blacks are largely devoid from that pool.
And how much of that do you think is because Boston has a relatively small, as a percentage,
black population?
AKILAH JOHNSON: You know, demographics are something that we kind of dealt with head
on, right, because a lot of people like to say that demographics are destiny.
And, in fact, Boston does have a relatively small black population, particularly in the
greater Boston area.
But when you begin to kind of compare that with some other cities that have smaller black
populations, you see that you can't solely pin, kind of, the lack of political clout
to the demographics of the city.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: There are so many striking facts in this series.
And here's one that I had to read a couple of times to myself just because I couldn't
quite take it on board fully.
It says: "African-Americans in greater Boston have a median net worth of just $8.
That means they owe almost as much as the combined value of what they own, be it a car
or house or savings."
I mean, it is just an eye-popping statistic, and later you compare that to the median income
of whites, which is almost a quarter of a million dollars.
How do you explain that disparity?
AKILAH JOHNSON: It was so eye-popping, we actually had to write kind of a follow-up
sidebar, letting people know it wasn't a typo, because so many readers thought that we had
created this egregious error in a series kind of as high-profile as this.
But that number comes from a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as well as
Duke University, that was really looking at income disparities and wealth disparities
in communities of color.
So it was a -- Boston was part of a five-city study.
And of the five cities, Boston's African-American community had the lowest median net worth.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You also did an experiment using Craigslist to test racial attitudes
in housing.
Can you explain how that went and what you found?
AKILAH JOHNSON: So, we did a Craigslist study used and modeled off of a lot of what academics
do when they do kind of housing discrimination studies.
And so we sent e-mails with what would traditionally be considered black-sounding names, and e-mails
with what would condition traditionally be considered white-sounding names to different
landlords in the area, saying, hey, we want to see this apartment.
We saw it listed on Craigslist.
Is it available?
And then we tracked the various responses that the e-mail -- that the e-mails received.
And, by and large, what we found is that e-mails with black-sounding names were either ignored,
not responded to, or that people were more willing to show apartments to e-mails to those
folks who e-mailed with white-sounding names.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You described that one of the important things you're talking about,
not just all of the different data sets that you have compiled, but also the lived experiences
of African-Americans in Boston.
Are there particular stories that stand out to you, that seem emblematic of the problem
you guys were trying to describe?
AKILAH JOHNSON: I mean, I think one of the stories that kind of stands out is a follow-up
story that we actually did that has to do with a picture that we have put on the front
page that led off the series, and also was one of the main, kind of the centerpiece photo
of the day-one story.
And it has to do with a gentleman at the Red Sox game, at a Red Sox game, when the Red
Sox were playing the Yankees, and he is, by and large, the only black face in that section,
which really kind of helps illustrate and represents a sense of isolation that middle-class
and professional-class black folks feel in Boston.
One of the common refrains we heard is that kind of the higher up the professional ladder
you go, the whiter your world becomes.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In fact, you posted a video on your Web site of a white father describing
the experience he had going to Fenway Park with his biracial son.
CALVIN HENNICK, Boston: My son and my father-in-law and I all had tickets to a game at Fenway,
and it was for the day after the Adam Jones incident.
And a young woman sang the national anthem.
She was from Kenya.
And when she finished, the white fan on the left-hand side of me leaned over to me and
said, "She sang too long and she N-worded it up."
He like used the word.
I was like, "What did you say?"
And he repeated what he said.
And he said, "Yes, that's right, and I stand by it."
He was very proud of himself.
And so I went and reported it, and they kicked the guy out.
At first, I was confused why he would say this to me, because it seemed obvious to me
that I was there with my biracial son and my black father-in-law.
But then later, as I thought about it, I thought he kind of maybe pointedly did say it to me
the night after the whole Jones incident as a way of sort of saying, "I can say whatever
I want to."
BELZIE MONT-LOUIS, Boston: If I had been there, I would have asked, like,are you saying that
because they are sitting there?
Because I think sometimes throwing people's racism at their -- back at them makes them
really uncomfortable.
And, actually, no one wants to be called a racist, and I assume he wouldn't want to actually
say he was a racist.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You could read your series as a fairly damning indictment of the way
the structure of the city of Boston is organized and these patterns that have been going on
for decades.
What has the reaction been in Boston to this series so far?
AKILAH JOHNSON: Or you could read the series as a mirror that we're holding up for everybody
in the city of Boston to look at, including the folks at The Boston Globe, who realized
it was time for us to kind of take stock in-house of what our diversity issues looked like.
And so, by and large, a lot of the feedback that we have received from folks in positions
of power is just that, that the series really kind of made them stop and say, we talk a
good game, and we have talked about this for years, but we have -- we need to do better
and we need to do more.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: How hopeful are you that that actually will happen?
AKILAH JOHNSON: You know, now it's time to see where the rubber meets the road, so to
speak.
And so the goal is to hold people accountable.
The community is very engaged and involved, so the hope is that they begin to hold people
in positions of power accountable for the promises that they make to improve life within
the city's black community.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's really a fascinating series.
Akilah Johnson of The Boston Globe, thank you very much.
AKILAH JOHNSON: Thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": America Addicted -- a high school for students battling opioid
abuse; from the "NewsHour" Bookshelf, the memoir of a young American living in Russia
during the 1950s; and new steps -- a dancer showcasing a fresh take on an old art form.
But first: As churchgoers in Sweden celebrate this Christmas season, they are also preparing
for a major change in the way they worship.
The Church of Sweden recently decided its clergy should stop describing God in masculine
terms, such as he, and instead use more gender-neutral language.
This change has divided the country.
And as special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports, it's an issue that will resonate
beyond Scandinavia.
MALCOLM BRABANT: The weight of history resonates deeply at Lund Cathedral.
Its foundations were laid 900 years ago, making it almost half the age of Christianity itself.
Now the God worshipped here and in thousands of other Lutheran churches is getting a 21st
century Swedish upgrade.
Cathedral Chaplain Lena Sjostrand:
CHAPLAIN LENA SJOSTRAND, Lund Cathedral: We have a consciousness about gender questions,
which is stronger in our time than it has been before.
And, of course, this has had an impact on theology and on church life and pastoral reflection.
And I think that is -- we should have that.
MALCOLM BRABANT: In six months' time, the words in the name of the father, son and Holy
Spirit, used at the start of the service will disappear from churches which prefer to adopt
the gender-neutral phrase of in God the trinity's name.
CHAPLAIN LENA SJOSTRAND: I don't think that God is a big mother or a father sitting up
in the sky.
I don't think that makes sense.
God is something much bigger than this.
MALCOLM BRABANT: But here in Western Sweden, there's a conviction that the new gender-neutral
introduction undermines the entire service.
This is a traditionally conservative region.
Mikael Lowegren will resist pressure from the church hierarchy to replace masculine
terms such as lord and he with less gender-specific language.
PASTOR MIKAEL LOWEGREN, St. Mary's: You don't play lightly with these things.
You don't play lightly with the creed.
You don't play lightly with the liturgy of the church.
Being part of a tradition means that you come from somewhere.
You have a history, and that forms you and makes you what you are.
And if you lose contact with your roots, you run the risk of losing your own identity.
MALCOLM BRABANT: This from where the winds of change are blowing, Uppsala, north of Stockholm,
the seat of the Swedish church.
Archbishop Antje Jackelen is the primate of the Swedish Church, and leader of more than
six million registered Lutherans.
ARCHBISHOP ANTJE JACKELEN, Church of Sweden: We are not going to give up our tradition.
But in the tradition, there are all these elements already present.
Like Julian of Norwich in the 14th century said, as sure as God is our father, God is
our mother.
So, I mean, this is not something that's newly invented.
It's part of our tradition.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Sweden prides itself on being at the cutting edge of social change.
And the desire to use gender-neutral terminology is much stronger here than it is in many other
countries.
In the past years, Sweden has introduced a gender-neutral personal pronoun as an alternative
to he or she in certain circumstances.
The church insists it won't go that far, but critics fear the new pronoun will be introduced
in the future.
The church has also said it won't force priests to drop the traditional language, although
the primate has made it clear that the changes are preferable.
CHRISTER PAHLMBLAD, Lund University: I think it's a mistake because you can't fool anybody
with this gender-neutral language.
You can only fool yourself.
You are your own enemy.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Christer Pahlmblad is an associate professor of practical theology
at Lund University in Southern Sweden.
CHRISTER PAHLMBLAD: If the society in Sweden is so secularized, then the church instead
should sharpen its instrument and be very clear about what the Christian faith is.
Otherwise, nobody will know, in the end, know what the church is about.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Pahlmblad blames increased party political influence within the ruling
body, the Synod, for what he believes is a potential disaster.
CHRISTER PAHLMBLAD: If the political party are nominating persons for the Synod, then
of course they are nominating persons not because of their competence really in these
matters.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Back in Uppsala, the church primate insists the changes are based on a
genuine interpretation of religious history, not political correctness.
ARCHBISHOP ANTJE JACKELEN: God is beyond our human categories of gender.
It's actually already in the Prophet Isaiah in the 11 Chapter.
God says, "I am God," and not human or a man.
God is beyond that, and we need help to remind us of that, because due to the restrictions
of our brains, we tend to think of God in very human categories.
We are not worshipping political correctness.
We are worshipping God, the creator of the universe.
MALCOLM BRABANT: So what do Swedes make of changes that challenge a perception of God
that has existed for more than 2,000 years?
ALEXANDER LOVQVIST, Software Developer: I think that this community and the whole world
has been very male-dominated for a long time, and I think it's important that the female
gender gets more space in all communities all throughout the country and throughout
the world.
HANS ROCHESTER, Retired Priest: I'm a very conservative person, so most of it, I don't
like.
I'm used to the old way.
DANIEL WARNER, Philosopher: If you do make an image of God, which is typically a problematic
thing to do, because it's also supposed to be also something transcendent, talking about
that which you cannot really know, but if you have to make symbols of God, then you
should make them in such a way that they are accessible to as many people as possible.
MALCOLM BRABANT: The chaplain of Lund Cathedral believes that the church's patriarchal nature
has had a negative effect on some women.
CHAPLAIN LENA SJOSTRAND: I have met women who have had this experience that my life
is not included in what you are doing in the church.
And that is, of course, very sad.
And we have to -- as we can find other stories in our tradition, we have to broaden it, make
it wider, so both male and female could relate to faith.
MALCOLM BRABANT: But these arguments fail to move Pastor Mikael Lowegren.
MIKAEL LOWEGREN: God being the father means he has a son.
MALCOLM BRABANT: But that's the way that we -- that history teaches us, but there's no
guarantee that God is male.
God could be female.
MIKAEL LOWEGREN: You could use female imagery referring to God.
But the name of the God is what God has revealed.
It's the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit.
MALCOLM BRABANT: In common with more liberal Protestant denominations, the Swedish Church
promotes the ordination of women, a trend resisted by the powerful Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox faiths.
So will these changes spread beyond Sweden?
Anders Ellebaek Madsen is the faith editor of Scandinavia's main religious newspaper,
The Christian Daily.
ANDERS ELLEBAEK MADSEN, The Christian Daily: Thirty years ago, if you would have asked
me if homosexual weddings would have been possible in 30 years, I would have said absolutely
not.
So, I don't know what will happen in one or two generations, but right now, it's hard
for me to see this spreading as fast.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Supporters of the changes claim they are not intended to resurrect declining
church attendances.
Nevertheless, Sweden has become a testing ground for whether a gender-neutral God attracts
worshipers or drives them away.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Malcolm Brabant in Sweden.
HARI SREENIVASAN: This week, we are taking a second look at our own series America Addicted,
about the impact of the opioids crisis.
Overall, drug use has been down among teenagers, but mortality is rising, and that is leading
many to seek out new treatment options for their children.
The "NewsHour"'s Pamela Kirkland reported on how one so-called recovery school in Indianapolis
is giving new hope to students battling addiction.
It's part of our weekly Making the Grade look at education.
FRANCIE WILCOX, Student: I went from using downers, mixing alcohol and Xanax.
NICK SHIRKEY, Student: Oxys.
Percs.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Then I would use uppers like cocaine.
NICK SHIRKEY: Some meth and some heroin.
FRANCIE WILCOX: I would just use anything I could possibly use.
NICK SHIRKEY: Life just went on that downhill spiral, and I let it take me there.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie Wilcox and Nick Shirkey are two of about 30 students who attend Hope
Academy in Indianapolis.
All of them have struggled with substance abuse.
WOMAN: Thank you for taking part in today's circle and your willingness to support the
community.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Twice a week, their day starts here, in a circle modeled after the teachings
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Students lay out their goals.
STUDENT: What can life be like when I'm clean?
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Their regrets
STUDENT: Felt bad for all the things that I have done to people.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: And their sobriety dates.
STUDENT: My clean date is July 17.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope Academy is one of nearly 40 recovery schools in the U.S.
When it comes to kicking a drug habit, experts say simply being young is a major hurdle.
Only half of U.S. treatment centers even accept teenagers.
That's why recovery schools like these are becoming increasingly popular.
RACHELLE GARDNER, Chief Operating Officer, Hope Academy: I get a call probably once a
week from somebody saying, hey, I saw your school, we really want to start a school,
how did you start that, can you help us?
PAMELA KIRKLAND: In 2006, Rachelle Gardner started Hope Academy to help students who
have fallen behind because of addiction.
RACHELLE GARDNER: Our young are pretty normal kids.
They got the same issues.
They just so happen to have this disease along with it.
And we look at it as a disease, instead of just a behavioral problem.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope is a public charter school, meaning it's tuition-free, and must
take any student who qualifies.
The school is attached to an inpatient treatment facility, and traditional subjects like math,
English, and history are offered in small classroom settings, alongside a constant emphasis
on recovery.
WOMAN: Think about how drugs really did start affecting your life.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Students are randomly drug-tested, and attend 12-step meetings.
They also meet one a week with Brad Trolson.
BRAD TROLSON, Hope Academy: It's an easy thing to forget that we have control.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: He's the school's recovery coach and also in recovery himself.
We first met Trolson in June while he was meeting with 17 year-old Francie, who had
just relapsed days before at a weekend party.
FRANCIE WILCOX: You just start to get into recovery, and you like literally just sit
there and think, like, who am I?
What do I even like?
If I am not getting high or I'm not with people that I hang out and get high with, like, you
just don't know what to with yourself.
BRAD TROLSON: Our society, our culture is really -- it teaches our kids that drug use
and alcohol use is really a deeply ingrained part of being a kid.
And a lot of our students have fallen prey to that idea, and to such an extent that they
really don't know what the teenage is if it doesn't include drugs and alcohol.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie says she's struggled with self-harm and an eating disorder for
years.
She began drinking in sixth grade because she wanted to feel grown up.
FRANCIE WILCOX: It didn't progress super fast.
It just kind of -- I would drink on the weekend, but, eventually, it did start to go into smoking,
and pills, and other kind of things.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Before coming to Hope, Francie entered three separate residential treatment
programs.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Addiction literally starts to control your entire life.
MARY ANNE WILCOX, Mother of Francie Wilcox: It was at the point where we would say, I
think we're going to have to get used to the idea that we might be burying our daughter.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie's mom, Mary Anne Wilcox, says she and her husband felt scared
and helpless.
From their home in Savannah, Georgia, they made a difficult decision.
MARY ANN WILCOX: My husband suggested maybe we look into this school in Indianapolis,
and we could live here for a couple of years, until she gets through high school, and then
go back to Georgia, because there was nothing anywhere in the southeastern corner really
for us to do to get her services.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: That's all too common, says Andy Finch of Vanderbilt University.
He's one of the nation's leading experts on recovery schools.
ANDY FINCH, Vanderbilt University: Many places just don't have many adolescent options available,
and a lot of times, the options that exist might be too costly for a family to afford.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch recently authored a report on the effectiveness of recovery schools
vs. traditional high schools for teenagers who have struggled with drug addiction.
He found that nearly 60 percent of students in recovery high schools reported not having
relapsed in the sixth months that followed treatment.
That compares to just 30 percent of students in regular high schools.
ANDY FINCH: Teenagers who are struggling with addiction are having to face a lot of peer
pressure.
They struggle sometimes if they're trying to stop using to find friends who aren't using,
to find adults that know how to handle that and what to do with it.
And, often, the place where they're either finding drugs or finding friends who are using
drugs is in their school.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch also says that many adults in treatment admit to first using drugs
while in high school, meaning this age is crucial to combating lifelong addiction.
NICK SHIRKEY: High school is hard in general, but it's even harder when you have like this
extra weight or extra pressure on your shoulders.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick Shirkey spent much of his early childhood in the foster care system,
where he says he was abused and neglected.
His drug use started at age 12.
NICK SHIRKEY: At birth, I weighed 1 pound, 6 ounces.
I was born addicted to methamphetamines.
Parents were real bad addicts.
They didn't care.
They just wanted their next high.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick tried a treatment facility, but relapsed earlier this year.
This is his second attempt at Hope Academy.
BRAD TROLSON: Most of our students, they're not just substance users.
They come with a lot of trauma.
They come with a lot of mental and emotional issues that, once they get clean and sober,
now those things really start to surface.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: In many ways, 18-year-old Ian Lewis represents Hope Academy at its best.
He started using drugs in middle school, moving from marijuana and alcohol to prescription
opiates and cocaine.
After two years, Ian graduated in June as co-valedictorian.
He is now a freshman studying biology at Indiana-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
IAN LEWIS, Hope Academy Graduate: If you would've asked me two years ago, I probably would've
told you I didn't think I was going to college.
But I turned it around after I got into this recovery process.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: But Ian says Hope Academy can only do so much.
IAN LEWIS: It's not going to save you if you don't want to be saved.
Some of these kids out here, they don't want to stop using.
And that's when Hope isn't really effective, because they aren't using it.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Sometimes, you just forget.
You think, well, maybe I can drink, or maybe I can smoke, or maybe, if I go to this party,
I can use like a little bit of coke, if it's, like, recreationally.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: When we visited Francie again in August, she had relapsed for the second
time in three months.
FRANCIE WILCOX: It just reminds you that I don't drink and use like other people do.
Like, I have no limits.
I have no boundaries.
I just -- whatever I can do, I do, and that's just not a right way of thinking.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: But a relapse doesn't mean the end at Hope.
RACHELLE GARDNER: We can't be a no-tolerance school.
We have to be accepting, because relapse is part of the disease, regardless of how old
you are.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie has been assigned more focused recovery classes, where students
complete their course work one-on-one with their teachers.
Her mom, Mary Anne Wilcox, says she remains hopeful, but she admits these last few months
haven't been easy.
MARY ANNE WILCOX: I mean, it feels devastating.
You know, it's just -- you want so much for the whole thing to be over.
But it's just -- it reminds you that it's not.
It's forever.
And it's something that we will be dealing with forever and she will be dealing with
forever.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: As for Francie, she says, despite her setbacks, she can't imagine life
without this school.
Do you worry what might happen if Hope doesn't work for you?
FRANCIE WILCOX: Yes.
I worry a lot.
If I had to be in a regular high school, I don't think I would even be alive.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: There's been little research into the long-term outcomes for those who
attend recovery schools, but, for the students here, they still have hope.
From Indianapolis, I'm Pamela Kirkland for the "PBS NewsHour."
HARI SREENIVASAN: Tomorrow, we continue our series America Addicted with the story of
a doctor's devastating personal loss to opioids.
We return to Russia.
Some 40 years after the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1956, the country found itself again in
the midst of turmoil and upheaval.
That's the focus of Judy Woodruff's latest addition to the "NewsHour" Bookshelf.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The year began with Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalin himself, leading
to anti-communist uprisings throughout Eastern Europe and raising hopes within Russian.
Veteran foreign affairs reporter Marvin Kalb was a young diplomatic attache at the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow and had a front-row seat in a tumultuous year that foreshadowed the
breakup of the Soviet Union some 30 years later.
He has written a book about that time, "The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 - Khrushchev,
Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia."
And Marvin Kalb joins me now.
Welcome to the "NewsHour."
MARVIN KALB, Author, "The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 - Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost,
and a Young American in Russia": Hi.
Thank you.
Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, this is the story, as we say, of what happened at a crucial moment
in Russian history and the history of the Soviet Union, but it's also your first memoir
after 15 books you have written.
We get a glimpse of who Marvin Kalb is.
MARVIN KALB: It was a fun book to write.
I had never done anything like that in my life.
When you write about yourself, it's much more difficult than, as you know, writing about
the world or an event.
And in Russia at that time, everything was just so exciting.
And for me, as a young American there, it was an eye-opening, intoxicating experience.
I loved every day of it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you had been at Harvard.
MARVIN KALB: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You were studying for your Ph.D. You already knew the Russian language.
MARVIN KALB: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You were studying Russian history.
This opportunity came along to put you right smack in the middle of this place that you
had been studying.
And you were able to get to know some of the Russian people.
MARVIN KALB: I got to know the Russian people because one of the great advantages of being
utterly unimportant at the embassy was that, when I wanted to travel to different parts
of the Soviet Union, which had up to that moment been closed to foreigners, the ambassador,
the wonderful Charles Bohlen, looked at me and he would say, "What have I got to lose?"
So, Marvin would go to Central Asia, to Ukraine, to Northern Russia, everywhere.
And after an initial period of caution, the Russian people opened up, at least in my experience,
and I had a wonderful time with them.
I really was able to hear their problems and understand what was on their minds in addition
to having access to someone like Nikita Khrushchev.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, and I want you to tell that story, but we should remind everybody
this year was crucial in the history of the Soviet Union, because a month or two after
you arrived, Nikita Khrushchev surprises everybody, denounces Joseph Stalin, who had been a hero
in their eyes.
And everything changed, at least for a short time, when you were there.
MARVIN KALB: It was a fantastic moment in modern Russian history.
Up to that time, the Russian people had never experienced personal freedom.
And the Russian people, for the first time in their history, had an opportunity to think
for themselves.
And it was such a magnificent, fresh, wonderful thought for them and an experience for them
that they began to think, wait a minute, maybe we can get freedom.
And suddenly, young people, the future of Russia, they are denouncing the system itself.
And that thought ran through Russia.
Then it spilled over the borders and went into Eastern Europe.
And, suddenly, you had the Hungarian Revolution.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And everything was closed up again.
MARVIN KALB: Because Khrushchev decided just to crack down to end that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, in the meantime, you had the opportunity to meet Khrushchev himself.
MARVIN KALB: Oh, yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Tell the story, because that's where the name Peter the Great comes from.
MARVIN KALB: It was the July 4 holiday.
Ambassador Bohlen was having a big event.
Khrushchev decided to come with the entire politburo.
I happened to be one of four Americans in a woefully understaffed embassy who spoke
Russian.
So, Ambassador Bohlen said, Marvin, you ought to look after Marshal Zhukov.
That was sort of crazy in my mind because I had been a PFC in the United States Army.
That was my top rank.
And here I was responsible for dealing with a Soviet marshal.
And he loved vodka.
So, I fed him vodka, and I drank water.
(LAUGHTER)
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's a great story.
MARVIN KALB: I drank water.
And after about eight vodkas and waters, Khrushchev beckoned to both of us to come on over.
And Zhukov was a little tipsy.
And he said to Khrushchev, "I have finally found a young American who can drink like
a Russian."
Khrushchev loved that line.
He looked up at me and he said, "How tall are you?"
I said, "I'm six centimeters shorter than Peter the Great."
Well, he loved the line.
It brought the house down.
And from that time, even when I came back years later for CBS, he always remembered
me as Peter the Great.
It was a great asset.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You had access in a way that no other American journalist had.
But, Marvin, what did you learn about them as a people?
MARVIN KALB: What I think I learned more than anything else is how similar they are to us.
I remember once being in a train with a young Azerbaijani woman, probably 22, 23, and we
were traveling together.
Just happened that way.
And she was looking at me and she says, "Where are you from?"
I said, "the United States."
She said, "I don't believe it."
"Why?"
"Well, you speak Russian."
I said, "Yes, but even an American can learn Russian."
And there was an awkward five or 10 minutes when things were, oh, the Americans are very
bad and this is very bad.
And then, when she felt she knew me, and I felt I was getting to know her, everything
sort of dropped, and we were two people, and we were sharing experiences and insights.
And I found that to be the case with Russians, whether they lived in Central Asia, in the
Caucasus, or Ukraine, Northern Russia.
They are people just as we.
They really wanted peace.
Remember that this was 11 years after the end of World War II.
Thirty million Russians had been killed in World War II, maybe more.
And they all wanted peace, and yet they felt maybe they weren't going to get it.
Maybe there would be war.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, so many telling stories, a wonderfully written book.
MARVIN KALB: It's fun.
JUDY WOODRUFF: "The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 - Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young
American in Russia."
Marvin Kalb, thank you very much.
MARVIN KALB: Thank you, Judy.
Thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Now: how an artist in the world of tap dancing is using tradition, breaking
with it, and experimenting with a genre she discovered when she was just 3 years old.
Jeffrey Brown profiles a choreographer who is lighting up the stage in New York this
holiday season.
JEFFREY BROWN: For tap dancing phenom Michelle Dorrance, the most important thing you need
to know about her art form is this:
MICHELLE DORRANCE, Choreographer: You dance to create music.
But tap dance is the dance of creating music.
JEFFREY BROWN: That means we, the audience, both watch and listen.
And, for Dorrance, the sounds she seeks guide the movement.
MICHELLE DORRANCE: In order to get this sound, I have to move my body this way, so the look
of tap dance is often because we needed a hard toe, or a heel, or a toe drop.
And because of these particular nuances, our body had to do this to execute that sound,
and that's where the dance comes from.
When people say to us, oh, I get it, it's music, and you're like, yes, that's what drives
us.
JEFFREY BROWN: Since founding her company, Dorrance Dance, in 2011, she has helped lead
a renaissance in tap, gaining attention for her own exuberant, athletic style, arms, head
and feet in motion.
She's choreographed full-length dances for her group, including ETM: Double Down, where
the focus on music is made explicit, as dancers step on wooden boards that function like electronic
drum pads.
She and the company are constantly touring, bringing new audiences to this tradition-bound
dance form.
In 2015, Dorrance was recognized with the so-called genius award from the MacArthur
Foundation.
And this hoofer is a trooper.
Fighting off a bout of laryngitis, she let us visit a recent rehearsal of a dance called
Myelination at a Midtown Manhattan studio, and was happy to talk about her role as an
evangelist for tap.
MICHELLE DORRANCE: Some people use the word edu-tain or edu-tainment.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
That's what you see yourself doing?
MICHELLE DORRANCE: Yes, I mean, inside of the art form, you must constantly educate
about the past.
But something we were charged with, speaking of tradition, by our masters and elders of
the jazz era is, that's what jazz was about, having your own individual voice and pushing
your expression forward.
So, inside of this tradition, which I want to always honor, you have to define yourself,
and define your voice as authentically yours.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now 38, Dorrance grew up in North Carolina, dancing tap from age 3.
She performed with North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, and later with the show Stomp.
Her mother is a ballet dancer and teacher, founder of the Ballet School of Chapel Hill,
her father head coach of the University of North Carolina's women's soccer team, and
one-time coach of the USA Women's Team.
Somehow, tap comes from that?
MICHELLE DORRANCE: Yes, we all joke about it, because they both use their feet for their
professions.
Both of them have incredibly quick feet.
JEFFREY BROWN: You got that gene.
MICHELLE DORRANCE: Yes.
Let's bring that here.
JEFFREY BROWN: Quick feet are certainly one requirement for tap dancing, but it's also
clear that Dorrance seeks diverse styles and personalities for her company.
We watched her rehearse a duet with 22-year-old Byron Tittle.
BYRON TITTLE, Dancer: Well, I met Michelle when I was 10 at a tap festival, and I have
just been taking her classes, and following her, kind of stalking her, since then.
For me, there is a push that Michelle puts under you and behind you that doesn't feel
forceful.
It feels encouraging.
My life was made because Michelle asked me to do something this crazy.
Just full circle, it's really cool.
JEFFREY BROWN: By contrast, 39-year-old Nicholas Young has known and danced with Dorrance since
they were teens.
And there's another obvious contrast: size.
NICHOLAS YOUNG, Dancer: That's something that people have been really excited about, the
dancers that Michelle chooses.
She chooses a very diverse group of dancers, you know, and she allows each to express ourselves
individually while, at times, creating a very specific image, or a story, or a feeling in
her pieces.
But then I think people really enjoy seeing all of us move out of that story line and
become ourselves.
I think people relate.
I actually get that a lot.
I get guys come in to me after a show and be like, hey, you really made me feel like
I could do this, too.
So, I don't know.
JEFFREY BROWN: That's a good feeling.
BYRON TITTLE: Yes, it's so cool.
NICHOLAS YOUNG: Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: In her dance The Blues Project, Dorrance directly addressed the role of tradition
and history.
For her and the other dancers we met, being part of a tradition, and knowing that history,
is intrinsic to their lives in tap.
Dorrance cites the recent impact of Savion Glover, whose Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in
'da Funk, first performed in 1995, was another revolutionary moment for the form.
She's also acutely aware, as a white woman, that the history of innovation in tap has
largely come from African-Americans.
MICHELLE DORRANCE: It's a black form.
It's an African-American form.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
So, how do you think about the racial aspect?
MICHELLE DORRANCE: It's really important to acknowledge it.
And it's really important to share the history of the form, and to say the names of dancers,
to say the name Jimmy Slyde, Dr. Jimmy Slyde, Dr. Buster Brown, say the names of Fayard
and Harold Nicholas, Charlie Atkins, Honi Coles, to say the names of these men that
aren't the first names that come to your mind.
You think of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly because they were the heroes of the movie musical.
But there were dancers behind the scenes, and there were dancers innovating the form
that weren't on the screen, but they were the ones that were bringing -- breathing fire
into the form to make it exciting.
JEFFREY BROWN: And not just men.
Dorrance also cites women dancers who've been important to her, Dianne Walker, Brenda Bufalino,
Mable Lee.
MICHELLE DORRANCE: I feel very lucky to be a tap dancer, especially a woman as a tap
dancer right now.
I feel like I can jump into or be inspired by a style of a man or a woman, and it doesn't
matter, and I won't be received as being something very specific.
I will just be received as a dancer or a musician.
JEFFREY BROWN: Dorrance Dance performs in New York this holiday season, and then resumes
touring around the country in January.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in New York.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Tonight on PBS at 8:00 Eastern, 7:00 Central, a new docudrama, "The Sultan
and the Saint," tells the little-known story of Saint Francis of Assisi and the sultan
of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, who met on a battlefield and found common ground.
Here's a preview.
MAN: The biggest indication that Francis was changed by his encounter with Sultan al-Kamil
is that he rewrote the rule of his order, its code of conduct, its constitution, really,
to say to his friars that you can go and live in peace along Muslims.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And that's tonight on PBS.
That's the "NewsHour" tonight.
On Wednesday, we continue our series America Addicted and review the year in tech.
I'm Hari Sreenivasan.
Join us online and again here tomorrow evening.
For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you.
See you soon.
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