Today, more than
400,000 children are in foster care in the US, and every year, as many as
22,000 of them will age out of the foster care system. Without the safety net of a forever family to
provide the security and comfort most take for granted, these young people are
left on their own to face a future filled with hardships — from lack of
education to unemployment, higher rates of incarceration, poor health, early
parenthood and homelessness (as much as 50 percent of these kids will
experience this devastation in their lifetimes. Which is why SiriusXM’s own
Seth Rudetsky and his husband James Wesley created VOICES FOR THE VOICELESS:Stars for Foster Kids in 2015, when they were working with the Council on Adoptable Children and the group You Gotta Believe to adopt a child out of
foster care. At that time, the
organizations abruptly suffered major cuts from governmental funding, and Seth
and James decided to do what they have always done when faced with a crisis:
gather their friends and put on a show!
Over the past two years, VOICES FOR THE VOICELESS concert events have
raised almost a millions dollars to support You Gotta Believe’s efforts to
ensure that every child leaving foster care does so with the support of a
family, and on Monday they will be having the 3rd Annual concert at
Town Hall in New York City. This year’s
concert line-up will feature two-time Tony-nominee Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Spring Awakening), Grammy Award-winner Stephanie Mills (The Wiz), Capathia Jenkins (Newsies; Caroline, Or Change), Willie Garson (“Sex and the City”) to name a few and Seth joins me on the
show today to talk all about the concert and the great work that You Gotta
Believe does helping children.
Back on June 14, 2016, Jared Yates Sexton reported from a
Donald Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the first journalists
to attend these rallies he give mainstream readers an idea of the raw anger
that occurred there, and soon found himself in the center of a maelstrom.
Following a series of tweets that saw his observations viewed well over a
million times, his reporting was soon featured in The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg,
and Mother Jones, and right here on
this show as well and he would go on to write two pieces for The New York Times and would gain over
eighteen thousand followers on Twitter in a matter of days. But he also received online harassment,
campaigns to get him fired from his university professorship, and death threats
that changed his life forever. Now, he
has collected his experiences from the 2016 campaign into a new book titled The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore which offers his firsthand account of the events
that shaped the Presidential Election and the cultural forces that powered
Trump into White House. Jared joins me on the show today to talk all about the
book and so much more. Welcome back to
the show!
*** For listeners in
the New York City area Jared will be speaking at Book Culture in Manhattan (450
Columbus Ave, between 81st & 82nd Streets) tonight at 7pmET ***
Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 3-6 pm ET on SiriusXM Progress 127 and on the SiriusXM apps. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free thirty-day pass or go to the app store and download SiriusXM for free and listen on your phone
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