Melody Barnes, visiting professor at the University of Virginia, talks about last year's white supremacist gatherings in Charlottesville.
 
One year after a deadly white supremacist hate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the city continues to recover. What has Charlottesville learned, and what can it teach America about healing and resilience in a time of re-surging hate and divisiveness? In the "Aspen Ideas to Go" podcast, Slate Chief Political Correspondent Jamelle Bouie leads a conversation with former Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, domestic policy advisor for President Obama Melody Barnes, and Leslie Greene Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.

A Journey from Hate to Compassion

Christian Picciolini was a teenager when he joined the Chicago-area white supremacist skinheads. Bullied in school and isolated at home, he was looking for a sense of belonging. Years later, he left the group after the people he thought he hated showed compassion. Now Picciolini helps others fight hate and disengage from extremism. Read about his story and listen to an interview he did with New York Times contributing op-ed writer Wajahat Ali.

 

 

A Better Business Model

Women’s fashion may not be on the critical path to saving the planet, but if we all adhered to Eileen Fisher’s standards and values, we would be doing a lot less harm, writes Judith Samuelson in our blog. Samuelson leads the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program and wrote about a talk Fisher gave at Aspen Ideas. Fisher founded Eileen Fisher Inc., the largest women’s fashion organization to be certified a B Corporation. Read why Samuelson is inspired by Fisher's work.

 

 

"We are now more polarized in America than at any time since the Civil War. Not since the Civil War have red and blue America been so far apart. The cause of that is geographic self sorting, and it’s solidified by virtual bubbles and echo chambers. That’s the definition of faction, the Madisonian dystopia." — Jeff Rosen, 2018 Aspen Ideas