<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network: Concerned Clergy]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis is a fellowship of pastors and other concerned citizens who are God-fearing people who believe injustice, racism, ageism, classism and sexism to be contrary to the will of God.  ]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/s/concerned-clergy</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CkFd!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa429d953-5a0a-4494-81dd-a71a78beabb7_500x500.png</url><title>Progressive Indiana Network: Concerned Clergy</title><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/s/concerned-clergy</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:58:24 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.progressiveindiana.net/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[progressiveindiananet@gmail.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[progressiveindiananet@gmail.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[progressiveindiananet@gmail.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[progressiveindiananet@gmail.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast July 29, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[https://concernedclergy.org]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-29</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-29</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:02:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/209058778/3aa217ab368f876ee8cf322bd6558545.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Rev. Tony Alexander flies solo again &#8212; Pastor Greene is traveling in Kentucky &#8212; for an hour-long argument that ties three seemingly separate threads into a single thesis: discrimination is not a relic of the past but an openly admitted, court-documented policy of the current federal government. He opens with condolences for the family of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and prayers for the recovery of Sen. Mitch McConnell, before turning to the TPS crisis hitting central Indiana&#8217;s Haitian community &#8212; an estimated 7,000 people facing loss of work authorization and potential deportation. He then presents the administration&#8217;s own court admissions as Exhibit A: Trump lawyers acknowledged in federal court that disaster relief was withheld from states because they voted Democratic &#8212; a form of political discrimination the Supreme Court has effectively endorsed through its redistricting rulings. Pivoting to mail-in voting, Rev. Alexander frames Trump&#8217;s campaign against it as pure control, not security &#8212; pointing out that Trump himself votes by mail and conducts over 3,000 financial transactions electronically. Caller Tony raises the labeling trap &#8212; communist, socialist &#8212; being used to splinter the Democratic coalition, and Rev. Alexander agrees that Republican message discipline versus Democratic internal fracturing may be the decisive factor heading into the midterms. The program closes with a warning about the August 1st mass deportation rally in Fishers headlined by former CBP Commander Greg Bovino &#8212; and a call for civil, organized counter-presence from Hamilton County residents who imagine themselves exempt from these dynamics.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander opens solo &#8212; Pastor Greene is traveling in Kentucky &#8212; leads opening prayer himself.</p><p>- Condolences for the family of Sen. Lindsey Graham; prayers for the recovery of Sen. Mitch McConnell and for full transparency about his condition.</p><p><strong>00:05:54 TPS ends &#8212; 7,000 Haitians in central Indiana lose work authorization</strong></p><p>- The Supreme Court&#8217;s elimination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians takes effect; approximately 7,000 Haitians in central Indiana will lose the right to work.</p><p>- These are legal residents &#8212; many with mortgages, jobs, and children enrolled in schools &#8212; given 30 to 60 days to upend their lives.</p><p>- Indiana already leads the nation in foreclosures; removing thousands of homeowners and workers will worsen that crisis.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: this is a question of basic humanity &#8212; do we care for our neighbors, or are we simply exercising power because we can?</p><p><strong>00:10:12 The assault on DEI &#8212; words vs. principles</strong></p><p>- The attack on DEI is not really an attack on the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion &#8212; it&#8217;s an attack on the people those principles protect.</p><p>- Grants have been pulled for containing the words &#8220;diversity,&#8221; &#8220;equity,&#8221; &#8220;inclusion,&#8221; or &#8220;climate&#8221; &#8212; with no substantive review of what those grants actually did or whom they served.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the administration admitted in court documents that it was withholding disaster relief funds from states that voted Democratic &#8212; Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, New York.</p><p><strong>00:14:04 Court-admitted discrimination &#8212; disaster relief and political loyalty</strong></p><p>- Trump DOJ and DHS lawyers went into federal court and stated the reason funds were withheld was that states did not support Donald Trump.</p><p>- A state that is 48% Republican and 52% Democrat gets nothing &#8212; because the 4% margin means the overall state &#8220;didn&#8217;t vote for Trump.&#8221;</p><p>- The administration has discriminated against: law firms representing certain clients, universities for their stances, and now entire states for their voters&#8217; presidential preference.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s tie-back: if they&#8217;ll admit to discriminating against states, why would anyone believe there&#8217;s no discrimination against Black businesses?</p><p><strong>00:20:13 The Trump family and the unfair advantage</strong></p><p>- While DEI is dismantled for being an &#8220;unfair advantage,&#8221; Trump family members are placed on corporate boards &#8212; with government contracts following within weeks.</p><p>- Disclosures show Trump made over 3,000 trades in six months, many timed around his own announcements.</p><p>- Truth Social posts are now being sold as a premium subscription &#8212; giving paying traders advance notice of administration moves.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: everything I&#8217;ve described shows who actually has the unfair advantage. It is not small minority businesses.</p><p><strong>00:23:32 Mail-in voting &#8212; control, not security</strong></p><p>- Trump campaigns against mail-in voting but votes by mail himself; the Trump family almost certainly does too.</p><p>- His proposal: the U.S. Postal Service should screen mail and determine whether voters receive their mail-in ballots &#8212; placing that power in an understaffed, underfunded agency already raising prices and cutting service.</p><p>- Trump trusts electronic systems for over 3,000 stock trades, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and wire transfers &#8212; but not for voting, which happens once or twice a year.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: this isn&#8217;t about security. It&#8217;s about control. If it were about security, they&#8217;d start with the security of their own money.</p><p><strong>00:32:08 Greg Bovino comes to Fishers &#8212; the mass deportation rally</strong></p><p>- Former CBP Commander Greg Bovino &#8212; who was reassigned to California after spreading false narratives about protesters attacking agents during ICE shootings in Minneapolis &#8212; is headlining an August 1st mass deportation rally in Fishers, Indiana.</p><p>- Tickets: $50 general admission, $500 private dinner.</p><p>- ICE has set up a central Indiana headquarters in the Hamilton County area.</p><p>- Counter-protesters are planned. Rev. Alexander urges civil, safe engagement &#8212; and urges residents of Fishers, Noblesville, and Carmel to recognize they are not exempt from these dynamics.</p><p><strong>00:37:50 Caller Tony &#8212; the labeling trap and Democratic fractures</strong></p><p>- Tony calls in: Trump is using the labels &#8220;communist&#8221; and &#8220;socialist&#8221; to discredit any dissent &#8212; branding anyone who disagrees as un-American.</p><p>- The labels are divisive within the Democratic Party itself: progressives, democratic socialists, and centrists are fighting each other publicly in ways Republicans never do.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander agrees: Republicans fall in line &#8212; in votes, press releases, and public statements &#8212; while Democrats air their fractures in the open. The right smells blood in the water heading into the midterms.</p><p>- Republicans who deviate only do so after losing their primary or announcing a resignation &#8212; and even then, the deviation is usually milquetoast (&#8221;I&#8217;m concerned about some of these decisions&#8221;).</p><p><strong>00:44:19 Discrimination is not history &#8212; it&#8217;s current policy</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander ties everything together: court records prove the administration actively discriminates against political opponents. The Supreme Court has blessed racial discrimination in policing and political discrimination in redistricting.</p><p>- Pulling grants for the word &#8220;climate.&#8221; Withholding disaster relief for voting Democratic. Pulling people over for looking a certain way. These are not echoes of the 1960s &#8212; they are 2026.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s closing argument: the fight today is greater than it was in the &#8216;60s, because too many people have accepted the narrative that discrimination is over &#8212; while the government admits in court that it isn&#8217;t.</p><p><strong>00:50:57 Program close &#8212; Fishers rally and call to action</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: whatever you do to counter the Bovino rally, do it safely and civilly.</p><p>- Directed specifically at Hamilton County residents in Fishers, Noblesville, and Carmel: you are not exempt from this. Stand up. We need you.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast July 22, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reunited and it feels... well, not great. Reverends Alexander and Greene have unpleasant news to discuss: the state revoking minority business opportunities while the city privatizes public schools.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-22</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-22</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:01:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/208138976/16089a609aa3c1b35f2835d6275149d0.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Back together after a week off, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. spend a dense, wide-ranging hour on two connected fronts: the gutting of minority business opportunity in Indiana and the parallel dismantling of Indianapolis Public Schools. On the business side, Governor Braun&#8217;s elimination of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program triggers the first extended discussion &#8212; both hosts trace a pattern of actions since Braun took office (Martin University funding, the Indiana Black Expo name change, the DBE cancellation) that they argue reveal an intentional, racially targeted agenda. Caller Imhotep adds a street-level observation: watching road paving crews work 30th and 29th Streets near Riverside with zero Black laborers &#8212; under a Chicago-based contractor, Meade, Inc. &#8212; and invokes Attorney General Todd Rokita&#8217;s role as the legal catalyst for the DBE elimination. Caller El Amin poses the oldest question in Black political thought: the Farrakhan vs. King debate on integration vs. self-determination, his grandfather&#8217;s maxim that Black freedom has always depended partly on good-willed white allies, and asks where those allies are now. Both hosts pivot in the second half to the breaking announcement &#8212; mid-show &#8212; that Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, has been named as the first executive director of the IPEC (Indianapolis Public Education Corporation), the new body overseeing both IPS and charter schools. Callers Joyce and Guy engage on charter school accountability, the IPS November referendum, and who controls the narrative when The Mind Trust has a marketing budget and IPS does not.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Announcer legal disclaimers and station open for Concerned Clergy weekly town hall on Praise AM 1310 / 95.1 FM.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene back after a week off; Pastor Greene opens in prayer.</p><p><strong>00:02:29 Governor Braun eliminates Indiana&#8217;s DBE program</strong></p><p>- Governor Braun <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/politics/indiana-gov-mike-braun-announces-end-to-race-and-sex-based-contracting-preferences-indianapolis-attorney-general-todd-rokita/531-5aa3c593-cca8-43f1-8893-572a3b398330">announced the elimination</a> of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program &#8212; ending goals, tracking, and good-faith effort requirements for minority contractor participation on state contracts.</p><p>- The goals weren&#8217;t being met even before the cut; no disparity study was done to justify the decision.</p><p>- The Baptist Ministers Alliance and Concerned Clergy <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/indiana/governor-mike-braun-executive-order-to-eliminate-dei-creates-tension-in-community-clergy/531-acf77180-1285-4189-a796-e89fbdce4c41">issued a joint public statement</a> calling the action egregious.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: equal opportunity is not discrimination &#8212; opening doors to qualified people who found them historically closed is fairness, not favoritism.</p><p><strong>00:04:32 The post-George Floyd reversal</strong></p><p>- After Floyd&#8217;s death, corporations and governments nationally acknowledged discrimination and disparity &#8212; now the same administration is calling those remedies illegal.</p><p>- Pastor Greene connects this directly to Trump and the MEI (Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence) framework replacing DEI: no metrics, no goals, no accountability &#8212; just a charade.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: at least DEI had <a href="https://www.indygo.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Transportation-Network-Company-DBE-Participation-Handout.pdf">measurable percentages</a> &#8212; 15, 8, 3, and 1. MEI has nothing but rhetoric.</p><p><strong>00:06:16 Minority contractors in practice &#8212; crumbs and cutoffs</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander details how the DBE system already worked against minority contractors in practice: accepted below-market rates just to get in the door, then cut off once dollar thresholds were met.</p><p>- Studies every five years by the state, city, and minority groups have consistently confirmed disadvantage &#8212; IU, Purdue, IUPUI, Ball State all built major projects with under 5% minority participation.</p><p>- All Trump had to do was say &#8220;it&#8217;s not fair&#8221; to override decades of documented data. No new study, no evidence.</p><p><strong>00:08:22 Governor Braun&#8217;s pattern &#8212; IBE, Martin University, and the DBE</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene catalogs the pattern: from day one, Braun has targeted predominantly Black institutions &#8212; <a href="https://mirrorindy.org/martin-university-indianapolis-mike-braun-2025-budget-college-success-program/">Martin University funding</a>, renaming the <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/18/indiana-health-fair-kicks-off-with/">Black Health Fair</a>, the IBE reception dynamics, and now the DBE elimination.</p><p>- <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlackIndyLIVE/photos/just-one-day-after-indiana-black-expo-welcomed-gov-mike-braun-to-one-of-its-sign/1731107682350529/">Receiving an award</a> from Indiana Black Expo one day, then signaling to his base the next: Pastor Greene calls this blatant, offensive, and degrading.</p><p>- With no DBE requirement, large white-owned firms have zero profit motive to subcontract with minority firms. The argument that MEI will produce more opportunities for Black businesses is, in Pastor Greene&#8217;s words, a charade.</p><p><strong>00:11:19 Rev. Alexander &#8212; the IBE reception and a missed opportunity</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the governor&#8217;s reception at Indiana Black Expo should have been used to publicly name the community&#8217;s expectations, not to give a warm welcome.</p><p>- A missed chance to say: we see what you&#8217;ve done from day one &#8212; here&#8217;s what we want to see from you.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the state won&#8217;t even collect the data anymore because they don&#8217;t want to be caught. What we have is existing disparity data &#8212; and that data is damning.</p><p><strong>00:15:10 Caller Imhotep &#8212; Rokita, road crews, and the majority claiming discrimination</strong></p><p>- Imhotep: Attorney General Todd Rokita was the behind-the-scenes catalyst for the DBE elimination &#8212; issuing the &#8220;unconstitutional&#8221; legal opinion that gave Braun political cover.</p><p>- He traces the Supreme Court&#8217;s role: from <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision">overturning affirmative action</a> to allowing ICE to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5507125/the-supreme-court-clears-the-way-for-ice-agents-to-treat-race-as-grounds-for-immigration-stops">target people by race</a> &#8212; you can&#8217;t use race to hire, but you can use it to stop people.</p><p>- <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/07/21/former-border-patrol-leader-to-speak-at-mass-deportation-rally-in-fishers/">Fishers rally</a>: anti-immigrant activist Greg Bovino (former CBP commander) &#8212; paid by outside groups, previously fired &#8212; is stirring up trouble in a community with significant immigrant residents.</p><p>- Walking the 30th and 29th Street paving project near Riverside: the contractor, Meade, Inc. (a Chicago-based firm), had zero Black laborers among those doing tar and asphalt work &#8212; even at a $21/hour non-skilled level.</p><p>- Invokes Ben Franklin&#8217;s principle: it is the majority&#8217;s responsibility to uphold the rights of the minority.</p><p><strong>00:20:08 Post-Imhotep &#8212; contract rules and the galvanize moment</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander explains the contract tier system: city contracts use XBE percentages (15/8/3/1); state contracts use DBE; federal dollars effectively remove the requirements entirely.</p><p>- Meade, Inc. is a Chicago firm doing major Indianapolis road work &#8212; local workers are mostly absent from large projects generally.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: we&#8217;re past monitoring &#8212; there&#8217;s nothing left to monitor. The response must be galvanizing across organizational silos.</p><p><strong>00:22:33 Caller El Amin &#8212; Farrakhan vs. King; where are the good white allies?</strong></p><p>- El Amin raises the oldest strategic debate in Black political thought: separation and self-reliance (Farrakhan) vs. integration and coalition-building (King). On employment and education today, he doesn&#8217;t have the answer.</p><p>- His grandfather&#8217;s maxim from the pulpit: Black folks would still be slaves without some good white folks. He wonders where they are now.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: he sees evidence they still exist &#8212; the No Kings rallies showed cross-racial coalition energy. DEI cuts hurt women too; voting rights attacks target women too. Those are coalition-building opportunities.</p><p><strong>00:24:36 Post-El Amin &#8212; complacency, coalition, and the Indy Chamber</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: Indiana&#8217;s Black community has been too complacent. Monitoring and advocating without action isn&#8217;t a strategy.</p><p>- Women-owned, Black-owned, and Latino-owned businesses should be joining forces &#8212; this is not a narrow issue.</p><p>- Governor Braun ran as a small business champion without qualification. His actions have revealed a whites-only definition of that promise.</p><p>- Pastor Greene reaches out to the Indy Chamber: they need to go on record. If they only represent large businesses, small businesses should leave.</p><p>- El Amin (in the chat): &#8220;Taking the penny out of circulation might be a sign to move us out of circulation.&#8221; Pastor Greene: the goal is ultimately to funnel more people into the prison system &#8212; education, business exclusion, and incarceration are all connected.</p><p><strong>00:31:55 IPS governance &#8212; the new entity and the referendum</strong></p><p>- IPS is now under a new governance structure (IPEC &#8212; Indianapolis Public Education Corporation) with a <a href="https://www.wfyi.org/education/2026-06-22/indianapolis-ips-charter-referendum-rate-vote">November referendum</a> seeking approximately $95 million.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the segment: who will lead this new entity, and what does their background signal?</p><p>- Facebook commenter Ryan: charter schools are taking over Indy and people don&#8217;t understand how terrible they really are.</p><p><strong>00:33:47 Breaking news &#8212; Karega Rausch named IPEC executive director</strong></p><p>- Mid-show announcement: Karega Rausch <a href="https://www.wfyi.org/education/2026-07-22/karega-rausch-ipec-executive-director-indianapolis-schools">has been named</a> the first executive director of IPEC.</p><p>- His background: education and charter schools director under Indianapolis mayors Bart Peterson and Greg Ballard; director of Stand for Children&#8217;s local affiliate; chaired the Indiana Charter Schools Board; president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers since 2020.</p><p>- The Mind Trust <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheMindTrust/posts/pfbid02nWKc8hCzW4vd41DcrePp53sDaWg8yRPcyBiAZ9VbX1jfNJqQNXrDjAX37BAxVFGUl">announced the hire</a> before the mayor did &#8212; a telling signal of who is driving the decision.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: watch how hard Rausch fights for the IPS referendum. A charter-system loyalist softballing the referendum tells you everything about the long-term plan.</p><p><strong>00:36:23 IPS as the Titanic &#8212; disruption, union busting, gentrification</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: children are being tossed to and fro with every new superintendent and strategic plan &#8212; IPS education is sinking in real time.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the goals behind this process are multiple &#8212; destroy the teachers union, ultimately destroy IPS itself, gentrify school site real estate, and funnel financial benefits to those with The Mind Trust connections.</p><p>- The person hired is meant to execute the master plan, not disrupt it.</p><p>- IPS needs the referendum to pass; the charter sector will get its money either way. Rausch has every incentive to go soft on the fight.</p><p><strong>00:38:00 Caller Joyce &#8212; IPS alumna, contract accountability, magnet schools</strong></p><p>- Joyce, an IPS graduate with family members who were IPS principals, traces the dismantling of IPS back to the governor who was &#8220;too good to live in the governor&#8217;s mansion&#8221; and then became vice president, and a mayor who began breaking down the school system. (Note: Joyce appears to be conflating two governors &#8212; it is Gov. Braun, not Pence, who does not live in the governor&#8217;s mansion; Braun commutes by helicopter from his home in Jasper.)</p><p>- Charter schools take the contract money and then fail to uphold their contracts &#8212; she asks what happens in that case, because many have closed with no accountability.</p><p>- IPS has Herron, magnet schools &#8212; real, community-embedded institutions. Charter pop-ups from outside the city don&#8217;t know the community&#8217;s situation.</p><p><strong>00:40:54 Post-Joyce &#8212; special needs, level playing fields, and the charter marketing machine</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: charter schools <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/report-charter-schools-are-failing-students-with-disabilities/">don&#8217;t want special-needs children</a> (higher cost, different staffing) &#8212; they cherry-pick the cream of the crop and leave IPS with more expensive students and fewer resources.</p><p>- If charters claim to be public schools, they should be held to public school standards: accept all students, work for the referendum, be accountable for results.</p><p>- Charter schools with The Mind Trust backing send glossy mailers every back-to-school season. Schools without money can&#8217;t compete for the narrative &#8212; and Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene certainly aren&#8217;t getting on CNN to tell the truth about charter performance.</p><p><strong>00:47:13 Caller Guy &#8212; DEI in practice, Alexander Miles, and who controls the charter narrative</strong></p><p>- Guy: DEI programs produced variety in representation, but the actual placement of people of color in jobs has been lacking. Cites inventor <a href="https://www.invent.org/inductees/alexander-miles">Alexander Miles</a> &#8212; who automated elevator doors &#8212; as an example of Black innovation that goes uncelebrated.</p><p>- Asks whether data exists comparing charter vs. public school performance.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: IDOE publishes it annually. Charter schools don&#8217;t perform better than public schools &#8212; and in many cases perform worse. The<a href="https://mirrorindy.org/ips-and-charter-schools-what-do-studies-and-test-scores-say-about-student-achievement/"> data is public</a>; it&#8217;s just not on people&#8217;s lips because the other side controls the narrative.</p><p>- Republicans stay on one message always. Democrats and progressives don&#8217;t. That&#8217;s a resource and discipline problem, not a facts problem.</p><p>- Pastor Greene closes: the mayor who runs charter schools has never mentioned their performance data in a State of the City address. That silence is its own data point.</p><p><strong>00:53:31 Closing argument &#8212; the DEI/education double standard</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s closing observation: for DEI in business, Black companies must prove decades of track record before getting a contract. For charter schools, you can walk in with an idea from last year and be trusted with children&#8217;s education.</p><p>- The double standard is the point.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander closes out callers, notes Reverend Phillips is in the queue for next week.</p><p><strong>00:54:36 Station close</strong></p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast July 8, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander flies solo tonight, breaking down the negative effects Elon Musk's DOGE had on vulnerable populations as its shuttering was officially announced this week.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-8-2026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-8-2026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:01:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/206236081/4d1e1645bbac07e4bb6a0f2da39efa6c.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Pastor Greene is traveling, so Reverend Alexander goes it alone &#8212; anchoring a focused, data-driven hour around a single thesis: DOGE, officially declared dead this week, was itself the most significant example of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. Opening with the announcement of DOGE&#8217;s dissolution, Rev. Alexander walks through the CLASP (Center for Law and Social Policy) report &#8220;Tracking the Harm of DOGE Cuts,&#8221; cataloguing layoffs and eliminations across six federal agencies &#8212; HHS, Homeland Security, Education, the IRS, the CDC, and Social Security &#8212; and connecting those cuts to the foreclosure crisis, healthcare access gaps, and the gutting of services for children, seniors, and the disabled. A brief call from Fulton, who rings in asking for prayer for a health issue, becomes a live illustration of the healthcare access crisis Rev. Alexander has been describing. Caller Guy returns with his trickle-down vs. bubble-up framework and ties the Supreme Court&#8217;s TPS ruling to the labor crisis now confronting Ohio Governor DeWine in Springfield. Reverend Phillips calls to react to the energy assistance cuts before losing his connection. The final segment pivots to election integrity, where Rev. Alexander makes a pointed logical argument: Trump never claimed elections were rigged when Democrats ran them and he won (2016, 2024), only when Republicans ran them and he lost (2020) &#8212; which, Rev. Alexander argues, amounts to an implicit admission that Democrats run cleaner elections. The program closes with an announcement of the homegoing services for Mark Russell, a longtime Urban League of Indianapolis leader.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Announcer legal disclaimers and station open for Concerned Clergy weekly town hall on Praise AM 1310 / 95.1 FM.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander opens solo &#8212; Pastor Greene is traveling &#8212; and leads the opening prayer himself.</p><p>- Lead topic announced: DOGE is officially dead.</p><p><strong>00:02:16 DOGE is dead &#8212; and it was the real waste, fraud, and abuse</strong></p><p>- DOGE formed roughly 30 days after Trump&#8217;s January 2025 inauguration, headed by Elon Musk and uncredentialed young staffers with no agency knowledge or security clearances.</p><p>- Elon Musk departed May 2025 saying his work was done; the agency itself dissolved this week.</p><p>- Staffers&#8217; own depositions: they used ChatGPT to scan for keywords like &#8220;DEI&#8221; and &#8220;climate&#8221; &#8212; cutting grants with no substantive review.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s verdict: DOGE was itself the waste, fraud, and abuse &#8212; wasting money, operating on a fraudulent mandate, and abusing the federal workforce.</p><p><strong>00:06:50 The CLASP report &#8212; children, public health, and immigration</strong></p><p>- CLASP (<a href="https://www.clasp.org/doge-tracker/">clasp.org</a>) report &#8220;Tracking the Harm of DOGE Cuts&#8221; details cuts to six agencies.</p><p>- HHS / Administration for Children and Families: 700 layoffs; 40&#8211;50% cuts to Head Start; 50% cuts to Office of Child Care &#8212; programs that served nearly 1.5 million children.</p><p>- CDC: NIOSH eliminated; 18,000+ new HIV patients unable to access cut treatment programs.</p><p>- DHS: Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties gutted; Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services eliminated &#8212; leaving immigration processing dysfunctional despite being Trump&#8217;s stated top priority.</p><p><strong>00:11:40 The CLASP report continued &#8212; IRS, Social Security, and the human cost</strong></p><p>- IRS: 7,000+ layoffs. Social Security: 7,000 employees gone by September 2025, serving a base of 71.6 million beneficiaries.</p><p>- Some fired workers had to be re-hired after agencies discovered the cuts were catastrophic &#8212; at further cost with no accounting provided.</p><p>- Over 300,000 total federal workers lost jobs; no report was ever issued on what was saved or what the process cost.</p><p><strong>00:13:22 Caller Fulton &#8212; prayer for a health issue</strong></p><p>- Fulton calls in asking for prayer for a recurring swollen calf.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander prays for him on air, asking for healing and access to care.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander connects Fulton&#8217;s difficulty getting medical care directly to the HHS cuts just discussed &#8212; premiums skyrocketing, preventive care disappearing.</p><p><strong>00:17:33 Foreclosures, faith communities, and the fraying safety net</strong></p><p>- Gloria in the Facebook chat recalls church prayer meetings as a communal support network; Rev. Alexander reflects on how streaming, cell phones, and competing activities have eroded that infrastructure.</p><p>- Foreclosures now at a seven-year high &#8212; tied directly to federal job losses and the elimination of DEI departments across universities and corporations.</p><p><strong>00:20:46 Indiana&#8217;s complicity &#8212; alignment with federal cuts</strong></p><p>- Indiana&#8217;s Republican supermajority has not pushed back on any federal cuts &#8212; actively aligning state policy with Washington and already surrendering Indiana voter data.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: it&#8217;s not that the administration is out of touch &#8212; it&#8217;s intentional and, as Pastor Greene would say, immoral.</p><p>- ICE family separations cited as another example of policy that is harmful and known to be harmful.</p><p><strong>00:24:08 DOGE&#8217;s legacy &#8212; no accountability, no receipts</strong></p><p>- DOGE never issued a report on what it actually saved or what the process cost the government.</p><p>- Elon Musk left with a black eye; his own employees admitted they saved nothing and had no idea what they were doing.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s summary: DOGE came in for three months, cut like butter, left, and now it&#8217;s gone &#8212; with 300,000 people&#8217;s lives upended and nothing to show for it.</p><p><strong>00:29:24 Caller Guy &#8212; money transfer, trickle-down, and Springfield, Ohio</strong></p><p>- Guy frames the DOGE cuts as a simple money transfer &#8212; those who worried COVID assistance would discourage work are now enriching themselves through the same government they dismantled.</p><p>- Trickle-down economics doesn&#8217;t reach most people; bubble-up investment does. This administration is firmly trickle-down.</p><p>- The Supreme Court struck down TPS (Temporary Protected Status) protections; Ohio Governor DeWine &#8212; no progressive &#8212; is now publicly criticizing the ruling because Haitian immigrants were deliberately recruited to fill workforce gaps in Springfield, Ohio.</p><p><strong>00:33:05 Post-Guy discussion &#8212; TPS, Haiti, and trickle-down</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander explains: Ohio communities proactively settled Haitian workers legally under TPS; the Supreme Court has undone that investment.</p><p>- Haiti&#8217;s government has effectively been replaced by gang rule &#8212; TPS was a humanitarian lifeline, not an open-borders policy.</p><p>- Trickle-down is simply money moving from one pocket to another &#8212; it never reaches the bottom.</p><p><strong>00:37:12 The CLASP report continued &#8212; FDA, energy assistance, and farmers</strong></p><p>- FDA: 3,500 layoffs weakening oversight of food and drug safety.</p><p>- HHS Division of Energy Assistance: a $4.1 billion program helping 6.2 million households with utility bills &#8212; cut by DOGE, especially harmful given the AES Indiana rate increase that just took effect.</p><p>- The same food programs that feed seniors and children also support American farmers through federal contracts &#8212; cutting them hurts both ends of the supply chain.</p><p>- Trump&#8217;s response to tariff damage to farmers: a $12 billion stimulus payment rather than lifting the tariffs.</p><p><strong>00:41:27 Caller Reverend Phillips &#8212; energy assistance and Project 2025</strong></p><p>- Reverend Phillips reacts to the energy assistance cuts, calling Project 2025 dangerous.</p><p>- Call drops before he can complete his point.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: a Project 2025 checklist review of 2026 would show check marks across nearly every line item discussed tonight.</p><p><strong>00:46:50 Election fraud &#8212; the data</strong></p><p>- Between 2000 and 2026, only 99 documented fraud cases in U.S. elections over 26 years.</p><p>- The Brennan Center found just 30 possible illegal votes out of 23 million cast from 2017 to present.</p><p>- All the money, lawsuits, executive orders, and threats being spent on election fraud are addressing a problem that essentially <em>does not exist</em>.</p><p><strong>00:49:33 Election fraud &#8212; the logical argument</strong></p><p>- Trump won in 2016 under Obama (Democrat) &#8212; no fraud claims. Lost in 2020 under his own Republican administration &#8212; 60+ lawsuits, all lost; Bill Barr confirmed no fraud; only fraud found was Trump&#8217;s own fake electors.</p><p>- Won in 2024 under Biden (Democrat) &#8212; no fraud claims. The pattern: Trump only cries fraud when Republicans ran the election and he lost &#8212; implying Democrats run cleaner elections.</p><p>- Current push: directing the Postmaster General to vet mail-in ballots sets a precedent that could extend to intercepting Social Security cards or any other mail.</p><p><strong>00:52:33 Program close &#8212; homegoing services for Mark Russell</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander announces homegoing services for Mark Russell &#8212; more than two decades of service at the Urban League of Indianapolis &#8212; Thursday 7/9 at noon at Williams &amp; Blue Funeral Home, with viewing at 10 a.m.</p><p>- He asks listeners to pray for Mark Russell&#8217;s family.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast July 1, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene discuss the Metropolitan Development Commission punting a data center decision to the City-County Council and look at the effects of underfunded city parks.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-1-2026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-july-1-2026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:02:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/204553553/d10998f3d73dbe3647f0bb8f567ba5d7.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>On the eve of the Fourth of July holiday, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. anchor the hour around two converging crises in Indianapolis: the Metropolitan Development Commission&#8217;s refusal to place a moratorium on data center development, and the severe understaffing of the city&#8217;s park ranger corps at a moment when summer park safety is already in crisis. The MDC voted today to push forward with a special data center zoning framework &#8212; forwarding it to the City-County Council rather than pausing to address unanswered community questions about environmental impact, utility costs, and property values. Both hosts argue the decision reflects a pattern of closed-door negotiations with developers that excludes the public and that other cities, including Henderson, Kentucky, have handled more wisely. Then, Rev. Alexander shares a startling disclosure from a recent RDC Northwest Community Resource District Council meeting at Riverside Park: Indianapolis has 220 parks but only seven park rangers &#8212; dropping to six the following week &#8212; meaning the city cannot put even one ranger per shift per side of town. Caller Guy connects both topics through the lens of public information access, invoking Lincoln&#8217;s maxim that a republic depends on an informed citizenry. The program closes with a study in contrasts: Riverside Park&#8217;s &#8220;Sunday Fun Day&#8221; model of intergenerational community ownership &#8212; which produces no incidents &#8212; versus the chronic disorder at Northwestway Park, which Pastor Greene traces to higher rental property rates, lower homeownership, and a resulting absence of community investment. Both hosts close with a holiday weekend safety message and a call for HOA and community leaders around Northwestway to replicate the Riverside model.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Announcer legal disclaimers and station open for Concerned Clergy weekly town hall on Praise AM 1310 / 95.1 FM.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander welcomes listeners and the Progressive Indiana Network Substack audience; greets Pastor Greene; previews topics including data centers and city parks.</p><p>- Pastor Greene offers opening prayer.</p><p><strong>00:02:35 MDC data center moratorium vote &#8212; the community loses</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports that the Metropolitan Development Commission met that day and declined to place a moratorium on data center development, instead forwarding a special zoning framework to the City-County Council.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: deeply disappointed. Communities overwhelming asked for a moratorium &#8212; not a rejection of data centers, but a pause to get answers on environmental, utility, and infrastructure questions. A few insiders overrode the majority.</p><p>- The hosts urge constituents to remember this at election time. The AES Indiana rate increase also took effect that day, with another increase coming in January.</p><p>- Both agree the rush is not about wisdom &#8212; it&#8217;s about keeping developer timelines intact. The unanswered questions about who pays for infrastructure, what happens to property values, and how many data centers the grid can actually support are being deliberately avoided because the answers may not be community-friendly.</p><p><strong>00:08:56 Public process breakdown &#8212; closed-door negotiations and the indy.gov resource</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: all negotiations with data center developers have been conducted behind closed doors. Community members are given one-way presentations at MDC sessions, not genuine input forums. Feedback is acknowledged and ignored.</p><p>- He directs viewers to indy.gov &#8212; search &#8220;data centers&#8221; &#8212; to find FAQs, draft zoning regulations, meeting recordings, and proposed guardrails (lighting, noise, environmental, water usage).</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Indianapolis had no data center zoning at all prior to this process. What the council is now receiving is a framework to create that zoning &#8212; a workaround to avoid the moratorium communities wanted.</p><p>- Cities like Henderson, Kentucky have already placed moratoriums to do exactly this kind of deliberate planning. Marion County is not doing the same.</p><p><strong>00:20:20 Capacity limits and the Boone County ripple effect</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: there is a hard limit on how many data centers Marion County&#8217;s utility infrastructure can actually support. Nobody knows what that number is, because nobody has paused to find out. The internet rollout taught this lesson; data centers will teach it again.</p><p>- Citizens Energy Group has reportedly told developers they&#8217;ll pay for their own infrastructure upgrades; AES Indiana reportedly has not taken that position &#8212; creating an unequal burden on ratepayers.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the scope must be Indiana-wide, not Marion County alone. The Meta data center in Boone County (Lebanon) affects Marion County&#8217;s grid. A regional master plan is needed.</p><p><strong>00:23:01 Meta&#8217;s America&#8217;s Workforce Academy &#8212; opportunity in the new landscape</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander pivots to a jobs message: Meta is launching its America&#8217;s Workforce Academy, training workers for data center construction and maintenance. Indianapolis is one of roughly 24 selected sites, with a launch expected around August.</p><p>- The program is accessible at <a href="https://www.meta.com/actions/americas-workforce-academy/">https://www.meta.com/actions/americas-workforce-academy/</a>. It targets tech-savvy young people, and Meta representatives specifically mentioned recruiting gamers &#8212; people accustomed to extended, high-focus screen time.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: even while advocating for a moratorium, he wants young people to know these jobs exist and are well-compensated. Don&#8217;t let advocacy and opportunity be mutually exclusive.</p><p><strong>00:27:16 Break recap and pivot to park safety &#8212; the RDC Northwest meeting</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander recaps the MDC vote for listeners coming back from commercial, then transitions to park safety.</p><p>- Earlier that Monday, the RDC Northwest Community Resource District Council &#8212; working with IMPD&#8217;s Northwest District &#8212; hosted a meeting at Riverside Park to discuss park safety issues, particularly at Riverside and Northwestway Park.</p><p><strong>00:28:25 220 parks, seven rangers &#8212; the staffing crisis</strong></p><p>- The park rangers at the meeting disclosed a stunning figure: Indianapolis has 220 parks, but only seven park rangers &#8212; a number dropping to six the following week when one departs.</p><p>- Current split: four rangers on day shift, three on night shift, citywide.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: this is not enough to cover a single side of town per shift, let alone deter ongoing problems at the city&#8217;s most troubled parks.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: during summer, rangers take vacations too &#8212; so the real number is even lower much of the time. Some parks have almost certainly gone years without seeing a ranger. When something happens there, the city will blame the community rather than acknowledge the prevention failure.</p><p><strong>00:32:16 Who owns parks? &#8212; the councilor question and budget reality</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: who on the City-County Council is advocating for parks? He recalls Councilor Duke Oliver as a former champion of parks funding, but is unsure who currently holds that role.</p><p>- Pastor Greene identifies Councilor Dan Boots as the current chair of the Parks Committee. He notes that the budget decisions that led to this staffing level predate Boots, and that without mayoral support and a budget line item, there is no path to more rangers.</p><p>- Both hosts: the police chief will correctly say she doesn&#8217;t have the resources for parks. This has to be solved at the mayoral and budget level, not the police level.</p><p><strong>00:35:58 The youth employment pipeline &#8212; lifeguards becoming reluctant security</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: when he was growing up, city parks were important sources of first jobs for young people &#8212; lifeguards, pool staff, golf course workers. Friends of his worked at Douglas Park.</p><p>- Parks staff disclosed that young workers are now refusing to take those jobs because they&#8217;re being forced into informal security roles their training doesn&#8217;t support &#8212; telling peers to stop roughhousing, mediating conflicts, and then having to go to school with those same peers the next week.</p><p>- This creates a vicious cycle: fewer young workers &#8594; pools and parks unable to open &#8594; fewer resources for families &#8594; more unstructured time contributing to the very disorder that drove workers away in the first place.</p><p><strong>00:38:51 Caller Guy &#8212; facts, Lincoln, and park ranger history</strong></p><p>- Guy asks whether any reliable cost-benefit analysis exists for Indianapolis data center development. Rev. Alexander: not yet &#8212; which is precisely why communities are asking for a moratorium.</p><p>- Guy invokes a maxim attributed to Abraham Lincoln: If the people know the facts, the country will be saved. Those suppressing public information about data centers are acting against that principle.</p><p>- On parks: Guy recalls significant controversy when Indianapolis park rangers were first introduced &#8212; questions about their authority and conduct. That controversy has since quieted, Guy notes wryly &#8212; which Rev. Alexander points out may be because the rangers themselves have nearly disappeared.</p><p>- Guy: perhaps the city&#8217;s logic is that if there&#8217;s no visible disorder in the parks, they don&#8217;t need many rangers. Both hosts push back: the disorder is very visible.</p><p><strong>00:41:51 Riverside vs. Northwestway &#8212; community ownership as the variable</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports a key finding from the Monday Riverside meeting: Riverside Park&#8217;s &#8220;Sunday Fun Day&#8221; community has a genuine relationship with their park rangers &#8212; they know them by name. Rev. Alexander confirmed with Commander Lewis that Riverside has had no incidents in recent weeks despite being packed every Sunday.</p><p>- Northwestway Park, by contrast, is the number one source of calls in the Northwest District &#8212; issues nearly every day.</p><p>- The difference: Riverside has long-term residents who have taken ownership of the space. They run organized events, have vendors, attract OGs with show cars who mentor younger attendees &#8212; creating an intergenerational environment where a takeover mentality doesn&#8217;t take root.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the Riverside model works because the people there are homeowners with a stake in the community. Northwestway Park is surrounded by higher concentrations of rental property &#8212; renters don&#8217;t have the same incentive to invest community time and energy. This connects directly to fair housing failures and declining Black homeownership rates, which Councilor Amy Nelson has addressed in her policy work.</p><p><strong>00:48:39 Call to action &#8212; HOAs, community leaders, duplicate the model</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Northwestway Park is also surrounded by HOA communities and homeowners, not just rentals. There&#8217;s a church next door. Those stakeholders need to step up, talk to their HOA leaders, and start hosting structured community events &#8212; the way Riverside does.</p><p>- Don&#8217;t wait for the park rangers who aren&#8217;t coming. Take ownership before the park is taken over.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: it will require IMPD and city support to sustain, but the model works anywhere if the neighborhood is vested. Neighborhood watch groups with strong community ties produce measurably less crime.</p><p><strong>00:52:23 Program close &#8212; Fourth of July safety message</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: thank you to all listeners. Parks have splash parks, pools, and cooling centers &#8212; enjoy the outdoors this holiday weekend, but be safe.</p><p>- Both hosts wish the audience a safe Fourth of July.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast June 24,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene compare and contrast last weekend's Indiana Republican Party convention with Stacey Abrams' Urban League presentation in Indianapolis on Tuesday.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-242026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-242026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:02:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/203491409/6819437e3f993f11a8b3d59f99fcf258.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>With the Indiana Republican state convention just concluded and Stacey Abrams&#8217; Urban League keynote fresh in mind, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open a dense, politically charged hour with two interlocking arguments. First, they contend that the Republican Party has ceased to exist as a coherent institution &#8212; replaced by MAGA &#8212; and that traditional Republicans who fall in line with party dictates have effectively become what Rev. Alexander calls the &#8220;house Negroes&#8221; of the MAGA movement, a parallel he illustrates with the Republican delegation&#8217;s rapid pivot from incumbent Secretary of State Diego Morales to unknown party pick Max Engling within 30 days. Second, they work through the practical implications of Stacey Abrams&#8217; presentation the previous day at the Urban League luncheon, which laid out 10 steps to autocracy and 10 counter-steps to defeat it. Caller El Amin broaches the topic of academic free speech, given the recent non-renewal of IU lecturer Jessica Adams, who was suspended after Senator Jim Banks took issue with her classroom use of &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; as an example of covert white supremacy. Caller Guy returns with a historical argument for reclaiming Black contributions to American democracy &#8212; Crispus Attucks, Frank Wills, Russel Honor&#233; &#8212; as essential public relations infrastructure for the movement. The program closes with both hosts calling on the community to organize, speak up, and demand democracy, with Pastor Greene warning that too many people with power are going along silently with the erosion of rights and history.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene&#8217;s opening prayer includes a petition for those affected by earthquakes in California.</p><p><strong>00:03:00 Republican delegation recap &#8212; Morales out, Engling in</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports on the Indiana Republican state convention in Fort Wayne: roughly 1,800 delegates, incumbent Secretary of State Diego Morales dumped within 30 days of Republican leadership withdrawing support in favor of Max Engling.</p><p>- A Terre Haute candidate (correction: Dave Shelton is from Vincennes) with actual relevant experience was also passed over. Delegates fell in line behind the party&#8217;s choice with no apparent independent evaluation of Engling.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s argument: this is the definition of &#8220;house Negro&#8221; behavior &#8212; following orders without question, getting privileges from the master while abandoning your own values.</p><p>- The distinction between Republican and MAGA is not subtle: Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have explicitly said the Republican Party is dead and has been replaced by the MAGA Party. Traditional Republicans who haven&#8217;t noticed are the last to know.</p><p><strong>00:06:30 MAGA fractures within Indiana Republican politics</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene notes visible fractures: Trump threatening to withhold his signature from a bipartisan housing bill unless he gets voter suppression provisions; only three or four Republican members of Congress showing any backbone.</p><p>- At the state level: AES Indiana received its rate increase; Governor Braun is replacing the IURC chair after the fact, despite having hired the person who approved the rates months ago.</p><p>- Someone connected to the state&#8217;s trail programs resigned this week, citing the governor being too heavy-handed.</p><p>- The party dynamic: Braun is MAGA, Beckwith wants to be even more MAGA, and traditional Republicans who don&#8217;t conform are being pushed out.</p><p><strong>00:09:17 Max Engling and what he&#8217;s actually promising</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: Engling&#8217;s explicit platform is to limit voter participation, not expand it &#8212; targeting people of color specifically. He&#8217;s being openly racist about it and calculating that MAGA voters will reward that posture.</p><p>- This is Project 2025 in action at the state level: assume non-citizens are voting, use that as cover to suppress legal voters of color.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: whatever differences existed between Morales and Engling on the substance, Republican delegates don&#8217;t know Engling at all &#8212; they just did what they were told. That&#8217;s the house Negro dynamic in practice.</p><p><strong>00:15:11 Rev. Alexander&#8217;s primary season story &#8212; the parking lot parable</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander shares a personal anecdote from primary canvassing: a woman on a cane comes out of her car calling Democrats idiots, while he &#8212; a Democrat &#8212; is the only one there to help her get to the door.</p><p>- When she came back out after voting (Republican, of course), she told him &#8220;I love you.&#8221;</p><p>- Pastor Greene: this is exactly what Stacey Abrams was describing &#8212; partisan identity has replaced moral reasoning. It&#8217;s not right vs. left, it&#8217;s right vs. wrong. Doing the right thing shouldn&#8217;t make you an idiot.</p><p>- The MAGA framework needs division and anger to function. A civil conversation about shared problems is the enemy of their strategy.</p><p><strong>00:21:38 Stacey Abrams&#8217; Urban League keynote &#8212; 10 steps to autocracy, 10 to defeat it</strong></p><p>- Abrams was the keynote speaker at the Urban League of Indianapolis luncheon the previous day, presenting two frameworks: 10 steps to autocracy (expand executive power, cut government levels, install loyalists, attack media, scapegoat vulnerable communities, destroy support systems) and 10 steps to defeat it (commit, share, organize, mobilize, litigate, disrupt, deny, engage, elect, demand democracy).</p><p>- Rev. Alexander notes the steps to autocracy map directly onto what the Trump administration has been doing: Medicaid and Medicare cuts, USAID gutted, DEI eliminated, Elon Musk with a chainsaw.</p><p>- The Urban League had roughly 1,400 people in the room. Rev. Alexander&#8217;s ask: don&#8217;t just have the meal &#8212; share what she said. That&#8217;s step two on her own list.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander adds an eleventh step of his own: tie Indiana&#8217;s dismal quality-of-life rankings directly to the Republicans who have governed the state for decades.</p><p><strong>00:25:04 Caller El Amin &#8212; The chilling effect: IU professor fired for naming MAGA</strong></p><p>- El Amin calls in with a pointed question: how do you organize and share information when people are losing their jobs for speaking up?</p><p>- A recent case: IU social work lecturer Jessica Adams lost her position after using an academic graphic that listed the MAGA slogan as an example of covert white supremacy. Senator Jim Banks intervened to have her removed.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: El Amin is right, and this is precisely one of Abrams&#8217; 10 steps &#8212; controlling education to control the message. Turning Point USA clubs in schools, the new law restricting faculty speech, rewriting history &#8212; it&#8217;s all part of the same system.</p><p>- The attack is intentional and systematic. The response must be equally intentional and systematic. Commitment &#8212; Abrams&#8217; first step &#8212; means acting even when there are consequences.</p><p><strong>00:30:57 Republicans who don&#8217;t see it yet &#8212; a direct address</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander addresses traditional Republicans directly: you may call yourself MAGA, but MAGA has drawn a line and you&#8217;re on the wrong side of it. Trump and Trump Jr. have said the Republican Party is gone. Your family values candidate has been convicted of sex crimes and skipped his own child&#8217;s wedding.</p><p>- Gloria in the chat asks how to get the 10 steps to the people. Rev. Alexander&#8217;s answer: that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing right now. But the Urban League also needs to keep pushing what she shared &#8212; don&#8217;t let it end with the luncheon.</p><p><strong>00:33:42 The 10 counter-steps in detail &#8212; litigate in public</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander recaps Abrams&#8217; 10 steps to defeat autocracy: commit, share, organize, mobilize, litigate, disrupt, deny, engage, elect, demand democracy.</p><p>- His emphasis: the &#8220;litigate&#8221; step doesn&#8217;t only mean courtrooms. Litigating in public &#8212; using a radio show, a Facebook page, a community platform &#8212; is how non-lawyers fight back.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Jamal Bryant and Senator Raphael Warnock are both coming to Indianapolis next month. The question is what the community does with those visits beyond being in the audience.</p><p>- AES Indiana rate increases are coming in July and again in January. Indiana budget season is approaching. These are the organizing moments.</p><p><strong>00:44:38 Caller Guy &#8212; Trumplicans, Mussolini&#8217;s playbook, and erased Black patriots</strong></p><p>- Guy calls back after technical difficulties. His framing: what Trump is doing is not new &#8212; it&#8217;s Benito Mussolini&#8217;s playbook, adopted by Hitler, exploiting a population that feels downcast and left behind.</p><p>- Guy poses names to the audience as a test of public relations failure: Crispus Attucks (first patriot killed in the Boston Massacre, whose name is rarely mentioned in mainstream media); Frank Wills (the Watergate security guard who discovered the break-in); Russel Honor&#233; (who led federal relief after Katrina).</p><p>- How many people know these names? If the community doesn&#8217;t tell its own story, the erasure succeeds. Taking away Black history from national cemeteries and military records is the same playbook, just institutionalized.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Guy is right, but the point is that a government entity is now actively removing those references &#8212; from national cemeteries, from military history. The outcry needs to match the scale of the erasure.</p><p><strong>00:50:08 Closing &#8212; demand it, don&#8217;t go silently</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: where are the people committed to pushing back? Too many minorities with power are going along with it, saying nothing. We have too many voiceless people.</p><p>- El Amin posts in the Facebook chat: &#8220;<a href="https://normanwilkins.weebly.com/">Emancipation: 400 Years of History</a>&#8221; &#8212; a resource link Rev. Alexander directs listeners to visit and share.</p><p>- Pastor Greene closes with an urgent call: we can&#8217;t dance around this. Demand democracy. Don&#8217;t go silently. Stand up.</p><p><strong>00:52:45 Station close</strong></p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast June 17,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene look at the cycle of youth program cuts leading to teen violence, leading to calls for more policing, which is paid for by more cuts. Blame years of GOP leadership.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-172026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-172026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:31:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/202572238/3d230770b349521b32701dd9b9f50ecd.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Broadcasting through a summer storm, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open with a brief celebration: last week&#8217;s advance warning about the planned Northwestway Park takeover worked, and the park had a safe, family-friendly weekend. That good news is immediately paired with a new alert &#8212; a social media-organized takeover is now planned for Skateland on Glen Arm Road on the west side. The bulk of the program pivots to a sustained, data-driven indictment of Indiana&#8217;s record under decades of Republican supermajority rule, anchored by a Purdue University quality-of-life study ranking Indiana 46th out of 50 states. Both hosts connect the dots from defunded youth programs (PAL Club, OK Program, IMPD Cares) and charter school expansion to the park takeover problem &#8212; arguing that cuts to prevention always produce the very public safety crises politicians then use to demand more police. Caller Imhotep phones in from Atlanta, where he is attending FIFA World Cup events with young people, and draws a direct line from Dr. King&#8217;s &#8220;beloved community&#8221; to the anti-DEI funding cuts ravaging nonprofits. Callers Tony and Guy add personal testimony and political framing. The program closes with a direct message to Indiana Democratic candidates: stop playing footsies with Republicans and make them own Indiana&#8217;s dismal rankings on foreclosures, education, and quality of life heading into November.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene offers opening prayer, asking specifically for the safety of those affected by the storm.</p><p><strong>00:03:04 Northwestway Park success -- and the next takeover threat</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports that last week&#8217;s on-air warning about the planned Northwestway Park takeover had its intended effect: the park had a safe, family-friendly weekend with no incident.</p><p>- A new social media-organized &#8220;takeover&#8221; is now planned for this Saturday at Skateland on Glen Arm Road on the west side of Indianapolis.</p><p>- Both hosts repeat the message: young people are welcome to come enjoy themselves, but the community will not allow a repeat of the chaos pattern.</p><p>- Pastor Greene notes that parents may assume the skating rink is safe and need to be warned; takeover events attract people from across the city, and it only takes one encounter to escalate.</p><p><strong>00:07:02 Gerrelian Ragland and Pain to Progress -- community filling the gap</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander directly addresses Gerrelian in the Facebook chat, calling on the community to keep the environment safe.</p><p>- Pastor Greene highlights Gerrelian&#8217;s youth program Pain to Progress, along with Anthony Hampton&#8217;s south-side sports programming, as examples of community members filling the void left by defunded city programs.</p><p>- Programs that have been cut or defunded: PAL Club, the OK Program (targeting African American males), IMPD Cares. These are now being replaced piecemeal by community volunteers with no stable funding.</p><p>- Pastor Greene&#8217;s call to city-county councilors: fund programs like Pain to Progress directly. A pizza party costs money. Poverty is real. Prevention is cheaper than reaction.</p><p><strong>00:08:42 The PAL Club, the OK Program, and what was lost</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene details the value of programs like the PAL Club: they gave young people non-threatening contact with police officers, building relationships before any arrest or crisis interaction.</p><p>- The OK Program specifically targeted African American males and operated alongside IMPD Cares. Both are gone.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: people today say &#8220;I&#8217;m a product of the PAL Club -- it saved my life.&#8221; The concept works. It will come back eventually, possibly under a different name like Pain to Progress, but it needs real funding to operate at scale.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander adds: cuts aren&#8217;t limited to PAL Club -- DEI rollbacks and anti-poverty program eliminations are sweeping away the CYO, charter schools lack extracurricular activities, and the entire ecosystem of youth development is being stripped at the federal, state, and local levels simultaneously.</p><p><strong>00:15:10 Prevention vs. incarceration -- the false economy of cuts</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: cutting youth programs while expecting public safety is a contradiction. What are 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds doing this summer if not at home twiddling their thumbs?</p><p>- You can&#8217;t police your way out of it -- IMPD doesn&#8217;t have enough officers to cover every corner, every garage, every park, every event.</p><p>- Tourism, downtown sporting events, the city&#8217;s reputation -- all of it is at risk if you keep cutting prevention and then express surprise when something goes wrong.</p><p>- Denise in the Facebook chat: it&#8217;s a vicious cycle -- F-grade schools get defunded, which feeds the street pipeline, which produces the public safety crisis that gets blamed on parents.</p><p><strong>00:19:34 Break toss and framing the second segment</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the second segment: connecting the dots between what&#8217;s happening at the federal level and what Republicans have done in Indiana specifically.</p><p>- Imhotep is first in the call queue when they return.</p><p><strong>00:21:23 Caller Imhotep -- FIFA in Atlanta, King&#8217;s beloved community, and the $300 billion question</strong></p><p>- Imhotep calls from Atlanta, where he has brought young people to attend FIFA World Cup events; notes heavy DEA and ATF security presence has kept things in order, with only a minor crowd incident at State Farm Arena involving local streamer Tysonette.</p><p>- Connects the show&#8217;s discussion to the Georgia governor&#8217;s race: Keisha Lance Bottoms is running on free textbooks, free junior college, free first two years of four-year college, and mandatory job training for released prisoners; the Republican candidate offers none of that.</p><p>- Visited the King Center the previous day with the young people he brought; shed a tear reading Dr. King&#8217;s vision of the beloved community -- which he argues is exactly antithetical to anti-DEI funding cuts, school defunding, and nonprofit slashing.</p><p>- Closes with the $300 billion figure: federal money is going to reparations for Trump&#8217;s war on Iran, while that same amount could fund all American college students, all trade schools, and five years of health care.</p><p><strong>00:25:34 Post-Imhotep -- Connecting federal cuts to Indiana&#8217;s Republican record</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Imhotep&#8217;s point is federal, but it&#8217;s happening right here in Indiana too -- and with the Republican State Delegate Convention coming up this weekend, this is the moment to make the connection explicit.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander names the data: Indiana is #1 in foreclosures (worst in the country), 45th in education, leads in Black unemployment, and ranked 46th in quality of life by a Purdue University study from June 2025.</p><p>- This happened under a Republican supermajority -- through Daniels, Holcomb, Braun, and Pence -- and Indiana Democratic candidates need to be saying that clearly, not playing footsies with Republicans.</p><p><strong>00:30:52 Pastor Greene -- Make them own it; Behning and the education numbers</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: you can&#8217;t have different facts. Purdue&#8217;s numbers are what they are. Representative Bob Behning has chaired the House Education Committee while Indiana&#8217;s education ranking has fallen -- make him own it.</p><p>- The Republican majority passed the policies that produced these results. No Democratic candidate can credibly be blamed for Indiana&#8217;s foreclosure crisis or its education standing -- Democrats haven&#8217;t had the votes.</p><p>- Indiana Republicans won&#8217;t break with Trump because he&#8217;ll primary them. There&#8217;s no backbone in the current Congress. Democrats must be bold enough to stand on the facts and make Republicans answer for them.</p><p><strong>00:36:32 The Republican State Delegate Convention preview</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the Republican delegation meets this week. Sen. Jim Banks has already signaled who he&#8217;s backing for Secretary of State -- someone most Hoosiers don&#8217;t know -- and Republicans will fall in line regardless.</p><p>- That&#8217;s the difference: Republicans unify behind whoever their machine picks. Democrats need to learn that discipline for November.</p><p><strong>00:37:04 Caller Tony -- Growing up in Gary, the bookmobile, and what&#8217;s being lost</strong></p><p>- Tony, 62, grew up in Gary in a single-parent household with three sisters. His family relied entirely on publicly funded programs: the bookmobile (a mobile library that parked in his neighborhood), summer programs, and free school lunch.</p><p>- Those programs gave him his love of reading and shaped his childhood positively. Hearing that all of it is being cut breaks his heart for his grandchildren&#8217;s generation.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Indiana is 45th in education. IPS has been dismantled over 20 years. Charter schools lack extracurriculars. A new education commission chaired by the Indianapolis mayor is forming while public school funding is being stripped.</p><p><strong>00:41:10 Caller Guy -- Follow the money; trickle-down vs. bubble-up</strong></p><p>- Guy: it&#8217;s simple -- follow the money. Conservatives believe in trickle-down economics (wealth flows down from the top); progressives believe in bubble-up (investment in the masses builds upward).</p><p>- The money going to Iran is going to contractors -- and look at who those contractors are connected to. This is the same pattern as the Iraq reconstruction era: war and foreign expenditure enriches the already-connected.</p><p>- Investment in people is the best investment. The conservative framework says it believes that too, but the budget doesn&#8217;t reflect it.</p><p><strong>00:43:19 Closing argument -- Indiana under Republican rule</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reframes Guy&#8217;s point: every dollar in this federal government flows to Friends of Trump or Family of Trump. Democratic candidates should run on that at every level.</p><p>- Indiana is last or near-last in foreclosures, education, quality of life, and Black unemployment. Republicans have been in charge. Connect the dots. Stop being scared. Make them own it.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the Purdue data is not opinion -- it&#8217;s fact. Child care, education, health care -- Republicans own the results. Democratic candidates need the guts to say so clearly.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander closes: Purdue said Indiana is 46th in quality of life. Republicans have been leading Indiana. The question for November is whether voters want to continue down that road.</p><p>- Juneteenth reminder: coming up this weekend. Don&#8217;t forget your history.</p><p><strong>00:47:57 Station close</strong></p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast Update]]></title><description><![CDATA[Due to a line of extreme weather passing through Central Indiana last night, today&#8217;s episode of the Concerned Clergy Podcast will be delayed.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-update</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-update</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:39:09 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CkFd!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa429d953-5a0a-4494-81dd-a71a78beabb7_500x500.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Due to a line of extreme weather passing through Central Indiana last night, today&#8217;s episode of the Concerned Clergy Podcast will be delayed. We hope to have it for you tonight. Sorry about any inconvenience.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast June 10,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene look back on last weekend's state Democratic Party convention and look forward to a long, hot summer and concerns over safety in public spaces.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-102026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-102026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:01:13 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/201537853/0dbfeb0c660467c018cb7c7bc04d461a.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>With summer underway and a Democratic state convention just behind them, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open this week&#8217;s program on two urgent fronts: the state of the Indiana Democratic Party in the aftermath of the Secretary of State convention vote, and a gathering threat to public safety at Northwestway Park on Indianapolis&#8217;s northwest side. On the political front, both hosts dissect the convention outcome &#8212; Beau Bayh over Blythe Potter &#8212; and the immediate backlash from some Potter supporters threatening to sit out November, tracing the dysfunction back to a chronic leadership vacuum within the state and Marion County Democratic Party. Caller Marilyn provides a sharp firsthand account of bureaucratic neglect in the state&#8217;s disability services system, which both hosts connect directly to low voter turnout and the failure to hold elected officials accountable. The second half of the program focuses on a social-media-organized &#8220;Motion Party&#8221; takeover announced for Northwestway Park the coming Saturday &#8212; a flash event that follows a weapons-brandishing incident the previous Friday &#8212; raising alarms about park safety, IMPD staffing shortfalls, vanishing park ranger funding, and the mayor&#8217;s silence. Both hosts close with a call for proactive city leadership before a crisis forces reactive finger-pointing.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the evening&#8217;s two topics: the Indiana Democratic state convention outcome and park safety heading into summer.</p><p>- Pastor Greene joins; offers opening prayer.</p><p><strong>00:02:48 Indiana Democratic convention recap -- Bayh wins, party fractures</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports on the Democratic state convention: over 2,300 of roughly 2,500 delegates attended; State Treasurer and Comptroller nominations were uncontested formalities; all the heat was in the Secretary of State race between Blythe Potter and Beau Bayh.</p><p>- Immediately after Bayh won, the room split &#8212; many Potter supporters publicly declaring they won&#8217;t support Bayh in November. Rev. Alexander urges Democrats to reconsider given the stakes of the Secretary of State race.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the fracturing traces back to how the process was run -- Marion County, as the largest delegation, needed to model transparency and fairness from the start to earn trust on the back end.</p><p><strong>00:05:51 Leadership vacuum in the Indiana Democratic Party</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: without transparency and accountability going in, there can be no trust coming out. The party cannot unite for a blue wave if people feel the process was tilted.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Indiana Democrats have no single public-facing leader -- only a collection of silos. Township leaders, city-county councilors, reps, senators -- each running their own kingdom, none galvanizing the whole.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees: fresh leadership is required. The current leaders have not delivered on the two fundamentals -- raising money and turning out voters -- and should step aside.</p><p>- Both hosts: this didn&#8217;t get broken in one election and won&#8217;t be fixed in one. Transparency and accountability must come first; trust follows.</p><p><strong>00:13:23 Indiana needs Democratic mayors supported, not picked off</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the urgency isn&#8217;t just November -- Democrat mayors in Terre Haute, Evansville, Muncie, and other Indiana cities need coordinated party support now, or they&#8217;ll be picked off one by one.</p><p>- Instead of spending party money on travel, send resources directly to those local organizations to empower them with the same playbook.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the current leadership cannot bring about the unity needed. The party has been intentionally kept divided by those who benefit from the chaos. Who can unify? That question has to be answered honestly -- and asked: when did Indiana Democrats last win a statewide election?</p><p><strong>00:17:21 Convention aftermath -- room splits, SOS stakes</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the room split almost literally the moment the SOS vote was called, echoing the division visible on Facebook in real time. Despite the disappointment, he urges Democrats not to give up -- the Secretary of State position is too critical.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Morales has been egregious with taxpayer money; his own party may not even nominate him. The Concerned Clergy raised the unifying-message question during delegate training -- now they&#8217;ve seen the answer play out.</p><p>- Republicans, by contrast, will close ranks the moment their convention produces a nominee. Democrats must do the same.</p><p><strong>00:21:41 Caller Marilyn -- Disability services crisis and congressional accountability</strong></p><p>- Marilyn, legal guardian of a severely disabled 43-year-old nephew with the cognitive level of a 6-year-old, calls to describe the state&#8217;s attempt to eliminate his 24-hour care -- not because he doesn&#8217;t need it, but because the state won&#8217;t pay for it.</p><p>- She contacted Rep. Andr&#233; Carson&#8217;s office for help; his office redirected her directly back to the very agency that had already denied her nephew&#8217;s claim.</p><p>- Her broader point: elected officials give auto-generated responses to constituent calls, cannot be reached, and face no accountability. Both parties have proven indifferent to people&#8217;s actual needs.</p><p><strong>00:24:24 Post-Marilyn discussion -- Funding cuts and the voting imperative</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Marilyn&#8217;s experience is not isolated -- organizations like Noble of Indiana are losing funding that serves people in exactly her nephew&#8217;s situation, as are programs for disabled children statewide.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: CICOA (Central Indiana Council on Aging) is on the cut list for seniors; FSSA announced a six-month freeze on autism support applications just the prior week. These cuts happen because the party in power can -- low voter turnout lets them.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: elected officials in the minority should be shouting these cuts from every bullhorn and billboard. The public doesn&#8217;t know what&#8217;s being cut. Silence is a failure of transparency.</p><p><strong>00:29:31 Northwestway Park -- Background and the takeover threat</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander introduces the park safety topic: spoke earlier that day with the IMPD Northwest District commander and the Northwestway Park manager.</p><p>- Northwestway Park -- trails, soccer fields, splash park, picnic areas -- has seen an uptick of incidents; the previous Friday saw two people brandishing weapons before officers dispersed a crowd.</p><p>- A &#8220;Motion Party&#8221; has been announced on social media for Saturday, June 13th at 2 p.m. at Northwestway Park -- $5 cover, promoted on Instagram, drawing expected crowds from across the city.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: his daughter lives near the park; he&#8217;s been getting calls. Cuts to park programming, predicted years ago to cause exactly this, have now arrived.</p><p><strong>00:36:00 The Motion Party -- What&#8217;s coming and why it&#8217;s dangerous</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander details the social media flyer: the date is barely visible, the event is branded as a &#8220;Motion Party,&#8221; it mirrors the spinning and flash-mob patterns seen across the city.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: youth coming from all sides of town with unresolved school conflicts, in a permitless carry state, in summer heat -- this is not a question of if something goes wrong, but when.</p><p>- Community presence alone won&#8217;t stop it; the problem recurs the next Saturday at a different park. A city-wide solution is needed, not a one-off response.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: IMPD Northwest District commander is already stretched -- the city is budgeting for 2,000 officers but only has about 1,200. Park ranger funding is also being cut.</p><p><strong>00:42:07 Mayor&#8217;s accountability and the summer youth employment pipeline</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the responsibility falls on the mayor. City parks are city property. But there&#8217;s no public plan, no designated point person, and budget season is likely to bring cuts, not investment.</p><p>- When something goes wrong, Chief Terry or the current chief explains it after the fact -- the mayor is absent from the proactive conversation.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander raises a secondary issue: parks have historically been entry-level employers for teens (lifeguards, maintenance). Staffing shortages have already forced some parks to close for seasons. Community-driven events like Mike Epps&#8217;s park initiatives are filling the gap where sustained city investment should be.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the mayor or his designee needs to own this, name a solution, and get ahead of it -- not wait for a shooting to assign blame.</p><p><strong>00:45:22 Imhotep in the chat -- Closing the loop on Northwestway</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander responds to Imhotep&#8217;s question in the Facebook chat: yes, the Motion Party is this Saturday, June 13th; Riverside Park&#8217;s regular events continue separately on Sundays.</p><p>- Indy Parks and the IMPD Northwest District are now aware of Saturday&#8217;s planned takeover; both hosts hope the advance notice sends a signal to would-be disruptors.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the community values Northwestway Park as a resource -- families, walkers, soccer players -- and will not allow it to be taken over and abandoned.</p><p>- Pastor Greene closes: the city must be at the table. Leadership has to step up before the crisis, not just show up to assign blame after it.</p><p><strong>00:49:54 Program close</strong></p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast June 3,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene talk about Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith's recent Islamaphobic comments and the internal Democratic battle for the Secretary of State nomination.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-32026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-june-32026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:01:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/200545545/2eeb97ddfae96a2a79bc9659a2e4d0fb.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>In a dense, two-topic hour, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open with a sharp response to Indiana Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith's public call to normalize hate speech and his characterization of Islam as a "demonic death cult." Pastor Greene details a press release issued jointly with the Baptist Ministries Alliance and the General Missionary Baptist Convention demanding Governor Mike Braun formally retract Beckwith's remarks, and announces a multi-faith Religious Freedom Summit at the Statehouse the following Thursday. Callers Imhotep and Tim engage on the theme of media bias and Black community self-determination before Rev. Alexander pivots to a rant on Trump administration anti-DEI policy and the unqualified nomination of Bill Pulte to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The second half of the program focuses on the upcoming Indiana Democratic state convention, where delegates will nominate candidates for Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and State Comptroller. Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene parse Senator J.D. Ford's last-minute endorsement of Beau Bayh over Blythe Potter, express concern about the chaos it is sowing among progressives, and detail a candidate forum convened by the Concerned Clergy coalition to probe both SOS candidates on voter access, Black community engagement, and accountability -- framing the Secretary of State race as one of the most consequential on the November ballot.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the evening&#8217;s two topics: fireworks in the Democratic Secretary of State race, and Lt. Governor Beckwith&#8217;s call to promote hate.</p><p>- Pastor Greene joins; offers opening prayer.</p><p><strong>00:03:17 Lt. Governor Beckwith&#8217;s hate speech and the Concerned Clergy response</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander describes Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith&#8217;s public statement calling for Americans to be given &#8220;permission to hate&#8221; and his characterization of Islam as a demonic death cult -- framed as inconsistent with his professed Christian faith.</p><p>- Pastor Greene details a press release crafted jointly with the Baptist Ministries Alliance (Dr. Wayne Moore), Dr. Clyde Posey, and the General Missionary Baptist Convention, demanding Governor Braun publicly retract Beckwith&#8217;s remarks.</p><p>- Both hosts note this is not Beckwith&#8217;s first offense -- he previously referred to African Americans as &#8220;three-fifths of a person&#8221; -- and that the governor has responded with silence in both instances.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the call to hate is a moral issue, not a partisan one; the response is coming from Democrats and Republicans alike.</p><p><strong>00:07:12 Religious Freedom Summit announcement and governor&#8217;s non-response</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene announces a multi-faith Religious Freedom Summit at the Indiana Statehouse Thursday at noon, organized with Sen. Fady Qaddoura, bringing together participants across faiths and races.</p><p>- The three formal asks from the Concerned Clergy coalition: a public retraction of Beckwith&#8217;s statements, a reaffirmation of commitment to religious liberty and dignity for all Hoosiers, and a clear statement that hate-filled rhetoric has no place in state leadership.</p><p>- Governor Braun has not responded as of airtime; both hosts tie his silence to his own plans to put Turning Point USA clubs in Indiana schools and his political interest in not alienating Beckwith as a future competitor.</p><p><strong>00:10:13 Beckwith&#8217;s pattern of behavior and political motivation</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Beckwith&#8217;s demeanor at public events -- smug, taunting, dismissive of concerns -- mirrors the behavior of Indianapolis City-County Councilor Gibson at the data center meeting; it&#8217;s a calculated performance, not incidental.</p><p>- Both hosts speculate Beckwith is positioning himself for a higher profile ahead of the Republican convention and potentially a future run against Braun.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: regardless of the motive, you can&#8217;t let someone holler fire in a movie theater. It must be called out, especially by the governor.</p><p><strong>00:14:23 Caller Imhotep -- Universal moral code, media silence on dissent, and Palestine</strong></p><p>- Imhotep argues every faith tradition shares a common core -- do unto others -- making Beckwith&#8217;s worldview antithetical to all faith, not just Christianity.</p><p>- Notes that white ministers are actively speaking out against Beckwith-style rhetoric on social media but are invisible to mainstream media.</p><p>- Closes with a pointed observation about Arab American voters in Michigan who boycotted Kamala Harris over Palestine: given what has since happened there and the rise of figures like Beckwith, he argues that abstention had real consequences.</p><p><strong>00:17:00 Post-Imhotep discussion -- Beckwith as political performance</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander affirms Imhotep&#8217;s thesis on media conditioning and draws a direct comparison between Beckwith&#8217;s conduct and the Councilor Gibson data center incident -- same playbook, different venue.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Beckwith&#8217;s escalating rhetoric will continue unless addressed; notes Braun&#8217;s self-interest in not denouncing his lieutenant governor.</p><p>- Denise posts in the chat asking whether there was a call for Beckwith to step down; Pastor Greene clarifies the formal ask stopped at retraction, though he notes public pressure may eventually push further.</p><p><strong>00:20:15 Rev. Alexander&#8217;s rant -- DEI dismantling and the DNI nomination</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander pivots to a rant on the Trump administration&#8217;s anti-DEI campaign -- cutting any program that an AI search flagged for the phrase &#8220;diversity, equity, inclusion&#8221; -- while simultaneously appointing unqualified loyalists.</p><p>- Highlights the nomination of Bill Pulte to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: no security experience, no intelligence agency background, no law enforcement history.</p><p>- Raises the implicit contradiction: a president who claims to have been shot at and survived multiple close calls is putting someone with zero security credentials in charge of national intelligence.</p><p>- Closes the loop on the staged-assassination-attempt conspiracy theory circulating online and why Trump&#8217;s failure to tighten security makes it harder to dismiss.</p><p><strong>00:26:30 Caller Tim -- Stop complaining, pool resources, vote</strong></p><p>- Tim urges the Black community to stop focusing energy on racist rhetoric and instead adopt the model of Asian Americans: pool resources, invest in each other, put the right people in office.</p><p>- Recommends Black churches purchase land around their buildings and generate revenue by renting facilities six days a week to sustain their missions.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene affirm the voting imperative while pushing back gently: sharing information isn&#8217;t complaining, it&#8217;s how you help people vote wisely -- politicians win by deceiving voters, so you have to arm people with facts.</p><p><strong>00:30:39 Accountability for elected officials -- both parties</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: voting isn&#8217;t enough if you then excuse whatever your candidate does in office. Accountability must follow the win.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Trump didn&#8217;t campaign on tariffs, war with Iran, or rising gas prices -- he won on a different message and then governed another way. Voters have to be discerning, not loyal.</p><p>- Both hosts agree: whoever the next Secretary of State is, the Concerned Clergy will hold them to what they said.</p><p><strong>00:32:06 Indiana Democratic convention preview -- SOS, Treasurer, Comptroller</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander lays out the stakes: the Democratic convention that Saturday will nominate candidates for Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and State Comptroller (formerly the Auditor). The Republican convention will do the same.</p><p>- On the Republican side: the question is whether incumbent Diego Morales -- who has faced significant opposition from within his own party -- survives. Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard is also in the Secretary of State race as an independent.</p><p>- Democratic delegates: hundreds coming from Marion County alone, approximately 2,500 statewide. Results expected Saturday evening.</p><p>- Treasurer and Comptroller candidates are running unopposed; only the Secretary of State race is competitive on the Democratic side.</p><p><strong>00:33:53 Senator J.D. Ford&#8217;s endorsement of Beau Bayh</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: Senator J.D. Ford -- who had explicitly said he was staying out of the Secretary of State primary -- endorsed Beau Bayh just days before the convention vote, creating immediate backlash from progressives who supported both Ford and Potter.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the timing is the problem. Jumping in four days out after saying you&#8217;re staying neutral sends mixed signals and creates chaos at exactly the wrong moment for party unity.</p><p>- Both hosts note comments on Councilor Jesse Brown&#8217;s Facebook page -- the top comment reads &#8220;Y&#8217;all made this a war&#8221; -- indicating the endorsement is deepening fissures that will be hard to close after the convention.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: he doesn&#8217;t believe Ford acted arbitrarily; there&#8217;s something behind it they don&#8217;t know yet, and it may not be a satisfying answer for those offended. The distraction pulls focus away from Ford&#8217;s real opponent -- Republican Victoria Spartz.</p><p><strong>00:38:19 Concerned Clergy&#8217;s candidate forum with Potter and Bayh</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene details a candidate forum convened by the Concerned Clergy, Baptist Ministries Alliance, and General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Indiana, with both Secretary of State candidates -- Blythe Potter and Beau Bayh.</p><p>- Questions focused specifically on the Black community: voter access and protection, Black community outreach strategy, staffing diversity, Black-owned business engagement via the SOS business registration function.</p><p>- Context: current SOS Diego Morales has already provided Indiana voter data to the federal government; the next SOS will face immediate federal pressure.</p><p>- Both candidates&#8217; responses recorded; Pastor Greene expects the winner to appear on the Concerned Clergy program multiple times to be held accountable to their commitments.</p><p><strong>00:43:47 Why the Secretary of State race matters more than ever</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the SOS controls voting -- and voting is under more direct attack than at any point in memory, from executive orders on mail-in ballots to the threat of ICE presence at polling places.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: ICE at the polls will deter not just Latino voters but Black voters who avoid any law enforcement presence. Indiana&#8217;s already-low voter turnout cannot absorb that kind of intimidation.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander invokes the Trump-Raffensperger call: Trump didn&#8217;t call the governor of Georgia after losing in 2020 -- he called the Secretary of State. That office controls whether votes get found or not.</p><p>- Pastor Greene names the coalition present at the candidate forum: Dr. Posey (General Missionary Baptist of Indiana), Dr. Moore (Baptist Ministries Alliance), Dr. Clyde, and himself -- meeting at Purpose of Life Church.</p><p><strong>00:48:26 Post-forum fallout -- J.D. Ford endorsement revisited</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the Ford endorsement of Bayh has already surfaced in comments on Councilor Jesse Brown&#8217;s page as evidence that Democrats are &#8220;making this a war&#8221; -- poisoning the well for post-convention unity.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: whoever wins on Saturday, the real opponent is the GOP. Every distraction from that fight is a gift to the Republican side.</p><p>- Both hosts close with a call to watch Saturday&#8217;s results and a promise to report out more details next week.</p><p><strong>00:55:15 Program close</strong></p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast May 27,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene contrast the ways youth misbehavior is treated in affluent, mostly white areas versus predominantly Black spaces before turning to Democratic disarray in Marion Co.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-272026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-272026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 10:03:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/199544573/cc680c9fc5465ac21645166e39b7c7e4.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Back after a one-week technical hiatus, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. anchor the hour around a double-barreled critique of racial disparity in how youth misbehavior is covered and prosecuted in Central Indiana. The first half examines a Mill Stream (Noblesville High School) article about Hamilton County fight clubs and spinout gatherings, contrasting the sympathetic economic framing the article applies to white suburban teens with the blame-and-curfew response routinely directed at Black youth in Marion County. Callers Joyce, Mayhem, Moteph, Deanna, and Reverend Phillips each add perspective on parental responsibility, media bias, and the double standard in criminal justice outcomes. The second half pivots to Indiana Democratic Party organizing: Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene argue that Marion County Democrats are in structural disarray -- unable to run effective PC meetings, let alone mobilize for November -- while Boone and Hamilton County Democratic precinct committees are already a year into door-knocking, voter ID, and blue-wave training. Both hosts close with a direct warning that Marion County leadership must get organized or be held accountable when Indiana fails to ride a national Democratic wave.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Station ID and program open</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander opens with Substack/Progressive Indiana Network replay information and previews the evening&#8217;s topics: Democratic conventions, delegate decisions, and racial disparities in how youth misbehavior is addressed.</p><p>- Pastor Greene joins, offers opening prayer.</p><p><strong>00:03:29 Hamilton County fight clubs -- The Mill Stream article</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander introduces a Mill Stream (Noblesville High School newspaper) <a href="https://millermedianow.org/10955/uncategorized/the-cost-of-community-is-inconvenience/">article</a> titled &#8220;The Cost of Community is Inconvenient,&#8221; covering fight clubs and teen mob gatherings at Sonic and other Hamilton County businesses.</p><p>- Article attributes the behavior to economic hardship -- teens can&#8217;t afford bowling alleys or movies -- a framing neither host has ever seen applied to similar activity in Marion County.</p><p>- Pastor Greene notes Hamilton County officials will likely suppress coverage; in Marion County, identical behavior would lead local news.</p><p><strong>00:07:07 Double standard in narrative framing -- curfews, parents, and the article&#8217;s spin</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene observes that when Marion County youth misbehave, media asks &#8220;where are the parents?&#8221; and talks curfews; the Mill Stream piece never mentions parents at all.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander reads additional article passages arguing businesses, adults, and teens are all &#8220;suffering&#8221; -- language he has never seen used to describe similar incidents involving Black youth.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: the narrative frame set at the top of an article determines the entire direction of the discussion -- starting with economic hardship leads to movie ticket subsidies, not accountability.</p><p><strong>00:11:19 Hamilton County wealth data and the cyberbullying factor</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: the article&#8217;s economic hardship framing doesn&#8217;t hold up -- Westfield, Noblesville, and Carmel data show household incomes and property values roughly three times Marion County&#8217;s.</p><p>- Both hosts note the Mill Stream&#8217;s author appears to be a Noblesville High School student, which may explain why parental accountability is absent from the piece.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: cyberbullying spans all communities and income levels and is a key driver of the fighting; resources alone won&#8217;t fix it. He expects Hamilton County to fund recreational solutions that won&#8217;t address the root cause.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: social media connects youth across county lines -- everyone is chasing the same trends -- making the behavior universal even as the framing remains racially bifurcated.</p><p><strong>00:18:22 Caller Joyce  -- Racial double standard in parental blame</strong></p><p>- Joyce argues the tried-and-true solution is mobilizing churches, which already have brick-and-mortar facilities, to create positive programming for young people.</p><p>- Cites her experience at Church&#8217;s Chicken giving honor roll and perfect attendance coupons as a model for bringing parents and youth into positive spaces; criticizes gatekeeping as an obstacle to youth investment.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: in every discussion of Black youth on this station, parents are immediately implicated; this article about Hamilton County teens never goes there.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Hamilton County will likely throw money at recreational resources, which won&#8217;t solve the underlying cyberbullying dynamic -- and the IBJ or IndyStar would never have framed a Marion County version of this story the same way.</p><p><strong>00:25:35 Caller Mayhem -- Hamilton County hypocrisy and Section 8</strong></p><p>- Mayhem argues Hamilton County teens regularly come to Marion County to cause trouble and return home, yet Hamilton County dodges scrutiny.</p><p>- Points out that Section 8 housing exists in Hamilton County too, contradicting its public image.</p><p>- Concedes both communities cover up bad behavior, but says Marion County&#8217;s is uniquely exposed and prosecuted while Hamilton County&#8217;s is buried.</p><p><strong>00:27:36 Caller Moteph -- Media thesis, Lawrence Hill incident, and the cover-up pattern</strong></p><p>- Moteph clarifies the show&#8217;s thesis: the question is not whether bad behavior exists, but how differently it is covered and adjudicated by county and race.</p><p>- Cites a recent incident at a Lawrence Hill public park where a Black workout group doing nothing wrong was forced out -- contrasted with how Hamilton County youth destructiveness is handled.</p><p>- Shares firsthand knowledge of Hamilton County cover-ups including a wealthy family&#8217;s teens hospitalized for substance abuse with no public reporting.</p><p>- Invokes Malcolm X&#8217;s quote on media conditioning communities to hate the oppressed and love the oppressor.</p><p><strong>00:31:03 Caller Deanna -- Personal testimony: parental sacrifice as the solution</strong></p><p>- Deanna shares a personal story: after losing a stepchild to violence, she moved, left a relationship, homeschooled her children, took a major pay cut, and relocated outside Indianapolis.</p><p>- Reports her children are off anxiety medication and healing; credits setting firm boundaries, including with extended family.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene affirm her testimony while noting her sacrifices are not options available to all Marion County parents.</p><p><strong>00:33:37 Criminal justice disparities and transition to second segment</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene summarizes: Hamilton County has more money to spend on solutions, spins the problem differently, and faces no pressure to implement curfews.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander ties it together: the same offense -- drugs, violence, spinning, fight clubs -- will be handled as a misdemeanor with diversion in Hamilton County and as a felony in Marion County. Bail, bond, and sentencing all differ by geography and race.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the second-half topic: Marion County Democratic Party organization heading into November.</p><p><strong>00:37:38 Caller Reverend Phillips -- Justice system reform</strong></p><p>- Reverend Phillips calls for better training, focus, and oversight of the justice system, arguing those in authority need more willingness to correct bad behavior rather than deferring to credentials.</p><p>- Call drops before he can complete his full point.</p><p><strong>00:39:40 Marion County Democratic Party in disarray</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander argues Marion County Democrats must organize now -- post-primary, pre-convention -- with delegate decisions on Secretary of State and other positions coming up.</p><p>- Reports that a recent PC meeting was chaotic and left newly elected precinct committee members confused and demoralized rather than energized.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: a blue wave doesn&#8217;t happen by accident. Marion County has been hearing calls for new Democratic Party leadership for months; people are frustrated that some PC candidates couldn&#8217;t get on the ballot.</p><p><strong>00:43:46 Obama precedent and the stakes for statewide Democrats</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene push back on a Facebook commenter&#8217;s fatalism (&#8221;Indiana is and will always be red&#8221;), citing Obama&#8217;s 2008 Indiana win as proof a blue wave is achievable.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: a Black woman is now running for Indiana State Treasurer; she cannot win without massive Marion County turnout. Same logic applies to Secretary of State and other statewide races.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: Marion County Democrats who are already registered must be activated to vote -- registration alone means nothing; boots-on-the-ground PC work is the mechanism.</p><p><strong>00:47:48 What Marion County PCs need to do differently</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: resources alone aren&#8217;t enough -- you need strategy. Marion County Democratic clubs are siloed and inconsistent.</p><p>- Pastor Greene contrasts Marion County&#8217;s dysfunction with Boone and Hamilton County Democratic PCs, who spent the past year knocking doors, listening to voters, and feeding intelligence back to the party -- not just campaigning for individual candidates.</p><p>- Those counties ran training sessions, filled vacancies, and built a coordinated blue-wave infrastructure; Marion County has done none of this.</p><p><strong>00:50:56 Direct call to action -- Marion County Democrats on notice</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander: PCs are supposed to carry out exactly this mission -- the Democrat handbook says so. Marion County is spending its energy bickering instead of organizing.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: the chaos persists because some insiders benefit from it -- gatekeeping PC appointments, tolerating vacancies, keeping newly elected members confused. That has to end.</p><p>- Both hosts close with a direct warning: if Indiana misses a blue wave that reaches surrounding states, those responsible will and should be held accountable. You can&#8217;t pick up your ball and go home because your primary candidate lost.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[NO Concerned Clergy Podcast This Week]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Reverends had technical difficulties, so there's no show this week. See you live next Wednesday on Praise FM and here on Substack next Thursday morning.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/no-concerned-clergy-podcast-this</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/no-concerned-clergy-podcast-this</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 10:59:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qQPS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faeccad97-1e18-44c2-83e9-ed755984aa3e_3000x3000.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" 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stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like it by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast May 13,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene confront Christian nationalism - and how that movement sullies the faith by using Christian branding to conceal racism and authoritarianism.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-132026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-132026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 10:03:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/197618802/76d8d465c8070d6778721461f299e243.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>In this week&#8217;s edition of the Concerned Clergy Radio Show, hosts Reverend Tony Alexander and President Pastor David W. Greene Sr. dive into a timely and wide-ranging conversation about Christian nationalism versus true Christian discipleship, anchored by Pastor Greene&#8217;s recent article for Voices for Democracy examining how Christian nationalists systematically ignore Matthew 25 &#8212; Jesus&#8217;s explicit call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for strangers. Drawing on Trump&#8217;s Easter behavior, J.D. Vance&#8217;s attack on the Pope, Indiana Lt. Governor Beckwith&#8217;s three-fifths remarks, and the governor&#8217;s plan to bring Turning Point USA clubs into middle and high schools, the hosts argue that what is being sold as Christian faith is in reality a bid for racial and political power &#8212; and that the full interfaith community must respond, as evidenced by the ongoing assault on voting rights and the looming loss of CICOA services for Indiana&#8217;s elderly and disabled. Callers including Tim, Joyce, Guy, and Imhotep each add their own perspective, ranging from Black economic self-determination to humanist philosophy to a call for broad faith-community solidarity.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:01:42 &#8212; Opening Prayer</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene opens in prayer for the nation, state, and local leaders.</p><p>- Prays against discord wherever the devil is sowing it.</p><p>- Asks God&#8217;s protection over Rev. Alexander and blessings on all listeners.</p><p><strong>00:02:06 &#8212; Topic Introduction: Christian Nationalism vs. Christian Discipleship</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the night&#8217;s topic: what is Christian nationalism, and how does it compare to actual Christian discipleship?</p><p>- Notes Pastor Greene recently spoke on the subject with Voices for Democracy.</p><p>- Frames the question through recent events: Trump attacking the Pope at Easter, attacks on Robert Mueller after his death.</p><p>- Asks: can we honestly say a president who behaves this way is following Christ as a disciple?</p><p><strong>00:05:20 &#8212; Pastor Greene on His Voices for Democracy Article / Matthew 25 and the Black Church</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene was invited to write an article on Christian nationalism&#8217;s silence regarding Matthew 25.</p><p>- Matthew 25 is Jesus&#8217;s direct teaching: did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for strangers and the sick? Christian nationalists systematically avoid this passage.</p><p>- Instead they cast poor people as victims of their own choices &#8212; a form of classism &#8212; pointing to Lt. Gov. Beckwith&#8217;s three-fifths remarks as a modern example.</p><p>- The Black church, emerging from slavery, grounded its faith in a Jesus who lifts the oppressed and disenfranchised &#8212; the opposite of a Jesus wielded to maintain hierarchy.</p><p>- Christian nationalism&#8217;s vision of Jesus is &#8220;completely opposite&#8221; of the Jesus who ministered to women, people with questionable pasts, and the woman caught in adultery.</p><p><strong>00:10:01 &#8212; Rev. Alexander: Oppressors and the Oppressed Using the Same Faith</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander observes the historical paradox: enslaved people looked to Jesus for liberation while their oppressors used the same faith to keep them down.</p><p>- People of faith trusted God even as that faith was weaponized against them.</p><p>- Transitions to first caller.</p><p><strong>00:10:38 &#8212; Caller: Anonymous &#8212; On the Word &#8220;Christian&#8221; and the White Church&#8217;s Silence</strong></p><p>- Caller identifies as a child of God and son of God, not a &#8220;Christian&#8221; &#8212; noting the word was originally used as an insult in New Testament times.</p><p>- Points to January 6th imagery: the American flag, the Confederate flag, a Jesus flag, and a noose together &#8212; Jesus has nothing to do with nooses or racism.</p><p>- Challenges the white church&#8217;s historical silence: on slavery, on interracial marriage, on racism &#8212; where was the church then, and why won&#8217;t it speak now?</p><p>- Expresses concern that Black people are leaving for Islam in part because the church has failed to draw people with love.</p><p><strong>00:13:09 &#8212; Response: The Silence of White Churches / Lt. Gov. Beckwith / Turning Point USA in Schools (Part 1)</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander clarifies: the Black church was doing the work &#8212; the caller&#8217;s critique is aimed at white church silence.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees this silence must be confronted; the attacks by Trump and Vance on the Pope demand a response from the broader faith community.</p><p>- Warns against honoring the flag over the Bible &#8212; nationalism dressing itself as faith.</p><p>- Lt. Gov. Beckwith, himself a pastor, is actively teaching Christian nationalist ideas to his congregation.</p><p><strong>00:17:00 &#8212; The Silence of White Churches / Turning Point USA in Schools (Part 2) / The Faith Community Must Respond</strong></p><p>- The governor&#8217;s plan to bring Turning Point USA clubs into middle and high schools is &#8220;extremely dangerous&#8221; &#8212; it teaches superiority, discrimination, and racism to children.</p><p>- The double standard: slavery cannot be taught in schools, but Turning Point USA can come in and ignore Matthew 25.</p><p>- The faith community that must respond is broad: Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian, Muslim &#8212; not limited to any single denomination.</p><p>- Christian nationalists want to be the sole authority on truth &#8212; even rejecting the Pope&#8217;s call for peace.</p><p><strong>00:19:09 &#8212; Rev. Alexander: The Risk of Holy War</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander expresses fear that current rhetoric &#8212; what troops are being told, the framing of conflicts &#8212; is pushing the country toward a religious war, not just a geopolitical one.</p><p>- The danger is a war defined not by nukes or oil but by competing faiths.</p><p><strong>00:20:21 &#8212; [BREAK / Return] Caller: Tim &#8212; Black Economic Self-Determination and the Church</strong></p><p>- Tim argues Black people must stop supporting &#8220;racist clowns&#8221; and leave white churches that won&#8217;t speak up, returning to anointed Black churches.</p><p>- Calls for pooling resources: Black doctors, Black lawyers, buying back community businesses &#8212; &#8220;hit them in the pocket.&#8221;</p><p>- References John Reed&#8217;s killing on Michigan Avenue; notes few pastors showed up to protest.</p><p>- Advocates for returning children to Sunday school, teaching Black history at home, requiring Black authors for school reports.</p><p>- Tim is fifth generation married, father present &#8212; credits God, family, and community for keeping his children out of crime.</p><p><strong>00:23:17 &#8212; Caller: Joyce &#8212; Chattel Slavery, Desensitization, and Community Alarms</strong></p><p>- Joyce builds on Tim&#8217;s comments, noting Black people were great long before American slavery &#8212; and weren&#8217;t even the first enslaved group</p><p>- Describes Black people being treated as chattel and systematically desensitized through media narratives.</p><p>- Mentions the jubilee tradition of debt forgiveness as a model worth noting.</p><p>- Raises a local concern: tornado warning alarm systems in Indianapolis&#8217;s Black community aren&#8217;t working, and Fall Creek is rising.</p><p><strong>00:24:55 &#8212; Response: Broadening the Fight Beyond the Black Church</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander notes the conversation has narrowed toward the Black community, but discipleship is broader &#8212; all followers of Christ, across all communities, must be in this together.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees, noting Jews are often lumped in with Black people by the same forces &#8212; the fight belongs to the whole faith community.</p><p>- Acknowledges Tim&#8217;s call for ownership and responsibility, while stressing the need for coalition with others.</p><p>- The church&#8217;s declining attendance is real &#8212; parents who&#8217;ve left the church aren&#8217;t raising children in it &#8212; but that can&#8217;t be an excuse to ignore the crisis.</p><p><strong>00:29:10 &#8212; Trump as a Spiritual Model? / Truth Social, the Pope, and Easter Golf</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene: Christian nationalists dress up nationalism as faith, operating from a hierarchy in which whiteness is supreme.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander: if Trump claims to be a Christian, ask him directly &#8212; is Jesus your Lord and Savior? Is Jesus your king?</p><p>- Trump is plastering his own face across Washington and Florida, renaming bodies of water after himself, commissioning a golden statue.</p><p>- On Easter, instead of attending church, Trump posted attacks on Truth Social, condemned the Pope, and played golf.</p><p>- &#8220;That&#8217;s who you&#8217;re following as a disciple of Christ, folks. You need to find a better example.&#8221;</p><p><strong>00:31:13 &#8212; [BREAK / Return] [CLIP: Trump] on Iran Negotiations</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander plays a clip of Trump being asked about American financial considerations in Iran negotiations.</p><p>- Trump: &#8220;The only thing that matters... you cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That&#8217;s all. That&#8217;s the only thing.&#8221;</p><p>- Rev. Alexander&#8217;s takeaway: he just told you he doesn&#8217;t think about you &#8212; your finances, your spiritual condition, none of it.</p><p><strong>00:32:04 &#8212; Caller: Guy &#8212; Iran Assets, Pentagon Firings, and a YouTube Testimony</strong></p><p>- Guy notes Trump&#8217;s fixation on Obama and the Iran nuclear deal &#8212; points out the money sent to Iran was Iran&#8217;s own frozen assets, not a gift.</p><p>- Suggests the Trump administration&#8217;s mass firing of Pentagon intelligence staff has left them ill-equipped to navigate the Strait of Hormuz situation.</p><p>- Recommends listeners search YouTube for the story of a white Georgia farmer crushed under his tractor who reportedly received a message from Jesus Christ about the Black community.</p><p><strong>00:33:57 &#8212; Caller: Imhotep &#8212; Humanism, Historical Context, and Why Young People Leave the Church (Part 1)</strong></p><p>- Imhotep reframes the question: rather than asking if Trump is a Christian, ask if he is humane &#8212; &#8220;the things he says and does are inhumane.&#8221;</p><p>- Identifies as a humanist who has studied Buddhism&#8217;s four noble truths and eightfold path; argues shared humanity is a stronger unifying force than religion.</p><p>- Invokes his grandmothers (101 in 2001; 97 in 2016): &#8220;ain&#8217;t nothing new under the sun.&#8221;</p><p>- Historical walk: Black Codes (1700s), Bacon&#8217;s Rebellion (late 1600s), St. Augustine as first settlement before Jamestown, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, John Brown and Harpers Ferry (1859).</p><p>- The Puritans practiced a harsher form of Christianity in America than what they left behind in England &#8212; this behavior is not new.</p><p><strong>00:37:17 &#8212; Caller: Imhotep &#8212; Why Young People Leave the Church (Part 2) / New BOY Mentoring</strong></p><p>- At a Center for Leadership Development meeting, Imhotep observed the crowd: 75% Black women, 25% Black men &#8212; men must be more engaged.</p><p>- Three reasons young people aren&#8217;t in church: (1) single-parent homes where the working parent is at the hospital on Sundays; (2) young people are deconstructing &#8212; they read, they research on WorldCat and iCat, and they call out hypocrisy when a pastor rides a $200,000 Jag while the congregation eats cup noodles; (3) [implied: lack of male mentorship].</p><p>- His friend who runs New BOY (New Breed of Youth mentoring program) says you have to listen to young people.</p><p>- Solution: show them &#8212; 25&#8211;30 years of coaching and mentoring, leading by example as &#8220;a simple human being.&#8221;</p><p><strong>00:39:03 &#8212; Response: Adults Must Act Now / Refighting the Civil Rights Movement</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander refocuses: this moment requires adults to act &#8212; religious liberties for all faiths are under attack, even for self-described Christian nationalists who are still attacking Christians.</p><p>- The cross-faith coalition that works in redistricting fights can work here too.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: we are refighting the civil rights movement &#8212; the same forces that opposed voting rights, integration, and justice under Dr. King are back, more powerful.</p><p>- The Bible warns: cast out a demon and it returns with greater numbers. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re seeing.</p><p>- The youth will be victims of this &#8212; they can&#8217;t lead the fight. Adults in the faith community must come to the table.</p><p><strong>00:43:47 &#8212; White Christian Nationalism Is About Power, Not Service</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene draws the sharpest contrast of the night: at the core of Christianity is service to others; white Christian nationalism is about gaining power over others.</p><p>- They want power over Black people, Jewish people, poor people &#8212; the opposite of &#8220;fearfully and wonderfully made.&#8221;</p><p>- Turning Point USA has moved from college campuses to middle and high schools &#8212; Charlie Kirk&#8217;s operation is spreading fast.</p><p>- Some Black churchgoers migrate to white churches seeking proximity to power &#8212; sitting next to a senator or congressman feels like access &#8212; but that&#8217;s the wrong reason to choose a church.</p><p>- Pastor Greene has personally challenged pastors: how do you reconcile Matthew 25 with criminalizing the homeless?</p><p><strong>00:45:48 &#8212; Voting Rights, Redistricting, and Pastors Who Criminalize the Homeless</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander connects the dots: the same people who put their hands on Bibles at inauguration are stripping voting rights.</p><p>- Within hours of the Supreme Court&#8217;s redistricting ruling, officials in ongoing elections moved to redraw lines and redo votes &#8212; unprecedented.</p><p>- Pastor Greene: stopping an election midway is an act of pure power-seizure, not governance.</p><p>- The president doesn&#8217;t want to give up Congress; minimizing the Black vote is the mechanism.</p><p>- These actors aren&#8217;t heathens &#8212; they&#8217;re sitting in somebody&#8217;s church every Sunday morning.</p><p><strong>00:50:17 &#8212; Closing: CICOA, IPS Funding Cuts, and What Discipleship Actually Looks Like</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander ties the abstract to the concrete: CICOA (Central Indiana Coalition on Aging) is about to go away &#8212; services for widows, elderly, and disabled Hoosiers disappearing.</p><p>- Education funding is being cut from IPS.</p><p>- The services that embody Matthew 25 &#8212; feeding, clothing, caring &#8212; are being stripped away in real time.</p><p>- This is the difference between Christian nationalism and Christian discipleship: one seizes power, the other serves people.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast May 6,2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene talk about the previous day's Indiana Primary Election results - wins, losses, and the work yet to be done.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-62026</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-may-62026</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 10:02:13 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/196732777/f8fcdba3d14a310d49ff72ca26c5422f.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>The night after the May 5, 2026 Indiana primary, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. take stock of what the results mean for Indiana Democrats heading into November. Pastor Greene, himself a Senate candidate in the primary, reflects candidly on the experience of running a campaign before the conversation turns to the structural problem at the heart of Indiana Democratic politics: a Marion County electorate that turns out at 15% in primaries and needs to hit 45% or better to elect anyone statewide. The hosts walk through the numbers on voter turnout, the Secretary of State race, the Bayh name recognition question, Trump&#8217;s $13.5 million primary purge of redistricting dissenters, and what all of it means for down-ballot candidates like Kerry Forestal and Christina Moorhead. Listener comments from Gloria, Victor, Jill, Joseph, and caller Guy round out the discussion with on-the-ground perspective.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 &#8212; Opening and Replay Reminder</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander opens by reminding listeners they can catch the full show replay on the Progressive Indiana Network&#8217;s Substack the following morning.</p><p>- He notes the Indiana primaries are effectively over, with only provisional and military ballots still pending.</p><p>- He welcomes Pastor David W. Greene Sr. and sets up the evening&#8217;s focus: what happened in the primary and what work remains before November.</p><p>- Pastor Greene opens in prayer for the listening and watching audience.</p><p><strong>00:01:40 &#8212; Pastor Greene on Running for Senate</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander asks Pastor Greene &#8212; who ran for Senate in the primary &#8212; to share what the experience is like from a candidate&#8217;s perspective.</p><p>- Pastor Greene reflects that running a campaign is a relentless grind: canvassing, responding to requests, preparing materials, and managing volunteers, all while still having to live your regular life.</p><p>- He describes the emotional roller coaster &#8212; some days energized, some days drained &#8212; and says he was simply relieved when Election Day finally arrived.</p><p>- He frames the outcome plainly: &#8220;nothing beats a failure but a try,&#8221; and says running taught him a great deal about himself, other people, and how the political machine actually operates.</p><p><strong>00:05:38 &#8212; Volunteers vs. Voters: The Primary Turnout Problem</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander notes there was unusual volunteer energy for a primary, with lots of people standing behind candidates &#8212; but that enthusiasm didn&#8217;t translate into actual votes.</p><p>- Pastor Greene explains the core disconnect: most people don&#8217;t understand that the primary determines who&#8217;s on the November ballot, not November itself.</p><p>- He uses Senate District 29 as an example: roughly 10,000 people voted across all candidates in the primary, but winning in November will require 25,000 votes at minimum &#8212; and possibly close to 60,000 if participation trends continue upward.</p><p>- The lesson: a small minority of voters determines the primary, while the overwhelming majority only shows up in November.</p><p><strong>00:07:56 &#8212; Marion County by the Numbers</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander puts Marion County&#8217;s turnout in concrete terms: 632,000 registered voters, just over 15% participation in the primary &#8212; an improvement over past cycles, but still dismal.</p><p>- He walks through the math: every additional 15 points of turnout doubles the effective voting pool, yet Marion County is still well below 50%.</p><p>- Listener Gloria comments on Facebook that many people she encountered didn&#8217;t even understand what the primary was or what its purpose is.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees, noting some residents saw campaign signs and assumed they were for November &#8212; they didn&#8217;t know a May election was happening at all.</p><p><strong>00:09:27 &#8212; Why Turnout Is the Only Variable That Matters</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene says he has no magic solution to the turnout problem, but points to contested races and national/state conditions as the drivers of the modest increase they did see.</p><p>- He argues statewide candidates cannot win without Marion County turning out at 45% or better &#8212; a candidate can visit every county in Indiana and still lose if Marion Democrats stay home.</p><p>- He uses Secretary of State Diego Morales as the cautionary case: Republicans were embarrassed by him and barely put him in public, yet he won because Marion County turnout was too low to overcome rural Republican numbers.</p><p>- His bottom line: 15% primary turnout means 85% of Marion County Democrats didn&#8217;t participate &#8212; and that gap is what has consistently cost Democrats statewide races.</p><p><strong>00:13:13 &#8212; Listener Feedback: The Voter Education Gap</strong></p><p>- Listener Gloria&#8217;s comment surfaces a deeper problem: voters who don&#8217;t know the difference between a primary and a general election, or an off-year and a presidential-year election.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander says this is something you encounter constantly when canvassing &#8212; it&#8217;s not just apathy, it&#8217;s genuine lack of civic knowledge.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees and says the work ahead isn&#8217;t just get-out-the-vote but voter education and preparation at a basic level.</p><p>- Listener Victor comments that Democrats show up strong for the state convention but tank in November &#8212; Rev. Alexander says he&#8217;s heard this before, particularly the assumption that local Democrats don&#8217;t need to vote because their candidate is already safe.</p><p><strong>00:15:32 &#8212; Post-Primary Division: Will Democrats Unify?</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene raises the unity problem directly: before the election, he saw social media posts where people were asked whether they&#8217;d support the primary winner &#8212; and a lot of responses were &#8220;maybe&#8221; or &#8220;it all depends.&#8221;</p><p>- He argues that failure to heal the primary divide will make it impossible to win in November, because you&#8217;re not winning anything with 15% turnout.</p><p>- Statewide candidates need to not just win Marion County but win it by enough of a margin to overcome the rural Republican advantage &#8212; simply &#8220;getting&#8221; Marion County isn&#8217;t enough.</p><p>- He uses SD-29 nominee Christina Moorhead as an example: she needs strong Democratic turnout specifically in the Pike and Wayne portions of Marion County, or she cannot win.</p><p><strong>00:17:40 &#8212; Caller Guy: Reasons for Optimism</strong></p><p>- Caller Guy agrees with the hosts&#8217; overall framing but argues 2026 will be different: Beau Bayh &#8212; Evan Bayh&#8217;s son &#8212; is presumed to be the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State after the June convention, and Guy believes the Bayh name will drive turnout among longtime Democrats and independents.</p><p>- Guy also points to growing voter disenchantment with Trump&#8217;s economic record &#8212; gas prices, food prices, farm input costs &#8212; as a potential crossover motivator even among some Republicans.</p><p>- He flags the massive Trump-aligned spending in the Indiana Republican primary as a signal of what&#8217;s at stake and notes that money was the mother&#8217;s milk of those one-issue anti-redistricting ads.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander thanks Guy and flags that he&#8217;ll address the optimism &#8212; and the money &#8212; after the break.</p><p><strong>00:21:51 &#8212; Back from Break: The $13.5 Million Primary Purge</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reframes Guy&#8217;s optimism: the same forces that just spent $13.5 million &#8212; up from $250,000 last cycle, a 5,000% increase &#8212; to primary redistricting dissenters will not sit out November.</p><p>- He argues Democrats cannot afford to run on the cheap and need real resources to support candidates, not assume passion alone carries the race.</p><p>- Pastor Greene calls the spending a naked power play by private backers expecting a return on investment &#8212; not party money, but donors who want something specific in exchange.</p><p>- Both hosts agree it sent a clear message to every Republican officeholder: cross Trump and you&#8217;re gone.</p><p><strong>00:29:35 &#8212; What That Money Is Really Buying</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene connects the primary purge directly to the 2027 redistricting cycle: the newly installed MAGA senators in rural districts are safe from Democratic challenge and will vote accordingly when the map comes up again.</p><p>- He argues Trump funded these candidates specifically because redistricting was coming &#8212; the investment was never just about 2026, it was about locking in the 2027 vote.</p><p>- Listener Gloria comments that campaign finance used to have rules and regulations &#8212; Rev. Alexander agrees and says the current environment is the wild, wild west.</p><p>- Pastor Greene closes the thought: when someone spends that kind of money, they are committed to winning, and that money will be back in November.</p><p><strong>00:32:48 &#8212; Candidate Visibility and the DNC Investment Question</strong></p><p>- Listener Jill raises two issues: candidates need to do more retail politics to introduce themselves to voters, and the national Democratic Party isn&#8217;t investing enough at the local level.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander partially agrees but notes this primary season featured more candidate forums than he&#8217;s seen before &#8212; the problem wasn&#8217;t opportunity, it was whether voters showed up.</p><p>- He also pushes back on the DNC framing: the $13.5 million in Republican ads didn&#8217;t come from the party &#8212; it came from individual donors making phone calls, and Democrats need to think the same way.</p><p>- The Republican ads were simple one-issue attacks &#8212; &#8220;this person voted against redistricting, against Donald Trump&#8221; &#8212; effective precisely because they were that blunt.</p><p><strong>00:36:18 &#8212; The Bayh Name Recognition Problem</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander raises a skepticism about the Bayh name that goes further than Guy&#8217;s optimism: voters who remember Birch and Evan are aging out, and younger voters and newer Indiana residents have no idea who the Bayhs are.</p><p>- Pastor Greene fully agrees: the people who know the Bayh name are 40-plus; 20- and 30-year-olds don&#8217;t know the family at all, because it&#8217;s been over 20 years since Evan Bayh held office.</p><p>- He warns that assuming name recognition will carry Beau Bayh is a miscalculation &#8212; he has to run a real campaign in Marion County, answering the basic voter questions: who is he, what will he do, why should I vote for him.</p><p>- They both point to Evan Bayh&#8217;s own last race as a cautionary tale: a household name who lost because Marion County didn&#8217;t turn out at the level he needed.</p><p><strong>00:39:33 &#8212; Healing the Primary Divide</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander frames the post-primary moment starkly: in this environment, the choice is MAGA or Democrat &#8212; there is no third lane &#8212; and any further Democratic fracturing is a direct gift to Republicans.</p><p>- He says it doesn&#8217;t matter which candidate you supported in the primary; the entire party is now the concern, and unity is non-negotiable.</p><p>- Pastor Greene puts it on party leadership: what happens over the summer &#8212; the conversations, the planning, the direction-setting &#8212; will determine whether Indiana Democrats can capitalize on a potentially favorable national environment.</p><p>- He contrasts MAGA&#8217;s structural advantage &#8212; one leader, one message, unified turnout &#8212; with the Democratic reality of multiple leaders who must coordinate deliberately rather than following a single signal.</p><p><strong>00:42:58 &#8212; Know Your Candidates: Voter Research and Campaign Finance</strong></p><p>- Listener Joseph comments that voters need to verify and trust &#8212; do the homework, know the candidates before November.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander expands on this: for statewide races especially, if you can&#8217;t meet the candidate in person, look up their record &#8212; how they voted, what they supported, what they said they&#8217;d take away.</p><p>- He argues the campaign finance picture is part of that research: when $13.5 million floods into a primary, people should be asking right then where it came from, not just reporting the number.</p><p>- Pastor Greene agrees: anyone spending that kind of money is expecting a return on investment, and voters deserve to know what that return is.</p><p><strong>00:45:05 &#8212; Trump&#8217;s Loyalty Demand and the Long Game on Redistricting</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene lays out the long-term implication: the Trump-backed candidates who won their rural primaries are essentially in office now &#8212; Democrats aren&#8217;t beating them in November.</p><p>- Those five or more new MAGA legislators will be in place for the 2027 redistricting vote, which is exactly what the spending was designed to achieve.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander adds that Trump has said out loud that judges he appoints should be loyal to him &#8212; nobody should be surprised that legislators he funds are equally beholden.</p><p>- Pastor Greene notes Indiana Senate leadership itself could shift as a result, since the new members tip the internal balance further toward the MAGA faction.</p><p><strong>00:47:35 &#8212; Door-Knocking vs. Social Media: What Actually Works?</strong></p><p>- Listener Jill advocates for candidates going old school &#8212; events, door-knocking, direct voter contact &#8212; and Rev. Alexander asks Pastor Greene to weigh in from his own primary experience.</p><p>- Pastor Greene says door-knocking has a 10% hit rate at best: safety concerns, ring doorbells, and general reluctance mean only one in ten people will actually open the door.</p><p>- He says you still have to do it &#8212; leaving material and showing you were there matters &#8212; but the kitchen-table conversation of the old days is largely gone.</p><p>- The answer isn&#8217;t one silver bullet: you need events, door-knocking, social media, texts, emails, and mailers all at once, and you just hope enough of it lands.</p><p><strong>00:50:30 &#8212; Closing: Make Your Plan to Vote Now</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander thanks Pastor Greene for his efforts during the primary season and acknowledges there is still a lot of work ahead.</p><p>- He closes with the same message the show started the year with: don&#8217;t wait until November &#8212; make your plan to vote now.</p><p>- He reminds listeners the show replay will be available on the Progressive Indiana Network&#8217;s Substack the following morning.</p><p>- Pastor Greene and Rev. Alexander sign off and wish the audience a blessed week.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast April 29, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene discuss current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community. Pastor Greene talks about his candidacy for State Senate.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-29</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-29</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:02:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/195941918/62832e6711ee258890c244211c7f3e54.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Six days out from Indiana&#8217;s May 5 primary, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open the program by responding to the day&#8217;s Supreme Court ruling allowing Louisiana to redraw its congressional maps and undoing major parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 &#8212; a decision both hosts frame not as a legal matter but as a moral one, arguing it effectively dismantles the practical enforcement mechanisms of the civil rights law. They connect the ruling to a broader pattern of voter suppression targeting minorities, women, and immigrants, and make the case that the primary is the most urgent available response. The hosts then shift to Indianapolis&#8217;s ongoing data center controversy, criticizing the city&#8217;s first Department of Metropolitan Development community listening session as a performative &#8220;check the box&#8221; exercise that left residents more frustrated than before. In the final segment, Pastor Greene &#8212; a candidate for Indiana Senate District 29 &#8212; makes his closing pitch to voters in Pike and Wayne Township and the district&#8217;s suburban reaches into Boone and Hamilton counties, framing his affordability-first platform as a moral response to Indiana&#8217;s $22 billion budget and the federal cuts bearing down on seniors and people with disabilities. The program closes with details on a Souls to the Polls bus effort departing from five Indianapolis churches this Sunday, May 3.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 Open / Disclaimer / Station ID</strong></p><p><strong>00:00:43 Welcome &amp; Introduction</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander opens six days out from the Indiana primary; introduces Pastor Greene</p><p>- Pastor Greene offers opening prayer</p><p><strong>00:02:11 Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling &#8212; Overview</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander summarizes the day&#8217;s Supreme Court decision on Louisiana redistricting</p><p>- Court ruled maps drawn along racial lines are impermissible but maps drawn along party lines are not</p><p>- Pastor Greene frames the ruling as a moral issue, not merely a legal one</p><p>- Indiana cited as already ranking near last in voter participation</p><p><strong>00:05:24 What the Ruling Means &#8212; Urgency for the Primary</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander argues this is the most critical moment for voters who feel their voice doesn&#8217;t count</p><p>- Two states had already announced plans to redraw maps within hours of the ruling</p><p>- Pastor Greene invokes &#8220;the urgency of now&#8221;; connects low turnout to political emboldening</p><p><strong>00:08:12 Dismantling the Voting Rights Act &#8212; The &#8220;Third Leg&#8221; Argument</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander describes the ruling as kicking out the third leg of a stool &#8212; the Act itself survives but its enforcement mechanisms are gone</p><p>- Pastor Greene warns of a return to pre-Voting Rights Act conditions</p><p>- Discussion of new documentation requirements targeting women who have changed their names</p><p><strong>00:09:54 Who Stands to Lose Voting Rights</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander tallies affected groups: Black voters, women, immigrants with prior voting rights</p><p>- Pastor Greene argues the endgame is a electorate reduced to predominantly white male voters</p><p>- Discussion of how manufactured difficulty &#8212; lines, documentation, eliminated early voting &#8212; functions as suppression</p><p><strong>00:12:38 Caller &#8212; Guy</strong></p><p>- Guy calls in with a historical perspective, noting the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence</p><p>- References King Charles&#8217;s address to Congress the previous day on checks and balances and the Magna Carta</p><p>- Expresses optimism that overreach will backfire, citing Lincoln&#8217;s &#8220;you can&#8217;t fool all of the people all of the time&#8221;</p><p>- Predicts Congress flips back in the midterms</p><p><strong>00:14:58 Response to Caller / Indiana Redistricting Risk</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander thanks Guy, appreciates his optimism</p><p>- Raises prospect of Indiana revisiting its own maps now that Supreme Court has given cover</p><p>- Pastor Greene warns Trump will move urgently before November &#8212; redistricting, mail-in ballots, early voting all on the table</p><p><strong>00:17:20 From &#8220;Possible&#8221; to &#8220;Probable&#8221; &#8212; Federal Election Infrastructure</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander upgrades the threat from possible to probable</p><p>- Describes White House as effectively drafting model legislation for Republican states to follow</p><p>- Predicts a rapid cascade of state-level map challenges heading to the Supreme Court before November</p><p>- Pastor Greene argues Trump&#8217;s goal is controlling who votes, not just who wins; raises J.D. Ford vs. Victoria Spartz in IN-5 as example of a race that becomes unwinnable without voting access</p><p><strong>00:20:00 Executive Order on Mail-in Ballots / Break Tease</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander describes Trump&#8217;s executive order directing the post office to control mail ballot distribution while simultaneously cutting the postal budget</p><p>- Teases data center segment after the break</p><p>--- [COMMERCIAL BREAK] ---</p><p><strong>00:21:19 Indianapolis Data Centers &#8212; DMD Listening Session</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports on DMD&#8217;s first community listening session on data center guardrails, held the previous day</p><p>- Reaction was uniformly negative &#8212; attendees said nothing new was presented and no real input was taken</p><p>- Pastor Greene calls it a &#8220;check the box&#8221; meeting &#8212; the community was invited but not heard</p><p><strong>00:24:24 City Council&#8217;s Missed Opportunity</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander recounts how Councilor Jesse Brown&#8217;s earlier resolution to establish data center guardrails was voted down by council</p><p>- City then returned to the community asking for input after having already rejected a formal process</p><p>- Pastor Greene calls out the Black councilors who opposed Brown&#8217;s resolution and have not yet presented the &#8220;better plan&#8221; they promised</p><p><strong>00:26:44 Political Stakes &#8212; Data Centers and the 2027 Mayor&#8217;s Race</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene argues data center frustration is compounding with gas prices and other economic pain</p><p>- Warns councilpersons that silence on this issue is being noted and will matter in 2027 municipal elections</p><p>- Rev. Alexander agrees: this is one of the most-watched issues in the city right now</p><p><strong>00:28:16 Caller &#8212; Reverend Phillips</strong></p><p>- Reverend Phillips calls in briefly on the Supreme Court ruling and voting rights</p><p>- Frames the moment in spiritual terms &#8212; calls on believers to pray and seek God</p><p>- Rev. Alexander closes the call warmly and takes the break</p><p>--- [COMMERCIAL BREAK] ---</p><p><strong>00:30:34 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Pastor Greene&#8217;s Closing Pitch</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander introduces Pastor Greene as a candidate for Indiana Senate District 29</p><p>- Pastor Greene frames his candidacy as a moral response to what he calls egregious conduct at the statehouse</p><p>- Describes Indiana&#8217;s $22 billion budget as a moral document; cites seniors choosing between medicine and meals, CCDF childcare voucher gaps, and underfunded public schools</p><p><strong>00:33:27 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Federal Cuts Coming to the State</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander raises proposed changes to Supplemental Security Income &#8212; benefit reductions for disabled people living with family members</p><p>- Pastor Greene confirms SSI cuts are coming and shares what he&#8217;s heard across his district: retired people who did everything right now facing impossible financial pressure</p><p>- Argues seniors and people with disabilities deserve to age with dignity and stay in their homes</p><p><strong>00:35:40 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Cross-Aisle Optimism</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander asks whether Indiana Democrats can find Republican partners</p><p>- Pastor Greene points to Governor Braun&#8217;s $200 million one-time childcare fund as evidence &#8212; driven by Republican business community pressure, not Democratic lobbying, after 311+ childcare closures statewide</p><p>- Argues a broad urban-suburban-rural coalition &#8212; chambers of commerce, United Way, women-led organizations, faith community &#8212; can move the needle on affordability in the 2027 budget</p><p><strong>00:37:55 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Shared Economic Pain Across Party Lines</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander argues school funding, disability care, and food prices affect everyone regardless of race or party</p><p>- Pastor Greene: &#8220;They don&#8217;t charge me any more when I walk in the grocery store because I&#8217;m Black&#8221;</p><p>- Raises rural voters whose hospitals have closed and who now travel 100 miles for care at $4+ gas</p><p><strong>00:40:52 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Farmers and Tariffs</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander reports Wisconsin and Michigan farmers are choosing not to plant this spring due to tariff uncertainty and product markets collapsing</p><p>- Pastor Greene argues those farmers didn&#8217;t vote expecting this outcome &#8212; and their pain may shift their politics</p><p>- Notes Trump is pushing federal fallout down to the state level, increasing pressure on the governor heading into his reelection</p><p><strong>00:42:40 SD-29 Candidate Segment &#8212; Closing Argument</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander asks Greene for his closing message to SD-29 voters</p><p>- Greene: affordability first, fighting to protect Eagle Creek, bringing a track record of coalition work from business to faith-based community</p><p>- Campaign slogan: &#8220;Don&#8217;t be mean, vote for Green&#8221;</p><p>- Distinguishes himself from opponents on experience &#8212; points voters to his public record on education, health care, and redistricting</p><p><strong>00:45:51 SD-29 District Geography</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander asks Greene to define the district for voters unsure if they&#8217;re in it</p><p>- Greene: formerly J.D. Ford&#8217;s seat &#8212; Pike and Wayne Township, east to I-465, south to Raceway Road, plus Zionsville (Boone County) and West Carmel (Hamilton County) up to 146th Street</p><p>- Describes it as a gerrymandered district the GOP never expected a Democrat to win</p><p><strong>00:47:19 Souls to the Polls &#8212; Sunday, May 3</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander asks about the Souls to the Polls effort</p><p>- Pastor Greene: five churches participating this Sunday; buses donated by Cameron Riddle&#8217;s bus company; departing from Purpose of Life at noon</p><p>- Participating churches: Purpose of Life, Antioch, Fountain of Grace, Eastside Baptist, St. John&#8217;s Missionary Baptist, Olivet Baptist</p><p>- Churches traveling to the City-County Building to vote early; no church membership required</p><p>- To join or add a church: contact Kara Johnson at 317-869-7367</p><p>- Greene commits to repeating the effort in November</p><p><strong>00:50:11 Closing / Sign-Off</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander urges listeners to bring elderly family members to a participating church for the bus</p><p>- Thanks Pastor Greene for his campaign labor; thanks listening and viewing audience</p><p>- Sign-off: Concerned Clergy Radio Show, Praise AM 1310 / 95.1 FM, Indy&#8217;s Inspiration Station</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast April 22, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Revs. Alexander and Greene discuss current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community. Pike Twp. Trustee Annette Johnson visits the show.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-22</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-22</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:01:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/195189889/1535a8b3f8db8faf7194b371529b0060.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Rev. Tony Alexander opens the program with a wide-ranging discussion of data center proliferation across Marion County townships, pressing lawmakers for the guardrails they declined to put in place months earlier. Pike Township Trustee Annette Johnson joins to explain the trustee office&#8217;s emergency assistance role and her reelection campaign. In the second half, Concerned Clergy President Pastor David W. Greene Sr. returns to discuss the grassroots momentum pushing politicians on data centers, Governor Braun&#8217;s signing of a public camping ban, and Greene&#8217;s own affordability-first state legislative campaign. The program closes with voting reminders ahead of the May 5th primary.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:27 Introduction and how to tune in</strong></p><p>- Listeners can tune in live Wednesday nights at 7pm on Praise AM 1310 / 95.1 FM, Facebook, or YouTube (Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis page).</p><p>- Call-in number: 317-480-1310.</p><p><strong>00:01:58 Data centers: Carson announces legislation, council proposes guardrails</strong></p><p>- Congressman Andr&#233; Carson announced today that he will introduce legislation related to data centers, with details expected tomorrow.</p><p>- The city-county council is also now proposing guardrails &#8212; something Alexander notes they had the opportunity to do when they voted on the Metrobloks data center in Martindale Brightwood and declined.</p><p>- Alexander points out that Councilor Jesse Brown proposed transparency measures in the Democratic caucus and was voted down, only for colleagues to now embrace the same idea months later.</p><p>- Community asks include: transparency on facility size, energy usage and demand, infrastructure impacts, and binding community benefit agreements.</p><p><strong>00:05:25 Townships fighting alone &#8212; and what comes next</strong></p><p>- Communities in Decatur, Franklin Township, Pike Township, and Martindale Brightwood are all battling data center proposals with no coordinated legislative cover.</p><p>- Alexander argues the burden fell unfairly on individual councilors like Jesse Brown while the broader caucus stayed silent.</p><p>- A DC Blox data center meeting is scheduled for next Monday at Downey Avenue Christian Church, 111 South Downey Street (Council District 14), hosted by City-County Councilor Andy Nielsen; livestreamed as well &#8212; search &#8220;DC Blox&#8221; (B-L-O-X) to register.</p><p><strong>00:09:04 Voting reminders: Marion County primary</strong></p><p>- Mail-in ballot application deadline: Thursday, April 23 at 11:59 PM.</p><p>- Satellite early voting locations open this Saturday at township government centers in Decatur, Franklin, Perry, and Warren townships.</p><p>- Pike Township early voting: Pike Township Public Library, Fort Ben branch library, Krannert Park, and St. Luke&#8217;s United Methodist Church (86th Street).</p><p>- City-County Building early voting already open; closes May 4 at noon.</p><p>- Election Day: May 5th.</p><p><strong>00:12:04 Guest: Annette Johnson, Pike Township Trustee &#8212; role and funding</strong></p><p>- Johnson is in her eighth year as trustee (second four-year term), having previously served 14 years on the township board.</p><p>- The trustee&#8217;s office provides emergency assistance &#8212; utilities, mortgage, rent, clothing, school uniforms, food vouchers, diapers, and supplies for expectant mothers &#8212; funded entirely by the local township tax base.</p><p>- Pike Township is one of only three Marion County townships with a standalone fire department, which makes up the largest share of its budget.</p><p>- To qualify: must live in the township (verified by zip code), present ID, and document an emergency that occurred within the past 30 days &#8212; layoff, hours cut, medical leave, or fire damage.</p><p><strong>00:17:13 Federal and state funding cuts: pressure on the trustee&#8217;s office</strong></p><p>- Alexander raises the concern that federal and state funding sources are disappearing &#8212; will trustees have to absorb the slack?</p><p>- Johnson says the office hasn&#8217;t hit that wall yet but predicts it within two to three years.</p><p>- She is building relationships with churches and community organizations now to help fill any future void.</p><p>- Johnson notes the township&#8217;s budget is fixed to the local tax base across three areas: emergency assistance, small claims court, and the fire department.</p><p><strong>00:22:19 Top issue: utility bills / How the 30-day rule works</strong></p><p>- The number one presenting issue right now is utility bills, which Johnson calls out of control.</p><p>- Johnson works with the Winter Assistance Fund (WAF) &#8212; she matches WAF&#8217;s $800 contribution from township funds, reducing a $2,000 bill to $1,600, for example.</p><p>- Johnson&#8217;s goal is to pay the full balance so clients leave with a zero balance; she pays senior citizens&#8217; bills in full without exception.</p><p>- The 30-day rule refers to a qualifying emergency within the last 30 days &#8212; typically a pending disconnection notice, not the age of the debt itself.</p><p>- Johnson does not cover reconnection deposits &#8212; only pre-disconnection balances; she called on state legislators to update the restrictive guidelines governing trustee assistance levels.</p><p><strong>00:26:29 Re-election pitch and campaign contact info</strong></p><p>- Johnson&#8217;s three-part platform: protect the Pike Township Fire Department, expand innovative assistance programs, and be a powerful community voice.</p><p>- Community priorities she&#8217;ll advocate for beyond the trustee role: opposing data centers, Save Eagle Creek, and keeping charter schools out of Pike Township in favor of public schools.</p><p>- She recently held an essential goods giveaway with Walmart donations and plans to continue community-facing events.</p><p>- Contact: AnnetteJohnson2026.com | 317-418-7801</p><p><strong>00:30:38 Pastor David W. Greene Sr. joins: Data centers and grassroots pressure</strong></p><p>- Greene attributes the recent pivot by Carson and the city-county council to sustained grassroots pressure, not top-down leadership &#8212; politicians are recalculating mid-election.</p><p>- Save Eagle Creek yard signs are now ubiquitous across Pike Township; Greene notes the coalition organized entirely from the bottom up.</p><p>- Decatur Township residents have filed a lawsuit over the rezoning of a data center there; a new data center was also announced on another side of Indianapolis.</p><p>- Greene called out the Council&#8217;s treatment of Brightwood residents who came to speak at a recent hearing involving Councilor Ron Gibson.</p><p>- Greene praised Trustee Johnson for going beyond her job description to fight on data centers, Eagle Creek, and public education.</p><p><strong>00:35:24 Community benefit agreements and the DC Blox meeting</strong></p><p>- Alexander lays out what communities are asking for: transparency on size, energy demand, and infrastructure impacts, plus binding community benefit agreements before any approval.</p><p>- Greene agrees: &#8220;It&#8217;s time out for trying to do something to the community and not with the community.&#8221;</p><p>- Greene draws a distinction &#8212; not all politicians are on the wrong side; Johnson is an example of an elected official going above and beyond her role to fight for the community.</p><p>- A DC Blox data center meeting is scheduled for next Monday at Downey Avenue Christian Church, 111 South Downey Street (Council District 14), hosted by City-County Councilor Andy Nielsen; the meeting will also be livestreamed &#8212; search &#8220;DC Blox&#8221; (B-L-O-X) to register.</p><p><strong>00:39:18 Governor Braun&#8217;s public camping ban: homelessness is a condition, not a crime</strong></p><p>- Governor Mike Braun signed legislation banning public camping across Indiana &#8212; targeted, both hosts note, primarily at Indianapolis.</p><p>- Greene: homelessness is not a crime, it&#8217;s a condition &#8212; and conditions require solutions, not punishment.</p><p>- A $500 fine and Class C misdemeanor won&#8217;t solve homelessness; Greene argues it will deepen it by damaging credit and creating warrant exposure for people who can&#8217;t pay or appear in court.</p><p>- Greene serves on the Mayor&#8217;s Leadership Council on Homelessness and calls for expanding affordable housing, mental health care, addiction treatment, and employment pathways instead.</p><p><strong>00:44:06 The moral argument: money isn&#8217;t the problem, will is</strong></p><p>- Greene challenges the &#8220;we don&#8217;t have the money&#8221; framing &#8212; the state is simultaneously pursuing the Chicago Bears stadium and handing out decades-long tax breaks to data centers.</p><p>- Alexander adds: federal spending on war and other priorities dwarfs what it would cost to fund early childhood care, Medicaid, and homeless services.</p><p>- The fastest-growing homeless population, Greene notes, is women with children &#8212; meaning the law risks family separation on top of everything else.</p><p>- Greene: &#8220;Becoming homeless is not a crime. It&#8217;s a condition. It&#8217;s not a crime. It never has been.&#8221;</p><p><strong>00:47:29 Pastor Greene&#8217;s state legislative campaign</strong></p><p>- Green is running on an affordability-first platform in a district covering Wayne Township, Pike, Zionsville, and West Carmel.</p><p>- Key pressures he hears across the district: unaffordable childcare, inaccessible healthcare, seniors rationing medication, renters and homeowners unable to keep up with rising costs.</p><p>- Additional priorities: fully funding public education, saving Eagle Creek (Green lives near the reservoir and warns an environmental accident from data center water usage is a matter of when, not if).</p><p><strong>00:50:42 Closing and voting reminder</strong></p><p>- Alexander repeats all early voting locations and deadlines.</p><p>- Mail-in ballot application closes Thursday April 23 at 11:59 PM; Election Day is May 5th.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast April 15, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Revs. Alexander and Greene discuss current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-15</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-15</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:03:11 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/194360149/60877281a097c0efb75cae1353b665c1.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>Rev. Tony Alexander opens the hour with two threads running in parallel: the ongoing fallout from DOGE&#8217;s dismantling of USAID, anchored by newly public deposition testimony and a whistleblower memoir, and a preview of Indiana-focused topics &#8212; education funding under attack at both the state and local levels, Governor Braun&#8217;s about-face on child care vouchers, and the newly formed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC) board. President Pastor David W. Green Sr. joins at the half-hour to expand on the child care and education crises, pushing back hard on any framing of Braun&#8217;s $200 million announcement as a rescue rather than a partial correction of damage he helped cause. Two callers weigh in &#8212; one connecting DOGE&#8217;s data access to a personal identity theft incident in his household, the other asking whether Indianapolis&#8217;s Black community has a pathway into the tech jobs being promised around incoming data centers.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:26 Introduction and opening prayer</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander welcomes listeners, directs them to the PIN Substack for replays, and opens with prayer.</p><p><strong>00:01:38 Topic preview: DOGE, the USAID whistleblower, and Indiana education</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander previews the night&#8217;s agenda: Trump posting images of himself as the Messiah; Nicholas Enrich&#8217;s new book &#8220;Into the Wood Chipper,&#8221; a whistleblower account of DOGE&#8217;s takeover of USAID; education under attack at the state and local levels; and Governor Braun&#8217;s $200 million child care announcement.</p><p><strong>00:03:51 DOGE and the destruction of USAID</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander walks through DOGE&#8217;s origin &#8212; Elon Musk arriving within 45 days of Trump&#8217;s inauguration, promising to cut waste, fraud, and abuse with a chainsaw &#8212; and notes that Musk was effectively gone by May 2025 after a public feud with Trump, leaving extensive damage behind at USAID, Social Security, and elsewhere.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander describes Enrich&#8217;s account of DOGE staffers arriving at USAID in their early 20s, with no relevant experience, and using ChatGPT to run keyword searches for &#8220;diversity,&#8221; &#8220;equity,&#8221; and &#8220;inclusion&#8221; as the sole method for identifying grants to cut &#8212; eliminating programs on the basis of word matches alone, including a Holocaust documentary and plant biodiversity research.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander emphasizes USAID&#8217;s role in containing disease outbreaks globally before they become pandemics, and cites estimates that nearly a million children have already died as a result of the aid cutoff, with that number potentially rising into the millions.</p><p><strong>00:07:02 [NBC News clip &#8212; DOGE deposition testimony]</strong></p><p>- NBC News correspondent Julie Tsirkin reports on deposition videos from a civil lawsuit filed by humanities organizations, alleging DOGE violated the First Amendment by canceling more than 1,400 arts, history, and education grants.</p><p>- Former DOJ staffer Justin Fox testifies that he flagged a Holocaust documentary as DEI-related; he acknowledged using ChatGPT to identify programs to eliminate.</p><p>- Former DOGE staffer Nathan Kavanaugh states the goal was to eliminate the federal deficit, then acknowledges under questioning that DOGE did not reduce the deficit. DOGE claimed $150&#8211;$180 billion in savings before it ceased to exist.</p><p><strong>00:09:08 Rev. Alexander reacts to the clip</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander highlights that the deposition footage shows DOGE staffers unable to define DEI in their own words &#8212; one citing only the executive order &#8212; and connects this to the broader pattern of unqualified young operatives being handed authority over agencies they knew nothing about.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander notes that the deposition videos were originally posted to YouTube, taken down following a judge&#8217;s order after Fox reported harassment and death threats, but remain accessible through backup sources. He addresses caller LME&#8217;s implied question by noting that the DEI rationale was applied mechanically, with no actual evaluation of program merit.</p><p><strong>00:21:35 Break / Pastor David W. Green Sr. joins</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander welcomes President Pastor David W. Green Sr. to the program.</p><p><strong>00:23:08 Caller #1 &#8212; DOGE data access and identity theft</strong></p><p>- Caller #1 argues that the most underreported story from the DOGE depositions is not the DEI keyword searches but the fact that DOGE operatives accessed the personal data of every American &#8212; Social Security numbers, addresses, birthdates, medical records &#8212; and raises the question of what Elon Musk, who recently crossed $800 billion in net worth, would want with that data.</p><p>- Caller #1 shares that his wife received a fraud alert the previous week: someone had applied for a credit card in his name using her Social Security number &#8212; an incident he directly connects to DOGE&#8217;s data access. He urges listeners to stay engaged and vote, noting that Republicans have won only one special election since Trump took office.</p><p><strong>00:26:11 Caller #2 (LME) &#8212; Data centers, community inclusion, and tech jobs</strong></p><p>- LME references the recent shooting at a city councilman&#8217;s home tied to the data center controversy and asks whether Indianapolis&#8217;s Black community has a real pathway into IT and programming jobs connected to incoming data centers, noting that most corporate databases are already managed offshore.</p><p>- Pastor Greene responds that opponents of the data centers were never against technology or economic development &#8212; they were against being cut out of the conversation entirely. He draws on his own background in data centers in the 1990s to push back on the job-creation narrative, noting that a data center at night runs on one or two people; real community opportunity lies in construction and trades, not operations.</p><p>- Pastor Greene also connects the pattern to other top-down Indianapolis development decisions &#8212; the LEAP district, Eagle Creek water extraction &#8212; where community engagement came too late and created unnecessary friction, including the violence he explicitly condemns.</p><p><strong>00:32:08 Governor Braun and the child care crisis</strong></p><p>- Pastor Greene takes on Governor Braun&#8217;s $200 million child care announcement directly, arguing Braun should receive no credit for partially restoring what he helped destroy: CCDF vouchers have not been issued for going on 18 months, more than 311 daycares have closed since September, the YMCA&#8217;s child care operation shut down when the rates were cut, and thousands of families remain without access even under the new announcement.</p><p>- Pastor Greene identifies the three priority groups for the new funding &#8212; foster care parents, child care workers, and a third group he could not recall &#8212; and notes that this is a short-term fix with no guarantee of continuation; the real test is the 2027 budget session.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander adds that Braun moved only because the closures started hitting his own constituent base, with over 300 daycares shuttered and the damage spreading beyond the communities the legislation originally targeted.</p><p>- Pastor Greene argues the deeper cost is the workforce and developmental pipeline: parents forced to stay home rather than work, children entering kindergarten without structured early learning, and a cohort that will struggle to pass IREAD-3 by third grade as a result.</p><p><strong>00:42:39 Indianapolis education funding and the IPEC referendum</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene discuss the newly formed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC) board, which held its first meeting and is already moving toward a referendum to replace the expiring IPS referendum &#8212; which ends in November and covers IPS and charter schools alike.</p><p>- Pastor Greene says the board is targeting August 1 to get a referendum question on the ballot, but notes the board has met only once, has no executive director yet, and is already talking about how much money it needs before it has a clear picture of what it needs the money for &#8212; a dynamic Rev. Alexander compares directly to DOGE walking into USAID.</p><p>- Pastor Greene argues the deal has already been cut behind closed doors and the community rollout is just being managed, but notes that economic conditions &#8212; inflation, gas prices, the possibility of ongoing military conflict &#8212; could tank voter support regardless of how the ask is framed. He extends the warning beyond Indianapolis: Zionsville, Carmel, and townships throughout the region are all facing referendums of their own.</p><p><strong>00:49:48 Closing / next week preview</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander thanks listeners and callers and announces that Pike Township Trustee Annette Johnson will join the program next week.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast April 8, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Revs. Alexander and Greene welcome 7th District congressional candidate George Hornedo to discuss current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-8</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-8</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:02:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/193648823/bf621d73f0e5682535ea04faa1aaeebe.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><h4>SUMMARY: </h4><p>On this edition of the Concerned Clergy Radio Show, Revs. Alexander and Greene welcomed George Hornedo, a Democratic primary candidate challenging incumbent Congressman Andre Carson in Indiana&#8217;s 7th Congressional District, with the May 5, 2026 primary now underway. Hornedo outlined his background &#8212; from a WIC-assisted childhood in Texas to senior roles in the Obama Justice Department and on multiple presidential campaigns &#8212; and framed his run around the conviction that a congressional seat is more than an up-or-down vote in Washington; it is a platform and a megaphone for the entire community. The conversation ranged from the affordability crisis hitting Hoosier families, to Hornedo&#8217;s case for restructuring the federal funding formula so Democratic cities in Republican-led states stop getting shortchanged, to a played audio clip of President Trump arguing the federal government should abandon social programs in favor of military spending alone, to Hornedo&#8217;s alarm about the erosion of democratic norms. Greene Sr. wove in his own state Senate District 29 campaign, emphasizing coalition-building across levels of government and the moral imperative of putting people first. Both men agreed that disillusionment is not an option &#8212; the choice, as Hornedo put it, is to step away or step up. He closed by directing listeners to georgehornedo.com and inviting direct contact by giving out his cell number.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:01 Introduction and Opening Prayer</strong></p><p>- Alexander opens by promoting the PIN Substack replay and encouraging listeners to exercise their right to vote, noting that early voting is now underway</p><p>- The show&#8217;s guest is introduced as George Hornedo, Democratic primary candidate for Indiana&#8217;s 7th Congressional District, challenging incumbent Congressman Andre Carson</p><p>- Alexander offers an opening prayer and invites listener participation at 317-480-1310</p><p>- Greene Sr. is welcomed as co-host for the evening</p><p><strong>00:02:59 Guest Introduction: George Hornedo</strong></p><p>- Hornedo describes his background: 35 years old, raised in Texas, parents were young high school sweethearts who struggled financially &#8212; he was on WIC as an infant, which he cites as formative in his belief that government can work for people</p><p>- His career has spanned the Obama DOJ (civil rights work under Attorneys General Holder and Lynch), senior staff roles on presidential campaigns from Obama to Clinton to Buttigieg, voter protection work for Biden 2020, and policy work at the national voting rights organization Let America Vote</p><p>- He also cites private-sector work representing communities such as Birmingham, Jackson, Little Rock, Miami-Dade County, and the African American Mayors Association in securing federal funds</p><p>- He frames his candidacy not as personal opposition to Carson, whom he says he likes and respects, but as a response to necessity &#8212; particularly on issues like data center development and ICE enforcement where he sees the incumbent as too passive</p><p><strong>00:06:24 Federal Funding, Affordability, and the Federal Formula</strong></p><p>- Greene stresses the urgency of getting federal dollars into Indiana and into the right hands, noting that families are being crushed by rising grocery costs, utility instability, gas prices, and property taxes &#8212; including seniors cutting prescription pills in half to afford them</p><p>- Hornedo explains that Indianapolis lags behind peer cities in competitive federal grant attainment and argues for a more aggressive, proactive approach to bringing that money home</p><p>- He identifies a structural problem in federal formula funding: money flows to states based on population rather than need, which allows Republican-led states to shortchange Democratic cities &#8212; a pattern he says he saw repeatedly representing cities like Birmingham, Jackson, and Little Rock</p><p>- He calls for a coalition of members of Congress from similar cities to push for formula reform, arguing the change would be transformative for Indianapolis across housing, roads, homelessness, and public safety</p><p><strong>00:10:15 Coalition Building Across Government: Greene Sr. on Senate District 29</strong></p><p>- Alexander invites Greene to put on his state Senate candidate hat and model what collaboration between a state senator and a congressperson could look like</p><p>- Greene argues that Indiana&#8217;s tendency to operate in government silos &#8212; federal, state, and local officials staying in their own lanes &#8212; is a losing strategy; breaking down those walls so information flows freely would benefit everyone from the congressperson down to local trustees</p><p>- He points to Indianapolis&#8217;s road conditions as the most visible symptom of governments failing to work together and stresses that coalition-building is not optional &#8212; it is the only path forward against Republican supermajorities</p><p><strong>00:13:58 Campaign Model: Bottom-Up Politics and the Trust Deficit</strong></p><p>- Hornedo argues the biggest problem in Democratic politics, before you even get to policy, is an erosion of trust that cannot be rebuilt through TV ads</p><p>- He describes building what he says is the largest Democratic field operation the state has seen in years: over 38,000 doors knocked, on track for 60,000; over a million calls made; direct one-on-one conversations with more than 16,000 district residents</p><p>- He contends that voters do not care whether a solution comes from federal, state, or local government &#8212; they just want problems solved &#8212; and that a congressperson should be willing to use their platform on any issue affecting the community, regardless of jurisdictional lines</p><p>- He specifically cites his presence at the Martindale-Brightwood community hearing on data centers as an example of using the congressional platform on a nominally local issue</p><p><strong>00:18:40 Leadership Vacuum and the 2027 Mayoral Race</strong></p><p>- Hornedo says he got into the race because he got tired of looking around for leadership and not finding it &#8212; the state blames the city, the city blames the state, and federal representation sits on the sidelines</p><p>- He notes that the 7th District is Indiana&#8217;s only safe Democratic congressional seat, making it uniquely important, and links it to the need for new mayoral leadership in 2027</p><p>- He flags that when Julia Carson held the seat, the district led the state in voter turnout; it now ranks worst in a state that itself ranks dead last nationally &#8212; a condition he calls both embarrassing and reversible</p><p>- He frames his campaign as an ecosystem-building effort: getting to Congress is the beginning, not the destination, and the goal is to build a Democratic infrastructure that can win across the board</p><p><strong>00:21:41 Commercial Break</strong></p><p><strong>00:22:16 Post-Break Recap and Listener Call: Marilyn</strong></p><p>- Alexander recaps the guest and reminds listeners that early voting is open at the City-County Building downtown</p><p>- Caller Marilyn asks Hornedo how many opponents he faces; he clarifies that four candidates are in the Democratic primary &#8212; not the general &#8212; and that the seat is safe enough that whoever emerges will almost certainly win in November</p><p>- Marilyn asks whether Hornedo would collaborate with the winner if he does not prevail; he says yes without hesitation, affirming he will continue working for the community from whatever position he occupies</p><p>- Marilyn raises property taxes on Indianapolis&#8217;s east side, where new development is driving up assessments on existing homeowners; Hornedo sympathizes and says property tax reform is primarily a state and local matter, but pledges to use his platform to force the conversation</p><p><strong>00:27:17 Affordability Deep Dive: Wages, Costs, and Medicaid</strong></p><p>- Greene ties affordability to federal decisions cascading down &#8212; wars driving gas prices, utility instability, property tax referenda for schools &#8212; and describes meeting voters on fixed incomes forced to choose between medication and groceries</p><p>- Hornedo frames the budget as a moral document and takes direct aim at Trump&#8217;s proposed spending on military conflict while cutting domestic programs</p><p>- He describes voters he has met on the trail: a 25-year IPS educator using a food bank, a mother of two boys with autism facing special education cuts, a woman with multiple sclerosis denied food stamps because she earns $100 over the threshold</p><p>- He recounts visiting a woman in her forties with deep vein thrombosis, diabetic neuropathy, and severe arthritis who has been denied Medicaid appeal after appeal since returning to Indiana from Pennsylvania &#8212; a story he calls the most formative of his campaign</p><p><strong>00:34:05 Audio Clip: President Trump on Federal Spending</strong></p><p>- Alexander frames the clip for listeners as the current federal direction and turns to Hornedo for response</p><p><strong>00:35:18 Response to Trump Clip: Federal Devolution and Democratic Strategy</strong></p><p>- Hornedo argues Democratic candidates in competitive general elections should run that clip as a campaign ad &#8212; Trump called these programs &#8220;scams&#8221; and told his own cabinet secretary to ignore congressional authority</p><p>- He distinguishes between block granting (still federal money, states determine distribution) and what Trump is describing: removing federal funding from the equation entirely, something without modern precedent that would effectively end these programs</p><p>- He warns that Trump should be taken seriously and literally, including on election integrity &#8212; an outside group is reportedly working with the White House on executive orders targeting election administration, and the question is not whether elections will happen but whether they will be free and fair</p><p><strong>00:39:23 Voter Engagement and the Urgency of the Primary</strong></p><p>- Alexander asks Greene what he is hearing on the campaign trail about voter enthusiasm</p><p>- Greene says frustration will drive turnout, and stresses that a Democratic Congress capable of providing real oversight is essential given that Trump is acting without congressional check</p><p>- He describes the current dynamic as Trump pushing responsibility to states, Indiana Governor Mike Braun pushing it further to local governments, and local governments lacking the revenue to absorb it</p><p>- Hornedo urges listeners not to let disillusionment become inaction: the choice is to step away or step up, and stepping up can mean voting, talking to neighbors, or using whatever platform is available</p><p><strong>00:43:22 Infrastructure and the Federal Funding Formula</strong></p><p>- Alexander raises Indiana&#8217;s road conditions; Hornedo says Indiana ranks worst in the country in infrastructure</p><p>- He argues a more aggressive congressperson can bring competitive grant money home, freeing up city budgets for infrastructure, and that the federal funding formula itself must be reformed so Democratic cities in Republican-led states stop getting the short end</p><p>- He notes that federal road funding currently flows to the state, which as a Republican-led body consistently shortchanges Indianapolis</p><p><strong>00:47:45 Closing Conversation: Accountability and People-First Politics</strong></p><p>- Greene argues a blue wave alone is not enough &#8212; it must be a blue wave that puts people first, with fresh voices willing to do an honest accountability check on how the party got where it is</p><p>- He notes Democrats cannot ask the same people who got them here to fix the problem, and that owning the failures is not finger-pointing &#8212; it is the prerequisite for doing something different</p><p>- Hornedo affirms he is proud to be a Democrat but says he is a person first, and that putting people before party is the only path to real results</p><p><strong>00:50:19 Closing: Contact Information and Voting Reminder</strong></p><p>- Hornedo directs listeners to georgehornedo.com and gives his personal cell (317-354-7073) and email (george@georgehornedo.com)</p><p>- Alexander thanks Hornedo, reminds listeners that early voting is available now at the City-County Building and by mail-in ballot, and that the primary is May 5</p><p>- Alexander closes: &#8220;Be blessed.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast April 1, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Tony Alexander and]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-april-1</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:03:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/192915723/867071114b7d4cbfc289e6f4d5d7656e.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p>On this week&#8217;s Concerned Clergy Radio Show, Rev. Tony Alexander and Concerned Clergy President Rev. Dr. David W. Greene Sr. welcomed Denise Abdul-Rahman and Jordan Geiger of Black Sunlight Sustainability to discuss the environmental and economic stakes of AI data center development in Indianapolis&#8217;s Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood &#8212; including the City-County Council&#8217;s recent approval of the Metrobloks project at 25th and Sherman &#8212; as well as rising utility costs, the IURC&#8217;s statewide listening tour, and the upcoming free EV charger education event hosted by Concerned Clergy and Black Sunlight on April 7. The conversation drew a direct line between environmental racism, the erosion of democratic accountability at every level of government, and the urgent need for community education and civic engagement.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:00:00 &#8212; Opening / Announcements / Prayer</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander leads the opening prayer and introduces tonight&#8217;s guests from Black Sunlight Sustainability: Denise Abdul-Rahman and Jordan Geiger.</p><p>- Tonight&#8217;s topics: AI data centers in Martindale-Brightwood, rising utility bills, solar and EV alternatives.</p><p><strong>00:02:08 &#8212; Introducing Black Sunlight Sustainability</strong></p><p>- Denise Abdul-Rahman describes Black Sunlight as a statewide organization focused on connecting communities to resources for self-determination, clean energy, and resistance to environmental harm.</p><p>- Abdul-Rahman cites Dr. Robert Bullard&#8217;s foundational work on environmental justice: race &#8212; not income level &#8212; determines where environmental injustice is located in America.</p><p>- She describes how greenhouse gas emissions connect to intensifying weather events in Indiana &#8212; stronger tornadoes, extreme heat, damaging cold &#8212; as well as the emerging threat posed by AI data centers, which use excessive water, generate noise, and often rely on diesel generators.</p><p>- Martindale-Brightwood, already overburdened by industrial pollution, is described as a textbook case of environmental racism.</p><p><strong>00:07:05 &#8212; Rev. Greene Joins: Brightwood, Democracy, and the Price of Engagement</strong></p><p>- Rev. Greene expresses solidarity with Brightwood residents and frustration that they engaged the democratic process exactly as instructed &#8212; and were still overruled.</p><p>- He draws a parallel to the construction of I-65 and I-70 through Black Indianapolis neighborhoods, raising the question of whether the Metrobloks placement was intentional.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander notes that a &#8220;Rethink I-65/I-70&#8221; initiative is now exploring reconnecting those communities &#8212; at enormous cost.</p><p>- Rev. Greene connects the Metrobloks vote to a pattern of democratic erosion: from the appointed IPS board (with David Harris, a charter school advocate, named president) to federal voter suppression efforts &#8212; calling it an attack on democracy at every level.</p><p><strong>00:09:15 &#8212; What Happens Now? Community Options After the Council Vote</strong></p><p>- Denise Abdul-Rahman says the fight is not over: the public comment period was limited to 15 minutes with restricted speakers, and the community can still press the full City-County Council.</p><p>- She notes there are unresolved questions about the integrity of the process itself.</p><p>- Rev. Greene encourages residents to also engage Metrobloks directly to negotiate community benefits &#8212; but insists any real community agreement must be built with the community, not handed down to it.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander reads a statement from Councilor Gibson (posted during the live broadcast) claiming a $2.5 million commitment to Martindale-Brightwood, with an estimated $20 million in additional investment &#8212; noting it was the first he had heard of any such commitment throughout the entire process.</p><p>- Rev. Greene responds that the $20 million figure appears to reference a tax abatement &#8212; which does not benefit the community &#8212; and that a park in front of Metrobloks that nobody uses is not a community investment.</p><p><strong>00:13:02 &#8212; Jordan Geiger on Data Center Research and Black Sunlight&#8217;s Work</strong></p><p>- Jordan Geiger identifies himself as Assistant Director of Special Projects and Outreach at Black Sunlight Sustainability.</p><p>- His recent focus has been researching data center development projects across Indiana and their community impacts.</p><p>- Geiger&#8217;s audio deteriorated during this segment; Rev. Alexander noted they were losing him and tabled the conversation to return to later.</p><p><strong>00:14:07 &#8212; IURC Listening Tour: Real Relief or Check-the-Box?</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander outlines the IURC&#8217;s statewide listening tour schedule: Goshen/Elkhart, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Evansville; Noblesville City Hall on April 9; Indianapolis Ivy Tech Conference Center on April 20; plus Gary and Terre Haute. Residents are encouraged to search &#8220;IURC listening tour&#8221; for details.</p><p>- Abdul-Rahman says she wants to be optimistic: House Bill 1002 was already passed to address affordability, and the IURC is receiving input from the state&#8217;s five investor-owned utilities alongside a federal energy growth task force; attendees are reportedly being asked to bring actual utility bills.</p><p>- She notes that a coalition secured $117 million in federal funding to deploy solar across Indiana &#8212; but that contract was terminated by the federal government before it could produce results.</p><p>- She says Governor Pence eliminated energy efficiency programs and mandatory industrial investment standards created under Governor Daniels; she calls on Governor Braun to restore those programs and fund statewide solar deployment.</p><p>- In the near term, she expects the most likely outcomes from the listening tour to be modest: weatherization assistance for very low-income households and small residential green programs.</p><p><strong>00:19:01 &#8212; Caller: Rev. Phillips</strong></p><p>- Rev. Phillips argues that community members need to be educated and focused &#8212; using his own background in security work as an example of what trained attention looks like &#8212; and says people distracted by their cell phones aren&#8217;t paying attention to what&#8217;s happening around them.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander responds that utility meter reading is largely automated now, so cell phone distraction isn&#8217;t the reason utility bills are high.</p><p><strong>00:21:46 &#8212; Caller: Guy</strong></p><p>- Guy praises the citizens who showed up to fight data center approvals across the country, calling it democracy in action even when outcomes are discouraging.</p><p>- He argues solar should be the central focus going forward on energy policy &#8212; and warns that utility industry lobbyists will fight hard to prevent anything that threatens their revenue.</p><p>- He recounts a personal experience being inadvertently disconnected by the power company and finding it nearly impossible to get the error corrected &#8212; no local office, no one at the Monument Circle headquarters to take a complaint.</p><p>- He says the automation of customer service will only make that worse, and urges people to demand a human being on the other end of utility disputes.</p><p><strong>00:26:10 &#8212; EV Charger Education Event &#8212; April 7</strong></p><p>- Rev. Greene and Abdul-Rahman announce a free community education event co-hosted by Concerned Clergy and Black Sunlight Sustainability.</p><p>  &#8212; Tuesday, April 7 | Doors: 5:30 p.m. | Program: 6:00 p.m.</p><p>  &#8212; Julia Carson Center, 300 East Fall Creek Parkway, Indianapolis</p><p>  &#8212; AES Indiana will be present; food provided</p><p>- Abdul-Rahman describes the coalition behind the event &#8212; the Indiana Alliance for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Electric Vehicle Infrastructure &#8212; which includes: Concerned Clergy, Black Lives Matter South Bend, NAACP Evansville, NAACP Terre Haute, Purpose of Life Ministry, Scott United Methodist Church, First Baptist Church North of Indianapolis, and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance.</p><p>- The coalition&#8217;s core demands: INDOT siting of EV chargers in underserved communities, public listening sessions on Indiana&#8217;s EV infrastructure funding, and equitable contracting and apprenticeship opportunities for Black-owned businesses.</p><p>- Abdul-Rahman notes Indiana was allocated up to $100 million for EV infrastructure; the Trump administration has reduced that to approximately $75 million, of which only $3.8 million has been received, with contractor selections still pending.</p><p><strong>00:35:43 &#8212; Second Half: Democracy Under Attack, IPS, and Staying in the Fight</strong></p><p>- Rev. Greene says the Metrobloks vote is itself a democratic failure &#8212; a councilor voting against his own constituency &#8212; and places it alongside the shift of IPS to a mayoral-appointed board as evidence that democracy is under attack at the neighborhood, local, state, and federal levels simultaneously.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander says he&#8217;s hearing from dejected people who want to give up, and urges them not to: even when a vote goes against the community, people need to understand that five council members can outvote thousands of residents &#8212; and that is exactly why voter education and turnout matter.</p><p>- Rev. Greene calls for people to be energized rather than exhausted by the number of fights: data centers, school boards, voting rights, utility costs &#8212; they are all connected.</p><p><strong>00:41:16 &#8212; The Real Math: Jobs, Investment, and Who Benefits</strong></p><p>- Rev. Greene, drawing on his background as a systems engineer who worked in data centers beginning in 1985, says the jobs argument for data centers is overstated: a modern data center likely employs one person overnight; in the 1990s it was two.</p><p>- Rev. Alexander says on every major energy and infrastructure construction project he is aware of in Indiana &#8212; solar, wind, data centers &#8212; the foremen and superintendents were out-of-state travelers, not Hoosiers.</p><p>- Rev. Greene says local contractor inclusion has to be negotiated upfront and intentionally; without it, companies simply bring their existing out-of-state crews because it is easier.</p><p>- Both note that the community of Martindale-Brightwood is not anti-economic development &#8212; what they are is pro-community agreement, and a real community agreement requires negotiation, not a unilateral offer.</p><p>- Rev. Greene warns that if Metrobloks drives up energy demand and AES raises rates, everyone in the region pays &#8212; it is not a Brightwood problem, it is an Indianapolis problem.</p><p><strong>00:48:55 &#8212; Closing: Call to Action</strong></p><p>- Rev. Alexander calls for a coalition of councilors, senators, community leaders, and homeowners associations to sit at the same table and hear directly from developers.</p><p>- Reminder: EV charger education event, Tuesday April 7, Julia Carson Center, 6 p.m.; doors at 5:30.</p><p>---</p><p><strong>CONTACT BLACK SUNLIGHT SUSTAINABILITY</strong></p><p>Email: contact@blacksunlight.org</p><p>Phone: 855-275-7786</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast March 25, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David Greene welcome Congressman Andre Carson to talk about current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-march-25</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-march-25</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:03:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/192160238/21a714b9c4688242b548c99ff396f9c0.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p>In a timely appearance ahead of Indiana&#8217;s primary season, Indiana&#8217;s 7th District Congressman Andre Carson joined Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene on the Concerned Clergy Radio Show for a substantive hour covering the partial government shutdown, TSA worker pay, ICE reform, the state of the Democratic resistance under Trump&#8217;s second term, data centers and rising utility bills, IPS school governance, and gun violence prevention. After Carson&#8217;s departure, the hosts took calls &#8212; including one asking whether there is any legal recourse against on-air defamation of Black leaders &#8212; and pivoted to a call to civic action, urging listeners to attend upcoming No Kings rallies and Souls to the Polls events across Indiana on Saturday, with voter registration closing April 6.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>0:01:06 &#8212; OPENING PRAYER</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander leads prayer.</p><p><strong>0:01:50 &#8212; INTRODUCTION OF CONGRESSMAN CARSON</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander introduces Carson as representative of Indiana&#8217;s 7th Congressional District.</p><p><strong>0:02:06 &#8212; CARSON WELCOME / PLEASANTRIES</strong></p><p>Brief exchange. Rev. Alexander notes Carson is in the middle of a primary campaign and that Pastor Greene is on assignment and may join later.</p><p><strong>0:03:03 &#8212; WHAT&#8217;S HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON?</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander asks Carson to break down the current moment in D.C. &#8212; particularly the intelligence/national security landscape &#8212; from his perspective.</p><p><strong>0:03:35 &#8212; CARSON OPENS: GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN / TSA / ICE / PROJECT 2025</strong></p><p>Carson&#8217;s extended opening statement:</p><p>- Democrats are holding firm in a partial government shutdown over ICE funding</p><p>- Proposes separating ICE from DHS so TSA can function and airports remain open</p><p>- Filed an amendment to ban ICE agents from wearing masks/face coverings in public</p><p>- Connects Project 2025 to TSA privatization proposals, DEI elimination, healthcare cuts</p><p><strong>0:06:28 &#8212; TSA PAY, ICE BONUSES &#8212; REV. ALEXANDER PRESSES</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander notes TSA workers aren&#8217;t getting paid while ICE agents are receiving $50,000 recruitment bonuses. Asks Carson to clarify the political blame dynamics.</p><p><strong>0:07:44 &#8212; CARSON: TSA MORALE, ATTRITION, AND FIFA CONCERNS</strong></p><p>- 400+ TSA agents have quit since the partial shutdown began</p><p>- Record wait times at airports</p><p>- Expresses concern that staffing levels won&#8217;t recover in time for the FIFA World Cup</p><p><strong>0:09:13 &#8212; IS A DEAL POSSIBLE?</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander asks whether there&#8217;s any hope of a resolution or if it&#8217;s a stalemate.</p><p><strong>0:09:32 &#8212; CARSON ON SHUTDOWN NEGOTIATIONS</strong></p><p>- Says Schumer has put forward a &#8220;good faith proposal&#8221;</p><p>- Democrats pushing for ICE reform as a condition; Republicans offering only to exclude ICE deportation funding, which Carson calls insufficient</p><p>- Notes Senator Thune says a deal is not close</p><p>- Says Trump could end the TSA delays immediately by accepting a deal &#8212; and has chosen not to</p><p><strong>0:11:55 &#8212; &#8220;ARE DEMOCRATS READY TO FIGHT?&#8221;</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander voices frustration shared by many in the community: Democrats appear to be getting &#8220;punched in the face&#8221; without fighting back. Asks Carson directly if the party is ready to fight differently.</p><p><strong>0:13:23 &#8212; CARSON: THE FIGHT IS HAPPENING &#8212; BUT THE TOOLS HAVE CHANGED</strong></p><p>Key segment. Carson argues:</p><p>- Democrats can&#8217;t use the same playbook in a new environment</p><p>- Traditional media, terrestrial radio, church appearances alone aren&#8217;t enough</p><p>- Black voters are doing &#8220;a la carte&#8221; voting &#8212; they won&#8217;t automatically follow the party</p><p>- Social media and influencers now make or break elections</p><p>- The Black faith community, Black elected officials, creatives, and influencers must work collectively</p><p>- A progressive from San Francisco operates differently than one from Indianapolis &#8212; same goals, different methods</p><p><strong>0:16:45 &#8212; CALLERS / TRANSITION</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander acknowledges callers and brings in Pastor Greene.</p><p><strong>0:17:06 &#8212; PASTOR GREENE JOINS: OBAMA COALITION / JAMES BALDWIN / WHITE VOTER DEMOGRAPHICS</strong></p><p>Pastor Greene calls in and raises a demographic argument:</p><p>- Black voters are 14% of the population vs. 34 million Latino registered voters</p><p>- Obama built a winning coalition across Asian, Latino, Jewish, and Arab-American voters &#8212; that coalition has fractured</p><p>- Invokes James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and MLK: the Democratic Party is still predominantly moderate-white, and laying the blame for losses on Black turnout misses the structural picture</p><p>- The real question is why 65-70 million moderate white voters haven&#8217;t held the line</p><p><strong>0:19:15 &#8212; CALLER JOYCE: PERSONAL GRIEVANCES / SENIOR CITIZEN ISSUES</strong></p><p>Joyce, a retired government worker and senior citizen, describes what she characterizes as a pattern of harassment &#8212; frozen bank account, mail not being delivered, a gun pulled on her, being locked up in June, and her passport being flagged since 2017.</p><p><strong>0:20:52 &#8212; REV. ALEXANDER: &#8220;HOW DO WE GET RID OF PROJECT 2025?&#8221; (Chat question)</strong></p><p>Aggregates listener questions and hands back to Carson.</p><p><strong>0:21:10 &#8212; CARSON: DATA CENTERS AND UTILITY BILLS</strong></p><p>Carson pivots to a local issue he&#8217;s watching closely:</p><p>- Data centers are largely under state jurisdiction but he&#8217;s exploring federal options</p><p>- There&#8217;s a tier system &#8212; some data centers claim to be self-contained; others want to pass infrastructure costs onto consumers and municipalities</p><p>- &#8220;They should pay their fair share of the bill, not neighborhoods&#8221;</p><p>- Cites a personal dispute with AES over his own utility bill</p><p>- References Google scrapping its Franklin Township data center after community pushback</p><p>- Notes Bernie Sanders has proposed a federal moratorium on data centers &#8212; says he&#8217;s open to it</p><p><strong>0:23:53 &#8212; CARSON: IPS / ILEA SCHOOL GOVERNANCE</strong></p><p>Carson addresses ongoing discussion about restructuring Indianapolis Public Schools governance:</p><p>- Any changes must center students, teachers, families, and community voices</p><p>- Elected school boards are &#8220;a cornerstone of our democracy&#8221; &#8212; wary of shifting to appointed bodies</p><p>- Education decisions in Indianapolis must reflect and protect Black and brown families and working-class communities</p><p>- Supports both charter and traditional public schools &#8212; but with equity, accountability, and transparency</p><p>- Notes his own IPS background (St. Rita) and the students he grew up with who were misplaced in classes despite demonstrable intelligence</p><p><strong>0:27:31 &#8212; CARSON: VIOLENCE, GUNS, JOBS</strong></p><p>- References a &#8220;nexus to the Mexico-Chicago drug pipeline&#8221; (declines to go deeper)</p><p>- Introduced the Gun Safety Incentive Act to encourage safe firearm storage</p><p>- Hosts annual youth and adult job fairs with Ivy Tech &#8212; calls them personal passion projects outside congressional duties</p><p>- Notes violence historically spikes in summer; urges collective responsibility</p><p><strong>0:29:06 &#8212; CARSON RESPONDS TO PASTOR GREENE: MALCOLM X ON LIBERALS</strong></p><p>Carson directly engages Pastor Greene&#8217;s Baldwin/Malcolm X point:</p><p>- While a proud progressive, Malcolm X warned about certain liberals who &#8220;smile and say the right things&#8221; while pursuing agendas as destructive as overt racists</p><p>- Calls out the assumption that Black leadership should always &#8220;play second fiddle&#8221;</p><p>- Describes directly asking corporations (Eli Lilly, AES) about Black executives, contracting with Black-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses</p><p>- &#8220;What use of it is to have a position if you aren&#8217;t going to leverage it on behalf of your people?&#8221;</p><p><strong>0:31:00 &#8212; REV. ALEXANDER: DEI LANGUAGE BEING SCRUBBED</strong></p><p>Notes that the words &#8220;equity,&#8221; &#8220;diversity,&#8221; and &#8220;inclusion&#8221; are being AI-filtered out of contracts. Urges changing the language to preserve the substance of the initiatives.</p><p><strong>0:31:39 &#8212; CARSON WRAPS / CAMPAIGN INFO</strong></p><p>AndreCarson.com | 317-226-9400</p><p>Campaign is canvassing, phone banking, and compensating volunteers. Carson urges anyone who wants to get involved in politics to join a campaign that shares their values.</p><p><strong>0:35:58 &#8212; SEND-OFF</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander thanks Carson. Viewer Gloria thanks Carson via chat.</p><p><strong>0:36:44 &#8212; BREAK</strong></p><p><strong>0:37:29 &#8212; BACK FROM BREAK: REV. ALEXANDER AND PASTOR GREENE CONTINUE</strong></p><p><strong>0:37:59 &#8212; CALLER &#8220;MAYHEM&#8221;: DEFAMATION OF CARSON AND HIS GRANDMOTHER&#8217;S LEGACY</strong></p><p>Caller asks whether there is any legal remedy for on-air personalities &#8212; specifically one described as fired from Urban One &#8212; who are defaming Carson and his grandmother Julia Carson&#8217;s legacy on the radio without factual basis.</p><p><strong>0:39:32 &#8212; HOSTS DISCUSS: IS THERE A LEGAL ANSWER?</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene agree there probably isn&#8217;t a satisfying legal remedy. Pastor Greene ties the climate of disinformation to top-down normalization from Trump, saying people feel &#8220;empowered to say and almost do anything without facts.&#8221;</p><p><strong>0:41:13 &#8212; DOUBLE STANDARD: CHARLIE KIRK, JESSE JACKSON, ROBERT MUELLER</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander raises the asymmetry: criticizing Charlie Kirk (even ideologically) was treated as off-limits, while figures like Jesse Jackson and Robert Mueller &#8212; who served the country &#8212; are freely maligned. Pastor Greene adds that Trump saying &#8220;I&#8217;m glad he&#8217;s dead&#8221; about Mueller is &#8220;out of bounds&#8221; and sets a permission structure that trickles down.</p><p><strong>0:42:29 &#8212; CALL TO ACTION: SOULS TO THE POLLS / NO KINGS RALLIES</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander previews upcoming weekend events:</p><p>- Souls to the Polls &#8212; Saturday</p><p>- No Kings rallies &#8212; Saturday, at locations across Indiana</p><p>- Voter registration deadline: April 6</p><p><strong>0:43:16 &#8212; PASTOR GREENE: WHY THESE EVENTS MATTER</strong></p><p>Argues this is not a time for silence. No Kings rallies signal to the Republican Party that the opposition is watching and mobilizing. Low turnout at protests will be read as permission to keep going.</p><p><strong>0:45:44 &#8212; REV. ALEXANDER: 60+ INDIANA CITIES HOSTING NO KINGS EVENTS</strong></p><p>Per the Indianapolis Star, over 60 Indiana cities will have No Kings rally locations Saturday. Names Carmel, Lebanon, and Norah (east side) as central Indiana options. Says you don&#8217;t have to go downtown to participate.</p><p><strong>0:47:00 &#8212; PASTOR GREENE: IRAN / WAR / MISPLACED PRIORITIES</strong></p><p>Brief pivot: raises concern about the U.S. sending ground troops toward Iran. &#8220;We don&#8217;t have money for healthcare and other things, but we got money to go do this.&#8221; Notes sardonically that Trump&#8217;s sons won&#8217;t be among those heading to the front.</p><p><strong>0:48:05 &#8212; REV. ALEXANDER: WEST PALM BEACH DEMOCRAT WIN / REGISTER TO VOTE</strong></p><p>References a recent Democratic win in Palm Beach, Florida &#8212; right in Trump&#8217;s backyard &#8212; as proof that change is possible. Reiterates voter registration deadline of April 6.</p><p><strong>0:49:18 &#8212; PIKE TOWNSHIP DEMOCRAT CLUB FORUM &#8212; TOMORROW</strong></p><p>Primary election candidate forum</p><p>March 26, 6:00 PM</p><p>Lincoln Middle School</p><p>5353 West 71st Street, Indianapolis</p><p><strong>0:49:50 &#8212; CLOSING REMARKS</strong></p><p>Rev. Alexander closes out. Thanks Carson, Pastor Greene, and all listeners.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Concerned Clergy Podcast March 18, 2026]]></title><description><![CDATA[Watch now | Rev. Alexander is flying solo in this episode, with callers chiming in to talk about current events in the Circle City and beyond with a focus on issues affecting the Black community.]]></description><link>https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-march-18</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.progressiveindiana.net/p/concerned-clergy-podcast-march-18</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Progressive Indiana Network]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:37:09 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/191478522/ca6839c9416f99b9506077d721a9dba0.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p>Rev. Tony Alexander dedicates this episode to breaking down the SAVE Act, a federal bill being considered in Congress that goes far beyond simple voter ID requirements. While most people hear only that it requires ID to vote, the SAVE Act actually mandates proof of citizenship (passport or original birth certificate) both to register and to vote, forces all states to hand voter rolls to the federal government for citizenship verification, requires re-registration for anyone who didn&#8217;t provide citizenship proof initially, and introduces a &#8220;Real ID Enhanced&#8221; different from the standard Real ID. Rev. Alexander explains how this will disproportionately impact seniors who may not have original birth certificates, younger voters who lose documents, women whose names changed with marriage, and anyone born out of state who must obtain documents from their original birthplace. The bill will also overwhelm BMVs, Social Security offices, and passport agencies as millions try to get required documents. Two callers share experiences: Jo describes difficulties getting Real ID when her birth certificate didn&#8217;t match her married name (had to hire attorney, provide school records to prove maiden name), and Guy thanks Rev. Alexander for explaining the details that mainstream media overlooks. Rev. Alexander emphasizes the bill also shortens the election change window from 90 days to 30 days and includes provisions to charge people with lying on citizenship affidavits even when documents are contested. He urges listeners to register by April 6th, look up the actual law, share documents not summaries, and understand what&#8217;s coming.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. Help us continue to bring you more content like this by becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr></div><h4>WHAT&#8217;S INSIDE</h4><p><strong>00:03:23 - Station ID and Show Opening</strong></p><p>&#8226; WTOC AM 1310, 95.1 FM Indianapolis, Praise Indy</p><p>&#8226; Rev. Tony Alexander welcomes listeners, mentions Herman Whitfield family settlement with IMPD</p><p>&#8226; Open lines weekly: 317-480-1310, streaming on Facebook (Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis) and YouTube</p><p><strong>00:06:18 - What is the SAVE Act?</strong></p><p>&#8226; Being considered in Congress (House or Senate), unclear if it will pass as written</p><p>&#8226; Most folks hear it&#8217;s just a voter ID law - sounds simple and reasonable</p><p>&#8226; But it&#8217;s much more: requires proof of citizenship (passport OR original birth certificate)</p><p>&#8226; Must provide proof of citizenship to be REGISTERED, not just to vote - anyone not registered with citizenship proof will have to re-register</p><p><strong>00:14:23 - This is Voter Suppression Across the Spectrum</strong></p><p>&#8226; Bill seems to be failing in Congress, doesn&#8217;t have full Republican support, but someone&#8217;s really trying to push it through</p><p>&#8226; Goes across spectrum: Democrat, Republican, Black, white</p><p>&#8226; Definitely affects females especially those who have been married (name changes)</p><p>&#8226; Those without passports, can&#8217;t find original birth certificates</p><p><strong>00:19:22 - What Documents Required and Overwhelming the System</strong></p><p>&#8226; Original birth certificate plus proof of citizenship, will also require passport</p><p>&#8226; What happens to BMVs, Social Security offices, Marion County Health Department?</p><p>&#8226; Everyone without passport will have to get one - overwhelms customs/border passport department</p><p>&#8226; Women married long time don&#8217;t have proof of name change from Smith to Davis - now adding citizenship status requirement</p><p><strong>00:24:05 - Federal Verification and Voter Rolls</strong></p><p>&#8226; Mandatory for all states to give all voter rolls to federal government</p><p>&#8226; Federal government will determine if you are actually a citizen - they&#8217;ll be the verification system</p><p><strong>00:24:43 - [FIRST COMMERCIAL BREAK]</strong></p><p><strong>00:29:07 - Return from Break: SAVE Act Recap and Iran Discussion</strong></p><p>&#8226; Welcome back - important everyone understands SAVE Act is much broader than simple voter ID</p><p>&#8226; Not as simple as showing driver&#8217;s license when you vote</p><p>&#8226; Intelligence Committee hearings today with Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel about Iran strike - alarming things said</p><p>&#8226; Were told one thing but starting to come out that wasn&#8217;t true</p><p><strong>00:32:41 - Republican Leadership Pushing and Original Certificate Requirement</strong></p><p>&#8226; Republican leadership trying to get SAVE Act across because very important to Trump</p><p>&#8226; Indiana seeing retribution campaign against legislators who voted against redistricting</p><p>&#8226; Back to SAVE Act: must be ORIGINAL birth certificate - not copy from health department</p><p>&#8226; They want certificate from when you rolled out of hospital - disqualifies whole lot of folks</p><p>&#8226; Round and round way of suppressing vote</p><p><strong>00:36:47 - Caller: Jo&#8217;s Real ID Experience</strong></p><p>&#8226; Had trouble getting Real ID - birth certificate name didn&#8217;t match married name</p><p>&#8226; Had to hire attorney, provide school records from Tennessee to prove maiden name</p><p>&#8226; People need to get documents in order now</p><p><strong>00:39:06 - [SECOND COMMERCIAL BREAK]</strong></p><p><strong>00:42:22 - Difficulties Across All Ages and Real ID Enhanced Explained</strong></p><p>&#8226; Older individuals without original certificates, younger people lose documents constantly</p><p>&#8226; Regular Real ID (star) different from Real ID Enhanced (American flag)</p><p>&#8226; Enhanced verifies citizenship proof provided, previously used mainly for Canadian border</p><p><strong>00:48:59 - Caller: Guy Thanks for Explaining Details</strong></p><p>&#8226; Glad Rev. Alexander went into detail - most people just hear &#8220;you need ID to vote&#8221;</p><p>&#8226; This is masquerade/charade - if people heard details, they&#8217;d feel differently</p><p>&#8226; Trump administration constantly trying to hoodwink/bamboozle public throughout entire tenure</p><p><strong>00:56:24 - Need to Be Informed on SAVE Act</strong></p><p>&#8226; People copy headlines/articles, flood market with same message - many get misinformed</p><p>&#8226; Need to be informed with SAVE Act - only 5 states doing it now</p><p>&#8226; What happens to struggling systems like Social Security when everyone needs documents?</p><p>&#8226; People rushing to get Social Security cards, birth certificates they haven&#8217;t had in 15 years</p><p>&#8226; Have to get documents from original place - so much folks don&#8217;t understand</p><p><strong>00:58:07 - Additional Provisions and Closing Warnings</strong></p><p>&#8226; Must sign affidavit saying &#8220;I am a citizen&#8221; - if they contest it, can charge you with lying even if you really are citizen</p><p>&#8226; Currently have 90 days before election to make changes - SAVE Act shortens to 30 days</p><p>&#8226; Register by April 6th, make sure registration still valid</p><p>&#8226; Look up actual law, share documents not summaries, be informed</p><p><strong>01:00:32 - Show Closing</strong></p><p>&#8226; &#8220;That&#8217;s all we have for tonight. We hope everyone is informed and we&#8217;ll see you all next week. Be blessed.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://concernedclergy.org">https://concernedclergy.org</a></p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy">https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndyhttps://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy</a></p><p><a href="https://progressiveindiana.net">https://progressiveindiana.net</a></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.progressiveindiana.net/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Progressive Indiana Network is proud to distribute the Concerned Clergy Podcast. 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