https://progressiveindiana.net
SUMMARY:
Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene spend the hour on a single, urgent story: Gary, Indiana went 14 days without power after the August flooding — one of the longest outages of its kind in recent U.S. history — and neither the state nor NIPSCO said a word about it until a Saturday press conference nearly two weeks in. Both hosts admit they didn’t know Gary was still without power until pastors organized their own relief caravan. Pastor Greene recounts how a coalition of faith leaders — Bishop Posey, Pastor Wayne Moore, Pastor Guthrie, Pastor Reagan Robinson, and others — self-organized within 24 to 48 hours, filling a 26-foot U-Haul with supplies that were gone within two hours of arriving in Gary. Meanwhile, Hamilton County received Black Hawk helicopters to lift bridges the day after flooding hit. Councilor Oliver, a longtime disaster-relief organizer going back to Katrina in 2005, called in to describe being ready to help anywhere in the state and never once hearing Gary mentioned by name from the governor’s office. Caller Imhotep, a Gary native, makes the case that Gary is actually on the upswing — new investment, a 55-year low in crime — and argues the slow-walked response fits a pattern of the GOP wanting federalism only when it benefits their own pet projects. Both hosts close by naming the plain arithmetic of the story: Gary’s median household income is just over $38,000; Hamilton County’s is $121,000. Reverend Phillips calls in with an extended word of encouragement and faith for the people of Gary, and El Amin raises pointed questions about what happens if an outage like this became permanent or more widespread — and whether the AI data centers in the area ever lost power at all.
WHAT’S INSIDE
00:00:00 Station ID and program open
- Opening headline: after 14 days, power has finally been restored to Gary, Indiana — ranking among the top 15 longest power restoration delays on record.
- Pastor Greene opens in prayer for storm-impacted families, especially in Northwest Indiana.
00:03:19 A predominantly Black city left without the same response
- Rev. Alexander frames the core question: Indiana is a Republican-led state, but the portion of the state that is predominantly minority — Gary — isn’t getting the same service or urgency in a disaster.
- Rev. Alexander admits he didn’t know Gary’s power was still out as of last Wednesday’s show — it wasn’t confirmed restored until today.
- Even with power back, Gary residents are dealing with spoiled medication, spoiled food, and trees that damaged homes, forcing some to relocate.
00:05:14 Mold, disease, and the scale of what’s ahead
- Pastor Greene: mold is now a serious concern in flood-damaged homes across Broad Ripple, the Butler area, and Carmel — and Gary’s outage lasted far longer, compounding the risk.
- The Marion County Health Department, including Dr. Caine and her staff, was deployed to flooded areas of Marion County to treat illnesses from stagnant water.
- Pastor Greene: Gary has a long way to go, and “we” means all of us — this isn’t just Gary’s problem to solve alone.
00:07:02 Faith leaders self-organize a relief caravan
- Rev. Alexander applauds the pastors who mobilized: Bishop Posey, Pastor Wayne Moore (Olivet Missionary Baptist Church), Pastor Guthrie (First Baptist Bridgeport), and Pastor Reagan Robinson, who held a joint press conference the prior Wednesday.
- Rev. Alexander admits he assumed Gary had already rebounded — until the Saturday press conference revealed trees were still down, outside crews were on the ground, and NIPSCO had provided no coordination with the utility crews arriving from other states.
- Pastor Greene: for him, it started Thursday with a phone call. Within 24–48 hours, Bishop Posey secured a 26-foot U-Haul, and the relief effort was underway by Friday.
00:09:39 The state’s rainy day fund — over $4 billion sitting unused
- Pastor Greene: Indiana has more than $4 billion in surplus and rainy day funds. The governor could release those dollars directly rather than waiting on FEMA.
- Carmel reportedly moved ahead with its own recovery work, trusting federal reimbursement would eventually catch up rather than waiting on it first. Gary needed that same posture of urgency.
- Donations dropped off at Antioch, Bridgeport, and Purpose of Life churches reached Gary by Sunday — and were gone within two hours, including diapers being handed out on the spot.
00:12:29 The deafening silence — and a warning about assuming it’s over
- Pastor Greene: this is, to his knowledge, one of the longest outages of its kind in the country — and the silence beforehand was deafening. Neither host knew as of the prior Wednesday’s show.
- Pastor Greene’s caution: don’t walk away from Gary just because the power is back on. Two weeks of accumulated damage doesn’t disappear when the lights come back.
00:13:37 Black Hawk helicopters in Hamilton County vs. no tree crews in Gary
- Rev. Alexander: the day after flooding, Hamilton County had Black Hawk helicopters lifting bridges. Gary couldn’t get tree crews to clear roofs, streets, or cars.
- Even after the governor spoke up following Saturday’s press conference, Rev. Alexander asks: where were you before this? Gary has data centers, rate increases, and money flowing in — but couldn’t get basic tree-cutting crews organized.
00:15:22 Caller: Councilor Oliver — a career of disaster response, and total silence on Gary
- Councilor Oliver recounts organizing relief caravans to New Orleans after Katrina in 2005 (turned back by fuel shortages, redirected to Meridian, Mississippi) and later helping rebuild homes there directly.
- He was ready to help wherever needed this time — Hamilton County, wherever — but never once heard Gary mentioned by the governor’s office until it broke through independently.
- His closing message: you can’t wait on government. He’s organizing a Labor Day caravan with Reverend Covington, Friendship, and Reverend Bates’s church to bring donated goods to Gary.
00:19:56 Response — the church can only provide temporary relief
- Rev. Alexander: church-led relief is valuable but only ever temporary. Actual recovery requires state and federal funding and coordinated decision-making — someone with authority to say “we need this crew here, power restored there.”
- Federal disaster funding has reportedly now been approved for Gary.
00:22:01 A pause for a listener in crisis
- Rev. Alexander addresses a message received in the Facebook chat from a listener expressing suicidal feelings and hopelessness.
- He takes it seriously on air, confirms the show has the person’s contact information, commits to reaching out privately rather than on the show, and offers words of encouragement: today is not the end, and tomorrow can be better.
00:23:07 Caller: Imhotep — Gary’s comeback story, and the hypocrisy of selective federalism
- Imhotep, a Gary native, recently visited the King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta with his family and reflects on Dr. King’s actual message: not about integration for its own sake, but about the equitable distribution of tax-funded resources to Black neighborhoods that pay into the same system as everyone else.
- He describes Gary’s genuine comeback: new investment from Mike Epps and outside investors, a 55-year low in the murder and crime rate, and a jobs program modeled on approaches used by NYC Mayor Mamdani and Baltimore Mayor Scott — both cities also posting historic crime lows.
- His sharpest point: Republican governors — DeSantis in Florida, Abbott in Texas after Hurricane Harvey — routinely reject “big government” until their own states need federal disaster relief, then take it. Applying that same anti-federal posture to Gary while other governors got help is, in his words, criminal.
- He also flags a class-action lawsuit filed by Attorney Allen alleging NIPSCO turned away contractors who came to help restore power.
00:28:03 Caller: Reverend Phillips — a word of faith for Gary
- Reverend Phillips, who has family in Gary, offers an extended message of encouragement and scripture-rooted hope for the city: stay focused on God, stay together, and trust that the current hardship will not be the final word.
00:32:38 The “Michael” moment and the money already flowing into Gary
- Rev. Alexander connects Gary’s current cultural spotlight — the “Michael” biopic, the Chicago Bears’ negotiations to relocate to Northwest Indiana, and major data center construction — to the core question of the night: if this much investment and attention exists, why couldn’t basic disaster response reach the people already living there?
- His challenge: an area doesn’t deserve the economic development it’s chasing if it can’t take care of the people it already has.
00:33:54 Caller: El Amin — what if the outage had been permanent, and did the data centers ever go dark?
- El Amin, whose wife is from Gary, asks what would happen if an outage like this became permanent or spread more widely — no ATM access, no working credit cards, spoiled food across an entire region.
- He also raises a pointed question: were the AI data centers in the area ever without power at all?
00:35:22 Post-El Amin discussion — gentrification, intentionality, and NIPSCO’s history
- Pastor Greene raises a pointed question: is the delay about caring for the people currently in Gary, or about anticipating who might move in and out as investment increases?
- He notes NIPSCO’s documented history of underserving Black and brown neighborhoods, and argues that pattern, combined with the length of this outage, cannot be dismissed as coincidence.
- Both hosts agree: some of this was intentional, and it should carry consequences.
00:38:04 The unglamorous logistics of recovery — debris, dumpsters, and who pays
- Pastor Greene walks through practical recovery gaps that get overlooked: Marion County has roll-off dumpsters for flood debris; Gary does not. Someone has to pay for hauling debris to the landfill, and right now no one has answered who that is.
00:39:05 A challenge to local media — go get the comparison story
- Rev. Alexander challenges local news outlets and reporters directly: go to Broad Ripple, Hamilton County, and Gary and do a side-by-side comparison of cleanup progress — are the same trees and bridges still down in Hamilton County as in Gary?
- Rev. Alexander directly raises the possibility that this is connected to the administration’s documented pattern of withholding disaster relief from areas that didn’t vote for Trump — and asks whether Gary is being punished both for being a Democratic-leaning area and for being predominantly Black.
- He also questions whether private conversations may have already occurred between NIPSCO and Governor Braun’s office before the governor’s public statement.
00:41:51 Response — staying engaged, and the questions to ask months from now
- Pastor Greene: the community cannot assume Gary is being treated the same as Hamilton County just because news cameras show helicopters in one place and nothing in another.
- His call to action: track where FEMA and state dollars actually go over the next one to three months. If Gary and Lake County end up at the bottom of that list, the community has an obligation to raise the alarm — silence costs lives.
00:44:51 The Des Moines report — Gary’s numbers, as told by out-of-state media
- Rev. Alexander challenges influencers and news organizations chasing likes and clicks: the most detailed reporting on Gary’s crisis so far has come not from Indiana media but from KCCI News in Des Moines, Iowa.
- That out-of-state report included Gary’s population (67,000), median income ($38,700), and its ranking among the 15th-longest power outages in recent history — details Rev. Alexander says Indiana’s own media should have been the ones to surface.
- Rev. Alexander confirms the AI data centers in the area never lost power — construction continued uninterrupted throughout, unlike Gary itself.
00:46:49 Pastor Greene — exploited poverty, mold, and the health toll to come
- Pastor Greene: this comes down to not exploiting poverty — some people can survive a crisis because they’re rich, and others are left to suffer, and in 2026 that mindset is egregious.
- He worries about elderly residents, like a grandmother in a home for 50 years, breathing mold because of what he calls “Mickey-mousing around” and slow-rolled power restoration.
- Both hosts agree there will be real, and likely fatal, health consequences tied directly back to this crisis — even if no one connects the dots publicly.
- Practical fallout: residents who missed two weeks of work, particularly in service jobs, now face rent they can’t cover and the real possibility of eviction.
00:48:41 Closing numbers — median income tells the story
- Rev. Alexander closes with the plainest possible comparison: Hamilton County’s median household income is $121,000; Gary’s is just over $38,000.
- Program closes with thanks to listeners and callers.
