FBI reports show hate crimes are on the rise in the US while some civil rights groups declare white supremacy is a growing movement. Pulitzer prize winner, Eli Saslow speaks at the Eccles Center on Saturday night at 7 PM. He’ll talk about his work to cast light on white nationalism and other social issues like opioid addiction.
KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher talked with the Washington Post journalist, author and screen writer, Eli Saslow about his film Four Good Days which premiered at Sundance this year. Saslow says his newspaper reports on the ravaging effects of opiate abuse inspired him to dig deeper into the personal stories of how opiate addiction affects families.
“Tens of thousands of families across the country and the number of overdoses that we have in a year now around 80,000 drug overdoses a year in the United States. It's a real medical epidemic. But the movie is a much more intimate story of, how addiction can also kind of destroy just one family. It's the story of a mother trying to figure out how she can save her daughter who has been addicted to heroin for 11 years.”
Saslow plans to discuss the opioid epidemic in the US and the links he’s found to the rise of white nationalism. He says many poor, white, rural communities are susceptible to opiate addiction issues and have been targeted by radical fringe, nationalist recruiters.
“People in these areas are suffering and feeling disenfranchised in some ways. So, what we're seeing is white supremacist groups and white supremacist recruiters going into some of these communities and saying to people, you’re not having these problems here because of anything you're doing wrong or because of anything that you can necessarily solve. The problems and the feelings of disenfranchisement that you're experiencing are because of people that are coming to this country that don't look like you.”
Saslow says communities which have more immigration and diversity tend to be economically healthier, but the efforts of the far-right wing extremists are finding success in impoverished, white, rural areas.
“Real hurt in some of these communities. This is making their messages and their recruitment dangerously successful both in big political ways and also in extremist ways on the radical fringe where we have a real up-tick in very far right wing extremist based violence happening in the United States right now.”
The 37-year old Saslow has written three books, a screen play, been nominated for the Pulitzer four times and won it in 2014. He tries to approach his writing with empathy and says working for the Washington Post allows him to spend time with people from all corners of the country. He says with the shortened news cycle and fast paced consumption of news, depth and nuance in reporting are compromised.
“I get to spend sometimes weeks at a time embedded in people's lives and I think that that allows me to get to a more honest place and to write something that feels more essentially true, which I think is important for all of us.”
In his book, Rising out of Hatred:The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, Saslow writes about Derick Black, who was raised amongst the KKK and was the godson of David Duke. Now he is a prominent activist working on the other side to dispel white nationalist hatred and intolerance.
“Was indoctrinated with these white supremacist ideas and raised to take over this movement. And through remarkable acts of courage basically by people around him on a college campus, once he left this insular world of white nationalism he was confronted in his ideas and also was transformed by a group of students who took the time to engage with him.”
The Park City Performing Arts Institute brings Eli Saslow to the Eccles stage on Saturday at 7 PM. Doors open at 6:30.
Leslie Thatcher’s complete interview with Eli Saslow can be found here:
