Notes from the Red Hills: The Conservative Communities in L.A. County

This semester, we’ve hosted conservatives on our show and explored conservative Facebook groups, but this week, we dove deeper into the congregations of conservatives Los Angeles. We sent Mason Leib and Zack Kreisler to Beverley Hills and Chino Hills to explore the group dynamics within these areas but also look inward at our own role in this conversation.

Mason and Zack, as journalists among the Fox News fans, found that they occupied a rather unusual space for this community; they were a bounce board for individuals excited to share their views. They were also college students who were making their own ideological assessments.

Talking with Mason and Zack, I realized that as journalists, we rarely have the chance to debate politics with our interviewees. Will there ever be an instance where we will demand more of them? If we are constantly feeding the public a narrative of reality, shouldn’t we occasionally cause individuals to question it?

It may be a lost opportunity if we never try.

Our classroom is the sidewalk and our collection of stories is not only the greatest education for ourselves, but is for the people that we share it with, too.

Recently professors and students alike have asserted that we “need to speak truth to power” but this statement seems to forget that the true power in a democracy is in the power of the people. Maybe we should consider ourselves as the public’s great interlocutor, and consider that this could be the greatest public service that we could provide.