Conversation Series 110 – Nick Cotter (Three Years Later)

Come check out The Contraband Wagon, where we’re changing the conversation on race. During this hundred-and-tenth (yes, you read that right) Conversation Series event, we have a returning guest, Nick Cotter.

It has been about three years since Nick Cotter, a policy analyst for Alleghany county, was last on The Contraband Wagon. At that time we had a riveting conversation about affordable housing, poverty, and gun violence in Pennsylvania, all of which Nick has personal experience with. We talked about his evolution of race consciousness and why he agrees with Lyndon B. Johnson’s statements:
“Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences – radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.”

Since our last conversation, Nick has been working on an extensive gun violence prevention program for an absurd amount of hours a week. I happened to catch him during a weeks-long reprieve, and why not have the discussion on black-on-black crime that so many trolls on social media suggest antiracist activists are too afraid to have. Nick agreed right away as a racialized white man doing the work in the field. This will be a good one, y’all.