‘Community Spread’ Podcast Returns with episode 1: DEI Casualties
In this first episode airing Tuesday, Sept. 3, host Kevin Lundell and Stacy Bernal discuss the consequences of the Anti-DEI legislation that passed during the 2024 Utah legislative session and her upcoming bid to defeat John Johnson in the District 3 Utah State Senate race.
NEWS
"Community Spread" podcast host Kevin Lundell and Utah Senate District candidate Stacy Bernal at the recording studio for Episode 1. Image provided
The Ogdenite has partnered with 614 Productions to bring Season Two of their hit podcast “Community Spread;” the first episode “DEI Casualties” drops Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 5 a.m. This insightful series features in-depth discussions on issues that impact the local community.
“Community Spread” podcast, created by Ogden, Utah-based 614 Productions, is hosted by Kevin Lundell, an Ogden resident and community advocate. He is the former vice chair of the Ogden City Diversity Commission, doctor of chiropractic, and owner at Lundell Chiropractic and Roy Community Fitness.
Tune in for all new thought-provoking episodes and join the conversation! Season Two includes six episodes that will air every Tuesday, Sept. 7–Oct. 8. Listen to the new episodes weekly at The Ogdenite page or your favorite podcast streaming service.
*Please note that this podcast reflects the host’s guests’ opinions and does not necessarily represent the views of The Ogdenite.
In this first episode “DEI Casualties,” host Kevin Lundell and Stacy Bernal discuss the consequences of the Anti-DEI legislation that was passed during the 2024 Utah legislative session and her upcoming bid to defeat John Johnson in the District 3 Utah State Senate race. Listen here.
Episode 1 opening Monologue
By Kevin Lundell
“In the spring of 2020, I accidentally started a podcast … a worldwide pandemic was raging and a national racial reckoning was taking place following the murder of George Floyd. I was having so many interesting conversations with friends and loved ones as I was trying to understand my own evolving thoughts and ideas at this moment. So, I started to record some of these conversations and post them on Facebook. And, to my surprise, people started listening and commenting.
For the next year and a half, I had stepped so far outside of my own lived experience that I had conversations about topics ranging from racism and sexism to homelessness. I had a conversation with a woman whose brother was shot and killed by Ogden City police. I had a conversation with a transgender woman about her efforts to compete in sports. I had a conversation with a woman who was one of nine kids to integrate her high school in Maryland. I had a conversation with the first black mayor of Utah. I had a conversation with a mother and her experience raising a disabled child. I had a conversation with a man struggling to gain citizenship after his parents brought him to the United States as a child. And the list goes on and on.
So many of those conversations have shaped who I am today and I genuinely felt in 2020 that many of these conversations, happening across the country, would lead to progress. Fast forward to 2024 and, unfortunately, instead of the progress we had all hoped for, what we’ve seen, particularly in Utah, is backlash.
In this short new season of the “Community Spread” podcast, I hope to point out how this backlash is hurting many of my friends I had on the show just a few years ago, and that swept up in this backlash are some very unsuspecting victims.
The personification of this backlash, in Utah, is State Senator John Johnson who in 2023 tried to pass a bill called, “Prohibiting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education”; It failed in committee and never got a full vote on the Senate floor. However, in 2024 the bill got a new sponsor and a shiny gentler name, “Equal Opportunity Initiatives.” Despite the name change this bill accomplished almost all of the original goals of Senator John Johnson’s failed 2023 bill. As a result of this law, most of Utah’s colleges and universities closed any student centers associated with identity. For my hometown college, Weber State University, that meant the closure of its long-standing Women’s Center.
That Women’s Center played a key role in my mother’s life, and by extension my life. When I was 11 years old my parents were going through a divorce and my mom at this pivotal moment in her life decided she was going to go back to school to become a teacher. She was taking advanced math classes and sitting next to students 20 years her younger and wondered, What am I doing here? Am I smart enough to even do this?. Now you have to know my mom is one of the most brilliant people I know and even she was feeling woefully inadequate at this moment. However, right around this time she found a class at the Women’s Center called, “Women In Transition.” In this class she was flanked by women who looked like her, women who were going through similar things that she was going through, and for the first time she knew that, with the support of these women, she could do it. My mom went on to graduate and taught high school for 17 years; she was able to provide for herself and her family as a single mother.
As a direct result of the law passed in 2024 The Women’s Center at Weber State is being replaced by a generalized center called the “Division of Student Access and Success.” Now think back to my mom’s situation. She had specific needs that needed to be met by a specific program designed for women just like her. Do we honestly believe those needs would have been met by the Division of Student Access and Success? I don’t think so. Now extend that experience to the black, LGBTQ, Indigenous, Latino, Pan-Asian, Pasifika, and undocumented communities all of whose student centers at Weber State have been closed due to this legislation.
The question is why—why did they do this? Why did John Johnson and the state legislature decide these communities were receiving too many services and decide to cut them? Well, the truth is this isn’t Utah original legislation. John Johnson and the rest of the Republican state legislators are just piggybacking on the national backlash to the racial progress made in 2020. Is it any surprise that this bill looked eerily similar to the one passed in Florida and signed into law by Ron DeSantis? This is a theme you will see throughout this season of Community Spread.
The state legislature is not listening to you. They don’t care about the issues you care about.
They don’t share the same values that you share. They care more about keeping up with the other ultra-conservative states to prove their true MAGA credentials.
On the show today we have Stacy Bernal. Stacy is John Johnson’s opponent in the upcoming election in November. She happens to know a thing or two about this subject as she is currently serving on Ogden’s School Board and she was the first ever Diversity, Equity, and inclusion manager for the Utah Jazz.”
Listen to “Community Spread” Episode 1: DEI Casualties here or an your favorite podcast streaming service.