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This is the WFHB Local News for Thursday, December 30th, 2021.

Over the next two weeks, we will take a look back at the stories we covered in the year 2021. In today’s episode, we will review field reports from the last year.

You will hear a public opinion poll of the Astroworld tragedy, activists at two protests and an account of the 2021 Bloomington Pridefest.

All that and more in Field Reporting: 2021 In Review:

Voices in the Street – 2021 Pridefest

In August of this year, the 2021 Bloomington Pridefest took place after happening virtually the previous year. We turn now to our historic Voices in the Street coverage of this year’s Pridefest.

Voices in the Street. Photo: Chris Hack, 2019.

During sweltering heat on Saturday, Pridefest took place in downtown Bloomington after happening virtually last year.

Pridefest is an annual street festival organized by Bloomington PRIDE, a non-profit organization that advocates for the LGBTQIA+ community.

The festival featured a vendor expo, workshops with activists and experts, live music, drag shows and MPG wrestling.

WFHB Community Radio was a vendor at this year’s Pridefest. We set up three microphones and interviewed participants at the festival.

We asked folks what brought them to Pridefest and what the festival means to them.

Cosecha Indiana Marches through the Streets of Bloomington

In July of this year, protesters from Cosecha Indiana marched through the streets of Bloomington to demand reform on strict ID laws. WFHB News covered the protest.

On Thursday, members of Cosecha Indiana marched through the streets of Bloomington with demands to reform identification and driver’s license laws.

According to a spokesperson for the organization, Cosecha Indiana is part of a national movement working toward permanent protection, dignity and respect for all immigrant workers.

Volunteer Field Organizer Wendy Catalán Ruano talked about the activist group and the purpose of the protest.

“We are here because we’re demanding that the Driver’s License Bill is not ignored,” said Ruano. “We’re demanding that this is visible and our bodies are visible and that we have the right to drive without fear.”

Ruano discussed the lasting impact of the REAL ID Act – passed over 15 years ago – which requires federal agencies to only accept state driver’s licenses or ID cards issued upon proof of documentation of legal status and driver’s licenses.

“2007 was when driver’s licenses were revoked. Folks like my parents. My aunts and uncles were also having driving licenses at that time, but it’s now been more than 15 years since we’ve had that right back,” she said. “Everyone deserves to travel home, travel to their jobs and schools without fear of getting deported.”

The march started at Switchyard Park and ended at the Sample Gates on Kirkwood Avenue. Protesters chanted, “fighting for justice and driver’s licenses.”

Ruano said Cosecha Indiana has marched in various cities throughout the state and will end its series of marches in Indianapolis. She described how the advocacy group assembled the protest in Bloomington.

“We organized this week-long march which is more than 300 miles,” she said. “We started in the Gary-East Chicago area, now making our stop in Bloomington… Saturday, we’ll end up in Indy.”

“This is really just to be visible in all the cities,” she said, “demonstrating that there are undocumented leaders that are taking this issue head on. We are the frontline of this campaign, of this movement. Nobody understands our struggle more than ourselves.”

The organizer said she wants to emphasize how the decisions politicians make affect the lives of real people. She said she hopes to ignite a conversation among lawmakers to reform current driver’s license and identification policy.

“We do have politicians that think this issue is not important, but a lot of us here have suffered the consequences of that being ignored,” she said. “A lot of us have had loved ones, families, parents deported.”

On its Facebook page, Cosecha Indiana says immigrants in Indiana deserve to drive without fear. Stay tuned at 6 p.m. on Friday for more coverage of the march and protest during our weekly airing of Hola Bloomington.

Social Work Students Protest the National Police Social Work Conference in Bloomington

In October, a group of social work students protested the National Police Social Work Conference in Bloomington. WFHB News brought remote equipment and listened to what protesters had to say.

On Monday, the Bloomington Police Department hosted the National Conference on Police Social Work at the Monroe Convention Center.

According to a city press release, the conference provides an opportunity for national leaders in both law enforcement and social work to share best practices in embedding social workers into police departments.

In response, a small group of social work students formed to protest the conference. Grace Mitchell and Jacquie Cope, organizers of the Indiana Abolitionist Social Workers, said that social work and policing should not be combined.

“Well, it’s absolutely offensive that the solution to state violence is to have social workers walk alongside state agents,” said Mitchell.

“We have our own history of social control that we need to reckon with and pairing us up with the police is not going to do that and it’s antithetical to our values of social justice,” said Cope.

The Indiana Abolitionist Social Workers wrote a letter of dissent to all deans, associate deans and directors of Indiana University Schools of Social Work. Mitchell describes the points outlined in the letter.

“Putting us side-by-side with the police, these agents of the state when their very existence speaks to structural violence, really violates community trust,” says Mitchell. “It violates the aspirational values of our profession in our field.”

Cope and Mitchell said that the values of social work do not match the values of law enforcement.

“The police were born out of slave catchers in the south and union busters in the north. We are not aligning ourselves with that, and we shouldn’t. Social work has its own history of policing communities as well. And that’s something that we also need to reckon with,” said Mitchell.

“There’s no objective evidence that social worker and police collaboration mitigates the harm of policing. All of that evidence comes from police self reports. There is no objective data on citizen outcomes,” said Cope.

Cope says that collaboration between law enforcement and social work is not a new phenomenon.

“Social workers have worked with police in the past, and call them can police social workers as the name of this conference. So this isn’t actually very new. There is a history of social work complicity with police,” said Cope.

Mitchell says there are alternative solutions that our society can explore in order to address the root of the issue at hand.

“We can imagine better worlds,” said Mitchell. “People think that our options are to do nothing and sit on the sidelines or to walk hand in hand with the cops. Those are not the only two options.”

Mitchell and Cope said to reach out and support your local Black Lives Matter organization to learn more about reallocating funds from the police department to other city departments.

Voices in the Street – Astroworld Tragedy

Earlier this month, WFHB’s Youth Radio took over the helm of our segment, Voices in the Street, which features public opinion polls in the streets of Bloomington. In their first installment, WFHB’s Youth Radio asked residents about the Astroworld tragedy. We will now revisit that report.