Every couple of years, our team here at NewGround convenes Angelenos to celebrate the Trailblazers doing important work in our communities. This year, we hosted our first ever virtual Trailblazer Awards Ceremony, honoring journalist Ezra Klein, comedian Hasan Minhaj, and four of our wonderful Change-makers who took it upon themselves to convene a conversation about parenting and race this past summer.

If you missed any part of the inspiring reflections of our Change-makers or of the conversation between our awardees Ezra Klein & Hasan Minhaj, we encourage you to watch the event on our Facebook page, where it is readily available to stream! You can also access the event on YouTube – we’ve linked the recording below!

As we look toward the end of 2020 and the start of 2021, we know that the wounds in our body politic won’t magically knit together as the calendar turns. We will still struggle to listen to each other with curiosity. To quote Ezra, “The hard part isn’t [winning] the argument. The hard part is getting people ready to hear.”

NewGround’s mission is to create space for people to be ready to hear. We want to provide more “rough draft spaces,” as Hasan put it. Our Change-makers remind us that it is crucial to face the hard issues in relationship and with compassion – challenging ourselves and one another to be better and do better. In the year ahead, we plan to commit with even greater strength to all of these lessons.