A former CBC correspondent and now a journalism professor at Carleton University, Duncan McCue reflects on the media's role in reconciliation and why newsrooms still have work to do.
In this episode of Ampersand, our CEO and host Caitlin Kealey sits down with Duncan McCue, a former CBC correspondent and current journalism professor at Carleton University, to discuss the media's role in reconciliation and what it will take for Canadian newsrooms to do better.
Duncan draws on years of reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — including his time covering its national events — to reflect on the responsibility journalism was given in the TRC's Calls to Action, and why Canadian media has yet to fully answer that call. He shares a deeply personal account of processing vicarious trauma while covering survivors' testimony, and how that experience shaped his approach to trauma-informed journalism. The conversation also turns to Duncan's move from reporting to teaching, and the certificate in Journalism in Indigenous Communities he's launching at Carleton University to bring more Indigenous voices into the field. Duncan closes with a hopeful outlook on where reconciliation might stand a decade from now.
This season of Ampersand is dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the TRC and explores its lasting impacts. Through conversations with Survivors, scholars, and advocates, this season reflects on the progress made since the TRC’s final report and Calls to Action, while also addressing the challenges that remain.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email media@emdashagency.ca with any questions.
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Caitlin: Welcome to Ampersand, the podcast helping good people be heard and comms people be better. So, thanks for joining. Our icebreaker question, which is basically to date you, is to share a memory from your first computer or early days on the internet.
Duncan: Yeah, I was gonna date me. So I remember with great joy, the first computer I had, which I saved up my summer job money driving the ferry back and forth to my reserve to buy so that I could go off when I went to first year university at the University of King's College in Halifax, and it was those chunky Apple computers like you remember those?
First Apple with the gray kind of small gray screen and the little smiley face computer that came up. I can't remember what those first Apple computers were, but we used discs, and it was like Apple computers were like fancy at that point, right? Because before then I had a Commodore 64, which I just like played video games on.
But then to have this thing for university was very special and fancy, and my parents gave me a little bit of money to go with my summer job money. And then I used discs, like 700 discs to load up the program and do all that kind of stuff. And you had to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
And then I remember in second year, I saved up enough money to get a hard drive and that was like crazy like, because all of a sudden you put the little hard drive on there and it like went, you know, so much faster. So that was my. What were they called? What were those first Apple computers called? I can't remember.
Caitlin: I don't know. But my first was like the laptop version of the first Apple computer and
Duncan: Okay, so you're totally there. You young, you youngster.
Caitlin: I also played on a Commodore 64. So
Duncan: Did you? Okay. Alright.
Caitlin: Yeah, my neighbour had one and I'd go over and play weird. Eight-bit or 16-bit video games. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Mostly I remember like saving cats out of a burning building or something. It was really weird. Or children, I can't remember. Anyways, thanks for that. Yeah. so we've established that you are slightly older than me and that's- I love it though.
Duncan: A veteran. A veteran, yes. A veteran public broadcaster.
Caitlin: As I said earlier, there's nothing more intimidating than interviewing somebody who worked for the CBC for as long as you had. Did you participate in the TRC in any way, like, you were reporting,
Duncan: I did. I did. Um, so I was reporting. I was asked to be an honorary witness and CBC would not let me do that because they wanted me to continue to cover the, the TRC and they felt that it was- Perhaps, it would bring some question into the credibility of our coverage if I did that.
So I politely declined the invitation to become an honorary witness. But I did cover all, many aspects of the TRC regularly. The one that stands out for me, Caitlin, is I believe it was the fourth national gathering.
It was held in Vancouver. And I'm gonna say it was roughly 2013. And that was when the TRC was, had been going across, crisscrossing the country at that point for three or four years. And it had really kind of died down in the national conversation. The national media weren't paying any attention to it anymore.
It would pop up in kind of local media when it would do, you know, small local TRC events. And so I pitched to The National; I was a correspondent for The National at that point on CBC TV, and I said, I think Canadians need to know that this thing is on the road home. It's wrapping up.
It's been- it's gathered thousands of survivors' statements. What's happening. And so I did a, uh, about a 15 minute that was kind of behind the scenes of that national event at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We worked with the TRC, and they basically opened the doors; the national events for those who, uh, had a chance to attend them were huge affairs.
Like they were large-scale happenings with thousands and thousands of literally hundreds of providing statements both publicly and privately. And I wanted to show A. how this thing was working. This was groundbreaking in so many ways.
The only first world country to have, I put that in air quotes, first world country to have a truth and reconciliation event of this kind. And so I wanted Canadians to understand that, but also to see the kinds of things that the commissioners and the staff at the TRC were grappling with, in trying to bring these truths to the public attention.
And also to ask; “Why, why are we doing this? What is the goal here? And what can Canadians anticipate when it comes to the final report in 2015?”
So, we spent four days kind of behind the scenes, giving people access to the many things that were going on at those national events.
I think your question was, what are your recollections and what are, what kind of impacts on you? And I can think of two; one of the main people that I interviewed in that documentary was Ry Morran, who was the on the logistical coordinator of this whole big enterprise.
And I remember remarking to Ry, on about day three. I was just astonished by how many children were at this national event in Vancouver every day. Just buses and buses and buses, loads of children showing up, and I was like, why and, what's the thinking there?
Because, I mean, the survivors that were testifying publicly at these events were just pouring their hearts out, and it was just deep, deep emotional, heart-wrenching statements about the kinds of things that had happened to them. Ry said that that was intentional to share with school children the experience of hearing survivors share that testimony. And he quite memorably said to me, One of our roles here at the TRC is to plant seeds. Reconciliation is not something that's going to instantly happen when we release a four-volume report a year from now.
It is about planting seeds and I just remember being struck by what it must be like as a child to attend something like that, and to hear those things firsthand and how visceral that must be and how different it is compared to the- I'm older than you. I absolutely did not learn about residential schools in high school, but I bet you didn't either.
And I see that now in university students when I, I teach now, they know what the residential schools are because they have come up through schools where we are teaching residential schools. So that was super interesting to me. It was also a little bit like old home week for all the native folks.
Like it was more, although there was a lot of tears and a lot of emotion- it was also. It was a bit like a cultural gathering or a powwow, if I could call it that, in the sense that people were seeing people from all over the province that they hadn't seen in a long time. And so there was a lot of happiness and joy as well.
I'll share this story with you too; it also impacted me deeply as a reporter, because in a typical reporter's way was madly rushing around, building this documentary that I was going to be presenting on The National, and thinking about all of the stuff that we were filming.
And, oh, that's a good scene, and that's a good scene, and that's a gripping piece of testimony and everything like that. And then at one point we had asked for access to Marie Wilson, Commissioner Marie Wilson, in her session after the testimony. At day's end, every day the three commissioners would get together with their cultural advisor and their spiritual advisor, and a mental health person, and just unpack everything that they had just heard because they had spent eight hours doing this, deep listening of all of these testimonies.
And so we were filming that session; Marie graciously allowed us in to film her doing that debrief. And then when we turned the cameras off, Marie turned to me, and she said, “How are you doing, Duncan?”
That's all she asked me. I was so jazzed up and adrenalized by the thing that I needed to accomplish to tell this story. Well, I hadn't stopped to ask myself that, and I realized that I had been listening to dozens and dozens and dozens of these just heart-wrenching stories from survivors.
Hadn't begun to process it, and I didn't have an answer for her. I kind of choked up, and I went, and the next day, Caitlin, they had set up at the national events, all these little white tents where they had cultural healers who had set up to help people who were having a tough time.
And when we started off the day, it was day four, I said to my cameraman, Denise Grier, I said, go take a coffee. I'm just gonna take 15 minutes. And I walked into one of those tents, and there were two older native men in there, and they were smudging, and they just, they didn't say a word to me.
I just walked in. They said, you know, come and, and smudge. So I, you know, took off my hat and I smudged. And then they wiped me down with cedar and an Eagle fan, and I just began to weep, Caitlin, like I just started to cry because I'd been hearing all of this, you know. My relatives. I'm indigenous, I'm a journalist, but I'm indigenous, you know, telling all of these stories.
And it hadn't connected to my heart. I was processing it in my brain, but not in my heart. And in that way that journalists often do, you know, we shut off, we compartmentalize things so that we can do our jobs. But I needed to, to really process what it was that those people were sharing.
And I just started to weep. And they gave me a big hug, those two men, and they just, like, they just said, it's okay. You know, let it go. Let it go. There were many things about that national event that we're, Memorable to me. But it also, just in terms of my career as a journalist, it taught me a lot about taking care of myself and making sure that, to do this difficult work, how important it's to take care of yourself.
A really long answer, sorry, but it was a really interesting and fascinating thing to attend.
Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, it changed my life too, right? We did the last year of communications, and we came in a month before we released the calls to action, and I didn't know about residential schools very much and had to take a.
Speed course in all the history and all of the harms, and I think it's a good note that we have to take care of ourselves when we do this work. Sure. Because it's really tough, and it's even interesting as like a non-indigenous person doing the work because you know. There's a weird part where you can't be upset in the moment, but after, like, you have to process it because hearing horrible stories is hearing horrible stories.
Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Caitlin: Obviously this all has affected you and your career. Do you have specific views on reconciliation that have sort of been like formed by this work?
Duncan: I have lots. So I mean the word reconciliation troubles a lot of indigenous people, and I don't wanna revisit whether or not that's the right word to use. But I will say that one of the things that I tried to do a lot. in my stories with regard to the TRC, was to show how the actions that individual Canadians took were happening all over the place. And were lasting like, it was the small things that made huge differences.
And so I remember, going up for a different story up to, the Sunshine Coast, where a survivor from the St. George's Residential School, which was in Litton, had settled, to take up his life and the story was about how this survivor had connected with a, a Christian couple, some 10 years ago, 15 years ago, who had simply begun the journey that you just mentioned.
They learned about residential schools, didn't know anything about them. They were committed members of their church who wanted to do something different, to help. And they invited the survivor to lead members of their church in a drum-making workshop, and how that request and invite to help people in the church understand how a drum was made ended up forming a lifelong friendship between this couple and the survivor that had huge impacts on both sides. You know, the support that they gave him helped him heal some of the deep bitterness and wounds that he felt about the church.
And that church became a leading kind of contributor to all kinds of reconciliatory efforts. At the TRC events, there was a bentwood box that the commissioners would bring out at the end of every day.
And many Canadians came forth with the action items that they were bringing to reconciliation. And I did a story about the things that were going inside the Bentwood box. And they were fascinating. There were song lyrics from the Rock Group Blue Rodeo.
There were, you know, sports teams and the Winnipeg Ballet put in a ballet slipper to promise that they were going to have an indigenous theme ballet like there was, there were so many heartfelt and thoughtful practical action items that Canadians from coast to coast to coast put into the Bentwood box, and I just thought it was fascinating because so often when we talk about reconciliation, it's a buzzword that politicians throw out there. And we think about it in, in large kind of large scale terms, and any analysis of where we are on the 94 calls to action shows that the government has done abysmally when it comes to trying to meet the calls to action.
But I tended to focus my stories on these kinds of individual efforts that Canadians were making. Because at the end of the day, I think the whole thing, the whole exercise was as much about neighbors getting to know neighbors as it was anything else, and the understanding that a small group of committed people can make change, you know, to quote, I think it's Margaret Mead who said that, you know, that's how things are going to change is by these individual efforts.
I found those stories to be gripping because they were so moving to me that neighbours would get to know neighbours in ways that they hadn't before and that had the potential to change the narrative on a macro level.
Caitlin: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, the commission had reminded us regularly that it took us generations to get into this mess, so that it was gonna take generations to get out of it.
Thanks for that perspective. I think it's really important that we don't lose whatever your feeling for the word is. Point of the work is.
Duncan: Yeah.
Caitlin: So we did the media and comms for the last year, and for the calls to action, as I was mentioning earlier, we were there for the media relations, and I, I think we fielded like over 600 media relations calls in the three or four days of that event.
Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Caitlin: Which was an unprecedented number of requests. And it's interesting to me 'cause you spoke earlier about how national media wasn't really paying attention.
Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Caitlin: When, you know, when you pitched the national to go in.
Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Caitlin: We know there's a big role for media in any of these issues, but do you feel like there's a specific role within journalism and media to drive reconciliation forward to drive these issues?
Duncan: Yeah, a hundred percent. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself singled that responsibility out. I was very pleased to see that the TRC final report had recommendations with regard to the role that media plays in reconciliation. There were three specific calls to action with regard to the need for Journalism, capital J Journalism, to step up. One had to do with CBC, one had to do with APTN, and the other had to do with requiring journalism schools to teach indigenous content to students. So the future journalists of this country had some sort of baseline cultural competency when it comes to indigenous issues.
So I thought that was incredibly important, but I particularly honed in on what I thought were very apt words in the TRC report, which said that journalism and the media are part of reconciliation. They're not arms-length from reconciliation, you know, distant objective observers of this event of reconciliation that's going on. They need to be part of it.
My friend Karen Pugliese, a well-known indigenous journalist, Algonquin journalist, likes to say that journalism is not a reconciliation free we need to be part of that project. And there's a couple reasons for that.
There's the often quoted phrase that news is the first draft of history. It's important that journalists are well-versed in indigenous subject matter so that they can get that first draft of history right. We have seen this long, well over a hundred-year history of journalists not getting it right when it comes to reporting on indigenous subjects. And that's not my personal opinion. That's been well documented by many academics. The colonial bias, which has been very evident in print, broadcast media throughout Canada's history.
So our reportage has been anything but objective. It has, you know, to quote the textbook Seeing Red, by Carmen Robertson, it has upheld the Colonial Project in many ways. And so we have plenty to atone for, our legacy media organizations.
I think when the TRC said to the country's media, you have some work to do within your own newsrooms. And within the narrative lens in which you have been sharing indigenous stories. There was a collective silence. I mean, we didn't see Global and CTV or even CBC stand up and say, yes, we take responsibility for some of that problematic coverage.
We didn't see that. It was crickets. It was silence. You know, it was one thing to report on all of the various organizations, churches, police, all these kinds of things who clearly needed to do work. But you didn't hear any media organizations issue a mea culpa, or heaven forbid, an apology, and you still haven't.
But it is absolutely necessary that the media take a long, hard, critical look at the kinds of coverage that we have perpetuated through well over a century in this country, which has privileged Euro-Canadian perspectives. And so I think the TRC was an important stepping stone in starting that conversation.
And absolutely, as a journalism professor, now, call to action 86 was critical to trying to light a fire under journalism schools to understand that this is not about politically correctness. You know, this is not about wokeness, trying to teach indigenous content in journalism schools.
This is about accuracy. It's about accuracy and fairness, and trying to right the balance, which has been unfortunately tilted in one direction for far too long when it comes to journalism education.
Caitlin: Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, you've left media and now moved to journalism, which is an interesting move given there are not a lot of indigenous voices at the national level reporting the news.
Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Caitlin: So when you moved, I think we all were collectively a little bit sad. I mean, it's good for the future of journalism, in the longer term, which I would guess is why you've done the move. But how do you view your new position, you know, teaching the next generation of journalists in Canada
Duncan: Well, and I'll, I'll be real specific. I mean, the reason I made the move was because I really wanted to start focusing attention on the next generation of indigenous journalists. I have been in addition to being a reporter with the CBC, I've also been teaching journalism for a good 15 years or so, kind of off the side of my desk because I like teaching.
And I like working with young, up-and-coming journalists. About, well over 10, 10 or 11 years ago, I started teaching a course at the University of British Columbia called Reporting in Indigenous Communities, where I was introducing my students to, sending them out to local First Nations in the Vancouver area because many of them had never set foot on a First Nation before.
Many of them had not had these conversations about residential school or the Indian Act, or they didn't know that history. And it was an excellent project, which I got lots of community support from First Nations throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. We published all kinds of stories.
Students had fantastic experiences, which I was terribly proud of and terribly proud of their work, but it was primarily non-indigenous students that I was teaching. Every year, of 20 students, 19 of them would be non-indigenous. We only were getting, you know, one or two indigenous students per year at UBC and every journalism school that I've ever taught at, whether it is TMU or I've helped out at the University of King's College in Halifax. They've all struggled to attract indigenous students into journalism school. And I thought that offering indigenous content might change that; it didn't. And the reason that that's a problem is that we know that kind of as an entry point to journalism.
I didn't go to journalism school. It's possible to become a journalist without going to journalism school. But as an entry point, it is kind of the typical route that any young journalist would take to get into the business is to go to journalism school. I don't know the exact numbers on working journalists who have been to journalism school, but it's very high.
Most journalists have been to have some form of formal journalism training and, so the number of indigenous voices in the media. You lament the fact that there aren't that many in the national media, and I agree with you. There aren't; there need to be more.
There aren't that many in the local media outlets. You know, we have hard stats on that from the Canadian Association of Journalists. Eight outta 10 newsrooms in this country do not have indigenous folks in them. That needs to change. If Indigenous voices are really going to become part of the mainstream, if they're going to become part of the thinking of what makes headlines every day, then we need to have more indigenous journalists.
And that's why Carlton University approached me and said, we really wanna make a difference in this regard. We want to. And I said, great. I've been talking about this for a while. If you really wanna put your money where your mouth is, I've got an idea. And our simple idea, launching this Fall, Fall of 2025 is it's a certificate in journalism in indigenous communities.
And I believe that one of the reasons that we have not seen large numbers of indigenous students enroll simply has to do with the fact that most journalism schools are located in urban centers, and they don't wanna leave home. They don't want to, for all kinds of different reasons.
They prefer to stay in their home communities, whether it is because their family support is there, they have cultural reasons for staying there, ceremony or hunting and language, or it could be financial disadvantages if they move to the city. And so we're launching in fall, and I am proud to say that I think my theory's right. You know, we're gonna have, we've got space for 25 students, and I'm pretty sure that we're gonna be close to full. We're gonna have students who are able to study journalism and essential journalism skills from their home communities. And I'm terribly excited to see the kind of work that they're gonna be doing.
Caitlin: That's really exciting. I didn't know that it hadn't launched yet, so that's. So it's fully remote?
Duncan: So yes and no. It is offered as a remote program. There are eight courses which form the certificate. And four of them will be fully remote. But we also know from the pandemic as educators that 100% remote learning, online learning, has its challenges, and isn't always the optimum way to be teaching any learner. So we'll also be gathering together for three in-person intensives so that the students get to know each other and they get hands-on skills for things like radio and television. You know, it's always better to teach hands-on. So we'll gather together for one-week intensives for those courses.
And there's also a two-week internship component as well.
Caitlin: That's great. Yeah, I went to journalism school at King's College, and it would be hard to imagine not doing some of it in person.
Duncan: Yeah, of course.
Caitlin: Just quickly, 'cause we're running low on time, but I do wanna touch on your trauma informed journal journalism course that you've been teaching.
Duncan: Yes.
Caitlin: I think it's probably one of a, one of a kind. I don't think it exists elsewhere. How do you see that changing practices around narrative building and storytelling?
Duncan: Yeah, I don't teach a full course on trauma-informed journalism. Matthew Pearson at Carlton University, I believe, is one of the few journalism profs in the country who is teaching a full credit course on trauma-informed journalism.
And I do some guest lectures in Matthew's course, and also include components of that in my own teaching. It's an ongoing conversation, Caitlin. Matthew and Dave Seglins at the CBC convened a couple of years ago a number of industry professionals to sit down and say, okay, what's the state of where we're at with regard to mental health and journalists.
And it's not a, it's not a pretty story. For those two days, we spent a good day having a lot of journalists tell a lot of really heartbreaking stories about how news coverage is impacting them. And I'm not sure that the industry has necessarily entirely caught up with the mental health expectations of this new generation.
I think that the young folks, who are in their teens and early twenties, are far more literate, far more understanding and appreciative of mental health than our generation everywhere. I mean, when I broke into the newsroom, over 25 plus years ago, it was, suck it up, buttercup.
That was the kind of prevailing approach. I talked about compartmentalizing. We all developed our own ways of trying to cope with the challenging environments that we work in, all news reporters work in. And I'm not saying that, you know, we have to go cover the car crashes and the tragedies and the floods; we have to, because we have to bring empathy to our audiences so that they can understand the difficult things that people are experiencing. And hopefully we can learn from them in ways that other people won't be similarly harmed.
That is part of the role of a journalist, and so it is important that we go and do those things, but we have to start taking care of ourselves as well and understanding the impacts that has on us. Vicarious trauma is real, and particularly in an indigenous context. When you're reporting on indigenous communities, there has been lots of work on trauma-informed journalism when it comes to covering earthquakes or war zones that's been going on for, I would say a good couple of decades. And the DART Center for Trauma-Informed Reporting has done fantastic work there.
But I think it's only been in the past five or 10 years that we have begun to recognize that any indigenous journalist who covers, or non-indigenous journalist who covers the indigenous beat, quote, dealing with this on the daily, we are talking with people who experience severe trauma four to five times more often than the average Canadian. And on top of that, there are people that have suffered historical trauma. So whether it's residential schools or the loss of language, the loss of land, massive smallpox deaths, which decimated our population, all indigenous people carry that trauma within them, and it may come out when we interview them and talk to them, and we become vessels for that pain.
So, how to deal with our subjects in caring and responsible and ethical ways is essential if you're going to be reporting on indigenous issues and how to care for ourselves so that we don't end up in the same black hole and can do this work for not just one-off story, but for months and years ahead.
It's all absolutely essential conversation. And I like to think I wrote this textbook called Decolonizing Journalism where I got to interview and talk to several of my esteemed indigenous colleagues about the way that we work differently than the mainstream media has taught for so many years.
And there are multiple ways that, that I think indigenous journalists are doing journalism differently. But I think this trauma-informed approach is something that's just baked into many indigenous journalists' practice because respect is just such a key part of so many indigenous cultural teachings.
And we need to carry that when we go and an indigenous subject, a simple question like, how does it feel?
Caitlin: Yeah, because you don't know that necessarily how deep that goes. Right? Yeah. We have one last quick question. Well, it's not quick. It could be, it could be very long, but let's try to do it in a short form.
So we're 10 years out from the TRC. If you had a crystal ball, where do you think we'd be in 10 more years?
Duncan: I don't have a crystal ball 'cause I would've bought Nvidia stock a long time ago if I did. I'll say this: I was there when the TRC released its report.
I was on the national news, reporting on how that impacted people and, off camera at that time in 2015, I would've told you quietly. Yeah. Just another report. I covered the RCAP. And there is plenty of historical evidence of all kinds of reports and studies and commissions that have made fantastic recommendations for the way this country should move forward with regard to fulfilling its treaty obligations and honouring the commitments that it is legally required to make when it comes to relations with indigenous people that have gone nowhere. So I thought that the TRC would just be another one of those.
It would be a great resource for academics like me to quote when it came to our finger-wagging, soapbox speeches in front of podiums. But I have been pleasantly surprised at how, 10 years later, the TRC is still part of the conversation nationally. I don't think it's just amongst a small number of indigenous academics who keep talking about the TRC.
I think if you mention the TRC to all kinds of folks, they still remember what it is. There are all kinds of ordinary Canadians, whether it's in business, whether it's in journalism, whether it's in sports or arts, who are still making reference to the calls to action. And I think that's remarkable.
I think that's part of what the three commissioners hoped would begin to happen: that it would begin to be owned by Canadians and would serve as a reminder of the work that needs to be done. And so where are we gonna be 10 years from now? I can't hazard a guess.
I'm not a good prognosticator, so I don't know, but I have, I do have good hope. People will still remember what the TRC is another 10 years from now. They need to be reminded every once in a while about whether or not the commitments and the calls to action are actually being met.
But I like to think this is a conversation that is not stopping. The snowball is not so massive that it has rolled over that giant gorilla on the back of this country, which is colonialism.
That snowball is still rolling. It's still rolling. I'm an optimist that way.
Caitlin: Well, I appreciate your optimism because most people are not as optimistic as you when we do these conversations, so it's nice to hear someone that says, Hey, we're doing, we're doing better than I thought we were going to.
Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us.
For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favourite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode. Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey, and it's produced by Elio Peterson. This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact, helping progressives be heard.