- Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We wanna welcome back to the program, Brandon McKoy, who's President of a foundation called "The Fund for New Jersey".

Brandon, good to see you again.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- You got it.

We're gonna put up the website for "The Fund for New Jersey".

Describe for everyone what it is and what you're focused on and why.

- Well, The Fund is a foundation that provides support to organizations and leaders who are working in to realize a New Jersey that can work for everybody, making sure that we have high quality communities, high quality assets, and that we are moving towards and strengthening honestly, a multiracial democracy, want to have a strong civil society here in the state.

And so really interested in making sure that people are aware of what's going on in their community and that they have the tools needed to be active participants.

The fund cares deeply about the public being informed about the issues that matter and where our government is or is not on those critical policy issues.

What is the role of the foundation community, the philanthropic community, when it comes to supporting media that promotes public awareness vis-a-vis its connection to a healthy republic slash democracy?

- Oh, I think it's significant.

Obviously, the past 10 to 15 years, we've seen a significant shift in sort of the economics of media and the ability of newsrooms, newspapers to be able to continue to operate and employ investigative journalists, investigative reporters, people who are really digging into things that may not be the most popular or top of mind interesting for the vast majority of people, but are very, very, very important.

And so I think philanthropy has a major role in providing support to institutions, to news organizations so that they can do this important work.

And as we're still trying to figure out what is an economic structure or sort of a business structure that works for media long-term, philanthropy can at least help ensure that organizations are able to do what they gotta do.

And that we're not having these tremendous gaps in coverage.

Though I will say in New Jersey, I think we do suffer tremendous gaps in coverage and there's more that needs to be done.

- And to that on, let me disclose that "The Fund for New Jersey" is an underwriter over at NJ Spotlight News, a great organization, one of our media partners and one of our radio media partners, WBGO, New Jersey Public Radio.

Lemme try this.

Top three issues, policy issues that The Fund cares deeply about that does not get enough attention, not only in the media but among just in public discourse.

People are not talking about it, but these three issues matter deeply, particularly to those who are most vulnerable in our state and nation.

But let's talk to New Jersey right now.

- I would say one is taking seriously the fact that we are a state that is smack dab in the middle of the most active economic market in the world.

And at least part of our responsibility in that, is moving people quickly and reliably and efficiently.

And so there has been plenty of conversation, of course, about transportation, public transportation and otherwise, but the fact that it is still a conversation tells you how literally we've actually affected change and been been able to tackle the problem.

And so taking that more seriously, taking very, very seriously the fact that we gotta be able to get people to New York, to Philadelphia and to other parts of the state without it being such a hassle for them and get people from those cities into New Jersey.

That's one.

I think the fact that we are a coastal state, and this of course comes up, but the threats of sea level rise and flooding to municipal finance, which you might say, "Well, what are you talking about?"

For shore communities, if they're gonna start flooding out and we're not doing enough to prevent that or mitigate that, banks are gonna maybe make different decisions around mortgage opportunities.

Insurance companies are gonna make different decisions around coverage.

And so what does that mean for those communities?

And we know that certain amounts of sea level rising flooding are sort of already baked in to our future, take that seriously and start playing out the dominoes, and what do we need to do to limit the damage and ensure that people are not experiencing tremendous harm because we have not done enough on the front end to tackle this issue.

So that's the second.

And then thirdly, I would say is more so celebrating the fact that we are a gateway for immigrants into this nation.

For immigrants are a major part of Main Street business.

I think up to a quarter of Main Street businesses are owned by immigrants, if not more.

They're a major part of our culture.

New Jersey is incredibly diverse from a population standpoint in a way that many other places are not, especially relative to our size.

And that creates its own dynamics and scenarios.

But that's a tremendous strength and there's not enough conversation about how do we continue to take advantage of that strength and how do we make sure that we are including immigrants into our state and into our civic life and making sure that they can succeed.

- Brandon, a quick follow up on that.

Go back to media coverage of the migrant crisis.

Okay.

If in fact we continue to see video, pictures, visuals of urban communities across this nation, including in New Jersey where the narrative is the migrant crisis is hurting our cities, is hurting taxpayers, it's the government, federal government and state governments need to change dramatically immigration policy.

How does that relate to, and how does that connect to your description of how rich the immigrant history is of our country and our state vis-a-vis where we are right now?

- Yeah, I mean, I think framing things as a crisis without sort of talking about what are the options to make sure that we are succeeding is a very myopic viewpoint, a very narrow viewpoint.

It also can be a dangerous viewpoint depending on how you go about it, and put people in dangerous situations that we don't need to be seeing.

We don't want to encourage negative behavior and possible violence.

To be quite frank with you, I think, states doing more to work together, these are not issues that end at borders, these are regional issues, as you said, national issues.

And so New Jersey and New York doing a better job of working together, New Jersey and Philadelphia doing a better job of working together.

- How about Texas and New York?

Texas and New Jersey where a governor says, "Yeah, put him on a bus."

- Yeah, and I would say that is not the most responsible decision.

And you're sort of making things worse.

And rather than having these sort of, for lack of a much better term, catty engagements with each other realizing these are people, these are not political props.

These are folks that are fleeing very awful situations, often war or famine or otherwise, and taking seriously what is our responsibility and what can we do to actually help?

And we have a strong history of incorporating and welcoming immigrants into this nation.

This is not something that we cannot do.

It's really a matter of political choice.

And I don't even wanna say courage, but responsibility.

- Yeah, and finally, to Brandon's point, how the issues are framed, not for or against, it's not my place to express an opinion, but when you frame things as for or against immigration or immigrants, migrants versus how best to deal with these complex issues, it changes the discussion and very often policy decisions made in Washington and Trenton.

Brandon McKoy is the President of "The Fund for New Jersey".

Brandon, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

Wish you and your team all the best.

- Thanks Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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