The 2019 Story of the Year. Watch on PBS. Hear on SiriusXM Radio. Listen to the podcast.

Each year since 2013, the Pell Center has announced the public narrative that has made the biggest impact on public affairs in the previous twelve months. This year, “Story in the Public Square” co-hosts Jim Ludes and G. Wayne Miller agree the 2019 Story of the Year is not a single story, but a greater phenomenon: “The fracturing of America’s public narrative.” But there was plenty of competition, and this week’s guest, Brown University professor of sociology and international and public affairs Michael Kennedy, joins us as we break down a momentous year in the U.S. and abroad.

Michael Kennedy. Photo by Erin Barry of the Pell Center at Salve Regina U.

Takeaway One: As different as they may seem, the many popular protests in the U.S. and around the globe in 2019 reflect a universal theme.

And that, Kennedy said, is “a struggle for dignity, and a struggle for community… and also a common struggle against a system that impoverishes and endangers us. The system in which we live may not survive, and it's not because that system will die. It's because the planet can die.”

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Takeaway Two: Political right, left or center, climate change is “the connective tissue.”

“The environmental catastrophe, the ecological crisis in which we're living, is only going to get worse, so that is the connective tissue,” Kennedy said. “But not everyone sees that. So one of the things that I look at is Trump's supporters. They are profoundly alienated from the system. They look at the ‘deep state.’ They don't look at the deep ecological crisis, but they could because they see their communities being destroyed by environmental dangers. Instead, their attention is redirected elsewhere.”

Takeaway Three: American foreign policy is in crisis.

“One of the things that I think that we ought to do at the end of 2019 is to take stock of where America is in the world,” Kennedy said. “ We may have improved our position vis-à-vis [Russian president Vladimir] Putin. We may have improved our position vis-à-vis [Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan by pulling out. And, in fact, this debacle of this withdrawal from northeastern Syria abandoning Kurdish allies this is a great gift to Putin and Erdogan because if you're a realist this is the evisceration of American influence in the Middle East.

“If you're a humanitarian, this is a disaster for all of these Kurdish peoples, and all democratically struggling aspiring people in the region. I'm ashamed of this policy in particular, but I'm also so distressed by what Trump has done to American foreign policy in terms of our experts, in terms of our State Department, and our security establishment. You can find so many stories in the press, and even the GOP doesn't want to talk about it because, in fact, they are also embarrassed, but they have to be beholden to the great leader.”

"Story in the Public Square,” a partnership of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University and The Providence Journal, a Gannett newspaper, airs on Rhode Island PBS in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; the coast-to-coast broadcast schedule is at http://bit.ly/34fathd An audio version airs 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m., on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), Channel 124.