While Pride remains popular with the community, it’s become less popular with corporate sponsors. Many long-time donors have pulled funding.

WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao (@ba.marianna) reports it’s a problem for Pride festivals across the country. Nashville Pride’s Brady Ruffin has commiserated with other organizers from Atlanta to San Francisco.

“Costs are rising all around … Entertainment costs, production costs, security costs,” Ruffin said.

Going into this year, Nashville Pride wrestled with a $250k budget hole. The group turned to the community to fundraise, but it fell around $100,000 short. That meant scaling back this year’s Pride from a weekend to a one-day event. This shift has sparked a debate: Should Pride me more of a celebration or a protest?

“Especially in Tennessee, where LGBTQ+ folks are consistently facing political attacks and harmful rhetoric, I think that joy is not separate from protest,” says Nashville Pride’s Brady Ruffin. “For many people, joy is how we resist.”

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Photos: Marianna Bacallao

Notable quotables for this week — we explored the debate (or lack thereof) over birthright citizenship, a report that found Tennessee schools are re-segrating more quickly than almost any other state, why ecologists are working to preserve freshwater mussels in the Southeast, the joy in protest and the thrill of seeing ‘Hamilton.’

Specifically this week: doctors filed a lawsuit against the state. They’re challenging a new law, which requires the Tennessee Department of Health to submit immigration information to a state division that works with ICE. TDH runs the Children’s Special Services program, which covers health costs for severely disabled kids. That includes about 400 immigrants without legal status. There are concerns their parents will pull them from the program for fear of deportation.

Tap link in bio for our in-depth stories and to sign up for the NashVillager newsletter, a human-powered 5-day-a-week email direct to your inbox with local stories, info, and ticket giveaways.

It’s all fun and games if you get a video of a bear in your airbnb hot tub in East Tennessee. But you can get more than just Instagram views when you snap photos or get audio of nature around you. You can contribute to science.

During June we`ve brought you stories about signal species: bears, kudzu, mollusks, armadillos, and yet to come - bats! These species are telling us something about our changing world — but are we listening? If you are, then there`s something you can can contribute to scientific data about the changing world around us. Join our project!

We`ve teamed up with @inaturalistorg and created an Appalachia Signal Species project.

Tap link in bio to join and to contribute your observations. We can better our collective understanding of the world around us. Your observations might lead us to our next story.

Photos: Megan Jones/iNaturalist, Scott Loarie, used with permission

Fisk University’s rollout for its billion-dollar project dubbed the “Quantum Leap” has garnered pushback from community members concerned about its planned data center.

“They affect the health, well-being, and quality of life of the people who live near these facilities. As a teacher, I think about the children and families who live in these communities every day,’ says Jarrett Harper, teacher and Fisk alum.

Thousands signed a “No Data Center at Fisk” petition, and many others spoke before the Metro Planning Commission asking them to establish guardrails for data centers related to water usage, energy consumption and noise emissions. Others support the move, saying that Fisk can be a leader on how data centers should be run while also increasing the university’s technological abilities.

WPLN’s education Camellia Burris spoke with the university president, Dr. Agenia Clark, who insisted that misinformation is fueling many of the concerns about the proposed data center.

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Photo: Courtesy of Fisk University. Alexis Marshall / WPLN

America`s 250th birthday is inspiring plenty of music. Much of it is triumphantly patriotic. A compilation called “Outlaws’ Almanac” drops on Juneteenth and reckons with the tougher parts of the nation’s history.

Executive producer Lizzie No brought together 15 artists to offer newly recorded originals and reimagined traditional tunes that place individual and collective acts of resistance front and center in the American experience.

“This album is a celebration of our survival,” she says. “It`s always a celebration when you get a chance to define and expand the notion of us.”

Follow along for more from Jewly Hight. Tap link in bio for full story. Or check out the “An alternative soundtrack for America at 250” episode of This is Nashville.

Photos and video: Jewly Hight

Notable quotables for the week where data centers were hot hot hot in Middle Tennessee, along with ivermectin, the Tennessee grocery tax, changes in TennCare, and yes, armadillos.

Fisk University proposed a data center on its campus. That project is one of many that has garnered thousands of petition signatures and other kinds of public blowback. But the school’s president said all of that hinges on misinformation about “dirty data centers.”

WPLN also aired its latest installment of “Signal Species.” This story: armadillos migration into Tennessee, and what that tells us about climate change (spoiler alert: don’t lick them).

We also had a new Healthcare Hollow story about changes at TennCare are leaving vulnerable families without coverage and with no way to make their case to the state.

Tap link in bio for our in-depth stories and to sign up for the NashVillager newsletter, a human-powered 5-day-a-week email direct to your inbox with local stories, info, and ticket giveaways.