I'm not alone on this?! Maybe I should go on blueksky more often

🧵 (3/3) Dayton Literary Peace Prize hosts a special event with DLPP honorees @vluck89.bsky.social‬, @newsbysamuels.bsky.social, @gilbertking.bsky.social. @corinnabarrettlain.bsky.social speaks in Montgomery, AL. William & Phillip Taubman launch McNamara at War with a virtual talk at 92NY.

Hey there! I helped write the piece. The story actually describes the systemic failures of DC leaders to help schools that were almost exclusively Black, which led to poor outcomes. That is why.

Before we started reporting, it was easy for us to presume that Floyd’s words were incidental. They were not.

He decried the actions of the officer as coldblooded, cried out to his mother, and then he repeated over and over again, to his children and to his friends, that he loved them.

I often return to George Floyd’s final actions as an act of remarkable faith. On May 25, 2020, he woke up on a day he didn’t know he’d die. As he took his last gasps under the knee of a police officer, realizing his time was coming to end, he told his story through a weakened, strained voice.

And it is the feeling so often rejected by those who have the least, who, like George Floyd, wake up each day in hopes that a better tomorrow might be possible. This form of American hope was a defense mechanism, but it was also an engine that kept them engaged in the world.