Given how Trumpism seems deadset on squeezing the dizzying diversity out of the United States, it seemed a great time to reach out to Peter Guttman, a world-roaming photographer who’s spent decades portraying the full prismatic wonder and weirdness of us.
Please watch and/or share this conversation here or on Facebook, LinkedIn, X (at my handle @revkin) or YouTube.
Here’s a snippet focused on one of the grassroots voices pushing for Juneteenth as a national holiday - LaVerne Ross of the Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Monica, California.
As Guttman writes:
Though enslaved labor in southern states ended that Juneteenth, slavery further north continued until a ratification of the Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment many months later. A beloved fixture at the gospel-infused Calvary Baptist Church, LaVerne Ross, community activist and organizer, approached the city of Santa Monica three decades ago to commemorate this holiday that her family had first celebrated in Texas. After 64 years as a master cosmetologist, Ross helped revive fading strands of history when she founded a committee that swept the holiday’s prominence over to the west coast. Her efforts contributed to forging the country’s eleventh national holiday, which was signed into law by President Joseph Biden in 2021.
You can listen to and read Laverne Ross’s oral history here.
And don’t forget Friday’s show:
Friday, June 20, 10 a.m. Eastern, Explore Climate Facts, Feelings and Fates with Scientist Kate Marvel
Join us live on Facebook, LinkedIn, X (at my handle @revkin) or YouTube.
Kate Marvel is a cutting-edge climate scientist and communicator who describes her first book, Human Nature, as a “biography of the Earth in nine emotions.” I’m still reading but already it’s clear the book is a bracing tour of climate science, planetary history and the array of hopeful and/or heartbreaking environmental futures ahead, depending on choices made or avoided now. Learn about Marvel and the book at marvelclimate.com.
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