Effusion

• The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including Rev.
• At Pinckney’s funeral, then-President Barack Obama sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace.
• “The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison,” Biden said.
• What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.

The original big lie

• Boldly rejecting the Declaration of Independence as effusive “enthusiasm,” Smith injected white supremacy into public discourse.
• Smith, who owned several plantations and at least 71 enslaved people, was among more than 1,800 U.S. legislators who enslaved Black people.
• If you disagreed, vigilante thugs would beat you up or chase you into exile.

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’

• The Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford extended Southern racist ideology into the North.
• He addressed the consequences of slavery on America’s democracy and warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” “This government cannot endure,” he said, “permanently half slave and half free.
• It will become all one thing, or all the other.

• The Civil War was supposed to end slavery and the white supremacist ideology that underpinned it.
• The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, made equality explicit in the Constitution, extending civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans.

Democracies in peril

• In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a new alarm.
• His “Four Freedoms” speech was an updated version of Lincoln’s and further defined freedom within a democracy.
• The immediate issue was whether the U.S. should help England and other European allies defend against the fascist regimes of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
• Biden called out Trump for his “big lie” about the 2020 election that Trump has repeatedly claim was “rigged” against him.

Joseph Patrick Kelly volunteers for the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party.

• Ren (or the “Company”) , the trusted technology partner to top financial institutions and thousands of non-profit organizations, today announced it has received a strategic growth investment from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities and Valeas Capital Partners .
• “Bain Capital Tech Opportunities and Valeas bring deep experience in vertical software and wealth-tech and the resources needed to propel our next phase of growth.
• "It’s exceptionally rare to invest in a business with such strong capital efficiency that sits at the intersection of vertical software and a multi-sided network,” said Scott Kirk , a Partner at Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
• Institutions that leverage Ren’s platform have on average grown their giving programs 45 percent year-over-year, nearly two times faster than the industry average,” added David Shaughnessy , a Principal at Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.

• Smarter GTM™ company recognized for account-based analytics, account-based orchestration platforms, account-based advertising, and more
  SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Demandbase , the Smarter GTM™ company that helps B2B organizations hit their revenue goals, today announced it has been recognized in 54 G2 Spring 2023 Reports across 11 categories.
• The company was recognized as a leader in 35 reports and noted in nine as a high performer, three for best relationship, two for easiest to use and best usability, one for easiest setup, easiest admin and easiest doing business with.
• We see this reflected in the number of reports we were recognized for across multiple categories."
• The G2 Grid® reports are determined according to the volume of positive reviews that a company receives, along with additional context from other reputable sources.

• By automatically measuring product health in real-time, product teams can build and ship better products their users love!
• This was a radically new way to build products and is what inspired him to found Statsig and create the state-of-the-art product experimentation platform for all organizations.
• The Statsig platform helps product teams ensure they are consistently delivering the best features for their users.
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