What will your Thanksgiving look like? Will you be getting together with family and friends for a festive meal that includes lots of orange-colored side dishes filled with sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves? Will you be accommodating gluten free, vegetarian, and lactose intolerant guests in your menu planning? Will your excitement at getting together again after last year’s Zoom holiday be diminished by some anxiety about potential political disagreements among family members?

Access to quality education remains one of the primary concerns of Leading Ladies. Until all children in this country go to schools with equal resources, optimum class sizes, up-to-date books and technology, support services, trained teachers, and nutrition supplements and health care as needed, children in underrepresented communities and BIPOC populations will continue to fall behind and be unable to catch up in school and in life.

This week, we are focusing on reproductive rights, so clearly under attack right now while headspinning misinformation is being circulated about the place of abortion in our history and in the collective health of women.

In Manhattan, on one of the vertical LinkNYC digital billboards, you might see a new message that reads:

“Here’s an idea. Let’s ask everyone who is wondering if anti-semitism is real to wear a yarmulke for a week and then report back.”

The IRS began sending monthly checks to families with children in the US on July 15 — the official launch of President Biden’s American Rescue antipoverty program. The plan promises to halve child poverty, but only if the money actually reaches everyone eligible.

We decided to change it up this week. Instead of presenting an in-depth look at one issue, we are offering some staggering statistics and devastating details about a variety of social justice issues of concern to us. We hope you will find them as compelling as we do — and as clarion calls to action for all of us.

There’s a lot in the news right now about critical race theory (CRT). What is it and what is it not? And should it be taught in our schools?

As with many matters in our current media world, misinformation about CRT abounds on numerous platforms. In addition, organizations have sprouted up around the country…

June marks LGBTQ Pride Month as well as Juneteenth, both celebrations of events and people notably absent from the history books of our 1960s and 1970s school years. Instead, we learned, by the omissions, that gay people did not live in our worlds and certainly did not contribute to our society in meaningful ways; and that the important people and achievements in history were all accomplished by white people, particularly men whose families came from northern Europe.

If passed, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, now before Congress, will combat the insidious voter suppression laws that are surging in many states and districts in our country, preventing citizens, particularly those of color and living in neighborhoods of poverty, from participating in the electoral process guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Let’s start with this staggering statistic: A couple working full time and earning $7.25 per hour cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country without spending more than the recommended 30 percent of their income, according to Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in Tightrope.

When President Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday night, he talked passionately about the importance of expanding educational opportunity by providing free preschool and postsecondary schooling. He pointed to research showing that two years of preschool and post-high school training expands a child’s lifelong learning and earning achievements…

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere…

First, we have two quick reminders: Hungry to Learn

Please make time to watch Hungry to Learn, a documentary about food insecurity on college campuses and the subject of our next kNOw MORE! discussion on Monday, March 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. EST

As Congress pursues impeaching the current president of the United States for the second time, and we look forward to the inauguration of a new administration that promises to operate with integrity and decency, we might feel encouraged and even optimistic.…

As we look around us and plan a holiday season like none ever, we remember how lucky we are to have roofs over our heads and food in our refrigerators. We hope that is true for all of you as well. It is truly heartbreaking and astonishing that so many of our neighbors and fellow Americans are struggling with hunger, joblessness, and having a place to call home in our land of plenty…

The several positive comments we received about last week’s letter motivated us to explore the topic of educational inequity, and particularly, the concept of education debt. Underserved schools need more than equal funding to make up for centuries of substandard education and opportunities…

Trigger Warning: We may sound a little preachy this week.

If you are like us, you are feeling depleted, frustrated, exhausted, a little or a lot devoid of hope, aching to see — and, yes, hug — family and friends from afar, and wishing for a return to some kind of normalcy.

There are fewer than 60 days until the November 3 presidential election. We who reside in Massachusetts don’t live in a battleground state but we can still support the work of getting out the vote, particularly in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.