At the age of 16, Atticus Sandlin has made it a priority to support and empower LGBTQ youth throughout the Dallas area. He takes part in youth-led sex education at his school and throughout Texas with Youth First.
Tina Jones sits next to the empty space on the couch that was often taken by her husband, Brian Jones, who passed at the age of 52 from COVID-19 in January 2021. Tina had liver cancer in 2014 and still deals with residual health issues, so she thought out of the two of them, she would be at greater risk. “We completely prepared him for a life without me… The thought that I would ever have to be ready for a life without him never crossed our minds. He had no medical problems, he wasn’t overweight, no medications. This completely came out of the blue”.
Kendall Brown is a senior guard for the DeSoto High School girls basketball team. Brown signed with Houston and helped lead DeSoto to their first girls basketball state title in school history.
“How do I prepare my students to engage in conversations that are going to help them be critical thinkers and build towards racial reconciliation in this country?” said Anaïs Childress, an International Baccalaureate history and African American studies teacher in the Dallas school district. Texas educators who spoke to The Texas Tribune overwhelmingly denounced the new law, born from House Bill 3979 — the so-called critical race theory bill passed during the 2021 regular legislative session.
Dr. Fritz Thurmond has worked at Titus Regional Medical Center in Mt. Pleasant for 9 years. The hospital is short of at least 20 nurses needed to handle the surge of COVID-19 cases in the Titus County area. “It’s been one surprise after the other. It’s just been an assault — every time you think it’s gone, you start getting PTSD because you can tell it’s coming back.”
Niecee X is the founder of Youth 2 Power, a free six-week summer camp for teenagers aged 14 to 18. The programming will center around community leadership, political education, and art as a tool for social change.
Associate producer Everton Melo, director Kelsey Hodge, and producer Alexa May are three of the leaders behind the student-led and produced film, “Smile”. “Smile” was created for Southern Methodist University’s Film and Media Arts Summer Film Production as a coming-of-age story that asks what navigating life looks like following a suicide attempt.
Ama, meaning mother in Nepali, prepares lunch in her home in Rayale.
John Landrum is the Vice President of Operations - Systems and Technology of McKinney Avenue Transit Authority and has over 38 years in the business of streetcars. He started working with streetcars when he was a college student, inheriting a love for the vehicles from his father. “Some people collect butterflies, some people collect cards. My dad taught me to collect full size streetcars.”
