A little before our trip to Farmersville, I met Lola Vinson and Wes Helm, members of a multiracial, progressive community organizing group called Faith in Texas, whose projects have included local criminal-justice reform, anti-police-brutality efforts, a living-wage campaign and agitation against predatory lending. Working with several faith groups in Texas, including evangelicals, is key to the organization’s mission, and I wondered how Vinson and Helm’s experience might have shifted since Trump’s ascendancy.

LIVE FREE Texas Campaign Manager Brittany White visited WBUR Radio to discuss the most recent mass shootings in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH. “Yes, it is absolutely important that we condemn white supremacy for the evil that it is in this country… We should pray and act. We should condemn white supremacy from our pulpits and we should call our congressmen and demand that they have moral courage… Often times, what you hear to excuse urban gun violence is “black-on-black” crime and “white-on-white” crime but I want to be clear that stats show that the race of people are more than likely to kill that same race of people. So when we say black-on-black, we do a disservice when we don’t mention white-on-white crime as well.” Listen to the full conversation here.

“I do know I was wrong for what I did,” she said. “But the fact that other people are coming in doing the same thing I did, they are just as wrong as me. But if they have the money, they can go home to their families and work out their case.”