2020
August
17
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 17, 2020
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Today begins a week in which American opportunity should shine, with a major party set to name as its vice presidential candidate a woman of Black and South Asian heritage – 100 years after women won the right to vote.

The power of that pairing competes with concerns that pandemic and a hindered postal service could imperil November’s elections.  

Feeling whipsawed by the news cycle? Focus on the power of earned opportunity to emerge undeterred. 

Here’s a story you might have missed. An 11-year-old Nigerian boy, Anthony Madu Mmesoma, appeared in a video in June dancing barefoot in a downpour on the rough pavement of a Lagos street near the studio where he takes instruction. 

His moves were a study in grace, with refined extensions and leaps. Millions saw the video. Among them: Cynthia Harvey, a former dancer with the American Ballet Theatre in New York, now artistic director of an affiliated dance school.

 “Within a day,” she told one reporter, “I was trying to find him.”

She did. Anthony earned a scholarship to study virtually with the school this summer. After that? A scholarship from Ballet Beyond Borders, Reuters reports, should enable him to train in the United States next year. 

“Reminds me of the beauty of my people,” Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis tweeted when the video surfaced. “We create, soar ... despite the brutal obstacles that have been put in front of us! Our people can fly!!!”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Oded Balilty/AP
Tel Aviv City Hall is lit up with the flag of the United Arab Emirates after Israel and the UAE announced they would establish full diplomatic ties, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Aug. 13, 2020. The UAE would be the third Arab country to make peace with Israel, after Egypt and Jordan.
Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP
People carry buckets to fetch water past a police checkpoint in Harare, Zimbabwe, on July, 31, 2020. Police and soldiers manned checkpoints and ordered people seeking to get into the city for work and other chores to return home amid a lockdown.
PATRICK T. FALLON/LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS
Demonstrators led by Alma Couverthie (right) cross the street during a League of Women Voters march in Pasadena, California, on Feb. 14, 2020.

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A century of women’s suffrage: How the vote opened paths to leadership


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A message of love

Andrew Couldridge/Reuters
A silhouette of Noah, flying a kite at Dunstable Downs, in Dunstable, England, on Aug. 17, 2020.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Join us tomorrow at 12 p.m. EDT for a women’s leadership webinar on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S Constitution. Hear from centenarian activist Jane Curtis along with Nwabisa Makunga, editor-in-chief of the Sowetan (South Africa), and Celeste Montoya Kirk, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the role of women in civil rights movements.

Before you go, a bonus read: We asked for, and you supplied, stories of women who challenged what society said was possible. Enjoy this roundup of reader responses

More issues

2020
August
17
Monday
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