POV: Avalon PierceThe emails started Saturday morning. Individual messages from people who had been at the symposium, arriving throughout the weekend, with correspondence from those who had thought about what they wanted to say before saying it.Susan Park wrote about infrastructure. Three precise paragraphs, outlining what the foundation could do to address what her organisation needed rather than what funders typically offered.David Torres wrote one sentence.Dignity is the right framework to build around.A man named Kevin Walsh who ran a youth housing program and had been at the table five wrote four pages. It was an analysis of what he had observed in six years of working in the gap. What worked and what looked like it worked. Selene read every email twice.Avalon watched her do it at the kitchen table on Saturday morning, coffee getting cold, reading with the focused stillness of someone receiving something important.“Kevin Walsh’s four pages,” she said without looking up.
Last Updated : 2026-05-31 Read more