August on Martha’s Vineyard is almost always an embarrassment of riches. But this month has been unusually verdant on the literary, political, journalistic, artistic and cinematic fronts.

This has been a summer where I find myself swelling with pride for the island I call home, a place where so many of the issues I write about in this newsletter are being pondered and parsed in extraordinary ways. It has been a summer where the challenges we face, from inequality to immigration, housing, and climate change have been looked at in ways that are global, national and local.

Too often our island is viewed with suspicion as an enclave of the elite, an out of touch bubble of liberalism. That view is narrow and shortsighted, overlooking the extraordinary wealth of ideas and the richness of diversity that makes up the island’s year-round population of 20,000 and the way it swells in the summer to 100,000.

The month began with the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival in early August which featured best selling authors, including the island’s own Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer prize-winning author of “Horse” and more recently “Memorial Days: A Memoir” which chronicles the sudden loss of her husband, the author and legendary foreign correspondent Tony Horwitz.

Last week we had a panel discussion at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, the heart of the African American community and its heritage on the Island, which was co-sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists and the organization I co-founded, Report for America. At this house of worship, former New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who will begin a fellowship at Harvard University this fall, joined a panel that discussed an issue near to my heart and at the center of this newsletter: the importance of local news at a time of deep division in America.

Blow condensed his view l about the difference between writing national news and the importance of local news in restoring trust in journalism, saying: “Local news performs a slightly different function. It is about connecting people.”

He continued, “The reporting on the opening of the grocery store or the closing of the cleaners. It's really important to the community of people... Having the wedding announcement and the death notices and a real person writing about what that person's life was like. You thought, you know the guy at the end of the block, a real human impact. That makes people look at the people who are doing that repertorial work as trusted members of the society, of the community. That trickles up.”

This Sunday, there is the kick-off of a two-day festival known as “Islanders Write,” which brings together the beautifully eclectic mix of island writers: from novelist Richard North Patterson, to a panel on politics featuring Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. and NPR’s Mara Liasson. All three of these writers live part of the year on Martha’s Vineyard, and therefore qualify as “islanders.” This year’s “Islanders Write,” which is an initiative of The Martha’s Vineyard Times where I am the publisher, also featured a panel discussion on the surging and vibrant Brazilian community on the Island, which now makes up approximately 20 percent of the year-round population and which has been filled with anxiety brought on by recent raids by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Earlier this month was the African American Film Festival which featured a screening of island summer resident Spike Lee and his new film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” which pulls no punches in its assessment of class and the Black community’s greatest divide. There was the Black Book Festival which featured an all-star line up of Black voices.

But perhaps the most unusual day of all was last Saturday, on a perfect afternoon with deep blue sky and bright sunshine. At the exact same hour under two different tents at different ends of the Island, audiences heard the powerful and resonant words of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Justice Jackson spoke about her new memoir “Lovely One,” which chronicles her life leading up to being named as the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. And Michelle Obama hosted a live taping of her IMO podcast.

This week, I would like to share with you a taped conversation with my colleague at the MV Times, our columnist Sharisse Scott-Rawlins. Sharisse writes the MVTimes newsletter VOICES by Sharisse, which chronicles and celebrates the diversity of Martha’s Vineyard. She spoke with me about the meaning of all that has been going on this August on Martha’s Vineyard and a single day that featured both Justice Jackson and Michelle Obama and what that meant to her as a young, Black writer who grew up here on Martha’s Vineyard.

Join us at Islanders Write on Martha’s Vineyard

Charlie Sennott will be moderating a conversation on politics and the free press on August 17th at 7:30 pm EST at the Featherstone Center for the Arts as part of Islanders Write, a series of panel discussions and writing workshops with authors and thought leaders across Martha’s Vineyard. MV Times Columnist Sharisse Scott-Rawlins will also be speaking about the power of poetry at 3:45 pm EST. Learn more here.