Jason G. Green — TOO PRECIOUS TO LOSE A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility - WITH Joshua DuBois

A moving and inspiring memoir from a former Obama White House staffer, about his rural Maryland family’s untold history, the merger of three churches—one Black, two white—and how a radical embrace of community became their salvation, and his.Jason G. Green was raised on fellowship—literally. Fellowship Lane, the once unpaved road he grew up on, served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher’s kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to the people in a different way—through public service. After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, he spent four and a half years working in the White House as special assistant to President Obama.However, Green’s government career was cut short by a devastating call that it appeared his ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her presumptive deathbed. At her side, he listened while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that no longer exists. He was preoccupied with disbelief; how could he have never known the true legacy of his tiny community? How could a whole town’s existence be erased but for the memory of a few surviving elders? Green’s historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about the determination of his newly freed ancestors to build an African American house of worship, and how generations later, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, their progeny would be at the center of a brave decision to create an integrated church. Quince Orchard’s lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family.Fueled by a new understanding of where he comes from, Green traces one family through a century of life in a single community, asking deeply personal questions about belonging and finding answers from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebears.Jason G. Green is a Maryland-born community organizer turned attorney, tech entrepreneur, public speaker, and film director. Green previously served as special assistant to the president, and associate White House counsel to President Obama, where he provided legal counsel on economic and domestic policy matters. Green serves as a trustee for the Pleasant View Historic Association supporting its fundraising campaign to preserve the Pleasant View Historic Site and is a founding commissioner and former chair of the Montgomery County Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation. His award-winning documentary Finding Fellowship, available on PBS, explores the rich history of Quince Orchard. He currently serves as CEO of EverGreen Labs, is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Research to Action Lab and is the co-founder of the pioneering economic impact measurement company SkillSmart.Green is in conversation with Joshua DuBois, a nationally recognized strategist, entrepreneur, and cultural leader working at the intersection of values, community, media, and influence. He is the Founder and CEO of Values Partnerships, a social impact and cultural strategy firm that helps leading brands, institutions, and storytellers engage communities with authenticity, trust, and purpose. He is also the Co-Founder of Gauge, an AI-powered consumer insights platform that blends ethnography, cultural intelligence, and artificial intelligence to help organizations understand how people actually think and decide.PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593731710?ic_referral=oRJcsG64N23zH1onabI5KuNiKPjZoKz0Us_nNYQxbFcwM9EvYWnwRBgCLCInnJ1ZgPTeYPaRqwZdi_vHMe8zco1-ZtOEF35aiygk9ybtGfCSvkJ2RyNBadLDjRnr0AZyCjJleKc