I make ice cream now. But when I ran for the U.S. Senate, I said too many children in Baltimore couldn’t see the American dream because they were living a nightmare. Reading @CapehartJ's piece on @MayorBMScott, I thought about those words, and the people who led me to say them. The Rev. Iris Tucker, then pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church, introduced me to kids I would walk with and listen to, some of whom we later lost to the city’s gun violence. Their lives, their hopes, the things they should have had time to become, have stayed with me. So has an early encounter with the then-council candidate, whom Kaliope Parthemos introduced me to at the St. Nicholas Greek Folk Festival. What struck me about him was his sincerity. He cared, he listened, and he had a quiet determination to make things better. Even then, the politics was incidental to the purpose. Baltimore will always be my hometown. My grandmother still lives in the same row house in Greektown. My Papou, whose hospitality helped inspire @YalaGreek Ice Cream, is buried just up the road. I return to those places, and to the people and memories that made me. Jonathan writes that homicides have fallen nearly 60% since the Mayor's violence prevention plan began in 2021. No statistic can restore someone we’ve lost, and the work is far from finished. But that progress means more families spared an unbearable knock at the door, more kids reaching another birthday, more young people with time to discover who they might become. For all our arguments about whether progress is still possible in America, Baltimore deserves more attention, and so do its mayor and the people working every day to make that progress last. When I spoke about the nightmare, I wanted people to recognize what those children were living through. Today, it's Mayor Brandon Scott helping them see a future beyond it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. jcapehart.substack.com/p/may…