The People's Report: Wilmington, Delaware

Yasser Payne

This documentary is a long time coming. For those who know all of the shades of Wilmington, Delaware, UP CLOSE, the devastating effects of an ineffective education system and lack of job opportunities in the city is not news. Now the documentary, The People's Report, brings the despair and dichotomy between the haves and have nots in Wilmington to light in a most provocative way.

Kudos to Yasser Payne, University of Delaware Associate Professor of Black American Studies, who put a lot of work, research, and passion into helping to get this film made.

The People’s Report, a Teleduction/Hearts and Minds film production, reveals the in-depth details about the prolific violence and apathy in Wilmington, will be shown at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts next week on Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 3:30 pm.

Doubling as a research project and film, The People’s Report, includes data collected by Payne and 15 Wilmington residents (21 to 48 years old) from Southbridge and the East Side that Payne trained to participate in the project. Payne and these community recruits created a survey, conducted more than 500 interviews, and analyzed their findings. His process, called participatory action research (PAR), involves using members of the target population, as part of the research team.

“We equipped them all with a skill set,” Payne told radio station WDDE. “They received two months of training, the same as doctoral students get, and they were paid $17 an hour.”

Payne, who grew up in Harlem and Englewood, N.J., told WDDE that the PAR approach is effective because “the people in the community that is being studied are also experts.” Their lives are invested in the communities and so they are vigorously motivated to gather information and ultimately, to help implement change.

The opening of the film gives an overview of what’s to come, as these words are shown on the screen:

“Wilmington, Delaware is a small city of 73,000 people.”

“Its violent crime rate per capita is among the worst in the nation.”

“In 2010 a team of 15 researchers, part of a Participatory Action Research project took to the streets, armed with cameras and clipboards to find out why.”

Here are some of the gripping questions PAR survey asks:

-- How many times have you yourself actually been shot with a gun?

-- How many times have you heard about someone else getting shot with a gun?

-- Have you ever had a relative killed with a gun?

A majority of the survey respondents reported losing at least one family member (55 percent) and/or at least one friend (59 percent) to gun violence. About 25 percent indicated that they had been attacked or stabbed with a knife at least once, and another 20 percent reported that they had been shot at least once.

The survey also found that 44 percent of the respondents did not have a high school diploma, 64 percent total (70 percent of the men), were unemployed, and 64 percent lived in low-income housing.

We also learn from the film that for the first time in three years, a male student from South Bridge graduated from high school.

“The loss of jobs and quality school opportunities is predicative of physical violence,” Payne says. “We are advocating for Wilmington and the state of Delaware to find innovative ways bring more high quality jobs and better educational opportunities to these communities.”

But Payne hopes that the intervention in the lives of the PAR team members and the issues that the film raises will help to turn things around in Wilmington.

“The PAR team is required to organize an action agenda to compliment the data analysis,” Payne said. In other words, the PAR team is expected to formulate ways to make their communities better.

If you plan to be in the Wilmington area on Wednesday, May 29 — Go see this film!

Click here for more information about The People’s Report, directed by Sharon Baker and produced by Daniel Collins.

Go here to register to see The People’s Report and attend the lecture following the film.

The People's Report (Excerpt) from Hearts and Minds Film on Vimeo.

My Peace I Give To You

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." -- John 14:27

Gullah version:

"Now dat A da gwine way fom yah, A da gii oona peace een oona haat. Me own peace A da gii oona. A ain da gii oona de kind ob peace dat de people an de ting een dis wol yah da gii. Oona mus dohn leh oona haat be hebby bout nottin. Mus dohn be scaid."

oona means you

If Somebody Hurts You: Message for Children Only

What they're doing in Spain to help child abuse victims:

Child Abuse Hotline Ad Uses Photographic Trick That Makes It Visible Only To Children From The Huffington Post, May 6:

A Spanish organization called Fundación ANAR, or Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk, created a bus-stop advertisement in April that features the group's hotline number for children to report abuse. But by using a process called lenticular photography, the company made the hotline number, and much of the ad's content, visible only to those under a certain height -- presumably children.

Lenticular photography allows companies to create an image in a way that lets viewers see one of several different photos, depending on where they're standing. In the case of ANAR's ad, anyone taller than 4 feet 5 inches -- the average height of a 10-year-old, according to the group -- would see a picture of a boy with an unmarked face and the following message: "Sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it." Anyone under that height would see an image of the boy with a bruised face, the organization's hotline number (116-111) in white text, and the message, "If somebody hurts you, phone us and we'll help you."

Children and Guns

Children and Guns -- Should those two words go together?

From Harper's Weekly Review (May 7, 2013):

A five-year-old Kentucky boy shot his two-year-old sister with a .22-caliber Crickett youth rifle, and a 13-year-old Florida boy shot his six-year-old sister with a handgun. “The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun,” said a Kentucky coroner. “The little boy just sat there rocking back and forth,” said a Florida neighbor.

No Moor by Shafiq Husayn

Here's a strange, but rejuvenating and funky tune by Shafiq Husayn:


(This song really did change my mood.)

Italian Racists and Cecile Kyenge

New Black Appointment Showcases Racist Italy
by The Associated Press, May 1 2013

ROME — It was hailed as a giant step forward for racial integration in a country that has long been ill at ease with its growing immigrant classes.

But Cecile Kyenge’s (pictured) appointment as Italy’s first Black Cabinet minister has instead exposed the nation’s ugly race problem, a blight that flares regularly on the soccer pitch with racist taunts and in the diatribes of xenophobic politicians – but has now raised its head at the center of political life.

One politician derided what he called Italy’s new “bonga bonga government.”

On Wednesday, amid increasing revulsion over the reaction, the government authorized an investigation into neo-fascist websites whose members called Kyenge “Congolese monkey” and other epithets.

Kyenge, 48, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Italy three decades ago to study medicine. An eye surgeon, she lives in Modena with her Italian husband and two children. She was active in local center-left politics before winning a seat in the lower Chamber of Deputies in February elections.

Premier Enrico Letta tapped Kyenge to be minister of integration in his hybrid center-left and center-right government that won its second vote of confidence Tuesday. In his introductory speech to Parliament, Letta touted Kyenge’s appointment as a “new concept about the confines of barriers giving way to hope, of unsurpassable limits giving way to a bridge between diverse communities.”

Unfortunately, his praise and that of others has been almost drowned out by the racist slurs directed at Kyenge by politicians of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, an on-again, off-again ally of long-serving ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, and members of neo-fascist Internet groups.

In addition to his “bonga bonga” slur, Mario Borghezio, a European parliamentarian for the League, warned in an interview with Radio 24 that Kyenge would try to “impose tribal traditions” from her native Congo on Italy.

Kyenge on Tuesday responded to the insults, thanking those who had come to her defense and taking a veiled jab at the vulgarity of her critics. “I believe even criticism can inform if it’s done with respect,” she tweeted.

Think Not of Bombings, but of a Red Balloon

Questlove of The Roots tweeted something very thoughtful last night regarding the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy. He wrote:

Parents please monitor your kids' TV activity. Watching and rewatching [the] explosions is way too traumatic for young minds to process.

Of course he's right, but I'm sure many parents were way too caught up in the emotion and shock of the whole devastation to remember this. I heeded Questlove's advice and steered Gigi away from the news coverage of the bombings. But my inquisitive child was.....well .....curious, and so she googled the event and read about it on the internet. A few minutes later she came to me crying because it was all so sad and depressing.

To get her mind off the doom and gloom I turned to Hulu Plus and we looked for an uplifting family movie to watch. She saw a photo of a little boy holding a balloon and requested that we watch that film. It turned out to be The Red Balloon, a fantasy short film by French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, that features his son Pascal as a boy in Paris who finds a red balloon that follows and befriends him. It's a sheer pleasure to watch the joy that this inanimate object brings to the boy. I won't tell the ending, but the message to me was: When somebody takes something that you love away from you, God showers you with way more than you initially had.

And to my delight, the film is available for viewing for free, so I've placed it here for you to see. Enjoy! (...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.) -- Philippians 4:8


The Red Balloon won the following awards after its release: Louis Delluc Prize, Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Short Film Palme d'Or, BAFTA Special Award (Film)

The Art of Visual Storytelling

I took the plunge and took a three week course called The Art of Visual Storytelling recently and I'm so glad that I did. Since the price was right ($15), I couldn't imagine passing up the opportunity.

Although I don't have a background in drawing or animation, I figured the class would get the juices flowing and inspire me with other projects -- and that's exactly what it did! I also figured the teacher, Daniel Gonzales, an Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, would be able to pass on some valuable knowledge that I'd be able to take with me anywhere. And I was right. He turned out to be a really good teacher with patience and an ability to present the basic principles of the craft for people like me who have no background in it.

Here are a couple of the images that I came up with for the class:

 

Now I'm looking forward to continuing the creativity in my writing and video production.

Thanks Daniel!

Loving Yourself and Going Natural

"Loving your hair is loving yourself," says Dr. Jackie Copeland-Carson, one of the subjects in the documentary Hair Stories, directed by master hair braider and filmmaker Yvette Smalls.

I believe she's right. That's why I was so happy to hear that my dear friend and sister Celestine (a.k.a. Celeste) decided to let her hair exist in its natural state.

Here she is celebrating 16 months of "going natural" -- Isn't she lovely? Congratulations sister and may you continue to keep on loving yourself.

Pressing Toward the Goal

A little inspiration at work: 

Philipians 3:12-13 (New Living Translation):

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

And here's the Gullah version that makes me cry it's so beautiful:

A ain say A done do all wa God wahn me fa do, an A ain say A done come fa be all wa A oughta be een God eye. Bot A da try wid all me haat fa mek dat prize me own, cause Jedus Christ done mek me e own. Me Christian bredren, fa sho, A ain yet win dat prize. A ain all wa A oughta be een God eye. Bot one ting A da do. A da do all dat A able fa do fa git ta wa dey head ob me. A ain pay no mind ta nottin dat done pass.