Just Words

Deborah Sarsgard introduced us to Lucille Robinson, a grandmother in Baltimore who was raising a house full of grandchildren on her own.  We had Lucille and some other grandparent caregivers discuss their lives and the challenges they faced on The Marc Steiner Show.  Then we decided to spend more time with Lucille, and the interviews we recorded became the first three episodes of Just Words.  We'd like to thank Deborah for sharing some of her thoughts and memories of Lucille with us, which you can read  by clicking here.

I just got the news that Lucille Robinson passed away. Lucille was the first participant in our Just Words series about the working poor in Maryland. Hers was the story of a grandmother who is raising her grandchildren. Her daughter and son were missing in action, gobbled up by the seduction of the streets. Because of her husband’s death and her own illness, she lost her middle-class life in Columbia, Maryland and found herself back in the inner-city, raising children as she struggled through her seventies.

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We're so proud and pleased and overwhelmed to announce that this morning the Center for Emerging Media was honored with a 2007 Peabody Award for the series Just Words.  Just Words was a weekly documentary feature series that gave voice to marginalized people-low wage workers, ex felons, recovering addicts, the homeless, and more.  You can listen to it here.

We share the honor this year with some of our colleagues in public radio such as Speaking of Faith, the Brian Lehrer Show, and Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!  Also honored were television programs such as The Colbert Report and the BBC/Discovery Channel series Planet Earth.  A full list of  2007 winners can be found here.  All the winners ever are listed here.

Thanks for all your support!  We couldn't do without it.

In my work as producer for the Just Words series, I've come to believe that inner city mothers are the new stoics.  I can't tell you how many times I have asked a mother "How do you deal with all this?" and they just look at me like I am crazy to even imagine that they would take the luxury of considering NOT dealing with it all.  I do not know how they do it.  Being a mother is hard enough, I imagine.  But to be a mother trying to raise a child with drug dealers on the corner,without much money, with the schools in terrible shape and murders on the rise? 

That's what we are going to hear about today.  We're invited three women who have been featured on the Just Words series.  Lorraine Mackey lost her son, Aaron Mackey, to gang violence over a year ago.  She's doing everything she can to keep her other son safe, and is trying to pick up the pieces and figure out, what went wrong?  Sheilah Cannon's daughter was caught in gang crossfire while going to pick her little brother up from school, and had to spend months in shock trauma.  Now Sheila is doing everything she can to find a place she can afford to move her children to.  Nargas Hyman began to worry about her eldest son years ago when she saw him and his friends hanging out after school, with nothing to do.  She created an afterschool youth program that she is still running, over a decade later, out of her mother's basement.

What do these women go through as they struggle to keep their children safe?  We'll find out today.  Join us.

To hear Nargas, Sheila, and Lorraine on JUST WORDS, go here.

-Jessica

If you listen to Morning Edition or All Things Considered on Thursdays, you may have heard a documentary feature series called Just Words.  It's a project that Marc and I have been working hard on for the past year.  It's purpose is to go into the worlds of marginalized disenfranchised people, from low-wage workers to recovering drug addicts to ex-cons--and to bring their stories back and share them with our audience.  It's a year long series that was generously funded by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.  As the first year of our project winds down, we are bringing you a series of shows with people who have been featured on Just Words.

For our first show, which is today at One, we're going to talk with Walker Gladden of the Rose Street Community Center, Ray Cook of On Our Shoulders, and Dante Wilson of Reclaiming Our Children and Community Project.  Each of these men is deeply committed to changing the lives of young people in Baltimore.  They are the first line of defense between many kids and the seductive powers of the street life. They're really amazing people, and very inspiring, and have a lot to say, so I hope you will join us and hear them today. And bring YOUR questions and comments to the table.

To hear Walker speak as the everyman of the inner city of Baltimore, click here.

To hear Ray talk about issues of love in the inner city, click here.

To walk with Dante as he picks kids up from school for his afterschool program, click here.

To hear the thoughts of children in Dante's program, click here.

-Jessica