So it was strange to her. Dasani is not an anomaly. Well, every once in a while, a roach here and there in New York. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. But despite the extraordinary opportunity, she talked often about just wanting to go home as troublesome as that home life was. She was so tender with her turtle. She's passing through. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. And to each of those, sort of, judgments, Dasani's mother has an answer. In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. Nearly a year ago, the citys child protection agency had separated 34-year-old Chanel Sykes from her children after she got addicted to opioids. But she told me, and she has told me many times since, that she loves the book. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. And she became, for a moment, I wouldn't say celebrity, but a child who was being celebrated widely. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? Their sister is always first. And through the years of American journalism, and some of the best journalism that has been produced, is about talking about what that looks like at the ground level. This is so important." "I just want to be a fly on the wall. Dasani's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. And her principal had this idea that she should apply to a school that I had never heard of called the Milton Hershey School, which is a school in Hershey, Pennsylvania that tries to reform poor children. This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. Now in her 20s, Dasani became the first in her immediate family to graduate high school, and she enrolled in classes at LaGuardia Community College. She felt that she left them and this is what happened. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? So I'm really hoping that that changes. Despite the circumstances, Dasani radiated with potential. Email withpod@gmail.com. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. After Dasanis family left the homeless shelter, she was accepted to the Milton Hershey School, a tuition-free boarding school for low-income children in Pennsylvania. She made leaps ahead in math. The light noises bring no harm the colicky cries of an infant down the hall, the hungry barks of the Puerto Rican ladys chihuahuas, the addicts who wander the projects, hitting some crazy high. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home. She was an amazing ethnographer and she and I had many conversations about what she called the asymmetry of power, that is this natural asymmetry that's built into any academic subject, reporter subject relationship. She felt that the streets became her family because she had such a rocky childhood. And I have this pen that's called live scribe and it records sound while I'm writing. She will focus in class and mind her manners in the schoolyard. I still am always. But especially to someone like her, who she was struggling. Chris Hayes: --to dealing with those. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. This is the place where people go to be free. Beyond the shelters walls, in the fall of 2012, Dasani belongs to an invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children the highest number ever recorded, in the most unequal metropolis in America. And I had avoided it. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. Parental neglect, failure to provide necessities for ones children like shelter or clothing, is one form of child maltreatment that differs from child abuse, she says. And There Are No Children Here, which takes place in what's called Henry Horner Homes, which is in the west side of Chicago right by what is now called the United Center, which is where the Bulls play. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. I read the book out to the girls. To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. Only their sister Dasani is awake. Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. It was really so sweet. It's now about one in seven. Knife fights break out. One in five kids. And I met Dasani right in that period, as did the principal. And so putting that aside, what really changed? The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. Thank you! Anyway, and I said, "Imagine I'm making a movie about your life. A stunning debut, the book covers eight formative years in the life of an intelligent and imaginative young girl in a Brooklyn homeless shelter as she balances poverty, family, and opportunity. In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. Like, these two things that I think we tend to associate with poverty and, particularly, homelessness, which is mental illness and substance abuse, which I think get--, Chris Hayes: --very much, particularly in the way that in an urban environment, get codified in your head of, like, people who were out and, you know, they're dealing with those two issues and this is concentrated. Dasani opens a heavy metal door, stepping into the dark corridor. It starts as a investigation into what basically the lives of New York City's homeless school children look like, which is a shockingly large population, which we will talk about, and then migrates into a kind of ground level view of what being a poor kid in New York City looks like. Her siblings, she was informed, were placed in foster care. Dasani would call it my spy pen. In New York, I feel proud. And I remember the imam's face was just, like, horrified. They wound up being placed at Auburn. INVISIBLE CHILD POVERTY, SURVIVAL & HOPE IN AN AMERICAN CITY. She ends up there. Her expression veers from mischief to wonder. In fact, there's the, kind of, brushes that the boys have with things outside of their, kind of, experience of poverty and class have to do with, like, parking cars (LAUGH) or helping cars and stuff and selling water at the United Center where there's all sorts of, like, fancy Chicago roles through. And they did attend rehab at times. Dasani's 20. It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support. Her skyline is filled with luxury towers, the beacons of a new gilded age. You can try, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City., Why the foster care system needs to change as aid expires for thousands of aged-out youth, The Pandemic's Severe Toll On The Already-Strained Foster Care System. And there's some poverty reporting where, like, it feels, you know, a little gross or it feels a little, like, you know, alien gaze-y (LAUGH) for lack of a better word. But she was not at all that way with the mice. The Child Protection Agency began monitoring Dasanis parents on suspicion of parental neglect, Elliott says. She is 20 years old. The material reality of Dasani's life her homelessness, her family's lack of money is merely the point of departure for understanding her human condition, she says. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. They have yet to stir. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. They are true New Yorkers. She just thought, "Who could afford that?". And I had focused for years on the story of Islam in a post-9/11 America. They have yet to stir. Andrea Elliott: I met Dasani while I was standing outside of Auburn Family Residence, which is a city run, decrepit shelter, one of two city run shelters that were notorious for the conditions that children were forced to live in with their families. There have been a few huge massive interventions that have really altered the picture of what poverty looks like in the U.S., chiefly the Great Society and the New Deal and some other things that have happened since then. And they agreed to allow me to write a book and to continue to stay in their lives. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. So civic equality is often honored in the breach, but there is the fact that early on, there is a degree of material equality in the U.S. that is quite different from what you find in Europe. Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. Mice scurry across the floor. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. She would just look through the window. There's a huge separation that happens in terms of the culture that people consume, the podcasts they listen to or don't listen to, the shows they watch. Back then, from the ghettos isolated corners, a perfume ad seemed like the portal to a better place. I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. And it wasn't a huge amount of money as far as I know, although Legal Aid's never told me (LAUGH) exactly how much is in it. No. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. But she was so closely involved in my process. Their voucher had expired. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. And even up until 2018 was the last study that I saw that looked at this, that looked at the city's own poverty measure, which takes into account things like food stamps and stuff, nearly half of New York City residents, even as late as 2018, were living near or below the poverty line in a city that is so defined by wealth. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. And it was an extraordinary experience. She sorts them like laundry. And a lot of that time was spent together. And so she named her daughter Chanel. Mice scurry across the floor. Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. Why Is This Happening? "What's Chanel perfume? They were in drug treatment programs for most of the time that I was with them, mostly just trying to stay sober and often succeeding at it. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. I was never allowing myself to get too comfortable. Andrea Elliott: And I think the middle ground we found was to protect them by not putting their last names in and refer to most of them by their nicknames. But what about the ones who dont? (BACKGROUND MUSIC) It is an incredible feat of reporting and writing. It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. WebPULITZER PRIZE WINNER NATIONAL BESTSELLER A vivid and devastating (The New York Times) portrait of an indomitable girlfrom acclaimed journalist Andrea ElliottFrom its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering for In this moving but occasionally flat narrative, Elliott follows Dasani for eight years, beginning in 2012 when she was 11 years old and living in WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. And there's a amazing, amazing book called Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc which takes place in the Bronx, which is in a somewhat similar genre. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. Different noises mean different things. Her stepfather's name is Supreme. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. And those questions just remained constantly on my mind. It literally saved us: what the USs new anti-poverty measure means for families, Millions of families receiving tax credit checks in effort to end child poverty, No one knew we were homeless: relief funds hope to reach students missing from virtual classrooms, I knew they were hungry: the stimulus feature that lifts millions of US kids out of poverty, 'Santa, can I have money for the bills?' How did you feel, you know, about the pipe that's leaking?" Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. After that, about six months after the series ran, I continued to follow them all throughout. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. And at the same time, there's the old Janet Malcolm line about how every journalist who's, you know, not deluded will tell you what they're doing is ethically indefensible, which is not true and, kind of, hyperbolic, but scratches at something a little bit of a kernel of truth, which is that, like, there is always something intense and strange and sometimes a little hard to reckon with when you are reporting and telling the story of people who are in crisis, emergency trauma and you, yourself, are not. And we can talk about that more. If you use the word homeless, usually the image that comes to mind is of a panhandler or someone sleeping on subway grates. Eleven-year-old Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates is a primary caregiver for her seven siblings. People often remark on her beauty the high cheekbones and chestnut skin but their comments never seem to register. Family wasn't an accident. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? More often she is running to the monkey bars, to the library, to the A train that her grandmother cleaned for a living. You can tell that story, as we have on the podcast, about the, sort of, crunched middle class, folks who want to afford college and can't. Her polo shirt and khakis have been pressed with a hair straightener, because irons are forbidden at the Auburn shelter. Alexander Tuerkproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withTodd Mundt. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. And even as you move into the 1820s and '30s when you have fights over, sort of, Jacksonian democracy and, kind of, popular sovereignty and will, you're still just talking about essentially white men with some kind of land, some kind of ownership and property rights. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. No, I know. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. All rights reserved. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. Chris Hayes: That is such a profound point about the structure of American life and the aspirations for it. She is the least of Dasanis worries. But I would say that at the time, the parents saw that trust as an obstacle to any kind of real improvement because they couldn't access it because donors didn't want money going into the hands of parents with a drug history and also because they did continue to receive public assistance. This is a story." I mean, I think everyone knows there are a lot of poor people, particularly a lot of poor people in urban centers, although there are a lot of poor people in rural areas. So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. It's on the west side just west of downtown. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. We suffocate them with the salt!. And you got power out of fighting back on some level. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web. I think that that was a major compass for me was this idea that, "Don't ever get too comfortable that you know your position here or your place. Delivery charges may apply, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Rarely does that happen for children living in poverty like Dasani who are willing and capable but who are inundated with problems not of their own making, she says. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. This is And I did some quick research and I saw that, in fact, the child poverty rate remained one in five. They're quite spatially separated from it. It's a really, really great piece of work. And there was this, sort of, sudden public awakening around inequality. She had been born in March, shattering the air with her cries. Nearly a quarter of her childhood has unfolded at the Auburn Family Residence, where Dasanis family a total of 10 people live in one room. So she would talk about this. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. And, really, the difference is, like, the kind of safety nets, the kind of resources, the kind of access people have--. And she would stare at the Empire State Building at the tower lights because the Empire State Building, as any New Yorker knows, lights up depending on the occasion to reflect the colors of that occasion. So at the time, you know, I was at The New York Times and we wrestled with this a lot. But you know what a movie is. And her lips are stained with green lollipop. (LAUGH) You know? Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. Right outside is a communal bathroom with a large industrial tub. We get the robber barons and the Industrial Revolution. Thats not gonna be me, she says. She had seven siblings. This is according to her sister, because Joanie has since passed. Offering a rare look into how homelessness directs the course of a life, New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott was allowed to follow Dasani's family for almost 10 years. Andrea Elliott: I didn't really have a beat. WebInvisible Child, highlights the life struggles of eleven-year-old Dasani Coates, a homeless child living with her family in Brooklyn, New York. "What were you thinking in this moment? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. Like, these are--. Toothbrushes, love letters, a dictionary, bicycles, an Xbox, birth certificates, Skippy peanut butter, underwear. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? The book is called Invisible Child. Baby Lee-Lee has yet to learn about hunger, or any of its attendant problems. Have Democrats learned them? They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. We'd love to hear from you. And, of course, children aren't the face of the homeless. And so I also will say that people would look at Dasani's family from the outside, her parents, and they might write them off as, you know, folks with a criminal record. Either give up your public assistance and you can have this money or not. So this was the enemy. The difference is in resources. Chanel always says, "Blood is thicker than water." Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. Find that audio here. (LAUGH) I don't know what got lost in translation there. "This is so and so." Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. And so you can get braces.
© Naturheilpraxis Bünner 2023