We’ve heard about how difficult the transition from the military to the civilian world has been for many post-9/11 veterans. But sometimes statistics and unemployment percentages don’t convey the grave situation to others the way that a work of art can.
For the past eight years, Brooklyn-based photographer Jennifer Karady has been traveling throughout the United States to capture arresting images of soldiers returned from combat. She spends time with each veteran to learn his or her story and then composes a scene that conveys their emotions. As Karady’s website notes, “she works with real people to dramatize their stories through both literal depiction and metaphorical and allegorical means.”
When Karady spent time with former Marine Corps Sergeant Jose Adames, for example, she learned that he was struck by a mortar when he was in a convoy — resulting in shrapnel wounds, plus 17 fellow Marines in his unit also sustaining injury. When he returned home to Brooklyn, Adames found he was terrified of garbage trucks because they sound similar to exploding mortars. Karady depicted Adames in his uniform on the streets of Brooklyn, crouched and covering his ears as a garbage truck rumbles along behind him.
Karady spoke about her project, “Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan,” with the PBS NewsHour. She says that she interviews the veterans extensively before photographing them: “through those interviews, we are looking identify a moment from war that’s come home with the person into the civilian world. So we talk about both that memory of war and then also the way that memory manifests itself in the present.”
She continues, “In each photograph, the veteran is in uniform and we’re restaging this memory from war, but that moment is recontextualized in the civilian world. So you get this sense of a collision or collapse between these two worlds, and trying to represent something that’s invisible, something that’s unconscious, something that’s emotional, so what it feels like for the veteran to come home and sometimes experience two different realities at once.”
Karady travelled to the Omaha Nation reservation in Nebraska to photograph Shelby Webster, a single mother who left her kids to serve in Iraq. Her first convoy was attacked, which caused her to worrying about her kids. But she heard her deceased grandfather say, “Well, you’re going to be all right,” and she smelled burning cedar. She later learned that the Omaha people held a prayer meeting for her at which they burned cedar. In the photograph, Webster is on the ground, pointing her gun, while her children cling to her and her brother performs a cedar ceremony in the background.
In the coming years, Karady plans to publish photos from her project in a book and exhibit the portraits in galleries, accompanied with text or recordings of the soldiers telling their own stories.
Through Karady’s images, we can understand a little better the haunting memories that run through veterans’ minds when they return home.
MORE: Meet A Veteran That Uses a 19th-Century Art Form to Capture Today’s Soldiers
Tag: Brooklyn
Can You Green a Community Without Stealing Its Identity?
Large, elegant projects that showcase the best of the best when it comes to environmental design have made their way into cities across the country. Politicians have praised these efforts endlessly, and the press, including NationSwell, have lauded their benefits. But what if the neighborhoods that house projects such as New York City’s High Line or Chicago’s green roofs (and benefit from them) end up being hurt in the long run?
Unfortunately, that’s what seems to be happening with certain projects of this nature — an overgentrification, of sorts, that ends up driving out existing residents.
How does that happen? Well, as it turns out, by making neighborhoods nicer, they can often become too nice — driving up the cost of living and bringing in wealthier residents, according to Next City.
So, how do we make neighborhoods greener without changing the makeup of the area altogether?
One successful example is Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Home to significant heavy industry and a large Polish population, Greenpoint is a working-class neighborhood, just like it was before becoming “just green enough.”
In 2010, the polluted estuary there, known as Newtown Creek, was declared a superfund site. Instead of cleaning it up through a large gentrification project, newcomers and longtime residents alike joined forces through the Newtown Creek Alliance, winning a settlement from Exxon-Mobil (the company that leaked the oil and contaminated the creek). With that money and their elbow grease, a nature trail was created, benefitting the community.
Greenpoint resident and Alliance member Bill Schuck, explained to Next City that his fellow activists thought, “hey, wait a second. Are we doing this to make this attractive to real estate developers? And it was, no, we’re looking to benefit people like us.” Because of those efforts, Greenpoint received some much-needed cleanup and improvements without sacrificing its cultural and economic backbone.
Though there is no one secret for success in this arena, neighborhoods in other cities can learn from places like Greenpoint.
The key is to tailor any solution to the specific neighborhood — to listen to and to learn from the community members about their lifestyle and what kind of greening could benefit them. Another step is to make sure rents are stabilized and there’s enough affordable housing. Beyond that, though, is a general focus on practicality over publicity. The large, glamorous parks that are often widely loved can often be far less useful to a community, for example, than many smaller parks.
By focusing on the needs of the people when greening, a whole lot of good can be done.
DON’T MISS: 8 Inspiring Urban Renewal Projects
For Those That Don’t Have Internet Access, This Tool Connects Brooklyn Residents and Leaders
It’s frustrating to feel like you don’t have an easy way to tell your elected officials what you think about various topics. But in Brooklyn, one graduate student is using a simpler method to help connect residents with local leaders and community organizations.
Earlier this year, Asher Novek created HeartGov, a texting platform that enables citizens to send a text to a private website that alerts government officials and community groups, who then can strike up a chat over questions or concerns.
“There’s something that’s different about getting a text message than an email,” Novek said. “It’s more personal, more conversational, like getting a response from friend or from family member.”
Texts messages are displayed as they are received and then organized by issue, urgency level and phone number, according to HeartGov’s site. Community leaders then answer questions through the site, which then sends out a response via text message, consolidating the conversation into a single SMS chat.
Novek hatched the idea as a part of his master’s thesis at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and began testing the service in March. He selected Brooklyn’s Flatbush, Crown Heights, Midwood and Prospect Heights neighborhoods to implement his tool because he felt they had lower levels of community engagement than other areas of Brooklyn.
Residents outside the zone can send in a text, but responses will come from local leaders in the selected areas. Some participants include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Council member Jumaane Williams, Community Board 14, Midwood Development Corporation, Flatbush Development Corporation, Flatbush Junction Business Improvement District and the nonprofit Heights and Hills, which serves Brooklyn’s elder residents.
Though the tool’s purpose seems a bit nebulous, Novek said he purposely created it to be open-ended, serving as an experiment for what residents might use it for. Envisioning it as a cross between 311 and Change.org, the platform is meant to encourage residents to inquire about anything from reporting potholes to requesting information on local public schools.
While more cities continue to march toward bringing locals online, Novek is aiming to reach the underserved population who are still on the other side of the digital divide. As of last year, an estimated 20 percent of Americans did not use Internet at home.
HeartGov was inspired by other simple mobile-based tools around the world, Novek said. He points to such examples as Ushahidi, a data management system that collected citizen reports on the ground via text message during Kenya’s 2007 election, as well as UNICEF’s U-report, which promotes social mobilization and enables users to take surveys through text message. But in the U.S., Novek contends, developers skimmed over this type of tool to focus on web-based technology instead.
While he’s not certain of HeartGov’s future, Novek hopes to continue experimenting with how residents will leverage the tool to earn small wins. Ultimately, however, he wishes for big gains when it comes to community engagement.
MORE: Community-Owned Internet Access: How These Neighborhoods are Redesigning the Traditional Provider Model
Are Food Pantries the Future of Farming?
There’s a very surprising secret sprouting inside a Brooklyn nonprofit’s food pantry.
Using the amazing technology of hydroponics, social organization CAMBA is able to feed fresh, local vegetables to 5,000 people who face food insecurity a month, Tree Hugger reports.
Their hydroponic farm was constructed right in their pantry’s walls and was completed last August. Already, the farm churns out about 80 heads of lettuce per week.
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As we’ve mentioned before, the beauty of hydroponics is that it requires no sunlight, arable land or soil. It also allows city dwellers to have year-round access to fresh vegetables even if they live thousands of miles away from traditional farms. “We are able to grow year round with no natural sunlight inside of our actual food pantry,” Janet Miller, a CAMBA Senior Vice President, told the website. Besides lettuce, they also grow bok choy, spinach, lettuce and herbs.
CAMBA’s very own hydroponic system is also giving the thousands of individuals they serve the opportunity to learn about healthier choices by holding classes on nutrition education and wellness. “It’s going to be a good learning experience, in and out of our pantry service,” said Lucila Santana, CAMBA’s Project Coordinator of the food pantry. “We’ll connect with the community through volunteer opportunities, open houses for school kids, food demonstrations and even free classes on hydroponics.”
With more and more dwellers moving away from farms to the cities, fresh food has to travel a lot farther to end up on people’s plates. But as CAMBA proves, if we can’t live on a farm, why not bring the farm to us?
New York City Wants to Collect Your Leftovers
If you live in Portland, Oregon, or Berkeley, California, you’re probably used to collecting your banana peels, eggshells, and coffee grinds in a plastic bag and putting them on the street corner for the city to collect. Residents of New York City will soon have the same joyful composting opportunity.
The New York City Department of Sanitation and Glad Products (of “don’t get mad, get Glad” fame) announced Thursday that they will be expanding their organic collections pilot program, according to CBS New York.
The program is voluntary and will reach 70,000 homes in the coming months. That means that brown plastic containers for organic food waste will appear on the sidewalks of Brooklyn and Queens in the near future. Anyone who chooses to participate can collect food scraps in their home and put them out on collection day. The pilot project will be introduced in the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Glendale, Middle Village, and Maspeth.
Deputy Sanitation Commissioner Ron Gonen told CBS New York that the city spent $85 million to transport organic waste to landfills last year. But he says the cost is worth it: “That organic material can be converted to compost, which is an organic fertilizer that the city can sell. Or it could be converted into clean, natural gas,” he told CBS.
An expanding compost pilot program is great news for all New Yorkers. Whether you’re a committed gardener looking for nutrient-rich fertilizer, or a father of five who hates tossing leftover food in the trash, the opportunity to throw organic waste into a bin on the street will be a welcome one. So start saving those banana peels.
This Nonprofit Eases the Transition to Civilian Life for Vets
With all the magazines and television shows devoted to makeovers, it seems like physical transformation must be one of America’s favorite topics. Now, one non-profit is bringing the ever-popular makeover concept to some people who deserve it the most: U.S. Veterans.
The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation works with low- and middle-income families in Brooklyn, New York, providing them with a variety of services including affordable housing, foreclosure prevention, energy-saving weatherization, job-search assistance, college preparation, and art classes. One of their newest efforts is a veterans outreach program that provides makeovers and new wardrobes to former service members in an effort to help them make a successful transition to civilian life. So far they’ve served 170 veterans, with plans to help hundreds more this year.
Two participants in this program are veteran Peter Payne and his wife Ida, a married couple of 16 years. In this video, Ida explains, “In 2005 [Peter] had a major seizure and his memory was wiped away. I had to teach him how to do everything all over again.” She said the effort she put into helping him learn to bathe and recognize her and their son was worth it because, “He’s such a wonderful person, a husband like all women would love to have.”
Veteran Cedric Smith works for the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in its veteran outreach programs. After his time in the Army, Smith himself experienced homelessness and unemployment. “I want to let him [Peter] know that he’s not alone, that there’s millions of us who have our addictions, who have our traumatizing experiences, and that if we don’t have each other like we would if we was on the front line, we are the walking dead,” Smith says.
Smith helped the Paynes connect with Saxon/Hart, a company that works with beauty and clothing professionals to donate their services to needy people. They outfitted Cedric in a new suit, and gave Ida the beauty treatment and makeup session that this family that served America so richly deserved.
MORE: How One Woman Helps Veterans Dress for that Oh-So-Important Interview
How a Group of Exercising Seniors Hopes to Change a Crime-Plagued Neighborhood
While much of Brooklyn has enjoyed an influx of wealthy citizens who have grown weary of the Manhattan scene, the community of Brownsville continues to be entrenched in a deadly cycle of high poverty and senseless crime. In 2013, former mayor Michael Bloomberg declared New York City as the safest big city in America, with crime down a total of 30 percent over a 10-year period. In Brownsville, this declaration couldn’t be further from the truth. Over that same period, the neighborhood’s incidence of serious crime went down only 9 percent. And in 2013, the area had 13 murders on record — just three fewer than in 2012. But a group of about 40 elderly women and a few men are doing something together to improve their community and fight poverty: They’re exercising. “It makes people want to come out and do more, rather than be afraid,” Linda Beckford, a 70-year-old Brownsville resident and member of the group, told NPR. “A lot of seniors are by themselves and they don’t want to come out.”
On a recent February day, the women gathered at the local community center, where instructor Sid Howard, who is also a coach with New York Road Runners, led them in an aerobics workout. He starts the class with the elderly in chairs, where they warm up with rubber exercise bands. Eventually, they get up, stretch, dance and work muscles that haven’t moved in ages. On warm-weather days, the group takes to the streets, walking and dancing together. Not only is this an opportunity for them to get active and have fun, but it also gets people used to seeing their elderly neighbors, who before Community Solutions started the program used to stay primarily indoors.
Delores Stitch, one of the ladies in the group, says that she thinks the seniors get more respect now from their young neighbors. “They stop in and speak to us,” she told NPR. “The kids, the young adults, the middle aged.” In the summer, the group will walk to a local fresh produce stand, which is run by teens through another program focused on reinventing the neighborhood. Despite its high rate of crime and bad reputation, many residents of Brownsville and members of the social seniors group have lived here for decades. As Gwen Grant, 65, puts it, underneath the harrowing statistics lies a lot of promise, especially in the kids. “As seniors, we have to be interested in the kids. Don’t just say, ‘They’re bad, they’re troublesome,’ ” she says. “We have to give them what we know. We can also learn from them as well.”
This 6-Year High School Challenges Everything We Thought We Knew About American Education
At the innovative P-TECH early college high school in Brooklyn, “innovators” (what they call their students) don’t finish school until grade 14. But here’s the kicker: When they graduate, they walk away with an associates degree and a guaranteed job at IBM.
Thanks to public and private partnerships (IBM provides mentors for the school), P-TECH kids are taught science, technology engineering and math skills that get them ready for collegiate success and an invaluable leg up in the global economy. It’s a radical makeover of our traditional education system. As Rana Foorohar writes for her TIME cover story on the school, “a four-year high school degree these days only guarantees a $15 an hour future.”
MORE: This City Has a Bold Plan to Close the Technology Gap
P-TECH only launched in Sept. 2011 but already has scores of high-profile endorsements and even imitators. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, inspired by the New York academy, is opening six P-TECH schools in his own city. He told the magazine, “What’s very clear to me is that high school education as it is envisioned today isn’t sufficient for the modern workplace, or the modern economy.”
President Obama visited the Crown Heights-based school last year, and touted its game-changing model in his State of the Union address: “This country should be doing everything in our power to give more kids the chance to go to schools just like this one.”
MORE: Inside the Movement for Free Community College
“Companies, they’re looking for the best-educated people, wherever they live. And they’ll reward them with good jobs and good pay. And if you don’t have a well-educated workforce, you’re gonna be left behind,” Obama said.
The President also said in a speech during his October visit to the school that Verizon and Microsoft are following in the footsteps of P-TECH’s partner, IBM, and are considering public school collaborations. “This is a ticket into the middle class, and it’s available to everyone who is willing to work for it,” he said. “That’s what public education is supposed to do.”
Think It’s Impossible for Rival Gangs to Resolve Their Differences? This Man Will Prove You Wrong
Brooklyn might not look the same as it did back in the 1970s, when Robert DeSana started teaching at John Dewey High School in Bensonhurst. But underneath the coffee shops, loft spaces and trendy restaurants lies some of the same problems that plagued the area decades ago. Gangs are still the way of life for far too many youths born and raised in New York communities. Racial tensions still run high. And drug dealers still stake their claim to street corners. To DeSana, this is no way to live, so for almost 40 years, he’s been showing youths and adults alike that there is another way through the Council for Unity.
The CFU is a nonprofit that empowers youth to take ownership of the problems of bias and violence that exist in their schools and communities. The program, which includes a specific curriculum developed by DeSana and approved by the NYC Board of education in the 1980s, is centered on “Four Pillars”: family, unity, self-esteem and empowerment. The idea is to build a culture of acceptance, in which students from varying backgrounds can grow to understand and support each other to eradicate violence. So far, the program been a success. CFU reaches more than 100,000 kids a year, ranging from 8 to 20 years old, throughout 30 schools in the New York City area and beyond. More than 93 percent of attendees eventually graduate from the program. “If 93 percent of them are graduating, that tells you one thing: The street is not winning, we are,” DeSana told TruthAtlas.
MORE: Why Prisons of the Future Might Look Like College Campuses
When DeSana started the Council in 1975, he designed it as a way to unite opposing groups to prevent violence in school. That sense of peace ended up expanding into the surrounding community, and he was eventually asked to replicate the group at schools that faced similar challenges. From there, CFU just continued to grow. “It started as a club. Then, it became a program, then a course, then a culture,” DeSana said. “Now, it has become a movement.” In addition to New York schools, the Council has taken up residency in various prisons in the area, including Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum security institution in Ossining, New York, and the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead. Here, prisoners from rival gangs can find a common ground and a safe haven. “The founders of CFU in the Suffolk County jail were members and leaders of the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13, the Latin Kings, and the Aryan Brotherhood,” DeSana said. “That is an impossibility. That had never occurred before.” DeSana hopes he can prevent at-risk youths from becoming criminals in by offering them a community where they feel safe and secure, without the violence.
MORE: Meet the Venture Capitalist Who Is Investing in Redemption
These Gloves Will Keep You Warm and Help Renew American Manufacturing
Somewhere along the line, “Made in the USA” changed from a sign of quality to the sign of a high price tag. Brooklyn-based Bram Robinson is one of the people who are trying to turn back the clock . His company Upstate Stock makes knit gloves and hats in an upstate New York factory. Check out the company’s Kickstarter page to get in on the American-made movement.