There’s a red, white and blue sign in front window of the house where Ed Schoenberger lives in Greensburg, Kansas. It says “Rebuilding Greensburg with Pride.” This is certainly true for Ed, who has lived in this town for decades, and cared for its history with equivalent pride for just as long. Ed is the [...]

Our upcoming episode of SOTRU is set in the complicated, and ever-evolving borough of Brooklyn, New York.  In the show, we explore housing, development, and the inevitable impact it has on community.  In my research, I connected with Michael Premo.  He and his creative partner,  Rachel Falcone are “oral history artists.”  They met while working [...]

From the moment I heard the music and poetry of Blair, I was in love with it and believed in it.  He weaves spoken word poetry, with folk rock, trip-hop and punk. On his MySpace page, he writes, “My dad looked like Chuck Berry, played like Hank Williams. My mom cleaned white folk’s houses. [...]

Five years in the making and the winner of more than 20 awards in the U.S. and abroad, Brother Outsider is a feature-length documentary portrait of Bayard Rustin. Described as “potent and persuasive” (Los Angeles Times), “beautifully crafted” (Boston Globe), “complex and nuanced” (Chicago Reader), and “poignant” (TIME), the film premiered at the Sundance Film [...]

Graffiti and murals have become so integrated into the fabric of so many of our cities, that I often forget to stop to look at them.  In Brooklyn, as well as dozens of other places around the country, a specific type of mural exists among the cryptic tags, and colorful cartoon-esque characters.  Often comprised of [...]

Like most, I had never heard of Bayard Rustin until Al told me that we were doing an entire episode about him. I think in these infancy stages we were all still referring to him as Bay-erd. Anyway, like most people do now, I Googled him and stumbled upon his Wikipedia page (can you imagine [...]

The year is 1967. Bayard Rustin, only a few years off of the triumph of organizing the 1963 March on Washington, is standing before a crowd of people. He’s laying out a plan to erase poverty from American cities and towns. It’s not just a pie-in-the-sky spouting of rhetoric, but an actual, tangible plan. He’s [...]

If it bleeds it leads.
That was pretty much the mantra in news media. I worked for a TV station in Miami many moons ago, producing local newscasts. TV news is an interesting beast. It’s a furious scramble to get the breaking news on first before your competition, where death and destruction take up a majority [...]