Sadly, murder victims have been framed as statistics, especially in high crime cities. Father Bill Terry decided to do something about it and found a simple way to humanize these victims.

Visit our New Orleans page to listen to the Murder Board segment in our full hour radio episode or for further information about what we found in the Big Easy.

Will Allen started a food revolution in creating new urban farmers across the country. State of the Re:Union explores one of those farms in Milwaukee called Sweet Water Organics. Check out their incredible process that utilizes aquaponics and hydroponics, as well as their philosophy on taking another step to fighting the phenomena known as food deserts.

For more information on Will Allen’s Growing Power, Sweet Water Organics or our Milwaukee episode, visit our Milwaukee page!

Have a story of urban farming or how food availability has impacted your community? We would really like to hear what you have to say in the comments below.

For the first episode of our new season of shows, we spent the third week of June in the Española Valley of New Mexico, a place none of us had been to before.  It was truly eye-opening and exciting to spend time with farmers, santeros, mechanics, therapists, professors, oral historians, addicts, cashiers, musicians and poets…

The reason we ventured southwest-ward in the first place was because of water.  Specifically the way in which the people of the valley, for well over 400 years, have thought about, shared and used water.  In New Mexico, there are more than 1,000 acequias, which are not only man-made irrigation ditches, but also an entire culture and decentralized democracy in and of themselves. (more…)

Hello, Fellow Re:Union-Goers

A few weeks ago Brenton, our marvelous multimedia maker, told me about this outstanding idea he had. Now, Brenton’s an idea man through-and-through. When he’s not brainstorming ways to capture that elusive SOTRU story through the creative use of media, he’s strategizing effective ways to involve our audience and encourage them to tell stories about their communities. So, a clever concept from his area of the office is nothing new. But his plan for The My Community in One Picture Project, well this idea is absolutely genius. (more…)

In case you missed it, State of the Re:Union was on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ last Friday. They featured Al’s piece on Greensburg, Kansas, a town that’s rebuilding green after a devastating tornado three years ago. It’s a shortened version of our hour-long episode on Greensburg, named ‘To the Stars through Difficulties.’

You can listen to the story on NPR’s website.

Or, to hear the entire Greensburg episode of State of the Re:Union, visit our page featuring the show as well as supplemental stories and videos.

Whether by default or design, all of us on the SOTRU team are gradually becoming city experts. With each fresh location we go to, we accumulate new perspectives on how different places are approaching a frequently overlapping set of challenges, be it how to stem a rise in crime or reverse a loss of jobs, halt a wave of foreclosures or repair an urban infrastructure that’s seen better days.  What if to solve some of these problems we turned not to the usual handful of urban planners and economic development honchos… but to a group of physicists? (more…)