Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

It’s circus season in New York.  While the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Big Apple Circus are attracting widespread media attention, there’s another circus in town that is attracting consistently sold-out performances in Prospect Park.  While residents that align the park complain every year about the blasting music and defeaning crowds, devoted fans come every year to watch death defying acrobatic acts, trapeze artists spiraling through the air, disappearing tigers, and dancing elephants.  

The Universoul Circus definitely puts the soul in circus.  Founded in 1994 by Cedric Walker, who helped manage the Commodores and Jackson Five in the 70s, it is the only black owned circus in the country. Originally drawing on African-American cultural forms, Walker has expanded the show to include an international array of talent.  Two of his performers speak about what they bring from their home countries to the Universoul Circus.

Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia provides services to the homeless.  Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week it has an outreach worker drive throughout the city and check on the street homeless population.  Often struggling with substance addiction and/ or mental illness, this portion of the homeless is the hardest to assist.  Sam Santiago has been working as an outreach worker for Project H.O.M.E for ten years, prior to which he was a police officer and private investigator.  He knows almost all of the people living on the streets of Philadelphia, and the population has grown to trust him.  I accompanied him on one of his shifts.

10 am – Meet Sam Santiago, the outreach worker and Doug, a family doctor from Jefferson Hopsital at Project H.O.M.E.’s offices at 1515 Fairmount St.  Depart in the outreach van for a homeless “café,” which provides shelter and food for the homeless. 

10:07 am – Arrive at café.  Approximately, thirty homeless are spread out within a large open room.  Several men crowd around a Dell laptop, which seems to be the big excitement in the room.  Some people are sleeping on the floor.  A young man with a tattoo on his face stares blankly at the floor.  D.J., who seems to be enjoying himself the most, chases another man across the room, hitting him with a banana. Doug refills a prescription for anti-psychotic medication for a woman who has been off of her meds for a week and takes the stitches out of a woman’s foot, which had been in there for a month. 

10:15 am – Jack, a homeless man in the shelter strikes up a conversation with me.  He has large gashes in his hands and his fingers are stained with nicotine.  Thinking I’m an outreach worker he explains that he is ready to get out of the shelter and start his life anew.  He wants to go to Project H.O.M.E.’s offices to get the paperwork started.  He had a drinking problem, but says he has kicked it.  I tell him I’m there reporting on the homeless.  This prompts a political tirade.  Though an Obama supporter, he rails against the left wing media, the “Clinton juggernaut,” and the Bush family’s ties to the Nazis.  He gets louder and louder, people start to stare, and then storms off. 

10:37 am – Take Cedric, one of the men at the shelter, to a clinic for his doctor’s appointment.  Sam, the outreach worker talks about how homeless come from other states to Philadelphia because it is known for having better services.  But they have to have resided in the city for thirty days before they are allowed any services or shelter, something that is hard to prove if you’re homeless.  He says, “my thinking is if your homeless your homeless.  I don’t care where you’re from.”

11:02 am – Head over to Miracles In Progress, a treatment center for substance abuse and addiction to drop off a bag for Cedric, who Sam was able to persuade to leave the streets and go into treatment.  Cedric is a heavy drinker and smokes crack.  He is in blackout, part of the detox program where he can’t have any contact with people, so we aren’t able to visit with him.  He had been hanging out at 2^nd and Market St. where two restaurants were paying him a couple hundred dollars a week to stay away.  This helped sustain his crack addiction. 

11:15 am -  While pulling away from the clinic, Sam spots William, who is recovering from a crack addiction.  William smiles broadly at Sam and waves a set of keys at him, explaining that he is about to get a new apartment.  We head over to the Chestnut St. bridge where William had been living for six months before Sam and his caseworker were able to convince him to get treatment.  “He’s a real smart guy and everything, except when he’s smoking crack,” Sam said.  “He will smoke his whole social security check.”

11:22 am – We drive along the railroad tracks that run below the bridge and pull off to the side where we squeeze through a break in a chain link fence.  A path leads us up a hill to a cavernous hiding place underneath the bridge.  Mounds of trash are strewn throughout the space to the point that it resembles a landfill.  A man sleeps in a tent with an array of belongings stacked around him.  It is 20 degrees outside and he is covered with blankets.  He has cleared the trash back away from his spot to keep the rats away.  Sam approaches him, not getting to close so as not to scare him.  He introduces himself and asks him if he needs anything.  The man tells him his name is Paul and that he has seen him around and knows who he is.  Sam gives him his card and tells him that when he is ready to let him know.  It’s very difficult to get the homeless population living on the streets to come into the shelter system.  “I’m not going to sit there and preach to him about treatment and all,” Sam says.  “He doesn’t need to know all that shit.  He already knows it.”  Paul seems lucid but deeply depressed.  He thanks Sam and we leave. 

Under the Bridge

Sam says some of the homeless like this spot because the noise of the cars going over the bridge and the sound of the trains below help drowned out the voices in their head.

12:12 am – We stop at a 7/11 so Sam can play the lottery.  Unfortunately, the machine is down.

12:30 – We go to St. Columba, a small boarding house for homeless who are mentally ill, to pick up Eugene, a Vietnam vet who needs to be taken over to the Veterans Affairs office.  Eugene doesn’t live at St. Columba but wants to.  Richard who does live there, approaches wanting to show me a garden that was outside but isn’t there anymore.  Dressed in khaki pants, a blue sweater and red scarf that accents his white hair, he speaks rapidly, often unable to complete the syllables of one word before moving on to the next.  He jumps from topic to topic, unable to maintain a single line of thought.  After several minutes of rambling, I finally interrupt him and ask him his name, which quickly, though fleetingly focuses his mind.  He asks me my name.  I tell him it’s Sophie, which reminds him that he met a Sophie from Bulgaria and he wants to know if I am her.  He descends into a monologue on the people of Bulgaria ending on the topic of Queen Sofia.  He also mentions he is from New Mexico where he was a civil engineer and that he worked on his Ph.D. at Temple University.  I tell him goodbye.  “Au revoir!” he exclaims with a big smile on his face and waves as I walk away.

1:15 -  We take Eugene back to the Veterans Affairs office.  Very thin and soft-spoken, Eugene walks with a cane and has a sweet disposition.  He takes medicine for his arthritis and seizures, as well as medication to “stop his mind from going this way and that.”  He also had four toes amputated after he dropped a keg on them while unloading a truck.  He has a cast on his right arm from where he fell while living in Texas with his girlfriend, who died of alcoholic related seizures.  Eugene hasn’t had a drink for thirteen years. 

1:45 – We go to Jefferson Hospital to drop off Doug and head back to Project H.O.M.E’s offices. 

The obvious logic that arises from the recent spike in housing foreclosures is that if you cannot afford a house, then you should not buy one, regardless of what any bank tells you.  There is a patronizing element in this message that has been emanating throughout media outlets, espoused by experts, politicians, and pundits.  If you are poor you are just going to have to accept that not everyone can be a homeowner, some people will just have to be renters.

But what the foreclosure surge in part represents is the continuing dissolution of the middle class.  After WWII, as society recovered from the Great Depression, homeownership levels soared and the middle class became more robust.  Over the past six decades, levels have hovered within the sixty- something percentage range. While the issues of predatory lending and variable interest rates have played a role, the increasing financial insecurity of people that are considered middle-class is of vital importance.

Market deregulation has contributed to an economy that increasingly values a versatile workforce that eschews the long-term contract in favor of the short, contributing to job insecurity.  The crisis in health insurance poses the possibility of financial ruin for families who are uninsured, underinsured, and insured.   Utility, food and gas prices are on the rise, and the cost of a college education is grossly out of proportion to average American salaries.

Half of all households earn $48,000 or less, 34% earn less than $30,000 per year.   While politicians wrangle about what constitutes a middle class salary, it is clear that an increasing majority of Americans are struggling to maintain the outward indicators of a middle-class lifestyle.

Homeownership in the United States has historically been linked to positive social values.  Homeowners are supposedly more stable, involved in their neighborhoods and communities, and more likely to be upstanding citizens.  Americans aspire to this social status.   Now we are deriding average Americans for their aspiration to be homeowners and the middle-class for thinking they are so entitled.