We Live Here

Sonny Liston, Frankie Freeman, Chuck Berry, Tina Turner, Dick Gregory: That’s just a handful of America’s black luminaries who called “The Ville” home, a one square mile neighborhood in north St. Louis. But decades of population loss and systemic disinvestment have left it a shell of its former self. We team up with our very cool friends at WYPR’s “Out of the Blocks” and tell the neighborhood’s story through the voices of people who call it home today.

We keep the stories going and keep up our streak of handing the mics over to the community. Listen to the second half of this year’s “I Live Here” live storytelling event. Hear from three St. Louis artists — including a young poet, a country music performer and a singer-songwriter who are all grappling with the ideas of place and home.

It’s story time. Last year’s “I Live Here” storytelling event was so much fun, we decided to do it again this year. This week’s episode is a little different, and features hosts Tim and Kameel handing the mics to the community. In this first half, hear stories about black love, a woman who finds peace in her identity and spirituality and an outspoken politician who once struggled to speak for herself, let alone others.

There have been near-daily protests in St. Louis following the September 2017 acquittal of a white police officer who killed a black man six years ago. And mounting allegations of excessive use of force by police officers responding to those protests. As all this pressure from the outside builds, we’re coming at the issue of police accountability from a different angle. We bring you the stories of black cops, past and present, who’ve been trying to change the system from the inside.

In one of the country’s most segregated cities, the division seems nearly permanent: that black people in St. Louis live north, and white people south. It wasn’t always this way. Back when Christine Schmiz was growing up, plenty of white people lived in north St. Louis. But they left in a wave of white flight. Christine’s blue-collar family was part of this wave — a traumatic move for the then-14-year-old, who said she struggled since then to find a place she truly belonged. Decades later, during a process of reflection and self-examination, Christine found solace in an unlikely place — a poem written by St. Louis native Cheeraz Gorman. The young black woman also grew up in north St Louis, a generation after Christine, and tells the story of trying to make sense of what has become of her childhood neighborhood.

As we’ve been collecting stories for you guys over the past few months, other people have been prodding us to tell our story. Since we’re about halfway through season 3, we thought why not now? People are curious about the nitty-gritty behind the show, and how we do it together. Plus, we drop some news about an upcoming storytelling event we’re having Nov. 8 in St. Louis, and an upcoming episode about we need your help with.

Earlier this summer, we got bombarded with messages and emails from people wanting to know if it was true that Missouri has snatched back a wage increase from the lowest-paid workers in St. Louis. Short answer? Yes. But today’s show isn’t about that short answer. It’s about the long one.The story of HOW and WHY the city is locked in this battle. And the growing movement to keep up the fight to raise the standard of living for thousands of low-wage workers in this state — which now centers a lot on regular people working to get the raise back.

On this episode we explore the idea of a woke spectrum. You longtime listeners probably knew we would end up here eventually. After all, it is our new tagline. We go through responses we’ve collected about the word woke and we spend time with regular people -- many of them white -- trying to figure out, in light of everything going on, where they fit on this spectrum. And as it turns out, our spectrum kind of, sort of has some theoretical underpinnings when it comes to racial identity. You’ll just have to listen to find out what we mean.

Today’s show is all about choices. We’ll listen in as Damon Davis and Sabaah Folayan, producers of the critically acclaimed documentary ‘Whose Streets,’ talk about their choice to make the film and how they hope it will become a lasting document. We’ll also hear how a choice a good friend of ours made while covering Ferguson continues to shape the choices he makes now. A note that you won’t be hearing from us much on this episode. Because on today’s show, our choice is to listen.

On the third anniversary of Mike Brown's killing, we share the story of three playwrights who penned monologues about their experiences as black men in America. This is part 1 of two shows we're using to explore to art and activism. Part 2 will drop later in August.