We Live Here

Food insecurity has long been a problem facing people across the country and for many children, not knowing where their next meal is coming from or only eating food that lacks nutrition devastates their ability to focus, learn, and stay healthy. More recently in St. Louis black-led efforts like STL Lunch and the Hands Up United Books and Breakfast program have recognized that food access is a racial equity issue and the need that arises especially when school is out of session for summer. Now with COVID-19 closing schools until the next school year, food insecurity for children has become even more pressing than before. In this episode, we talk to a parent, a school board member, and a community advocate about the struggle to ensure that students in North St. Louis County are educated and fed during the pandemic.

The response to COVID-19 has varied across the country and across the globe. By now the especially devastating toll on black Americans has been well documented with death rates disturbingly and disproportionately higher than whites.The city of St. Louis made national headlines when its first 12 recorded deaths from COVID-19 were black. The peak of the first wave of cases expected to hit around the same day this episode is being released, which is why we wanted to better understand how the outbreak is touching the lives of black St. Louisans. In this episode a doctor, a mayor, and a nurse share their stories about how COVID-19 is affecting black residents in the St. Louis region and how they're working to make sure everyone in our town can stand a chance against the deadly virus.

If you’ve been tuning into our recent episodes, you’ll know that a couple of weeks ago, we did an episode about anti-Asian xenophobia. We collected so many revealing and inspiring interviews for that episode that we couldn’t use them all. We decided that a special conversation we had with two Vietnamese American doctors which has continued to stick with us through this time is befitting especially since the St. Louis region is still expecting some very difficult weeks ahead. In this episode, we wanted to take some time to share two interconnected and inspiring stories about healing and community in the face of xenophobia and an invisible enemy.

States across the country have announced shelter-in-place orders but for many that is not an option. The challenge for St. Louis and elsewhere is how to curb the spread of the coronavirus among people who are unhoused. This virus has highlighted how the same inequities in St. Louis are found in towns across the U.S. which is why we are partnering with our public radio friends at America Amplified to help explore how the spread of the coronavirus is affecting those who are unhoused in St. Louis and beyond.

By now, there are reports about Chinatowns across the country that are hurting for business because of anti-Asian xenophobia. We wanted to understand how anti-Asian xenophobia has impacted Asian Americans and Asian American-owned small businesses here in St. Louis. In this episode, we hear from a Taiwanese American therapist, a Chinese American organizer, and two Asian American small business owners about how the rise of anti-Asian xenophobia has affected their lives.

Schools are closed across the country and some are done for the rest of the academic year. The shift to online learning for many schools can also reveal the deep economic and racial inequities that characterize schools in our hometown and yours. We wanted to understand how this sudden change could affect long-standing racial and economic disparities in education outcomes. In our first first episode about the COVID-19 crisis, we will hear what the director of a local education nonprofit and a teacher are doing to keep kids from falling behind.

We’ve spent the past couple of months preparing for a season on the theme “black on campus.” But with efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, like many of you, we can no longer go on with “business as usual.” We decided that now is not the time for a season about college campuses, especially when campuses are closed around the country.So we will be postponing the release of episodes about the black experience on college campuses until a later date. Instead, we’ll be putting a racial and economic equity lens on the outbreak of COVID-19… and recovery from it. Like you, we don’t know how this is going to play out. But what seems certain is that this crisis will hit those with the least in our society the hardest. And you’re going to be hearing a lot of phone conversations, because just like you we’re practicing social distancing. We want to hear your stories about how COVID-19 is affecting you, so send a voice memo to welivehere@stlpr.org. We’ll be dropping episodes at least once a week starting March 26. And we’ll step up production from there if we need to, so keep an eye on your feed. Be safe and be kind to each other.

The We Live Here team is about to start dropping episodes for our brand new season! This time, we’re talking about what it means to be black on campus. And we’re working with Educate, a podcast from American Public Media that explores stories about education and opportunity across the country. In the coming weeks, we’ll share the stories, experiences, and movements shaping the lives of black students across the country. And reveal the work being done to impact black students for generations to come.

St. Louis is home to longest running school desegregation program in the country. For generations it has shaped the students’ lives and how they see race in one of the most segregated places in America. On this episode we share five firsthand accounts of the trials and triumphs experienced during the program’s long history. What’s revealed is a portrait of a community that still struggles to make every student feel welcome in the classroom.

Up to this point in our season, we’ve been talking about big, top down structures and practices that create municipal divides, and how they’ve made St. Louis one of the most segregated cities in America. So we decided to flip the script and talk about bridging those divides from the ground up. On this episode, we tell you how Mayor McGee went from sharecropping in the deep south to helping a group of mostly black mayors share resources in the fractured system they inherited.