Pictures flash by. He is dead. He is dead too. A crushing family legacy of loss.
The picture of the street outside her door appears darkly fearsome. She worries, she says, as she goes out on the street.
But Amber Ellis’ message is that she is a survivor, a believer, a person with a foot on future’s up escalator.
Check her video, above. It’s a powerful story told with even greater strength when you appreciate the story-telling quality of this sophomore from Gary Comer College Prep.
She is one of dozens who’ve benefited in the last decade from the work of Free Spirit Media, a youth media development program that works with youngsters at five Chicago schools. http://www.freespiritmedia.org/
And they are one of 11 youth programs that belong to the Chicago Youth Voices Network, a unique and inspiring collection hard to find anywhere on this globe. http://cyvn.org/
The gift of Free Spirit Media, beyond its being there, is its belief, as founder Jeff McCarter explains, of helping youths to tell their stories in their own voices.
And Amber’s, as he says, is about loss and about maybe being the last one standing, but standing up nonetheless to live a life fulfilled.
This is a story that could easily fit into whatever you are writing about this summer in terms of teens and violence and the positive steps being taken to deal with this tragedy. If you need help connecting with any of the programs, or putting together a package of stories, I’d gladly help out.
So, too, if you have any you want to showcase or pass along, please do so. Steve@newstips.org
If all else fails it, the ethnic news media can always count on one thing to survive. It is a connection. It is a legacy. It is a memory. It is another way of listening, hearing, seeing. It carries the sound that lasts for generations.
As yet another wonderful NPR program reminded us today, the success of some ethnic media amid the stunning collapse of American journalism is their ability to link one generation after another with a common root, and to keep their eye on what matters.
It is the ability of some Latino radio stations to capture the imagination of second and third generation Latinos with a delicious presentation of Spanglish.
Its the powerful appeal of Korean or Chinese television stations that tell the story of our daily lives in the rhythm of the place where we now live but in the language of where we came from.
And it is the ability to satisfy the hunger of immigrant parents and their children and their children’s children who want to be able to feel as if they are living within the same story though generations and countries separate them.
What works for the Ethnic New Media
The ethnic media can continue to thrive by speaking out and speaking for their communities. By staying focused on this mission and doing its job in the most creative way possible. By staying update in technology and business strategy so it can get by on less in these hard times. By learning to share with others in order to survive. And by not giving up.
