Dear Cleveland: Seeking young voices on life in the city and how to make it better
This reporting is supported by the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism National Fellowship.
Other stories in the series include:
MC2STEM High School freshman Elijah Rox, left, practices verses he composed as part of a residency at his school where students write song about what they'd like to see change in their community. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer)
Cleveland, Ohio -A low, vibrating thud filters through a hallway of MC2STEM, the city high school housed in the Great Lakes Science Center, which looks out on Lake Erie.
At each end of the corridor, students cluster in groups around plywood recording booths fitted with professional microphones and lights. Holding headphones to their ears, they practice the verses they've spent the last few days writing:
This is the streets
Somebody gonna die today
Somebody's mama gonna cry today
That's why some people gotta get high today
So I just gotta stay OK.
The landscape of Cleveland, painted with their words, can feel bleak.
The students write of bloodied bodies, trash-strewn streets, abandoned homes, gunfire and so many crying mamas you can almost hear the wailing.
My life is a job, it's a 24-hour shift
We have responsibilities of adults but we still little kids
That's how 14-year-old Malikeye Johnson describes his life, as a series of tough choices.
"It's just the way it is," he says.
This is reality to many of these students, and others who since 2012 have poured their troubles (and hopes) into songs as part of an in-school residency, after school program or summer camp with area nonprofit Refresh Collective.
We first collaborated with Refresh Collective while reporting on lead poisoning. Its teen interns tackled two tough public health problems - lead poisoning and gun violence - through music, which they saw as better way to engage young people and encourage change.
Many of the children and families we met while writing about lead poisoning in Cleveland struggled with a lot more than exposure to this toxic metal. On top of the normal childhood worries about fitting in, taking tests, dating and bullying, they were stressed about feeling safe in their neighborhoods, getting to school on public transit and having healthy food to eat.
For this project we wanted to write about how kids live, grow up, learn and play in Cleveland, often facing multiple challenges at once.
We realized quickly that while we might have studied a lot of data about life in Cleveland, we didn't know enough about what was important about this story to the children themselves.
Over the last six months, we've started a series of conversations with Cleveland students and young people, including the teens at MC2, to address that problem.
What we've heard is that we need to do a better job of listening. Cleveland's children have a lot to say to the adults around them, about what's wrong, and right, in their lives. They also have ideas about how to fix what they see that's not working.
We decided the best thing we could do to help share their thoughts was to get out of their way as much as possible, and let them speak to you as if they were sending direct messages. That's why we're calling this project "Dear Cleveland."
"Dear Cleveland"
As we were thinking about this project, we spent time with students in English classes at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in the Hough neighborhood. What students shared there planted the seeds for our approach to this reporting. Five classes took a survey that told us that violence, racism and the state of their neighborhoods were among their top concerns.
They also told us that they were most comfortable communicating through music or photos, and not with adults or the wider community.
That, we concluded after listening to them, was because of how they felt they were labeled or perceived:
"People misunderstand us, I say this because what they see happening in our neighborhood they think it's everybody fault. They blame everybody for other's people's mistakes. They label us as troubled kids but most of us have potential ...."
"They see us and think we don't care about our future or see us as failures."
One young man at MLK gifted us the name for this project when his response during one of our early conversations was pitched as an open letter starting with the words "Dear Cleveland."
Seeking change
Students at MC2STEM High School use a sound booth to record songs they've been working on that share perspective on issues they face in their community and care about. From left to right are: Travon Sellers, Kieara Clay, Andre Cook, and Anthony Moten. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer)
One thing we know already is that things are tough for many, many children in Cleveland. More than half live below the poverty line, among the highest rates of any big city nationally. In some neighborhoods, one in three kids have elevated levels of lead in their blood. More than three-fifths of Cleveland school kindergartners were off track in language and literacy proficiency last year, according to state testing.
There's no one way to measure how stressed our kids are. But decades of research has shown that poverty, witnessing violence and even living in a neighborhood with distressed housing can cause physical stress responses in the body of exposed children. Although the body's response is different for each child, if the stress doesn't go away and adults don't provide support, there can be harmful consequences. These include long-term health problems, premature death, even genetic changes passed on to the next generation.
In just one Cleveland class of about 3,500 kindergartners who started school in 2013, a Case Western Reserve University analysis shows:
- Almost 40 percent (2 in 5) had a case of abuse or neglect reported involving their family;
- 87 percent (almost 9 out of 10 kids) received food assistance at some point;
- Nearly three quarters had lead in their blood before entering school;
- Almost 1 in 10 were born both too early and too small.
In a 2015 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of older Cleveland students, 36 percent reported feeling sad or depressed.
A federally supported study of kids who came into contact with children services, the juvenile court or mental or community behavioral providers over a three-year period in Cuyahoga County, found that 94 percent of the children over 8 years old surveyed said they had been victimized in at least one way: stolen from, assaulted, been a witness to domestic or community violence, exposed to a shooting, or had someone close to them killed.
We also know that nearly all the above adverse experiences disproportionately affect black and minority children.
We've heard these experiences reflected in the songs, survey responses and conversations we've had with young people in our city.
We've also heard their desire for change.
Kids with the Refresh Collective groups respond to a few simple questions when they compose their music:
What do you want to change in our world?
In your neighborhood?
In your life?
For some, the answer is heartbreakingly simple.
I wish I was Superman, I could save people's lives ...
I'm a kid from the C-L-E I'm not tryin' to D-I-E.
I want to stay alive, and survive, also strive...
I make great efforts to achieve
I don't want to get shot and watch my chest bleed.
Those words belong to Deangelo Boykins. When he wrote them in 2015 he felt overwhelmed by the violence in his St. Clair-Superior neighborhood.
"It was hard fearing death," says Boykins, now 18. "I was hoping some people in the community would listen to that."
The song, "Our Time" was a collaboration with Ariana Rodgers, who was 12 at the time and wrestling with the knowledge that a boy she knew had a gun.
"I was dreaming of what the results of that might be," Ariana, now a sophomore at Cleveland School of the Arts says. Or what might happen if she told someone.
She viewed her lyrics as a call to action:
It's our time, the struggle is real
Let's bring back Cleveland before it gets killed.
There are many other young people across the city looking for ways to make things better in their neighborhoods, schools and communities, not just for themselves.
One is a group of teen and young adult "social justice warriors" who for months have been meeting as the Empowering Youth Exploring Justice (EYEJ) Impact 25 Youth Council to discuss problems they face in their lives and potential solutions they can present to community leaders.
We are also working with teens at Cleveland schools who research and work to address health problems they see in their schools and neighborhoods, including obesity, lack of exercise and depression.
More than 500 Cleveland area students participate in the Health Professions Affinity Community (HPAC), an extracurricular program, and we hope to tell you about some of their projects.
Ariana Rodgers, and so many others we've talked to, say they want to be heard. They want us to understand their pain and what they overcome, but also what they aspire to do and become.
"Don't criticize us," Ariana said recently. "Help us make it right."
We hope in the coming months to collaborate with young people, and help them share their stories in a variety of ways: essays, artwork, music, poems, podcasts, videos.
We also are looking to work with Cleveland kids and young adults (and their parents, teachers, neighbors and mentors) who want to study the history and roots of the problems and explore solutions that might work in their communities.
[This story was originally published by The Plain Dealer.]