Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on May 16, 2022. Her stepfather's name is Supreme. I would be off in the woods somewhere writing and I would call her. This week, an expansion of her reporting comes out within the pages of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.. Clothing donations. And I hope that she'll continue to feel that way. Chris Hayes speaks with Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist and author Andrea Elliott about her book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City., Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City. Now in her 20s, Dasani became the first in her immediate family to graduate high school, and she enrolled in classes at LaGuardia Community College. Her siblings will soon be scrambling to get dressed and make their beds before running to the cafeteria to beat the line. She held the Bible for Tish James, the incoming then-public advocate who held Dasani's fist up in the air and described her to the entire world as, "My new BFF.". And I had focused for years on the story of Islam in a post-9/11 America. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean, these were people with tremendous potential and incredible ideas about what their lives could be that were such a contrast to what they were living out. She is a child of New York City. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. (LAUGH) You know? She felt that she left them and this is what happened. Dasani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. And, as she put it, "It makes me feel like something's going on out there." It's called Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. Each spot is routinely swept and sprayed with bleach and laid with mousetraps. Chapter 1. Lee-Lees cry was something else. Criminal justice. Author Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. The citys wealth has flowed to its outer edges, bringing pour-over coffee and artisanal doughnuts to places once considered gritty. To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. Thats a lot on my plate.. And that was a new thing for me. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. It's important to not live in a silo. People who have had my back since day one. This is so important." And demographers have studied this and I think that we still don't really know ultimately. She said, "Home is the people. Every once in a while, it would. And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. She will focus in class and mind her manners in the schoolyard. They have yet to stir. And there was a lot of complicated feelings about that book, as you might imagine. And, you know, I think that there's, in the prose itself, tremendous, you know, I think, sort of, ethical clarity and empathy and humanization. Now the bottle must be heated. And by the time she got her youngest siblings to school and got to her own school, usually late, she had missed the free breakfast at the shelter and the free breakfast at her school. Her siblings, she was informed, were placed in foster care. I didn't have a giant stack of in-depth, immersive stories to show him. They will drop to the floor in silence. The movies." She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. And that carries a huge ethical quandary because you don't know, "Will they come to regret this later on?" To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. And for most of us, I would say, family is so important. Back then, from the ghettos isolated corners, a perfume ad seemed like the portal to a better place. Chris Hayes: You know, the U.S., if you go back to de Tocqueville and before that, the Declaration and the founders, you know, they're very big (LAUGH) on civic equality. Dasanis story, which ran on the front page in late 2013, became totemic in a moment of electoral flux in New York after the election of Democrat Bill de Blasio as mayor on a It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. Dasani's 20. Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless It was really so sweet. Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. She will kick them awake. But she was not at all that way with the mice. Just steps away are two housing projects and, tucked among them, a city-run homeless shelter where the heat is off and the food is spoiled. I got rice, chicken, macaroni. The fork and spoon are her parents and the macaroni her siblings - except for Baby Lee-Lee, who is a plump chicken breast. She became the first child in her family to graduate high school and she has now entered LaGuardia Community College. I felt that it was really, really important to explain my process to this imam, in particular, who I spent six months with, who had come from Egypt and had a very different sense of the press, which was actually a tool of oppression. And it wasn't a huge amount of money as far as I know, although Legal Aid's never told me (LAUGH) exactly how much is in it. Mice were running everywhere. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. Over the next year, 911 dispatchers will take some 350 calls from Auburn, logging 24 reports of assault, four reports of child abuse, and one report of rape. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. And so putting that aside, what really changed? Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. So Chanel is in Bed-Stuy. So in There Are No Children Here, you know, if you go over there to the Henry Horner Homes on the west side, you do have the United Center. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. "What were you thinking in this moment? I had been there for a while. They have learned to sleep through anything. They think, "All men are created equal," creed is what distinguishes the U.S., what gives it its, sort of, moral force and righteousness in rebelling against the crown. And, of course, the obvious thing that many people at the time noted was that, you know, there were over a million people in bondage at the same time they were saying this. She would change her diaper. Now in her 20s, Dasani became the first in her immediate family to graduate high school, and she enrolled in classes at LaGuardia Community College. On a good day, Dasani walks like she is tall, her chin held high. And I pulled off from my shelf this old copy of Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here, which is a classic incredible book about two brothers in the Chicago housing projects in the 1980s. A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. Chris Hayes: Yeah. I wanted to, kind of, follow up (LAUGH) the book that I loved so much in the '80s by looking once again at the story of poor urban America through one child. ", And we were working through a translator. And a lot of that time was spent together. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. She is among 432 homeless children and parents living at Auburn. Elliott picks up the story in Invisible Child , a book that goes well beyond her original reporting in both journalistic excellence and depth of insight. Elliott spent Every morning, Dasani leaves her grandmothers birthplace to wander the same streets where Joanie grew up, playing double Dutch in the same parks, seeking shade in the same library. And I said, "Yes." I want people to read the book, which is gonna do a better job of this all because it's so, sort of, like, finely crafted. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. So she lived in that shelter for over three years. She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". We'd love to hear from you. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. Some donations came in. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. She made leaps ahead in math. I think that that was a major compass for me was this idea that, "Don't ever get too comfortable that you know your position here or your place. And I remember the imam's face was just, like, horrified. Slipping out from her covers, Dasani goes to the window. It's in resources. Chanel was raised on the streets and relied on family bonds, the reporter learned. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. But she was so closely involved in my process. Their sister is always first. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series But what about the ones who dont? Shes not alone. And she wanted to beat them for just a few minutes in the morning of quiet by getting up before them. I can read you the quote. And then you have to think about how to address it. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. Sept. 28, 2021. So I work very closely with audio and video tools. And at the same time, there's the old Janet Malcolm line about how every journalist who's, you know, not deluded will tell you what they're doing is ethically indefensible, which is not true and, kind of, hyperbolic, but scratches at something a little bit of a kernel of truth, which is that, like, there is always something intense and strange and sometimes a little hard to reckon with when you are reporting and telling the story of people who are in crisis, emergency trauma and you, yourself, are not. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and seven siblings in one of New York City's Elliott hopes Invisible Child readers see people beyond the limiting labels of homeless and poor and address the deep historical context that are part of these complicated problems, she says. And she sees a curious thing on the shelf of her local bodega. The sound that matters has a different pitch. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Thank you! The bodegas were starting. And, of course, children aren't the face of the homeless. More often she is running to the monkey bars, to the library, to the A train that her grandmother cleaned for a living. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. I don't want to really say what Dasani's reaction is for her. For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. And that's just the truth. And so I also will say that people would look at Dasani's family from the outside, her parents, and they might write them off as, you know, folks with a criminal record. So I think that is what's so interesting is you rightly point out that we are in this fractured country now. Mice scurry across the floor. Nope.. To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. Well, if you know the poor, you know that they're working all the time. And what really got me interested, I think, in shifting gears was in the end of 2011, Occupy Wall Street happened. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. By the time, I would say, a lot of school kids were waking up, just waking up in New York City to go to school, Dasani had been working for two hours. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. They loved this pen and they would grab it from me (LAUGH) and they would use it as a microphone and pretend, you know, she was on the news. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. We see a story of a girl who's trying to not escape, she says. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. I do, though. And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. And that's really true of the poor. Then Jim Ester and the photographer (LAUGH) who was working with me said, "We just want to shadow you.". Now the bottle must be heated. Now you are a very halal Muslim leader. The problems of poverty are so much greater, so much more overwhelming than the power of being on the front page of The New York Times. I had spent years as a journalist entering into communities where I did not immediately belong or seem to belong as an outsider. This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. Only their sister Dasani is awake. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. Best to try to blend in while not caring when you dont. There's so much upheaval. She was named after the water bottle that is sold in bodegas and grocery stores. The people I grew up with. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. So she would talk about this. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. And, really, the difference is, like, the kind of safety nets, the kind of resources, the kind of access people have--. And I had avoided it. It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support. So this was the enemy. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. Right? That's what we tend to think of the homeless as. She's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. Dasani would call it my spy pen. And in all these cases, I think, like, you know, there's a duty for a journalist to tell these stories. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. This is according to her sister, because Joanie has since passed. Her expression veers from mischief to wonder. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. Elliott writes that few children have both the depth of dishonest troubles and the height of her promise., But Dasanis story isnt about an extraordinary child who made it out of poverty. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. ", I think if we look at Dasani's trajectory, we see a different kind of story. Andrea Elliott: So Milton Hershey School was created by America's chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who left behind no children. At that time when Chanel was born in '78, her mother was living in a place where it was rare to encounter a white person. I think about it every day. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Have Democrats learned them? Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. In the blur of the citys streets, Dasani is just another face. The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. I was comfortable with that as a general notion of what I should be doing with my work, because I think that is our job as journalists. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. 'Cause I think it's such an important point. Whenever I'm with Chanel, Dasani, Supreme, any of the kids, I'm captivated by them. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. Nearly a quarter of her childhood has unfolded at the Auburn Family Residence, where Dasanis family a total of 10 people live in one room. Who paid for water in a bottle? She's studying business administration, which has long been her dream. Its the point Elliott says she wants to get across in Invisible Child: We need to focus less on escaping problems of poverty and pivot attention to finding the causes and solutions to those problems. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. He said, "Yes. The bottled water had come to Brooklyns bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. The mice used to terrorise Dasani, leaving pellets and bite marks. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours, Elliott says. There definitely are upsides. We suffocate them with the salt!. This focus on language, this focus on speaking a certain way and dressing a certain way made her feel like her own family culture home was being rejected. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. Her name was Dasani. Then the series ran at the end of 2013. Where do you first encounter her in the city? This is If danger comes, Dasani knows what to do. It's, sort of, prismatic because, as you're talking about the separation of a nation in terms of its level of material comfort or discomfort, right, or material want, there's a million different stories to tell of what that looks like. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. Nine years ago, my colleague Andrea Elliott set out to report a series of stories about what it was like to be a homeless child in New York City. Laundry piled up. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. And it's the richest private school in America. There is no separating Dasanis childhood from that of her matriarchs: her grandmother Joanie and her mother, Chanel. The sound of that name. That image has stayed with me ever since because it was so striking the discipline that they showed to just walk in single file the unity, the strength of that bond, Elliott says. In 2012, there were 22,000 homeless children in New York City. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. They are true New Yorkers. Bed bugs. Just a few blocks away are different or, kind of, safer feeling, but maybe alienating also. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth She sorts them like laundry. Family was everything for them. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? Dasani described the familys living quarters as so cramped, it was like 10 people trying to breathe in the same room and they only give you five windows, Elliott recalls. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequalitytold through the crucible of one remarkable girl. She is 20 years old. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. It was a high poverty neighborhood to a school where every need is taken care of. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. And she wants to be able to thrive there. But I met her standing outside of that shelter. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the MontanaLibrary2Go digital collection. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. But nothing like this. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" And it's, I think, a social good to do so. I have a lot of possibility. In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. She could go anywhere. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. Her skyline is filled with luxury towers, the beacons of a new gilded age. And that would chase off the hunger faster. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. You're not supposed to be watching movies. And I did some quick research and I saw that, in fact, the child poverty rate remained one in five. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. You know, that's part of it. And I had read it in high school. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. So I'm really hoping that that changes. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and Andrea Elliott: And I think the middle ground we found was to protect them by not putting their last names in and refer to most of them by their nicknames. And a lot of things then happen after that. I still am always. And when she left, the family began to struggle, and for a variety of reasons, came under the scrutiny of the city's child protection agency. She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. IE 11 is not supported. They follow media carefully. Of all the distressing moments in Invisible Child, Andrea Elliotts book about Dasani Coates, the oldest of eight children growing up in a homeless shelter in New Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child profiled in Andrea Elliotts highly praised five-part New York Times feature, arrived on stage at Wednesdays inauguration ceremonies to serve as a poignant symbol ofin Mayor de Blasios wordsthe economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love. But there's something ethically complex, at least emotionally complex. Born at Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. Yeah. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. And I was trying to get him to agree to let me in for months at a time. Day after day, they step through a metal detector as security guards search their bags, taking anything that could be used as a weapon a bottle of bleach, a can of Campbells soup. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. I had an early experience of this with Muslim immigrant communities in the United States that I reported on for years. The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. The people I hang out with. Chanel always says, "Blood is thicker than water." But you have to understand that in so doing, you carry a great amount of responsibility to, I think, first and foremost, second guess yourself constantly. Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. To watch these systems play out in Dasanis life is to glimpse not only their flaws, but the threat they pose to Dasanis system of survival. And, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. She was unemployed. She's transient." I live in Harlem. It has more than a $17 billion endowment. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyns gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. Why Is This Happening? This family is a family that prides itself on so many things about its system as a family, including its orderliness. She would wake up. And, of course, not. And how far can I go? I think that what is so striking about the New York that she was growing up in, as compared to, for instance, the New York of her mother Chanel, also named for a bottle of liquid, (LAUGH) is that Chanel grew up in East Brooklyn at a time when this was a siloed community, much like what you are describing about Henry Horner. How you get out isn't the point. She is sure the place is haunted. And they have 12 kids per home. The journalist will never forget the first time she saw the family unit traveling in a single file line, with mother Chanel Sykes leading the way as she pushed a stroller. I got a fork and a spoon. Chris Hayes: --to dealing with those. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. 11:12 - So at the time, you know, I was at The New York Times and we wrestled with this a lot. It's helping them all get through college. You have a greater likelihood of meeting someone who might know of a job or, "Hey, there's someone in my building who needs a such." But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. She is forever in motion, doing backflips at the bus stop, dancing at the welfare office. ANDREA ELLIOTT, Part of the government. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. It never works. And I have this pen that's called live scribe and it records sound while I'm writing. And yet, in cities, the fracturing happens within really close range. You can try, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City., Why the foster care system needs to change as aid expires for thousands of aged-out youth, The Pandemic's Severe Toll On The Already-Strained Foster Care System. Her parents were struggling with a host of problems. Yes. Andrea Elliott: I met Dasani while I was standing outside of Auburn Family Residence, which is a city run, decrepit shelter, one of two city run shelters that were notorious for the conditions that children were forced to live in with their families. Andrea Elliott: So at the end of the five days that it took for me to read the book to Dasani, when we got to the last line, she said, "That's the last line?" She trots into the cafeteria, where more than a hundred families will soon stand in line to heat their prepackaged breakfast. Shes Andrea joins to talk about her expanded coverage of the Coates family story, which is told in her new book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City.. Her city is paved over theirs. How did you respond? And I'm also, by the way, donating a portion of the proceeds of this book to the family, to benefit Dasani and her siblings and parents. Webwhat kind of cancer did nancy kulp have; nickname for someone with a short attention span; costa rican spanish accent; nitric acid and potassium hydroxide exothermic or endothermic And one thing this book's gotten me to see is how the word homeless really is a misnomer, because these people have such a sense of belonging, especially in New York City. This is a story." This is the type of fact that she recites in a singsong, look-what-I-know way. She was a single mother. The material reality of Dasani's life her homelessness, her family's lack of money is merely the point of departure for understanding her human condition, she says. I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating.

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