Every once in a while, it would. Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. She ends up there. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. The sound that matters has a different pitch. We rarely look at all the children who don't, who are just as capable. 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. She never even went inside. And as I started to, kind of, go back through it, I remember thinking, "How much has really changed?" They follow media carefully. She will kick them awake. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. She would wake up. "What's Chanel perfume? And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. And I think showing the dignity within these conditions is part of that other lens. Her parents are avid readers. Theres nothing to be scared about.. Nearly a year ago, the citys child protection agency had separated 34-year-old Chanel Sykes from her children after she got addicted to opioids. This is where she derives her greatest strength. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. They were in drug treatment programs for most of the time that I was with them, mostly just trying to stay sober and often succeeding at it. At that time when I met her when she was 11, Dasani would wake around 5 a.m. and the first thing she did, she always woke before all of her other siblings. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. 4 Dasani blinks, looking out at It's called Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. In fact, there's the, kind of, brushes that the boys have with things outside of their, kind of, experience of poverty and class have to do with, like, parking cars (LAUGH) or helping cars and stuff and selling water at the United Center where there's all sorts of, like, fancy Chicago roles through. They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. 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. Dasani slips down three flights of stairs, passing a fire escape where drugs and weapons are smuggled in. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. And it's the richest private school in America. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. Chris Hayes: I want to, sort of, take a step back because I want to continue with what you talk about as, sort of, these forces and the disintegration of the family and also track through where Dasani goes from where she was when she's 11. Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. 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?" 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. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. There have been a few huge massive interventions that have really altered the picture of what poverty looks like in the U.S., chiefly the Great Society and the New Deal and some other things that have happened since then. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. It was this aspiration that was, like, so much a part of her character. Born at The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. It's painful. She is always warming a bottle or soothing a cranky baby. 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. Dasani was in many ways a parent to her seven younger brothers and sisters. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. And how far can I go? It was a high poverty neighborhood to a school where every need is taken care of. 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. Then the series ran at the end of 2013. Jane Clayson Guest Host, Here & NowJane Clayson is Here & Now's guest host. I don't want to really say what Dasani's reaction is for her. Now the bottle must be heated. We'd love to hear from you. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. She was doing so well. So she's taking some strides forward. Andrea Elliott: Okay. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. It's now about one in seven. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. How you get out isn't the point. People who have had my back since day one. In 2012, there were 22,000 homeless children in New York City. And a lot of that time was spent together. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web. So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. But what about the ones who dont? 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. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. You find her outside this shelter. Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. Dasani's 20. Mice scurry across the floor. Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. The brothers last: five-year-old Papa and 11-year-old Khaliq, who have converted their metal bunk into a boys-only fort. What happens when trying to escape poverty means separating from your family at 13? 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. And then you have to think about how to address it. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. Hershey likes to say that it wants to be the opposite of a legacy school, that if your kids qualify, that means that the school hasn't done its job, 'cause its whole purpose is to lift children out of poverty. I can read you the quote. All rights reserved. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. And part of the reason I think that is important is because the nature of the fracturing (LAUGH) of American society is such that as we become increasingly balkanized, there's a kind of spacial separation that happens along class lines. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. But the spacial separation of Chicago means that they're not really cheek and jowl next to, you know, $3 million town homes or anything like that. A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. 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. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. And at first, she thrived. I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. WebIn Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. What's interesting about that compared to Dasani, just in terms of what, sort of, concentrated poverty is like in the 1980s, I think, when that book is being reported in her is that proximity question. And you can't go there unless you're poor. 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. She's studying business administration, which has long been her dream. It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" No, I know. And I understand the reporters who, sort of, just stop there and they describe these conditions and they're so horrifying. Sort of, peak of the homeless crisis. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. 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. Thats a lot on my plate.. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. She was just one of those kids who had so many gifts that it made her both promising in the sense of she could do anything with her life. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. She wanted to create this fortress, in a way. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. It gave the young girl a feeling that theres something out there, Elliott says. I had been there for a while. At one point, one, I think it was a rat, actually bit baby Lele, the youngest of the children, and left pellets all over the bed. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. And there's so much to say about it. 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. 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, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. Dasanis room was where they put the crazies, she says, citing as proof the broken intercom on the wall. And there was this, sort of, sudden public awakening around inequality. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. Elliott says she was immediately drawn to 11-year-old Dasani not only because of the girls ability to articulate injustices in her life, but how Desani held so much promise for herself. They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. Taped to the wall is the childrens proudest art: a bright sun etched in marker, a field of flowers, a winding path. Slipping out from her covers, Dasani goes to the window. Child protection. The Milton Hershey School is an incredible, incredible place. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. Still, the baby howls. But to Dasani, the shelter is far more than a random assignment. It is also a story that reaches back in time to one Black family making its way through history, from slavery to the Jim Crow South and then the Great Migrations passage north. You know, that's part of it. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. This family is a family that prides itself on so many things about its system as a family, including its orderliness. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. So her principal, kind of, took her under her wing. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. She would change her diaper. I mean, I called her every day almost for years. You get birthday presents. And she didn't want the streets to become her kids' family. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. There's a huge separation that happens in terms of the culture that people consume, the podcasts they listen to or don't listen to, the shows they watch. And there's a amazing, amazing book called Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc which takes place in the Bronx, which is in a somewhat similar genre. I was never allowing myself to get too comfortable. 6. Some donations came in. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home. Then Jim Ester and the photographer (LAUGH) who was working with me said, "We just want to shadow you.". ANDREA ELLIOTT, If she cries, others answer. The2009 financial crisis taught us hard lessons. You know? Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. It was really so sweet. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. Their sister is always first. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. Dasani was growing up at a time where, you know, the street was in some ways dangerous depending on what part of Brooklyn you are, but very, very quickly could become exciting. To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. What is crossing the line? She changed diapers, fed them and took them to school. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. So that's continued to be the case since the book ended. And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. And these bubbles get, sort of, smaller and smaller, in which people are increasingly removed from these different strata of American life. She was the second oldest, but technically, as far as they were all concerned, she was the boss of the siblings and a third parent, in a sense. (BACKGROUND MUSIC) It is an incredible feat of reporting and writing. And this was all very familiar to me. The popping of gunshots. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. Bed bugs. And I said, "Yes." But, like, that's not something that just happens. And that didn't go over well because he just came (LAUGH) years ago from Egypt. It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. You just invest time. I think about it every day. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? And she would stare at the Empire State Building at the tower lights because the Empire State Building, as any New Yorker knows, lights up depending on the occasion to reflect the colors of that occasion. Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. Rarely does that happen for children living in poverty like Dasani who are willing and capable but who are inundated with problems not of their own making, she says. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. And so it would break the rules. Chris Hayes: Yeah. 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. "This is so and so." I feel accepted.". It's a really, really great piece of work. And a lot of things then happen after that. She made leaps ahead in math. And a few years back, there was this piece about a single girl in the New York City public school system in The New York Times that was really I think brought people up shore, 'cause it was so well done. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. He said, "Yes. She is sure the place is haunted. But I know that I tried very, very hard at every step to make sure it felt as authentic as possible to her, because there's a lot of descriptions of how she's thinking about things. And it's a little bit like her own mother had thought. Right outside is a communal bathroom with a large industrial tub. And even as you move into the 1820s and '30s when you have fights over, sort of, Jacksonian democracy and, kind of, popular sovereignty and will, you're still just talking about essentially white men with some kind of land, some kind of ownership and property rights. A movie has characters." She had seven siblings. And I had an experience where someone I knew and was quite close to is actually an anthropologist doing field work in Henry Horner Homes after There Are No Children Here. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Toothbrushes, love letters, a dictionary, bicycles, an Xbox, birth certificates, Skippy peanut butter, underwear. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. Dasani squints to check the date. Delivery charges may apply, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. She's had major ups and major downs. We get the robber barons and the Industrial Revolution. And they agreed to allow me to write a book and to continue to stay in their lives. 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. In this moving but occasionally flat narrative, Elliott follows Dasani for eight years, beginning in 2012 when she was 11 years old and living in Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. You're gonna get out of your own lane and go into other worlds. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. Parental neglect, failure to provide necessities for ones children like shelter or clothing, is one form of child maltreatment that differs from child abuse, she says. And we can talk about that more. She had a drug (INAUDIBLE). She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. In one part of the series, journalist Andrea Elliott contrasts the struggle of Dasanis ten member family living at a decrepit shelter to the gentrification and wealth on the other side of Fort And we're gonna talk a little bit about what that number is and how good that definition is. Only their sister Dasani is awake. They're quite spatially separated from it. There were evictions. 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. It's something that I have wrestled with from the very beginning and continue to throughout. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. She doesn't want to have to leave. On one side are the children, on the other the rodents their carcasses numbering up to a dozen per week. And that's really true of the poor. 16K views, 545 likes, 471 loves, 3K comments, 251 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from EWTN: Starting at 8 a.m. Author Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, And she wants to be able to thrive there. She actually did a whole newscast for me, which I videotaped, about Barack Obama becoming the first Black president. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? We rarely look at all of the children who don't, who are just as capable. Where is Dasani now? Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. Andrea Elliott: This is a work in progress. Chanel thought of Dasani. And for most of us, I would say, family is so important. Her stepfather's name is Supreme. April 17, 2014 987 words. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. Nope.. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. (LAUGH) Like those kinds of, like, cheap colognes. The bodegas were starting. Well, if you know the poor, you know that they're working all the time. And about 2,000 kids go there. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. I have a lot on my plate, she likes to say, cataloging her troubles like the contents of a proper meal. She's pregnant with Dasani, 2001. And they did attend rehab at times. And through the years of American journalism, and some of the best journalism that has been produced, is about talking about what that looks like at the ground level. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series 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 wasn't a safe thing. And I just wonder, like, how you thought about it as you went through this project. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. Either give up your public assistance and you can have this money or not. To know Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates to follow this childs life, from her first breaths in a Brooklyn hospital to the bloom of adulthood is to reckon with the story of New York City and, beyond its borders, with America itself. Today, Dasani lives surrounded by wealth, whether she is peering into the boho chic shops near her shelter or surfing the internet on Auburns shared computer. I have a lot of things to say.. There are parts of it that are painful.
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