Story Telling. Violence. The Future.

In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune entertainment section Chris Jones wrote an article titled “Violence, Chicago and its story tellers.” I hope you'll read it.

Mr. Jones wrote about how the creative community has begun to use their talent and national platforms to draw attention to the gun violence in Chicago. He wrote that artist are not only trying to put a face on victims, but are "trying to search for causes, solutions and prevention".

He also wrote about a “common theme” that is gaining strength. “Geography, or where you live in the region, does not inoculate a city, a region, a nation, from responsibility.”

He asks “Are the stories behind the violence in Chicago understood in a Wheaton or Winnetka? and other communities far from high poverty neighborhoods?

To the past 20 years I've been using maps and the stories on this blog to try to tell the same story, with the goal of attracting support from people who don't live in poverty for volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and learning programs operating in high poverty neighborhoods. See example.

I posted an animation on Friday showing how sports stars could be more consistently drawing attention to these issues, and drawing needed resources to tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods.

Imagine how many different ways this story could be told by creative people. Imagine if when Anne Hathaway ended her Oscar acceptance speech by wishing for a day when stories of poverty were only in the movies and not in reality, if she had pointed to a web site where more videos were drawing fans to places where they could become personally involved in the lives of youth and families living in poverty.