Earlier this month, Philadelphia staff writer Mensah M. Dean published Roots and Realities, a three-part series about the causes and consequences of gun violence in Black America.
Now, you can listen to Dean narrate these stories in an audio series produced by The Philadelphia Citizen, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that combines calls to action and civic-minded events “with the goal of bolstering democracy in the American city where it was born.” The Citizen developed scripts for each piece and worked with Dean to record them for its CitizenCast podcast.
In the first story, “Defined and Diminished by Gun Violence,” Dean traces the history of gun violence in Black communities back to the days of W.E.B. Du Bois, showing how centuries of inequitable social policy have kept the homicide rate for Black people in Philly — and elsewhere — disproportionately high. You can listen to it here.
The second piece, “The Intergenerational Fallout of Gun Violence,” shares the stories of Philadelphians who have lost grandfathers, brothers, cousins, and children to gunfire. Their families’ intergenerational losses reflect the institutional racism at the root of America’s shooting epidemic. It starts with the tale of Movita Johnson-Harrell, who has lost her father, brother, cousin, and two sons to gun violence since 1975. You can listen to it here.
The third installment, “Life in Poverty, Punctuated by Gun Violence,” shows how gun violence and poverty remain inextricably linked — and in no big city is that connection as acute as it is in Philadelphia, where Black citizens are at the highest risk of experiencing both. From the 1940s to today, Philadelphians describe how intense financial need at every level led them to pick up a gun. You can listen to Dean’s recording here.
