where is dasani from invisible child now

It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. You get birthday presents. You find her outside this shelter. Luckily, in this predawn hour, the cafeteria is still empty. But what about the ones who dont? Dasani squints to check the date. This is typical of Dasani. She loves being first the first to be born, the first to go to school, the first to win a fight, the first to make the honour roll. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. Thats what Invisible Child is about, Elliott says, the tension between what is and what was for Dasani, whose life is remarkable, compelling and horrifying in many ways. On one side are the children, on the other the rodents their carcasses numbering up to a dozen per week. Invisible Child emerged from a series on poverty Elliott wrote for the New York Times in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement. She could go anywhere. 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. Shes (LAUGH) I don't know what got lost in translation there. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyns gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. And so I did what I often do as a journalist is I thought, "You know, let me find a universal point of connection. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. 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. 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. So she knows what it's like to suddenly be the subject of a lot of people's attention. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? To kill a mouse is to score a triumph. But despite the extraordinary opportunity, she talked often about just wanting to go home as troublesome as that home life was. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. April 17, 2014 987 words. To follow Dasani, as she comes of age, is also to follow her seven siblings. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. So this was the enemy. 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. And you can't go there unless you're poor. 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. 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.". But you know what a movie is. In New York, I feel proud. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. And the reporter who wrote that, Andrea Elliott, wrote a series of stories about Dasani. 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 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. Email withpod@gmail.com. She wanted to create this fortress, in a way. Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. Despite the circumstances, Dasani radiated with potential. Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on May 16, 2022. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. This is where she derives her greatest strength. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. We have a period where basically from the New Deal to 1980, inequality in the country shrinks and then the story, as you well know, from 1980 to now is just skyrocketing inequality. She makes do with what she has and covers what she lacks. 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. Dasani squints to check the date. She is in that shelter because of this, kind of, accumulation of, you know, small, fairly common, or banal problems of the poor that had assembled into a catastrophe, had meant not being able to stay in the section eight housing. She loved to sit on her windowsill. (LAUGH) Like those kinds of, like, cheap colognes. They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. And one of the things that I found interesting is that one of the advantages to being within such close proximity to wealthy people is that people would drop off donations at the shelter. And she talked about them brutally. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. But basically, Dasani came to see that money as something for the future, not an escape from poverty. Family was everything for them. WebInvisible 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 shelter. (LAUGH) You know? 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?" It's just not in the formal labor market. Thank you! And I could never see what the next turn would be. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. And I think that that's also what she would say. Eleven-year-old Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates is a primary caregiver for her seven siblings. You can tell that story, as we have on the podcast, about the, sort of, crunched middle class, folks who want to afford college and can't. Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. It was a constant struggle. Knife fights break out. She calls him Daddy. They are true New Yorkers. The Milton Hershey School is an incredible, incredible place. And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. Public assistance. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. She's studying business administration, which has long been her dream. 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. 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. 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. 'Cause I think it's such an important point. Their sister is always first. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? And then I wanted to find a target in New York, a good focal point in New York. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. And that didn't go over well because he just came (LAUGH) years ago from Egypt. Who paid for water in a bottle? And that really cracked me up because any true New Yorker likes to brag about the quality of our tap water. Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. 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 Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Radiating out from them in all directions are the eight children they share: two boys and five girls whose beds zigzag around the baby, her crib warmed by a hairdryer perched on a milk crate. She then moved from there to a shelter in Harlem and then to a shelter in the Bronx before finally, once again, landing another section eight voucher and being able to move back into a home with her family. Mice scurry across the floor. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. And to her, that means doing both things keeping her family in her life while also taking strides forward, the journalist says. She is among 432 homeless children and parents living at Auburn. 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. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Fremson , it sparked direct action from incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who had Dasani on the stage at his administrations inauguration in January 2014. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. I had spent years as a journalist entering into communities where I did not immediately belong or seem to belong as an outsider. And, of course, not. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. Chris Hayes: Her parents, Supreme and Chanel, you've, sort of, made allusion to this, but they both struggle with substance abuse. Her hope for herself is to keep, as she's put it to me, her family and her culture close to her while also being able to excel.. No. The 10-year-olds next: Avianna, who snores the loudest, and Nana, who is going blind. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. 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. And welcome to Why Is This Happening? Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. Dasanis room was where they put the crazies, she says, citing as proof the broken intercom on the wall. Why Is This Happening? And the Big Apple gets a new mayor, did get a new mayor this weekend. Chris Hayes: --real tropes (LAUGH) of this genre. And so this was his great legacy was to create a school for children in need. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. It's unpredictable. What Hershey calls code switching, which is you switch between the norms, the linguistic codes, and behaviors of one place to another so that you can move within both worlds or many worlds. They have yet to stir. What is crossing the line? But with Shaka Ritashata (PH), I remember using all of the, sort of, typical things that we say as journalists. She felt that she left them and this is what happened. Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. And so Dasani went literally from one day to the next from the north shore of Staten Island where she was living in a neighborhood that was very much divided along the lines of gang warfare. 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 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. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. One in five kids. Chris Hayes: We don't have to go through all of the crises and challenges and brutal things that this family has to face and overcome and struggled through. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. She actually did a whole newscast for me, which I videotaped, about Barack Obama becoming the first Black president. "This is so and so." Chapter 42 Now a sophomore, Dasani believes that her family is desperately fractured. And then, of course, over time, what happens in the United States is that we become less and less materially equal. In the book, the major turning points are, first of all, where the series began, that she was in this absolutely horrifying shelter just trying to survive. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. Random House, 2021. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. Find that audio here. Chris Hayes: Yeah. The people I grew up with. And that's just the truth. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. I think that when you get deeper inside and when you start to really try your best to understand on a more intimate level what those conditions mean for the person that you're writing about, so you stop imposing your outsider lens, although it's always gonna be there and you must be aware of it, and you try to allow for a different perspective. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. And unemployed. It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. Sometimes she doesnt have to blink. Her polo shirt and khakis have been pressed with a hair straightener, because irons are forbidden at the Auburn shelter. He said, "Yes. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. And it was an extraordinary experience. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. Her body is still small enough to warm with a hairdryer. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. 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. In the city, I mean, I have a 132 hours of audio recorded of all my reporting adventures. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. And she wants to be able to thrive there. And there's so much to say about it. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. And she just loved that. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. So it's interesting how, you know, you always see what's happening on the street first before you see it 10,000 feet above the ground in terms of policy or other things. It is on the fourth floor of that shelter, at a window facing north, that Dasani now sits looking out. Try to explain your work as much as you can." The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. And it's a little bit like her own mother had thought. She doesn't want to have to leave. Like, she was wearing Uggs at one point and a Patagonia fleece at another point. Children are not often the face of homelessness, but their stories are heartbreaking and sobering: childhoods denied spent in and out of shelters, growing up with absent parents and often raising themselves and their siblings. 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. And we can talk about that more. 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. Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. And they were, kind of, swanky. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. This is so important." 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. It's a really, really great piece of work. The mouse-infested shelter didnt deter Dasani from peeking out her windowsill every morning to catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building. Like, you do an incredible job on that. A movie has scenes. I think about it every day. There's so much upheaval. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. Andrea Elliott: This is a work in progress. And There Are No Children Here, which takes place in what's called Henry Horner Homes, which is in the west side of Chicago right by what is now called the United Center, which is where the Bulls play. This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. What happens when trying to escape poverty means separating from your family at 13? So her principal, kind of, took her under her wing. 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. And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. People often remark on her beauty the high cheekbones and chestnut skin but their comments never seem to register. And I found greater clarity after I left the newsroom and was more in an academic setting as I was researching this book. And I think showing the dignity within these conditions is part of that other lens. She has a delicate oval face and luminous eyes that watch everything, owl-like. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. 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. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. 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. It's on the west side just west of downtown. For a time, she thrived there. She was doing so well. She wakes to the sound of breathing. I still am always. 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. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. She has hit a major milestone, though. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. So civic equality is often honored in the breach, but there is the fact that early on, there is a degree of material equality in the U.S. that is quite different from what you find in Europe. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. Their sister is always first. We often focus on the stories of children who make it out of tumultuous environments. (LAUGH) She said to me at one point, "I mean, I want to say to them, especially if it's a man who's saying this, 'Have you ever been through childbirth?'. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. Multiply her story by thousands of children in cities across the U.S. living through the same experiences and the country confronts a crisis. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the Pioneer Library System digital collection. There are parts of it that are painful. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. 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. I mean, whether you're poor--, Andrea Elliott: --or you're wealthy, (LAUGH) like, you know. And they were things that I talked about with the family a lot. And this was all very familiar to me. I mean, that is one of many issues. I focused on doing projects, long form narrative pieces that required a lot of time and patience on the part of my editors and a lot of swinging for the fences in terms of you don't ever know how a story is going to pan out. She could even tell the difference between a cry for hunger and a cry for sleep. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. Andrea Elliott: So Milton Hershey School was created by America's chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who left behind no children. And I was trying to get him to agree to let me in for months at a time. And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." We burn them! Dasani says with none of the tenderness reserved for her turtle. The Child Protection Agency began monitoring Dasanis parents on suspicion of parental neglect, Elliott says. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. I mean, everything fell on its face. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. How did you respond? And yet, in cities, the fracturing happens within really close range. It was this aspiration that was, like, so much a part of her character. It literally saved us: what the USs new anti-poverty measure means for families, Millions of families receiving tax credit checks in effort to end child poverty, No one knew we were homeless: relief funds hope to reach students missing from virtual classrooms, I knew they were hungry: the stimulus feature that lifts millions of US kids out of poverty, 'Santa, can I have money for the bills?' She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. She's at a community college. Thats not gonna be me, she says. Dasani is not an anomaly. And she also struggled with having to act differently. Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. And at that time, I just had my second child and I was on leave at home in Washington, D.C. where I had grown up. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. Chanel. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours. 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. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. You're not supposed to be watching movies. Her name was Dasani. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. And how far can I go? 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. How you get out isn't the point. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. But I don't think it's enough to put all these kids through college. And she'd go to her window, and she talked about this a lot. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. Chris Hayes: That is such a profound point about the structure of American life and the aspirations for it. It's painful. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. People who have had my back since day one. And a lot of that time was spent together. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. Her city is paved over theirs. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. Sleek braids fall to one side of Dasanis face, clipped by yellow bows. We get the robber barons and the Industrial Revolution. But I think she just experienced such an identity crisis and she felt so much guilt. This family is a proud family. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. I mean, this was a kid who had been, sort of, suddenly catapulted on to the front page of The New York Times for five days. And a lot of the reporting was, "But tell me how you reacted to this. The rap of a security guards knuckles on the door. It was really so sweet. She had a drug (INAUDIBLE). And a lot of things then happen after that. Dasani hugs her mother Chanel, with her sister Nana on the left, 2013. o 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. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. In order to witness those scenes, I have to be around. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. And it's not because people didn't care or there wasn't the willpower to help Dasani. Dasani slips down three flights of stairs, passing a fire escape where drugs and weapons are smuggled in. It happens because there's a lot of thought and even theory, I think, put into the practice. 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. 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.

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