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Likka Stoes
Youth Radio’s Anyi Howell was inspired to write this commentary based on a news event in his community. Two liquor stores were vandalized, and the Oakland men involved were charged with felonies, including hate crimes. Police say the men were part of a group that went to a liquor store, demanding the owners stop selling alcohol to blacks, and smashing bottles and merchandise. In response to the incident, Oakland residents held a town meeting and discussed what some see as a dangerously large number of liquor stores in African American neighborhoods.
Anyi Howell didn’t need a town meeting to point out the high concentration of liquor stores in West Oakland and other low income neighborhoods throughout the U.S. He’d been noticing the stores, often directly across the street from churches, since he was a little kid, driving around with his family.
Anyi was upset that his community had to deal with the liquor store vandalism, but he felt the local media misinterpreted the event:
Oakland has been in the news because several black men demolished a liquor store and allegedly threatened the store owner for “poisoning the Black community.” The news spares no opportunity to show this footage, and prosecutors are painting the culprits as terrorists. But I look at the situation through a different lens…
These stores’ bottom line is black people’s consumption of candy, sodas, single cigars, cigarettes, stale donuts and old fruits… They promote our unhealthy lifestyles with advertisements and deals. In my neighborhood, if I want to go to a grocery store with a real produce department, I probably pass at least five liquor stores on my way.
In this story, Anyi draws on his own experiences growing up and his analysis of city politics, to examine how liquor stores contribute to neighborhood struggles.
Click here to find the full script and audio for this story.
Teach Youth Radio
For this month's feature, you will be able to view these strategies and resources:
1. How teachers can align this Youth Radio story to National Standards in the classroom.
2. Suggestions for lesson plans that link the story's content to your classroom's themes and subject areas.
3. Suggestions for lesson plans that explore media literacy, using the story to re-read mainstream media.
4. Bios of the Youth Radio reporters who produced the story.
5. A list of resources and further research related to the story's themes.
6. Links to Youth Radio’s media production techniques as guides and inspiration for your students’ creative media-making projects.
1. NATIONAL STANDARDS: Standards Alignment
Subject: LANGUAGE ARTS
NL-ENG.K-12.1 READING FOR PERSPECTIVE
NL-ENG.K-12.2 UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
NL-ENG.K-12.3 EVALUATION STRATEGIES
NL-ENG.K-12.6 APPLYING KNOWLEDGE
NL-ENG.K-12.9 MULTICULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
Subject: HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.1 HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION
NPH-H.9-12.2 HEALTH INFORMATION, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
NPH-H.9-12.3 REDUCING HEALTH RISKS
NPH-H.9-12.4 INFLUENCES ON HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.7 HEALTH ADVOCACY
Subject: ECONOMICS
NSS-EC.9-12.1 SCARCITY
NSS-EC.9-12.3 ALLOCATION OF GOODS AND SERVICES
NSS-EC.9-12.4 ROLE OF INCENTIVES
NSS-EC.9-12.5 GAIN FROM TRADE
NSS-EC.9-12.7 MARKETS -- PRICE AND QUANTITY DETERMINATION
NSS-EC.9-12.8 ROLE OF PRICE IN MARKET SYSTEM
NSS-EC.9-12.13 ROLE OF RESOURCES IN DETERMINING INCOME
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2. NEWS YOU CAN USE: Story content in your classroom, Suggestions for lesson plans
Language Arts:
Shifting Perspectives:
Anyi introduces various voices and perspectives in this story, including his dad, his uncle, liquor store owners, and himself as a child and teen. Ask your students to identify the range of perspectives contained in this commentary, and discuss what each contributes. How does Anyi shift among these different voices (using quotes, paraphrases, recalled scenes) to compose a compelling narrative?
Getting It Right: Clearly Anyi and his editors put a lot of thought into creating a piece that is powerfully written, rich with images, characters, and scenes. But Anyi also had to do a lot of fact-checking to make sure everything in his story was accurate. Have your students go through the commentary and highlight each claim that would require evidence to back it up (for example, “If an area heavily saturated with fast food restaurants is vulnerable to health problems stemming from obesity, it’s no wonder areas with a lot of liquor stores experience higher violent crime rates”). Ask them to work in small groups to do the research required to fact-check the story.
Health:
Community Health: Anyi links a wide range of public health struggles here: drug use, violence, obesity, smoking, etc. While these issues manifest in individual behavior, Anyi wants to explore their political and economic roots. In the end, he faults the zoning department for allowing so many liquor stores to exist in a single place. Have students research the zoning department regulations in their own town or city. What, if any, efforts are made to ensure that zoning decisions are informed by public feedback and support community health?
Mapping: Anyi paints a picture of his own neighborhood in West Oakland, indicating that he’s noticed similar patterns in other low income areas across the U.S. Have students walk the blocks surrounding their homes or school, mapping what they see. How many liquor stores? Churches? Outlets for fresh produce? Fast food restaurants? Safe playgrounds? Compare these maps with communities very different from their own. How do these various environments influence health in the local areas?
Economics:
Scarcity and Availability: According to the economic concept of scarcity, when resources are limited, people must “choose some things and give up others.” What resources are scarce in the community Anyi describes, based on his own analysis and other data students can uncover? What resources are available? How does this uneven distribution affect residents’ life-styles? Is it accurate to use the word “choices” to describe their behaviors? How does Anyi’s perspective push listeners to examine root causes rather than pathologize individuals or communities?
Ownership:Anyi makes reference here to store owners’ perspectives: “Store owners say they’re just serving a demand-that the real poisoners are drug dealers hanging around these stores just as much as the winos. But to me, the notion of “Discount Liquor” sounds like drugs at a deal…” Have students go to a nearby liquor store or other neighborhood retail business to interview the owner. See what they can learn from that person that relates to and perhaps complicates Anyi’s argument.
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3. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY: Putting This Story in Context
What Makes a News Story?One of Youth Radio’s signature moves is to translate or respond to a news story from a young person’s perspective, often someone with first-hand experience relevant to the event covered in the mainstream press. In this story, Anyi personalizes and contextualizes a recent incident of vandalism that took place in his community. Have your students find an article about the link between liquor stores in low income neighborhoods (see list of research and resources for a report on the event Anyi describes). Ask them to compare and contrast the perspectives and arguments put forth in Anyi’s story with the article they find. How does each story present information? Who gets quoted? What explicit and implicit arguments are made?
Your Story: Have your students find a newspaper article covering an event in their own community. Look for a story that students know something about, based on their own personal experiences. Then ask them to do what Anyi did, and “re-write” the story, in a sense, through their own eyes. It’s important to emphasize here that this activity does NOT mean writing a first person testimonial devoid of facts and evidence. They need to back up their counter-claims with sources—a process that can generate useful discussion about what “counts” as an authoritative expert or valid data.
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4. MEET THE COMMENTATOR
King Anyi is the first "Rhythmatic Motavational Speaker," a creative title to sum up his creativity as a rapper/poet/comedian/host/promoter/project associate/reporter. From West Oakland, California, King Anyi, 22, is the son of a poet/painter/playwright/activist. In this commentary, Anyi uses his creative story telling and unique outlook to shed light on the liquor store situation, which is causing problems in his city. He draws on his creativity as a Rhythmatic Motavational Speaker and interactions with his father and others to get his point across. King Anyi started and operates Hustlemania Entertainment Group, a hip hop music and video company (www.hustlemaniaentertainment.com).
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5. RESOURCES AND RESEARCH
• "San Francisco Chronicle article covering the incident Anyi describes"
• "Report suggesting link between liquor outlets and community violence"
• "Report on community mapping methodologies"
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6. MEDIA PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES FOR LEARNING: Making Audio Narratives
Click here to link to Youth Radio's guidelines for conducting interviews, writing commentaries, and producing features.
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