Part of the Series
Ladydrawers
The final strip in the Ladydrawers’ “Growing Season” series, which for the last year has investigated food policy, race and public health in comics form, is “The Gresham Experiment, Part 2.” It’s a follow-up to “The Gresham Experiment, Part 1,” last month’s collaborative strip with Sheika Lugtu and Anne Elizabeth Moore, which explores food access and public health issues on the South Side of Chicago (just a few blocks north of Moore’s home).
This strip links food access issues to the mainstream media depiction of the Auburn Gresham neighborhood as violent and dangerous — and the subsequent presentation of gun violence as a public health issue in its own right. But maybe the connection between violence and food access isn’t so complicated: Maybe ensuring the success of in-place food access policies can directly impact the biggest public health issues that disproportionately afflict majority-Black neighborhoods.
It’s a fitting way to end our current series, as The Ladydrawers Comics Collective has some big changes in store. If you missed any installments, you can find all four seasons of strips here. We’ll be taking some time to do a small Midwestern tour and prepare for the release of our first strip collection Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking in May. But we’ll be back soon to continue our long-running investigative comics journalism series with a new project that we’re sure you’re going to find fascinating.
Footnotes
1. “New details on Tyshawn Lee’s death,” Jeremy Gormer and Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune (November 19, 2015). https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-tyshawn-killing-autopsy-results-met-20151118-story.html (accessed February 12, 2016).
2. “Connecting the dots between urban food deserts and violence,” MIT CoLab (September 9, 2015). https://colabradio.mit.edu/connecting-the-dots-between-food-deserts-urban-violence/ (accessed February 12, 2016).
3. Ibid.
4. “No, Hillary Clinton does not want to close half the schools in the US,” Lauren Camera, US News & World Report (December 23, 2015). https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015-12-23/no-hillary-clinton-does-not-want-to-close-half-of-the-countrys-schools (accessed February 12, 2016).
5. “Joplin Elementary School: Details,” Great Schools website. https://www.greatschools.org/illinois/chicago/1402-Joplin-Elementary-School/details/ (accessed February 12, 2016).
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.