Launched by Before Ferguson, Beyond Ferguson, the 63106 Project focus on the issues facing area residents.
Carrying a bag with a pair of pants, three tops, a pair of sneakers and a nightgown, Valerie Nichols left her home for Grand Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center not sure what she would find. She had last seen her mother on March 1.
The 63106 Project is a racial equity storytelling venture focusing on families in neighborhoods with a documented history of economic and health disparities. I grew up in one of those families.
The pandemic has all but stolen Jamaica Ray’s livelihood, but he refuses to let it crush his spirit. For two months, Ray had nowhere to play his steel drums as he had been doing for the last several years in front of the iconic century-old Crown Candy Kitchen.
“I’m 63 years old, mon, a senior citizen. That’s who it (the virus) catches. People want to shake my hand, get close to me, play my drums and take pictures. I can’t take chances.”
Squinting to read an ingredients label at the grocery store, Courtnesha Rogers breaks down. Tears stream down her face and blur the print.
She stands there, sniffling it all back, trying to pull herself together as other shoppers, wary in the time of COVID-19, make a wide detour around her.
Her friend’s death would have been easier to take if it were COVID-19, she thinks.
As a kid, Steven Jones was smart and a little nerdy, an only child who secretly wanted to be Bill Nye the Science Guy. Now he’s 33, unemployed, disabled, and facing a global pandemic that none of the scientists can quite explain.
Five-year-old Meegale Hundley can’t wait to race his bike outside. It’s been 60 days since he’s been allowed to venture outdoors.
Courtnesha Rogers’s first hint of pandemic was the day she showed up at the Flance Early Learning Center to pick up her daughter, Angele. “Hey, you can’t go any farther,” she heard someone yell. A table with bottles of Germ X was set up outside, and she had to sanitize her hands before she could enter the building. What? Then she was told she could not bring Angele a My Little Pony cake with four big candles for her birthday.
And then she heard that her father’s best friend had died.
He was 36.
Kim Daniel has stared death in the eye more times than she can count. But this coronavirus has her more than scared. ‘“It’s intimidating,” she says. “I don’t walk out the door without a mask, gloves, baby wipes and rubbing alcohol.”