This story is part of a series of reports from Johnson County Community College journalism students working with KCPT’s Hale Center for Journalism to report on hopes and obstacles for achieving the American dream. The reporting is part of KCPT’s Re:Dream project. Beneath the bulky uniform of the custodial staff of Johnson County Community College is an aging physique, but one chiseled in the gym and boxing ring on Chicago’s South Side. Masking the heart of a fighter is the charming smile and infectious enthusiasm of a man whose job is to toil in the wake of others, whose lot in life is to build up the people around him. Carl Carter was born in 1950 and came of age during the American Civil Rights movement, inspired by the passionate speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the ultimate showman, Cassius Clay. “I heard of Cassius Clay, but thought he was a white man,” says Carter. “When I saw he was a black man and heard him saying, ‘I am the greatest! I shook up the world! I am beautiful!’ I had never heard anyone talk like that. I was inspired and wanted to be like that.” [FLEX-CONTENT] Entering the gym for the first time, the young Carter started a ritual of exercise that has lasted a lifetime. Boxing brought Carl “Pretty Boy” Carter amateur glory in his five-year career, but more importantly, it gave him somewhere to channel the aggression of a teenager while the tides of racial tension roiled. “Boxing kept me off the street,…...

This story is part of a series of reports from Johnson County Community College journalism students working with KCPT’s Hale Center for Journalism to report on hopes and obstacles for achieving the American dream. The reporting is part of KCPT’s Re:Dream project. Grace Manasseh grew up under the sun of eastern Africa in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. Raised by a single mother, she dreamed of studying in America and imitating the success of her brother, who studied here and became a doctor. Unlike her brother but much like her fellow JCCC student Henry Lubega, who was profiled earlier in this series, Manasseh wishes to return to her home country. She says times have changed very recently, where more young people wish to study abroad and return to their home countries to help make a difference and be a part of what she sees as a “coming up” of Kenya. “It’s not like the way it was before. … People want to build the future back at home, and so things have changed,” she says. “There were other students who came [to the U.S.], and they were successful, and so they went back home, and they started building and implementing their ideas they got from here. And so I feel like that’s one of the factors that has contributed to that growth.” Manasseh wants to study broadcast journalism — one of her grandparents was a radio journalist — and return to her country to use the media as a platform to discourage young girls from marrying early in life.…...

The participants started the Peace Walk at the Jewish Community Center and ended at the Church of the Resurrection in Overland Park. Promoting peace and diversity, SevenDays is a week-long commemoration of the victims of the shooting at the Jewish Community Center on April 13, 2014. Reporter Cara McClain, a student at the Missouri School of Journalism, produced this Storify. This story is part of the KCPT and Hale Center for Journalism project Beyond Belief, a series of stories and discussions about faith in our city. The project is part of Localore: Finding America, created by AIR, a Boston-based network of independent public media producers. Principle funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Watch for a discussion about the SevenDays celebration on this week's "Week in Review" program with Nick Haines, this Friday, 7:30pm, on KCPT....

This story is part of a series of reports from Johnson County Community College journalism students working with KCPT’s Hale Center for Journalism to report on hopes and obstacles for achieving the American dream. The reporting is part of KCPT’s Re:Dream project. After the Valiente triplets left their home country of Paraguay to live in Gardner, Kansas, their only reminder of home was each other. More than a year ago, triplets Marce, Edgar and Rocio Valiente, then 17 years old, left their home in Pirayù, Paraguay, to live in Kansas with their aunt and uncle, Libby and Hugo Valiente. The triplets are now learning American customs and picking up English quickly. Their dream is to find success on American soil, and they’re not afraid of a challenge. [Editor’s note: Quotes from Rocio and Edgar were translated from Spanish to English by the reporter.] Rocio Valiente says leaving her home country was terrifying: “I was scared because [the United States] is another country, without my dad, without my mom. And it’s a big change. I felt nervous.” But Rocio says she understood the importance of moving to the United States and learning English to improve her chances of attaining a good career. “This day and age, it’s important everywhere, and in every job [to speak English],” she says. The triplets’ aunt, Libby Valiente, says it was important to bring the triplets to the United States to live with her and her family. “It has always been Hugo's dream that the kids come to…...

This story is part of a series of reports from Johnson County Community College journalism students working with KCPT’s Hale Center for Journalism to report on hopes and obstacles for achieving the American dream. The reporting is part of KCPT’s Re:Dream project.   William “Bill” Brown emerges from the workshop at his home on his mobility scooter with a smile and a wave. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” can be heard in the background. Lines of motorcycles can be seen in the workshop behind Brown as he launches into a story about how he started riding motorcycles at a young age. “I was the second of seven kids,” he says. “Dad was a railroader, and Mom was usually pregnant.” Brown laughs, his smile peering through his gray beard. “Dad was good at training us and helping us learn about mechanical things, but he said, ‘We don’t have any money to buy stuff for you.’ So, everything I had was something I worked for. I had a little scooter that I’ve had all these years. I mowed an acre yard with a push mower, and a guy gave that to me … and that’s how I got started.” [FLEX-CONTENT] Brown is a full-time professor of automotive technology at Johnson County Community College, where he’s taught for 15 years and helped launch a course for motorcycle maintenance and repair. He’s been involved in the automotive industry for nearly 50 years, working at shops, eventually running his own facility and teaching automotive classes. Although Brown's life may appear fairly straightforward,…...

This story is part of a series of reports from Johnson County Community College journalism students working with KCPT’s Hale Center for Journalism to report on hopes and obstacles for achieving the American dream. The reporting is part of KCPT’s Re:Dream project.   Henry Lubega just wanted to get out alive. Lubega, a student at Johnson County Community College, lived in Uganda and faced hardships most Americans could not begin to fathom. But his courage and willpower have allowed him to trump daunting perils to achieve his goal of getting an education in the United States. A key part of his dream is to return to his homeland and use his education to make a difference in Uganda. [FLEX-CONTENT] JCCC counselor Dave Ellis says this is rare: Most international students are satisfied simply with receiving an education in the United States. “The majority of international students that I’ve worked with are here to go and get a four-year degree somewhere,” Ellis says. “They come here to get the general ed credits out of the way to move on to go to KU or UMKC.” But Lubega is not a typical international student. His stern gaze during his interview seems evidence of his determination to see his dream come to fruition. “I’m utilizing every opportunity that comes my way,” Lubega says. “I’m at JCCC learning, which will see me get back to Uganda and make it a better place.” Lubega’s aspirations to return to his native country are especially remarkable given the amount of turmoil he’s had to endure. Lubega was searching for a…...

This story is part of our coverage of Kansas City’s SevenDays project, which aims to bring people together to conquer hate and celebrate diversity. The project is led by Mindy Corporon, who lost two family members in the April 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. For each of the seven days, Corporon joins us for a video intro to the day’s activities (above), and Flatland is running a daily dispatch from students at the Missouri School of Journalism, inspired by the day’s theme. Journalism student Cara McClain wrote on today’s theme, “you”. The notion of self care is gaining momentum, as many people recognize the impact it can have on their lives. The Kansas City, Missouri-based Secondary Trauma Resource Center has been working for the past five years to expand people’s understanding of what self care is, how vital it is to organizations, and how it can be supported in the workplace. Executive Director Julia Westhoff is the sole paid employee of the Second Trauma Resource Center. She has worked from the beginning in building the organization from a project with six other women who saw secondary trauma, the effect of working with victims of trauma on the caregivers, which she says is one of the biggest issues facing the nonprofit sector. So Westhoff and her team worked on creating a model and curriculum to train caregivers on how to take care of themselves and recognize and stem the effects of secondary trauma. [FLEX-CONTENT] In this interview, Westhoff talks about the symptoms of secondary trauma, her own experience…...

This story is part of our coverage of Kansas City’s SevenDays project, which aims to bring people together to conquer hate and celebrate diversity. The project is led by Mindy Corporon, who lost two family members in the April 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. For each of the seven days, Corporon joins us for a video intro to the day’s activities (above), and Flatland is running a daily dispatch from students at the Missouri School of Journalism, inspired by the day’s theme. Journalism student Emma Nicolas wrote on today’s theme, “go”. Arms splayed out on either side of the mat, eyes closed, with a smile. This is how Kelsie Wilhoit, a group fitness instructor in Lenexa, Kansas, ends each of her yoga classes. “It seems a little goofy, but it really works,” Wilhoit admits. For Wilhoit, working out has always been about more than achieving a beach body. While a toned body is an extra bonus, Wilhoit says getting exercise gives her strength physically and — more importantly — mentally. “It’s the best feeling in the world,” Wilhoit says of yoga. “It gives you this empowerment and control, it’s like the one thing you can control even when you can’t control anything else.” Wilhoit teaches yoga, pilates, and a fusion class called yogalates throughout gyms in Lenexa, four to five days a week. She says she turned…...

This story is part of our coverage of Kansas City’s SevenDays project, which aims to bring people together to conquer hate and celebrate diversity. The project is led by Mindy Corporon, who lost two family members in the April 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. For each of the seven days, Corporon joins us for a video intro to the day’s activities (above), and Flatland is running a daily dispatch from students at the Missouri School of Journalism, inspired by the day’s theme. Journalism student Josh Matejka wrote on today's theme, “connect.” Reconciliation. Trust. Acceptance. These are words you’ll hear a lot at Kansas City’s Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ. And for many in the church, those words carry significance beyond Sunday mornings. Take Curtis Filer. At 66 years old, he’s an active member in the church. He sings in the choir. He’s been on the past two pastoral search committees. And he’s the Moderator Elect of the Congregation. He’s also a former minister in the Community of Christ denomination. So where do reconciliation, trust and acceptance come into his story? Much of it has to do with the fact that, at 32 years old, Filer, as he says, “came to understand” himself as a gay man. “I had gone through many internal struggles to try to ‘pray the gay…...

This week KCUR reporter Suzanne Hogan and KCPT reporter Mike McGraw are exploring the economics behind Missouri River navigation and Port KC development. During a conversation that aired today on KCUR 89.3, McGraw told Hogan, “Historically, the port has been just about the river and a big freight facility down in southern Kansas City. But during the period that we were doing our reporting, the city actually came to the port authority and asked them to do some abatements on downtown properties.” You can hear their conversation here:     Local activist Jan Parks, who represents the school district in the city, told the reporters: “I thought the port authority was still being the port authority, taking care of the port of KC, which I had always thought was its main purpose.” McGraw explains that Parks’ concern was about tax abatements and its impact on school quality and maintenance. Her concern, explains McGraw, is that the school district has more than $200 million in deferred maintenance, it operates off property taxes and “the more abatements we have … the less money the school’s going to have to do that maintenance that’s waiting to be done.” In Tuesday’s story, Hogan explored the economics behind the vision for Missouri River navigation; and on Wednesday, McGraw investigated the impact of Port KC’s tax abatement and development strategies on public infrastructure and taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, among other areas of interest besides tax abatements, Port KC does have a port to manage. The agency is in the midst of reopening the city’s ancient Missouri…...

This story is part of our coverage of Kansas City’s SevenDays project, which aims to bring people together to conquer hate and celebrate diversity. The project is led by Mindy Corporon, who lost two family members in the April 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. For each of the seven days, Corporon joins us for a video intro to the day’s activities (above), and Flatland is running a daily dispatch from students at the Missouri School of Journalism, inspired by the day’s theme. Journalism student Josh Matejka wrote on today’s theme, “others”. Dana Bass spends her days managing thousands of people who work on big, expensive projects. And it all started with Christmas carols. “The earliest memory I can think of [volunteering] was caroling with the church I was with,” Bass says. “We went to different area nursing homes … We even went to our little city jail.” [FLEX-CONTENT] Bass is the Volunteer Director for Kansas City’s Habitat for Humanity branch. She’s been at the organization for 12 of her 25 years in nonprofit management. Bass is also a site manager for AmeriCorps, an agency that sends out long-term volunteers — like Peace Corps, but in the United States. With AmeriCorps, Bass has been to Louisiana to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina with 2,000 volunteers from all over the country. She’s even worked with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. So Bass has seen a lot in the nonprofit world. And, in Kansas City, she likes what she sees. She says Kansas City is one of the most giving and philanthropic cities in the country, and…...

When Kansas City needed help to keep a prestigious global architecture firm from leaving town last year, it reached out to an unlikely partner — the Port Authority of Kansas City. The loss of the firm, Populous architecture, which designs sports arenas around the world, would have been a huge blow to Kansas City and its image. So the port authority — a state agency whose commissioners are appointed by City Hall — swaggered up to the plate. The agency cobbled together a 15-year property tax abatement for redevelopment of the old Board of Trade building near the Country Club Plaza. By saving money on taxes, the developers were able to offer Populous an attractive lease agreement that kept them from leaving town. Since then the port authority — often at the city’s request — has become a big player in Kansas City redevelopment thanks to its ability to offer tax incentives with relatively little accountability. This has played out in a number of deals over the last few months, and it could be the back story of other deals to come, much to the dismay of tax abatement critics. “Make no mistake about it, these (port authority commissioners) are corporate developers,” said R. Crosby Kemper III, Kansas City Public Library director and perhaps the city’s most ardent abatement opponent. The trend continuing under the port authority, he said, represents a “massive shift of taxes onto the working poor.” [FLEX-CONTENT] Michael Collins, president and CEO of the port authority, has been at the center of an anti-abatement storm in recent…...

This spring, there's new life on the Missouri River - and it's more than buds on trees or fish in the water. Barge traffic may be on the verge of a renaissance. At least that's the hope of Port KC, which reopened the Woodswether terminal in the West Bottoms last year. The facility, currently the only public port operating on the river, is receiving barges for the first time since 2007. "I mean we feel very strongly. Our mission is to make sure that people don't forget about this (the Missouri River,) before it's too late," says Richard Grenville, port operations manager for Port KC, a state agency whose commissioners are appointed by Kansas City. Port KC is investing more than $25 million in the terminal. And while this is a promising development for barge operators, the river as a transportation solution hasn't always been an easy sell — mostly because of droughts and floods. "When we were having depth problems back in the late 1990s and early 2000s everybody said, 'Oh the Missouri River — that's it. It's finished,'" Grenville says. "We're trying to overcome that now, and we're getting there." According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, barge traffic has been going up over the last five years. But it still falls way, way short compared to the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. An Unreliable River? There are 12,000…...

This story is part of our coverage of Kansas City’s SevenDays project, which aims to bring people together to conquer hate and celebrate diversity. The project is led by Mindy Corporon, who lost two family members in the April 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. For each of the seven days, Corporon joins us for a video intro to the day’s activities (above), and Flatland is running a daily dispatch from students at the Missouri School of Journalism, inspired by the day’s theme. Journalism student Emma Nicolas wrote on today's theme, “love”. Sally King, a Kansas City clinical social worker, began her journey working with senior citizens after she met Hazel. King lived near Hazel about 15 years ago in the South Hyde Park neighborhood of Kansas City, where King was a house sitter while working toward her Master's in Social Work. Like many others in the Hyde Park community, she grew to love spending time with the 83-year-old woman. King says she’d never met anyone like Hazel, always positive and upbeat despite her health conditions. “She was still so interested in life even though she felt bad,” King said. King had never experienced this kind of behavior from the elders in her own while life growing up in Sedalia, Missouri, so Hazel gave her a new sense of hope and meaning. They spent time together painting in the backyard, where, King says, Hazel would often drift off to sleep in the sun. King now works with clients throughout Missouri and Kansas hoping to…...

Jackie Robinson’s push for racial equality spanned a lifetime where he used his athleticism as a conduit to challenge our country’s segregated system and demand change. Now, a new two-part film on his life airs next week on KCPT. (Flatland is KCPT's digital magazine.) Through a collection of old photos, film, and interviews, the project delves into the complexities of a man who was a Civil Rights pioneer before and beyond his integration into Major League Baseball. He was someone Martin Luther King called “a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” Sarah Burns co-directed the film with her renowned filmmaker father Ken Burns and her husband, David McMahon. Flatland spoke with Sarah Burns recently about the film. Here’s an excerpt from that conversation. With a person as iconic as Jackie Robinson, whose story has been told in so many books, radio shows, on Hollywood film, and in plays, how is this film different from the other biographies and tributes? What is revealed in it? We felt that even though there has been so much coverage of the Jackie Robinson story in books and film, a lot of the ways it was told was limited. They just look at the beginning of his baseball career. I understand why because you want to focus on this iconic moment, but his life was much more complicated and broad. The danger of looking at just that time is that we think of him as this guy who turned the other cheek, who was quiet, who was passive in the face of the torment he…...

This article was first printed in UMKC’s University News, and is reprinted by permission here. Hope Austin is a UMKC creative writing student and a community producer for KCPT’s Beyond Belief project. On April 13, 2014, outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller opened fire on an unsuspecting group of people, killing 69-year-old William Lewis Corporon, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood. He then moved on to Village Shalom, a nearby Jewish retirement center, killing 53-year-old Terri LaManno. While Miller had hoped to kill Jews, all three victims belonged to Christian denominations. Since the shooting, Mindy Corporon, whose father and son both died that day, says she has found herself called to action. “A key aspect of where I feel like God is pulling me and telling me to go is to pull people of different faiths together and have a different conversation,” Corporon said. “I’m not trying to recruit people from one faith to another. ... My objective and God’s mission for me is to give people a safe environment where they can learn about one another’s faiths and respect one another. It’s a step further than tolerance, because tolerance is [just] tolerating people, not understanding.” [FLEX-CONTENT] One way Corporon hopes to promote understanding is through an annual week of activities called SevenDays: Make a Ripple, Change the World. SevenDays is an annual celebration in April that invites all people, but especially young people, to do good works. “My foundation, Faith Always Wins ... started the event SevenDays with the premise to commemorate the shooting and to help people remember…...

Community gardens have been a source of food stability and financial savings for Americans since the 1800s. During the Great Depression, they provided food to the unemployed, and The Victory Garden campaign during WWII encouraged people to help a rationed economy by growing their own fruits and vegetables. And although many of those national campaigns were abandoned after the war, America has seen a resurgence of community gardens since the 1970s. One of the first Kansas City gardens to join that trend was The Troostwood Youth Garden at 52nd and Paseo, started by Erika Wright. [FLEX-CONTENT] Wright conceived the idea to create a community garden focused on educating youth when she was working at her mother’s daycare center. With the help of a land-grant from Rockhurst University, Wright grew what was an empty plot of land on a street corner into a thriving garden.It’s an accomplishment all the more impressive because she had muscular dystrophy and had been wheelchair bound since birth. The disease eventually took her life in 2011. She was 45 years old. Since then, Mary L. Wright, Erika’s mother, and Jill Anne Johnson, Erika’s godmother, have continued Erika’s legacy by tending to the garden. “We really kind of bombed out the first year, and then we said, ‘No. She worked so hard to get it going get it started and all that that the least we can do is it get on out there and get with it,’” says Mary Wright. “You have to put one foot in front of the other and not let no man…...

According to the Pew Research Center, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and Muslims currently make up just less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population. Pew projects the numbers of Muslims in America to grow to 2.1 percent of the population by the year 2050. What these findings suggest is that Islam, like all religious traditions, is not an ethnicity, race, or Facebook status — but is a very personal choice. Brett Cooper is profiled and photographed here as part of a week-long series on being Muslim, from KCPT and the Beyond Belief project. Boyishly good looking and studying secondary education at the University of Kansas, Brett Cooper says he wishes he had a more interesting story of his religious conversion. But the fact is, he simply studied his way into Islam. While he says he was not disenchanted or unhappy with his religious upbringing, he just wanted an opportunity to make up his own mind. Cooper’s initiation into the Muslim community began when he entered Johnson County Community College. He began with a small library of religious texts that included the ancient sixth century classic Tao Te Ching and the Book of Mormon. But what struck him most about the Quran, Islam’s holy book, were the similarities between the Christian narrative regarding Jesus and the Muslim account. “The things that some, like [noted atheist Richard] Dawkins, do not like about religion were the same things that I did not like about religion,” says Cooper. [FLEX-CONTENT] Over time, Cooper says he felt himself more and more drawn to the rich tradition of scholarship in…...

According to the Pew Research Center, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and Muslims currently make up just less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population. Pew projects the numbers of Muslims in America to grow to 2.1 percent of the population by the year 2050. What these findings suggest is that Islam, like all religious traditions, is not an ethnicity, race, or Facebook status — but is a very personal choice. Humaira Mirza is profiled and photographed here as part of a week-long series on being Muslim, from KCPT and the Beyond Belief project. When you first meet 34-year-old Humaira Mirza, it’s easy to be reminded of the story about the tortoise and the hare. It’s the story of a race between unequals and teaches us something about the power that patience can have in turning a practical disadvantage into a spiritual strength. Most of us are too cynical to believe that slowing down can be the fastest way to reaching our goals. But Mirza looks like the kind of overachiever, the kind of woman you meet at a friend's dinner party and wonder, “How does she do so much, so calmly and so well?” Indeed. When does Humaira Mirza have the time to take care of three young sons, maintain the role of the quintessential host who throws fabulous Muslim holiday celebrations, and still manage to run a law practice helping battered women in the Kansas City region? Not only does Mirza do all that, but she also seems able to maintain a calm and measured flow of energy reminiscent of an…...

According to the Pew Research Center, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and Muslims currently make up just less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population. Pew projects the numbers of Muslims in America to grow to 2.1 percent of the population by the year 2050. What these findings suggest is that Islam, like all religious traditions, is not an ethnicity, race, or Facebook status — but is a very personal choice. Adam Foster is profiled and photographed here as part of a week-long series on being Muslim, from KCPT and the Beyond Belief project. Society today might be suffocating with controversies, but when it comes to faith in God there is no controversy in the mind of 32-year-old Kansas City poet Adam Foster. When asked what kind of Muslim he is, Foster, like so many American Muslims of his generation, doesn’t identify with any classification. The kind that prays, he says. In other words, he is an American Muslim — the politics, the culture, the confusion, and, like the title of one of Foster's poems, the controversy. “I do not like to put myself into a category,” says Foster. “I do not claim to be associated with any particular mosque. I just need a place to pray, and I am not really interested in anything else that’s being offered.” Foster says the old adage that we make plans but God is the ultimate planner is not just a cliché, but a principle that has given him true inner peace. So when Foster's 3-year-old son was diagnosed last year with Leukemia, he says, “I just…...