by Brenda Ann Kenneally

The summer of 2010 was the first I spent without my father. After he died, I amped-up the mission to visit more of the “places I always wanted to see”. My son Simon and I had a day in Las Vegas before picking up the car to drive to breathtaking Zion Canyon and the other surrounding amazing canyons; they are Wonders of the World. No cellphones or texting, no Internet or TV, these are usually the rules of our adventures. The plan was to limit distractions so our small family of two can reconnect to the sacredness of real life, to allow us to be awed by nature and not fall into the haze of lethargy that increases in opacity as the landscape of America becomes homogenized.

Simon was 16, and each year it was becoming more difficult. Even sentences like what I just wrote were harder for him to hear. I became more frightened that he would lose his soul, as he became more convinced that I was paranoid and old. I worried more as technology began to make fun efficient and sanitary. Real is difficult, messy and unpredictable. A person who has the heart for the real is of good character: this was the moral battlefield upon which I fought for the soul of my only child. My dad was our patron saint of the real, and when he passed, it was another enormously sad reminder that the age of the real is nearing its end.

My father, who nicknamed himself Fast Eddie, was a beautiful fatalist who, instead of reliving past glory days, told tales of being the last one picked when sides were being divvied up for dodge ball and of being terrified of barracks inspections because he was “all thumbs” when it came to squaring his sea bag. His mother, a strict Irish Catholic, lulled him to sleep with the threat of Hellfire and woke him to the promise of redemption at 7:00 A.M. Mass. By the time Fast Eddie quit high school to join the Coast Guard, he was already a full-blown manic-depressive with an addictive personality.

“Drinkin’, gamblin’ and chasin’ “—Catholicism made Eddie a compulsive gambler of the fiercest variety. He figured out early on that even when you win, there is no staying on top, as every day alive is one closer to cashing in your chips for eternity. Eddie had the beginning and the end figured out and this freed him to play by his rules, since the in-between, Eddie said, “is the only thing you have control over”. Playing by his own rules was the guiding force in his life up until the end.

He may have lived a little longer if he had stayed at the adult home, not sneaked cigarettes next to his oxygen tank and did what his doctors determined was best for him. But he left, got his own apartment, went on manic binges and tried to lure the night nurse from the home to come and party. Eddie had always said that he would be terrified if he won big, because it might make him go crazy. “This time for real,“ he would say. But win or not, he needed the action of just being in the game.

I inherited my work ethic and capacity for long suffering from my mother’s side of the family. I got my emotional aesthetics from my dad. I’ve tried to pass both of these on to my son.

I grew restless a couple of hours into our big night in Vegas. I felt that the replicas of tourist attractions were patronizing, and wanted my son to add Nevada to our ongoing survey of the Fifty States. I was directed downtown, and told that the Old Vegas maybe had a leftover bit of the spirit of individuality that lured folks West in the early days. Fremont Street used to be just that, a street with sidewalks for people, not the sprawling highways with pedestrian overpasses that herd tourists through mega-lobbies from The Bellagio to MGM Grand. Fremont was a 30-minute bus ride down the Strip and each block seemed to take us back a couple of years in time as the buildings appeared to be renovated according to their proximity to big name hotels.

We reached Fremont Street and found that it had become a “tourist-friendly” promenade mall with piped-in Classic Rock music and laser light shows on what the announcer boasted was “the world’s largest outdoor canopy”. Disappointed, I kept walking and as the music faded, I took a seat at a picnic table next to a lone truck selling tacos. I finally felt like I was somewhere. Across the street in a landscape where everything had been leveled, sat a huge box of a building that took up a city block. The Western Hotel and Casino was the most intriguing place I had seen since I arrived in town. I wanted to go in but was afraid of becoming obsessed. I am a photographer, but I never take my camera on vacation. When a guy from The Western came over for a taco and asked to share the table with us, I was thrilled.

He kept apologizing for himself, not for anything in particular, but mainly, it seemed, just for his existence. He said that The Western was dead that night. But that tomorrow, it would be crazy as it would be the 3rd of the month—government check day—Social Security, Disability, Public Assistance. I knew that I had to visit The Western if only to pay homage to my dad. Our dinner companion took us in through the back door and I immediately recognized everyone in the place. Their fatal flaws openly and refreshingly displayed, there was no small talk. Just like with my dad, the conversations cut right to the chase. It was as if by walking in through the doors of The Western, you were acknowledging that you were hip to the fact that no one in life gets out alive. The question of what it all means hangs in the air and the repetition and the numbers are comforting answers, open to interpretation by mystics and skeptics alike. And the answer “absolutely nothing” is perfectly acceptable to both. I did become obsessed, and somehow I got me and my camera invited back.

After hiking the big canyons, I spent ten days photographing and filming at The Western Hotel and Casino, previously also the world’s largest bingo hall. I was a guest of the new owners, The Tamares Group, and in exchange for photographing the renovations at one of their sister hotels, I was given free rein to document The Western as I wished. They said there were no plans to close the place. The faithful still came to suspend the long hours of their retirement inside deep pockets of hope and anticipation. The jackpot itself is another day done. Even though it was said that the Western still turned a profit, there was an uneasy feeling that the score would have to be settled soon for cheating time.

I took what I had and vowed to go back. My pictures of The Western remain a souvenir of a place that was comforting, like curling up in my daddy’s lap. But my daddy is gone and now so is The Western. It closed on January 16th, 2012. So now it is a news item, it can signify the struggling economy, or perennial issues like nutrition, public health, alcoholism or addiction. Now there is another metaphor for our failed social contract. The patrons poured money into The Western’s slots in the hopes that it would be there in the future when there was no place else for them to go.

Now it is all gone.

TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by Brenda Ann Kenneally

She was receiving additional mortgage fees despite making her payments so she discreetly searched for ways to keep her family’s home until she found a small Cleveland-based community action group, Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), previously known for helping create school guard crossings. Barbara was hired by ESOP, and they formed a powerful alliance that, over the course of the last five years, has saved more then 16,000 homes.

Years before the “Occupy” movement, ESOP used controversial tactics that were highly effective in bringing banks and loan sharks to the table to renegotiate bad loans. Using three-inch plastic toy blue sharks, which ESOP purchased by the thousands, victims of predatory loans and ESOP employees deposited the sharks at the homes, offices and clubs of lenders and bankers. The hope was to humiliate them to the table. It was odd, but it worked.

Inside ESOP, the compelling story of how the organization went from a small community action group to a state movement that saved thousands of homes.

In 2007, Richard Cordray, the newly elected Ohio Treasurer, walked into the small ESOP office and backed the organization to receive funding and go statewide, effectively transforming a small non-profit “dot-org” into a multi-million dollar operation to help fend off the impending economic demise of Cleveland and much of Ohio. Despite its successes, the city and the state continue to face an uncertain future as the crisis had already impacted a huge percentage of inner city homes. And after ten years of fraudulent practices, predatory lenders moved to the suburbs.

Trapped in a predatory loan, Barbara Anderson relates the shame of being caught up in a bad mortgage.

Today ESOP is a major player in Ohio’s survival. Although the predatory lending has stopped, widespread and persistent unemployment still takes homes away from their owners and much of Cleveland’s inner city housing is boarded-up, vandalized, or has been torn down by the city.

Barbara currently remains affiliated with ESOP but also continues her advocacy, organizing a community center in her own neighborhood, Slavic Village. She is also a member of a church group and a street club that addresses mounting neighborhood issues related to the depopulation of Cleveland including the diminishing education system and violent crime.

On January 4, 2012 Richard Cordray was appointed by the Obama administration as the director of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Elizabeth Warren.

What happened within inner city Cleveland is a microcosm of what has taken place throughout the country over the past ten years. The difference is that having an organization like ESOP for support and information set Cleveland apart from other cities or states such as Florida where those trapped in a predatory loan have had little or no place to turn within the chaos.

PHOTOGRAPHS and TEXT by Anthony Suau

Original musical score by Curtis Lundy

With support from Leica Camera

Where were you when the results of the Iowa Caucus were announced on Tuesday night?

I was with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum when he came so close to winning. How Santorum came on so quickly caught a lot of people by surprise. Huckabee did the same last time around in 2008, but his momentum started weeks earlier. Santorum, by contrast, seemed lifted from obscurity, advancing not just single digits, but to 8 votes behind winner Mitt Romney.

He put in the work – it’s what Iowans look for – he visited all 99 counties. He appeals to a large segment of social conservatives, evangelicals, and born-again Christians. They don’t buy into the “electability” of Romney, just because Romney polls well nationally against President Obama.

These conservatives are a specific interest group, very strong within the Republican Party, though they don’t speak for the state as a whole. They’re unified, energized, and proactive. Iowa Republicans are divided right down the middle: the struggle can be seen playing out between the social conservatives, who may have lost some strength since the Christian Coalition era, and the larger emphasis right now on the national debt and the struggling economy.

There are credible questions if Iowa is the perfectly representative testing ground, as Democrats have won the state in the general election for five out of the last six election cycles, including Gore in 2000 and Dukakis in 1988. However, the majority of the time Iowa does tend to swing with the winner.

Davenport, Iowa, January 2, 2012, Mississippi Valley Fair Grounds

Tell us about some of the logistics of covering the campaign:

I covered every candidate, logging over two thousand miles of driving in the last week and a half. I looked at the daily schedules and I knew where I could get and where I couldn’t. Even though I live in Iowa, mostly I stayed in hotels because the distances were too vast for me to get home at the end of each day.

In 2008, there was so much excitement that it was overwhelming. This time, without any Democratic challengers to President Obama, it’s only for one side. So there were more lulls and downtime, when the candidates weren’t in Iowa.

What did you find compelling from your perspective at street level?

What struck me about the people in the crowds was that they have this great anger arising from their perception of the direction of the country: with the debt, with the ongoing economic crisis.

Ron Paul’s campaign was notable: His supporters debated with great passion amongst themselves. His style is deliberately candid, whereas the other candidates were using more prepared and coached remarks.

At a “Rock the Caucus” event at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Michelle Bachmann, Paul, and Santorum made appearances. The response for Paul there was enormous. It does seem that the majority of younger Republican voters are supporting Paul.

The central theme was the economy, about which most questions were asked. Many of the contentious social issues such as gay marriage, etc. were not front and center. It was all about the economy.

Any more personal highlights?

It’s long hours and stress, but I enjoy the theater and the quirky aspects in addition to the importance of covering the presidential election.

I do want to demystify the political process with my photographs, to show what the process is like. It’s not all polish, and I like to travel around the edges.

One example: we were walking out into a field where Santorum and Congressman Steve King were pheasant hunting, and I was leading everyone, being the photographer from Iowa. We were trying to figure where they were going, and then we came upon them, with their guns. Everyone was ducking … it was comical.

TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by Danny Wilcox Frazier

Interview by Alan Chin

2011 has been a whirlwind year for Facing Change, as we have seen our dream and small initiative develop into a fully functioning project. We’ve been in the field, focusing on quintessential American stories including the continuing economic crisis, migrant workers, homeless children, historical landscapes, agriculture, the ongoing “Occupy” movement, and many others.

Our friends and supporters including the Library of Congress, Leica Camera, the Open Society Foundations, PhotoShelter, German GEO and individuals like you have all played critical roles in supporting our work and bringing it to larger audiences. We would also like to thank all of you for your attention and engagement.

Looking forward to 2012, Facing Change is proud to have continued support from our current friends and from new ones on the way. We have powerful new stories to offer in early January and well into the year.

Beyond new production, we are working to enhance this website to make it interactive for greater participation and personal involvement. We are also looking to develop a place for contributors’ work — your voices — as many photographers have sent in powerful ideas and images that we would be honored to present on: The Public Sphere.

If you’ve appreciated the photographs and stories we’ve been able to bring to you, please consider a tax deductible donation to our efforts:

SUPPORT

Warmest regards for the new year,

All of us at Facing Change: Documenting America

A Conversation with Debbie Fleming Caffery

Since I was a child I saw people working in the fields, in the sugar cane industry. My grandfather had a garden and raised pigeons, and every year during the harvest he took me riding to a sugar mill to see a friend that worked there. Another friend had a small country store and we would visit him as he made syrup out of the raw sugar. We would drive through the burning cane fields at sunset to go home.

I was raised in a culture of story telling: Etched into my heart as a child, I heard about my ancestors, the Acadians, being driven from Nova Scotia and from African American women telling us of their ancestors being taken from their homelands as well as the continued suffering they endured because of racism and poverty. I went back and forth from Catholic to Baptist churches and was sung to in French by my Acadian great-grandmother and by African American women singing both gospel and the blues.

We lived across the Bayou Teche from a sugar mill and my brothers and I spent a lot of time playing on the banks of the bayou, watching the barges being loaded with sugar. We would fall asleep to the sounds of the mill and during harvest time, the smells in our house were so sweet and intense.

Along the Mississippi River, towns are dead. There used to be cotton, now there’s soybeans and corn as well. A long time ago, the jobs were horrible — low paid, seasonal – but now those jobs are gone.  There are no good jobs to replace the farming ones. Although pay and conditions began to get better, a mechanized combine replaces 22 workers.

This summer, the levee broke when there was severe flooding. One unintended consequence was that people got temporary jobs removing the debris, burning trash, and re-farming the land.

Which areas did you spend the most time in?

Mound Bayou, Mississippi, is an old African American town. There had been no place to hang out in Mound Bayou, but an old ice cream parlor was reopened as a bar and café on Main Street. Years ago, I photographed a tombstone with angel wings, and I wanted to find it again.

So I started meeting people and asking. No one knew about or had heard of the tombstones, but they told me, “We’ll find the angel wings for you.” And in that search, I explained that I was photographing for our Facing Change Documenting America project and they began to help me. I became grounded in the community. People said to me, “Oh, I’ve heard about you!” and I give prints of my photographs. I hope to focus more on people that are unemployed, that depend on Social Security and Medicare.

We found the tombstone eventually, but it’s sinking.

And I’ve been going to Woodview, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi for years. It’s a typical old Southern town, the black people live on one side, the white people on the other. Mrs. B and her daughter run another small bar and cafe. They have a contract feeding prisoners, hundreds of plate lunches every day. She’s totally exhausted by evening. Some of the prisoners in Mississippi are hired out by the state as workers on farms.

You were in your native Louisiana as well as Mississippi; are there differences between the two neighboring states?

In northern Louisiana, it seems worse. People have moved away, many to work in the oil industry on the Gulf. Schools and hospitals are closed, churches abandoned. I went to a service and there were only six people there. One of the small signs of hope I did see was a church getting renovated. I saw signs of progress: the steeple removed, a new coat of paint, but I never saw anyone working. It was kind of mysterious.

I met James in Tensas Parish, overseeing the cotton harvest. He’s 62 years old, and has been working for the same family since he was six years old. But it’s rare to have a good job like that.

I get this sense that the main reason for the depopulation and economic decline of this region is the mechanization of agriculture. Can you talk a little more about that?

There is the river, and there are the towns. In between the towns is the agriculture. The main highway was moved from along the Mississippi River so now there is no traffic through downtowns. There really isn’t a need for the towns any more, the ceilings are falling down in old buildings.

A lot of people don’t have cars. I saw a van going around selling groceries, because the nearest stores are so far away. The kids are bussed to school. In Mound Bayou, the hospital is closed and boarded up, so there’s no doctor. The elderly have nowhere to go. It’s very sad.

TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by Debbie Fleming Caffery

Interview by Alan Chin

With support from Leica Camera

The history, literature and images of migrant workers have become part of our rich American history. From John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Dorothea Lange’s iconic image of the “migrant mother” and César Estrada Chávez’s legacy as a farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist, what I remember is just one small piece of a long struggle.

By the early 20th century, American cities were growing dramatically and agriculture needed to meet expanded needs for food. Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1917. This law established a legal basis for the importation of some 73,000 Mexican workers. During the Great Depression, foreign demand for agricultural exports plummeted and prices dropped. In an effort to open up jobs to native-born citizens, the Immigration and Naturalization Service cooperated with local authorities to deport more than 400,000″ Repatriados” back to Mexico in the 1930s. At least half were U.S. citizens, mostly the children of immigrants.

Generations later, the situation remains the same. In 2011 alone, the U.S. expelled nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau, October 2011). More than eight million undocumented workers, who comprise five percent of the work force, are embedded in the American labor market. Many of these people risk their lives to cross the border; many die on their way, while others are caught by the US Border Patrol and deported. Undocumented workers face extraordinary economic hardship in their home countries, encouraging them to endure these dangers.

Once in the United States, it is unsurprising that migrants are often employed in the most undesirable occupations. Meat-packing plants, landscaping, picking food or tobacco: all are low-wage jobs in physically demanding and difficult conditions. Without legal accountability or safety standards, most middle-class Americans would never dream of accepting such toil. Yet these tasks remain essential, underpinning the basic fabric of the American economy and quality of life.

All the while, undocumented immigrants live under the radar with meager wages and poor access to education, social services, and health care. Nonetheless, I have seen how they remain resilient and strive to be part of the American Dream. In this photographic essay, I show a glimpse of migrant workers’ daily lives.

TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by Carlos Javier Ortiz

With support from Leica Camera

Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, believes that the consequences of homelessness on young children will affect them and society not only in the short term, but also throughout their lives. “Research on the biology of stress in early childhood shows how chronic stress caused by major adversity, such as extreme poverty, abuse or neglect, can weaken developing brain architecture and permanently set the body’s stress response system on high alert, thereby increasing the risk for a range of chronic diseases,” he expounded in a recent paper. He went on to state that, “Research shows that later interventions are likely to be less successful – and in some cases are ineffective,” and that, “homelessness is providing the foundation for a lot of things that are going to cost society a lot of money later.”

Such grim forecasts make the work of organizations such as Horizons for Homeless Children (HHC) that much more critical. The program, located in Boston, provides day care and early education for homeless children under six.

For mother Nicole Adams, once homeless and now living in temporary housing, HHC offers her two-year-old daughter Khani an environment that encourages her thirst for learning. It also provides a safe haven from the violence that plagues her neighborhood, where seven shootings, including the murder of a child, occurred this past year. “I just definitely want a different life for her than what I had, period, “ explained Nicole.

Without the program, these children would spend their days in shelters or on the streets. With it, they are provided the tools for healthy growth and development so that they will be on pace with their peers as they enter kindergarten, and in the long term, have a greater chance at success.

TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by Lucian Perkins

With support from Leica Camera