Now, before i get to our author, i want to introduce Tanisha Briley who is our amazing city manager here in gaithersburg burg. Tanisha will be, yes. And i was i was just saying this is this being taped for cspan . I was just saying a little worried because other people may want hire her away. I dont want that other cities. Please dont do that, tony. Shes going to be leading the conversation. A few months ago, tanisha handed me a book and it like she and i book recommendations. This is kind of a regular thing. But this is the first time one of us had actually, like, bought a book and handed it to other person. And that book was invisible child by andrea elliott. And tunisia is very much this books evangelist in a marvel of immersive journalism, eliot followed the daily plight of a homeless family to parents and eight children in new york city. In fact, she practically became part of the family, all by embedding herself with them for eight years at the heart, the story is dasani the eldest daughter, a young teen full of personality, charm and moxie. We see dasani care for her siblings and navigate complex relationships with her parents, both of whom genuinely seem to love their kids, but also suffer from Substance Abuse and likely Mental Health challenges. We observe life at school, her life at various shelters, the obstacles of getting from place to place on the new york Transit System and the challenges of finding and obtaining stable housing opportunities for advancement are scarce for dasani, but when they do arise. The central question of this book becomes will she able to break free from the cycle of poverty . And i will say the story gut wrenching is utterly it is a page turner and not to mention its a really good book from a Public Policy standpoint. For me, the book reshaped my worldview and deepen my understanding of homelessness and life in shelters. And im so glad all of you are here today to be part of this conversation and give it the consideration it deserves. So our guest of honor is andre elliot, who is an Investigative Reporter for the New York Times. Not only did win the nonfiction pulitzer for this book, invisible child, she had earlier won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Thus has become the first woman ever win individual Pulitzer Prizes in both journalism and arts and letters that deserves a round of applause. And add that to a slew of other awards would take me a long, long time to list. So i wont. I think you get the point, Andrea Andrea elliott is an elite and storyteller who spends time bringing us some of our societys most urgent stories. Were so lucky to have her with us today. Welcome, andrea elliot. Wow. How about the best mayor of the best city the world today . Thank you. Just. Thank you. I am so ive been anticipating this discussion for months. Id heard about New York Times series back in 2013. I didnt engage then. I heard about the book when it was released. And i also resisted reading it. Then and then it was recommended to me probably three or four times. And so finally last summer, i relented and i decided read the book. Now, the reason i rejected the book is because maybe some like you kind of tired the same approach to these stories of poverty. They tend to to be the same. They tend to have some of the same endings, same heroines or heroes, same approaches. And no one comes away with anything different. That was that was an issue for me. And one of the reasons i avoided it, but also because i myself live the childhood of of intense poverty and people tell the story. Right. From my perspective im overly critical of of storytelling. Once i read this book i have to tell. Not only did you resist the trap that that trap all writers who really are trying to do a good thing, they fall into this trap of the same old thing. You found a way. Give this family and their plight the and honor it deserved. I think the reader has to come away with a sense of a different understanding a challenge to these notions that we hold fast to why people are in poverty and they have these challenges and i, i have to say thank you to decided and should now for opening up to but also to you for being brave enough to push and chase this story. It is an important one. It is compelling. It will be a, i think, for anyone who wants to understand the plight of for not just children, but our society. And so thank you. I have to start there. Thank you so much. What im beautiful. Introduction by the mayor and and you i feel so honored to be today and i especially appreciate that you by thanking dasani and chanel because that is where i that is my point of departure every time that if not for them theyre encouraged able act of bravery vis a vis their willingness to be vulnerable which is in their world a dangerous thing that because they did that and allowed me in this story was able to be born in book form. It exists in many other forms, but in book form. Yeah. I cannot wait to dive into this with you. Ive been fangirling all day, so forgive if if i come apart at some point. But weve already had some really conversation and i hope that our conversation today helps you whether. Youve read the book or you plan to read it. I think this will be a really important conversation. So we heard a little bit about this jon nese journey with judds introduction, but why dont you tell about her . How do we get here . How we get to decide any story in book. Yes. Yes. Okay. So this dasani on the cover. This photograph was taken a months after i met in the fall of 2012. I was standing outside a homeless shelter in brooklyn trying interview families when her family walked out. And she, in particular just jumped out at me. I began following them and and in those early days when wanted to understand was what did it mean to be growing deeply poor in the richest country in the world and in one of the richest cities, the richest city actually the city with the richest collection of billionaires. This is true in the entire world that there was such a chasm between the rich and the poor. And how was that playing out in the lives of children in particular because we had the highest and continue have the highest Child Poverty rate of most advanced countries. How did we get there. I was wondering the same thing and thats what what me to dasani and into her life and you know what i will say is this book covers a lot of really difficult terrain. Dasani is survivor of many things beyond her control and. Shes a winning person. Shes somebody whos always trying to win. I dont see this, though, as catalog of sorrows. I her story, the throughline her story as one of joy. And thats kept me in their lives all of those years. I always wanted to be there. I found them electrifying and funny, captivating and in the videos and these, you know. So i felt really lucky to be to be with them. Yes. All these years. Yeah. You cant you cant not read book and come away with just a love of design. I think we all if youve read it. Youre a dasani fan. Yes and i think theres a passage that you kind of describe. Yes. Because for her. Okay. So its not a short book. I will. By saying that it could be a doorstop. Right. Its its the length of a president ial and i believe that it is worth every bit as much that her life worth every bit as much. I dont just say that from a place of principle but from a place of intellectual seeking that her life in terms of history, terms of policy, in terms of oral narratives about survive all about struggle, about intergenerational poverty lends itself that kind of scope. So the passage im going to read to you, the last passage i wrote, and it took me, i think all these years to write it and it just gets at the book is about. And i this by saying i was trying to figure out how to write this passage and writers tend to look to other writers for guidance and one of the greats out there is robert caro, who has written books about Lyndon B Johnson and his of the books that he wrote about president johnson. He had a passage that began to understand Lyndon Baines johnson, to know the 36th president of the United States of america is to understand the character of the nation. And so in a very deliberate both to him, to the place that to sonnys life deserve, i will read you this quick passage. Know dasani, Lashawn Coates to follow this childs life from her first breaths in a Brooklyn Hospital to the full bloom of adulthood is to reckon with the story of new york city and beyond its borders with america itself. It is a story that begins at the dawn of, the 21st century in a Global Financial capital, riven by inequality. It is also a story that reaches in time to one black family making way through history, from slavery to the jim gross crow south, and then the great migrations. Passage north. There is no separating dishonest childhood from that of her matriarchs. Her grandmother, joanie, and her mother chanel. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in disneys words. My heart, the ground beneath her once belonged to them. Her city is paved over theirs. It was in brooklyn. Chanel was also named for a fancy sounding bottle spotted in a magazine 1978. Back then from the ghettos, isolated corners perfume ad was the portal to a better place. Today, dasani lives surrounded by wealth. Whether shes into the boho chic shops near shelter or surfing the internet on its shared computer. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. To see dasani. To see all the places of her life from the corridors of school to the Emergency Rooms of hospitals, to the crowded vestibules of family, court and welfare. Some places are more felt than seen. The place of homelessness, of sisterhood of a mother, child. Bond that nothing can break. They dwell within dasani wherever she goes to follow dasani, as she comes of age, is to follow her seven siblings, whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one only together. Have they learned to navigate povertys systems . Ones with names suggesting help. Child protection and public assistance. Criminal justice. Services. To watch these systems play out into sandys life is glimpse their power. Their flaws and the threat they pose to disneys own system of survival. Her siblings greatest solace their separation her greatest fear. This is created other forces beyond her control. Hunger. Violence. Racism. Homelessness parental drug addiction. Pollution segregated schools. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child as dasani grows up. She must contend with them all. Okay. Thank you. Theres a lot there that we will try to spend a little time. I want to spend a tiny bit of time on systems. Yeah. And well talk a little bit that. But i think one of the there are lots of things jump out for me. The the familys love for one another is one. And how that permeates you know, it permeates the stories of permeates the books but also the way that you found a way to balance sort of their life story and how sits in the context of the of their family and the history of the country, right . Yes. Can we talk a little bit about that . Yes. I mean, is a reflection of my own often very humbling, not utterly humiliating journey as a student of their lives. This is what we have to do is, journalists. We have to go in with an idea, a general idea of why the people we are following or the place we are writing about matters. But also holding sort of in balance, sort of these two contradictory things, this idea of why it matters and that we really dont know what the story is. You you must go in open because thats our job. And what i thought was writing about when i met dasani was this label that we give to people to be homeless suggests a current plight, a current condition. Something thats happening now. And it was it was happening to dasani then and there she was also poor. Poverty, another label. But what i began to realize is like with each label i pulled back was more and more and more and more history. And more links to the past that explain the present that you couldnt understand her homelessness without going back in the history of her family to see what had happened to them that brought them there. And so i think that thats so much a part of why i wanted to situate her story in broader Historical Context was to force people to see beyond these labels. And because what are the labels do they. I mean, you. You can help me here. What do you think these i mean, they kind of force us. I mean, i think they they definitely allow us to step back and see things as a system, an other thing. Right. Thats not something thats personalized, thats not human. And they put the onus on the person they do. They do. Which is, again one of one of the reasons im an evangelist for the book is that i think you do such brilliant job of helping us reexamine this context of personal responsibility and accountability, and certainly dasani herself and parents, dont make all of the right decisions all the time. But you help us see the urgency of their struggle, their everyday crises, and how that sort of competes with trying to be grounded and think about the future these things that we blame parents for, not right the parents of the of the poor children their children because their parents are bad. Right. Right. You know, its one thing to kind of like do the research which is what i tend to do in the beginning of any project call. All the experts read the studies. And its another thing to be in the trenches with, the people youre writing about. And what found so striking was early on hearing about abraham maslow, the 1940 psychologist who talks about the Human Experience as pyramid. This is often taught as a pyramid. Its called his hierarchy of needs. The deep hierarchy needs that in order for of us to achieve our utmost, which is the top of the pyramid, we have to have the things at the base at the very base of the pyramid are like basic physiological things, like housing, water, shelter. And then after you have those basic things, housing, water, shelter, food, then you feel safe safety comes next. And after safety, you begin to achieve things like love, belonging. And only after that and after that, selfactualization we all want to be at the top and we want for everyone you would assume we all basically want that for everyone. Right . But the poor tend to be blamed for not having actualized, right. Having selfactualization without, understanding that they cant because theyre consumed with the crumbling bottom. Right. With being able if you are and this is what i saw day in day out living with being in their lives standing in welfare line for four, 8 hours, watching them get logged of their shelter and having to ride the train all night. Just the things that they went through completely occupied their brains to the point where there was no bandwidth left for planning for dreaming. It was just about survival. And in act of survival, there was incredible amounts of innovation and, you know, i think these small daily miracles that just go unnoticed that that were were striking to me. But, you know, so i, i really wanted to show that in this book what its like to live in that constant state of of stress and how it impacts the brain how it impacts the body, how it gets in the way and how a child like the sunny tries to circumvent it. But in the very beginning, i will say i wanted to avoid the adults because i think was afraid of the public reaction. Were talking about the politics of. I wanted to reach as wide audience as i could with the series ran that book that led to this book being born and these are New York Times readers. But i wanted it to try to reach many people beyond the New York Times as i could. Didnt matter to me where anybody was. I wanted this to be a story that mattered to everyone. Because no matter you are politically, you cant deny that there are now more than 13 million children in america living in poverty. Thats the stakes are very bad for, really, for the future. Its not a thing when you have one fifth of your future workforce. Growing up in adversity, its its a costly problem. It means greater costs in terms of lack of participation in the labor market, in terms of everything from Health Problems to homelessness to incarceration. So there is a social scientists that i believe his name is robert mack, who estimates that the cost of Child Poverty in america is 1 trillion per year in of lost opportunities in the labor market and all of these other things. And so so so its a problem we can all agree its a problem how to fix might be what ends up being up for debate and yet when we write about poor people the response tends to be one of blame. And yet these children, you cant argue theyre to blame, right . Theyre kids. They didnt theyre not responsible. And so my initial approach was just sort of write about them in this Charlie Brown way, where the adults became like were like they just were in the background. They didnt exist. They didnt have a voice. It was just the kids, just the kids. And this was one very compelling kid. But then all these years later, i in a different place. Yeah, that yeah. And and were glad you were glad you. So this is a black right lets lets put the obvious on the table here. Yes. This is a black family. I, i grew up in a similar way. Right. We dont tend to trust outsiders, particularly those are white presenting right authority figures. All of those things. This is how you show up, this family. How do you get so how do you build this trust . How did they let you in . Yeah, i in the beginning, i mean, yes. So i came as far as design is concerned from a different i look different, i talk different. I had never experienced homelessness. Id gotten to go to graduate school. I belonged to the establishment. I was there with my card from the New York Times. I couldnt have been more different. And in the beginning, her mother send the kids out because she didnt have a working phone and say check it the white ladys there. They run out, they come back. You, jamar, shes still there. Oh, it. And finally and like they had absolutely no reason no reason to trust me for the reasons that you just and i learned very early on by speaking to them that white people up in their world for one of two reasons, either t