Sounds from the Street

“When you’re homeless, you have kids, you have bills, you have family, friends, responsibilities,” Ronald Dudley said. “The only thing separating you from the rest of the world is a lease.” Dudley, aka Pookanu, is a musician on a spiritual mission—a mission to make sense of life, God, and fatherhood. It’s a lot to examine when you consider he’s relentlessly working to not only provide for his family but also find permanent housing. His life hasn’t been easy and you can hear it in the hard-bitten, sermon-like lyrics on his recently-released album, Father’s Day. Pookanu joins Sounds from the Street to discuss music, family and his experience with homelessness.

As a girl, Wendy Oxenhorn aspired to become a professional ballerina before a tragic injury shattered her dream. But that twist of fate catapulted her into a life of social work that eventually led her to co-found the first street paper and spark a global movement. Today, there are 112 street papers in 35 countries employing some 11,000 homeless vendors at any given time. But Wendy's work didn’t stop there. She eventually landed a dream job saving musicians’ lives at the Jazz Foundation of America and was recently named a 2016 NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor in jazz. Wendy shares her incredible journey in her own words. Sounds From the Street is a bi-weekly podcast elevating the voices of people engaged with the homeless community in our nation’s capital.

Born in Mississippi, raised in Pennsylvania, Patty Smith now calls D.C. home. It’s here where she’s spent the last decade selling Street Sense. She started in 2005, two years after the paper was founded. Her life, like many struggling with housing stability, was steeped in unexpected setbacks, bad luck, bad relationships, and bad health. The one constant through the tough times has been music -- Patty looooves music. She’s always singing, taking the pain and the grief of life -- the blues --and transforming it into song. Sounds From the Street is a bi-weekly podcast elevating the voices of people engaged with the homeless community in our nation’s capital.

On June 3, 2015, a group of students from Alice Deal Middle School organized a rally to support homeless anti-discrimination legislation. Then-sixth graders Nico Foxley and Sofia Giorgianni, along with their teacher, Michael Martini, join the podcast to discuss what they learned and why they feel so passionately about the issue. Sounds From the Street is a bi-weekly podcast elevating the voices of people engaged with the homeless community in our nation’s capital.

Though Snowzilla and the dark days of winter are fading from our memories, it’s technically not spring yet. In fact, the Interagency Council on Homelessness’s [ICH] plan to protect the homeless from hypothermic injury lasts until the end of March. Analyst Kate Coventry of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute is on the show to share her knowledge of the Winter Plan. She’s joined by artist and advocate Reggie Black, who has firsthand experience on both sides of the Winter Plan. Formerly homeless, Reggie is now a member of ICH and is on the diverse team of policy makers and citizens tasked with designing the multi-layered plan.

After weeks of walking past a Street Sense vendor selling newspapers, online marketing expert Adam Motiwala eventually asked the vendor if he was interested in an experiment. What began as a one-on-one digital marketing tutorial developed into a weekly workshop at Street Sense called Digital Hope. Adam discusses how his workshop has evolved into a groundbreaking income-generating model for homeless individuals. Sounds From the Street is a bi-weekly podcast elevating the voices of people engaged with the homeless community in our nation’s capital.

At age 24, Nick Flynn started working at the Pine Street Inn, the largest shelter in Boston. It was here that he reconnected with his estranged father, who was unsheltered at the time. Ten years later, Nick shared the story in his moving memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which was later adapted to the big screen as Being Flynn, starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano. Today, Nick explores the story behind the story while shedding light on the origins of homelessness and the subsequent explosion of shelters across the United States. Sounds From the Street is a bi-weekly podcast elevating the voices of people engaged with the homeless community in our nation’s capital.