Speaker 1: Alright, it worked. It worked, this little voice memo straight
Speaker 1: into the podcast feed boom. Who needs a studio and engineers?
Speaker 1: Well sometimes we do, but this is quick and dirty.
Speaker 1: So Hi, it's Barretonday again and welcome to how the
Speaker 1: citizen Ish, at least this week of Citizen Stories, citizen
Speaker 1: ing stories. So you heard the launch uh announcement in
Speaker 1: the previous item in the feed Today Monday, April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: we launched the first actual story and it's a topic
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart. It's libraries. I have
Speaker 1: a an audio that you'll hear that sets up the
Speaker 1: story and then yeah, you're gonna hear the story of
Speaker 1: the Innovator and Residence program at Cosst Library in Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and a woman named na Esco uh who took a
Speaker 1: library that we think of as a quiet place, a
Speaker 1: place to consume stories, and helped turn it into a
Speaker 1: much louder place, uh, place for people to tell their
Speaker 1: own story or come together to do so. And this
Speaker 1: is very Black America whose stories are being erased right now.
Speaker 1: So find these stories on my Instagram. Baratunde on how
Speaker 1: the citizen Instagram spelled like that. On the Citizens Guide
Speaker 1: that's John Alexander, and you can also find them on
Speaker 1: my LinkedIn or John's LinkedIn. All of that out I'll
Speaker 1: have in the show notes on this episode, and you
Speaker 1: can sign up to get the daily emails about this
Speaker 1: as well as the summary of what we all did together.
Speaker 1: If you go to stories dot howdocitizen dot com right
Speaker 1: at the tone, the tariff will be five jillion percent boop.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the audio of these videos make some noise. If
Speaker 1: you love your local library, they have palaces for the people,
Speaker 1: places where democracy is actually an action truly open to everyone.
Speaker 1: I've even served on the board of the Brooklyn Public Library,
Speaker 1: That's how much I love them. So when I think
Speaker 1: of citizen as a verb and where we citizen, libraries
Speaker 1: are literally first on the list, which is why I
Speaker 1: want to share this story first, the story of a
Speaker 1: library in Memphis, Tennessee, that is showing up for the people.
Speaker 2: When you think of library, you think of books, librarians
Speaker 2: somewhere quiet. This is not that library. My name is
Speaker 2: na Esco and I am the innovator in residence for
Speaker 2: podcasts programming at Kasid Library, a woman who at Memphis
Speaker 2: is majority African American. Right, we do have high poverty
Speaker 2: rates as well. So COSCID is positioned in downtown Memphis
Speaker 2: where a lot of the poverty is going on. This
Speaker 2: is a place for innovation. So you'll come and see
Speaker 2: my podcast studio. On the opposite side of me, you
Speaker 2: will see the Fatiography videography lab. There is an entire
Speaker 2: performance space. Oftentimes you hear patron say, I didn't know
Speaker 2: a library had things like this, So that one thing
Speaker 2: that they thought that they could never do or participate
Speaker 2: in it is available and no cost to them. Here.
Speaker 2: I mean that just opens the door for someone to
Speaker 2: really create a pathway. We live in an era right
Speaker 2: now when a lot of people are being silenced and
Speaker 2: I'm so proud to really sit down mentor someone and
Speaker 2: they actually feel like they can say what they really
Speaker 2: want to say.