mission

For many years I have followed Humans of New York on social media. The stories posted by photographer and journalist Brandon Stanton provide glimpses into the lives of people he interviews. Some of the stories are funny and heartwarming, and some of the stories are raw and devastating. Mr. Stanton's goal is to make New York City feel smaller, in a sense, by helping people see connections they have with total strangers. Though we come from different cultures or socioeconomic backgrounds, we might have something in common. Whether the story reveals something deeply personal or skims the surface, there is no doubt that people who we might have looked at with judgement, or even looked past without a second thought, become visible—become human.

During the fall semester, for several years, my classes have studied a unit that investigates the legacy of racism in our community, which includes reading statistics and articles about redlining and unequal neighborhoods in our city and interacting with several projects that respond to the information and perspectives we learn. Our school is located below Fresno’s “Mason Dixon Line” (Shaw Ave.) in Southwest Fresno, which is an area of town that has been plagued by poverty and crime as a result of redlining and other inequitable practices. After this unit, we engaged with the article “How to Beat Stereotypes by Seeing People as Individuals” by Zaid Jilani, and we examined how Mr. Stanton uses the concept of storytelling to help break stereotypes with Humans of New York.

For this project, my students interviewed people who live or work in Southwest Fresno (93706) or the adjacent community of Downtown Fresno (93721). We hope that by reading the stories of the humans of Southwest Fresno and Downtown Fresno you will make connections with and feel empathy for the people whose lives are represented here, and that you will see them as individuals rather than as a statistical group. Our mission for this project is to help break stereotypes that people have about Southwest Fresno through storytelling.

Mrs. Schulz

Teacher, Edison High School