Kenny Carroll, United Peoples Organization [Photo: Seven youth are gathered in a stream, under a fallen tree. Two young ladies in the front are wearing goggles while examining an object. The title panel appears.] [Video: Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum presents the following audio interview with Kenny Carroll, “Disconnection” The interview takes place in Washington, DC, where Kenny Carroll is with United Planning Organization. The narrative is overlaid with photographs illustrating the landscape and events described.] [Photo: A man is pointing to a map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Youth wearing life jackets look towards the map. They are on a boat.] Ken Carroll: One of the things that occurred to us when we decided, as part of our college-prep program, to incorporate STEM activities, when Tony and I got together, one of the first things we had to deal with [Photo: A man points towards a wetland. Eight youth look towards the wetland.] is, pretty much like all the panelists have said, we have kids who have grown up sort of distanced from the environment that's around them. [Photo: Twelve individuals, primarily children, listen to a man as he is talking. They are on a path in the woods.] Even though they're affected by it, they are unconscious of it and there is a disconnect with that. One of the things Tony, on one of our first trips to Sandy Springs, where you took kids up to Maryland [Photo: A young boy is steering a boat. A man wearing sunglasses looks ahead.] to show them where the Anacostia bubbles out the ground, when I wrote about that, as a writer, one of the metaphors that I kept going back to, in the poem I wrote about that day, was [Photo: Three youth, covered in mud, are planting during low tide in the Anacostia River.] sort of kids being reconnected with their mother, right? Because the day you had the kids out there, you know, you had some kids who were completely sort of distant, stood in a corner, under an umbrella, "Mr. Kerr, when are we going home?" [Photo: A young man wearing a life jacket and binoculars is grinning as he holds onto a tight rope, ready to pull it. His peers fill the boat behind him. Water is visible in the background.] And then you had people, like "Z" and Crystal and them, who were just running through the woods, screaming like they had been reunited -- right? -- with an old relative. And I think there's a cultural shift [Photo: Nine youth plant seedlings on the banks of the Anacostia River during low tide. Two adults are present, assisting the children.] that has taken place, and, you know, the video games and the, the being in the house and being away from nature is only, the, you know, the symptoms of that. But what we had when I came up -- I had a family – I can go back to my grandparents, who, you know, [Photo: A young man and boy are talking with one another, while standing in the Anacostia River wearing waders. A trash trap is visible in the background.] had land in Upper Marlboro. And even for my family, who lived in D.C. -- My grandmother was on 9th and Kennedy, [Photo: A pollinator garden is visible. Many dwarf sunflowers are in full bloom.] but she had a garden in her yard. She planted flowers. And we were expected to be out there, on our hands and knees, with the earth, right? [Photo: A bee is taking nectar from a white flower.] In addition, I grew up in public housing, over here in Congress Heights and then, later on, Montana Terrace in the northeast. [Photo: A light purple flower in full bloom is displayed next to two flower buds.] And you had a 4x6 plot of land in front of your front yard, and my mother grew flowers in every bit of that. You know, so… there was always a time where you were expected to be connected to the Earth, and that has changed for a lot of our children. [Photo: Tall purple flowers with blue hues stand among tall grasses]. And there's that -- Lauren talked about this -- that big disconnect with them in this. [Photo: Thirteen youth and two adults are walking in a line through the mud on the Anacostia River during low tide.] And so it's a culture shock when they get out in nature and have to interact with that. [Photo: Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s logo appears on a black background.]
