Dear Indy,
Today’s lead story comes from K-12 reporter Carley Lanich, who attended a graduation ceremony Friday for the first cohort of Indy Peace Leaders. Here’s how it begins:
Dairius Banks wasn’t in Indy Peace Leaders when it first started this year but, after he kept showing up, the program’s leader let him stay.
The Arsenal Tech senior had followed a friend to the group which had been meeting regularly at their school to talk about what it means to be a leader. Banks said he’d never been a part of a group like it, but once he joined, he just started talking.
“It’s like a big therapy session,” Banks said. “We all had somebody to talk to.”
Banks is one of 14 young Black men at Tech who graduated last week from the school’s first cohort of Indy Peace Leaders. It’s a group Brandon Randall, of the local consulting group Tru Colors Indy, has led at Tech since late September. In it, he teaches lessons on how to appropriately deal with life’s challenges and become a leader for others as they’re faced with similar struggles.
The program’s launch comes amid the backdrop of an already violent spring in Indianapolis. Seven young people between 12 and 17 years old were injured in a downtown shooting last month, prompting police to announce their enforcement of a state curfew for kids. And Tech has lost several of its own students to gun violence, Randall said.
A chair sat empty at the Indy Peace Leaders’ graduation celebration on Friday, April 12. One of the 14 young men set to graduate was recovering in the hospital after being injured in a shooting, Randall said — a visceral reminder of something Arsenal Tech Principal JR Shelt told the Indy Peace Leaders he remembered hearing when he was a young Black student: “One in four of us won’t make it to see 25 years old.”
“That’s always stuck with me,” Shelt told the graduates, explaining how it drives his purpose today. “When you’re my age, you’ll do the same thing. If someone changes your life or gives you an opportunity or gives you a different way of thinking, you’ll pass that on to the next generation.”
Continue reading the article here.
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In other news
- What can Indy’s Black residents expect from a redeveloped Indiana Avenue? In a word: Reconciliation. That’s according to a team of consultants who held a kickoff event with the eventual goal to redevelop the area.
- When you experience theater, you’re probably accustomed to the shine of a finished production. But have you heard about Discovering Broadway? There, you’re given a glimpse of musicals that are not yet complete. Lou Harry explains here.
What’s going on around the city
- Saturday, April 20: The annual Orchid Show is back at Garfield Park Conservatory, 2519 Garfield Plaza Drive, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Presented by the Central Indiana Orchid Society, orchids from around the Midwest will be on display and available for sale. Tickets are $6 per person, or $14 per family.
- Saturday, April 20: Record Store Day, one of the biggest days for independent music stores, is here at last. Several local stores, including Luna Music, Indy CD & Vinyl and Square Cat Records, will have exclusive pressings from a wide range of artists. Luna Music, 5202 N. College Ave., will have performances from local bands, including Light Study and Living Dream, starting at noon. Free to attend.
- Sunday, April 21: Author Reyes Ramirez will host a grant writing workshop at Tube Factory, 1125 Cruft St., at 1 p.m. Ramirez, who has received numerous grants for his writing and curatorial projects, will share tips on how to write project proposal summaries and things to consider when starting a grant application. Free.
— Breanna Cooper, arts and culture reporter
Looking for other things to do? Check out Mirror Indy’s events calendar.
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What else we’re reading today
- Chalkbeat Indiana: The concept of “microschooling” lies somewhere between a traditional public school and homeschooling. Lawmakers are considering whether to make them eligible for vouchers.
- Indianapolis Business Journal: The downtown popup park known as Spark on the Circle will be back at the start of June with longer hours and a few other changes.
- Wall Street Journal: Despite what you may see in popular media, the numbers of homicides are dropping fast in cities across the country — further contributing to criminologists’ theory that the rapid spike of homicide rates in 2020 were a pandemic-driven outlier.
Arts and Culture
There are all kinds of stereotypes about poets, that they sit under trees talking about flowers and the wind, that they wear berets and snap their fingers, that they make terrible first lovers.
It’s possible some of those things are true about a poet here and there — even a broken clock is right twice a day. But more true is that poets think deeply about words, which is why a poem is a very good way to say important things about the world and about being alive.
The poets in today’s Mirror Indy list by author Samantha Fain are talented wordsmiths, but their work cultivating community in Indianapolis goes hand-in-hand with their creative work.
— Jennifer Delgadillo, arts and culture editor
Want to explore more of our city’s vibrancy? Find more arts and culture coverage here.
Reflections
I hate to treat this newsletter as my own confessional, but here we go: Yes, it’s true, I do have an invasive Bradford pear tree in my yard. It came with the house.
If you don’t know why it matters, I recommend checking out a new op-ed in IndyStar from Cliff Chapman, president of the Central Indiana Land Trust. You’ll quickly learn about the problems of the tree (and not just because of their odor).
Sure, I’m doing my part. I’ve torn up sets of burning bush, planted redbuds and dogwoods, and cleared lawn grass to make way for purple coneflower, brown-eyed susan and goldenrod. I even hung a little bee hotel — a gift from my mom a couple years ago that I’m pretty sure has housed a single bee so far.
But that dang Bradford pear is still looming and I just can’t get myself to cut it down. Be a better person than me. Cut down your Bradford pears.
Ryan
P.S. If you liked something about today’s newsletter, or didn’t, let me know at ryan.martin@mirrorindy.org. It helps us serve you better.