Dear Readers,

How many of you still frequent Medium? How often do you write, and when you write, do you write for yourself, your audience, or a combination of the two? Do claps mean anything to you?

I joined Medium when it was a freer place, with no paywalls or corporations vying for our attention. I find little pleasure in any of the social media platforms that used to be a place for connection and ideas.

Facebook is a graveyard akin to Back to the Future 2.

Instagram is bright, beautiful, plastic and grim.

I haven’t logged onto anything else in ages.

Remember Xanga? Being nostalgic for Xanga makes me an old Millennial, and I don’t care.

Back then, my college friends and I blogged our thoughts with no fear of employers or trolls judging us for thoughts on pop culture or politics. We wrote for each other and the random anonymous Xanga-ers who would stumble across our colourful glitchy pages. It was a great little community.

Sometime between then and now, the online world has become more global, yet more distant (and it’s loud!). The world is flat again. You can communicate with anyone across the globe, finding your commonalities and judging your differences, without really knowing what daily life is like in a corner other than your own.

We can travel for long weekends in fascinating places ala Ryanair/Easyjet/Airbnb, but that doesn’t really count does it? (I have noticed that every city starts to feel the same, and I don’t really know one any better than the next).

Back to *you*, dear Readers. What do you think of these things? Do you still have meaningful interactions online? If you are here, and if this entry gets delivered to your inbox or notifications, would you say hello?

With love from Berlin,

Talitha

I’m happy to announce my new film project: THE PEACE BETWEEN.

In collaboration with director Caroline Kamya, I am producing & shooting The Peace Between, a short documentary film telling the stories of friendships between locals and refugees in different corners of Europe: North, South, East & West. The film tells four stories, each one about a cross-cultural friendship between a local and a newcomer. We see how these relationships grew from first impressions and initial reservations, to the events that brought them together and how the friendship changed them.

We just had our first shoot in Budapest, Hungary in June 2017 and are currently casting in Denmark, Greece, & France, where we will shoot in July — September 2017. Film screenings will be followed by discussion times hosted by local organisations and churches, in order to open dialogue about being in community with new neighbours and relating to one another from a place of understanding and respect.

Check out my Patreon page for updates on the film, behind the scenes stories and more info on how you can become a patron of the arts. =)

This film is a passion project and is not for profit, financed in part by my generous patrons, who believe in supporting artists directly. In the olden days, it was the rich who supported the arts & had a say in commissioning projects — but with the Patreon platform, anybody can support their favourite artist for the price of a cup of coffee. At the moment, I have 50% of the funds that I need and am looking for more patrons who are passionate to see stories like these.

Originally published at talithabrauer.com.

One crazy person drives a lorry into a Christmas market. The world inhales the news and exhales fear with a hiss.

This is a hard post to write. Just yesterday morning, I was remembering a year ago, how we were ready for 2015 to end, how the Paris attacks had shaken us. Now people are paying attention to Berlin. Last night’s tragedy was small in comparison to Paris, but it’s disturbing nonetheless: 12 dead. 48 injured. All Christmas markets in Berlin are closed today.

Questions are flying, and in this time of social media, we expect instant answers: Who is behind this? Who is the driver? Is he a refugee?

We are angry that people were killed in a Christmas market, a place that is meant to be fun and safe.

One act of wickedness grabs people’s attention and suddenly overarching narratives are created around that one person.

I understand the anger and the fear — we’re angry when life is violently snuffed out. We are afraid of what we don’t know. It’s hard to be open minded about refugees when the main narratives you see are —

The fear is real — but it’s oversimplifying to correlate last year’s influx of refugees into Europe and these attacks as cause and effect; there is a series of enquiries being passed over. Questions like —

What happens after the dramatic journey across sea and land, once the refugees have crossed (or been blocked at) central European borders?

After refugees are registered in Germany/Europe and await their fate, what then?

Since hundreds of thousands of refugees came to Europe all at once, how can we know who they are?

Should we be afraid?

We naturally ask these questions. If I were to meet you in the street and say, “I want you to trust me”, your natural (and sensible) response would be, “Why should I?” It’s a lesson we learn quickly as children: Trust is to be earned, not assumed.

I remember one classmate telling me a story of how she got together with the cutest guy in the class. Later, she told me it was a lie, a test of friendship and I had passed. I thought to myself, Yes, it was a test — of your friendship, and you failed.

Every day, we consciously or subconsciously make decisions about who to trust. People gain our trust over time, but trust can be lost or broken in an instant.

Trust does not exist outside of relationship.

The talking heads do nothing to build this trust; they actually thrive on spreading fear. Trump tweeted about the terrorist attack in Berlin before police had named a suspect. Angela Merkel’s political opposition immediately began blaming Monday’s deaths on her decision to let the refugees in. And ISIL claims responsibility for the attack — effectively keeping people in fear, even if they’re lying.

Many refugees are afraid, too. They have fled countries to escape torture, religious persecution, bombing, and more. The majority of Syrians I have interviewed have asked me not to publish photos of their faces on the internet or on facebook because of how the Assad regime could use it to harm their families.

I will not live in fear nor will I be ruled by it. I refuse to let the narrative of one killer outweigh the narratives of many ordinary men, women, and children.

Again, this is a difficult topic to write about. You see, I spent this year getting to know refugees: men, women, and children from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I started Brother’s Keeper International and we’ve been blogging about refugees in Berlin all year, but it’s only now that people are paying attention to Berlin.

Looking for Answers, Building Trust

In September 2015, I traveled with a Syrian family for 10 days from Budapest to Hamburg. I wanted to help one family. I wanted to see the thousands with my own eyes and understand — who are they?

I was in the crowd of men, women, and children sitting in the aisles of the train from Hungary to Austria. Waiting for our late night connection in the quiet Salzburg station. Arriving in Munich long after midnight where every person received a personal & medical check before heading into the massive exhibition hall that served as emergency housing. Eating canned tuna fish and bread at 3 in the morning before catching a short 5 hours sleep on army cots lined up in rows.

There were lots of families, moms and dads holding their young ones with big eyes and brave dispositions. So very little crying considering how many young kids there were. The little girl in my group fell asleep and slept right through as she slowly slipped off her chair and onto the floor. The kids were utterly exhausted.

There were also many men, young and old. Within the mass of refugees, people traveled in smaller groups. The mother in my group kept her money in a pouch around her neck, nestled in her bosom. She warned me to sleep with my camera and valuables right next to my body.

She had the natural fear any mother would, alert to protect her family as they traveled in the midst of a mass of strangers.

After the journey, the refugees are placed in camps and they wait for their asylum application to be processed. It’s often 9 months or more before they are assigned a flat of their own.

The media covers hardly any stories of the waiting. The same meals being served day after day: slices of white bread with cheese. Apples, bananas, oranges, honey. Hot food that is always the same. Staff and refugees alike have told me, the food is bad. Edible, but bad.

Some of the refugees use their limited resources to buy hot plates, where they can cook themselves rice and make themselves stew. If the system were set up so they could all cook in the kitchen for themselves, it actually would be good for their dignity and boredom. But many are housed in converted office spaces, gyms, and schools, several families crowded into a big room, with individual spaces divided by portable partitions. Sometimes the refugees improvise further with sheets.

Making Space for the Unheard Stories

I’ve tried to fill in some gaps from what I’ve learned from my firsthand experiences with refugees and in refugee homes. But as to knowing refugees, understanding who they are and where they come from — that is only possible when we stop skimming headlines & tweets, and take the time seek out their stories and listen.

So I’d like to introduce you to a few — click on the photos to read their stories.

For more stories like this, follow Brother’s Keeper International on Instagram & Twitter.

If you made it all the way to the end — thank you. For real. :)

And if you *really* are a fan, please recommend ♥, share & follow — let’s make space together for these unheard stories!

Fear and Freedom in Berlin was originally published in Extra Newsfeed on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I met John (20) at a Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio and then spent the day with him and his friends, Austin & Devon, who are Bernie Sanders supporters.

As we hung out, I was struck by the undercurrent of fear in their discussion — the Paris bombings led to thoughts about a recent school shooting in a nearby township; opinions on money spent abroad quickly gave way to discussing the reality of homelessness and the challenge to make ends meet from $10.50/hr (minimum wage).

The following is a snippet from our conversation, shared with their permission. Feel free to listen in.

Photos & interview by Talitha Brauer. Transcription by Elyssa Brauer.

Where were you when the Paris thing happened?

John: I was sitting at home watching it…next thing you know, every channel was all the Paris shots. It was just going on buh-boom-boom-boom, just kept goin’ and goin’. Them numbers just kept gettin’ higher and higher and higher.

So when you see Paris & San Bernardino, are you afraid that that’s gonna happen here?

J: It already has, even though I think 9/11 was half set up by our own government, but I think the shit’s gonna keep happening. They’re probably planning something right now that we don’t even know. Just like the Boston fuckin’ bombers, all that shit, we were never expecting anything. It just happens and then everyone notices it.

Austin: Everything’s unexpected.

J: We can’t prepare for anything. They say they have higher security — that’s while there was just a shooting in fucking Madison Township High School.

A: That kid was fourteen years old shooting up the school!

J: Buhboom! You’d never know it, you just can’t know. There’s nothing to stop it. No matter who’s the president!

A: I just don’t understand like, what would possess a fourteen year old to shoot up a school? I wasn’t even thinking about…Fourteen? Fourteen? The only thing that was on my mind was Yu-Gi-Oh and football (laughs).

So do you feel safe in America?

A: I feel safe.

J: When I’m 21, I’m gonna own a gun.

A: You can own one right now it just can’t be a handgun.

J: It just can’t be a handgun, yeah.

A: I could do more damage with a shotgun than with a handgun!

J: You just take one shot!

This is also something that is interesting to me from abroad. You’re troubled by shootings, you’re troubled by teenagers doing these crazy shootings, but you also feel the need to have a gun to protect yourselves as soon as you’re able.

What do you think would be a way to solve the school shootings?

J: I don’t think it can be solved.

A: Teach your kids gun safety. That’s the only thing we really can do. It’s our constitutional right to own weapons so I mean, they really can’t take guns away from us, so the only other way to do it is to bring your kids up knowing what guns are and what guns can do and the safety behind all the guns.

J: Yeah. Kids are fuckin’ high and they’re like ten and twelve and it’s like, dang. Kids knowing how to shoot guns already. They’re over there in ISIS training like ten year olds how to fight and shoot guns and shit.

A: I’m not worried about what’s going on in a different country.

J: Exactly, that’s the thing, we need to worry about our own country. We’re in so much debt, we’re just never gonna catch back up.

A: We’re so worried about getting popularity points for helping other countries when we should be helping our own.

J: You walk through Dayton and you see all these homeless people…we’re so worried about helping them people [overseas] and people don’t even have shelter over here.

A: I’ve been to Las Vegas twice, and in that town alone, I have never seen more homeless people in my life. I’m sure there’s more [somewhere else], but I haven’t really been to anywhere big yet, so, Vegas is pretty much the biggest place I’ve been. You can’t walk five feet down the street without another homeless person being there, they’re just everywhere.

J: The only thing about the homeless people — I get why some are homeless, but there’s shelters and there’s jobs. In Vegas, if you can’t find a job, you got issues. I would work at McDonalds before I would be homeless. I was homeless before — I lived in my car. But you just gotta keep working and fucking get another job. I’m 20, I can’t just get shit for free. I tried. I tried to get a Link card and I can’t even get that. Everyone else can.

A: You can’t get what?

J: A food card. I dunno. I went there when I was working at GTI and I made too much money (laughs). It’s bullshit. I was gonna get an apartment [in income based housing]. They said I made too much money there too and I’m like, fuck, it’s only $10.50 an hour, how is that too much money?

A: (laughs) Yeah, because those are income based for metropolitan people. That’s another thing, with like welfare and everything. They set the bar way too low, to where you basically can’t work a full-time job, you *have* to work a part-time job to even qualify for it. So that’s another reason why people are lowering their standards, working a part-time job just so they can get the assistance.

Like John said, $10.50— he’s 20—I’m the same thing. Me and her, we have a kid and we tried doing it on our own and both of us had to work a full-time job, you know 40+ hours a week just to, you know, make it by. But if they raised that bar for welfare up a little bit to where if you make a little more money, it’s not gonna mess with anything — I think that’d help out a lot, honestly.

And then we wouldn’t have to be worrying about people calling in about people being lazy, and all this. People are only lazy because if they do get a better job and they’re still not gonna be able to make it, so they might as well just stay down, and get help.

So there’s no way to get out of it — you’re stuck with the same problems because you can’t make more to get out of it.

A: Yeah. And then again, if you’re making $10.50 an hour and you’re making too much for welfare and you can’t get into these income based housings, and you can’t find a two bedroom house where you can get by perfectly fine — you’re going to struggle.

How long were you living in your car?

J: Not long, just a couple nights I would stay in there [my car], then I would just get a hotel the next night or something. I had options, I just decided to sleep in my car ‘cuz I was all around and then I got this place [gestures to the house]. I had a Ford Escape.

I’m 20 and I’m doing pretty darn good. There’s like 20 and 30 year olds, 40 years olds that don’t even have a job or a place. Then you got people who get their parents to pay for their shit. They get these fancy trucks and cars and I gotta work for my shit.

My checks would be like 600, 700 dollars, and I get like $400 pay checks and I’m like, dang dude. Healthcare and all that bullshit I don’t even have. I don’t even have a doctor, or healthcare or Obamacare and that’s still getting taken off my check. I haven’t seen a doctor in a long time and that shit still gets taken off.

That’s like a fourth of your check for insurance that you only need if you get sick or something.

This story is part of Voices of America, a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.

<< on to Part 1 <<

Why I Created This Series

© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer

Eavesdropping in Greenville: Stories from a Swing State was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!

I started a new medium account to post the stories of refugees. Please follow Brother's Keeper International and don’t miss these powerful accounts of men, women, and children who started new lives here in Europe. If you are tired of sorting through the weary news cycle of stats and sorrow, read these stories for personal accounts from inside the refugee crisis.

Love,

Talitha

www.brotherskeeperintl.com

Who are Trump’s supporters and why don’t I know any?

John R, age 20, grew up in Chicago. Now he’s a cook in Greenville, Ohio.

“I’m with Trump. There’s some things that Bernie does that I agree with, but the Bernie supporters just want everything handed to them. They think they should get everything for free. It’s not OK that it’s us working and paying for them when they’re not working. They get houses for free and they don’t have to work — that’s not right.

I know a lot of people in Greenville who live off the state, and that’s where half my taxes go. I get $200 taken out of each pay check for taxes — that’s a lot.

I like Trump because he’s a self-made billionaire and he has money to help. Hopefully more people will start getting more jobs, sort of like Obama did. He brought a lot of jobs, hopefully those will keep going up.

I don’t agree with Trump on everything, like “Oh, just kick ’em all out”. It’s going to be a long process, but at least slow it down a little bit, start focusing more on our country, cus you know ISIS and all them are cooking up something as we speak and you never know when something is gonna happen. More illegal people coming over isn’t gonna help.

Every solution that they have has failed so far. I don’t think building a wall will really help, because there’s a Mexican border and that doesn’t help either.

I don’t know about the Mexicans and all them, but the Muslims, he has a big problem with them for some reason and I think he’ll slowly start taking them out. Like all the Syrian refugees and that stuff, I don’t believe in that. Because they’re all from the same area, one (terrorist) can just slip in with them. You can’t trust any of them.

I think the media eggs Trump on a lot too. The other candidates start blurting out random things and they just start going at him. The media is the one that causes them to start talking like that. The other day they started talking about Trump’s hands…that don’t need to be said. They all argue too much anyway. We just don’t have any good candidates. Trump’s all right, but after that who would you choose?

Trump sounds more powerful than all the others.

I don’t like how they compare Trump to Hitler. Just because he doesn’t want illegal people coming in doesn’t make him racist. That’s not a color, it’s illegal, there’s a difference. There’s plenty of white people that are sick of white people stuff too. Going into schools shooting…that’s a lot of white people.

Trump has a family and has his own life, he has black friends. He’s not racist. Hitler was racist, Trump’s not.

What do I hope for? A good country, no terrorist attacks, for that to slow down. For people to get more jobs, for our country to be better. We’re so much in debt.

This story is part 6 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.

< < Part 5< <

Why I Created This Series

© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer

I’m with Trump: Stories from a Swing State was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who are Trump’s supporters and why don’t I know any?

Kaitlynn P, age 20, lives in Greenville, Ohio, 33 miles away from her hometown. She voted for Trump.

“We were out late last night dancing, got about three hours sleep. We got a ride to Dayton and had to take a bus to get to the rally. We didn’t make it in, we were ten minutes late. We saw Trump board the plane, that was pretty cool.

I moved away from home for the first time three months ago. I work at a factory here in Greenville. We go out dancing for fun. There’s not much to do around here.

I think it’s stupid to put a wall between here and Mexico. I don’t get the whole reason why you would have to put a wall between somewhere just because people have different opinions. I don’t agree with it.

I like Trump because he speaks his mind. That’s about it.

I hear a lot about Trump and I don’t like the other presidential candidates right now. They say something, but they don’t do it.

If Trump becomes president, we’ll see if he can do it.”

This story is part 5 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.

< < Part 4< < ………………………… >> Part 6 > >

Why I Created This Series

© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer

First Time Voter: Stories from a Swing State was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who are Trump’s supporters and why don’t I know any?

Yvonne K, age 62, was born and raised in New Jersey. She married a farmer and moved to Ohio 40 years ago.

“I feel fear about some of the liberal ideas — that they’ll ruin the country. The government is putting their hands in every single thing, from churches, to education, to banking. The government is growing, growing, growing and pretty soon we’ll be a communist state.

I don’t want to see the Democrats get in because I don’t want this to become a socialist nation. I’m going to be old and vulnerable. And things could get really hard, really bad.

The election has this high drama going on, there’s the jesters, there’s the people who come out in the middle with the comic relief. It’s like this huge big show. It’s a three ring circus. It’s stupid! It’s these intelligent, educated people just saying all these ridiculous things and ripping each other apart.

Trump didn’t seem quite as vicious as the other ones. He’s using a different tactic. He’s drawing people in with a magnetic thing that’s very subtle. Very powerful.

I don’t trust Trump, because the things he’s promising are the things in people’s hearts. Especially people over forty. They want America to be what it was thirty years ago, safe and happy and wonderful — except it wasn’t — although it was safer.

People really want to hear that and really want to believe it. They just want to believe that we can go back to the time when kids could play outside and folks could trust their neighbours. It’s the moral compass inside the hearts of men and women that is askew, and no one is going to bring them back.

It’s arrogant to say ‘I’m gonna bring America back.’ America doesn’t want to go back. America’s going where America is going and one person isn’t going to change that.

I really think Hillary’s gonna get elected, I really do. But I don’t know. It’s just that the Clintons have been building and building and building for decades and they’re still in power in a lot of ways. The Clintons and the Bushes are all in cahoots too, all in bed with each other. It’s insanity!

People don’t want an elder statesman. They want an entertainer.

Whenever something’s really popular, and it seems like “This is it!”, then you’d better ask the question, “Is this it?” People are all going crazy after him, waving their hands, crying out “Trump, Trump!” like they’re all heading down the river in their inner tubes. It’s the thing to do. If everyone is into it, then it raises a red flag and needs to be examined.

Economically, we are so in debt. These big promises from Trump — it’s like the guy you’re dating who tells you that you’re the one, and then he disappears, that’s sort of how it feels… I don’t trust that.

I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I’ve got one day. I’d better figure it out.”

This story is part 4 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.

< < Part 3 < < ………………………… >> Part 5 > >

Why I Created This Series

© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Stories from a Swing State (Part 2) was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who are Trump’s supporters and why don’t I know any?

Bruce K, age 67, was born and raised in Darke County, Ohio. He lives on a farm there.

“I lived here the first eighteen years of my life, then I went to college. I got a masters degree in electrical engineering, married Yvonne and came back. I started working as an electrical engineer, and then also as an organic farmer.

I worked at Wright Patterson Air Force Base for over 30 years as a civil servant. My grandfather was a farmer, and he loved farming, and he had an organic garden. Farming was my sanity with the craziness of the political things at work.

I worked on the B2 during Kosovo — I was upset that we were bombing those people. My conscience really started to haunt me about what we were doing, defending one people group against another.

I kind of wondered why my grandfather was opposed to World War II, and now I understand why. Most all of these wars are fictitious, unneeded, and it’s all money-driven, by greed and pride.

We took down Libya, Gaddafi, Egypt. We’re trying to do it in Syria now. Trying to start World War III. I mean, what are we doing?

Our forefathers had it right, we need to take care of here, and foreign entanglements are what get us in trouble, and we are entangled. That’s why the Muslims hate us. I don’t blame ’em. I don’t blame ’em at all.

Today I see almost no difference at all [between Republicans and Democrats]. In the way they do policy — I see the same lies, the same corruption. Things are very corrupt. It’s just a different kind of corruption than you’d find in a third world country. It’s all masked over very neatly. It’s just the way we do business here. A whistleblower is told to be a whistleblower, but if you’re a whistleblower… good luck.

I started doing all this research, and that’s when I came to the conclusion about the big banks, that they control the politicians and that the politicians are essentially puppets. And that started to keep me up at night.

This place is not good. Maybe this is just the fear kicking in, but the amount of surveillance; the heavy-handedness of the law; the fact that if you go to court, we don’t have common law anymore. I learned a lot about contract and law and things like that. And I realised that we don’t have many rights. We don’t have any rights, even though we think we do. That’s kind of an illusion.

So it’s no worse in some third world country than it is here, in a way. There’s a lot of political prisoners here. We have the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. That says something. This is not a safe place to be.

I’d like to see Trump get the economy turned around. I think that’s where he shines the most, and we need that. We need to have tariffs. If the Chinese have a tariff on our goods, we need to have an equal one on theirs. There’s a tax advantage for companies like Apple to have their manufacturing overseas — Trump wants to change that.

Now, Trump may be a false dude, I can’t say. I don’t know. But I like the fact that he is willing to get in there and rough it up. I know he’s using the political theatre. I mean, he’s a master at it.

You’ve gotta have a strategy, and he does. He’s got one. These other clowns are out to lunch. And they’re liars as far as I’m concerned. I just think all the entrenched politicians and bureaucrats are liars and… he may be too, but I’m gonna risk it on him.

The only reason I’m thinking of Trump is because he’s the closest thing to get us there — away from corruption. I’m a libertarian. I want truth and honesty. The American way, whatever it is. I’m agnostic about the person, I don’t care who the person is. I just want the person who will get us to that point. That’s my struggle, finding who that’s gonna be.

I may vote for Trump. Or I may not vote at all.”

This story is part 3 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.

< < Part 2 < < ………………………… > > Part 4 > >

Why I Created This Series

© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Stories from a Swing State was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From afar, I watched celebrity Donald Trump rise from unlikely outlier to popular candidate in the presidential primary race.

My Facebook newsfeed was punctuated daily by statuses asking, “Who are Trump’s supporters? I don’t know any!” There is a lack of political discourse in the States; I want to do something to change that.

To open space for conversation.

No single candidate will bring a solution to the problems facing this country.

We need to learn to speak and listen to one another if we are ever to find a way forward. We have to see the humanity in one another. To open dialogue instead of hurl insults across dividing lines.

That’s the goal of this series: to initiate genuine conversation and create space to listen and engage with one another.

-TKB

Voices of America: Artist Statement was originally published in Voices of America on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.