For the past two months, I have been fortunate enough to work on a number of exciting and unique projects. I have experienced reporting for a large social injustice protest, as well as created vlogs with my partner. Currently, we have been busy working on our individual PSAs. To start, we had to research environmental issues that need to be addressed to the public. Personally, I am extremely passionate about social equality here in America and I wanted to make a video on an issue that I see in my social environment.
One of my ideas was a statistical PSA on how African Americans are stopped and searched by law enforcement at a higher rate than any other nationality. As a young African American male, this is a problem that I had to be educated on, learning what to do and what not to do while stopped. African American drivers are twice as likely to be arrested during a traffic stop (Bureau of Justice Statistics). I find this fact compelling because I feel that many people really don’t even realize the importance of this issue. I have actually witnessed a law enforcement officer follow a family member for at least six blocks as we were driving home from the mall, even though we were driving properly and had committed no traffic offense. When I started driving I can remember how my mother taught me to always be alert because sadly it is a reality that as a black male I can be pulled over for no reason other than “fitting the description.”
The PSA idea that I ended up choosing was the alarming population of homeless veterans and how people need to take action. Since 2010 the population of homeless veterans has actually gone down a substantial amount. However in 2017, on any given night there are still over 39,000 homeless veterans living on the street (United States Interagency Council on Homelessness).
I chose this topic because it’s such a sad issue. These people served for us and many of them come home from the war with disabilities such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). They also find it hard to adjust back into society. While recent efforts by numerous organizations have really helped, there still is a lot of work that needs to be done.
After completing my research, I started to write the script and pick out the visuals. This was actually harder than I expected because I needed to pick out copyright free footage. Now as I continue to finish making this video, I am thankful that Double R has given me a platform to address such an alarming and sad issue that we face today.
