You Didn't See Nothin Finalist for Signal Awards

You Didn’t See Nothin has been nominated in two categories for the Signal Podcasting Awards: Limited Series & Specials - Best Host and Limited Series & Specials - Documentary.

You can vote for You Didn’t See Nothin via the Signal Listener’s Choice Awards now through October 5th.

The Signal Awards seeks to honor and celebrate the people and content that raise the bar for podcasting.

Luminaries and leaders within the industry will judge Shows, Limited Series & Specials, Individual Episodes and Branded Shows & Advertising across categories ranging from Best Innovative Audio Experience to Best TV & Film Recap. See all categories here.

You Didn't See Nothin Nominated for Black Podcasting Awards

You Didn’t See Nothin has been nominated in four categories for Black Podcasting Awards. You Didn’t See Nothin is a finalist in Best Sound Design, Best History Podcast, Best True Crime Podcast, and Best Limited Series Podcast. Winners will be announced via livestream on September 24th at 1:00pm CDT. Watch the livestream here.

Black Pod Awards emerged from a Twitterstorm before we all knew what a global pandemic meant in real-time. We exist to be part of the answer to what is beyond #OscarsSoWhite. We exist to share more recognition for Blacks behind the mic, editing software, and more. We exist because all the work that goes into podcasting earns AND deserves more acknowledgement from us by us. 

Chicago Reader: ‘Black Light Cinema Project’ brings film to the forefront

Black Light Cinema Project” opened July 7 at the South Side Community Art Center with a focus on belonging, home, archival materials, and the self. The topic of identity saturates both galleries, although with different content, allowing them to juxtapose one another while working in unison. 

In a five-minute documentary entitled Beneath The Surface, cai thomas looks at Trina Reynolds-Tyler, the data director at the Invisible Institute, and her work on gender-based police violence in Chicago. The film shows shots of protests and research, while Reynolds-Tyler discusses feelings of isolation, narrative justice, and how she’s aiming to uncover and expose the data and the truth behind these stories. 

Read the full article by S. Nicole Lane for Chicago Reader

You Didn't See Nothin Winner of Best Serialized Story - Third Coast International Audio Festival

We’re thrilled to announce that You Didn’t See Nothin has been named the Best Serialized Story of the 2022-23 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition from Third Coast Audio Festival.

The Competition features over 1000 hours of submissions from around the world, stories chosen by a panel of 21 exceptional Judges — stories that push the boundaries of what audio is capable of, and reveal our world in sound.

Learn more about the competition and see the full list of finalists here.

You Didn't See Nothin on Snap Judgment

Illustration by Teo Ducot

You Didn’t See Nothin host Yohance Lacour sat with the Snap Judgment team for an interview on the making of the podcast, race in America, and the “meat of the matter.” Listen to the interview with Snap Judgment host Glynn Washington, as well as the first episode of You Didn’t See Nothin, “Young Black Male” on Snap Judgment.

Hear all episodes of You Didn’t See Nothin wherever you listen to podcasts.

Listen to Snap Judgment episode >

A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability

“I had a big goose egg on my forehead,” Tianna Morrow recalled, after being pushed down by Urbana police officer John Franquemont. “I busted my head on the cart where the kids put their shoes.” 

Morrow and her boyfriend, Lamar DeShawn Phillips, who are both Black residents of Urbana, were sleeping when they were woken up in the middle of the night by police in January 2018. They had crashed on the couch at an apartment rented out by Phillips’ brother. Morrow says they had his permission to be there, but police were called by the brother’s girlfriend, who was also residing in the apartment. 

After he refused to leave, Officers Franquemont and Adam Marcotte, both white, moved in to arrest Phillips, and a struggle ensued. Franquemont put Phillips in a headlock, but he slipped out. Phillips attempted to escape through the front door, but Franquemont grabbed him and punched him several times in the face, according to reports by both Franquemont and Phillips. 

Morrow tried to plead with the officers, but Franquemont shoved her and she fell back hitting her head on the shelf. When she got up, Marcotte pushed her and she hit her head a second time, she said in an interview with the Invisible Institute. 

Read the full article.

This story is part of a partnership focusing on police misconduct in Champaign County between the Champaign-Urbana Civic Police Data Project of the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and Illinois Newsroom, which provides news about Illinois & in-depth reporting on Agriculture, Education, the Environment, Health, and Politics, powered by Illinois Public Media. This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project, which is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.

Mayor Brandon Johnson must make explicit commitments to transparency

“History holds important lessons for the new administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson. It is inevitable that situations will arise in which he and his team will have strong incentives to restrict access to public information to maintain an official narrative that serves their purposes. That is why it is essential for him to make explicit transparency commitments at the beginning of his tenure.

We should be realistic about this. Power imposes itself through narrative, and information control is a necessary tool for that purpose. We cannot design our institutions with the expectation of exceptionally enlightened leadership. We must design them to withstand limited, fallible, self-protective human beings like ourselves.”

Jamie Kalven writes in the Chicago Tribune Opinions Column on the need for transparency from the City of Chicago and three of the priority items Mayor Johnson can engage to maintain his campaign commitment to transparency. Read the full article here.

In 1997, a 13-year-old was beaten by white Bridgeport teens. A podcast challenges the racial narrative that followed.

Clark’s story left an indelible mark on Lacour — a father, a leather artist and a former drug dealer who went to prison in 2008 for trafficking heroin and got out in 2017. Lacour pores over the minutiae surrounding the hate crime case with a passion. He looks at events like the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York through the lens of the Clark case, which makes him realize “how far we are from any kind of reconciliation.”

“It was a story that symbolized and represented so much about Chicago and America and race and power to me, that it’s always been close to me and has been a personal flashpoint for me,” Lacour said.

Chicago Tribune talked with Yohance about the Clark case and You Didn’t See Nothin, which is part memoir, part investigation. Read the conversation here.

Bonus Episode - Somebody Podcast

Three years after the release of the “Somebody” podcast, Chicago continues to block the full release of the inspector general report investigating the police response to Courtney Copeland’s murder. In this update episode, Shapearl Wells discusses the summary findings of the report that were publicly shared while she presses on for full transparency.

Read the article

Listen to the bonus episode

Jamie Kalven: It’s inconceivable CPD’s new leader was unaware of disgraced ex-Sgt. Ronald Watts’ activities

Harold Ickes Homes, 2008. Photo: David Schalliol

In his comments after Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson announced his appointment as interim police superintendent, Fred Waller described himself as “old school.” Presumably, this was meant to reassure the department’s rank and file and city residents concerned about crime. In this fraught moment, as summer approaches, it’s easy to imagine that Johnson was drawn to Waller as a calming, seasoned presence able to address challenges in the days ahead, while conveying to officers under his command that he has their back.

In the context of the long struggle to advance meaningful police reform, however, “old school” has other, more disturbing connotations associated with the “code of silence” within the department.

Often used loosely to characterize police culture, the term “code of silence” is at once imprecise and inevitable. So it’s important to be clear: I intend it to refer to a set of tools, central to the operation of the department, that are deployed in response to incidents of misconduct, criminality, errors of judgment and other regrettable events. These tools are used to impose a narrative solution rather than to engage the problem at hand. This is less a matter of discreet “cover-ups” than the ongoing operation of narrative machinery by which the institution seeks to protect itself from scrutiny and accountability.

Read Jamie’s commentary in full

Revisit Jamie’s Code of Silence reporting on Watts

You Didn't See Nothin Named One of Vulture's "Best Podcasts of 2023"

There’s a mythical quality to the premise of You Didn’t See Nothin. The injustice of a horrible crime leads a man to investigative journalism, but he becomes disenchanted and ultimately leaves the profession altogether due to the force of its constraints. Years later, he returns to that instigating story, looking to settle a spiritual score. The individual in question is Chicago writer and designer Yohance Lacour, and the story he revisits is a hate crime that took place in the late ’90s: a young Black boy, Lenard Clark, beaten into a coma by a gang of white teenagers for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You Didn’t See Nothin is a fluid amalgam of things — memoir, journalism, social history — but above all, it’s a spirited litigation of a systemic failure. It’s an outstanding listen. Lacour is a fantastic writer and an even better narrator.

Read the full article

‘You Didn’t See Nothin’ Podcast Takes A Closer Look At The Lenard Clark Case And Its Impact On A Fractured City

Photo by Bill Healy

Twenty-six years ago this week, a 13-year-old Bronzeville boy looking to put air in his bicycle tire became the victim of a vicious, racist attack that haunted his Chicago neighborhood for years.

“You Didn’t See Nothin” is a seven-part podcast that dives into the case of Lenard Clark. Produced by USG and the Invisible Institute, the podcast is narrated by journalist Yohance Lacour, who takes a look back at life as a young man during that tumultuous time.

At the time, Lacour, who grew up in Hyde Park, was a 23-year-old budding journalist and student at the University of Illinois Chicago living at home with his father and selling weed to keep money in his pockets. Once the business started to grow, he left school behind, he said. That decision set him on a path that led to a multi-year prison sentence.

Read the full article

Release Full Watchdog Probe of My Son’s 2016 Death Outside Police Station, Mom Demands

Shapearl Wells (right) stands with Jamie Kalven (center) and reporter Heather Cherone (left) to discuss the continued withholding of the full Office of the Inspector General Report into her son Courtney’s death in 2016.

A Cicero woman is calling on Chicago officials to release the full probe completed by the city’s inspector general into how the Chicago Police Department investigated the 2016 murder of her 22-year-old son.

Courtney Copeland died while handcuffed after asking police officers for help after being shot. More than seven years after Copeland’s death, no one has been charged with his murder, and his mother, Shapearl Wells, is left with few answers.

“It’s very painful,” Wells said. “Seven years, and we still don’t have the answers. We still don’t know what happened to my son. Seven years, I’m still fighting, trying to find the truth.”

Wells said she remains determined to solve her son’s murder and will not stop demanding answers from the Chicago Police Department, which she said botched not only its response to Copeland’s plea for medical assistance but also the investigation into his murder.

Read the full article