Health

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  Contaminated Drug Needle

  Mother: Crystal R
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  tired

  Mother: Shearine M
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  stop

  Mother: Shearine M
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  Drug Trash in Playground--"Wet"

  Mother: Ashley O

  "Even though that’s empty you can smell the embalming fluids.  It’s the worst smell in the world.  It smells like mint from far away, but when you get closer if you know what “wet” smells like you know it’s wet.  My kids are like two feet tall, and they’re right next to it, so they’re smelling that.  That’s disgusting."
   

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  Graffiti

  Mother: Ashley O
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  Self Portrait

  Mother: Erica S

  "I’m struggling and the depression and the sadness I think really just comes from my harsh life.  When you’re trying to do positive things and move forward and make things better, it’s discouraging and it’s hard and that’s depressing.  It makes you sad.  It makes you tired.  It makes you want to give up.  It makes you wonder "why?" "what's the point?" I want people to see that that’s a person who was just really having a bad day because of everything that goes on.   It’s not always easy for us, period.  Single women.  Minority women.  Women, period.
  

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  A Deteriorating Ceiling

  Mother: Whitney H

  "I took a picture of this because I was just showing the water damage. You got landlords where they don’t wanna come out and do work on your house, and then you have this. You have your ceiling falling in because you run your shower and you go to get in the tub and you have water damage and it’s coming through the ceiling."

   

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  Abandoned Houses

  Mother: Whitney H

   

  "You have all these homes and millions and millions of people living in shelters and you’re saying there’s no housing but you have all these abandoned homes going to waste."

   

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  Unfinished Construction

  Mother: Whitney H

  
  

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  Breaking the Cycle

  Mother: Whitney H

  This is me breaking the cycle with my daughter.  I don’t want my daughter to go through nothing I went through.

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  Whitney

  Mother: Whitney H

  "Misunderstood by many, loved by enough. I stand on my own two feet like a grown woman. Single mother of one and barely making it but never struggling."

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  Can i have something to eat?

  Mother: Imani S

  “He was asking the case worker for something to eat.  I don’t have child care, so I have to take him to my appointments.  If he was in day care I wouldn’t have to have lugged him early in the morning to an appointment to the welfare office to try to get food stamps and medical coverage.  I can’t help it if my baby’s hungry.  I was thinking ‘I’m not going to lie to you miss, he’s hungry.’”

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  City Hall at Night

  Mother: Imani S

  "I was on my way to the overtime job that I was doing when I got my food stamps cut off.  They had called me to work there for one day.  So, I was thinking to myself, “Well, if I go down here this one day, are they going cut my food stamps off?  I really didn’t know what to do.  At the time I was walking through there, it made me think, “Was I going to get cut off again?” What kind of programs can the City do to help us stay on the food stamp program when we do extra work?  I don’t think it’s fair for us to get reprimanded for doing something positive.  That’s why I chose that picture."

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  Imani and her friend Peppy

  Mother: Imani S

  "She died on my 18th birthday   I never celebrated my birthday after that.  I missed six months of school when she passed away.  I just sat in my room in a corner in the dark for six months.  I wouldn’t eat.  The only time I came out of my room was to go to the bathroom.  And I rarely had to go to the bathroom ‘cause I wasn’t eating or drinking anything."

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  Marques

  Mother: Tianna G
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  A Devoted Mother

  Mother: Tianna G
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  Marianna

  Mother: Tianna G
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  Marcus

  Mother: Tianna G
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  Medical Testing

  Mother: Tianna G
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  Child Illness

  Mother: Tianna G

  "Every time my son got sick, their dad had to take off of work. That's  money we're missing. That means: Do we pay the rent or do we pay the light bill?"