It’s been more than two years since we launched Outsiders. The idea back then was pretty simple: Could we help people understand this impossibly complicated topic - homelessness - by zooming in on just one thing happening in one community?
A lot of you told us the answer was "yes."
So, now, we’re trying that again. We've got a new podcast called The Walk Home produced by the same partnership that brought you Outsiders: KNKX Public Radio and The Seattle Times.
Instead of homelessness, this new podcast focuses on a killing that happened about 30 miles north of Olympia, in Tacoma, Washington.
Back in 2020, a man named Manny Ellis started walking home one night on a Tacoma street. He encountered a couple of police officers. And he died there.
This was about three months before George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis; it was kind of a different world. Not a lot of people took notice of Manny’s death.
But his sister, Monèt Carter-Mixon, had a feeling something was wrong about the story police were telling. So she started investigating it.
What happened next was this chain of events that has changed the history of Washington state. And because of the timing of Manny’s death, it offers us a window into the racial justice movement of 2020: what it meant, what changed, and what’s left undone.
Here’s the first episode of The Walk Home. To get the full 8-part series, look for The Walk Home from KNKX and The Seattle Times on your favorite podcast app, or go to thewalkhomepodcast.org.
