Our Neighbors on WFYI!
Our neighbors, Ro and Earl Townsend, were written about and interviewed on WFYI. Enjoy!
Ro and Earl Townsend live in what some call the MLK neighborhood, northwest of downtown Indianapolis. It’s one of the poorest areas in the city. They’re known for hosting fine dining events, starting an open-mic poetry show, and handing out bags of food to hungry kids.
These are all fairly manageable side projects for the couple, who are also raising five children.
But their latest project got really big, really fast.
It started with barbecue cookouts. The parties were getting popular, so Ro enlisted help from cooks in the neighborhood, called it Open Bite Night, and posted about it on social media.
“We were expecting it to be a bigger cookout kind of a deal,” Ro says. “And then it just turned into something else.”
About 300 people showed up to their home. They decided to throw another Open Bite Night a few months later, on a blocked off neighborhood street. It attracted 1,100 people, and Ro says even more couldn’t come because there was nowhere left to park.
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About The Author
Maurice Broaddus
As The Dream Catcher, he brings things from the dream world into reality. He is a relationship tactician, connecting people and coordinating efforts. He maintains connections in the community that support discovery, practice and celebration in order to build community, economy and mutual delight. The author of the Knights of Breton Court trilogy, Buffalo Soldier, he has many of his short stories collected in The Voices of the Martyrs. The neighborhood scop, he tells stories about the gifts of the people, telling the stories of what happened and taking the minutes of the community. You can learn more about him at http://mauricebroaddus.com/