{"id":38957,"date":"2025-04-28T09:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T14:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swopehealth.org\/?p=38957"},"modified":"2025-04-28T09:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T14:08:16","slug":"one-on-one-with-swope-health-johnny-waller-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swopehealth.org\/one-on-one-with-swope-health-johnny-waller-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"One-on-one with Swope Health: Johnny Waller Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Swope Health announces a new edition of its podcast, One on One with Swope Health, featuring a second conversation with Johnny Waller Jr., a community activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric Wesson, founder and publisher of The Next Page KC<\/a>, a newspaper focused on the Black community, hosts the show\u2019s conversations with Kansas Citians about issues of importance to the community\u2019s health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this episode, Wesson and Waller call out poverty and unemployment as the forces creating crime and violence in Kansas City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waller runs an expungement clinic, and he also serves on several charitable organizations\u2019 boards in the area. He recently challenged the organizers of a public safety forum, frustrated by yet another symposium asking for public input to identify problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe actually know what the problem is; we\u2019ve been talking about the problem for 17, 20, 30, 40 years,\u201d he said. \u201cSo why are we still talking about what the problems are?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problems, he said, are poverty, unemployment, and lack of education. Waller noted that 49 percent of the prison population comes from poverty or extreme poverty; there are households on the East side that make less than $16,000; unemployment is worse in Blue Hills than in Overland Park \u2013 all factors pointing to a poverty and unemployment problem. The by-product of this problem is crime and violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how better to address the issues? \u201cLet\u2019s be intentional,\u201d he said. \u201cWe seem not to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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