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Check out Martin Ricard’s travel diary for this project.

Winner of “Best Student Multimedia Feature Presentation” in the 2010 Online Journalism Awards.

From the ONA judges:

“The judges decided that this was a winning entry because we were really impressed by the quality of the production of this piece. We were also really impressed that it was all put together by a single journalist. The reporter did the reporting, did the programming of the flash site, did the design work, the video editing, without really compromising the quality of any of those different elements. The story allows you to follow two different threads using guides. We thought that this is something we’d like to see more of generally in the news industry–helping lead the reader through the story, and this is what this piece managed to do very well.”

The Black Family: Revisited from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Demo Reel 2009 from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Donald Zimmerman was mad at the world, stewing again in a 6-by-9-foot mayonnaise-colored jail cell. Then, he remembered the advice a counselor had given years earlier.

“She told me, whenever you get angry, to close your eyes and take a deep breath,” the 28-year-old Southeast Washington man said, recalling when he was locked up after a police officer pulled him over in October 2008 for a routine traffic stop. They found an outstanding warrant for an old robbery charge, for which he had already served time.

Using his counselor’s suggestion, Zimmerman changed: As quickly as he became upset, something on the inside told him to get rid of that anger, get off the guilt trip and let it go.

For some ex-offenders, the most important part of reentry is not freedom from a jail cell but making an internal change. For some, that means forgiving themselves for their crimes. For others, it’s deciding to stop and listen to the world around them.

But, with a criminal past hanging over their heads, how do they get there?

Donald Zimmerman embraces his seven-month-old son Dontrell as his son Donald Jr., 5, plays flag football in District Heights. (Marcus Yam/The Washington Post)

“If, in fact, we are sincere about helping someone transform themselves from a situation of stigma to one of acceptance, there needs to be a change in language used to describe them,” said Badi Foster, president of Phelps Stokes, the nearly century-old District-based foundation that recently launched an initiative called the Homecomers’ Academy, aimed at addressing reentry issues and changing stereotypes about former offenders. “Instead of defining themselves by their deficits, many are redefining their statuses as lifelong learners.”

As many as 60,000 D.C. residents — one in 10 — are felons, 15,000 of them under court supervision. Two-thirds are rearrested within three years. Forty percent are sent back to prison.

Legislators at the national and local levels regularly introduce so-called second chance legislation to expunge nonviolent crimes and ensure that ex-offenders are not permanently discriminated against. But Carnegie Mellon University is scouring empirical evidence regarding ex-offenders to discover how long it takes — if it can be determined — for them to be redeemed, or deemed harmless to society. The preliminary results of the study, highlighted in the May issue of Criminology, show that a person’s criminal record, depending on the crimes, could indeed become irrelevant after a certain number of years. Led by Alfred Blumstein and doctoral student Kiminori Nakamura, the study could help employers conduct background checks on ex-offenders with a better understanding of the risk involved.

The results also support what many advocates have long believed: that every ex-offender, no matter the offense, is forgivable.

For the past year, Cortez McDaniel, 56, a mentor for the Phelps Stokes’ Homecomers’ initiative, has promoted his recidivism prevention workbook, a how-to guide he created in prison to help people once they are released. McDaniel said he has watched many overcome their criminal past and the stigma society attaches to being a felon.

“So even though society’s got this vision that it’s not possible,” he said, “I truly know in my heart that it is.”

In Montgomery County, the Rev. Tim Warner is the community liaison for the African American and faith communities in the county’s executive office of community partnerships. He also runs his own nonprofit organization, Onesimus Human Resource Development.

Onesimus was a slave who in biblical times robbed his master and was converted by the Apostle Paul. In the book of Philemon, Paul urges Philemon to mediate on behalf of those like Onesimus — people “once not profitable” to the church and community — so that they can reenter the fullness of life in society.

Warner, a Methodist minister, said the participants in his program sometimes return to crime, but others clean up their lives.

“If you go to any correctional facility, I would argue that 20 percent of the people there need to be there. You and I would want them to be there,” Warner said. “I do not discount the power of God to redeem them, but I don’t know if it is in my power to do so.”

“Another 20 to 30 percent of the people who are there shouldn’t be able to be in jail in the first place because they have drug and alcohol problems,” he said. “But 50 percent of the rest of the them, they need a shot. Work needs to be done on them, and some of them can come around.”

Zimmerman counts himself among those who deserve a break. He caught his first charge in 1998 after he robbed a man for some money he was owed. The judge gave him probation because it was his first offense, but Zimmerman returned to selling drugs and using PCP and marijuana. He eventually was arrested for distribution of crack cocaine.

He spent six months in the D.C. jail before being shipped off to a penitentiary in rural Pennsylvania about 50 miles east of Philadelphia, where he spent four years yearning to go back to a normal life.

Although he could walk around now with a chip on his shoulder for his last incarceration, in which he was released after 42 days because the robbery warrant had been cleared years ago, Zimmerman now counts the stigma of having a record as a blessing.

“My record defines me. I’m not ashamed of it one bit,” Zimmerman, a portly man with an equally large smile, said one recent afternoon while at his aunt’s home, taking a break from cooking his family a meal for his son’s birthday. “It makes me who I’ve become now. It makes me stand tall.”

He said his record reminds him every day that being there for his family and raising his 5-year-old and 7-month-old sons are too important for him to go back to jail.

Zimmerman is now a dispatcher for a trucking company and plans to attend community college in the fall to study culinary arts.

Most of all, he said, for the first time in a while, things are normal again.

As the 20-year-old graffiti artist stood in broad daylight Saturday morning and aimed his spray paint at a concrete retaining wall behind the Rhode Island Avenue Shopping Center, the pleasant greeting of a passerby startled him.

He nervously put down the paint can and looked over his shoulder. For the past couple of weeks, he had been tagging his alias, AERA, throughout the area at night, with no one around to catch him in the act or disrupt his creative flow.

“Okay,” the artist said he thought to himself as he resumed his work, “this is a little weird.”

But on this day, spray-painting graffiti on public property, an act that would have been against the law any other time, was all good. It was part of a “mural jam,” a city-sponsored project that drew dozens of graffiti artists to contribute their flair to a nearly 1,000-foot-long wall turned canvas in Northeast’s Edgewood community.

Artists work on the nearly 1,000-foot-long wall in Northeast's Edgewood community that is serving as a concrete canvas for the "mural jam," sponsored by the Commission on the Arts and Humanities. (Megan Rossman/The Washington Post)

The goal of the project is to beautify the city and dissuade youths from engaging in illegal graffiti. But it represents a broader shift in thinking among the city’s political and art establishments, which are beginning to learn how to coexist with a graffiti culture that has thrived for years.

“We decided that just painting over [graffiti] with one color was not the answer,” said Gloria Nauden, executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which authorized the murals. “You have to embrace them as artists, give them freedom. It’s about the respect and allowance of not being defined.”

From when tags began to show up scrawled across buildings and other public property in the District in the 1970s, the city has been struggling to find ways to eradicate what has long been viewed as vandalism.

The city has been forceful in its attempt to crack down on graffiti, including beefing up its graffiti abatement program in the Public Works Department and tracking down and arresting taggers. But like weeds sprouting through pavement, graffiti artists, many of them young people striving to claim a unique identity, have managed to survive.

Instead of viewing the graffiti artists as enemies, city officials have caught on to the idea of embracing them.

It started last year with MuralsDC, a $100,000 city-funded project spearheaded by D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) that connected teenagers with well-known graffiti artists to paint murals throughout the city to cover areas hardest hit by taggers. The underlying belief in the program was that by incorporating the graffiti artists in the creation of the murals, young people would be reluctant to participate in illegal tagging.

The efforts seem to have made a dent, Nauden said. Last fiscal year, the Public Works Department reported 1,948 incidents of graffiti on the buildings it monitors, spokeswoman Nancee Lyons said. This fiscal year, as of June, the department had received 695 incident reports, a significant decline.

“I don’t know whether we can attribute it all to the mural project,” Lyons said. “But it seems to be making a bit of a difference.”

With the expansion of the city-funded, graffiti-inspired mural projects, the District joins cities including Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that have incorporated graffiti into their public art landscapes.

Graffiti experts say such programs are an important first step because, although many have viewed tagging as a social ill, taggers themselves, part of the ever-evolving hip-hop culture, have often viewed themselves as artists. Or, as they like to refer to themselves, “writers.”

“Essentially, it will desensitize people to the idea that it is an art form, not something you just see scribbled on the side of a building,” said Dominic Painter, executive director of Midnight Forum, a hip-hop-influenced youth group that specializes on the arts in the District. Painter also heads up MuralsDC, which has been expanded.

Projects such as the Edgewood mural not only bring life back to communities riddled with blight, some say, but they also show youths what they can aspire to become.

While Pose 2, one of the artists involved in the Edgewood mural, was taking a break Saturday, he spoke candidly about his passion for graffiti. Just past the tracks of the Metro Red Line station, he could see in plain view the numerous abandoned buildings coated with elaborate graffiti. Although it is illegal, Pose said, the graffiti reminds him of his roots in Yonkers, N.Y., where he got his start as a graffiti artist.

He now sells his art in galleries for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. Pose 2 pointed to the city-sponsored mural, part graffiti, part intergalactic mosaic.

“The young people here,” he said, “they can see the evolution.”

But not all of the graffiti artists have bought into the goals of the program.

“I just like the illegal kind a lot more,” AERA said. “Just the adrenaline and being out on a rooftop.”

There will never be enough murals to cover all the nooks and crannies taggers eventually find to spray-paint their pieces, some youths said.

But Painter said the main goal of the mural projects is to spread understanding of the art. Such understanding can encourage city officials to fund more programs that allow youths to express their identities creatively, he said, and it also can persuade youths to respect the artwork and realize that when they take ownership in a mural created by fellow graffiti artists, they also take ownership in their city.

“One kid might hit 10 to 20 walls,” Painter said. “But if you get to that one student, that problem’s abated right there.”

Thirteen-year-old Jennifer Jones and 12-year-old Johnice Patterson slowly approached with a large leather bridle over their heads as the horse jerked away.

“Ru-pert,” Jennifer said in gentle rebuke as she struggled to show Johnice, a novice, how to properly bridle a horse. For some reason, Rupert was uncooperative.

Their instructor, Lelac Almagor, stood a few feet back, arms crossed and smiling.

“The hardest thing for me is not being able to help them,” she said, chuckling, before Jennifer and Johnice finally got the bridle on. It’s one of the many jobs they have to do each day before being able to climb on a horse’s back.

This is the KIPP AIM Academy equestrian team. Most of the students live in Southeast Washington and come from families of meager means, which would typically make horse riding — an expensive habit — off-limits.

But in two years, Almagor, an English teacher at the charter middle school who started the equestrian program, has managed to forge a sort of magnetic, magical connection between the kids and the horses.

Students are responsible for cleaning the horses, maintaining the stalls and doing chores around the barn. Debrene Cunningham, 13, works on removing Rupert's bridle after her equestrian session at the Hideaway Horse Center in Brandywine, Md. (Marcus Yam -- The Washington Post)

By giving them a new kind of challenge, Almagor said, she has been able to take them beyond the confinements of school and their inner-city environment, all the while building character and drawing them closer to the classroom.

“I think the biggest thing about this is, when you come to school, we try to make the point that there is so much out there in the world for you,” Almagor said, referring to KIPP’s rigorous curriculum, which seeks to prepare all students for college. “We tell them, ‘If you work hard and are open to it, there are all kinds of adventures you can have. There’s nothing you can’t do.’ And this is a way of making that real.”

The program was inspired by Almagor’s passion for horses. While growing up in Stamford, Conn., she spent weekends riding horses in a nearby stable, which allowed her to develop her intensity and release her energy. She said that almost as soon as she started teaching at AIM Academy two years ago, she was interested in starting a program that did the same thing for her students.

Almagor had a friend who volunteered at Hideaway Horse Center in Brandywine. The center agreed to host the students at a reduced cost and donate riding clothes. Not every student gets to suit up, because there’s not enough gear for everyone.

Although the team has lost two members since it began, seven students — five girls and two boys — remain committed. The team hasn’t participated in any competitions, but Almagor hopes to do so in the near future. And some students have found a new passion.

Jennifer was so inspired by horse riding that she wants to compete professionally when she gets older. She was accepted at a boarding school in Maryland where she could pursue her riding dream, but, even with financial aid, her family could not afford it.

When she started, she was afraid of horses. During her first attempt at getting on a horse, she said, she nervously climbed on backward. “It’s not that scary anymore,” she said.

It also makes her unique among friends.

“When you go home, you don’t really have people saying, ‘We’re going out to go horse riding,’ ” Jennifer said. “So it’s a little different.”

On Saturday, she demonstrated her progress by trying something she had just learned: prodding Rupert into a slow trot and jumping a crossrail.

Her face lit up, and she threw her right fist in the air in triumph.

Those moments of triumph, however, are balanced by episodes of apprehension. Almagor said some students were scared when she taught them how to prepare for a jump by raising up off the saddle. They whined: “Oh, Lord!” or “This is so uncomfortable.”

Eventually, they get it, as 14-year-old JaQuwan Gillis did Saturday.

Almagor instructed him to get his horse in a slow trot and have it gallop over three poles spread out in a row on the arena ground.

JaQuwan breathed heavily and closed his eyes. On the third attempt, he focused, took a deep breath, sat up straight on the saddle and told himself, “Just try not to close your eyes.”

This time, he kept his head straight and zeroed in on the poles. Then, he and his horse jumped gracefully over them. JaQuwan breathed out a sigh of relief and smiled.

It started as a joke.

Jake Sendar and Timothy Patch, two high school buddies home from college for the summer, would soup up an old family minivan and sell ice cream to kids in the neighborhood. Just for fun.

But no one seriously thought they would do it. Now, it’s probably safe to say the two 19-year-olds, who started their business last week with nothing more than ambition and a rickety old van, have proved their doubters wrong.

“I was saying all the time that we couldn’t have better summer jobs than selling ice cream,” Patch said yesterday. “Because nobody is unhappy to see an ice cream truck.”

Jake Sendar, left, and Timothy Patch vie for customers after a competitor pulls up behind them. The two high school buddies, home from college for the summer, have been traveling around town learning the ropes of the business. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

At a time when the recession is eliminating most traditional summer work for teenagers and young adults, these young vendors have found their niche, leaving jobs at the mall, movie theaters and fast-food chains to older workers.

Sendar, of Potomac, first thought of the idea a month ago, after his mother suggested he get a job selling tart frozen yogurt for the District-based salad chain Sweet Green, which had just launched its frozen yogurt truck concept. Sendar was home from Vanderbilt University and working at a neighborhood pizza joint two days a week.

But Sendar said he didn’t like the sound — or taste — of tart frozen yogurt.

He remembered that Patch, who lives in the District’s Palisades section, had a well-worn, cobalt-blue Volkswagen Eurovan that had been passed down from his parents. They and their buddies used to pile into it for road trips when they attended Georgetown Day School in Northwest. So Sendar asked his friend about the idea.

“I realized it was totally doable,” Sendar said.

Patch, skeptical at first, agreed. But he said it didn’t sink in that they were actually going to sell ice cream out of a truck this summer until they left Sears with a commercial-grade freezer.

“That was when I realized he really was serious,” Patch said.

For the past week and a half, the two have been traveling around town learning the ropes of the ice cream truck business — and grossing $200 to $400 a day.

First lesson: An ice cream truck business needs more than just frozen treats to get rolling. Without any knowledge of the industry or mechanical skills, they learned that with some spray paint, stickers, a few powerful batteries for the freezers, rubber mats, a loudspeaker, appropriate ice cream truck music and a good tuneup, they could make it happen.

They took out the back three rows of seats in the van and replaced them with rubber mats and the freezer. They bought a boat seat for the person who sells the ice cream to customers. The pair drained their savings, about $3,000 total, to outfit the vehicle.

And you can’t have a Eurovan-turned-ice cream truck without a cool name. So they came up with Cool Kids Ice Cream.

“Our first idea was the Dream Team,” Patch said, pointing to the logo on the side of the van, a pair of white Ray-Bans with a D.C. emblem and an ice cream cone in the lenses. “Then we thought of C.R.E.A.M. [Cash Rules Everything Around Me], like the Wu-Tang Clan song, but that wouldn’t have worked.”

They also faced the bureaucracy that dispenses vending licenses, which, Sendar said, presented one of their most formidable obstacles. After multiple trips to the offices of city regulators to fill out forms, the business was finally legal.

The height of Sendar’s frustration came when he had to give the name of the business to an outsourced phone operator from another country.

“I had to spell out ‘cool kids’ like 30 times,” he said.

They also learned that it’s not necessarily a good idea to drive an ice cream truck downtown — too few customers, too much traffic, nowhere to park. So they usually confine their route to Northwest neighborhoods.

On most days, Sendar said, business has been brisk.

Their best spot has been Turtle Park in Tenleytown, where at 3 o’clock they usually catch a rush of kids from summer camp craving ice cream.

Their offerings include all the Good Humor favorites, which they buy from a wholesaler in Maryland, and sometimes homemade ice cream.

Yesterday, they were met by Ferrall Dietrich, 42, and her 4-year-old son Michael, who after purchasing a bubble-gum-flavor snow cone, clapped his hands excitedly.

A few minutes later, Sendar and Patch learned their next lesson. Another ice cream truck pulled up behind them and started taking most of their customers.

No worries, they said, it comes with the territory. If the summer venture works out, they plan to expand next year.

“I don’t know,” said Sendar, seated in the boat seat. “I think it would just be cool to get another Eurovan.”

Excerpt from program:

We’re learning the hard way. This edition of B-Side is about a group of people struggling to learn, to make it in college. And we’re not talking about the usual too many units not enough time kind of trouble. These students are undocumented immigrants – most brought here by their parents when they were too young to have any say in the matter. And now they’re dealing with the consequences.

There are all kinds of difficulties those of us who were born here would never even think about. Tam Tran, a graduate student at Brown University in American Studies helps us navigate the issue. Tam is undocumented.

Conflict in California: Jude Joffe-Block
In California a law called AB 540 allows students who graduate from California high schools to pay in-state tuition at state colleges. This in-state rate applies even to students who are undocumented, which makes it controversial. Jude Joffe-Block introduces us to people on both sides of the legal debate.

Cupcakes for College: Martin Ricard
Martin takes us to Lighthouse charter school in downtown Oakland where students have formed an organization to raise money to help their fellow undocumented classmates who need funds for college.

Campus Support Services: Karen Weise
Karen visits Cal State Long Beach where the university has a program to train faculty and staff to help undocumented students. Staff who complete the training get a sticker to put on their office door that lets students know they can go to them with questions and issues regarding their status.