TM22-30. BARI KANG, from Immigrant to Movie Maker.


Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Bari Kang, on air from July 26th

Deeply rooted in his experience as a Punjabi immigrant to America, Bari Kang’s two independent crime thriller films Lucky (2016) and The Scrapper (2022) have earned favorable comparisons to the works of his longtime idols Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Yet, the multi-talented actor, writer, and director’s personal story of sacrifice and struggle as a DIY filmmaker, has more in common with three world renowned creative hyphenates – Sylvester Stallone, Vin Diesel and Lena Dunham – who, weary from a constant cycle of auditions and rejections, launched their careers by writing scripts they also starred in. 

As a self-taught artist, Kang’s success with two films is nothing short of a miracle. His debut film Lucky, a dark, gritty tale inspired by his own personal family experiences as illegal Punjabi immigrants in Queens, NY, won the Audience Award at the Urban world Film Festival and earned the praise of critic Michael Rechtshaffen of the Los Angeles Times: “Kang, in his filmmaking debut proves adept at capturing background detail with a close-up hand-held authenticity. . .Palpably gritty!” Jared Mubarak of The Film Stage wrote of Lucky: “A script bolstered by a complex and relatable antihero.”

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Kang’s The Scrapper, earned an 88% aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes. “I wrote a million-dollar screenplay but could only raise a fraction of  that.” Kang humbly credits his committed crew and talented cast for making it happen. The Scrapper, currently available for streaming was released by 1091 Pictures and continues to be distributed around the world. Tim Brennan of About Boulder wrote: “The Scrapper is a smart, solid, crime film that promises more good work from Bari Kang…he’s made a film with a point of view and something to say. Kang is a smart screenwriter.” Movie blogger  Federico Furzan said, “The Scrapper is a pearl of its own world of small budget films. . . an action thriller that doesn’t let you rest. . . Bari Kang shines in the film.” Testifying on the compelling, gritty story, Battle Royale With CheeseJoel Fisher wrote “Kang creates a gritty world filled with gangsters, tense action and a heart at the centre.” Movie Insiderreview by Brian Renner highlighted him as a multi-hyphenate creator: “Kang shows prowess in all departments from writing/directing to acting.”

Kang’s cultural ties have shaped his work as a filmmaker; beginning with the deflating of a showbiz stereotype attributed to ethnic actors. He grew tired of watching colored performers “being pigeonholed.” Specifically, South Asians feeling obligated to pursue a career in comedy as the only way in.  Kang recalls how difficult it was for him growing up in America, as an outsider. Struggling with poverty and living on the fringes, he admits there’s no comedic fodder to be gleaned from a difficult childhood that was often full of tears. The last thing he wanted to do was to become “an Indian funny guy.” 

Having experienced real life, Kang became fascinated with the dark side of human nature, drawing him  to the films of Scorsese, Tarantino and Brian De Palma. This fascination for the lives of the underdog, the outcast, and the anti-hero, led him to write The Scrapper. Growing up in Queens in the 90s and early 2000s, exposed him to Mafia-Gang culture, and inspired him to think of a thriller involving Punjabis and Italians. “Then I saw the article about a Punjabi truck driver who got caught moving money around for a Mexican cartel. I realized  there was a whole shadowy history between these two cultures that seemed a compelling topic to explore. As I researched the Punjabi experience, I stumbled upon the Punjabi-Mexican families in California during the early 1900’s. Even though interracial marriage was illegal at that time, Punjabi men and Mexican women gamed the system because they were judged ‘brown.’ This led to over 1000 Punjabi/Mexican families! I already knew of  the contemporary criminal links between Punjabi’s and other cartels and this history became the backbone of The ScrapperWith Jake, the protagonist, I was able to explore my inner conflict between fitting in and staying true to my roots.” 

Those roots included a surreal and a bitter history. As a young child, Kang’s life and those of his extended family, were threatened during the 1980’s Sikh Massacres, a series of organized pogroms against Sikhs in India and Punjab which continue to impact the region to this day. Government estimates projected 3,350 Sikhs were killed nationwide, while independent sources claim tens of thousands! Fearful for his family, Kang’s father–who had recently started a hardware business–organized an escape plan that found, five year old Bari, in androgynous disguise, using the passport of his aunt’s young daughter to board a flight to America. Aboard the aircraft, was the first time he used a western style toilet — and crayons! Although he and his aunt entered America illegally as refugees, they were given asylum. Kang became a U.S. citizen in 2011. As for his parents, who escaped Punjab separately, his mother was tortured by Police at one point. They had to go through Mexico to get to the U.S., spending time in  California detention camps. His grandfather, too old to leave, encouraged everyone else to go. Once settled in Queens, Kang’s parents toiled in a sweat shop. Eventually, they started a small retail discount store, which the family still owns. 

Kang’s commitment to honoring his parents’ sacrifice and struggle, led him to earn an MBA from Columbia Business School, with the hope of launching a career in finance. However, he graduated in 2008 during the economic collapse, and his degree wasn’t enough to get him a job during a precarious time. But he worked non-paying internships in the film business, which rekindled his creative aspirations as an Actor.

Though many thought he was crazy, he forged ahead and sought out the best acting teachers in New York; eventually getting on the frustrating treadmill of auditions and rejections. With the obvious lack of opportunities for ethnic actors, he took the advice of a prominent casting director and decided to write his own projects to star in. Kang says, “I felt I had the skills to be a leading man, and the only way was to make a movie and prove it.”

“It’s never easy, especially with a budding young family to raise, and sometimes I have doubts. However, there’s always something inside that keeps pushing me ahead. When I strike a powerful chord with my characters and get lost in a whole new world I created, then it becomes exhilarating. The business is frustrating, but I’m grateful for my journey. If I make a movie that’s both entertaining and meaningful, I’ve achieved something.

FILM LINKS:

THE SCRAPPER (2021) – Critically Acclaimed Crime Thriller Feature Film

The Scrapper Official Trailer 

Streaming now on TUBI

VOD Geni Link 

LUCKY (2017)– Award winning Crime Drama Feature Film 

Lucky Official Trailer 

Amazon Link 

BARI KANG IMDB

The Scrapper IMDB

The Scrapper Rotten Tomatoes

The Scrapper Instagram 

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T

TM22-25. Richard Battle asks “WHY” did they Die?


Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Richard Battle, on air from June

“The common question asked when someone loses a dear one prematurely is “Why”?” says Richard V. Battle, a lifelong Texas resident and award-winning author who lost his only son in 1998.

“Like the community in Uvalde, I was faced with a reality that I had never contemplated,” he reveals. “After a long search, I found comfort that my son was in heaven, and my faith assured me that God was in control. I realized that I did not grieve where my son was but where he wasn’t. I was then able to process my grief and resume living.”

As reality sets in, the town will never be the same, and the grieving families and community will help each other through the healing process.

Richard is the author of eight books, including Surviving Grief by God’s Gracewhich details Richard’s loss of his first and then only child, his son John. It is a story of the grief, spiritual quest, and grace that helped Richard and his family survive that loss and live with hope for the future. Richard has provided free copies of his grief book to the Uvalde library to help families cope with their irreparable loss.

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Battle is available to give his unique boots-on-the-ground insight on this unspeakable tragedy and how the residents in the small Lone Star community of Uvalde will cope with the senseless loss of so many young lives and find healing in faith and hope.


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HELPING PEOPLE WIN EVERYDAY
Richard’s mission is to share ideas and experiences with the desire to
help people win life’s race.

His uplifting messages will encourage, entertain and inspire audience members to attempt and attain new levels of personal performance



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TM22-23 JoAnn Erwin’s “Behind these Walls”

Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest JoAnn Erwin, on air from June 7th

JoAnn Ewin was an exemplary nurse working at Little Sandy Correctional, but one day she said no to a date with the warden and her life was sent upside down. Today nearly 8 years later she is still fighting for her wrongful dismissal and the justification of being blacklisted and persecuted.

Former Prison Nurse tells all in her memoir.
Sexual harassment, lies, and court cases that seem to never be brought to a closure.
Elliott County, Kentucky, 2022 JoAnn Erwin has released her first book, a memoir about her time as a prison nurse, for preorder. Her ongoing court case, because of her wrongful termination, is continually delayed. While waiting for the judge to make a final ruling, JoAnn is ready to tell her story to the public. Preorder will be available till June 30, 2022, when the eBook will be available for purchase. A paperback edition is planned to be released after June 30, 2022, as well.

Will justice prevail or will she be caught in the big man’s cluTS20-20 Sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal accountability of sweeping it all under the rug? She shares her story with us and prays that justice will prevail in June at her next court hearing.

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JoAnn set out to write her memoir to bring awareness to the corruption in the prison and court systems in the state of Kentucky. Her experiences are not exclusive to just her own story but have happened to others. What started as a hostile work environment where favoritism and sexual innuendos were prevalent turned into a wrongful termination when JoAnn refused to have a drink with the warden. After daring to stand up for the rights of inmates to receive doctor ordered medical care provisions and refusing the warden’s proposition for a date, JoAnn found herself declared a security risk. She was also blocked from holding any nursing position at any of Kentucky’s state prisons. Now, after several years of court, her case is still unresolved.

Sexual harassment, lies, cover-ups, mistreatment of staff and inmates. These wrongs have happened at one time or other in the thirteen Kentucky state prison facilities. Every attempt is made to keep things that happen behind these walls quiet. The public does not know what goes on in a state prison. I have experienced all the above and more during my employment at Little Sandy Correctional Complex. I am Jodie Erwin, and this is my experience as a prison nurse.
This memoir includes firsthand experiences inside of a Kentucky state prison. A must read for those considering going into the field of prison nursing. This memoir gives insight into nursing inside of a prison and the challenges that arise from being a caregiver for prisoners. With the constant pressure to both give adequate medical care and to do what is in the prison’s inner circles’ best interests, this book exposes the brokenness of the system and those who are in charge. Even working inside a prison
for a short time has emotional, mental, and physical consequences. With the added pressure of unchecked sexism and harassment, this memoir reveals the darker side of this type of work. Behind These Walls will be available for purchase in both eBook and paperback editions

JoAnn (Jodie) Erwin was born in Olive Hill, Kentucky. She is the oldest of six children. She worked as a factory worker in Morehead, Kentucky till she lost her job in 2002.
Seeking a more stable career she returned to college to pursue a nursing degree. Jodie was forty-seven years old when she went to nursing school. In December 2005, Jodie graduated from the LPN program and went to work at a nursing home. It was 2012 when she took a position at a prison and her life was set on its current course. She would face some of the darkest and most difficult times of her life. Turning to writing Jodie has started a journey of healing by sharing her memories of being a prison LPN with her readers.


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PRISON MISHANDLED COMPLAINTS

THIS JUDGE DISMISSED THE CASE 2 DAYS BEFORE THE COURT DATE AND DID NOT GIVE JO ANN HER DAY IN COURT.

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TSM22-19 The Dancer and The Devil


Sara Troy with her guests John O’Neill and Sarah Wynne, on air from May 10th

Washington, D.C.Communism must kill what it cannot control. So, for a century, it has killed artists, writers, musicians, and even dancers. It kills them secretly, using bioweapons and poison to escape accountability. Among its victims was Anna Pavlova, history’s greatest dancer, who was said to have God-given wings and feet that never touched the ground. But she defied Stalin, and for that, she had to die. Her sudden death in Paris in 1931 was a mystery until now. 
The Dancer and the Devil: Stalin, Pavlova, and the Road to the Great Pandemic by nationally bestselling author John O’Neill and international lawyer Sarah Wynne traces Marxism’s century-long fascination with bioweapons, from the Soviets’ leak of pneumonic plague in 1939 that nearly killed Stalin to leaks of anthrax at Kiev in 1972 and Yekaterinburg in 1979; from the leak of the flu in northeast China in 1977 that killed millions to the catastrophic COVID-19 leak from Biolabs in Wuhan, China. Marxism’s dark past must not be a parent to the world’s dark future.


COMMUNIST CHINA PLAYED WITH FIRE AND THE WORLD IS BURNING

Nearly ten million people have died so far from the mysterious COVID-19 virus. These dead follow a long line of thousands of other brave souls stretching back nearly a century who also suffered mysterious “natural” deaths, including dancers, writers, saints, and heroes. These honored dead should not be forgotten by an amnesiac government trying to avoid the inconvenient truth. The dead and those who remember and loved them deserve answers to two great questions. How? Why?


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The Dancer and the Devil answers these questions. It tracks a century of Soviet and then Chinese Communist poisons and bioweapons through their development and intentional use on talented artists and heroes like Anna Pavlova, Maxim Gorky, Raoul Wallenberg, and Alexei Navalny. It then tracks leaks of bioweapons beginning in Saratov, Russia, in 1939 and Soviet Yekaterinburg in 1979 through Chinese leaks concluding with the recent concealed leak of the manufactured bioweapon COVID-19 from the military lab in Wuhan, China. Stalin, Putin, and Xi, perpetrators of these vast crimes against humanity itself, should not be allowed to escape responsibility. This book assembles the facts on these cowardly murderers, calling them to account for their heartless crimes against man culminating in COVID-19.


“There have been tyrants and murderers [throughout history], and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.” —Mahatma Gandhi 

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly two weeks ago on Feb. 24, people all over the world have watched the brutal destruction of apartments, supermarkets, and city centers. They have also watched the heroic and likely hopeless resistance of the Ukrainian people ranging from farmers fighting tanks with tractors to outgunned, untrained mothers joining the front lines with Molotov cocktails.

Those witnessing the graphic news ask why? Why does Vladimir Putin direct such a horror? Why do the Ukrainians fight so fiercely against fearful odds with such courage? To understand the passionate resistance of the Ukrainian people to the fanatical, brutal assault of Stalinist Putin, look to the history of their national anthem, Ukraine, and brutal Putin himself.  

As we see the massive overwhelming Russian troops, tanks, and planes moving to crush the much smaller Ukraine resistance, an old Ukrainian song is often heard by crowds sheltering with children below ground. The crowds began to spontaneously sing a haunting melody beginning with the words, “Thou art not dead Ukraine … as in the Springtime melts the snow, so shall melt away the foe.”  

A video of a housewife singing the song while clearing bombing debris became popular on YouTube and is now played all over the world. Written in the 1860s, the Ukrainian national anthem was banned in Stalin times. Humming it would bring a quick death sentence. For hundreds of years until the Soviet period in the 1920s, Ukraine was a land of small farmers called Kulaks, much like the working farmers of Ohio or Iowa, and roving bands of herdsmen called Cossacks. The Cossacks were generally considered Europe’s greatest horsemen, fiercest warriors and freest souls. Their songs, much like our Western songs, were played and sung by guitar players known as Kobzars. Their romantic and beautiful ballads sang of great love and fierce war on the steppes (plains) of Ukraine and of the rides of the famous Don Cossacks and explorers. They were the retained history and culture of Ukraine. 

The Cossacks became loyal Romanov followers in the 17th and 18th centuries. The last great successful cavalry charges of history were Ukrainian Cossacks led by the so-called Black Baron in World War I, inexplicably breaking the back of modern Austrian machine gun and artillery units through courage and sabers. Because of their love of freedom, the Ukrainians were enemies of the Soviets from the beginning, particularly Stalin. He levied terrible revenge. As part of his own 1928-1932 “cultural revolution,” Stalin determined to control ideology and culture, banning words like God, killing many thousands of priests, and purging the arts. In 1931, the Kobzars in Ukraine were summoned to Kyiv to form a union and meet with Soviet leadership. Hundreds were instead shot and dumped into a secret mass grave with their instruments. Their songs and even their instruments were banned on penalty of death. Stalin then began the collectivization of all agriculture in this great breadbasket, seizing all land and forcing the entire population into collective farms owned by the State.   

The collectivization experiment was predictability a failure. Stalin’s answer to reduced production was to initiate a slaughter in 1932-1934 sometimes called the Holodomor. Stalin seized most grain, including even the seed stocks required for the next year’s crop. Those who resisted and their families were shot. Wealthier families were sent to be worked and starved to death in notorious projects like the White Sea-Baltic Canal. At least 6 million Ukrainians and perhaps many more perished by starvation and execution during the Great Famine as it came to be known – the greatest genocide other than the Holocaust in modern European history. Until their freedom from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainians were a bitter, enslaved people retaining in their hearts, but humming only secretly “thou art not dead, Ukraine.”   

Putin’s background controls Putin’s actions. His grandfather was Stalin’s cook, and his father a World War II exterminator of humans for Stalin. Putin continued in the family business as a KGB officer who, like Stalin, was a self-made man of steel who avoided all combat but utilized deftness and poison to accelerate his rise and eliminate opponents. Asked about Putin when he became president of Russia in 1999, Putin’s mentor Anatoly Sobchak said, “Putin is Stalin.” Several days later, Sobchak and a bodyguard died suddenly of heart attacks without any prior history of coronary disease.  

Like his idol Stalin, Putin pursued a dream of a Soviet empire that has graduated from being a retail poisoner of hundreds to a mass murderer of many thousands and potentially millions in Ukraine. And like Stalin, Putin may well succeed in his conquest of the physical land of Ukraine through vast numbers and brutal weapons, overcoming courage and homemade Molotov cocktails.  

Putin will fail, however, to conquer the souls of the Ukrainian people. Writing songs is sometimes more important than writing the laws. When the Putin statues, like the Stalin statues, fall, the Ukrainians will again openly sing from their national anthem, “We’ll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom,” and summon forth from their graves the long-gone Cossack leaders to once again fight for Ukraine’s freedom on the steppes. 

THE DEVIL AND THE DANCER

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TSM22-10 Michael Roberts& Behind Sacred Walls


Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Michael Roberts, on air from March 8th

Michael Roberts, author of the new memoir Behind Sacred Walls: The True Story of My Abuse by Catholic Priests. In an interview, Michael will talk about navigating his sexuality as a gay man — prior to, during, and after the abuse.

Throughout his childhood and teenage years, religion played an important role in Michael’s life. Growing up within a Catholic family in an all-American small town, not only informed his belief system but created the perfect conditions for him to be groomed and later abused by several priests. The added layers of religious shame and the fear of his family finding out that he was homosexual were factors in the physical and psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of priests. His nearly ten years of abuse took place under the eye of the Catholic Church, as was the institutionalized cover-up by high members of the Church.



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Roberts fought alone against this centuries-old, untouchable institution in search of some form of repair and control over his destiny. He completed his college education, graduating from a prestigious university with a bachelor’s degree in Biological Science. His new book, Behind Sacred Walls, is a cathartic, cautionary tale about blind faith, broken trust, and the loss of innocence of a young man trying to survive deep betrayal and trauma.


Michael Roberts has worked as an environmental technician and as a sales and marketing manager for a biotech company that makes implements to pharmaceutical research to develop drugs. Prior to this, Micahel worked as a professional model in Paris, Rome, and the United States. He has appeared in television commercials and numerous print ads and catalogs, as well as runway shows. Michael is married to his partner, Johnathan, with whom he enjoys traveling around the world. His future plans include volunteer work in wildlife conservation to help save endangered species.

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