Instead of Blaming FEMA, We Need a National Safety Net
As the water rose in his Cedar Rapids home, Frank refused to leave, even when a FEMA boat pulled up to his porch. FEMA wouldn’t take his two dogs, Romeo […]
Taking Blame for the Floods
We stood at the end of a road leading into the waters of the Mississippi River, which had burst through a levee in Gulfport, Illinois, and swamped thousands of acres […]
Iowa: The Midwest Katrina?
“It looks like Katrina,” said a man stuck in traffic, his bare foot hanging out his car window, on the jammed freeway through Cedar Rapids on Friday, June 13, as […]
Will Obama Fever Heal Black-Latino Relations?
The day before Obama’s thrilling clinching of the Democratic nomination, I met with a group of high school students at the Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy, an alternative, activism-oriented high school […]
Golf Course Wars in Benton Harbor
Golf courses have been lightning rods and symbols for class struggle around the world, as in Morelos, Mexico, where a golf course sucking up the town of Tepoztlan as water […]
Thrown into the Mix
“Mixed income” is the hot phrase in housing developments and neighborhoods across the country these days. It is the bedrock of the Hope VI plan for redevelopment of public housing […]
Keeping Kukui Gardens
Faced with the prospect of losing their homes, residents of a Honolulu affordable-housing complex defied Hawaiian cultural traditions, getting organized and vocal and achieving a victory for affordability in one of the country’s most expensive cities.