Let America be America Again

February 14, 2010, at 1:22 am

Let Amer­ica be Amer­ica again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pion­eer on the plain
Seek­ing a home where he him­self is free.

(Amer­ica never was Amer­ica to me.)

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Just ridin’

December 11, 2009, at 2:48 pm

I am inspired by my friend Josée’s report­ing from the Copen­ha­gen Cli­mate Sum­mit, so I thought this would be a good time to focus on issues of envir­on­mental justice. For too long, we have lied and extern­al­ized the true costs of doing busi­ness. That loan is now being called in. It will be poor people […]

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In and out of darkness

November 1, 2009, at 11:15 pm

I’m always try­ing to under­stand what my pho­tos mean, bey­ond the mere con­ceit of the image. Look­ing back over the thou­sands and thou­sands of pho­tos I’ve shot over the last eight yeasrs, I’m start­ing to see some trends. Most of the time, my pho­tos are about boundaries.

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Neda and the News

July 12, 2009, at 7:03 pm

I got up from my com­puter, shuffled to the kit­chen, put the kettle on, and had a little sob by myself. I’d been writ­ing about women join­ing the protests in Iran, and of the import­ance of pic­tures of young, attract­ive, female pro­test­ers, when I saw the video. I had been glued to the com­puter, read­ing everything and any­thing I could about Iran. It was power­ful moment recor­ded in shaky video. Power­ful enough to change the world, and I knew it, but I didn’t tell anyone.

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Photos from the streets of Tehran

June 17, 2009, at 1:04 am

In the tur­moil and con­fu­sion of the post-election Iran, strict con­trol of inform­a­tion is a key tool in quash­ing dis­sent. Media access is severely restric­ted, for­eign journ­al­ists are con­fined to their hotels, and com­mu­nic­a­tions net­works are being dis­mantled. There are even reports of mili­tias con­fis­cat­ing satel­lite dishes. The cur­tain has been drawn on Iran. It is, how­ever, already too late.

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Something is happening in Iran

June 15, 2009, at 12:03 am

Today, the con­flict between rad­ical Islam and reform leaped from the impli­cit to the interne­cine and all too real. Kaplan con­tin­ues:
…the issue of “fun­da­ment­al­ism” in Iran, and the West’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with it, was about to be over­taken by lar­ger shifts in the political-historical land­scape that few could yet fathom.
It took twelve years for Kaplan’s pre­dic­tion to come true.

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What Are You Doing Here?

December 28, 2008, at 1:20 am

sparse

“What are you doing here?” said the pair of eyes behind the counter. Good ques­tion. John and I were going to find my grandmother’s house in Hyde Park, an upscale sub­urban com­munity north of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago. To get there, we had to walk through Chicago’s notori­ous South Side. What the Viet­namese man […]

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The Commons

December 6, 2008, at 5:35 pm

Anna at The Commons

My friend Melanie has a favor­ite neigh­bor­hood cof­fee shop, The Com­mons, on Col­lege street in Toronto West. It’s a cozy little inde­pend­ent place, com­plete with edgy baris­tas, well-worn benches, and fine young things. It has four long tables, and a good vibe. Like most local cof­fee shops, the reg­u­lars here know […]

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