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Wednesday, 07 January 2009

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Games Without Frontiers

Brooklyn Rail - November 2008
Last spring, Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal moved into a cordoned area set up in the back of a Chicago art gallery, where he would remain for one month. The makeshift cell contained a computer, desk, bed, lamp, coffee table, and stationary bike (which, like most stationary bikes, went untouched). Facing him was a paintball gun with an attached webcam. With the help of friends, an interactive system was designed in which users could log on to the Internet, aim the gun, and fire. For the month, Bilal was an around-the-clock target, offering himself up to anyone wanting to "shoot an Iraqi."

Open Letter to Sarah Palin from a Community Organizer

Huffington Post - September 12, 2008
Sarah Palin, I'd like to introduce you to a woman named Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, who passed away in 1992. Based upon your recent comments about community organizers, I'm certain you've never heard of her. Most people haven't, and most people don't know a whole lot about the principles and history of organizing. But unlike you, most people don't go out of their way to disparage a group who has done so much to make this country great.

Surviving a Weekend with White Supremacists

Alternet - July 4, 2007
In late June, two days after temporarily relocating to Alabama, I'm seated in the conference room of a hotel in the town of Sheffield, in the northwest section of the state. I've come to the region to do research for a book about Latino immigrants in the U.S. South -- where their population is growing fastest -- and how they are (or aren't) being welcomed.

Meet the Wealth Gap

The Nation - June 30, 2008
For a delivery worker, perched on a bicycle with plastic bags of food dangling from each handlebar, Manhattan's East Side offers many opportunities for a trip to the emergency room. I learn this one May afternoon as I trail 26-year-old Apolinar Perez, a chubby-faced Mexican immigrant who skillfully steers his black mountain bike through the chaos. A taxi switches lanes without warning, nearly clipping my front wheel.

The Good-Behavior Bribe

New York Magazine, October 28, 2007
At 5:30 in the morning, Ruddy Mieses, one of the first participants in Michael Bloomberg's radical new antipoverty plan, parks his rented white Crown Victoria in front of a forbidding brick complex in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and takes stock of his finances. The livery-cab driver's ten-and-a-half-hour shift has earned him $145. Not too bad.

The United Nations of Brooklyn

The New York Times, October 21, 2007
Hudoykul Hafizov, a soft-spoken, slightly built immigrant from Uzbekistan, works as inventory manager at Silver Rod Pharmacy in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and he has a favorite joke: "A person who knows three languages is trilingual. Someone who knows two languages is bilingual. But do you know what they call a person who speaks only one language?"

Pausing for a beat, Hafizov replied triumphantly to his own question: "American!"

Alan, Alien

New York Magazine - April 17, 2006
On Saturdays, when Alan's father works a twelve-hour shift as a cook at a nearby restaurant, his best friend, Daniel, comes over to play. If it's warm they run about, and if it's cold they sprawl out on the mattress in Alan's bedroom, which he shares with his parents and younger sister, and play video games. It is cold right now�two homeless men will be found frozen to death tomorrow in Brooklyn�so they are inside, and Alan's 9-year-old face, normally gentle and wrinkle-free, is stuck in a grimace. He's losing the fight.