BY STEPHEN SCHABER On 14th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in Union Square, across from Jason’s Jewelry & Diamonds and next door to a Western Union, you will find Bourbon Coffee, a large café with a larger mission. This…
Month: May 2011
Tommy’s Team
BY ASHOKA MUKPO On a drizzly day in mid-April, about seven teenagers sit in a cluttered Washington Heights high school classroom, waiting to hear the recruitment pitch for a local football team. Slumping in their seats, they look distractedly out…
Refugees in a Refugee Nation
BY NICOLE SCHILIT The 100 men packed tightly in the barren room suffered from different degrees of malnourishment, a visible marker that distinguished how long each had spent in the prison. The worst off had been jailed up to four…
Marching to Competency
BY MICHAEL LARSON Staff Sergeant Joseph Pratt arrived at Forward Operating Base Tiger in the middle of August 2005 for an inglorious assignment but one on which America’s exit strategy from Afghanistan hinged: for two weeks, he would train Afghan…
Risks for Afghan Journalists Grow
BY ANNA KORDUNSKY Sangar Rahimi, an Afghan reporter who works for The New York Times in Kabul, likes to be the first to arrive on the scene. In early October 2001, long before he even became a journalist, he and…
Amateur Aid Causes Trouble in Haiti
By REBECCA WEXLER The small American church group that arrived at the Port au Prince airport just days after the devastating 7.0 magnitude January earthquake had nothing but the best intentions—literally. Armed with the healing power of God and the…
Vets at Columbia, Then and Now
BY LAUREN SCHULZ In 1968, the Vietnam War was raging and so was Columbia University. Anti-war students ransacked the ROTC barracks and a year later, the program was banned from campus. Fights broke out on campus over the war. Students…
Mexicans Speak Up — on Twitter — About Drug War
BY MONICA ADAME Denise, a powerful television anchorwoman, heard her smart phone beeped. It was April 10. “HELP, the town of Uruachi in Chihuahua is under siege by 150 hit men,” read the tweet. She quickly retweeted the information and…
Srinagar Spring
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the exquisite Kashmiri city of Srinagar, Himalayan snow peaks tower over glacial lakes, and at night the Islamic call to prayer drifts lazily through luxurious gardens cultivated by Mughal emperors. It is not hyperbole to suggest…
Riding MSR Tampa
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the summer of 2006, Army Sergeant Devin F. Muir departed from his base near Al-Hillah for a patrol in the sweltering heat of central Iraq. A year earlier, being involved in the war had not been…