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…
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…
Hard Opportunities
BY MIMI WELLS Ayesha was thirteen years old when her parents gave her to a forty-year old man to settle a blood debt between their families in accordance with a Pashtun custom known as “baad.” The man…
One at a Time
BY MIMI WELLS Specialist Mathew “Doc” Kenney sat in the backseat of the third heavily armored MRAP, near the window. It was around midnight on Easter Sunday, 2009, and the four-car convoy was returning home from escorting a group of…
No Refuge
BY NICOLE SCHILIT Maya Paley’s cell phone rings frequently but when she answers the call the person on the other line will immediately hang up. Instead of getting annoyed Maya calls the person right back. “It’s usually only the refugees…
Once a Marine
BY LAUREN SCHULZ NEW YORK – I met Allen Striffler for the first time on the steps of the New York Athletic Club in the fall of 2009. We had both just left a gala where Allen was being honored. …
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…
An IED on 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…
Imperfect Marriage: Amnesty and Cageprisoners
SARIKA BANSAL Finding the perfect organizational partner can be tricky. Human rights groups are no exception to this. To be effective, they often must work with other groups, including NGOs, for-profit companies, and even autocratic governments. Some partnerships work beautifully,…
Indian Independence Was Academic to Him
By Sarika Bansal Cramped in a sweltering college dormitory in South India, Dr. Vemuri Venkat Ramanadham—then known as “Lecturer Ramanadham”—and fervently debated the Indian independence movement with more than 50 students. Was non-violence the best way to get the British…
Mexico’s Latest Poet-Diplomat
By Mónica Adame I met Gaspar Orozco during my first event as public relations coordinator for the Mexican Consul General in New York almost three years ago. Our boss, the head of the Consulate, invited Mexican artists living in the…
Ending Violence against Women in Zimbabwe
By Mónica Adame “I had been at the base for about two days when a group of three men instructed me to enter a room. They forced me to lie on the ground and stripped off all of my clothes.…
Outpacing Violence one Tweet at a Time
By Mónica Adame The first time armed gang members threatened Daniela Azpilcueta, 27, a resident of Monterrey, in the Northern state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, she immediately tuned to Twitter. “I saw the gun on the right window and just…
Flight from Stalingrad
By ANNA KORDUNSKY Galya and her family had been living in the bomb shelter under the ruins of her apartment building for two weeks when unexpected visitors came down the stairs: five Soviet soldiers, three of them wounded in street…
Journey Into Israel
By Nicole Schilit About 12 meters from the end of the bridge stood the fence separating Egypt and Israel. Zebib, 27 years old, born and raised in Eritrea, was alone. Alone except for the 36 other African refugees who had…
Ethiopia Chokes Refugees
By NICOLE SCHILIT Genet’s soft voice makes it difficult to make out the words she is saying. The young Eritrean refugee avoids eye contact, and when she speaks she turns toward the empty space in her small one-room home rather…
Just Beside History
By Stephen Schaber My parents hate being bothered by the telephone- the ringing, the holding, the talking. When someone calls they rarely answer it. In fact, the answering machine picks up after two rings. I find it incredibly annoying. They…