During 2014, I reported on North Carolina’s Moral Monday movement, a faith-based organizing effort that is becoming a national model. The movement is spearheaded by the state NAACP with broad support from churches and issue-based organizations, including women’s, immigrant, environmental, LGBT, and labor groups. Most of the articles were published online by The American Prospect, illustrated by […]
Louisiana Musician Finds His Own ‘Solution to Pollution’
Drew Landry’s “BP Blues” helped focus attention on the plight of fishermen and oilfield workers after the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Now Landry is collaborating with bluesman Dr. John on a CD of environmental songs. A sampler will be released April 20, the one-year anniversary of the oil spill, during a New Orleans concert. Produced by […]
Oilfield Worker’s Wife Sets Off for White House—on Foot
Cherri Foytlin is an environmental activist in Rayne, Louisiana. Her husband, Forest Foytlin, worked on a deepwater rig before the BP oil spill. On March 13 she leaves on a 1,200-mile walk to Washington, D.C. Her message to President Obama is surprising and complex. Produced by Barry Yeoman and Richard Ziglar for KRVS, Lafayette, Louisiana, […]
The Louisiana Paradox: Loving Wildlife and Oil Drilling
A family forced onto food stamps by the deepwater moratorium wants drilling to resume — but also laments the American dependence on oil. Part 3 of Losing Louisiana, a series originally published in onEarth. FOREST FOYTLIN WAS WORKING on a deepwater drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico when the radio crackled news of the blowout […]
Subsidies at Sea
A private shipbuilder received millions in ‘location incentives’ to save an abandoned naval yard in South Philadelphia. What did the city get in return? Originally published in Mother Jones. PHIL ROWAN WAS CALLED OFF his construction site one crisp October afternoon and told to get himself down to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. It was an invitation to […]
Silence in the Fields
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign ‘guestworkers.’ The conditions are hardly hospitable—and those who speak out can be sent straight back home. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE GREYHOUND PULLS UP TO A TWO-STORY METAL WAREHOUSE in the tiny town of Vass, North Carolina. Efrain Madrigal gets off the bus. […]
Academic Apprentices: Still an Ideal?
With hundreds of Ph.D.s competing for every available faculty position, the apprentice model that sustained generations of silversmiths and printers seems to fall apart at the university level. Originally published in Duke Magazine. THE APPRENTICE IS ONE OF AMERICA’S most enduring icons. Whether it’s Paul Revere silversmithing at his father’s shop or fifteen-year-old Horace Greeley knocking on […]
Spiritual Union: A Case Study
How a community of Guatemalan immigrant poultry workers triumphed in one of the fiercest anti-labor corners of the nation. Originally published in The Nation. Morganton, North Carolina THE CHOIR LOFT SWELTERS. It’s 5 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and all the heat from a summer day in the North Carolina foothills seems to have refracted through the stained-glass […]
