Can academic rigor, firm discipline, and a daily dose of religion turn boys from poor families into scholars? An intimate look at one such attempt. Originally published in Duke Magazine. AS AN AUGUST DRIZZLE falls outside, thirty-one middle-schoolers sit at long tables in a North Carolina mountain lodge. It’s the end of summer vacation: Next week […]
Foreign Service
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. ED MAHONEY GAPED AT THE SPECTACLE. On the edge of the Guatemala City dump, a fetid ravine swarming with vultures, dozens of human scavengers intercepted garbage trucks. They picked through the refuse for anything of value-bottles, cardboard, string-to sell to recyclers. Mothers carried their babies in boxes while older children played […]
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. […]
Left Behind in Sandtown
The Enterprise Foundation led a $60 million effort to repair a broken Baltimore neighborhood. All it fixed was the buildings. Originally published in City Limits. THERE WASN’T AN EMPTY PARKING SPACE for blocks around Gilmor Elementary School the night Mayor Kurt Schmoke visited Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood last June. Braving the summer rain, 400 people packed the auditorium […]
