Maria’s Bodies
Nearly one hundred days after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, at least half of the island’s 3.4 million inhabitants still struggle to survive without electricity. The reason: the hurricane was a natural disaster, but the way the government let Puerto Rico’s infrastructure degrade set this vulnerable impoverished population up for a manmade disaster. Without electricity, food and medicine spoil, clean water can’t circulate, hospitals can’t function, vital information can’t disseminate, and Puerto Rican suffering increases.
A Massacre in Jamaica
“Dear Residents of Tivoli Garden,” the don had written. “I hope you are all fine and this letter reaches everyone in the best of health. As for me I’m doing all right and my health conditions are fine.” Coke thanked Tivoli for sending him postcards and said he was sorry for the pain of the past year. For the future, he looked to God. “My deepest sympathy and condolences goes out to the families who loss their love ones and to those that were injury. . . . When the community cry, I cry too.” One sentence could be construed as a warning: “Don’t let anyone mislead you to do anything that is not right in the sight of God.”
Pre-Occupied: The Origins and Future of Occupy Wall Street
This is how Occupy Wall Street began: as one of many half-formed plans circulating through conversations between Kalle Lasn and Micah White, who lives in Berkeley and has not seen Lasn in person for more than four years. Neither can recall who first had the idea of trying to take over lower Manhattan. In early June, Adbusters sent an e-mail to subscribers stating that “America needs its own Tahrir.” The next day, White wrote to Lasn that he was “very excited about the Occupy Wall Street meme. . . . I think we should make this happen.” He proposed three possible Web sites: OccupyWallStreet.org, AcampadaWallStreet.org, and TakeWallStreet.org.
“No. 1 is best,” Lasn replied, on June 9th. That evening, he registered OccupyWallStreet.org.