This Is Not a Test

A letter from Disaster City.

Published: Jun 15, 2020
Length: 32 minutes (8,067 words)

“Somebody’s Gotta Help Me”

“But abuse by law enforcement inside jails remains largely out of sight and harder to document.” Phillip Garcia was in psychiatric crisis. In jail and in the hospital, guards responded with violent force and restrained him for almost 20 hours, until he died.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Jun 16, 2020
Length: 22 minutes (5,543 words)

Breaking the ‘London Restaurant Industry’ Monopoly on the Old Kent Road

“These restaurants deserve access to capital, and for that money to percolate in their local ecosystems, empowering a community, rather than being funnelled up to investors and landlords.”

Source: Eater London
Published: Jun 16, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,102 words)

The Case of the Stolen Ruby Slippers

“At 1:44 p.m., Bennett sent out a BOLO (be on the lookout) alert across the region, asking law enforcement to watch for shoes that are “dark ruby red in color … and valued at $1 million.””

Published: Apr 30, 2019
Length: 56 minutes (14,100 words)

The Pariah Ship

“With passengers falling ill, the ship was denied a port by country after country.”

Published: Jun 11, 2020
Length: 28 minutes (7,101 words)

The Trayvon Generation

“I believed I could keep my sons alive by loving them, believed in the magical powers of complete adoration and a love ethic that would permeate their lives.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 15, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,969 words)

We Can Protect the Economy From Pandemics. Why Didn’t We?

“A virologist helped crack an impossible problem: how to insure against the economic fallout from devastating viral outbreaks. The plan was ingenious. Yet we’re still in this mess.”

Source: Wired
Published: Jun 16, 2020
Length: 29 minutes (7,325 words)

The Prophecies of Q

“American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 15, 2020
Length: 44 minutes (11,163 words)

TERF Wars: Why Transphobia Has No Place in Feminism

“And it is in the spirit of sisterhood that I would like to address many of my fellow feminist activists, some of them respected elders in the movement, and say: you’re being badly misled, and you need to stop this bigoted, wrongheaded nonsense right now.”

Source: Medium
Published: Jun 16, 2020
Length: 24 minutes (6,038 words)

Beneath the Black Rocks

“The same unknown that makes me nurse the thought of my mother’s death, makes me think of the loneliness of everyone who died of the virus. Their loved ones will carry the same wound I carry in my heart. For decades, for the rest of their lives they will be imagining the last moments of the ones who left them.”

Source: Popula
Published: Jun 8, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,184 words)