Search Results for: California
Saint of the Hood
A profile of Father Gregory Boyle, who launched Homeboy Industries 25 years ago to help formerly gang-involved men and women by providing them with job training, therapy and a strong, positive community:
“‘The beauty of Father Greg’s approach is eternal, unrelenting hopefulness for those young people,’ says Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment. ‘The curse is that it’s terrible for the balance sheet of a nonprofit, and it really can wreak havoc. Most nonprofits function with a very clear sense that resources and dollars are a constraint. They turn people away, put them on waiting lists, and send them to other programs. The money dries up and so do the services—end of story.'”
‘See You On the Other Side’
The short life of Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend her last days practicing journalism:
“Jessica hadn’t expected to win. The other finalists were teams of students, and she worked solo on her ‘Slab City Stories’ project—a multimedia report on the inhabitants of a former Marine base-turned-squatter-RV-park in the California desert (though not, she made sure to point out, without the support of her professors, classmates, and Kickstarter backers). Jessica didn’t enjoy being in the spotlight, either; she was more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. It took her only a few seconds longer to accept the award than it did to get to the stage. After a rush of thank-yous and a celebratory double fist-pump, Jessica returned to her seat—and to what appeared to be a bright future, one in which she’d tell many more stories and win many more awards.
“Less than four months later, on January 13, 2013, Jessica died. She was 25.”
Unforgiven, Unforgotten
Phil Busse stole McCain lawn signs in Minnesota during the 2008 presidential campaign. The prank made him infamous:
“Within hours, I received several hundred angry emails and phone calls, including three death threats. A man in Michigan yelled at me over the phone, calling me ‘sick’ and ‘demented,’ and informing me that he was going to go steal ten times as many Obama signs in retaliation. A man from Texas, who described himself as ‘a 29-year-old, 250-pound Republican,’ called me ‘little Phillip’ and offered to whoop my ass. A man in California told me to go play a long game of ‘go hide and fuck yourself,’ and warned that he was planning to exercise his Second Amendment right. Another man from Springfield, Oregon, left a voicemail message calling me ‘despicable’ and informing me that he would hunt me down if I returned to Oregon. Clearly, whatever message I had intended about visceral participation in politics was completely eclipsed by the messenger. In hindsight, this would be the third principle of public spectacle—and one that I was long overdue to have learned.”
This Is What Humane Slaughter Looks Like. Is It Good Enough?
A visit to the Prather Ranch Meat Company in California, which prides itself on high standards for handling cattle. But what does that even mean?
“The phone in Prather’s modest beige office rings a lot. But when people call these days, it’s most often not to ask what the cows are fed, or if they’re on antibiotics or hormones, or how lushly and freely they range.
“It’s to confirm how peacefully they died.”
David Lee Roth Will Not Go Quietly
A profile of rock star David Lee Roth, who has had a diverse career and life. He’s now 57 years old and back doing shows with Van Halen:
“He eventually became a certified EMT in New York and then completed a tactical medicine training program in Southern California. Not famous enough to headline Madison Square Garden, plenty famous enough to stand out in a tactical medicine training program.
‘The altitude drop is when somebody realizes who you are and they take you to task. Now you’re the guy who gets to do garbage five days in a row instead of one, and doing ambulance-garage garbage is different from I-just-finished-dinner-and-now-I-have-to-dump-the-garbage-darling garbage. That will test you. But I was old enough and smart enough to know what I’d signed up for. These tactics are of value, they’re a contribution.’ For years he went on ambulance calls all over New York City, and found that a life in the music business was good preparation for rushing to the aid of grievously injured people in the less picturesque corners of the city. ‘My skills were serious,’ he says. ‘Verbal judo, staying calm in the face of hyper-accelerated emotion. Same bizarre hours. Same keening velocity.'”
Second Coming
A profile of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who just turned 75 and is ready to address the state’s problems:
“Unemployment in California is still higher than the national average and the state has billions of dollars of unfunded pension liabilities. He says there are some public workers in the state who can retire at 50 ‘and I think they’re going to live until they’re 100. So we have to pay for them for 50 years and they only work for 30 … how’s that going to work?’ He has other projects – ‘big ideas’, such as changing the distribution of new tax money to schools to help children who may not speak English as a first language, and developing a bullet train in the face of considerable opposition and a rising price tag. ‘You can’t be a great country without a big idea and without being able to have faith that the people who come after you will continue,’ he says, emphatically. ‘Otherwise it’s just shifting sands.'”
Troy Knapp, a Ghost in the Backcountry
For nearly a decade, a fugitive allegedly terrorized cabin owners in the Utah mountains. The story of what drove him into the mountains, and the months leading up to his capture:
“Knapp launched his first experiment in criminal solitude in September 2000: He stole a Toyota pickup, pointed it west, and didn’t stop driving until he hit Big Pine, California, on the eastern edge of the Sierras. Toothy granite peaks rim the town, a gateway to some of America’s most popular backpacking. Knapp ditched the truck on a dirt road, stripped it of its tools – and two pairs of binoculars – and walked into the backcountry.
“A few days later, a local hiker reported a suspicious man carrying a rifle near the Owens River. A warden from a nearby fish hatchery went to investigate, but while he was gone, his truck and a hatchery building were broken into. Missing were his boots, $3 in change, and maps of the Eastern Sierras and Death Valley National Park. Local cops were put on alert.”
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws
How a get-tough law in California led to life sentences for petty thieves and drug offenders—and how support for its repeal came more from Republicans than Democrats:
“Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end. As the years passed and word of great masses of nonviolent inmates serving insanely disproportionate terms began to spread in the legal community, it became clear that any attempt to repair the damage done by Three Strikes would be a painstaking, ungainly process at best. The fear of being tabbed ‘soft on crime’ left politicians and prosecutors everywhere reluctant to lift their foot off the gas pedal for even a moment, and before long the Three Strikes punishment machine evolved into something that hurtled forward at light speed, but moved backward only with great effort, fractions of a millimeter at a time.”
Operation Stolen Treasures
Two California men use conspiracy theories to fuel a massive tax-fraud scheme:
“The Old Quest presenters told Trinidad every time he used his social security number as part of a financial transaction, he was ‘creating money,’ and that when he signed a loan document, the bank received nine times the amount he borrowed. They warned attendees to not try the OID process themselves because its complexity would get them into trouble. ‘Leave it to the experts,’ they said.
“About a week later, the pastor went to Wilson’s Costa Mesa home, where she calculated the balance on his mortgages and credit cards that would be claimed as withheld income. Trinidad wrote a $2,500 check that day.
“The presenters made it sound as though Old Quest was working with lawyers and accountants. ‘Who in their right mind would think lawyers would do fraudulent things?’ Trinidad told investigators.”
As Common As Dirt
One of this year’s nominees for the James Beard Awards. Inside the lives, and calculating the wages, of farm workers in California:
“Compared with other recent tales of American farmworkers, Villalobos and Gomez might consider themselves lucky. In Florida, tomato pickers have been locked in box trucks under the watch of armed guards; in North Carolina, pregnant workers have been exposed to pesticides during harvest and birthed babies with missing limbs; in Michigan, children as young as six have been found laboring in blueberry groves. Those are marquee cases that garner national media, shining the spotlight on the most egregious abuses. In relative terms, suits like Villalobos are mundane, but they are also ubiquitous, filed with a frequency that suggests the most pervasive and insidious abuse faced by farmworkers is the kind Villalobos encountered: the blatant disregard of labor laws governing wages, safety, and health. This type of abuse is most typically seen in fields managed not by farmers but by farm-labor contractors, many of whom started out as farmworkers themselves.”
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