Monthly Archives: March 2018

Features, Writing

Her son was killed in New Orleans, one of hundreds gunned down. Here’s why she’s marching

NEW ORLEANS — If you stand close enough, you can make out the names and numbers in small font on the beige plasterboard outside St. Anna’s Episcopal Church.

5/25/07 Montrell Faulkin 22 Shot
3/02/10 Kris Rink 24 Shot
9/19/12 Garold Lewis 25 Shot

There are so many names, dozens and dozens, that the display runs out of room with 2012 and resumes inside the church with more panels listing yet more names of people killed in gun violence in New Orleans. Among the victims — mostly black, mostly young, mostly male — is Deidra Smoot-Hall’s baby boy:

6/21/15 Kenneth Hall Jr. 27 Shot.

On the local nightly news, her son’s death was a blip, another name on the seemingly never-ending list of people killed with a firearm.

“I know he’s not coming back,” Smoot-Hall said. “But I refuse to allow him to become just another number. He was a victim of violence. Brutal gun violence.”

Read more at Los Angeles Times

Features, Writing

‘We can’t let this pass us by’: Here’s how a Native American tribe in Oregon sees hope with marijuana

WARM SPRINGS, Ore. – A weathered marquee near the center of this small Native American reservation perched on the high desert plateaus of central Oregon reads “Every Day Is Another Chance,” offering a sense of optimism that can be hard to find among anybody who lives here.

The once-bustling lumber mill that sliced and shipped Douglas fir throughout the Pacific Northwest closed two years ago when the machines got too old and expensive to replace. The tribe tried a casino, but it was located half an hour from the highway, and nobody came.

Now they’ve opened another one, but meanwhile, nearly a quarter of those living on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs reservation are unemployed. To Carina Miller, a member of the tribal council, it’s time for the tribe to wade outside its comfort zone, to go beyond the traditional native economies of bingo, gambling and hydropower.

If everybody in Oregon is talking about getting rich off legalized marijuana, she figures, why should the tribe be left behind?

Read more at Los Angeles Times