Selected Articles

Links to some of my work that I think holds up after deadline.

Interviews and commentary:

• 50 years ago, Winter Soldier revealed that the Vietnam War was one big war crime.
• How military veterans are answering the call to defend Black lives.
• I got to sit down with the great John Sayles as he was promoting his novel  Yellow Earth: here’s a profile for the DSA quarterly Democratic Left, and an online-only DL piece on the book itself.
• With Syria in the news for all the wrong reasons, I was glad to write this Newsworks interview with Alia Malek, author of the essential book The Home That Was Our Country.
• “We Are The Cavalry”: Veterans at Standing Rock.
• Two articles from different stages as I pondered whether  Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not in any sense a war resister:  my Guernica, a meditation about the difficulties of war storytelling. The Bergdahl Dilemma, and my Newsworks essay in prep for the WHYY panel, “Is Bowe Bergdahl…?”
• For the Philadelphia Inquirer, I’ve been doing some historical spins on current events. For Memorial Day, I talked about Vietnam-era resisters who were also WWII veterans; when Congress tried to derail the Iran nuclear deal, it was time to talk about George Logan.
• A 2014 Veterans Day piece about the Iraq vets I knew who were intimately familiar with the land now being claimed by the “Islamic State.”
• For Boston Review, an essay about veterans, trauma and dissent  written in response to Chris Hedges.
• The Wrong Question:  Interview with Joshua E.S. Phillips, author of None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture.
•  On the Issues, a wonky feminist journal, asked me to comment for their issue on women and war. I love the title they gave it.
• Editorials for WVFC:  Supreme Court Preview- Women and Walmart v. Dukes, After Health Reform Vote, What Now?; After Giffords Shooting, More Bravery Needed, and With Respect, Justice Scalia, Women are Real Persons.
• Wolf In The Heart: Interview with former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas about his book The War Lovers,and how journalists help gin up war fever.

• David Mixner, the architect of the Vietnam Moratorium campaign who has become the gay soldier’s fiercest advocate.
• No links, but  I’ve profiled Frederic Tuten for Poets & Writers (great honor) and interviewed John Edgar Wideman for ep;phany magazine (ditto).
• For Women’s Voices for Change, I discussed the groundbreaking new film Night Catches Us with the acclaimed poet Patricia Spears Jones. Earlier interviews for WVFC included  new MacArthur Fellow Annette-Gordon Reed and Alaskan poet and visionary Katherine MacNamara.

National features:

• Sheltering in Place? Welcome to Our World: COVID19’s limitations aren’t new to those of us with disabilities; Sunshine Mugrabi and I explain disability justice at Democratic Left.
• A book review  of Amy Ellis Nutt’s peerless work  of narrative nonfiction, Shadows Bright as Glass.
• Two on the Wal-Mart discrimination case: Supreme Court Preview: Wal-Mart v. Dukes, Women and The Wal-Mart Way and Wal-Mart v. Dukes: The Day After.
• Major Margaret Witt’s reinstatement to the U.S. Air Force in her Don’t Ask Don’t Tell lawsuit, and the implications of the policy for all women.
• Some of the stories and thinking of my book, from Iraq vets at Winter Soldier 2008 to grunts in the 1899 Philippine war.
• The book tour of Judy Shepard,  whose son Matthew’s murder turned her from “just a mom” to a human rights pioneer.
• Newsbriefs for WVFC, such as this one during 2010 primary season,  and this one on financial reform legislation.
• For American Bar Association Journal, early-2003 plans for Iraq’s legal system just after the 2003 invasion, doubts about military tribunals and about possible ways to prosecute military contractors.
• About Nicholson v. Scoppetta (2002), a lawsuit by former battered against New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services.
• About disability and rehabilitation: articles on physical therapy, occupational therapy, and disabled athletesincluding former Olympic skier Jimmie Heuga.

Urban reporting, from Philly and Manhattan:

• The foreclosure crisis in Philadelphia, with special focus on NW Philly.
• When a Philadelphia regional rail station is renovated per ADA, is it really accessible?  And what do people need to consider in this new world of deregulated electricity?
• The almost-only-in-New-York phenomenon of illegal hotels: My 2007 series on this earned an award for “in-depth reporting” from the NY Newspaper Association. Real estate investment companies manage tosubvert New York law and turn venerable Manhattan buildings over to short-term visitors, despite $188 million in city and state funds collected by such owners.
• The legacy of civil rights giant Bayard Rustin, who was also a Chelsea gay man 30 years before the type existed.
• Apparel-industry small businesses fighting proposed zoning changes that would gentrify the Garment District where they work: here and here.
• A church built to serve new French immigrants in 1857, with a chapel dedicated by Charles de Gaulle, now in danger of being shut down.
• RNC police lawsuits: The Hudson River Park Trust is still being sued by people swept up by the NYPD during the 2004 Republican National Convention, who were taken to a toxic pier. I also wrote about theexperiences of the cops on duty that week in the former bus depot.
• The saga of the Hotel Breslin, a Tin Pan Alley jewel turned SRO turned haven for artists of all kinds, now the boutique Ace Hotel.
• Chelsea’s local prison, the medium-security Bayview Correctional Facility — some of whose inmates are getting ready for release college degrees and drug treatment.
• Veterans issues,  from homelessness to stopping the war by all means necessary.

More commentary/editorials:

• NewsworksWHYY ran my praise of Mount Airy, A neighborhood bursting with art and diversity.
• The Shirley Sherrod fiasco, written for WVFC.
• A letter to John Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter, who arrived in California the year I did but learned a very different lesson.
• About Cobell v. Salazar, the fifteen-year legal struggle by Blackfeet Indians for fair compensation for the oil underneath their land.
• A meditation on Major Alice Davey Sheldon, also known as science-fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr.

I’m hoping to broaden my freelance portfolio on both the urban reporting front and the human rights front. If you’re interested in working with me, please feel free to make contact.