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Ida Tarbell

Ida Tarbell: Learning to Dig

After rejecting an opportunity to expose the predations of the Standard Oil Company in the 1880s, Ida Tarbell decided to tackle a more limited, though still ambitious, topic. She simply did not feel prepared as a journalist to tackle the biggest trust on

Steve Weinberg January 9, 2000
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The HMOs That Make Money Off The Poor

A few years ago, fistfights would break out in the parking lots of state offices in Miami as HMO salesmen rushed to sign up welfare mothers arriving to pick up food stamps. Some marketers parceled out gifts of diapers or cheap medicines to

Fred Schulte September 5, 1999
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Mentors Can Mean Magic

Chicago-born and raised, which means a boyhood and then adulthood of rooting for the Cubs, Judge Gregory Mize includes in his celebration of baseball the annual luncheon of the Emil Verban Memorial Society. Last April, some 200 rememberers of Verban gathered at the

Colman McCarthy September 4, 1999
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Bram Fischer’s Journey

As Nelson Mandela and his comrades were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964, the underground freedom movement in South Africa was unraveling. Many black activists were imprisoned, while many of their white comrades fled the country. One of

Glenn Frankel September 4, 1999
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Benazir and the Bomb

Way back in 1984, when Benazir Bhutto had just been released from years of detention by a military dictator, she traveled to Washington for benedictions and support. The brave young Pakistani politician told admiring American audiences what they wanted to hear: That she

Emily MacFarquhar September 4, 1999
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Real Nuns Don’t Wear Habits

My latest nuns arrived in the mail today, a pair of slightly thick around the hips Sisters with ankles to match, photographed from behind as they cross a street. Their light colored habits have been hacked off at mid-calf, their matching veils clipped

Martha Fay September 4, 1999
Victor Logan, "Stinga" displays an award recognizing his efforts to uphold the 1995 gang truce and to better himself through the Conscious Youth Development Program. It reads: CYDP 2nd Aniversary of the Bird’s Isle Declaration recognizes Victor Logan for resolving to change in spite of the odds. February 16, 1997. Photo by Donna DeCesare

Struggling to Change in Spite of the Odds

Belize City, Belize–”Stinga,” is a Conscious Youth success story. The former head of the Black Scorpion Posse, BSP, is one of the original gang leaders, who signed a historic truce halting gun battles on Belize City streets. Stinga surveys his muddy surroundings before

Donna DeCesare August 31, 1999
In Baku, Azerbaijan, the oil industry is the ball and chain of the city’s environment.

Letter from Baku, Azerbaijan

On the farthest eastern reaches of Europe lies the Caspian Sea, a milky green land-locked sea that hides many treasures. In Baku, Azerbaijan, the oil industry is the ball and chain of the city’s environment. Traveling in the Caucasus is quite dangerous, especially

Stanley Greene August 31, 1999
Homeless children in Nogales, Sonora, learn to read and write in a classroom at Mi Nueva Casa. Their teacher is Gloria Judith Rodriguez. Photo by Jeffry D. Scott

Nogales Plans to Rescue Children from Border Underworld

Veronica was ten years old when she first went into the tunnels. She insists she wasn’t thrown out of her house or abandoned like many of the other kids who lived with her in the miles of concrete storm channels that run beneath

Miriam Davidson August 31, 1999
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Selling Seniors on HMO’s

WHEATON, Md.—On a muggy August morning at Hot Shoppes cafeteria, salesman Matt Buckley tells a group of retirees over coffee that Medicare is changing and they must adapt. The seniors seem worried by the prospect. Yet they know Medicare, the U.S. government’s $211-billion-a-year,

Fred Schulte December 6, 1998
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Doom Thy Neighbor: After Hiroshima and Nagasaki… Lahore and Bombay?

Note: The pictures for this story are copyrighted and not available for web publication.   Islamabad—-In the coded signal sent to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to announce India’s recent nuclear detonations, Indian scientists invoked the name of Shakti, a Hindu goddess. “Shakti

Lawrence Lifschuitz December 6, 1998
Darryll Vann is in a shrinking minority group--African-American men who teach youngsters. Only 11 percent of elementary school teachers are male and a much smaller percentage of them are African-American. Photo by David Snider

True Heroes

Of the 27 faculty members teaching 549 minority students at Garrison Elementary School in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C., two are black males. Darryll Vann has 26 boys and girls in his kindergarten class, Hassan Abdullah 21 in his first-grade class. Darryll

Colman McCarthy December 6, 1998
Organizer Juan Carlos Molina, of the Workplace Project, shared with domestic workers some history of workers’ cooperatives worldwide, as the women began meeting recently to consider setting up their own co-op. Photo by Jerrilyn Hedrington

Maids

Shahida Ahmed fled Bangladesh for the United States four years ago, horrified that whoever planted a bomb to blow apart her husband’s body would come next for her. With no hope of going home again, she is awaiting a decision on her request

Katti Gray December 5, 1998
Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, as shown in a police mug shot taken in the evening of his arrest during the Rovinia raid. Photo courtesy of the South Africa History Archives, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Messages from Underground

We had just finished our first cup of tea, when Hilda Bernstein rose and left the kitchen. Several minutes passed. Hilda was eighty-one years old and had acquired an artificial hip not long ago, and she negotiated the staircase of the small townhouse

Glenn Frankel December 5, 1998
Ida Tarbell

Ida Tarbell: A Reporter’s Life

Obviously intelligent and a fast learner, the 23-year-old Ida M. Tarbell quickly expanded her job description after beginning her journalism career on The Chautauquan magazine during 1880. As a result, she received a broad education on all manner of topics. Ida Tarbell She

Steve Weinberg December 5, 1998
A woman walks on the U.S. side of the border as smoke pours over the wall from Nogales, Sonora. The smoke smelled of burning plastic. Photos by Jeffry D. Scott

Bridging Troubled Waters in Ambos Nogales

In the hillside shantytowns of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, people get drinking water from trucks and store it in barrels salvaged from the dump or nearby factories. They have no choice. The city’s crumbling, 50-year-old water distribution system doesn’t extend to where they live.

Miriam Davidson December 5, 1998
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Benazir Bhutto: Comeback Kid?

Note: The pictures for this story are copyrighted and not available for web publication. Benazir Bhutto, world-class political pugilist, is refusing to go down for the count. For over a year now, this twice-elected, twice-deposed ex-prime minister of Pakistan, has seemed to be

Emily MacFarquhar December 5, 1998
Sonia, a young Los Angeles girt, wears a memorial T-shirt from her brother Ulises’ gang funeral. A local Mara Salvatrucha gang member raises the lid of the coffin he was sanding to strike a pose of respect to the memory of his dead homeboy. Photo by APF Fellow Donna Decesare

Avenging Angels: Homegirl Survival Stories

Text and photos by Donna DeCesare “The weak one is the one society thinks is good, but that’s the one that is going to end up dead.” –Angel, Latina gang member “Trippy” from Mara Salvatrucha getting a new tattoo. Photo by APF Fellow

Donna DeCesare December 5, 1998
A photo taken by Discovery astronauts in 1991 shows the thick haze over the central Andes in Bolivia. The pollution is caused by the extensive dry seasonal burning in the Amazon basin. The hase is trapped in the lower atmosphere by a stable layer of air. The forests are being burned, in many cases, for coca production. AP/Wide World Photo.

Coca Fields: Better than Devastation?

Ichoa, Bolivia – The yap of a toucan sounded from a treetop near the Ichoa ranger post in Bolivia’s Isiboro-Secure National Park. From the cabin’s porch, park director Hans Rocha picked out the bird’s long-billed silhouette, framed against the foothills of the Andes,

Corinne Schmidt November 16, 1998