Hurricane-battered infrastructure and limited electricity have taken a toll on the tourism-driven economy of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Home to 100,000 Americans, the islands took a hit from both hurricanes Irma and Maria at their peaks within a span of two weeks. William Brangham speaks with U.S. Virgin Islands state senator Janette Millin Young about…
Both federal and local authorities have faced criticism for the speed of Puerto Rico recovery efforts. A month after Hurricane Maria, some 80 percent of the island remains without electricity. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with José Sánchez, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to discuss the problems with the devastated power grid. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/
The federal response in Puerto Rico continues to draw criticism from locals, their dissatisfaction amplified by President Trump’s visit to the island on Tuesday. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz talks with special correspondent Monica Villamizar about the president’s visit and the disconnect she sees between the White House and the reality in Puerto Rico.
My father is from Puerto Rico and my mother is from the Dominican Republic. I’ve been watching anxiously as news has been filtering out from Puerto Rico. My ex-wife, Juanita Garcia, returned to the island recently to take care of her mother. She is now knee deep in the crisis. The good news is she…
When I was with the Voicewaves project in Long Beach, I had worked with young people who had signed up for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). I remember how proud and excited they were. They believed that they could now live and work out of the shadows. Their names and contact information, their lives, are…
When I was growing up in the Bronx, New York public housing, I didn’t think I was poor. I had a roof over my head and my parents made sure that we had food and clothing. They sacrificed to send us to Catholic Parochial School. You played in the streets because that’s what you did….
Would Tiny Houses work in Long Beach? Do our land costs put this out of bounds? According to the Real Estate website Zillow.com, “The median home value in Long Beach is $555,000. Long Beach home values have gone up 6.9% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will rise 1.5% within the next year. The…
Race and Racism has been in the American DNA from our beginning. One cannot speak about our Original Sin without it causing rancor, thumb twiddling, deep sighs, and angry fingerpointing. This is one more effort to “discuss” the issue of race and racism in America but this time it’s about it in the the Trump era….
The Charlottesville white nationalist rally, along with the associated deaths and injuries linked to it, follow a nationwide increase in hate crimes in the past year. Within 10 days of Donald Trump’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 900 bias-related incidents against minorities. The center’s president Richard Cohen joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss these…
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has embarked on a five-day trip across Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, he is expected to address President Rodrigo Duterte’s ongoing war on drugs, in which over 2,500 people have been killed. Lindsey Ford, the Director of Political-Security Affairs for the Asia Society Policy Institute, joins Hari Sreenivasan from Washington.