Tag: community members
Violence Is the Engine of Modi’s Politics
In the first week of August, the glitzy megacity of Gurugram, an hour’s drive from New Delhi, was burning.
With its gleaming malls and opulent high-rises, Gurugram had become symbolic of India’s economic rise. But for much of this month, the city has been in a state of siege from Hindu mobs running amok, attacking Muslim homes, commercial establishments, and places of worship. Smoke billowed from buildings set ablaze, riot police trawled the streets, and multinational corporations ordered their
The One Parenting Decision That Really Matters
A recent study calculated that in the first year of a baby’s life, parents face 1,750 difficult decisions. These include what to name the baby, whether to breastfeed the baby, how to sleep-train the baby, what pediatrician to take the baby to, and whether to post pictures of the baby on social media. And that is only year one.
How can parents make these decisions, and the thousands to come? They can always turn to Google, but it’s easy to
Community Input Caused the Housing Crisis
Development projects in the United States are subject to a process I like to call “whoever yells the loudest and longest wins.” Some refer to this as participatory democracy.
Across the country, angry residents and neighborhood associations have the power to delay, reshape, and even halt entirely the construction of vital infrastructure. To put a fine point on it: Deference to community input is a big part of why the U.S. is suffering from a nearly 3.8-million-home shortage and has
The Many, Many Beautiful Cartoon Women of Web3
About six months ago, my Twitter feed started getting confusing. I couldn’t tell the NFTs of cartoon women apart.
World of Women, which is a collection of illustrated portraits of women, was one of the earliest and splashiest—the one with a film and television deal. Women Rise, which is a collection of illustrated portraits of women, expressed in its “roadmap” a commitment to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Boss Beauties, which is a collection of illustrated portraits of women,
What I Learned When My Parents Got Arrested
I was eating tandoori chicken at Shalimar Restaurant in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco on a school night when I received a call from my aunt, Yasmeen, who said my parents had been arrested.
Earlier in the morning, a dozen armed FBI agents had raided our home in Fremont, California; dragged my parents out of bed; handcuffed them while they were in their pajamas, and drove them to the county jail in Oakland. There was even a helicopter circling
There’s More to Kids’ Life Than Fighting COVID
On the day before school resumed this past August, when the COVID-test positivity rate in our West Texas community was soaring past 25 percent and the local paper’s headlines trumpeted the rapidly worsening situation, my elder daughter, who was entering the fifth grade, told me she couldn’t wait for classes to start.
It was only August 2, weeks before the Midland Independent School District would ordinarily have opened. But in an effort to mitigate the academic losses associated with