In his latest story from North Dakota for the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Tolan asks what we can expect now that the Army Corps of Engineers has declined to approve a permit that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, needs in order to finish construction along the planned route.
Sandy Tolan was in North Dakota today as police and National Guard troops marched in to break up the protest over the proposed Dakota Access oil pipeline.
He writes: “The protesters faced down the advancing forces with prayers, songs and torrents of declarations, including ‘Water is life!’ and ‘We will stand our ground!'”
You can read his story in the LA Times.
Sandy Tolan is headed back to North Dakota, where he recently covered the protests by members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters against the proposed 1,172-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline.
In his October 18 story in Salon.com, Sandy describes the tense standoff between police and the thousands of protesters who have set up camp at the site. Opposition to the $3.78 billion project, nicknamed “the black snake,” has brought together indigenous, environmental, and climate activists around the world.
“At times I felt like I was back reporting in the West Bank, not in the Northern Plains,” he writes.
You can also listen to an interview with Sandy on PRI’s Living on Earth, which includes sound he recorded at the site and clips of protest leaders.
One of Los Angeles’ NPR affiliates, KCRW, has launched Bear and Rux’s year-long multi-platform project about aging in the city’s working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. “Going Gray in LA: Stories of Aging along Broadway” is part of the station’s Independent Producer Project.
The first two radio stories (from the historic Latino neighborhood Lincoln Heights), a couple of photo essays, and some additional content is available on the project website.
Please check back every few weeks, as KCRW will be airing new stories and adding content to the website through next spring. “Going Gray in LA” is funded by the Eisner Foundation.
Homelands co-founder Sandy Tolan, author of the book Children of the Stone, is touring the eastern U.S. this fall with the book’s protagonist, the Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan. They’ll be joined by Ramzi’s Arab/French fusion ensemble Dal’Ouna.
As a boy, Ramzi threw stones at Israeli tanks in the occupied West Bank. Sandy’s critically acclaimed book describes how he grew up to build music schools for Palestinian children.
The tour celebrates the release of Children of the Stone in paperback. You can donate and learn more on the tour’s Indiegogo campaign page.
The photo above, from a 2015 story by Bear Guerra and Ruxandra Guidi published in Americas Quarterly, has won a prestigious American Photography award.
The piece, “Indigenous Residents of Lima’s Cantagallo Shantytown Confront an Uncertain Future,” describes how 200 families from an Amazonian group are facing eviction from their settlement along the polluted Rimac River in Peru’s capital. The families were pushed off their original territory in 2000 by logging and mining activities.
Bear and Rux have been collaborating for several years under the name Fonografia Collective. They recently moved from Quito, Ecuador, to Los Angeles to work on a year-long project about aging in LA for the public radio station KCRW.
If the current presidential race has soured you on the democratic process, you might seek solace in the latest episode of Scene on Radio, an excellent podcast produced by our old pal John Biewen at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. The episode reprises two stories from Groundwork: Democracy Close to Home, an hour-long special hosted by NPR’s Scott Simon that first aired on public radio stations in July 2012.
The first piece, reported by John, dives deep into the heart of a small fishing community in Alaska as it searches for ways to respond to unimaginably big changes in the ocean on which it depends. The second piece, by our Jonathan Miller, follows the intense (and ultimately transformative) debate over fracking in a small upstate New York town.
Jonathan’s story starts at about 11 minutes. But listen to the whole thing; John’s piece is terrific.
British businessman, adventurer, and author Richard Branson celebrated World Book Day with a list of “My top 65 books to read in a lifetime.” Weighing in at number 59 was Alan Weisman‘s bestseller The World Without Us.
The book, published by St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books, imagines a planet without people to examine how human beings have altered the earth. It was TIME’s number one nonfiction book of 2007 and a New York Times bestseller.
