My first exclusive. And a front page article on the Daily Beast. Click the image to go through to the article…
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11 Reasons Chocolate Is Good for Your Health
It’s been called “THE MOST STUNNINGLY IRRESPONSIBLE REPORTING I’VE EVER SEEN ON THE DAILY BEAST.”
Check out my latest hard-hitting news piece here.
8 Crazy Conspiracy Theories About Amelia Earhart
A new search will launch this summer for the remains of famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, whose resting place is one of U.S. history’s greatest mysteries. See the wildest explanations—from an alien abduction to a fake identity—for her disappearance.
for The Daily Beast. And picked up by MSNBC.com.
Rush Limbaugh’s Craziest Comments
A little Rush round-up. The guy has said some crazy stuff over the years, and I quite enjoyed unearthing a bit of it for The Daily Beast. (Writing some of the blurbs was fun, too, of course.)
Check it out here.
4 lessons from Columbia’s Social Media Debate
I got published on Poynter this week. Sweet.
Here are the lessons. Check the article for the details.
1. Young journalists are eager to help shape our profession. We have opinions, are not afraid to share them, and (sometimes) know what we’re talking about.
2. There should be repercussions for improper use of social media.
3. Journalists are smart. The audience is stupid.
4. Social media norms are still developing; involve all stakeholders before making a brash regulatory decision.
Start-up publisher brings literacy to Liberia and understanding to America
By: Jake Heller
When Wayétu Moore fled war-torn Liberia as a five-year-old and arrived at an elementary school in New York City, she was greeted with a surprising question:
“Did you go to school on an elephant?” one of her new classmates asked her.
“Something I experienced as a young foreigner here was the lack of knowledge about other cultures,” the now 26-year-old Moore said from her apartment in Prospect Heights.
So in January 2011, Moore launched a children’s book publishing company called One Moore Book, which strives to share the stories of foreign people and the customs of foreign countries with American children. Its books will “serve as a key to unknown people and places for all kids who do not have access to cultures outside of their own.”
“I hope that children can pick up these books… and understand that the world is just so much bigger than what we know and what we have been taught,” said Moore.
Thus far, One Moore Book has sold more than 3,000 books across the country, and is present in schools from Houston, Texas to New York City.
Chloe Taylor, a kindergarten teacher at P.S. 116 in Gramercy, thought that her students would do well to learn from Moore’s books. Last November, in a colorful classroom draped with pastel drawings and splotchy paintings, she introduced her class to Moore’s first book, “J is for Jollof Rice.”
The book tells the tale of a young Liberian girl who scours her nation’s countryside, her city’s markets, and her parents’ kitchen for food to make for dinner—all while learning the alphabet. Jollof rice is a mix of rice, tomato sauce, vegetables, meats and spices, and is one of Liberia’s signature dishes.
The students sat squarely in front of 25-year-old Taylor, on a colorful checkerboard carpet. It was near the end of the day, but they all still had boundless energy. They squirmed in their spots, imaginarily affixed to the ground, and shot their hands into the air whenever Taylor probed them with questions.
“How many of you have eaten rice before?” she asked.
Almost all of the children’s hands shot up.
“I’ve eaten brown rice,” said one student.
“Rice with beans,” said another.
“Sticky rice!” shouted someone from the back.
“I really liked “J is for Jollof Rice” because there are a lot of similarities between what the girl in Liberia did and what children do in New York,” Taylor said.
The book’s main character even transforms the apples she buys in a Monrovian market (Monrovia is the capital of Liberia) into the classic American food: apple pie.
“How many of you have eaten apple pie?” Taylor asked.
“Me! Me! Me!” the classroom erupted.
Indeed, in Moore’s Liberia, J may be for jollof rice, but P is still for pie. And parallels.
“I want children in America to learn that Liberian children are not that far removed from them,” Moore said.
Parents of Taylor’s students agree.
“I think it’s great when the kids learn about any other culture and country,” said Sarah Browne, Julian’s mother. “I think it expands their knowledge base and expands their view of the world.”
Shanika Bailey, whose daughter Neeasia is the only black student in Taylor’s class, concurred. She was particularly pleased that her child was learning about African culture.
“When blacks were enslaved they lost their language, their culture and their way of life,” Bailey said. “That’s why I feel it is very important for [Neeasia] to know as much about Africa as possible, so that she can get a sense of self.”
But Moore’s aim is not merely to educate Americans about other cultures. She has also targeted her books towards children living in countries with low literacy rates. By telling stories that reflect specific cultural narratives, she hopes that she will be able to increase literacy levels in countries like Liberia, where such levels remain low.
According to the State Department’s last calculations, done in 2008, 42 percent—nearly half—of Liberians are illiterate. And according to the United Nations, in Liberia’s rural areas, 74 percent of people do not know how to read. Only 19 percent of men and eight percent of women in Liberia have completed high school or university, the UN also reported.
“It would serve the children in Liberia so so much if they had access to literature written for them,” Moore said.
Since January, One Moore Book has published six children’s books, all about Liberia. Moore authored or co-authored all of the titles, while her siblings provided the illustrations. Next, Moore plans to write books about—and for—children in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Bolivia.
“I feel like children are so impressionable and so vulnerable to the world,” she said. “I hope that children can pick up these books and say: ‘I want to go to Liberia someday,’ or… ‘maybe I could have a friend who is Haitian.’”
As Taylor closed “J is for Jollof Rice” and carefully placed it back on the shelf, her students all began to clap and cheer.
“Who wants to go visit Liberia now?” she asked.
“I do!” the crowd in front of her answered.
In the Staten Island Projects, an Informal Economy Brings Liberian Immigrants a Taste of Home
- Bangura Kromah said that she thanks God when she is able to earn $10 in one day. (Photo: Olivia Smith)
By: Jake Heller
In the shade of a low-lying oak tree in the heart of Staten Island’s Park Hill projects, Bangura Kromah sat selling palm oil.
Kromah is one of about 15 elder Liberian women who sell the greasy, deep-red cooking oil—as well as other traditional Liberian provisions—whenever the weather is nice; it’s a way for her to earn a little money and get away from the television set, she said.
“I don’t want to be inside,” the 64-year-old Kromah explained. She lives alone, has never gone to school, and has trouble walking.
Selling food in the makeshift market is also a way for Kromah to connect to her home in Liberia. Before coming to New York City 10 years ago as a refugee from that country’s civil war, she sold fresh produce in one of capital Monrovia’s many markets.
There, she was part of a movement. Market women make up a significant part of Liberia’s economy—an economy where only 15 percent of the population is employed in the formal sector. The women are often a family’s only income-earner. And they are a significant political force. As portrayed in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the market women’s peaceful protests brought an end to Liberia’s civil war, led to dictator Charles Taylor’s resignation, and culminated in the election of Africa’s first female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Both Sirleaf and the leader of the women’s peace movement, Leymah Gbowee, won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
But here in Staten Island, Kromah is struggling to get by.
“If you make $10 per day, you say God, thank you,” she sighed.
Kromah is a sturdy woman—the type of person who could actually be described as big boned—but sat half-slumped next to her table of produce. Her bright red and black dress was covered up by a weary gray fleece, and she kept a red Yankees toque snug on her head.
Like her fellow vendors, she imports palm oil in bulk from Africa and repackages it into Snapple bottles. They charge $5 a bottle. A bag of dried fish costs the same amount.
For Juah, a 60-year-old woman dressed in a bright orange and yellow robe called a lappa, that income was not enough. Last year, she could no longer afford to buy the palm oil. She now sells popsicles of frozen red Kool-Aid mixed with sugar for 25 cents each.
She said that she makes “sometimes $2, sometimes $3” per day.
Juah, who like other women refused to give her full name, also works part-time as a home caretaker. She accordingly makes just enough money to pay for essentials.
“In the mornings, I pay my rent,” she said, referring to the first two weeks of every month. “Over the following two weeks, I buy my rice.”
And she’s budgeting for another purchase: “Now that it gets cold, I have to buy sweaters,” she laughed.
Juah admitted that she does not have a permit to sell her popsicles, but was steadfast in her defense of the other vendors. They all have permits, she said, even though the permits are hidden from the casual shoppers.
Still, legality may not matter: the New York City Health Department, who administers the permits, has not received any complaints about the market. The children who were eagerly waiting for Juah to pull the popsicles out of her small blue cooler certainly had no qualms with her being there.
Older Liberians, meanwhile, enjoy the ambiance of the area they call “under the tree.” They gather there to talk politics and weather, and to trade local gossip.
“It is the tradition back home,” said Bamah Massalay, Kromah’s aunt who sells at the table next to her.
They also come to Sobel Crescent because it is the only place in New York to buy Liberian food.
Selling everything from sweet African beans—black and brown—to hot peppers—ground and whole—to banana chips, onions, dried fish and, of course, palm oil, the market is the center of a little Liberia hidden within a suburban Staten Island.
“We come and buy because it’s our traditional food,” said a woman named Hawah, who was chatting with a vendor dicing up green potato leaves. “We love to eat it.”
Other African markets do exist across New York, notably at the corner of 116th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, where the Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market proudly displays signs that thank former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for orchestrating the market’s construction. The market was set up after Giuliani shut down the informal African market that used to be located on 125th Street. A sign outside the 25-vendor market reads: “Building a better community is our job.”
Outdoor markets in general are also experiencing a surge of popularity, as New Yorkers develop an appetite for local food. Diane Eggert, Executive Director of the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York, estimates that there are more than 120 farmers’ markets in New York City, and says that the number of markets has increased steadily since the first market opened in 1976.
But Kromah and her fellow Liberians prefer to stay under the tree. There, they get a taste of home.
Editorial: Four Days Later
By: Jake Heller
It was a flash in the pan. On October 7, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The world’s media erupted. Sirleaf’s soothing smile was splashed across television screens, front pages, and computers the world over, and, if only for a fleeting moment, a small, impoverished, recovering West African nation found itself at the center of attention.
By the time Liberia’s election came around four days later, the news had moved on.
An A6 story from the New York Times, an online photo gallery from the Washington Post, and a next-day article about the prospects of a run-off election from the L.A. Times were all the nation’s top newspapers could muster.
Four days later, it no longer seemed newsworthy to mention that the election was only Liberia’s second since its civil war, that some of Sirleaf’s main opponents are warlords, and that eight of 10 Liberians still live on less than $1.25 a day.
Four days later, a 57-year life expectancy, a 58 percent literacy rate, and an unemployment rate hovering around 80 percent no longer seemed relevant.
It was just another election in another far-away land.
Four days later, America’s news agencies proved that $1 million dollars and a shiny medal is always more interesting than the nuances of nation building, the importance of elections, or the precariousness of peace.
In the months that have followed, Liberia’s fragile stability has started to unravel. It turns out that there was a run-off election, as the LA Times predicted. And it also turns out that Sirleaf’s opponent in the run-off, Winston Tubman, boycotted the vote. He accused the Nobel laureate of rigging the elections, which were deemed free and fair by the Carter Center, a pro-democracy NGO that monitored the election.
He and his party are now holding massive rallies aimed at unseating Sirleaf, who won the second election with over 90 percent of the vote. (Though only 37.4 percent of people voted.)
Tubman has called for a “Great Victory Rally” to begin this evening and to last 30 days. At his last large rally, on the eve of the run-off election, national police killed at least two protestors, according to The Guardian.
The police are not capable of reigning in such massive unrest. Michael Keating, a lecturer of international relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston, called them “underfunded, undertrained and over anxious to use their authority” in an op-ed published one week after the killings.
The political apparatus is equally shaky. Liberia is beset by a legacy of imperialism, patronage, and local allegiances that continues to plague their rebuilding and reconciliation processes.
“Politicians campaign by handing out money from the back of their SUVs,” Keating writes.
The United Nations has a significant presence in the country, but the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) is not powerful enough to prevent another civil war. Liberia is still far from returning to the carnage that claimed more than 250,000 lives over the last two decades—it did just hold two successful elections, after all—but it is a country characterized by all of the symptoms of a pending catastrophe: poverty, illiteracy, inequality, marginalized youth, and an elite hell-bent on preserving its importance.
Speaking to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington this February, Liberian activist J. Aloysius Toe described the potentially perilous permissive conditions that continue to haunt Liberia today. He declared that Liberia is “sitting on a time bomb of social unrest, and may soon explode with volcanic fury.”
Winston Tubman seems poised to set that bomb off.
So when Sirleaf delivers her acceptance speech in Oslo on December 10, media organizations around the world should do more than to concentrate on the palatial decor of Oslo’s City Hall, on the privileged few afforded an invitation, or even on her words. They should concentrate on her actions, and on the actions of her compatriots.
Because as important as celebrating the Nobel Peace Prize is, the prizes awarded for good work should not be more revered than the work itself.
A Day in Court
We took a trip to Mahattan’s Supreme Court last Monday (October 24), and were told to file a story by midnight. Here’s mine:
An Italian art expert told a Manhattan jury Monday that she too was a victim of accused rapist Hugues Akassy.
Paola D’Agostino told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court that Akassy, posing as a French television journalist, had smooth-talked his way into her life, only to stalk her and molest her once she turned down his advances.
He lurked in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, where D’Agostino works, and forced himself onto her one evening in Riverside Park, she said.
D’Agostino claimed that the pair were enjoying a picnic in the park—she brought cheese and crackers, he brought wine—when Akassy pushed her onto her back, his hands on her chest, crawled on top of her, and began kissing her. She brought her knees up to his groin to separate his “heavy” body from hers, and pried him off of her.
She then fled in tears, she said.
But she did not leave the park and Akassy eventually caught up with her on the pier, she testified.
He calmed her down, steered her towards the edge of the water, and held her in what she called a “Titanic pose” as she leaned over the railing, the jury heard. She said she was no longer afraid.
“A man who you were afraid of is holding you over the Hudson River,” defense attorney Glenn Hardy asked her. “And you were not scared?”
During D’Agostino’s testimony, she never made eye contact with Akassy, and kept her head pointed squarely at the prosecutors and defense lawyer questioning her. When she was asked to disclose personal information like her cell phone number and address, she shifted her eyes from side to side, but otherwise remained steady in her focus—always ahead.
Akassy, meanwhile, shuffled through papers, twiddled a pen, and seemed to only occasionally listen to his accuser’s testimony. When was listening, though, he did so intently, and looked directly at the witness stand.
Akassy is charged with raping a Russian tourist in addition to stalking and sexual abuse in incidents with four other women. He faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted on all charges, Hardy said.
Hardy’s defense stressed that D’Agostino only filed her complaint against Akassy after her sister had told her about the rape charges.
“If [D’Agostino was] that concerned with what happened, [she] would have contacted the police much earlier,” he said.
Hardy also had no doubt that his client had sex with the Russian tourist accusing Akassy of rape.
“The issue is whether or not it was forced,” he said.
For all its emotional flourish, however, the trial did manage to put one of the twelve jurors to sleep. The man, who admitted to dozing off during last Thursday’s proceedings as well, was replaced about an hour into the afternoon session after he failed to stay awake during D’Agostino’s testimony.
On the Eve of the Election in their Home Country, Liberians Pray
By: Jake Heller
Just days before Liberia’s first election in six years, about 100 refugees from the strife-torn West African nation prayed for peace Sunday at the Christ Assembly Lutheran Church in Staten Island.
Christ Assembly’s senior pastor, the Rev. Philip S. Saywrayne, strode to the altar in the heart of the boisterous, musical service, which featured a gospel choir, drums—African and a rock’n’roll kit—and an electric guitar, and quieted the ringing church.
Wearing a red robe that matched the simple church’s wall-to-wall carpeting, and framed against a Liberian flag behind him, Saywrayne urged worshippers to “put on [their] spiritual eyes” and see that “the angels of God can dwell among us.” Peace in Liberia is possible because “God can change the worst person among us,” he said.
Alphonso Kenneth said the service reminded him of home. “Being back in Liberia, we always worshipped the Lord,” the 15-year-old said. “We always knew that by worshipping in Him we could become better people.”
Scheduled for October 11, the Liberian election is expected to be close. Incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has faced significant critiques and challenges during her run for a second term, and opposition leaders and power-hungry warlords still wield significant political influence throughout the nation. International observers worry that a contested election could plunge the impoverished West African country back into civil war.
Saywrayne has therefore urged all churches on Staten Island to encourage their congregations to fast and pray for peace between 12 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday. He is hosting a breaking of the fast at Christ Assembly Monday evening.
“I don’t think you want war in your country?” Saywrayne asked his crowd, who was seated for the first time during the service.
“No!” they yelled back. Then “this is something you want to do for your nation,” the Liberian reverend said, referring to Monday’s prayers and fast. “God is going to answer our prayers for peace.”
“I believe [the] Lord God do many things for me,” added congregant Dehkentee Logan, whose parents live in Liberia. “I know he can save me and my family.”
Logan’s hope and Saywrayne’s preaching peace are not simply wishful thinking, either; Liberians have traditionally believed that God actually controls what happens in their lives, and that lobbying God can affect His ultimate actions.
“He been the source of everything we do,” said choir director Paykue Fahnbulleh.
This belief traces back to the tribal faith systems that were widespread in Liberia before ex-American slaves arrived there in the mid-19th century, and it was later co-opted into Christianity.
Indeed, many Liberians at Christ Assembly adamantly believe that God determines their—and their country’s—fate.
Zachariah Logan, Christ Assembly’s Executive Director for Evangelism, for example, implored congregants to heed Saywrayne’s call to prayer. “We have to pray so that God can choose our leader,” he said.
Other church leaders concurred, and stressed the importance of taking action.
“If we don’t do something, our posterity, our children, will be in trouble,” said the Rev. Patrick Chai.
Saywrayne accordingly organized the day of prayer and fast. He said that fasting helps concentrate the mind on God, and helps God hear people’s prayers. At 6 p.m. Monday, he plans to break the fast with fruit and water.
“During the old days, the people of God would bring fruits into the temple,” he said. “So we also use the fruits.”
Fruits are also easy to carry, and are generally inexpensive, he noted. The church and its congregants do not have much money—“Don’t bring an orange without a knife to peel it,” he reminded those assembled on Sunday—but are willing to give back to their homeland. In addition to fasting and praying, congregants are sending non-perishable food items to Liberia’s hungry.
“We all have to serve, in fellowship,” said Jerry Jacob, who volunteers every weekend to drive the church van, picking people up all over Staten Island to bring them to church. “We make the Church,” he added.
“Those who come here, they sacrifice to give,” Saywrayne said.
The reverend likened such constant sacrifice to Jesus’ struggle to spread the Gospel. And he urged his congregants to keep fighting, to do their part in bringing peace to Liberia. Referencing the crucifixion, Saywrayne said: “You see, when you start your work, you have to finish it.”
