archive

My project 'looking' advanced to the final round of judging in the Interactive category of the World Press Photo 2019 Digital Storytelling Competition. While it was unfortunately not selected for nomination, I am honored to have been considered, especially as the work is unfinished and the nominees, themselves, being so outstanding. 'looking' was among good company!

I was interviewed by Rasmus Helmann for part of his story on Grindr culture in one of Denmark's leading national newspapers, Politiken. The story is in Danish.

“If you think running for office is hard, try doing it with a baby.”

“Take Me As I Am” exhibition at the 2019 Lumix Festival

An photo assignment for the Boston Globe.

A collection of graphics reporting on a bomb threat made at Tufts University in 2016.

"Approximately 15 students from Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) conducted a silent protest of Tufts labor practices Friday morning at Cousens Gym during annual Jumbo Days programming for prospective students. Following the morning demonstration, TLC members marched with janitors across campus to deliver a letter to University President Anthony Monaco, requesting a sit-down meeting to discuss the impact of last year’s custodial reorganization.”

The New England fishing industry has been struggling for many years. Environmentalists and regulators have restricted fishermen’s ability to work as fish populations such as cod reach dangerously low levels. Gloucester, Massachusetts, a 400 hundred year-old seaport is struggling. Fishermen are backing out of the industry and a once impressive fleet has been reduced to no more than a handful of boats. Will the Gloucester of tomorrow resemble its blue-collar fishing heritage?

The company from which Tufts contracts its custodial services, DTZ, formerly UGL Unicco, has had a business relationship with the university since 2011. While custodians, union representatives and students demanded that the university make no cuts to the janitorial staff, members of the administration defended the decision to reallocate custodial labor and said that the terms of the reorganization were to be determined by DTZ alone.

Throughout the last year, Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) has been organizing in support of DTZ custodial employees who work on Tufts’ campuses. Students, faculty, staff and members of the custodians’ union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ, held demonstrations in opposition to a reorganization of the staff, which was originally estimated to result in 35 layoffs and was projected to save the university $900,000 annually. After the restructuring was implemented earlier this year — ultimately displacing 18 custodians, seven of whom are no longer working with DTZ — efforts have turned to fundraising in support of those workers who were affected.

Amy, who grew up in Los Angeles, says she never foresaw owning goats. Her city-bound parents did pay for horseback-riding lessons for her though and unwittingly fostered her love for the countryside. At the age of 17, Amy moved across the country to Kentucky, exiting her southern California life forever. “I like not having my neighbor two feet from me," she says. "Once I moved out of L.A., there was no going back."

More Than Pain is a series of narratives from patients, caregivers and activists in Kenya on the theme of access to morphine and palliative care in West Africa. The product of an international group of students and journalists in collaboration with grassroots activists and NGOs in Nairobi, Kenya, this work puts forth narratives intended to impact international drug policy and social stigma concerning end of life medicines. While also a participant in the workshop, I was a principle designer of the resulting website.

The story of a palliative care nurse in Nairobi, Kenya treating a terminally ill man, Samwell.

Despite strong pushback from student and union activists, Tufts laid off four janitors from its custodial staff before the start of this academic year and several others have left the company.

The third annual Fall Gala, held in Gantcher Center last Friday, sold out tickets but also saw an increase in students who had to be evaluated by Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS).

In 2000 Sheila Kadende moved from Zimbabwe to Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2006 her landlord suddenly evicted her and every other resident of their building in Johannesburg's Central Business District to make way for new construction: a mall. Kadende is a victim of the city government's efforts to rejuvenate low-income areas with shopping centers and small businesses - an effort commonly known as gentrification. Since her eviction, Kadende, 42, her eight year old daughter Madeleine and her twenty year old nephew Washington have lived in a desperate housing situation, provided by the government that theoretically treats accommodation as a human right but practically is overwhelmed by systemic poverty.

Since as early as 7 AM, for the past week, representatives from the Boston Building Trades Council of the Metropolitan District (or Metro BCTC) have been gathering near Tufts University campus coffee shop, Brown and Brew, and Powder House Square in order to protest the school’s lack of commitment to using unionized labor on their construction projects.

Samwell Mosota Omaiyo sits up in his bed on Sunday afternoon at the Texas Cancer Centre in-patient facility in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015. He was recently diagnosed with late-stage mandible cancer and is extremely sick. The nurses who take care of him here at the Centre are trained in palliative care and tend to over a dozen patients around the clock in this small medical building on the outskirts of the city.

As emigration rates rise and tourism plummets, some living in the small country are growing and learning together.

Tufts custodians are in the midst of more conflict with their employer DTZ and contractor, Tufts University, facing “dramatic and sudden reorganization,” according to a press release from the Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC), the janitors’ student advocates.

At 5:17 PM on Wednesday, June 24, the Tufts computer system distributed a confirmation of a Tufts student’s leave of absence, which included personal information such as the student’s ID number, major and housing status, to 1299 recipients.

Berlin is well-known for its alternative culture, its street art and its abandoned buildings. Blub, the abandoned waterpark originally built in 1985 is no exception. Originally attracting over 600,000 people annually and costing the equivalent of 22 million Euros to build, for Berliners growing up at the time, Blub was the park to visit.

As Tufts’ custodial staff face an uncertain future after layoffs began two weeks ago, their one amelioration — DTZ offering alternative work opportunities at other metro Boston facilities — may be an inadequate solution.

Over the next several years, Tufts University could expand its building footprint by 275,000 square feet, despite recently moving forward with protested layoffs to custodial staff.

Today, during the Tufts President’s Picnic, the Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC), university faculty, janitors, union members and alumni protested janitor staff cuts initiated early last week.

Since the 2014 fall semester I have followed, reported on, and live-tweeted the dynamic story of the Tufts janitors, their advocates and their employers.

The Tufts Labor Coalition has accused the Tufts administration of betraying a recent agreement between Tufts janitors and their union, SEIU. The plan would have delayed staff cuts until students return in the fall. In a public statement, released on June 9, the student advocacy group said, “…the administration [has] reneged on this agreement and has proceeded with layoffs…”

A portion of a Tufts’ university-wide email concerning custodial staff cuts has been redacted from the public version of the announcement.

Earlier this week, six Tufts janitors received layoff notices. They are six of 20 who will be dismissed by late August as part of Patricia Campbell’s, Tufts Vice President and Linda Snyder’s, Vice President of Operations “reorganization plan of custodial services.”

At around 11:30 a.m. the Tufts University administration sent an email to the Tufts community concerning the proposed custodial cuts, saying six janitors will be fired today, with the rest of the 20 layoffs finished by August of this year.

Tufts undergraduate HyunJae Kim died unexpectedly on the morning of Saturday, May 9, according to an email sent to the Tufts community by University President Anthony Monaco. Kim, a junior studying biomedical engineering, hailed from Seoul, South Korea.

According to a Tufts Labor Coalition press release, student activists have decided to end a weeklong hunger strike, which began at 3 p.m. last Sunday, May 3.

Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) met with members of the Tufts administration at 12:00 p.m. today — the fourth day of a five-student hunger strike — to further discuss the proposed restructuring of Tufts’ custodial staff. The meeting was the second in as many days and resulted in a proposal from the administration to decrease the number of affected janitorial positions to 20, according to Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler.

University administrators and representatives from Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) held their bi-weekly meeting in the Mayer Campus Center today to discuss the university’s plans to make cuts to janitorial staff. The meeting took place in the midst of a five-student hunger strike in protest of the proposed cuts, which began last Sunday, May 3.

A short film looking at the tradition of wooden-boat building in New England.

Last Thursday and Friday, artist and activist Avram Finkelstein led students in creating a public work to make a statement on racism and race privilege in the United States. The event, which Finkelstein termed a “flash collective,” was a collaboration between the Tufts Art Gallery and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. It was funded through a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC).

"Yesterday, Tufts custodial employees, students and community members marched from Brown and Brew to Ballou Hall to protest proposed layoffs and changes in custodial employee schedules."

John Vik, a long-serving staff member at Tufts on his last year with the university.

A short film on the custodial staff at Tufts which began two years of reporting on Tufts labor issues.

A student photojournalist at Tufts University was arrested Tuesday and charged with disturbing the peace while he was on assignment at a Boston rally where students protested a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

3Ps presented its fall major production, “Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl the week of Nov. 10. In this contemporary rendition of Greek mythology, the plot is centered on Eurydice’s struggle between remaining in the Underworld with her deceased father, a character Ruhl invented, or returning to the land of the living to be with Orpheus, her husband.