Editor’s note: Five additional portraits are below McLaughlin’s essay. By BILL McLAUGHLIN Many years ago while working on environmental issues and getting quite angry at the political and corporate entities that were contaminating the air and groundwater in the rural area where I was living, an experienced activist and dear friend gave me some advice …
By JIM McKEEVER It was a few minutes after the pizza joint opened at 11 a.m. on a dreary Monday morning in Middle America. I pulled the rental SUV into a parking space in the the empty lot, transferred a $5 bill from my wallet to my front pocket and pulled up a photo of …
By JIM McKEEVER The woman eases herself into a chair across from a man in the waiting room, sets her walker aside and goes into detail about her many surgeries. “I’ve been cut 24 times,” she says, launching into a laundry list of diseases, including diabetes, renal failure, fibromyalgia. She says she is 57, grew …
By JIM McKEEVER I heard many stories during a recent “water drop” in the desert with Border Kindness, a not-for-profit humanitarian aid organization in southern California. One in particular told by a fellow volunteer will stay with me. The story marked the beginning of the 34-year-old man’s transformation a quarter-century ago. As a young boy …
By JIM McKEEVER Mexicans can be heroes again. A U.S. District Court judge last week overturned a 2021 U.S. Customs and Border Protection policy that had stopped Mexicans from crossing the border to donate plasma. In May 2021, I noticed long lines outside the three plasma donation centers within a few hundred yards of the …
By JIM McKEEVER We need a better word, something stronger. When we talk about divisions in the country and the ways we reinforce and protect our beliefs, we fall back on words like “echo chamber” and “bubble.” This is where we prefer to stay — our “safe space,” to use another popular term bordering on …
By JIM McKEEVER Ten years ago, during the welcoming ceremony for incoming students at my youngest son’s college, a speaker read a poem that ends with a question. Many of you will recognize it, perhaps have claimed it as a mantra. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and …
By JIM McKEEVER I am in awe of James Baldwin. The novelist, poet, essayist and activist has been in vogue recently, thanks in part to the 2020 re-release of the documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” and scholarly books such as Eddie S. Glaude’s “Begin Again.” Baldwin, who died in 1987, was a brilliant writer …
By JIM McKEEVER What must it be like to give up everything you have, especially if you are forced to flee your home and travel thousands of miles, protecting yourself and your children from harm? Each day asylum seekers from various countries, as well as detainees released from a Texas immigration detention center, are dropped …
soy de aquí y soy de allá I didn’t build this border that halts me the word fron tera splits on my tongue from “Where You From?” by Gina Valdés By DENNIS HARROD Hope is the last thing you’d expect to find in the faces of people trapped in the border city of Tijuana. They’ve …
Sense of Decency 