Living Positively with HIV: A Photo Essay by Amelia H. Krales

Elda Malpera is proud of how far she has come. A resident of East New York, Brooklyn, Malpera, 39, a mother of four, has overcome two decades spent in the grip of addiction, time in prison and a rape that left her HIV-positive. Read more »

From the IndyBlog

National

• ‘Not Our Kind’: Responding to the Black anti-abortion Movement
  By Loretta J. Ross, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  The Black anti-abortion movement needs to be taken seriously. The people involved in it carefully exploit religious values to make inroads into our communities. They poison the soil in which we must toil ... (0 comments)
• Corporations Unleashed: Landmark supreme court decision to allow unlimited spending in federal elections
  By Ted Nace, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Few people would describe large corporations as a sector of society suffering from a deficit of political power. Yet, corporate power increased dramatically on Jan. 21 when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Citizens United v. FEC that legalized unlimited funding of independent political broadcasts in federal elections by corporations. (4 comments)
• A Race Against Time: Push for Regional Solutions to Climate Change Gathers Steam
  By Tina Gerhardt, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  As the U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen ended last December without a legally binding agreement, environmentalists, government officials and activists are asking if an international agreement is the best way to address global warming. (2 comments)
• Walking the Dream: Immigrant College Students Push for Reform
  By Karen Yi, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  Miami-Dade Community College student Felipe Matos has a new schedule this spring semester. Each day starts with a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call, a big breakfast, a quick stretch and securing his feet with a thick layer of duct tape. Then Matos sets off for a 17-mile walk interspersed by several breaks of singing songs, and later stops to sleep in a different place every night — RVs, churches or even strangers’ homes. (7 comments)
• The Value of Work: An Interview with Journalist Gabriel Thompson About Immigrant Labor
  By Micah Williams, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  Even the most virulently anti-immigrant activists in our country can’t deny that immigrants, documented and undocumented, work hard — very hard. Slaughtering animals at breakneck speed, dodging reckless taxis on bicycle to deliver meals, breaking their backs picking vegetables in far-flung fields: traditional immigrant work is brutal. (1 comment)
• History Loses One of Its Own HOWARD ZINN DIES, 87
  By Jessica Lee, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  Legendary historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn likely died just the way he would have wanted — from a heart bursting with love and revolutionary spirit while on a speaking tour highlighting the voices of uncommon heroes in American history. (0 comments)
• History: Cruelty and Compassion: Howard Zinn In His Own Words
  By Howard Zinn, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? (0 comments)
• Let’s Break from the Party of War and Wall Street
  By Stanley Aronowitz, in the Jan 8, 2010 issue
  People cannot live without hope. The long night of the eight Bush years was tolerated only because many of us believed it would come to an end. That Obama seized on that belief better than his Democratic opponents is a testament to the high expectations people had that regime change in Washington just might bring about a better life. (2 comments)
• Waiting for the Rapture
  By Nicholas Powers, in the Jan 8, 2010 issue
  Can it be a year ago that we celebrated Obama’s victory? I danced in Harlem where cars honked like a wild jazz band. A woman climbed on a hood and screamed. People flooded the streets of cities around the world as a great love surged through us and swallowed the planet whole. In the midst of celebration I raised my arms and yelled, “This is who we really are!” A year later, why do we still have faith in him? (4 comments)

Local

• Reader Comments
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  (0 comments)
• Living Positively with HIV: A Photo Essay by Amelia H. Krales
  By Amelia H. Krales, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  Elda Malpera is proud of how far she has come. A resident of East New York, Brooklyn, Malpera, 39, a mother of four, has overcome two decades spent in the grip of addiction, time in prison and a rape that left her HIV-positive. (0 comments)
• Experience Is The Best Teacher: Bronx School Fights to Save Building Trades Programs As DOE Pushes College Prep Over Hands-on Learning
  By Mary Annaïse Heglar, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Ever since he was a small child, Rubany Peña knew he wanted to be a carpenter. “I always loved the city’s layout and I wondered how it was built,” Peña said. (0 comments)
• Beyond Port-au-Prince: Grassroots Women’s Group Brings Aid to Remote, Hard-Hit Areas of Haiti
  By Judith De Los Santos, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Huddled around the lantern’s glow in the middle of the night, a group of teens rap lyrics to the beat of the tambora. (0 comments)
• Legal Floodgates Open: Undocumented Haitians Now Have Chance to Live, Work Legally in U.S.
  By Renee Feltz, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Just three days after the earthquake, immigration officials granted Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to Haitians living illegally in the United States. (2 comments)
• Compassion of the Church: Springing Faith into Action for Haiti
  By Jaisal Noor, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Reverend Doctor Philius Nicolas has led the Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men since its founding in 1973 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. (0 comments)
• Students Say: ‘NO FARE!’
  By John Tarleton, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Under the MTA’s plan, students would be charged half-fares starting in September of this year and full fares beginning in September 2011. (2 comments)
• SoHo’s Real Fashion Victims
  By Diane Krauthamer, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  There are thousands of fashion victims in New York City, but not due to a lack of style. Rather, these are the low-wage workers in the fashion industry who stock, cashier and provide security at high-end fashion stores. (0 comments)
• Unhitched: Married Couples Get Unmarried to Support Gay Rights
  By Indyendent Staff, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Married couples take a final kiss to suspend their vows in the “UnMarriage until GayMarriage” ceremony at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park on Feb. 14. (0 comments)

International

• Hope for Haiti: Trained in Cuba, Bronx doctor Melissa Barber drops everything to help earthquake victims
  By Renée Feltz, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  After the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Dr. Melissa Barber received a call asking her to help treat people left injured and living in squalid conditions. “There was no question,” said Barber, 30, who was born and raised in the Bronx and worked in quality assessment at St. Barnabas Hospital in the heart of the borough. (0 comments)
• Participatory Radio: Lessons from the Radical South
  By Andalusia Knoll, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  People across Latin America and the United States are increasingly turning to community media as a tool of resistance. (0 comments)
• International News Briefs
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  (0 comments)
• WEB EXCLUSIVE: Haitian Journal: Beneath the Ruins, The Indypendent’s Nicholas Powers Finds the Hopes, Fears, Dreams, Confusion, Regrets, Anger and Generosity of the People of Port-au-Prince
  By Nicholas Powers, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  4:53:09 PM Tuesday January 12th was the last moment of Old Haiti. The nearly 200,000 people who were going to die in the next few minutes did not know it and the survivors did not know they’d carry the burden of saying goodbye. (1 comment)
• The U.S. in Haiti: Neoliberalism at the Barrel of a Gun
  By Arun Gupta, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. (2 comments)
• The Godfather of Microcredit: Muhammand Yunus’ Vision of ‘Social Business’ Is a Curious Amalgam of Left and Right
  By Mark Engler, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist, godfather of microcredit and founder of the now-famous Grameen Bank, enchants many different types of people with his imaginings of a better future. (1 comment)
• Bolivia Organizes Counter-Copenhagen Summit
  By John Tarleton, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Four months after U.N. climate talks dominated by the world’s leading polluters broke down, the indigenous-led government of Bolivia will host a people’s conference on climate change. (0 comments)
• Same Old Interests Have Plan for ‘New Haiti’
  By Isabel MacDonald, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  In the wake of the earthquake that has killed almost 200,000 people in Haiti, the foreign ministers of several countries calling themselves the “Friends of Haiti” met on Jan. 25 in Montreal to discuss plans for “building a new Haiti.” (0 comments)
• Haiti: How to Turn Disaster into Catastrophe
  By Arun Gupta, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  Since 1950, Port-au-Prince’s population has exploded from 144,000 to about 2.5 million. While the wealthy capital-area suburb of Petionville was largely spared, with few homes destroyed, poor people packed in shoddy housing, bore the brunt of the death and destruction. The underdevelopment of Haiti is the underlying cause. (10 comments)

Culture

• Through the Lens: A New Exploration of New York
  By Irina Ivanova, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  Think the city isn’t what it used to be? This spring, several venues around the city ask you to consider the question. (0 comments)
• The City of Monsters Confronts Its History: A Review of El Monstruo
  By Bennett Baumer, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  The monster is Mexico City (known in Spanish as D.F., for distrito federal), and El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City is a brief history of Mexico through the monster’s eyes written by Nation and La Jornada contributor John Ross. (0 comments)
• NYPD Memoir Expose: A Review of NYPD Confidential
  By Ann Schneider, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  In his new book, NYPD Confidential, Levitt follows the rise and fall of former Police Commissioners Lee Brown, Bill Bratton, Howard Safir and the now-disgraced Bernie Kerik. (0 comments)
• Dreaming of the Netroots: A Review of Beyond the Echo Chamber
  By Eleanor J. Bader, in the Mar 12, 2010 issue
  Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke’s Beyond the Echo Chamber enthusiastically trumpets the rise in “citizen journalism.” The book further celebrates the information sharing that has resulted from the internet’s nearly ubiquitous presence. (0 comments)
• Wastelands: Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Proved Poetry Can Be for the People
  By Jacob Scheier, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  "Something is wrong with America’s moral imagination,” former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass told the audience at the most recent Dodge poetry festival in New Jersey in fall 2008. (0 comments)
• Your Own James: Caribbean Revolutionary C.L.R. James Left a Rich Body of Thought; A Marxist Polymath Who Rejected Leninism
  By Rico Cleffi, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  Martin Glaberman, a longtime associate of C.L.R. James, once observed that the staggering scope of James’ writing often meant, “Everyone produces his/her own James. People have, over the years, taken from him what they found useful, and imputed to him what they found necessary. (0 comments)
• Political Films to Test Oscars: Will the Blue People Win?
  By Judith Mahoney Pasternak, in the Feb 19, 2010 issue
  “Oscar” is getting older—this year marks the 82nd awards ceremony for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But movie lovers will have to wait until March 7 to find out whether or not he has, in fact, become wiser. (7 comments)
• Dances With Space Smurfs: A Review of Avatar
  By Raj Patel, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  Under what rock have you been hiding to miss the storm around James Cameron’s environmental parable, Avatar? Certainly not beneath a hunk of unobtanium: it floats. (4 comments)
• A Faith-driven Renaissance: Performers Highlight Muslim Art and Culture
  By Amy L. Dalton, in the Jan 29, 2010 issue
  On Saturday, Jan. 23, a dozen musicians, comedians and spoken word artists teamed up at Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater for a multilingual, transnational explosion of Muslim arts and culture. (0 comments)