By Zak Rosen
Graffiti and murals have become so integrated into the fabric of so many of our cities, that I often forget to stop to look at them. In Brooklyn, as well as dozens of other places around the country, a specific type of mural exists among the cryptic tags, and colorful cartoon-esque characters. Often comprised of a simple portrait, along with a name, birth and death year, and sometimes a message, memorial murals began to sprout up all over NYC in the 90s. Today, it might be safe to say that there’s at least one memorial mural in every neighborhood in the city.
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By Brenton Crozier
Like most, I had never heard of Bayard Rustin until Al told me that we were doing an entire episode about him. I think in these infancy stages we were all still referring to him as Bay-erd. Anyway, like most people do now, I Googled him and stumbled upon his Wikipedia page (can you imagine that sentence 5 years ago?). It didn’t take long for my personal political proclivities to feel incited about the prospect of this hour-long special. I could hear it in my head, “This is State of the Re:Union and our show today is about a gay communist turned socialist.” Where do you go from there? READ MORE
By Tina Antolini
The year is 1967. Bayard Rustin, only a few years off of the triumph of organizing the 1963 March on Washington, is standing before a crowd of people. He’s laying out a plan to erase poverty from American cities and towns. It’s not just a pie-in-the-sky spouting of rhetoric, but an actual, tangible plan. He’s telling the U.S. government: do this, this and this—and maybe we can create a society in which everyone has jobs, health care, food on the table and a roof over their heads. READ MORE
By Brie Burge
If it bleeds it leads.
That was pretty much the mantra in news media. I worked for a TV station in Miami many moons ago, producing local newscasts. TV news is an interesting beast. It’s a furious scramble to get the breaking news on first before your competition, where death and destruction take up a majority of your newscast and where there’s a buzz in the newsroom because of the “good pictures” the chopper got while over the scene of some fatal car crash. READ MORE
