In Israel in 1988, a group of women dressed in black clothes and assembled for weekly vigils in public places, first in Jerusalem and then in other cities, to protest their government’s treatment of Palestinians. It was one year into the intifidah, or uprising, of Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank and […]
The UN World Conference Against Racism, which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001, featured an extraordinary range of experiences, testimonies, and recommendations, but the Dalit were disappointed, even angry. The Dalit are the 250 million people who represent the lowest Hindu caste in South Asia: the “untouchables.” They are one-sixth of India’s population, […]
Andy Goldsworthy gets up before dawn on a winter’s day to make his art. He draws his materials from nature, in this case, icicles that have formed on the underside of rocks and tree branches. By breaking them just so with his hands, he arranges the pieces in a spiral form that seems to wind […]
The Pima Indians of Arizona have one of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States. Half of the people living on the Pima reservations, along the Gila and Salt River valleys in Arizona, suffer from diabetes. However, their tribal cousins, the Nevome of Mexico, don’t have anywhere near the same incidence […]
When it was published in 1975, with text by John Berger and photos by Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man made the invisible visible. In Germany and Britain at that time, one in seven manual workers was an immigrant. In France, Switzerland, and Belgium, the corresponding figure was 25 percent. European prosperity during the Cold War […]
She was seventeen when she decided to learn Spanish. Until that time, Rigoberta Menchu Tum spoke only Quiche, a Mayan language. In Guatemala, where 65 percent of the population is indigenous, it was not difficult for a young Quiche woman to maintain distance from the Spanish-speaking dominant culture. But as Rigoberta Menchu became involved in […]
Located in the coastal city of Mombasa in Kenya, Bombolulu Workshops employs 150 artisans, most of them with physical disabilities. They make jewelry, clothes, and wooden sculptures. In addition to being a major center for rehabilitation, Bombolulu functions like a modern enterprise with its own marketing and design departments. The center derives some of its […]
In 1777, long before the advent of sex change operations, Charles d’Eon de Beaumont abruptly changed his gender. Soldier, royal censor, diplomat, and spy, d’Eon was a famous figure in pre-revolutionary France. At a young age he became a member of the King’s Secret, a network of spies in the service of the French king. […]
On a fall day in 1964, civil rights activist Mario Savio took off his shoes, climbed atop a police car on Berkeley campus, and started a movement. Inside the police car sat Jack Weinberg, a Berkeley alumnus arrested for distributing civil rights literature from a table in front of Sproul Hall. The crowd of students […]
The women of Afghanistan have rarely enjoyed equal status with men, not under the kings that ruled the country for centuries, not under the Soviet-backed regime that took over in a 1979 coup, and definitely not under the fundamentalist Taliban who seized power in 1992. In this country, with one of the lowest rates of […]