Through the lens of theater, 15 New York University students have the opportunity to explore issues that will remain critical long after the last troops return home.

Click to read my new piece in the Times’ City Room.

South Korean tourists come to New York to cruise to the top of the Empire State Building and wander through the exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. But another must-do activity is a little less expected: a visit to Think Coffee.

Read  more of my story at the New York Times.

A huge crowd of people gathered outside the security checkpoint at Times Warner Cable Arena earlier Wednesday night, awaiting entrance to the convention hall to see former President Bill Clinton address the Democratic National Convention here….

Click to keep reading at The New York Times.

 By ANDREW SIDDONS and ISABELLA MOSCHEN

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — While a decision to move President Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention to a smaller venue might have left some volunteers and visitors here feeling left out in the cold — or the rain, as the weather forecast was predicting — many took it in stride, their support for the President undiminished.

My dispatch from the Democratic National Convention for the Times’ Caucus blog.

Are you left-handed? A cat lover? If you’re at the Democratic National Convention and you support President Obama, there is a button for you. No group is too obscure to profess support for the president’s re-election. Pearl divers, rejoice…..

Click to keep reading my dispatch from the Democratic National Convention for the Times’ Caucus blog.

Does Ron Paul believe in marriage licenses?

Answer? NOPE.

On Outer Reaches of the Harlem Line, a Conductor Who Offers Full Service

You can travel the 82 miles from Grand Central Terminal to the remote, pastoral station in Wassaic, N.Y., with no more human engagement than the time it takes a conductor to punch your ticket and walk on.

Or you can wind up on Timothy P. Curley’s train.

To continue reading, click here. 

Advocates struggle to fit gender-based asylum cases into rigid U.S. laws. For Guatemalan women, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Photo Credit: Devon Baird

Shoe Leather: Reported Stories, July 2011

(Original Link)

By Isabella Moschen

Over the crackle of Skype, some two thousand miles from New York City, a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in central Guatemala outlined the official response to domestic violence. When a female victim files a claim, she can begin the process of seeking redress at the local women’s municipal office. The steps that follow involve judges, trips to the police, official documents, and stamped reports. A man in uniform will even escort the victim home to collect her toothbrush and a change of clothes. At all costs, they will protect her. At least, this is how it happens on paper.

In practice, the victim withdraws her claim and returns to the abuser. She has little confidence in the policemen and their likelihood to follow through, if they believe her at all. She fears her lack of financial independence and the possibility of retaliation by her abuser’s friends and relatives. The Peace Corps volunteer, Devon Baird, knows this because she works at the Oficina Municipal de la Mujer, where these stories often unfold.

That same morning, Baird, who is stationed in Baja Verapaz, said she watched a segment on the local television news about a Guatemalan woman whose body was found in three separate bags. The perpetrators had cut off her arms and head and mutilated her breasts. Such brutal deaths happen with alarming frequency in the Central American nation, in domestic situations as well as on the street. Femicide, or femicidio, is the term human rights groups use for crimes that target women simply because they are female. And with some four thousand cases over the past decade, Guatemala’s femicide rate is among the highest in the Western Hemisphere.

“These are issues that are no longer ‘other people’s’ problems,” said Amanda Martin, director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, a Washington, D.C.-based organization known as the GHRC. “With globalization and travel and immigration, these problems are now our problems.”

Continue reading →

East Flatbush — At the Atlas Cops & Kids Boxing Club in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, one April afternoon, Coach Pat Russo nodded his head in encouragement as the boys (and a handful of girls) jumped rope, “hit the mitts,” and tightened up their footwork. The after-school rush had set in as dozens more young members streamed into the two-ring space, glancing at a list of posted rules as they passed.