The death of transgender 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn has started a national conversation about the issues faced by trans youth. Alcorn left behind a suicide note referencing her parents' refusal to accept her identity, saying, "The only way I will rest...
Betsy came to Dr. Martin for a second — or rather, a sixth — opinion. Over a year, she had seen five other physicians for a “rapid heartbeat” and “feeling stressed.” After extensive testing, she had finally...
Robert Raben, founder of an influential public relations and government affairs firm known as The Raben Group, recalled the moment about a year ago that kicked his personal commitment to expand diversity within the environmental movement into...
Living on the cold streets of Seattle—decades after a war left his body 70 percent disabled—John would have never thought of himself as a role model. He wasn’t just an alcoholic. He was the type who was so committed that...
If you’re trying to get back to Europe after fighting in Syria, it helps if you’re headed to Aarhus. In this lively Danish port town west of Copenhagen, authorities are giving its citizens-turned-foreign-militants a second chance....
"This is an interview with Dena Samuels, who I met through the social justice work she has been doing as an educator and activist for about 15 years. Her new book on the topic is called The Culturally Inclusive Educator: Preparing for a...
In recent decades, social isolation has been recognised as a major risk to our health and longevity. It's twice as bad for you as being obese and nearly as bad as smoking. The rising number of people who say they are affected, across a wide range of...
Our nation’s capital closed out the year with 105 homicides , up one over 2013 . But violence and the fear it brings won’t end with a flip of the calendar or the last gunshot of 2014. The nightmarish scene of a body...
Inside a squat building in this town of 3,500 people just outside the state capital of Dover, six high-school students sat around a table last week, each holding a stack of small laminated cards. One girl had her spare arm wrapped around her...
Few city-related topics have generated as much debate in 2014 as broken windows policing. New York has played host to this discussion, especially in the aftermath of the over-aggressive arrest that led to Eric Garner's terrible death, but the...
Valerie Seeley has been behind bars since 2003. But her troubles started much earlier, in 1995, when she first met Oliver Williams and his 10-year-old daughter while visiting a friend in Brooklyn. “I thought it was a really cool thing that he...
For thirty-four years, a lawyer in New York City named Jonathan Chasan has been trying to stop officers from beating up inmates on Rikers Island. He started working at the Legal Aid Society when he was thirty-one years old, in a unit known as...
This neighborhood south of downtown is bleak, with empty parking lots fenced in by barbed wire, and skeletons of buildings covered in graffiti. Many of the people walking the long blocks of Mechanicsville grew up poor, and their children are...
My partner is lying on her back and both of us are trying to hide our nervousness about the first ultrasound of the pregnancy. As the examination starts, we hold hands and stare intently at the bedside screen. Initially, the monitor shows...
Silvina and Eduardo know too well the difference between "inside" and "outside." As former inpatients of Argentina's largest psychiatric hospital, they have experienced the stigma attached to those who are confined inside it, and the difficulty...