Pink Elephants

America’s refugee crisis continues to dominate the news cycle, but while much is known about what’s happening to refugees from Central America once they arrive here, what isn’t as clear are the multitude of factors that are causing them to flee their homes in the first place.

There are few things more emblematic of the blind eye America turns towards sexual violence than the epidemic of untested rape kits currently found in the criminal justice system. Estimates range somewhere in the hundreds of thousands; far more than can ever easily be accounted for. And in America’s halls of justice, the silence is deafening.

Steve Zeltzer is a freelance journalist and the host of WorkWeek on KPFA Radio in Pacifica, California, and has been covering Bay Area labor politics for over thirty years. He sat down with me this week to talk about how labor politics on both the local and national stage have shifted dramatically over the years, and why.

The future of urban development is one of the most complex and multi-faceted issues of our time. At the nexus of concerns around urban development is FutureProof, a monthly event hosted at the Local Color artist’s collective in Downtown San Jose. Each month’s event features casual conversations with a variety of civic engineers, both from the public and private sector. Pink Elephants was on the scene at the most recent event, and we’re proud to share FutureProof with you.

This month marks the 84th anniversary of the San Francisco General Strike, a landmark moment in Bay Area labor history, and the 25th anniversary of LaborFest, a month-long celebration in honor of the general strike.

As part of the event, the Service Employees International Union hall recently hosted “Workers Rights, Workers Lives: Organizing in Silicon Valley,” an all-day forum focusing on the ravages of the subcontracted labor market and what labor organizations are doing to fight back.

In the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States realized the awesome, life-altering potential of the weapons in its possession and said to the world, “never again.” In yet another moment of shattering national peril, can we repeat those words today?

Coal country is the center of some of the most violent battles of America’s labor movement, including the Battle Of Blair Mountain, West Virginia, America’s largest armed uprising outside of the Civil War, and one of the bloodiest battles in our nation’s history.

Ron Soodalter is a freelance journalist, historian, and an authority on the Battle Of Blair Mountain both past and present. He sat down with me recently to discuss why the history of this famous battle matters so much today.

There are few pastries more quintessentially American than the donut. And there’s one man more responsible than any other for elevating the donut from its humble origins to the celebrity status it enjoys today: Ted Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee who forged an empire of independent donut shops to rival that of major chains like Winchell’s and Dunkin.

I recently had the privilege to speak with Ted about his life and work, and the entrepreneurial legacy he left behind. He’s got one incredible story to tel

Sean Dickerson is the president of the Silicon Valley chapter of 100 Black Men Of America, an organization dedicated to developing today’s black youth into tomorrow’s leaders. He joined me recently to talk about how the organization aspires to help young people see themselves as something greater than a sum of society’s failed expectations.