Articles by James Ridgeway
Will the US Send Haitian Refugees to Gitmo?
Source: Mother Jones
The U.S. prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is inextricably linked to terrorism and torture in the minds of most Americans today. But not very long ago, it was known for torment of a different kind. In the 1990s, an immigrant detention center at Guantanamo served as a holding pen for undocumented migrants from the Caribbean who were caught trying to enter the United States. Most notoriously, it was a destination for Haitian “boat people,” including some with HIV, who fled their country in large numbers in the wake of the 1991 coup.
The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina
Source: Mother Jones
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren’t too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude-a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.