The 239 is a place where artists are chasing the hip hop dream through microphones in closets and judging success through YouTube hits. Motivations are plenty — money, a way out of the hood, therapy, communication, artistic collaboration.In Naples and Fort Myers, Fla., an underground community of emcees, producers, DJs, and dreamers are pushing every day […]

Bakersfield is a working-class, oil and agriculture town at the bottom of the San Joaquin Valley in California. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides. The pollution that hovers above it silently takes years off residents’ lives. Twenty per cent of children in the area suffer from asthma and air pollution costs valley residents […]

When Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban government in 1959, it signaled a move to emphasize the collective state over the individual. Businesses were nationalized, private property was seized by the government and converted into military facilities, schools and other infrastructure. Castro’s philosophy was to educate students to be an asset in society, not for uniqueness. […]

The United States accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants—and about 25 percent of its incarcerated inhabitants. And in 2000, one in 10 black males between the ages of 20 and 40 were incarcerated — 10 times the rate of their white peers. This mass incarceration has financially crippled families who make […]

Human nature, or perhaps American nature, prevents us from dwelling too long on events that are unsettling. A dramatic natural disaster will capture our attention, inspire us to action, and then recede to the background of our lives. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the natural disaster is a long, drawn-out event — a rising sea level […]