Are Redevelopers Including the Voices of Lincoln Beach’s Most Frequent Visitors?
An op-ed exploring who gets to weigh in, as the city of New Orleans and Boston-based planners Sasaki redevelop a historic Black beach, used primarily by Hondurans for the past two decades.
Building a Solidarity Economy in Jackson, Mississippi
Cooperation Jackson’s ultimate goal is to create a federation of worker-owned cooperatives on a community land trust.
Innocence Project Files for ‘94 Killing Evidence (scroll below the fold)
This is the most important and story I’ve ever written, and I fought editors at two newspapers to write it. To get it published, I had to frame it through the lens of DNA evidence, rather than through the lens of judicial, police and lawyer misconduct, and inadmissible information that provided a motive for an alternative perpetrator. These issues resulted in what was very likely a wrongful conviction (a conviction several members of the original jury later regretted), that led to Belynda Goff, a mother and now grandmother, being sentenced to life without parole. (My editor was worried the newspaper would seem like an advocate. Frankly, I felt an advocacy role was warranted.) This story pressured a reluctant district attorney’s office and judge to release DNA evidence, setting a district precedent, and caught the attention of an op-ed writer, who ran with this story in a way that, as a news reporter, I couldn’t. He kept it in his column nearly every week, while I covered the related court filings.
I started reporting this story in 2012, when Belynda Goff had been imprisoned for nearly 18 years. The media coverage at the time of the homicide assumed her guilt. The coverage never mentioned that credible evidence implicated the victim, Stephen Goff, in an arson-for-hire scheme (he was allegedly paid but didn’t complete the “job”), nor did the jury hear this evidence. (Neither did my belated coverage mention the arson-for-hire, per editorial decisions made above my pay-grade. ) Belynda was charged a year after her husband’s death. In that year, she endured all various intimidation tactics, including her rental home burning as a result of arson, with her children inside. (Their barking dog woke them, and they fled the flames).
The DNA evidence was missing or corrupted, so Belynda languished in prison for 23 years, until, due to the fantastic work of her Innocence Project lawyer, Karen Thompson, Belynda was sentenced to time served and freed in 2019. Had I not pushed this story and taken it from paper to paper, this story might never have made it to the public spotlight for a second time. Without my work and even more so, Karen’s work, Belynda could easily have died in prison.
Trump's Defense Secretary Could Be Military Industry Sweetheart Tom Cotton
And Cotton has an abysmal record on protecting threatened communities and a boots-on-the-ground approach to conflict.
Controversial Frac Sand Mining Comes to Arkansas
Five years into the exploration for natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale, most Arkansans know about the hydraulic fracturing process and its links to environmental havoc. Now a mushrooming side industry is amplifying the threat.
Vets on Main
Downtown Little Rock residents and business owners fight a clinic with a laudatory track record of getting veterans into homes and substance recovery. It isn’t the first time this VA Day Treatment Center has faced such animosity.
No Rights for Tenants
A research panel wants Little Rock landlords to fix properties and end retaliatory eviction.
Arkansas Renters Have Less Rights than in Any Other State
Arkansas is the only state without a warranty of habitability, which means there’s no minimum standard of safety and sanitation to which property owners must adhere.
Building New Africa in Little Rock
More than a edgling housing development in the John Barrow neighborhood, New Africa is a utopian experiment.
Power Struggle
Members of an electricity cooperative is rural Arkansas deal with a lack of transparency, herbicide-pollution and bylaws aimed to silence dissent.
UA-Fort Smith Silences Trans Student
Jennifer Braly was invited by psych professors to lecture on gender identity disorder. Then she was uninvited by the department chair.
How Little Rock Cares for It’s Homeless
Once dubbed the “meanest place to be homeless” by the National Coalition for the Homeless, Little Rock officials have a 10-year plan. But things are behind schedule.