published on the NUDGED blog, March 14, 2020 >>
A small US company is selling an app that might end our ability to walk down the street anonymously. Among its clients: authoritarian states and US immigration enforcement. Jacinta Gonzalez, an organizer with the NGO Mijente, talked with us about why this puts the 11 million undocumented people in the United States at an even higher risk for deportation.
Published on the NUDGED blog, March 18, 2020 >>
Before 700,000 Rohingya fled the genocide in Myanmar in 2017, the military had riled up millions of users against the group in a hate speech campaign on Facebook. Why did the company not intervene? And could this happen again? Human rights experts Matthew Smith (Fortify Rights) and Alan Davis (Institute for War and Peace Reporting), who both witnessed the events leading up to the genocide, shared their insights with me on the phone.
German version (with photo essay) published February 14, 2017 by ZEIT ONLINE >>
In the US Mexican borderlands, even Trump voters oppose the president’s plan to erect a border wall. They fear that even more immigrants will die in their backyard.
published by Lufthansa Magazine, August 2018, print and online >>
The city that never sleeps had an old dancing ban in place, from 1926 – until the current mayor overturned it. We visit some night owls as they celebrate their first summer of freedom.
published in German by ZEIT ONLINE on February 28, 2017 >>
Harvest workers, nannies, craftspeople: Eleven million people live in the US without papers, nothing goes without them. Trump wants to deport them anyway. A life full of fear.
published in the magazine of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), pp. 8-11, May 2017 >>
Climate change is a lie and science does not need any exchange: Donald Trump has an “alternative” understanding of what is true – much to US researchers’ chagrin. A conversation with the political scientist Beverly Crawford from Berkeley University, who is currently researching Fake News.
translation of a feature published November 12, 2016, by ZEIT ONLINE >>
In Oakland thousands take to the helicopter lit streets each night since the election, protesting hate crimes and a police state. But the demonstrators are also at odds with each other.
part of the photo exhibition “…und plötzlich diese Stille” (…suddenly there is silence), on display in the townhall of Wadersloh, Germany, as of April 20, 2016 >>
When the air raid warning went off, Samer* und Gazi* ran for their lives before bombs transformed their neighborhood into a landscape of rubble. Today father and son live in rural Liesborn-Göttingen and fear for their family whom they had to leave back in Syria.
part of the photo exhibition “…und plötzlich diese Stille” (…suddenly there is silence), on display in the townhall of Wadersloh, Germany, as of April 20, 2016 >>
In Germany, Kainat can finally go back to school. Her family fled from a remote Pashtun village still ruled by the Taliban, who forbid her to leave the house. In rural Westphalia, the eleven of them easily make friends as they are all avid football players. All of them except one-year-old Sana who prefers sitting on the ball to kicking it.
part of the exhibition “…and suddenly there is silence”, on display in the townhall of Wadersloh, Germany, as of April 20, 2016 >>
Sulyman is angry. Angry with himself, because he cannot do anything but “sleep, eat, drink” – in a house with 40 other worrisome men. And he is angry with the authorities. Six months have passed since his application for asylum; six months, in which his wife and small children have persevered between the front lines waiting for a family reunification visa. What, if the Syrian war is faster than the German authorities?