Tessa Stuart

Behind the scenes with the policy wonk, power broker, romance novelist, lawyer and entrepreneur who just might be our next vice president.

Stacey Abrams slips out of a chauffeured black Escalade and through the hotel caterers’ entrance. She snakes down the hallway to the step-and-repeat, where she snaps a few quick photos with Democratic Party officials, sweeps past the cash bar, slowing to shake hands with Congressman Hank Johnson, then ducks through the ballroom’s side door to take her place at Table One.

This is her third year headlining the Gwinnett County Democrats’ annual gala. Fifteen years ago, Gwinnett was a mostly rural, majority-white Republican stronghold. Today, it’s Atlanta’s largest suburb, the state’s most racially diverse county, and the epicenter of Georgia’s transformation into a battleground state.

Abrams, in a midnight-blue tuxedo jacket and sparkling teardrop earrings, is the center of gravity inside the neon-blue-lit ballroom. Party leaders, donors, and newly declared candidates revolve past the table to say hello, introduce their children, take selfies. She greets each warmly, bouncing babies on her knee, nodding appreciatively every few minutes when someone mentions her name from the stage. You’d never know that she hates this part of the job…

Read more at Rolling Stone.

On the campaign trail in Iowa with the progressive warrior as she tries to prove she’s the Democrats’ best chance to beat Trump.

It’s late November at the Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines, Iowa, a Forties dance hall converted from a World War I tire factory with ancient plumbing and a buzzing neon sign. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is listed on the marquee just above the cage fights and the craft show taking place next month. Hundreds of people have crowded onto the well-worn maple floor: old ladies in NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED T-shirts, college students home for Thanksgiving, young couples with small kids.

But not everyone who has shown up tonight is sold on Elizabeth Warren. (A middle-aged man behind me says he’s choosing between Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg — “I’m going to see who makes me a better offer.”) And that’s why she’s here, at her 169th town hall: to tell her story, answer questions, take selfies, convert the skeptics, and assure her existing supporters that she’s still the right choice — that she can pull this thing off.

All summer and into the fall, Warren was rising steadily in the polls, starring in viral town-hall moments, baiting billionaires, and unveiling dozens of ambitious policy proposals — from canceling student debt to rolling out universal child care. She was not the front-runner yet, but the one who would probably win it in the end, assuming, as many overconfident political observers did, that any minute now the bottom would drop out of Joe Biden’s campaign, and that Bernie Sanders was too old, Pete Buttigieg too young and inexperienced, and the rest of the pack too far behind to catch up. Now, it’s almost December, and the lead she held here for months has abruptly disappeared.

Read more at Rolling Stone.

Kenya Harmon and Keynan Williams are cutting it up on a December afternoon at the Kayton Homes in Savannah, Georgia. Williams, a wiry man with big eyes, sits in a wicker chair with a sun-bleached cushion, cigarette in his hand, Miller High Life at his feet, dog staring quizzically out of the screen door behind him. A tinsel wreath, hanging from a railing outside the upstairs apartment, twinkles in the sun above them.

“…The thing about it, if you have the Republicans win this here? Win that Senate? We’re doomed,” Harmon, who is round with big teddy bear energy, says.

Williams nods in agreement. “They gonna buck on Joe. Everything he try to do, they gonna pull it.

As a teen in Minnesota, Ilhan Omar didn’t wear a hijab often. “I, regretfully, was one of the folks who would only wear it the days I didn’t have the time or energy to fix my hair,” says Omar, who arrived in the U.S. in 1995 as a refugee of the Somali civil war. Her attitude evolved after September 11th: “I knew we had a responsibility to help shape a narrative about our faith that is positive.” This year, she became the first woman sworn in to Congress in a head scarf, after negotiating the end to a 181-year-old edict that representatives must “remain uncovered” while on the House floor. Lifting the ban caused an outcry from some conservatives, but, as an unapologetic progressive, Omar is getting used to that. For now, though, she’s trying to stay focused on the agenda she came to Washington to advance, and on advocating for people like herself — refugees, immigrants, Muslims, women, Minnesotans.

Read more at Rolling Stone.

The congresswoman on her vision for a post-fossil-fuel future and an economy that works for working people.

There was, essentially, no Green New Deal before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was just a slogan rolling around the mouths of newspaper columnists and environmental activists until the 30-year-old political phenom put her star power behind it. Just a month after she was sworn in as the youngest congresswoman in history, Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey debuted a 14-page resolution outlining the principles she hopes will form the foundation for a slew of climate legislation over the next decade. A jobs program to save the planet shouldn’t be all that controversial, but skeptics along the political spectrum found something to hate. The concept was ridiculed by Republicans even as some attempted to co-opt it (Rep. Matt Gaetz’s Green Real Deal), and deemed too audacious by liberal Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the Green New Deal’s ambition was always the point… Read more at Rolling Stone.

Why Can’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis?

It’s the epicenter of the tech industry and the wealthiest, most progressive state in the union, but homelessness is surging — and no one can agree on how to fix it

The Big Cow Con

Citrus thieves. Honey embezzlers. Raisin scammers. Fertilizer fraud. Detective Rocky Pipkin thought he had seen it all — until he discovered Arno Smit.

One year. Six families. Dozens of lives disrupted by the Trump administration’s punitive and unpredictable immigration policies.

The year Donald Trump was carried into office on a frothing anti-immigrant platform, there were an estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Roughly two-thirds had been here for more than a decade. Prior administrations had abysmal records, but generally acknowledged that the U.S. was enriched by the immigrants who chose to build their lives here. It’s why Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to some 3 million undocumented immigrants, why George W. Bush supported a path to legal citizenship, why Barack Obama — labeled “deporter-in-chief” after removing nearly 3 million people — also created DACA to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

But from the start, Trump embraced a rabid xenophobia once restricted to the furthest fringe in modern American politics, slashing refugee admissions, rescinding DACA, and ratcheting up arrests of longtime residents. All of that was before the pandemic hit, shutting down immigration courts, turning detention centers into viral tinderboxes, and giving the administration cover to institute some of its most draconian measures yet.

A year ago, Rolling Stone began documenting the stories of immigrants around the country who are fighting removal, waylaid in detention centers or mired in endless court proceedings, with the stability and safety of their families hanging in the balance…

Read more at Rolling Stone.

The Speaker of the House on outsmarting Republicans, skepticism of the Green New Deal and not having any regrets.

It was a bone-cold January day in the nation’s capital. The federal government — finally back in business after the longest shutdown in American history — opened three hours late due to a dusting of snow and a “flash freeze” in the forecast. Not that it mattered to anyone who worked inside the speaker’s office. Nancy Pelosi was there at her usual time, and her aides were expected to be there too. There was work to do: committees to finish assigning, a postponed State of the Union to organize, and less than three weeks to hammer out a deal with the White House on border security before funding was set to run out again.

Pelosi is at the height of her power, having recaptured the House, dispatched an attempted coup of her leadership, and faced down the president in a very public, extremely high-stakes fight. Her approval rating has risen eight points since November, and now sits higher than it has been in more than a decade.

Nancy Pelosi has waited a long time for this. Born 78 years ago, she was the youngest of Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.’s seven children, and the only girl. While her elder brother was groomed to follow in their father’s footsteps…

Read more at Rolling Stone.

The Health Department’s Christian Crusade

The religious right has infiltrated the office of Health and Human Services, and reproductive rights are the first target

How a progressive congressman – and former bassist – from El Paso is threatening to unseat the Senate’s most hated Republican

Beto O’Rourke, the democratic congressman from El Paso, has just finished the first of the day’s three campaign events, an early-morning house party in Tyler, Texas, and is now high-tailing toward a second meet-and-greet 115 miles away in Texarkana, determined to squeeze in an extra, unscheduled stop. O’Rourke wants to overtake “the Beto Bus” – a raucous, 45-foot vessel scooping up supporters of his long-shot bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz – currently lumbering somewhere up ahead on an East Texas highway. O’Rourke’s longtime chief of staff, David Wysong, is privately skeptical of the plan. “It has a lot of moving parts,” he mutters more than once. O’Rourke loves it. He loved it too when one of the organizers of this morning’s event pulled alongside the car to insist he not leave town without eating at Stanley’s Famous Pit BBQ. Now, open-faced brisket sandwich in his lap, a little cup of barbecue sauce perched on the armrest, and with 20 minutes of lost time to make up, O’Rourke glances at Wysong, navigating a steep stretch of highway, and says with a grin, “No sudden moves.”

Read more at Rolling Stone.

YouTube Stars Fight Back

The video titled “Thank you, I will miss you guys” is barely more than a minute long — all one shaky, handheld shot trained on the face of then–21-year-old Ben Vacas.

Vacas, known online as Braindeadly, has big brown eyes, a fauxhawk, a stubbly goatee and a British accent, discernible as he tells his 40,000 YouTube subscribers goodbye.

“I woke up today hoping to make a video, but I went into a call with Machinima this evening and they said that my contract is completely enforceable. I can't get out of it,” Vacas tells the camera. “They said I am with them for the rest of my life — that I am with them forever.

“If I'm locked down to Machinima for the rest of my life and I've got no freedom, then I don't want to make videos anymore,” he says quietly.

The screen fades to black.

INSIDE 5 POINTZ

The Queens Graffiti Mecca Was Never Just About the Painting on the Outside

Nicole Gagne doesn’t remember the fall itself, or any of the month that followed. She spent almost all of it in a hospital bed, pumped full of a painkiller that had the happy side effect of causing temporary amnesia.

So she doesn’t remember the concrete staircase dissolving under the weight of her step. She doesn’t remember dropping three and a half floors, or landing on her side, wedged between two piles of wooden pallets. And she doesn’t remember being buried under the spall and rebar that fell more slowly than she did.

Gagne had complained to the building’s super about the pallets the day before. That she remembers. They had been sitting in that corner of the otherwise bare cement courtyard for weeks, maybe even months. Too long, in any case. The super asked the pallets’ owners, proprietors of a T-shirt manufacturing business on the first floor, to remove them an hour before Gagne fell. They didn’t, and it is probably the only reason she is still alive.

TAKE TWO: HOW KPCC'S QUEST FOR LATINO LISTENERS DOOMED THE MADELEINE BRAND SHOW

Vying for Latino listeners, KPCC gave Madeleine Brand a co-host, A Martinez. It didn't stick.

What It’s Like to Be the Target of NYPD Surveillance

A SANTA MONICA TRAILER PARK — AND ITS SENIOR RESIDENTS — FACE OFF WITH FANCY NEW DEVELOPMENT

The eviction notices kept coming, one after another. Mary Herring, who will turn 79 in August, says she received six in all — “They just wanted to make sure we got it.”

The first notice that Village Trailer Park would be closing went out to its mostly elderly residents on July 10, 2006. On Aug. 5, less than a month later, 80-year-old John Stiles put a gun in his mouth. The night before he took his life, neighbors say he was agitated about the park closing and anxious that he had nowhere else to go.

The notices, it turned out, had been issued erroneously. The owners had not secured from the city of Santa Monica's Rent Control Board the permits necessary to close the park.

Six years later, they still don't have the permits. But the battle over the once-lush 3.5-acre parcel at Colorado Avenue and Stanford Street — and the meaning of “affordable housing” in a city that pioneered rent control — has only escalated since.

It’s Too Easy to Kill Pedestrians in New York City — and Too Hard To Hold Drivers Accountable

Five days after two Upper West Side residents were struck and killed by moving vehicles, their deaths separated by two blocks and 30 minutes, the sidewalk at 97th Street and West End Avenue is so thick with mourners that they spill onto the street. The crowd eventually swells so large that it becomes impossible for a crosstown bus to make its turn onto West End from 97th. For a moment, the bus sits paralyzed, mid-intersection, as a line of cars stacks up behind it, honking.

A candlelight vigil for two dead: That is what it takes to stop traffic on the Upper West Side.

Haim: From Family Band to International Acclaim

“We'd agree, OK, we'll tell Dad we practiced for an hour, and then we'd watch TV,” Alana says. As soon as they heard his key in the lock, the three would snap into action, shutting off the TV and patting it down for static, Este says, “ 'cause my dad would come home and feel the TV and be, like, 'Did you guys practice? Were you guys watching TV?' ”

Back in those days, they would go to Fashion Square to buy Spice Girls Chupa Chups lollipops from Limited Too. One time after a Rockinhaim gig in Sherman Oaks, Este and Danielle were approached to be part of their own Spice Girls knockoff, called The Valli Girls. The songs they sang landed on soundtracks for the Trollz doll TV show and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

When they were older, Este and Danielle left Alana behind, sneaking out to shows at Spaceland, Sixth and Alameda Warehouse or the Smell. Este explains now, almost apologetically, “I could only find one fake ID, and getting Alana a fake ID when she was like 13 … ”

“It was hard with my braces,” Alana agrees.

WBAI’s Death by Democracy

It was 6:30 p.m. on August 9, at the end of the evening news. The voice of Jose Santiago, longtime news director at the legendary radical radio station WBAI, drifted out over the airwaves for what would be the last time.

“Over the years, I’ve knocked out last-minute news copy at breakneck speeds thousands of times, in a whole bunch of different places, and always made the deadline,” Santiago told listeners. “But this one, on such short notice, is not flowing so easily.”

Earlier that afternoon, Summer Reese, interim executive director of Pacifica Radio, which owns the station’s broadcast license, had gathered WBAI’s staff together and confirmed rumors that had run rampant for months. Almost all of them were losing their jobs.

“This is goodbye,” Santiago said, his voice growing shaky. “I want to say a million things, but none more than ‘thank you.'”

The end was a long time coming.

For years, observers inside and out had been prophesying the death of WBAI, birthplace of the nationally syndicated alternative news program Democracy NOW!. The station has not turned a profit in more than a decade. The last year has been particularly tough.

Millions of dollars in debt, and unable to pay staff or rent, WBAI has devoted a staggering 169 days to pledge drives since October. Quacks and conspiracy theorists solicited donations by dangling gifts like magic water capable of curing cancer and books that claim, matter-of-factly, that the world is secretly ruled by shapeshifting reptilian overlords.

Ask the people who have lived through the slow, sad decline, and they will tell you that the very thing they thought would save the organization—democratizing the network—nearly killed it entirely.

AS SAN FERNANDO TURNS

Mario Hernandez wanted to go on a retreat, to get away from his small town for the weekend and clear his head. He told his girlfriend he was heading to St. Joseph Salesian Youth Renewal Center in Montebello — advertised as “a peaceful place where Jesus might more easily be heard.”

She was having none of it.

Thirty minutes before he was set to leave, Maribel De La Torre burst into his apartment. She ripped a heavy, wooden picture frame from the wall and slammed it to the ground. Glass sprayed across the floor.

“If I could kill you right now, I would,” De La Torre allegedly told Hernandez. “I fuckin' hate you. I hate you for what you have done to me.”

Hernandez would later tell investigators that De La Torre launched herself toward him, grabbed him by the throat with both hands and began to squeeze. When police arrived, Hernandez's face was red, with a big shiner starting to swell above his cheekbone. His neck and arms were covered with scratches and bruises.

Officers took a report; Hernandez filed for a restraining order against De La Torre a few days later. Two days after that, De La Torre filed for a restraining order of her own, claiming that, months earlier, Hernandez threw her against a wall, tried to strangle her and threatened to leave her and return to his wife.

The court granted each protection from the other. Their restraining orders stipulated that Hernandez and De La Torre were to keep 100 yards' distance between them.

And that might have been fine, except for the fact that, as members of the San Fernando City Council, the pair was scheduled to sit side by side and discuss the city's financial health the following Tuesday.

Murder on Montana Avenue

The living room of Sofia Merman's West Hollywood apartment is filled with photos of her only son. Sasha in cap and gown, Sasha sitting for his Navy portrait, Sasha and his mother standing in the Black Sea in Odessa. The images are tucked inside stacks of photo albums and sit in frames beside his college and postgraduate diplomas, certificates of excellence as an art teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and blown-up copies of his intricate pen-and-ink drawings.

Shortly after her son's 2008 murder, Sofia sat in the living room with Sasha's friend and financial planner, Daniel Becerril, who first met Sasha when he was invited onto the campus of Markham Middle School to help teachers invest their retirement funds. Sofia asked Becerril if he'd heard about Sasha's killing. He said yes. She asked why he hadn't called to express his sympathies. He said he didn't know why.

“He said, 'Yes, yes — he come to us, we love him, he met our children who love him so very much,' ” Sofia Merman relates in a thick Russian accent. She remembers telling Becerril, “Yes, [Sasha] told me you were nearly older brother, and he help you.”

But there was one thing she did not share with Becerril that day nearly four years ago, as she mourned the slain Sasha. “I didn't tell him what I tell my son: 'His face is like a killer.' ”