New York City’s Unemployment Hits Minorities Hardest

New York City’s slowly declining unemployment rate has stalled at 8.7 percent since March, leaving more than 340,000 New Yorkers currently searching for work. According to the New York State Department of Labor, more than half of the unemployed New Yorkers are either Hispanic or black. Pedro Mercado is one of the roughly 140,000 Hispanics [...]

Occupy Wall Street Meets Tahrir Square

October 25, 2011 Two Egyptian activists led hundreds of American protesters on a march out of Zuccotti Park on Monday, walking past the police barricades on Wall Street for the first time since protests began about six weeks ago. It marked a peculiar show of solidarity between a movement born out of decades of oppression [...]

Women in the Military: November 3

Queens: Illegal Conversions on the Rise

Sitting in her new airy room in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Jill, 26, recalls the days when she lived in an illegal basement in Ridgewood, Queens. Cell phone signals did not exist, bath towel always had a rotten smell, and everyday was a challenge making herself invisible to other tenants in the three-storey building. “I didn’t feel [...]

Chinese Homebuyers Entering the U.S. Market

Lu Hong, a 25-year-old nursing student at SUNY Stony Brook, migrated to the U.S. in 2004 from the eastern Zhejiang Province, China. Hong’s father, a Chinese businessman with a U.S. green card, spends two months a year in America and focuses the rest of the year on his booming construction business in China. After the [...]

A Fight For Mental Health In Minority Communities

BROOKLYN—She fought. She fought from high school to high school. Until Patice Ratliff started receiving counseling at her sixth high school, Brownsville Academy, she didn’t understand why fighting was always her first instinct. “Counseling is not just ‘oh my God, I’m going insane,’ counseling is something different,” said Ratliff, 17, standing outside of Brooklyn Criminal [...]

Debates on School Co-Location Rage in NYC

New York—Even when the parents of PS 184 Shuang Wen School (SW) won the battle against the City Department of Education (DOE) back in 2009 to keep charter schools and traditional public schools from sharing buildings, they knew it was only a temporary truce. As the size of the three existing charter schools in District One [...]

Brighton Beach School Leads the Way for Fitness Outside of the Gym

As the doors to room 219 open, the sound of third graders “bouncing” and “scooting” overpowers the voice of Beyoncé. Twenty-two children have their eyes fixed on the dance instructor, who is simultaneously relaying dance steps while jumping herself. This is Jamee Schleifer’s dance studio at New York City’s Public School 253. A rarity among [...]

Russians move from the Ballet to the Ballroom

Some of the most famous names of Russian descent are associated with ballet, such as Tchaikovsky, Irina Baronova and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But for today’s generation, Karina Smirnoff or Anna Trebunsnkaya often come to mind first, Russian dancers famous for their ballroom dance moves on the popular ABC show Dancing with the Stars. Smirnoff and Trebunsnkaya [...]

9/11 A Decade Later

Charity Elder, Gabi Menezes and Carey Fox were NYU News and Documentary students when the 9/11 attacks took place. The days and weeks after the attack they were out in the streets of New York City reporting for their stories. Elder is the supervising producer of CBS, The Early Show, Menezes is the former Bureau Chief [...]

Church Avenue Laparkan Keeps Customers In Touch With Home

EAST FLATBUSH—Laparkan Trading, a company founded to provide an alternative shipping service for Caribbean immigrants in North America, enjoys consistent business in the densely populated Caribbean neighborhood of East Flatbush, despite tough economic times. When customers enter Church Avenue’s bustling, compact office filled with boxes, barrels and other customers, the atmosphere is familiar and comfortable. [...]

The Hobby of Owning a ‘Hobby Store’

With the economy in a tailspin, businesses everywhere are trying to find ways to increase revenue – even if it means relocating their entire operation. Small-business owner Marvin Cochran is the exception. For the past five years, Cochran and his “Rudy’s Hobby and Art Supply” store have experienced a steady 10 percent decline in revenue. [...]