Living Outside Tribal Lines
Born on a Native American reservation, Sherman Alexie has been navigating the boundaries of American culture in poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays, and even stand-up comedy, for over two decades. Alexie shares his irreverent perspective on contemporary American life, and discusses the challenges of living in two different cultures at the same time. “I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian,” Alexie tells Moyers.
April 12, 2013
I wrote and produced this commentary with Bill Moyers to show how the changing skyline of Manhattan physically represents the impact that money and power has on the lives and neighborhoods of regular people. As wealthy investors drive up real estate values, the middle class is being squeezed out and the working poor are being shoved deeper into squalor—in places as disparate as Silicon Valley and New York City.
November 28, 2014
Locked out of America
After civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander published her book The New Jim Crow in 2010 she ignited a national conversation about our dehumanizing system of incarceration and justice in America.
Alexander spoke to Bill Moyers about the people she met as she traveled the country to speak out against mass incarceration. She tells Moyers that, “There are enormous victories that are being achieved precisely because the people whom we have written off and viewed as disposable are reclaiming their voice, standing up, speaking out, organizing even as they struggle to survive.”
December 20, 2013
I visited the Occupy Wall Street site multiple times between September and December in 2011. After interviewing a variety of protestors, most of whom expressed their anger at the growing economic inequality in the U.S., I produced this Bill Moyers Essay.
(Photo: David Shankbone)
March 1, 2012