Dérive

One week has passed since a massive 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Central Mexico on September 19, destroying building and taking lives in the states of Puebla and Morelos, and parts of Mexico City. At publication, the New York Times cites at least 326 people killed – 186 in Mexico City – and some 50 collapsed buildings. Two weeks earlier, parts of southern Mexico and Guatemala were hit by an 8.2 magnitude quake - the largest in over a century. Cellphone footage from the 19th shows the unfolding disaster, as office workers rush out of buildings and into crowded city streets, while buildings sway, small fires catch, and waves rock tourist-packed gondolas at the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco. Incredibly, this latest quake happened 32 years to the day of the infamous 1985 Mexico City earthquake - a massive 8.0 magnitude tremor that, along with several aftershocks in the proceeding days, killed some 10,000 people and ruined nearly one third of all the city’s buildings. Sinc...

  The Division of Korea Japan annexed Korea from Russia in 1910 following the Russo-Japanese War, where it then ruled for thirty-five years. Koreans were not willing colonial subjects, and resistance included a nonviolent protests in 1919 that ended in 7,000 Koreans deaths and 50,000 arrests. The Korean language and culture was attacked, while millions were forced into labor and thousands conscripted into the Japanese military. In 1943, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek, met and agreed that Japan should lose all territories conquered by force, and determined that “in due course Korea shall become free and independent.” Yet, an independent nation of Korea still does not exist. Two years later, Harry Truman, the new champion of freedom and independence, authorized the murder of some 230,000 Japanese in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 9, the “Fat Man” fell on Nagasaki and Russia invaded Korea. In response, a line was...

  The night of September 8, 1971, was a sleepless one for the men of Cell Block A. Hours before, a fight had broken out between guards and two popular inmates, who were later dragged off to solitary confinement - “the box” - as punishment. One man yelled a final promise to the guards: “We’ll get you in the morning, motherfuckers!” And so they did.   The next morning a fight broke out, a strategically placed heavy metal bolt broke, tear-gas launchers and baseball helmets seized, and 40 guards taken hostage. It was September 9, 1971, and the Attica uprising had begun.   Given the horrendous conditions in Attica, and the larger social and political context of the time, the uprising was less than a surprise for all involved. A year earlier, inmates at Auburn prison went on strike, and then took fifty hostages, to protest a number of abuses. All prisoners involved were mercilessly beaten by guards after Auburn was recaptured.   In July, New York Correctio...