Alice in Radioland » investigative

‘Yusuf Bey IV Indicted in Journalist Slaying’

pauline — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:17:16 +0000

That headline, splattered across bay area newspapers a couple of weeks ago, might have alarmed me. I spent an evening documenting Yusuf Bey IV at Your Black Muslim Bakery back in 2006. It was all for a series of stories I did about the community response to liquor stores, particularly the over-concentration of them in West Oakland.

At the time, Bey was under investigation for his possible involvement in the assault on two Muslim- owned liquor stores in Oakland.

When I entered the Bakery I was searched. After I recorded him giving a speech to a small group of followers, I was taken to Bey’s empty upstairs apartment and interviewed him in the presence of a bodyguard about liquor stores in Oakland for close to an hour.

At no time did I feel my safety was in danger. In fact I was taken off guard by how such a young man, with apparent insecurities and little life experience could be responsible for leading a powerful organization.

In the end I did a long radio feature for KALW news (which no longer hosts the link to the program) and for NPR’s Day to Day. It won me the radio award in my graduating year at UC Berkeley School of Journalism (’07). A snippet of the interview was included in A Day Late in Oakland, produced by Zach Stauffer, which is now doing the film festival circuit.

‘Faces of Foreclosure’ Published on Consumer Reports Online

pauline — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:10:37 +0000

This month, Consumer Reports Money published the eight-part video series I produced called “Faces of Foreclosure.” Seven of them were profiles of individuals who are either in the process of losing their homes, or have already lost them. Almost all of the borrowers we talked to were dealing with a crisis caused by an adjustable rate mortgage.

This video is a compilation of highlights from all of the stories, narrated by Norma Garcia, Senior Attorney at Consumers Union and manager of the mortgage video project. For individual stories, click here, and scroll through the bar on the right hand side.

thought the dot.com evictions were over?

pauline — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:30:34 +0000

San Francisco is losing thousands of rentals a year, and this 75-year-old grandmother is not putting up with it.

Luz Moran is resisting eviction from the Mission-district home she’s lived in for 35 years.

Here she looks through two years of paperwork from her landlord, who wants to turn her place into Tenancy in Common apartments. Because TICs are unregulated and unregistered, more and more of the middle class are turning to the homeownership model to avoid a move out of the expensive city.

I wrote about the phenomenon for the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week. For weeks, I poured through city documents and housing reports. I snapped the top photo at a rally for Jose Morales, another elderly tenant who is resisting an Ellis Act eviction.