...writes about culture, politics, cities, farms, food, design, technology, ecology, energy, infrastructure, plants, animals, people & spirit(s).
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Front Street and The Spark are a product of three years of immersion in California's unhoused communities
One is a literary experience, the other cinematic -- both reveal an underground movement to reimagine the American Dream
This is the story of homelessness as it's never been told
Front Street book cover reveal coming soon
An urban tribe's last stand
The Spark film is in post-production
I am an independent journalist with bylines in the New Yorker, National Geographic, Washington Post, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Walrus and Mother Jones, among other publications (click on the links above to read some of my stories). My wife, Samira Kiani, and I live between the Bay Area and California's remote Lost Coast region, where we are developing a spiritual sanctuary—open to seekers, broken souls, and all of humankind—amid a foggy, fern-filled forest. In Sausalito, we operate Union Island, a floating refuge on a century-old wooden yacht called Asesu. We are proud members of Temple Guaracy, an international organization based in the Umbanda tradition of Brazil, which is headquartered in the Atlantic rainforest outside São Paulo.
Monte, the man pictured to my left, taught me the ways of another sort of refuge: America's homeless camps. These are places where all of our country's inequities pile up, along with all the associated traumas and suffering, but they are also vibrant communities where broken souls gather to heal and be reborn. We have much to learn from our unhoused neighbors; they are the experts on homelessness who we should be listening to. This book and film is my effort to bring their world -- their stories, their wisdom, their movement -- to light.
Our unhoused neighbors need your support. I do not recommend donating to large homeless services agencies and charities with government contracts because these are invariably intertwined with the business of forcibly removing unhoused folks from the homes they create on the street, often via bulldozer. "Sweeps" are profoundly traumatizing and destabilizing for our nation's most traumatized and unstable residents. They make the work of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps infinitely more difficult. Most cities, however, have small street-based non-profits that serve as allies to unhoused communities, helping them to resist sweeps and supporting them through the devastation when they occur. These groups rely on donations and provide opportunities to participate the real solution to homelessness: stepping on the other side of the poverty veil and getting involved in the lives of your unhoused neighbors. Below are some examples of such groups in California. Click on the links to learn more.
