Tag Archives: prayer

Three New Stories: Orlando, Prayer, Private Security, and the Warriors

Why Prayer Can Be A Powerful Tool For Social Justice

If I’ve ever written anything important, this is it, for feminist culture site The Establishment. Following the massacre in Orlando, I interviewed four queer faith leaders who told me how prayer and fellowship fuel their activism. I asked them to respond to people who posted online who were exhorting others not to pray and saying that religion is at the heart of all of society’s ills.

The halftime show at Oracle Arena features flamethrowers shooting fire from the baskets

How to Watch the Warriors: A Journey Into Fandom and Across the Bay

This travelogue through Oakland and SF is the culmination of my season of basketball-watching, condensed into the seven games it took the Warriors to lose the NBA Finals. I had to write this one before Game 7, since I was going to be off the grid, and I left it in the hands of my favorite editor, David Roth at VICE Sports, who did a bang-up job editing it and finishing the ending I wrote before I went to Redwood Magic.

Omar Mateen, George Zimmerman, and How Wannabe Cops Become Killers

My first piece for Complex Life, the new news site of the music magazine, is also my first news piece wherein my reporting consists entirely of synthesizing other sources. At first I felt weird about pitching and writing such a piece, except since I read a few dozen news stories for it, I guess it counts as a researched piece instead of just an aggregation. Anyway, the weird thing was that my editor’s editors demanded that I include George Zimmerman in the piece for the clicks. I was skeptical but I think he does fit the overall thesis that men obsessed with joining law enforcement, and thwarted in their quest, end up taking security-related jobs that suit their thirst for social control. G4S, the company I discuss in the piece, not only employed Omar Mateen but scores of other men who went on to commit violent acts, on or off the job.