Skid Row is a sprawling tent city in the heart of downtown Los Angeles where you’ll find thousands of people sleeping on the streets, diseases, no toilets, no food or water. AJ+’s Dena Takruri goes to ground zero of L.A.’s homelessness crisis to show the dire and shocking conditions residents live under.
AJ+’s Dena Takruri spends a day with Jose Guevara, a 23-year-old Salvadoran college student who recently relapsed with leukemia for the third time. He’s a DACA recipient, and his mother has temporary protected status, or TPS. The Trump administration has ended TPS, and if his mother has to leave the country, Jose will lose his insurance coverage.
Undocumented people in northern California are bracing for massive ICE raids. AJ+’s Dena Takruri speaks with an undocumented Honduran mother who’s preparing her family for the worst.
For decades, the war on drugs has unfairly locked up a disproportionate number of black people in California. Now that recreational weed is legal, the city of Oakland has mandated that half of all marijuana business permits go to people who are low income and have a cannabis conviction. AJ+’s Dena Takruri visits Nug, a weed business training such folks to become potrepreuners.
Dena Takruri joined US Senator Bernie Sanders on a roundtable discussion along with with journalists from the leading social media news outlets, Ana Kasparian (co-host of The Young Turks), Versha Sharma (Senior Correspondent at NowThis), and Mike Vainisi (Head of Editorial at ATTN:) They discussed how social media has changed the way we get our news, how we can best utilize these changes to engage the American people in grassroots movements and the impact of net neutrality and media consolidation on the changing landscape.
In Spain, particularly in the contested Catalonia region, soccer is political. The country is home to the two top teams in the world, Football Club Barcelona, or “Barça,” and Real Madrid. Barça is a premier symbol of Catalan identity and pride, while Real Madrid is seen to represent the Spanish crown and Madrid’s rule over Catalonia. As the battle over Catalan independence hits crisis levels, AJ+’s Dena Takruri hangs out with Catalan soccer fans, for whom stadiums are a symbolic battleground over the future of this region.
The battle in Catalonia over independence from Spain reached a turning point Oct. 1, after an independence referendum was met with a brutal crackdown by Spanish national police. Since then, Spain has been witnessing the worst constitutional crisis in its recent history. AJ+’s Dena Takruri went to Catalonia to find out what’s driving thousands of Catalans into the streets to either fight for secession from Spain, or demand unity.
Just two miles from where the Trump administration is drafting anti-refugee policies, a little Washington, DC, falafel shop is trying to do the opposite. AJ+’s Dena Takruri visits Falafel Inc., which donates a portion of its profits to feed refugees through the World Food Programme, and also hires and trains refugees to eventually open their own franchises.
Sun Mu once made propaganda art for the North Korean government. Now a defector, he creates art freely in South Korea. But his exhibit was banned in China, and he has to keep his identity concealed to protect the family he left behind. AJ+’s Dena Takruri sat down with him just as tensions between North Korea and the U.S. were heating up.
Dena Takruri 