Laura Gottesdiener
Laura Gottesdiener is a freelance journalist based in New York City. The author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, her writing has appeared in Mother Jones, Al Jazeera, Guernica, Common Dreams, Playboy, RollingStone.com, and TomDispatch.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, June 13, 2019 Two Iraqi Peace Activists Confront a Trumpian World There's a dark joke going around Baghdad these days. Noof Assi, a 30-year-old Iraqi peace activist and humanitarian worker, told it to me by phone. Our conversation takes place in late May just after the Trump administration has announced that it would add 1,500 additional U.S. troops to its Middle... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 27, 2017 Burning Raqqa: The U.S. War Against Civilians in Syria It was midday on Sunday, May 7th, when the U.S.-led coalition warplanes again began bombing the neighborhood of Wassim Abdo’s family. They lived in Tabqa, a small city on the banks of the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Then occupied by the Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh), Tabqa was... Read more |
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Views Monday, November 16, 2015 One Night in Kunduz, One Morning in New York When people ask me what my new job is like, I tell them that I wake up very early and count the dead. When I say “very early,” I mean a few minutes after four a.m., as the sky is just softening to the color of faded purple corduroy. By “the dead,” I mostly mean people across the world that my... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 25, 2015 King Coal Is Dead! In Appalachia, explosions have leveled the mountain tops into perfect race tracks for Ryan Hensley’s all-terrain vehicle (ATV). At least, that’s how the 14-year-old sees the barren expanses of dirt that stretch for miles atop the hills surrounding his home in the former coal town of Whitesville,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 09, 2015 How to Destroy This Nation: A Magical Mystery Tour of American Austerity Politics Something is rotten in the state of Michigan. One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 20, 2015 A Foreclosure Conveyor Belt: The Continuing Depopulation of Detroit Unlike so many industrial innovations, the revolving door was not developed in Detroit. It took its first spin in Philadelphia in 1888, the brainchild of Theophilus Van Kannel, the soon-to-be founder of the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company . Its purpose was twofold: to better insulate buildings... Read more |
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Views Monday, November 17, 2014 Separate and Unequal: A Journey Across a Divided Detroit In late October, a few days after local news cameras swarmed Detroit’s courthouse to hear closing arguments in the city’s historic bankruptcy trial, “Commander” Dale Brown cruised through the stately Detroit neighborhood of Palmer Woods in a Hummer emblazoned with the silver, interlocking-crescent-... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 13, 2014 A Trip to Kuwait (on the Prairie): Life Inside the Boom At 9 p.m. on that August night, when I arrived for my first shift as a cocktail waitress at Whispers, one of the two strip clubs in downtown Williston, I didn’t expect a 25-year-old man to get beaten to death outside the joint. Then again, I didn’t really expect most of the things I encountered... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 24, 2014 Drowning in Profits Security is a slippery idea these days -- especially when it comes to homes and neighborhoods. Perhaps the most controversial development in America’s housing “recovery” is the role played by large private equity firms. In recent years, they have bought up more than 200,000 mostly foreclosed houses... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 08, 2014 When Predatory Equity Hit the Big Apple Things are heating up inside Wall Street’s new rental empire. Over the last few years, giant private equity firms have bet big on the housing market, buying up more than 200,000 cheap homes across the country. Their plan is to rent the houses back to families -- sometimes the very same people who... Read more |