Best of Indy 2022 (Plus Archival Highlights)
Thank you to everyone who has read this newsletter during 2022. We know your time is finite and your email box is often overflowing. We enjoy being able to share directly with you the latest stories we’re covering and what we’re thinking about. We also welcome the comments you send us at contact@indypendent.org. Please keep them coming.
We look forward to doing more great work in 2023. But first, one last look back at the outgoing year. Below is our Best of The Indy 2022 honor roll. Fifty-two of our best articles published over the past 52 weeks by 39 dedicated, talented writers and reporters who believe, as Joseph Pulitzer once wrote, that journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”
Bonus Highlights
How has our coverage evolved over the past decade? And how has the left in New York City and beyond grown and changed? Check out our Best of The Indy from over the past 10 years. What a decade it has been! 2012 || 2013 || 2014 || 2015 || 2016 || 2017 || 2018 || 2019 || 2020 || 2021 || 2022
We do all this work on a modest budget. We are currently in the middle of our once-a-year winter fund drive. This is when we count on our readers to step up. Please give what you can today. Whatever it is — $25, $50, $100, $200, $500 or more — every little bit helps. If you’re still mulling whether to give or not, see this op-ed by our Editor-in-Chief John Tarleton.
And now, without any further adieu, The Best of The Indy 2022.
NYC Government
Welcome to Eric Adams’ Fear Factory
By John Teufel
This Month in Eric Adams: The Mayor Extends the Blue Wall of Silence to the Whole of City Government
By John Tuefel
Carlina Rivera and the Untold History of How East River Park Was Destroyed
By John Tarleton
Broken Promise: Mayor’s Plan to Shift 250,000 Retired City Workers to Privatized Health Insurance Heads to City Council
By Steven Wishnia
Elections
Socialism Spreads Upstate, One Door Knock at a Time
Theodore Hamm
South Brooklyn, Staten Island Activists Take Aim at NYC’s MAGA Congresswoman
Manny Jalonschi
How the New York Democrats’ Midterm Debacle Unfolded and What Comes Next
By John Tarleton
Labor
As Historic Election Begins, Meet the Workers Who Built a Union at Amazon’s Staten Island Complex
By Amba Guerguerian
Labor of Love: EWOC is Pioneering a New Model for Empowering Workers
By Amba Guerguerian
Workers at Dual Starbucks-Amazon Go Store Take on Union-Busting Giants
By Dylan Rice
NY Farmworker Overtime Laws Are Changing, But Only at a Snail’s Pace
By Simon Davis-Cohen
NYC’s “Delivery Boys” Band Together to Protect Themselves from E-bike Theft, Traffic Accidents
By Dashiell Allen
Hundreds of Part-Time Faculty at The New School Strike After Months of Negotiation
By Safiyah Riddle
Amazon Labor Union Newspaper Revives Independent Labor Press
By Katie Pruden
When Our Great-Great-Grandmothers Led Historic Strikes Against Their Bosses & The Patriarchy
By Eleanor J. Bader
Tenants’ Rights, Housing & Homelessness
Eviction Thwarted: Brooklyn Community Successfully Mobilizes to Defend Family Facing Removal From Their Home
By Amba Guerguerian
Homeless New Yorkers Respond to Mayor’s Plan to Boot Them from Subway System
By Jenna Gaudino with Sue Brisk
Manhattan Bridge Encampment Evicted as City Plows Ahead with Homeless Sweeps
By Yastika Guru & Amba Guerguerian
Kingston Rent Guidelines Board Cuts Rents by 15%
By Steven Wishnia
Race, Policing and Criminal Justice
Is Eric Adams Playing Black Voters?
By Nicholas Powers
Dirty NYPD Detective Responsible for 15 False Convictions Back on the Stand as Judge Reviews 1988 Murder Conviction?
By Theodore Hamm
Media Attention is Growing on Prakash Churaman’s Case, and the Judge isn’t Happy
By Danny Katch & Julian Guerrero
Anthony Sims is Coming Home
By Theodore Hamm
Immigration
One Moldovan Village’s Response to the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis
By Lindsay Myers
Welcoming The Stranger: An Interview with New York Immigration Coalition’s Murad Awawdeh
By Renée Feltz
Little Amal Comes to NYC
By Jessica Max Stein
Abortion Rights
What I Learned at The Crisis Pregnancy Center
By Yastika Guru with Amba Guerguerian
Defend Our Clinics! Photo Story
By Nina Berman
An Abortion Doctor’s Story
By Melanie MacLennan
Red State Report: In Post-Roe Idaho, Pro-Choicers Make a Stand Against Dystopia
By Erin Sheridan
Abortion Throughout History: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America
By Molly Morrow
LGBTQ
‘The People’s Beach’ is a Queer Landmark That Deserves to Live On
By Nicky Yeager
NYPD Arrests 9 Trans-Rights Protesters Outside Anti-Trans Event
By Katie Pruden
New Free Youth Camp Taught by and for Trans and Queer Artists
Eleaner J. Bader
Queer & Trans NYCers Respond to Colorado Springs Mass Shooting
Blake McMillan
Energy and Environment
Beyond Con Ed: For New York, Public Power is the Past and the Future
By Lachlan Hyatt & John Tarleton
Extinction Rebellion Urges Revolt Against Climate Inaction
By Nancy Hoch
Health, Education & Economy
COVID and the View from the Global South
By Manvi Jalan
Students Still Want to Read Books but NYC’s Public School Libraries Are Being Forgotten
By Ben Mankoff
Money, Money, Money
By Bennett Baumer
Why Workers Need Unions to Counter the Power of Their Employers
By Paddy Quick
International
Welcome to the New Cold War and the Return of Nuclear Brinkmanship
By John Tarleton
Green Tide Rising in Latin America
By Laura Carlsen
Cuba Journey: Resisting the Blockade, 60 Years Later
By Julia Thomas
Sri Lankan People’s Movement Makes a Splash, But Now What?
By Amba Guerguerian
Culture
Is It Okay to Laugh? We Talk Comedy in a Time of Covid and Rising Fascism with Political Comedian Francesca Fiorentini
By John Tarleton
Reverend Billy’s Revelations: Holiday Shopping
Reverend Billy Talen
Human History, Retold by David Graeber
By Steven Sherman
A Charles Dickens Classic Recast in 21st Century Appalachia
By Jessica Max Stein
Mourning the Love of One’s Life
By Karen Malpede
Remembering the Sixties Generation
By Nicholas Powers
Conspiracy Theories, Then and Now
By Rosa Marín