New America Nyc

A real-life thriller, (T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during a live FBI counterterrorism sting operation of a suspected jihadist. With unprecedented access to an active informant – Saeed "Shariff" Torres, a 63 year old former Black Panther – viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them. (T)ERROR illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America, and asks – who is watching the watchers? PARTICIPANTSIntroduction:Beth DembitzerCurator, Social Cinema@New America@bethdembitzerParticipants:David Felix SutcliffeCo-director, (T)ERROR@davidfsutcliffeFaisal HashmiFormer member, Muslim Justice InitiativeAli KarimDirector of Security, Masjid At TaqwaMike GermanFellow, Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice

Prospective students often start their college searches with high expectations, and soon into their exploration, high anxiety. Both students fresh out of high school and older adults returning to school are making crucial choices about their educations without key information and resources and with misconceptions about everything from application requirements to financial aid and sound student loan options.According to recent research from New America's Education Policy Program and Public Agenda, 41 percent of students say they did not find enough helpful information to make their college decisions, and less than 1 in 5 adult prospective students has used an interactive website like the College Scorecard when considering college choices. And when it comes to paying for college, for example, 48 percent of students from families making less than $50,000 were unfamiliar with the Pell Grant, the cornerstone of federal financial aid for low-income students.What do these findings mean for the systems of higher educ

The next Steve Jobs is just as likely to come from Lagos, Lahore, Monterrey or Mumbai as from Silicon Valley. According to Elmira Bayrasli's From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, high-growth entrepreneurs are overcoming vexing obstacles to not only build businesses and jobs and contribute to economic growth, but also to change mindsets. Whether in Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan or Turkey, people in some of the world's most challenging societies are building globally competitive products and services, attracting international praise and investment, and creating game-changing economic possibilities for their countries.Join New America NYC for a conversation with Elmira Bayrasli and The Economist's Matthew Bishop to discuss the rise of global entrepreneurship, how Silicon Valley has become universal, and how innovation is shifting to the other side of the world.

I wish I could stop the world for a moment. - Puran Bhat, puppeteerPuran the Puppeteer, Rahman the Magician, and Maya the Acrobat are just three of the talented residents of India's Kathputli Colony of street performers who, for more than sixty years, have built their tiny, patched shacks and workshops and a vital, tight-knit community in the alleyways of western Delhi. The colorful, clamorous Rajasthani slum, celebrated in Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, was home to 3,000 practitioners of India's ancient folk arts – snake charmers, fire eaters, contortionists, musicians, and circus performers – and their families whose children were tutored at the earliest ages to carry on their traditions.In 2010, the Indian government sold the land to developers with plans to erect Delhi's tallest skyscraper and a luxury mall, and soon after, relocation permits were issued. Tomorrow We Disappear takes us through the dramatic last days of the community, following the artists' fight to protect their homes from de

The Voting Rights Act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. The historic march from Selma to Montgomery, grassroots demonstrations across the South, and legislative pressures in both Congress and the courts radically transformed American politics. And yet fifty years later we're still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power.As chronicled in Ari Berman's new book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, we're at an alarming moment in history when lawmakers are being criticized for devising new strategies to keep certain communities out of the voting booth. In such a political climate, on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision overturning a key part of the Voting Rights Act, is there a new struggle for voting rights in America, or is a decades-long fight still unresolved? What will these tensions mean for the U.S. campaign system and an already hotly contested 2016 presid

"I am intrigued by this strange collision of people from around the globe in Africa. What interests me is how fantastic, horrific, and how transparent, human stories unfold in this beautiful place from which we humans originate." - Hubert SauperSix years in the making, Hubert Sauper's We Come As Friends observes the precarious start of South Sudan, the African continent's newest country. With an eye for both haunting beauty and sorrow, the film captures South Sudan's earliest days of independence, the rapid exploitation of its natural resources by the world's superpowers, the displacement of its people from their ancestral homelands, and the devastating descent into war.In a tiny, homemade tin and canvas airplane, through surreal and surprising encounters, Sauper explores the human landscape of the fledgling country – Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, American evangelicals, displaced farmers and their families – to capture all their thoughts and dreams for South Sudan's future.Follow th

You can't win; if you tell lies people will distrust you. If you tell the truth people will dislike you. - Oscar WildeFrom little white lies to criminal deceit and global deceptions, dishonesty is a universal constant of the world we live in. Commonplace acts of make clear cheating isn't just happening on a newsworthy scale, but in smaller, more mundane ways everywhere.(Dis)Honesty - The Truth About Lies shows us that lying is a part of human nature, but little fibs can snowball into large-sale problems with major implications for society. Several recent studies have shown that we don't really understand the causes and complexities of dishonesty, but at the same time, research is indicating that reminding ourselves about our own morality makes us behave better. When we too often go to great lengths to rationalize the stories we concoct, why is it so hard for us to tell it like it is?

Once seen as the Great Equalizer, the value of higher education in the era of soaring college debt has come into serious question.In their new book, The Real College Debt Crisis: How Student Borrowing Threatens Financial Well-Being and Erodes the American Dream, William Elliott III and Melinda K. Lewis argue that our current system of financial assistance is failing the very students it's intended to serve. For many students, even crippling student debt seems a small price to pay for a college degree that leads them to a more prosperous life. But, in reality, low-income students who wholly rely on this system are hit the hardest, while students from more affluent families emerge unscathed. The Great Equalizer, then, is becoming a Great Reinforcer of growing inequality and widening income and wealth gaps.Rather than patching up the student debt system, can we pay for college in a way that lives up to America's ideals? Can we reduce inequality and reward effort and talent, instead of conferred advantage? Can ea

What will World War III look like? A new book from P. W. Singer and August Cole answers this by smashing together the technothriller with nonfiction.Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War explores what would happen if the brewing cold war between the US and China/Russia were ever to turn hot. It is a fictional scenario, but a real risk in the years ahead. Amid escalating tensions over Ukraine and the South China Sea, China's regime newspaper recently warned that "war is inevitable" if the US doesn't change its policies.A unique hybrid between the technothriller and the nonfiction current affairs genres, reviewers liken Ghost Fleet to early Tom Clancy in style – a novel, but one that comes with nearly 400 endnotes that point to just how real every single technology and trend in it is. The book follows everything from a modern day Pearl Harbor attack to what the first battles in space might be like, along the way revealing everything from new Chinese drone prototypes to how certain US weapons have already b

In 2009, photographer Gillian Laub went to rural Georgia to document Montgomery County's two segregated high school proms. Her New York Times essay that followed stirred a powerful outcry and forced the school district to bring the longstanding tradition to an end. Back a year later to photograph the school's first integrated proms, her welcome had run out and, despite the school district gains, she encounters a world still strongly divided and shaped by the legacy of Jim Crow.Another year later, she's drawn back again when she learns of the murder of Justin Patterson, an unarmed 22-year-old black man, by an older white man. Years before the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray exposed the country's enduring struggle with racial injustice, the death of Patterson went largely unreported. With commentary and candid reflections from local residents, young and old, black and white, Southern Rites weaves together the stories of the senior prom and the murder of Justin Patterson to reveal a com

Inside the secretive and mysterious world of North Korea, Joseph Kim lived a young boy's normal life. But when he was five, disaster struck: the first wave of the Great Famine killed millions, including his father, and forced the rest of his family to desperate escape routes into China. Alone in the streets, he had nothing but his street-hardened instincts for survival.But through the eventual support of an underground network of activists who kept him hidden from authorities, Kim eventually made his way through the American consulate in Shenyang and became one of just a handful of North Koreans brought to the U.S. as refugees.Joseph Kim's Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America provides a vivid narrative of resilience. In a country where most have never heard of Facebook or Google and where details of social and cultural life are largely unknown, the book serves as an important first-hand account of atrocities committed within North Korea and hidden from the West and most o

In the wake of the formation of the new Israeli government and as the Vatican formally recognizes the the state of Palestine, the debate about Israel/Palestine in the United States is shifting. As many look past a two state solution that seems increasingly difficult to achieve, more fundamental debates about Zionism, partition and equality are gaining greater prominence. Join New America NYC for a debate over these questions between Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow at New America, and Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.

Less than a month after it first appeared, Sarah Maslin Nir's two-part report on systemic wage theft, rights violations, and dangerous working conditions in New York City nail salons already looks like a journalistic parable for the ages. Within hours, the exposé had sparked thousands of conversations, in news broadcasts and on social media, about how best to help the vulnerable employees Maslin Nir had described. As a result, New York governor Andrew Cuomo ordered, on an emergency basis, broad new protections for nail salon workers, and hundreds of multilingual volunteers fanned out across New York City, distributing fliers and talking to the workers about their rights. Today, New York's nail salon industry, which had been almost completely unregulated, faces some of the strictest standards in the country.Unvarnished, as the series was called, is an object lesson in the power of careful, sensitive reporting and writing to expose and correct workplace abuse, a warp-speed, Twitter-enabled version of what Upton

In a just released report, the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence presents oral testimonies collected from more than 60 Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza during last year's 50-day combat operation. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the assault, the vast majority civilians. On Israel's side, 73 people were killed, all but six of them soldiers. More than 2,200 Palestinian homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is How We Fought in Gaza 2014 describes loose rules of engagement that were often interpreted as carte blanche to shoot anything that moved. The report's authors, all former combat soldiers, describe a "broad ethical failure" that "comes from the top of the chain of command" of the Israeli army. Join New America NYC and Senior Fellow Peter Beinart, prominent American author and political analyst, in conversation with Breaking the Silence's Avner Gvaryahu and Eman Mohammed, the first female Palestinian photojournalist in Gaza, where she cove

Too many Americans are working too few hours for too little money. As federal, state, and local policymakers debate everything from minimum wages to budgetary goals to global trade policy, more attention has been appropriately focused on those left behind in the economic recovery. Among them are the 27 million part-time workers in America – while the country's overall employment rate has fallen, many remain stuck in part-time jobs. For older workers and those with child care obligations, a part-time schedule can be an advantage. For others, there is a greater need for full-time work and benefits. Will America's economy of the future leave younger and lower-income individuals and families with fewer options for ensuring secure livelihoods? Where do current trends stand on the state of part-time work in America? In an age of simultaneously increasing flexibility and vulnerability, how are workforce and wage trends impacting families? What role can policymakers play in pursuing the objectives of both national ec

Corporations are the dominant actors in Washington. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 represent business, and the largest companies now have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them. How did American businesses become so invested in politics? And what does all their money buy?In his new book, The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, Lee Drutman draws on extensive data and original interviews with corporate lobbyists to provide a detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why it matters, and most importantly, how we can make sure that their presence doesn't undermine our democracy.Join New America NYC for a conversation with Lee Drutman and Zephyr Teachout about the relationship between corporations and Capitol Hill – and how we might reform it.

  New York may be known as a concrete jungle, but it is also an important center of green activism. To mark the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, we're partnering with the Museum of the City of New York to discuss how citizens, entrepreneurs, and policy makers are making an impact on our city's environment, today and for the future. Join our panelists for a conversation about how we can connect environmental and economic justice, balance ecological and development concerns, and strive for a greener—and more equitable—city.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik set off a bomb outside the Norwegian prime minister's office in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then drove to the island of Utøya, where he killed sixty-nine more, most of them teenagers. In her new book One of Us, journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day, Norway's own September 11. She delves deep into Breivik's childhood, showing how a hip-hop and graffiti aficionado became a right-wing activist and then an Internet gamer and self-styled warrior who believed he could save Europe from the threats of Islam and multiculturalism.How did Breivik, raised by a single mother in one of the world's most famously tolerant and egalitarian societies, become convinced that feminism and immigration has destroyed European culture? How did a gifted child from an affluent Oslo neighborhood become Europe's most reviled terrorist?Join New America NYC for a conversation with Åsne Seierstad and The New York Times's Lydia Polgreen about the psychological roots

 In collaboration with Pacific Standard Magazine An onslaught of new "psychoactive substances" -- an ever-shifting range of chemical products marketed in stores under names like "bath salts" and "spice" -- has transformed the global market for recreational drugs and reduced drug enforcement efforts to a hopeless game of Whac-a-Mole: as soon as one of these substances gets banned, a slightly different formula pops up, untested and potentially dangerous.In Pacific Standard's March/April cover story, Maia Szalavitz, a reporter covering drugs and addiction for nearly 30 years, introduces us to Matt Bowden, a flamboyant New Zealand glam-rocker and drug-maker who has played a key role in launching this historically viral outbreak of new drugs. He has also spearheaded a national reform in favor of establishing a regulated market for new psychoactive substances, a tactic that may prove to be the only viable policy response to this burgeoning pharmacopeia. Rather than punish New Zealand for this experiment, world lead

In the year since MH370 vanished over the South China Sea, private pilot and science writer Jeff Wise has appeared on CNN more than 50 times to lend his insights on where he thinks the plane has ended up. In the same time Wise was dubbed CNN's new "aviation analyst," a million theories bloomed about MH370's whereabouts, including his own. Despite the unprecedented and technically complex turn of events, aviation experts, governments, and amateur plane hobbyists all thought they had the answers, answers that were often received as incomplete, illogical, or downright wacky. Will we ever find the plane or learn more accurate details of its disappearance? In light of last week's crash of a Germanwings airbus in the French Alps, are safety standards and emergency protocols going unenforced? Will these crashes put new strains on global political relationships and the travel industry?Join New America NYC for a conversation between Jeff Wise and technology and aerospace journalist Eric Adams to recount the progress a