The West is Burning
My first season as a wildland firefighter By Colin McLaren as told to Steven Boyd Saum Photo by Colin McLaren By October 2020, wildfires in the western U.S. burned an area larger than the state of New Jersey. A story from the front lines. Typically when we’re out on a fire, we work 16 hour days: up before six and finishing with a pretty late dinner — whenever the work is really done. But recently two of the fires we worked overnight, to 9 a.m. the next morning. We were on the Cold Creek Fire in Wenatchee, Washington. We went...
Black Lives Matter: Voices and Scenes from Protests with the Peace Corps Community
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. Elijah McClain. A fraction of a terrible litany of Black lives taken by police. Since Memorial Day Returned Volunteers have been on the streets to join protests—and lead them. “Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education ... We must also treat the disease of racism itself.” —Sargent Shriver | Founder of the Peace Corps, in a speech at the First National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, 1958 Elizabeth Smith went to Myanmar in January to serve as a Volunteer. When...