written for Inspire Malibu
The crisis of opioid addiction in the United States is an ever-evolving tragedy. Healthcare professionals, state and federal legislatures and law enforcement have, so far, been unable to stop or contain the spread of opioids and heroin spiked with even more powerful and deadly drugs. In fact, it has become increasingly difficult for scientists to keep pace with new heroin cocktails.
written for Inspire Malibu
April 25, 2017
LOS ANGELES – Like other states in the U.S., California has seen a spike in overdoses as a result of heroin and prescription painkillers. While the news cycle appears to have moved away from the country’s opioid epidemic, the problem persists. In 2015, an estimated 33,000 people fatally overdosed on heroin or opioid medication, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
March 24, 2017
Tumultuous, as a description for the first two months of Donald Trump’s Administration, falls short. Terms like missteps, chaos and, as of late, collusion are now ubiquitous in the mainstream press, but they’ve become small explosions drowned out by the roaring inferno that’s engulfed American politics.
QUESTION: What’s it like growing up in an evangelical enclave?
CHRISTOPHER: In my case, this was mostly a middle to upper-middle class, white evangelical milieu, but when I say I lived in an enclave, I mean that my social world consisted of practically, entirely, people from church and Christian school. The churches we went to…we changed churches a few times through my childhood. Some were Baptists, Wesleyan, nondenominational, but supported by the Missionary Church, Independent Christian Church. The Christian school, too, was an interdenominational school, pretty much protestant one, though with a lot of Baptists and a lot of Baptist trappings. We basically lived in that parallel world. A lot of the things that we consumed came from those parallel Christian structures and institutions, like contemporary Christian music, Christian bookstores, literature. I did have some windows into the outside world because it’s not like we had no secular books and things of that nature, magazines in the house. But I didn’t know any Jews, for example, until I went to college, except for those who had converted to Christianity. I knew a handful.
Written for Inspire Malibu
March 21, 2017
Nestled between Columbus and Cincinnati, Washington Court House, Ohio, a town with little more than 14,000 residents at last count, is now charging drug overdose survivors with “inducing panic.” The misdemeanor, which can result in a $1,000 fine and up to 180 days in jail, is levied immediately after first responders save a victim’s life, in most cases, with naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.
September 17, 2016
left: Angela Shelton and Frances Callier
LOS ANGELES – “I identify as black,” says Los Angeles based writer, actor and comedian Angela Virginia Shelton. “I don’t mind being called African American because I think that’s polite and appropriate, but my personal position on it is that I’m not an immigrant. I say black and I always have because I’m an American.”
February 14, 2017
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – There’s been a national romance with hopping freight trains, crisscrossing the country and watching the American landscape unfold live and in person since the Great Depression.
November 18, 2016
LOS ANGELES – Air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport are undermanned, overworked and passenger safety is a constant concern. Responsible for incoming and outgoing aircraft while simultaneously managing every move of taxiing aircraft, a controller’s job at busy hubs, like LAX, is not for the timid. Thousands of lives are at stake and there’s zero room for error.
written for Inspire Malibu
February 28, 2017
LOS ANGELES – Before the ink on new marijuana laws has even dried, there are looming signs of trouble. To coin a phrase, where there’s smoke, there might be a federal raid underway.
December 15, 2016
LOS ANGELES – Landlocked in the middle of city, Koreatown is dense and diverse. In less than five-square-miles, it’s the most populated neighborhood in the city, housing an array of cultures made up of lifelong L.A. denizens to young people just arriving from other parts of the country. Though for many low-income, minority residents, like 46-year-old Umberto Gutierrez, an undocumented immigrant, working and living in K-town means coping with exploitation.