Had a few stories recently that I was pleased with.
One was an analysis for Americas Quarterly of Brazil’s election through the lens of a pair of hipster glasses that Dilma Rousseff’s presidential campaign embraced in an effort to win young voters and activists:
It’s an outfit you might spot in any number of artsy New York or São Paulo neighborhoods today. The retro glasses have been re-popularized in recent years by sports stars (Lebron James, David Beckham), artists (Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z), and politicians (former U.S. presidential candidate Rick Perry, for one), but Rousseff wore them before they were cool, which makes her that much cooler.
And for the start-up news site Fusion (I’m working for a Walt Disney company!), I visited Santa Maria to see how the small university city is recovering from a January 2013 nightclub fire that killed 242 youths. In short, it’s not recovering. I spoke with family members of survivors, one of the lead victims lawyers, the chief police investigator, and security analysts, but the most haunting comments came from a local newspaper reporter:
“We have a whole archive of photos from the club that will never be published,” said Humberto Trezzi, a journalist for state daily Zero Hora who spent a month in Santa Maria reporting on the tragedy. Santa Maria is a city torn between officials seeking to move forward and families refusing to forget, said Trezzi, a former war correspondent in Libya and Angola.
“In a war you expect violence, and when people die it’s maybe five to 10 people,” he said. “In this case 242 people died suddenly at a dance club in an average city. It’s more than horrible.”
President Rousseff initially vowed swift action on creating a new federal fire safety code, but that quickly took a backseat to other concerns — including a bitter reelection fight that in many ways was reduced to a pair of hipster glasses.
