James “Robbie” Robinson says he’s delighted that now there is more ‘blending’ between gay and straight communities in San Francisco. This has been a result, he believes, of mainstream acceptance of LGBT identity.
Storyteller: James “Robbie” Robinson Date of Story: 1957-present Location of Story: San Francisco, CA, U.S.A. Location: The Castro, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A. Date: 11 October, 2016
Scheherezade Rahim talks about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, in 2007, the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. She explains how this day directly affected her sister’s wedding and explains how Pakistan went through three days of mourning as people were afraid to leave their house.
Storyteller: Scheherezade Rahim Date of Story: 27 December, 2007 Location of Story: Karachi, Pakistan Location: Bronxville, New York Date: 20 September, 2016
Programmer Rami Rihawi left Aleppo at the end of 2015, and five months later he was sitting with Mark Zuckerberg in Berlin, talking about the potential for virtual reality in social media.
Storyteller: Rami Rihawi
Date of Story: 2015-present Location of Story: Berlin, Germany Location: Berlin, Germany Date: 11 March, 2016
Nadia Rida and Aras Mufty talk about how they were moved to organize a protest after witnessing the poor conditions at a refugee center outside Vienna. Starting with a simple Facebook post and expecting no more than 500 attendees, over 20,000 people showed up to call for a smarter solution for the thousands of refugees arriving in Austria.
Storyteller: Nadia Rida and Aras Mufty
Date of Story: 31 August, 2015 Location of Story: Europaplatz, Vienna, Austria Location: Vienna, Austria Date: 7 December, 2015
Nutritionist Emanuela Spiga laments that the country did not use the historic opportunity offered by Tangentopoli (“Bribesville” scandals) to enact lasting change.
Storyteller: Emanuela Spiga
Date of Story: Early 1990s Location of Story: Italy Location: Monserrato, Italy Date: 5 February, 2016
This post is part of a collaboration with author Davide Rubini to collect the stories of Italy in the aftermath of the “Bribesville” (Tangentopoli) scandals of the 1990s. Find out more about Rubini’s new novel, il fischio finale (The Final Blow).
Ambassador Tariq Aqrawi remembers the Scotsman who lived in Akre for a brief period in the 1950s, who dressed his whole family in Kurdish clothes and spoke the native dialect. He linked this Mackenzie to a bookshop in Baghdad that sold banned Kurdish books.
Storyteller: Tariq Aqrawi
Date of Story: 1950s Location of Story: Akre, Kurdistan Location: Vienna, Austria Date: 29 January, 2016
Activist Pari Ibrahim, founder of the Free Yezidi Foundation, talks about how she devoted her life to helping her people–the minority Yezidi population in Iraq– since the morning of 3 August 2014 when family members called from the Sinjar region in Iraqi Kurdistan to let her family know the Islamic State was carrying out massacres and kidnappings against these practitioners of an ancient syncretic religion.
Storyteller: Pari Ibrahim
Date of Story: 2 August, 2014-present Location of Story: Netherlands; Sinjar, Kurdistan Region of Iraq Location: Netherlands Date: 31 October, 2015
A story of how a family was moved by the plight of refugees at Vienna’s Westbahnhof (West Train Station) and took in a family of eight as they made their way to Germany to start a new life in a safe environment.
Storyteller: Elaine Slevin
Date of Story: 2015 Location of Story: Vienna, Westbahnhof Location: 1160, Vienna, Austria Date: 14 September, 2015
All Stories
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Hosting a Syrian refugee family in Vienna: 48.196799, 16.337702
Visiting China as it opened its doors to the world: 39.904211, 116.407395
A wild carriage ride in San Francisco: 37.774929, -122.419416
Growing up in a refugee camp in Turkey: 37.344293, 40.619649
Crossing mountains to marry (and meet for the first time): 37.091727, 43.487692
Returning to Baghdad, a city devastated by dictatorship and war: 33.312806, 44.361488
Remembering a diverse, beautiful Baghdad: 33.300978, 44.365883
How I came to be born in exile: 31.964143, 44.906650
Visiting Iraq without Iraqi approval - discovering Kurdistan: 36.237500, 43.963055
The paradox of Malala: 40.749041, -73.967699
A family reunited - life in West and East Germany after the wall: 51.755940, 7.465210
Suddenly 20,000 people showed up at our demonstration: 48.196932, 16.338594
Discovering that my neighbors were war criminals on the run: -23.550520, -46.633309
The housewarming gift from my Nazi landlord: -23.550520, -46.633309
When the dead were treated before the living: 29.424122, -98.493628
Ranch life in 1930s South Texas: the crazed pet javelina: 28.275892, -99.101350
The day Berlusconi arrived in our mailbox: 44.316842, 9.319982