From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
When my mom was dying, hospice came daily and stayed for about ninety minutes. They answered questions, checked what needed to be checked, and did what good professionals do: They made a brutal situation feel slightly less impossible. And then they left. Ninety minutes go fast when you are watching your mother decline. The rest of the day stretches out in a way that does not feel like time so much as exposure. Every sound becomes a data point.
Sometime in the summer of 2017 I wrote in my journal, Jesus fucking Christ, please save me. I was trapped in hell, and I could see no way out. Our beautiful, sunny, two-bedroom penthouse apartment in the East Village which I had rented for Rayya to make her happy in the last months of her life had become a dungeon of misery, danger, degradation, drugs.
"For example, we proposed to keep our benefits the same as they are now. We just wanted them protected under a contract," Tobin said. "[Hospice East Bay] said no, they want the right to make them worse. And so, that's been really shocking and disappointing."