First Time For Everything
An important (although slightly unexpected) moment in the story of Ghost Boat came along today. What you’re witnessing below is a scene from New York, when a few of the team—left to right, Bobbie Johnson, Eric Reidy and Noah Rabinowitz—got together… for the very first time, despite working on the project for six months.
We’ve gathered because in a few hours the Matter team is heading to the National Magazine Awards, the industry’s biggest prizes—where Ghost Boat is nominated in the reporting category, up against some heavy hitters like The New Yorker and The Atlantic. It’s a privilege to be in that list, and everybody who has taken part (by which we mean you) should count yourself among the nominees. Of course, in the grand scheme of things it’s just an award: We haven’t completed our mission yet, and who knows what’ll happen tonight, or in the coming weeks. But it’s good to have an excuse to be in the same place for once.
This Just In
Back to some serious business. Eric recently spoke to Martin Xuereb, the director of MOAS — a charitable organization in Malta which has been running operations to find and rescue boats making Mediterranean crossings.
In their conversation, Martin details some of the techniques MOAS uses, its experiences at sea, and the relationship with various national governments. He also explains where things can go wrong.
The launching of the craft is, in itself, quite problematic if there are waves that are crashing onto the shore. The launch can be quite problematic and what happens exactly in Libya, in 2015 in particular, there was the Red Cross who was helping the Libyans retrieve bodies but I’ve seen pictures of skeletons on the Libyan shore. The Libyan coastline is huge, hundreds of kilometers of beaches, and some of them are totally out of reach. There is no one who goes there to look and patrol. I wouldn’t put it … It’s really possible that if these people left and were in distress, no one would have known about them.
You can read — and annotate — the full interview.
Further Reading
Another story discovered on Medium that brings the refugee issue to light in a surprising way: This piece from The Advocates explores the world of John Barham, an immigration lawyer who specializes in working with asylum seekers by day, member of a punk band by night.
Onward.
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