down in smoke

My new long multimedia comic on the medical marijuana wars in Oakland, California is now up at Cartoon Movement. Click through for the full piece, and hover over each page for field audio, interviews and primary source documents.

bust town

I recently drew some scenes from Stockton California for an infocomic about the city’s bankruptcy. Read the whole piece at the Boston Review.

up and coming

Hey! I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con next week speaking on panels. First up is Progressive Politics in Comics, moderated by Douglas Wolk, on Thursday July 12 at 1 p.m. Then Sunday July 15 at 3 p.m. it’s Publishers Weekly Comics World: Serious Pictures: Comics and Journalism in a New Era with a bunch of great people. I’ll otherwise be wandering the convention floor and doing some reporting drawings. If you see me, please come say hi! I’ll have plenty of ibuprofen and vegan jerky.

On Saturday July 21 I’ll be at Code for Oakland all day doing some livesketching of the coding festivities and wooing all those tech minds with tactile tools. And then wrapping up this month on Tuesday July 24 from 6-10 p.m. I’ll be creating small paintings for quick sales at 111 Minna in San Francisco with some other great artists. There will also be a reception for my show at the Cartoon Art Museum soon! But the show will be up through September.

I’ve been working on some longer projects lately that haven’t yet seen the light of the internet, but stay tuned for big drawn journalism pieces at the Boston Review and Cartoon Movement before the month is out. And that’s just the line-up for this month — there’s a ton of awesome stuff in the works for later in the year, including comics conventions, speaking engagements, and new, rad-as-hell multimedia projects. My excitement is founded, trust me.

field reporting kit

This is what I carry around most of the time, sometimes with more snacks.

a new infrequent update

The sidebar is now full of all the cool stuff I’ve been working on lately for all the cool people I’ve been working for. Our SXSW panel went great — check out the list of resources and links at Graphic Journos. Here’s the little video I made as a proof of concept of my Occupy Oakland reporting — more of these are in the pipeline.

And I won a James Madison award from the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee! Yes, they give those to cartoonists too.

For more beat reporting, keep an eye on Twitter but also Tumblr, where I’ve been doing some original little pieces lately, like this one on the SXSW Homeless Hotspots.

Occupy Oakland Illustrated History #2

Occupy Oakland Illustrated History #1

occupying my time

Some exciting work developments on the Occupy Oakland front. I was thrilled to do this piece for GOOD tracking the first six weeks of Oakland’s occupations. And yesterday my first Oakland field report documentary for Citizen Radio aired (starts around the 18 minute mark). Yes, I’m making radio again!

More written work is in the pipeline, big announcements, etc, the usual.

occupy county jail

I was arrested while reporting on Occupy Oakland on Thursday at about 1 am, wearing my press pass. My arresting officer acknowledged that I was press, and his officer friend even recognized me and knew my work (if you’re reading this, sir I would sure like to interview you!). I had a meeting set with the OPD press information officer for 8 hours later to obtain my official OPD press credentials. When I told this to the cops, they replied, “Do you want us to call her and tell her you’ll be late?”

I was detained for 15 hours and ultimately charged with the same misdemeanor as other demonstrators and NLG legal observers: PC 409, failure to leave the scene of a riot. Our arraignment dates are a month from now, and we were explicitly warned against returning to the plaza in the meantime. As I told ABC7, I feel like the OPD does, I think: confused.

You know it’s bad when Occupy Veterans is sending you personal supportive messages. This is a crappy video that I took while trying to run to safety — instead I ran into the kettle.

If you are interested in the whole saga, swim up my Twitter stream. The Oakland Police Department arrested 103 people that night, some of whom were not involved in Occupy at all. 95 received the PC 409 misdemeanor citation, but interim OPD Chief Howard Jordan told the New York Times that the group of arrestees were “generally anarchists and provocateurs.”

I am not the first journalist arrested while covering Occupy, and I doubt I’ll be the last — but I’m not clear on if other journalists are being charged with crimes, or arrested and released. Any information appreciated.

I’ll have a full piece about this clusterfuck at Alternet on Monday. I’m also still fundraising at Spot.Us for my illustrated history of Occupy Oakland (buy original art!). I may have an awesome new publisher for that — more details next week.

occupy art

This is one of the sketches I did of the Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant camp pre-raid — actually just 12 or so hours pre-raid. I’m trying to put together a show of occupy art at the Oakland and SF camps with the generous support and aid of SomArts and other galleries in Oakland. Stay tuned for more details there, and if you or someone you know has been creating art around occupations here (best if it’s easily displayed — drawings, paintings, prints, photos, etc) please get in touch.