Latest news with #MelissaHarris
New York Post
10-07-2025
- New York Post
Woman says she was raped on Coney Island and witnesses just laughed and recorded
A Brooklyn woman alleged that she was raped on Coney Island while celebrating the Fourth of July — and bystanders just laughed and filmed instead of trying to save her. Melissa Harris, 25, told CBS News she tripped over a walking mat on the beach at around 3 a.m. that night while trying to escape a man with 'bad vibes' marching menacingly toward her. 'He saw that I was on the floor and that's when he put his face between my legs, and I started screaming and everyone started laughing and recording me,' said the Brooklyn native, who allowed herself to be identified in the hopes of finding her attacker. Advertisement 'Nobody helped. Nobody stopped.' 3 Harris said the man approached her on the beach around 3 a.m. and forced oral sex on her. CBS News New York 3 She said her attacker followed her from the beach and then raped her on Stillwell Avenue. CBS News New York Advertisement At one point, a light from a golf cart shined on her and her attacker — but the driver just drove off without intervening, said Harris, who has reported the attack to the NYPD, The Post confirmed. When she managed to free herself and leave the beach, her assailant followed her down Stillwell Avenue and raped her, she said. 'He bent me over over here, and he raped me,' she told CBS, pointing toward a planter just beside some of the famed boardwalk rides. 3 Harris shared a video of a crowd of people standing around a bonfire before the attack. Melasia Harris Advertisement 'My face hit the bushes. I couldn't do anything … I was just really scared and then I was screaming for help,' Harris said. 'I was just terrified, and I couldn't fight back,' she said, saying that there were also witnesses for the second part of her nightmarish ordeal. Harris said she had arrived at the boardwalk around 11 p.m. Friday after the fireworks had finished. She shared video with CBS News showing a crowd of people standing around a bonfire before the attack. She told News12 Brooklyn that she had been hanging out with a group of people she had just met — and the assailant was one of them. Advertisement After the assaults, she claims the group ran off. She said she's sharing her story in order to get the man of the streets. The NYPD did not immediately respond to the Post's request for additional information.
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Musk's DOGE Cuts to the Federal Workforce Are Already Upending the D.C. Area Housing Market
Melissa Harris had her future meticulously planned. But after more than 37 years in public service, those plans fell apart when President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ravaged her workplace at the National Institute of Health (NIH). So Harris took an early retirement at the end of April, packed up her Gaithersburg, Md. home, and relocated to North Carolina. 'Right now, I can't imagine anybody wanting to go to D.C. and live there,' she said. Harris, 60, had planned to retire in two years so she could receive the maximum payout after about four decades of service. Instead, she expects she'll be receiving less than what she would have, 'even with the bonus that they offered,' she said. The day she came into the office to enjoy her early retirement celebration was the day mass firings hit NIH. Obviously, the party was cancelled. But DOGE's blow to Harris was more than just symbolic. The unexpectedly rushed retirement pushed her to leave the area sooner than planned and buy a home in North Carolina before she had the chance to sell her Maryland property. '[I] am paying for two homes until I get my other one fixed up to sell,' Harris said. Two months later, Harris says she hasn't been paid and isn't sure when exactly she'll receive her first check. 'Nobody's gotten in touch with me,' Harris said. 'It's kind of scary.' The radio silence, she said, has forced Harris and her partner to cut costs amid the financial uncertainty. 'We just got a new house,' she said, 'and we're just going to pretend to be house poor for a while before we find out what's going on.' Stories such as Harris' may turn out to be part of a trend that real estate experts are watching for closely: Public servants fired or otherwise impacted by DOGE cuts leaving the Beltway. In the DMV region, encompassing D.C., parts of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, more than 500,000 people work directly for the federal government, according to data from the 2023 American Community Survey and 2025 Current Employment Statistics compiled by the Economic Policy Institute this year. These numbers don't account for the vast network of external government contractors reliant on federal dollars. Massive job and contract cuts stand to alter the socioeconomic geography of the Beltway in a way the New York Times compared to the devastating impact of the collapse of manufacturing on the Midwest. The complete picture of the number of workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the Trump administration's 'reduction-in-force' initiative is difficult to paint. About 75,000 workers took a buyout offer, Reuters reported in February, while more took the early retirement program Harris trusted most. In total, Reuters estimates that 260,000 federal workers were fired, accepted buyouts, or took early retirements. They're now struggling to find work, said Karen F. Lee of FedsForward. Her organization, launched after DOGE cuts started, helps federal workers transition to the private sector. 'There are absolutely hardships,' she said, including people trying to afford camp for their kids this summer. 'We're at a place where, I think, there is absolutely worry.' Newly jobless workers are afraid about making rent or not having healthcare. Some have dropped out of the labor force all together. Paying for a home is another area being upended by the federal government shakeup. A Bright MLS report released Tuesday surveyed DMV-area realtors in May and found nearly 40% of them said they'd had real estate transactions affected by federal government job cuts. Specifically, the real estate agents in the D.C. metro area 'said they have worked with a client whose decision to buy or sell was due to federal workforce layoffs and cuts,' according to the Bright MLS survey. Titled 'Tracking the impact of DOGE on the housing market,' the report found, among other things, that retirees in the region like Harris were more likely to be home sellers, 'suggesting that federal workforce cuts and uncertainty had a bigger impact on older workers in the D.C. metro area this spring.' Sam Medvene is the president of the D.C. Association of Realtors and has seen the consequences of federal job loss in real time. Medvene said realtors in his association have worked with buyers who had to abruptly rescind contracts when their probationary government job offers were revoked. 'We had a lot of under-contract individuals lose jobs,' Medvene said. The shakeups are also impacting sellers who wanted to sell their homes, came under contract, and then had those offers pulled because of the fallout from federal job loss. 'The combination of both the economic uncertainty and changes federally that are happening, as well as locally, has led to this retraction,' of buyer interest and an increase in inventory, said Medvene. For now, though, he said the situation is more wait-and-see than a dire retrenchment in the housing market. May saw active listings in the D.C. metro area hit their highest level in four years, said Redfin senior economist Asad Khan. The region ranks in the top 10 among the 50 largest metro areas by active listings, Khan said. There are signs that the area housing market is holding strong, but it's on wobbly footing. According to Bright MLS, younger families hit by DOGE layoffs and cuts may also be looking to leave the region, but may start the process later this year because of school and childcare. That's what DMV area realtor Richard Pearrell predicts. Pearrell maintains an online database tracking housing and condo inventory and average sales prices. On one hand, Pearrell sees panicked reports about federal layoffs as 'hype,' and emphasized that the region still hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels of housing inventory. On the other hand, he acknowledged the toll economic uncertainty has taken especially on buyers. 'It's just more of, 'let's sit back and wait until all of this irons itself out,'' Pearrell said. ''Am I going to have a job or not? Or, is the spouse going to have a job or not?' Those are the conversations I'm having.' Noting that workers who took buyouts have months of runway before the rubber meets the road, Pearrell expects to see an uptick in people trying to sell their homes beginning as early as August. 'That's when people are going to have to make the decision,' he said. ''Well if I don't have a job because I have taken the severance, what am I going to do?'' And the D.C. metro area isn't the only one that'll be hit by the government's job-slashing effort. Pearrell has seen the amount of homes for sale in Texas and Florida increasing 'astronomically,' while fewer are being sold, creating a spike in housing inventory. Mortgage broker and President-elect of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, Kimber White, is based in Ft. Lauderdale and points to Florida as a hub for remote government workers who settled in the area during the COVID pandemic, and are being forced to return to Washington to comply with return-to-work mandates. He notes there's been a slight uptick in mortgage delinquencies in the first part of 2025, but not enough to point to a crisis. 'Right now, no,' White said. 'Do I think we're going to see some [increases in delinquencies]? Yeah. We're going to see an uptick,' he said. For her part, Harris considers herself lucky. Though her lifelong service was cut short and retirement plans nearly thwarted, she was able to skip town and is settling down elsewhere. But what she faced at NIH still stings. 'Seeing the president and [Musk] on television, that affected us a lot,' Harris said. 'Because seeing that, it's almost like a personal attack… 'You're the problem.' That's what they're saying.'
New York Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Podcasts That Revisit the Past Through Oral Histories
When the term oral history first came into use, the oral aspect referred to the way information was collected — a historian or researcher would conduct interviews with people with firsthand knowledge of a particular event, then collate those accounts, usually into a written form. Such was the case with 'Division Street: America,' a landmark 1967 book by Studs Terkel, which explored the lives of some 70 Chicago residents as a microcosm of a divided country. More than 50 years on, that oral history has been updated in audio form. Here's a primer on 'Division Street: Revisited,' along with four other podcasts in a similar format. 'Division Street Revisited' For Melissa Harris, a former Chicago Tribune journalist, returning to the stories that Terkel told in 'Division Street' has been a passion project 15 years in the making. When she discovered that Terkel's archived tape recordings had been digitized, podcasting was on the rise, and the format was an obvious fit. The result is 'Division Street Revisited,' which continues the stories of seven of the book's Chicagoans through interviews with family members and friends (since the subjects themselves were no longer alive). In the spirit of Terkel's original work, Harris and Mary Schmich, her fellow executive producer, focused on people whose stories speak to larger cultural issues. One episode spotlights a gay actor who lived in fear of his family finding out about his sexuality; another, a Native American who moved to Chicago from the reservation and became a pioneer for Native culture in the city. Starter episode: 'Myra Alexander: Never Too Old to Be Free' 'Fiasco: Iran-Contra' This historical series is a spiritual successor to the long-running Slate podcast 'Slow Burn,' chronicling pivotal moments in American history through interviews with people who witnessed it. The host, Leon Neyfakh, who worked on the first two seasons of 'Slow Burn' before departing to start 'Fiasco,' has said that his guiding principle is to approach broad political history through emotionally rich personal stories. In this way, each season of Fiasco reframes a seemingly well-known chapter of history through the recollections of dozens of key players, beginning with the early years of the AIDS epidemic in its first season. The most recent installment explores the Iran-contra scandal, when senior officials in the Reagan administration violated an arms embargo for Iran with the intention of financing anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Through deftly woven interviews, this complex and multifaceted saga becomes not just easy to follow, but also impossible to stop listening to. Starter episode: 'Get Me Kevin Kattke' 'Making Gay History' The decade-old nonprofit Making Gay History — founded to remedy a lack of substantive LGBTQ+ history in classrooms and mainstream discourse — and the podcast of the same name are offshoots of the celebrated 1992 book, 'Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990,' by the journalist Eric Marcus. Drawing inspiration from Terkel's work, Marcus chronicled the lives of key figures in the queer civil rights movement, conducting interviews with people like the playwright Larry Kramer, the transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson and the National Football League player David Kopay, among the first professional athletes to come out as gay. Across more than 150 episodes, the 'Making Gay History' podcast features digitized excerpts from these alongside equally compelling interviews with lesser-known figures. Marcus occasionally shifts from host to subject, as in the ninth season, in which he talks about coming of age at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. Starter episode: 'Sylvia Rivera — Part 1' 'Witness History' This podcast from the BBC World Service delivers on a simple premise — 'history told by the people who were there' — but does so in a snappy, bite-size format that sets it apart from most lengthy oral histories. Each episode is just 10 minutes, and unspools a single archival eyewitness account of a memorable chapter in 20th and 21st century history. Many episodes focus on tragic or dramatic incidents like the final days of Hitler before he killed himself in 1945, as told by his secretary, and the 1972 Andes plane crash as told by a survivor. Others explore cultural turning points like the 1995 launch of Windows 95, or the publication of a landmark novel like 'Lord of the Flies.' No matter the subject, the firsthand accounts always make for compelling listening. Starter episode: 'Oklahoma City Bombing' 'Cold War Conversations' A treasure trove of personal narratives that flesh out what life was really like on either side of the Iron Curtain power this richly detailed series. Ian Sanders, the host and producer, has evident passion for his subject, and began the series in 2018 as a way to gather and preserve as many human stories from the Cold War as possible. Over more than 400 episodes, he's interviewed a vast array of soldiers, spies, defectors and everyday civilians who had to navigate life in the Eastern Bloc. Listening to even one episode of 'Cold War Conversations' will make this sprawling, potentially intimidating period of history feel vivid and compelling. Starter episode: 'Gillian — A US Student Visiting Cold War East Germany'
Axios
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Podcast revisits Studs Terkel's "Division Street: America"
Veteran Chicago journalists Melissa Harris and Mary Schmich are revisiting Studs Terkel's seminal 1967 collection of Chicago interviews in "Division Street: America" in a new podcast launching tonight. Why it matters: These updated interviews with descendants, paired with the original book, offer a fascinating narrative of Chicago history from multiple perspectives. The basics: The original book featured 71 interviews but the podcast focuses on seven. "They include an actor terrified his family would discover he was gay; a Native American leader determined to preserve his culture in the big city; and a Lithuanian tavern owner dedicated to street protest," Pulitzer-winning former Tribune columnist Schmich tells Axios. "I saw a unique opportunity to revive those people — those voices — and connect the 1960s to the 2020s." Biggest surprise: "How important music was in all these lives. One of our subjects is a packinghouse worker who loved playing boogie-woogie on the piano. There's a wealthy woman who founded the jazz archive at the University of Chicago." "We tracked down the great-grandson of a Chicago school janitor — and he turned out to be a fiddler who plays hip-hop, classical and bluegrass. It makes a great playlist," Schmich says. Hopes for the listener:"That they'll learn some history. How many people know that Chicago's Uptown neighborhood was once nicknamed Hillbilly Heaven? Or that Halsted Street in the Bridgeport neighborhood was once known as the Lithuanian Downtown?" Schmich asked. "I also hope it will remind people that we're not the first Americans fearful of the social turmoil we're living in." Harris hopes it will "inspire people to go out and interview their oldest living relatives … set their phones down in front of them, hit record and ask them questions about their lives." Listen up at the Division Street Revisited site or sign up for virtual and in-person listening club events starting in February
