Vanity Fair profiles The eXile: "Gutsy...visceral...serious journalism...abusive, defamatory...poignant...paranoid...and right!"
MSNBC: Mark Ames and Yasha Levine
Broke the Koch Brothers' Takeover of America
exiledonline.com
victorville

Adelanto California

Originally published in NSFWCORP on April 16, 2013.

When I first started reporting on the subprime suburb of Victorville, I little expected that the neighboring town of Adelanto would become ground zero for a fight between billionaires on one side, and poor, vulnerable minority parents and children on the other.

I first heard about the fight through the local right-wing paper, the Victorville Daily Press, which gleefully announced on its front page that a local school, Desert Trails Elementary, had just made history as the first school in the nation to be privatized under California’s new “parent trigger” law. The paper described the takeover as “promising a fresh start to the failing elementary school,” and claimed it had received widespread support from parents. (more…)

December 5th, 2015 | Comments Off on Pulling the Trigger: School Privatization in California’s Subprime Suburbs

Back to Victorville: Dispatch Zero

It’s just past 5 a.m. and I’m sitting in my suite at The Plaza hotel, high up above the grimy streets of downtown Las Vegas. On the horizon, beyond the gold brick Trump Tower, beyond the needle of the Stratosphere,…

January 9th, 2013 | Leave Comment

Recovered History: How Wall Street-Funded Self Help Propaganda Greased the Real Estate Bubble

I was passing through the Mojave Desert and by chance stopped by a local thrift store in Joshua Tree. I’m glad I did, because I spotted a book that I just had to own. At $0.50, it was priced to sell….

October 19th, 2012 | Comments (56)

From the Archives: Boomer Reactionaries in Subprime Suburb of Victorville, Calif., Rage Against Giving Healthcare To Their Kids And GrandKids...

In the spirit of the Millennial vs. Boomer debate raging in the comment section of Connor Kilpatrick’s great piece, “Thirty More Years of Hell,” I’d like to republish my account of an anti-healthcare town hall meeting I attended way back in 2009 in the subprime Southern California suburb of Victorville…

February 7th, 2012 | Comments (28)

eXiled Alert! Dylan Ratigan Gives Shout Out To Yasha Levine, The eXiled For Pioneering Real Estate Market Reporting Out of Victorville

I’ve been living in Venice Beach for the past few months, convalescing after almost two years of immersion-reporting out of Victorville, California–the front lines of California’s real estate meltdown. Life out in Victorville, a remote exburb on the edge of…

February 1st, 2011 | Comments (19)

Victorville Dispatch: Still Here, Still Proud [and Still Poor]

For months people had been asking me if I’m still living in Victorville and if so, why I stopped writing about it. Some dumbshit even accused me of running back to live the big city life, as if I was…

June 5th, 2010 | Comments (33)

How Cheap Solar Power Will Save the SUV

This article was first published by AlterNet. HESPERIA, CA—Say hello to the thing that could save our gas-guzzlin’ suburban lifestyle: affordable residential solar power that’s within reach of the most cash-strapped America consumer. This breakthrough is not a result of…

January 16th, 2010 | Comments (26)