The Ann Arbor Independent Editorial Team 2249 posts 224 comments

by Lynn Parramore WHAT IF YOU could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? Didn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. Nobody would ask about your job status or how many kids you have. The…

Cordial greetings. I appreciated the trial subscription to The Ann Arbor Independent. Ann Arbor is in need of an independent newspaper, providing careful and in-depth reporting about local affairs, and I had looked forward to becoming a…

FORMER WARD 4 City Council member Marcia Higgins, along with Mayoral candidates Christopher Taylor and Sabra Briere all voted to allow the city’s parkland to be “repurposed” for “transit.” It was Higgins who inserted language into a zoning…

by Katie Sutton DETROIT’S HISTORIC EASTERN Market is known for its huge pavilions chuck full of local produce, greenery, and snacks, but the real treat of this extraordinary farmer’s market is in the businesses that surround it. The…

IT WAS ANNOUNCED on March 26 that the Detroit Society of Professional Journalists (DSPJ) has awarded a prize for investigative journalism to The Ann Arbor Independent newspaper. The Indy, launched in October 2013, is the first locally-owned…

by Steve Rosenfeld SECRETARY OF Defense Chuck Hagel unveiled his 2015 Pentagon budget in a detailed speech where he proposed spending $496 billion—about $45 billion less than the White House, retiring a tank-shooting aircraft and spy…

by J.H. Mae THE OTHER DAY I saw an author on TV promoting a book he wrote about how we’ve all been lied to about the health benefits of drinking milk. I guess I’m supposed to bow down to this man – he’s clearly more educated than me –…

The Koch brothers, billionaires, have created a tangled web of 17 nonprofits, PACs and businesses through which they funneled over $400 million dollars in 2012 aimed at influencing national and state politics. Most companies doing business…

by Amanda Whiting WHEN HE WAS nine, he wrote poems that made me weep. When he was ten, I found pornography in his room. When he was twelve, the fistfights began. His grades dropped precipitously. He spent most of his time at school…

Washtenaw County’s former Head Start Director Patricia McGee was put on leave weeks before she retired in December 2011. A county official told a reporter in December 2011 that Ms. McGee was being investigated due to unspecified…