#hugh dandrade

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Hugh D’Andrade’s “The Murder Next Door”

I'm about to leave for a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me on Feb 14 in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and on Feb 15 for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

Hugh D'Andrade is a brilliant visual communicator, the art director responsible for the look-and-feel of EFF's website. He's also haunted by a murder – the killing of the mother of his childhood playmates, which cast a long, long shadow over his life, as he recounts in his debut graphic novel, The Murder Next Door:

https://www.streetnoisebooks.com/the-murder-next-door-a-graphic-memoir

In 1978, Hugh was a normal ten year old, always drawing and obsessed with riding his dirt bike around his quiet suburban neighborhood. The brothers next door, Derek and Ari, were his constant playmates. One day, he came home from school to find them standing on the lawn. The brothers were crying, arguing. When Hugh asked them what was going on, Derek said there was a dead body in their house, then Ari quickly said, "It's someone else, Derek, it's not her." Ari insisted that it was their mother.

As they argued, Derek told Hugh to go inside and look for himself. That's how he found the dead body of his next door neighbor.

This became the defining moment of Hugh's life. For the rest of his life, he felt like there was a before-Hugh and an after-Hugh, the Hugh before the trauma and the Hugh after it. Passing strangers on the street, he wonders about their rifts, the moments that transformed them, that haunt them.

After finding the body, Hugh ran to his own parents, who called the police, gathered in Derek and Ari, and took charge of the situation. When the dust settled, Derek and Ari had disappeared, sent off to a neighbor's place. A week later, when Hugh returned to school, a classmate told him that the whole school had "decided not to talk about it." So he didn't.

But he was haunted by the murder, seized by spasms of fear that the murderer would return for him. He threw tantrums, broke things, smashed things. His parents said it was "just a phase." He interrogated his parents relentlessly about what they would do if the murderer came back. Their answers were meant to reassure him, but failed. Life went on. Whispers blamed his neighbor's husband – a doctor who was at the hospital at the time of the killing – for the murder.

Murder Next Door is told in a series of interleaved scenes of Hugh's childhood, his adolescence, his contemporary therapy sessions, his life today in Oakland. He interrogates his own motivations for engaging endlessly with online conspiracists. He reflects on the years he spent with his mother, campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment, and how that informed both his lifelong feminist beliefs, and his view of the murder of a woman in the house next door. He comes to see a pathway from harassment and sexist remarks to sexual violence and murder, and to notice how the boys at school exhibited the same sexist attitudes that he was noticing in wider society. He struggles to figure out what masculinity is, and what kind of man he wants to be – a strong man, who protects women from men like the murderer? But the murderer was a strong man, too.

As a young activist campaigning against the first Gulf War, Hugh becomes militant, aggressive, trying to bully his classmates into caring about the conflict as much as he does – to care about the innocents whose blood was about to shed in their name. Their indifference makes him relive, over and over, the murder of his neighbor. It's as though he knew in advance that she was about to be killed and couldn't get anyone else to care about it.

Eventually, as an adult DNA analysis identified the killer, a long-dead man who had done some upholstery work for the family a few weeks before the murder. Some of Hugh's nightmares go away.

The Murder Next Door is a haunting, beautiful meditation on masculinity, trauma, and fear. Hugh is a superb illustrator, particularly when it comes to bringing abstract ideas to life (which is why he's so valued at the EFF!), and this is a tale beautifully told (with permission from Derek and Ari and other family members). It's an extraordinary book.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/10/pivot-point/#eff

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Exclusive Preview: The Murder Next Door

The Murder Next Door exclusive preview. When someone is murdered next door, it changes everything about the way you live your life #comics #graphicmemoir #graphicnovel @streetnoisebooks.bsky.social @hugh-jeego.bsky.social

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Star, December 3

Cover: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston having a baby 

Page 1: Tori Spelling lied about having to evacuate due to wildfires 

Page 2: Contents, Carrie Underwood 

Page 4: Scary skinny Bethenny Frankel refusing to eat 

Page 5: Reese Witherspoon cooking up a TV project with Jacques Pepin, beauty addict Courteney Cox’s frozen face, Melania Trump won’t disgrace her family with a divorce 

Page 6: Kris Jenner put Corey Gamble in her will and her kids aren’t happy about it, Angelina Jolie hasn’t had sex since splitting with Brad Pitt in 2016, Spot the Stars -- Lady Gaga, Dorinda Medley, Ashley Tisdale, Maya Rudolph, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chloe x Halle, Rising and Falling Stars -- Serena Williams, Jerry Springer, Corinne Olympios, Bill O’Reilly, Lisa Vanderpump, Tekashi 6ix9ine 

Page 8: Star Shots -- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jordan Barrett and Emily Ratajkowski, Luke Bryan and Cole Swindell, New Kids on the Block with Tanika Ray, Cardi B 

Page 10: Hugh Jackman, Paris Jackson and Caroline D’Amore, Cuba Gooding Jr. and costars Bianca Marroquin and Amra-Faye Wright, Naomi Campbell 

Page 12: Jeff Goldblum, Ashley Graham, Sandra Bullock and costars Julien Edwards and Vivien Blair 

Page 13: Woody Harrelson 

Page 14: Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, Kelly Rowland and Jessica Alba and Jenna Dewan and Amy Adams and Olivia Munn, Michael J. Fox 

Page 16: Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show -- Adriana Lima, Shawn Mendes, Lais Ribeiro, Gigi Hadid, Duckie Thot, Elsa Hosk 

Page 18: People’s Choice Awards -- Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Melissa McCarthy, costars Johnny Galecki and Sara Gilbert, the Kardashians, Victoria Beckham, Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani 

Page 20: Eddie Redmayne, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sharon Stone and Keke Palmer, John David Washington and Topher Grace and Spike Lee and Adam Driver, Kate Hudson and Danny Fujikawa 

Page 22: Whitney Port, Mark Wahlberg and Abby Cadabby and Elmo, Lacey Chabert 

Page 23: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum 

Page 24: Martha Stewart and Jessica Simpson, Michael B. Jordan and Tony Dandrades, Sam Worthington

Page 25: Savannah Guthrie, Seth Meyers 

Page 26: Hot Sheet -- Lauren Bush Lauren 

Page 28: Fashion Best of the Week -- Katherine McNamara, Susan Kelechi Watson, Aly Raisman, Giuliana Rancic 

Page 30: Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Jen Harley couples makeover 

Page 31: Chubby Chris Pratt packing on the love pounds, Scarlett Johansson tells Colin Jost it’s me or your career 

Page 32: Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk’s baby joy, greedy Blac Chyna still bleeding Rob Kardashian dry, Love Bites -- Zoe Kravitz and Karl Glusman engaged, Harry Shum Jr. and wife Shelby Rabara expecting, Chrissy Metz’s new boyfriend is Hal Rosenfeld 

Page 34: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston -- it’s baby time 

Page 38: Geraldo Rivera 

Page 40: Stars Losing Their Virginity -- Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, Ansel Elgort, Anna Faris 

Page 42: Joe Jonas, Shia LaBeouf, Katy Perry, Dwayne Johnson, John Stamos, Khloe Kardashian, Harry Styles, Daniel Radcliffe 

Page 44: Wicked Whispers -- Beyonce and Jay-Z, Lindsay Lohan, Anne Hathaway, Usher, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, blind item 

Page 46: Winter Wellness 101 with Autumn Calabrese 

Page 48: Double Takes -- Busy Philipps vs. Olivia Culpo 

Page 49: Malin Akerman vs. Alison Brie 

Page 50: Gift Guide -- Derek Hough 

Page 53: Kristin Cavallari 

Page 54: Miles Brown and Marsai Martin 

Page 60: The Great American Baking Show with Jason Arthur 

Page 70: Burning Questions -- Alex Rodriguez selling his Hollywood Hills home, AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys has relapsed, born-again Christian Stephen Baldwin having an affair with a masseuse, Monica Lewinsky’s first impression of Bill Clinton 

Page 72: Paris Jackson gave decorative pillows and signed bottles of perfume to people in rural Mexico affected by the 2017 earthquake 

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Street Noise Books Presents: Revolution, Resistance, Healing, and Queer Love in Spring 2025!

Street Noise Books Presents: Revolution, Resistance, Healing, and Queer Love in Spring 2025! #comics #graphicnovel

Graphic novel publisher Street Noise Books presents the Spring 2025 list: The Murder Next Door, by Hugh D’Andrade, Eyes on Gaza, by Khaled Beydoun, with art by Mohammad Sabaaneh, You Must Take Part in Revolution, by Melissa Chan and Badiucao, Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder, by Cara Gormally, Call Me Emma, by Makee, and Punk Like Me, by JD Glass and Kris Dressen. Street Noise books have…

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The people's disruption

“Innovation” is in very bad odor these days. “Disruption” is even more disreputable. But as tech and the global south researcher Rida Qadri writes in Wired, “innovation” isn’t limited to inventing unregulated banks and calling them “fintech” and “disruption” is more than just misclassifying employees as contractors.

https://www.wired.com/story/disruption-mobility-platforms-politics/

Qadri studies workers who are seizing the means of computation, reverse-engineering and repurposing the apps that are meant to keep them in bondage and figuring out how to set themselves free. Her research on gig drivers in Jakarta is essential reading:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

Indonesian drivers have banded together to build clubhouses that serve as break-rooms, union halls, tech workshops and scooter maintenance depots. These centers are the birthplace of “tuyul” apps, which allow workers to resist algorithmic “optimization” and adapt their working conditions to improve their pay and safety.

In her Wired piece, Qadri gives examples of other “tech workers” — that is, low-waged, casualized workers who are dispatched and managed by apps — who use technology to take back control, from “farmers who strike against a smart city plan” to riders who band together to get back their stolen scooters.

This is mutual aid, with code. It is every bit as innovative and disruptive as Uber or Amazon, but because it is done by workers, rather than to workers, it is not recognized as such. Indeed, when workers modify the apps that script their movements, they’re called “criminals,” not “innovators.”

Take Doordash’s smear campaign against Para, an app that let delivery drivers find out how much a job paid before they took it (Doordash hides compensation from drivers in hopes of tricking them into taking unprofitable runs):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

Doordash called Para a criminal app, baselessly accused it of identity theft, and insisted that drivers had no right to know how much they were going to get paid before they committed to a job.

But as Para shows, seizing the means of computation is an important strategy for workers seeking a better life. The tactics of Adversarial Interoperability (AKA Competitive Compatibility or Comcom) can transfer power from Goliaths to Davids:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But the soi-disant disruptors of the business world will not tolerate being disrupted themselves. Uber is content to skirt labor, safety and transportation policy, but would scream bloody murder if drivers and riders hacked the app to make it obsolete:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Image: Hugh D’Andrade/EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/about/staff/hugh-dandrade

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/