Daniel is a Social Justice writer for Fusion Network in Miami, Florida. 

Daniel Rivero - Miami, Florida, USA

Being in the right place at the right time has its benefits. I was fortunate to meet Daniel, a talented writer at the Fusion Network based in the U.S.A., on the Princess Islands in Turkey. We started talking about writing and what he did for a living. Daniel is one interesting guy. He gets to travel for his job, writes about Social Justice in the U.S. and still gets to travel the world in his free time. 

Daniel is a stand-up guy who is looking to create a more positive light in the otherwise gloomy news circuit, what we call the American Media. His take on important issues pertaining to the Black Lives Matter Movement, justice for those who don't have a voice and other aspects of social justice has a profound effect on his audience. 

He's an inspirational figure in my eyes as I try to build up my portfolio in the next few years. ~ Dan Hellinger

What improvements do you want to see the US make in the next 5 years? 

What aspirations do you want to achieve in life?
"I would like for the U.S. to be a more pluralistic society. The de facto thought process for many sectors of our society is "I am not familiar with X thing, therefore X thing is inherently wrong or flawed." It's a shame because over time, this worldview has made our nation homogeneous, in a very negative way. I live in Miami, where multiculturalism and bilingualism or trilingualism is the norm, but I recognize that we're an exception to the rule. My big fear is that if we don't become a more accepting or pluralistic society on the whole, that our political landscape will get even more divided. What I see in some of our emerging politics is a tendency towards a blind, angry nationalism, which is frightening at best. My hope is that we reject it and learn to see the diversity of experiences and perspectives as an asset to our country, and not a threat to it."
"I want to write a book one day. I write articles and do reporting all the time for my job, but accomplishing a full fledged book that I am proud of is one of my main goals in life. Besides that I want to really live modestly, with good friends and family, in a way that positively impacts the people around me. As for other goals I definitely want to learn more languages. I have English and Spanish down, and I'm working on Arabic. I want get that down well enough and then move on to more. There's nothing that broadens your understanding of humanity more than literally learning how other cultures think and speak differently than you. It is immensely satisfying."

The de facto thought process for many sectors of our society is "I am not familiar with X thing, therefore X thing is inherently wrong or flawed."

Is money important or is the power of knowledge more crucial to you?

What would you want to tell a fellow traveler about your home country? 
"The power of knowledge is more crucial without a doubt. Knowledge often means influence, and knowledgeable influence is needed to make the world a better place for all the people living in it. Money can also be used to influence, but ironically that's a cheap way to gain influence. It's not as respectable."
"The US is a complicated place. There is much very bad about it and there is much very good about it. The level of gun violence that we have is insane, but on a certain level the arguments against gun control are perfectly valid and reasonable. We are always struggling to balance the conservative and the liberal side of all issues, and the results are very polarizing because no one is fully in control of the outcome. Also, the history of slavery hangs over us in such an insane way. We have remained so divided, even when compared to other former slave states in the Caribbean and South America. We have a long way to go to make things socially just in our country."

Daniel's Travel Story

"There was one time where I was in British Columbia in Canada, where a friend of mine's parents owned an island that they had purchased to develop and then resell. The home was under construction when we spent about 5 days on it a few years ago. It was glorious -- across the water you could see the Olympia Mountains in Washington State, so we were right on the border.

One day we decided to take a little inflatable boat on a ride through the waters, just off the international boundary. It was tiny -- about ten feet long, maybe. We took it to this island on the Canada side, docked, and hiked up to the top of the island to smoke some weed. After smoking, there was a dispute between three of us about which was the proper way back to the boat. My one friend Fat (yes we call him Fat) was delusional, and refused to take the right way. So, the group split up. My friend Sean and I heading one way, and Fat taking the wrong way. When we got back to the boat, we messed up. Sean flooded the motor, and we couldn't get it to start. Second, and much worse, I accidentally stepped on the valve that was holding the air inside the raft, and the boat started deflating. As I used one hand to keep the valve in place and to trap the air inside, I pumped air back into it with my foot. Really it was just replacing the air that was still spilling out. But we had another problem. Fat was lost on the island. As Sean and I were dealing with our sinking boat, Fat started screaming for directions. We yelled back and forth at each other, not being able to see one another, and we cussed each other out in the most creative, and extreme circumstances imaginable.

Turns out, we were screaming so loud at each other that some people on the Canada side could hear us echoing through the small town. We know this because a boat showed up with many men, asking if we called for SOS. We looked at each other, and said, No, we did not call for SOS. The men then took off in the boat, at which point we thought "We are stupid, we should have asked for help," considering that I was still struggling to keep our raft afloat, and the motor was still not working. Suddenly, Coast Guard cutters appeared on both the US and Canada sides, searching for whoever called SOS. It had gotten serious, and it had gotten big. Helicopters circled overhead. Then, a second boat came close to us and we told him our situation. He laughed, told us to hop on board, and we went and picked Fat up on the other side of the island before he finally dropped us back at the island where we were staying.

When we got back, we learned that it was all over the news that there was a search and rescue operation underway. There was live coverage. The next day it was front page of the paper. At the moment we didn't say anything to anybody. Minutes later, we were outside, ready to smoke some more weed, laughing at the Coast Guard boats on the horizon." ~ Daniel Rivero