Friday, November 30, 2018
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Round-the-Clock Church Services
An excerpt from the Huffington Post -
Church Holds Continuous Worship Service To Prevent Family’s Deportation
Dutch police aren’t allowed to enter churches during services. So a Netherlands church is worshipping 24/7 to protect a family of asylum-seekers.
By Carol Kuruvilla
After hearing that a refugee family faced imminent deportation, a Netherlands church sprung into action ― and members have continued stepping up for over one month.
Bethel, a church and community center in The Hague, has taken dramatic steps to protect the Tamrazyans, an Armenian family of five asylum-seekers who have lived in the Netherlands for nine years. The government has reportedly denied the family’s asylum request and approved them for deportation ― even though there’s a law in place that allows children who have lived in the country for over five years to be eligible for a residence permit, if they also fulfill other requirements. The Tamrazyans applied for a permit under that law and were denied, according to Bethel.
Knowing that Dutch law prevents police officers from entering houses of worship during religious services, church members decided to hold a nonstop worship service at Bethel that would allow the Tamrazyans to take shelter in the church.
The continuous worship service started on Oct. 26 at 1:30 p.m. ― and it hasn’t stopped since.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-worship-service-continuous-asylum_us_5bfd636ae4b03b230fa72d08
Church Holds Continuous Worship Service To Prevent Family’s Deportation
Dutch police aren’t allowed to enter churches during services. So a Netherlands church is worshipping 24/7 to protect a family of asylum-seekers.
By Carol Kuruvilla
After hearing that a refugee family faced imminent deportation, a Netherlands church sprung into action ― and members have continued stepping up for over one month.
Bethel, a church and community center in The Hague, has taken dramatic steps to protect the Tamrazyans, an Armenian family of five asylum-seekers who have lived in the Netherlands for nine years. The government has reportedly denied the family’s asylum request and approved them for deportation ― even though there’s a law in place that allows children who have lived in the country for over five years to be eligible for a residence permit, if they also fulfill other requirements. The Tamrazyans applied for a permit under that law and were denied, according to Bethel.
Knowing that Dutch law prevents police officers from entering houses of worship during religious services, church members decided to hold a nonstop worship service at Bethel that would allow the Tamrazyans to take shelter in the church.
The continuous worship service started on Oct. 26 at 1:30 p.m. ― and it hasn’t stopped since.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-worship-service-continuous-asylum_us_5bfd636ae4b03b230fa72d08
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Saturday, November 24, 2018
1921 Tulsa Race Riot Survivor Dies
An excerpt from the AP -
1 of the last survivors of 1921 Tulsa race riot dies at 103
By KEN MILLER
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riots and among the first black women in the U.S. Coast Guard, has died. She was 103.
Hooker was 6 years old when one of the worst race riots in U.S. history broke out and destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street.” She hid under a table as a torch-carrying mob destroyed her family’s home, she told National Public Radio in an interview this year.
She recalled hearing the mob use an axe to destroy her sister’s piano. For a child, she said, it was horrifying trying to keep quiet.
“The most shocking was seeing people you’d never done anything to irritate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things,” said Hooker, who died this week at her home in New York, according to her goddaughter.
The number of deaths from the riot was never confirmed, but estimates vary from about three dozen to 300 or more. The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa.
https://apnews.com/5834f70be49645669f4aae2a4570d242
1 of the last survivors of 1921 Tulsa race riot dies at 103
By KEN MILLER
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riots and among the first black women in the U.S. Coast Guard, has died. She was 103.
Hooker was 6 years old when one of the worst race riots in U.S. history broke out and destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street.” She hid under a table as a torch-carrying mob destroyed her family’s home, she told National Public Radio in an interview this year.
She recalled hearing the mob use an axe to destroy her sister’s piano. For a child, she said, it was horrifying trying to keep quiet.
“The most shocking was seeing people you’d never done anything to irritate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things,” said Hooker, who died this week at her home in New York, according to her goddaughter.
The number of deaths from the riot was never confirmed, but estimates vary from about three dozen to 300 or more. The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa.
https://apnews.com/5834f70be49645669f4aae2a4570d242
Friday, November 23, 2018
A Clueless Clown
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.
By Eugene Robinson
In Riyadh, they must be laughing at President Trump. In Pyongyang, too, and in Tehran. In Beijing and, of course, in Moscow, they must be laughing until it hurts. They look at Washington and they don’t see a champion of freedom and human rights. They see a preening, clueless clown.
Trump’s reaction — or non-reaction — to the Saudi regime’s brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe. It shows them that if you just shower Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-not-a-champion-of-human-rights-he-is-a-clueless-clown/2018/11/22/979a1342-edd7-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b8d4ef2aef5a
Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.
By Eugene Robinson
In Riyadh, they must be laughing at President Trump. In Pyongyang, too, and in Tehran. In Beijing and, of course, in Moscow, they must be laughing until it hurts. They look at Washington and they don’t see a champion of freedom and human rights. They see a preening, clueless clown.
Trump’s reaction — or non-reaction — to the Saudi regime’s brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe. It shows them that if you just shower Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-not-a-champion-of-human-rights-he-is-a-clueless-clown/2018/11/22/979a1342-edd7-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b8d4ef2aef5a
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Powerful
An excerpt from the Atlantic -
Letters: ‘I Want to Grow Up to Be Someone That Fights for Families Like Yours’
Teenagers in California respond to the story of a mother and son separated at the border.
‘The Separation Was So Long. My Son Has Changed So Much.’
In September, Jeremy Raff reported on the story of Anita and Jenri, a mother and her six-year-old son. Anita and Jenri fled Honduras and crossed the Rio Grande on a raft near McAllen, Texas, in mid-June; they immediately turned themselves over to Border Patrol and asked for asylum. In accordance with Trump administration policy, agents separated Anita and Jenri; they were detained 25 miles apart from one another for a month before a lawyer helped them reunite.
Christsna Sot, an eighth grade teacher at Impact Academy of Arts in Hayward, California, showed Raff’s video to his students, who wrote letters to Anita and Jenri. Here is a selection of those letters.
https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2018/11/eighth-graders-respond-story-family-separation/574024/
Letters: ‘I Want to Grow Up to Be Someone That Fights for Families Like Yours’
Teenagers in California respond to the story of a mother and son separated at the border.
‘The Separation Was So Long. My Son Has Changed So Much.’
In September, Jeremy Raff reported on the story of Anita and Jenri, a mother and her six-year-old son. Anita and Jenri fled Honduras and crossed the Rio Grande on a raft near McAllen, Texas, in mid-June; they immediately turned themselves over to Border Patrol and asked for asylum. In accordance with Trump administration policy, agents separated Anita and Jenri; they were detained 25 miles apart from one another for a month before a lawyer helped them reunite.
Christsna Sot, an eighth grade teacher at Impact Academy of Arts in Hayward, California, showed Raff’s video to his students, who wrote letters to Anita and Jenri. Here is a selection of those letters.
https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2018/11/eighth-graders-respond-story-family-separation/574024/
A Quiet Impact
An excerpt from the New York Times -
How a $15,000 Movie Rallied a New Generation of Black Auteurs
By Reggie Ugwu
It’s not so hard to find them now. But nearly 10 years ago, when they appeared in “Medicine for Melancholy,” the first film by the “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, characters like Micah and Jo’ — young, black, financially overdrawn but rolling in polished pop culture references — were, if not exactly unicorns, a protected species, rare enough to be worthy of tapping the person next to you and spreading the word.
Aimless and anxious 20-somethings in popular culture were nothing new, of course. But they tended to be monochromatic, as if early-onset ennui and the shallow comforts of art snobbery were the exclusive inventions of white people.
So cinephiles at the time took note when, seemingly out of nowhere, came a convincing counternarrative in the form of “Medicine.” It followed Micah and Jo’, a would-be couple whose one-night stand stretched fitfully into two, as they walked and biked around an artfully desaturated San Francisco, waxing on about indie rock and Barbara Loden in one breath, and black identity, the politics of interracial relationships and gentrification in the next.
~~~~~~~~~~
With Jenkins’s third film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” due next month, the people who made “Medicine” as well as prominent admirers — including Lena Waithe (“Master of None,” “The Chi”), Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and Terence Nance (“Random Acts of Flyness”) — discussed its outsize legacy and quiet influence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/movies/medicine-for-melancholy-black-auteurs.html
How a $15,000 Movie Rallied a New Generation of Black Auteurs
By Reggie Ugwu
It’s not so hard to find them now. But nearly 10 years ago, when they appeared in “Medicine for Melancholy,” the first film by the “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, characters like Micah and Jo’ — young, black, financially overdrawn but rolling in polished pop culture references — were, if not exactly unicorns, a protected species, rare enough to be worthy of tapping the person next to you and spreading the word.
Aimless and anxious 20-somethings in popular culture were nothing new, of course. But they tended to be monochromatic, as if early-onset ennui and the shallow comforts of art snobbery were the exclusive inventions of white people.
So cinephiles at the time took note when, seemingly out of nowhere, came a convincing counternarrative in the form of “Medicine.” It followed Micah and Jo’, a would-be couple whose one-night stand stretched fitfully into two, as they walked and biked around an artfully desaturated San Francisco, waxing on about indie rock and Barbara Loden in one breath, and black identity, the politics of interracial relationships and gentrification in the next.
~~~~~~~~~~
With Jenkins’s third film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” due next month, the people who made “Medicine” as well as prominent admirers — including Lena Waithe (“Master of None,” “The Chi”), Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and Terence Nance (“Random Acts of Flyness”) — discussed its outsize legacy and quiet influence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/movies/medicine-for-melancholy-black-auteurs.html
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Allowance by App
An excerpt from the New York Times -
How Parents Teach Smart Spending With Apps, Not Cash
By Ann Carrns
Jonathan and Erin Kraftchick started out by paying their two children’s allowance the old-fashioned way, using paper money.
“I tried the cash thing,” said Mr. Kraftchick, an accountant and financial-literacy advocate in Raleigh, N.C. First, they used glass jars, then switched to a system that involved slipping money for different purposes into separate paper envelopes, for each child.
But keeping up with multiple envelopes became unwieldy.
“It’s a lot of hassle,” Ms. Kraftchick, an artist, said with a laugh.
So when Mr. Kraftchick read about a “smart” debit card called goHenry earlier this year, he quickly signed the family up for an account.
~~~~~~~~~~
“We got tired of having a drawer full of dollars,” said Brandi Tzonev, a sales manager and personal trainer in Lawrenceville, Ga., who uses goHenry with her 15-year-old son, Alex, and 10-year-old daughter, Gabriella.
Some banks have long had accounts aimed at children and teenagers, and many families use prepaid debit cards — rather than traditional debit cards, linked to a checking account — as a way to help children manage money. But the newest generation of “smart” debit cards are managed by advanced mobile apps that give parents detailed control over how much the young people spend — and even where they spend — with a few taps on a phone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/business/children-allowance-apps.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage
How Parents Teach Smart Spending With Apps, Not Cash
By Ann Carrns
Jonathan and Erin Kraftchick started out by paying their two children’s allowance the old-fashioned way, using paper money.
“I tried the cash thing,” said Mr. Kraftchick, an accountant and financial-literacy advocate in Raleigh, N.C. First, they used glass jars, then switched to a system that involved slipping money for different purposes into separate paper envelopes, for each child.
But keeping up with multiple envelopes became unwieldy.
“It’s a lot of hassle,” Ms. Kraftchick, an artist, said with a laugh.
So when Mr. Kraftchick read about a “smart” debit card called goHenry earlier this year, he quickly signed the family up for an account.
~~~~~~~~~~
“We got tired of having a drawer full of dollars,” said Brandi Tzonev, a sales manager and personal trainer in Lawrenceville, Ga., who uses goHenry with her 15-year-old son, Alex, and 10-year-old daughter, Gabriella.
Some banks have long had accounts aimed at children and teenagers, and many families use prepaid debit cards — rather than traditional debit cards, linked to a checking account — as a way to help children manage money. But the newest generation of “smart” debit cards are managed by advanced mobile apps that give parents detailed control over how much the young people spend — and even where they spend — with a few taps on a phone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/business/children-allowance-apps.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage
Monday, November 19, 2018
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Friday, November 16, 2018
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Survivor recalls Jonestown tragedy 40 years later
https://apnews.com/08719a0375204841ba4efaa718b96dff
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Monday, November 12, 2018
Sunday, November 11, 2018
What Would He Think
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
I was Pat Tillman’s wife, but I can’t speak for him. Neither can you.
By Marie Tillman
I think that patriotism is complex, like Pat himself. It is not blind or unquestioning. And it’s a fool’s errand to argue over who’s allowed to claim sacrifice. Many of the kneeling athletes say they are protesting as American patriots who want the nation to be better than it is. When I look around at the vitriol aimed at them for expressing their beliefs, and at the compulsion to simplify complicated issues to pit people on opposing sides, I want to kneel, too. Because I believe we are at our best as Americans when we engage in constructive dialogue around our differences with the goal of understanding one another.
This mind-set is where change happens, progress is made and bridges are built. I believe that in our hearts we are all the same: We all want our children to be healthy and safe and to have opportunities. We may have significant differences in how we think we should get there, but divisive rhetoric will only deepen the chasm and make us forget all that we share.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-pat-tillmans-wife-but-i-cant-speak-for-him-neither-can-you/2018/11/08/18374652-d8a0-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.6b244a1f165c
I was Pat Tillman’s wife, but I can’t speak for him. Neither can you.
By Marie Tillman
I think that patriotism is complex, like Pat himself. It is not blind or unquestioning. And it’s a fool’s errand to argue over who’s allowed to claim sacrifice. Many of the kneeling athletes say they are protesting as American patriots who want the nation to be better than it is. When I look around at the vitriol aimed at them for expressing their beliefs, and at the compulsion to simplify complicated issues to pit people on opposing sides, I want to kneel, too. Because I believe we are at our best as Americans when we engage in constructive dialogue around our differences with the goal of understanding one another.
This mind-set is where change happens, progress is made and bridges are built. I believe that in our hearts we are all the same: We all want our children to be healthy and safe and to have opportunities. We may have significant differences in how we think we should get there, but divisive rhetoric will only deepen the chasm and make us forget all that we share.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-pat-tillmans-wife-but-i-cant-speak-for-him-neither-can-you/2018/11/08/18374652-d8a0-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.6b244a1f165c
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