company:the miami herald

The story behind a powerful photograph. A Mighty Girl posts the background to this picture, in which an anti-racist protestor ended up protecting a man she’d come to demonstrate against:

https://40.media.tumblr.com/9cf7820d2c983f748d836fa3e989f5be/tumblr_mp211cBm7V1qzmh88o1_1280.jpg

A Mighty Girl

When Keshia Thomas was 18 years old in 1996, the KKK held a rally in her home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hundreds of protesters turned out to tell the white supremacist organization that they were not welcome in the progressive college town. At one point during the event, a man with a SS tattoo and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a Confederate flag ended up on the protesters’ side of the fence and a small group began to chase him. He was quickly knocked to the ground and kicked and hit with placard sticks.

As people began to shout, “Kill the Nazi,” the high school student, fearing that mob mentality had taken over, decided to act. Thomas threw herself on top of one of the men she had come to protest, protecting him from the blows. In discussing her motivation for this courageous act after the event, she stated, “Someone had to step out of the pack and say, ’this isn’t right’... I knew what it was like to be hurt. The many times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me... violence is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea.”

Thomas never heard from the man after that day but months later, a young man came up to her to say thanks, telling her that the man she had protected was his father. For Thomas, learning that he had a son brought even greater significance to her heroic act. As she observed, “For the most part, people who hurt... they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let’s say they had killed him or hurt him really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?”

Mark Brunner, the student photographer who took this now famous photograph, added that what was so remarkable was who Thomas saved: “She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her. Who does that in this world?”

In response to those who argued that the man deserved a beating or more, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitts Jr. offered this short reflection in The Miami Herald: “That some in Ann Arbor have been heard grumbling that she should have left the man to his fate, only speaks of how far they have drifted from their own humanity. And of the crying need to get it back.
Keshia’s choice was to affirm what they have lost.
Keshia’s choice was human.
Keshia’s choice was hope.”

To view more pictures of this Mighty Girl’s remarkable act of courage and read more about the event, visit the BBC at ►http://bbc.in/1djDOGY. You can also read a recent interview with Keshia on MLive at ►http://bit.ly/1u2zkOQ.

For picture books about Mighty Girls taking a stand on behalf of another person — even in the face of opposition — we recommend “Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad” for ages 4 to 8 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/unspoken), “Dare” for ages 4 to 8 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/dare), and “Bully” for ages 7 to 11 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/bully).

For stories for older readers, we recommend “The Lions of Little Rock” for ages 10 to 13 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/the-lions-of-little-rock), “Number the Stars” for ages 9 and up (►http://www.amightygirl.com/number-the-stars), “Minnie McClary Speaks Her Mind” for ages 9 to 13 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/minnie-mcclary-speaks-her-mind), “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” for ages 9 to 13 (►http://www.amightygirl.com/the-witch-of-blackbird-pond), and “To Kill A Mockingbird” for ages 10 and up (►http://www.amightygirl.com/to-kill-a-mockingbird).

For stories for children and teens about real-life girls and women who took a stand for what they believed in, visit A Mighty Girl’s “Role Model” section at ►http://www.amightygirl.com/books/history-biography/biography

For Mighty Girl stories about the importance of compassion, visit our “Kindness / Compassion” section at ►http://www.amightygirl.com/books/personal-development/values?cat=223

And, for stories for young readers about overcoming racial prejudice, visit our “Racial / Ethnic Discrimination” section at ▻http://www.amightygirl.com/books/social-issues/prejudice-discrimination?cat=71

Inside the system: Open letter to Jeff Bezos - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/open-letter-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/06/9e7efa46-fea0-11e2-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html?hpid=z1

Un journaliste du WP espère que le libertaire Jeff Bezos respectera ses valeurs journalistiques féodales.
▻http://farm1.staticflickr.com/4/6242572_68240cc1ee_z_d.jpg?zz=1

Back in 1982, when I was an editor at Tropic, the Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, the publisher asked us to run a story on our cover about the winners of The Silver Knight award, which was given out every year at a gala to the most promising high school seniors in the Miami area. The Silver Knights were a fine and noble enterprise, but the event was run and financed by Knight-Ridder, the corporate owners of The Miami Herald; Herald stories about the Silver Knight awards were inevitably uncritical, nakedly celebratory, and drenched in self-promotion. We at Tropic declined to run the story of the awards on the grounds that we were a small magazine trying to establish a feisty, pugnacious identity, and being a corporate suckup toady lickspittle didn’t fit in with our plans. The publisher glowered, muttered something about insubordination, and steered the story to another, less visible section of the paper. We went unpunished.

Wikipedia tells me that one of the Silver Knight winners that year was little Jeffrey Bezos of Miami Palmetto High School. Haha.

You and I briefly crossed paths as younger men, and I dissed you. I guess it’s clear who won that race.

Here’s the thing: We were right to decline that story, Jeff, but, more to the point, our publisher was wise to LET us decline. In the next 10 years, freed to robustly experiment with an outsize personality, Tropic would develop a fanatic following in Miami, and our writers and photographers would win two Pulitzers and be finalists for two more. That happened because the people above us trusted us, if grudgingly, and — more important — had our backs.

...

“Kick up, kiss down.” Aggravate your bosses, but make the people below you love and respect you. Katharine Graham and Don Graham were brilliant at this — they must have given their board of directors fits, because during the great years they chose aggressive journalism over pennypinching every time — and we loved them for it. It’s an irreplaceable advantage, loyalty drawn from affection and respect.

En temps de crise les sous-officiers du capitalisme espèrent sauver leur fortune en appellant à leur chefs de se comporter en bons seigneurs avec leurs vassaux.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Hommage2.jpg

Héritière du compagnonnage d’arme du haut Moyen Âge, la vassalité est la situation de dépendance d’un homme libre envers son seigneur par la cérémonie de l’hommage. Le système féodo-vassalique s’est développé à cause de l’affaiblissement de l’autorité publique après l’effondrement de l’empire carolingien (Xe - XIe siècle) : l’empereur, les rois et bientôt les princes territoriaux étaient incapables de faire régner l’ordre et d’imposer leur pouvoir aux seigneurs locaux. Un réseau de relations d’homme à homme s’impose donc, donnant des droits et des devoirs pour chacun d’entre eux, une pyramide sociale allant théoriquement du roi au grand seigneur (grand feudataire), seigneur, vassal et arrière-vassal (Vavasseur) mais dont l’effectivité dépend de l’autorité du supérieur.

Et hop, voilà l’essentiel de ce que pense le nouveau chef :
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-purchase/2013/08/05/e5b293de-fe0d-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2011/09/28/National-Economy/Images/AP071119020627.jpg

There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there.

Jeff Bezos par contre ne promet rien sauf la recherche constante de profitabilité. C’est une réponse digne d’un des plus riches libertaires du monde.

Quand les Etats-Unis et la France faisaient pression sur l’#Afrique_du_Sud pour interdire le retour de Titid en #Haïti (#WikiLeaks)
►http://wikileaks-press.org/this-week-in-the-press-25-31-july-2011

In 2005, French and U.S. diplomats discussed the consequences of Aristide returning to Haiti, and agreed to pass on joint concerns to the South African government in the form of a veiled threat: as South Africa wanted a seat in the UN Security Council, they “could not afford to be involved in any way with the destabilization of another country.” Just before Aristide’s 2011 return, The Miami Herald reported that President Obama and UN Secretary Ban-Ki Moon both called on South African President Zuma prevent Aristide from leaving and possibly affecting