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John Blake, CNN

2018-09-29 09:27:12

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/29/us/polite-racism/index.html

The polite way to call someone a racist - CNN

How do you call someone a racist without ever using the word? Use terms like "racialist" or "ethno-nationalist." The spread of this new racial doublespeak, though, may reinforce racism while pretending to call it out.

us, The polite way to call someone a racist - CNN

The polite way to call someone a racist

(CNN)In a classic Monty Python skit, an angry man walks into a pet shop carrying the stiffened corpse of a parrot nailed to its perch.The man complains that the bird he purchased is dead, but the shop owner keeps insisting the parrot may be exhausted or prefers reclining on its back.A surreal argument ensues as the shop owner keeps responding with a line that has now become synonymous with refusing to see the obvious:"No, no, he's not dead, he's resting."Could a similar refusal to name the obvious be at work in the way people talk about race virtually every day?Read MoreA new language of racial tiptoeing has emerged in recent years, and some say it may be edging close to the linguistic absurdity of the dead parrot skit. It's a racial doublespeak that sometimes evades more than explains.It's a tendency to call out someone or something as racist but to avoid mentioning the actual words "racist" or "racism" while doing so.This doublespeak seems to have spread everywhere.People don't say racism put President Donald Trump in office; they use a term like "racial anxiety" or "racial resentment." If a white politician running for governor warns voters that they may "monkey this up" by electing his black opponent, that's not racist; that's "racially charged." White Americans who are uncomfortable with a changing culture or who believe they're left behind while minority groups get ahead aren't exhibiting racism; that's "racialized economics."There's a buffet of racial euphemisms that awaits anyone shopping for a more polite word for racism. There's "racially freighted" for venomous anti-immigrant remarks. And white voters who resent demographic changes aren't motivated by racism; they're driven by "ethno-nationalism" or "white nativism."Why are these racial euphemisms spreading?Was it "ethno-nationalism," "racial anxiety" or just plain racism that motivated demonstrators like this man at the Charlottesville protests in 2017? The words we use matter, some say. Do we need them to avoid offending people and to give nuance to a complex topic? Or do they sometimes reinforce racism instead of calling it out?That's the question I posed to people who fall on different sides of this trend. Some say we don't call out racism by name enough, while others say we do it too much.This language may be new, but it reflects an old social taboo that discourages many Americans from talking directly about race, especially many white progressives, says Robin DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility."The result is that many end up "talking in ridiculous circles" to avoid actually using the words "racist" or "racism.""You get this dynamic where nobody wants to come out and call it what it is," DiAngelo says. "White progressives are the worst. Our identity is very much rooted in being a nonracist. We really dance around it and avoid ever connecting ourselves to it."The irony is that people who refuse to use plain language while calling out racism are inadvertently reinforcing it, DiAngelo says."You actually end up protecting it when you don't name it," she says. "That's one of its means of operation -- to remain unnamed and unmarked."He's not a 'racist,' he's a 'racialist'I first became aware of this racial doublespeak when I heard someone describe another person not as a racist but as a "racialist."I'd never heard the word before. I looked it up and it is an actual word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It's a person who believes that "race determines human traits and capacities." That was my first of many forays into the world of racial doublespeak.You get this dynamic where nobody wants to come out and call it what it is. White progressives are the worst. Our identity is very much rooted in being a nonracist. We really dance around it and avoid ever connecting ourselves to it. Robin DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility," on the habit of using euphemisms in place of the word "racism"Now, using euphemisms is not inherently wrong; sometimes it's the right thing to do. People might say someone "passed away" instead of "died" to soften the pain when talking to relatives.But there's something about race that brings out the need to reach for the euphemisms. Consider anti-Semitism as a comparison.How many different words are there to describe anti-Semitism? Whether someone paints a swastika on a synagogue wall or a nation murders millions of Jews, people normally describe these events as driven by anti-Semitism. People see anti-Semitism in events big and small -- it all springs from the same poisonous well.Why isn't racism perceived the same way? Why so many different terms for a sentiment that springs from the same place?The British comic troupe, Monty Python, was not known for its political commentary, but its classic "dead parrot" sketch offered a prelude to how Americans talk about racism.Perhaps it's because people are still negotiating what racism means.Using "racism" is the verbal equivalent of the nuclear option, says George Lakoff, author of "Don't Think of an Elephant!" a book that explains how language frames political debates.Lakoff says it's appropriate to use phrases like "racial resentment" because "racism has many manifestations." But using a blunt word like "racism" or "racist" can inflame rather than explain."They're fighting words," he says. "If you're going to get away from these fighting words and say that there's a particular aspect of race involved here, you don't want to say racist."She won't play the racist guessing gameBut some scholars who study language and race say there's another reason to avoid using those words:Most people use them in the wrong way.They think racism is about bad people who are intentionally mean to people of other races. That's all.But some who study racism say it's more like an iceberg -- 90% of it is submerged.They say it's not just about white hoods and racial slurs. Racism is a system of advantage that's based on race. It does most of its damage below the waterline: a criminal justice system that disproportionately targets people of color; students of color who are punished at a higher rate than their white peers; mortgage lenders that discriminate against Latino and black borrowers; job-seekers with "white-sounding" names who get more callbacks than those with "black-sounding" names.The iceberg metaphor is what Jennifer Roth-Gordon invokes when talking about racism. She's a linguistic and cultural anthropologist at the University of Arizona who teaches students about race. She tries to avoid using terms like "racist" or "racism."She says they shift the conversation back to people obsessing over individual behavior -- whether some person said or did something racist."When people are protesting racism with signs about love, they're playing into the game of people who want to define racism as hate," she says. "It sets this incredibly high bar for what it means to be racist: It has to be intentional. That's the top of the iceberg."When people are protesting racism with signs about love, they're playing into the game of people who want to define racism as hate. It sets this incredibly high bar for what it means to be racist: It has to be intentional. Jennifer Roth-Gordon, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of ArizonaRoth-Gordon prefers using more nuanced terms, like "racial anxiety" or "racial bias." It makes people less defensive and broadens the meaning of racism.It also avoids what she calls the racist "guessing game," says Roth-Gordon, who explores racism and language in her book, "Race and the Brazilian Body: Blackness, Whiteness, and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro." That's the game where the public obsesses over some individual getting caught committing some crude racial offense. Focus on that type of racism and you don't have to talk about the racism below the surface that many whites benefit from, she says."It's safe for white people to play this racist guessing game," she says. "They like the idea that there is some kind of meter or test and some kind of measure that once they start pulling up some of these other examples, they can safely say, 'I would never do that.'"They want to use the word 'racist' even moreYet there are others who say people need to call out racism by name, not with euphemisms.Reniqua Allen is a freelance journalist based in New York City who wrote an essay for The Guardian in 2013 entitled, "It's time to put a moratorium on the word 'racist.'" In it, she said the word had become overused to describe any racially negative situation. People need better words to talk about race, she said, ones that wouldn't automatically put people on the defensive."People were using 'racist' for every single thing that had to do with race,'' she says.Robin DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility," says some white people talk in ridiculous circles to avoid using the words "racism" or "racist."Five years later, her beliefs have changed."I actually want us to use the word 'racist' more," she says today. "I really do. We're afraid to call a spade a spade."The news cycle played a part. President Barack Obama experienced a torrent of racism, but people were afraid to call it out. Then came the election of Trump and the images of white men marching openly in Charlottesville, Virginia, preaching white supremacy.The issue also became personal. Allen says she has never been called the N-word so much as now. The abuse picked up after Trump became President, she says. Readers often post comments in her articles making fun of her name and calling her ghetto."I'm just done," she says. "I don't want to write people off. I want to give people the space to learn and grown about race. But I'm tired of being called a monkey."I can identify with some of Allen's experiences.Why I dread calling out racismA standard critique by the right is that people of color overuse the word "racist." We think of ourselves as victims too much. We want to make everything about race.I've seen those types of people in action. I had a high school buddy who wore a T-shirt that read, "Is it because I'm black?" We all laughed with him because we knew characters like that who seemed to see a racist conspiracy in everything.But over the years, I've discovered that many people of color have abandoned talking to white people too directly about racism. It's too much work and too much risk. We could lose friends, jobs and, in my case, relatives.My mother is white, and I've found that the most difficult conversations I've had about racism involve talks with the white side of my family. I dread it like going to the dentist.Not ever really saying how you feel, though, exacts a price. I call it the "black tax." That's probably not an original phrase, but it's the idea that suppressed emotion takes a toll. Sometimes, like Allen, I want people to plainly call out racism when they see it.That's why some people of color get so angry. We sometimes witness people engaging in all sorts of verbal gymnastics to avoid using the word. The implicit message is they know how to spot racism better than we do -- when our lives have literally depended on knowing how it operates. The temptation is to just shut down like Allen and write some people off.I'm just done. I don't want to write people off. I want to give people the space to learn and grown about race. But I'm tired of being called a monkey. Reniqua Allen, author of the essay, "It's time to put a moratorium on the word 'racist'"Still, everyone pays a price when people don't feel free to name what they see and hear, says DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility."She says she understands why it may be tactful at times to avoid calling someone or something racist. But that impulse can cross the line, and tact can become a cop-out."I wish we had new words, and yet at the same time, I wonder why. Why do we need new words?" she says. "What do you fear you lose, or what is at risk by naming it 'racism?'"For whom does that shut down the conversation? What is the pressure? Does that pressure lead us back to where we are today, where we're talking in ridiculous circles to avoid naming what it is?"The spread of racial doublespeak may get worse. Every week seems to bring yet another racial incident that grabs the headlines. The midterm elections are around the corner. And then the 2020 presidential race will begin.Some commentators say Trump deliberately stirs up racial wedge issues -- like denouncing the protests of police brutality by black NFL players -- to motivate white voters and distract from his legal problems and anemic poll numbers.But what will we do when someone says or does something transparently racist?Will we call out racism by name? Or will we start talking like the Monty Python pet shop owner who kept insisting the dead parrot was just resting?We can find a new word to disguise an unpleasant reality, but it won't change what everyone else can see.

John Blake, CNN

2018-11-09 17:35:06

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/09/us/georgia-florida-governors-races-analysis/index.html

Analysis: The question now facing Democrats - CNN

If Democrats hope to take back the White House, they will have to do better than mobilize those who don't normally vote in midterms. Florida -- and maybe Georgia -- shows that won't be enough. They will have to wake up the "too woke to vote" crowd.

us, Analysis: The question now facing Democrats - CNN

Analysis: The question now facing Democrats: How to wake up the 'too woke to vote' crowd

(CNN)If you talk politics in the black community, you've probably run across this character:The "too woke to vote" nonvoter.They follow elections. They hate racism. They talk all day about "The Man" oppressing their people.They're just too hip to vote because they think America is too irredeemably racist for voting to make a difference.They are gripped by what one writer calls "the highest level of woke-osity."Read MoreAfter Tuesday's midterms -- when one black candidate for governor narrowly lost in Florida and another trailed in a Georgia race still too close to call -- I wondered what those "too woke to vote" were telling their voting friends and families now.It's not a trivial question. How those conversations go could affect what happens in the 2020 presidential election.Republican Ron DeSantis wins Florida governor election, CNN projectsIf Democrats hope to take back the White House in two years, they will have to do better than mobilize people who don't normally vote in the midterms. Florida -- and maybe Georgia -- shows that won't be enough.They will have to mobilize people who don't normally vote at all.And that means waking up the "too woke to vote" crowd. There was a lot of hope riding on the candidacies of Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams. Gillum lost his bid to become the first black governor of Florida, a crucial swing state. And Abrams is trying to become the country's first black female governor. Though she has yet to concede, her opponent, Republican Brian Kemp, has declared victory.Both Gillum and Abrams attracted the support of former President Barack Obama and black celebrities. Both had to contend with opponents who employed tactics that seemed, at least to some, straight out of the Jim Crow playbook, including racist rhetoric and the use of a term that once seemed relegated to the history books: complaints of "outside agitators." There were also allegations of voter suppression.But Abrams' and Gillum's supporters hoped they could overcome those obstacles by turning out voters who don't normally vote in midterm elections.Georgia governor's race is still undecided as votes continue to be countedIt wasn't enough in Florida, and it may not have been enough in Georgia -- in part because Republicans did the same, and perhaps even better.President Trump matched the enthusiasm of progressive voters in those states by mobilizing his white, rural base with promises to protect them from, as Peter Beinhart wrote in The Atlantic, "Latino murderers and women who destroy men's lives by alleging sexual assault."The harsh truth is this: Racism often works," Beinhart said. "Cross-racial coalitions for economic justice are the exception in American history. Mobilizing white people to protect their racial dominance is the norm. The lesson of 2018 is that American politics is not reverting to 'normal.' In many ways, Trumpism is normal.''Whether Democrats can get those "too woke to vote" to the polls will be crucial to the party's success.This issue isn't abstract to me.One of my best friends in Atlanta is "too woke to vote." He studies black history, loves the Black Panthers, talks constantly about racism. But he won't vote.Just two weeks ago, we had an impassioned argument about the importance of voting. I told him I didn't care who he voted for; just vote.Abrams campaign: We don't accept Kemp declaring himself the winner in Georgia governor raceThe discussion got so heated that he stepped away from me as I raised my voice. We changed the subject to safer ground: sports and women.It made me think about what writer and poet Michael Harriot said in a 2017 essay in The Root:"You can't have an intelligent conversation with someone with a Ph.D. in wokeology because, when losing an argument, they can always counter actual facts with: 'Who told you that? The white man?'"Still, after Tuesday, I wanted to know what my "too woke to vote" friend thought.What would he make of an election where the President of the United States aired an ad that was so racist that some networks, including Fox News, refused to air it? What would he think about the cartoonishly racist robo-calls directed against black candidates? What would he think about the Republican who successfully ran against Gillum in Florida and warned voters not to "monkey this up" by electing his black opponent?Most important: Did he have any second thoughts about not casting a ballot for Abrams, despite the narrow outcome of her race?Midterm results that will shape America's futureHe cut right to the chase and flashed his Ph.D. in wokeology: He told me he figured Abrams' opponent would win because, as Georgia's secretary of state until Thursday, he oversaw the election."I don't regret not voting and I don't plan on voting going forward," he told me. "I have absolutely no trust or faith in the US political and justice system."Someone I know on Facebook put it more succinctly:"F--- the vote."If Democrats hope to win in 2020, they must somehow do what Obama did in 2008: cut through a lifetime of cynicism among those who think the system is rigged and that change is impossible -- and get them to the polls.And they must somehow do it after two charismatic black candidates in the South failed to win two big elections after both seemed like they had so much going for them.

John Blake, CNN

2018-10-16 11:32:38

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/us/eugenics-craze-america-pbs/index.html

When Americans tried to breed a better race: How a genetic fitness 'crusade' marches on - CNN

Years before Nazis preached about a master race, millions of Americans tried to breed a better, and whiter, race. A new PBS film looks at "The Eugenics Crusade" that caused leaders to sterilize scores of Americans deemed genetically unfit.

us, When Americans tried to breed a better race: How a genetic fitness 'crusade' marches on - CNN

When Americans tried to breed a better race: How a genetic fitness 'crusade' marches on

(CNN)They started swarming across America's border, millions of desperate families fleeing poverty or seeking political asylum. But many people were repelled by their presence. Some warned that the country was facing a "genetic invasion" and that whites were "losing the demographic game." Another said, "There will no longer be an America for Americans." One leader even thought of a radical way to keep them out. "Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races?" he asked. Adolf Hitler wrote a fan letter to one of the eugenics leaders in the United States because he was so inspired by the man's ideas. That scenario may sound familiar, but it's actually a description of early 20th century America. The country was gripped by a demographic panic. That fear, along with mounting anxieties about crime and poverty, led to one of the most shameful episodes in American history. Read More "The Eugenics Crusade," an American Experience film that premiered on PBS Tuesday night, recounts how America responded to those fears. The country's leaders tried to breed a better race, and millions of American citizens were enthusiastic backers. It was an ugly time. The eugenics mania that swept the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to forced sterilizations and the passage of laws in 27 states designed to limit the numbers of those considered genetically unfit: immigrants, Jews, African-Americans, the mentally ill and those deemed "morally delinquent." How American laws inspired the Nazis The engrossing two-hour film, though, is about something deeper than science. It is about fear -- how fear of "the other" can corrupt even the most brilliant minds. The film shows how an iconic inventor, a Nobel physics laureate and a brilliant Supreme Court justice all embraced the pseudoscience. The crusade also found champions in social reformers like birth control proponent Margaret Sanger and W.E.B. DuBois, one of the founders of the NAACP. DuBois saw no irony in calling for African-Americans to "breed for better brains, for efficiency, for beauty."It's a nasty part of our country's history that's not very fun to confront. It's not very pretty to think about ways in which Nazi eugenics policies were practically modeled on American eugenics policies. Nathaniel Comfort, author of "The Science of Human Perfection," on the eugenics craze that swept America in the early 20th century The film, written and directed by Michelle Ferrari, is filled with jaw-dropping moments: newsreel footage of white American families merrily competing in "genetic fitness" contests at state fairs where they were measured like livestock; a retelling of a pivotal court case where a teenage mother was forcibly sterilized by her mother; and the story of how the irrepressible inventor of Kellogg's Corn Flakes became a champion of eugenics. One the most chilling parts of the film, which is available online, involves an appearance by Adolf Hitler. Ferrari shows how America's sterilization policies inspired Nazi Germany's leaders to launch their own eugenics program, which later led to genocide. Hitler actually wrote a fan letter to one of the biggest backers of eugenics in America, a wealthy lawyer named Madison Grant, who wrote a book, "The Passing of a Great Race." "Your book was my bible," Hitler told Grant. Few people today, however, know about this period in American history. "It's like this dirty secret that people whisper to each other once in a while," says Nathaniel Comfort, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who is featured in the film. "It's uncomfortable. It's ugly," Comfort says. "It's a nasty part of our country's history that's not very fun to confront. It's not very pretty to think about ways in which Nazi eugenics policies were practically modeled on American eugenics policies." Why eugenics was so seductive Behind every movement there's a powerful personality. The eugenics crusade had Charles Davenport, a slender, Ivy League-educated scientist whose dignified demeanor exuded an air of authority. The PBS film shows why Davenport was the right man to spread the wrong idea. He was ambitious, a shrewd manipulator of the media, and he knew how to attract the support of wealthy patrons to spread his eugenics ideas to powerful politicians. It was Davenport who called for a wall to be built around America to keep out the "cheaper races."Eugenics had won such mainstream acceptance that Americans competed in "fitter families" contests at state fairs during the 1920s. Davenport was inspired by the work of Sir Francis Galton, who is credited with starting the eugenics movement during the late 19th century. A cousin of the famed naturalist Charles Darwin, Galton theorized that humans could control their own evolution. His proposal: Pair the most intelligent and fit so that their children would boost the "breeding stock" of the human race. That proposition, of course, led to the next question: What do we do about those deemed not fit or intelligent? The eugenics crusade provided a monstrous answer: Ban them from reproducing. The solution was so seductive because it bore the authority of science. The America of the early 20th century was torn by social ills: massive inequality, urban squalor, tensions over immigration. Eugenics gave reformers a scientific answer to these problems. If social ills were caused by "feebleminded" people with bad genes, as many eugenics champions argued, why not make the world better by eliminating bad genes?"Just as we have strains of scholars, military men, we have strains of paupers, of sex offenders, strains with strong tendencies toward larceny, assault, lying, running away," Davenport once told a reporter. "The costs to society of these strains is enormous." It was a planned extinction of the most marginalized people in society -- dressed up as a way to better society. Why eugenics ideas persist The crusade to build a better race eventually became a quest to build a whiter race. The film shows how lobbying from eugenics proponents helped push Congress to pass the Immigration Act of 1924. It banned the entry of Asian immigrants and limited Eastern and Southern Europeans for more than four decades. "To some extent humanity has always been about 'othering' -- there's us and there's the other," says Adam Cohen, a writer and historian featured in the film. "The eugenics movement gave this scientific punch to this idea that there's us and there are others, and we are the right people. We're the people that's not only important to favor now, but we're the people who have to own the future." The film shows how the eugenics crusade was finally stopped by several factors: A counterattack from the scientific community, changing attitudes toward poverty triggered by the Great Depression, and later revelations about Nazi atrocities. But the core idea of eugenics -- an overwhelming faith that everything in human nature is determined by our genes -- persists, says Comfort, author of "The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Become the Heart of American Medicine." He calls this notion "genetic determinism" and alluded to some of its assumptions in a recent article for Nature magazine. Want to explain why students of color do poorly on tests? Look at their genes, the theory goes, not lack of support. To some extent humanity has always been about 'othering' -- there's us and there's the other. The eugenics movement gave this scientific punch to this idea that there's us and there are others, and we are the right people. We're the people that's not only important to favor now, but we're the people who have to own the future. Adam Cohen, author of "Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck" "But the benefits of good teaching, of school lunches and breakfasts, of having textbooks and air conditioning and heating and plumbing have been established irrefutably," Comfort writes. "And they actually are causal: We know why stable blood sugar improves mental concentration." Then there is another disturbing shadow from the eugenics movement that lingers. People talk openly now about creating "designer babies" due to advances in gene therapy. This is the world envisioned in sci-fi movies like "Gattaca," where society is divided between wealthy people who engineer physically perfect babies and those who can only have children the natural way. Comfort writes that such a world would be a nightmare: "People would be defined at birth by their DNA. Expectations would be set, and opportunities, resources and experiences would be doled out — and withheld — a priori, before anyone has had a chance to show their mettle."Comfort is not so sure that humanity can resist the eugenics impulse to breed better human beings. The belief that genes are the primary determinant of a person's success is seductive because it can absolve people of blame, he says. "The allure of the innate is very real. Genes. Blood. Your basic inborn identity. It sounds like the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything," Comfort says. "What makes a eugenicist is this overwhelming faith that everything in human nature is determined by your genes," he says. "This takes different forms in different places. We need to know how it manifests itself in these different periods right down to this day." In some ways the eugenics crusade marches on.

John Blake, CNN

2018-11-02 00:41:00

politics

politics

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/politics/trump-ad-blake-analysis/index.html

Analysis: Trump is making racism boring again - CNNPolitics

President Donald Trump may be on the verge on doing something that arguably no American leader has ever done:

politics, Analysis: Trump is making racism boring again - CNNPolitics

Analysis: Trump is making racism boring again

(CNN)President Donald Trump may be on the verge on doing something that arguably no American leader has ever done:Make racism boring.When Trump released an ad Thursday demonizing Mexicans and blaming Democrats for allowing an undocumented immigrant who was convicted of killing police officers to stay in the United States, some called it Willie Horton 2.0.Horton was an African American man who was the subject of a notorious campaign ad released by an independent group of supporters of George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign. The scowling image of Horton, a convicted murderer and rapist, was shown all across America. The ad, which was shocking at the time, was credited with sinking the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis.But this is a different America and a different President. Will it have the same impact?Read MoreMaybe not, and here's why.Trump shocks with racist new ad days before midterms President George H. W. Bush was a patrician politician who was never known as a racial demagogue. He was lampooned in Saturday Night Live sketches as a nerdy wimp. There was a shock element at the time that supporters of the Bush campaign would release such a blatantly racist ad.Is anyone shocked that Trump would release such an ad?"This has been Donald Trump's playbook for so long," Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez told CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time."Trump's ad comes a week before the midterm elections. Trump and the conservative media machine have been on a tear recently, warning Americans about the migrants headed north. They've implied that these migrants might have rabies and smallpox and they may be infiltrated with Middle Easterners and gang members. Trump's racist video is part of a broader GOP midterm strategy aimed at the conservative baseIf any other President said this, it could have ended their political career. But this is already a President who said African immigrants come from "shithole" countries, who once suggested that some Mexican immigrants were "rapists," and who started his political career with a racist conspiracy theory that suggested that the nation's first black President was actually born in Kenya and forged his birth certificate.Does this new ad from Trump really shock anyone?Trump has often been called the first "Reality TV" president. It's long been noted that he knows how to say outrageous things and concoct colorful bad guys to keep his base and the media riled up.But commentators have recently noted that his rallies are being held at smaller venues and have not drawn the crowds they once did; and he's losing support in the Midwestern states that propelled him into the Oval Office. After Trump recently said he might revoke birthright citizenship, some commentators said all Trump has left to offer is "racial panic." Trump may now be on the verge of being that Reality TV star who is losing his ratings because he can no longer shock anymore.There will probably always be a segment of Americans who respond to raw racial appeals. But racism has more impact when it's cloaked. Racism, of course, was never "boring" to many, such as the victims of lynchings. Yet there was a time when white supremacy was woven so deeply into the fabric of ordinary American life that it seemed almost mundane, just another part of ordinary life.That's part of the reason why the Horton ad was so effective -- it was cloaked. It was positioned as a he's-not-tough-enough-on-crime attack against a candidate, when it was really saying he's a wussy liberal who won't protect your family against the big bad black man.Trump's recent ad and his recent rhetoric take away that cloak.But more than anything, through the sheer volume of repetition, it can cause people to tune Trump out. And when they tune you out, that is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a man like Trump.Racism works best when it's cloaked. Make it too raw and repeat it too much and we may soon find out that what once worked in 1988 will no longer persuade most Americans. We'll find out next week if this is true.

John Blake, CNN

2018-02-22 13:53:37

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/us/billy-graham-mlk-civil-rights/index.html

Where Billy Graham 'missed the mark' - CNN

He is widely considered America's greatest pastor, but Billy Graham refused to take a clear stand against the greatest moral evil America faced in his day, some say.

us, Where Billy Graham 'missed the mark' - CNN

Where Billy Graham 'missed the mark'

(CNN)The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. electrified the nation when he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, but there was another famous American pastor who was not impressed.Billy Graham, who had refused to participate in the 1963 March on Washington, dismissed King's belief that protests could create a "Beloved Community" in America where even "down in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls.""Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children," Graham said after King's speech.Graham's response to the epic march raises a question about his legacy that some scholars and activists have asked for years: How can anyone call Graham a great pastor when he refused to take a clear, unequivocal public stand against the greatest moral evil America faced in his day: racial segregation?Billy Graham, whose 'matchless voice changed the lives of millions,' dies at 99Graham occasionally preached racial tolerance and held integrated crusades during the civil rights era. But even some of his biggest supporters say Graham accepted segregation at some of his crusades, criticized marches and sit-ins, and would not risk his popularity by confronting segregation head-on.Read MoreOne Graham biographer says he even tried to sabotage the civil rights movement."There wasn't a major Protestant leader in America who obstructed King's Beloved Community more than Billy Graham did," says Michael E. Long, author of "Billy Graham and the Beloved Community: America's Evangelist and the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.""Graham was constantly making statements opposing King and his dream," says Long, an associate professor of religion at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. "Graham's legacy is definitely tarnished by the way he approached racial justice."Questions about Graham's response toward racism have lingered for years. But criticism of the evangelist gradually receded as he became an American folk hero in his old age. When the 99-year-old evangelist died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina on Wednesday, he was known as "America's pastor." Presidents sought his counsel. Millions packed stadiums for his crusades. And through it all, no scandal ever besmirched Graham during his six decades in the public eye.But any look at Graham's legacy that does not examine his actions during the civil rights movement is incomplete, some scholars say. Graham's rise coincided with the most turbulent years of the movement, when pastors and public figures were forced to make choices that would define them for the rest of their lives.Civil rights coward or hero?For some, Graham was a civil rights hero. They say he was a close friend and collaborator with King, that he insisted on integrating his crusades in the segregated South, and that he preached a gospel of racial tolerance so forcefully that some of his fellow Southerners called him a communist and a "nigger lover." Graham actually helped dismantle segregation, says Steven P. Miller, author of "Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South." There wasn't a major Protestant leader in America who obstructed King's Beloved Community more than Billy Graham did.Michael E. Long, author of "Billy Graham and the Beloved Community: America's Evangelist and the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr."Graham contributed to the theological defeat of segregation," Miller tells CNN. "He could reach an audience that civil rights activists obviously could not. And on several notable occasions, he made a point of using that sway to link his evangelistic message with racial tolerance."For others, Graham was a civil rights coward. They say he distorted his relationship with King, that his nods to racial tolerance were token and inconsistent, and that he refused to risk his fame by championing the movement while other white ministers lost their jobs, and lives, for their activism. Even some of Graham's biggest admirers say his stance on racism during the 1950s and '60s was wobbly. William Martin, professor emeritus of religion and public policy at Rice University in Texas, is credited with writing the definitive biography of Graham, "A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story." Martin's book, which contains the story of Graham's dismissal of King's "Dream" speech, is filled with unabashed admiration for his subject and has been cited by Graham admirers. Yet even Martin's book shows that Graham's conduct during the heyday of the civil rights movement was anything but resolute. According to Martin, Graham would preach that "all men are created equal under God," but backtracked when segregationists criticized him by saying he "followed the existing social customs" in whatever region of the country he preached. He sometimes accepted segregated seating at his crusades for fear of offending whites. And, according to Martin, Graham once told a Southern newspaper that the Bible "has nothing to say about segregation or non-segregation."Graham wasn't callous about racism; he wanted to be popular, Martin wrote."Graham clearly felt an obligation to speak against segregation, but he also believed his first duty was to appeal to as many people as possible. Sometimes he found these two convictions difficult to reconcile," Martin wrote in "A Prophet with Honor." There were times that Graham took a stand against racism, according to Martin.How Billy Graham became the most famous preacher in AmericaAs early as 1953, Graham told a Chattanooga, Tennessee, crusade that he would not accept the usual practice of segregated seating and personally removed the ropes marking the section for blacks. He declared in a newspaper column that the Bible did not teach racial superiority. He privately urged segregationist Southern governors to "consider the racial problem from a spiritual point of view."Those actions might seem tepid today, especially in contrast to King's speeches, writings and street protests. But Martin points out that Graham was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the reign of Jim Crow. His father used the n-word, whites were taught that blacks were inferior, and many evangelical Christians in the North as well as the South saw no contradiction between supporting segregation and being a Christian."Of course he could have spoken out more forcefully against segregation, but he spoke out more forcefully than anybody expected him," Martin says. "Graham was never out in front of the parade on segregation, but he was always out in front of his unit."Theology vs. the movementGraham's reluctance to embrace the civil rights movement wasn't just complicated by his yearning for popularity. It was stymied by his theology, several scholars say.His message was relentlessly focused on one goal: saving souls for Jesus. Graham spoke of racism as "a heart problem" that could be solved simply by converting people to Christianity, says Lewis V. Baldwin, professor emeritus of religious studies at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. King and other pastors thought Graham's approach was narrow, that unjust laws and institutions promoting racism had to be changed, not just people's hearts, Baldwin says.Graham, though, could not embrace a Christianity that went beyond saving souls, says Baldwin, author of "The Voice of Conscience: The Church in the Mind of Martin Luther King Jr."10 things you didn't know about Billy Graham"He opposed racism and segregation in principle but refused to consistently attack it publicly and also refused to march with King and other ministers who protested against these social evils," Baldwin says. "This is where Graham missed the mark."At times, Graham even criticized civil rights marchers. Graham condemned the civil disobedience tactics they used during the 1965 campaign in Selma, Alabama, Martin wrote in "A Prophet without Honor." An act of civil disobedience produced one of the most galvanizing moments in the movement: Unarmed demonstrators marching for the right to vote were filmed being beaten by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge for refusing an order to disperse.Footage of that march shocked the nation and eventually led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.According to Martin's biography, Graham said at the time that only "a spiritual and moral awakening" would solve the nation's race problems, adding that "if the law says that I cannot march or I cannot demonstrate, I ought not to march and I ought not to demonstrate." "Billy Graham was uncomfortable with confrontation," Martin says. "He wanted to move along in an orderly fashion. He wasn't comfortable with some of MLK's tactics."MLK, friend or foe?The times, though, called for confrontation, King preached, and that belief produced tension between the civil rights leader and Graham.The nature of Graham's relationship with King is the subject of an ongoing dispute between Graham supporters and civil rights veterans and historians. Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor' Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Evangelist Billy Graham, who reached millions of people through his Christian rallies and developed a relationship with every US president since Harry Truman, died Wednesday, February 21, at the age of 99.Hide Caption 1 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'A school portrait of Graham, age 17, in 1935. After high school, Graham moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Tennessee to enroll in the conservative Christian school Bob Jones College. He then transferred to the Florida Bible Institute. He was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1939 and quickly gained a reputation as an evangelical preacher.Hide Caption 2 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preaches in the early 1950s. He said he became "born again" after hearing an evangelist at a tent meeting in 1934.Hide Caption 3 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham reads on an airplane during a "Pulpit in the Sky" trip in 1953.Hide Caption 4 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses a crowd in London's Trafalgar Square in 1954. Graham's London crusade lasted 12 weeks and drew huge crowds.Hide Caption 5 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to soccer fans in London during halftime of a match between Chelsea and Newcastle United.Hide Caption 6 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In the 1950s, Graham began a weekly Sunday night radio program, "The Hour of Decision."Hide Caption 7 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham embraces his family upon his return from his "Crusade for Christ" tour in the 1950s. With him from left are his wife, Ruth, and his daughters Anne, Virginia and Ruth (Bunny).Hide Caption 8 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1957, Graham's crusade at New York's Madison Square Garden ran nightly for 16 weeks.Hide Caption 9 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits with Graham at the White House in 1957.Hide Caption 10 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Supporters greet Graham upon his arrival in New York in 1959. Graham and his wife were returning from a six-month speaking tour that included stops in Australia and the Soviet Union.Hide Caption 11 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1960, Graham explains the Bible to Waarusha warriors in Tanzania.Hide Caption 12 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham visits with children during a trip to Ghana in 1960.Hide Caption 13 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits in a jungle clearing a few miles from Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1960.Hide Caption 14 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits with US President John F. Kennedy.Hide Caption 15 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham gets a kiss from his wife, Ruth, after they returned to the United States following a tour in Africa and the Middle East.Hide Caption 16 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preached that racial segregation was unbiblical, but some civil rights rights leaders criticized him for not being more involved in the civil rights movement. Graham asked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver a prayer at a Madison Square Garden crusade in New York in 1957.Hide Caption 17 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham dictates a synopsis of his evening sermon into a tape recorder in 1962. Secretaries would then type the synopsis for distribution to the press. Graham was conducting an eight-day crusade in Fresno, California.Hide Caption 18 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham appears in the 1963 documentary "The World's Greatest Showman: The Legend of Cecil B. DeMille."Hide Caption 19 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses the congregation at the opening of a 32-day London crusade in 1966.Hide Caption 20 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to more than 5,000 US troops in Vietnam in 1966.Hide Caption 21 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses an audience in 1967. He was frequently listed by Gallup as one of the "Ten Most Admired Men in the World."Hide Caption 22 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham is flanked by US President Richard Nixon, left, and Vice President Spiro Agnew as they bow their heads in prayer in 1969. Graham was speaking at Nixon's inauguration.Hide Caption 23 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham rides a donkey in Jerusalem while visiting the city in 1969.Hide Caption 24 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to a crowd of 18,000 on the closing night of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1974.Hide Caption 25 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1978. Inclement weather had forced the crusade to the nearby Mid-South Coliseum, but when the clouds lifted, Graham went to the stadium to speak to those who could not get into the smaller indoor arena.Hide Caption 26 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham and his wife visit her birthplace in Huaiyin, China, in 1988. They were married for 64 years until her death in 2007.Hide Caption 27 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham takes a boat ride with US President George H.W, Bush near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1989.Hide Caption 28 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preaches in New York's Central Park in 1991. It was his first appearance in New York City since 1970. The crowd was estimated at 200,000.Hide Caption 29 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham stands next to singer Johnny Cash in New York's Central Park.Hide Caption 30 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Pope John Paul II meets with Graham at the Vatican in 1993. Graham had often been called the "Protestant Pope."Hide Caption 31 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1996, House Speaker Newt Gingrich presents Graham with a Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony on Capitol Hill.Hide Caption 32 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham gestures as he speaks to a capacity crowd at Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1996.Hide Caption 33 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1997, Graham gave the invocation at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton.Hide Caption 34 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham greets Chinese President Jiang Zemin at a California luncheon in 1997.Hide Caption 35 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Former first lady Nancy Reagan greets Graham at the gala dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.Hide Caption 36 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Presidential candidate George W. Bush meets with Graham in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2000. Years earlier, Bush said, a conversation with Graham had helped lead him to give up drinking.Hide Caption 37 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to a crowd at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2004. Over the course of his career, Graham preached to more than 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories.Hide Caption 38 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham leads his "last crusade" at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York in 2005. He spoke to more than 230,000 people.Hide Caption 39 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits in his mountain home in Montreat, North Carolina, in 2006.Hide Caption 40 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham and his son Franklin attend the Metro Maryland Festival in 2006. The three-day program was led by Franklin.Hide Caption 41 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'US President Barack Obama meets with Graham at his Montreat home in 2010.Hide Caption 42 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks with Graham and his son Franklin during a visit to Montreat in 2012.Hide Caption 43 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Well-wishers gather with Graham at his 95th birthday celebration in 2013.Hide Caption 44 of 44Graham supporters say the pastors were friends and collaborators. They point out that King accepted Graham's invitation to deliver an opening prayer at a 1957 crusade in New York. They say King asked Graham to call him "Mike," a name reserved for King's closest friends. They say Graham even bailed King out of jail.King did indeed praise Graham for his stance on civil rights. After the 1957 New York crusade, King wrote Graham thanking him for his "courageous" stand on race relations. He then urged him to take his integrated crusades to the Deep South, according to a letter collected in the King Papers Project, a collection of King's speeches, unpublished manuscripts and other written works held at Stanford University in California."You have courageously brought the Christian gospel to bear on the question of race in all of its urgent dimensions," King wrote Graham in a letter dated August 31, 1957.A year later, King's tone shifted. He wrote Graham urging him to rescind his invitation to a segregationist governor to open a crusade rally. King told Graham that allowing Price Daniel, Texas' governor at the time, to open the rally could imply endorsement of discrimination and that Graham should "make crystal clear" his position on segregation.Of course he could have spoken out more forcefully against segregation, but he spoke out more forcefully than anybody expected him. Graham was never out in front of the parade on segregation, but he was always out in front of his unit.William Martin, author of "A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story."Graham did not respond in writing to King, but his adviser and childhood companion, Grady Wilson, quickly wrote back, brushing aside King's request.In his letter, also in the King Papers Project, Wilson told King that Graham "has never engaged in politics on one side or the other." He also told King that Graham loved the governor despite his views and "frankly, I think that should be your position."The most controversial claim about King and Graham's relationship is that the civil rights leader blessed Graham's decision not to march with civil rights demonstrators. That claim comes from a popular story told by Graham supporters. They say King and Graham made a deal: Graham would confine his message to his crusades, while King would take his message to the streets.Graham spread that story himself. There are scattered examples in audio recordings and in print -- including "Billy Graham and the Beloved Community" -- of Graham telling a variation of the same story.The author of that book, Long, quotes Graham saying about King:"He said, 'Billy ... I think you ought to do just what you're doing -- have integrated crusades in these stadiums. That helps prepare the way for me in the South ... but if you go to the streets, your people will desert you, and you won't have the opportunity to have these integrated crusades.' "Martin, author of "A Prophet with Honor," says he's never seen evidence of such an agreement but wouldn't be surprised if it happened."I don't think Billy Graham would have made up such a conversation," Martin says. "I don't know that King ever denied it."Those who were part of King's inner circle, though, said they never heard of that conversation or any deal.When asked if Graham and King were friends and collaborators, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a close friend of King, chuckled.Billy Graham Fast Facts"No, that's language," says Vivian, who was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his civil rights activism. "I don't remember such a time, and I was with Dr. King a long time, and with him at every major stand," Vivian says. "It's hard to find pictures of the two together."The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was also part of King's inner circle at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, described King's relationship with Graham as cordial but tinged with conflict. "I'm not aware that they were close friends," Lowery says. "Nor would I consider him a strong partner of Dr. King. I'm aware that they knew each other and engaged in conversations from time to time."Lowery doesn't think King made any deal with Graham."I never heard that," Lowery says. "Dr. King would not have made any kind of deal with anybody. Dr. King was his own man. Dr. King was critical of Billy Graham and his failure to speak out on segregation issues." There's another story that others tell about a suggested deal between Graham and King that sends a far different message. In "Parting the Waters," the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of King, author Taylor Branch wrote that King once approached Graham with a proposal: I'll participate in your crusades if you speak out more against segregation. Graham refused, Branch wrote, because he was concerned about becoming too political. The notion that Graham and King would have been collaborators is far-fetched, says Miller, author of "Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South." Miller says he also never found proof that Graham bailed King out of jail, as some Graham supporters have claimed."There were dreams of a King-Graham alliance but it never came about," Miller says. "Graham was never one to seek out controversy. Formally associating with King would have been a huge risk and a significant departure from the way Graham normally approached evangelism."Foe of the movement?Another perspective on Graham's stance toward the civil rights movement is even more critical. One scholar says Graham tried to undermine the movement.Long, author of "Billy Graham and the Beloved Community," says Graham was a constant critic of the movement and tried to shift blame away from his native South whenever King shined a spotlight on the region's racism.Long also says Graham personally lobbied President Dwight D. Eisenhower to ignore the racial crisis in the South, that he told a white audience in Charlotte in 1958 that demonic hordes were the real source behind the country's racial problems, and that he wrote a 1960 article for U.S. News and World Report tacitly defending Southern resistance to integration.US presidents mourn death of Billy Graham"The Bible also recognizes that each individual has the right to choose his own friendships and social relationships," Graham wrote. "I am convinced that forced integration will never work. You cannot make two races love each other and accept each other at the point of bayonets."Graham missed a chance to change history because he could have made a major difference if he had become an ally of the movement, Long says. He had a personal bond with white fundamentalists that no other pastor could duplicate."The conservative whites who were opposed to integration and yet felt some sort of Christian pull to consider their black brothers and sisters beloved by God had nobody like King leading them," Long says. "If Graham had come out vocally for King and the movement early on, he could have made a huge impact in advancing equality for all Americans."How Graham thought about his actions during those turbulent years is difficult to tease out from the historical record. According to Martin in "A Prophet with Honor," Graham appeared to signal some regret during an address to students in Hawaii in the mid-1960s."It's true I haven't been to jail yet," Graham is quoted as saying. "I underscore the word 'yet.' Maybe I haven't done all I could or should do."At least one close friend of King had no doubt that Graham evolved on issues of race. "He was late coming to it, but the reasons he did not speak out, I am not certain," Vivian says. "I wouldn't want to accuse a man who was trying as much as possible to win souls for Christ."Vivian then told a story to show why he believed that Graham had evolved.In June 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention met in Atlanta for its annual assembly and passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and condemning racial injustice. The convention was formed in the 19th century when its Northern and Southern members split over the issue.Graham rose from his sickbed to travel to Atlanta, where he publicly applauded his fellow Southern Baptists for their resolution. He was greeted with cheers and a standing ovation."I want to say, thank God. That'll help my ministry all over the world," Graham said of the resolution.Too little, too late? Not for Vivian. What's important is not what Graham did or said in the 1950s and '60s, Vivian says:"It's how he ended up." For one Graham scholar, questions about Graham's stance on race do not diminish his legacy. "It helps us keep his legacy in perspective," says Miller. "It points to Graham's limits, his humanity. To Graham's credit, he always acknowledged his own limitations."JUST WATCHEDTrump recalls seeing Billy Graham with fatherReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH (9 Videos)Trump recalls seeing Billy Graham with fatherEvangelist Billy Graham has died Graham: I was faithful to the messageBilly Graham unafraid of death (2005)Billy Graham's 1991 interview on retiringBilly Graham: Part of life is pain (1998)Billy Graham delivers 9/11 sermon (2001)Billy Graham at Clinton inauguration (1993) Graham attends library ceremony (2010)

Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN Photographs by Melissa Golden/Redux and Nichole Sobecki for CNN

2018-03-28 14:02:11

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/28/us/travel-ban-somali-refugees-one-year-later/index.html

Trump's travel ban stranded her. America welcomed her. - CNN

For this Somali refugee and her family, making it to the United States was the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

us, Trump's travel ban stranded her. America welcomed her. - CNN

Trump's travel ban stranded her. Then America welcomed her.

Atlanta (CNN)Batulo weaves through the crush of passengers streaming down the train station stairs. It is loud -- so loud. Suitcases rumble and announcements blare and no one seems to know which way to go.But Batulo heads directly for the airport entrance. She watches the crowd thin as people pass through the sliding doors. Like a tide spreading across the sand, travelers scatter in every direction. To many people, it looks like chaos. It did to Batulo the first time she arrived here a year ago. But now she sees things differently. She can already tell today will be quieter than usual at the world's busiest airport. The rhythms of this place have become as familiar to her as a verse in the Quran.Read MoreShe gets in line at the employee entrance, a black bag slung over her shoulders, a bright pink pin on her hijab that says "#KEEPON." As she waits to pass through security, Batulo stands just a few feet from the spot where her world changed: the red line on the floor that says, "DO NOT ENTER." Lost and foundBatulo's father, Abdalla, didn't obey the warning. The second he saw her, he sprinted past airport police. He ignored shouts to stop. He ran over the red line, swept Batulo off her feet and carried her across the arrivals lobby.Batulo's family excitedly awaited her arrival at the Atlanta airport in February 2017. Once they reunited, the happy mood swiftly turned somber as emotions overcame them. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)For weeks, Abdalla had been terrified he would never see his oldest daughter again. She was stranded and alone in a Kenyan refugee camp, where daily life was difficult and dangerous. He was here, thousands of miles away, unable to protect her.Abdalla Ramadhan Munye and his wife, Habibo Mohamed, arrived in the United States days before Donald Trump's inauguration. They had seven children in tow -- two daughters, three sons and a niece and nephew they'd been raising for a decade. Batulo was supposed to follow about a week later.But the Trump administration's travel ban blocked her from boarding a flight to the United States. For nearly a month, the Somali refugee family lived separate lives on separate continents, begging authorities to help them live together again. Court orders blocking the travel ban answered their prayers.On a Wednesday night in February 2017, Batulo landed in Atlanta on an American Airlines flight. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion.But Batulo sobbed.JUST WATCHEDParents: 'We didn't intend to leave you behind'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHParents: 'We didn't intend to leave you behind' 05:20The airport was a maze of walkways, trains and signs she struggled to understand. When she couldn't find her way, she began to cry. A lanyard around her neck held an ID card from the International Organization for Migration."I am a refugee from SOMALIA," the card read. "I may not speak English and need help to find my next flight."Batulo froze at the foot of the escalator, afraid to take her first step on a contraption she'd never seen.A couple saw her struggling and helped her find her way. She never learned their names. She only remembers they were wearing blue.A new journey beginsChallenges of life in the United States were sharp at first. It was winter, and the biting cold pricked their skin like needles. Strangers' words were sometimes hard to understand. Even though Batulo and her family had found safety, they lived each day with fear for the friends and family they'd left behind.Batulo's oldest brother, Ramadhan, was still in Kakuma, the Kenyan refugee camp, waiting for the go-ahead to join his family in the United States. Would he ever get the chance, or would a new travel ban stop him from making the trip? The commotion of the airport frightened Batulo at first. Now she's familiar with the routines of this place, like the security line where she waits with other employees. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)There was so much uncertainty, but as the days passed, there was less and less time to wallow and worry. They had to improve their English. They had to find work. They had to learn to make it on their own.It's a well-worn path, traveled by more than 3 million refugees who've sought safety on US soil since 1975. But the journey has become far less frequent as the Trump administration increases immigration restrictions. In the year since Batulo arrived, about 26,000 refugees have resettled in the United States -- nearly a 75% drop from the same time period the previous year.For Batulo and her family, the stroke of a president's pen rewrote the story of their lives for weeks. But that was more than a year ago. Now new routines define their lives. They've found jobs at warehouses and chicken plants. The younger children study at a nearby elementary school. The older ones are taking GED classes at a technical college down the street. As they head to school or to work, they pass each other in the hallway of their three-bedroom apartment like gears cycling through a machine. Batulo puts an array of options on the table as she prepares breakfast in her apartment in the Atlanta suburb of Clarkston, Georgia. When she lived with her family in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp, food sometimes was scarce. (Melissa Golden/Redux and Nichole Sobecki for CNN) Batulo departed for the United States afraid of what she would find here. When she stepped onto a plane for her first flight, the Trump administration's travel ban was the only thing she knew about America and its people.Since then, there have been so many firsts. The first time Batulo saw snow. The first Ramadan feast in their new home. The first time an American man stood up on a crowded train and offered her a seat. The United States was more welcoming than she expected. But some of the firsts haven't been easy.A 'first' they didn't expectJuly 4 started well. Abdalla and his children took the bus to Walmart. His oldest son, Ramadhan, was finally about to arrive in America. The family wandered the brightly lit aisles and found chicken and fish to cook for a feast. But back at the apartment, when darkness fell, something terrifying happened.Abdalla heard sounds he never wanted to hear again.Sounds he heard in another home, thousands of miles away.By the numbers: How Batulo and her family fit inTotal refugees:22.5 million around the world3 million living in the USRefugees recently admitted to the US:96,874 in 2016 33,368 in 2017 4,978 so far this yearSomali refugees recently admitted to the US: 10,786 in 20162,770 in 201773 so far this yearSources: Pew Research Center, International Rescue Committee, US State Department, United NationsSounds he heard the day his oldest daughter was raped and killed.Sounds he heard when his family fled.Explosions. Gunfire. These are sounds you do not forget.To Abdalla, it sounded like Somalia.Only one explanation seemed possible: War had found his family here, too.He yelled for his children. They closed the windows and slammed the front door shut. They ran to their bedrooms and turned out the lights.Abdalla fumbled for his phone. In an orientation class after arriving here, he'd learned what to do in an emergency. Call 911.His son, Juma, told him to hold off. "This is a celebration," Juma said. The explosions weren't gunfire or sounds of war, he told his father. They were fireworks.Abdalla remembered something else he'd learned: that on July 4, Americans celebrate. But this, he thought, does not sound like a celebration. Even if it is, someone could hide in the commotion and attack.Abdalla's children filled balloons with money to welcome their oldest brother, Ramadhan, to the United States. The day before, the family panicked when they heard fireworks for the first time. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)His family kept their front door closed, afraid to go outside, until morning.It was their first Independence Day in America.On the jobOn Batulo's first day of her first job, the words that spilled out of customers' mouths sent her spinning. In Kakuma, the Kenyan refugee camp where she had lived for nearly a decade, she sometimes helped her mother with sewing. But before coming to America, she never had a job of her own. When Batulo arrived in the United States, she wanted to focus on her studies. She hopes to become a nurse someday, and she needs to get a GED before she can enroll in a college program.But first, she has to earn enough money to help her family pay rent. And like all refugees, she has to pay back the cost of the flights that brought her to the United States. So she asked for leads from the International Rescue Committee, the agency helping her family resettle in the United States. And a few months after her arrival, Batulo landed a job at a Dunkin' Donuts at the Atlanta airport.Batulo prepares to make a fresh pot of coffee at an airport Dunkin' Donuts, where she landed a job shortly after arriving in the United States. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)At first, Batulo bristled when customers asked for things she'd never heard of and glared at her when she didn't grasp what they said at the speed of light. Sometimes, they didn't seem to understand what she said, either. "Nonfat milk," one man said."Who's fat?" Batulo replied.Now, Batulo beams as she stands behind the Dunkin' Donuts cash register. She wears a Delta Airlines pin on her lapel -- a recent gift from a pilot. When she says "Hello sir" and "What'll you have, ma'am?" and "Please swipe your card for me," her voice is so confident and clear that you can hear it above the rumble of the rolling trash bin, above the honk of the cart zooming by, above the announcement every few minutes that Atlanta, Georgia, is in the eastern time zone. Sometimes, lost passengers stop and ask Batulo for directions. They don't always speak English, but Batulo does her best to point the way. The line of customers tapers off at times, but never disappears.Blonde girls with their hair in ponytails and sparkles on their backpacks. An old man with a bright red bandana in his pocket. Pilots in uniform fueling up for the night.Abdalla, Habibo and their youngest son, Ibrahim, walk with Ramadhan outside the Atlanta airport after reuniting with him there in July. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)At the world's busiest airport, there is always someone who needs a cup of coffee.If anyone asks what to order, Batulo will tell them to try her favorite drink, vanilla chai. While she works the register, she zips from station to station behind the counter. One minute, she makes a fresh pot of coffee. The next, she spins around and plucks a few donuts from the shelves.She darts so quickly that the back of her hijab flutters behind her, like the hint of a superhero's cape. A devastating messageAbdalla stares at a photo on his cell phone screen, searching for signs of something familiar. A man wearing a surgical mask stands hunched over a wheelbarrow, surrounded by rubble.Abdalla and his family are more than 8,000 miles away from the war-torn land they fled, but it is always close.The man in the photo is Abdalla's father, standing on a street in Mogadishu. The photo shows him helping the Red Cross clean up the wreckage from a bombing that killed hundreds of people. Just a few feet from his father, there's something that looks pink -- it's human flesh, Abdalla says. The October truck bombing in Somalia's capital tore people apart. Abdalla's father is picking up the pieces: hands and legs strewn across a city block.When Abdalla arrived in the United States in January 2017, worries about his daughter, Batulo, consumed him. Now he fears for his father's safety in Somalia. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)For years, Abdalla didn't know whether his father was dead or alive. As war spread in Somalia, communicating with family there became increasingly difficult. It was a relief when they recently reconnected for the first time in nearly a decade. They use a cell phone app to send each other photos and voice messages. For Abdalla, it's hard to hear his father's description of the place he once called home: "Somalia has become a bad country. It's no good. So don't even try to live your life here."It's even harder to see his father suffering and know there's nothing he can do to help.Life lessonsBatulo furrows her brow as she stares down at the notebook in front of her. Math usually comes easily to her. But there's one problem on the worksheet her teacher handed out that simply doesn't make sense.Batulo raises her hand."What about Number 7?" she asks."A school band has 480 boxes of popcorn to deliver. The booster club has offered to deliver 1/3 of the boxes. The cheerleaders will deliver 1/4 of the boxes. What fraction of boxes will the members of the band deliver?"Batulo listens as her math teacher at Georgia Piedmont Technical College tells the class that building vocabulary will help them handle tricky GED test questions. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)Keenan Slaughter looks out at the GED class at Georgia Piedmont Technical College and realizes the problem his students are having with the math worksheet has very little to do with numbers."Do you understand the situation?" the math professor says. Rows full of refugees look back at him with blank stares.Slaughter explains that school bands give students the chance to play musical instruments. Sometimes they sell popcorn, he says, to raise money for things like uniforms and travel. "Are you familiar with the concept of what a booster club is?" Slaughter asks the class.Batulo is quick to answer "no." This is the first time she's heard that phrase."They promote school spirit," Slaughter says. There were no bands or booster clubs at Batulo's school in Kakuma.Last week, she got a text message from a friend there."Life is becoming hard," he told her. Schools have started to charge for classes. He has to drop out. He can't afford to pay. Game changerAbdalla presses a button in his pocket.Beep-beep. A large TV has become a focal point of the family's living room. When they first arrived in the United States, they had no TV and crowded around a cell phone screen to watch movies. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN) The doors to his 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan open. His oldest son sits beside him. His wife and several children climb into the back rows.Abdalla starts the engine and backs slowly out of the parking space. He drives so slowly through the apartment complex that, at times, it seems like the car is barely moving. When he reaches a traffic light, the car lurches to a stop.A tree-shaped "Black Ice" air freshener dangles from the rearview mirror. A bumper sticker on the back of the car says, "I'm a proud parent of a Kiwanis Terrific Kid!"He bought this van for $2,500 a few weeks ago from a nearby used car dealership. It's old. The check engine light won't turn off. And Abdalla is scared to drive at night or on the highways.But he knows this vehicle will be a game changer. Eventually, he might drive it to work, or to visit his son's school.For now, he's just using it for short trips.Other than trains and buses, this is the family's only way to get around. They had two bicycles, but no locks. Both bikes were stolen from their front porch.Batulo walks to school in the morning. Once she gets her GED, she hopes to study to become a nurse. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)For months, Abdalla tried to pass a driving test.He failed so many time he lost count. Then, finally, he passed.Memories and a memorialBatulo puts on her backpack and rushes out the door of her apartment. It's February 15, the one-year anniversary of her arrival in the United States. That means she's eligible for a green card. She has an appointment to begin the application process, and she doesn't want to be late. As she heads to the bus stop, Batulo walks on the narrow strip of dirt between the curb and the concrete. She prefers feeling the earth under her feet. It makes her think of Kakuma.An ambulance zooms by.She rode in one for the first time a few months ago. She had to be rushed to the hospital after falling ill from a milk allergy. That day, for a moment, she worried she was going to die. In her first year in America, she has seen accidents and sickness -- but nothing like Kakuma. There, it seemed like six or seven people died every day. Batulo's journey to work takes more than an hour. She rides a bus and two trains to get to there. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)As she waits for the bus, a deflated helium balloon bobs nearby in the wind. Stuffed animals sit in a pile, soggy from a recent rain. They're part of a makeshift memorial at the apartment complex where her family lives. A toddler was hit and killed by a car here a few months ago. She was a refugee, and Batulo's neighbor. The driver who killed her didn't stop.Batulo's mother told her she saw a man driving away from the scene that day. And a lifeless child lying on the ground.A new routineBatulo used to walk home alone from the bus stop at night. She doesn't anymore -- not after what happened to her mother. The first time, Habibo was walking with her children to school. Then it happened again when she was walking alone.There was a group of men -- or maybe boys, Habibo isn't sure. One time someone threw rocks at her. Another time she thinks someone shouted something about her hijab. Abdalla reported it to the managers of their apartment complex. "We don't know them. We don't work with them. We didn't talk even a single day with them," Abdalla says. "So I don't know how they can throw stones."Batulo serves drinks to customers at the airport Dunkin' Donuts. Occasionally, she helps lost passengers find their way. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)Routines have formed. But they can change.Batulo stopped heading home alone from the bus stop at night. Now she calls when she's on the way, and her family walks with her.Learning her wayBatulo flicks her finger across her cell phone screen as the train rumbles down the tracks. She's heading in to another shift at work. It's a long trek. Four days a week, she takes a bus and two trains to get there. Chats with friends in Kenya help pass the time. She searches for the perfect pictures to send them as she fires off a string of text messages describing her day. Her phone is full of photographs. She keeps them to remember each step she takes. She wants to have something to show her children someday.In one, her mother lies on an exam table in a hospital room. In another, her sister stands in an aisle at Walmart, smiling. Then there's the photo from a moment that seems so long ago: Batulo is wearing headphones over her hijab and staring into the camera with a forlorn expression. That was the day officials told her she couldn't travel to the United States.When she shows that photo to her children, she will tell them what she learned in the painful weeks that followed. Be patient, be strong and take one step at a time. The other steps will follow. Batulo heads to class at Georgia Piedmont Technical College, where she's studying English and math as she prepares for the GED test. (Melissa Golden/Redux for CNN)Batulo leans in toward the window. The tall buildings of the Atlanta skyline come into view. It's a cloudy day, but they still look shiny and bright. Batulo holds her cell phone against the glass and presses record.Then, one by one, she sends the 15-second video to friends in Kakuma. "Naenda job," she writes to one friend. On the way to work."Umeona kwetu kunavo pendeza," she says to another. See how lovely our country is. Batulo doesn't have her green card yet, but she's already taken the first step toward getting it.She's hoping to get a driver's license soon, just like her father did, then save up to buy a little red car and drive to North Carolina and Missouri and as many US states as she can. She wants to see what they look like.She has come so far from that first day. But she still has so far to go.In a few days, she will see a movie in a theater for the first time. She is still learning her way around and studying for her GED.But there is one thing she doesn't need a map or test-prep packet to teach her.When one friend asks where she recorded the video, Batulo is swift to reply."Kwetu nyumbani," she says. Our home.

Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

2018-05-23 16:53:43

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/23/us/border-zone-immigration-checks/index.html

The US border is bigger than you think - CNN

Border Patrol agents can conduct immigration checks in a broad area known as the 100-mile zone, which encompasses many major cities and several entire states.

us, The US border is bigger than you think - CNN

The US border is bigger than you think

(CNN)Two women speaking Spanish at a Montana gas station. A passenger on a Greyhound bus in Florida. A 10-year-old with cerebral palsy heading to a hospital in Texas.Their brushes with Border Patrol occurred miles and months apart, but they have one thing in common: The authorities who detained them weren't working on the border.The continental United States has two major land borders: a 1,933-mile stretch between the US and Mexico and a 3,987-mile stretch between the US and Canada.But Border Patrol agents work in a far wider geographic area. According to federal regulations, the agency's expanded search authority to conduct immigration checks extends anywhere within a "reasonable distance" of 100 air miles from US land borders and coastlines. "Without this authority, persons evading our immigration laws could effectively vanish after crossing," Daniel Hetlage, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement to CNN. "But with it, we have the ability to enforce our laws."Read MoreTwo-thirds of the US lives inside this so-called 100-mile border zone, which includes several entire states, including Florida, Michigan, Maine and Hawaii, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Activists accuse the agency of racially profiling and violating constitutional rights as its enforcement efforts move inland."Although the 100-mile border zone is not literally 'Constitution free,' CBP frequently acts like it is," the ACLU says.Conducting immigration checks in the 100-mile zone isn't a new practice, and this isn't a new debate. But it's been getting more attention lately as the Trump administration ratchets up its crackdown on illegal immigration. Here's a look at several recent cases, and the issues they raise:An agent heard her speaking Spanish and asked for her IDThe case: Ana Suda says what started as a late-night trip to buy eggs and milk took a surprising turn last week in Havre, Montana, about 35 miles from the US-Canada border. Suda says a Border Patrol agent heard her speaking Spanish, then stopped her in the store and asked to see her ID. In a video Suda recorded of the incident, she asks why she and her friend were singled out and accuses the agent of profiling. "It has nothing to do with that," the agent tells her. "It's the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store in a state where it's predominately English-speaking." Suda says she and her friend were both born in the United States and were allowed to leave the gas station after about 40 minutes.JUST WATCHEDUS citizen asked for ID after speaking in Spanish ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHUS citizen asked for ID after speaking in Spanish 02:27The debate: Activists were quick to point out that there's nothing illegal about speaking Spanish in Montana or anywhere else in the United States.Speaking Spanish is not a valid reason for Border Patrol to question or detain you.The Constitution prohibits all law enforcement agencies, including @CBP, from racial profiling and arbitrary searches and detentions.https://t.co/M5T9ZsBKEv— ACLU (@ACLU) May 21, 2018 In a statement, CBP said its agents "have broad law enforcement authorities," including the authority to question individuals, make arrests, and take and consider evidence. Suda told CNN she's seeking help from the ACLU about the next steps she should take. CBP says the incident is under review. "Decisions to question individuals are based on a variety of factors for which Border Patrol agents are well-trained," an agency spokesperson said in a statement. "This incident is being reviewed to ensure that all appropriate policies were followed."They asked passengers on a Greyhound bus to show their papersThe case: Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in January, asking passengers to show identification. Video of the incident shows them questioning a woman, then taking her and her luggage off the bus.A CBP spokesman told CNN affiliate WPLG that agents had identified a woman who'd overstayed her tourist visa. She was taken into custody and handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Border Patrol agents routinely conduct law enforcement activities at transportation hubs as part of a layered approach to preventing illegal aliens from traveling further into the United States," CBP said..@CustomsBorder got on a Greyhound bus yesterday at 4:30pm in Fort Lauderdale and asked every passenger for their papers and to prove citizenship. Proof of citizenship is NOT required to ride a bus! For more information about your rights, call our hotline👉 1-888-600-5762 pic.twitter.com/rWJn61o8VP— FLImmigrantCoalition (@FLImmigrant) January 20, 2018 The debate: A fellow passenger's cell phone video of the arrest spread rapidly online. Experts were quick to point out that it's nothing new to see Border Patrol agents conducting immigration sweeps on buses or trains. But the video added fresh momentum to a push from advocates, who criticized the practice. "Without an official judicial warrant, border patrol agents should not be permitted to board the private property of the Greyhound corporation to harass its customers and violate their civil liberties," the Florida Immigrant Coalition said in a statement at the time. "Floridians deserve to ride a bus in peace without having to carry a birth certificate or passport to go to Disney World, visit family, or commute for work."Greyhound said its hands were tied."We are required to comply with all local, state and federal laws and to cooperate with the relevant enforcement agencies if they ask to board our buses or enter stations," the company said.In a letter to Greyhound officials in March, the ACLU called for a policy change, listing the Florida incident along with similar cases in other states. The ACLU argues that the bus company isn't legally required to let agents without warrants aboard, even in the 100-mile zone. Greyhound, the letter said, "should not be in the business of subjecting its passengers to intimidating interrogations, suspicionless searches, warrantless arrests, and the threat of deportation."She headed to the hospital -- and ended up in custody The case: Advocates said 10-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant, was on her way to emergency gallbladder surgery when Border Patrol agents pulled over the medical transport vehicle taking her through a checkpoint in Freer, Texas, about 60 miles from the border. Agents traveled with Rosa Maria to a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, and took her into custody after the surgery was completed. Hernandez's family and their supporters characterized her detention as cruel and unnecessary. Immigration officials said the procedures were routine enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. "Due to the juvenile's medical condition, Border Patrol agents escorted her and her cousin to a Corpus Christi hospital where she could receive appropriate medical care," CBP said in a statement after Rosa Maria was detained. "Per the immigration laws of the United States, once medically cleared she will be processed accordingly."Rosa Maria was released from custody days after her apprehension. JUST WATCHEDUndocumented 10-year-old in federal custodyReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHUndocumented 10-year-old in federal custody 01:11The debate: CBP runs checkpoints like the one where Rosa Maria was detained along major thoroughfares and in other areas in the 100-mile zone throughout the Southwest. Hetlage, the CBP spokesman, said checkpoints are vital for CBP's immigration enforcement efforts and "support the apprehension of criminal violators." The agency's authority to use them, he said, has been upheld by the Supreme Court.To conduct a lawful search at checkpoints, agents must have probable cause developed from agent observations, records checks, canine sniffs and other methods, the agency says on its website.Local activists routinely criticize checkpoints, alleging racial profiling and other civil rights violations. In Arizona, a group trying to monitor a checkpoint has been battling with the feds for years in court, trying to get access and data about what happens there. Critics also claim checkpoints do little to help with immigration enforcement. They point to a recent General Accountability Office report which found only 2% of Border Patrol apprehensions occurred at checkpoints between fiscal year 2013 and 2016, and that 40% of drug seizures at checkpoints were 1 ounce or less of marijuana from US citizens."It really does affect border residents' lives day to day, if you live in this zone," says Chris Rickerd, policy counsel with the ACLU's national political advocacy department. But what happens at checkpoints, he says, should matter to all Americans -- no matter how close they live to the border.CNN's Keith Allen, Paul P. Murphy and Tal Kopan contributed to this report.

Story by Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN Video by Tawanda Scott Sambou, CNN Photographs by Edmund D. Fountain for CNN

2017-10-13 11:18:20

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/13/us/ice-air-deportation-flight/index.html

Aboard ICE Air: Behind the scenes on a deportation flight - CNN

ICE Air, run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has deported nearly 100,000 people on charter planes in the past year.

us, Aboard ICE Air: Behind the scenes on a deportation flight - CNN

They have one-way tickets, paid for by Washington

Alexandria, Louisiana (CNN)The men shuffle in a line across a lonely tarmac, one by one.Chains around their ankles clank with each step, a steady beat punctuating the engines' roar. Some men walk in sneakers without laces. Some sport navy blue prison-issue shoes. One wears work boots, still stained with paint.Read MoreThis may be the last time they touch US soil. The Boeing 737 beside them is bound for Guatemala City. And these men, like all passengers on ICE Air, have one-way tickets.In the past year, the United States has deported nearly 100,000 people on charter planes like this one. With immigration arrests on the rise, the number of deportation flights could grow. As groups of detainees make their way toward the aircraft on this muggy morning, security contractors waiting on the tarmac swiftly slip into a familiar routine.A gloved guard motions for the detainee in front of him to follow his commands.He points at his mouth. The detainee opens wide. The guard searches for signs of contraband.He picks through the detainee's pockets. He checks under his socks and pats down his pants. He unlocks the handcuffs, but just for a few seconds, and checks underneath them, too.Deportees wait to be searched by guards before boarding the plane.Edy Segundo Mota Perez rubs his right wrist before a guard places a cuff around it again and turns the key. Mota climbs the metal staircase to the plane, stepping carefully to avoid losing one of his unlaced red sneakers or tripping over the chains between his legs. In about 30 minutes, the screening process is over and 116 passengers have boarded the plane — first men, who are handcuffed and shackled, then women and families, who aren't. Less than half have been convicted of criminal charges. All are Guatemalan nationals with deportation orders, brought to this airport by US immigration authorities who detained them across the eastern United States.Some detainees wear T-shirts that hint at where they've been. One advertises a mulch company in New Jersey. Another touts paint "applied with pride" in Michigan. Mota's neon orange shirt celebrates a soccer championship in Rhode Island. The plane door closes.Those lives are behind them now.Next stop: Guatemala. The 116 deportees on the flight are Guatemalan nationals who were in the United States illegally, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Preparing for takeoffThe Central American country is the top foreign destination for ICE Air Operations, the arm of the US government that runs deportation flights.This 737 is one of 10 chartered aircraft in ICE Air's fleet, used to transport immigration detainees across the United States and remove them to countries around the world.Over the past year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than 29,000 immigrants who were in the United States illegally have been deported on more than 500 flights from this airport in central Louisiana -- one of five hubs for ICE Air. In many ways, this plane looks like any other passenger jet: the beaming flight attendant with a scarf smartly tied around her neck, the lit-up seatbelt signs, the safety cards stuffed into seat pockets.By the numbersWhat we know about the 116 deportees on this flight108 men5 women3 children6 members of family units -- three fathers and three sons49 people convicted of criminal charges, including homicide, driving under the influence, illegal reentry, aggravated assault and domestic violence Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs EnforcementA woman with a smooth Southern drawl greets passengers over the PA system. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Our estimated time of flight this morning is 2 hours and 36 minutes.Another flight attendant demonstrates how to fasten seatbelts, wear oxygen masks and inflate life vests in case of emergency. This plane, like any other taking off from the United States, must follow federal safety regulations.Some of the detainees stare blankly at the flight attendant. Others look entranced.For about a dozen guards scattered in seats throughout the plane, this is a familiar scene. They take several deportation flights a week.But for many detainees onboard, this is the first flight of their lives.The flight attendant offers a final message.We thank you and have an enjoyable flight.When she finishes, a few men cheer. "Do it in Spanish!" one shouts, drawing laughs from others around him.No translation is offered as the flight moves down the runway. FAA regulations don't require it.More than 500 deportation flights flew out of Alexandria, Louisiana, in fiscal year 2017. Flights to Central America, like this one, fly across the Louisiana coastline and over the Gulf of Mexico.Regrets and reliefThe cheering starts up again as the plane climbs into the sky.First one man hoots. Then several rows around him join in. But many detainees are silent, their faces reflecting a sea of emotions.Two women in Row 6 bury their heads in their hands.A few rows behind them, a man shifts in his seat and looks frantically at his fellow passengers.Mota, the detainee who's wearing a T-shirt celebrating a soccer championship, sits in the plane's last row, smiling as he chats with the man beside him.It's no surprise, Mota says, that some of his fellow passengers sound happy. He's relieved to be returning to Guatemala after spending nearly a month behind bars. "I just want to get there quickly," he says.Edy Segundo Mota Perez says he's relieved to be returning to Guatemala. "I'm just waiting to get there, nothing more. My mom and my sister are there. I'm anxious to get there, and happy."The 25-year-old called Providence, Rhode Island, home for almost eight years. He was one of more than 600 people arrested in a recent operation aimed at detaining undocumented immigrants who came illegally to the United States as unaccompanied minors.Mota did not face any criminal charges. Border Patrol officers apprehended him after he entered the United States illegally in 2009. A judge ordered his deportation in May 2011, according to ICE, but Mota remained in the United States. ICE described him as a fugitive who'd failed to comply with the judge's decision.Mota says ICE officers were waiting for him outside when he returned home from his construction job one Monday evening this July. He doesn't know if he'll ever see the United States again. Returning and risking another stint in immigrant detention, he says, isn't worth it."I don't want to go back to jail without committing any crime," he says.He's sad to be leaving behind siblings in the United States. But he's ready to return to Joyabaj, Guatemala, where his mother and sister will be waiting to welcome him. He wants to focus on starting fresh there, far from the threat of immigration authorities. The plane is soaring at nearly 500 mph now, 33,000 feet above the sparkling blue sea.Deportees on the flight receive sandwiches, granola bars and bottled water.Calling the shotsFrom the front cabin, a man with a goatee, polo shirt and black sunglasses atop his head surveys the scene.For most of the flight, he's quiet. But it's clear this ICE officer is the one calling the shots. He decides when the guards will pass out bottled water, turkey sandwiches and chocolate chip granola bars. He decides when they should escort detainees to the bathroom.He decides when it's time to remove the detainees' handcuffs and shackles.On this flight, the chains come off about an hour and a half into the journey. Guards throughout the plane spring into action, unlocking the restraints. Once again, the sound of clinking metal fills the air, this time as they pack away the cuffs, dropping them into worn green duffel bags. When these detainees step off the plane in Guatemala, they won't be shackled. The last bathroom break on this flight occurs about two hours after takeoff."Shut it down," the ICE officer tells the guards. "We're about 20 minutes out."Ladies and gentlemen, in approximately 30 minutes we're going to land. We ask that you sit in your seats with your seatbelts fastened.As the flight nears Guatemala City, guards remove detainees' shackles and handcuffs.The view from aboveIn seat 5E, Erminio Leiva Cano leans so far over his 17-year-old son that their faces are practically side-by-side as they look out the window.On this plane, there aren't in-flight movies or magazines. Gazing out the portals is one of the few ways to pass the time.Leiva looks through the puffy white clouds that dot the sky, searching for a sign of something familiar below. Could that be Mexico, the country they passed through on the way to what they thought would be a long future in the United States?It's their first flight. Leiva, 54, says he never imagined they'd fly in an airplane. And if they did, he never thought it would be like this.Leiva says he and his son came to the United States 10 months earlier, hoping to stay for years. He thought they'd have more time."In the short time we were there," he says, "we didn't really accomplish anything."Leiva and his son did not face criminal charges. Border Patrol agents apprehended them in Arizona after they illegally crossed into the United States, according to ICE. Officials issued an expedited order of removal but released them from custody.Erminio Leiva Cano and his son were deported after living in the United States for about 10 months. "I feel sad ... In the short time we were there, we didn't really accomplish anything," he says. "I thought it was going to be different."Leiva says he and his son moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he wore an ankle monitor and checked in monthly with immigration authorities.His son found a job at a roofing company. Leiva worked for a pallet factory.Just yesterday, Leiva says, authorities detained them and said their deportation day had come. It happened so quickly, he says, they didn't have a chance to tell their loved ones in Guatemala that they were returning. Leiva's eyes are wet as he looks out the window. He's been trying to keep his own emotions in check and cheer up his son."No matter what in life," he says, "we have to be brave."The view below the clouds shifts from blue sea to lush green land, from flatness to mountains covered with trees, from trees to small buildings with metal rooftops that reflect the sun, from small buildings to taller ones with clotheslines on the roofs.The clouds get bigger. The ground gets closer.People on the plane begin to cheer again.Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Guatemala. The local time is 9:45.An average of six deportation flights arrive in Guatemala City every week, according to ICE.A warm welcomeAt Guatemala City's airport, officials hustle the deportees off the plane to a reception area that most passengers arriving in the country's capital never see. The small building beside a Guatemalan Air Force runway is a hive of activity.Marimba music pipes through loudspeakers as deportees who've just arrived file through the door. Staffers hand out water and juice and point them toward rows of folding chairs.The music stops. A man at the front of the room wearing a vest that says "MIGRACIÓN" runs through a list of announcements in Spanish.He assures the group that the interview process they're about to go through will be quick. He knows they're eager to reunite with family members. "The last thing you want is to stay here, right?"Please, he asks, even if you were using another name in the United States, use your legal name here.An average of six deportation flights from the United States arrive in Guatemala every week. Guatemalan immigration officials meet deportees as they arrive, escorting them to a welcome center.So far this year, the United States is deporting fewer Guatemalans than it did during the same period last year, according to local government figures. Still, as the Trump administration vows to ramp up its crackdown on illegal immigration, Guatemalan officials are bracing for an influx. And local media coverage of the latest waves of arriving deportees has been bleak."Their American dreams are over," one recent report said. "Many return with more debts than hope."But in this room, the government is sending a positive message."I want you to reflect on something," the official says. "If you're sitting here, you are someone who has risked a lot. There is no reason to be ashamed."A few hours ago, most of the people in this room were deportees handcuffed on an airplane. Now they're getting a hero's welcome.The official paces in front of the room, addressing the crowd with the fervor of a preacher at a tent revival."I want to remind you that big or small, rich or poor, whatever you are, countryman, this is our homeland," he says. "Welcome."Cheers erupt again.After a 2.5-hour flight, Leiva and the other deportees hand over paperwork and complete interviews with immigration officials in Guatemala City.Over the PA system, officials read out names, calling up each deportee for an interview.Like the guards on the runway in the United States, Guatemalan authorities know this routine like clockwork. Leiva steps forward. He hands his paperwork to an official, who's sitting in front of a brightly colored wall emblazoned with a patriotic message in Spanish and the indigenous language of Quiché:YA ESTÁS EN TU PAÍS Y CON TU GENTEIt ko chupan ri a tinamit ki kin ri ka winiäq.Now you are in your country and with your people.Back on the runway, the engines on the ICE Air jet start again. The flight is almost empty as it takes off toward Louisiana. But tomorrow the plane will head to Honduras, packed again with passengers in handcuffs and shackles.About this storyICE gave CNN permission to ride on a deportation flight on August 17. Officials asked CNN to obscure the faces of ICE officers and contractors on board, with the exception of Marlen Pineiro, ICE's assistant director for removals, who accompanied the flight and agreed to an interview. The agency also asked CNN to obtain written consent from detainees before interviewing them or showing their faces.

Story by Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN Video and photographs by Evelio Contreras, CNN

2016-02-04 14:50:06

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https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/04/us/beyond-the-border-life-in-limbo/index.html

Beyond the border: Life in limbo - CNN

Jesús and his mother thought crossing the border would be the hardest part of their journey. But now this question haunts them: Will America let them stay?

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Beyond the border: Life in limbo

Jesús sits beside his parents, staring at the walls of the packed waiting room as he searches for hints of what the future holds.A large sign surrounded by red, white and blue bunting says "Welcome." A poster proclaims "Hope for a Better Life" above a quote from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter that describes America as "a nation of immigrants."It's a warm day in September, 10 weeks after Jesús and his mother got off a Greyhound bus in Tupelo, Mississippi, and reunited with his father after 13 years apart. Since then, everything has felt exciting but uncertain.Today, in this Memphis office, they hope to learn what happens next.An insurance ad flashes across a TV screen on the other side of the room, showing sparkling blue water and the Statue of Liberty.Read MoreJesús tells his mom he wants to visit the landmark someday. "I want to climb inside," he says, "and see what's in her head."The long road to reunionOne thought occupied Jesús' mind in the summer of 2014: "Voy a conocer a mi papá." I am going to meet my father.Throughout the exhausting maze of Greyhound bus rides that took him across the southern United States in the summer of 2014, Jesús had one goal in mind: meeting his father.The dream of being side by side after a lifetime apart propelled the 14-year-old as he and his mother left Guatemala, made their way through Mexico and scaled the border fence into Arizona. It kept him hopeful as they were detained by immigration authorities and released on parole. It buoyed him as their journey through the South became a maze of Greyhound bus rides.Now that dream has come true, but Jesús has many more. And he's starting to realize how many hurdles stand in the way.His father, Pedro, left Guatemala in 2001 to find work in the United States. Jesús and his mother, Angelica, followed 13 years later. They were among tens of thousands of people from Central America who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the summer of 2014. Activists called the wave of new immigrants a humanitarian crisis. U.S. officials called it a surge of illegal immigration and vowed to do everything they could to stop it -- and to send back most of the people who'd already arrived.That could include Jesús and Angelica.As they began their journey beyond the border, they gave CNN permission to follow, asking that only their middle names be used and the location of their new home omitted to protect their privacy. At the time, they thought making it across the border would be the hardest part of their journey. Now the joy of their reunion on a summer afternoon has faded. And like millions of undocumented immigrants, they are haunted by this question as they try to build a new life in the United States: Will the government give them the chance to stay? On the summer day in 2014 when he and his father, Pedro, embraced for the first time in 13 years, Jesús felt like the hardest part of his journey was over.'Are you afraid for your lives?'The sun has barely started to light up the sky when Jesús and his parents step onto the front porch of their two-bedroom duplex apartment. The man who shuttles them to appointments with immigration officials is late, and they are anxious about missing the meeting that could decide their future. Their appointment in Memphis, about two hours from the one-stoplight town that they call home, is their fourth meeting with immigration officials in 10 weeks. Each time, they've paid Elquin Gonzalez to drive them, leaving home in the morning unsure of whether they'll have the chance to come back that night.As they wait, Jesús thinks about his mother's friend from their hometown in Guatemala who crossed the border with them. She went to a meeting like the one they have -- and left with an ankle monitor locked to her leg. It blares loudly every time the battery dies.He imagines wearing one to school: His teachers will be angry when the loud beeping interrupts their classes. The other kids will stare.Or even worse, what if a judge decides to send them back to Guatemala and he has to leave his new school behind?Jesús and his parents pile into the back of Gonzalez's car just after 6:30 a.m. As the beige Honda barrels down the highway, Gonzalez hurls rapid-fire questions from the driver's seat.About this seriesWhat happens after undocumented immigrants arrive on America's doorstep? "Beyond the Border" explores how the paths they take change their lives -- and the nation. The first story, "Getting there," documented the long journey Jesús and his mother took to reunite with his father after almost 13 years.He's the Hispanic minister at St. James Catholic Church in Tupelo and a longtime leader in the community who knows how hostile America can be for unauthorized immigrants. Gonzalez emigrated legally from Colombia with a religious worker visa more than a decade ago. Since then, he's watched people hoping for a second chance get detained and deported in the blink of an eye. Sometimes he drives someone to a meeting with immigration but doesn't bring them home."Has anyone in your family been killed?" he asks."Have you been threatened?""Are you afraid for your lives?"Pedro and Angelica look at each other, puzzled. Jesús is asleep."Has your lawyer asked you any of this?" Gonzalez asks them. No one they know has been killed, Pedro says. But they worry constantly about their family members in Guatemala, especially their son and daughter, who are studying there. Angelica's mother was kidnapped last year. The whole family traveled to a neighboring town to demand her release. And once, some men in an SUV tried to abduct their daughter and her cousin. They drove away once the girls started screaming.Their village has gotten much more violent in recent years, Pedro says. And nobody trusts the police. When the men tried to kidnap their daughter, Angelica says she went to the police station, but they didn't write a report. When her mother was abducted, police asked for a bribe to help free her. "We don't know who to trust anymore," Pedro says. "Police are either corrupt or they are afraid."Angelica's father is trying to organize a coffee farming project. It hasn't come together as quickly as some community members hoped, Angelica says, and the family has been getting threatening phone calls. She suspects irate investors are to blame. "Oh, so he's like an organizer, risking his life for the good of the community," Gonzalez tells them. "That could help your case."They should start thinking about these questions and answers now, he says. They're not appearing before a judge today, but they need to be ready when their court date comes."The judge will look for a legal way you can stay here," he says. "But if there isn't one, he'll have to deport you. So right now, you need to start gathering proof."He warns that many lawyers can't be trusted. There's a misconception, he says, that getting a lawyer guarantees you the chance to stay. A lot of lawyers who know there's no way to win will take the cases anyway. For them, it's easy money. But that doesn't mean it's hopeless, Gonzalez tells them. "It's like a lottery game. You win or you lose. But you have to try."He pulls into the parking lot of the Department of Homeland Security's Memphis office just a few minutes before their meeting is scheduled to start."We're here," he tells them. "Now let's see what they tell us."Is today the day their time is up?Angelica and Pedro sit side by side. They are in the same location but very different places.Angelica thinks about all the debts they haven't paid and how much her family needs the money she and Pedro earn working at a Mexican restaurant in Mississippi. Their two older children are still in school in Guatemala, and the costs keep growing. The other day, their daughter called and said there wasn't enough. There is never enough. The couple's parents, siblings and cousins need help, too.Pedro catches a glimpse of a man across the room who looks hauntingly familiar. He saw the man three years ago when immigration authorities swept through the home where Pedro was living and arrested everyone there. It's an experience he wants to forget -- but he can't put behind him. He's preparing to appear in a Memphis court in five months to make his own case to stay in the country. The lawyer he's been working with is taking on Angelica and Jesús' case, too, though he hasn't met with them yet.What will today's proceedings bring? Could he lose his wife and son so soon? What if immigration officials allow them to stay but then a judge sends him back to Guatemala? Jesús stares at the Statue of Liberty, wondering.Jesús has grown up since he arrived in the United States, and he's gotten used to life in Mississippi. He wants to stay and continue his studies but fears he won't get the chance.So much has happened since the day officials in Arizona released Jesús and Angelica from detention, allowed them to continue their travels and gave them a deadline for reporting back to immigration authorities. They had to make a six-hour trek to Atlanta for one appointment, then a three-hour drive to Alabama for another. It took 10 weeks to land a meeting here, at the closest immigration office to their home. Angelica hoped authorities would let them stay if they kept showing up, but she fears this could be the day officials eject them.Hours pass before a man calls her name. He hands her a piece of paper and points to a note on the back that says, "Next date 3/3/2015 for OSUP."They're not sure what the words mean, but they understand the numbers."They gave us more time," Angelica says.Jesús grins as he counts on his fingers the number of months until his next immigration meeting: six. The future flashes back into focus.His first cross-country practice is tomorrow. Then there's soccer in the spring. Outside on the street, he picks up a booklet advertising car sales and finds his dream ride: a bright yellow Hummer. Just $32,000.Pedro smiles and shakes his head. "Imagine how long it would take me to save enough money for that," he says.When they get back to Tupelo hours later, Gonzalez takes them to a shop his wife started seven years ago. "Speedy Gonzalez" caters to the area's growing Hispanic population. Rosaries dangle above the cash register. Dried spices, bags of rice and religious candles are for sale. A sign on the wall lists exchange rates. Pedro goes up to the counter, cashes a paycheck and fills out a form to send $800 to Guatemala.He feels relieved. At least until February 2015, when his court date arrives, he and Angelica can keep working and sending money home. What happens after that is anyone's guess.Learning and loving AmericaJesús hears the school bus rumbling even before it turns the corner onto his street."I think it's coming," he tells his mother, tossing his backpack over one shoulder and heading out the door without saying goodbye. His first day at his new school was the worst day of his life.In Guatemala, his grades were so good that he was his state's representative in the country's Congress for a day. None of that seemed to matter in a classroom thousands of miles away in the United States. He didn't speak English and nothing anyone said to him made sense. That night, he told his parents he was never going back.Now, he jokes with them that he might hide underneath the school so he can keep studying there instead of going back to Guatemala. He's amazed by the way teachers use technology in the classroom and by what it's like to live in a country where the government cares about students enough to provide school buses and fund their education.When Jesús first arrived, he relied on online translators and help from classmates to communicate. Now he easily expresses himself in English, writing his observations about the United States.When his teachers discovered Jesús was still learning English, they changed his schedule and paired him with a student whose parents are Mexican. While Jesús worked on building his vocabulary, they put their lessons into Google Translate to give him a way to follow along. He struggled at first but soon started getting A's and B's. One day, his friend who spoke Spanish turned to him, crying. Someone had shouted at her, "Go back to Mexico, where you came from." The words stung even though Jesús wasn't there to hear them. She isn't from Mexico, but her parents are. Jesús isn't from Mexico either, but he says that doesn't matter."For me, she is more than a friend; she is like a sister. Guatemalans and Mexicans, we stick together. We are all Hispanic. They didn't just discriminate against her," he says. "They discriminated against me."But after meeting Jesús, more and more of his classmates started telling teachers they wanted to study Spanish. They saw him in the hallway and said "hola" to make him feel welcome. With a Mississippi twang in his voice, he replied "hello" or "hey."He soon learned many more words in English, but those two are still his favorite. Not because of the way they sound, he says, but because it's very sad to tell people goodbye.What does the future hold?Jesús huddles near the space heater in the apartment. It's February, and the temperature outside has dipped below 30 degrees. Inside, it isn't much warmer. He got home from school more than an hour ago but is still wearing his coat.Before, he would have planted himself in front of the TV or the computer after eating an afternoon snack. But the TV is off, and the computer screen, sitting on an end table against the wall, is black.The family next door has moved out, taking their Internet and cable connections with them. Pedro told Jesús he doesn't want to pay for new service until he knows how much time the family has left in the United States. Tomorrow, they expect to find out. To pass the time on this winter afternoon, Jesús listens to a CD of marimba music from Guatemala and plays a video game on his father's cell phone. His goal is to earn 200,000 coins in "Temple Run." Right now, he has 20,000. As his avatar bounds over tunnels and bridges, Jesús thinks of his other goal and whether he'll reach it: learning English. On the wall beside him, there's a calendar with days crossed off. On January 28, he spelled out "Happy Bithday." Jesús decided to write the words in English to mark the birthday he and his mother share. When the day came, they did little to celebrate. Angelica didn't tell her co-workers at the restaurant because she didn't want them to fuss over her. The family wanted to get a cake but didn't know where to find one. At school, Jesús enjoyed the attention of celebrating his 15th birthday with friends. In science class, his teacher and classmates used Google Translate to learn to say "Feliz Cumpleaños." Things are starting to make sense for him in school, and he's eager to keep studying.But he's worried he won't get that chance. Tomorrow, a judge could decide to deport his father. Once again, he'll miss school and make the two-hour drive to Memphis with his family.Whatever happens, he wants to see it with his own eyes.A date to rememberJesús settles in on the bench behind his parents, his eyes darting around the room. It's his first time in court, and the atmosphere feels ominous. The judge isn't here yet. Everyone is whispering.He is afraid but trying to smile. He leans forward and reminds his father to put his cell phone on vibrate.Pedro sits silently on a bench in the front row, bowing his head and gazing at the blue carpet. He tossed and turned all night, barely able to sleep. So many people depend on him. What will they do if he's sent back?Angelica sits beside him, staring straight ahead. She is praying that God will give them a little more time, so they can save more money for their children's studies.In just a few minutes, all the benches inside the courtroom are full. A woman in a plaid suit announces that anyone whose name isn't on the day's docket has to leave. Jesús and Angelica head out, looking back one last time at Pedro. As the proceedings start, they huddle near the door, straining to hear. An attorney tells the judge why his client is filing a form late: "She got bad advice from a lawyer in Little Rock."Another explains why he just started working with a client, years into his case: "He's from Seymour, Tennessee. It isn't exactly a hotbed of immigration lawyers."Before he made friends in America, Jesús spent hours alone, passing the time with toys, computer games and YouTube videos.The judge criticizes the way immigration officials have handled a case: "It seems like the Department of Homeland Security has been anything but forthright." Outside the courtroom, a young couple cries tears of joy after the judge schedules their next hearing for December 2016. Jesús notices that the judge is giving out court dates that are months, even years, away. He hopes that will happen in his father's case, too. "Let them give us until 2100," he says, smiling.As Jesús strains to listen, a security guard tells him and others waiting by the courtroom door that the area has gotten too crowded; they have to move out of earshot. Jesús spots Gonzalez, their driver, on the other side of the room and plants himself in a chair nearby. He tries to distract himself by observing what's going on around him -- the way a woman's shoes squeak on the floor, how much the security guard seems to like his cup of coffee. He cranes his neck in the direction of the courtroom but doesn't see any sign of his father.Thirty minutes later, Pedro returns to the waiting room, looking stunned."They gave us a little more time," he tells his family.The courts are so busy that the day he's scheduled to come back is two years away. Angelica laughs. Jesús grins, bouncing his fingers on the sides of the waiting room chair like he's tapping out the first few notes of a fanfare.Pedro isn't quite ready to celebrate. Some other words the judge said weigh on him."If I don't show up, they will kick me out for 10 years," he says.Well, then, don't forget the date, Gonzalez tells him. "Put it on the front door, on the refrigerator, on the calendar." February 2, 2017.Jesús says he will.Familiar facesIt's cold when they leave the court, but the sun feels warm. Jesús snaps photos of his parents standing on a Memphis street. Above a doorway in the background, he can see an American flag.When they arrive home, they decide to walk to the grocery store. It's rare to have an afternoon free as a family, and they want to take advantage of it. Jesús looks at a small seedless watermelon in the produce aisle."Look at all the fruit from Guatemala," he tells his mother. He perks up when a boy and his mother walk through the door, pushing a shopping cart."That's my classmate," he says.Angelica waves and smiles. The store opened only recently, with a line so long it took an hour to get inside. It was the town's first grocery store, and everyone was excited. Pedro pays $53.87 for fruit, chicken, snacks and bottled water for the week.Outside, Jesús waits with the shopping bags while his parents go into a nearby drug store. He circles a display of orange plastic rakes for sale and thinks about autumn. It was beautiful, he says, to see leaves change color for the first time. Then they seemed to fall from the trees so suddenly. His father told him a gust of wind brought them down.Winter is very cold, but he hopes he'll experience another first soon: He never saw snow in Guatemala.As he waits, he watches people walk from the store to the parking lot. He sees another classmate, then his school nurse, then the janitor.The sound of birds overhead pierces the air. Jesús gazes up. "Look, they're migrating," he says. The birds are lucky. They fly over cities, across borders, from country to country.He wonders whether they're going to Guatemala.A massive flock flew over his hometown once -- so many that it was hard to see the sky. Is their fear enough to win asylum?One morning in May while Jesús is in school, Angelica makes her case for why they can't go back to Guatemala. The interview is a key part of the asylum process known as a credible fear screening. To win asylum, a person has to prove persecution because of race, religion, national origin, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Passing the screening means you'll have a chance to convince a judge. Failing it means your days in the United States are likely numbered.For U.S. officials, it's a step that stops ineligible cases from clogging up the court system.For anti-immigrant groups, it's a scam exploited by people who claim fear to get a free pass into the United States.For immigrant rights advocates, it's a flawed system engineered to send as many people back to their home countries as possible, no matter what threats they face.For Angelica and Jesús, it's their only shot to stay in the United States.News stories in his Facebook feed about Central American families getting rounded up for deportation made Jesús worry that his family could be separated.It takes Angelica more than an hour to explain to an asylum officer in Houston why she is afraid. They speak on the phone. A translator tells her what questions he is asking and shares Angelica's responses with him.According to an official record of the interview, this is the summary the asylum officer reads at the end: "You have been threatened by unknown criminals who demanded you pay them money. They would call you by phone and threaten to kill you unless you paid them. You told them you would call the police and they stopped calling you. They kidnapped your mother and took her to a different village, but the police found her. ... After you reported (it), men tried to grab your children as they were going to school but could not grab them. Your children tried to tell the police and the police told you to report it if it happened again. The police did not investigate either report you made. Someone ran over your sister's foot with a car. You were walking through a blocked off area and someone ran through posts to run over her foot."In an interview with the same officer several months later, in September, Jesús corroborates his mother's story.The officer checks off a box in the report saying he finds the claims Angelica and Jesús have made to be credible.Then he checks off another box. It says the case doesn't meet the guidelines necessary to proceed with an asylum claim. The officer's decision gives Angelica and Jesús the first real choice they've had in months: to give up and get ready to go back to Guatemala or keep fighting for a chance to stay in the United States.Only an immigration judge can overturn the asylum officer's ruling.To Angelica, it's a no-brainer. She wants to make her case in court. A long way from TucsonAngelica and Jesús were in Tucson in the summer of 2014. So was Judge Matthew W. Kaufman.They were stocking up on supplies at a Greyhound bus station after being released from detention. He was working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as assistant chief counsel, the arm of the agency that represents the government in deportation cases. Sixteen months later and 1,200 miles away, they come face to face in a Memphis immigration court. Kaufman was recently hired as a judge as part of a push to help a system bursting at the seams. With the number of new cases growing at an exponential rate, backlogs hit an all-time high. Nationwide there are more than 430,000 cases pending in immigration court, and only about 250 judges to hear them.That's why Pedro has been waiting for his court date for years. Angelica and Jesús are on a faster track. Because they are "recent border crossers," their cases are on a list that the government has vowed to deal with quickly.On this October morning in Kaufman's courtroom, Angelica and Jesús have a simple request: that he reverse the asylum officer's decision and let them proceed with their case.Angelica tells the judge that her daughter's boyfriend recently started getting threats and extortion shakedowns from a local gang. Her family is terrified. She describes the day her mother was kidnapped. As she relives it, her eyes fill with tears.Immigration judges aren't allowed to comment outside the courtroom on the specific cases they hear. But Judge Dana Leigh Marks, the head of their union, uses a catchphrase to sum up what it feels like to preside over an asylum case. "It's like hearing death penalty cases," she says, "in a traffic court setting.""An order of deportation can, in effect, be a death sentence. These cases often include a risk that the person might die if forced to return to his or her homeland, either from violence or from rampant diseases unchecked by an impoverished and/or corrupt government," she wrote in a 2014 opinion piece for CNN. "But a judge cannot allow a person to stay here based on the risk -- or even the certainty -- of death, unless certain other technical requirements are met."After hearing Angelica and Jesús speak in court, Kaufman upholds the decision by immigration officials that the asylum case they're making wouldn't be winnable.He signs papers with their names on them that leave no room for doubt."The case is returned to the DHS for removal of the alien," each paper says. "This is a final order. There is no appeal available."He asks for their address and says a notice will come in the mail. It could assign them another appointment to check in with authorities, or it could list the place and date when they'll be deported. Angelica thinks the judge didn't believe their story. She wonders how bad things have to get for someone to help them. At least, she says, God knows that what they said is true.That night, Jesús lays in bed. He tells his parents he is dead and doesn't want to go back to school.Marking timeNearly everything on the walls of the living room marks the passage of time.There are three calendars, a yellow post-it note showing which uniform color to wear each day of the week and a clock that ticks away every second.But inside the apartment where Pedro, Angelica and Jesús live, there's no sign of the one date everyone is dreading.They don't know when it will come. Or if it ever will.They try to make the results of the court hearing a distant memory. Workdays grow longer. The school bus keeps coming. They hope for another chance.Deportation raids in the newsJesús walks down the school bus stairs, brushes past his father and pushes open the front door.He tosses his backpack in the bedroom and heads to the place he always goes when he comes home from school, now that they have Internet service again: Facebook. His profile photo is a small tree beside a large lake in Guatemala. Facebook is how he stays in touch with friends there, and where he follows the twists and turns in the fortunes of his favorite soccer team.But on this day in January, as he scrolls through his Facebook newsfeed searching for fun after school, he finds fear instead."Inmigrantes centroamericanos en peligro de deportación en EEUU, según confirman autoridades," one headline reads. "Central American immigrants in danger of deportation in the United States, authorities confirm." "Cómo los deportados centroamericanos enfrentan el regreso a sus países.""How deported Central Americans face the return to their countries," says another.The words send Jesús spiraling into a panic. Headline after headline tells the same devastating story: The Obama administration launched a new operation with raids targeting Central American families who came to the United States in the summer of 2014. They started with 121 people in three states and have said they plan to keep going. Jesús feels like his worst fears are coming true.What if he's taken away in handcuffs? What if one day he comes home from school and his parents aren't there? What if he doesn't have a chance to say goodbye to his friends? As soon as his father gets home from work, Jesús begs him to call their attorney and find out the latest on their case.Pedro puts the call on speaker phone so Jesús can hear."Your wife and your son don't have anything to be afraid of, because they've been going to the check-ins. They are already in the hands of immigration." It's unlikely, the lawyer says, that they would be the target of a raid. Jesús thanks God that they have a lawyer looking out for them. He's hoping some paperwork the attorney is filing will give them more time.Jesús searches for the lucky cards in his family's Lotería game.Jesús sits on the living room floor, sorting through a stack of large paper cards covered with brightly colored drawings. Each card is part of a game called Lotería."This one is lucky, and this one is lucky, and this one is lucky," Jesús says, stacking the cards beside him."This one isn't," he says, tossing another card aside into a new pile.All the cards in the 20-piece set are supposed to have the same shot at winning the Bingo-like game. But Jesús has played enough times to know that some have a greater chance.The only choiceEric Henton calls it a "Hail Mary" move.Sometimes, the immigration attorney says, that's what it takes to turn a case around. This time, it's their only choice."We have nothing else that we can do," he says. "We have to try this."In his office high up in a Memphis skyscraper, Henton keeps a portrait of his wife that a grateful client painted. On a nearby bookshelf, there's a copy of the Bible in Spanish.In court, Henton says he does the best that he can and leaves everything else up to God.Since the surge of Central American immigrants started coming across the border in 2014, Henton estimates that his office has taken on up to 200 new clients. Most are seeking asylum. But the cases are very difficult to win, Henton says.The number of people seeking asylum from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has skyrocketed as violence surges in those countries. Immigration snapshot: How Jesús and his family fit in1.3 million Hispanics of Guatemalan origin living in the United States in 2013704,000 Unauthorized immigrants from Guatemala living in the United States in 2013 68,445 People in family units, such as Jesús and Angelica, apprehended at the border in 201464,464 People in family units apprehended at the border since then4,257 Guatemalans who asked for asylum in 2014175 Guatemalans granted asylum in 201454,423 Guatemalans deported from the United States in 201433,249 Guatemalans deported from the United States in 2015315,943 Deportations in the United States in 2014235,413 Deportations in the United States in 2015437,219 Immigration cases pending nationwide5,056 Immigration cases pending in Memphis court1,415 Guatemalans waiting to hear their fate there -- included Jesus' father, PedroSources: Pew Research Center, Migration Policy Institute, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement"People are afraid to go back. Terrible things have happened to them and their families, and yet, they don't meet the definition of asylum," he says.The year Angelica and Jesús crossed into the United States, 2014, only 4% of the more than 4,000 Guatemalans seeking asylum won their cases, according to the U.S. Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review. For immigrants from countries such as Iran, Venezuela and Somalia, the approval rate was far higher. Now that a judge has ruled against Angelica and Jesús, Henton must resort to his "Hail Mary": a request for deferred action.In a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, he will outline the positive aspects of the mother and son's case and give evidence for why they deserve mercy. The request aims to take advantage of an option authorities use to prioritize cases and decide how strictly to enforce immigration laws. The approach became well known after President Obama's 2012 executive order giving children brought to the United States by their parents a chance to avoid deportation. It's also common to see it applied to cases involving illness, Henton says. But the attorney says deferred action requests are often rejected. And even when they're granted, there are no guarantees.Last year, he won deferred action for a client who'd been ordered removed from the United States by a judge in a credible fear proceeding. Then a few months later, Henton says, officials changed their mind. She was deported. "So even if we win that battle, it's not anything that will protect (them) going forward, for any amount of time," he says. "We just can't predict how long that's even going to be on the table."Policies seem to be shifting daily, Henton says. As soon as you think you've figured something out, it changes."People come into my office all the time and say, 'Tomorrow, things might be completely different,' " he says. "And they're exactly right."'Backed against the wall'Above the low hum of a space heater, the sound of laughter seeps into the living room.Jesús and Angelica sit together in the bedroom the family shares, swapping stories. Pedro leans back in the next room and listens. It's the kind of moment he missed for almost 13 years. He loves hearing their laughter. But he's learned that the happy moments are often temporary."I have seen it; she always tries to distract herself with my son. They start chatting and laughing, forgetting themselves a little bit," he says. "But the next day, it's back to the same thing."He sees the sadness on his wife's face. He knows she's thinking of their two children in Guatemala. He's afraid she'll make herself sick.Angelica always knew her time in the United States could be temporary. But she's frustrated by the way her request for asylum was handled."They say it was illegal the way we crossed the border," she says. "But if it was illegal, why are we still here? Why have they let us stay for so long? We've gone to every meeting they told us to go to, and still, it turned out badly."The truth is that Angelica has been dreaming of going home ever since she left Guatemala. Adjusting to life in the United States has been hard. She struggled to fit in at work. She loves being able to send money for her children to study and for her mother to get a new kitchen stove, but she hates being so far away from family.She already knows the first thing she'll do when she returns to Guatemala: go shopping with her daughter, holding her hand and laughing as they walk through the streets. Still, she hopes for more time in the United States. She wonders whether her case has fallen through the cracks or whether there's just been a processing delay.She can't shake the questions swirling in her mind.Are the rumors she's heard true? Could her teenage son be taken from her? Will immigration agents raid their home? Will she be forced to wear handcuffs when she flies in an airplane for the first time? What will people in Guatemala think? How will her family make ends meet? Can they ever be safe?"We are between yes and no," she says. "We are backed against the wall, waiting."Pedro checks the mail every day with the fear that he'll get a letter from the government that says his wife and son will be deported back to Guatemala.Pedro has been worrying, too. Word of the fresh wave of immigration raids has spread through his network of friends and co-workers. Last week, a man he's known for years called and warned him to be careful. The steps he takes from his front door to the mailbox have become the most frightening part of his day.Relief washes over him every time he finds it empty. "One more day," he tells himself. A father's wishFor one moment on a hot summer afternoon in 2014, Angelica, Jesús and Pedro were three people coming together.Now they're still in the same location, but in some ways, they're already splitting apart.When Jesús stepped off the Greyhound bus, his head was only a few inches above his father's shoulders. Today, they're almost the same height, and Jesús' voice has gotten deeper. Pedro says those aren't the only things that have changed about his 16-year-old son.Jesús worries about how he looks now. He takes things more seriously. He likes to make his own plans instead of just following whatever his parents are doing. He speaks English, smiling and joking with classmates whenever he sees them. The small black cell phone Pedro owns hardly seems his anymore. Most of the images on it are photos Jesús snapped. They document his firsts in America.The snowmen he made last winter. Fourth of July firecrackers singeing the ground. The day they swam and caught fish with friends. A Christmas tree with bright blue lights.Pedro hates to imagine what it will be like to live alone again. He feels younger now, like the arrival of his wife and son gave him a chance to start fresh. He's gotten used to eating Angelica's stews and kicking the soccer ball around with Jesús when the weather is warm. For years, he's been a father from afar. He sent his family money, offered them advice on the phone and scanned Facebook for photos showing how his children had changed. This is different and something he doesn't want to lose. He proudly looks on as Jesús buries himself in homework and dashes around the apartment getting ready for school. He likes the way his son has started asking for permission before going to spend time with friends.The toddler who could barely walk when Pedro left Guatemala is growing up before his father's eyes. And Pedro loves what he sees. He never realized it would all flash by so fast.Jesús plays soccer after school while his parents rest during an afternoon break before returning to work.'It would destroy my soul'Before the day he reunited with his father, this is what Jesús knew: His papá was very fast at chopping up cucumbers.He was kind on the phone when he called Guatemala.Lots of people said they looked alike, but Jesús wasn't sure.This is what he knows about his father now:At the end of his 13-hour work day as a head cook, his legs sometimes ache so much that he asks Jesús to rub them.He helps people without asking for anything in return, like the day he lugged a washing machine into an apartment for his landlord but refused to accept any money.He gives good advice that Jesús tries hard to remember. "Si quieres que te respeten, respeta tu primero." If you want others to respect you, respect others first.If he had to use one word to describe his father, Jesús would pick "incredible."Jesús is afraid that someone will separate them again. It's a fear he hasn't been able to forget, ever since he started reading about the recent wave of raids targeting Central American families. His father has given him their lawyer's phone number, just in case."Me destrozaría el alma," Jesús says. It would destroy my soul.For Jesús, the sentence he said as he boarded the Greyhound bus 20 months ago still holds true. But it has a different meaning.Voy a conocer a mi papá.Back then, the phrase meant something simple: I am going to meet my father.The promise of a hug on a summer afternoon seemed like enough.But there are two definitions for the Spanish verb conocer: "to meet," and also "to know." Jesús has accomplished one, and not the other. There's so much more about his father -- and the country where he lives -- that he wants to understand. They are still getting to know each other, Jesús says.He hopes they'll have the chance.

Bobbi Young, Special to CNN Photographs by Preston Gannaway for CNN

2017-02-22 15:28:32

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opinions

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/22/opinions/nursing-home-rape-essay/index.html

My mother was raped in a nursing home at 88 - CNN

Bobbi Young describes how her family fought for nursing home reform after her mother was raped at a facility when she was 88. One of her mother's last wishes was for people to understand that no one is too old to become a victim of rape.

opinions, My mother was raped in a nursing home at 88 - CNN

My mother was raped at 88 -- but never defeated

Bobbi Young holds a photo of her mother, Marilyn Young, the day after she passed away at home in Carmel Valley, California. (CNN)I scanned my mother's bed, pulled back the rumpled sheets and uncovered her shivering naked body. I stared at her bruised inner thighs, her sheets wet with urine and blood, her catheter pulled completely out of her. I covered her with a blanket and held her close as she pleaded, "Get me out of here."I kissed her forehead, our tears mixing, and promised no one was going to stop me. She would not spend another night in this nursing home.I pushed the call button. No response. I followed the cord to the wall and found it disconnected. My heart racing, I tracked down an aide and demanded that a nurse come to my mother's room immediately. At 88, she was examined with nonchalance and covered back up.I called the manager to her room and told her I was taking Mom home. The nursing staff gathered in force, attempting to convince me that her release was a long process, that my mother could still benefit from their help. Her stay in the nursing home had been a temporary transition needed after being hospitalized with a stroke.Read MoreBut I knew my mother had been harmed. I feared the worse. And I feared for her life if she stayed there.I called her doctor to sign a release form, and I phoned a service for private medical transport. I also called my husband and said, "I need to bring Mom home with us today. Go get Daddy."At the front door of the nursing home, the management staff lined up to wish us well. They invited us to come back and visit."Thank you," I told them, "but we will never drive by this road again."Sick, dying and raped in America's nursing homesWhen we arrived home, the driver unloaded my bundled mother and the rain momentarily stopped. I looked up and saw my father, his hand pressed to the window, tears in his eyes and mouthing the words "Mama ... Mama's home." Married 69 years, my parents experienced every second apart as an eternity.Once settled in their own bed, Daddy curled up next to Mother, held her hand, prayed with her, assured her she was OK now, home safe. She was still recovering from her stroke, and even though my father sensed some harm had come to her, he didn't ask. He didn't want to stress her more. He never left her side.Medical equipment, photos of happier times and leftover Christmas decorations fill Marilyn Young's bedroom.Over the weeks that followed, my mother complained of pain in her groin area. Doctors increased the doses of pain medication, but she still awoke in anguish, day after day. I finally had to examine her -- and my heart sank.I knew she needed to be seen by her gynecologist as soon as possible.A nurse practitioner examined my mother and ran tests to confirm her suspicions: a sexually transmitted disease. Had my mother shown these symptoms before, she asked. The answer was no. Had my mother had any sexual partners besides my father in her lifetime? The answer was no.When I told her about what had happened in the nursing home, the nurse said my father would need to be tested for the disease. My mother was visibly shaken. I asked the nurse, if my father was negative, what would be the next step? She said, you need to call the California Department of Public Health and file a report.We drove home silently. My mind struggled with how much my mother had been through; now we were minutes away from devastating my father. I asked if she wanted my help in telling Daddy. The answer was yes.As I spoke, Daddy didn't hesitate to agree to be tested. Then he asked what all of this meant. What would proving he was negative for the disease mean? Mama, her voice choked with sadness, replied: "I was raped." My father held my mother, crying, shaking his head in disbelief and apologizing for not being able to keep her safe.How protected are your elderly loved ones from sex abuse? I grew up believing my parents were strong and took comfort trusting I would always be safe. They both worked two or three jobs throughout my childhood to buy me and my siblings encyclopedias to enhance our knowledge of the world long before Google existed.Witnessing this wound inflicted on my parents cut deeply to the core of my own foundation. The hospital had recommended the nursing home as a transitional step; her own internist was the director of the facility: What could possibly go wrong?There were no warning flags. We failed to protect her against something we could not even imagine existed. A distress signal is only as good as the person who sees it. When I saw it, I took action. But it was too late.For months, my parents comforted each other, not wanting to be even a foot apart. Their love never wavered; it only deepened. I would walk past their bedroom and see them snuggled tightly together, whispering. My father later told me they were praying and planning to renew their wedding vows on their 70th anniversary.Beyond the harm the perpetrator had inflicted on my mother, he took a toll on my father's remaining strength and stole some of the precious time my parents had left. Still, together they decided to fight for reform, which my husband and I fully supported. We filed a civil lawsuit against the facility, arguing that more should have been done to protect my mother. She was brave enough to appear at the center of a public service video created by a nonprofit calling for nursing home reform.Six women. Three nursing homes. And the man accused of rape and abuse After taking her mother into her own home, Bobbi Young cared for her until Marilyn passed away in January. Two months before my father passed away at 95, he told my mother his time was near and asked my husband and I to help them renew their vows early. They exchanged their promises tearfully and glowed with renewed divinity. He did not live long enough to see my mother receive a settlement in her case against the nursing home. On the day my father died, my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. His painful journey ended 17 months later. But our commitment to choose love and joy enabled Mother and I to embrace our faith and carry on. I promised my husband I would not be sad or bitter. I had promised my father I would care for Mama and keep her safe.I feared that I would not be able to fulfill those promises.But there are moments in life that transcend fear. They mend twisted hearts. This became one of those moments.After my husband's funeral, all of my mother's nurturing traits intensified. I had promised to care for her, and now she was providing me with what felt like a second childhood. She took the reins, suggesting remedies such as extra locks on doors and an alarm system to quiet our fears. She reminded me of recipes to help stretch our dollars to survive -- such as making "imagination cookies." When I looked sad, she would talk about funny things my husband did to make her laugh. We prayed together, planned our spring garden, went for drives on hot days with the windows down, hair blowing in the wind, laughing with memories.I promised my mother I would honor her vow to carry on her courageous battle for justice all the days of my life by telling her story. While her perpetrator will likely never be found, it was one of her last wishes for people to understand that no one is too old to become a victim of rape. My mother died in January. She was 94. As I walk around my home now, I look at the empty rocking chair in which she soothed her children. I can feel her brushing my long hair. The seedlings she planted in eggshells on Christmas Day are bursting toward spring. I can hear her laughter and her reminder to me: "The gifts God gave you, he did not give to another; respect them and share them wisely. ..."Who was this woman in my life? Why was she made to suffer so?An answer fills my sorrowful heart:Suffering can carve two types of people, monsters and angels. I am fortunate to have been raised by angels. And I pray to one day be worthy of that divine fabric that still holds me tightly together -- love.Nursing home sex abuse: 5 things that need to change Editor's note: Bobbi Young lives in Carmel Valley, California, where she cared for her mother during her final days. The views expressed here are solely hers.

Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN

2017-08-20 13:05:34

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/20/health/nursing-home-aide-rape-trial-guilty/index.html

Caregiver convicted of rape in nursing home - CNN

No one believed he would rape nursing home residents. Now he's going to prison.

health, Caregiver convicted of rape in nursing home - CNN

No one believed he would rape nursing home residents. Now he is going to prison

(CNN)At first, no one believed them when they said the charming, well-liked aide in the nursing home where they lived had raped them. Claims like theirs are often dismissed as drug-induced hallucinations, signs of dementia or attempts by lonely residents to get attention. And even when the cases of nursing home residents get to court, they can fall apart when victims' memories prove unreliable -- or they are no longer alive to testify. This time was different. The two women made their way to the courthouse in Waynesville, North Carolina, last week to testify against the man entrusted with their care. One entered the courtroom in her wheelchair, two oxygen tanks behind her, and defiantly described the February night when 58-year-old Luis Gomez lifted up her nightgown. He had entered her room at the Brian Center, a nursing home in the center of town, when she was alone and asked if she needed to go the bathroom. She said she did, and climbed out of bed. As she entered the bathroom and faced the toilet, she heard the door close and lock. Then, she said, Gomez raped her. Read More At first, no one acted on her accusation, and she feared Gomez might appear in her room again at any moment. But when a nurse insisted on notifying police -- against the wishes of her boss -- the call triggered an investigation. And women just down the hall from the resident came forward, with their own allegations against Gomez.Now he has been sentenced to at least 23 years behind bars. "What this man has done for a period of almost a decade is ... prey on Alzheimer's patients because they're forgetful and they can't remember and oftentimes they die," the prosecutor told the judge during sentencing. "In 2016, Your Honor, he made the grave mistake of hurting the wrong woman. She was brave enough to tell, and she wouldn't be quiet until everybody listened. And because of her, that's the only reason that we are finally able to put him in prison." After a weeklong trial, Gomez was found guilty of raping both women who testified against him -- convicted on six counts that included forcible rape with a physically helpless victim. He still maintains his innocence, and is appealing the verdict. What should we investigate next? Email Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken At his sentencing, the prosecutor said the two women who testified against him were not his only victims.Six others have accused him, she said. At three different facilities in the area. Some were in their 50s and 60s. At least one was nearly 90. None were believed, until the woman who was raped in her nightgown came forward. Gomez's attorney told jurors they shouldn't believe her either. "He told me I'm untruthful, and I said, no I am not," the victim, now 55, said of the lawyer's questioning. "He made me feel like I was a worm crawling on the ground." CNN does not typically identify victims of sexual abuse.The weeklong trial of Luis Gomez took place at the Haywood County Courthouse in Waynesville.Gomez's attorney, Joel Schechet, told the court that his client is a "good man" who came to America after almost dying from an assault in Guatemala. "To this day, I would contend he never committed an act that was inappropriate to any of these people making these allegations," he said, adding that had the jury found him innocent,Gomez was prepared to leave the country and return home. The Brian Center paid a six-figure fine after regulators found it had failed to protect residents from sexual abuse. A spokesperson for its parent company said it was pleased the case was over and that it had been unaware of the multiple allegations against Gomez until the police investigation began. Months before the trial, a CNN investigation into sexual abuse at nursing homes had discovered many of these same accusations against Gomez at three different nursing facilities in Haywood County. At least some had been reported to the state.But because investigators were unable to substantiate any of the complaints, Gomez's record remained clean and he continued work as a nursing aide.Asked whether the Gomez case would spur change, such as a way to track a pattern of unsubstantiated complaints against nursing home employees, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has said the agency is simply following federal and state laws.They refused to comment on just how many times Gomez was investigated in the past. But in court, the prosecutor ticked off each accusation, one by one: In 2011, years before Gomez worked at the Brian Center, a woman with severe Alzheimer's said he had touched her inappropriately while cleaning her up at another nursing home in town, prompting a law enforcement investigation. At first, she insisted it had happened. But then she said, "Well, maybe I'm confused."Two years later, a resident at yet another nursing home screamed when she awoke to Gomez touching her. She was living in the Alzheimer's wing, even though she didn't suffer from the condition. The following year, an Alzheimer's patient at the same facility reported that he had pressed her "down there." But she said she was "afraid" and didn't want to get him in trouble. She has since passed away. After that, the accusations started piling up at the Brian Center. Nursing aide Luis Gomez most recently lived in this house, according to property records. In 2015, a resident said Gomez touched her breasts and told her he wanted to marry her. Another woman, who'd suffered a stroke, told staff that Gomez molested her. She was promptly committed to the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. Within months, a different woman insisted Gomez had touched her while changing her diaper, but said that no one believed her. And yet another said she had silently endured weeks of sexual abuse that left her terrified. The woman who said he raped her in the bathroom was his eighth accuser. Before the judge sentenced Gomez, the victim asked to have a word with him. The sheriff wheeled her up to face him. Then she spoke."The Lord loves you," she told her attacker. "Even though what you did is wrong, the Good Book says that I must love you, even though you did me wrong; and I do. I love you, and I pray that the others learn to forgive you and love you as I have. May you go in peace." Gomez sat silently and cried, she said. She returned to the Brian Center, where she says memories of her abuse still haunt her. The day of the verdict, she said, was the best day of her life. She was finally believed. "It felt like a ton of bricks were off my shoulders," said the woman, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure. "I wanted to scream in the courtroom, 'Yeehaw!'" News of the verdict quickly made its way around town, reaching another woman who had accused Gomez of sexual abuse -- the stroke victim who had been sent to the psych ward. The stroke victim sent to the psychiatric ward after accusing Gomez of molesting her says his sentence is not enough."I was glad that people did believe it, and something was done about it," she said, speaking on the phone from the facility where she lives now, many miles from the Brian Center. But she wasn't satisfied with the outcome. "What he did was a lot worse than what he's paying for." The nurse who supervised Gomez and defied her boss by triggering the police investigation said she, too, was also glad the victims were believed. Even if her life has been upended. She said she suffered panic attacks for months leading up to the trial. She was fired from the Brian Center days after notifying police, and she said she plans to sue the facility to make a statement: that nurses will not be forced to act unethically. "I couldn't live with myself if I did not make the call," said 36-year-old Krista Shalda. "I could not go to bed at night if I knew I was the reason someone was getting sexually assaulted." She doubts she will ever work in a nursing home again. Facilities are reluctant to hire a whistleblower, she said. She also knows that she wouldn't be able to stop herself from worrying about what could be happening behind closed doors.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-11-12 15:49:05

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/us/conference-of-catholic-bishops-vatican/index.html

US bishops conference: Vatican orders delay in taking action on sexual abuse crisis - CNN

The Vatican has told the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to delay voting on measures to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual abuse, the president of the conference said in a surprise announcement Monday morning.

us, US bishops conference: Vatican orders delay in taking action on sexual abuse crisis - CNN

Vatican orders US bishops to delay taking action on sexual abuse crisis

Baltimore (CNN)The Vatican has told the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to delay voting on measures to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual abuse, the president of the conference said in a surprise announcement Monday morning. In announcing the decision to his fellow bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said he was disappointed by the Vatican's interference, which he said he learned of on Sunday afternoon. "At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items in our docket regarding the abuse crisis," said DiNardo. For weeks, the US Catholic bishops have trumpeted a series of reforms they had hoped to make after what one cardinal called the church's "summer of hell." Those reforms must be approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which gathers the country's bishops twice a year to debate and adopt new policies.The Vatican's eleventh-hour intervention, ordered by its Congregation for Bishops, according to DiNardo, essentially puts the American bishops' reforms on hold. Read MoreDiNardo, who looked shell-shocked Monday morning, tried to put a positive spin on the Vatican's decision, calling it a "bump in the road." But many bishops gathered in Baltimore through Wednesday were surprised and unhappy about the Vatican's decision, he acknowledged. Bishop Christopher Coyne of Vermont said the bishops had been "thrown a little sidewise" by Monday's announcement. "We are not, ourselves, happy about this," DiNardo said during a press conference Monday in Baltimore. "We have been working hard to get to the action stage, and we'll do it, but we have to get past this bump in the road."DiNardo also said that the text of the proposals for the bishops' meeting this week were finalized in October 30, which did not leave much time for the Vatican to raise objections or advise modifications. Pope Francis met with his ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, on Saturday, according to the Pope's public schedule. Pierre is in Baltimore and addressed the body of bishops on Monday morning, though he did not mention the Vatican's insistence that the US bishops delay their vote. In a brief interview afterward, he said the Pope is concerned about "communion," the idea that the church moves together as a whole, rather than allowing national bishops conferences to make their own policies. That goal, however, is in tension with the Pope's insistence that local church leaders are best equipped to understand and respond to the needs of their communities. Asked about the apparent contradiction, DiNardo called it "quizzical." A Vatican spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Pope Francis will convene a meeting of bishops from around the world in February to address the sexual abuse crisis, which has roiled the church on several continents, including North America, South America and Australia.The bishops' well-laid plansThe Catholic bishops had been expected to debate and vote on several "concrete measures to respond to the abuse crisis," according to a news release about the meeting in Baltimore. Those measures, according to the bishops' conference, included a hotline to report bishops accused of abuse or mishandling abuse cases, standards of conduct for bishops and "protocols for bishops resigned or removed because of abuse."The bishops can still debate those measures, but they will not taking binding votes on them this week, following the Vatican's intervention.DiNardo said the Vatican's instructions came in the form of a letter from its Congregation for Bishops, which he said had concerns about church law. Under canon law, only the Pope can hold bishops accountable. The congregation also wanted the US bishops to wait to take action until after the meeting of bishops in Rome next February. US Catholic bishops announce new policies to police bishopsCatholic bishops in the United States have been heavily criticized for failing to hold themselves accountable for the sexual abuse of children, especially after a grand jury report in Pennsylvania released this summer found widespread evidence of abuse by priests and coverups by bishops. In another scandal, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and a powerful figure in the church, was demoted by Pope Francis after a man accused McCarrick of molesting him decades ago in New York. Since then, other men have come forward in media reports accusing McCarrick of molesting them while they were seminarians. McCarrick has denied the accusation from New York and is appealing his case at the Vatican. A number of Catholic bishops have said they are concerned that McCarrick was allowed to rise through the church's ranks despite persistent rumors about his conduct. DiNardo and others traveled to Rome this fall to personally ask the Pope for the Vatican's help in investigating McCarrick. Immediately after DiNardo made the surprise announcement on Monday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, one of the Pope's closest allies in the United States, said the bishops should still discuss the proposals, even if they are not approved this week. Cupich also suggested that the bishops could vote on the new measures at an emergency meeting in March. "We need as a conference, as brother bishops, to take up this issue for the good of the church in this country without delay," Cupich said.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-10-12 10:06:58

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/12/us/cardinal-wuerl-resignation/index.html

Abuse survivors angry over Pope's praise for fallen cardinal - CNN

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the embattled archbishop of Washington. But the Pope's high praise for Wuerl in the wake of two clergy sexual abuse scandals angered some abuse survivors.

us, Abuse survivors angry over Pope's praise for fallen cardinal - CNN

Abuse survivors angry over Pope's praise for fallen cardinal

(CNN)Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the embattled archbishop of Washington and one of the church's most powerful Americans. But the Pope's high praise for Wuerl in the wake of two clergy sexual abuse scandals angered some abuse survivors. Wuerl is the most prominent American Catholic to step down since the abuse scandal reignited this summer. But Francis has asked Wuerl to remain as the archdiocese's apostolic administrator -- akin to an interim manager -- until a successor is named. And in a letter released Friday, the pope praised Wuerl for his "nobility" in handling the criticism against him.Cardinal Wuerl acknowledges calls for leadership change, doesn't mention his futureThe Pope wrote that Wuerl has "sufficient elements to 'justify'" his actions "and distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes.""However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this, I am proud and thank you," the pope wrote.Read MoreSignificantly, while Wuerl is resigning as archbishop of Washington, he will remain a cardinal. He is still part of the powerful College of Cardinals and is one of only 10 American cardinals who could choose the next Pope.The Pope's praise of Wuerl also comes just days after the Vatican announced that it was investigating his predecessor, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Wuerl has been accused by a former papal diplomat of knowing about allegations that McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians. Wuerl has denied the accusations. "Although Cardinal Wuerl as of today is no longer the archbishop of Washington, he certainly doesn't seem to be out of favor with the boss," CNN senior Vatican analyst John Allen said, referring to the tone of the Pope's letter about Wuerl's resignation. Wuerl, who turns 78 in November, technically tendered his resignation upon reaching age 75, as all Catholic bishops and cardinals do. But cardinals are often allowed to serve until they are 80. Wuerl said Friday that he was deeply touched by the pope's "gracious words of understanding" in Friday's letter, and he asked for forgiveness for "past errors.""The Holy Father's decision to provide new leadership to the Archdiocese can allow all of the faithful, clergy, religious and lay, to focus on healing and the future," Wuerl said in a statement released by the archdiocese. "It permits this local Church to move forward. "Once again for any past errors in judgment I apologize and ask for pardon. My resignation is one way to express my great and abiding love for you the people of the Church of Washington."But abuse survivors, many of whom had called for Wuerl's resignation, blasted the Pope on Friday for praising Wuerl's "heart of a shepherd." "Wuerl took the most vulnerable -- children -- and put them in harm's way. How could the Pope possibly call him a good shepherd? It sends the message to abuse victims that the Pope doesn't really care about them. He only cares about 'his people,'" said Becky Ianni, a Washington-area leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. John Delaney, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse who is originally from Philadelphia, said he sat and cried after reading this morning that the Pope had called Wuerl a "noble man." "That's such a huge slap in the face to victims," said Delaney, who now lives in Tennessee. "I have tried not to bash the Pope. I really wanted to like him, but after today, the gloves are off." Other Catholics, however, called Wuerl's resignation a sign that the Pope, who has been accused of moving too slowly to combat clergy abuse, is finally taking concrete actions. John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, said the Pope's letter about Wuerl sends mixed messages, in part because the cardinal's record on abuse was itself mixed. "Wuerl was better than most (bishops), but not good enough, and that is part of the message today. Things are changing. Bishops are going to pay a price, even influential and effective bishops, even a bishop who did better than most." Even with the papal praise, Wuerl's resignation caps a remarkable fall from grace for one of the world's most powerful Catholic leaders. Cardinal Wuerl asks priests to forgive his 'errors in judgment' amid clergy abuse furorThe Pittsburgh native spent more than 50 years climbing the ranks of the Catholic Church, building a reputation as a loyal churchman and scrupulous teacher. Known as a key ally of Pope Francis, Wuerl sits on the Vatican committee that vets and appoints bishops around the world. But after a damning 900-page report by a grand jury in Pennsylvania and a letter from a former top Vatican official accusing Wuerl of covering up for his disgraced predecessor, the cardinal faced increasing pressure to step down from his perch atop the church's hierarchy.The Archdiocese of Washington vigorously defended Wuerl, sending detailed explanations of his actions to area clergy and pushing back against accusations that he failed to deal adequately with pedophile priests while he was the bishop of Pittsburgh.Wuerl also faced accusations from a former papal diplomat that he knew about accusations that his predecessor in Washington, McCarrick, had sexually abused seminarians. In a letter published in August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's former US ambassador, said Wuerl was "well aware of the continuous abuses committed by Cardinal McCarrick and the sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict."The Archdiocese of Washington denied Vigano's allegations, saying, "Cardinal Wuerl has categorically denied that any of this information was communicated to him. Archbishop Viganò at no time provided Cardinal Wuerl any information about an alleged document from Pope Benedict XVI with directives of any sort from Rome regarding Archbishop McCarrick." The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and a columnist at Religion News Service, said the Pope was smart to accept Wuerl's resignation, "even if he didn't really want to." "I think Wuerl finally convinced him that, for the good of the archdiocese, he needed to resign," Reese said. CNN's Hada Messia and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

Daniel Burke and Rosa Flores, CNN

2018-10-18 18:44:52

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/us/catholic-church-us-investigation/index.html

US Justice Department investigating Pennsylvania Catholic Church - CNN

The Department of Justice has subpoenaed at least seven of the eight Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania as part of an investigation into abuse by priests.

us, US Justice Department investigating Pennsylvania Catholic Church - CNN

US Justice Department investigating Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, Buffalo

(CNN)The Department of Justice has subpoenaed at least seven of the eight Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania as part of an investigation into abuse by priests. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton acknowledged on Thursday they had received federal subpoenas. "The Diocese of Pittsburgh has received the subpoena from the US Department of Justice and will cooperate fully with any and all investigations of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy in Pennsylvania," said spokesman the Rev. Nicholas S. Vaskov.The department is also looking into the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, a source with knowledge of the federal subpoena told CNN.Several groups that represent abuse survivors said this appears to be the first federal probe of this size and scope into sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the United States. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice in Washington declined to comment. Read MoreReport details sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania's Catholic ChurchThe federal probes come on the heels of a damning grand jury report in Pennsylvania that found credible evidence that 301 "predator priests" abused more than 1,000 children in six dioceses since 1947. Because the statute of limitations had run out on most of the crimes, only two priests have been charged as a result of the two-year-long investigation.But the Pennsylvania report has prompted officials in several other states to open inquiries into allegations of sexual misconduct by Catholic clergy.The Survivors Network of those Abuse by Priests has been asking for a federal investigation into the Catholic Church since 2003, during the church's last widespread scandal of clergy sex abuse.David Clohessy, SNAP's former national director, said "as best we can tell" this is the first such federal probe into the Catholic Church in the United States targeting clergy sexual abuse. "And it is long overdue."Dioceses respond"This subpoena is no surprise considering the horrific misconduct detailed in the statewide grand jury report," said Jerome Zufelt, spokesman for the Diocese of Greensburg. "Survivors, parishioners and the public want to see proof that every diocese has taken sweeping, decisive and impactful action to make children safer. We see this as another opportunity for the Diocese of Greensburg to be transparent."The Archdiocese of Philadelphia likewise pledged to cooperate with the probe. Abuse survivors angry over Pope's praise for fallen cardinal"The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has received a subpoena issued by a federal grand jury, which requires the production of certain documents. The archdiocese will cooperate with the United States Department of Justice in this matter," the archdiocese said.The Diocese of Allentown said it "is responding to an information request contained in a subpoena from the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania," adding, "The diocese will cooperate fully with the request, just as it cooperated fully with the information requests related to the statewide grand jury."The diocese sees itself as a partner with law enforcement in its goal to eliminate the abuse of minors wherever it may occur in society."The Diocese of Erie also confirmed that it had received a subpoena. "Its counsel is in conversation with the Department of Justice. We will have no further comment at this time," a spokeswoman said. A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia told CNN, "The US Department of Justice generally does not confirm, deny or otherwise comment on the existence or nonexistence of an investigation."Investigators in Buffalo seek documents about porn, source saysThe Justice Department subpoenaed the Buffalo diocese in late May, a source with knowledge of the federal subpoena told CNN.The source said the subpoena sought diocesan documentation regarding pornography, taking victims across state lines, and inappropriate use of cell phones and social media. The subpoena did not indicate toward what specific end this information was directed, the source said. Bishop Richard Malone was frustrated the subpoena did not list specific names or the overall reason for the subpoena, the source added. Diocesan lawyers were not able to ascertain any more details despite negotiating to limit the documentation to living priests only, according to the source.A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Buffalo said it received a request from the US attorney's office several months ago to review documents."A subpoena was provided and after some discussion, an agreement was reached to produce documents," communications director Kathy Spangler said. "We have heard nothing since early June. As far as we know, our response has nothing to do with the current Pennsylvania investigation that has just begun."Barbara Burns, public affairs officer of the US Attorney's Office of the Western District of New York, told CNN by phone that the office cannot confirm nor deny investigations.CNN's Brian Vitagliano, Anne Claire Stapleton and Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-09-23 04:09:39

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/23/europe/silent-popes/index.html

Why Francis and Benedict won't answer the accusations dividing their church - CNN

For the first time in 600 years, there are two living popes, one retired and one active, whose fates may be intertwined, even as many of their followers are at odds.

europe, Why Francis and Benedict won't answer the accusations dividing their church - CNN

The silent Popes: Why Francis and Benedict won't answer the accusations dividing their church

(CNN)One rarely leaves his monastery high on a hill in Vatican City. The other speaks freely -- too freely, critics say -- but has vowed silence on this matter, for now. Two men, both clad in white, both called Holy Father, and now, both facing questions about a crucial facet of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis: What did they know, and when? Amid the onslaught of news about the scandal, it can be easy to overlook the historical novelty and high drama of this moment in the life of the church: For the first time in 600 years, there are two living popes, one retired and one active, whose fates may be intertwined, even as many of their followers are at odds. It has been nearly a month since a former papal diplomat published a dramatic letter asserting "homosexual networks" and widespread cover-ups within the highest levels of the Catholic Church.JUST WATCHEDArchbishop wants Pope Francis to resignReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHArchbishop wants Pope Francis to resign 03:07The diplomat, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, demanded that Pope Francis resign for allegedly lifting sanctions that his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, had placed on an American cardinal accused of sexual misconduct. Read MoreWhether those sanctions actually existed is a question that Francis and Benedict seem uniquely qualified to answer. But neither the 91-year-old German scholar, nor the 81-year-old Argentine Jesuit has said a word about them. Supporters of both popes cast their silence in spiritual terms, forms of discipline and faith that truth will be revealed, eventually. Others say Benedict and Francis are loath to descend into a mudslinging fight with a former employee. Some wonder if more mundane strategies may be at work, too, such as self-preservation. Meanwhile, many Catholics are clamoring for answers, anxious that the scandal, with its many troubling questions, could irreparably mar the church's moral reputation and undermine trust in its leaders. JUST WATCHEDWhy this Pope's resignation shocked the worldReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWhy this Pope's resignation shocked the world 01:03Since Benedict's abdication in 2013, the two popes have taken pains to avoid awkward images or public spats. But in the United States and beyond, Benedict is held by conservatives as a life raft in a sea of moral relativism. Francis is beloved by liberals for his reform-mindedness, focus on poverty and openness to new ideas. While many American Catholics still like Francis, his popularity has plummeted in the last year, according to a recent CNN poll. "Maybe some people ... are not very happy with Pope Francis, so they dream about" Benedict, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Pope's current ambassador to the United States, said at an event Wednesday in New York. "At times our feelings are overwhelming, so instead of looking at reality as it is, you know, we judge reality from our own feelings, our resentments, our disappointments. And so, we say, 'This Pope, I don't understand him,' and we dream about the other." The sex abuse scandal has exacerbated tensions between the two camps as both fight for high moral ground. Francis and Benedict know everything they say can be twisted and used in those skirmishes, friends and advisers say, and are mindful of mistakes they've made in the past. So, while their factions fight online, both popes have kept their silence about Vigano. Theories and inter-church debates have rushed into the vacuum, to many survivors' dismay. Clergy celibacy, homosexuality, seminary culture, even liturgy have been conscripted into left-right debates about the true source of the church's troubles. Francis has spoken often about the church's clergy abuse crisis at large. He wrote an emotional letter after August's damning Pennsylvania grand jury report, repeatedly apologized in Ireland last month for that country's scandals and convened emergency meetings in Rome with American church leaders. But many Catholics are urging him to be more forthcoming about Vigano's accusations. More than 46,000 Catholic women have signed an open letter to Francis, writing "to pose questions that need answers.""We need leadership, truth and transparency," the women wrote. "We, your flock, deserve your answers now."Other Catholics say Benedict is the pope who has questions to answer.Vigano's accusations The chief accusation against Francis comes from Vigano, who served both Benedict and Pope Francis as nuncio, or papal ambassador, to the United States from 2011 to 2016. Francis has said he fired Vigano for plotting a 2015 meeting with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who became a conservative cause célèbre for refusing to sign same-sex marriage licenses. In an 11-page letter published August 25, Vigano tore into his former Vatican colleagues, accusing them of turning a blind eye to "homosexual networks" within the church, according to the archbishop. Vigano's chief evidence of this secret Catholic subculture comes in the person of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington, who was forced to resign this summer over accusations that he molested an altar boy and sexually abused young seminarians. JUST WATCHEDPope accepts resignation of prominent cardinalReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHPope accepts resignation of prominent cardinal 01:40Now 88, McCarrick has denied the allegation about the altar boy and appealed his case to the Vatican after an investigation by the Archdiocese of New York found the accusation credible. He has not responded to the accusations about the seminarians. For years, reports about McCarrick's misconduct with seminarians passed through the hands of powerful cardinals and archbishops, who apparently did nothing about them, according to Vigano. McCarrick himself was made a cardinal in 2001.Finally, Vigano says, in 2009 or 2010 Pope Benedict XVI placed "canonical sanctions" on McCarrick, ordering him to live a life of prayer and penance away from the public eye. But those sanctions have come under sharp questioning. Photographs and videos show McCarrick hobnobbing with church leaders, including Benedict and Vigano himself, at high-profile church events while the sanctions were supposedly in place. The website that published Vigano's letter, National Catholic Register, now says the sanctions were not a "formal decree, just a private request" by Benedict to McCarrick. If the sanctions were a "private request," Francis' supporters say, how was he supposed to enforce them? Vigano's agenda has also been questioned. In addition to the Davis fiasco, he has aligned himself with conservatives opposed to aspects of Francis' papacy, including his efforts to change elements of church teachings. But some allegations in Vigano's letter appear to be backed by documents, including a newly unearthed letter from a top Vatican official indicating that Catholic leaders had known about McCarrick's alleged misconduct with seminarians since 2000.In the United States, conservative bishops have vouched for Vigano's character and called for an investigation of his allegations about McCarrick. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops had asked the Vatican to lead the probe, with its leadership traveling to Rome last week to make the request in person. In a statement Wednesday, the bishops' conference said it still supports an investigation but made no mention of the Vatican. The Vatican has not responded to requests for comment about a potential investigation into McCarrick. 'He is trying to save the church'On the day Vigano's accusations broke, the Pope was asked about them on the plane ride home from Ireland. "I will not say a single word about this," he said. "I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions. It's an act of faith. When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak."Next Tuesday, the Pope will again face reporters, on a papal flight back from a four-day visit to the Baltic states. While Francis has kept silent about Vigano so far, Pierre, his new ambassador, offered a glimpse of how the Pope may be approaching this situation. Much has already been written and said about the Pope's Jesuit background -- perhaps too much, joked Pierre, ribbing his hosts, the Jesuit-run America Media, at Wednesday's event in Manhattan. "They think they know everything, the Jesuits," Pierre said with a laugh. But "discernment," a key part of Jesuit spirituality, plays an important role in Francis' life, the nuncio said. Discernment, as described in the Jesuits' Spiritual Exercises, is a way to contemplate complex situations and make sound decisions. "It's the capacity to analyze the situation in the light of Christ and the Spirit," Pierre said. Pierre said he saw Francis put discernment into practice while traveling with him through Mexico, where the nuncio was previously stationed. "He is discerning all the time. He's in touch with reality. He has no idea already-made before he sees things." "Maybe Providence is working in that," Pierre continued, "to have chosen somebody who has this capacity, this experience and this patrimony of the Jesuits and the Spiritual Exercises, precisely to guide the church in this difficult time." One of the Pope's closest confidants, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, said the Pope sees the Vigano letter as part of a conservative campaign to disrupt his papacy, and "draws energy from the conflict."Still, Francis has acknowledged errors in his handling of clergy sex abuse.JUST WATCHEDPope defrocks priest amid sex abuse scandalReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHPope defrocks priest amid sex abuse scandal 01:36After dismissing allegations against a bishop accused of cover-ups, the Pope in April said he had made "serious mistakes in the assessment and perception" of Chile's abuse scandal. The Pope later accepted that bishop's resignation, along with several other Chilean bishops. "He knows that he has made big mistakes on this, and he realizes that they were bad judgments, and now he wants to be cautious about not making the same mistakes," said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of church history at Villanova University in Philadelphia. Francis also likely sees Vigano's accusations as part of a larger problem within the church: Catholic bishops face sexual misconduct allegations on several different continents right now. (On Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced new policies to police bishops, including a hotline to field complaints.) "I believe that Francis is trying to do something bigger than defend himself," Faggioli said. "He is trying to save the church. "The problem is that the real person who should respond to Vigano's letter is not Francis," the professor continued. "It's Benedict." The 'private' PopeSince retiring in 2013, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has lived a quiet, almost cloistered life. Now 91, friends say that he is frail but mentally sharp.In his farewell address as Pope, Benedict promised to stay "hidden" from the world, even as he knew his unique personal history would make a complete disappearance nearly impossible. Private letters between Benedict and a German cardinal published last week in Germany reveal his concern for privacy, and that he not be seen as interfering in church matters. In one letter, Benedict defends his decision to resign, when he became the first Pope in 600 years to abdicate St. Peter's Throne. "With 'pope emeritus,' I tried to create a situation in which I am absolutely not accessible to the media and in which it is completely clear that there is only one pope," he wrote. But Benedict's decision to retire as "pope emeritus" has had its own complications. Some conservative Catholics look to him as an anti-Pope, or at least an anti-Francis. The Rev. Joseph Fessio, an American Jesuit who studied under Benedict and has published his works at Ignatius Press, said the former Pope likely knows of the efforts to pit him against Francis. "In some ways, he has become the face of 'the Resistance,' " Fessio said, "even though he hasn't done anything to be a resistor." When Benedict does make public remarks, conservatives often scour them for hints of unhappiness at the church's current situation, or leader. Last year, a Catholic website ran a piece under the headline "Benedict XVI is silent, but we all know what he thinks."In the piece, the author argues that Benedict's praise of a deceased cardinal's faith in the church, that he held faith in the church "even if at times the ship is almost filled to the point of shipwreck," could be interpreted as a dig at Francis. (The late Cardinal Joachim Meisner had also publicly questioned Francis' decision to open the door for remarried Catholics to receive Communion.) Benedict's longtime aide, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, called the interpretations of the former Pope's remarks "stupid." But Fessio isn't so sure. "He's got a very wry sense of humor, and he understates things," Fessio said. "He's not going to say, 'The church is a mess under Francis.' But his support for Meisner was a semi-coded message that he is aware of what's going on in the church right now." Ganswein has said the former Pope will not comment on Vigano's letter, knocking down reports that he had approved its contents as "fake news."Besides a reluctance to be seen as interfering, Benedict may have other reasons to hold his tongue, some Catholics say. He was Pope from 2005 to 2013, when much of the alleged misconduct outlined in Vigano's letter took place. Even allies acknowledge that Benedict did not lead the Vatican curia with a firm hand. "When it comes to Benedict, it's damned if you did, and damned if you didn't," said Paul Elie, a Catholic journalist who has written about the relationship between the two popes. "If Benedict knew about the allegations against McCarrick and didn't put him under sanctions, that's not good," Elie said. "And if Benedict didn't know about the allegations, that's not good either." But Fessio and other Catholics say Francis should answer Vigano's charges, instead of making vague remarks about "scandal" and "division" during morning homilies at Casa Santa Marta, his Roman residence. "He's attacking Vigano and everyone who is asking for answers," Fessio said. "I just find that deplorable. Be a man. Stand up and answer the questions."Many church watchers expect that Francis, or perhaps the Vatican's press office, will eventually answer Vigano's charges. The question is, when?

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-09-19 20:00:13

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/19/us/catholic-bishops-new-abuse-policy/index.html

US Catholic bishops announce new policies to police bishops - CNN

The US Catholic bishops' conference issued a dramatic apology on Wednesday for the role of bishops in the church's clergy sexual abuse scandal and announced new initiatives to hold abusive or negligent bishops accountable.

us, US Catholic bishops announce new policies to police bishops - CNN

US Catholic bishops announce new policies to police bishops

(CNN)The US Catholic bishops' conference issued a dramatic apology on Wednesday for the role of bishops in the church's clergy sexual abuse scandal and announced new initiatives to hold abusive or negligent bishops accountable. "Some bishops, by their actions or their failures to act, have caused great harm to both individuals and the Church as a whole," said the administrative committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a statement. Pope meets with leaders of US Catholic Church 'lacerated' by abuse scandal "They have used their authority and power to manipulate and sexually abuse others. They have allowed the fear of scandal to replace genuine concern and care for those who have been victimized by abusers."The statement from the US Catholic bishops' conference comes a week after its leadership met with Pope Francis at the Apostolic Palace in Rome. In a statement after the meeting, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the bishops' conference, called it a "lengthy, fruitful and good exchange."But in recent weeks most of the news surrounding the Catholic Church has been far from good. Read MoreThe church is facing abuse scandals on several continents, with its epicenter in the United States. American Catholics are reeling from a series of scandals beginning with the surprise announcement in July that a leading American cardinal had been credibly accused of abusing a minor. American cardinal says his own mother is 'embarrassed to be Catholic' That scandal, which led to Archbishop Theodore McCarrick's demotion from the prestigious College of Cardinals, has been followed by a series of equally damning accusations, from a Pennsylvania grand jury report that found widespread evidence of sexual abuse and cover ups, to the announcement last Thursday that Pope Francis has ordered an investigation into a West Virginia bishop who has been accused of sexually harassing adults. DiNardo himself is also facing accusations that he mishandled a complaint against a Catholic priest in Texas in 2010. "This is a time of deep examination of conscience for each bishop," the bishops' administrative committee said on Wednesday. "We cannot content ourselves that our response to sexual assault within the Church has been sufficient."The administrative committee at the bishops conference is composed of about 25-30 members, including the president and top leadership, the chairs of bishops' committees and regional representatives. Typically, the committee sets the agenda for the bishops' semiannual meetings, when new polices are debated and voted on. McCarrick is the only American archbishop mentioned by name in the statement. The committee said it "supported a full investigation into the situation" surrounding him, "including his alleged assaults on minors, priests, and seminarians as well as other matters regarding the current crisis."Catholic bishop in West Virginia resigns amid sexual harassment investigationMcCarrick has denied the accusation about the minor and is appealing his removal from ministry at the Vatican. He has not responded to the allegations about the seminarian.Notably, the bishops' statement makes no mention of the possibility of a Vatican-led investigation into McCarrick, which DiNardo had said he would seek from Pope Francis. A Vatican spokesman has not responded to requests for information from CNN. Even without the Pope's approval, the US bishops can take several steps on their own. On Wednesday, they announced they had: 1. Approved a "third-party reporting system" to receive confidential complaints of sexual abuse of minors by a bishop, and sexual harassment of or sexual misconduct with adults by a bishop, and will direct those complaints to civil authorities and the "appropriate" church authorities. Those authorities are not named in the statement. 2. Ordered a committee at the bishops' conference to develop proposals for policies "addressing restrictions on bishops who were removed or resigned because of allegations of sexual abuse of minors or sexual harassment of or misconduct with adults, including seminarians and priests."Letter suggests Vatican knew of sexual misconduct allegations against McCarrick in 20003. Begun the process of developing a "code of conduct" for bishops regarding the sexual abuse of a minor by a bishop; sexual harassment of, or misconduct with an adult by a bishop; or "negligence of a bishop in the exercise of his office related to such cases."4. Agreed to support a full investigation into McCarrick, with help from lay experts in relevant fields, such as law enforcement and social services."This is only a beginning. Consultation with a broad range of concerned parents, experts, and other laity along with clergy and religious will yield additional, specific measures to be taken to repair the scandal and restore justice," the bishops said in their statement.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-09-13 21:50:00

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/13/us/dolan-amanpour-cnntv/index.html

American cardinal says his own mother is 'embarrassed to be Catholic' - CNN

You know the scandals in the Catholic Church are bad when a leading American cardinal says his own mother is ashamed to show her faith in public. That's what Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.

us, American cardinal says his own mother is 'embarrassed to be Catholic' - CNN

American cardinal says his own mother is 'embarrassed to be Catholic'

(CNN)You know the scandals in the Catholic Church are bad when a leading American cardinal says his own mother is ashamed to show her faith in public. That's what Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday. "You don't think that did me in?" said Dolan, often one of the more cheery American churchmen. "When my mom says -- she's in assisted living -- she said: I'm not going out for lunch, I'm kind of embarrassed to be Catholic.""Boy, when your own mom is saying that..." Dolan said, trailing off. Read MoreDolan's comments came as Pope Francis and American Catholic leaders are struggling to deal with a rapidly escalating and morally disastrous series of scandals that center on sexual abuse by clergy and coverups by bishops. On Thursday, the Pope convened an emergency, closed-door meeting with a contingent of American church leaders to discuss the scandals and ways to prevent them from reoccurring. One of those leaders, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has himself been recently accused of mishandling a clergy abuse claim, according to documents from police in Texas. Last week, Dolan's own New York diocese was one of eight in the state to receive a subpoena from the state's attorney general, who has convened a civil probe into how the church leaders handled clergy abuse allegations. In the interview with Amanpour, Dolan addressed that inquiry as well as several other pressing topics in the church. But, as Dolan notes, the Catholic abuse "epidemic" extends far beyond the United States, from Latin America to Europe and Australia. Here's Dolan in his own words on some of the toughest issues facing the church. On New York's civil investigation "We have to cooperate, whether we like it or not. I think we kind of like it now. We told (New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood), thanks. Come on in. We need this. The disaster of this is such an oil spill that you've mentioned, beginning with the victims and their families. "If I don't have the trust of my people, I have nothing. The church is based on trust, it's not based on coercion. So that bothers me. One of the ways we might be able to get it back: Ask the outside experts. We bishops in New York, we wrote and said, 'Come on in. How can we help? Anything you want, go ahead.'"Since 2002, I keep bringing that date up. Because that's when the bishops, I'd like to propose, began to get their act together and did some very good things. We have been cooperating with ... the district attorney. There's ten of them here. We got a pretty good track record of working with them, provide any document that they want. You do know, any time we get an accusation, I had to learn this the hard way. Since 2002, the second person that knows it after us is the D.A. We say, 'Here. This is for you. We can't judge it. We can't decide if its credible.'"Read more about New York's civil investigation into the Catholic Church. On the Catholic Church's 'epidemic' of abuse "This summer has been anything but a church picnic for us. It's been a disaster, one crisis after another. And as I try my best to listen to people, I hear them express very eloquently frustration, bewilderment, anger, confusion. You name it, they got it. "I'm feeling the same way. I get angry as well. That priests could do this. That brother bishops would be so negligent and not responding properly. That our people are suffering and most of all -- most of all -- that these victims are. And they, think of what this summer has been for them. Even those that may have come forward decades ago, like many of them did. Maybe things have just begun to heal and now they're hearing all this again. "The (Archbishop Theodore) McCarrick affair, the Pennsylvania grand jury ... report. Now all the tension with the Vigano letter. Ireland, Chile, Australia, you name it. It seems to be epidemic."On whether Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, DC, should resign "I got to be personal -- he's a good friend and he's a tremendous leader. I kind of hope he doesn't resign. We need him. He's been a great source of reform in the past.I trust him enough that if he thinks he needs to resign for the good of the church, he will. And I would respect that decision."Read more about the calls for Cardinal Wuerl's resignation. On the accusations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano "I do think we need to take Archbishop Vigano's allegations seriously. I trust the Pope very much. I think he's going to say we need to get to the bottom of this, let's look into it, let's not be rash and impetuous in answering. But I owe my people an answer to this. And I think we'll get them. I trust the Pope."Read more about Archbishop Vigano's allegations. On whether homosexuality played a role in the church's sex abuse crisis"I don't think that's the sole root of it. The sole root of it is a lack of chastity, a lack of virtue. This isn't about right or left. This isn't about gay or straight. This is about right and wrong. We're just talking about decent human upright behavior. You don't abuse a minor. You don't do that. That's just -- I don't care if you have no faith. You know that that is vicious, that's diabolical. You don't do it."It's about right and wrong, I don't think it's about gay and straight. I don't think it's about liberal or conservative. I don't think it's about Vigano or Pope Francis. It's about right and wrong."On whether the church should change its rules on clergy celibacy "If it needs to change, it shouldn't be just because of that reason (the clergy sex abuse crisis). There could be other good reasons to talk about a change. And I'm at peace with talking about those. To jump to the conclusion here, I don't know."

Analysis by Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-08-27 23:27:43

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/us/vigano-pope-resign-abuse-analysis/index.html

The 'coup' against Pope Francis - CNN

Even before Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign on Sunday, the two men had a history, and it wasn't good.

us, The 'coup' against Pope Francis - CNN

The 'coup' against Pope Francis

(CNN)Even before Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign on Sunday, the two men had a history, and it wasn't good. Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, angered some church officials in 2015 by arranging a meeting at the Vatican's embassy in Washington between the Pope and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to sign same-sex marriage certificates. During his trip to the United States, the Pope had tried to stay above the country's culture wars. Vigano foisted Francis right into the fray. The Vatican, which tried to distance the Pope from Davis, was displeased. Two years later, Francis quietly accepted Vigano's resignation. On Sunday, Vigano struck back. Pope Francis silent on archbishop's call for him to resignIn an 11-page "testimony" released to conservative Catholic media, Vigano accused Francis of ignoring his warnings about Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who led the Archdiocese of Washington from 2000-2006. Under Francis' orders, McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals last month after accusations that he molested an altar boy and seminarians. Read MoreBut Vigano said the Pope earlier had lifted restrictions on McCarrick put in place by Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2015. "In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church," Vigano wrote, "he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick's abuses and resign along with all of them." Vigano's accusations come as Francis and his church are trying to contain a quickly escalating sexual abuse crisis that has spread from Australia to Pennsylvania. In Ireland, a country devastated by its own clergy abuse scandals, the Pope repeatedly apologized last weekend for the sins and crimes of church leaders, lamenting that "some members of the hierarchy didn't own up to these painful situations and kept silent." Pope replaces ambassador to U.S. who set up Kim Davis meetingOn the plane ride home, the Pope himself kept silent about Vigano's accusations. "I will not say a single word about this," he said. "I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the sufficient journalistic ability to make your conclusions. It's an act of trust."While journalists dig for the truth, and the Pope keeps silent, Vigano's letter has emerged as a sort of Rorschach test for Catholics: Many conservative Catholics say the Pope must go. Liberal Catholics accuse the archbishop of launching a coup d'etat against his boss. "This is a coup operation against Pope Francis," said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of Catholic history and theology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. "It is a stunning convergence between the personal agenda of Vigano and the theological agenda of those who do not like Pope Francis." Turning the tables on Vigano, the Archdiocese of Washington suggested his tenure in the United States should itself be investigated. Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits Ireland Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis arrives at the closing Mass of his Ireland visit at Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland on Sunday, August 26, 2018.Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandClerical sex abuse protesters assemble at the General Post Office in Dublin before marching to the Garden of Remembrance during the Pope's visit to Ireland on Sunday.Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis celebrates Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland, on Sunday.Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandAn aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park in Dublin as Pope Francis celebrates the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families on Sunday.Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandAn aide adjusts Pope Francis' cape as he speaks at the Knock Shrine in Knock, Ireland, on Sunday.Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPeople wait for the arrival of Pope Francis in front of the Knock Shrine on Sunday.Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis passes by a banner of a protester as he leaves St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin on Saturday. The Pope spoke of his shame over the "appalling crimes" of historic child abuse in the Catholic Church and said outrage was justified. However, he failed to specifically mention the current scandal over a US grand jury report documenting at least 1,000 cases of clerical pedophilia.Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis prays at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin on Saturday.Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on College Green in Dublin on Saturday. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandNuns wait for Pope Francis to arrive for the Festival of Families on Saturday.Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis leaves St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin after meeting recently married couples, and couples preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage, as part of his visit to Ireland.Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandRiverdance performs at the Festival of Families.Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandSpeaking in a hall in Dublin Castle on Saturday, Pope Francis addresses the sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, saying, "the failure of ecclesiastical authorities -- bishops, religious superiors, priests and others -- adequately to address these appalling crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments."Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandA journalist reacts inside the media center as Pope Francis arrives at Dublin Airport on Saturday.Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandThe Pope disembarks from the aircraft as he arrives in Dublin on Saturday. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPriests await the arrival of Pope Francis at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral.Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandProtesters tie baby shoes to a post, signifying the children who died in mother and baby homes in Ireland, during a protest in Dublin ahead of the start of the Pope's visit to Ireland.Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandThe Pope is greeted by Archbishop Eamon Martin as he arrives at Dublin Airport on Saturday.Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis is flanked by Irish President Michael Higgins upon his arrival at the presidential residence in Dublin on Saturday.Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandMembers of the armed forces arrive before the meeting between the Pope and Irish President Michael Higgins at Aras an Uachtarain on Saturday.Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandA crowd reacts to Pope Francis' arrival for the Festival of Families.Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandPope Francis waves to the crowd at Dublin Airport on Saturday.Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: In pictures: Pope Francis visits IrelandRainbow flags and blue ribbons are tied to Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin to remember the victims of Catholic Church clerical sex abuse.Hide Caption 23 of 23A 2014 memo shows that Vigano himself demanded that evidence be destroyed in an attempt to end an investigation against a former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, according to CNN Vatican analyst John Allen.But the Bishop of Phoenix, the Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, issued a statement defending Vigano, whom he said he has known since 1979."Although I have no knowledge of the information that he reveals in his written testimony of August 22, 2018, so I cannot personally verify its truthfulness, I have always known and respected him as a man of truthfulness, faith and integrity," Olmsted wrote. A 'hit list'Even before he tussled with Francis, Vigano was adept at courting controversy. In 2011, when he ran the Vatican City State, the Italian churchman clashed with his superiors, accusing Vatican officials of corruption. The charges became enmeshed in the Vatileaks scandal, when former Pope Benedict's butler leaked documents detailing the infighting. "Vigano presented himself as a whistle blower," said John Thavis, who was the Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service at the time. "But he also had a persecution complex. He saw conspiracy theories all around him." Thavis said Benedict didn't seem impressed by Vigano's views. "He sent him 4,000 miles away, to the United States."For Catholic parents, choosing to raise kids in a church marred by sex abuse is a 'painful thing'Vigano was appointed the Vatican's US ambassador in October 2011. For the most part, he kept a low profile, though some accused the archbishop of breaking with church protocol by appearing at an anti-gay marriage rally at the Supreme Court. (Typically, Vatican ambassadors -- known as nuncios -- do not publicly involve themselves in another country's internal political debates.) Besides representing the Pope, nuncios typically advise popes on whom to appoint as bishops. In his letter Sunday, Vigano seemed bitter that Francis had relied on other Vatican officials for recommendations, saying that "the nunciature in Washington was now out of the picture in the appointment of bishops." Instead, Vigano said, the appointment of several bishops to top posts in Chicago and New Jersey were "orchestrated" by McCarrick and his successor in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, as well as Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a Honduran who is one of the Pope's closest advisers. More salaciously, Vigano said the Catholic Church is plagued by "homosexual networks" that "act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church." Those "networks," Vigano said, were complicit in a "conspiracy of silence" that allowed McCarrick's and others' alleged abuses to continue.In statements, Wuerl of Washington and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, both of whom were named in Vigano's letter, denied any allegations against them. "The factual errors, innuendo and fearful ideology of the 'testimony,' serve to strengthen our conviction to move ahead resolutely in protecting the young and vulnerable from any sort of abuse," Tobin said, "while guaranteeing a safe and respectful environment where all are welcome and breaking down the structures and cultures that enable abuse."'No more apologies': Pope's visit fails to soothe Irish fury over abuseThe fact that most of the bishops Vigano criticizes are well-known liberals has led some church experts to suspect his motives. "This letter is a hit list," said Faggioli. "It's all the people he thinks are bad for the church because of their 'homosexual agenda.'"Apparently, that includes Pope Francis. Vigano saves most of his ammunition for the Pope, who he says he told in 2013 that McCarrick was "a serial predator" but "continued to cover for him." But the Pope didn't cover for McCarrick. Unlike his predecessors, Francis forced the former cardinal to resign in July. And Thavis said Vigano's assertions about Benedict putting restrictions on McCarrick, including not allowing him to participate in church events or celebrate Mass in public, are patently false. "McCarrick appeared at several high-profile events with Benedict," he said. Still, Thavis and Faggioli, as well as other church experts, said the Vatican should respond in detail to Vigano's charges, even if the Pope himself refuses to do so. "They still need to answer some questions," Faggioli said. "This is something that cannot be ignored."

Analysis by Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-08-19 04:04:59

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/19/us/catholic-sex-abuse-outrage/index.html

'How could this happen again?' Why this Catholic abuse scandal seems worse than 2002 - CNN

If the Catholic sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2002 slowly unspooled through news reports, Pennsylvania's grand jury report landed like an atom bomb, dropping its online horrors all at once.

us, 'How could this happen again?' Why this Catholic abuse scandal seems worse than 2002 - CNN

'How could this happen again?' Why this Catholic abuse scandal seems worse than 2002

(CNN)This is how bad things are in the Catholic Church right now: The Pope's top adviser on clergy sexual abuse canceled a trip to Ireland for a papal event because he has to investigate sexual misconduct in his own seminary.And Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, isn't alone. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, another key papal ally embroiled in the sex abuse crisis, has also canceled his appearance at next week's World Meeting of Families, a spokesman told CNN. Pennsylvania sex abuse report presents crucial test for Pope FrancisConsider the litany of recent incidents in the Catholic Church: • Catholic bishops have launched investigations into sexual misconduct in seminaries in Boston, Nebraska and Philadelphia. • The former archbishop of Washington resigned from the College of Cardinals after accusations that he molested seminarians and an altar boy. Read More• A Catholic bishop in Australia was convicted by a civil court of covering up abuse, and the Vatican has accepted the resignations of six bishops from Latin America after church investigations. • An Associated Press investigation found evidence that priests and bishops around the world have abused Catholic nuns and sisters for decades. • Next week, the Pope plans to travel to Ireland, where the former president, in an interview with The Irish Times, recently accused a top Vatican official of pressuring her to "protect" incriminating church documents from civil authorities in 2003. The Vatican has declined to comment on the allegation. But none of the above compares to the stomach-turning, nearly 900-page grand jury report unveiled Tuesday in Pennsylvania. The report, two years in the making, revealed shocking accusations: More than 1,000 children had been abused by 300 Catholic "predator priests" in six Pennsylvania dioceses during the past 70 years. The report also said some church leaders covered up the crimes, shuffling priests from rehab centers to parishes, giving no notice to parents or civil authorities. The state's attorney general called it the largest investigation ever by a US government into the Catholic Church. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called it a "moral catastrophe.""I know that many of you are asking," Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote to Catholics in his Chicago archdiocese Friday, "how could this be happening again?"Priest abuse victims detail lifetime of trauma and broken trustIf the Catholic sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2002 slowly unspooled through news reports, Pennsylvania's grand jury report landed like an atom bomb, dropping its online horrors all at once. With some redactions, the report was readily available for everyone to read and share: the accusations of sexual deviance, shameless lies and deceitful churchmen."What we have now is people freely expressing their outrage on Facebook and Twitter," said Greg Kandra, a Catholic deacon in Brooklyn, New York. "The anger is palpable. This is like 2002 on steroids."The details in the grand jury report are so disturbing -- one section describes a gang of pedophile priests who marked their child victims with crucifixes -- that some Catholics said they now fear raising their children in the church. Many are also calling for bishops and other church leaders to be finally held accountable. All of the bishops and most of the priests named in the report escaped punishment. They were allowed to resign or quietly retire. Some were given recommendations for other jobs, including one at Disney World. Because of extensive coverups, the statute of limitations had run out on most of the crimes, the grand jury said. Only two priests were charged with crimes as a result of the investigation. "The bishops' first reaction was to say that things look bad, but they did all we could," said Paula Kane, chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Pittsburgh."But lay people aren't buying that. The trust between the church's hierarchy and the people in the pews has been destroyed." This week, as the Catholic mood in the United States has shifted from shock and grief to outrage, an increasing number of Catholics are calling on the church to clean house, starting with the bishops. Report details sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania's Catholic ChurchFriday, Catholic theologians, scholars and lay leaders began circulating a petition urging all 271 active bishops in the United States to step down.As of Saturday, it had more than 1,000 signatures, representing a small fraction of the 68.5 million Catholics in the United States."Today, we call on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God's People," the petition said. Bishop-sized loophole After the 2002 Catholic sexual abuse scandal, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted new policies. They pledged to report priests accused of abuse promptly to police, include lay experts in abuse investigations and adopt "safe environment" training in their dioceses. Catholic leaders say the policies have worked. "By finding almost no cases after 2002, the grand jury's conclusions are consistent with previous studies showing that Catholic Church reforms in the United States drastically reduced the incidence of clergy child abuse," Greg Burke, director of the Vatican's press office, said Thursday. Burke also called the accusations in the grand jury report "criminal and morally reprehensible." But some Catholics say the bishops' policies have a bishop-sized loophole, as evidenced by the case of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick, who resigned from the College of Cardinals on July 28, apparently rose to the top of the church's ranks even though there were persistent rumors about his behavior with young men, including seminarians in his dioceses. McCarrick has denied the accusation about the altar boy and has not commented on the other allegations. Pope on Pennsylvania sex abuse report: 'We abandoned the little ones'Two New Jersey dioceses where he was a bishop -- Metuchen and Newark -- have acknowledged paying settlements to men who accused McCarrick of abuse. The dioceses have refused to divulge the years of the settlements. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced Thursday that he will ask the Vatican to conduct an "apostolic visitation," church-speak for an investigation, into McCarrick, and what church leaders knew about his behavior. DiNardo also said the bishops' conference is working on a plan to make misconduct and abuse by bishops easier to report and resolve. Both of those steps would take approval from the Vatican. Under church law, only the Pope can discipline or remove bishops. Some Catholics say they are wary of bishops trying to police each other, saying such a system could be rife with conflicts of interest. "I'm not so sure it should be up to the bishops to make recommendations or suggest solutions," said Kurt Martens, a canon law expert at The Catholic University of America in Washington. "The credibility of the bishops is not that high," Martens said, "and I am saying that charitably." What comes next? Next week, the Pope plans to travel to Ireland, a country that suffered through its own appalling clergy sex abuse scandal in 2009. He is widely expected to meet with victims, perhaps privately, and may also publicly address the Pennsylvania grand jury report in some way.American Catholics are increasingly skeptical of how the Pope is handling sex abuse in the church, according to the Pew Research Center. Less than half say he is doing a "excellent" or even "good" job on the issue, according to a survey taken in January, before the most recent scandals. Bishop says Catholic Church suffers from 'crisis of sexual morality'Some say the recent scandals are cause for the church to rethink its stance on the all-male and mostly unmarried priesthood. (The Roman Catholic Church currently ordains married men in rare occasions.) The Pope has said the "door is closed" on ordaining female priests, but has said he is open to discussing the possibility of married priests in places where there is a shortage of clergy. But the meeting to discuss that possibility won't take place until October 2019. Many Catholics are looking for action now. In May, all of Chile's 31 active bishops were called to Rome for an emergency summit after a Vatican investigator looked into a clergy sex abuse scandal in that country. All 31 offered their resignations, and the Vatican eventually accepted five of them.Experts say it would be impractical for all 271 of the active bishops in the United States to travel to Rome and meet with the Pope, and even more impractical to ask all of them to resign, though Francis could summon just the former and current bishops from Pennsylvania. It's also possible that the Vatican quickly greenlights the US bishops' proposals to provide for greater oversight of bishops, even though that idea is often unpopular in Rome. (A papal proposal in 2015 for a church tribunal to judge bishops was quietly scotched.) For centuries, Catholic bishops have had near-total control in their dioceses, with little oversight from anyone save the Pope, said Kane, the Pittsburgh University scholar. "That old model is still in place," she said. But the pressure is building on the bishops to change quickly. Cardinal DiNardo, the president of the US Catholic bishops' conference, said he plans to travel to Rome to present his plan and "urge further concrete steps based on them." Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington resigns after altar boy sex abuse allegationHe and other Catholic leaders say they don't have much time to repair public trust in the church. "The clock is ticking for all of us in church leadership," said Cardinal O'Malley of Boston, the Pope's top adviser on sexual abuse. "Catholics have lost patience with us and civil society has lost confidence in us."Meanwhile, officials in Pennsylvania said their investigation is not over. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said his office's hotline and email accounts for abuse survivors have "lit up" with more than 150 calls since the grand jury report was published. And some prominent Catholics, including Illinois State Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, are calling for attorneys general in more states to follow Pennsylvania's lead. "That's the only way I see something happening," she told National Catholic Reporter.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-12-01 02:00:22

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/30/us/bernie-glassman-american-zen-master/index.html

An American Zen Master has died: An oral history of Roshi Bernie Glassman - CNN

He was a Jew from Brooklyn named Bernie who became of world's most influential -- and controversial -- Buddhist Zen masters.

us, An American Zen Master has died: An oral history of Roshi Bernie Glassman - CNN

An American Zen Master has died: An oral history of Roshi Bernie Glassman

(CNN)One of Bernie Glassman's favorite koans asks: Where do you step from the top of a 100-foot pole? His answer seemed to be: You plunge. Glassman, who died November 4 at age 79, was a Brooklyn-born Jew, a recognized Zen master, a Buddhist trailblazer, a restless mensch and a serial plunger. Glassman plunged into aeronautical engineering, into Zen, into leading a Buddhist community, into running a bakery, into growing that bakery into a constellation of social services, into holding spiritual retreats among the homeless and at Holocaust-haunted concentration camps, into writing a book of koans with a Hollywood star, into mourning when his second wife died and into learning to walk and talk again two years ago after a stroke. The plunges, as Glassman called them, served a spiritual purpose: to uproot preconditioned ideas, bear witness to what's going on and serve those most in need. At a time when many American Buddhists preferred self-development to social engagement, Glassman dismissed "mannequin meditation" and carried his Zen practice from clean-aired monasteries to chaotic city streets, where he led weeklong retreats on sidewalks and in crowded parks. Read More"Bernie was very clear that meditation was not a refuge from life," said Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, Glassman's third wife. "For him, meditation was total engagement." With his longish hair, sad-eyed smile and Churchill cigars, in his later years Glassman looked less like a traditional Zen master than a "hippie cigar entrepreneur," to quote a former student. But his carefree aesthetic masked intense ethical commitments. After an epiphany in which he saw people as "hungry ghosts" -- Buddhist beings whose swollen bellies and pencil-thin necks symbolize the insatiability of desire -- Glassman vowed to serve them. "It was a literal experience and a formative experience," said Glassman in 1996. "Seeing the variety of cravings and beings all around us." Bernie Glassman in 1981. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, which Glassman co-founded in 1982 with his Zen community, has grown into a $10 million business selling sweets to companies like Ben & Jerry's while employing ex-cons, the disabled and former addicts through its "open hiring" policy. The profits are donated to Greyston Foundation, which offers affordable housing and social services for the poor and health care for people living with AIDS. "One thing Bernie Glassman was great at was feeding people," said Frank Ostaseski, author of "The Five Invitations" and founding director of the Zen Hospice Project. "He fed their material needs, and he fed them spiritual sustenance." Zen Peacemakers International, Glassman's other big venture, has nearly 1,200 members, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, in 25 chapters worldwide. About 2,500 people have participated in its "bearing witness" retreats, many held at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other sites of notorious inhumanity, said Rami Efal, the group's executive director. "Everyone doing engaged Buddhist work owes a certain debt to him," said Hozan Alan Senauke, vice abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center in California and a longtime social justice activist.Trained by Japanese missionaries in the intricacies of Zen, a school of Buddhism brought to China in the 6th century, Glassman was an influential bridge between its ancient teachings and his modern American following. He was also ambitious and iconoclastic, preferring Hawaiian shirts to a Zen teacher's brown robes, and came to believe that Eastern practices were insufficient for the tradition to blossom in America. "In our evolution in this country, we have imported these wonderful techniques from the East," Glassman said in 1997, "and we are now at the point where we know it's not enough." Some of Glassman's Zen experiments found a following; others did not. At times, some Buddhists questioned whether they were authentically "Zen" at all. "He moved pretty far to the edge of what Zen was," said the Rev. James Myoun Ford, a Zen priest and Unitarian Universalist minister who has written several books about Zen. "Zen needs people who break the mold, but we also need the mold." Glassman's empowering of non-Buddhists to teach in his Zen lineage, relentless focus on social justice and refusal to adopt the traditional trappings of a Zen teacher stirred the waters of American Buddhism. "People either thought he was a heretic or an avatar of the 'New Zen,'" said Helen Tworkov, author of the book "Zen in America: Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism.""So much of what he tried to do is broaden the parameters of Zen, especially for underserved populations." Glassman's restlessness and unconventionality likely prevented several of his Zen projects from attracting large enough flocks to flourish, several experts said. But his idiosyncrasies also inspired fellow Zen adepts. "Bernie is the one who really gave us the permission to be ourselves," said Senauke. "His influence will be wide that way." Glassman passed his direct influence on to 29 dharma heirs, the Buddhist term for spiritual successors, whom he recognized as masters in his Soto Zen lineage. The eclectic heirs include a National Book Award-winning author, a pioneer in prison ministry, an expert in end-of-life care, a Jesuit priest and a Catholic nun. "Bernie completely revolutionized our sense of what it means to be a Western practitioner of Zen in the 21st century and to make a difference in the world," said Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, abbot of the Village Zendo in New York City and one of Glassman's dharma heirs. "I learned from him how to really serve."It was great -- and sometimes it wasn't great. It was like: Oh my, my whole world is changing right in front of me." Glassman leads the Zen Peacemakers on a "bearing witness" retreat. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. The following is a brief oral history of Glassman's life, based on previously published interviews, a documentary and recent conversations with his family, friends, students and former students. Some quotations have been lightly edited for length and clarity. The photographs in this story were taken by Peter Cunningham. Bernie Glassman was born January 18, 1939, in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, to secular Jewish immigrants.Glassman: "I was a spoiled baby with four older sisters."Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, Glassman's third wife: "At the same time many people comment about the sadness in his eyes. He lost his mother at the age of 7, and that affected him deeply. On some very basic level he knew about suffering." Glassman: "I grew up in somewhat poor areas and people were being beaten up because they were black, they were being beaten up because they were Jewish. I was very aware of all of that."Glassman: "I became interested in airplanes very early in my life and went to a high school that specialized in engineering in Brooklyn and from there to an engineering college. In college I got interested in Zen through reading Huston Smith ... the page on Zen struck me as home. Nowadays on the web, we might call it my homepage. That was home for me. It was immediate." Glassman: "I went to Israel for a year. I came back in '63 and heard there was a Zen temple in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. There was a group of people sitting together one night a week, and there was a young monk helping the Japanese roshi in charge. That young monk was (Taizan) Maezumi, who was to be my teacher. I was 24 and he was 32. He was just a young monk and he did not speak much."Glassman: "Around 1966 I ran into Maezumi again. He was translating for a man, Yasutani Roshi, who had become somewhat famous in the Zen world because of "Three Pillars of Zen." And he was translating for him at a workshop and I saw that his English was really good so I went up to him and asked if he had his own place, which he did."Glassman: "In the early days there weren't very many people. I'd go to sit every morning and many times it would just be Maezumi, myself and maybe a few other people. But then it started to grow in the 1970s and got rather large."Glassman was given the dharma name Tetsugen, or "penetrator of subtleties." Ordained a novice priest in 1971, Glassman and his family moved into Maezumi's Zen Center of Los Angeles. Glassman and his teacher, Taizan Maezumi Roshi. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Alisa Glassman, Bernie's daughter: "My mom, Helen, was raised Orthodox Jewish, and my brother and I went to yeshivas in Beverly Hills. Meanwhile we lived in the hood in Los Angeles. It was odd to everybody else, but it wasn't odd to our family. We kept kosher in the home and Zen masters from around the world would come to our house for Shabbat. It was sometimes hard to bring people home. I had to explain a lot to people before they came to the house." In 1976, Maezumi Roshi conferred dharma transmission on Glassman, making him the first American authorized to teach in his Soto Zen lineage. Glassman: "I became very involved with the Japanese Soto sect because Maezumi would basically take me with him to Japan every year for about a month and we would always visit headquarters and various teachers within the Soto sect. Maezumi was looked at as somewhat of a rebel, but he would always visit headquarters." In 1983, Maezumi was accused of sexual impropriety with female students and entered rehab for alcoholism, according to the White Plum Asanga, an organization that includes his students and successors. Glassman: "Before I left, I was sort of his right-hand person, if you will. ... I left in December of 1979, and a couple years later there were the scandals and attendance went way, way down."Maezumi encouraged Glassman to start his own Zen community. With donations, he bought a mansion for his small flock in Riverdale, New York. Glassman's Zen community in New York started a bakery called Greyston. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, abbot of Zen Center of Los Angeles: "He immediately starts a bakery, and that created a huge mess because people didn't want to work night and day. Many students decided not to follow him because they wanted him to be the image of the Zen master in the zendo and he was so brilliant at that."Marko: "If you look at old pictures of when he was a priest, you can see this intensity and fierceness in his eyes. Sometimes it rankled people." Glassman: "I'm pushy. I'm very determined to get things done. If someone is hungry, I want to feed them. If someone is homeless, I want to find a place for them to live." In the 1980s Glassman moved his community to an impoverished area of Yonkers, New York. He conceived of a "mandala" of social services for the community, including a homeless shelter, addiction treatment, child care and jobs at Greyston Bakery. Glassman: "I didn't want to start a business that would provide work for just a few students and help support our community. I wanted to start a business that could also provide jobs and training outside our community. I was looking for a way for business itself to become a force for social change and a way of spiritual transformation."Helen Tworkov, a former student of Glassman's and author of "Zen in America:" "He was tremendously restless. He seemed most comfortable in his office, plotting and planning."Marko: "He used to give excellent dharma talks, but when he started talking about construction and state approvals for grants, people used to get pissed and say, 'That's not Zen!' And he would say, 'That's exactly Zen!" There was an exodus of students who didn't want to move to Yonkers. He watched so many people leave him." Glassman: "When we say that Zen is life, dealing in the moment with what is, that's the essence of Buddhism. So if there's a starving person, giving them food is the essence of Buddhism."Man identified as "Batman" in the documentary, "Instructions to the Cook": "I was living on the streets homeless and suffering, drugging and drinking and everything. I needed help, and he was there for me. He came up to me and asked if he could sit down beside me and I looked up and saw this strange man in his robes and stuff and I said sure. He was comforting, reassuring and energizing. It made me feel warm. I felt wanted. He invited me to come up to Westchester and at the time I thought he was joking. Four days later, I decided to make a phone call, and he sent one of the monks down to bring me up to the monastery."The Rev. James Myoun Ford, Zen priest and Unitarian Universalist minister: "Bernie cared about hunger, basic shelter, people at the edge. Before him, the big social justice issues for many Buddhists were 'in-house' issues like peace. It was social justice from the vantage of the middle and upper class. Bernie talked about soup kitchens. He was going to be the Zen Buddhist Dorothy Day.Glassman leads one of his "street retreats." Photograph by Peter Cunningham. In 1997, Greyston Mandala opened the Maitri Center and Issan House to provide housing and health care for people afflicted with AIDS.Unidentified man featured in "Instructions to the Cook," speaking to Glassman: "Seeing over the years the things you have done for people who are living with AIDS, people living with no hope, and I was one of them. I am so thankful for the things you pulled together. When I came in this door in 2000 with kidney failure, I learned to live all over again. There's a hope for living here and I just want to give it to the next person." Frank Ostaseski, founding director of the Zen Hospice Project: "What I learned from Bernie was a willingness to stay in the room when the going got tough and to take loving action. It changed the way I practice. I've learned to stay in the room when people are suffering and not leave." Maezumi died unexpectedly in 1995. Soon after, Glassman stopped wearing robes, grew his hair out and told people to call him Bernie. Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, abbot of Village Zendo in New York City: "He felt like the name Tetsugen didn't cut it when he was at a city council meeting trying to get approval for a project. He made that decision right after his teacher died, and that is important. He didn't do it before because of his love and respect for his teacher, who was a Japanese man with a family that was well known and very much a part of the hierarchy in the Soto Zen school. When Bernie disrobed and grew his hair, some of us who were more traditional were like, 'How could you do this?' But it was also liberating. We could practice no matter what we looked like, and we didn't have to hold onto traditions that were not suiting us." Hozan Alan Senauke, vice abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center: "For Bernie it was a challenge because when Maezumi passed away, it was assumed that Bernie would become the leading figure for Soto Zen Buddhism in the United States. But he absolutely stepped away from that. He had already made the decision long before that he did not want to be saddled with that responsibility. He wanted to follow his own path. That was a radical step -- and perplexing, from what I understand, to the Japanese, who were looking for Bernie to be the point person for their Zen project in America." Nakao: "I don't think he could have done the religious institution thing. I think it would have killed him." Alisa Glassman: "My dad was always a searcher, and I think things unfolded for him through his life. He was always questioning: What does it mean to be a Zen Buddhist, a human being, just to be? For him, it wasn't about the traditions, the bells, the robes. It was the actions, the way he led his life. That was Zen to him." Glassman: "I couldn't have hair when I was with Maezumi Roshi and I couldn't be Bernie. Then he died in '95, and by '96 I was Bernie again, and I had a beard and hair."In the mid-1990s, Glassman was looking for a new venture. He had already begun experimenting with "street retreats."On his 55th birthday, Glassman meditated in Washington, searching for his next adventure. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Glassman: "I wanted to figure out, what am I gonna do next? So I decided to do a retreat on the steps of the Capitol, in Washington, D.C. There were about 20 of us. And I gave as a theme for that retreat: What actions are we gonna take in our lives that will help the aspects of society that we're not dealing with, and society's not dealing with?"Nakao: "When he did the first street retreat on his birthday on the steps of the US Capitol in the freezing snow, he saw that the people who were with him had been shaken out of their usual mindsets and that this was, in many ways, more powerful than all the hours they had sat in meditation halls." Glassman: "It turned out to be the coldest week in Washington, DC, in 50 years. We slept at night at a local shelter, one of the largest shelters in the country a few blocks from the Capitol. At that retreat came the answer to my question — that I was going to start a peacemaker order." Street retreats and "plunges" at Holocaust concentration camps and homeless shelters became hallmarks of the Zen Peacemaker Order, which Glassman co-founded with his late wife, Roshi Sandra Jishu Holmes, in 1996. Glassman and other Zen Peacemakers meditate on the train tracks at Auschwitz. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Glassman: "I want to figure out how to learn from those who have suffered in a certain way, even though I can't fully enter that realm. So we go on the streets. I know we aren't homeless and I make that quite clear. At the same time, those who come will experience something that is closer to that world than those who haven't been there. This is the meaning of 'bearing witness.' It's like entering a church knowing you're not God or the priest. But you will experience something different from someone who stays out of the church or someone who is just hired to fix the roof." O'Hara: "In all the Abrahamic spiritual traditions there's a sense of caring for the other, and it's a beautiful way for us to be generous and kind to one another. But they are still the 'other,' and there's a kind of one-up, one-down relationship. What we learned on the street retreats, when you don't take anything with you in terms of money or ID, and we try to wear simple clothes, we can go into that space of learning what it is like to be homeless, to be poor. That's an insight that you can't read about. You have to do it."Marko: "It took me years before I would go on the street with them. A lot happened on the streets. A lot. People who had great fear about what it would mean to be a bag lady, what it is to starve, came out feeling very differently." Alisa Glassman: "The first year they did Auschwitz and he asked me to go, but I didn't want to because I had gone to yeshivas and we had a day every year just for remembering the Holocaust, and it was painful. But he didn't ask me to do a lot of things in life, so I went."Glassman: "We entered Birkenau. And I was struck again -- like before when I was struck by all the hungry spirits suffering, and wanting to be fed, wanting their suffering to be relieved -- so now I was struck by the feeling of souls. In my head it was like millions of souls wanting to be remembered."O'Hara: "His willingness, as a Jew, to go to Auschwitz over and over again and to see the hurt and meet it, is just really powerful for me." Ostaseski: "He would sit like a stone on the train tracks in Birkenau in the cold and rainy November weather. The rain was pounding and there was Bernie in his poncho not moving an inch, setting an example for all of us. He was leading with his life." Nakao: "He used to say that he liked to go into cracks, not only of our society but also himself."Glassman walks at the gates of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp, where he said he heard souls' voices clamoring to be remembered. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Glassman's wife, Roshi Sandra Jishu Holmes, died of a heart attack in 1998, plunging Glassman into grief. Glassman: "Over and over, people talked about Jishu's lighthearted, happy smile, a smile that none of us was going to see again. What are you going to do? they asked me. I'm going to bear witness, I replied. I canceled my schedule of public appearances for the rest of the year, including a book tour. I put off hundreds of friends, associates and students who called or wished to fly over. I knew from the beginning how easy it would be for a man like me, surrounded by people and programs and plans, with schedules finalized two years in advance, to throw himself into his work. Instead I chose to do a plunge. I chose to plunge into Jishu."Nakao: "Jishu held the empathy and emotions for the couple. Bernie was not that. He was a doer, a visionary. He saw where he wanted to go and if you wanted to go with him, great. But when Jishu died he realized that she carried a piece of being human that he had not really developed, so he went very deep into that and became more that way."Glassman: "When she was still alive, Jishu had brought into our relationship certain energies that lay dormant in me. She had brought her softness, her femininity, her down-to-earth practicality and deep empathy into our life together. Now, with her death, I either had to manifest them myself or watch them disappear from my life."In 2013, Glassman co-wrote a book with "The Big Lebowski" star Jeff Bridges called "The Dude and the Zen Master." Actor Jeff Bridges and Glassman wrote a book of koans together. Photograph by Peter Cunningham. Jeff Bridges: "Bernie and I really hit it off; we both cared about a lot of the same stuff. This is where Lebowski comes in. Bernie has been interested for some time now in making Zen more accessible to our times and culture, relevant and down to earth, and he felt that Lebowski did that big time. So he asked me if I wanted to write a book about that. I said, 'OK.'"Glassman had a stroke in 2016, but continued to teach his students and dharma heirs. Alisa Glassman: "The stroke itself became a Zen practice for him. He pushed himself to walk again and didn't complain. It was his last plunge." Marko: "He was not expressive of feelings, but after the stroke, his feelings started revealing themselves. He would meet with his successors on Zoom (a video conferencing system), and at one point someone asked him what he has left to live for. His life was so diminished, half of his body had been paralyzed, and Bernie just said, 'love.' The old Bernie would have never said that." Rami Efal, executive director of Zen Peacemakers International and Glassman's former assistant: "For two afternoons a month, he would meet on a conference call with his 22 living successors, the people he had been working and studying with for the last 30 years. I would always joke that he could be as absent-minded as anybody, but once you put him in front of students he would step right into that role. His students don't have zendos (Zen centers) or cushions, they work in business, education, all walks of life. He was really proud of that." Glassman died on November 4, as Zen Peacemakers were preparing for a "bearing witness" at Auschwitz-Birkenau. A ceremony was held there for Glassman this month. Marko: "The only instructions he gave me is that part of his remains should be put in Birkenau. He felt such a strong pull to that place. He was not much of a believer in reincarnation. He was very clear that the only thing that stays is the effect of our actions. He felt good about the effects of his actions. He came from Brooklyn, where what you really want to do is be a mensch. When you are mensch, you are a human being in the deepest and simplest sense of the word. You are doing things for other people, responding to their needs. A mensch responds." Glassman: "What good is it if we just make ourselves more holy? What's the point? The point is to serve, to offer, to be the offering.""A mensch responds." Photograph by Peter Cunningham.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-10-16 11:39:46

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/us/stetzer-christian-outrage/index.html

Outraged online? We all are. Here's what one Christian says about how to deal - CNN

How should Christians, or anyone for that matter, respond to the outrages that seem to ooze from our screens every day?

us, Outraged online? We all are. Here's what one Christian says about how to deal - CNN

Outraged online? We all are. Here's what one Christian says about how to deal

(CNN)Ed Stetzer has been blocked by his own Twitter account. Actually, it's not Stetzer's account, though it bears his bio, picture and name -- and tweets out links to his stories.It's one of several fake social media accounts run in Stetzer's name, but without his permission. (Note to Twitter readers: this is Stetzer's real account.) Stetzer would like to shut down the fake accounts, of course, but the author and expert in evangelism has bigger issues with the internet. In addition to his columns at Christianity Today, Stetzer is dean of the School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership at Wheaton College and executive director of the Billy Graham Center. A big man with a big personality, Stetzer looks a bit like a Metallica roadie who found Jesus. He sees himself as a bridge between secular America and its evangelical subculture. In his latest book, "Christians in the Age of Outrage," Stetzer finds plenty to criticize on both sides. Read MoreThe cover image shows a sheep with a wolf's fangs, a clear reference, Stetzer says, to Christians who act like sheep offline but turn into wolves when sitting at a keyboard. It's also a nod to the fact that our online identities -- like Stetzer's fake Twitter accounts -- aren't always what they seem.So how can Christians, or anyone for that matter, learn to respond to the outrages, faux and otherwise, that seem to ooze from our screens every day? Stetzer said he started thinking about that question a year ago, when it seemed like our online lives couldn't get any more confusing and caustic. And then, of course, they have.This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Q: I was going to start by comparing tweets attacking you to the smite-y, imprecatory psalms in the Bible. The point being that people have always been terrible. What makes now worse, in your mind?A: (Laughs) I may be able to find some tweets that are as bad as the imprecatory psalms. (Editor's note: He did. They were.) But seriously, part of the problem we see now is in growing polarization. Democrats are more liberal and Republicans are more conservative than they have been, according to surveys. The vitriol coming from both sides empowers the extremes, and we've seen how dangerous that can be, for example, with the "Pizzagate" conspiracy. Christians need to see that spreading conspiracy theories and "fake news" is a sin, and that sin can have a deadly impact.Ed Stetzer is author of the new book "Christians in the Age of Outrage." Q: Your book is on some of the same bestseller lists with "The Trump Prophecies." What does that say about American evangelicalism, that such different books could find such a wide audience? A: It says this is a very strange time we are living in, and it shows how much evangelicals need some theological and missiological clarity. The fact that the "Trump Prophecies" is even a thing is a mystery to me and most other evangelical leaders. To see President Trump, or any president for that matter, as some sort of prophetic figure is bizarre at best. It runs counter to the gospel and 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Jesus is not coming back on Air Force One, and he is not coming back riding a donkey or an elephant. For Christians to be "all in" on any politician or candidate is literally dangerous to their faith. Q: Evangelicals are more likely than other Americans (49% to 38%) to connect with people like themselves on social media, according to your book. How concerned are you about echo chambers? A: It's a twofold problem. The echo chamber first affirms your ideas, then it amplifies them, and you can start to believe the worst things about people you don't agree with. If I am a conservative evangelical Christian and I perceive that the Left is out to destroy me, and my only solution is to kick back, then we are all going to wind up with a bunch of broken shins. Q: Ouch. What do we do about that? A: It starts with the house of God. I think we need to get our house in order because it's not. We've seen the media reports about how Russian trolls targeted my people (conservative Christians) and that is deeply problematic. Christians have to be far more discerning. Who wants to be part of a group that is always angry and easily fooled? I don't think that's a winsome way to approach the culture today. Q: What about the political battles waged by evangelicals? A lot of non-evangelicals say they are outraged by prominent evangelicals' support for Trump, and I've even heard some evangelicals grumble privately about it. But in public, many pull their punches. A: There's a sense that we don't do a lot of internal self-criticism. One of Billy Graham's rules was not to criticize other ministers, and so I don't do it often, but I have done it on occasion. It's a question of, do I want to turn into a "watchblogger," using my platform to call out other people. And the answer is no. I would rather call people to a better way. It's easy to be a person who constantly critiques other religious leaders. Q: Sure, but a lot of the outrage on the Left seems to be coming from a perception that many white evangelicals embraced the "values voters" label and yet voted in large numbers for a President who seems to defy core Christian values.A: It's a misreading to say that top evangelicals have not said things to one another about that. I have said things to people. It is often done privately. You may not hear about it in the media, but those conversations are happening.The other thing I would say is that, when I show up at church on Sunday, I have to preach to and teach people who see Trump as a choice they had to make, not one they wanted to make. And I get why people begrudgingly voted for him. For me to start tweeting about that misses the responsibility I have to pastor a whole congregation of people. There has be a greater sense of caution in how we engage. Overly partisan engagement turns you into a partisan hack.Q: How much of evangelicals' concern is driven by the sense that America is becoming less of a white, Christian nation? A: That's a huge part of it. But when I hear people say, "I want to take my country back," I wonder, back to what? Because the height of religiosity was in the 1950s, and I don't know many people of color or women who want to go back to the '50s.The other thing is that God doesn't have a country. We have to stop thinking like we are the "new Israel." Christian leaders have to disciple people away from that belief. Q: I sometimes feel tempted to turn it all off and go meditate. Do you ever feel that way? A: Yes, but at the end of the day, I can't retreat. The founder of my faith told me to "go and make disciples of all nations." If that's the case, I have to listen to Jesus, not my own frustrations or desires to leave it behind. We didn't get to choose this mess of a time to live in, but it is our time and the key question is: How do we live faithfully in it?

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-10-26 20:34:52

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/26/us/evangelicals-dead-sea-scrolls/index.html

After Bible museum scandal, more evangelicals suspect they have forged Dead Sea Scrolls - CNN

Days after the Museum of the Bible acknowledged purchasing forged Dead Sea Scrolls, more American Christians say they now suspect that they, too, have bought pricey fakes.

us, After Bible museum scandal, more evangelicals suspect they have forged Dead Sea Scrolls - CNN

After Bible Museum scandal, more American Christians suspect they bought fake Dead Sea Scrolls

(CNN)Days after the Museum of the Bible acknowledged purchasing forged Dead Sea Scrolls, more American Christians say they now suspect that they, too, have bought pricey fakes. Steven Ortiz, a professor of archeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, said that he believes several fragments purchased by the seminary since 2010 may not be authentic. "We suspect that maybe three of our 10 fragments are forgeries," Ortiz said. "The seminary trustees are asking: What are we doing with our scrolls?" Ortiz said his seminary has sent eight of its fragments to the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), the same German laboratory that tested the Museum of the Bible's fragments. The test results were inconclusive with three of the seminary's fragments, Ortiz said, and they are awaiting further results. Robert Duke, dean of the School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University in California, said the Christian school is considering testing the five fragments it purchased in 2009. Read More"With this new information, we have a new direction for due-dilligence research," Duke said. "In some ways, we all need to lean into the news this week. We will be meeting to assess next steps, including possible testing with BAM."On Tuesday, the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, announced that five of its most valuable artifacts -- once thought to be part of the historic Dead Sea Scrolls -- are fake and will not be displayed anymore. The news was not unexpected, as multiple scholars, including one who worked for the museum itself, had raised serious doubts about their authenticity. CNN wrote about the questionable artifacts last November. Germany-based scholars tested the museum's fragments and found that five "show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin," the Museum of the Bible said in a statement.Of the museum's 16 fragments, 7 will not be displayed and 9 will be tested further, a spokesperson said. Found 70 years ago in caves in Qumran, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, the scrolls are considered one of the 20th century's most important archaeological discoveries. With more than 900 manuscripts and an estimated 50,000 fragments, it took six decades for scholars to excavate and publish them all. Some scrolls contain the earliest known fragments of what would become revered as Jewish and Christian Scripture. In 2002, new fragments began mysteriously appearing on the market, where many were scooped up by evangelicals eager to own a piece of biblical history and find tangible evidence attesting to their belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. Some evangelicals' idolization of Scripture made them easy marks for unscrupulous dealers, scholars say. "It was the fertile soil that made the sale of forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments not just easy but extremely profitable," said Kipp Davis, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Trinity Western University in Canada, was one of several academics who has tried to warn Christians, including the Bible Museum, about potential forgeries. "My hope is that this is something that prompts these institutions to approach these questions with a more critical eye." Since the Bible Museum announcement, controversy has focused on the Green family, the evangelical billionaires behind the Museum of the Bible. In 2017, the Green family's company, Hobby Lobby, agreed to pay $3 million and return artifacts smuggled out of Iraq as part of a settlement with the Justice Department. Scholars have repeatedly questioned their approach to procuring artifacts. But many scholars, particularly those who work with antiquities, say issues with evangelicals and artifacts extend beyond the Greens. Since 2002, more than 70 fragments purportedly part of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were sold, many to American evangelicals, according to Norwegian scholar Arstein Justnes. Some of those scraps have reportedly cost millions. Justnes believes that 90% may be forgeries, based on analysis of the text and handwriting. For years, Justnes and other scholars have been calling on the Greens and other evangelicals to reveal how and from whom they acquired the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. In an interview before the Bible museum opened last Fall, Steve Green told CNN that wasn't sure who sold his family the Dead Sea Scroll fragments."There's been different sources, but I don't know specifically where those came from." A spokesperson said Green was not available for comment about the German test results. "They should tell us where they bought them and show their papers," Justnes said. "The physical tests are super sexy and what the public wants to hear about, but without an object's provenance, it is just unethical. And it helps the illicit market."Like Justnes, Davis said he hopes the scandal will encourage evangelical collectors to be more up-front about the provenance of their Dead Sea fragments. "There has to be a stronger focus now on how to handle questions of provenance. That's really where the massive failure in this has taken place." That may be easier said than done. Duke and Ortiz said their institutions were told their fragments were connected to the Kando family, who for decades had been trusted middlemen between buyers and the Bedouins who found the Dead Sea Scrolls. For years, the thinking among scholars has been: If an artifact came from Kando, it's likely legit."It's important to remember that the world of Dead Sea Scroll scholarship is reliant upon artifacts Bedouins found," Duke said. "They were not part of provenanced archaeological dig." But even before the Bible Museum's tests, Ortiz said he and other scholars had doubts about their supposedly ancient artifacts, based on analysis of the handwriting and text. For one, many of the fragments bear snippets from the Hebrew Bible, which is unusual because less than a quarter of all known Dead Sea Scrolls pertain to Scripture. But evangelicals and others are known to pay higher prices for them. For what it's worth, even scholars at Harvard University have been fooled by a forgery, Ortiz said, noting the infamous "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" scandal, a fiasco that hoodwinked a respected scholar and made worldwide news in 2012.Ortiz said he did not know how much Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary had paid for the fragments. Charles Patrick, a spokesman for the seminary, said the fragments were purchased with donor gifts and "privacy policy does not permit me to release the amount of donor gifts." Ortiz and other experts say even tiny fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls can fetch six figures, depending on their perceived historical, and, for some evangelicals, spiritual value."My biggest concern with any of the academic institutions buying these scrolls is that they excite the market, and when you excite the market, you excite forgers."

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-02-21 15:33:00

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/us/how-billy-graham-became-famous/index.html

How Billy Graham became the most famous preacher in America - CNN

In August of 1949, Billy Graham was just another lost soul who literally climbed a mountain in search of spiritual clarity.

us, How Billy Graham became the most famous preacher in America - CNN

How Billy Graham became the most famous preacher in America

(CNN)Billy Graham was having doubts -- in his ministry, in his rock-ribbed Christian faith, even in himself.At age 30, he was president of a small Christian college in Minnesota. But he was better known as the skinny preacher with the booming voice who crisscrossed the country leading evangelistic crusades.Billy Graham, whose 'matchless voice changed the lives of millions,' dies at 99But the size and ardor of the crowds had begun to wane. After a "flop" in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Graham was almost ready to call it quits."It was sorriest crusade we ever had," said his longtime friend and colleague Grady Wilson. Even more troubling for Graham: A fellow preacher had been peppering him with questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible, hammering cracks in the bedrock of his faith.Read MoreGraham died on Wednesday at age 99. Presidents and pastors mourned his death, calling the evangelist one of this country's most successful and beloved preachers. But in August of 1949, Billy Graham was just another lost soul, looking for a little help from above. Climbing the mountainHandsome and charismatic, Charles Templeton was every bit the evangelist as Graham. The two friends traveled and preached together during the mid-1940s in the Youth For Christ movement.More intellectually curious than Graham, Templeton had begun to read modern theology, which threw doubt on the historical accuracy of the Bible. He told Graham their faith was flimsy and urged him to study at a top seminary. The two evangelists wouldn't be able to get by on their "animal magnetism and youthful enthusiasm" forever, Templeton argued. Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor' Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Evangelist Billy Graham, who reached millions of people through his Christian rallies and developed a relationship with every US president since Harry Truman, died Wednesday, February 21, at the age of 99.Hide Caption 1 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'A school portrait of Graham, age 17, in 1935. After high school, Graham moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Tennessee to enroll in the conservative Christian school Bob Jones College. He then transferred to the Florida Bible Institute. He was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1939 and quickly gained a reputation as an evangelical preacher.Hide Caption 2 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preaches in the early 1950s. He said he became "born again" after hearing an evangelist at a tent meeting in 1934.Hide Caption 3 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham reads on an airplane during a "Pulpit in the Sky" trip in 1953.Hide Caption 4 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses a crowd in London's Trafalgar Square in 1954. Graham's London crusade lasted 12 weeks and drew huge crowds.Hide Caption 5 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to soccer fans in London during halftime of a match between Chelsea and Newcastle United.Hide Caption 6 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In the 1950s, Graham began a weekly Sunday night radio program, "The Hour of Decision."Hide Caption 7 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham embraces his family upon his return from his "Crusade for Christ" tour in the 1950s. With him from left are his wife, Ruth, and his daughters Anne, Virginia and Ruth (Bunny).Hide Caption 8 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1957, Graham's crusade at New York's Madison Square Garden ran nightly for 16 weeks.Hide Caption 9 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits with Graham at the White House in 1957.Hide Caption 10 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Supporters greet Graham upon his arrival in New York in 1959. Graham and his wife were returning from a six-month speaking tour that included stops in Australia and the Soviet Union.Hide Caption 11 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1960, Graham explains the Bible to Waarusha warriors in Tanzania.Hide Caption 12 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham visits with children during a trip to Ghana in 1960.Hide Caption 13 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits in a jungle clearing a few miles from Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1960.Hide Caption 14 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits with US President John F. Kennedy.Hide Caption 15 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham gets a kiss from his wife, Ruth, after they returned to the United States following a tour in Africa and the Middle East.Hide Caption 16 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preached that racial segregation was unbiblical, but some civil rights rights leaders criticized him for not being more involved in the civil rights movement. Graham asked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver a prayer at a Madison Square Garden crusade in New York in 1957.Hide Caption 17 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham dictates a synopsis of his evening sermon into a tape recorder in 1962. Secretaries would then type the synopsis for distribution to the press. Graham was conducting an eight-day crusade in Fresno, California.Hide Caption 18 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham appears in the 1963 documentary "The World's Greatest Showman: The Legend of Cecil B. DeMille."Hide Caption 19 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses the congregation at the opening of a 32-day London crusade in 1966.Hide Caption 20 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to more than 5,000 US troops in Vietnam in 1966.Hide Caption 21 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham addresses an audience in 1967. He was frequently listed by Gallup as one of the "Ten Most Admired Men in the World."Hide Caption 22 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham is flanked by US President Richard Nixon, left, and Vice President Spiro Agnew as they bow their heads in prayer in 1969. Graham was speaking at Nixon's inauguration.Hide Caption 23 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham rides a donkey in Jerusalem while visiting the city in 1969.Hide Caption 24 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to a crowd of 18,000 on the closing night of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1974.Hide Caption 25 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1978. Inclement weather had forced the crusade to the nearby Mid-South Coliseum, but when the clouds lifted, Graham went to the stadium to speak to those who could not get into the smaller indoor arena.Hide Caption 26 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham and his wife visit her birthplace in Huaiyin, China, in 1988. They were married for 64 years until her death in 2007.Hide Caption 27 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham takes a boat ride with US President George H.W, Bush near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1989.Hide Caption 28 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham preaches in New York's Central Park in 1991. It was his first appearance in New York City since 1970. The crowd was estimated at 200,000.Hide Caption 29 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham stands next to singer Johnny Cash in New York's Central Park.Hide Caption 30 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Pope John Paul II meets with Graham at the Vatican in 1993. Graham had often been called the "Protestant Pope."Hide Caption 31 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1996, House Speaker Newt Gingrich presents Graham with a Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony on Capitol Hill.Hide Caption 32 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham gestures as he speaks to a capacity crowd at Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1996.Hide Caption 33 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'In 1997, Graham gave the invocation at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton.Hide Caption 34 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham greets Chinese President Jiang Zemin at a California luncheon in 1997.Hide Caption 35 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Former first lady Nancy Reagan greets Graham at the gala dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.Hide Caption 36 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Presidential candidate George W. Bush meets with Graham in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2000. Years earlier, Bush said, a conversation with Graham had helped lead him to give up drinking.Hide Caption 37 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham speaks to a crowd at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2004. Over the course of his career, Graham preached to more than 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories.Hide Caption 38 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham leads his "last crusade" at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York in 2005. He spoke to more than 230,000 people.Hide Caption 39 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham sits in his mountain home in Montreat, North Carolina, in 2006.Hide Caption 40 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Graham and his son Franklin attend the Metro Maryland Festival in 2006. The three-day program was led by Franklin.Hide Caption 41 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'US President Barack Obama meets with Graham at his Montreat home in 2010.Hide Caption 42 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks with Graham and his son Franklin during a visit to Montreat in 2012.Hide Caption 43 of 44 Photos: Billy Graham: 'America's pastor'Well-wishers gather with Graham at his 95th birthday celebration in 2013.Hide Caption 44 of 44Graham demurred, saying he "didn't have a good enough mind" to settle deep theological questions. Templeton accused his friend of "intellectual suicide."Riled by the insult and wracked by doubts, Graham fled to Forest Home, a Christian retreat center tucked into Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains. There, he wandered among the tall pines and wrestled with his misgivings.Graham sat on a tree stump and opened his Bible on a big rock. He prayed and pondered, pleaded and struggled, until, finally, he surrendered, deciding to trust in the authority of the Bible, doubts be damned. (A bronze tablet marks the "Stone of Witness" at Forest Home.) "He decided to simply preach the Gospel and not worry about the intellectual challenges of the faith," said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Dartmouth University. "He literally climbed down the mountain and never looked back."The Canvas CathedralHis faith renewed, Graham poured everything into his next crusade, which began on September 25, 1949, in a Ringling Brothers-type tent pitched in downtown Los Angeles. The tent stretched for a whole city block, and was rigged with seven poles, a large marquee bearing Graham's intensely focused image, and a Bible propped open to Romans 12:2.Postwar America simmered with spirituality and Bible sales were booming. Some scholars call the period the Third Great Awakening. Television had yet to steal the spotlight from other forms of entertainment, and Graham knew how to put on a good show."The crusades were meticulously planned," said Balmer. "They made political conventions look like kindergarten."Graham persuaded organizers to spend $25,000 on billboards, radio spots and newspaper ads coaxing Californians to visit the "Canvas Cathedral" and hear "America's Sensational Young Evangelist Preach."US presidents mourn death of Billy GrahamHe preached with a passion that surprised even his longtime colleagues, according to William Martin's biography, "A Prophet with Honor."He marched across the stage like a soldier, chopping the air with his arms, his long fingers pointing the ways to heaven or to hell, his Carolina tenor warning that the wages of sin is spiritual death. In a subtle dig at Templeton, Graham said one night, "When God gets ready to shake America, he may not take the Ph.D. and the D.D. -- God may choose a country boy. God may choose the man that no one knows, a little nobody, to shake America for Jesus Christ in this day, and I pray that he would!"But turnout at the tent revival was disappointing: just 2,000-3,000 people per night, when more than 6,000 were expected. Chairs were spaced out to make the crowd look bigger.Organizers "put out a fleece," asking God to decide whether to continue the crusade, according to Martin's biography. If the weather warmed up, they would keep going. If not, they would shutter the Canvas Cathedral.As it happened, a heat wave blew into Los Angeles, convincing the organizers to keep the crusade going. But the hot spell was nothing compared to the media storm that would soon descend. 'Puff Graham'During the first few weeks of the Los Angeles crusade, a few B-list Hollywood celebrities lent their low-watt star power to the proceedings.Stuart Hamblen, a "radio cowboy" who drank and gambled before Graham convinced him to stop backsliding, was an early convert, telling his radio audience he "heard the heavenly switchboard click" one night at the Canvas Cathedral.But Hamblen's epiphany couldn't account for the horde of reporters and photographers who swarmed Graham as he walked into the tent one night in late October.Graham grew alarmed, according to Martin, fearing the media frenzy were feeding on some unknown scandal in his ministry.In fact, they had come to praise Graham, not to bury him.10 things you didn't know about Billy Graham"You have just been kissed by William Randolph Hearst," one reporter told the young preacher, showing Graham a two-word telegram sent by the newspaper magnate to his ink-stained scribes. It said, simply, "Puff Graham."Within days, headlines in Hearst papers, the country's largest chain, trumpeted the "new tide of faith" turning under the big tent in Los Angeles. Newspapers across the country ran front-page stories about the conversions of Hamblen, Olympic runner Louis Zamperini and former mobster J. Arthur Vaus. Other media soon joined the countrywide "amen corner.""Evangelist Graham seemed to be wielding the revival sickle as no one since Billy Sunday had wielded it," raved Time magazine. Life magazine devoted four pages to the "rising young evangelist."Graham never fully understood why Hearst, engaged in a longtime extramarital affair and an even longer dalliance with dubious media ethics, decided to bestow his considerable blessing on the evangelist. The two men never met. And Hearst, famously reclusive, never gave an explanation.Graham's ardent anti-communism likely appealed to Hearst, but lots of preachers at the time warned of the Soviet threat, said Martin. One thing is clear: The publicity campaign catapulted Graham into a new realm of fame. "It was an enormous boost," said Balmer, "if for no other reason than it gave credibility, which brought in money to the ministry."It also brought multitudes to the Canvas Cathedral. Attendance spiked to 6,000 a night, with hundreds more thronged outside the tent.As organizers extended the crusade to accommodate the growing crowds, a sign hoisted on the marquee proclaimed, "Something's Happening Inside, CONTINUING Another Week."But even Graham didn't quite know what that "something" was."You better get back out here real fast," he told a friend in Chicago, "because something has broken out that is way beyond me."Billy Graham Fast FactsIn the crusade's eighth "sin-smashing" week, Graham ran out of sermons and had to ask friends for suggestions. In an inspired bit of borrowing, one night he preached 18th century evangelist Jonathan Edward's famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God," nearly word for word. By the time the crusade ended on November 20, 1949, 350,000 people had heard Graham preach at the Canvas Cathedral and 3,000 had heeded the call to devote their lives to Christ, according to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Untold millions read and heard about the crusade, making Graham a lifelong believer in the power of the press. To commemorate the crusade, Graham's association keeps a mural-sized photograph of the Canvas Cathedral at its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. "They regard that crusade as the changing of the water into wine," said Martin.It's hard to overstate the effects of the crusade -- and its media coverage -- on Graham's ministry."I don't think there's any question that it's what thrust him into the national consciousness," said Martin.Consider the following example: In 1948, the year before the Los Angeles crusade, 65,000 people came to hear Graham preach. In 1950, that number rose to 1.8 million, and continued to crest for decades.As for Charles Templeton, unlike his friend, he attended Princeton Theological Seminary. He later left the ministry and gained prominence as a journalist in Canada. But he lost his Christian faith, saying he couldn't believe the Bible anymore. He died an agnostic.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-04-06 14:33:02

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europe

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/europe/pope-elevation/index.html

Seeing the Pope help strangers made me tear up. Later I learned why. - CNN

Psychologists call the emotion "elevation," and it can have enormous power over us, whether you're the Pope or a famous Hollywood director.

europe, Seeing the Pope help strangers made me tear up. Later I learned why. - CNN

Seeing the Pope help strangers made me tear up. Later I learned why.

Vatican City (CNN)They were there to see the Pope: the students waving flags, the newlyweds in white, the priests and nuns and rich donors. In front sat the elderly and sick, many in wheelchairs: the Pope's VIPs.I watched from a balcony, like Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree. As Francis approached the wheelchairs, a dark-haired man slowly uncoiled to meet his embrace. Francis touched the man's head, blessing him, said a few words and moved down the line. Moments later, a small boy leaped from his chair to hug Francis. His mother wiped her hands on her pants before shaking the Pope's. I was surprised to find my eyes tearing, accompanied by a short burst of benevolence. I felt a brief urge to hug everyone in the room. (I am not a hugger.) Read MoreCovering my tears' tracks, I turned to a colleague. He was emotional, too. It wasn't the first time I'd felt like this. But still, it was a bit odd. Why would witnessing a moment of kindness between complete strangers move me to tears? Isn't blessing people what popes and other holy men and women are supposed to do? When I returned home, I emailed a journalist who has covered popes for more than 20 years. "Those events never fail to move me," he said. "They always seem to be the most authentic moments of papal activity." At least I wasn't alone. But the question remained: What was going on in my brain?Answering that question was tricky. I asked moral philosophers, psychologists and spiritual leaders. I scoured books and academic journals and online articles. In the end, I learned that the sentiment I felt may be more common than you think, and it can be very contagious. A few years ago, the Pope spread it to a Pennsylvania family, who infected a famous Hollywood director, who responded with a remarkable act of generosity, a karmic chain whose repercussions still ripple through the world. Psychologists call the emotion "elevation," and this is the story of what it does to us, whether you are Pope Francis or J.J. Abrams or Thomas Jefferson. Yep, the man who "discovered" the feeling that makes us verklempt was the third president of these United States. A presidential psychologist Jonathan Haidt was sick of studying negative emotions. For eight years at the University of Virginia, the social psychologist had been plumbing the depths of disgust, studying ancient moral codes and conducting modern experiments. The idea of "positive psychology" attracted Haidt, who wanted to learn how to harness the power of emotions for moral growth, to help us live fulfilling and ethical lives. One day, Haidt writes, he came across a letter written by Jefferson more than 200 years ago. In it, Jefferson describes the effects of observing moral beauty, even in works of fiction. "When any ... act of charity or of gratitude," he wrote, "is presented to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty or feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable or grateful acts also." Observing good deeds, Jefferson continued, can "elevate" our bodies and minds, opening our chests and hearts. Thomas Jefferson described the emotion of elevation two centuries ago.The letter struck Haidt like a religious revelation: the sheer serendipity of finding a "new" emotion almost perfectly described by a former American president, at the very school that president had founded. Jefferson had noted four major components of the emotion: a triggering event (you witness moral beauty), a physical sensation (your chest dilates), a motivation (you want to help others) and an emotional feeling (you are uplifted and optimistic). That sounds a lot like psychologists' current definition of elevation: a warm, uplifting feeling that we experience when we see unexpected acts of kindness, courage or compassion. It often makes us want to help others and become better people. Haidt briefly considered calling the emotion "Jefferson's emotion," but thought better of it. Instead, he called it "elevation."Studies conducted in India, Japan and elsewhere have documented elevation, though people there may have different words for it. And religions have been telling elevating stories about selfless heroes for centuries, through texts such as the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita, a classic of Hindu literature. Haidt, who now a professor at New York University's school of business, began publishing his first academic papers on elevation in the early 2000s. Scholars from around the world soon followed suit, conducting experiments to test his theories. "It's a very unusual emotion," said Simone Schnall, director of the Body, Mind and Behaviour Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. "To be honest, I didn't think it would be something that people experience very often." But once she started studying elevation, Schnall says she started seeing it everywhere: on television, in daily life, while watching the Pope wash the feet of Muslim inmates on Holy Thursday. "It's not just feeling good," says Schnall, who has co-written three academic papers on elevation. "It compels you to want to do something." But some psychologists say Haidt has missed the mark on elevation. They argue that what I felt in Vatican City is actually a different emotion, with a different name. The earth got goose bumps Kama muta. That's what Alan Page Fiske, an anthropologist at UCLA, calls the emotion that washed through me when I saw the Pope blessing the elderly and the sick. The phrase means "moved by love" in Sanskrit. (The more well-known phrase kama sutra roughly translates as "love book.") Fiske says the closest we can come to the meaning of kama muta in English are words such as moved, touched, stirred or smitten. Christians might say that they've been slain in the Spirit or rolled by the Holy Ghost. Sufis might feel it during mystical moments, other Muslims on the Hajj pilgrimage. Mormons might call it "burning in the bosom." In internet slang, it's the stuff that makes you feel all the feels. Seeing Francis wash the feet of inmates on Holy Thursday can compel people into acts of kindness, scholars say. What connects those words is a feeling of oneness with another person or being, Fiske says. Kama muta is primarily a communal emotion; it bonds us to each other, makes us feel "cozy and connected." Researchers have studied kama muta in 19 countries, showing participants videos of cute kittens, families reunited after long separations, or people being kind to strangers. "All evoke kama muta," Fiske says. "Because they depict a sudden intensification of a communal relationship." What I felt was kama muta, too, according to Fiske. "Your emotional reaction is just the one that observers are said to have felt when observing the Buddha, in his past avatars, performing extraordinary acts of loving kindness," Fiske told me. "In the ancient Pali texts such acts are said to give observers -- and even the earth itself -- goose bumps." Like elevation, kama muta often comes with both physical and moral components, Fiske said. We feel flushed or get goose bumps and want to be kind and loving, whether that means calling our grandmother or helping a friend. Also like elevation, kama muta is a relatively new academic discovery. We still have a lot to learn about it. Academics seem to know a little more about elevation, including lab experiments that show just how much power the emotion can have over us. Transcending the self In 2016, two scholars examined the empirical evidence on elevation for the American Psychological Association's academic journal. The results were extraordinary. Experiments had found that elevation made people more likely or willing to volunteer for onerous tasks, donate to charity, mentor other people, register as an organ donor and cooperate with others. In other experiments, elevation was found to reduce prejudice and negative attitudes toward "outgroups" such as LGBT people and African-Americans. One experiment even found initial evidence that elevation could lead nonreligious people to become more spiritual, mainly by fostering a sense that people are benevolent and life is meaningful. "Elevation appears to lead to transcending the self -- psychologically, physiologically and behaviorally," wrote the scholars who summarized the findings on elevation, Rico Pohling of Germany's Technische Universitat and Rhett Diessner of Idaho's Lewis-Clark State College. Millions were moved when Francis embraced a disfigured man in 2013."Therefore, it may help us to connect with each other, to temporarily overcome our selfishness and perhaps to move toward changing ourselves and thus inducing an upward spiral of positive change, not only for the individual who experiences it, but for a whole community." But elevation may not be all kindness and connection, Pohling and Diessner warned. One study found initial evidence that suicide bombings could cause elevation "within members of the same cultural group." "The results exemplify that elevation may indeed foster a desire to become like a martyr in certain societies," the scholars wrote. "However, further studies are needed on this highly provocative topic." Most of the studies, though, offered empirical evidence about elevation's potential benefits. Here's how one worked: In 2010, three scholars set out to test if elevation could inspire altruism in British university students. They recruited 59 young women from the University of Plymouth in England and broke them into three groups. One group was shown a video clip of Oprah Winfrey's show in which musicians expressed appreciation for their mentors. Another was shown a sketch from "Fawlty Towers," a British sitcom, intended to produce mirth. The control group saw a nature documentary. After watching the videos, the women were asked to write a short essay about what they had seen, while the researchers pretended to have computer problems that fouled up the whole experiment. Would the women be willing to participate in another study, the researchers asked, warning that it was "rather boring" -- a series of 85 elementary math questions. The women who had seen the Oprah clip, the researchers found, not only felt elevated -- warm in the chest, uplifted in the mind -- they were more likely to volunteer for the boring study and spent roughly twice as much time on the math questions as the women who had seen the comedy or documentary. Many even stayed to help beyond the hour for which they had signed up, the researchers said. Daniel Fessler, an evolutionary anthropologist at UCLA who co-wrote the study, said we don't fully understand elevation yet. We don't know why we feel it, or why, from an evolutionary perspective, feeling it would offer an advantage to a particular person. But the societal effects of elevation could be huge, Fessler and other scholars said. The study of elevation could help nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers and others who work long and often under-appreciated hours caring for other people. It could also reshape how we teach ethics and morals to students. They might, for example, be interested in a real-life example of altruism that stars a famous Hollywood director. A famous case of elevationKristin Keating was sitting in a movie theater when she began to cry. A preview for a new documentary on Pope Francis had begun to play. "Everything came flooding back," she said. In 2015, Keating, her husband, Chuck, daughter Katie and twin sons Michael and Christopher were on the tarmac at Philadelphia International Airport when Francis arrived for the World Meeting of Families. The marching band Chuck Keating leads at a Pennsylvania Catholic school had been selected to play for the Pope as he disembarked from the plane. (They chose the theme song from "Rocky," of course.) Just as the Pope was driving away from the airport, he or someone in his entourage spotted Michael Keating, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. The Pope asked his driver to stop the car, slowly walked to the Keatings, leaned over a guardrail and planted a kiss on Michael's head. A video of Pope Francis kissing Michael Keating quickly went viral and inspired others."It would have been very easy for him to bless Michael without getting close to him," Kristin Keating said. "But he put in a lot of effort. It speaks to who he is." "It was uplifting for all of us," added Chuck Keating, "to know that someone was looking after us." Kristin remembers peering at the Pope through tears, then shaking a hand that felt soft as a cloud. "You know how people say that something wonderful will get them through the rest of the week? I felt like the Pope's blessing will get me through the rest of my life." The emotion the Keatings felt probably wasn't elevation, experts say. It was gratitude. Elevation is when we're moved by good deeds done for others; gratitude when the deeds are done for us.A video of the Keatings' moment with the Pope, which lasted less than 90 seconds, went viral. The Washington Post followed up with an article detailing the sacrifices Chuck, Kristin, Katie and Christopher have made to care for Michael. Kristin has already had two hernia operations from lifting Michael. The Washington Post article caught the attention of J.J. Abrams, the co-creator of "Lost" and director of Hollywood blockbusters such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Abrams was so moved by the Keatings' story that he and his wife immediately donated $50,000 to the Pennsylvania family. And Abrams wasn't alone. More than 650 people gave the Keatings nearly $100,000. The donations were a godsend, Kristin Keating said. The family used the money to buy a van that could accommodate Michael's wheelchair, which means her days of heavy lifting may be over. Abrams told The Washington Post that he and his wife, Katie McGrath, made the donation "likely for the same reason others did: We were moved by the Keating family's grace, strength and commitment to each other." (Abrams' agent did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.) The Keatings say they've tried not to make their house a shrine to Michael's moment, but they have kept reminders of the day the Pope singled their family out: tote bags full of newspaper articles, a DVR half-full of news reports, rosary beads from the World Meeting of Families, tumblers adorned with the image of Francis kissing Michael's head. The Pope seems keenly aware of how many lives he can touch with simple gestures. He's done it too many times for it to be a coincidence: embracing a man covered with boils, washing the feet of inmates, personally escorting refugees to Vatican City, or the example that moved me, the simple act of paying attention to sick and elderly people. Those moments speak volumes about the moral power of the papacy, but they also say something about us. We are hungry for such moments, even captivated by them; we want to rush off and tell others about what we've seen and, afterward, we want to become better people. It's not a new thing under the sun, but maybe each generation needs to learn the lesson again: Edicts and rules may keep us from behaving like devils, but if you want us to be saints, it helps to show us how.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-11-03 18:01:37

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/us/pittsburgh-shooting-first-shabbat/index.html

Pittsburgh rabbi told Trump that hate speech led to synagogue massacre - CNN

In a short but impassioned sermon Saturday, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers blamed politicians for a rise in hateful rhetoric, saying it led to the massacre at his synagogue last week in which 11 Jews were slain in the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history.

us, Pittsburgh rabbi told Trump that hate speech led to synagogue massacre - CNN

Pittsburgh rabbi told Trump that hate speech led to synagogue massacre

Pittsburgh (CNN)In a short but impassioned sermon Saturday, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers blamed politicians for a rise in hateful rhetoric, saying it led to the massacre at his synagogue last week in which 11 Jews were slain in the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history. Myers said he delivered that message personally to President Donald Trump when he and first lady Melania Trump visited Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha synagogue, the site of the shooting here in Pittsburgh, on Tuesday. "I said to him, 'Mr. President, hate speech leads to hateful actions. Hate speech leads to what happened in my sanctuary, where seven of my congregants were slaughtered. I witnessed it with my eyes." According to police, the man accused of the attack yelled that he wanted to "kill Jews," in part because Jewish groups have been helping refugees settle in the United States. Myers was speaking at a "unity" Shabbat service at Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh, where members of all three congregations that met at Tree of Life, as well as other members of the city's Jewish community, came together to worship on Saturday morning. Read MoreWearing a rainbow-colored prayer shawl and a Pittsburgh-themed yarmulke, Rabbi Myers made his distaste for Washington clear but also said he does not "foist blame" on the President or "any one person" for the attack.Myers also addressed criticism he has received from fellow Jews irked that he met with Trump, who has been accused of using anti-Semitic tropes and hateful rhetoric. Trump has repeatedly denied the accusations, noting that his daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. "The scourge of anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated and cannot be allowed to continue," Trump said last week. Myers said members of the Trump administration, including the president's personal secretary and son-in-law Jared Kushner, have contacted him to offer support this week. But after meeting with Trump, Myers said Saturday, some Jews accused the rabbi of "going to the dark side." One even suggested that he get "un-circumcised.""I said, 'OK, you go first,'" Myers said, drawing laughter from the congregation. More seriously, Myers said he drew on Jewish tradition in meeting with the President, particularly the Bible's insistence on welcoming strangers. That was the message of the Torah portion that would have been read during the Shabbat service last Saturday had the gunman not stormed his synagogue, the rabbi said. A week later, more than 600 people filled Congregation Beth Shalom for the Shabbat service, including many members of the three congregations attacked a little more than a mile away at Tree of Life. Members of all three congregations took turns reading the portions of the Torah.Near the beginning of the service, the congregation observed a minute and 11 seconds of silence, commemorating the 11 Jews murdered on October 27."God did not have anything to do with this," Beth Kissileff said in a heartfelt speech at the unity service. A writer and wife of a rabbi at New Light Congregation, one of the three congregations that met inside Tree of Life, Kissileff drew applause when she continued, "That is not our theology. Humans are given free will. We have a choice between good and evil. Some people choose to do evil. Our job is to make sure that those who choose evil don't have access to assault rifles." Impromptu Shabbat service right now in front of Tree of Life. Police barriers still block entry to the sanctuary. pic.twitter.com/1JKlxym5vY— Daniel Burke (@BurkeCNN) November 2, 2018 About a mile away, in front of the still-closed Tree of Life Synagogue, its former rabbi, Chuck Diamond, led a Shabbat service outside on Saturday morning."This was a place that stood, for so many people, for joy," Diamond said. It was the site of bris ceremonies, bar mitvahs and weddings. The rabbi urged the survivors not to feel guilty, but to remember that they have been blessed with the gift of life. A makeshift congregationAs Friday evening fell, with police tape marking the barriers of their makeshift congregation, members of Pittsburgh's Jewish community welcomed the Sabbath outside of the Tree of Life synagogue.About 50 men locked arms and swayed, harmonizing in Hebrew under darkening skies, while police looked on and pilgrims laid stones and flowers at memorials for the 11 congregants who were slain. The building is still closed while police process the crime scene.Many of the women sang, too, though they stood off to the side. Children ran back and forth playing between their parents' legs. A father gently wiped tears from his teenage son's cheeks, consoling him softly as the congregation prayed.At one point, the service was stopped to thank a member of the FBI who had helped the Chevrah Kadisha, the Jewish organization that helps prepare bodies for burial. Afterward, the congregation broke into "Al Hanisim," a Hanukkah song that commemorates Jews' perseverance in the face of violent oppression. Though not normally a part of Shabbat services, no one had to ask why the song was appropriate to sing on this night."The Jewish people know from our history that, no matter how bad things seem, we can always pull together, we will always persevere," said Rabbi Sam Weinberg, principal of Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, whose students helped organize the Shabbat service through text messages Friday."Six days after, right here," he continued, pointing at the Tree of Life synagogue that loomed nearby, "the most horrible and terrible thing happened, we can still come together as a people and recover a little bit of the peace of Shabbat."The service capped an emotional day in Pittsburgh as the city's Jewish community buried the last of their dead. As night fell, it seemed as if half of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh's historically Jewish neighborhood, was walking home from Sabbath services, huddling together against the cold.'A circle no one wants to be a part of'The last funeral for the 11 Jews killed a week ago was held Friday. Rose Mallinger, 97, was remembered for her strong will and commitment to Tree of Life.Under the soaring vaults of Rodef Shalom's sanctuary, another of Pittsburgh's large and historic synagogues, Mallinger's family and friends praised her zest for life."She was 97, but she was not done," said Rabbi Myers, who led Mallinger's congregation at Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha. "She had spunk." Later in the service, Myers said that "an angel" had visited him Friday morning, just as his spiritual strength was waning. That angel, he said, was the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, where a racist gunman killed nine members in 2015. Some in the congregation gasped when Myers called Manning to the front of the Rodef Shalom on Friday. Congregants of various faiths gather Friday with the Rodef Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh. Wearing a button commemorating the Charleston massacre, Manning said he traveled to Pittsburgh to offer moral sustenance, show solidarity and to "pay it forward," after many Americans stepped up to support his church. At Mallinger's memorial service, the pastor read Psalm 23 and told the congregation that his church "mourns with you, is here with you and will always be here with you." After the service, a long line of mourners waited to speak with Manning, hugging him and tearfully thanking him for coming to Pittsburgh. One woman sobbed as she lamented a rise in white nationalism, while the pastor stoically consoled her. Pittsburgh's Jews and his Charleston community share a common and tragic bond, Manning said in a brief interview afterward."We are part of a circle that no one wants to be a part of," he said. "What we have to do, today, and every day, is to make sure that that circle doesn't get any bigger."Manning was just one of many people across the world moved by last week's anti-Semitic attack. Myers said he received a call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. After a brief discussion about what language to converse in (Myers said they chose Hebrew, their "mother tongue") Netanyahu told him that all of Israel mourns with Pittsburgh, Myers said.Outside Tree of Life, pilgrims gathered to place flowers and signs at the memorials for the 11 Jews killed by the gunman.Among them was Jody Yoken and her 9-year-old son, Ryder, who were in town from Toronto for a hockey tournament. Yoken said her son, who attends a Hebrew school, has asked difficult questions in the aftermath of the attack: Are we safe? Why don't people like us? "I tell him that some people have difficulty accepting differences," Yoken said, "and that's why we have to try to be as accepting of other people as we can be."A global outpouring People of faith greet each other at Temple Sinai before Friday evening Shabbat services. The Twitter hashtag #ShowupforShabbat has been trending all week, with communities in the United States urging people to attend synagogues and show their support in the aftermath of the attack. In Britain, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wrote on Twitter that he would attend synagogue Saturday to stand "shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Londoners for their Shabbat service to show solidarity to the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting last weekend."Places of worship should be sanctuaries and safe spaces. Tomorrow I will be standing shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Londoners for their Shabbat service to show solidarity to the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting last weekend. #ShowUpForShabbat #PittsburghStrong— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) November 2, 2018 The UK Jewish community was also rallying to show solidarity, with leaders urging people to attend services.CNN's Ray Sanchez, Sarah Jorgensen and Amir Vera contributed to this report.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-11-02 23:51:23

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/us/pittsburgh-shooting-first-shabbat/index.html

First Shabbat since Pittsburgh massacre unites international Jewish community as the last victim is buried - CNN

Pittsburgh's grieving Jewish community welcomed the Sabbath outside the Tree of Life Synagogue on Friday evening, an emotional act of worship and defiance just six days after the worst attack of anti-Semitism in American history.

us, First Shabbat since Pittsburgh massacre unites international Jewish community as the last victim is buried - CNN

Police tape surrounds the Tree of Life synagogue. On Friday, Pittsburgh's Jews worshiped there anyway

Pittsburgh (CNN)With police tape marking the barriers of their makeshift congregation, members of this city's grieving Jewish community welcomed the Sabbath outside of the Tree of Life Synagogue on Friday evening, an emotional act of worship and defiance just six days after the synagogue witnessed the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history.About 50 men locked arms and swayed, harmonizing in Hebrew under darkening skies, while police looked on and pilgrims laid stones and flowers at memorials for the 11 congregants who were slain last Saturday. The building is still closed while police process the crime scene.Members of the Jewish faith gather outside the Tree of Life synagogue Friday evening for Shabbat services.Many of the women sang, too, though they stood off to the side, a separation common in the more conservative branches of Judaism. Children ran back and forth playing between their parents' legs. A father gently wiped tears from his teenage son's cheeks, consoling him softly as the congregation prayed.At one point, the service was stopped to thank a member of the FBI who had helped the Chevrah Kadisha, the Jewish organization that helps prepare bodies for burial. Afterward, the congregation broke into "Al Hanisim," a Hanukkah song that commemorates Jews' perseverance in the face of violent oppression. Though not normally a part of Shabbat services, no one had to ask why the song was appropriate to sing on this night."The Jewish people know from our history that, no matter how bad things seem, we can always pull together, we will always persevere," said Rabbi Sam Weinberg, principal of the Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, whose students helped organize the Shabbat service through text messages on Friday.Read More"Six days after, right here," he continued, pointing at the Tree of Life Synagogue that loomed nearby, "the most horrible and terrible thing happened, we can still come together as a people and recover a little bit of the peace of Shabbat."The service, one of many held across the city, capped an emotional day in Pittsburgh, as the city's Jewish community buried the last of their dead. As night fell, it seemed as if half of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh's historically Jewish neighborhood, was walking home from Sabbath services, huddling together against the cold.Impromptu Shabbat service right now in front of Tree of Life. Police barriers still block entry to the sanctuary. pic.twitter.com/1JKlxym5vY— Daniel Burke (@BurkeCNN) November 2, 2018 'A circle no one wants to be a part of'The last funeral for the 11 Jews killed six days ago was held Friday. Rose Mallinger, 97, was remembered for her strong will and commitment to Tree of Life.Under the soaring vaults of Rodef Shalom's sanctuary, Mallinger's family and friends praised her zest for life."She was 97, but she was not done," said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who led Mallinger's congregation at Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha. "She had spunk." Later in the service, Myers said that "an angel" had visited him Friday morning, just as his spiritual strength was waning. That angel, he said, was the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, where a gunman killed nine members in 2015. Congregants of various faiths gather Friday with the Rodef Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh. Wearing a button commemorating the Charleston massacre, Manning said he traveled to Pittsburgh on Friday to offer moral sustenance, show solidarity and to "pay it forward," after so many Americans stepped up to support his church. At Mallinger's memorial service, the pastor read Psalm 23 and told the congregation that his church "mourns with you, is here with you and will always be here with you." After the service, a long line of mourners waited to speak with Manning, hugging him and tearfully thanking him for coming to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's Jews and his Charleston community share a common and tragic bond, Manning said in a brief interview afterward."We are part of a circle that no one wants to be a part of," he said. "What we have to do, today, and every day, is to make sure that that circle doesn't get any bigger."Manning was just one of many people across the world moved by last Saturday's anti-Semitic attack. Myers said he received a call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. After a brief discussion about what language to converse in (Myers said they chose Hebrew, their "mother tongue") Netanyahu told him that all of Israel mourns with Pittsburgh, Myers said.Outside Tree of Life, pilgrims gathered to place flowers and signs at the memorials for the 11 Jews killed by the gunman last Saturday.Among them was Jody Yoken and her 9-year-old son, Ryder, who were in town from Toronto for a hockey tournament. Yoken said her son, who attends a Hebrew school in Canada, has asked difficult questions in the aftermath of Saturday's attack: Are we safe? Why don't people like us? "I tell him that some people have difficulty accepting differences," Yoken said, "and that's why we have to try to be as accepting of other people as we can be." A global outpouring People of faith greet each other in the sanctuary at Temple Sinai before Friday evening Shabbat services. Temple Sinai opened its doors to Pittsburgh-area Jews and people of all faiths. The Twitter hashtag #ShowupforShabbat has been trending all week, with communities in the United States urging people to attend synagogues and show their support in the aftermath of the attack. In Britain, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wrote on Twitter that he would attend synagogue on Saturday to stand "shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Londoners for their Shabbat service to show solidarity to the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting last weekend."Places of worship should be sanctuaries and safe spaces. Tomorrow I will be standing shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Londoners for their Shabbat service to show solidarity to the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting last weekend. #ShowUpForShabbat #PittsburghStrong— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) November 2, 2018 The UK Jewish community is also rallying to show solidarity, with leaders urging people to attend services Friday night and Saturday morning.CNN's Amir Vera contributed to this report

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-11-02 13:19:52

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/us/rabbi-myers-profile/index.html

Pittsburgh shooting: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers counsels a grieving synagogue -- and nation - CNN

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers lies awake at night, wrestling with his conscience and his God. It's been nearly a week since seven members of his congregation were slaughtered in the worst act of anti-Semitism in American history.

us, Pittsburgh shooting: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers counsels a grieving synagogue -- and nation - CNN

Rabbi Myers heard the screams of his congregation. Now he wrestles with God and his conscience

Pittsburgh (CNN)The rabbi lies awake at night, wrestling with his conscience and his God. He was known as a lighthearted presence at his previous job, when he was a cantor at Congregation Beth Judah on the New Jersey coast: good for a nip of Scotch after Shabbat services, for talking trash about his beloved New York Giants, for teaching Judaism to children and orchestrating elaborate productions of Purim spiels, the comic plays that commemorate Jews' deliverance from an anti-Semitic emperor. But that was before seven members of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers' congregation were slaughtered in their sanctuary, their holy place, on Saturday. It was the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history, with 11 killed overall. Each of the three Jewish congregations that meet at Tree of Life synagogue lost at least one member. "My holy place has been defiled," Myers' said Sunday, echoing the Prophet Ezekiel. Now, Myers wonders why God would put him in Pittsburgh, where he landed his first job as a rabbi at Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha a little more than a year ago. He wonders if he could have done more to save his flock. He hears the screams of Bernice Simon as her husband of more than 60 years was shot before her eyes, and then he hears her silence. Read MoreWhen he lies awake at night, the rabbi thinks of Psalm 23, which begins, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want." "Well, God, I want!" he said at an interfaith service Sunday in Pittsburgh, channeling the grief and anger of many Americans. "What I want, you can't give me. You can't return these 11 beautiful souls." Later, Myers recalled how Psalm 23 concludes, with gratitude for a "cup that runs over," and he thought about the outpouring of support that has flowed from hundreds of texts, emails and social-media messages. To watch Myers under the media's klieg lights this week, explaining Jewish mourning rituals to President Donald Trump and the first lady, answering questions from countless journalists, or counseling a grieving nation, is to wonder at his composure and apparent kindness. His sheer mensch-iness. As the week wears on, Myers is again preparing for the Sabbath, planning to lead services Friday night and a "unity service" on Saturday, one week after the shooting, bringing together survivors from the three congregations that worshipped at the Tree of Life. Friends and former colleagues say they are impressed but not surprised by Myers' spiritual stamina. "He's shouldering the responsibility, but I also know that deep down he is overwhelmed by the events and still doing amazingly well," said Rabbi Aaron Gaber, who worked alongside Myers for seven years at Congregation Beth Judah in Ventnor City, New Jersey. "I am in awe." But when Myers talks about Psalm 23, it's hard not to think about the middle of David's ancient song. Between the shepherding Lord and the overflowing cup lies a valley dark with death, the psalmist says. And even for a rabbi who encourages his flock to find the little joys amid life's sorrows, these must be very dark days. "I'm running on empty," Myers said in a brief email message. The 'Kiddush Club' Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, Myers heard a call to join the clergy from a young age, when the cantor of his local synagogue introduced him to the intricacies of Jewish liturgy. When that cantor had a stroke, Myers stepped in to conduct the congregation's choir, though he was just 15, he told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. In Judaism, the cantor, or hazzan in Hebrew, leads the congregation in singing, sometimes composing new melodies to accompany ancient prayers. In the 20th century, cantors could become as famous as opera singers among American Jews. Today, many cantors also take charge of a congregation's youth education programs, as Myers often did. After graduating from Rutgers University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, he returned to his love of sacred singing, even if his wife, Janice, sometimes wondered at his passion for the arcane art. "Mine is a sacred calling," he said at his farewell celebration at Congregation Beth Judah in 2017, "and although Janice will sometimes ask me, 'Do you have to answer the call?' I cannot put God's call to voice mail." Though Myers took his divine call seriously, he is not a brow-furrowed zealot, Gaber said. After prayers on Shabbat, he would invite fellow worshippers to join his "Kiddush Club," where the only price of admittance was a willingness to sip a nip of Scotch on a Saturday morning. "Everyone was invited to have a shot of Scotch and enjoy themselves," Gaber said. "That's how he is. He creates a lot of joy." Myers' tenure at Congregation Beth Judah ended on a sad note, though, when the congregation merged with another synagogue, as many others have in the face of declining religious observance among American Jews. Beth Judah let him go last year, according to Jewish Voices New Jersey, a newspaper. At his farewell party, Myers thanked everyone from the synagogue's maintenance man to his children, Aaron and Rachel. Most of all, he thanked the people he sang for. "Thank you to you, my congregants," he said, "for the opportunity to represent you to God in prayer."While he was at Congregation Beth Judah, Myers quietly became ordained as a rabbi, figuring it could expand his job prospects. It did. Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha hired Myers a few months after he left Congregation Beth Judah. 'A stronger tree'At his installation ceremony at Tree of Life, Myers opened with a joke: A rabbi finds a box in the attic, which his wife tells him not to open. Overcome by curiosity, the rabbi pries open the box, finding three eggs and $2,000. The rabbi's wife told him that she put an egg in the box for every bad sermon the rabbi delivered. "In 20 years, only three bad sermons? That's not bad," the rabbi said. Um, yeah, the rabbi's wife said, except that every time the box filled with a dozen eggs, she sold them for a dollar. After the joke, Myers turned serious. American Judaism is changing, he told members of his new congregation, and, in order to survive, they would have to change as well. They would have to find new ways to reach a rapidly diversifying country. "This voyage may indeed be treacherous, with storms along the way, but it also holds the promise of clear, calm waters and beautiful vistas," he said. He even donned a captain's hat to demonstrate his willingness to head the ship, according to a transcript of the speech. Tree of Life will now be noted for a different, tragic reason. Already, it has become a place of pilgrimage for Jews and other well-wishers around the world. Meanwhile, Myers said, the "hard work of healing" still lies ahead."We will rebuild to be a stronger tree, offering a new light," the rabbi said at last Sunday's interfaith vigil. "People will come and say, 'Wow, that's how you're supposed to live your life.' " The audience clapped, and then the rabbi began to sing. The song was a mourner's lament.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-10-29 10:00:21

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/29/us/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-jewish-values/index.html

American Jews have feared this kind of attack for years, but still kept their doors open. Here's why - CNN

As they mourn their dead, Jews are having difficult discussions about the tensions between the core Jewish value of helping strangers in need and the need to keep their communities safe from anti-Semites and others with violent intentions.

us, American Jews have feared this kind of attack for years, but still kept their doors open. Here's why - CNN

American Jews have feared this kind of attack for years, but still kept their doors open. Here's why

(CNN)Like many American Jews, Rabbi Ethan Linden was in a synagogue on Saturday morning, reading a portion of the Torah, when a friend came and interrupted him. Linden walked out of the synagogue and found a quiet place. "And I did what I never do -- I made a call on Shabbat," he said, using the Hebrew word for the Sabbath honored by observant Jews. These are the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shootingLinden called his parents, who belong to one of three congregations that meet at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Linden himself is a native son of Squirrel Hill, a friendly neighborhood with a vibrant and historic Jewish community. Linden, a Conservative rabbi who now runs a Jewish youth camp in the Berkshires, said he learned Hebrew in Tree of Life's classrooms, played "eraser hockey" on its polished floors and celebrated his entry into adulthood, his bar mitzvah, in its sanctuary. Read MoreOn Saturday, the rabbi, now 41, was relieved to hear his parents were safe, but grew horrified as it became clear that his childhood spiritual home had become a sickening crime scene. Police say Robert Bowers, who repeatedly expressed anti-Semitic sentiments online, killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue. According to the Anti-Defamation League, it was likely the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.The terrible death toll and shocking anti-Semitism drew lamentations from Jews around the world, from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of London. "The deadly attack inside a synagogue earlier today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has pierced the heart of Jewish communities worldwide," Sacks tweeted on Saturday. "The fact this attack happened inside a synagogue, whose name is the Tree of Life, makes it all the more horrific." Pittsburgh synagogue gunman said he wanted all Jews to die, criminal complaint saysAs they mourn their dead, Jews in the United States and elsewhere are also having difficult discussions about the tensions between the core Jewish value of helping strangers in need -- a tenet heartbreakingly taught in Saturday's Torah readings -- and the need to keep their communities safe from anti-Semites and others with violent intentions. "I lived in Europe for two years," Linden said, "where synagogues are routinely guarded by gates and police officers, and sometimes require a passport to enter." "Europe's history is why they have those guards," the rabbi continued, alluding to the Hitler-led Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. "I am concerned that America's present will force us into that position as well." American Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, have been warning for years about rising anti-Semitism in the United States. In 2017, there was a 57% spike in hate crimes against Jews, according to the ADL, the largest annual increase on record. Leaders around the world react to the mass killings at a Pittsburgh synagogueAfter the spate of bomb threats against dozens of Jewish Community Centers nationwide last year, Jewish groups sought and received increased federal funding for safety measures. But the country's contentious political climate, inflamed by the midterm elections, has continued to feed anti-Jewish bigotry, according to the ADL. A recent ADL report on anti-Semitism and the midterms warned that "the Jewish socio-religious population in the US is being disproportionately targeted with disinformation and abuse during this crucial political moment.""A staggering expansion of online harassment coincided with, and arguably fomented, the increase in offline anti-Semitism," the report continued. Bowers stands accused of both, according to law enforcement officials. Hours before opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, he posted on the social network Gab that HIAS, a Jewish refugee resettlement agency, "likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in." It wasn't the first time Bowers had used social media to attack HIAS, an organization founded in 1881 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, when American Jews welcomed Russian refugees with food and comfort on the docks of New York City. After Jews became relatively settled in the United States and Israel became a haven for Jewish refugees, the organization turned its sights to others in need, partnering with the US government as one of nine national refugee resettlement agencies. Today, they help immigrants and refugees from South America to Syria. "We thought we could take our empathy, our biblical texts and our religion's emphasis on refugees and use them to help others who, like our parents and grandparents, were seeking safety and a better life," said Melanie Nezer, HIAS' Senior Vice President for Public Affairs. Weeks earlier, Bowers had criticized HIAS' "National Refugee Shabbat," an event marked on October 19 and 20 by some 300 synagogues and Jewish centers in North America, according to HIAS. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is believed to be the deadliest attack on Jews in American history, the ADL saysIn New York City, a multifaith group that weekend talked about the importance of collaborating across religious and denominational lines. In Los Angeles, three synagogues came together for a service that featured music from a Syrian Jewish musician and dinner provided by a Syrian refugee family. In Kansas, synagogue leaders encouraged the gathering there to support political candidates "who share our values of welcoming the stranger and treating everyone with fairness and compassion." Some clergy drew connections between the global refugee crisis and the biblical story of Abraham leaving home in search of a new land, according to HIAS. It seemed so uncontroversial -- so Jewish and so American -- to espouse these ideas, said Nezer. HIAS never imagined it could become fodder for anti-Semites."Local faith communities getting together to talk about their lives and traditions and how to help make other people's lives better. That's what 'Refugee Shabbat' was all about," Nezer said, her voice heavy with emotion.The group has received hostile comments online before, but few overt threats. In the coming days, HIAS staffers will meet to discuss security and other safety issues, Nezer said, as will other American Jews. On Sunday, Rabbi Linden made the long drive back to his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he plans to take part in a vigil at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall. As he drove, the rabbi reflected on the Torah readings from Saturday. It's a complex set of stories about Abraham and the founding of the Jewish people. Abraham welcomes strangers into his tent who bring very good news. The strangers tell the Hebrew patriarch that his wife, Sarah, who was aged and feared infertile, would bear a long-awaited child. The strangers, it turned out, were angels in disguise."It's one of the core stories that we tell ourselves about who we are as a people," Linden said.72 hours in America: Three hate-filled crimes. Three hate-filled suspects. But the biblical story doesn't end there, Linden notes. In one of Scripture's most challenging passages, God asks Abraham to prove his loyalty by sacrificing his new son Isaac on a mountaintop. As Linden interprets it, the story is a warning against zealotry, religious or otherwise. In the end, God stops Abraham before he kills his beloved son."The way I am understanding the story today is that violence against an innocent person is never justified," Linden said. "You might think you know what God wants and even what he has commanded, but in the end, the shedding of innocent blood is never what God desires."

John Blake, CNN

2018-10-29 03:12:59

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/28/us/arming-houses-of-worship/index.html

The Bible backs up Trump's idea to arm houses of worship - CNN

What does the Bible say about arming pastors and people in the pews? That's the question some are asking after a gunman recently killed 11 people at a synagogue. Clergy cite dueling scriptures to answer this question.

us, The Bible backs up Trump's idea to arm houses of worship - CNN

There's scripture backing up Trump's idea to arm houses of worship

(CNN)When Rabbi Hillel Norry walks though the valley of the shadow of death, he carries something more than a rod and a staff to comfort him.He tucks a large-caliber handgun in his waistband and keeps a watchful eye on his synagogue. A black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Norry says he armed himself years ago after a man who had left anti-Semitic messages on his phone appeared at a synagogue he once led and threatened to harm him.These are the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting A lanky man with a salt-and-pepper beard, Norry says he is a man of peace -- he's a vegetarian who believes in "ethical eating." But he also says it's ethical for clergy and parishioners to be armed. He cites the Bible's description of religious leaders as "shepherds" as proof. "If we're the shepherds, the first job of the shepherd is to protect the flock from the wolf," says Norry, a visiting rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Gulfport, Mississippi. "Why does a shepherd carry a stick? So he can whack the wolf."Read More Some theological questions are abstract, but after an attack on a synagogue in Pennsylvania left 11 people dead, here's one that is urgent and raw: What does the Bible say about arming clergy and people in the pews? The slayings in Squirrel Hill, the heart of a Jewish community in Pittsburgh, is being called the worst attack on Jews in US history. It was also an assault on something else: the way communities of faith have operated for centuries. Houses of worship are often called sanctuaries, a refuge from the world. Indeed, the scriptural reading in synagogues around the world Saturday focused on Abraham welcoming strangers, who turned out to be angels.About 4% of Texas town's population killed in church shooting But Saturday's shooting was just the latest in a series of mass shootings in houses of worship where the stranger turned out to be armed. A white supremacist killed nine people at a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. And a gunman killed 26 worshippers at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017."I hate that this keeps happening," says the Rev. Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which also became the site of a shooting in 2007. A gunman killed two church members and injured three others just as Sunday service ended. Boyd cites a saying from Jesus in Matthew 10:16 to justify why he now has armed security at his church: Jesus said his followers should be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves." "Because people have been shot and killed on my campus, this is not theory to me," says Boyd. "I know what can happen if we're not prepared." Part of the preparation is scriptural. Just as people debate the Second Amendment in society, they debate bringing guns to worship in the religious world. Here's how they use the Bible to justify their positions:Jesus said carry your cross, not your gun The Rev. Tim McDonald III says he's heard clergy cite the Bible to justify arming clergy and congregants. "That's absurd," he says. "When you put that in a house of faith it goes against the tenets of our faith, that our trust is in God and not guns." McDonald and others who don't believe pastors or congregants should be armed cite many of the same scriptures: Jesus rebukes a disciple who brandishes a sword to defend him, telling him in Matthew 26:52, "For all who take the sword will perish by the sword." Emanuel AME Bible study reclaims room: 'This territory belongs to God' The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:4 that Christians should use weapons that "are not the weapons of the world." Jesus did not use violence to protect himself, as the writer says in 1 Peter 2:23:"When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." There are plenty of disagreements about what Jesus and his apostles did or said, some say, but not when it came to the use of violence. They were nonviolent to the bitter end. "The apostles endure imprisonment, beatings, torture and martyrdom at the hands of their enemies, and never once lifted a finger to defend themselves through violent means," wrote G. Shane Morris, in an essay on whether Christians should carry guns in church. You can't find a scripture that justifies armed clergy, says McDonald, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. "I want them to show me; I guarantee you it's out of context," McDonald says. "What did Jesus say, 'Those who live by the sword will also perish by the sword.' You've got to read the whole scripture, not the part that you want to use to support your position." McDonald says, however, that he sees no conflict with hiring armed and trained security in church. He says he has moved from a position of "no guns" to church security because of the recent attacks in houses of worship.Charleston church attack harks back to 1963 Birmingham bombing But he won't carry a gun in the pulpit. "A gun for me is based on fear -- you're expecting the worst," McDonald says. "That goes against everything I believe. I expect the best. I'm not going to live in fear. Our trust is in God, not in guns." Boyd, from Colorado Springs, says he respects pastors who believe they should be armed, but he won't carry a gun in the pulpit either. It's not that he has anything against guns. He says he grew up in the Deep South where he was surrounded by guns. But the notion of an untrained pastor drawing down on a gunman from the pulpit as people flee a crowded sanctuary is unnerving. "I am not for arming pastors," he says. "We can actually do more harm than good. The last thing I want to do is to turn it into a Wild West shootout." Nor does he want people in his congregation to bring guns to church. Even with his church's history, he has a message for ordinary parishioners who bring guns to church."We tell them to put it back in their cars," he says. 'Blessed be the Lord who trains my hands for war' Norry, the rabbi, has no theological problem with congregants who are trained in self-defense bringing guns to worship. What, for example, would happen if a gunman first took out a security guard in a house of worship? Guards would be the first target of a gunman, he says. He wants a backup in his congregation because "police cannot prevent bad things; they respond to bad things." "If there had been four or five armed people in that synagogue, I don't know what would have happened," he says of the congregation in Pittsburgh. "I tell you what, it would have changed the dynamic." Those like Norry who say the Bible justifies clergy and congregants bringing guns to worship cite similar passages:As opposition to him mounted, Jesus told his disciples in Luke: 22:36-38, "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." David, one of the heroes of the Old Testament, says in Psalms 144:1, "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle." Trump says Pittsburgh synagogue should have had armed guards Nehemiah 4:14 says, "Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes." And Genesis 14:14 is one of Norry's favorites. It tells a story of Abraham, considered the father of the Jewish faith: "When Abraham heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan." "He goes with a militia of people," Norry says. "He gathers arms and people to rescue his kidnapped nephew. He doesn't pray to God, 'Help me make peace among the nations.' He goes ready to make battle." Norry says he doesn't relish the thought of violence. He calls himself a man of peace. He was reluctant to even talk about the fact that he is armed in worship. And he described President Trump's comments that an armed guard inside the synagogue would have stopped Saturday's attack as "tone deaf." But his experience and the headlines have made him wonder what he would do if a gunman were to burst into his synagogue or attack his family. He says violence is justified, "even holy," when it comes to protecting your children and your congregation. "How is fighting back worse? I don't understand that position," he says. "In that moment, you have to fight. You can talk about reducing hate. I'm for that. But why would you want to make me defenseless?" It's not a Biblical passage, but Norry can think of another use of words that could possibly prevent more mass shootings in houses of worship.72 hours in America: Three hate-filled crimes. Three hate-filled suspects. He cites the signs that churches and other communities often put up to attract visitors. They're often bristling with scriptures, perky uplifting messages and times of services. Norry thinks it might be time to change some of those signs. They would still welcome the stranger. But they would send another message to the wolf that shows up at the door. "How about signs that said, 'Our congregation is trained and prepared to fight back. Go somewhere else.' "I bet you somebody would think twice about messing with that congregation."

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2018-09-03 22:11:58

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/03/health/claire-wineland-obit/index.html

Claire Wineland, inspirational speaker and social media star, dies one week after lung transplant - CNN

Wineland, 21, captivated millions of people around the world with her honest talk about illness and mortality while living with cystic fibrosis.

health, Claire Wineland, inspirational speaker and social media star, dies one week after lung transplant - CNN

Claire Wineland, inspirational speaker and social media star, dies one week after lung transplant

(CNN)Cystic fibrosis did not define Claire Wineland. She did.No matter the obstacles placed in front of her, of which there were many, she refused to be pitied and was determined to live a life that mattered. She inspired countless people, invited -- no, demanded -- honest talk about illness and mortality, and brightened the worlds of those she touched with her smile, spunk and spirit.On Sunday evening, after being taken off life support and using the newly transplanted lungs she received just one week earlier, Claire took her last breath. The cause of death was a massive stroke she suffered soon after the transplant surgery. She was 21.'Love what is'A quarter of Claire's life was spent in the hospital. The medical team that tended to her became family. She played hide-and-seek with nurses and left explosions of glitter in her wake. She watched one of her doctors squirm as he gave her the safe-sex talk. She took great care to decorate her hospital room so it felt and looked like home.Read MoreShe expected to die young. Then came the call that offered new lifeHer parents, Melissa Nordquist Yeager and John Wineland, split up when Claire was 3, but they remained friends and partners in her care.Her father credits Claire with teaching him "to not be afraid of what hasn't happened yet" and to learn to "love what is."Yeager, who lost and quit jobs as hospital stays dictated, always marveled at her daughter's aura and her ability to lift up those around her.In 2017, Yeager recalled a conversation with Claire about death. At one point, Claire looked at her mom and said, "After you die, you're closer to everyone you love because you're part of everything," Yeager remembered.These words were a gift, a reminder that Claire would remain with her always, even after she was gone.Trusting ClaireMore than 30,000 people in the United States, more than 70,000 worldwide, have cystic fibrosis, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The median survival age is 40, the foundation reports, which is a great improvement from the 1950s, when surviving long enough to attend elementary school was rare.Claire Wineland spent a quarter of her life in the hospital.The genetic and progressive disease creates an overabundance of mucus, which traps infections and blocks airways in the lungs. It also complicates digestion, affects the pancreas and other organs and, eventually, leads to respiratory failure.There is no cure, but dutiful breathing treatments -- which eat up hours each day -- can help with symptoms and complications. A double-lung transplant, when successful, can add years to a patient's life.Claire's parents learned to trust their independent and strong-willed daughter. When it came to her care, she knew her body best -- what worked for her, what didn't and how far she was willing to go.So when she became a legal adult and told them she had no intention of getting a double-lung transplant, they had to accept her decision, even if it pained them."I had to be honest," she once explained. "It's not for me and never has been."A change of heartClaire took the gift of life and her health seriously, but she didn't take herself too seriously. She once escaped from the hospital so she could attend a Bernie Sanders rally. She laughed at the absurdities that often swirled around her, including those moments in the produce aisle at Whole Foods when shoppers would prescribe her unsolicited "cures," telling her to eat more pineapple or that a mushroom cleanse would take care of everything.Claire Wineland's greatest wish, her mother said, was that "her foundation will live on, even in her absence."She was of the mind that she would leave this world with the body she came in with. She'd travel, answer calls for speaking engagements and put energy into her foundation, which she set up at age 13 after coming out of a 16-day medically induced coma. She'd work on a book -- promising it wouldn't be "another happy sick person book" -- and appreciate the small things like swims in the ocean for as long as she was able.At a TEDx talk she gave last year, Claire made a point of saying how cystic fibrosis helped give her a quality of life."Life isn't just about being happy. ... It's not about how you feel second to second," she said. "It's about what you're making of your life and whether you can find a deep pride in who you are and what you've given." Claire had a change of heart about transplant earlier this year, prompted by a steep decline in her health that robbed her of the energy and ability to do what gave her joy and purpose. She wasn't done contributing. It was a welcome, albeit terrifying, development for those who loved her.Living while dying: 'Little Buddha' wisdom from a terminally ill 'goofball'To get on the list for new lungs, she had to be sick enough to need them, yet strong enough to withstand the surgery and recovery. Some people worried that she'd waited too long and wouldn't be given the chance at continued life.But Claire took on the evaluation process to get on the list with laser focus. She sat in an educational meeting at UC San Diego Health's transplant center and diligently took notes. Revealed on her left ankle was a tattoo: the thumbs-up "Don't Panic" logo from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."She listened to the risks and the long list of side effects and emerged unfazed."None of it spooked me," Claire said afterward. "Now that I'm looking at it as something I have to do ... I'm willing to deal with anything."'It's a GO!!!'In late May, she made the list and shared the exciting news with her social media followers who dot the globe. But then, a mix of health and life complications took a toll and knocked her off the list, temporarily. By mid-August, she was back on and feeling ready.Claire and her mother beamed in a photo posted on social media after they learned her transplant was a go. She'd worked hard to get there, was focused on her self-care and getting stronger. She joked that the squats she was doing, upon doctor's orders, would help get her more than lungs. She'd also get a butt. She knew that the call could come at any minute, and on August 26, it did."It's a GO!!!" she posted on Twitter, not long before she was wheeled into the operating room in San Diego. "See y'all on [the] other side."The nine-hour surgery went well, and her mother reported that the lungs were working great. Yeager posted a video of herself doing a happy dance with friends in the waiting room. Why a terminally ill young woman has changed her mind about livingBut not long after the successful surgery, hope turned to fear. Claire suffered a stroke when a blood clot cut off blood flow to the right side of her brain. She never emerged from her medically induced coma. Despite emergency surgeries, and what her mother described as "Herculean efforts" to try to save her, the daughter she knew was gone. Given the severity of the stroke and Claire's advance directive, it became clear that it was time to let her go. She passed away peacefully, with her parents by her side. "They saw her into this world for her first breath and were with her for her last," Laura McHolm, the board chair for Claire's foundation, wrote in a Facebook post. Less than 3% of lung transplant recipients have a stroke between the surgery and hospital discharge, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which operates the nation's organ transplant system.Claire, who understood the importance of organ donation, was a donor herself. On Monday afternoon, her mother received word that Claire had already made a difference. "Claire was able to save the life of two people, her right kidney was transplanted to a 44 year old woman in San Diego, and her left kidney was transplanted to a 55 year old male in Northern California. Also, Claire's corneas and tissue was recovered and she will be able to enhance the life of up to 50 people," a family services specialist wrote to Yeager in an email message. "Claire's gift is huge, I want your family to know that your daughter is a hero."The family intends to honor her memory by continuing to advance Claire's Place Foundation, which she established to financially support others affected by her lifelong disease. 'Go enjoy it'In one of the last videos Claire posted, she went where she hadn't before.A self-described "goofball," she usually engaged people with humor and optimism. This time, she was raw and allowed herself to cry. As she faced the prospect of getting a double-lung transplant, she understood how desperate she was to live -- and give -- more."It hurts everything inside of me to make this video," she said into the camera. "I didn't realize how much I didn't expect to live this long. I didn't expect to have a chance. ... The years of telling myself I can do it on my own are over."Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.She had plenty of emotional support, but she worried what transplant surgery might mean for her future and her parents' future if it didn't go well. What if they poured everything into her transplant, and she didn't make it or was not able to work again, she explained later. She needed financial help. By asking for it, she said, she could relax and get in the headspace for whatever would come next.Before signing off, Claire implored viewers to do one thing."Go enjoy your life. Really. I mean that seriously," she said with her signature smile and laugh, her eyes not yet dry. "Go enjoy it, 'cause there are people fighting like hell for it."

Story by Wayne Drash, CNN Photographs by Kayana Szymczak for CNN

2018-06-29 18:12:17

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/health/acthar-mallinckrodt-questcor-price-hike-trevor-foltz/index.html

Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family's fight to save their son - CNN

They were fighting to save their son. And the cost of the "miracle drug" he needed kept rising.

health, Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family's fight to save their son - CNN

Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family's fight to save their son

Newport, Rhode Island (CNN)Trevor Foltz splashes in the pool in his grandparents' backyard. His brother and sister join in the fun, as does their father. Their mother, Danielle, watches from a nearby lawn chair. She's like a hawk, keeping a close eye on Trevor and the rest of her brood. It was 10 years ago in this backyard when a similar moment of revelry was shattered. Trevor, then a toddler, was running around, having the time of his life, his mom keeping steady watch.Trevor suddenly came over, placed his hand on her knee and looked directly into her eyes. He tried to speak but couldn't say a word. Then his head twitched ever so slightly to the right. Their gazes locked. Mom's heart wrenched. It was so mild that Danielle told herself it must have been her imagination. She didn't tell her husband, Jonathan, or anyone else. But moments later, it happened again: Trevor coming to her, resting his hands on her knees, looking into her eyes. Read MoreTrevor plays with his brother and sister, Toby and Bristel, in the swimming pool at their grandparents' house. The family swims together every weekend in the summer and uses the time together to bond. Trevor's condition soon became obvious to all. The Foltzes were eating dinner with friends a few days later when Trevor had one seizure, then another and another. "Some heartache transcends language," Danielle recalled. "This is one of them."The Foltzes had been there before. At 7 months, Trevor was diagnosed with infantile spasms, a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy. The diagnosis was devastating, forcing the family to cancel an overseas move and fight for their son's life.It also thrust them into the unregulated world of America's drug prices. Trevor's doctors said he needed a "miracle drug" known as Acthar. But between Trevor's birth and diagnosis, the price of the drug had shot up from $1,600 a vial to more than $23,000 a vial -- making him one of the first children caught up in one of medicine's most controversial price hikes. After the initial diagnosis, the Foltzes wrestled with their insurance company for days to get Trevor treated with Acthar. Eventually, the treatment was fully covered, at a cost of more than $125,000. And the drug worked. The tremors stopped. But more than a year later, on that day in the backyard, the seizures had returned. Another round of treatment was in order. Again, the Foltzes ran into red tape. The insurer was balking at spending another $125,000, and Trevor's parents worried whether he would get the precious vials of medicine needed to give him a shot at a normal life. A decade on, the pain is still raw. Still palpable. Still real. "It feels like we're pawns," says Trevor's father, Jonathan. The drugmaker, he says, "is allowed to take advantage of us, and we have to move on and go about the challenge of living.""It seems very backwards, from the top down -- and we're at the bottom."Drug prices that make parents cryWe often hear about exorbitant drug price hikes in the moment. The Internet lit up with outrage when the price of EpiPen, the emergency medicine used to treat severe allergic reactions, went through the roof. A kitchen drawer in the family home is full of syringes, next to spoons and sippy cups. "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli was dubbed the "most hated man in America" after he raised the price of an AIDS drug by more than 5,000%. His tears at being sentenced to seven years in prison drew little sympathy.But we rarely hear about the anatomy of a price hike, especially one that climbed for more than a decade in the face of a federal investigation and protests from top medical associations. I wanted to know how a drug invented in the 1930s could go from $40 a vial in 2000 to $39,000 in 2018 -- essentially from the cost of a coffee maker to the price of a new car with leather seats. With a treatment regimen requiring at least three vials over the course of several weeks, this drug costs more than many people's homes. The sharp jump in Acthar's price outraged families, doctors, pharmacists and hospitals -- and led Danielle Foltz to testify before Congress against the increase. It ultimately resulted in a $100 million settlement between the government and the drugmaker -- as well as revelations that Medicare has spent nearly $2 billion covering Acthar prescriptions for seniors while the drugmaker paid millions to prescribing doctors. The exorbitant price also forced doctors and hospitals to question whether a $20 alternative would work just as well.I first heard about Acthar from the epilepsy community; my own son has an uncontrolled seizure disorder. Parents would often cry when describing the cost of Acthar and the struggle to get the medicine for their child. Please tell this drug's story. Our story.Imagine holding a vial worth more than your minivan, your hand trembling for fear of dropping it, while you administer a shot with a 1-inch needle to your seizing, screaming baby. I spent the past year canvassing the epilepsy community, talking to scores of people, including 10 parents whose children struggle with infantile spasms and more than a dozen doctors who treat them. I felt that it was important to tell Trevor's story since he was among the first children caught up in the price hike and his mother spoke so bravely before Congress. He was in such good health when his mother testified, I wondered: How is he doing now, at age 11? Trevor takes an array of medication three times a day to help minimize the severity and frequency of his seizures. The skyrocketing cost of Acthar led to huge increases in revenues for the drugmakers, Questcor and Mallinckrodt, not because of any breakthrough in treatment, critics say, but as a result of higher prices, aggressive marketing and an alleged effort to thwart all competition. That allegation is what led to the government's case against Mallinckrodt, which purchased Questcor in 2014. Mallinckrodt settled without any admission of wrongdoing. "This was a particularly egregious situation where they raised prices extraordinarily, but then they sought to buy out a potential competitor to make sure those prices were going to stick as long as possible," said Mike Moiseyev, the deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition, who helped build the government's case.Questcor had purchased Synacthen, a synthetic version of Acthar, and then made sure it never entered the US market, the government alleged. "When Questcor deprived [babies] of an imminent alternative in the form of Synacthen, they truly became victims of that scheme," Moiseyev said.And though Mallinckrodt says it will cover the cost of Acthar if insurance can't, some doctors say high-priced drugs are raising health care costs for all of us in the form of higher premiums, co-pays and hospital visits.From months of reporting, the magnitude of the controversy became clear. Parents are distraught and angry. Neurologists are perplexed and frustrated. Mallinckrodt maintains that it is acting "responsibly and ethically" and has made only "modest price adjustments in the mid-single digit percentage range" since purchasing the drug. "H.P. Acthar Gel makes a significant difference in the lives of very sick patients with unmet medical needs. We are proud of the drug and the important investment we are making in it," Mallinckrodt told CNN in a statement.Still, the drug's price has continued to rise. It's now nearly $39,000 a vial -- an increase of $7,000 since Mallinckrodt purchased Questcor and 97,000% since Questcor first acquired Acthar in 2001. By 2015, Mallinckrodt was reporting net sales from Acthar of $1 billion. In response to questions from CNN about the price of Acthar, Mallinckrodt said that the drug's "previous owner was near bankruptcy and raised the price of the drug substantially" to keep it on the market. "Additionally, Mallinckrodt provides discounts to this list price to payers, which the prior owner generally did not offer."'Russian roulette' waiting for medication to arriveDanielle and Jonathan Foltz were missionaries in 2007, eager to move their young family to the east African nation of Tanzania where they planned to live for years, if not the rest of their lives. They already had two children: son Toby, 6, and daughter Bristel, 2. Trevor was born healthy and beautiful in April, the perfect addition. Danielle Foltz testified before Congress in 2008 about Acthar's price hike. Despite her testimony, the drug has continued to climb from $23,000 to nearly $39,000 today. By November 2007, most of the family's possessions were in Tanzania, and the family lived with Danielle's parents in Rhode Island in preparation for the big move.Jonathan was loading a storage container when Trevor had his first cluster of seizures. They were jerky, odd movements, resembling a newborn's startle reflexes. The seizures progressively worsened, with as many as 20 in a 60-second span, up to five times a day.Trevor was soon evaluated, and the young parents were given the painful diagnosis of infantile spasms. The family consulted three neurologists who told them the same thing: If they didn't get control of his seizures, Trevor's developing brain would be permanently damaged. The only thing standing between Trevor and a normal shot at life, his parents were told, was Acthar.The family was warned that the treatment would be expensive. At the time, the average cost of a vial was more than $23,000; Trevor would need at least five. The Foltzes didn't have a home to mortgage as collateral should they need it. To cut through insurance bureaucracy, one of Trevor's grandfathers offered to put the first vial on his credit card, no matter what it cost, if it meant his grandson would get the medicine promptly. Devastated, Danielle and Jonathan would give up their dream to focus on saving their boy. There would be no move to Tanzania. "Those days following Trevor's diagnosis, for our family, were the most emotionally dark that we've lived through," she would later tell lawmakers. "My husband and I were pretty much a puddle on the floor."Initially, the family's insurance company held up shipping the drug to the Foltzes because of its cost. Danielle called a hotline set up by the drugmaker to help families get the medicine. She was told that the approval process would take at least three business days. "When your infant's body is being racked by 40 seizures every single day, you do not have three business days to play Russian roulette, waiting for a medication that could stop his seizures and right your world again," Danielle said.A week after the diagnosis and countless phone calls, the first vial finally arrived. The commonly quoted price of Acthar in 2007 is just over $23,000, but a receipt from Trevor's first vial shows that the family's insurance was quoted a price of $30,543.56. Even with the adjusted discount on the receipt, the price was $26,177.62 a vial. CNN blurred Trevor's medical information to protect his privacy.A drug too expensive to offer patients who may benefitThe first recorded case of infantile spasms was in a 4-month-old English patient.The doctor who discovered the disorder: the child's father.It was 1841 when Dr. W.J. West noticed the symptoms in his son."I first observed slight bobbings of the head forward, which I then regarded as a tic, but were, in fact, the first indications of disease," West wrote in a letter to the British medical journal Lancet.You can feel the doctor's heartache as his son's condition worsened by his first birthday: "He never cries at the time of the attacks, or smiles or takes any notice, but looks placid and pitiful, yet his hearing and vision are good. He has no power of holding himself upright or using his limbs, and his head falls without support."Nearly two centuries later, that description remains all too familiar to anyone who has dealt with the debilitating disorder, which is often referred to as West Syndrome. A diagnosis is devastating for both child and parents. About 2,000 babies are diagnosed each year in the United States, usually before their first birthday. About 70% to 90% of them will have intellectual or developmental disabilities, often with IQs in the range of 30 to 50. It's crucial to bring spasms under control quickly, neurologists said, for children to have the best possible outcome. There are just three front-line medications used to treat infantile spasms: • H.P. Acthar Gel, or Acthar, an anti-inflammatory also known as ACTH. • Vigabatrin, an anticonvulsant that costs about $50,000 for a six-month course of treatment. • Prednisolone, the oral version of the steroid prednisone; it costs about $20 but is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the disorder. It is still used by doctors to treat infantile spasms. Acthar and prednisolone can have a host of serious side effects, but neurologists said the most feared complication is immune suppression with infection, which can sometimes lead to death. Vigabatrin can cause blindness.None is guaranteed to stop the seizures. Jonathan Foltz says he feels that the pharmaceutical company used children like Trevor as pawns to make money. "It became a boon for them; for us, not so much." Several neurologists I spoke with said Acthar is their preferred choice in treating infantile spasms. Generally speaking, they said, it is effective about 50% of the time. Mallinckrodt cites a randomized clinical trial from 1996 that shows 86.7% of patients had a "positive response" to Acthar, compared with 28.6% for prednisone. Neurologists have noted that the study compared a high dose of Acthar to a low dose of prednisone. Some patients don't respond to prednisolone but respond to Acthar, and vice versa, neurologists said. Some children never have seizures again, while many others -- like Trevor Foltz -- relapse. But Acthar's extreme price has jolted the medical community, forcing hospitals and neurologists to rethink how they treat children like Trevor. For many rural hospitals, Acthar isn't an option due to its price, some neurologists said. Even at some top medical centers like Johns Hopkins, Acthar isn't offered as a first-line treatment due to its exorbitant price tag. "We have found oral prednisolone to be equally effective, as have several other researchers," said Dr. Eric Kossoff, director of Hopkins' pediatric neurology residency program. Dr. Eli Mizrahi, president of the American Epilepsy Society, said Acthar's high cost is a constant worry. Simply put, he said, paying tens of thousands of dollars a vial is not viable in the long run."It's a concern because it's a barrier to care," Mizrahi said. "I'd like to hear why the drug is so expensive and what [the drugmaker is] doing to bring the cost down." "For many pediatric neurologists, ACTH is not a treatment option," said Dr. John Mytinger, a pediatric neurologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "This may be because the clinician believes that prednisolone is just as good as ACTH and/or the expense of ACTH cannot be justified."The family tries to provide Trevor with as "normal" a life as possible. Here, Trevor visits donkeys on a family outing at a nearby farm. Insurance covers the cost of Acthar in almost every case for infantile spasms, and Mallinckrodt participates in the National Organization for Rare Disorders program that offers the medication for free to uninsured patients. As a result, Mallinckrodt has said, every child who needs Acthar gets the drug. But doctors said that is a gross understatement of the issue: The fact is, they said, the drug's price has created a major obstacle to care and great frustration within the world of child neurology."A lot of us had to ride this roller coaster of whether to use [Acthar or] whether to use oral steroids first," Dr. Phillip L. Pearl, a professor of neurology at Harvard, once told an FDA panel as company executives listened. "It has affected practices across the country."Another neurologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear Mallinckrodt would retaliate against his hospital, said, "It's ironic that we have a big barrier to treat the most vulnerable portion of our population: our babies. "It's frustrating because I never want price to be a limitation for my ability to treat kids appropriately," the doctor said. "Due to the high cost of Acthar, barriers are put into place around prior authorization, which limits timely access to the medication. In layman's terms, if the price wasn't so high, insurance companies would authorize it quicker, and you could get it to your patient faster."For parents, the pain is personal. Think what it's like, they said, for your child to be treated with prednisolone and not respond well, only to learn later that the drug some neurologists say is the best in the world wasn't an option -- because of its astronomical cost. Add in the stress of a diagnosis of infantile spasms, and the whole process can be soul-crushing. Danielle Foltz says she constantly worries that Trevor will die from a seizure, but she chooses to celebrate every day he's alive.One mom I spoke with said her child was given prednisolone for the first two treatments "due to price, access issues and side effects." She can't help but wonder whether her child's spasms would've stopped if Acthar had been administered first. Lauren Marx-Abel said her neurologist recommended prednisolone when her son Danny was diagnosed, due to concern over the availability of Acthar and its high price.Prednisolone eliminated his spasms, but a different seizure type returned later, and medicine didn't help. Her son would eventually have the left hemisphere of his brain surgically removed. At 5, he has made some developmental gains from the surgery but will probably always have cognitive delays. "But we're happy that he's happy," his mother said.Mrs. Foltz goes to Washington and no one listensAfter Trevor's initial diagnosis and treatment, Danielle blogged about the ups and downs of his progress and became a strong advocate within the infantile spasms community. Her posts earned her an invitation from a 20-member congressional panel to testify about the rising price of prescription drugs. The Foltzes left Rhode Island for the nation's capital with their two boys in July 2008. Bristel stayed behind with her grandparents. Danielle was the Joint Economic Committee's star witness. The family took up seats on the front row of the wood-paneled room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Toby, 7, was dressed in a striped white polo. At 15 months, Trevor was adorable with a tuft of blond hair and a pacifier in his mouth. The family yearbook captures the Foltzes' trip to Washington when Danielle testified on Capitol Hill about Acthar's price increase. "Those days following Trevor's diagnosis, for our family, were the most emotionally dark that we've lived through," she said. The boys caught the eye of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat. "Very well-behaved children," she said before getting to the heart of the matter. "We're here today because we're outraged by what some pharmaceutical companies have been doing with pricing for important medications that affect all generations," Klobuchar said, according to a transcript of the hearing. Price increases for other drugs were mentioned: Mustargen, a cancer drug, was up 1,000%; Cosmogen for kidney disease had risen 3,500%; and Matulane, for treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma, was up nearly 8,000%. But those were nothing compared with the rise in price of Acthar. Questcor Pharmaceuticals had paid a mere $100,000 for the rights to the drug in 2001. The company first raised the price from $40 to $750 a vial shortly after acquiring it. The price doubled over the next few years. Then, on August 27, 2007, the price shot up overnight from $1,600 to $23,000 a vial. The hike was so dramatic that the Epilepsy Foundation, the American Epilepsy Society, the American Academy of Neurology and the National Association of Epilepsy Centers fired off a letter demanding answers. The Epilepsy Foundation was especially shocked. The drug's previous manufacturer almost took Acthar off the market in the mid-1990s after federal regulators found major problems at a factory. But the Epilepsy Foundation pleaded for the drugmaker to keep producing it for babies with infantile spasms. Now, the foundation was fighting to keep the drug affordable. The strategy to charge tens of thousands for a vial of Acthar was initiated by Questcor's new chief executive, Don Bailey, who had spent most of his career not in the pharmaceutical industry but as an executive with defense contractor Comarco. Bailey and Steve Cartt, Questcor's executive vice president, were adamant that the price would not be coming down, that it was part of a coordinated plan to stop the company from bleeding cash."To ensure the continued availability of Acthar, Questcor needed to establish a business model that would make Acthar economically sustainable," the two executives wrote the epilepsy groups on October 1, 2007.Danielle holds Trevor on the family stoop. The family agreed to speak with CNN 10 years after her testimony because the pain is still raw: "I wish to God we knew nothing about catastrophic epilepsy and Acthar." When Danielle took the microphone at the hearing, she spoke of the agony of Trevor's diagnosis and watching him seize. "How do you find the words to describe the most horrific event in your life, your personal valley of the shadow of death?" Danielle said. "Because that is exactly the feeling that clamps your heart when you are at a place where the medication needed to rescue your child is out of reach."Trevor slept for much of the hearing. At one point, Danielle joked with Klobuchar, "If he were awake, I'd let him toddle around for you."The proud mother told the committee how her son finally got the Acthar he needed. "Trevor has been seizure-free since his fourth injection, and that's why I brought him with me today," she said.At the end of the hearing, Klobuchar said Congress would continue to focus on drug price hikes, because "this just can't keep happening like this.""I just want to assure you," she said, "that we're not just going to let this go." Danielle left Washington hopeful that lawmakers would act. But she couldn't help notice that only one other committee member -- its chairman, Sen. Charles Schumer -- showed up for the hearing. And that was only briefly. It was as if she'd spoken to an empty room, literally and figuratively.By the time she got home, the mother had become fodder for Internet trolls who told her to shut up and be grateful her son was healthy.And he was. For another few weeks.From the glands of a slaughterhouse pigActhar first gained a foothold in the medical community because it was once cheap -- a byproduct of a Chicago slaughterhouse. The drug takes its name from a pituitary hormone known as ACTH [short for adreno-cortico-tropic hormone], which stimulates the body to produce another hormone, cortisol, to help manage stress and inflammation.Weeks after Danielle testified, Trevor relapsed with his seizures continuing unabated. A decade later, his mother still keeps track of the daily seizures that rock Trevor's world. Acthar was first isolated in 1933 by a Canadian biochemist who also helped discover insulin. Made from the pituitary glands of slaughtered pigs, Acthar was tried in a few patients with low cortisol and other symptoms in the mid-1940s. But it wasn't until the groundbreaking cortisone trials at the Mayo Clinic -- which led to the Minnesota clinic's only Nobel Prize, in 1950 -- that Acthar was thrust into prominence. The Nobel was confirmation of the work of two Mayo pioneers: Dr. Philip S. Hench, a rheumatologist, and chemist Edward C. Kendall.Hench and Kendall were on a quest for a breakthrough treatment in arthritis. In his chemistry lab, Kendall had isolated several compounds, including cortisone. The first patient was injected on September 21, 1948. Several more followed. Soon, patients who could hardly move were suddenly climbing over test chairs and jumping up and down without pain. But cortisone was expensive to make, and large-scale production was projected to cost millions. Looking for an alternative, Hench and Kendall wondered whether ACTH would produce the same anti-inflammatory benefits. They received a supply of ACTH from a division of the Armour meatpacking plant in Chicago, which had begun marketing Dial soap in 1948 and was looking for other ways to sell byproducts of the slaughtering process. Four of Mayo's first 23 cortisone test patients received ACTH as part of their therapy; two received only ACTH. The doctors were on edge."Would ACTH prove to be so effective that it would eliminate the use of cortisone?" Kendall wrote in his memoir. They quickly learned the results: "ACTH produced essentially the same anti-rheumatic effect as did cortisone," Hench wrote in 1950 detailing the study's findings.Soon, thousands of patients with rheumatoid arthritis received either cortisone or ACTH. Armour received FDA approval for HP Acthar Gel in 1952 to treat dozens of conditions, including arthritis, gout, lupus and kidney disease. It was even tried for poison ivy and snake bites in those early days -- a thought that gives today's neurologists the shivers. Adverse effects for ACTH and cortisone, the early trials showed, included psychosis, depression, immune suppression and fluid retention. But the side effects for ACTH were deemed more bothersome because of unwanted pig proteins and other cells in the medicine, according to a 1976 Mayo publication. Trevor has trouble tolerating loud sounds and makes sure to either wear noise-cancelling headphones or protect his ears with his hands if things get too loud. The first patient to ever receive cortisone fell into a psychotic state in the years afterward and refused any more of the steroid. In 1954, her doctors gave her Acthar instead. Shortly thereafter, her lungs filled with fluid, drowning her, according to author Thom Rooke in his book "The Quest for Cortisone." As the field of corticosteroids improved and steroids like prednisone became more readily available, Acthar's relevance in the field of rheumatology faded.But by the late 1950s, a study of 60 children with infantile spasms found that at least 30% showed "dramatic improvement" on ACTH, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Five patients became seizure-free over the course of the study. The results were considered phenomenal: At the time, 10% of babies with infantile spasms died, and 85% were mentally disabled. Acthar became the standard for treatment for the rare disorder in the decades that followed.Over the years, the drug shifted hands several times. Armour eventually sold Acthar to a French pharmaceutical firm, which merged with a German counterpart in 1999 to form Aventis. Two years later, that new company sold Acthar again, this time to a pharmaceutical firm in Southern California.Its new owner, Questcor, would make Acthar the centerpiece of its business, stoking controversy with the massive price hike in 2007. It would ride the price increase to record profits and eventually a mega deal, getting bought out by Mallinckrodt for $5.6 billion in cash and stock in 2014. Not bad for a company that paid $100,000 for the drug.I wondered how Hench and Kendall might feel about Acthar's price since it was their work that put the drug on the map. Both doctors died long ago, but I tracked down Hench's only surviving son for his thoughts. "I can tell you this," John Hench said. "My father would not be happy with any of this at all." A miracle cure no moreAfter Danielle noticed Trevor's faint twitch in her parents' backyard in August 2008, it became apparent that his relapse had set in. If Acthar works the first time for a child with infantile spasms, the protocol is to give him another round of treatment.Bristel carries her brother along a path during a family outing. Despite his seizures, Trevor and his siblings still play and goof around like any other family.It was an odd and painful position for the Foltzes to be in -- to depend on the manufacturer Danielle had just ripped on Capitol Hill. "She had testified how outrageous the price was, then we needed it again," Jonathan Foltz recalled. "When it's your child, you're willing to do whatever, even if it means going back to a company that's not ethical."Danielle called the helpline set up by the pharmaceutical company and was put through the same red-tape bureaucracy. She wanted to scream. As a result of her testimony, an intermediary offered to reach out to Questcor CEO Don Bailey on her behalf. Bailey said that he was touched by her words and that the company had already improved Acthar delivery times to just over two days. "It is sad to see that Trevor is having a recurrence," Bailey emailed the intermediary on September 3, 2008. "This is such a nasty disease. I hope [Danielle] is able to get Trevor treatment that solves the problem, whether it is vigabatrin, Acthar or whatever. Her doctor is the best person to help them decide, of course."Bailey was clear on another point: The price of Acthar would not be lowered. "If Acthar was priced where it used to be, it would just be taken off the market because no company is going to make and provide a drug that they lose gobs of money on," Bailey wrote.It was hardly comforting words to a distraught mom reeling from her son's relapse. "Every nerve in my body was fired with fury," Danielle recalled. Trevor eventually received another round of treatment of five vials. This time, though, the miracle cure didn't work. Trevor's seizures continued unabated, tormenting him more than 100 times a day. Making it officialNearly two dozen of the nation's top doctors gathered in a hotel on the University of Maryland campus in May 2010. Among them: neurologists who had prescribed Acthar for babies with infantile spasms.Even though it had been used for decades, Acthar had never been approved by the FDA for infantile spasms. In doctor's parlance, the drug had been used "off-label" to treat the disorder all those years. At times, Trevor wears a protective helmet to prevent a head injury should he seize and fall.Questcor was asking the FDA to make it official as part of an application for orphan drug status. That designation would give the company seven years of exclusive marketing and guarantee it hundreds of thousands of dollars in research grants. Without the FDA's approval of Acthar for infantile spasms, Questcor would stand to lose millions.It was almost a formality. The panelists acknowledged that it was an odd position to be in: to consider the request on a drug many considered the standard-bearer for infantile spasms. About a dozen parents testified how the drug changed the course of their children's lives. One couple said their son was diagnosed with infantile spasms in 1961. He was first given the steroid prednisone, only to still suffer about 10 seizures a day. He was then given Acthar. His seizures never returned. (At the time, Acthar was a handful of dollars per vial.)They said their son was now 49, a manager in a software firm and with two children of his own. "Needless to say, Acthar was a miracle drug to us and to our family," the father, Warren Farrell, said.Hours into the hearing, the subject of Acthar's extreme price came up."This is the elephant in the room," said Harvard's Pearl, who was then chief of child neurology at Children's National Medical Center in Washington. "The price of Acthar escalated by something like 30 times when [Questcor] took it over."He pressed the company to explain itself. Dr. David Young, Questcor's chief scientific officer, told the panel that there was a shortage of the drug when the company acquired the rights from Aventis, a result of the quality control issues in the 1990s that almost led to it being discontinued. Young said the price increase in 2007 was needed "for the viability of the company, as well as the product itself."Trevor has an array of speech and processing issues. Despite his disabilities, he still enjoys life, including this visit to a local farmers market. "The former price, actually, it was just not economically viable for the company," Young said. "We are trying to be good citizens to make sure that every patient who needs it gets it."Asked why Acthar helps relieve seizures in children with infantile spasms, Young had no explanation: "We actually don't know the exact mechanism of action. That is unknown. There is a lot of hypotheses, different hypotheses, but we don't know the exact mechanism."Questor didn't present a study of its own, instead relying on 10 small, previously published studies, four of which were randomized controlled trials. The panelists said it was extremely unusual that the company did not conduct closely monitored double-blind trials, as is typical for the FDA. The company highlighted one study in particular, from 1996, comparing high-dose Acthar to low-dose prednisone involving just 29 patients. The study found that Acthar patients had "the highest overall response rates of 87%." Company representatives said two other studies showed the same 87% efficacy. Several neurologists at the hearing cast doubt on that 87% figure due to their own experience of about 50% to 60% efficacy. One criticized the studies as "fairly flawed studies compared to the way the FDA usually works." Young defended the company's decision, saying it would be difficult, if not medically unethical, to conduct a double-blind trial."I am not a clinician, but if it was my child and you told me 'I am going to randomize them to a drug that has 87% probability of success versus a drug that has 60% probability of success,' " Young testified, "I am going to say, 'I am not going to do that.' " In its statement to CNN, Mallinckrodt reiterated those trial results, saying that "patients who responded in the pivotal study treated with a two-week course of H.P. Acthar Gel therapy experienced complete suppression of the two key measures of disease -- spasms and hypsarrhythmia."Later in the hearing, Pearl spoke up again, this time about the drug's potential toxicity. He said neurologists should not overlook the possibility of sepsis and death in patients.Trevor's mother will never forget the day 10 years ago when the boy relapsed. "Some heartache transcends language," she says. "There is nothing easy about using ACTH," Pearl said. "For those of us who have a lot of experience with it, and frankly, I do, it is not an easy drug to give, and you can get into all sorts of trouble."He warned that if more doctors outside of pediatric neurology start using it, "we are going to have more adverse effects than we ever dreamed of."Dr. Kevin Chapman, a pediatric neurologist with the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, agreed."ACTH is the scariest drug that I use," he said, adding that the side effects are "manageable" if patients are monitored "quite closely." By the end of the hearing, the doctors voted 22-1 that there was "substantial evidence of effectiveness" for Acthar to be a treatment for infantile spasms.Before the meeting adjourned, Dr. Gerald van Belle, a professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington, suggested that the company conduct a study to assess the drug's long-term outcomes."It may not pay off in terms of money, but it would certainly pay off in terms of good will," he said. "I do think we should pay more attention to the long-term developmental outcomes."Such a study would give better insight into how children respond over time -- those like Trevor whose response to Acthar was originally celebrated as a success. 'Choosing joy'By the time Trevor was 2½, his seizures continued, even after the second round of treatment. Doctors eventually determined that the only remaining option was to remove almost the entire left hemisphere of his brain, which helped lessen the amount of daily seizures but left him with speech difficulties and other cognitive issues. It's a heartbreaking thing to raise a child who has seizures. Every day, you worry: Will my son's front teeth get knocked out from a hard fall? Will he fracture his skull? Will a tumble down the stairs leave him paralyzed? On Saturdays, Trevor and a medical aide often visit an animal shelter and farmer's market to help him socialize and interact with others. What if he seizes during a bath? What if he seizes while sleeping and suffocates on his pillow?When I visit the Foltzes in Rhode Island, Trevor greets me with a handshake and smile that melts my heart. We laugh when he expresses disappointment that I didn't bring my son to play with him. There's a shared camaraderie among kids with seizure disorders: They like being around each other because only they truly understand the pain.I apologize to Trevor. Maybe next time I'll bring my boy, I tell him.The Foltzes agreed to speak with me due to our shared bond over raising sons with seizure disorders. "It's a very real thing living with a child that could have a [fatal] seizure," Jonathan says. "It just seems kind of silly to be worrying about the bottom line of a company when you're talking about kids' lives.""As a parent," Danielle says, "it's like waking every day feeling like death is in the room with you but choosing joy because you still have him." 'You can charge whatever you want'The headlines in January 2017 blared: "Drugmaker fined $100M for hiking price 85,000%" and "Mallinckrodt to pay $100 million to settle US probe on drug pricing."Acthar's new owner had settled a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission and five states stemming from Questcor's actions -- including its purchase of a competitor drug that, the FTC said, "threatened its monopoly." The year before its sale to Mallinckrodt, Questcor bought the US rights to Synacthen, outbidding competitors who wanted to sell the drug in the US at a "significant discount" to Acthar, the FTC said. The synthetic drug is already available in Europe, Canada and other countries, the FTC said, "at a fraction of Acthar's price." Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas, one of five states that joined the suit, said the drugmaker "extended its monopoly over ACTH-based therapeutic drugs, which it used to exploit the sick and dying."Trevor's noise-cancelling headphones help keep unexpected noises from sending him into a seizure. Mallinckrodt strongly disagreed with the allegations and settled the case without admitting wrongdoing. "We are pleased with the agreement reached to resolve this legacy matter," Mallinckrodt said in a statement at the time. In its statement to CNN, Mallinckrodt said that Synacthen is not a "generic competitor" to Acthar and that the two are "very different drugs." "Mallinckrodt did not pursue commercialization of Synacthen for IS, as the barriers to completion were, in our view, virtually impossible to overcome. Notably, Synacthen has never been approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. for any indication and it is not an alternative treatment for IS in the U.S. "In all the time that Synacthen has been commercially available in select foreign countries, it has never been commercialized in the U.S. and no owner of Synacthen [including the owner prior to Questcor] ever undertook U.S. development of the drug in IS or any other indication. "Even in Canada, where Synacthen is approved and used in certain indications, it is not approved for use in IS patients. In Canada, the label contains a warning against use in infants or children under 3 years old due to the product containing benzyl alcohol." In the months since the government settlement, the price of Acthar hasn't dropped; instead, it has risen steadily to about $39,000. Dr. Stephen Schondelmeyer has followed the price of Acthar ever since it skyrocketed overnight in 2007. He's the director of the PRIME Institute, a research organization that studies economic and policy issues related to pharmaceuticals."It wasn't because of competition. It wasn't because of research and development costs," he said. "The company saw an opportunity to raise the price, and they did it."How can the company keep raising the price, even after settling the monopoly case? "When you have a unique position in a marketplace," Schondelmeyer said, "you can charge whatever you want."He called the 97,000% drug hike, from 2000 to today, "one of the highest price changes ever" in the history of the United States. "Not more than a handful of drugs have ever seen a price increase like this," he said. "This certainly is an extremely extraordinary price increase and is, without a doubt, not a competitive market price."They weren't looking to pick a fight with Big PharmaTrevor races ahead of his family between the high brush, the gravel kicking up between his feet in his dash to the ocean shore.It's the family's Saturday routine. Start with a splash in the grandparents' pool, then let their boy run wild amid the serenity and spray of the New England coast. Weekend strolls to the beach have become a family routine. It allows them to be whole, away from the stares of the public, should Trevor seize. These trips give Trevor respite from the daily seizures that rock his everyday world. Here, the family can be whole. Toby, now 17, and, Bristel, now 13, accompany their brother. Together, the family soaks in the quiet of Rhode Island's coast away from the stares of the public, should Trevor suddenly seize. Those moments still jolt Mom and Dad to their core. "It's like watching him die a little at a time," Danielle says. Danielle, 42, and Jonathan, 40, say they've spoken with Trevor's brother and sister about the unimaginable: the possibility Trevor could die. The Foltzes are private folks, two ordinary parents drained by their son's condition. They weren't looking to pick a fight with Big Pharma but were willing once more to speak up for Trevor, the energetic boy with radiant green eyes, a brilliant smile and a kind heart. They're also speaking out for families like theirs: the forgotten ones who are getting pummeled by co-pays, deductibles, higher premiums and all the other expenses that come with raising a special needs child."I wish to God we knew nothing about catastrophic epilepsy and Acthar," Danielle says. "Our heart has always been to protect other families from going through hell, emotional and financial, that we did."Sitting at the ocean's edge, Trevor's parents say their problem with the drugmaker seems like a distant nightmare -- that they did everything possible to raise concerns with lawmakers before getting subsumed with the realities of raising a child with lifelong disabilities. News of Mallinckrodt's $100 million settlement jolted them again."It seems like a slap on the wrist," Jonathan says. "I'm not against capitalism. I'm not against people making a profit. But when small market drugs are making billions and they're supposed to be using the money to help the community with new drugs, it seems like a failure."It seems like [company executives] planned to do exactly what they did. It went perfect: They became multimillionaires, and the company became a $6 billion company. It became a boon for them; for us, not so much." Trevor and his dad take in the views during a hike in the Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, Rhode Island. Adds Danielle, "Someone, somewhere, figured out they could make a lot of money on rare diagnoses -- and they chose infantile spasms." Trevor faces his biggest test yet.Last summer, a doctor recommended another brain surgery to try to relieve his seizure activity. Trevor would never be able to use his right arm, leg or fingers. He would lose his ability to read. With intensive therapy, he might regain some mobility within a year or two, but there's no guarantee. Trevor's joyous romp to the ocean shore, the family's rare moment of peace, would be no more.That's something Jonathan and Danielle just can't fathom. Epilogue: And the lawsuits play onDon Bailey, the CEO of Questcor who directed the extraordinary price hike in 2007, left Mallinkrodt in 2016. According to SEC filings, he was guaranteed more than $25 million upon leaving the company. In the year since the $100 million settlement, Mallinckrodt has continued to face fallout. A new whistle-blower lawsuit accuses Mallinckrodt of retaliating against an employee after she says she raised ethical concerns and potential violations of law by the drugmaker.Mallinckrodt said it hired outside legal counsel and conducted "a thorough review of her concerns. We believe the company has acted responsibly at all times, strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to vigorously defend this matter."Investors have filed a class-action suit, accusing company executives of making false and misleading statements about its monopoly status. A similar suit was brought by Medicare Advantage organizations, accusing the drugmaker of stifling competition and dramatically raising the drug's price.The city of Rockford, Illinois, also sued Mallinckrodt after the city got stuck with a nearly $500,000 bill to cover the costs of Acthar for two infants of city employees. The half-million-dollar charge nearly blew through the city's $3.5 million allocation for prescription drugs for city employees."The tale of how a 65-year-old brand medication could rise in price from $40 per vial in 2001 to over $35,000 per vial by 2015 is a story of, perhaps, the most egregious monopolistic conduct and unfair trade practice in US history," the city of Rockford alleged.The drugmaker has denied the allegations.

Wayne Drash, Sergio Hernandez and Aaron Kessler, CNN

2018-06-29 15:00:04

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/health/acthar-mallinckrodt-medicare-claims-doctor-payments/index.html

Medicare spent $2 billion for one drug as the manufacturer paid doctors millions - CNN

More than 80% of doctors who filed Medicare claims in 2016 for H.P. Acthar Gel -- a drug best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder -- received money or other perks from the drugmakers.

health, Medicare spent $2 billion for one drug as the manufacturer paid doctors millions - CNN

Medicare spent $2 billion for one drug as the manufacturer paid doctors millions

(CNN)More than 80% of doctors who filed Medicare claims in 2016 for H.P. Acthar Gel -- a drug best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder -- received money or other perks from the drugmakers, according to a CNN analysis of publicly identified prescribers.The analysis, which looked at doctors who filed more than 10 Part D claims, found that the drugmakers -- Mallinckrodt and Questcor -- paid 288 prescribers more than $6.5 million for consulting, promotional speaking and other Acthar-related services between 2013 and 2016. Mallinckrodt purchased Questcor in 2014.At about the same time, Medicare spending on Acthar rose dramatically -- more than tenfold over six years.Medicare spent nearly $2 billion on Acthar from 2011-2016, according to the agency's data -- even though some doctors say an equally effective treatment would have cost a tiny fraction of that amount. Medicare spending on Acthar from 2013-2016 accounted for nearly $1.8 billion.The evidence that this drug is any better than synthetic steroids is either weak or does not exist.Daniel Hartung, Oregon State College of PharmacyMuch of the rise in Medicare spending coincided with a marketing push by Mallinckrodt to target adults, especially seniors, after it purchased Acthar's previous manufacturer, Questcor, in 2014, according to company documents CNN has reviewed.Read MoreOn Friday, a separate study of Acthar payments and prescribing patterns found results similar to CNN's analysis. The authors of that study, published in JAMA Network Open, said their findings "suggest financial conflicts of interest may be driving the use of [Acthar] in the Medicare program.""We clearly found that as you ratchet up the payments to doctors, there were more prescriptions generated and more spending in the Medicare program on this drug," said Daniel Hartung, the study's lead author.Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family's fight to save their sonActhar is best known for treating babies with infantile spasms, a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy. Hartung, an associate professor at Oregon State's College of Pharmacy, said he found it troubling the drug is being marketed in adult medicine, with taxpayers footing the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars. "The evidence that this drug is any better than synthetic steroids is either weak or does not exist," Hartung told CNN. Mallinckrodt's recent push in the fields of rheumatology, nephrology and multiple sclerosis, he said, was the result of the drugmaker's "aggressive marketing for a number of conditions that, while having an FDA indication, are poorly supported by the medical evidence."Dennis Bourdette, another of the study's six authors, told CNN the nearly $2 billion spent by Medicare was the result of a tiny fraction of doctors "going along with prescribing [Acthar] without worrying about the cost."H.P. Acthar Gel makes a significant difference in the lives of very sick patients with unmet medical needs. We are proud of the drug and the important investment we are making in it.Mallinckrodt statement"The issue is that it is incredibly more expensive than synthetic corticosteroids and for some reason -- maybe financial gain -- a small number of doctors will prescribe it," Bourdette, chair of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, told CNN.However, some doctors who prescribed Acthar in adult medicine and received money from Mallinckrodt told CNN they used Acthar only after steroids and other treatments failed. While Acthar is not a steroid, it replicates some of its anti-inflammatory benefits.A steroid like prednisone can cost as little as $2.50 for a bottle of pills -- less than a venti coffee from Starbucks -- compared to Acthar at nearly $39,000 a vial of injectable liquid. Over a course of treatment, those figures get even more dramatic: $7.50 for three bottles of prednisone vs. $117,000 for three vials of Acthar.How CNN reported on Acthar"The continued growth in [Acthar] use is peculiar given its very high cost, widespread negative media coverage, and notable lack of evidence supporting its use over lower-cost corticosteroids," the authors wrote. The findings in Friday's study, which focused on 2015 Medicare claims and 2015 payment data, appeared to back up much of CNN's data analysis, which looked at Medicare claims for 2016 -- the latest year for which data is available -- and payments dating back to 2013, the first year for which those numbers are available.The drugmakers have paid at least 18,810 doctors nearly $27.5 million in Acthar-related payments from 2013 to 2016, CNN's analysis of government data shows.In response to questions from CNN about its findings, Mallinckrodt issued a statement in which it strongly defended its payments to doctors:"In the period of 2013-2016, of all healthcare practitioners prescribing H.P. Acthar Gel to whom Mallinckrodt or the prior owner made payments, more than 95% received only modest meals or nominally priced clinical reprints [of medical journal articles] -- well within regulations and guidelines." Mallinckrodt said the "vast majority" of the remaining doctors were "engaged for peer-to-peer speaking engagements" and that a small fraction of them were involved in other consulting services, such as speaking to employees or investors and participating in expert Physician Advisory Boards. "It is our belief that many physicians prefer peer-to-peer presentations and dialogue over other methods of learning about the value a product may bring to appropriate patients they are treating. The physicians who present to their peers must take time away from their practice and frequently travel to other cities -- incurring normal, but sometimes substantial travel expenses. Any payments reported include reimbursement for these expenses."The drugmaker stressed that Acthar is FDA approved for 19 indications including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and kidney disease and "is largely used as a later line treatment, prescribed by skilled healthcare providers to a small subset of appropriate patients who need an alternative treatment option." The drug is also the "gold standard" in treatment for infantile spasms, Mallinckrodt said."H.P. Acthar Gel makes a significant difference in the lives of very sick patients with unmet medical needs. We are proud of the drug and the important investment we are making in it," the drugmaker said. "Mallinckrodt has invested substantially in H.P. Acthar Gel since acquiring it in 2014, generating further data supporting its use, and has made only modest price adjustments. The company has acted and continues to act responsibly and ethically in its dealings with healthcare practitioners and others."Since Mallinckrodt purchased the drug from Questcor in 2014, the price of Acthar has gone from $32,000 a vial to nearly $39,000. In 2000, before Questcor purchased it, it was $40. Questcor shocked the medical community when, on August 27, 2007, it raised the price overnight from $1,600 to $23,000 a vial.Last year, Mallinckrodt paid $100 million without admitting liability to settle a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission and five states stemming from Questcor's purchase of a competitor drug that the FTC said "threatened its monopoly." How a drug for children expands to one for the elderlyMallinckrodt purchased Acthar as part of a $5.6 billion deal for Questcor in 2014. At the time, Mallinckrodt President and CEO Mark Trudeau called the drug key to the future of the pharmaceutical company.Shortly after the purchase closed in August that year, executives unveiled their strategy: go after the 4 million Americans the company said suffered from "Acthar indicated conditions" -- many of them elderly. Medicare having to spend almost $2 billion on a drug that is of questionable benefit is very disturbing. Rita Redberg, cardiologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine Gary Phillips, the president of Mallinckrodt's autoimmune and rare disease business, pledged to "go out and get the word out.""The one thing that you can be sure of is that the awareness and the evidence of the product will just expand dramatically over the next year," Phillips said in a briefing with investors in October 2014.Phillips showed PowerPoint slides detailing the company's strategy, including the need to get Acthar to its "underserved patient population" in rheumatology, pulmonology, ophthalmology, dermatology and kidney disease. One graphic showed 9,000 patients were currently treated with Acthar and that 300,000 people had "addressable but currently untreated" conditions. The slide also noted a total of 4 million Americans suffered from "Acthar indicated conditions.""Today Acthar is only used in about 3% of these [300,000] patients," Phillips said. "The strategy is pretty straightforward."He pledged to "expand significantly" Acthar's sales force in the fields of rheumatology and pulmonology over the next year. Indeed, the message was clear: There were more patients to treat and more money to be made. JUST WATCHEDHere's why drug prices are so highReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHere's why drug prices are so high 01:45The Mallinckrodt PowerPoint presentation seemed in stark contrast from years before, when Steve Cartt, then the executive vice president of Questor, wrote an email to an infantile spasms advocate about how the company failed in expanding treatment."Based on this experience, it became clear to us that in the treatment of infantile spasms is where the medical community has determined that Acthar provides its true value to patients," Cartt wrote in August 2007 in an email shared with CNN. The aggressive marketing push outlined by Mallinckrodt executives in that October 2014 investor meeting appears to have paid off: Medicare spent more than $600 million on more than 12,000 Acthar claims in 2016 -- more than double the numbers from 2013, the year before Mallinckrodt's purchase. Many of those prescriptions were made by rheumatologists, nephrologists, and neurologists -- the very type of doctors Mallinckrodt executives said they planned to target.All told since 2011, Medicare has spent more than $1.98 billion on some 45,000 Acthar claims. Is it even effective for treating elderly patients?Multiple doctors familiar with Acthar told CNN that the drug shows little benefit in adults over steroid treatments, which they said could range anywhere from $2.50 for prednisone to $5,000 for a high IV dose of methylprednisolone. Even at the high end, these doctors said, prescribing steroids over Acthar could have saved Medicare nearly $1.8 billion. "Medicare having to spend almost $2 billion on a drug that is of questionable benefit is very disturbing," said Rita Redberg, a cardiologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Redberg co-authored an editorial in JAMA last November about the high price of Acthar, also known as ACTH, warning there is a "lack of evidence for its efficacy in any adult conditions." "The lack of high-quality evidence supporting Acthar gel's benefit in a variety of conditions, along with the unconscionable price increase by the manufacturer, should give pause to all practitioners," wrote Redberg and her co-author, Dr. Saate Shakil, a UCSF resident. There is significant clinical evidence to support the effectiveness of H.P. Acthar Gel. Equally important, there are decades of clinical experience that doctors have with the product as a proven therapy for appropriate patients.Mallinckrodt statement"Not only should clinicians consider the lack of evidence supporting the efficacy of ACTH, but its story should cause us to reexamine and strengthen our standards for FDA approval, Medicare and private insurance coverage, and professional use patterns."The drug was first approved in 1952 to treat dozens of conditions, from arthritis and gout to lupus and kidney disease. The field of corticosteroids drastically improved in the decades that followed, almost making Acthar obsolete in adult medicine until recently. The FDA approval in 1952, Redberg said, essentially grandfathered the drug in for an array of adult conditions that most likely would not stand up to today's more rigorous drug trial standards. "We looked for studies of this drug, and they're really not there," she said. In response to such criticism, Mallinckrodt said "there is significant clinical evidence to support the effectiveness" of Acthar."Equally important, there are decades of clinical experience that doctors have with the product as a proven therapy for appropriate patients," Mallinckrodt said. The drugmaker added that it has invested "nearly $400 million into the drug. Specifically: building on substantial clinical experience as well as previously completed and largely independent clinical case series and smaller trials; modernizing manufacturing; expanding medical affairs and research activities; and initiating six well-designed, company-sponsored randomized, controlled clinical studies, targeting combined enrollment of nearly 1,100 patients." Mallinckrodt said the nearly $400 million doesn't include marketing or payments to doctors.Read Mallinckrodt's full statement What about the cheaper alternative? Why would Medicare pay nearly $2 billion over five years when there was a far cheaper alternative?Stephen Schondelmeyer says you can thank lawmakers for that: Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices or tell doctors what drugs to prescribe. "Our Congress has told the Medicare program, you cannot control drug prices," says Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota. He directs the College of Pharmacy's PRIME Institute, which studies economic and policy issues related to pharmaceuticals. "We don't have any government process for evaluating, regulating and managing drug prices." It wasn't because of competition. It wasn't because of research and development costs. The company saw an opportunity to raise the price and they did it.Stephen Schondelmeyer, professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of MinnesotaIn 2001, Questcor Pharmaceuticals paid a mere $100,000 for the rights to the drug. The company first raised the price from $40 to $750 a vial shortly after acquiring it. The price doubled over the next few years. Then, on August 27, 2007, the price shot up overnight from $1,600 to $23,000 a vial. Questcor continued to raise the price of the drug to about $32,000 before Mallinckrodt purchased Questcor in late 2014. Since then the price has risen about another $7,000.Acthar's extraordinary overnight price hike to $23,000, Schondelmeyer said, was especially troublesome. "It wasn't because of competition. It wasn't because of research and development costs," he said. "The company saw an opportunity to raise the price and they did it."He called the 97,000% drug hike from 2000 to today "one of the highest price changes ever" in the history of the US. "Not more than a handful of drugs have ever seen a price increase like this," he said. "This certainly is an extremely extraordinary price increase and is, without a doubt, not a competitive market price."Until we get politicians willing to stand up against these big interest groups," Schondelmeyer said, "I don't expect to see change in the policy."In 2007, H.P. Acthar Gel's previous owner was near bankruptcy and raised the price of the drug substantially in order to keep the drug on the market. Since acquiring H.P. Acthar Gel, Mallinckrodt has only made modest price adjustments in the mid-single digit percentage range. Mallinckrodt statementPresident Donald Trump had vowed to change the Medicare provision to save billions of taxpayer dollars. "We don't do it. Why? Because of the drug companies," he told a crowd in New Hampshire in January. But earlier in May, in unveiling his plan to bring "soaring drug prices back down to Earth," Trump scrapped plans to allow the federal government to directly negotiate lower prices for Medicare. UCSF's Redberg said drugmakers consistently take advantage of Medicare not being able to negotiate on prices or insist on cheaper alternatives under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003."There's no competition and no upper limit for moral grounds on pricing," she said. "If doctors prescribe it, Part D plans are going to pay whatever it costs."In response to questions about the price increases, Mallinckrodt said:"In 2007, H.P. Acthar Gel's previous owner was near bankruptcy and raised the price of the drug substantially in order to keep the drug on the market and to ensure the long-term supply of the drug for treatment of children afflicted with infantile spasms and other small groups of patients suffering from complex, devastating diseases. They did this only after extensive consultation with the FDA.""Today the price per vial of H.P. Acthar Gel is $38,892. Since acquiring H.P. Acthar Gel, Mallinckrodt has only made modest price adjustments in the mid-single digit percentage range. Additionally, Mallinckrodt provides discounts to this list price to payers, which the prior owner generally did not offer." An unusually high amount of moneyOnly 352 doctors filed more than 10 Acthar-related claims with Medicare in 2016, a CNN analysis of the data shows. Medicare does not include doctors who filed 10 or fewer claims in its public data, citing privacy concerns. Those 352 physicians comprise less than 20% of all doctors who prescribed Acthar through Medicare in 2016, according to the agency. The other 80% were excluded. Still, those 352 doctors accounted for more than half of the Acthar-related claims Medicare covered that year, costing the program almost $369 million. In 2016, Medicare covered nearly 13,000 claims for Acthar worth more than $636 million. A CNN analysis found that more than 80%, or 288, of the 352 doctors who filed publicly available Acthar claims with Medicare in 2016 also received money or other perks from Mallinckrodt or Questcor between 2013 and 2016. Those perks ranged from a few dollars' worth of food or drink to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for honoraria, compensation for services, travel and lodging.CNN's analysis showed that of those 288 doctors, eight received an unusually high amount of money -- more than $220,000 -- from the drugmakers.As an educator and speaker, it is essential to me that prescribers understand how to use — and in whom not to use — various therapies. These therapies all come with potential adverse consequences and significant price tags. Sadly, we, the physicians and prescribers, do not determine the price of drugs.Dr. Grace Wright, a rheumatology specialist in New York CityDr. Grace Wright, a rheumatology specialist in New York City, received the most payments -- 673 -- and the largest amount of money: $370,970.49. More than half was for honoraria and travel and lodging; the rest was compensation for services, consulting fees, food and beverage and education. Wright filed 16 Part D claims for Acthar in 2016 resulting in $940,839 in Medicare coverage. Asked about her payments and claims, Wright told CNN, "I have always complied with the requirements of the PhRMA Code, including in my interactions with Mallinckrodt and Questcor. To the very best of my knowledge, Mallinckrodt and Questcor fully comply with the requirements of the PhRMA Code as well."Therapies like Acthar are used to bridge flares in some ... patients, and may in fact be the only therapy yet available to them. ... The mortality rate in these patients can be quite high, as is the burden of care for the patient, family, and healthcare team."As an educator and speaker, it is essential to me that prescribers understand how to use—and in whom not to use—various therapies. These therapies all come with potential adverse consequences and significant price tags. Sadly, we, the physicians and prescribers, do not determine the price of drugs." Here's the breakdown of payments and claims for the other seven doctors who CNN's analysis showed received an unusually high amount of money from the drugmakers from 2013-2016:• Dr. Annette Howard of Houston, Texas, a psychiatry and neurology specialist, received 609 payments worth $345,913.22 -- about a third was compensation for services, another third was honoraria, about a quarter was for travel and lodging, and the rest for consulting, education and food and beverage. Howard filed 11 Part D claims for Acthar in 2016 resulting in $688,991.24 in Medicare coverage.• Dr. Anupa Khastgir of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a nephrology specialist, received 538 payments worth $334,390.56 -- about a third was compensation for services, about another third for travel and lodging, more than a quarter for honoraria and the rest for consulting, education and a grant. Khastgir filed 11 Part D claims for Acthar in 2016 resulting in $642,813.58 in Medicare coverage.• Dr. Ruwani Gunawardane of Fulton, Maryland, a neurology specialist, received 502 payments worth $332,393.36 -- nearly half was compensation for services, about a third was honoraria, about a sixth was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for consulting, education and food and beverage. Gunawardane filed 38 claims resulting in $1,329,002.84 in Medicare coverage.Although expensive, it is worth trying on a selective group of patients. Anything to keep these patients from going down the ominous road to dialysis.Dr. Anupa Khastgir, a nephrology specialist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma• Dr. Ara Dikranian of San Diego, California, a rheumatology specialist, received 489 payments worth $273,937. Of that, nearly half was compensation for services, about a quarter was for honoraria, about a sixth was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for consulting, food and beverage and education. Dikranian filed 86 claims resulting in $4,443,774 in Medicare coverage.• Dr. Howard Busch of Loxahatchee, Florida, a rheumatology specialist, received 488 payments worth $267,701.63. Of that, more than a third was compensation for services, more than a quarter was for honoraria, about a fifth was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for consulting, education and food and beverage. Busch filed 44 claims resulting in $3,271,920.07 in Medicare coverage.• Dr. Petros Efthimiou of Brooklyn, New York, a rheumatology specialist, received 399 payments worth $243,234.04. Of that, more than a third was for honoraria, nearly another third was compensation for services, more than a fifth was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for consulting, education and food and beverage. Efthimiou filed 13 claims resulting in $693,725.34 in Medicare coverage.• Dr. Guillermo Valenzuela of Plantation, Florida, a rheumatology specialist, received 391 payments worth $224,713.96. Of that, nearly half was compensation for services, nearly a third was for honoraria, about a fifth was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for consulting, education and food and beverage. Valenzuela filed 50 claims resulting in $2,036,129.13 in Medicare coverage.Howard, Gunawardane, Dikranian, Busch and Valenzuela did not respond to requests by CNN for comment. Asked about her payments and claims, Khastgir said, "When [Acthar] became available in 2012 to the nephrology community we were skeptical of its use and mechanism of action." But she said more research into the matter proved promising. She said patients who had been treated with other drugs such as steroids were given a trial of Acthar and some of them responded -- including "slowing down or even arresting kidney decline" and "stalling or even preventing the need for dialysis and/or transplant down the road.""Although expensive, it is worth trying on a selective group of patients," she said. "Anything to keep these patients from going down the ominous road to dialysis."Khastgir said she has lost patients to the side effects of other drug regimens, and that Acthar "appears to be relatively safe." She said she has collaborated with five other doctors in the US to do a retrospective study, which Mallinckrodt funded. Unfortunately, both younger and older patients sometimes do not respond to first-, second- or, even, third-line treatments, including corticosteroids. In these situations, we consider [Acthar], based on published data that it may work differently than corticosteroids.Dr. Petros Efthimiou, a rheumatology specialist from Brooklyn, New York, "I am a speaker for the company and will talk to nephrologists on lunch or dinner programs presenting the data on the drug. My expenses are paid for by the company. The contract with Mallinckrodt is in line with other consultant/speaker agreements done in the past."May I ask, what you would do if you had Nephrotic Syndrome resistant to other drug therapy and your only hope was an expensive drug or an expensive organ replacement/dialysis. And what would you do if your 18-year-old daughter gets diagnosed with a rare form of Nephrotic Syndrome and the choice is to use drugs that will cause infertility for life and possible blood cancers down the road or use an expensive drug with minimum side effects?"Known side effects include hypertension and fluid retention, but doctors who have used Acthar for years to treat infantile spasms told CNN the most feared side effect is immune suppression that potentially leads to death. Dr. Efthimiou also responded to CNN's questions, saying: "I consulted with previous and current manufacturers of this medication, from 2013-2016, on rheumatological diseases where [Acthar] is indicated and FDA approved. My efforts led to the development of two Institutional Review Board [IRB] approved research studies (at a previous institution) on the safety and efficacy of this medication, which has been in use since 1952. "Rheumatology conditions not only affect seniors; many patients are younger individuals who suffer from autoimmune conditions. ... Unfortunately, both younger and older patients sometimes do not respond to first-, second- or, even, third-line treatments, including corticosteroids. In these situations, we consider [Acthar], based on published data that it may work differently than corticosteroids."While medication costs remain a global public health issue, my principal responsibility as a physician is to my patents. In rheumatology, just as in other disciplines, we consider very expensive biologic medications for treatment, especially for rare and hard-to-treat diseases. None of my patients have suffered serious side effects from [Acthar]. All patients on this medication in my practice are carefully monitored for any adverse reactions."If I had a serious, refractory, immune-mediated disease, I would take this medication under physician supervision."Doctors get paid tooBetween 2013 and 2016, Mallinckrodt and Questcor -- the Acthar manufacturer it purchased in 2014 -- paid at least 18,810 doctors nearly $27.5 million for Acthar-related consulting, promotional speaking and other services, according to a CNN analysis of government data. The analysis shows 16 doctors were paid an unusually high amount of money -- more than $250,000 -- compared to the rest. For context, the average amount doctors received between 2013 and 2016 from Mallinckrodt and Questcor was $1,461.18, and the median was $79.82.The following doctors were not among the high-frequency prescribers -- those who filed more than 10 Acthar claims -- in 2016, but were among the best compensated:Dr. Ana Stankovic, a Massachusetts nephrology specialist, received the highest number of payments and the highest amount of money -- 988 payments worth $476,254.16. About 40% was for compensation for services, such as speaking engagements. More than a quarter was for honoraria, another quarter was for travel and lodging, and the rest was for food and beverage, consulting and education. Reached by phone, Stankovic declined to comment, saying the payments "were two or three years ago."Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.Dr. Margaret Mitrane, a New Jersey rheumatologist and former deputy division director at the FDA, received the second highest amount -- $463,500 -- almost all of it for consulting work, according to the data. On her LinkedIn page, Mitrane touts having "over 25 years of clinical development and regulatory affairs experience including FDA and big pharma corporations." Another physician, Dr. Alan Brown of South Carolina, was paid more than $325,000. In 2015, Brown reported a case series on Acthar involving five patients with rheumatoid arthritis who had failed other treatment. "Results from this case series indicate ACTH gel may be a safe and viable option for patients with refractory [rheumatoid arthritis] who have failed previous therapy with multiple RA treatments," Brown wrote.In 2015, Brown filed 16 Medicare Part D claims for Acthar worth $719,093 in prescriptions. Part D is Medicare's prescription drug funding program for the disabled and people 65 and over.But Brown, Mitrane and Stankovic were not among the high-frequency prescribers -- those who filed more than 10 Acthar claims -- in Medicare's 2016 Part D prescriber data. CNN was unable to reach Mitrane for comment, and Brown did not respond to requests by CNN for comment.CNN's Curt Merrill contributed to this report.

John Blake, CNN

2018-11-11 00:27:20

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/10/us/ww2-reunion-us-german-veterans/index.html

A WWII hero returns to Germany to meet his enemy - CNN

He was a legendary tank commander in WWII who returned to the scene of a battle 68 years later to meet a former enemy and answer one question about a woman he encountered in a battle: Did she live?

us, A WWII hero returns to Germany to meet his enemy - CNN

A World War II hero returns to Germany to solve a mystery -- and meet an enemy

(CNN)Clarence Smoyer's index finger caressed the trigger. Sweat poured down the leather flaps of his helmet. No one in his tank moved or even whispered. It was March 6, 1945, and Smoyer was part of the Allies' last push into Nazi Germany. The lanky 19-year-old with a mop of curly hair was part of a tank crew that had crawled into the German city of Cologne for what would become the US Army's biggest house-to-house fight in Europe. The Germans called it "Endkampf," the final battle for their homeland."Gentlemen, I give you Cologne," Smoyer's commander announced over the radio. "Let's knock the hell out of it!" Smoyer didn't need any added motivation. Before he entered the shattered city, he'd received word that his cousin and his wife's brother had both been killed in the war. Those bastards are going to pay, he vowed. Clarence Smoyer during the war. He gained a reputation for deadly accuracy as a tank gunner. Now he intended to fulfill his promise. His M26 Pershing tank had just been engaged in a shootout with a German tank at a sprawling intersection in the town's center. But then the enemy tank ducked behind a building. Smoyer searched for it, scanning a hellish urban landscape of rubble, sagging streetcar cables and collapsed buildings. Read More "Staff car!" someone yelled over the radio. A black Opel streaked into the intersection. With orders to shoot anything that moved, Smoyer pressed the trigger. Bullets and tracers from Smoyer's gun smashed into the car; ordnance from another source also flew through the intersection. The car crashed into the sidewalk, and then Smoyer saw something that made the pit of his stomach fall out. The car's passenger door swung open and a person with a light-colored sweater embroidered with flowers crumpled to the street. He saw a flash of curly brown hair. Smoyer's adrenalin turned to horror: Did I just shoot a woman?The past can destroy the present Smoyer's question would force him to return to Cologne 68 years later. It would force him to reach out to an unlikely ally. And it would force him to deal with another question that may not be limited to war veterans: How do you atone for a terrible deed when you're not sure you've committed it? How Smoyer answered those questions is the subject of an upcoming book, "Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II." Written by Adam Makos, the engrossing book is a war story and a mystery. Yet unlike other mysteries, this was one the main character wasn't sure he really wanted to solve -- at least not at first. Smoyer dreaded the answers because still more questions had lingered at the back of his mind for decades: Was that a woman? If so, why was she there? And perhaps most important: Did she survive? "I often thought, 'Why the hell would somebody drive into a place like that,' " Smoyer says today. Smoyer is now 95 and long retired from his job as a supervisor at an industrial cement plant. He was married to Melba, the woman who sent him homemade fudge when he was in combat, for 70 years before she died in 2017. They had two daughters. Smoyer with a US tank from World War II. German tanks had Americans outgunned, but Smoyer destroyed a feared German tank during a legendary battle. Anyone passing Smoyer on the street today wouldn't imagine that he fought in one the most legendary tank duels of World War II, says Makos. He destroyed a dreaded Panther tank, one of the most formidable weapons in the German arsenal. Yet Smoyer doesn't revel in war stories. He turns the channel when war movies come on. He closes the window when Fourth of July fireworks go off. He's a big quiet guy with a nervous chuckle. "It was hard for me to believe that he was a legendary tank gunner in World War II because he was so gentle and calm," Makos says. Smoyer had good reason to turn away from the sounds of war. For those who fought in tanks, war was literally hell on wheels. This is what they faced: Men who hadn't showered in three weeks were crammed together into small metal capsules. Shells that penetrated through tank hulls ricocheted inside like supersonic pinballs. Concussion forces from the impact of shells shattered men's bones and turned their bodies to jelly, with just the skin holding their corpses together. Tanks were called "crematoriums on wheels." "The mechanics and maintenance men used to cry when they came out from cleaning a tank," Makos says.Smoyer (top center) and his crew pause during a lull in the fighting. He thought he wouldn't survive the war. But repressing those memories could also be lethal. Smoyer had seen it happen before. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the book, Makos tells the story of Smoyer's company commander, Capt. Mason Salisbury. Salisbury had returned home from the war, graduated from Columbia Law School and become a lawyer at big New York firm. One winter weekend, he stayed at his parents' mansion on Long Island. He played tennis and ate dinner with his family. That Monday morning, his father found him slumped in a car in the garage. The car had been running all night. Salisbury had killed himself at 30. He'd left a note, saying he was depressed over the loss of his friends in battle. Makos wrote: "After surviving more close calls with German shells than he could count, Capt. Salisbury had been stalked and cut down by the unseen killer. The mental toll of war."Smoyer discovers a vital clue Smoyer was losing the battle with that unseen killer. The mental toll of the war was eating into him. He'd become a hero for his actions in Cologne that day. After his encounter in the intersection, his tank would go on to tangle with another German tank known as the "monster" -- the dreaded Panther. It had a gun so powerful that its shells could go through one American Sherman tank into the next. Tank warfare was so grisly during World War II that American soldiers had a nickname for tanks: crematoriums on wheels. Smoyer and his crew destroyed that Panther, and the duel was caught on film by a combat cameraman. Journalists heard about the battle and interviewed and photographed Smoyer and his crew. One journalist wrote a piece about it called, "Killing a Monster." But as the years went by, Smoyer tried not to think about the war. He'd have flashbacks of battles, but he pushed those memories away. Yet one question never quite went away: What really happened at that intersection? One day he got some answers. They came in his mailbox. A war buddy had sent him a VHS tape called, "Scenes of War." It turned out that a combat cameraman had also filmed what happened in the intersection. Smoyer plopped the tape into his video player and started reliving a battle he had fought over 50 years earlier. He saw the massive intersection again. The rubble. The car streaking through as bullets and tracers from his tank and the German tank zipped across the roadway. He saw the car crash again, a body tumbling out of the passenger side, a familiar flash of curly brown hair. It was a woman. He saw her stare vacantly into the sky as American medics tried to treat her. He saw her curl into a fetal position as one medic tenderly covered her with a blanket. He saw her blink as soldiers walked by.The woman from the car fights for her life as American medics tend to her wounds. His chest started to heave as he realized what he had done. At the time of the battle, he was too preoccupied with surviving the war to dwell on his actions. And he kept the memories at bay for years afterward. Now, he could no longer do that. "I had forgotten about it for decades, the car was just a blur, and now the whole thing came back, clear as day," Smoyer says.Smoyer started having nightmares. He'd wake up swinging, afraid he'd hit his wife, Melba. He had to take medication to calm himself, but the nightmares kept coming. He could barely function in the day. He kept seeing the woman in his dreams. The past was destroying his present. "The war is over, I thought, why do I have to worry about this anymore?" Smoyer couldn't change what he'd seen, but maybe he could lessen its sting. He acquired uncut footage of the battle from the National Archives and, with notepad in hand, scoured the film for another explanation. "I prayed that I wasn't the one," Smoyer says. Doubts and denial crept into his mind. Maybe it wasn't his fault? Maybe the German tank had shot the woman? "He was searching for a way he didn't do it," Makos says. None of his war buddies could satisfy that search. The rest of his tank crew had all died of old age. Then another idea struck Smoyer. What if he could contact the German tank gunner? What if he was still alive?An enemy becomes a comrade Gustav Schaefer stood in a Cologne square on a frigid winter afternoon in March 2013, arms tucked behind his back, wondering why an American soldier wanted to talk to him. Who was this Clarence Smoyer? Schaefer was the gunner in the tank that had faced Smoyer 68 years earlier. Barely 5 feet tall, he'd been a teenager assigned to a tank because of his size.Gustav Schaefer was the German gunner who faced Smoyer in the fight for Cologne. They shared a battle and a common nightmare. A Cologne journalist had contacted Schaefer, saying Smoyer wanted to meet him. Schaefer agreed but was nervous: What did he come all the way to Germany to talk about? Would he be angry? Smoyer spotted Schaefer and walked toward him, picking up the pace as he got closer. Smoyer reached out with an open hand as Schaefer timidly extended his. What Smoyer said next put Schaefer at ease: "The war is over and we can be friends now." Schaefer hadn't been the prototypical Nazi soldier, Makos said. He was a farm boy from Northern Germany who'd been drafted. He actually grew up admiring the United States from afar, reading about "cowboys and Indians" and learning about Mickey Mouse. He said he had no animosity toward Jews. A Jewish neighbor had loaned his family a car once when they'd hit hard times and had never asked for anything in return. "They didn't have electricity. He didn't have a radio. He only had a few books," Makos says. "His big enjoyment was riding his bike to the train tracks to watch the trains go by." Now Schaefer was about to relive a painful drama with Smoyer. After pleasantries, they retreated to a hotel and shared evening beers. Smoyer told him why he'd sought him out. The next day they decided to confront their past. Together they walked to the scene where the car crashed, where the woman's body tumbled out. Makos was there to record what happened next. "This is where I see her in my dreams," Smoyer told Schaefer, pointing to a lamppost.American medics try to help the woman after her car was caught in the crossfire. This is the sight that stayed with Smoyer for years. Schaefer knew what Smoyer meant. He had seen the same film that Smoyer saw while watching a television documentary a decade earlier. He told Smoyer that he, too, kept having nightmares about the woman. They began to talk as two old soldiers, recalling the battle. Smoyer said the intersection was a shooting gallery. He didn't have time to study the car. And that's when Schaefer said something that filled in the blanks for Smoyer: "Well, that's why I shot it, too." It turns out that both he and Schaefer had shot at the car. Smoyer no longer bore his guilt alone. Another soldier had reacted just as he had. It's what they were trained to do. Smoyer's eyes teared up. Then he became angry. Why, he wondered, would a civilian drive into the middle of a battle zone? "It's war," Schaefer said. "It's in the nature of it. It can't be undone." Smoyer, though, had his own surprise for Schaefer. He had learned who the woman was and what had happened to her. Now Smoyer and Schaefer were about to pay their respects to her. Both started walking.The woman in the car Her name was Katharina Esser, and she was 26. The youngest of four sisters, she was called "Kathi." All her sisters had married and had families. She stayed home to care for her parents, and would often take her nieces and nephews to the park, pushing them on their scooters.Kathi Esser, the woman caught in the crossfire, was a caretaker for her family. She looked out for her parents and cared for her nieces and nephews. Esser took night classes to get a degree in home economics. She worked as a clerk in a grocery store. The driver of the car that day was her boss, the owner of the grocery. Makos suspects that Esser and her boss had gone stir crazy staying in an air raid shelter and had decided to make a run for a bridge outside Cologne to safety. All three of Esser's sisters had lost their husbands in the war. "Life only has these (sad) things to offer us nowadays," Esser wrote in a letter to one of her family members after learning that one of her brothers-in-law had been killed in battle. "I don't believe in a good outcome anymore." Esser, though, still had something to look forward to. "She hoped that she would be a mother one day and have children of her own," Makos says.Instead, Esser died after being caught in the crossfire. She was buried in a church cemetery, just 200 yards from where she had fallen. Smoyer and Schaefer walked along a path to the church and stopped before a knee-high wooden cross. A plaque on the cross read, "The Unknown Dead." Esser had been buried in a mass grave. At the time, people weren't certain of her identity. Her papers had been separated from her at the time of her death. But Germans were methodical record keepers. And one of her sisters had seen the film of her death and realized it was Kathi. After writing journalists and historians in Cologne, Smoyer had pieced together her identity and her final resting place. Now Schaefer knew, too. Both placed yellow roses on the grave. As Smoyer bent down to place his rose, he almost lost his balance. Schaefer grabbed his arm and steadied him. Smoyer told Esser he was sorry. "Visiting the gravesite gave me a chance to apologize to Katharina, just me and her," Smoyer says. The fate of Kathi Esser haunted the American and German soldiers who saw her fall before their tanks during the last days of the war. Later on the trip, Smoyer got another helping hand -- from Esser's family. They heard he was in town and invited him to their house. They told him to be at peace and that their Kathi wouldn't have blamed him. One of Esser's nieces told him: "The people who started this war are the ones who killed Katharina." Smoyer says the meeting with Esser's family "brought me some comfort." "War is hell," he says. "No matter what side you stand on. A lot of young people get killed, but it's the leaders of the countries who should have to do the fighting on the front lines. If that happened I'm sure there wouldn't be wars anymore." Smoyer remained friends with Schaefer afterward, exchanging letters and talking on Skype. Schaefer died in 2017. Smoyer sent a bouquet of flowers to his funeral with the inscription: "I will never forget you! Your brother in arms, Clarence." And both he and Schaefer never forgot the woman in their dreams. They said farewell to Kathi.They used their past to save their present."You could write a textbook on how they healed from trauma," Makos says. "They went to the scene and confronted what had happened. They paid their respects to her and apologized. And they honored her by trying to understand who she was."The memories of tank warfare were so bad for Smoyer that he would turn off the television when war movies came on. Smoyer and Schaefer didn't just share their story for themselves, Makos says. They did it for Esser. "They said we're not going to tell our war story. We're going to tell you about her. By doing so she could live forever." It would be easy to imagine that Smoyer never sees Kathi in his dreams anymore. Yet that is not the nature of war. "It still hurts," he says. "It don't go away." But he says he rests easier at night now. "I don't wake up swinging my arms anymore and I can sleep a full night," he says. "I still see her in my dreams. I think I always will. I don't think she haunts me. It's different than that. It's not a nightmare anymore."

Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Anne Lagamayo and Lauren Cook, CNN

2018-08-21 10:04:08

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/health/rural-suicides-among-farmers/index.html

Suicide rates in rural America are soaring. One family is working to change that. - CNN

Rural suicides outpace those in urban America, and Montana's suicide rate leads the nation. One farming family in north central Montana shares their story of loss in the hopes that their anguish can save others.

health, Suicide rates in rural America are soaring. One family is working to change that. - CNN

Their dad killed himself on the farm where he was born. They hope his story will save others

Big Sandy, Montana (CNN)Her father worked the harvest every year from age 11 and was the strongest man she ever knew. When she was in high school, he once caught his foot in an auger, a long tube of a machine that pulls cut grain from a combine. He managed to yank himself free and drive his truck home without passing out. Dick Tyler then hobbled into the house with his bloodied cowboy boot and mangled toe. "It was reasonable and rational and absolutely necessary that he stop and come into the house and say, 'I'm hurt. I need help,' " said his daughter, Darla Tyler-McSherry.But two years ago, at age 82, as a series of mounting health issues forced him to step away from the work he loved, he didn't have the same kind of language or strength to ask for help. "We're so good at talking about physical pain," Darla said through tears, "but we're so bad at talking about any kind of psychological pain."Read MoreDarla Tyler-McSherry and her brother, Randall Tyler, on the farm where they were raised.Darla is the director of student health services at Montana State University Billings. She is trained to spot depression and suicide ideation in students. But in her own father, she couldn't see what was coming. He took his own life on the very farm where he was born and raised. Afterward, his daughter struggled with guilt. She's now determined to take her family's anguish and use it for good by advocating on behalf of other farmers who may be in crisis. Her motivation is to honor his memory -- and because she knows that her family isn't alone. The suicide rate in rural America is 45% greater than in large urban areas, according to a study released last fall by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A more recent CDC report said Montana's suicide rate leads the nation, coming in at nearly twice the national average. A third long-touted CDC study, currently under review, listed farming in the occupational group, along with fishing and forestry, with the highest rate of suicide deaths. That occupational study was based on 2012 data, when farming was strong and approaching its peak in 2013, says Jennifer Fahy, communications director for the nonprofit Farm Aid. Farmers' net income has fallen 50% since 2013 and is expected to drop to a 12-year low this year, the US Department of Agriculture reports.Fahy says farmers are facing more stress now than they have since the farming crisis of the 1980s, when hundreds of farms were auctioned on courthouse steps across the country each month and thousands of farmers faced financial ruin.That's why now is the time to talk, Darla says. By sharing their own story, she and her older brother, Randall Tyler, hope others can be spared their -- and their father's -- pain.In his bloodThe 1,200-acre farm is nestled in the serenity of rural north central Montana, where crops stretch as far as the eye can see beneath an expansive blue sky. The summer breeze casts waves across seas of wheat.Nicknamed for the grain that thrives in this region, Randall refers to the area as "the breadbasket of Montana." Unlike his sister, who left for college and took a job in the big city of Billings, Randall is pure country and was born to farm. He can quote the exact time he graduated from high school and was free to do what he loved: "May 26, 1982, 7 o'clock nighttime. Best day of my life, because me and school really didn't get along that well." Randall Tyler says he runs on diesel fuel. Farming, he says, "just gets in your blood."As a small child, he tagged along with his dad to the fields. He could identify whose land they passed in the pickup and the tractors each man drove. He took every chance he could to ride on the combine and watch his dad tinker with equipment. He was pint-sized when he took apart his green pedal tractor so he could "overhaul its engine," he laughs. By age 5 or 6, he was steering a real truck between rows of bales. "I kind of run on diesel fuel," Randall said. "It just gets in your blood." Each morning, he tunes his radio to the Northern Ag Network to hear reports on the markets and the weather. Like all farmers, he says, he's at the mercy of both. He used to work with his dad, growing and harvesting barley and wheat. Now, Randall is on his own to manage it all. Darla sees their dad in Randall in the way he talks, moves and fixates on projects.Randall misses the conversations after he and his dad each devoured the Trader's Dispatch, a monthly publication catering to farmers, ranchers and the like that he calls the "farmer's bible." They bantered about the latest equipment for sale and who they knew who was selling what. His thoughts turn to his father when he sprays the fallow field and passes the two knobs where they took a break a few years ago, field glasses in hand, and watched a herd of 200 antelope. He holds onto the good memories: the pack trip they took in the wilderness, the snowmobiling in West Yellowstone, the machinery they ogled at farm shows. When Randall faces a predicament -- questions like when to sell or where; what and how much chemical to spray -- he says to himself, "Darn it, Dad, I wish you were here to make this decision." But he knows what his father would say: "Gotta keep moving, Randall. Gotta take care of the farm, keep it active, do what you think is right."An 'agrarian imperative'Just as coyotes and cats mark their territory, Michael Rosmann says, so do humans -- but with tall fences and legal paperwork. Rosmann is a longtime farmer and Iowa psychologist who specializes in agricultural behavioral health. He's referring to the "agrarian imperative," a theory related to the territorial nature of animals that also applies to humans.Any danger of losing that territory, of losing that farm, heaps on pressure, he says -- especially when the land has been passed down across generations. "When we're not successful, we blame ourselves for losing the opportunity our ancestors secured for us," he said.Dick Tyler's parents purchased the family farm from the original homesteaders in 1931, during the Great Depression. An old wooden homestead wagon, eventually purchased by Tyler to celebrate the history, remains parked near the house between the gravel driveway and a long row of bright red poppies. The place is about 10 miles from the itty-bitty town of Big Sandy, a crossroads that's home to 600 people. Darla Tyler-McSherry helped her mom garden as a girl and still does so during trips back to the farm.Tyler was born in the house his parents built. It's the same house where Randall and Darla grew up. Their 78-year-old mother, Lenore, still lives there, and someday, Randall expects that the home will be his -- hopefully, by then, with Mrs. Right. For now, he holds onto his own place 30 miles to the north in Gildford, an even-smaller town where he knows everyone and they all know him. Randall, 54, often stays with his mom during the busy season, which begins in April and runs through mid-October. The days are long and the weekends rarely free; whatever it takes to get the work done.Darla, 50, who helped her mom garden as a girl and still does during visits, reads from a poem her grandmother Marion Tyler Lawrence wrote. It's a love note to her late first husband -- Dick Tyler's father -- and the farm they cherished. Rest well my loveIn heaven aboveThis farm is kept wellAs I do tellThis land of the sand Is cared for by loving hearts and hands Thank you dear childrenFor the love and the careThat you give thereGod shall bless you for your love and care And will keep you safely in His armsFree from all harm Working against themThere are a number of explanations for why suicide rates are higher in rural America: social isolation, lack of access to mental health care, small community living where internal struggles become tightly held secrets. For farmers, there are particular economic stressors too, including an existence in which crops -- and one's livelihood -- can be wiped out with a drought, infestation or 15-minute hailstorm. Markets fluctuate. Costs for fuel and fertilizer climb while prices earned per bushel plummet. Lenders come knocking. The President introduces tariffs, adding uncertainty to a life that's already plenty uncertain.The solitude of life in Montana's vast open spaces can add to the emotional challenges facing farmers.The very psychological traits that make farmers successful -- the ability to toil alone, rely on personal judgment and take risks -- work against them if they're struggling emotionally or financially, says Rosmann, the agricultural behavioral health expert. "Working alone and relying only on one's own judgment when depressed can be dangerous," he said. "Taking risks when depressed or struggling can dig oneself into a deeper hole ... and even set up the distressed person to become self-destructive."Of Montana's 56 counties, 45 have a population of fewer than six people per square mile, and 10 of those have a population of fewer than one person per square mile, according to the US Census Bureau. And most counties have a mental health care professional shortage, state figures show.In a place like Montana, where the winters are long and dark, a man is taught to "cowboy up," be independent and not be a burden to others, says Karl Rosston, a licensed clinical social worker who serves as the suicide prevention coordinator for the state's Department of Public Health and Human Services. The stigma attached to mental illness looms large, he says, and depression is "seen as a weakness." It's also a gun culture -- "If you're from Montana, you grew up with guns," Rosston said -- which means access to the most lethal method for suicide comes easy. Nearly two out of three suicides in Montana are by firearm, compared with half for the United States as a whole, he says. Plus, Montana is home to a large number of military veterans and seven Native American reservations -- two groups with disproportionate suicide rates. Add to this, studies have shown increased rates of depression and suicide linked to factors like pesticides and high altitude. Seven of the top 10 states for suicide rates, according to the CDC list, are in the Mountain States.The storm he couldn't weatherDick Tyler's farm wasn't struggling; he was. Like his mother before him and his son after him, he had a rare hereditary eye disease called lattice dystrophy. It can make the eyes feel like sandpaper beneath the eyelids and spawn the kind of sensitivity to light that can require days in darkness, Randall explains from experience. It causes intertwining deposits that cloud the corneas. Although there's no cure, corneal transplants often help.Tyler had at least eight transplants over the years, his kids say. In the summer of 2016, his left eye needed another transplant. At the same time, an unrelated infection in his right eye had been giving him trouble. He was struggling to see, and he couldn't drive or work the land he loved. Dick and Lenore Tyler, left, and Randall, far right, at Darla's wedding to Dave McSherry in 1997. He told his kids he worried about going blind. He went to Missoula for the corneal transplant, Darla says, and it was successful. Given his age, however, the doctor warned that it would take longer than before to heal.And then gastrointestinal issues hit him, requiring several trips to the ER in Great Falls, more than an hour from home. He'd been offered temporary relief but no answers, his kids say, and a doctor's appointment that was further out than he liked.Dick Tyler wasn't willing to wait. Ten days after his surgery, he was dead."I'm not sure if my dad's expectations were in alignment with what was possible," Darla said. "There was hope and good faith for it," Randall added, "but he kind of bowed out a little quicker, before the hope and the faith really kicked in."Their dad had weathered his share of challenges. On top of the corneal transplants, he'd had a hip replacement and emergency bypass surgery -- not to mention that mangled toe from the auger accident. He was the sort who bounced back and looked forward.Plus, Darla had always taken comfort in a conversation she'd overheard decades earlier. It was during America's farm crisis of the '80s, when losses, debts and foreclosures skyrocketed amid overproduction and a grain embargo against the Soviet Union. He was talking with a friend about the farmers who'd taken their lives. Her dad looked down at the floor and shook his head, she remembers, and said, "What could ever be so bad that would make a person feel like they had to do that to themselves?" The relief she felt then, coupled with a more recent comment he'd made to Randall about the burden that suicide places on those left behind, allowed her to believe that for him suicide "would never be the answer."She's learned through her work, though, that "thoughts of suicide come in waves." "The storm came up with so much ferocity and so much intensity that none of us saw it coming," she said. "This wave just hit him, and he wasn't able to come out of it." 'Something so awful as this'It was a beautiful, picture-perfect Friday at the end of September. Randall was out seeding when his mother called him on his cell phone: "I cannot find Dad." Lenore Tyler had gone into town to pick up her husband's eye drops from the pharmacy. She feared that he didn't have enough to get through the weekend. She asked him to join her for the ride, but he told her he wanted to stay home. When she returned, he wasn't where she'd left him or anywhere she looked. Farming was something he did in partnership with his dad for years, but now Randall Tyler works alone."Dad! Dad! Come on, Dad! Where are you? This isn't funny," Randall called out as he roamed the grounds, checking in buildings, peeking around trucks and behind machinery. After a while, he reached out to some neighbors to help him search. Suicide prevention advocates warn media against sharing details about how a person takes his or her life. They say it can be triggering to suicide loss survivors. Darla and Randall want people to know what happened to their father because it speaks to who he was. Dick Tyler had guns, and he loved them. They were pieces of art he collected. He displayed them in his home, polished and showed them off at gun shows. But he didn't use one to end his life. As Darla's husband told her, "he wouldn't want to have used one for something so awful as this." Instead, he drowned himself in the farm's reservoir.Their father didn't know how to swim and was terrified of water. Randall remembers how throughout his lifetime, his dad would warn, "be careful now. Don't you fall in there," whenever they set up the water pump in the reservoir, which covers about three acres and is up to 14 feet deep. They found his black and white cap, water bottle and sunglasses next to the water. His body was spotted floating in the southwest corner."I think Dad plain got tired and fed up," Randall said. "We didn't realize he was hurting that much, I guess." He knew that it was hard for his dad to not be out in the fields where he belonged, so his son kept him involved -- asking for advice and reporting back on each day's progress. Randall trusted that his father would be working again soon enough. If only he'd given it a little more time. Darla knelt over her father in the funeral home and wept. She ran her fingers through his hair, stroked his arm and told him, "Dad, I think you jumped the gun." If only he'd held on another week or 10 days to make it to that next doctor's appointment and give his eye more time to heal, she suspects, "he'd still be here." She's read interviews with people who've survived jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. They've spoken about the regret that took over as soon as they were airborne, she says. She likes to believe that their father too felt a rush of remorse the moment he leapt. 'Like throwing darts'Coming back to the farm from Shepherd, the small town outside of Billings where she went on to build a life with her husband and stepdaughters, can be a struggle for Darla. The farm and her father are one and the same, and she's still getting used to being here without him.The last time she made the 4½-hour drive, she and Randall sat over dinner and counted the names of people they knew who'd taken their own lives. They came up with more than half a dozen. Randall sits in the still-smells-like-new farm shop, a building Dick Tyler viewed as his "masterpiece." The space is well-lit and pristine, and it has a place for every tool a farmer could want. His dad's hat collection lines one wall, and collectibles and historical photos of the farm dot others."I think Dad plain got tired and fed up," Randall Tyler said. "We didn't realize he was hurting that much, I guess."He begins to rattle off stories of men lost. There was the one who didn't want to fight cancer anymore and "took care of it right in his own chair." Another guy "was having troubles, and he ran his dad's pickup over a cliff just to take care of it." And then there was the rancher who lost most all of his cattle in a blizzard. There were a few survivors, though, so he pulled out his gun, "took care of them and then took care of himself."Randall knows this work is a gamble, yet he can't imagine doing anything else. "Every day, you roll the dice and you hope for the best," he said. "It's just like throwing darts." There's only so much a farmer can control, and the status of global trade tariffs isn't on that list. The grain merchandisers he sells to often ship his crops across the ocean to China, he says. "If they put a halt to it, shoot, it's definitely going to hurt our market," Randall said. "But our little voice out here don't amount to much. ... They don't listen to us guys."All he can do is focus on what's in front of him as he turns his truck toward the sun in the fallow field. The hours and hours of solitude, Randall says, don't bother him. He daydreams, watches the crops grow and admires the seasons, sunrises and sunsets. He thinks about the tasks awaiting him, loses himself watching a hawk or seagull soar above, and tunes in to the radio. He listens to country rock and ag market reports and keeps tabs on funeral announcements.Making the world rightIt'll be two years next month since they lost their father. As the economic concerns of farmers grow, so does Darla's determination to make a difference.She's connected with advocates and lawmakers, published letters to the editor and participated in a community walk to raise awareness about suicide in rural Montana. She's gathered educational materials about depression, suicide and the resources available to suicide loss survivors. She's set up a table at a rodeo, along with pamphlets for military families, brochures about how talking can save lives and bumper stickers that read, "Caution: Treatment for Mental Illness Can Cause Recovery." She plans to do this more.Darla Tyler-McSherry tours Big Sandy High, where four generations of Tylers went to school.Darla earned a grant from the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Yellowstone Valley to launch a project inspired by a story she heard about her father. After he was gone, a friend of his told her, "When your dad would see someone in town walking down the street, he would stop and ask in earnest how they were doing. He wasn't asking to be nosy or gossipy; he genuinely cared." Ask in Earnest is her effort to promote "candid and compassionate conversations about suicide for the farm and ranching community," Darla writes on her website. Her plan is to offer tips for self-care, information about warning signs and ways to help those in need. Someday, Darla says, she might even start a nonprofit. Her dream would be to bring in experts, like Iowa's Rosmann, to facilitate community conversations across the state and coach others to do the same.Rosmann says he admires Darla's determination to take on this cause. Hers is a sort of response he's seen before."To take the loss and turn it into a positive event of some kind," he said, "makes it possible for many people to go on."Farmers in crisis deserve all the help they can get, he says. Farm Aid offers a hotline, but it's not 24/7 and is for referrals more than crisis intervention, explains Fahy, the organization's spokeswoman. And people on the other end of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, though essential, aren't generally versed in what life looks like for a farmer, Rosmann says.National resourcesNational Suicide Prevention Lifeline24/7800-273-TALK/800-273-8255Crisis Text Line24/7Text HOME to 741741 Farm Aid HotlineMonday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET800-FARM-AID/800-327-6243Some states have their own farm and rural helplines, but he believes such options should be universally available. He imagines designated suicide prevention hotlines staffed by people who understand farming and speak the language so there's no cultural gap. He'd like counseling for farmers to be subsidized, since they generally have high insurance deductibles and aren't likely to seek help, especially when financially stressed. And he wants more rural family doctors to be trained in agricultural medicine, including behavioral health. Getting help early is essential, says Matt Kuntz, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter in Montana and the interim director of the Center for Mental Health Research and Recovery at Montana State University. "It's critical that people go in to get mental health treatment before they are in a life-or-death crisis," he said. "If they wait until they are really desperate, the margins for error with the clinician shortage, insurance issues, etc., are just too small." The Trump administration pledged this summer to give up to $12 billion in aid to farmers, but that announcement has been met with criticism and was even described by a fifth-generation farmer and Trump supporter as "a Band-Aid on a broken leg." Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin introduced the Farmers First Act, which would establish a stress assistance network for farmers and ranchers. Montana has invested in measures to help its residents, including a strategic plan to reduce Native youth suicides. Gov. Steve Bullock announced grants in April to fund online therapy and bring a mental health awareness program into schools. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.And then there are individuals like Darla, who hopes in her own passionate way to be part of the solution. She wants to help redefine for farmers -- and for anyone facing a wave of suicidal thoughts -- the meaning of the word strength. It takes strength to speak up and ask for help. It's that kind of strength that might have saved her father's life.On the front steps of the family home where she sits, she imagines him. He would sit here in the summer after a long day's work, reading the paper or a farm magazine while listening to the mourning doves. The pump set in the reservoir would be on, watering the yard and garden. "It was just a sign that everything was right in the world," she said. "It was just the perfect way to end the day." As she sits here and talks about him, she likes to think each gust of wind is him blowing through. The mourning dove perched on a wire nearby, she imagines, is Dick Tyler looking down with approval.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN Design by Annie Regan for CNN

2018-06-28 08:06:13

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/health/embryos-egg-donor-surrogate/index.html

Two dads, an egg donor and a surrogate: How a freezer failure changed everything - CNN

A gay couple wanted a family and, with the help of two women, had a son. When a storage tank holding embryos, or future siblings, failed, the outcome touched them all.

health, Two dads, an egg donor and a surrogate: How a freezer failure changed everything - CNN

Two dads, an egg donor and a surrogate: How a freezer failure changed everything

San Francisco, California (CNN)Their first date was over lunch during a Proposition 8 protest, where they joined hundreds of others railing against the passage of California's same-sex marriage ban. The two men took a break from demonstrating, threw their hearts on the table and talked about their desire to have kids. So it was somehow appropriate that in June 2013, nearly five years later, Bill Taroli and Yang Li stood in a delivery room and welcomed their son, Henry, one day before the US Supreme Court overturned Prop 8. A couple weeks later, with their newborn in their arms, they exchanged vows and were legally married. Having Henry required careful and complicated planning over the course of several years. To become fathers, they needed a support group, legal help, extensive research, reams of documents, reproductive science and about $150,000. But none of that mattered without the help of two women: an egg donor and a surrogate. One embryo brought them Henry. Five remaining healthy embryos they kept frozen in storage at the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco. They imagined the sibling they might someday give their son and stayed in touch with the women who'd helped give them life once -- and might again someday. Then came the news in March. A freezer or cryogenic storage tank at the facility failed, causing the level of liquid nitrogen to dip too low and the temperature to rise. The malfunction jeopardized the status of thousands of eggs and embryos inside, potentially crushing the dreams of hundreds of hopeful parents and families.The fate of their embryos would prove significant not just for the fathers but for the women invested in their journey.Read MoreThe eggs she wasn't usingTaroli, 47, was adopted by his stepfather and was 20 when he first met his biological dad. When he considered pathways to fatherhood, he was open to a variety of options.Li, however, was keen on having a biological child, making the decision of how to proceed easy, Taroli said. Henry "got his sperm and my name." They scrolled through a registry of possible egg donors provided by the fertility center, studying pictures and written statements. They settled on "Isabelle," a name chosen by the potential donor, and elected to sit down with her in person. She was a college student living in Sacramento when she spotted an ad about egg donation. She didn't need to do it financially, as she had family support and scholarships, but she liked the idea of extra spending money and looked ahead toward medical school and the enormous expenses to come.Isabelle, the name she preferred to go by for this story, also thought about how fixated she was on not getting pregnant, and her mind turned to those who wanted nothing more."Some people are tying so hard to not have something that other people would absolutely love to have happen to them," she said by Skype from the United Kingdom, where she's beyond medical school and now doing her residency in Wales. "I thought, 'I have these eggs. I'm not using them. Someone might as well.'"She also liked the idea of taking part in social innovation and helping families who, without someone else's eggs, might never have children.Isabelle's mother was befuddled by and against her daughter's decision to donate eggs."No, no, no -- don't do it," Isabelle remembered her pleading. "What's the point?" She ended up going through six egg donation cycles and received $7,000 to $8,000 each time, she said. She was fascinated by the science of it all. Her pre-med friends lined up to give her hormone injections. Most of her donation cycles went directly to a frozen egg bank, where they'd be used by people she'd never know or meet. But her first cycle, the experience she appreciated most, went to two men who chose her.She was excited to meet the people "who wanted my eggs to be part of their family," she said. When they got together in the clinic offices, Taroli did most of the talking and peppered Isabelle with questions. Li, who didn't want to speak for this story, sat by with a clipboard, she remembered. The few questions Li asked were specific: He wanted to know what it was like to grow up bilingual and multicultural.Isabelle, now 29, has a Portuguese mother and an American father. Henry has American and Chinese dads. And although their backgrounds are different from those of her parents, the couple saw in Isabelle a commonality. She walked away struck by their kindness and thinking how lucky any child of theirs would be.Capable but 'not interested in carrying my own'They came to know their embryos well, including their sexes, through chromosomal testing and biopsies of their cells. Taroli explained that they received rankings, which measured their viability, and the ones they stored -- including the one that would become Henry -- represented their best chances to become parents. Next, Taroli and Li had to identify their surrogate. A traditional surrogate is implanted with embryos using her own eggs, but Taroli and Li opted for a gestational carrier, a surrogate who receives through in-vitro fertilization an embryo using somebody else's eggs. The latter process, if they chose a carrier who also lived in California, would be less legally complicated for the gay dads, Taroli explained. The woman's name would not appear on Henry's birth certificate. Instead, both of their names would. A few hours north of Castro Valley, the community in the East Bay where Taroli and Li live, the woman who would become their surrogate and her husband were happy to be parents to an only child. But she comes from a big family, in which the women generally have five or six kids, and her pregnancy had been "really, really easy," she said.An article she read about surrogacy got her thinking. Though pregnancy had been such a breeze for her, she knew that having a family was often a struggle for others. She thought about how some women feel attached to their babies while they're in the womb and how she didn't. It wasn't until after her son was born that she made a connection.The surrogate asked to be identified as "Audrey" to protect her privacy. "I felt emotionally capable of being a surrogate. I felt physically capable," Audrey said. "It seems kind of a waste that I'm so able to carry children but not interested in carrying my own." Her husband, whom she's been with for more than 16 years, also didn't want more children but was in full support of this idea. His mother, Audrey said, was initially disappointed because she still held out hope that they'd give her more grandkids. Audrey's mother and grandmother, however, were completely on board. It was her father, divorced from her mother and living several states away, who had the hardest time understanding. The thought of his daughter delivering somebody else's baby, and being part of a process that might include the destruction of embryos, went against his faith. But the two of them had weathered points of friction before, and Audrey, then 30, was prepared to move forward. It wasn't about the money for her, although the $27,000 came in handy for the then stay-at-home mom.She'd done research into how surrogacy worked and signed up with a surrogacy agency. There were questionnaires for her and her husband to complete, a psychological evaluation she had to clear and medical records that needed to be shared. She suspected that being a surrogate for a woman might become emotionally fraught and was most interested in being a surrogate for a gay couple. She also welcomed the chance to have an ongoing relationship after the birth. The agency learned about Taroli and Li and set up a meeting.With her husband and 3-year-old son with her, Audrey walked into the family-style restaurant the surrogacy agency had selected. It was initially awkward, sort of like heading into a blind date, she said."They brought me flowers, which was really sweet," she remembered. "You could tell how much they were trying to impress me."Like her husband who works in IT, so does Taroli; Li is in software development. Their initial shyness was something she understood and liked. As they warmed up, they shared their histories, and the two men spoke openly about their hope to be fathers. They told her that they liked the idea of staying in contact with their surrogate, not just during the pregnancy but after, a proposition that made her smile. She left feeling like, in them, she'd found her match. 'Not just a vessel for their child'After some additional testing at the fertility center, Audrey and the couple began to iron out a legal contract. She laid out what she was -- and wasn't -- comfortable with. She wanted to pick her own doctor and hospital. No more than two embryos could be implanted in her, she said, and she was relieved when they decided to go with just one. She planned to work with a doula, did not want an epidural and would consider a cesarean section only if the doctor deemed it necessary. Eating healthy foods and not smoking were conditions she already chose to live by. And she and her husband would abstain from sexual intercourse in the weeks right before and after the embryo transfer, to make sure she was having Taroli and Li's baby -- not hers. For many people, in vitro fertilization requires repeated tries -- and additional costs -- to work, if it works at all. The first embryo implanted in Audrey took without a hitch. She, Taroli and Li were in touch by email a few times a week, and the dads came along to some of her doctor appointments. They got together at least once a month and came to know each other as her belly grew. Sometimes when they'd visit, the two men would take her and her family out to dinner. "They really valued me," Audrey said. "They saw me as a person, not just a vessel for their child."She recalled how her own child took the developments in stride. When he was nearly 4 and she was very pregnant, someone asked her son, "Aren't you excited you're going to be a brother?" The young boy answered, without skipping a beat, "That's not going to be my brother. That's Bill and Yang's baby." As her contractions grew stronger in the Redding delivery room, she held off on pushing and screamed out, "Are the dads here? Are they here?" A nurse rushed Taroli and Li in from the waiting room. They were there to witness Henry's arrival and cut his umbilical cord.Audrey and her husband, who was also in the room, watched as the two new dads fussed with how to put on the first diaper."They were so funny," Audrey, now 36, remembered. "They were being a little snippy with each other. I'm sure I was like that with my son, and it was so cute to see that in someone else." Audrey pumped breast milk for Henry for 10 months and stopped sending the UPS shipments on dry ice only once Taroli and Li had enough to get them through their son's first year.She and her family visited Henry's family quite a bit in the beginning. They saw them on Christmas and were at the boy's first birthday party. They've since moved to Los Angeles, where Audrey works as a speech therapist. It's been a couple years since they've seen each other, but they still get updates and pictures. 'He's not my son'Isabelle and Audrey have not met but have heard about each other. They each received photo books Taroli and Li created to document Henry's first year and how he came into this world. They receive updates and additional photographs, still. And, as a result, they've seen pictures of one another, as they're both central to Henry's story. Isabelle remembers being a little thrown by the first photograph she spotted of Audrey."I remember thinking, she had my egg inside of her," she said. "That's just crazy." Isabelle didn't see Taroli and Li again until Henry was about a 1½. The couple reached out to the clinic to say they wanted her to meet Henry."I wanted him to have the opportunity to know who was involved in his coming into being," said Taroli, who didn't learn that he was adopted until he was 14.The clinic, in turn, put the query to Isabelle. She was living in the UK at the time but would be returning to California for Christmas.Isabelle's mother, who had opposed her daughter's decision to donate eggs, suddenly couldn't wait for her chance to meet the boy. That would come later. The first visit with Taroli, Li and Henry was Isabelle's alone. As she drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, she began to grow nervous. She was fresh off a breakup, emotionally raw and worried that she might see Henry and suddenly want him. She feared that she'd lay eyes on him and believe, "This is my baby," she said. "But then, when I got there and I saw Henry, he couldn't have cared less," she said with a laugh. "I was just another person in the room. Yes, he's genetically my son, but he's not my son. He was more interested in the tissue box than me." She tries to see them whenever she's in California and appreciates the photos they send her. Her mother gushes over pictures of Henry and "is probably more attached to him than I am," Isabelle said. Sometimes she wonders, if Taroli and Li had had a girl, whether she would have seen herself more in the child. She knew that there was a female embryo in the tank and thought about what might come later.Taroli and Li told her, at one point, that if she ever found herself single or struggling to get pregnant, she was welcome to use embryos they didn't use."It would be quite ironic, wouldn't it?" asked Isabelle, who faces years of continued medical training and hopes to be an obstetrician-gynecologist some day. The option of using their embryos, if she needed them someday, stayed in the back of her mind.An ocean between them Taroli was texting with his mom, with his television on in the background, when a national story caught his eye. He recognized the lobby of the Pacific Fertility Clinic but thought it was just generic footage, he said, to complement a report on a failed fertility clinic storage tank in Cleveland, Ohio.He had to rewind and watch the piece three or four times before the truth sunk in. The very same weekend that Cleveland experienced a tank malfunction, so did San Francisco.He fired off an email to the fertility clinic, not knowing whether this freezer failure affected them. Li, who is establishing a new business in China, was abroad, so Taroli sent him a message, too, with a link to the TV segment. A day or two later, Taroli said, he got a late evening call from the clinic, confirming that their embryos were in the ill-fated tank. To find out whether the embryos were destroyed, however, would take further testing. To test an embryo requires that it be thawed first, which -- in turn -- might damage the embryo, Taroli explained. He and Li decided they would approve testing, one embryo at a time. If the first was still OK, they could hope that the others were, too. "So we did that," Taroli said over coffee in April. "They all came back dead." With thousands of miles and the Pacific Ocean between them, the couple processed what this meant for them."They were viable lives. They were potential babies, four boys and a girl, that if we chose to could have been our kids," Taroli said. "It's not about the death of a child; it's not the same thing. ... It's the death of the possibility." And it's the death of what might have been for Henry, who'd lost the chance to have biological siblings.Taroli was playing the role of solo parent during Li's China trip. He got choked up when he spoke about their son, who recently turned 5, and the extra big hugs he was getting. "If I get upset, he cries," Taroli said. "I've been careful not to talk about it in front of him." Breaking the newsIt was important to Taroli to break the news to Isabelle and Audrey. They were part of the fertility journey from the start, and they deserved to know how it ended.Before he got to Isabelle, though, she got an email from the Pacific Fertility Clinic. The clinic wanted to know, out of the blue, whether she'd be open to donating eggs again. She explained where she now lived but said she'd be interested if they wanted to talk. She got a call almost immediately. If the clinic wanted to fly her to California or could wait until she was there for a visit, she said, she'd be willing to go through a donation cycle, she said. She was told they'd reach out again if they needed her.The exchange got her thinking about Henry and her experience. She talked to a friend about it that night and wondered aloud about how big Henry must be.When she woke up at 4 a.m., she said, she had an email from Taroli, telling her about the storage tank failure. She began to wonder whether the clinic had only called her because it had lost her eggs and their embryos. Taroli too found the timing odd. Why would they reach out to Isabelle without knowing whether he and Li were even interested in going through this again, he wondered. The clinic, contacted several times for clarification on this and other questions, would not comment for this story.The news of the lost embryos both shocked and saddened Isabelle."For some reason, I kept thinking about the little girl egg," she said, and the potential that was lost for all the embryos. "They would never become people. But then, I guess, we always knew that they wouldn't all ever become real people, right?"Isabelle told Taroli that if he and Li ever wanted to try again, her eggs were theirs.Audrey's heart sunk too for the couple when she got the news from Taroli. She knew from a previous conversation that they were on the fence about when -- or if -- they'd have a second child, but she hated that the option was taken away from them.Because her experience with Taroli and Li was so wonderful, Audrey went on to be a gestational carrier once more a few years later. But the second time she did it for an opposite-sex couple, and the experience was awful in comparison. That couple demanded that doctors speak only to them and wanted to manage all aspects of her life. Audrey felt like nothing more than a vessel.After that, she said, she couldn't imagine being a surrogate again -- unless it was for Taroli and Li."They were so great, and I love them so much," Audrey said. "I would do it a million times over again for them." Taroli and Li knew this.'Happy with where we are'Pacific Fertility Center formally offered to cover all costs for another round, and their doctor, whom they don't blame in any way, was eager to have them go through the process again. But Taroli and Li, after processing the shock, mourning the loss and coming to terms with where their lives are now, have decided they aren't interested in going through this again. Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.They're getting older, they love their life with Henry, Li's new business in China will require lots of travel and time apart, and now is not the time for them to have more children.The truth is, they may have never used those embryos, but they would have liked to make that decision on their own terms."If we were really eager to have a second child still or didn't have Henry yet, our thinking might have been different," Taroli said. "We're happy with where we are." Meantime, attorneys are signing on clients for lawsuits against the clinic, but Taroli said they can't imagine dragging this out. They don't need to take part to find closure. Yes, they want to understand what went wrong with the tank that held their embryos, most of all because they want to be sure it doesn't happen again. "I work in tech, where lives aren't on the line," Taroli said. "You improve your process and put something better in place until the next thing you couldn't anticipate happens." He doesn't judge those who are seeking legal remedies, and he knows that for some, for instance those who froze embryos before undergoing treatment for cancer, what happened is a tragedy of different proportions.But for him and Li, they will love the child they do have, stay honest with Henry about where he came from and give him every chance to know the women who helped him get here. And someday, when the time is right and he asks why he never had siblings, they'll find the words to explain.

Wayne Drash, CNN Photographs by Victor J. Blue for CNN

2018-08-23 07:13:07

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/health/cara-pressman-surgery-update-aetna/index.html

From 'screw you' Aetna to Sweet 16, teen celebrates her surgery -- and new life - CNN

Cara Pressman had a blunt "screw you" message for Aetna after the insurer denied her minimally invasive brain surgery. After the teen spoke up, Aetna changed its policy -- and Cara got her surgery.

health, From 'screw you' Aetna to Sweet 16, teen celebrates her surgery -- and new life - CNN

From 'screw you' Aetna to Sweet 16, teen celebrates her surgery -- and new life

Nyack, New York (CNN)Cara Pressman raises her hands in triumph. The crowd claps in unison, and a DJ cranks up the music. The banquet hall on the banks of the Hudson pulsates as nine of Cara's best friends lead a procession to the dance floor. It's the start of her Sweet 16 birthday party -- a celebration not just of her big day but of all that has happened in the past year. A way for friends and family to express their love. JUST WATCHEDSee Cara celebrate her Sweet 16ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSee Cara celebrate her Sweet 16 01:48Cara became a viral sensation months ago after the teen with a seizure disorder delivered a blunt message to her insurer. Her two words for Aetna -- "screw you" -- expressed the anger she felt at being denied a minimally invasive brain surgery that promised to end her seizures. Her story, first told by CNN in December, triggered a massive uproar, and Aetna eventually approved the procedure.This Saturday evening, amid the cheers of her closest friends, Cara radiates on stage beneath strings of white flashing lights. Then someone shouts, and the dance floor clears. Everyone rushes outside. Read MoreIt's as if Mother Nature has joined the party: A rainbow stretches from the Hudson River high into the heavens. Cara launches her head back and strikes an array of poses as people take photos. "That's what's important in life -- miracles, right?" her mother, Julie Pressman, says, pointing to the sky. "I can finally exhale."Her father, Rob, says it's "like a unicorn coming down.""She's been so happy since the operation," he says. "We're looking forward to a great year."It's a moment the family thought might never come. After Cara speaks, Aetna changes policyCara's mother became a fierce champion for her youngest daughter, determined that Cara would get the surgery her doctors believed could stop her seizures. A motivational note rests on the family refrigerator. Cara has suffered from a seizure disorder most of her life.Each time they struck, her body would grow cold and shake. She'd zone out anywhere from 20 seconds to two minutes, typically still aware of what was going on around her. She had seizures on the soccer field, during softball games, on stage during plays, in the classroom. Most anywhere.Her doctors last year recommended Cara for laser ablation surgery, a minimally invasive procedure in which a thin laser is used to heat and destroy lesions in the brain where the seizures originate. It's cutting-edge work, performed through an eighth-inch hole in the skull. Neurosurgeons believe it to be more precise and less invasive than traditional open brain surgery, in which a two-inch hole is cut in the skull or, in some cases, the entire skull cap is removed. Yet the nation's third-largest insurance company overruled her treating physicians. In denying her coverage, Aetna said it considered laser ablation surgery "experimental and investigational for the treatment of epilepsy because the effectiveness of this approach has not been established.""Clinical studies have not proven that this procedures [sic] effective for treatment of the member's condition," Aetna said.When first approached for comment by CNN late last year, the insurance giant stood by its denial.Cara underwent the laser ablation surgery on July 25. Three weeks later, she says she's adjusting well: "It kind of feels like it's a little bit of a dream, but I also know it's real."In response, Cara had this message: "Considering they're denying me getting surgery and stopping this thing that's wrong with my brain, I would probably just say, 'screw you.' "From there, the story took off. The hashtags #ScrewAetna and #CaraPressman were shared across Twitter. Her grandmother made T-shirts for family members for Christmas that read "I'm on Cara's team" on the front; on the back, the message said #SYA (short for #ScrewYouAetna).Girl has blunt message for Aetna after her brain surgery request was deniedhttps://t.co/QMmPf2i4t0— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 11, 2017 Behind the scenes, neurologists and neurosurgeons reached out to the family, offering support. But none was more powerful than Mark Solazzo, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Northwell Health, New York's largest health care provider.The hospital executive was so moved by Cara's story he told the family: "This is the last day you're going to fight Aetna on your own." Solazzo is passionate on this issue: Insurance denials for what Northwell deems medically necessary procedures have swelled the past two years, with the health provider saying it lost $150 million in justifiable reimbursements at a time when insurance companies have been setting record profits.The Northwell executive set in motion a chain of events. He tapped Dr. Ashesh Dinesh Mehta, the director of Northwell's epilepsy surgery, to handle Cara's case and even offered the surgery for free if Aetna still refused to cover it."I was happy to do that," Mehta said.Before her Sweet 16 party, Cara spent the day getting her hair and makeup done.Cara underwent a series of tests this spring with her new team at Northwell. Mehta said her case was complex because the focal point of her seizures was fairly deep in her brain behind her temple. To perform an open brain surgery, he said, he would need to dissect a portion of her brain to get to the spot. As a result, Mehta said, her team agreed with her previous doctors that laser ablation was the route to go."We did our due diligence, and we did determine that this would be the best way to treat her epilepsy," he told CNN.Along the way, Aetna had a change of heart. In April, the insurer notified the family it would cover the surgery: "Coverage for this service has been approved, subject to the requirements in this letter."There was no explanation. No apology. Just an approval with full coverage.Pressed by CNN for answers, Aetna said the approval came after her doctors made a new request for laser ablation surgery. "Based on recently published clinical evidence, the procedure was approved."Aetna went on to say it recently updated its policies for epilepsy patients seeking laser ablation. "Related, in July 2018 we made updates to our epilepsy surgery clinical policies based on recently-published data," Aetna said. "The new guidelines cover laser ablation surgery if certain criteria are met."As shared in December, we constantly evaluate new published and peer-reviewed studies as well as additional evidence when developing our clinical policies, and will continue to do so."Cara's mother, Julie, wanted the party to be especially memorable: "It's not just a birthday party. It's literally like a debut. She's coming out of this brain surgery and is so radically different."Mehta gave all the credit to the diminutive teen with the powerful voice: "She really advocated for herself, and it worked out for her. Whatever happened, it got her the appropriate treatment. I've got to hand it to her."Northwell's Solazzo added, "Cara has been an inspiration to all those who have had the privilege of caring for her. Her advocacy and courage will hopefully clear the way for other epilepsy patients who could benefit from this surgery."'Never been more excited'The day of the surgery, July 25, was filled with nerves and excitement. Cara's parents and older sister, Lindsey, crowded her hospital room before the operation. They gabbed about trivial, everyday stuff, as families often do.But make no mistake. The importance of the day weighed on everyone. Cara told staff at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset she had "never been more excited for anything in my life." Her first grand mal seizure, when she fell to the floor and shook, came at the age of 9, but she remembers having smaller aura seizures, when she would space out for brief spells, as far back as kindergarten. She can have five seizures in a day, sometimes as many as 30."It's been really, really difficult to live with," she said. Cara keeps a box filled with various anti-seizure medications from over the years. About 1/3 of epilepsy patients live with uncontrollable seizures because no available treatment works for them, according to the Epilepsy Foundation. As she was wheeled off to the operating room, Dad wrapped his arms around Lindsey and held her, reassuring her that Cara would be OK. Cara had waited until summer to undergo the surgery. That way, she could adjust to any changes in her brain activity before the new school year started. Laser ablation is still emerging in the care of epilepsy patients, and Cara's mother said she hopes her daughter can serve as an example for other teens who qualify for laser surgery and are afraid of open brain surgery, known as a temporal lobectomy."This really gives people hope who are young and dealing with this -- that they can go forward early on in life and get this procedure done," she says.In the operating room, the hourlong procedure "went quite well," Mehta said. "Everything went as planned." There are only about 40 to 50 centers around the nation, Mehta said, where laser ablation surgeries are performed, with the technique becoming more popular in recent years. Mehta said existing data show about a 50% seizure-free rate for those who undergo laser ablation, compared to about 70% who undergo traditional open brain surgeries.A comprehensive study is underway to better define its efficacy. But Mehta said he has had better success than the national average: "My results are about as good as the open temporal lobectomy."The laser surgery is more appealing to patients and parents, he says, because open surgery can be so daunting. Laser surgery is less invasive, requires less time in the hospital and has a quicker recovery, Mehta said.Cara poses for pictures outside the banquet hall at Nyack Beach State Park as friends snap photos. "You look like a princess," one friend says.Patients can suffer short-term memory loss, especially forgetting names of people they meet. "It's not usually something that is devastating, especially when you're younger," he says. "Given that she's young, we believe that her brain is going to be more able to adapt."Cara had one grand mal seizure in the days after the surgery, but she'd forgotten to take her anti-seizure medicine the day before. Mehta also says it's not unusual for patients to have seizures in the week or two right after surgery.Based on her recovery three weeks after surgery, he believes Cara has a 60% to 80% chance of being seizure-free. The benchmark will be a year from now. "The big question is whether she will have one or two seizures a year or whether she has no seizures," Mehta says. "We want no seizures."I'm keeping my fingers crossed."A new, vibrant CaraAt her birthday party, the new Cara is on full display. She dances. She laughs. She commands the crowd.Cara's father, Robert, requested a slow dance with his daughter shortly after she blew out the candles on her birthday cake. "Since the operation," he says, "she has exploded -- just the joy in her personality."Her sister marvels at her transformation. "She is just flourishing," Lindsey says. "I've never seen her so vibrant and so open with herself."Cara says it's been "weird" ever since her surgery because "I feel so much better." It's also a bit of an adjustment to think she could actually be seizure-free.Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team."It kind of feels like it's a little bit of a dream, but I also know it's real."On stage, Cara honors 16 of the closest people in her life, and each helps light an individual candle. She begins with her father: "One of the funniest people I know."There's the uncle who is "one of the biggest weirdos I know," the friend who "always knows when to cheer me up" and the one who "always has a smile on her face that never seems to leave." She saves the 16th candle for her mom. Cara praises her as a triathlete and marathon runner, and thanks her for planning the entire party. "She was there for me every single time I was in the hospital -- literally the best," Cara says. "Mom, please come up and light the final candle!"Cara says she hopes she can inspire other teens with seizure disorders to advocate for themselves. "It's been really, really difficult," she says. "I've had to go through so much."As the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" echoes across the room, Mom rushes to hug her daughter. As the two embrace, George Harrison's voice sings:Little darling, the smiles returning to the facesLittle darling, it seems like years since it's been here.

Wayne Drash, CNN

2018-05-13 11:07:44

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/health/liver-transplant-mom-erika-zak/index.html

A dying mother's plea for her life - CNN

Her only chance at life is a new liver, but her insurer said no. Then she wrote a powerful plea to the CEO.

health, A dying mother's plea for her life - CNN

Her only chance at life is a new liver, but her insurer said no. Then she wrote a powerful plea to the CEO

Portland, Oregon (CNN)All Erika Zak wants to do is play with her daughter on the playground. Take her to the zoo. Walk her to school.She's never been able to be the mother she longs to be.At 38, Erika is dying.Her battle to live began almost as soon as her daughter, Loïe, was born four years ago, when Erika was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer that had spread to her liver. The cancer was removed from her colon and, her doctors say, she responded well to treatment. But a microwave ablation surgery last year to remove two tumors from her liver went terribly wrong, leaving a fist-sized hole in her liver and destroying her bile ducts. Read MoreEvery day since has been a fight to survive. She's been hospitalized 19 times in Oregon over the last 12 months for infections, bleeding and an array of other health issues.She has high blood pressure in her liver, which backs up the veins in her esophagus and can be catastrophic. Her surgical oncologist constantly worries she will fall ill with a bad infection and die. Without a liver transplant, her doctors say Erika will likely die before the end of the year. "Every time she calls me and has a fever and some bleeding, we all hold our breath, worried: Will this be the time Erika bleeds to death?" says Dr. Skye Mayo, her surgical oncologist at Oregon Health & Science University. "This is kind of the end game of what liver failure looks like."More than 100 doctors at three of the nation's top medical centers have weighed in on her case, which is complex and exceedingly rare. Their conclusion: The only way to save Erika's life is to give her a new liver. After weeks of evaluation at the Cleveland Clinic in December and January, Erika finally got her big break. On February 2, doctors there approved putting her on the wait list for a liver transplant. The news changed everything. Erika finally had hope. Around the house, 4-year-old Loïe would say, "Mommy, when you get a new liver, can you push me in the swing?"But Erika hit an immediate wall. Her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, denied coverage for the transplant, saying it would not be a "promising treatment." She appealed and was rejected again. The mom who desperately wanted to live looked into Oregon's Death with Dignity program. Erika had written a letter to her daughter months ago to be read after she died. Now she worried Loïe might receive it sooner than Mom had planned: Dear Loïe,If you're reading this, I'm probably not on this earth anymore. So please remember this:I am with you always; even if you can no longer see my face or feel my hands through your hair. I am with you when you look up to the sky and see tiny birds flying free or the stars twinkling in your eyes. I am with you when you feel a perfect, warm breeze upon your sweet face.Erika wasn't going to give up. Her little girl with bright blue eyes was a constant reminder of all that is precious. Outraged and heartbroken, Erika wrote a four-page letter to the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare (UHC), giving him a piece of her mind about what she felt was a rigged review process, riddled with errors, that determined her life wasn't worth saving.Weeks passed until the company reached a decision. Despite her plea, the answer was the same: Denied. Then, last week, an amazing thing happened. Erika Zak and her husband, Scott Powers, lock hands during a recent hospital visit. The two met 20 years ago. 'My life hangs in the balance'If it's true that opening your heart, revealing your feelings, unleashes freedom and makes you whole, Erika turned to one of the things she loves most in an effort to save her life. Writing. It was early April. She sat at her computer, her keyboard clacking. She wasn't going to leave her husband, Scott Powers, and their daughter Loïe behind without trying her damnedest to stay on this Earth for as long as possible. There was too much at stake. UnitedHealthcare had overruled her treating physicians and denied the transplant, saying "unproven health services is not a covered benefit." The words burned, like chemo. Her first appeal went nowhere, and she felt trapped in a labyrinth of red tape.The young mother -- frail from having lost 20 pounds in the past year, her skin and eyes yellow from jaundice -- felt the only way to get a new liver was to plead her case directly to the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, David Wichmann. Her frame may be tiny, but don't mistake that for weakness. She is one of the strongest women you will ever meet. As she typed, Erika bared her soul. Of longing to live. Of seeing her daughter grow up. Of the need for "my only option," a liver transplant."Given that my life hangs in the balance based on this review," she wrote, "it is unconscionable that it has not been undertaken with the level of competence and professionalism anyone would expect of UHC."She blasted what she called the "shockingly incompetent manner" in which the country's largest insurance company handled her case. She outlined what she described as a series of errors made in the review process -- ranging from UHC saying her liver failure stems from "chemotherapy toxicity" to an insurance medical director who erroneously said she had "life-threatening lesions.""Neither are true," she wrote Wichmann. "(UHC's) handling of my case has been plagued by unnecessary delays, incomplete responses, inept scheduling, contradictory statements, and worst of all repeated factual errors regarding my medical history. "Most importantly, decisions based on inaccurate information and analysis have already delayed my listing and transplant two months." Loie has been with her mother throughout the process. Erika calls her "my tiniest, most amazing companion."One review doctor noted she had a "9cm tumor" in her liver, she wrote, apparently unaware that was actually the hole from the ablation surgery resulting in her chronic liver failure. "I have been doing every single thing I possibly can do to stay alive for these past four years, scratching and clawing by day and praying every night an opportunity like this would come along," Erika wrote. "Now, when the promise of my long-term survival is actually greatest, I need UHC's support more than ever."She sent the letter via FedEx on April 11. Her concerns were valid. Her transplant team at the Cleveland Clinic made clear to UHC's appeals unit the primary cause of her liver failure was not from chemo toxicity or cancer, but instead was the result of "a consequence of complications following microwave ablation." "Of note, what mainly drives the indication of liver transplantation in this case is liver failure and NOT liver metastases from colorectal cancer, which makes the patient's post-transplant oncologic outcome more encouraging," wrote Dr. Federico Aucejo, the director of the Cleveland Clinic's Liver Cancer Program, in an appeal on Erika's behalf on March 6. He did note that she had some chemotoxicity, which was a secondary cause of liver failure."The opinion of the experienced Cleveland Clinic multidisciplinary liver transplant committee (is) that liver transplantation would prolong this young patient's life substantially, and that there is NO other treatment alternative that could match this outcome at this point in time."Two days after sending her letter, Erika and her husband were told the UHC executive team had received it and that her case was undergoing further review. Several times, the family said it was told a decision would be made by a certain date; those dates came and went without a decision. As time wore on, Erika grew ill with a high fever and was hospitalized for several days. It was the fifth time she'd been admitted since February 2, the day Cleveland Clinic doctors approved her for a transplant.On Instagram, she posted an illustration with the words "waiting, waiting, waiting" on a pink backdrop with black crosses. "Waiting for insurance to approve the only thing that will save me: a liver," she wrote. "Waiting for my liver to fail completely; waiting to die. Waiting to be saved."Erika has undergone multiple surgeries and faced more than 70 rounds of chemotherapy.'Wait or die'More than 100,000 Americans are on wait lists for organ transplants, and every hour someone dies while waiting for the life-saving surgery, said Dr. Andrew Cameron, the chief of transplant surgery at Johns Hopkins and the surgical director of its liver transplant program. For liver transplants, 20,000 Americans are on the wait list and only 7,000 will receive a new liver in 2018, according to Cameron, who is not connected to Erika's case. "The lucky few undergo a transformative life-saving procedure," he said. "Those who don't get that lottery ticket wait or die."Transplant teams at hospitals spend hours upon hours -- months even -- assessing and debating whether a patient is a good candidate for a transplant, Cameron said, typically with more than a dozen doctors weighing in. It is deeply disturbing, he said, when an insurance company overrules the "decision made by a thoughtful, careful transplant team to utilize one of society's limited resources -- that precious gift to save somebody's life."The negotiated cost for a liver transplant for an insurance company is roughly $200,000, Cameron said, adding it is "exceedingly rare" for an insurer to deny a transplant. "That is highly unusual and highly undesirable," Cameron told CNN. In Cleveland, Dr. Aucejo is trailblazing the field for patients like Erika, having performed the only two transplants in America this century on people suffering from what is called unresectable metastasis in the liver from colorectal cancer. It's groundbreaking and could prove transformative. "I hope that we can achieve good results and set precedent," he said. Dr. Skye Mayo, a surgical oncologist at Oregon Health & Science University, has treated Erika Zak since 2015. When you're trying such a new approach, Dr. Aucejo said, it can be difficult getting insurers to agree to treatment and he wished getting them aboard could be done "in a more expeditious way."He explained that in the late 1980s and 1990s, surgeons tried transplants on patients like Erika with "unresectable metastasis in the liver from colorectal cancer," but the "outcomes were not good."Only 18% of the patients lived past five years, so the transplants were stopped, Dr. Aucejo said. But, he emphasized, most of the bad outcomes were the result of technical complications and post-transplant management, not from the cancer returning. The field of transplants has greatly improved in the decades since, he said.Doctors in Europe, primarily in Norway, have begun changing the field, he said, finding that about 50-60% of patients with Erika's condition survive a transplant past five years. That is a substantial difference, he said. Dr. Mayo, Erika's surgical oncologist in Oregon, said no one at the insurance company reached out to him during the review process "to help explain the facts of her case." That is troubling, he said, especially when it's one of the most complicated cases a doctor will ever see. "It is frustrating when it seems that the facts aren't all being considered," Dr. Mayo said. "Her life now is not limited by her cancer," he said. "It's limited by the fact she will go into liver failure and die within the next several months if she doesn't have a liver transplant."Erika wrote a note for her daughter if she does not survive: "I am with you always; even if you can no longer see my face or feel my hands through your hair." When opposites attractErika was in the prime of her life. At 34, she'd given birth to her first and only child, Loïe, the little girl who Mom calls "my tiniest, most amazing companion." She'd been married to the love of her life for four years. She and Scott met in 1998 when he was at Brown University and she was at the Rhode Island School of Design, both in Providence. The two were polar opposites. He was the MVP of Brown's soccer team and majored in economics. She was into the arts and majored in textile design. He was from the tightly wound East Coast, she from the free-wheeling West Coast.The connection wasn't immediate, so Erika had a mutual friend slip a tiny drawing to Scott. It contained her phone number; he called it. Soon they clicked. Scott made her laugh and feel beautiful. Erika saw in him someone who was kind and devoted; in her, he found the woman who he'd always searched for, with a captivating sense of humor and a sailor's mouth. They tied the knot on Halloween in 2009 in the wine country of Healdsburg, California. Her career was taking off, too. She was working for Old Navy, choosing and designing the fabrics, prints and plaids for the company's baby and toddler division. While she was pregnant, she was promoted to senior textile designer."It was all coming together," she wrote on her blog. "And then, like that, my foundation crumbled."During the final trimester of her pregnancy, she'd experienced pain in her stomach. It was thought to be nothing more than part of the difficulties of pregnancy. But in the weeks after delivery, the pain grew excruciating and she felt a lump on her side. On April 8, 2014, she received the awful news -- that she had stage 4 metastatic colon cancer that had spread to her liver. Her daughter was just 3 months old. "Worst Day Ever" read the headline of her blog.She had survived cancer once before. At 28, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Her thyroid was removed, and life continued as normal. It was nothing close to a stage 4 diagnosis. In the years after her colon cancer diagnosis, she blogged about most everything. Of losing her father to Alzheimer's at age 83. Of the pain over two friends' deaths -- including an oncologist she'd met in a cancer support group."Have you ever cried and screamed so hard that the blood vessels around your eyes burst?" she wrote. In her blog posts, she was brutally honest about her cancer and the effects of chemotherapy. Erika and Scott Powers met in college while they were both in school in Rhode Island. She'd sit on the shower floor in a fetal position, screaming and sobbing. It was "anguish and pain and longing for my former life and utter disbelief for the war my body was waging on itself," she blogged. Her fingertips felt like they had been "burned on a hot pan most of the time." Her hands cramped into weird, contorted positions. Her hair was dry and brittle, like straw. Her energy was so drained she felt twice her age.As a teen, she'd suffered debilitating depression and anxiety that was so bad at times, she said, "I hoped that I could just disappear forever.""It's funny how afraid I am of that now: disappearing. How much I want to live. How important it feels to be here," she wrote on December 1, 2016, two and half years into her cancer battle. She would face multiple surgeries and undergo more than 70 rounds of chemo. On February 28, 2017, she wrote:"This is chemo day. Scream in your pillow day. Hide in the shower day. Lie to your baby day. Tell her you're going to work day. Vials and vials of blood day. Tell your doctor you're angry day. Make your husband cry day. Poison your body day." On another day, she penned: "Cancer is a slow form of torture. It strips you of dignity; of peace of mind; of stability."On April 4, 2017, nearly three years to the day of her diagnosis, she and her daughter had a soul-crushing conversation. The cancer had been eradicated from her colon shortly after the diagnosis, but it remained in her liver. "Mommy, are you going to last?" Loïe asked."What do you mean, Loïe?""Will you be here forever and ever?" the girl asked."I really don't know, babe."As she awaited word from her insurer about the transplant, Erika said, "I'm mad and grouchy, but I still feel like I have a fighting chance."Six days later, Erika underwent the ablation surgery at a facility in New York to target two small tumors on her liver. Something went wrong. She ended up with the hole in her liver. To save her life, surgeons had to block off the veins and arteries going to her liver. The entire central part of her liver died, Dr. Mayo said. Two bags are now attached to her abdomen to drain the bile. With bile going immediately outside her body, instead of through the liver and her body, Erika was susceptible to extreme sickness and potential fatal bleeds. "All of those things culminated in what is now liver failure for her," Dr. Mayo said. "She's in this cycle right now where she's losing on a daily basis some of her body's most vital fluids."The cancer in her liver, meanwhile, was progressing on a path, he said, where "she would die of cancer." She could no longer tolerate any standard form of chemo treatment. Her doctors in Oregon last fall tried one last treatment to fend off her cancer: a groundbreaking immunotherapy cancer drug called pembrolizumab, known by its brand name Keytruda.Her sky-high tumor marker levels fell to normal. "She had an incredible response to this new drug," Dr. Mayo said. "I think all of the cancer remaining in her body is dead at this point. What she will die of is liver failure."With a new liver, he said, her problems with bleeding and high blood pressure could be resolved. Her jaundice would be gone, too.But transplant surgery is not without major risks. Most of those who've received a transplant with unresectable metastasis in the liver from colorectal cancer, Cleveland's Dr. Aucejo said, experience a recurrence of cancer within 12 months. Most of the cancers that return can be treated with standard care, like chemotherapy or surgery, he said, profoundly prolonging their lives. For a small subset of patients, though, the cancer comes back aggressively and it's not treatable with chemo or surgery, he said. "Unfortunately in that subset of patients, the survival is more dismal."While it's impossible to predict the outcome, he said, Erika shows "features that may do well." There's no evidence cancer has spread beyond her liver, he said. Plus, patients who had their colon cancer removed two years or more before the transplant, Dr. Aucejo said, tend do well. Erika had the cancerous portion of her colon removed in 2014: "That's a good indicator."Dr. Aucejo also emphasized the criteria for transplant qualification is stringent and that Erika shows promise. "We're talking about distributing limited organs," he said. "Again, we have to be very careful that we're not giving organs to people who are not going to benefit from it when there's people dying with standard indications because there's not enough organs."Erika Zak comes to the hospital every three weeks for a groundbreaking immunotherapy drug. Her doctors says that without it, she would have died of cancer. 'This is so messed up'In the days and weeks after Erika fired off her letter to the CEO, her husband, Scott, worked the phones. He felt lost in an endless loop of delays and broken promises as to when the insurer would reach its decision. Finally, they were told a decision would come May 2. Erika couldn't sleep the night before. She pulled out her phone and recorded a message, weeping for much of the video. "My life is literally in their hands, and every day I feel myself kind of fading away more and more," she says. "I don't want to leave. I don't want to die."The next day came. Each minute crept by.Shortly after 2 p.m., Scott's phone rang. It was their point of contact with UnitedHealthcare.He had crushing news: Denied.He explained Erika's case was sent back to the three reviewing doctors. One of them, he said, "changed his decision from 'not promising' to 'promising.'" However, the other two doctors ruled the transplant not to be promising: "The bottom line is they're upholding that decision."The doctor who sided in favor of the transplant, their UHC contact told them, was the only one of the three who talked directly with her transplant surgeon. Scott grew furious. "Honestly, you know that is messed up," he said. "I don't know who you've got to go to, but I would go to someone now and have someone call us, because this is so messed up."Scott Powers has advocated for his wife since she was first diagnosed with cancer. Scott pressed for more information. He got little. "Scott, I know what you've been through," the UHC rep told him. "I know what you're going through."Erika sat silently for the first 10 minutes of the conservation, absorbing the news and what it meant for her fate. But at those words, it was time to speak up. "Hey!" she shouted. "This is Erika, and you've never heard from me before. You don't know what we're going through. Because I'm dying."Through tears, she said, "I need a liver transplant, and I need it now."The UHC rep confided he "was not hoping for this outcome. I was hoping that I'd have good news." He suggested Erika and Scott fax over any new information they thought might be relevant. He also acknowledged the delays in recent weeks were not in keeping with the company's policies. "Someone needs to be accountable for this," he said. "You know, why, when we have these guidelines in place, did we not follow them?"That needs to be looked into," he said, adding, "I'm not trying to sweep anything under the rug."He apologized for having to be the bearer of bad news, saying his goal had been to end the day on a positive note. "Like I said, I wish I had better news." After more than 30 minutes, he ended with: "Have a good night, OK." Not the words the couple wanted to hear. Erika went numb. Heartbroken and angry didn't even begin to describe her feelings. Scott felt equally distraught. "I just want her to get a liver," he said. "She deserves that."The CEO never responded -- not by email, phone or letter.Erika Zak says her will to live is motivated by her daughter, Loïe. Here, they play on the couch as the family dog, Maddie, watches.A sudden changeFive days later, on Monday, May 7, a surprise call came. Erika and Scott were preparing Loïe for school when Scott's phone rang. They had spent the weekend trying to figure out their next move, while trying not to focus too much on when Erika might need Death with Dignity. They knew they had one appeal left, and they didn't want to blow it. They hadn't sent any new information since the last call.It was their UHC rep on the phone. This time, he had good news: The insurer would cover Erika's transplant.When Scott heard she'd been approved, he jumped up and down. Erika watched him from across the room. There was no explanation for the change. They were told to focus on Erika's health and next steps. Erika called her mother, who unleashed a guttural scream at work. Loïe has grown excited at the prospect of her mother's transplant. Erika just wants to be able to walk her to school or take her to the playground.Dr. Mayo was preparing for surgery when he took Scott's call. Elation spread across the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University where doctors, nurses and staff celebrated.In Cleveland, Dr. Aucejo heard the welcome news from his transplant coordinator. He'd not spoken with anyone at UHC about the case in the five days since the previous denial. "They had decided on their own. We hadn't gotten back to them," he said. "I'm happy they ended up sharing our vision."I had been speaking with Erika and Scott for this story over the last month and had reviewed her medical records extensively. During the May 2 phone call in which Erika was told her transplant had been denied, Scott told the UHC rep that the couple had been speaking with a member of the national news media.I was on a flight to Oregon when they received the joyous news. "UHC just called and approved Erika. Unreal. Know you're in flight but call whenever," Scott texted. When we met a couple hours later, Erika's emotions were still raw. She thought this would be her last Mother's Day. Now, suddenly, she has hope for more. Glancing at her daughter and husband, Erika broke down in tears. "I can't imagine not being here," she said. "It's not because I keep the family together or anything. It's just the love I have for them.""Mommy, why are you crying?" Loïe said."I'm crying because I love you."Loïe placed her fingers in her mother's right hand. "Love you," Loïe said.As she and Loïe locked hands, the tattoo on Erika's wrist displayed a fitting message: "Be brave."During her cancer fight, Erika and her twin sister got matching tatoos with one message: "Be brave."EpilogueUnitedHealthcare declined to answer CNN's questions about the handling of Erika's case, except to issue this one-sentence statement:"We had on-going conversations with her husband and contacted him as soon as the decision was made to approve the transplant request."Even after the approval, Erika said she still wanted to move forward with the story, to speak up for others who've experienced the pain of similar denials. To let them know they're not alone. To encourage them to be their own best advocates.It can mean the difference between life and death. "No one should have to fight and work that hard," she said, "especially when I have all these doctors saying it will save my life."Since the approval, the family has been preparing to move to Cleveland for Erika's surgery and recovery at the Cleveland Clinic. Erika was officially notified Friday morning she was placed on the liver transplant wait list.It's impossible to know how long the family will be in Cleveland or when the transplant will occur. Transplant candidates are given what is known as a "MELD score," ranging from 6 to 40. Those closest to 40 are given the highest priority. Erika's MELD score has hovered around 22. If her score is still in that range, Dr. Aucejo said, her transplant could be a few months away."But this varies a lot," he said. "There are many variables at play here."A patient for a liver transplant, he said, is typically hospitalized 7 to 10 days for the procedure, with a recovery time of 4 to 8 weeks before the patient resumes normal activities.Would Erika have had the transplant by now if the surgery had been approved in February?Every day Erika says she can feel her body deteriorating. "I don't want to die," she says."That is very speculative, at the least," Dr. Aucejo said. "I couldn't say that."He chose his words carefully, saying it's a "complex dynamic" between hospitals and insurance companies and he doesn't want to upset that balance. "She's been approved and that's what matters -- and hopefully we can move forward with her transplant."Dr. Aucejo said he can somewhat understand the insurance company's initial reluctance at coverage because the procedure is so rare for patients with Erika's condition. "It's a new territory," he told CNN. "I can't blame anybody."If Erika receives her transplant and succeeds, Dr. Aucejo said, she could help set precedent for many others down the road.More than anything, she would finally get a chance to be the mother she wants to be.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2018-09-26 17:49:31

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/26/health/sexual-assault-reporting-kavanaugh/index.html

Decades after their own sexual assaults, women put themselves in shoes of Kavanaugh's accusers - CNN

Decades-old allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh have introduced a new chapter in the #MeToo movement. Some women are thinking and talking about their own sexual assaults for the first time in years. And they're asking themselves if they could come forward.

health, Decades after their own sexual assaults, women put themselves in shoes of Kavanaugh's accusers - CNN

Their sexual assaults happened decades ago. Now women see Kavanaugh's accusers come forward and wonder if they could do the same

This story contains graphic language. (CNN)Her Catholic boyfriend said he was waiting until marriage to have sex, so she felt safe. But after she passed out fully clothed on prom night, she woke up naked with him on top of and inside her. She got pregnant that night, 36 years ago, and he paid for her abortion. Then he mailed a letter to tell her she was going to hell.Five drunken frat boys piled on top of a college sophomore, who was sober, as the party's loud music drowned out her screams in the dark room. They grabbed at and groped her. One of them penetrated her with his finger before she broke free and ran. A 19-year-old studying abroad woke up to a young man fondling her and masturbating in her face. An older boy plied a 15-year-old with booze and, after she passed out at a house party, stole her virginity. Another young woman took the cocktail a cute guy offered on her 21st birthday. She didn't know what to call it when the same guy had his way with her after she grew woozy, they left the bar and her body went numb. More than a decade later, when a friend of friends assaulted her, dislocated her jaw and left her bruised, she knew the word: rape. A reluctant witness: Christine Blasey Ford finds herself at the center of America's #MeToo reckoningThese are just a sampling of the dozens of stories of sexual assault that were shared with me in recent days by phone, email and through social media. They are accounts from women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who I asked to reflect on their younger years, mostly in high school and college. They spoke out on the condition that they, and the accused, would remain anonymous.Some called their sexual assaults a "cliché," perhaps too common to be worth mentioning. One woman simply quipped, "Is there a woman who made it through college without this experience?"Read MoreWith decades-old allegations of sexual assault and misconduct by Judge Brett Kavanaugh making headlines and threatening to derail his Supreme Court nomination, we've entered a new chapter in the #MeToo movement. Women are thinking back to their own experiences, many of them for the first time in years. They're talking about their assaults online, in their homes and at dinner parties. What are these stories stirring up in women? Are they putting themselves in the shoes of Kavanaugh's accusers? And do they think they could or would come forward themselves if the men who assaulted them were suddenly poised for positions of power? 'Every scream I never screamed'Plenty of those I heard from spent years blaming themselves and few, if they knew who their attackers were, reported anything to authorities or other adults, including parents. Those who did learned quickly why most girls and women don't. They weren't believed, felt ashamed and didn't see justice served. They were fed the "boys will be boys" line, even by their mothers. New allegations against Kavanaugh submitted to Senate committeeSome had never shared their stories before; others only with select family members or friends.There were those who were relatively unscathed by their experiences. Others were not so fortunate and have years of therapy behind them to prove it. One woman said she dropped out of college for a year and couldn't have an intimate relationship for eight years after her rape. The one who lost her virginity against her will at 15 listed off a series of subsequent assaults and spent much of her adult life struggling with low self-esteem and trying not to "feel like a slut." The last time she was assaulted, she was nearly 40. She was walking through a park in broad daylight when a man approached from behind, thrust his hand up her skirt and grabbed her crotch."At first I froze, but then I started to scream," she said. "I couldn't stop screaming. ... It was every scream I never screamed." They were assaulted by men or boys they didn't know, and ones they were fixed up with, knew since childhood or were dating. One woman's attacker was a longtime crush; a second's a best friend. A third woman's attacker was a graduate student she looked up to as an undergrad; he was the "golden boy" in the academic department who could make or break her professional future. A fourth's supervised summer legislative interns on Capitol Hill.Memories that last: What sexual assault survivors remember and whyA fifth woman revealed she was assaulted by three men -- relatives or people connected to family members."Until their parents die, until they move away and I never have to see their face again, until I die -- most will never know that these people who walk among us have this fundamentally broken way of treating women," she wrote in a social media post. To come forward about these men before then wouldn't be "worth the headache," she said. But, "if any of these people got anywhere near one of the highest offices in the land, I'd air their dirty laundry. ... Bless this woman (referring to Christine Blasey Ford) as she walks through this fire. I'm frankly relieved that I likely won't ever be in her shoes."'Bookend to Brock Turner'For some, this moment has been triggering. One woman called it a "bookend to Brock Turner," a story that hit a number of the women I heard from harder than this. Turner is the former Stanford University student who, in January 2015, was caught on campus, outside a fraternity, sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. He was sentenced to six months in jail but only served three. Trump blasts second Kavanaugh accuser: 'She admits she was drunk'One woman said the election of President Donald Trump was what did her in. She couldn't stop crying and was inconsolable the day after he won. "I felt like my country had just said that a man who was known to be a serial sexual assaulter was worthy to hold the highest office, which meant that it was okay to assault women," she wrote.The growing activism of women give many of them hope, even if they fear that what they want to see will take time. "The ground beneath these men has shifted in ways that they are still not prepared for," one woman said. They want to think, though, that high schoolers and college students are more sensitive and aware, better equipped to call sexual assault what it is and more inclined to speak up. They're afraid they may not be right.If they could talk to their younger selves, they'd take them by the shoulders and tell them they didn't deserve the wrongs pushed on them.How to talk to kids about sexual harassment Their own parents didn't talk to them in ways they talk to their own children. Their little ones, sons and daughters, learn about consent early and aren't required to hug or touch anyone they don't want to hug or touch. They're given lessons in boundaries and understand they have agency over their own bodies. Some have told their older kids what happened to them, while others say the details are something they'll never share. They don't shy away from using words such as rape and assault. They talk openly about relationships and how to honor partners. They insist their sons treat girls and women -- really, everyone -- with respect and tell their daughters to be vigilant. One woman is waiting for the day when her kids will let her sign them up for self-defense classes.'A skeleton' in his closetThey question if they'd come forward like Kavanaugh's accusers.There are those who can't fathom putting their own lives under the microscope or exposing their families to the fallout. Some look back and, even after all these years, worry that they were partially to blame. One said she'd want to dig into her attacker's more recent past, see if he's shown respect for women and allow for the chance that he'd changed. Others want to believe that if the greater good depended on it, they'd be as brave.These tweets show why people don't report sexual assaults"The more 'the public' sees that this happened to countless women who did not report it, the harder it will be to deny the accusations of those who do come forward," one woman wrote in an email. "We can't all be liars."A few women mentioned that they've Googled the men who assaulted them. They've monitored their lives and careers. One woman decided, timed with the 30th anniversary of her assault, to send the now-family man a letter. She never expected to hear from him -- and she didn't. She did it for herself. By putting words to what she's lived with all these years, she felt better.At one point the prom date who once vowed he was waiting until marriage to have sex, and then paid for an abortion after he raped his date, held a job in a state attorney's office. "I remember back then wondering what I would do if I learned he was running for public office. It seemed plausible that he would," the woman said. "I wondered if he considered me and my abortion a skeleton in his Republican closet."Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.Just days after she first typed #MeToo on her Facebook page last year, even though they had no friends in common, he sent her a Facebook friend request. It was the first contact he'd made with her since he'd written 35 years earlier to tell her she was going to hell. It felt a bit like "a litmus test," she said. Would her accepting, in his mind, mean he was safe?She waited a few days and then accepted. She did it not because she was letting him off the hook. She accepted because she wanted him to see her every post, to know how strong she is.

Moni Basu, CNN

2018-06-01 11:27:25

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/01/us/how-immigrants-changed-california-politics/index.html

In 'forgotten' California, a new generation is more woke than ever - CNN

In one of California's few conservative strongholds, the sons and daughters of once-targeted immigrants are fired up to bring change at the polls.

us, In 'forgotten' California, a new generation is more woke than ever - CNN

Blue state, red valley: In this part of California, a new generation is more woke than ever

Calwa, California (CNN)Sandra Celedon's hometown barely resembles the California we know. There are no Golden Gates or Hollywood walks. No sweeping Malibu vistas. No Pacific fog creeping over a city by the bay. Here, labor leader Dolores Huerta has more star power than Angelina Jolie.This Fresno County town is in the "other California," and though it is situated smack in the middle of the state, equidistant from San Francisco and Los Angeles, there is nothing else that's "middle" about it. It's not middle class. Nor middle of the road. It grew up around a large brick winery owned by the California Wine Association, from which it gets its name: Calwa. It's a good guess, though, that few here can afford vintage libations, red or white.Of the nearly 1,400 people who call this place home, 1,221 are Latinos like Celedon. Mexicans, really, according to the latest census. Lately, Punjabi families have started to move in. You can see them along with Hmong in Calwa Park, the rare place that makes news in a good way. A quarter-mile graffiti wall is celebrated as the largest legal one in Northern California. Of the 1,400 people, more than a third are officially classified as poor. Unofficially, many more are struggling.Read MoreSandra Celedon grew up with the sting of anti-immigrant sentiment in the "other California." Now she and an army of young activists are fired up to bring change.Once a shipping yard for the Santa Fe Railroad, Calwa is now consumed by heavy industrial companies like Allied Electric and Gray Lift. Trains and trucks blow through here so fast and so often that people automatically raise their voices and think nothing of it. When Celedon was a little girl, she thought the thunderous noise was a sign that Jesus was coming. Calwa, a suburb of Fresno just 4 miles southeast of downtown, lies in the heart of California's Central Valley. Forgotten to the rest of California. Forgotten to America. Just forgotten.That's what Celedon tells me on a glorious spring afternoon. The rain, so unrelenting that it damaged tender tomato plants and flooded almond orchards, has finally stopped and given way to a sky as blue as it gets around here. The air, too frequently, is a toxic mix of dust, exhaust, crop pesticides, tainted water and poverty; Central Valley counties routinely get failing grades for pollution. The air, too frequently, does not carry change. But now with Donald Trump in the White House and California's midterm primaries set for June 5, Celedon is convinced change may finally come -- to her beloved hometown and to the Central Valley, one of the few remaining bastions of conservativism in America's bluest state. California’s Central Valley Population 4.1 million   Counties Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare Racial makeup (estimates): California 38.6% 38.4% 13.7% 5.6% Central Valley 50.7% 34.3% 7.5% 4.4% Hispanic/Latino White Asian African American Median household income: California, $63,783 Central Valley, $46,602 People below poverty level: California, 15.8% Central Valley, 23% Note: For racial makeup, white, African American and Asian are non-Hispanic, but Hispanic or Latino may include people of any race. Source: US Census American Community Survey To understand Celedon's optimism is to understand that a whole generation of activists like her grew up in places like this, in a California that has not always been friendly to immigrants. Young people here acquired a quiet but fierce determination to make sure their own sons and daughters did not get burned by the same forces, which they saw rising during Trump's campaign and subsequent election. They were galvanized to action.As an immigrant myself and as a journalist who has covered politics, I grew curious about what seemed like a fresh injection of energy in Valley towns and cities. Immigrants are not always politically engaged. What was different now? Some of the answers lie here in Calwa Park, where Celedon played as a girl, got her fill of hot dogs and dreamed her American dream. But years of mismanagement left this green space littered and forlorn, part of a Fresno park system that earned the dubious distinction of being the worst of any metropolitan area in the nation. It was an indignity Celedon helped erase. Without parks, where would children play? Where would people walk?On our left is a 26-foot-tall metal rocket, a Cold War relic boasting American prowess in space. To the right are picnic tables volunteers will soon paint, along with the rocket. The improvements, planned by Celedon's nonprofit Friends of Calwa, also include planting nine Raywoods. Immigrants work long hours for little pay on farms in California's Central Valley, where poverty rates are much higher than the state average.Fresno County has been home for Celedon since she arrived in California as a little girl. Her parents crossed the border legally from Mexico to work in the Central Valley farms and fields that produce one-fourth of America's food. But she didn't have a visa and grew up undocumented until she turned 16, when she was able to get a green card. At 21, she became a citizen. Celedon does not take her civic duties lightly. At 33, she's a mother, an advocate, a social worker, an activist on fire. She carries childhood memories that remind her of her destiny.One is of a public hearing at her elementary school, where local politicians promised speed bumps for her neighborhood. She finished high school and went on to earn a college degree in public health, but the breakers were never built. Another is of Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure that was designed to block undocumented immigrants from receiving state-funded services. Under it, Celedon would have been barred from public schools and hospitals. She felt politicians were attacking the very core of who she was, as though she were less than human.Republican politicians promoted the highly divisive measure, and the anti-immigrant rhetoric turned ugly. So ugly, in fact, that years later state lawmakers called it the "most mean-spirited and un-American" measure in California history. In heavily immigrant cities and towns like Calwa, the campaign to pass Prop 187 was crushing, a total repudiation of an entire group of people.Voters approved Prop 187, although a federal court ruled it unconstitutional and it was never implemented. Still, it proved to be an earthquake for California politics. Things would never again be the same. Over the years, California became the most liberal state in the nation and now, the beating heart of the Trump resistance. It's not necessarily that way, however, in the cities and towns that surround the vast Central Valley farmlands tucked between I-5 and Highway 99. These are places where many immigrant families still live in isolation and fear, heightened after Trump's election. Little has changed -- politically, culturally, economically -- since the time Celedon was a girl. But things feel different now, Celedon tells me as we drive alongside sidewalks on Maple Street that didn't exist too long ago. Now they glisten under the sun, trophies of Celedon's activism. We meander past the Cowboy Café, a store owned by a Yemeni man who helped Celedon obtain her green card, and the Los Amigos Food Market, the sole grocery in Calwa.For Celedon, politics isn't just about the presidency or the men and women who represent her in Washington and Sacramento. Politics starts at ground level. And it is very personal. "People get elected to office and then move on," Celedon says. "We have to be able to create power in our communities."Calwa may be forgotten and the people may even be forgiving. But they never forget. And this is the most woke she's ever seen her people.Daughters of immigrants, lawyers Aida Macedo (left) and Amparo Cid decided to devote their energy to empowering Central Valley communities.'We were so scared'At Calwa Park's El Dorado Taqueria, Celedon orders mangonadas for herself and two of her closest allies: Amparo Cid and Aida Macedo. The three women slurp their mango drinks laced with chamoy and chile-lime salt and reflect on the things that inspire their activism.Cid and Macedo, both 34, are young lawyers who left more politically comfortable environments in San Francisco and Los Angeles to devote their energies to the Central Valley."There are so many Calwas in California," Cid says. "People here have been kept down for so long.""I didn't even know where Fresno was," adds Macedo. "Then I come out here and realize people don't even have safe drinking water here. Or sidewalks. I had never seen illiterate people before." Agriculture is a $47 billion industry in California but there's a mighty chasm between farmers and their laborers, who are mostly minorities and immigrants and make next to nothing for toiling long hours in fields and factories. That's why cities like Fresno and Bakersfield top the list for most concentrated poverty. That's why a Congressional Research Service study found parts of the Central Valley were even poorer than Appalachia.Cid's parents left Mexico and worked in a garlic factory in Gilroy, about 30 minutes southeast of San Jose. Even now, garlic reminds her of when her mother and father would come home from work, their clothes and hair drenched in the pungent aroma.Cid's father idolized Ronald Reagan. He loved Reagan's cowboy hats and boots and his talk of the American dream. He was a socially conservative Catholic man and he respected the GOP. Perhaps his whole family might have been that way except for Proposition 187."Because of that, the GOP lost my entire family," Cid says.Republicans felt the backlash of their anti-immigrant efforts, turning California from red to blue.California Republicans, led by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, touted Prop 187 in the same way Trump talks about building walls. It was even called the "Save Our State" initiative.Cid remembers being called a wetback for the first time by elementary school friends she had known since kindergarten. At 10, she realized that no matter her successes, some people would always see her only as a Mexican. California's immigrants and elections Out of the state’s 39.5 million residents, more than 10 million are immigrants. California’s foreign-born population accounts for about 25% of the state population and 25% of the country’s foreign-born population. Nearly half of California’s immigrants are naturalized US citizens: 49% Naturalized US citizens 26% Green cards/visas/other legal status 25% Undocumented Naturalized US citizens are less likely to vote and more likely to identify as Democrats or independents: Naturalized US citizens US-born citizens Considered a likely voter Democrats Republicans Independents Other 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% California’s voter registration application is available in 10 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese Source: Public Policy Institute of California; California Secretary of State The GOP did not see the backlash coming. The Los Angeles Times described it like this:"His re-election apparently doomed, Wilson seized on the provocative initiative and, through a racist campaign, tapped the latent bigotry of Californians to rescue his flailing candidacy, a Pyrrhic victory that has badly damaged Republicans by alienating Latinos in the state and nationwide ever since."Things got even worse. In 1996 came Proposition 209 outlawing affirmative action, and then two years later Proposition 227 restricted bilingual education in public schools. For Latinos, who have since surpassed whites in population in California, the measures felt like a direct attack on their heritage. They began asserting their political power and got their ultimate vengeance at the polls by voting, along with moderate whites and Asian-Americans, for Democrats. If there is a legacy of Prop 187, it is this: After the referendum, California's Republican Party experienced a steady decline, and the state that gave its electoral votes to Richard Nixon, Reagan and then George H.W. Bush became solidly blue. Interestingly, it happened about the same time that Southern states like Texas, also with large numbers of immigrants, were turning red across the board. Today, the GOP controls all statewide Texas offices, the state legislature and makes up a majority in the Texas congressional delegation. But in California, no Republican has held statewide office since Arnold Schwarzenegger completed his last term as governor in 2011. Hillary Clinton defeated Trump with nearly 62% of the vote, and the state has sued the Trump administration on virtually every issue: environment, health care, education, technology and, of course, immigration. The irony of Prop 187 was that the backlash against the GOP went on to benefit the very people their measure once targeted. More than 10 million immigrants -- a quarter of America's foreign-born population -- live in California and no state is more immigrant-friendly in terms of laws and policies. A driving force was a fundamental belief that all boats need to be raised; that the world's seventh-largest economy had to do all it could to protect its huge immigrant labor force.In just over two short decades, the state has transformed itself from Prop 187 to innovative thinking on immigration policy, providing tuition, financial aid and health coverage to all children, issuing driver's licenses regardless of immigration status and now, allowing even undocumented immigrants to obtain professional licenses, including law licenses.With it came the growth and maturity of the state's immigrant rights movement, which exploded in the urban centers and is now commanding attention in the agricultural Central Valley.Supporters flocked to a Trump campaign rally in Fresno in 2016, but some Republicans were bothered by the party's decision last year to invite controversial former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio to headline a fundraiser.The three women standing before me at this Calwa taqueria are part of that movement, children of immigrants who grew up witnessing hatred and are now saying: enough."For sure, it shaped me," Macedo says of Prop 187. "Nobody in my neighborhood went to school at the time of Prop 187. We were so scared."She was born in Mexico City and raised in southeast Los Angeles by a single mother who worked factory jobs. The family overstayed their US visas, but Macedo became a citizen when she was 18. She met Cid at UC Davis law school, and eventually they made the difficult decision to devote their energies in the Central Valley, in the "other California."Focusing on the state's young votersTemporary gain, permanent enemy?Hillary Clinton narrowly won in Fresno County, but 10 other Central Valley counties sided with Trump. That falls in line with the urban-rural divide that manifested itself in national results. Many voters here define themselves as culturally Republican and argue the liberals in urban, coastal California are elitists out of touch with rural lifestyles. Farmers and ranchers feel Democrats prioritize environmental regulations over what's best for agriculture. And while agriculture is dependent on immigrant labor, residents in this area feel strongly about national security.I called Tom Barcellos, a Central Valley dairy farmer, to better understand the mindset of Valley conservatives."People who live in the cities don't have a clue where their food comes from," he told me. "Look at the population centers -- San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. That's why California is blue."In these lowlands that parallel a stretch of the Pacific Coast to the west and the Sierra Nevadas to the east, politics remain murky and muddled. Old world power still holds sway over the newest Americans: Mexicans, Vietnamese, Indians, Hmong, Yemenis. Central Valley city and county councils are not always in sync with the state. Lee Brand, Fresno's fourth consecutive Republican mayor from whiter and wealthier north Fresno, opposed becoming a sanctuary city. Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims has publicly criticized California's sanctuary law and said her deputies work closely with federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials. And last fall, the Fresno GOP invited none other than controversial former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio to headline its fundraiser, a move that made a lot of people bristle.Central Valley farms are dependent on cheap migrant laborers, many of whom are undocumented.Barcellos' father immigrated from the Azore Islands, and Barcellos' position on immigration is one I have heard before from foreign-born people who gained status through legal -- and often arduous -- channels. "I don't believe anyone should get a free ride," he said. At the same time, he believes anyone who works hard and assumes responsibilities should be given legal work status. Roughly half the workers Barcellos hires on his 1,200 acres are Latinos. Few were born in America."I know undocumented workers who are pillars of their community," he said. "A lot of them pay taxes and never get Social Security. That's wrong." Opinions on immigration In the past 20 years, more Californians see immigrants as beneficial to the state. 1998 2017 Immigrants benefit the state Immigrants are a burden 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Both immigrants and US-born residents support DACA protections for some undocumented immigrants and oppose building a wall along the entire Mexico border. Immigrants US-born residents Oppose building a wall Favor DACA protections 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Source: Public Policy Institute of California; California Secretary of State Some conservatives worry that California Republicans who choose to align themselves with Trump on immigration may be haunted by the ghosts of Prop 187. They stand to once again alienate Latino and Asian-American voters -- whose numbers are growing exponentially -- not just in 2018 but for generations to come.This is how Karthick Ramakrishnan, 34, a professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, put it: "You might win an election or two by being anti-immigrant. But those people you insult are always going to remember it. You are making a permanent enemy by making a temporary gain."Ramakrishnan is himself the son of Indian immigrants who settled in California and has written books and articles on civic participation and immigration. He says anti-immigrant rhetoric now is even uglier than it was during Prop 187. Then, Republicans targeted those who were undocumented. "What is different this time around," said Ramakrishnan, "is that this administration is trying to make even legal immigrants look bad."He cited the Trump administration's usage of "chain migration," once a derogatory and fringe term that is now used to attack a legitimate avenue for immigrants to bring family members to America.Ramakrishnan pointed me to a 2016 survey of Asian-Americans, the fastest growing immigrant group in California and the nation. The poll concluded that exclusionary rhetoric was a big reason Asian-Americans are shifting toward the Democratic Party. From 2012 to 2016, there was a 12-point national increase in the percentage of Asian-Americans who identify as Democrats.Voter trends suggest Republicans may struggle to hold onto their last vestiges of power in the Golden State. Increasing numbers of Californians are registering with "no party preference," threatening to outnumber Republicans here. The GOP's loss of power has been so staggering that Schwarzenegger, the former governor, warned his party was going to go down like the Titanic unless it embraced tolerance and inclusivity. Not just here in California but in other states that are fast browning like New York, Nevada, Texas and Virginia.Democrats are hoping to unseat Devin Nunes, a Central Valley congressman and ardent Trump supporter. Some voters feel he is out of touch with his constituents.In Fresno, I was eager to speak with Darius Assemi. He's a powerful Iranian-American entrepreneur who runs Granville Homes. I had spotted several billboards for the ubiquitous, family-owned building firm in Fresno.Lately, Assemi's name has been bandied about in debates not about development but about immigration. He has been vocal about how he feels. "Illegal immigrants will ruin America. But only if we boot them out," read a headline over Assemi's commentary in The Fresno Bee."We can't say all immigrants are bad," he told me. "What is that going to get the Republican Party? We are already becoming irrelevant in California. Soon we will become irrelevant in our own community."In the Central Valley, the young activists I meet tell me they are excited about the prospect of electing more immigrant-friendly candidates this year. That includes congressional seats held by ardent Trump supporters like Devin Nunes, arguably the President's closest ally in Washington. 2016 election results in Central Valley counties Hillary Clinton Donald Trump Fresno Kern Kings Madera Merced San Joaquin Stanislaus Tulare 0% 20% 40% 60% Source: California Secretary of State Nunes has come under fire in his district as being out of touch with many of his constituents. One of three billboards in a campaign inspired by the Oscar-winning movie asks: "How can you forget us?" Another Valley Republican, David Valadao, is running in a district that has more Democrats and Latinos than white Republicans, and activists are hopeful they can unseat him, too.Massive political signs urging people to "Rise and Vote" tower over dusty Valley highways. In their shadows, lawyers Cid and Macedo launched their own consulting firm a few months ago with the goal of connecting those working in the anti-Trump space. They hope to empower people, whether it is someone considering a run for office like school board candidate Robert Fuentes, or someone who has never voted, like the immigrants who show up for sessions called "Know Your Rights.""We are social justice attorneys whose philosophy is to live and work within the communities we serve," they announced on their website. "As the daughters of strong immigrant parents, we believe everyday people are the key to transforming their own communities. The community holds power now."They talk about the lack of immigrant and minority representation everywhere, from city councils all the way up to Congress. They want to change that starting with this year's midterms. "We are at a tipping point in the Valley," Cid told me. "That's why if the GOP doesn't shift they are going to lose. Landowners don't get more votes because they own more land. When you feel your family is on the line, your vote becomes very powerful."Although the immigrant population is burgeoning, Valley activists recognize that demographics alone are not enough for seismic political shifts. History has shown that immigrants are less likely than their native-born counterparts to vote or engage politically. In the Central Valley, about 285,000 immigrants are eligible to become US citizens. Many others who are already citizens are not registered to vote. That adds up to a lot of potential votes, and Valley activists have ramped up registration efforts to help immigrants overcome barriers; to get them to act at this moment in history when they are perhaps paying more attention.Cid introduced me to Maria Lemus, 36, one of three Latinos who earlier this year founded Valley Forward, an organization that focuses on mobilizing voters. Lemus tells me "she cried a lot" after Trump won the election. She knew her life as an undocumented woman was about to get considerably worse. Then over dinner and wine she met with two other DACA recipients, and the so-called Dreamers launched their dream. Mai Thao joined Hmong Innovating Politics, one of the first Hmong organizations to take on issues of immigration."Now we are channeling our feelings into action," said Lemus, who spends long hours knocking on doors. "Just because we cannot vote doesn't mean we cannot stay engaged. If I can get one person who was not engaged before to show up and vote -- that's a win."The upcoming election, Lemus predicted, will be an important one for California not just on a federal level but locally. A recent study of city governments found that Fresno was the second-most conservative major California city, behind Anaheim, in terms of policy preferences. Lemus belongs to a Valley-wide coalition reinvigorated by a sense of urgency after the election of Trump. It includes people like Mai Thao. When she was only 14, Thao worked in Fresno on the 2008 campaign of Blong Xiong, who became the first Hmong to serve on a California city council. That experience motivated Thao, 27, to move back to the Valley permanently.Her parents had been uprooted by the CIA's Secret War in Laos; her mother spent more than 10 years in a refugee camp. They immigrated to the United States in 1987 and restarted life as tenant farmers growing Asian crops like lemongrass, Chinese eggplant and long beans. Her mother learned English and later worked at the Sierra Nut House and in factories that made belts, headbands and purses. California’s likely voters compared to adult population, by race 43% White 34% Latino Adult population 15% Asian-American 6% African-American 2% Other 61% White 18% Latino Likely voters 12% Asian-American 6% African-American 3% Other Source: Public Policy Institute of California; California Secretary of State More than 30,000 Hmong live in Fresno, the second largest community in the United States after Minneapolis. Thao says her parents related to politics through the lens of war, but now an entire generation has been born in America. Younger Hmong, including herself, are progressive in their views and more apt to engage politically.In December, Thao joined Hmong Innovating Politics, or HIP, one of the first Hmong organizations to take on issues of immigration."Our mission is very, very simple: to strengthen the political power of the Hmong," she says. "Five years from now, we hope to be a voting bloc. Like the Latino vote. People are now standing up for what they believe in."Steve Ly was recently elected mayor of Elk Grove, the first Hmong mayor in the country. And television anchor Paula Yang is vying for a Fresno city council seat.Thao tells me she grew up in a neighborhood of drive-by shootings and survived on food stamps and swap meets. That all seemed normal when she was a girl. Now, she knows better.Thao and Lemus reminded me of Celedon, Cid and Macedo. Children of poverty forged by anti-immigrant tactics. Thao remembered once seeing a poll that said 62% of Americans opposed the resettlement of Hmong in the 1970s."More than half of Americans did not want us here," she said. "That's my family. That's my history."One of Trump's top California critics could help him hold the HousePolitics gets personal for Sandra Celedon, who has been fighting to improve the quality of life for immigrant communities in Fresno.No more the joke of CaliforniaOn this spring evening in Calwa, we climb back into Celedon's Toyota Prius a little before 6 and make our way a few miles north to "The Place."That's Celedon's term for a section of Fresno south of McKinley Boulevard that roughly divides the city between the haves and the have nots. More than 90,000 people call The Place home. Most are not white; together they speak 100 languages. Here, the median income is less than half the rest of the county. Celedon tells me people pay more than 30% of their incomes for housing that is dilapidated, bug-infested and often without air conditioning even as Valley temperatures swelter above 100 degrees. Many people don't have health insurance and are deeply affected by cuts in social services and education, but their prevailing tenor is to retreat and keep their heads low.Celedon started another nonprofit, Fresno Building Healthy Communities, to tackle the problems plaguing The Place. Tonight, she's planned a small meeting to gather support for a citywide parks initiative, which includes a measure on this November's ballot to raise the city's sales tax by 3/8th of a penny. The proceeds, about $37 million a year, would benefit Fresno parks.A large monitor in the conference room reads: "Creating One Healthy Fresno. Parks Matter." Off to the side is a pasta and bread sticks dinner catered by Olive Garden. Cid and Macedo take their seats along with community activists who have shown up to learn more about the initiative.This evening marks 518 days since Trump was elected president, and Celedon's energy has erupted fierce like the crops in the surrounding farmlands. Her colleagues have even encouraged her to run for office. "It's our choice," Celedon says. "We grow and make change, or we stay the joke of California."There are no better advocates than those who have themselves lived through cycles of injustice, she says. No better advocates than those who did not forget.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2018-01-10 10:19:45

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/10/health/vegas-shooting-survivor-rachel-sheppard/index.html

Vegas shooting: Shots rang out, and three lives collided - CNN

Three bullets hit Rachel Sheppard when a gunman opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas. A stranger and a woman she barely knew saved her -- and changed them all.

health, Vegas shooting: Shots rang out, and three lives collided - CNN

Shots rang out, and three lives collided

Tehachapi, California (CNN)A new engagement ring adorns her finger, and fresh congratulatory balloons float in the room. But in Rachel Sheppard's hand is a reminder of the horror that also hangs in the air. It's the bullet that was cut out of her back two days earlier -- one of three that tore into her body last fall in Las Vegas. "Seeing it in person, it all still seems so surreal," says Sheppard, 26, while seated at her dining room table a few weeks ago. "This crazy, insane massacre happened. I think about it every single day."Sheppard was one of more than 500 people injured when a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in October. Another 58 people died. That she survived, especially since one bullet ripped into her aorta, is astonishing. That she was home less than a month later and is walking around and able to talk about it is mind-blowing -- not least of all to her."They said I was one of the worst critical patients," she says of the staff at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, where she arrived by ambulance. "Nobody thought I was going to make it."Somehow, she did. And while she's looking ahead and already planning her wedding, Sheppard is still coming to terms with how her life changed in an instant. So are two people who journeyed with her that night. Read MoreInto the unknownA blown-up photograph, taken at the festival just hours before the shooting, is taped to the wall by her Christmas tree. In it, Sheppard smiles widely, her arm flung around a friend in a floppy-brimmed hat. She sports sunglasses and the sleeveless burgundy top that will later be soaked in blood and cut off.Mass shootings in America are a serious problem -- and these 9 charts show just whyNot too far away in the crowd of 22,000 concertgoers, Jake Codemo would soon split with his two "guy trip" buddies. They wanted to grab something to eat; he insisted on staying for Jason Aldean's performance. "Come back and find me," Codemo, 30, told them.With the first barrage of gunfire, Codemo didn't know what was happening. The second burst made it clear, and he turned to run. He hadn't gotten far when he stopped short, his eyes having caught a stranger's. Alaina Kelly stood over Sheppard's body, screaming for help.Kelly, 23, had only met Sheppard two days earlier, even though they both live in the area of Tehachapi, California. Kelly came to the three-day festival with her parents, her siblings, a friend and their significant others. Her brother's girlfriend invited a friend, Sheppard, to join just a week before, when the group realized they had an extra ticket. The "kids" hung out all that Sunday at their hotel pool and then at the festival. Just hours before the shooting, Rachel Sheppard, third from left, and Alaina Kelly, center in white, enjoyed the festival with thousands of other country music fans."I had been drinking a lot that day," Kelly says. But she remembers the first round of gunshots and then finding herself frozen after her group scattered, unharmed, and she was left behind with Sheppard.Codemo says he never had time to think. He grabbed Sheppard under her arms, an unidentified man took her feet, and they began to run. Kelly raced alongside them. She watched as Sheppard's arms flailed about, and she held hers above her own head, hoping to protect herself from gunshots.With another burst of fire, they all fell to the ground to take cover. The unidentified man turned his attention to a new victim, and somehow Codemo -- with or without Kelly's help, no one is sure -- darted off with Sheppard into the unknown."To this day, I don't know where the medical tent was," Codemo says. "We just happened to run directly to it." The relief of making it to the tent was tempered by what followed. 'Like sitting ducks'Nearly 6,000 miles away, Sheppard's boyfriend of more than four years, Jesse Morrow, woke in a Milan, Italy, hotel room. He'd arrived just hours earlier for work. The drill rig mechanic got a call from a friend who'd heard the news from Sheppard's friend -- the one who'd invited her to the festival. "There was a terrorist attack," Morrow, 28, remembers his friend saying. "Rachel was one of the ones that got hit."He'd flown to Italy the day before, with plans to propose after he returned. Now, he was frantic to reach the woman he longed to marry. Using the mobile application WhatsApp, Morrow says, he must have called her 25 times with no luck.2 of the 5 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history happened in the last 35 days She was in the medical tent where only a few people were qualified to offer help, says Codemo, who'd carried her there. The ongoing gunfire left everyone in the tent out of reach of ambulances and, he says, stranded "like sitting ducks." A man who stood by a wounded loved one inside the tent took a bullet in his back, right next to Kelly.The tent grew hectic with screams and filled with victims and others trying to help. Some who'd been shot had people with them. Others lay bleeding alone. Some had "parts blown off," Codemo recalls. A woman lay nearby, her leg "split off at the hip."Kelly looked around and grew hysterical. Codemo was determined to rein her in."Focus on Rachel!" Kelly remembers him screaming."Stay here!"Rachel Sheppard says she and Jesse Morrow knew they would marry, but the Vegas shooting "solidified that this person would be my forever."Someone shoved an IV in Sheppard's arm, and Kelly held the bag. After Sheppard's top was cut off, Codemo removed his own shirt, using it to apply pressure to her wounds. He says he used his fingers to try to stop the blood that kept pooling beneath her left breast. Sheppard, still awake, thought of her boyfriend. Kelly had Sheppard's purse and was asked to pull out her phone and call Morrow."Are you OK?" Sheppard remembers him asking. "I don't know," she told him."I called him because I didn't think I was going to make it," Sheppard says. "We just kept telling each other we loved each other."Morrow hung up and rushed to the airport for the first flight he could get. 'It's all in your head'When an ambulance pulled up near the medical tent, Codemo and Kelly rushed Sheppard toward it. It was full, but Codemo pleaded to get on board."If I hold her, can we go?" he begged. "She's lost a ton of blood. ... I don't think she's got much left." Coroner: All Las Vegas victims died from gunshot wounds He held her on his lap in a corner of the ambulance, hiding her face so she wouldn't see the man in front of them with a gunshot wound to his head. Kelly reached out to hold the man's hand. He was dying, and she didn't want him to feel alone. Sheppard's breathing grew shorter, and she complained about the pain. "I had no clue how she was alive," Codemo said. "It was confusing how she was still talking."Sheppard credits lessons from her parents for keeping her present. As she struggled, she focused on her breath to try to stay calm. "Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Through the nose, and out the mouth," she told herself.Jake Codemo, center, with his friends less than an hour before the shooting. They had a room at Mandalay Bay, two floors beneath the gunman. "Growing up, my dad and my mom always taught us it's all in your head," Sheppard says. "If you mentally shut down, your body will do the same."Codemo could shield her face for only so long. Once they got to the hospital, there was no hiding the gruesome chaos. Victims in wheelchairs lined the hallways. Blood covered the floors and walls, Sheppard remembers. She cried and yelled in pain, "I can't do this!" She began to vomit blood. The last thing she remembers before being put under was a man grabbing her face and looking her in the eyes. "You're going to f***ing make it," he told her. "You're going to f***ing do this."She has no idea who the man was.Five gallons of bloodMore than 240 patients poured into Sunrise Hospital's trauma center the night of October 1. Sheppard's "injuries were very critical and of those treated as part of the (mass casualty incident), she was clearly one of the most challenging," Dr. Jeffrey Murawsky, the hospital's chief medical officer, said in a written statement to CNN.When the hospital looks like a 'war zone'The tear to her aorta -- the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body -- ran from her upper to lower abdomen and affected the blood flow for her kidneys, Murawsky explained. The surgical repair required quick precision, grafts and complicated attachments. Her liver too was torn by a bullet. And she sustained injuries to her intestines and abdominal muscles, as well as a fractured vertebra in her lower spine."Rachel required many units of blood and blood products and multiple surgeries to correct her injuries," Murawsky said. "They were initially severe enough to even cause her to require CPR to maintain her blood flow." She heard that she received 40 units -- "a five-gallon bucket," she says -- of blood. A red scar runs from above her sternum, where doctors cracked open her chest, down to her pelvic bone.For three days, her abdomen was left open so doctors could evaluate her healing, Murawsky said. Her body swelled as she lay in the ICU. Rachel Sheppard's scar serves as a constant reminder of how close she came dying in October. "She looked like a baked potato," split down the middle, says Morrow, her fiancée, who rushed back from Italy to be by her side. "She was swollen so bad, her fingers looked like rolls of quarters."Doctors predicted that she'd be in the hospital for three to six months, but she was out in 18 days. After six days in a Bakersfield, California, rehab facility, about 45 minutes northwest of where she lives, she went home. Today, her fingers clutch the handles of an exercise machine at physical therapy, where she goes three times a week. She lost 30 pounds in the aftermath of the shooting and, with months of limited mobility, is working to strengthen her core, upper body and balance.An X-ray picture she pulls up on her phone illustrates some of the toll on her body. Wires, crisscrossed like shoelaces, hold her sternum together. A bullet, since removed, rests near her fractured lower vertebra. Her spine now exhibits slight scoliosis, curving to favor her left side, where she took the shots. For gunshot survivors, recovery can last a lifetimeShe emerged with a dropped right foot and a right big toe that turned "floppy," sometimes dragging and causing her to trip, she says. Using electrical stimulation and resistance bands, physical therapists are working to re-educate her muscles. She also is still grappling with numbness and tingling sensations in her legs. The discomfort makes heavy blankets, even some clothing, unbearable. She and Morrow are relearning how to cuddle.Other people receiving physical therapy look over at her in awe. "This woman is amazing. I was in Vietnam, and I saw a lot of this stuff," a man getting rehab after shoulder surgery says of her injuries. "The men, of course they were boys, they would have laid there and given up." 'Why did I live?'Determined and upbeat, strong and stoic -- that's the face she wears at therapy and most of the time. But back home, Sheppard allows herself to feel, even though she says she's all cried out. She can't help but struggle with some survivor's guilt, and the tears fall as she explains."Why did I live?" she asks. "Why won't I have more injuries for the rest of my life compared to someone who was shot once? Why am I walking and others aren't?"Las Vegas shooting: Lawsuit filed as new questions raised over timelineOnce fiercely independent, she's now terrified to be alone. Loud sounds make her jump. She scrutinizes strangers in a new way. She's also angry that she and others at the festival don't know how the mass shooting happened. She is among the many who've filed lawsuits in a desperate search for answers.She thinks about it every day and would like to see a qualified therapist, a trauma specialist. But finding the right person to talk to in her small community -- and one who will be covered by her limited medical insurance -- hasn't worked out.Sheppard is changed, she knows that, and so are Kelly and Codemo, the two people who were with her that horrific night. What they shared connected them forever, they say, and the three remain in close touch. Alaina Kelly and Jake Codemo visit Rachel Sheppard for the first time after the night of the shooting at a rehab facility in Bakersfield, California. Kelly panics in large crowds and can't listen to loud music. The sound of a passing ambulance days after the shooting sent her to the side of the road in a panic. Nightmares haunted her for a while, and she ended up dropping her college classes. But Kelly also learned about herself. She has a new understanding of what she's capable of and plans to resume classes with the aim of becoming a nurse."I'm a fighter and not a flighter," she says. "I definitely don't want to waste my life. I want to experience everything I can, but that's also hard because I'm scared and nervous to go to new places."Then there's Codemo, whose contact information is saved on Sheppard's phone under the name "Jake (saved My Ass)."Codemo, a journeyman lineman who works on electrical power lines, got home to Ventura, California, where he hugged his wife and three young daughters extra tight."Every day, it makes me think about life a little differently," he says of what he experienced in Las Vegas.He lost his own father when he was pretty young and doesn't want to take anything for granted. Nor does he want to live with regrets, which is why he is now on an epic three-week trip with his wife.They just finished hiking to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, he said in a text message Monday. Next up, they are heading to the southern end of the Serengeti National Park to witness the Great Migration of wildebeest and zebra. After that, they're off to Zanzibar to scuba dive in the Indian Ocean."I've always been a guy who lives life in the moment," Codemo says. Now, he knows there is simply no better way. Cheering her onBefore the shooting, Sheppard was a longtime bartender and server who hoped to build a wedding and event coordinator business. Doctors have told her it'll probably be a year before she can get back to the local Mexican restaurant, where she lifted kegs and 30-pound trays. The walls in a corner of her living room are covered in messages from those cheering her on. There are cards from children in Las Vegas, red hearts filled with well wishes collected from a nearby fundraiser and a big poster board crowded with notes from co-workers and customers at the restaurant."We are all missing you like crazy around here. ... I can't wait to see you soon behind the bar singing 'Pina Colada,' " one woman said. "You are the most amazing bad ass I've ever met. I cannot wait for you to see how many people have loved and prayed for you," another wrote. "May God bless you & continue to make you stronger," said a third, ending the message with "#margaritastrong."Taped to the large poster board is a letter written by a nurse who tended to her at the very beginning.Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter."I will never in my life forget you. You -- my sweet patient Rachel -- are still supposed to be on this planet," she wrote. "Take that and run. Never look back. Enjoy every second. ... Accomplish the job God has kept you here for and have a blast doing it."Sheppard is not a religious person and can't say she necessarily believes in God. But she does believe that "things happen for a reason" and that some force was on her side that night in Vegas. She believes the prayers of others mattered.Where all of this will take her, she doesn't know. She doesn't want to have to know. She doesn't want to promise that she'll be a leader in any sort of movement or take on the pressure to live an extraordinary, uber-accomplished life."People want know, 'What are you going to do now?' " she says. "I just want to do me and, at this point, focus on my healing."She wants to breathe in, breathe out and be present.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2017-12-13 09:34:58

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/13/health/kentucky-appalachia-women-eprise/index.html

Forget abortion: What women in Appalachian Kentucky really want - CNN

Kentucky may become the first state to effectively outlaw abortion. But the women in Appalachia would simply like birth control, sex ed and honest talk.

health, Forget abortion: What women in Appalachian Kentucky really want - CNN

Forget abortion: What women in Appalachian Kentucky really want

Story highlightsA court battle about Kentucky's only abortion clinic is in progressWomen in Central Appalachia, hours away from the clinic, worry about other mattersThey are stepping up to fight for basics, like birth control and sex ed accessPikeville, Kentucky (CNN)Perhaps it was the abstinence pledge she felt forced to sign or the promise ring she was told to slip on her finger. But from the moment Cheryl became sexually active, she felt dirty. Then, three boys raped her, reducing her self-image to mud.She didn't dare tell anyone or seek help. Growing up in rural eastern Kentucky, she'd been raised by drug addicts who'd lost the family home and lived in a place, she says, where there was "nothing left to do but do each other." Shame kept Cheryl, who wants to be identified only by a pseudonym, from even stepping foot into her hometown's health department. A year of untreated chlamydia stole her fertility."I wish I hadn't been so scared," says Cheryl, now 20 and a University of Pikeville student who hopes to be an attorney someday. "I will never be able to have a family. I wish the way I'd learned about my own body and sex in general had been different." Read MoreHere, where the Bible Belt cinches tight around Central Appalachia and small-town living means everyone knows your business, matters of sexuality and reproductive health are traditionally talked about in whispers -- if they're talked about at all. But pull back the kudzu, and you'll hear voices crying out for change, even as the political winds howl against them. Arwen Donahue, an artist and writer, is working on a graphic novel about choices, reproduction and motherhood because she wants to give voice to rural women who are often isolated. Gov. Matt Bevin, they say, is hell-bent on outlawing abortion. Under him, state officials are threatening to close Kentucky's only abortion clinic. And though a pre-abortion ultrasound requirement was recently struck down, Bevin signed into law a ban on abortions after 20 weeks. Meantime, the Trump administration has rolled back Obamacare's contraceptive coverage requirement and proposed a budget that would cut programs to prevent teen pregnancy -- while sinking millions more into abstinence-only education. In the face of all of this, there are women in eastern Kentucky rising up to do what others won't do for them. Through activism and art, radio shows and bootleg sex ed classes, they are taking a stand for their communities and families, and for every young Cheryl out there. As deep as the 'hollers'Near a stone bridge that crosses the North Fork of the Kentucky River in the quaint town of Whitesburg, a group gathers in a space usually reserved for youth programs and punk rock shows. They are here to embark on a bold mission, one that is so new, they ask me to leave before they get to work. Last clinic standingThe dozen or so who stream in are from Whitesburg and nearby towns, the big city of Lexington and even the nation's capital. Their goal? To launch a comprehensive birth-control access campaign in southeastern Kentucky, where teen birth rates outpace the national average.In walks a woman who remembers classmates who got pregnant before they reached high school. Here comes another who likes to say it's easier to get pain pills in these parts than some forms of birth control. A third works on the front lines to ensure abortion access.Abortion has put Kentucky in the national spotlight. If its last abortion clinic, based in Louisville, closes, the Bluegrass State would be the first in the nation to effectively ban the procedure since it was legalized in 1973. But here in this easternmost part of the state, hundreds of miles from Louisville, a court battle over the clinic's fate is hardly top of mind. Many people I meet while traversing the region aren't even aware this fight is happening.Medical professionals can count on one hand the times they've been asked about abortions. Women who've had abortions rarely, if ever, mention it. For many, the clinic might as well be in Las Vegas. If you don't have the means to get to Louisville -- let alone pay for the procedure, lodging and child care -- what difference does it make if there's no abortion clinic in the state?What can make a difference in tackling unplanned and unwanted pregnancies are more conversations about -- and more access to -- birth control, reproductive health care and sex ed. But the challenges in opening up these discussions run as deep as the "hollers," or valleys, that cut through these green hills. 'The whole town knew'Outsiders often imagine this area in black and white, a place where poverty blankets the land much like the fog that hangs in the morning air. But the reality bursts with color -- and people who defy expectations. "Women in this area are not encouraged to be forceful," says Zelma Forbes, who goes by "Sweet Tater" when she's on the radio. Tattooed on Stacie Sexton's left shoulder are the longitude and latitude of Whitesburg, where she was born and raised until she moved to nearby Hazard as a tween. She lives in Lexington now but never forgets where she's from. She recalls the abstinence-only education she got in grade school and how two of the seven girls in her class got pregnant before the end of eighth grade. One miscarried; the other married. She'd just turned 20 when a nurse at the health department confirmed that she was pregnant and insisted that she make a prenatal care appointment. With the start of college around the bend, she had other plans: She traveled more than 150 miles to Knoxville, Tennessee, for an abortion. When someone from the health department called because she'd missed her appointment, Sexton was honest about what she'd done. "The whole town knew within a few days," she says, privacy laws "be damned."Kentucky's 20-week abortion ban: A ticking clock on a complex pregnancyToday, at 32, she's a force for change. She recently organized the first "Abortion Monologues" in Lexington, providing a stage for women and men to share their stories while trying to increase empathy and erase stigma. But it's her full-time job at the Kentucky Health Justice Network that brings her back to Whitesburg this evening to steer the group committed to promoting birth control access. She directs the new project, All Access EKY, which is loosely modeled after a successful Colorado initiative. Between 2009 and 2014, with the help of a private funder, Colorado managed to cut births and abortions by about 50% among teens and 20% among women between 20 and 24, while saving the state nearly $70 million in public assistance. With funding from the Educational Foundation of America, All Access EKY aims to increase access to and demand for birth control, including long-acting reversible options like IUDs and implants -- the sorts of contraceptives that can be hard to come by here. We're "still having to fight all these negative stereotypes of being barefoot and pregnant," Sexton says. "We do have a problem, but people would be receptive to these options if they had them." Across Kentucky, 47% of pregnancies are unplanned, costing the state $75 million and the federal government nearly $303 million a year. This is according to the latest figures culled by the Guttmacher Institute, a leading research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health. In Appalachian Kentucky, the teen birth rate is 68% higher than the country and 34% higher than the rest of the state, according to a report by several groups, including the Appalachian Regional Commission. All Access EKY wants to shape a new reality through coalition building, education, legislation and storytelling. A hardscrabble historySigns pointing to churches dot the roadways. So do alerts for blasting zones and fallen rock, where the long-dying coal industry gasps for breath.To understand how women have experienced this region, it helps to know a bit about the hardscrabble history of where they're from.The area has long been defined by coal. But the truth is, since automation took hold after World War II, mining has been on its way out. The "boom and bust" business that displaced millions of people has been dying for decades, says Dee Davis, founder and president of Whitesburg's Center for Rural Strategies, who has lived in and studied this area for most of his 66 years."I don't think anyone thinks that the coal industry is coming back," he says, though some may still hope for it. "I may hope that Scarlett Johansson is going to come into my office, give me a kiss and ask me to run away with her, but it's not going to happen."A lack of alternatives forced plenty of people to move elsewhere, but for many who've stayed, the connection is too strong to imagine leaving. Davis talks about the lush hills that sustain him, the crows that chase away hawks in "a big movie in the sky," the memories of the grandmother with bodybuilder arms who taught him to skip rocks across the creek bed.Nestled in the hills of Central Appalachia, Kentuckians are fighting for their communities. The women I meet speak about their dozens of cousins, the generations that root them here, the gardening, fiddling and quilting that courses through their "mountain woman" veins. One stands on her office porch; behind her is a painting of a quilt design made by her grandmother, who died in February at age 99. Before she was buried, the family slipped something into her pocket: bean seeds that had been in the family for nearly 200 years. This is an area where strong women have been slow to get pap smears and mammograms or tend to their general health. It's also a state where 76 out of 120 counties don't have an OB-GYN, according to a 2014 report by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.'I'm an abortion travel agent' and other tales from Texas' new desertWith the arrival of Obamacare and the expansion of Medicaid, Dr. Jessica Branham says, the situation has started to change.Branham, an OB-GYN in nearby Floyd County, says she's seen patients who haven't sought reproductive care in 10, 15, 20 years. So beyond gynecological exams, she's talking to them about advances in birth control.Many women here are still haunted by "the ghost of the Dalkon Shield," she says, the flawed and dangerous intrauterine device that went on the market in the 1970s. But even if she persuades them to trust what's new, she can't always deliver. If an IUD is approved by insurance, it's often on a "buy and bill" basis, meaning the patient must pay for it up-front, she says. At $600 to $800 a pop, she says, that's usually a deal-breaker. This means that for a woman experiencing heavy bleeding, it can be easier to get a hysterectomy, which is covered by insurance, than it is to manage the problem with a simple form of birth control, she says. "The algorithms of who gets what, I will never understand," Branham says.Bridging the disconnectSexton, of All Access EKY, says women of all ages should know that their contraceptive options extend beyond abstinence, the pill and condoms -- and that what works for one person may not work for another. But just getting them to walk into a health department can be a challenge when the person behind the counter or in the exam room might be a neighbor or fellow church member.If a woman gets through the door, she should be informed enough to know what options to ask for -- and hope the one she wants is available, says Sexton. All Access EKY is focusing on 10 counties in southeastern Kentucky. Of the clinics in those counties, only a third offer the full range of contraceptive methods, according to Power to Decide, a national nonprofit working to prevent unplanned pregnancies. Appalshop, a cultural and media hub in Whitesburg, has partnered with All Access EKY to produce material that will speak to people in Central Appalachia.Complicating matters further: Not enough people in the region are trained to insert IUDs or implants, which often means an additional wait. "If you have to make people wait, they're not going to do it," Sexton says. "And that doesn't matter if you're in eastern Kentucky or Los Angeles."To battle these barriers, Sexton says, the project is asking for help from health departments, state lawmakers, educators and community leaders. But recruiting support will take time."There's a disconnect between what people think we do and what we do," she says of her group's work. The words "birth control" are immediately associated with "liberal thoughts and people having sex willy-nilly. And, really, our goal is helping people control their futures." One person helping get the word out is Willa Johnson. She thinks about her peers who married young because they got pregnant and felt that they had no choice -- only to get divorced young, too.Johnson, who lives in Whitesburg, is 32, single and fosters a toddler. She also works at Appalshop, a cultural and media hub housed in a rustic wooden structure that serves as a mouthpiece for Appalachian voices and ideas. Appalshop has been an institution in Whitesburg for nearly half a century and, along with Power to Decide, is a partner in All Access EKY. By raising awareness about birth control options, Willa Johnson hopes people in eastern Kentucky can better shape their futures. With the help of five young women Johnson recently hired -- two high school seniors and three college students -- her team is building a website and producing stories that will speak to people in this region.Among their projects are a radio essay about being denied birth control because of religious beliefs, a conversation with a high school principal about how schools deal with teen pregnancies, and video interviews with doctors serving the area. "We want to share stories and experiences to break down this idea that we can't talk about access to birth control," Johnson says. "I want the community to hear that there are others having these conversations. I want them pushed out of their comfort zone."Learning about the 'P-I-L-L'Down the road, past the health department and a craft moonshine distillery, this sort of openness about sex is foreign to the senior women I meet at the recreation center.They're playing cards and don't stop dealing or looking at their hands to talk. "Mommy said babies came in suitcases," says one woman, who didn't learn about sex until she got married. "When I started my monthlies, I was scared to death," says another, who raced to her school's principal's office when she first got her period."We don't believe in abortion," announces a third, when the word is first mentioned.Wilma Ritchie, 77, a mother of eight, is less absolute. She talks about her own daughter, who was advised by a doctor to have an abortion. Her daughter refused; the baby died as soon as it was born."She lost another one like that," Ritchie says. "It lived an hour or two."When her friends say they don't want to see abortion in Kentucky, Ritchie at first keeps her mouth shut. Then she answers quietly, almost under her breath, "I don't think it's right, but if a woman's life is at risk, well ..." Wilma Ritchie, who sings bluegrass gospel, doesn't think the issue of abortion is black and white. These women were taught to mind their parents and not have sex until they were married. They worked hard to care for their own, which is why the scourge of drugs, a reliance on government programs and the fact that babies are being passed off to foster homes and grandparents make some of them shake their heads.But while these women largely represent the way it was, over at community radio station WMMT, located at Appalshop, Zelma Forbes proves that there have always been exceptions.She's a 71-year-old community college math instructor who doubles as "Sweet Tater," the name she uses each week during her two-hour radio program dedicated to Old Appalachian music.Forbes, who was married once for 10 years, presses play so Sheila Kay Adams can sing, "I wish I was a single girl again, Lord, Lord, don't I wish I was a single girl again." Off-mic, Forbes shares her own story, which includes plenty of zingers. "He didn't like me," she says of her ex-husband from half a lifetime ago "And that's OK. I didn't like him, either."No one had to teach her about sex. Growing up on a farm in Greenup County to the north, watching the animals taught her plenty. Her older sisters filled her in on details like menstruation. Always curious, she dug deeper, flipping through biology books.She was in high school and college in the '60s, when friends had abortions before it was legal. One time, using leftover financial aid money, she helped pay for a friend's procedure. She says she knew all about the "P-I-L-L and D-I-V-O-R-C-E" because "Loretta Lynn sang about it." She's now a mother of three: two her own, one adopted from her daughter when she was hooked on drugs (she's quick to point out that her daughter is now sober). She wishes sex wasn't taken so lightly. If birth control was readily available, there would not be the same need for abortions, she says. But she's a realist too, which is why she says the choice to get an abortion in Kentucky should remain. She's unusual for her generation, and she knows it."Women in this area," she says, "are not encouraged to be forceful." 'Too political' for schoolThat may be traditionally true, but Tanya Turner, 31, is among those women determined to blaze a new path. Like "Sweet Tater," she takes to the community radio airwaves with her WMMT program, "Feminist Friday." Turner is also the brains behind what she likes to call "Sexy Sex Ed," an occasional workshop to bring honest conversations to young people to fill the void left behind by homes and schools. Tanya Turner imagined "Sexy Sex Ed" to give young people information they may not get elsewhere.She wishes the United States would follow the lead of countries like Sweden, where age-appropriate sex education starts in kindergarten. If left to their own devices, she warns, kids will Google answers to even the most innocent questions and enter the depths of online porn.She used to run an online program for 21 school districts but quit after attending a reproductive rights rally at the state Capitol. She wanted to write about the experience and was told she could as long as she didn't include the words "birth control" or "sex ed." Those words were seen as "too political," she says. "It felt like a gag order to not be able to say those words at this unprecedented time." Children and young adults need safe spaces to talk, she says. They should understand the importance of consent and the way their bodies work. She need only think about the young people who've shown up, including the six transgender students who joined her for a sex ed workshop this year, to know that the hunger for authentic conversation is real. Though her full-time job now is to raise money for Appalshop, she organizes sex ed programs when she can and draws a steady flow of participants -- which often includes chaperones and parents who have plenty to learn, too. "I'll say, 'If this gets to be too much, you may want to leave.' But no one will leave," she says. "I get 40-year-olds thanking me." Quiet no more The scenes laid out around Lindsey Windland are supposed to make viewers uncomfortable: hands holding a knitting needle, a screwdriver and a bottle of poison. A female saint dressed in red, clutching a coat hanger. They're textile pieces Windland created after researching the desperate measures women took before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the country.Using the sewing skills passed down by her grandmother, Lindsey Windland created a textile series to raise awareness about the need for safe surgical abortions.Windland's grandmother taught her to sew, a skill passed down in a region known for its quilting heritage. A mother and small-business owner in Madison County, she says that her latest work is part of her effort to "take back the idea that embroidery was something to keep women quiet, docile and sitting down."She's one of two artists I met in the foothills of Appalachia who are using their crafts to send a message about reproductive health. Both were given grants by the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which supports feminist artists who hope to inspire social change.Windland, 33, is grateful that she's never had to think about having an abortion. But she took on the subject after the election of Kentucky's anti-abortion governor in 2015. "When Bevin came into office, I was feeling overwhelmed," she says. "I understand people's religious beliefs, but they need to understand that women can resort to things that make them die." One of her pieces hung in a local art show, but it wasn't well-attended, she says. In February, though, the whole series will be on display in a Louisville gallery -- the first that was willing to show them after others turned her work down. Before then, she says, she'd like to add one more to the collection: a piece that illustrates how far women in Kentucky need to travel for abortions.She hopes the series will spark conversations and shape attitudes."Just because it is really difficult for women to obtain abortions in our state, it doesn't mean they won't try to do it themselves or go somewhere else to have it done," Windland says. "A safe surgical alternative exists, and we should utilize it."Farther to north, on her farm in Nicholas County, Arwen Donahue is writing and illustrating a graphic novel based in part on her own abortion. She was 40 when she suddenly found herself pregnant. She and her husband already had one child, never intended to have another and were struggling with their farm and finances. The decision to have an abortion was painful enough, she says. But adding to the weight was a feeling that she couldn't tell anyone beyond her mother and a couple of close friends. The graphic novel by Arwen Donahue will offer stories from three years in her life -- including the one when she had an abortion. "I felt like I was surrounded by people who'd think I was a monster," says Donahue, now 48. She grew up in more urban and liberal areas of America but has called this farm home for 20 years. "There is this unspoken cultural assumption that there are some things you do and some things you don't do. One thing you don't do is have an abortion if you're in a stable marriage, and the second thing you don't do is talk about it."The self-imposed shame and silence takes a toll, she says, and further isolates rural women who are already cut off. So she's working on telling her story about choices, reproduction and motherhood. Her graphic novel will weave together the narratives of three years in her life, including 2010, the year she had an abortion. Though she plans to eventually publish it as a book, she's releasing pieces on Rumpus, an online literary magazine. Donahue is motivated to share her experiences, she says, in part for those who can't. She speaks up on behalf of rural women whose stories are too often overlooked or misunderstood. "I'm really glad to put my shoulder to the wheel on this issue and feel that it's time," she says.A 'revolution' stirsThe abstinence pledge and promise ring didn't keep Cheryl from becoming sexually active. They didn't protect her from being gang-raped. And they didn't prevent the loss of her fertility.But Cheryl knows that she isn't alone.She's not an activist or artist and has never heard of All Access EKY. Instead, she's part of a generation of eastern Kentuckians trying to reconcile what they've been taught with what they've lived and what they hope to be.She tells her story in the chapel at the University of Pikeville, 45 minutes up the road from Whitesburg, surrounded by other women who've gathered to discuss their own coming-of-age tales in Central Appalachia. Most are first-generation college students. They compare stories of parents and siblings who've struggled with addiction. One speaks of the crowded day care center in her high school, the friends who've all married young and have children.Two single mothers speak of the sacrifices they've made to give their children a better life and the abusive husbands they've left behind. One of them, a mother of four in her late 20s, announces amid tears that she signed divorce papers the day before, prompting the room to erupt in applause.Not one of the women in the chapel knew that Kentucky has only one abortion clinic, nor did they know that it may close. The news startles and angers them."If you take that option away, it'll make room for people to do it on their own," says one."If they want an abortion, they're going to get it," says another. In this space, where their names are protected, they openly tell stories of women they know who've had abortions. The cousin who is an alcoholic and needs to grow up before she can raise children. The struggling sister who didn't want to bring another drug-addicted baby into the world. The friend who simply trusted that it was the best decision for her at the time. Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.On campus, though, they fear that they're a minority, which is why they usually keep their feelings to themselves."If you say you're pro-choice, you're the devil," one student says. But a professor in the room then tells them a story. She talks about the students who've railed against abortions in the classroom, only to seek her out later to say they feel like hypocrites because they've had abortions themselves.The students let this soak in. Maybe they aren't so alone in their feelings. Maybe, as they pursue their dreams and lives in eastern Kentucky, they can be part of something bigger. "If we get enough young people who really care," says one, "our generation will be the revolution."

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2017-03-31 12:35:44

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/health/hfr-paulette-leaphart-naked-truth/index.html

Paulette Leaphart and the naked truth - CNN

Paulette Leaphart was the perfect hero: a cancer survivor baring her double-mastectomy scars on a 1,000-mile walk to Washington. Until her own words got in the way.

health, Paulette Leaphart and the naked truth - CNN

The naked truth

(CNN)Behind the double-mastectomy scars that run across her bare chest, she had a story to tell.So late last April, Paulette Leaphart embarked on a 1,000-mile walk from her childhood hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi, to the halls of Congress in Washington. And she did it topless.The breast cancer survivor screamed for a cure and demanded better and more affordable health care. She wanted women without breasts to believe in their beauty and be proud of their strength. By showcasing and embracing her scars, she hoped to inspire others to do the same. Her journey was bold, visual, moving. It offered a hero to admire and, given Paulette's audacious decision to walk shirtless in the face of strangers, a rich spectacle to witness. It spoke to African-American women, who face the highest breast cancer mortality rate. It inspired legions of survivors. And it spoke to many who'd lost someone to the disease.Read MoreIt seemed a storyteller's dream. But reality would eventually intrude.Documentary filmmakers were first to seize on Paulette's potential -- after she approached a producer who was out on a shoot, lifted up her shirt and said her story needed to be told. A stunning trailer for "Scar Story," in which the film crew would follow her entire walk, was released in late October 2015.A Kickstarter campaign to help fund the film went up weeks before the walk began, attracting enthusiastic donors. Journalists flocked to Paulette, eager to tell her story. Even megastar Beyoncé took notice and featured Paulette in "Lemonade."I saw the trailer on Facebook and, like so many others, was hooked. In a world hungry for heroes, whose stories of inspiration bring us light amid darkness, Paulette seemed to feed that craving. After making a few calls and learning she was walking with her 8-year-old daughter, no less, I hopped in my car, picked up my amateur photographer stepson, and headed to North Carolina to walk with her.Some stories land on a journalist's plate like manna from heaven. They're perfect morsels you can't wait to share. Others arrive a mess of ingredients with no recipe to follow. This one started the first way and finished the other. After walking with Paulette for a full day, I left with more questions than answers. No matter how much I hated to admit it, aspects of her story simply didn't add up. And the more I kept digging, the more inconsistencies I found: about her past and her cancer treatment, about how much she was actually walking, even about her motivations.Part of me wanted to walk away -- from Paulette and the story. If even one woman's life was saved thanks to a conversation Paulette started, wasn't that enough? So what if our hero was flawed? But then I thought about the thousands of people following Paulette on Facebook, all the journalists who covered her journey and the online video viewed more than 20 million times.And I realized: This story wasn't just about Paulette. It's about our need to find -- and, for some of us, become -- heroes. It's about the unchecked storytelling and self-promotion that thrives on social media. It's about the disappointment we feel when reality jolts us awake from our reverie.In our desperation to believe in people, do we dole out passes too easily? Had we, in our collective enchantment with Paulette, all become blind? Shameka Fulston, left, and others join Paulette Leaphart for a community walk in Charlotte. Fulston planned to rejoin Paulette for the last 100 miles of her walk but left Charlotte feeling disenchanted.A vision from GodI caught up with Paulette at a house outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where she and her daughter were staying. The grill was fired up, food filled the counters and the music was pumping. Paulette, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Living beautifully," greeted me with a hug. "The walk has given me back everything the devil stole from me," she told those in the room, as they gathered to pray for her journey. The hostess said she opened her home because she'd lost her own sister to breast cancer. As her tears fell, she told Paulette, "That's why I wanted to take care of you." Dusk turned to night, and I kept my eye on the time. When we spoke by phone, Paulette had warned me she woke up at 4:30 each morning and walked 20 to 40 miles each day except weekends, which were for rest. She had to cover that sort of ground, she explained, if she wanted to meet her goal of reaching Washington by June 27, her 50th birthday. I'm in decent shape, but walking at least 20 miles on little sleep scared me. "Oh, we're not starting 'til 9 a.m. tomorrow," Paulette finally told me as the night wore on. A community walk was planned in downtown Charlotte. I breathed a sigh of relief.The next morning, the crowd was passionate but small -- about three dozen women, men and children. Many wore pink, and most had been touched by breast cancer. "Five years in October," said one woman. "Nine years cancer-free," said another, sporting a "Fight Like a Girl" T-shirt. "Mom died in 2004," said one man, who survived lymphoma himself. A woman who'd driven through the night to be here took off her shirt to reveal her own tangled scars. She'd seen Paulette in Atlanta and vowed to walk with her. After photos, videos and prayers, the walkers hit the pavement, weaving their way through downtown. "We need a cure! We need a cure!" they screamed, following Paulette's lead. "Breast cancer sucks! Breast cancer sucks!" They also sang hymns."We will walk until we defeat this demon!" Paulette yelled. All the pain I felt from the day I was born had purpose, and I'm living that purpose. God said I'm going to use your chest.Paulette LeaphartIt was Memorial Day, one month to the day since she started, and the streets were quiet. Occasional onlookers gawked, wondering what the commotion was about. I walked along taking notes and wondered myself: How effective was this small, 1-mile march, really? I was more interested in what would come next: the walk she was resuming with her daughter to reach Washington in less than a month.They had already covered 710 miles. They'd walked all but 100 of them, Paulette said. She said she often used cabs to carry her through dangerous parts of the journey. With most weekends off, that would mean they'd averaged more than 27 miles a day on foot. We got started around noon. I'd pictured us rambling through rolling hills of green. Paulette would be like Forrest Gump, I thought, gathering disciples as she strode through quaint towns. Paulette preferred a busier route and steered us toward US 29. In her mind it was safer, and only along highways could she and her message be seen. She carried no sign, insisting the scars told her story. To her 5,000 friends and thousands more followers on Facebook, Paulette was already a hero. They showered her with love and praise. "If I had 10,000 thousand tongues, I couldn't thank you enough," one person wrote the day after I walked with her. "I understand your fight! God is with you every step of the way.""I love you for what you are doing," wrote another. "You are so brave you are my WOMAN OF THE YEAR." "You are such a phenomenal woman," wrote a third. "I lost my mother to breast cancer but I know if she were alive, she would be walking with you -- the whole way. ... God bless you." Paulette has inspired women all over the world and said she has even saved lives. People who'd been considering suicide, she said, were motivated by her to go on.The global attention began two years earlier, when, over Labor Day weekend, she posted topless photos of herself on a beach in Mississippi. She had just emerged from eight months of depression after losing her breasts and being told she couldn't have reconstructive surgery because of a pre-existing blood-clotting disorder. She says she had a vision from God to go to Biloxi Beach, take off her shirt and be photographed. She said people surrounded her. A woman began to cry and then she did, too. Onlookers applauded. Paulette freed herself in that moment and, in posting photos on Facebook, did the same for others. She said a man wrote to thank her, saying that his wife, who'd lost her breasts years before, had finally bared her chest for him. She was chosen by God to be a vessel for his work, she said, and her photos were "liked" almost 300,000 times. It was God who woke her up one night in December 2013 to tell her she had breast cancer, which doctors later confirmed. And it was God who told her to go on this 1,000-mile topless walk."All the pain I felt from the day I was born had purpose, and I'm living that purpose," she said. "God said I'm going to use your chest." Pushing her daughter in a weighed-down stroller, Paulette Leaphart winds her way out of downtown Charlotte to continue her journey toward Washington. The first signsBased on the expressions of the people we passed, not everyone saw the purpose. She joked that she must look like a bag lady to some. Others got what this was about and offered her cheers and hugs. A church group giving out toiletries to homeless people gathered her in a circle for prayers. Two women on bikes who'd seen her story rode up and passed her $20 bills.Paulette had said she only ate fruit when she walked. On this day, though, she ate fried chicken tenders from Popeyes and two hot dogs at Cook Out, a Southern fast-food chain. I wasn't judging her choices; I matched everything she ate and then some. But she didn't eat the apple I offered, and I never saw her eat a piece of fruit. It was one of those tiny, perhaps silly, observations I filed away. But aren't we all guilty of saying and doing different things, especially when it comes to diet? The heat had slowed her down. She said she was now aiming for 20 miles a day, news that came as a relief. It was late afternoon, though, and we hadn't even gone 10 miles. Sometimes her daughter trudged along with us. More often, she climbed into a stroller built for kids less than half her size. Bags spilled over the sides; one balanced across her lap. Several times the awkward contraption tumbled over when she was getting in or out. While picking up her scattered belongings -- an overstuffed wallet, sunscreen and bug spray, water bottles and her daughter's "Jesus Storybook Bible" -- Paulette told me she'd already lost her driver's license and passport. "How do you check into hotels?" I asked, knowing desk clerks always ask for ID. "Everyone knows who I am," she answered with a smile. I made another mental note.The highway we walked along grew busy. When Paulette's daughter was out of the stroller, I often caught myself holding my breath as cars whizzed by. In the hottest part of the day, she took breaks. Sometimes, she said, she and her daughter studied. Other times, they found a place to swim, catch a movie or visit a garden. On the day I walked with her, we went bowling. Paulette was on her phone often and obsessed with charging it wherever we stopped. She wasn't making calls as much as checking Facebook. She seemed consumed with monitoring likes, shares and comments. I asked if anyone on the Internet ever put her down.Only one, she said: a woman she didn't know who was spreading lies and had a criminal record. A woman she suspected was crazy and jealous. A woman she was determined to ignore.What about the documentary group who'd set out to follow her? What had happened to them? Paulette told me they'd made money off her story without her consent and left after just a few days, abandoning her and her daughter "like dogs on the side of the road." Paulette often described her undertaking as "a walk of faith" and said Jesus has always been with her. When she was a small child, she said, she was sexually, physically and emotionally abused. Her great-grandmother gave her a Bible. She said it was the first book she ever read."She couldn't protect me, but she gave me something that would." After one particularly brutal beating, Paulette said, she promised God that if he let her live, she'd dedicate her life to taking care of children. She has eight; she said she gave birth to four and adopted four others. Over the years, she said, she's fostered hundreds more. Her older kids were caring for her teens during the walk, she said. Her youngest, whom she said she home schools, refused to be left behind. When Paulette was at her lowest point fighting cancer, she said, her daughter pushed her to battle on."There were days I wanted to stop breathing. She'd climb up into my bed and love all over me. She'd say, 'Mama, promise me you're going to beat cancer.' I promised her and I kept it." The highway we walked along grew busy. When Paulette's daughter was out of the stroller, I often caught myself holding my breath as cars whizzed by. When the shoulder narrowed, Paulette simply walked on the road. "I force them to respect me."Fear, she insisted, was nothing more than the devil. She said God would protect her and her daughter. I hoped God would also remember me.Salvation came for us in the form of a flat stroller tire. The weighed down contraption now moved like lead.Paulette had asked for help pushing it throughout the day, and I was happy to oblige in spurts. But now, unless she could fix it, this day looked done. An auto shop tried to help but couldn't. A taxi ride took us to the other side of an interstate. I left her at Cook Out and took an Uber back to my car. She planned to wait with her daughter for a ride back to the house where she'd been staying. She had miles to make up, she said, and needed to get to Walmart to buy a new stroller so she could pick up where she left off first thing in the morning. Our day ended as the sun began to set. We'd logged less than 14 miles.The "Scar Story" trailer was widely shared on social media and gained the attention of journalists, as well as Beyoncé, who featured Paulette in "Lemonade." Paulette's financial woesAs more local, national and international reporters told Paulette's story, my reservations mounted. One local TV reporter wrote online that Beyoncé had walked with Paulette, though it was later trimmed from the piece. Another referred to her as a social worker, a career that, up until this point, she hadn't mentioned to me. When I'd asked Paulette what kind of work she'd done, she only mentioned owning a successful day care center in Virginia -- which, she said, she'd sold years before for a profit. She became homeless, she said, when medical expenses mounted from two years of cancer treatment. She had to choose between having a roof over her head or fighting to get well.I wondered how many of these journalists actually spent a full day with her; besides the filmmakers, Paulette had told me I was the first. Was I a horrible person for not buying her story wholesale?I know we're all vulnerable in this time of Internet hoaxes and fake news. Remember the recent story of a Santa Claus in Tennessee who claimed an ailing 5-year-old boy died in his arms? The world went nuts over this tearjerker, the story went viral, and none of it was publicly corroborated by anyone other than Santa. I got teary-eyed when I saw Santa's story, and when I first learned about Paulette's I was similarly taken. It's who I am as a person; I want to believe. But as a journalist my job is to ask questions and pull on those loose threads of doubt. So I enlisted a CNN researcher to pull up a background report on Paulette. That's when her story began to unravel. She found a way for people to feel sorry for her, a way to collect money and notoriety.Barbara Smith, who won part of a $100,000 judgment against PauletteIt turns out her financial struggles long predated cancer. Years before Paulette said God woke her up to say she had breast cancer, there'd been more than a half dozen civil judgments and liens against her totaling well over $100,000. She'd filed for bankruptcy, owed the IRS about $45,000 and had faced multiple evictions. The bulk of the civil judgments stemmed from the Virginia day care center, which Paulette had owned for less than two years. I spoke to Barbara Smith, who said she and a friend were bilked out of more than $60,000 after Paulette persuaded them to invest in the day care center and become her partners. They agreed that Smith and the friend, who knew Paulette from church, would later take over the business from Paulette, which she had valued at $200,000. But she'd been dishonest about the state of her day care center, was in the hole and hadn't even been paying rent on the building, Smith said. The pair lost everything they gave Paulette. "We were investing in something that wasn't even there," said Smith, who admitted they were too trusting. "She just kind of shrugged it off as if we knew what we were getting into." Court documents show that Paulette had defaulted on her lease and had "fraudulently represented" the worth of her business. Paulette "declined to cooperate with her counsel and failed to appear for trial," the court order read. The plaintiffs were awarded more than $100,000, but they "never saw a red cent," Smith said. Paulette filed for bankruptcy a few days later. When media reports about Paulette's 1,000-mile walk began appearing, Smith said she and her friend were only temporarily surprised. Knowing her the way they did, this was just another "newfangled idea of how to get money," Smith said. "She found a way for people to feel sorry for her, a way to collect money and notoriety." Paulette Leaphart captured the attention of young documentary filmmakers when she approached a producer, lifted up her shirt and said her story needed to be told. A day with BeyoncéIt became clear, as I ambled along with her, that Paulette possessed an inflated sense of her fame. She told me she imagined having her own reality TV show and a movie deal by the time her walk was over. She envisioned a career doing motivational speaking across the globe. She spoke about Beyoncé as if they were friends and said the star had spent a whole day alone with her on the set of "Lemonade." She said Beyoncé wanted her daughter, Blue Ivy, to look up to women like her. She said Beyoncé had promised to walk with her for a mile. I reached out a number of times to Beyoncé's publicist to ask about their relationship but never got a response. Paulette predicted that by the time she arrived in Washington, thousands of women would join her. She said she'd been invited to walk in places as far-flung as Kenya and Jamaica and that she was a hero in Israel.These seemingly over-the-top statements only made me question her further. I knew she was struggling, and I worried about her. ... Part of me wanted to close the book on this story, leave it unwritten and move on.I followed her daily on Facebook to see where she was and what she'd do or say next. Five days after I left her, she posted a picture of the stroller with the flat tire. The next day she posted a picture I'd seen her take with a man outside Charlotte. She was supposed to be nearing Durham at this point, around 150 miles away from where we said goodbye, and I couldn't help but wonder why she was still sharing shots from nearly a week earlier. I learned that she stayed in the house where I met her for five nights total -- two after we parted ways. After that, she seemed to take as many days off as she walked. She visited with relatives and girlfriends and frolicked on a beach. She fell sick and rested. She phoned to tell me about circulation problems in her feet and cried about being bullied online. She put her walk on hold to travel up to Washington to attend The United State of Women Summit, hosted by first lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, but didn't stay. The next day she posted photos of herself in a hospital bed, saying she was dehydrated.I knew she was struggling, and I worried about her. I suspected the attention had derailed her initial mission, that she'd gotten in deeper than she could handle. I wondered if she was surrounded by people who no longer cared about her best interests. I feared there might be something bigger going on with her, that she might have other issues. Part of me wanted to close the book on this story, leave it unwritten and move on. Her journey now felt tragic and sad. What purpose would outing her discrepancies serve? But I kept reminding myself Paulette put herself in the spotlight. Millions of people subscribed to her story, including plenty of journalists. Beyond notoriety, what else was she after? How was she affecting others? Maybe there was something to gain from digging deeper -- for all of us.The trailer for "Scar Story," a proposed documentary about Paulette Leaphart's 1,000-mile walk, was filmed in New Orleans, where Paulette lives. Looking for directionPart of what kept me going was what I learned about the documentary.The filmmakers told me they'd spent seven months preparing for this venture. They said Paulette had signed off on the trailer and Kickstarter page and had been told time and again that the film crew's intention was to simply document her journey. They thought they'd made it clear to Paulette that she would be responsible for her personal arrangements, logistics, support system and finances. As the departure date approached, they said, they kept checking to make sure her plans were on schedule. Paulette assured them she was ready.The day they set out, the filmmakers learned that her plan was to lean on them. Director Emily MacKenzie said Paulette turned to her and asked, "Which way should I go?""My heart sank," MacKenzie told me. "In that moment when she said that, I felt betrayed and deeply worried." Paulette also insisted on bringing her daughter. The filmmakers had expressed concerns about this in earlier conversations. How would Paulette walk and care for her at the same time? She insisted she could handle it. They agreed to help out in small ways; they'd gladly walk Paulette's daughter to the bathroom or make her a sandwich. But once the walk began, they said, Paulette wanted them to take on far more responsibility for her daughter than they'd discussed or agreed to -- and when they resisted, she grew furious. They had a film to make and couldn't be liable for the welfare of a child, they told her. I am sad to report that while we were with her on the road, the environment became hostile and unsafe for my team.Filmmaker Emily MacKenzieEverything about the walk now made them nervous. Paulette got horrible blisters, even though she said she'd been training for more than a year. (Her explanation, on Facebook, was that she'd only trained on flat ground.) They spent three days with her -- covering 17, 11 and 9 miles -- and all signs pointed to disaster. Paulette blamed them for not being prepared. They'd put their lives on hold for a year for this project and were crushed, but felt they had no choice but to walk away. They worried about Paulette and her daughter, though. They said they offered to drive them home to New Orleans, where Paulette lives, or at least take her daughter to relatives. They were in contact with one of Paulette's cousins, who was also concerned. They only left when they were assured loved ones were on the way.Soon after their paths diverged, they said, Paulette's mileage seemed to quadruple. One day she boasted online about a full day of walking that, given the distance between her self-reported starting and stopping points, would have amounted to about 65 miles.Finally, in June, MacKenzie posted a letter on the film's website on behalf of the team, telling supporters why the film's focus had changed to feature other women. She chose her words carefully. "I am sad to report that while we were with her on the road, the environment became hostile and unsafe for my team. We realized the distressing truth that the terms under which we had agreed to film the documentary were false and that we would be in a compromised and legally liable position to stay on the road any longer. In good conscience, I could not keep my crew on the road. Hence, we are not filming further with Paulette." The attacks from Paulette's supporters were almost immediate. You're going to be arrested for this. God knows what you did! How could you leave a homeless woman? Someone reached out wondering how they could organize to buy Paulette a house. The filmmakers could only shake their heads. They'd been in Paulette's home. They knew she wasn't homeless. When Paulette saw the letter she immediately threatened legal action, saying her lawyer would be in touch. The filmmakers never heard from an attorney. A frequent presence on Facebook, Paulette Leaphart is a big fan of selfies. She posts glamour shots of herself frequently.The A TeamAt a certain point, beyond fact-checking Paulette's background, I knew I had to look into her online critics. That's when I learned about three women who call themselves The A Team. At the helm is Kimberly McCarty, Paulette's chief adversary, the woman Paulette said was spreading lies about her. Paulette initially said she didn't know McCarty. But McCarty said she and Paulette connected via Facebook five years ago, before Paulette's diagnosis. McCarty said Paulette insisted on taking her out for a nice birthday dinner, only to have forgotten her credit card. McCarty said she was forced to foot the bill for them both. McCarty said Paulette told her a movie was being made about her based on a book she'd written and that R&B artist Fantasia was doing the soundtrack. When Paulette later revealed her breast cancer on Facebook, McCarty didn't buy it. Paulette later admitted she'd met McCarty once, but she likes to point out that McCarty has a criminal record and can't be trusted. It's true: McCarty has been convicted of theft, forgery and false pretense -- which could certainly make her a questionable source and made me reticent about reaching out to her at all. But McCarty owns her past and doesn't deny making mistakes. McCarty has been on an obsessive mission to cast Paulette as a fraud. She has gone so far as to say Paulette never even had cancer, that her double mastectomy was elective after she tested positive for the BRCA gene (think Angelina Jolie's preventive surgery). McCarty insisted her fight is less about Paulette and more about honoring those like her father who've battled cancer, and the friends she's lost to the disease. But McCarty, and some of the people who chime in on her posts, can be downright cruel. They have called Paulette names, mocked her appearance, poked fun at her weight. Whether or not McCarty can be trusted, her claims were enough to force me to hit pause. I needed to know, with certainty, that Paulette actually had cancer. Mixed in with selfies, Paulette Leaphart often added shots of herself in hospital beds or otherwise struggling. She asked for prayers and got them by the hundreds.15 pages of medical recordsPaulette, at first, welcomed the chance to clear this up. With me on the line, she called one of her doctors and requested that her medical records be faxed to her. What she didn't tell the receptionist was that she was giving them my fax number. And that's how I learned that Paulette did, in fact, have a 0.7 cm cancerous tumor in her right breast, and that one of six sentinel lymph nodes removed from her right side also tested positive for cancer.Sometimes, though, when Paulette shares her story, she talks about cancer in her left breast. The left breast was benign, the pathology report shows. She also has talked about her cancer metastasizing to other organs in her body. To be clear, this could have happened; we don't have all of Paulette's medical records, just those that were faxed to me. Still, I was confused. I asked Paulette for permission to talk to her doctor so I could get a better understanding of her disease and treatment. Whenever I asked for details about radiation, chemotherapy and medications, the information she shared was often vague. She said she requested that her oncologist talk to me, but when I called his office I was told she'd made no such request and the doctor couldn't speak. When I told her this, she never followed up. So instead I enlisted a surgeon who specializes in breast surgical oncology to interpret the 15 pages of medical records I had. What I do know, based on the records I've seen, is that Paulette had breast cancer in her right breast. Claims that she did not have cancer are lies.Paulette's 0.7 cm tumor is considered "very, very small," according to the surgeon, who did not want to be named. A "re-excision," after an initial lumpectomy, could have gotten the slight margin of cancer cells left behind, the surgeon said. Instead, Paulette opted for a double mastectomy. Paulette said she has a family history of cancer, so such an aggressive approach can be understood, the surgeon said. Because one of the six lymph nodes removed tested positive, she had what doctors describe as stage 2a cancer. Based on what the surgeon saw, she couldn't say whether chemotherapy or radiation would have been necessary. It should also be noted there is no definitive course of treatment for breast cancer. It's a deeply personal decision a woman makes with her doctor. Perhaps Paulette had radiation and chemotherapy, as she told me and said on Facebook. But the records I received did not confirm this, and without talking to her oncologist -- something I needed her help to do -- I can't say with certainty that she did. And I certainly can't say I've seen all her medical records. What I do know, based on the records I've seen, is that Paulette had breast cancer in her right breast. Claims that she did not have cancer are lies. But exactly how her treatment played out beyond the double mastectomy remains unclear, as do details about how her cancer evolved. Members of The A Team have pulled together presentations, outlining frequent contradictions in Paulette's story. They have saved every post she's made on Facebook over the past several years and allow her to argue their case for them. Why was she bald before she started chemotherapy? How does she explain recycling identical photos to describe different doctor appointments? What happened to the cancer she once said was in her liver? How could she say pneumonia cleared her lungs of tumors? How did she walk 5 miles each way to doctor's appointments when she claimed to be so sick?Katrina Adams is another member of The A Team. Her sympathy initially went out to Paulette. She followed her on Facebook and told her she was praying for her. But then she started seeing posts that left her baffled. One day Paulette would be languishing in a hospital bed, and the next she'd be out shopping with her children. Then Adams' own mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, and Adams saw how chemo ravaged her body. How could Paulette be so active? She started watching more closely, found McCarty along the way and realized she wasn't alone in having doubts. "I let it go for a while," Adams said. "But then this walk came along and it sent me over the edge."Using a Facebook pseudonym, "Marwin Jones," Adams also chronicled Paulette's posts and shared her outrage. "How can you have heart & liver surgery, pneumonia, train to walk from MS to D.C., home school your children and move six times, all while battling stage 2 aggressive breast cancer that 'in your words' Spread to your liver and lungs. Not to mention, you took 'breaks' from the cancer treatment to travel for leisure," she posted in July. "Who does that? This alone is enough to look at you with the 'side eye.' " Paulette Leaphart has been treated as a hero by many. She imagined having a reality TV show and movie deal by the end of her walk. From help to hesitationBeyond The A Team, there were others who initially supported Paulette and now have nothing to do with her. Among them were a seasoned public relations professional, a Washington insider with connections to a breast cancer foundation, and a best-selling erotic-fiction author and publisher known as Zane.An old trusted friend encouraged Zane to sit down with Paulette. Zane was happy to meet her and offer help, but it didn't take long for Zane to grow suspicious. As she described it, she saw the story change in the course of a day: One minute Paulette complained about how much she was paying for cancer medications, but when Zane proposed a way to get medications donated, Paulette said she was on disability and everything was covered, Zane said. When Paulette told her she owed doctors $200,000, someone Zane knew offered Paulette that money on the condition it go directly to the doctors. Paulette passed on the offer, Zane said, saying she'd prefer to declare bankruptcy after the walk.Another friend of Zane's, with Marriott connections, reached out to Paulette to offer booklets of hotel vouchers so she could stay in rooms free during her walk. Paulette never responded.Despite all this, Zane said, she has no animosity for Paulette."It was just one of those things that once I became apprehensive I didn't want to be involved," she said. "At the end of the day, I wish her well. I just couldn't be caught up in it." She made valid points a blind man could see.Carmen Lawrence, after reading Facebook posts critical of PauletteOne woman who did get caught up in it was Carmen Lawrence from Cleveland, who said she had been Facebook friends with Paulette for a few years.She'd followed her battle with cancer, pneumonia and other ailments. And when Paulette embarked on this ambitious walk, Lawrence wanted to help. Lawrence told me she took up a collection at work for Paulette. Although Paulette has a GoFundMe page for donations, which has raised $8,640 toward a goal of $100,000, she suggested Lawrence wire her money directly. Lawrence did. She sent Paulette "well over $800," she said. But Lawrence grew wary. She didn't understand why Paulette was posting only parts of her walk. And when Paulette posted about being stalked by McCarty, Lawrence couldn't help but peek at McCarty's page."She made valid points a blind man could see," Lawrence said.She reached out to Paulette to ask questions. How did she know McCarty? Why wasn't her walk recorded? Did she have cancer?"I was blocked in minutes" from her Facebook page, Lawrence said. In that moment, any trust she had in Paulette was lost."I was so into her story," Lawrence said. "She hung herself." Paulette Leaphart was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2014 but was unable to have reconstructive surgery because of a blood-clotting disorder. Family mattersPart of Paulette's story centers on when her cancer struck -- seven months after a first cousin, Monique McDonald, died of breast cancer. Paulette often said she moved to Mississippi in 2013 to care for Monique and her four daughters. I heard Paulette tell a crowd she was the only one who could set her cousin free; that Monique needed Paulette to tell her it was safe to let go and be with God, and only then did she peacefully pass.But Monique's mother and oldest child aren't having it. As a little girl, Ashia McDonald, 22, was mesmerized by Paulette. She was the relative who got out of Biloxi, lived a glamorous life and seemed to have it all.When her mom got really sick, she said, Paulette began calling every day, promising she'd send money and come help. She showed up the day Monique died, Ashia said, and told relatives she'd been evicted from her home. Rather than arrive to help, Ashia said, Paulette was the one who needed help.Court documents confirm that Paulette failed to pay rent on a Lithia, Florida, home in May 2013. Her landlord threatened legal action in mid-May before filing for an eviction. Monique died on June 1.The family later learned Paulette had gone to area churches asking for donations for Monique's children, saying she was caring for them, Ashia said. Other than the $50 dorm fee Paulette offered when Ashia went to college that fall, she said she and her sisters -- who were in the custody of their grandmother, Brenda McDonald -- never saw this financial help."It tears me up because that's my sister's child," said McDonald, 59. She quit her job to care for her grandchildren, and she cries over the phone when she talks about Paulette. "She took advantage of my grandkids. She took from them. She took their mother's death and ran with it." Ashia thinks back to her mother's packed funeral and remembers being struck by Paulette's demeanor. As mourners grieved and comforted one another, Ashia noticed something else in Paulette."She was so intrigued. ... There was no sympathy. There was no sadness. It was weird, like she wanted to be in my mother's shoes," Ashia said. "It had everything to do with the crowd and the love. ... I'm telling you, I knew she had something up her sleeve." Seven months after the funeral, Paulette was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sometimes my mom gives so much she gets hurt. Her intentions are always pure.Porsha Cummings, Paulette's oldest childAnother of Paulette's cousins, Candy McDonald, 29, told me of her own anger with Paulette. She, too, always looked up to her "Auntie Paulette." But that ended after Candy said she signed a lease for Paulette, which she then skipped out on, hurting Candy's credit, she said. Candy also says Paulette stole her beloved Yorkie named Suge. Paulette has had three marriages. The first lasted 16 years; the second, four years; the third fell apart in about a week, according to the three men.Her first husband, David McKenzie, said Paulette was a stay-at-home mom who often provided day care out of their home, and he -- a military man -- was frequently away. He read a few articles about Paulette's journey and worried about her walking along highways with a child but applauded her effort to raise awareness about cancer. He can't help but laugh a little, though, when he thinks about her setting out to trek 1,000 miles."I will say that it's out of her character to walk that far," he said. The Paulette he knew didn't exercise and "might walk down the street or around the block," he said. "But life changes, seasons change and people change." The second man she married, Craig Leaphart, was hesitant to talk."I would say that her heart is in the right place and leave it at that," he said. He did add that she's had "serious health issues" and that "her mom had breast cancer." I asked how he felt about his daughter walking with Paulette."I have no comment on that," he said, before hanging up.Her third husband, Sidney Williams, told me he'd met Paulette on an online dating site right before her double mastectomy. She told him about her cancer, and he fell for her. Months after the double mastectomy, she moved in with him in Seattle, he said. When she told him she had to go to MD Anderson in Houston for cancer treatment, he suggested she stay in Seattle, and he took her to a cancer center there to discuss treatment. He walked into the room just as a doctor was telling her there was no sign of cancer, he said. "She herded me out of the office at that point," he said.Williams interpreted this to mean she'd never had cancer and said, in that moment, he felt like he'd been "suckered." He said he couldn't believe a word she said anymore and told her the marriage was over. He was heartbroken and disappointed but relieved to get out early.She told me she left him after overhearing him say, while she was in the throes of her cancer battle, "I didn't marry her to watch her die." Williams said she stole his 2003 Jaguar and left the state. She told me she took his car, saying she drove it cross-country in spite of how sick she was. Williams said he never saw that car again.Paulette Leaphart carried no sign and insisted the scars across her chest told her story. She walked along busy roads, like US 29, saying this was how she could be best noticed. A daughter's defensePorsha Cummings takes the criticism of Paulette personally. Cummings, 31, is Paulette's oldest child. The Fort Worth, Texas, hairstylist and mother of three girls talks about a mom who has always given to and thought of others. "Sometimes my mom gives so much she gets hurt," Cummings said. "Her intentions are always pure." A daughter from a relationship before Paulette's first marriage, Cummings said she grew up a "military brat" in a family that always lived a "very affluent lifestyle." Her mother welcomed girls who'd aged out of the foster system. She ran a day care center out of their home and cut deals for parents who couldn't afford the care. She took in foster children and paid for their private-school educations. So when Paulette called Cummings and told her she had cancer and was struggling financially, Cummings wanted to take care of her mother. She said she told her mom to come to Texas so she and her fiancé could help. But Paulette wouldn't have it. "She wanted to put on a strong face for her children," Cummings remembered, and didn't want to burden anyone. Paulette didn't have insurance, Cummings said, and told her she had depleted her savings paying for chemo and other procedures, including $40,000 to remove her breasts. Cummings had been saving up for her wedding and insisted her mother take what she had. It crushed Cummings to think of her mom sleeping on an air mattress, facing outrageous medical bills and not having all she'd been accustomed to. And then to see people say she was never sick with cancer? That just incensed Paulette's daughter."We know her story. We were there," Cummings said. "We're just happy she's surviving and that she's thriving in her survival. ... I'm proud to be her daughter." The trailer for a proposed documentary about Paulette Leaphart, which was later scrapped, showed her walking through her New Orleans neighborhood. Back with questionsThe next time I saw Paulette after I left her in Charlotte was in Washington. She had indeed reached the capital by June 27, her 50th birthday, crossing a bridge into the district on foot. A rally to welcome her was scheduled for a week later, after Congress was back in session. She was surprised to see me. Because I hadn't written about her yet, she said, "I thought you kicked me to the curb." Her words reminded me of the cold description she offered about the documentary filmmakers, who she said left her and her daughter "like dogs on the side of the road." I'd come back to Paulette because I still had questions. Outside a church, a crowd of maybe 50 people gathered. Certainly not the thousands she'd told me earlier would join her on her walk through D.C. Together, they would head to the Capitol for a rally. There were women who wept when they saw Paulette, some who'd driven hours to be by her side. They marveled at her, calling her the strongest woman alive.Local reporters popped by to meet her. They filmed and gushed. I watched a cameraman turn teary-eyed while she spoke. Several women took off their shirts to reveal their own scars, something they'd never done before. I walked with one woman, her chest discolored by radiation burns, who almost didn't make it here because of ongoing pain. Women thanked Paulette and cried in her arms. She'd inspired them. She understood them and was like them. She was their hero. We walked 5 miles that day. I weighed in with those walking and -- once again -- began to fear I was being too hard on Paulette. So what if she hadn't literally walked all 1,000 miles? She was still making a difference. Who was I to question this power she had? Clearly, she'd touched people who needed her.But then, as she'd done before, Paulette got in her own way.She has a knack for saying more than she should. If she walked and spoke of cancer, women's health, her faith, it would be sufficient. But she's prone to hyperbole that gets her in trouble. They did the same thing to Jesus. They're going to have to kill me to stop me.Paulette LeaphartApropos of nothing we were discussing, she blurted out that "Harry called" and appeared shocked when I didn't immediately know who she was talking about. "You don't know Harry?" she said, eyebrows raised. It was Harry Connick Jr., I learned, and she said he wanted her on the premiere of his new show. When I followed up, a spokeswoman for the show told me a producer had been in touch with Paulette about her story but that she did not appear on the premiere, and was not scheduled to appear on any shows.I asked if Beyoncé ever showed up, and Paulette responded, "No, she's really busy." And then she added with a coy smile, "We're going to catch up later."I asked her about her work as a social worker, and she told me she single-handedly reformed the foster care system in the state of Virginia. When I said I'd love to learn more about the program she developed, she told me to Google it. I asked if the program had a name and she couldn't give me one. I tried to confirm Paulette's story by calling the director of social services in the city where Paulette said she worked; despite leaving a dozen messages, I never heard back. The director's assistant said she'd never heard of Paulette, despite starting there long before Paulette claims to have revolutionized the system.I wanted to know about Paulette's finances when cancer struck. She said she'd been bringing in less than $5,000 a month between child support and half of an ex-husband's retirement money. In one breath, Paulette would say she made too much to qualify for Medicaid; in another she'd talk about being homeless.I asked where she was when she lost everything, and she described giving up a house in Mississippi, as well as all her jewelry and her cars. "Cars?" I asked. She said she had three of them: two Mercedes and a Cadillac Escalade. I asked Paulette what she was raising the money for. Was it for a cause? Was it to help fund research to find a cure? She told me the money was only to cover her expenses.On Facebook she shared photos of people passing her money, including one in which a driver leaned across his passenger seat, waving a $100 bill. Her critics wondered if she's reporting any of the donations she's received -- whether online, by wire or in person -- and suggested people file complaints with the IRS. Paulette's supporters told me these critics were just "trying to snuff out her light," as one put it. Paulette insists on Facebook that she loves her haters. She thinks about their efforts to tear her down and also says this: "They did the same thing to Jesus. They're going to have to kill me to stop me." In some cities along the way, Paulette Leaphart was joined by others for community walks. This group in Charlotte sang hymns and chanted "We need a cure" and "Breast cancer sucks."Addressing the crowdShe took the stage at a park near the Capitol like a rock star. "Survivor" by Destiny's Child blared through speakers, and she implored people to dance. A couple of women who'd driven in from eastern Pennsylvania sat on the sidelines, watching her in awe. "She radiates," said one. "I actually got to walk next to her!" gushed the other. Paulette spoke about God sending her directly to a surgeon to remove her breasts. Some women answered with amens; others appeared troubled. "I'm pretty sure you have to go to an oncologist before you go to the surgeon," a woman who'd lost one of her own breasts to cancer said to me later. This woman is a devout Catholic and doesn't doubt the power of God, but she said this part of Paulette's story sounded a little off to her. All day I'd scanned the crowd looking for Shameka Fulston. She was the woman who'd driven through the night from Atlanta to walk with Paulette in Charlotte and had bared her own scarred and breastless chest. She said back then she would walk the last 100 miles of Paulette's journey with her and join her in Washington, but she was nowhere to be seen. I'm sort of sad this walk is over. If I kept walking, I could have a new house by the end of the year!Paulette Leaphart to a crowd of supporters outside the US CapitolI later called Fulston to see what became of her. She said several things about Paulette gave her pause in Charlotte. For one, she said Paulette grew annoyed, even angry, when she found out Fulston could have gotten reconstructive surgery but chose not to. Paulette told me she had picked out size D breast implants before doctors said reconstructive surgery was too dangerous. Fulston didn't want reconstructive surgery because her body had already been through enough, she said. Now, the person who preached that women should embrace their scars was making Fulston feel judged for hers. Then, Fulston said, when she asked what Paulette planned to petition Congress about, Paulette had no clear answer. "I just don't like being a part of something that doesn't seem to have a lot of direction," Fulston said. Later, she was asked to fly up to Washington for a photo op with Paulette, Fulston said, and she balked. To travel for pictures seemed absurd and a waste of her time. She remains confused about what Paulette is fighting for.From a stage in the park outside the Capitol, Paulette looked out at her admirers. She said none of this walking was for the money. But then she boasted about the time she raised $1,200 in one day. "I'm sort of sad this walk is over," she told the crowd. "If I kept walking, I could have a new house by the end of the year!" Filmmakers spent seven months preparing to film Paulette Leaphart's walk, but they walked away after only a few days. Paulette says she was abandoned; the filmmakers tell a different story. Blocked on FacebookAfter the walk Paulette went back to New Orleans and posted pictures of herself sitting on plush leather seats behind the steering wheel of what appeared to be a new Mercedes SUV. Paulette later told me she'd be addressing a crowd of 40,000 people over Labor Day weekend. She gave me the name of the event -- I asked her to repeat it so I knew I had it right -- but I couldn't find any evidence of it ever existing. And on Labor Day weekend, this woman who consistently posted on Facebook multiple times a day said nothing about a speaking engagement.Paulette continued to say she wasn't out for fame and attention but kept sharing glamor shots and pictures from TV and film sets. She posted about her daughter now having an agent but did not respond when I texted to congratulate her and asked to learn more. She has since blocked me from her personal Facebook account. It's what she does when people ask questions, I've been told time and again. One woman, after noticing Paulette's posts about her newfound fame and attention, simply asked her how she was paying it forward. She, too, got blocked.In November, Paulette posted a video in which she talked about a CNN reporter who had been on "a witch hunt" for six months. She'd been warned that I was working on a story -- "a negative article," she said -- and shared what she felt after seeing me in Washington."Her eyes were dark," she told her followers. "And I felt this spirit about her and it was very uncomfortable. ... My manager noticed something about her, too." (Her claims are) unfair to those women who truly endured those treatments to survive breast cancer. The exploitation ... has got to stop.Dr. Melanye Maclin, a Maryland dermatologistNot always beautifulLast fall, someone put me in touch with Dr. Melanye Maclin, a Maryland dermatologist who does research and has developed hair and skin care product lines. She has media and celebrity connections in the Washington area and says she was asked to help get Paulette publicity when she arrived in the nation's capital at the end of her walk. Maclin had been watching Paulette's journey and was intrigued, so it was easy enough for her to make a couple of quick calls. She invited Paulette to her home for lunch, where they discussed a campaign Maclin wanted to launch for her skincare line. It was to be called "Always Beautiful" and would be about capturing a person's inner beauty. Paulette seemed the "living example" of the message, and "Dr. Mac," as she's often called, imagined Paulette being the face of the campaign.A couple of friends, including a breast cancer surgeon, saw Maclin's enthusiasm about Paulette and told her to be cautious. But she, like so many others, wanted to believe. So did her friend Chantay Savage, a recording artist whose remake of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" went gold. Savage's mother died of breast cancer, and she recorded a song, "Always Beautiful," for Dr. Mac. The song was released on social media and featured Paulette in the video. The flood of negative remarks and accusations about Paulette was almost immediate. They took the doctor and Savage by surprise, and they yanked the video. They also began to look at what Paulette's critics were posting. In an email, Maclin reflected more on what she'd seen on Paulette's Facebook page and heard from Paulette directly. "She does not display hyperpigmentation from radiation or scars claimed from the multiple surgeries due to admitted liver and lung metastasis," Maclin wrote.The breast surgeon I'd enlisted to look at the limited medical records I had about Paulette agreed that the photos show no obvious sign of radiation or additional surgeries, but also reserved judgment, saying some people are less likely to scar. But there was more from Maclin, who added, "It was also bizarre that she told me that she did not do chemotherapy," contradicting the story she has told on social media. Her claims are "unfair to those women who truly endured those treatments to survive breast cancer," Maclin said. "The exploitation ... has got to stop."Paulette Leaphart's walk stirred up a media frenzy. Her image and story appeared in print, online and across screens around the globe. The media and the messageOne leader in breast cancer activism, who didn't want to be named, encouraged me to think about Paulette in a different way. Yes, she may be prone to exaggeration and not entirely believable, but if she touches one person, if she inspires one woman to get a mammogram, isn't that a win? And, this activist added, Paulette largely speaks to a population that deserves attention. Black women are less likely to receive breast cancer diagnoses at an early stage than are white women, are more likely to receive a diagnosis of triple-negative breast cancer (which means cancer cells don't have the receptors to respond to certain drugs and therapies) and have the lowest breast cancer survival rate of any ethnic or racial group, according to the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The difference in mortality rates can be attributed to the stage of diagnosis, tumor characteristics and issues such as obesity. But it is also influenced by levels of education and access to treatment and health insurance, a comprehensive American Cancer Society report says. Furthermore, Paulette has tapped into an audience that shares her faith. If women are taking notice and paying more attention to their breasts because of her, that may be all that matters. The message may be more important than the messenger. There's no way to measure how much of a difference Paulette Leaphart made in shaping the conversation about cancer in this country. But then another activist, who also didn't want to be named, described Paulette as dangerous. This activist works with women with stage 4 metastatic cancer, women whose cancer has spread to other organs, usually the bones, brain, liver or lungs. Their survival rate is the lowest, and these women, this activist said, are facing the end.For a while, she followed Paulette's journey. Then, she said, she saw a Facebook post about a woman with stage 4 who Paulette said successfully prayed away her cancer."That was it for me," said the activist, who then unfriended Paulette. "Does that mean my friends weren't worthy of being saved?" Others voiced concerns about her preying on people's emotions and their wallets while standing on a pedestal for a cause that seemed undefined. I wondered if other journalists had faced doubts and hurdles; I wanted to hear their experiences covering Paulette. One newspaper reporter, on condition of anonymity, admitted to having had some misgivings but was on a tight deadline and being pushed to publish. Another piece was put out by someone who, it turned out, wasn't a journalist and didn't have the tools or obligation to check Paulette's story. What mattered most in this case, I was told, was giving voice to the struggles she represented. Other journalists I contacted didn't want to comment at all. Upworthy, a website for viral content, reached out to Emily MacKenzie, the documentary filmmaker, to see if she could vouch for Paulette's story. MacKenzie said she told them that, in good conscience, she could not and advised the site against sharing any videos of Paulette. The site did anyway, and one video it posted in June got more than 20 million views, which only prompted other outlets to tell Paulette's story. I reached out to people at Upworthy, including the vice president who MacKenzie said she spoke to, more than half a dozen times. I said I wanted to learn about their vetting process and the decision to share videos about Paulette. I never got a response.Features about Paulette continued to come out after her walk. She made the Washington Post, ESPN and chatted with Roland Martin on News One. She was interviewed for the BBC World Service Newshour, mentioned in a Sports Illustrated column and photographed for The New York Times. More recently, she was featured in the February issue of Washingtonian. Paulette Leaphart appeared on TV and film sets after her walk ended and posted selfies with Will Smith and Scott Bakula.Hollywood sets and setbacksBefore she blocked me from seeing her Facebook page, I checked on her social media presence from time to time. The images were often a mixture of selfies and pictures of her posing, impeccably made up and modeling new clothes. She appeared on the sets of CBS' "NCIS: New Orleans" and the upcoming movie "Girls Trip," posting pictures with stars and mentioning names like Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith. She shared a shot with Scott Bakula on the "NCIS" set, and another with Will Smith, who was visiting the "Girls Trip" set. "Will Smith heard about my story and came over to shake my hand," she wrote. Other photos showed her home in bed, giving two thumbs up from a gurney in an ambulance and in a hospital room bed. She pleaded for prayers and talked about pain and setbacks. At one point she feared she had kidney cancer and asked people to pray for her. It turned out to be a kidney stone. She worried a lump under her arm was the return of breast cancer, and supporters overwhelmed her with more prayers. It was a cyst.One day she'd be listless under the covers; another she'd be dolled up in clothes she said were created specifically for her. She'd stand beside people she'd identify as her personal stylist, her fashion consultant, her makeup artist.We need this story. We need this woman before us. We need this woman and what she did on the tip of our tongues.Nikky Finney, poet and author At one point over the summer, she encouraged people to sign a petition for a proposed "cancer relief bill" written by a Michigan resident. But that push seemed sporadic. Since then, I've used other Facebook accounts to keep tabs on her posts. She's been the keynote speaker at a few events. She walked into turquoise waters while on a Caribbean cruise. She drove to Florida to receive, by her own account, $27,000 of dental work free of charge. In early October, she attended the espnW Women + Sports Summit in California. She was flown first class, put up in a posh resort and walked away with $400 in Adidas swag. She was also flown to ESPN's headquarters in December, where she was given the espnW Pegasus Award for Inspiration.An esteemed poet and author, Nikky Finney, took to the stage at the summit in California to share "Topless in America," an original and powerful piece she wrote in Paulette's honor. I reached out to Finney to see if she was aware of the questions swirling around Paulette's story. She didn't respond. On her website, Finney calls Paulette her "shero." She says she "stopped me in my tracks and reminded me of what a woman is truly made of: Iron & Lavender." "We need this story. We need this woman before us," Finney writes. "We need this woman and what she did on the tip of our tongues."As the heat rolled in late last spring, Paulette Leaphart began to slow down. She said she hoped to walk 20 miles a day, rather than the up to 40 miles a day that she said she'd walked previously. The 'real Paulette'?What Paulette did should be on the tips of our tongues, but not because she deserves praise, others say. Annette Johnson of Beaumont, Texas, has known Paulette for several decades. She knows some of Paulette's relatives and attended the same church when they were both living in Mississippi.Paulette reached out to Johnson in October 2013, months after Johnson was diagnosed with breast cancer and Paulette's cousin, Monique McDonald, had died. This was a few months before Paulette's own diagnosis. Johnson said Paulette wanted to hear all about what she was going through. "Then, all of a sudden, she came down with cancer," Johnson said. "And I was really sympathetic."But as time went on, Johnson began to notice something strange. She said Paulette's Facebook posts began to mirror a little too closely the experiences Johnson had shared in phone conversations with Paulette. Johnson rattled off her dietary and workout regimens, only to see Paulette post them as if they were her own. She told Paulette she lost her hair after the first chemo treatment, and all of a sudden, she said, Paulette had shaved her head. She mentioned how she wasn't able to get a chemo treatment when her white blood cell count was too high. The same thing happened to Paulette. Johnson told her that during a workup, doctors found a spot on her liver. Paulette's doctors found one, too. Johnson made an unusual request of her doctors: that she be allowed to keep her chemo port when it was taken out; it had been her "lifeline," she said. The next thing she knew, Paulette was boasting about keeping hers. "Can you not have an original thought of your own?" Johnson said she thought. To have your story pimped, played and punked by someone for their own selfish gain is a sin and a shame.Annette Johnson, a longtime acquaintance of PauletteAnd then there was this: She told Paulette she was marrying her long-lost love. Soon after, Johnson said, Paulette told her she was marrying her long-lost love, too. But Sidney Williams, Paulette's third husband and the supposed long-lost love, said the two had met online only months before.There were other things about Paulette's story that raised questions. When Johnson was in the throes of treatment, she felt good about herself if she could walk to the kitchen and back to bed. Yet here was Paulette driving cross-country in Williams' car. "You drove yourself back in the midst of treatment? I didn't drive for a year," Johnson remembered saying. "How did you do that?""I just did it," she recalled Paulette answering. Paulette took pictures of herself in emergency waiting rooms just about every week, Johnson said. Other Facebook posts showed Paulette bouncing around, going on vacations, just as she was claiming to be broke and deathly ill. And she was taking repeated breaks from her treatment, which made no sense to Johnson.Johnson could no longer believe her. She'd opened up, shared her pain, thought she was confiding in and bolstering a fellow survivor. She felt like she'd been had, and was angry because she'd defended Paulette to others."We share our stories to encourage another sister or brother who is going through the process. We open up and give our hearts," she said. "To have your story pimped, played and punked by someone for their own selfish gain is a sin and a shame." What Paulette has done "hurts me to the core," Johnson said. She said she wants the "real Paulette" to stand up. "I encourage her to tell her own story."Last July, after arriving in Washington, Paulette Leaphart set out to lobby Congress. Her message, however, wasn't entirely clear. The devil on her back I reached out to a psychologist after reading her blog post about the "psychology of hero worship." She told me everyone has access to 15 minutes -- and more -- of fame these days. To stand out, though, people have to "up the ante and up the storytelling." In the case of Paulette, I can't help but believe she upped that ante to her own detriment. On December 13, then-President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a $6.3 billion bill that includes $4.8 billion for medical research for cancer and other diseases.Paulette took to Facebook Live to talk about the good news. She said her phone had been "blowing up" with messages. "I'm trying not to cry," she said. "But God said that there was going to be a cure, and he asked me to take that walk to talk to Congress and get their attention." I was there for the first two of her meetings on the Hill, along with an entourage of her children, some of her friends and fans, and a woman who says she is Paulette's manager. Paulette met with aides in both cases, though Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan came in at the very end of her meeting in his office and posed with her and others for pictures. She later posted Facebook pictures with Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr., D-New Jersey, and Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican. Perhaps she grew more effective as her visits continued. But in the meetings I attended, Paulette didn't seem to understand that the people she was meeting with were on her side -- that they, too, want a cure for cancer and more affordable health care. Nor did she get how the legislative system works or which laws -- including the Affordable Care Act -- were already in place.She complained about insurance and pharmaceutical companies, talked about being a business owner for 20 years who then became homeless. She said she made $1 too much to qualify for food stamps. She said she had to pay $5,000 a month for her blood disorder treatments. I could only surmise that this was in addition to the $2,500 to $5,000 a month she often said she needed to pay for her cancer treatments."You're preaching to the choir," an aide said. "This congressman shares your concerns."He explained to her how the system works, how there needs to be a certain number of votes to pass bills, how she needs to lobby in her own district to effect change. Paulette listened and demanded: "What's more important than human life?" This story wasn't just about Paulette. It's about our need to find -- and, for some of us, become -- heroes.There's no way to measure how much of a difference Paulette Leaphart made in shaping the conversation about cancer in this country. She touched many minds and hearts, but whether she did so in the most honest and transparent way remains questionable.The day after Christmas, she posted a new photo from a hospital bed. She complained of excruciating pain and revealed there was a new mass, this time next to her right ovary. My stomach dropped for her. She asked for prayers, and they came in by the hundreds.Then, in less than 24 hours, her longtime critic Kimberly McCarty shared an old post that questioned whether Paulette still had her ovaries. In the post, one of Paulette's daughters wrote that her mother's ovaries were being removed out of fear that the hormones produced by them were feeding her breast cancer. And, once again, I no longer knew what to believe or feel.Then came Facebook photos from Paulette. In one she was getting a vaginal ultrasound. In another, she was flashing the victory sign with her fingers and smiling as she was being pushed into an MRI machine. She posed next to the doctor who, she said, had just removed her ovaries. There was no cancer, she later reported. In the weeks before publishing this story, I set out to give Paulette a chance to address questions I still had and to respond to accusations made by others. I emailed her twice detailing my reporting and asking for answers about everything from her career and court judgments to her cancer and treatment. When I got no reply, I texted her and even had my editor send her a Facebook message. Then I called her. She indicated she had seen my questions and told me she didn't want to talk to me. Soon after my first email, Paulette thanked Jesus on Facebook for her "brand spanking new house" and shared a photograph of the home. "I obeyed him," she said of God, "even when the devil was riding my back." Days before we published this story, Paulette took to Facebook Live and said that about 25 years ago, after multiple suicide attempts and a nervous breakdown, she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder. She said 10 years of therapy helped her integrate more than 20 personalities. She said she was going public with this after reading about the movie "Split," by M. Night Shyamalan. Once more, I felt for her -- and wished I could know what to believe.Paulette likes to say that when life gave her lemons, she made lemonade. She adopted yellow as the color of her campaign and often says "yellow is the new pink." She once mused out loud as we walked in North Carolina whether the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the embodiment of all things pink and cancer, would put out a hit on her for stealing attention from its organization. I don't think I'll ever know the full truth about Paulette. But the color that comes to mind when I think of her is neither yellow nor pink. It's the murkiest of grays. CNN's Amy Roberts contributed research to this story.

Randi Kaye and Wayne Drash, CNN

2017-10-12 23:38:58

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/12/health/uganda-adoptions-investigation-ac360/index.html

Kids for sale: 'My mom was tricked' - CNN

A CNN exclusive investigation uncovers what could be a child trafficking scheme for adoptions after one mom blew the whistle.

health, Kids for sale: 'My mom was tricked' - CNN

Kids for sale: 'My mom was tricked'

(CNN)The 7-year-old girl, dressed in bright pink and holding one of her favorite stuffed animals, sees her mother for the first time in nearly a year. A brilliant smile spreads across Namata's face, punctuating her excitement.She and her mother are speaking via Skype more than 7,400 miles apart. Namata, or Mata as she's known, talks from the home of her adoptive parents in Ohio. Her mother watches via a laptop in Uganda, in a quiet spot away from her village.JUST WATCHEDPart 2 of CNN's exclusive investigation: Kids for SaleReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHPart 2 of CNN's exclusive investigation: Kids for Sale 09:15"Hello," Mata says. "How are you doing?"  Her mother laughs. She's in awe of laying eyes on the daughter she thought she'd lost forever. Mom holds a newborn, and Mata says she wants a closer look at her sister. Her mother stands and lifts the baby, cradling her over the computer screen. Mata beams, as does her adoptive mom, Jessica Davis. Read MoreAs the conversation continues, Mata wants answers. She wants to know why her mother gave her away.By the time the call ends, Mata's radiant smile has turned to sobs. "My mom was tricked," she says. "My mom was tricked."Her mother told her it was never her intent to give Mata up for good -- that she'd been deceived. She had been told that Mata would be given a great educational opportunity if she was sent away but that she would one day return. That Mom would always be a part of her daughter's life. JUST WATCHEDA Skype conversation changed everything for Namata, for her birth mother in Uganda and for her adoptive family in Ohio.ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHA Skype conversation changed everything for Namata, for her birth mother in Uganda and for her adoptive family in Ohio. 00:58For Mata's adoptive mother, the revelation was earth-shattering. Devastating. Traumatizing. Every possible emotion rolled into one.It also confirmed a gut feeling: that something was amiss about the story the Ohio-based adoption agency had told Jessica and her husband, Adam, about Mata's background. The agency, European Adoption Consultants, told them that Mata's father had died and that her mother neglected her and couldn't afford to feed her. The paperwork said Mata had never attended school.The 'orphan' I adopted from Uganda already had a familyBut in the months after she arrived in America, as Mata's command of English improved, she spoke glowingly about her mother. How they cooked together, how they went to church together and how her mother walked with her to school.The Skype conversation, on August 29, 2016, confirmed Jessica's suspicions. As she absorbed the news, Jessica realized that she didn't participate in an adoption at all but had unwittingly "participated in taking a child from a loving family."And she knew what she had to do: return Mata to her mother. 'Pull the wool over their eyes'The Davises shared their story exclusively with CNN, saying they believe that Ugandan children like Mata are being trafficked, with American families not knowing the real stories behind their adoptions. An investigation by CNN into this alleged trafficking scheme found that children are being taken from their homes in Uganda on the promise of better schooling, placed into orphanages even though they aren't orphans, and sold for as much as $15,000 each to unsuspecting American families. CNN's investigation discovered that multiple families were duped this way.Mata's home in Uganda; she was one of seven village children taken from their parents with the promise of better schooling.Keren Riley of Reunite, a grass-roots organization that helps return trafficked children to their birth mothers, says facilitators on the ground prey on vulnerable moms, often widows, promising educational opportunities for their children. The traffickers, she says, can include police and lawyers, teachers and local leaders. Complicating matters, there is no word for "adoption" in the language many Ugandan villagers speak, Riley says, so mothers are easily deceived. "It's easy to pull the wool over their eyes," says Riley, who arranged the video reunion between Mata and her birth mother. Traffickers "know when somebody has lost a husband in a tragic way and is vulnerable and is not coping -- and then they get flagged."That's exactly what happened in Mata's village, Riley says: A villager-turned-trafficker made a pitch at a local church and managed to get seven children into the adoption circuit, including Mata, who was sent to a place called God's Mercy, about a four-hour drive away. That's where the Davises met her: "She was at an orphanage. No toys. Bars on the windows," Jessica said.According to an affidavit obtained by CNN, Mata's mother ultimately told a Ugandan family court that she was grief-stricken after her husband died in a vehicle accident March 28, 2014, and was told about a way to get Mata a good education."I had not realized that I had gone through a process to take away my parental rights completely," the mother said in sworn testimony September 8, 2016. "I had all along thought and understood that the child was going to be educated and returned back to me."But the original orphan referral form that sent Mata to God's Mercy painted a different picture, saying the mother was "helpless" and "can't provide basic needs of the child for better growth." The referral form is dated October 21, 2014 -- exactly one week after the Davises say they got a call from European Adoption Consultants telling them Mata was available for adoption. At the time of that call, the Davises now believe, Mata wasn't an orphan at all but was still living at home with a mother who loved her. They believe she was pulled from her home and placed in the orphanage after the adoption agency found an American couple -- buyers, in a sense -- with money to adopt a child.The Ugandan government would later determine that Mata's mother had been deceived, with a Ugandan court finding that the referral form had been forged and wasn't actually signed by Ugandan police. Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesMata, as she is known, became part of Jessica and Adam Davis' family, along with their daughters Abby, left, and Taylor and sons Owen, center, and Isaac.Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesAbby Davis gives Mata a kiss the day she officially became part of the family.Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesJessica Davis says her children and Mata became fast friends, bonding over bubbles and games of tag.Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesMata saw snow in the US, a rarity in Uganda. Upon her return, she shared this picture with other children in her village.Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United States"If our child had been taken from us, we would want our child back," says Adam Davis, with Jessica and Mata.Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesThe Davis family made sure there was a crowd at the airport to welcome Mata to the US. They had a smaller goodbye party when Mata returned home. "We were trying not to cry, because Mata was happy," Jessica says.Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Mata's life in the United StatesJessica Davis used her skills as a professional photographer to chronicle her family's life with Mata, including this trip to the beach.Hide Caption 7 of 7Believing that the story in the referral form was false, the Davises began their own investigation and contacted the US State Department about the discrepancies."We were told her father was deceased, that she was being severely neglected at home and her mother was leaving her open to abuse, leaving her for days," Jessica Davis says. "It was a pretty dramatic file."A woman named Debra Parris with European Adoption Consultants was the first person to tell the Davises about Mata, saying they needed to decide quickly whether they wanted to pursue the adoption.Adam Davis says he's never forgotten that phone call because, amid the pain of hearing about Mata's background, there was a moment of joy: "When she said her name, it was so beautiful." It made the adoption process real.Little did he know that it was the beginning of a heart-wrenching journey.Shuttered business, elusive ownerThe headquarters of European Adoption Consultants, or EAC, sits abandoned on a manicured lawn in a business park in Strongsville, Ohio, outside Cleveland. A glimpse inside its front windows reveals time cards still hanging on a wall and brooms sitting on the floor amid a smattering of office furniture.  The company logo remains emblazoned on the side of the building, but a letter is missing from its address along Alameda Drive."Alameda Dive," it says.European Adoption Consultants placed more than 2,000 overseas children in US homes since the early 1990s before the State Department debarred the agency in December.The building was shuttered in December after the State Department debarred the agency for three years -- meaning it could no longer place children in homes. The FBI has since raided the building, taking away boxes of materials, and the Ohio attorney general's office filed suit in June to dissolve the adoption agency altogether. The State Department said EAC "failed to adequately supervise its providers in foreign countries to ensure" that they didn't engage in the "sale, abduction, exploitation or trafficking of children."It said that EAC had exhibited "a pattern of serious, willful or grossly negligent failure to comply" with standards for international adoption and that it failed safety procedures that prevent "solicitation of bribes" and "fraudulently obtaining birth parent consent." "EAC offered consideration to birth parents to induce them to release their children for adoption" and failed to take the proper steps to make sure birth parents consented to the termination of their parental rights in accordance with applicable laws, the State Department determined. "Failure to provide adequate supervision contributed to many of the violations described above," the department said. View note View note View note View note Four months after the State Department took action against EAC, the Ugandan government shut down God's Mercy orphanage, where Mata had been sent. It told CNN in a letter that the orphanage had been closed for "trafficking of children," "operating the children's home illegally" and "processing guardianship orders fraudulently." The government also found that all of the guardianship orders processed for children from God's Mercy were done through a Ugandan law firm that was dealing directly with EAC, according to the letter, which was signed by Pius Bigirimana, permanent secretary for Uganda's Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development. CNN was unable to reach anyone from the orphanage. But the lawyer who processed the adoptions for EAC at God's Mercy, Dorah Mirembe, denied any wrongdoing by the orphanage. CNN spoke to Mirembe by phone, and she insisted that children are not being trafficked in Uganda through orphanages and that neither she nor EAC ever trafficked children.She also said Mata's birth mother knew that her daughter was being adopted and taken to America, despite the Ugandan court's finding that Mata's mother had been lied to. She said the same about another woman from the same village whose daughter, CNN learned, also was sent to God's Mercy and placed with adoptive American parents by EAC.According to the Ohio attorney general's lawsuit, about 300 families had paid EAC for international adoptions that were in various stages when the agency was debarred. The State Department said that those cases would have to be transferred to other approved adoption providers and that it was helping guide a number of families through the process.  JUST WATCHEDMata plays with her adopted sisterReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMata plays with her adopted sister 00:10The State Department allegations effectively brought to a close an agency that had placed more than 2,000 children from overseas in homes across America since 1991 -- a dream that reportedly began after its founder, Margaret Cole, lost a child to SIDS. Cole said she already had four children, but after the death of her fifth child, a girl, she established the adoption agency and soon flew to Russia to set up contacts for adoptions, the start of what she said was her new life mission."The agency is the only good thing that's happened from my daughter's death," she told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper in 1995.The agency flourished. As EAC grew, it handled adoptions in more than a dozen countries, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Haiti, Russia and Uganda. Tax records from 2000 to 2015 show that EAC reported more than $76.1 million in revenue and more than $76.3 million in expenses over that period.In a 2004 Cleveland Magazine story in which several families raised questions about their EAC adoptions, Cole was asked how she avoided crooks amid the shadowy business of international adoptions."I just have a radar," she said. Margaret Cole said she started EAC after she lost a child to SIDS. CNN tried to interview Cole at seven properties associated with her, but she could not be located.CNN wanted Cole to answer similar questions about the Davises' adoption and others, the State Department allegations and the FBI investigation. Was EAC purposely deceiving families as part of a scheme to traffic children for profit? Or was it simply negligent, unaware due to a lack of background checks that the children it was getting from Uganda were being trafficked? Could EAC also have been a victim of this apparent trafficking scheme? CNN made repeated phone and email requests for comment to Cole, with no response. We visited seven properties associated with the EAC founder -- six locations in Ohio, one of which was raided by the FBI, and one in Florida -- but Cole was nowhere to be found. CNN reached out to one of Cole's daughters about speaking with her but never heard back.JUST WATCHEDAnderson Cooper talks with Randi Kaye about her investigationReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHAnderson Cooper talks with Randi Kaye about her investigation 02:23However, we tracked down Parris, the woman who notified the Davises about Mata, who had identified herself to Mata's adoptive parents as the director of EAC's African adoption program. In YouTube videos, Parris speaks of life-changing moments, of traveling with adoptive parents to Africa to meet children for the first time. "A lot of times, I take five or six sets of parents with me and get to see children experience their parents for the first time," Parris says in one video. "For us, that's something that is a reward at the end of the day."But on a recent summer day, Parris was in no mood to talk. After trying to reach her by phone numerous times, CNN confronted her outside her son's home in Lake Dallas, Texas. We asked whether we could talk to her for a moment about Uganda adoptions."No," Parris responded. She went on to deny being EAC's Africa head and playing a role in organizing Ugandan adoptions.Instead, she said "there were people in Uganda who did it." The adoptive families said Debra Parris was their main contact with EAC. When we tracked her down, Parris denied being EAC's Africa head or playing a role in organizing Ugandan adoptions.We continued to press, asking whether the adoptive and birth mothers had been lied to."No. Absolutely not," Parris said.No charges have been filed against Cole, Parris or EAC. The FBI declined to comment, saying its investigation is ongoing.Not in it 'to buy a child'Around the time the Davises realized that their adoption was a sham, a family in West Virginia made a similar discovery. Stacey Wells and her husband, Shawn, had adopted a 7-year-old girl named Violah from Uganda using EAC. Parris, the family says, was their EAC contact for the adoption. Like Jessica Davis, Stacey Wells described Parris as aggressive on the phone, demanding an answer right away as to whether they'd take the child.For the Wellses, questions began mounting in the year Violah lived with them. Things didn't add up. As her English improved, she'd talk about walking with her mother to church and cooking dinner with her -- not the story of abandonment the Wellses had been told by the agency. Violah spoke of the day she and her sister were ripped away from their mother, with the girls screaming and crying. "Her experience in her home just did not match the paperwork," Stacey Wells says.Then, one night in September, Shawn Wells went to the Facebook page of Reunite. It had the story of a woman who said her children were taken away against her will. Shawn called his wife over to the computer. They were shocked. "That's Violah's mother," Stacey said. "That's her."Stacey Wells adopted Violah, thinking she'd been abandoned by her mother. "After the dad died, they told us, she didn't feed them, that they were found sick, dying, basically."It's not uncommon in Uganda for American adoptive parents to be in court with a biological mother -- proceedings that happen quickly, often without translators, the birth mother not fully understanding what she's agreed to and the American parents equally confused about what's transpiring. Such was the case with the Wellses, who were devastated after seeing the Facebook page."We were just sick," Stacey says, "because, really, the lie she had been given."They already had two children when they took in Violah. They thought they were giving an orphan a home. Instead, Stacey says, "she was made an orphan.""I just wasn't in it to buy a child."Like the Davises, they began the extraordinary step of returning Violah, who hailed from the same Ugandan village as Mata and had been sent to the same orphanage, God's Mercy. The Wellses reached out to Reunite's Riley, who said Violah's birth mother was also lied to by local traffickers using the same false promise of education in America. Violah was one of four girls taken from her mother. One was previously reunited with her; two others remain missing, believed to be in homes in America."They are getting the orphans because there is a dollar sign, you know. A market's been created," Stacey says. Like the Davises, the Wellses paid about $15,000 to EAC. They said they spent their life savings on the adoption. Both Jessica Davis and Stacey Wells have been interviewed by the FBI.In November, Stacey Wells brought Violah back to her home village, an emotional moment that is forever seared in Stacey's mind. Violah's mother emerged from a little shop where she worked and sprinted toward them. She wrapped her arms around Stacey and then gave Violah a giant hug.  Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyViolah's mother embraces her daughter and Stacey Wells, the woman who adopted Violah and then returned the girl to her Ugandan village. "I'm very happy and very grateful," Violah's mother said.Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyAfter her return, Violah, right, met with her sister, Resty, center, and Mata, left. Mata was taken from the same Ugandan village and also adopted by a US family. Like Violah, she was returned to her birth mother. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyStacey Wells and Violah show villagers images on a smartphone. In America, Wells homeschooled Violah and bought her a pass to a local YMCA, where she enjoyed swimming.Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyViolah's description of her mother raised a red flag for Wells. Violah said her mother cooked for her, made her fish and walked to church with her. The paperwork Wells had been given told another story.Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyWells and her husband discovered the truth when they found a Facebook page for Reunite and saw a photo of a woman who claimed that her children had been taken. "We said, 'that's Violah's mother,' " Wells said. "And we were just sick." Here, Ugandan investigators join Violah and her mother (center, in gray shirt) for the reunion.Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyBack in her village, Violah was also reunited with her great-grandmother. Wells and her husband thought they were giving an abandoned orphan a home. Instead, Stacey says, Violah "was made an orphan."Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Violah is reunited with her familyViolah also was greeted by jubilant siblings. Her oldest brother took her by the hands and broke out in dance, swinging her around in celebration. "In that moment," Stacey says, crying, "I knew she was where she was meant to be."Hide Caption 7 of 7At her home, Violah was greeted by jubilant siblings. Her oldest brother took her by the hands and broke out in a dance, swinging her around in celebration."In that moment," Stacey says, crying, "I knew she was where she was meant to be."Saying goodbye  After learning about Mata's background, Jessica Davis says, her mantra became "I want the truth for my child, because living a lie will never work." Unsure how to proceed, she contacted the State Department. Jessica said that at one point, the department told her, "you can just keep her if you want.""I said to them, 'I didn't purchase her at Walmart.' "She urged government officials not to notify the adoption agency, fearing that something could happen to Mata's birth mother in retaliation.After a nearly three-year saga, Jessica and Adam Davis were exhausted, physically and emotionally. They'd spent about $65,000 on the adoption, flights to Uganda, fees and other expenses.The Davises in court the day an Ohio judge made Mata's adoption official. Mata bonded with her new siblings quickly, Jessica says: "They were playing tag; they were doing bubbles. ... It was amazing."At first, adopting had seemed the right thing to do. It was in line with their strong Christian beliefs, and it allowed Adam to practice what he preaches as an associate pastor at a Methodist church in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Blessed with four children of their own, they believed that adopting an orphan who was in a desperate situation was a way of making something good happen in a difficult world.They opened their home and their hearts, only to suffer the crushing blow of what really transpired.JUST WATCHEDMata leaves for UgandaReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMata leaves for Uganda 00:56"We unwittingly placed an order for a child," Adam says. "The only trauma this poor kid ever experienced was because we essentially placed an order for a child.""They selected her for us," Jessica adds.The Davises filed paperwork to have Mata's adoption vacated, and in September, the Ugandan government gave parental rights back to her birth mother.With Riley's help, Mata's return was set in motion. The family threw her a goodbye party before leaving America last fall. The Davises told their four other children to put on happy faces -- and try not to cry in front of Mata. Home videos provide a glimpse into the emotional scene. "What's today?" asks Jessica."I'm going home," Mata says, smiling. "Are you excited?""Yeah." Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata was reunited with her mother in their Ugandan village. "I had not realized that I had gone through a process to take away my parental rights completely," her mother told a Ugandan court.Hide Caption 1 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyAdam Davis, right, accompanied Namata on her return journey to Uganda while his wife, Jessica, stayed home with their children. "If our child had been taken from us," he said, "we would want our child back."Hide Caption 2 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata, as she's known, shows village children a photo of her playing in the snow while she lived with the Davises in Ohio. Hide Caption 3 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata holds her baby sister, whom she first met via Skype while talking with her mother from Ohio. It was during that call that Mata realized her mother hadn't given her up for adoption. "My mom was tricked," she says.Hide Caption 4 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata back home in her village in Uganda. As her English improved during her time in the US, she spoke glowingly about her mother -- which didn't match the story her adoptive parents had been told.Hide Caption 5 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata told her adoptive parents how she and her mother cooked together, went to church together and walked to school together. The paperwork from the adoption agency said Mata had never attended school.Hide Caption 6 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata's mother, left, thought she was giving her daughter a chance at a better education, not giving her away for adoption. When the Davises learned of the deception, they knew they had to return Mata to her mother. Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: Mata is reunited with her familyMata, left, and Violah were taken from the same village and adopted by two US families. After they were returned to their mothers, the girls became fast friends.Hide Caption 8 of 8The first thing she'll do when she sees her mom, she says, is "hug her."Soon, Mata and Adam were on a 14-hour flight to Uganda while Jessica and the rest of the family stayed home. Mata had lived with the Davises for a year, blending in well with their other children and adapting to life in America.Returning her was not only the right thing to do -- in the Davises' mind, it was the only thing to do.JUST WATCHEDMata and her mom reuniteReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMata and her mom reunite 00:22The day after landing in Uganda, Adam and Mata traveled to her village. As they approached her home, Adam told Mata that he loved her and was proud to have been her dad for the past year.When Mata and her mother saw each other for the first time, Adam said, it was like the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son. Her mother rushed toward Mata, scooping her into her arms. They were laughing and crying, overwhelmed with pure joy."I've never seen anything like it," Adam says.Mata was home.EpilogueThe Davises still speak to Mata via Skype every couple of months. She's back in school in her village and enjoying her new sister. The Wellses have kept in touch with Violah, too. Mata and Violah have become friends and have blossomed since returning home.Mata, left, and Violah met up in the village after their return. "The only trauma this poor kid ever experienced," says Mata's adoptive father, Adam Davis, "was because we essentially placed an order for a child."When asked how she felt since Mata's return, her mother said with a smile, "I'm very, very, very happy."Violah's mother echoed that sentiment: "I'm very happy and very grateful."Two of her daughters remain missing, however. Riley, of Reunite, says she has notified the two families in America who she believes adopted them. She has not heard back.How to HelpThe families featured in our story worked with Keren Riley of Reunite to help reunite their adopted children with their birth mothers. Riley, a UK citizen living in Uganda since 2010, established the grassroots organization to help provide services to children without parental care, and to help children who have been trafficked or otherwise lost in the system reunite with their Ugandan families. Riley has set up a GoFundMe page where she is accepting donations. "Both families are aware of the truth," Riley says. "They appear to be continuing to live their lives and let the children believe what they've been told, which isn't true at all."A study from 2015 by the Ugandan government, sponsored by UNICEF, found that Ugandan parents were being "bribed" and "deceived," often with financial incentives, and that the orphanages were complicit. The report says orphanages don't always properly verify information about children's histories before taking them in. The findings of that study match up in many ways with what happened to Mata and Violah and support what CNN found.CNN's Kerry Rubin and Ismael Estrada contributed to this report.

Story by Wayne Drash, CNN Video by Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield, CNN

2018-02-11 21:11:31

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/11/health/aetna-california-investigation/index.html

State launches Aetna probe after stunning admission - CNN

California's insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after learning a former medical director for the insurer admitted under oath he never looked at patients' records when deciding whether to approve or deny care.

health, State launches Aetna probe after stunning admission - CNN

CNN Exclusive: California launches investigation following stunning admission by Aetna medical director

(CNN)California's insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after learning a former medical director for the insurer admitted under oath he never looked at patients' records when deciding whether to approve or deny care.California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones expressed outrage after CNN showed him a transcript of the testimony and said his office is looking into how widespread the practice is within Aetna."If the health insurer is making decisions to deny coverage without a physician actually ever reviewing medical records, that's of significant concern to me as insurance commissioner in California -- and potentially a violation of law," he said.Aetna, the nation's third-largest insurance provider with 23.1 million customers, told CNN it looked forward to "explaining our clinical review process" to the commissioner.California insurance commissioner Dave Jones launched the investigation after being contacted by CNN.The California probe centers on a deposition by Dr. Jay Ken Iinuma, who served as medical director for Aetna for Southern California from March 2012 to February 2015, according to the insurer. Read MoreDuring the deposition, the doctor said he was following Aetna's training, in which nurses reviewed records and made recommendations to him. Jones said his expectation would be "that physicians would be reviewing treatment authorization requests," and that it's troubling that "during the entire course of time he was employed at Aetna, he never once looked at patients' medical records himself." "It's hard to imagine that in that entire course in time, there weren't any cases in which a decision about the denial of coverage ought to have been made by someone trained as a physician, as opposed to some other licensed professional," Jones told CNN. "That's why we've contacted Aetna and asked that they provide us information about how they are making these claims decisions and why we've opened this investigation."The insurance commissioner said Californians who believe they may have been adversely affected by Aetna's decisions should contact his office.Members of the medical community expressed similar shock, saying Iinuma's deposition leads to questions about Aetna's practices across the country."Oh my God. Are you serious? That is incredible," said Dr. Anne-Marie Irani when told of the medical director's testimony. Irani is a professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at the Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU and a former member of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology's board of directors."This is potentially a huge, huge story and quite frankly may reshape how insurance functions," said Dr. Andrew Murphy, who, like Irani, is a renowned fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. He recently served on the academy's board of directors.The Gillen Washington caseGillen Washington, 23, says he hopes to force change at Aetna.The deposition by Aetna's former medical director came as part of a lawsuit filed against Aetna by a college student who suffers from a rare immune disorder. The case is expected to go to trial later this week in California Superior Court. Gillen Washington, 23, is suing Aetna for breach of contract and bad faith, saying he was denied coverage for an infusion of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) when he was 19. His suit alleges Aetna's "reckless withholding of benefits almost killed him."Aetna has rejected the allegations, saying Washington failed to comply with their requests for blood work. Washington, who was diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency, or CVID, in high school, became a new Aetna patient in January 2014 after being insured by Kaiser. Aetna initially paid for his treatments after each infusion, which can cost up to $20,000. But when Washington's clinic asked Aetna to pre-authorize a November 2014 infusion, Aetna says it was obligated to review his medical record. That's when it saw his last blood work had been done three years earlier for Kaiser.Despite being told by his own doctor's office that he needed to come in for new blood work, Washington failed to do so for several months until he got so sick he ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung.Once his blood was tested, Aetna resumed covering his infusions and pre-certified him for a year. Despite that, according to Aetna, Washington continued to miss infusions.Washington's suit counters that Aetna ignored his treating physician, who appealed on his behalf months before his hospitalization that the treatment was medically necessary "to prevent acute and long-term problems.""Aetna is blaming me for what happened," Washington told CNN. "I'll just be honest, it's infuriating to me. I want Aetna to be made to change."During his videotaped deposition in October 2016, Iinuma -- who signed the pre-authorization denial -- said he never read Washington's medical records and knew next to nothing about his disorder.Intravenous immunoglobulin can cost as much as $20,000 per treatment. It helps patients like Gillen Washington stave off infection.Questioned about Washington's condition, Iinuma said he wasn't sure what the drug of choice would be for people who suffer from his condition.Iinuma further says he's not sure what the symptoms are for the disorder or what might happen if treatment is suddenly stopped for a patient."Do I know what happens?" the doctor said. "Again, I'm not sure. ... I don't treat it."Iinuma said he never looked at a patient's medical records while at Aetna. He says that was Aetna protocol and that he based his decision off "pertinent information" provided to him by a nurse."Did you ever look at medical records?" Scott Glovsky, Washington's attorney, asked Iinuma in the deposition."No, I did not," the doctor says, shaking his head."So as part of your custom and practice in making decisions, you would rely on what the nurse had prepared for you?" Glovsky asks."Correct."Iinuma said nearly all of his work was conducted online. Once in a while, he said, he might place a phone call to the nurse for more details.How many times might he call a nurse over the course of a month?"Zero to one," he said.Glovsky told CNN he had "never heard such explosive testimony in two decades of deposing insurance company review doctors."Aetna's responseAetna defended Iinuma, who is no longer with the company, saying in its legal brief that he relied on his "years of experience" as a trained physician in making his decision about Washington's treatment and that he was following Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletin appropriately."Dr. Iinuma's decision was correct," Aetna said in court papers. "Plaintiff has asserted throughout this litigation that Dr. Iinuma had no medical basis for his decision that 2011 lab tests were outdated and that Dr. Iinuma's decision was incorrect. Plaintiff is wrong on both counts." Gillen Washington receives an infusion of the medicine needed to boost his immune system. He calls it "the magic juice."In its trial brief, Aetna said: "Given that Aetna does not directly provide medical care to its members, Aetna needs to obtain medical records from members and their doctors to evaluate whether services are 'medically necessary.' Aetna employs nurses to gather the medical records and coordinate with the offices of treating physicians, and Aetna employs doctors to make the actual coverage-related determinations."In addition to applying their clinical judgment, the Aetna doctors and nurses use Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletins ('CPBs') to determine what medical records to request, and whether those records satisfy medical necessity criteria to support coverage. These CPBs reflect the current standard of care in the medical community. They are frequently updated, and are publicly available for any treating physician to review."Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said he couldn't comment specifically on Washington's case, but what drew his interest was the medical director's admission of not looking at patients' medical records."What I'm responding to is the portion of his deposition transcript in which he said as the medical director, he wasn't actually reviewing medical records," Jones told CNN.He said his investigation will review every individual denial of coverage or pre-authorization during the medical director's tenure to determine "whether it was appropriate or not for that decision to be made by someone other than a physician."If the probe determines that violations occurred, he said, California insurance code sets monetary penalties for each individual violation.Girl has blunt message for Aetna after her brain surgery request was deniedCNN has made numerous phone calls to Iinuma's office for comment but has not heard back. Heather Richardson, an attorney representing Aetna, declined to answer any questions. Asked about the California investigation, Aetna gave this written statement to CNN:"We have yet to hear from Commissioner Jones but look forward to explaining our clinical review process."Aetna medical directors are trained to review all available medical information -- including medical records -- to make an informed decision. As part of our review process, medical directors are provided all submitted medical records, and also receive a case synopsis and review performed by a nurse. "Medical directors -- and all of our clinicians -- take their duties and responsibilities as medical professionals incredibly seriously. Similar to most other clinical environments, our medical directors work collaboratively with our nurses who are involved in these cases and factor in their input as part of the decision-making process."Gillen Washington became emaciated and gravely ill after four months without treatment.'A huge admission'Dr. Arthur Caplan, founding director of the division of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, described Iinuma's testimony as "a huge admission of fundamental immorality.""People desperate for care expect at least a fair review by the payer. This reeks of indifference to patients," Caplan said, adding the testimony shows there "needs to be more transparency and accountability" from private, for-profit insurers in making these decisions.Murphy, the former American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology board member, said he was "shocked" and "flabbergasted" by the medical director's admission. "This is something that all of us have long suspected, but to actually have an Aetna medical director admit he hasn't even looked at medical records, that's not good," said Murphy, who runs an allergy and immunology practice west of Philadelphia."If he has not looked at medical records or engaged the prescribing physician in a conversation -- and decisions were made without that input -- then yeah, you'd have to question every single case he reviewed." Murphy said when he and other doctors seek a much-needed treatment for a patient, they expect the medical director of an insurance company to have considered every possible factor when deciding on the best option for care. Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter."We run into the prior authorization issues when we are renewing therapy, when the patient's insurance changes or when an insurance company changes requirements," he said."Dealing with these denials is very time consuming. A great deal of nursing time is spent filling and refilling out paperwork trying to get the patient treatment."If that does not work, then physicians need to get involved and demand medical director involvement, which may or may not occur in a timely fashion -- or sometimes not at all," he said. "It's very frustrating."

Story by Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor. Graphics and data analysis by Sergio Hernandez, CNN

2017-06-02 21:01:51

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/us/who-commits-hate-crimes/index.html

The four reasons people commit hate crimes - CNN

Most hate crimes are committed by four types of people, according to an obscure study used by FBI.

us, The four reasons people commit hate crimes - CNN

The four reasons people commit hate crimes

(CNN)What motivated the man who killed two people on a Portland train after shouting anti-Muslim slurs? What prompted the person, or people, who spray-painted the N-word on an NBA star's home? What ideas would incite an Israeli teen charged with threatening dozens of Jewish centers in the US, throwing communities into chaos and terrifying the parents of young children? We call them all "hate crimes," as if the same motivation lurks behind each of these disparate incidents. But that term is outdated and inaccurate, experts say. What spurs offenders into action is rarely animosity alone. It's a toxic mix of emotions, from anger to fear to indignation. And, as the FBI says, "hate itself is not a crime." Instead, bias is considered an "added element" to offenses like murder, arson and vandalism, leading at times to longer prison sentences. Read MoreThe public and prosecutors often disagree on what constitutes a hate crime. Besieged minorities like Muslims and transgender people often see an assault on one of them as an attack on their entire community, especially in this era of intense rancor and fear. Between the November election and February, for instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 1,300 "hate incidents" across the country. But how do prosecutors determine the role hate had in a given crime? For more than two decades, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have relied on a somewhat obscure study to help spot bias in criminal offenses.In 1993, Jack McDevitt and Jack Levin, two social scientists in Boston, examined 169 hate-crime case files at the Boston Police Department. They then interviewed victims, offenders and investigators. McDevitt and Levin found that there are four main kinds of hate crimes, ranging from thrill-seekers, the most common; to "mission-offenders," the rare but often lethal hardcore hatemongers. Knowing the differences between the types of hate crimes -- and their motivations -- not only helps law enforcement better understand them, McDevitt said, it also helps find perpetrators and put them in prison. "If they know the motivation," he told CNN, "they know where to look." Here are the four categories of hate-crimes, along with some examples, many of which are hypotheticals taken from the FBI's training manual on recognizing and collecting data on hate crimes: Thrill-seekingThese hate crimes are often driven by an immature itch for excitement and drama. Think bored and drunk young men marauding through neighborhoods, mayhem on their minds. Often there is no real reason for these crimes, experts say. They're committed for the thrill of it, and the victims are vulnerable simply because their sexual, racial, ethnic, gender or religious background differs from that of their attackers. Often the attackers think society doesn't care about the victims -- or worse, will applaud their assault. The attackers may be young, but they are dangerous. In McDevitt's study, 70% of these "thrill offenses" were assaults, including vicious beatings that put victims in the hospital.That said, the attackers' animosity toward their victims, who are chosen at random, can be relatively low, which at least offers the opportunity for rehabilitation. Examples: A group of teens breaks into an LGBT center, destroys property and scrawls anti-gay graffiti on the walls. A street gang assaults a Hindu man while yelling anti-Hindu epithets. A group of men viciously attack men leaving a well-known gay bar, yelling "Sissy!" and "Girlie-man!" Defensive In these hate crimes, the attackers sees themselves as "defending" their turf: their neighborhood, their workplace, their religion or their country. Unlike thrill-seekers, who invade other neighborhoods and attack without warning, "defenders" target specific victims and justify their crimes as necessary to keep threats at bay. Many times, they are triggered by a particular event, such as a Muslim or black family moving into a new neighborhood. Like thrill-seekers, the "defenders" show little or no remorse for their attacks and believe that most, if not all of society supports them but is too afraid to act. "They honestly believe that what they're doing has some sort of communal assent," said Brian Levin, who leads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Examples: A group home for people with psychiatric disabilities is set on fire by a man heard to say, "I'll get rid of those crazies." A transgender woman is attacked near her home by men who yell, "We don't want no queers in this neighborhood!" A Japanese man is attacked by a white man who called him an anti-Asian epithet and complained that the Japanese are taking jobs away from Americans. RetaliatoryThese hate crimes are often seen as revenge, whether in response to personal slights, other hate crimes or terrorism. The "avengers," who often act alone, target members of the racial, ethnic or religious group who they believe committed the original crime -- even if the victims had nothing to do with it. They care only about revenge, and they will travel to the victims' territory to enact it. These eye-for-an-eye attacks spike after acts of terrorism, a bitter backlash that often targets Muslim Americans. After the 9/11 attacks, for example, hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims rose by 1,600%. A similar spike occurred after the Paris attacks in 2015. Occasionally, members of the same religion or racial group target each other. Ohio prosecutors, for example, charged members of a breakaway Amish sect with hate crimes after they violently cut off the beards of a rival sect. An appeals court overturned the hate crimes conviction, though, ruling that religion had been a significant but not prime motivation behind the assaults. Examples: A woman fires gun shots into the men's locker room of a fitness center, saying she hates men for rejecting her. Hours after Islamic extremists launch a terrorist attack in Europe, someone defaces an American mosque with graffiti that says "Go home, terrorists!" Mission offenders These are the deadliest -- and rarest -- types of hate crimes. They are committed by people who consider themselves "crusaders," often for a racial or religious cause. Their mission: total war against members of a rival race or religion. They are often linked to groups that share their racist views. Mission offenders write lengthy manifestos explaining their views, visit websites steeped in hate speech and violent imagery, and travel to target symbolically significant sites while seeking to maximize carnage."Mission offenders believe that the system is rigged against them, which means that they can justify excessive violence against innocents," said Levin. These hate crimes can look a lot like terrorism, and scholars say mission offenses often overlap both definitions, as in the case of a Muslim man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando last year. Former President Barack Obama called the massacre both "an act of terror and an act of hate." Examples: Mission offenders tend to become infamous. According to criminologists, they include Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Charleston church shooter Dylan Roof and Omar Mateen, who massacred 49 people at gay nightclub in Orlando. What can be done? McDevitt acknowledges limits to these categories. Crimes rarely fit cleanly into one or the other. "Some people have multiple motivations. They may feel 'defensive,' but also that it's fun to go and harass someone." Edward Dunbar, a psychologist who has written widely about hate crimes, said the categories are valuable for training police and prosecutors but can't predict or prevent bias-motivated attacks. "To assess patterns of violence, or look at issues like capacity to benefit from rehabilitation, or to consider the evidence of premeditation, the typology is not the way to go." Still, the categories help communities learn how to respond to hate crimes, McDevitt and other experts say. Many hate-crime offenders believe that society supports their violent prejudices. The Internet, with its hives of hate groups, has fed that feeling, especially with the ascendancy of the alt-right during the 2016 presidential election. It's crucial for communities -- and politicians -- to clearly and unequivocally condemn hate crimes. McDevitt said that when he interviewed victims, they tended to want three things: 1) A statement from public officials denouncing the crime and the beliefs that inspired it.2) For law officers to take the crime -- and their duty to protect the vulnerable -- seriously. 3) For communities to value them and make clear they don't share the animosity that triggered the hate crimes. In other words, behind every hate crime is a message: You are not welcome here. Behind every strong community is another: Yes, you are.

John Blake, CNN

2018-04-03 23:54:32

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/us/mlk-memphis-what-if/index.html

MLK Jr. assassination: The question that haunts his last day in Memphis - CNN

We know what the world lost when MLK Jr. was assassinated. But what more could it have gained had he survived? How would he have changed events? Here are four scenarios.

us, MLK Jr. assassination: The question that haunts his last day in Memphis - CNN

The question that haunts Martin Luther King's last day in Memphis

(CNN)It's April 4, 1968, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. steps outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and leans over the balcony.King has been in an anxious mood all day, and his room reflects his hurried state of mind. His bed remains unmade, and his suitcase -- containing his hair brush, clothes, a can of Magic Shave and a copy of his book, "Strength to Love" -- remains unpacked. As King stands on the balcony, he asks a saxophonist in the courtyard below to play his favorite song, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," at a rally he's leading later that night. 'A wound that remains raw'Across the street, a man raises his rifle in the narrow bathroom of a derelict rooming house and points it at King. It is 6:01 p.m.Just as the man squeezes the trigger, King suddenly returns to his room to don his overcoat against the evening chill. The bullet misses King's head by inches and slams into a wall.Read MoreAmerican history is full of grim what-if questions. What if President Lincoln's bodyguard had not decided to get a drink and leave Lincoln unguarded that night at Ford's Theatre? What if Robert Kennedy had decided not to take a shortcut through the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where an assassin was waiting for him on the night he was killed? As the nation remembers King's assassination in Memphis 51 years ago, there's another largely unspoken question: What if King had survived? Would he have changed the trajectory of events that shaped a post-1968 America? And how would events have changed him as the country evolved?He still didn't feel worthy of everything given to him. David Garrow, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of KingI asked those questions of some of the people who knew King best. They include a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer whose work revealed some of King's most private inner struggles, scholars who have studied and taught King's life for decades, and a close friend who was with King at the Lorraine Motel and remembers his peculiar mood during his last moments.They cited four possible scenarios, had King lived. These may seem trivial to consider in light of King's murder. But part of the reason so many people still deeply mourn King a half-century later is not just because of what the world lost -- it's the tantalizing possibility of what more it could have gained.He would have outflanked the 'Southern strategy' Some commentators talk about the white backlash, or "whitelash," that greeted President Obama's election. But the United States was already undergoing a whitelash when King was assassinated.Many white Americans in 1968 thought the civil rights movement had gone too far. Segregationist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama tapped into that racial resentment while running for president. He drew huge crowds in the North and won nearly 10 million votes in the 1968 general election as a third party candidate. What Wallace started, Richard Nixon refined.Would King have been able to counter Richard Nixon's successful "Southern strategy?"Nixon won the 1968 presidential election as a Republican in part by deploying what some historians call "the Southern strategy."Clay Risen, author of "A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination," described that strategy in a recent New York Times editorial."Nixon played to the middle by eschewing the overt racism of George Wallace," Risen wrote. "But he deployed a range of more subtle instruments -- anti-busing, anti-open housing -- to appeal to the tens of millions of white suburbanites who imagined themselves to be racially innocent, yet quietly held many of the same prejudices about the 'inner city' and 'black radicals' that their parents had held about King and other civil rights activists."That backlash rolled on in other ways. There was a violent reaction to busing in places like Boston in the 1970s. The Supreme Court made school integration more difficult with cases like Milliken v. Bradley, and weakened affirmative action programs in college with Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, a case prompted by a white law student who said he was a victim of reverse discrimination.The impact of that white backlash lingers. The Republican Party is predominately white. Public schools in America are even more segregated than they were in the 1960s. And the private lives of millions of Americans remain segregated as well. Most whites don't have any nonwhite friends.Could King have stopped any of this?Jesse Jackson: Losing MLK 'hurts all the time,' but we fight onYes, says the Rev. William Barber, the force behind "Moral Mondays," an interracial social justice movement formed in North Carolina in 2013. He has revived King's Poor People's Campaign this year with a series of marches and job walkouts. The new campaign is planning to launch six weeks of nonviolent civil disobedience on May 13, Mother's Day."King was killed at the very time that we needed to expose this strategy," Barber says. "When he was killed, it almost gave the Southern strategy and Christian nationalism a path to hijack the public discourse."King would have outflanked the Southern strategy, Barber says, by showing working class white Americans in clear and dramatic ways that they had common cause with all working people. When King was killed, he was forming an interracial army of poor whites, Hispanics, Native Americans and blacks to camp out on the Mall in Washington and demand that Congress stop funding the Vietnam War and fight poverty instead. He was going to demand a $12 billion Economic Bill of Rights to guarantee jobs for the able-bodied, income to those unable to work and an end to housing discrimination.Images of King speaking out on behalf of poor white people would have sent a powerful signal to alienated whites who were starting to flock to the Republican Party, Barber says."You wouldn't have had the ability to split poor whites and blacks, because the Poor People's Campaign would have brought them together," he says. "You wouldn't have gotten a Nixon and a Reagan."You wouldn't have gotten five more years of Vietnam, either, another historian says. Thousands of whites protested court-ordered busing in North Carolina. How would King have dealt with such resistance to integration?King was assassinated exactly one year to the day after he delivered a speech opposing the Vietnam War. It was one of the most unpopular decisions he ever made. President Lyndon B. Johnson abandoned him, and many black and white allies denounced him.King's anti-war speech, though, won him new fans in the growing anti-war movement -- which was bolstered even more when Robert Kennedy began to oppose the Vietnam War.King could have saved thousands of lives in Vietnam, had Kennedy, who was running for president in 1968, also survived, says Benedict Giamo, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. "I think it would have been a quicker end to the Vietnam War with a coalition of MLK and RKF," says Giamo, who teaches a course called "Witnessing the Sixties." "As we know, from '68 to '73, you had close to 25,000 more deaths in Vietnam." King's anti-war speech was prophetic. The United States gradually turned against the Vietnam War, and today it is seen as a major blunder. And King's Vietnam speech is seen as one of his finest moments.He would have been pushed aside by blacks and whitesHistorians get nostalgic about King's Poor People's Campaign, but for many who were involved in his last crusade, there is little nostalgia. Many were exhausted by 1968, and some of his close aides didn't support it."Even the staff people weren't that enthusiastic," says Bernard Lafayette, who was a close friend of King and the national coordinator for the campaign, which was led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "The enthusiasm that should have been there was not there," he says. "It seemed so hopeless. How do you help poor people?"Who is Martin Luther King Jr. to us, 50 years later?The nation is still trying to figure that out. The Poor People's Campaign ended in June, when police closed down a camp that had been set up by demonstrators near the Lincoln Memorial, and arrested those who resisted.Almost everything that happened to the Poor People's Campaign would have happened even if King had been there -- and it would have "hurt King's stature tremendously," says Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and author of "Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer.""He was going to lose the white working class to Nixon and Reagan no matter what," Podair says. "He was assassinated in April, and only six months later Nixon was elected."King's economic message would have been just as controversial in the 1970s as his racial message was in the 1960s, Podair says. King had evolved to become a "democratic socialist" much like Bernie Sanders is today, Podair says. He would have pushed for a government-run national health program, a national jobs program and a guaranteed income for Americans. Maybe that resonates with those who voted for Sanders when he ran for president in 2016. But that kind of economic message would not have gained traction in the '70s and '80s, Podair says. Those years were marked by recessions, cutbacks in government services and the rising popularity of a neoliberal economic message that said the best way to stimulate the economy is not to help the poor but to cut taxes for the rich, Podair says.King would have been engulfed by the white backlash, Podair says.How could singing "We Shall Overcome" compete with the defiance and black leather jackets of the Black Panthers?"He was a martyr, so even white conservatives have a different view of him now. But had he lived, they would have been saying some nasty things about him. They would have called him a socialist, a Marxist or a communist."Black militants were already calling King nasty names when he was assassinated. They were dismissing his nonviolent philosophy as naive, too passive. That would have continued had he survived, some say.Images of nonviolent black marchers singing "We Shall Overcome" while getting beaten didn't seize the imagination of many blacks anymore. But pictures of Black Panther leaders clad in leather jackets while toting guns did.King couldn't stop the rise of black militancy. Perhaps he could have redirected some of its energy, but too much anger was building, says Giamo, from Notre Dame."King was a voice of reason and moderation," Giamo says. "As it was, with King gone, a more militant presence in the civil rights movement provoked more of the backlash that we saw in affirmative action and busing. You lost that moderate voice. You lost the center. And the center did not hold."He would have teamed up with Mandela -- and taken on Trump Fast forward to 1990 and imagine this scene:Nelson Mandela has just been released from prison in South Africa. The world is about to get its first glimpse of the anti-apartheid leader in 27 years. As he emerges in the sunlight, leading a procession of supporters, Mandela thrusts his right fist into the air in a victory salute. Next to him, a beaming King, his closely cropped hair now speckled with silver, raises his fist in salute as well as they walk past cheering crowds.This is the post-1968 scenario the Rev. Curtiss Paul DeYoung envisions for King. In his imagining, King's moral appeal is too global to be tarnished by domestic changes in US politics. He's a global leader who would naturally seek out another transcendent figure: Mandela.King spoke out against apartheid; one person says he would have formed a formidable partnership with Nelson Mandela upon his release in 1990.DeYoung, CEO of the Minnesota Council of Churches, taught a college course on King and Malcolm X for 25 years. King had spoken out against apartheid, he says. DeYoung imagines a "creative interchange" between the two men, with Mandela "reinvigorating King's work around racism." "King never gave up on the humanity of white people, and Mandela brought that kind of sensitivity to whites in South Africa," DeYoung says. "He really believed that whites could be redeemed and reconciled. He had converted enough of his jailers while he was in prison."Had King lived through the 1990s and beyond, how would he have responded to other social justice issues of the time, such as women's rights and gay marriage? For starters, DeYoung says, King -- who often said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere -- would have been forced to re-examine his own private behavior.King had extramarital affairs, a secret that was revealed through FBI surveillance. "If he saw gender as a justice issue, it might have changed his view of women and therefore his extramarital behavior," DeYoung says. "He would have to critique his own extramarital affairs from a justice perspective." King acted like many traditional black pastors of his time. He grew up in a hypermasculine, patriarchal black church where women were treated as subservient. He reflected some of that standoffish attitude toward assertive woman in his treatment of Ella Baker, a legendary civil rights organizer. He would probably do quite well on Twitter because of his ability to express himself in a few words and write things that people could remember. Jerald Podair, author and historian, on how King would have fared on social mediaYet on LGBTQ issues, he acted like a man ahead of his time. He rejected repeated calls to disavow Bayard Rustin, a close aide of his who was gay.Some think King's wife, who became a champion of gay rights, would have further cultivated that part of King. "She understood the movement for sexual and gender equity was a civil rights movement," says Vincent Stephens, director of the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. "Had he lived, she would have been able to play a positive role to help him broaden that conversation."Fast forward to today and imagine King in the era of President Trump. This scenario is not hard to conjure. Some of King's closest friends and aides -- Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Young, the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- are still in the public eye and weigh in on current events.Imagine King taking to Twitter to engage in a verbal shootout with Trump. "He would probably do quite well on Twitter because of his ability to express himself in a few words and write things that people could remember," says Podair, the Lawrence University historian. "Trump would have given him a nickname." On the other hand, Podair says, maybe King wouldn't take to Twitter. His lofty pronouncements might not play well in a world full of snark and juvenile memes."The Twitterverse is such a cesspool that he might say, 'I don't even want to get involved,'" Podair says.There is one public battle King would not be able to resist joining -- critiquing the white evangelicals who support Trump. Podair envisions a contemporary "Letter From Birmingham Jail" bristling with references to Scripture and irrefutable logic."He would be hitting them where they lived," Podair says. "They can always dismiss others by saying they don't understand us. What King could do is say, 'I come from the same place as you do. I can recite the Bible right along with you. I grew up in the church and I'm telling you're on the wrong path.' They couldn't turn their back on him."He would have become an elder statesman King could have turned his back on public life. But he may not have had the choice to step aside. He could have been forced aside by health problems, or even scandal.Some of King's closest friends would have "staged an intervention" and forced King to step away from his public role, says David Garrow, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of King, "Bearing the Cross.""By 1968, King is so exhausted and so drained physically and mentally that he's on an emotional edge that he's never been before," Garrow says.During his last days in Memphis, King told an aide that he had a migraine headache for three days because of divisions within the civil rights movement, "and sometimes I feel like turning around, just quitting, or maybe becoming president of Morehouse College," according to "Voices of Freedom," an oral history of the movement.Garrow says he can envision King retiring and become an "elder statesman" in American public life.He'd make five speeches a day. The person traveling with him would just be exhausted. What I would do is send another person with a fresh suitcase and clothes so they could relieve him. And Martin Luther King would keep him going.Bernard Lafayette, a close friend of King"'Doc' so often over the years had always fantasized about stepping out of the public eye and just going back to being a minister and teaching a philosophy course at Morehouse," says Garrow.Yet there was a part of King that drove him to activism, Garrow says.Part of that was guilt. He felt like he had to keep earning the acclaim of the Nobel Peace Prize he had been awarded in 1964. He felt that he had received too much credit and others in the movement had been ignored. He had "this unstoppable pressure to keep sacrificing himself," Garrow says."He still didn't feel worthy of everything given to him," Garrow says. "That's the most unique thing about King and the thing that people find hardest to appreciate about King whenever they think of some famous celebrity type. They're assuming that those people have some huge-sized ego. Doc had none of that."King actually didn't want to be a civil rights leader, Garrow says. He was drafted.People picked him to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott; they chose to build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference around his persona; he was often cajoled and pressured into various civil rights campaigns."It's always other folks who are taking the initiative and drawing him in," Garrow says.That kind of pressure took a physical toll. Some say King might not have even lived to an old age had he survived Memphis.Randal Maurice Jelks, an African-American studies professor at the University of Kansas, says autopsy reports show King "was in pretty bad shape physically." "He was under constant stress and surveillance," Jelks says. "He smoked. His liver was shot. Think of how many funerals he had to go to and do." Lafayette, King's aide, says King kept a punishing schedule. He hardly ever saw him sleep."He'd make five speeches a day," he says. "The person traveling with him would just be exhausted. What I would do is send another person with a fresh suitcase and clothes and they would relieve him. And Martin Luther King would keep him going."King could have collapsed from the weight of scandal as well.King had traditional beliefs about gender roles, but some say he would have become an ally of LGBQT rights because of his wife's activism.The FBI knew of King's extramarital affairs and, according to some, tried to induce him to commit suicide by mailing tapes of his trysts to his home in Atlanta along with a taunting letter.Yet imagine King in a post-Watergate era, where a public figure's private life is fair game. Imagine camera crews ambushing King."They would have gone after him," says Podair, the Lawrence University historian. "God knows there might be women suing him. There would certainly be a lip-smacking satisfaction that, 'Hey, we caught him doing that.' ... Sean Hannity's head would be exploding." As grim as those scenarios may be, Lafayette doesn't remember gloom from King's last days in Memphis.He remembers King's resilience.King wasn't supposed to make the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech the night before his assassination. He was in bed at the Lorraine Motel and it was pouring rain. The phone rang. An aide pleaded with King to come to the church that night to make a speech, telling him, "This is your crowd," Lafayette says.King joked with the aide, playfully asking if him if he was seriously asking him to get out of his pajamas, put on a suit and go out in a rainstorm, Lafayette says.King went, and we can see the result on film: his last speech. Eyes blazing as he peered into a cheering audience, King almost seemed to be on the verge of tears near the end. He seemed to foretell his death, vowing that, even though "I might not get there with you," "we as a people will get to the Promised Land."King preached himself out of his depression, Lafayette says."The mountaintop speech lifted him up again," he says.Ways you can honor Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years after his assassination Five decades after his death, we can wonder what would have happened, had King lived. But there's another what-if we can ask that goes back further:What if King had never accepted the request to head the Montgomery Bus Boycott when he was just 26 years old? What if he spurned later efforts to get involved in the movement, preferring instead to move to Atlanta to take over his father's church and live a comfortable, middle-class existence with his wife and four kids? What if the world never heard "I Have a Dream," no one ever read "A Letter from Birmingham Jail," and that rich, rolling baritone of King's had never been heard by countless desperate people across the globe who cling to King's belief that "unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality?"That, perhaps, would have been the greater tragedy.

Story by John D. Sutter, CNN Video by Leyla Santiago and Khushbu Shah, CNN Photographs by Erika P. Rodriguez for CNN Graphics by Sam Petulla, CNN Additional reporting and translation by Cristian Arroyo for CNN

2018-03-16 01:00:12

politics

politics

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/politics/puerto-rico-six-month-deaths-sutter-invs/index.html

Puerto Ricans are still dying in Hurricane Maria's wake - CNNPolitics

Exclusive: Breathing machines gone silent. Hospital cutbacks. Six months after Hurricane Maria, the deaths continue in this town

politics, Puerto Ricans are still dying in Hurricane Maria's wake - CNNPolitics

'We are the forgotten people': It's been almost six months since Hurricane Maria, and Puerto Ricans are still dying

Maunabo, Puerto Rico (CNN)Lourdes Rodriguez heard the scream early on the morning of January 6, before the sun rose and before the frogs began their chorus. "Lourdes! Lourdes!"She instantly recognized the voice of her father, Natalio Rodriguez Lebron, 77, a former nurse who cared for the mentally ill, people he believed society had forgotten. She darted up the stairs.Her father's health had long been troubled. He had diabetes, lung disease, sleep apnea and congestive heart failure. And in the months since Hurricane Maria battered this coastal town, Lourdes watched his condition worsen. The sleep apnea machine he needed to help him breathe was useless for months because their hilltop neighborhood in Maunabo was entirely without electric power. In December, a business had donated a generator to power the machine at night, but the family struggled to afford the gasoline needed to keep it running. Read MoreAs Lourdes reached the top of the stairs, she felt an uneasy stillness in the air. The sky was thick and black. No moon was visible. And the electric generator, a machine that sometimes rumbled like a car engine, had fallen eerily silent.She swung open the living room door to find her father clutching his chest. The machine was off. Her father appeared unable to breathe. Natalio Rodriguez Lebron, center, is shown with his family.Her mother, Julia "Miriam" Rodriguez, stayed with Natalio while Lourdes rushed to restart the generator, which had run out of gas, and repower the breathing machine. Her mother felt Natalio's body go limp in her arms and then collapse to the floor, face down. Frantic, they called 911 and tried to comfort him. Waiting there on the floor, Julia Rodriguez told me, she felt a wind -- a physical gust -- leave her husband's body and pass into her own. She said it was as if the decades they'd spent together -- the moves from Puerto Rico to the mainland and back; the hours they both worked as nurses; the three children they raised -- hovered in the room, a tangible, living thing, and then became part of her. Julia Rodriguez knew then that her husband might not survive. All these months later, it seemed the storm may have won.* * * * *It's been nearly six months since Hurricane Maria. Its howling winds, which topped 150 mph, long have dissipated. The storm that battered Puerto Rico on September 20 before hooking northward into the Atlantic is a memory. Yet, in this US commonwealth, people are still dying in Maria's wake. That's especially true of those who lack basic services like electricity. Rodriguez died on January 6. In addition to his death, CNN identified five people who died in 2018 from causes that friends, family, doctors or funeral home directors consider to be related to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath. It's not possible to say with 100% certainty that a death this long after a storm was "caused" by Hurricane Maria, experts told me. But that's beside the point. These deaths show dangerous conditions persist in Puerto Rico.I spent several days in Maunabo, Rodriguez's town on the southeast coast, and other areas without power, to try to understand how communities are faring all these months later.Maunabo, Puerto Rico, is still off the grid almost six months after Maria, the mayor tells CNN.I had been to Puerto Rico several times since the storm, reporting for CNN on topics from uncounted deaths to water outages and an "exodus" to the US mainland. In December, I drove the entire path the eye of the storm took across the island. On that route, I met a woman whose clock was stopped at 3:27 -- the moment the hurricane swept through. Puerto Rico, it seemed, was an island frozen in time, doomed to relive that day again and again. Would that still be the case after six months?Metrics on the response to Hurricane Maria told me that might be the case, at least for some residents. So, too, did academics and others who study how we respond to hurricanes. Puerto Rico, some of these experts said, appears to be stuck between the "emergency" and "recovery" phases of disaster response. Typically, in the United States, the emergency phase -- in which people lack necessities like food, water, shelter and power -- lasts for days or, at most, a few weeks, said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Then comes recovery, when residents, government agencies and others start to rebuild. "Here we are months after this storm and we are debating if we should still be sending these emergency -- really emergency, and life sustaining -- supports, or (should we) transition into this recovery process," Peek said. "That is just truly breathtaking." It's true that progress has been made. Tourists are coming back to San Juan, and parts of the city are humming. Casinos are open in ritzy Condado and the bomba dancers are back in Río Piedras. A month after Maria, roughly 1 million of the 3.3 million American citizens here remained without running water service. Now, nearly everyone has it. In late December, only about a third of temporary roof requests had been met by the US Army Corps of Engineers, leaving some people sleeping in homes where it rained inside at night. Months later, nearly all those requests for professionally installed tarps have been fulfilled. Formal shelters for hurricane victims are now empty, according to federal officials.Yet inequities remain, especially when it comes to electricity. As of March 7, more than 10% of electric customers in Puerto Rico were still without power, according to figures reported to the US Department of Energy by the local utility. Maybe that sounds small -- but it represents nearly 156,000 customers, and likely more than that number of people, since the average Puerto Rican household is about three individuals. Also consider that figure in the context of other recent storms. Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast of Texas on August 25. The next day, an estimated 304,000 customers were without power -- yet all but about 2,600 had electricity restored in 19 days, according to data provided to CNN by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Florida after Hurricane Irma? That storm left an estimated 6.2 million customers in Florida without electricity on September 11, according to the Florida Public Service Commission, which, like the commission in Texas, collects data from electric utilities. In a little more than two weeks, virtually all power was back. These comparisons are, of course, imprecise. No two storms are the same in terms of intensity, needs or geography. Puerto Rico is an island and, as federal officials have said repeatedly since the storm, you can't just drive in supplies from another state. Communications systems were down and many roads were impassible in the first weeks after the storm. The island's power grid also was in lousy shape, by many accounts, before Hurricane Maria. Comparing that grid to Florida's, which is the gold standard for preparedness, is somewhat unfair, said Seth Guikema, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Michigan, who studies grids and disaster response. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he said, some Florida utilities built concrete posts and took other measures to ensure power could be restored faster after storms.The US Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which oversees disaster recovery, says it is doing everything possible to ensure basic services are restored to Puerto Rico.Michael Byrne, FEMA's federal coordinating officer for Puerto Rico, told me in an interview that Puerto Rico's unique logistical challenges fully explain the delays. No other US disaster has presented these unique and difficult circumstances, he said, which meant FEMA had to invent a strategy for how to respond to the crisis. The unique situation here also makes comparisons between the response to Maria and responses to other storms problematic, he said.If storm-related deaths are continuing, he said, his heart goes out to affected families. "The initial reaction is the reaction anyone would have: I'm sorry to hear that. Truly. One of the things that you don't stop being, no matter your job, is a human being." There are programs, he added, to help bring generators and financial assistance to storm victims, especially those who are in vital need of medical services. The US Army Corps and FEMA say logistical issues -- including Puerto Rico's remote location -- explain power-restoration delays.In a statement emailed to CNN this week, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is helping with power restoration, said back-to-back 2017 disasters, the remoteness of the island and the fact that some supplies had to be manufactured for installation in Puerto Rico, slowed down work on the electric system. "Helicopters have been used to airlift poles, materials and people into remote locations to perform repair work," the Corps said.Yet these explanations matter little to many of those who have been living without electricity for nearly six months, and have gone without running water for much of that time. They know another truth: The longer the wait, the more a person is at risk. * * * * *The family legend goes like this: The first of Natalio Rodriguez's ancestors to arrive in Maunabo was hidden in a barrel aboard a ship from Africa. He may have arrived as a free man, they said. This much is sure: Rodriguez roots travel deep into this fertile soil. The family has been here as long as anyone can remember. By the time Natalio Rodriguez was born in December 1940, the 11th of 12 children, much had changed in Puerto Rico -- and yet little had, as well. Rodriguez grew up helping his father, Juan Ines Rodriguez Monclova, work the verdant sugar cane fields behind their home on the side of a shark-tooth mountain. This was the work of his ancestors, too. The Spanish enslaved Africans and, before that, indigenous Taino people -- who gave Maunabo its name -- to work in that industry. Natalio Rodriguez and his neighbors had all those stories coursing through their veins. His original ancestor in Maunabo is said to have married a Spanish woman, which is how relatives explain the fact that some of their cousins and aunts have bright blue or green eyes, while Natalio's and Lourdes' eyes and skin carry the deep hues of espresso and midnight. Lourdes Rodriguez, right, with her two children and mother, Julia "Miriam" Rodriguez.When Rodriguez was a boy, slavery had long been abolished, of course; and the Spanish had been kicked out of Puerto Rico by a new colonial power: the United States. The US, which occupied Puerto Rico in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, granted Puerto Ricans citizenship about two decades before Rodriguez's birth. Still, his family members and neighbors couldn't elect their own governor until 1948. Even today, Puerto Ricans, while subject to US laws and given US aid, can't vote for president or elect full, voting members of Congress. Despite all that, young Rodriguez remained enchanted by American culture. He loved Western movies and books and grew up galloping the family's horses down from the mountains and into the valley, which was home to the town square, not far from a lighthouse and the radiant turquoise coast. His childhood nickname was "Hormiguero," Spanish for anthill, his longtime friend, Damian Lopez, 70, told me. I laughed and asked about the origin of that name. The kid was something of a living verb, Lopez said -- always moving, never still. That restlessness would take him places his father never saw. Some of Rodriguez's older brothers enlisted in the US military (one lost part of his hand in the Korean War, according to Julia Rodriguez) and, as a teenager, Natalio Rodriguez tried to do the same. Unable to join the service because of a heart arrhythmia, according to his wife, he found other ways to follow in their footsteps. After one brother moved to New York -- bringing home exotic northeastern foods like cod, cherries and white grapes to a family that grew avocado, grapefruit and oranges -- Rodriguez decided, after high school, to move there, too. He would become a big man like his dad -- 5-foot-9 and 300 pounds -- and not averse to physical labor. But he began to resent helping in the sugar fields. Maunabo was, and is, desperately poor. (Fifty-six percent live below the poverty line, according to the US Census Bureau). Some of his relatives still plowed up their fields with bulls tied to oxcarts. The brother who moved away seemed so much happier, and so much richer. In the United States, Rodriguez thought, he'd have a better life, too.So, in his late teens, Rodriguez boarded a plane for New York. "Right after getting out of the cab, he stepped on a pile of dog s---." Natalio loved to tell this story, his wife, Julia, said."He'd go, like, 'Wow, so this is how you all live here, dodging piles of poop in the streets!?'" Maunabo, located in southeast Puerto Rico, is home to 11,500 people. Julia Rodriguez grew up in Maunabo, too, just up the hill from Natalio and his family. The couple raised three children together, primarily on the US mainland. For him, the 50 states were a place of promise and of hope -- a place of purpose and duty.Still, strangely, that first New York impression -- the muck on the street -- stuck with him, too.He never felt fully settled, his wife told me. He yearned for home. In 2009, he and Julia finally resettled in Maunabo. * * * * *"Look," says Luis Lafuente, Maunabo's vice-mayor. He points at a perfectly circular hole extending from the roof of city hall."That's where the clock used to be." It was busted by Hurricane Maria.Crabbing and fishing are popular in Maunabo. The town hosts an annual crab festival.Time hasn't just stopped in this town, which is at the southeast corner of Puerto Rico, near where Maria delivered its first punches. After the storm, it's almost irrelevant. On this day, March 9, Lafuente tells me exactly 0% of the area's 11,500 residents have been reconnected to the electric grid -- the same as the day Hurricane Maria struck. Between 35% and 50% of residents do have electricity, he said, from three emergency generators installed on December 23 by the US government. But those generators are prone to failure, he said, and don't reach mountain communities. (The Army Corps said the alleged "failures" result from generator switch-overs, not from problems with the equipment. The Puerto Rican power authority -- PREPA -- told CNN 37% of customers in Maunabo had power as of March 13, but did not specify the source of that electricity.)At dusk, those mountains turn to charcoal silhouettes. Few lights shine. Only the lucky and the wealthy can afford personal generators. We drive Lafuente's Jeep Renegade around the town where he's spent his life. Parts of it are unrecognizable to him. Playgrounds are twisted. A truck barn turned to scrap metal. Power lines are draped over posts like wet noodles. Some electric posts are so off-kilter, they look like they're doing pushups. The hospital had to be relocated to another municipal building, which most recently had been home to emergency management workers and police. Those officers and workers, in turn, had to move into a public school that closed before the storm. The hospital still has a sign that says "Emergencia 24 Horas," indicating the emergency room never closes. The reconfigured hospital, however, opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 11 p.m. Many of those who require emergency assistance earlier or later than that have to drive through an unlit mountain tunnel -- it feels like something out of "The Walking Dead" -- to seek medical help. Maunabo's five schools reopened in late November. But students leave class at 12:30 p.m. because there's no power. A school principal I met told me she drives to other towns to make photocopies so students can take tests. Teachers assign very little homework, she says, because the students are so overwhelmed already.We stop by the lighthouse, perhaps the most iconic site in Maunabo, to find that its searchlight and glass have been shattered by Maria. The Coast Guard hadn't used it since the 1990s, anyway, according to Wanda Marín Rivera, board president of the town's cultural center. But Lafuente and others had hoped tourism might revive the town, with the lighthouse as a destination, since sugar cane, plantains and crab fishing haven't been providing stable work. (Maunabo became known as a hub for crab fishing. Crab images are stamped into the sidewalks and painted on walls; a crab statue sits in front of the baseball stadium, which was heavily damaged, and a smaller one perches on the mayor's desk).Despite the state of things, Lafuente says Maunabo will improve. Tourists will come. Industry will pick back up. Already, he says, crabbers are setting traps by flashlight at night. "The people of Maunabo are very motivated and anxious to grow and make the town even better than it was before," he tells me. "We will rise again. We are rising."* * * * *At first, the mountain protected them. The day Maria hit, Natalio Rodriguez huddled in a small bathroom with his wife, his daughter Lourdes, her two children, and, nearby, Natalio's elderly sister. "We were crammed like tuna in a can," Lourdes Rodriguez recalled. Water poured under the door. Natalio told everyone to stay calm, Lourdes told me. Meanwhile, she said, the house "shook like Jell-O." Still, they survived. Most of the house did, too. The hillside, which had raised so many of their ancestors and grown so many of their crops, sheltered them from the worst of it. Julia Rodriguez has been without electric power service since Maria hit on September 20.It was after Maria that the real danger began. The power was out. Water, too. Food was scarce. For several days, the winding, steep-pitched road to their mountain home was blocked, Lourdes said. It was a week before she was able to wait in hourslong lines for gasoline and get her car to a hill in a neighboring city, Caguas, where she could call their many relatives on the mainland to say they had outlasted the hurricane. Communications systems in Maunabo remained essentially inoperable for months, she told me. Island-wide, according to Puerto Rico government data, only 25% of cell towers were functional by October 20.It was in these isolated circumstances that Natalio Rodriguez's medical conditions began to worsen. The labored breathing was especially troubling for his wife and daughter. The sleep apnea machine he used at night to get oxygen into his lungs wasn't working without electricity. That meant he and his wife could not rest, much less sleep. He paced the house at night and walked the neighborhood by day. In desperation, the family made cardboard fans for him to use to try to move air around his face. No one thought it would help him breathe, really, but it was something. "All of a sudden he became a quiet person. He was a talker. Pepito enjoyed long conversations," Julia Rodriguez said, using Natalio's family nickname. "He could spend hours and hours talking. But then (after the storm) he didn't speak much." The family worried also about the insulin he used for diabetes. It required refrigeration. They had no working refrigerator without power. And ice was difficult to come by. What they really needed, of course, was electricity.On November 17, Maunabo plaza and city hall got power from a small generator -- purchased for $35,000 by the municipality, according to the mayor, Jorge Márquez. From their home in the mountains, Lourdes Rodriguez said, the family could see a faint glow. It looked like the town downhill was on another planet. About a month later, the family received a small power inverter, Lourdes Rodriguez said. It ran for only two or three hours before running out of fuel, she said.A bigger generator was donated later, but the family had trouble affording the gasoline needed to run it, she told me. The fuel alone cost them $60 per week while her father was alive, Lourdes Rodriguez said. Plus, there were filters, oil and repairs. When the machine was on, they said, Natalio calmed some. But they could not keep it going. * * * * *Some of them died during the storm. A mudslide in Utuado, Puerto Rico, killed two "bedridden" sisters. Another person drowned in Toa Baja. But the aftermath of Hurricane Maria appears to have been most deadly.Hurricane debris is piled up at a temporary dump in March in Maunabo.More than 1,000 "excess deaths" occurred after the storm, in September and October 2017, than during the same timeframe in 2016 and 2015, according to Alexis Santos, a professor at Penn State University who analyzed Puerto Rican government mortality statistics.That doesn't tell you 1,000 people certainly died directly because of Hurricane Maria. But it does indicate an unusual number of people were dying -- and well into October.The only difference, Santos said, was the hurricane.In November, I put together a CNN team to survey the funeral homes in Puerto Rico. We were only able to reach about half, but those directors and other staff members told us they had seen at least 499 deaths they considered to be hurricane related, based primarily on their conversations with family members. We then documented the deaths of several uncounted people who died in the weeks after the hurricane, not only the day the storm hit. They included an older man in Cayey who died in a fire set by a lantern he wouldn't have been using if he'd had electricity; a man in Canóvanas who committed suicide in the storm's aftermath; and a woman in Corozal who lacked access to medical treatment. (Two deaths we highlighted were later added to the Puerto Rico government's list of official hurricane-related deaths).Still, I didn't expect deaths would continue into 2018. It's impossible to use statistics to prove that they are, because the Puerto Rican Demographic Registry has not released data for this year. (CNN and Puerto Rico's Centro de Periodismo Investigativo are suing that agency for access to death records). Trends suggest the aggregate loss of life in Puerto Rico is slowing and may have normalized, Santos told me. Still, I was able to document several deaths that occurred this year and appear related to Maria's frantic aftermath. Several of the deaths I researched occurred in Maunabo. Braulio Salinas Santiago, 71, died of an apparent heart attack in the parking lot of Maunabo's makeshift hospital on January 18, according to his wife, Margarita Baerga Diaz. It was about 5 a.m., she said, before the hospital, which operated 24-7 before the hurricane, had opened. Similarly, Fulgencio Velazquez Chevalier died on February 20 in the car of his wife, Litza Rodriguez Figueroa. The 50-year-old suffered depression and intense anxiety after the storm, according to Rodriguez Figueroa, who is a nurse. She believes that stress, along with a related increased smoking, contributed to her husband's cardiac arrest. When she drove by the closed Maunabo hospital, she told me, Velazquez was still alive. Carmen Rodriguez Martinez died on January 25 at age 71. Her doctor, Arturo Torres Borges, wrote two words on the death certificate in a spot reserved for circumstances that may have contributed to the death: "Huracán Maria." The causes of death included respiratory failure and heart disease. Héctor Pedraza, left, lost his mother -- Herminio Trinidad's wife -- when she died in February in the aftermath of Maria.Rodriguez Martinez required an oxygen machine to breathe, according to her daughter, Iris Janette de Jesus Rodriguez, 54. They still didn't have electricity from the grid when I visited in late February. A generator hadn't been enough, she said.In Corozal, farther into the mountains, Victor Manuel Belen Santiago wept as he told me that his mother, Zoraida Santiago Torres, 58, had saved his life by helping him kick drug addiction. Their home was destroyed by the storm, and Belen Santiago rebuilt it by hand, puzzling scraps of the roof and walls together like a reassembled house of cards. But he couldn't restore the power his mother needed to run an oxygen machine. She died on February 13, he said, after getting fluid in her lungs that could not be cleared. Her death certificate lists organ failure and a bacterial infection among the causes of death, along with chronic liver disease. After the loss, Belen Santiago said he contemplated suicide. His beloved mother was gone. He had no job -- no prospect for a job after the debt crisis, which struck Puerto Rico before the hurricane. It was unclear if life ever would feel safe again. "We are the forgotten people," he said. "It's like we don't exist." * * * * *The morning of January 5 started like so many others, with a tap-tap-tap of her father's cane on the second-story patio -- Natalio Rodriguez's way of waking his daughter up for the day. Lourdes Rodriguez rolled her eyes playfully and walked upstairs to see what he wanted this time. She and her two children, ages 13 and 8, had been sleeping on twin beds in a room downstairs since the storm. The roof of a new home they had been building was torn off by Maria.She would awake to her father's screams the following night, but this day now occupies a different territory in her memory. She considers it one of the best days of her life. Her father seemed so healthy, so alive. He wanted to go everywhere that day, see everything. He carried his cane with him while visiting his sister, a nun, in Ponce, a city on the south coast. But he kept it in his elbow crease -- more ornament than crutch. At an ice cream shop, he pretended to be a clueless American tourist -- using affected Spanish, asking to see tourist attractions on the other side of the island. The store's workers laughed when he broke the gag, Lourdes Rodriguez said. He ordered his favorite flavor: passion fruit with pineapple. That night, they ate seafood at a restaurant near the beach.In March, power lines were still twisted and broken in southeastern Puerto Rico. Now, Lourdes Rodriguez wonders why that day was different.Maybe it was the upcoming holiday? January 6 is Three Kings Day in Puerto Rico, or Epiphany, when Christians commemorate the arrival of wise men visiting the infant Jesus. Her father had been talking about it for some time, telling her children to prepare their best clothes (the truth was that most of their clothing had been donated after the storm) so they could go to a pig roast in a neighboring community. In years past, they'd gathered up guitars, pots and sticks and gone caroling up and down the hillside -- a Puerto Rican parranda -- growing the party as they visited one house and then the next, offering food and drinks and collecting stories.Maybe he was living in anticipation of that day? Or maybe this day was his way of saying goodbye. * * * * *What's taking so long? That question nagged at me as I reported on Puerto Rico's ongoing electrical outages. And it's a question that clearly haunts many Puerto Ricans.Experts offered some theories."They're Americans but they're not represented in Congress," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in New York. That means there are few political repercussions for a botched disaster response, he said, and few advocates for funding. "It really gets down to money and poverty and politics.""It's unconscionable and unreasonable that it has taken so long" to restore power, he said. "You have to ask yourself, 'why is that?' It's money and politics, the common denominator for so many things. ... Can you imagine no (electric) power in Beaumont or Port Arthur or Rockport, Texas, for this amount of time? I don't care what kind of disaster it was. You would never see this."Byrne, the FEMA official, said this disaster has been adequately funded and the federal government is responding to the crisis in Puerto Rico in the same way it would in the 50 states. "We're not leaving," he said. "We're here until we take care of all of the requirements that are needed."As of March 15, FEMA had spent $1.1 billion in Puerto Rico; $1.6 billion in Texas; and $993 million in Florida for individual assistance following the fall 2017 hurricanes. "That's the initial, quickest payment to individual citizens for immediate needs, but the real cost is in long-term recovery dollars for infrastructure projects, like buildings, roads and other public facilities," which is not included in those figures, said Chris Currie, director of emergency management issues at the US Government Accountability Office. Congressional appropriations for disaster response and recovery in recent months are not always itemized by storm, he said, making it difficult to say which hurricanes ultimately will be given the most federal funding. An estimated $23.2 billion has been appropriated specifically for Puerto Rico, according to The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates Maria caused $90 billion in damages; Harvey, $125 billion; and Irma, $50 billion.Regardless of financing, the relative slowness of the recovery in Puerto Rico is seen by some people here as dehumanizing.Life is returning to parts of San Juan, the capital, but hurricane damage remains.In a way, Maria has revealed the ugly colonial relationship between the island and the United States, said Silvia Álvarez Curbelo, a historian and director of the research center at the University of Puerto Rico's school of communications. "This raw nerve of colonialism comes creeping in in every conversation" these days, she told me. "It's this feeling of subordination. The people -- common people -- have no way (to respond) except to wait. Wait for this letter. Wait to see if FEMA comes to town. Wait to see if the federal government comes (though) with the money they told us they would give us for recovery."Such frustrations reached a boiling point in the past. There were plenty of other factors at play, but Spain's failure to address a humanitarian and economic crisis after an 1867 hurricane in Puerto Rico "provided the context for the first political movement for independence on the island," Stuart Schwartz, a Yale history professor, writes in "Sea of Storms."The uprising, however, was "crushed immediately," said Álvarez Curbelo, from the University of Puerto Rico. Nothing like that ever would be tried today, she said. While Puerto Ricans have worked hard to create a national cultural identity, and while the idea of independence was popular decades ago, few Puerto Ricans in recent years have supported political independence from the United States, according to Florida International University anthropologist Jorge Duany.If anything, Álvarez Curbelo expects Puerto Rico to sink further into "political paralysis" and become more US-dependent after Maria.She doesn't see the United States granting Puerto Rico full rights as the 51st state, a move that likely would require the approval of Congress. Remember, she said, this storm follows a massive debt crisis in which the island's government declared bankruptcy. What does Puerto Rico have to offer the United States now? A fiscal oversight board, appointed by the US President, is steering austerity measures. Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans have been taught, generation after generation, she said, to believe that they cannot survive without the help of a colonial power. "I'm not a pessimistic person," she told me. "I'm a historian. I tend to be sober. I watch the long trends. But I don't see the light -- in the total sense of the word 'light.' The thing about power is it's a metaphor for the island. The fragility of the energy system -- of the power system -- is the perfect metaphor for our condition: The light comes and goes. There is no sense of future."* * * * *The ambulance arrived at 2:18 a.m. on January 6, records show. It was too late. Natalio Rodriguez Lebron died at 1:23 a.m. According to the death certificate, Rodriguez's death was caused by chronic lung disease, hypertension and diabetes. In the notes on that document, a doctor from the Puerto Rico Bureau of Forensic Sciences also mentioned that he was a smoker and obese.That bureau, in San Juan, is the only laboratory in Puerto Rico authorized to classify deaths as hurricane-related. In the months after Maria, the office has come under criticism, including from CNN, for possibly missing dozens if not hundreds of "indirect" hurricane deaths. The US government installed three emergency generators in Maunabo to try to re-electrify the town.The official death toll has stood at 64 since early December. In February, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced Puerto Rico had enlisted the help of George Washington University to study the mortality that followed Hurricane Maria. That analysis, due out in coming months, will focus on deaths from September through February. To date, Natalio Rodriguez's death has not been classified as hurricane-related. Puerto Rico's Department of Public Safety, which oversees the forensics bureau, did not respond to repeat requests for comment on his death and others in this story. Rodriguez's family believes his death was related to Hurricane Maria. His doctor, Pedro Lopez Lopez, shares that view. Rodriguez's health deteriorated in the conditions Maria left behind, he told me. He saw Natalio about two weeks before his death; and he was "stable" then, he said.The body was not delivered to the forensics office until 2:38 the following afternoon, a time that forensics documents confirm. By afternoon, the body had started to decompose. The family was told it would be impossible to have an open-casket service, as is the norm in Puerto Rico. The closed casket was the hardest part of the funeral, a longtime friend told me. "It was terrible," Damian Lopez said. "If you love someone, you'd like to see him for one last time."There was also the matter of the expense. The Federal Emergency Management Agency manages a program that can cover some funeral expenses for eligible families after hurricanes. But those deaths typically must be certified as hurricane-related in order to qualify. The Rodriguez family already put $4,000 toward his funeral, a receipt shows. They still owe $1,115. In December, FEMA did grant the family $4,000 for home repairs and $3,000 to replace household items that were damaged in Maria, Lourdes Rodriguez said. Julia Rodriguez told me friends and relatives tried to offer the family money after the storm but that her husband turned away the help. He was a proud person, she said, and generous. He also knew that everyone in the community was suffering.* * * * *People will keep dying until power is restored. That's the stark assessment Arturo Torres Borges shared with my colleagues Leyla Santiago and Khushbu Shah, who tipped me off to the possibility of continued deaths in Maunabo. Torres is the medical doctor who wrote "Huracán Maria" on the death certificate of a local woman.Natalio Rodriguez's doctor puts it this way: "This is a public health crisis." I met plenty of people at risk in Maunabo.Some are so sick of the situation they try to laugh it off.Zoraida Santiago Torres, 58, died February 13. Her family members believe a lack of electric power contributed to her death.Across the street from Litza Rodriguez Figueroa, whose husband died in February, lives Ana Ramos Davila, a 74-year-old who will insist you drink her bottled water and then ask if you have any cute gringo friends who would drink Coors Light and play dominoes with her. That's the dream! she said -- gringos, Coors and dominoes. Post-Maria has included little of that. "Christ! When is this going to be over?" she said of the storm. "I've spent $100 or more just on bags of ice" to try to keep food cool without power. "No one is helping me, my dear." "I already told my psychologist if you get a call that I took my life, don't be amazed," she said, serious. "I'm so tired of this -- looking for supplies, finding water, lighting candles. I'm so tired." A few houses up the street, I met David Torres and Juanita Guzman, who were having their home repainted. Torres showed me a breathing machine he's supposed to use at night but doesn't, he said, because it requires a steady power source and could short circuit without one. He has a small generator -- "I use it to turn on one light and one fan; if I turn on the light, I have to turn off the fan." It doesn't provide steady enough power to run the machine, he said. "I need my oxygen mask. One of these days my wife is going to wake up and find me dead by her side," he said. "She told me that in the night she hears me having trouble breathing." "If it's my time to die, I'll die," he said, laughing. "There's nothing I can do."Experts say post-storm stress and depression can be deadly. Poverty exacerbates the risks, said Redlener, from Columbia University. The way people interpret a disaster matters, too. If they believe the disaster is simply weather-related rather than manmade, they're more likely to accept it, said Peek, from the University of Colorado. What she fears is that Puerto Ricans are struggling because of the human response to the hurricane. "It's like the despair effect," she said. "People who feel forgotten and neglected -- they may suffer negative mental health effects."Up the hill from the Rodriguez family live Miguel Amaro Leon, 79, and Maria Morales Ortiz, 76. They welcomed me onto their outdoor patio just as the sun was setting. A generator roared behind our conversation as they told me how hard it's been to keep the thing running. "It's been really difficult because we have to pay for the gas," Amaro Leon said. "We only use the generator three or four hours daily. If not, we would have to spend more money." Can they keep their insulin cold?"More or less." "We try to eat food that doesn't need to be in the refrigerator." As we talked, the generator ran out of gas.Frogs chirped in the night. "Things are getting better little by little," Amaro Leon said. "We just need power." * * * * *On my last evening in Maunabo, Lourdes Rodriguez took me to see her father's grave. It's in a cemetery in the valley, not far from the town plaza. Looking across the property, you can see the foggy mountains in the distance where so many of Lourdes' relatives cut sugar cane and plowed the earth, first under the rule of the Spanish and now the United States commonwealth. Natalio "Pepito" Rodriguez Lebron died on January 6.Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her father's family nickname -- "Pepito" -- was written by hand in wet cement. The family hasn't been able to pay for a headstone. "I can't fix it," she said, sobbing. "It's hard for me to see it that way."Álvarez Curbelo, the professor at the University of Puerto Rico, told me earlier that she wished Hurricane Maria's dead could speak. That way they would not be ignored. I asked Lourdes what she thought her father would say if he could talk with us now. "He would tell us to keep calm," she said, somber. "That was always his saying: 'Take it one day at a time.' Don't think about the next week or the next month. "Take it one day at a time."

Moni Basu, CNN

2017-11-16 23:16:23

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/world/iran-prison-poet/index.html

Baha'i woman survived a decade in Iranian jail by writing poetry - CNN

Her Baha'i beliefs in peace, altruism and humanity were, undoubtedly, instrumental to Mahvash Sabet's perseverance in prison. But she also relied on something else: poetry.

world, Baha'i woman survived a decade in Iranian jail by writing poetry - CNN

Writing to survive: Baha'i woman's poetry was her best friend in Iranian jail

(CNN)The sun had already set when the woman with long gray hair descended the steps to the same prison gate she had passed through all those years ago. Mahvash Sabet had been behind bars for an eternal decade, and on this evening, she was leaving Tehran's Evin Prison without money or possessions or anyone waiting for her.Iranian authorities released Sabet from her jail cell a day ahead of schedule at a little after 5 p.m., the deadline for prisoners to make their last phone calls of the day. The move was deliberate, she believes, to keep her homecoming quiet and largely removed from media glare. She had become, after all, internationally known.Outside the prison gate, Sabet asked to borrow a passerby's phone, then waited patiently for the 90 minutes it took her husband to cross Tehran in rush-hour traffic. She had been arrested, interrogated and tortured for her faith -- she is Baha'i, a religion the Islamic Republic of Iran considers heresy. She and six other members of an informal Baha'i council known as the Yaran, or Friends in Iran, were arrested in 2008. Read MoreHer Baha'i beliefs in peace, altruism and humanity were, undoubtedly, instrumental to Sabet's perseverance in prison. But she also relied on something else: poetry."Writing," she says, "became my means of survival."She scribbled her words on paper napkins and towels and shoved them into pockets and purses during precious "contact" visits with family, when they were not separated by the usual thick glass. The words she managed to get out of prison described a place of bleakness but one that could not break the human spirit. Author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani reads a statement from Mahvash Sabet at a PEN International ceremony honoring Sabet's poetry.They were words that recently earned Sabet recognition from English PEN, the founding center of PEN International, which promotes freedom of expression. Poet Michael Longley, winner of this year's PEN Pinter prize, named Sabet as the 2017 International Writer of Courage. "Her imagination is rhapsodic. Her poems want to soar," Longley said at a ceremony ipn London. He called her incarceration a "sin against the light" and then, quoting William Blake, said: "The power of dictators to silence and imprison writers continues to 'put all heaven in a rage.'"Sabet walked free of Evin Prison on September 18, the eve of President Donald Trump's speech to the United Nations, which focused in part on Iran. But, really, she had escaped prison long ago, when she began writing. What are they doing to us in this perilous place,this prison of loss? But what can they do to a handful of dustin the middle of chaos?If they cut open our veins, red tulips will blushlike blood in the fields.If they padlock our lips, the mouths of a thousandspring buds are unsealed.Hear readings at the PEN ceremony'Where's the life in your roots gone?'Before Shiite clerics took over Iran, Sabet lived another life. Born Mahvash Shahriyari in the small city of Ardestan, about 225 miles south of Tehran, she moved with her family to the capital when she was in the fifth grade. She earned a degree in psychology but also taught and became a principal in several schools. She had always loved writing and was good with words, say those who know her, and for a while she played a role with the National Literacy Committee of Iran. Sabet was a teacher and principal before Iran began persecuting the Baha'is.She fell in love with Siyvash Sabet and the two married in 1973. They had a son, Foroud, and a daughter, Negar. But the life she had envisioned ended with the Islamic revolution. The Baha'i faith is monotheistic and focuses on the spiritual unity of humanity. It was founded during the 19th century in what was then Persia and has millions of followers across the world, including 300,000 in Iran.But Iran's Shiite clerics view the faith as blasphemous because its founder, Baha'u'llah, declared himself to be a prophet of God. Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammed was the last prophet of God. And so, since 1979, life for Baha'is in Iran has deteriorated. Iran banned the religion, and the Baha'is -- the largest religious minority in the country -- have faced persecution in all aspects of life. Baha'i cemeteries have been desecrated; their marriages are not recognized.The Iranian government, says Amnesty International, routinely denies the Baha'is "equal rights to education, work and a decent standard of living by restricting access to employment and benefits." Sabet was fired from her job as principal and permanently barred from public education. She eventually became a director of the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education, created to help Baha'i students barred from higher education in Iran.On March 6, 2008, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security arrested Sabet and jailed her for more than two years without a proper hearing. Eventually, a revolutionary court convicted Sabet and the six other Baha'i leaders and condemned them to 20 years behind bars, although later the time was reduced to 10 years. The charges against them included espionage for Israel and spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. It was a verdict that Amnesty International called a "damning manifestation of the deeply rooted discrimination against Baha'is by the Iranian authorities."One of Sabet's lawyers, Mahnaz Parakand, recalls her first encounter with Sabet in February 2009. Sabet was handcuffed to Fariba Kamalabadi, another of the Baha'i leaders.The two women did not complain or speak of themselves, Parakand recalls, but she could tell from the color of their skin that they had been deprived of daylight and fresh air. "However, despite all their hardships, their will remained unbroken and they were determined to give up their lives, if necessary, for their beliefs," Parakand would later write.About the same time, Iranian authorities arrested American journalist Roxana Saberi and imprisoned her in Evin for 101 days. Saberi shared a cell with Sabet and Kamalabadi. "They taught me to, as they put it, turn challenges into opportunities -- to make the most of difficult situations and to grow from adversity," Saberi wrote of their encounter."We kept a daily routine, reading the books we were eventually allowed and discussing them; exercising in our small cell; and praying -- they in their way, I in mine. They asked me to teach them English and were eager to learn vocabulary for shopping, cooking and traveling. They would use the new words one day, they told me, when they journeyed abroad. But the two women also said they never wanted to live overseas. They felt it their duty to serve not only Baha'is but all Iranians."Later, when I went on a hunger strike, Mahvash and Fariba washed my clothes by hand after I lost my energy and told me stories to keep my mind off my stomach. Their kindness and love gave me sustenance."Evin has been home to thousands of political prisoners in Iran. Many wallowed in grief. Many broke. But not Sabet.She had been confined to a 13-by-16-foot shared cell in Evin's Section 209, a ward notorious for housing prisoners of conscience. The small windows were covered by metal that let in hardly any light. Often, she slept on a cold cement floor, even in the midst of harsh winters. She was subjected to nightlong interrogations and worse: torture and solitary confinement.After her release, I wrote to Sabet, asking about her imprisonment, her poetry and how she survived."A prison does not merely consist of high walls and barbed wire. The effects go far deeper and are much more complex than external barriers," Sabet said in a translated and emailed response to my questions.She says her confinement cut her off from everything, even her own senses of light, taste, touch and sound, to the point that the sensory deprivation began turning her into a vegetable. "They leave you into this limbo state and simply feed you to keep you alive," she says. "And all through this time, they interrogate you. They throw false charges at you over and over again. They accuse you, threaten you, abuse you, curse you, humiliate you. And you have to endure it all knowing that this could lead to further charges, more indictments, longer imprisonment ahead."But there was something else that was even harder to endure, she says. "Worse than this was that they wanted me to forget who I was. They wanted me to forget what I believed, forget my identity."Sabet searched for signs of hope in the smallest things, a sparrow taking flight or a thistle growing out of the pavement. And she began writing them down.And I said to myself,'Are you less than a weed then?Where's the life in your roots gone?Where's growth in your leaves? Your stem? No stirring in you at all? For shame!And at that I felt a surge of the sapOf spirit blaze within.'They cannot take from me what I shall never lose'At first, Sabet says, she wrote poems for her family. She wanted to cheer them up."I didn't want them to suffer for me; I wanted them to stop grieving for me," she says. "But soon, poetry began to lighten my own heart, too. I found that I could express my deepest feelings through poems. They could contain my misery amnd my suffering, my anguish at being separated from my friends and family, and in addition to recording painful moments of crisis, they became the place where I could record my little victories."She discovered she could put her anger and grief away if she expressed them in a poem. Her words allowed her to forget heartbreak and sorrow, overcome disappointments. They cleansed "the rust off my heart and recover the strength of my soul," she says.Why is it that despite its reels and shakesthe topsy-turvy world here cannot causethis throbbing heart of mine to ache?... If I have not died here it is becausethey cannot take from me what I shall never lose.But she also wrote so that she would remember her experiences, she says. She kept a pen and notebook with her and wrote every single day. In prison, poetry became Sabet's best friend. ... And that is why I need a balm to perfumethis camphor-tasting bread.A light to cast on these yellowed faces.A breath to lift these heads.Sabet at her Tehran home in a recent photograph taken after her release.'And I witnessed it'Sabet's lyrical verses, taken out of Evin by visitors, reached a relative, novelist Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, in the spring of 2011. Nakhjavani's parents, also prominent Baha'is, left Iran in 1951 and raised their daughter in Uganda and the United Kingdom. In 2003, Violette and Ali Nakhjavani retired to a town on the outskirts of Strasbourg, France, and that is where the family first received an envelope containing a handful of Sabet's poems, typed out in Persian.Violette read them out to Bahiyyih, whose knowledge of the language is limited. Soon, more poems arrived and together, mother and daughter translated and recast each one so that it made sense as poetry in English. It was a labor of love, so touched were they by the power of Sabet's verses. They were, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani tells me over the phone, "delicate and without recrimination.""Like many Persians, versifying was in [Sabet's] blood but she had never considered herself a poet," Nakhvajani says. "Her words made me weep — not just because of the terrible conditions she described, but because of her compassion."She was simply trying to lift her spirits and those of others as high as she could above those walls."There was one poem that especially touched the Nakhjavanis -- about a woman who died in prison. Sabet had seen a prison guard stuff the woman's body in a bag, like a dried-up branch of pine needles. All they said was -- well,The poor thing is free at last --And I witnessed itHer bundle of things, so frailAn ant could have carried it off like a grain of wheat --And I witnessed it.Her food a crumb of bread, so small,That a worm in the water could have swallowed it -- And I witnessed it."My mum said, 'We have to get this out,'" Nakhjavani says. "They put this woman in a bag and carried her off. Nameless. She had no significance to anyone in the world but was immortalized by the compassion of a witness -- that was Mahvash." As challenging as it was for Nakhjavani to take on a Persian poetry translation project, she felt compelled. Her mother died a year after they began, so her father became her translator. "I had to do these for the nameless woman. For my mum," Nakhjavani says. "Mahvash is bearing witness. For all the women who have died nameless in the world.""Prison Poems" was published in 2013. It contains about 70 of Sabet's works. "This project humbled me," says Nakhvajani. "If I were in her situation, I don't think I would have had this courage."In this way, Sabet's words survived prison walls and then transcended the barriers of translation, interpretation, reconstruction and appropriation into another language. In this way, Sabet's words became known to the outside world.Although you're rooted to your feetYou long for the sky;Although you're sister to the dustYou yearn to fly highBaha'i woman recalls imprisonment in Iran Sabet, right, with the other six Baha'i leaders who were arrested and jailed for 10 years.'Stay near that we may be reunited'On that September evening when Sabet was no longer a prisoner, she emerged from Evin with a purple head scarf. She had never cut her hair behind bars and it had turned from a brown shoulder bob to silvery waist-length locks. Doubt and distress filled Sabet on the inside. Anxiety sliced away the joy of seeing her loved ones again.Nakhvajani saw the photographs from the night of Sabet's release and was struck by her grace after so many years in prison. Her first public statement centered not on her own hardship but on her wish for her prison companions to be freed. Then she climbed into a car and drove into Tehran with her husband. Home was beautifulWith everyone busy doing things.Your prayers there tasted of eternity.Yet, everything felt new.She didn't know what to do with the money her husband gave her. She was dazzled by the new technology that had taken over during her time behind bars. She felt fearful of open places; even in her own home, she did not feel safe. Were there cameras detecting her every move? Was someone watching as they had in Evin?Her family had a new house and it seemed as unfamiliar as a hotel room, though occasionally she spotted remnants of her old life: a photograph, a tray. But mostly, she recognized nothing."Did we have this before?" she asked. "Where did this come from?""Don't you remember?" her family members replied.But she didn't.The dresses in the cupboard were mostly new, but when she did recognize one, it filled her with sadness. It was a reminder of the past she was forced to leave behind. "I had to forget all my old habits," she says. "I had to adapt myself to living on a thin blanket on the floor. That was where I did everything. I had to sit on that blanket, eat on that blanket, read and write and say my prayers on that blanket and finally, sleep on that same blanket."Yet, she blamed no one for her ordeal."I am a Baha'i and Baha'is are encouraged not to think of people as enemies," she says. "They are urged not to harbor resentments or bear grudges towards others. ... They should strive to see something they love and to respect every soul. "Do I strive for this ideal? I do not always succeed, but I try."While she was in Evin, PEN decided to honor Sabet as the 2017 Writer of Courage. She was deeply touched by the recognition but did not know then that she would be free to send a statement on the night of her honor.Nakhjavani traveled to London to read it on Sabet's behalf."Ten years of my life has just passed behind bars and I, as a renter of the world, I find myself given this incredible award. It is a wonder to me. And a mystery. "Coming back into the light after these 10 long years in darkness has not been easy. The changes I see all around me are truly astonishing. The pace of life is overwhelming. But the hardest thing for me is to know that even though I am walking free, many other friends and colleagues still remain behind bars. So in the midst of my wonder, I am filled with anguish. I am torn between joy and sorrow at this moment. ..."Sabet was recently reunited with Fariba Kamalabadi, another Baha'i leader released from prison.Now, as it was in Evin, poetry warms Sabet's heart. She is filled with "unutterable joy" when she meets those who have read her verses and understand what she was trying to say.A couple of weeks after the PEN ceremony, Sabet was reunited with Fariba Kamalabadi, the second of the seven Yaran to be released. The Baha'i International Community expects the release of the other five leaders soon. One of Sabet's poems paid tribute to her former cellmate:To my dear FaribaHow can I,without your mirror,know who I rightly am?Stay near that we may be reunitedand forever remain.Every morningI feel myself melting,flowing and coming aliveas I dive into the crystal clear springsof your heart's waves.Sabet is no longer in prison but she is not free. Not in Iran, where persecution of the Baha'is not only continues but has worsened, according to a report published by the Baha'i International Community. "The Baha'is in Iran continue to face daily pressures aimed at eradicating them as a viable entity in their own country," says Diane Ala'i, the organization's representative to the United Nations.About 100 Baha'is remain languishing in Iranian prisons, all of whom, the Bahai's say, are there solely because of their religious beliefs.Sabet thinks of them as she tries to put back the pieces of a life interrupted. She thinks of the prisoners inside Evin. Of those who survived. And those who did not.Or perhaps someone took her to see GodUp in the higher realms somewhere.And maybe He gave her a shelter there,A threshold she might call her own,And offered her just enough shade for joy,For a mouthful of peace, for the taste of love.And maybe God, at least, believed in her sufferings.

Moni Basu, CNN

2018-07-20 12:33:59

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/us/khizr-khan-the-making-of-an-activist/index.html

He shot to fame with one speech and is now on a mission against Trump - CNN

After owning the iconic moment of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Gold Star father Khizr Khan is now endorsing Democratic hopefuls, especially veterans, and is familiar enough to make robocalls and share headlines with powerful operatives.

us, He shot to fame with one speech and is now on a mission against Trump - CNN

He came to this country with $200 and hope. How Khizr Khan's American dream led him into a battle with Trump

Arlington, Virginia (CNN)Not too long ago, voters in Maine and Alaska received a robocall from the man who owned the iconic moment of the 2016 Democratic National Convention."Hello, this is Khizr Khan," he said, "calling on behalf of the People for the American Way." Khan was urging people to contact their senators -- Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski -- and tell them to oppose one of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees, a man one preacher has called "moral poison." Thomas Farr, a North Carolina attorney, "has spent a career using the law to discriminate," Khan said on the call. "He's fought for laws to prevent African-Americans from voting, and made it harder for workers to stand up for their legal rights on the job."If there were ever an example of what a political being Khan has become in the two years since he shot to fame, this was it. Read MoreHe has been endorsing Democratic hopefuls, especially veterans, and appearing with them at campaign stops. He's made short videos that candidates have posted on their websites and aired on local television stations. Now he was familiar enough to make robocalls and to share headlines with powerful operatives. "From Khizr Khan to Roger Stone, Idaho candidates get some big-name endorsements," read a headline in the Idaho Statesman.Army Cpt. Humayun Khan's image looms large at the 2016 Democratic convention, where his father gave an impassioned speech.Man, by nature, is a political animal, Aristotle surmised millennia ago. But Khan, despite his penchant for philosophy, would surely have laughed heartily at the notion of himself as one. He never expected to become an activist and such a well-known one at that, although he was wise enough to anticipate the trials and tribulations of fame.A unique set of circumstances set Khan on his journey, some he could control and others that he could not. He calls it his destiny. Or as the Persian scholar and poet Rumi, whom Khan grew up reading, wrote: "Though destiny a hundred times waylays you, in the end it pitches a tent for you in heaven."Khan has been waylaid a few times in his 68 years. He arrived in America in late 1979, carrying a single silver Samsonite suitcase and $200 in his pocket. The life he led in his adopted homeland was, by all counts, quiet and simple, though it was far from plain. He was a hard-working Pakistani immigrant who had felt the sting of martial law and developed a deep love and respect for the Constitution of the United States; he eventually realized his dream of graduating from Harvard Law School. He, along with Ghazala, his wife of 43 years, raised three sons, one of whom deployed to Iraq as an Army captain and returned home in a coffin.JUST WATCHEDMuslim-American Gold Star father on son's sacrificeReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMuslim-American Gold Star father on son's sacrifice 05:48Khan had never spoken publicly about his son's 2004 death except for a Washington Post story the following year. In it, he described Humayun as the comforter in the family who had taught disabled kids in high school how to swim. Khan took care not to express his opposition to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. But five days after a Muslim couple attacked and killed 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, and 11 years, five months and 29 days after Humayun died, candidate Trump appeared on Khan's television screen. He was calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.JUST WATCHEDKhizr Khan interviewReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHKhizr Khan interview 11:40Such a ban might have prevented Khan and his family from ever settling here. And what about Humayun's sacrifice? Was his service to the nation to be belittled in this way? The next afternoon, Khan received a call from a reporter for Vocativ, an online storytelling site that offers its audience a "unique lens" into issues. The reporter told Khan that he knew about Humayun's death and wanted to get a response from Khan to Trump's comments.No one had ever asked Khan to comment on a presidential candidate before. Khan was taken aback by the call, but nevertheless he agreed to the interview. He felt he could no longer remain quiet. Politics had suddenly taken a deeply personal turn.JUST WATCHEDKhizr Khan's powerful DNC speech (Full speech)ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHKhizr Khan's powerful DNC speech (Full speech) 06:03"We are proud American citizens," Khan said. "It's the values (of this country) that brought us here, not our religion. Trump's position on these issues do not represent those values."Khan was asked about the San Bernardino shootings."This is the time for us American Muslims to rat out any traitor who walks amongst us," he said. "Among us hides the enemies of the value system of this country. And we need to defend it."Hillary Clinton's campaign saw the Vocativ story and immediately called Khan to see if he was comfortable with Clinton mentioning Humayun in a speech she had planned on homeland security. Khan was OK with it if it were in the context of patriotism, not partisan politics.Many months later, the Clinton campaign called again, this time to ask if Khan would speak at the convention.Khan was not accustomed to airing his opinions on national matters and replied that he would have to think about it. He understood the risk he would be taking by stepping onto the DNC stage. His friends and family had warned him that his privacy would be forever gone, that politics had turned ugly and he might even become the target of harassment or worse. He sensed his life might not ever be the same.And for what? Would the words of a Muslim Gold Star father have any effect on an election that observers believed would be won handily by Clinton?He wrestled with the request and deliberated in lawyerly fashion the arguments for and against his speaking publicly. He decided he would call the Clinton campaign and politely turn down the invitation.But then he found a single envelope in his mailbox. There was no stamp, no return address. The handwriting belonged to a child."Dear Mr. Khan," the letter said. "You are a lawyer. Can you please not let them deport Maria? She is in fifth grade and she is our friend. Thank you."Khan walked back to his house in Charlottesville, to a room set up to pay tribute to Humayun's life. He stared at his son's photograph, at his deep, dark eyes, and asked himself: "What would Humayun do?"He and Ghazala both knew the answer. He called the Clinton campaign and said "yes."Khan introduces Clinton at a New Hampshire rally in 2016. Her loss devastated him but strengthened his resolve to stay politically active.He practiced his speech over and over again, and in the back seat of a taxi carrying him and Ghazala to the convention in Philadelphia he realized he had his pocket-size Constitution tucked in the left-breast pocket of his jacket, where it always was. He decided he would pull it out on stage.The rest is now a part of political history. Khan delivered a seven-minute speech that rocked the convention and reverberated across America. "Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our their future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy," Khan said, waving the blue booklet in the air. "In this document, look for the words 'liberty' and 'equal protection of law.' "Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending the United States of America -- you will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one."The crowd roared. The moment went viral.Other political neophytes might have relished their moment in the spotlight as the zenith of their lives and then moved on. In 2012, two families who belonged to Mitt Romney's church stood on stage at the Republican National Convention and talked about the candidate as a caring person. At the DNC, an Arizona woman spoke passionately about how Obamacare helped her daughter who was born with a congenital defect. They were ordinary people brought on stage to tell a heartwarming story to tout a candidate. They were not heard from again.Khan meets with members of the Muslim community, and veterans, while campaigning for Clinton in Norfolk, Virginia.Khan might have been one of them. But in those few minutes, his fiery speech made him a star and an avalanche of publicity followed. In the weeks leading up to the election, journalists sought him out for stories. He appeared on countless television shows, including numerous stints on CNN. He had become a voice to be reckoned with.Needless to say, Trump's electoral victory devastated Khan. But it steeled his resolve to carry on. Had Khan spoken out against a GOP candidate like George W. Bush, he might have considered returning home and disappearing from the public eye. "But it continued to get worse," he told me recently. "What good is your patriotism if you don't speak when your country faces peril? When your Constitution is maligned? When the values you defend are maligned? When you have a choice to honor your sons and daughters and their sacrifice or you let their uniform be soiled by a corrupt bigot tainted by Vladimir Putin's corrupt money."He has been unfaithful to the Constitution of the United States," he said of Trump. "Therefore, I must speak."In the months after the election, Khan penned a memoir in record time. "An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice" was published in the fall of 2017. It was a book that laid out Khan's love affair with America that began long before his celebrity moment at the convention."I am an American patriot," Khan wrote, "not because I was born here but because I was not. I embraced American freedoms, raised my children to cherish and revere them, lost a son who swore an oath to defend them, because I come from a place where they do not exist."What good is your patriotism if you don't speak when your country faces peril? When your Constitution is maligned? When the values you defend are maligned? Khizr KhanCritics praised the book. It could teach all Americans what real patriotism looks like, they said. Khan embarked on a frenzied promotional tour that took him to 13 cities in a matter of weeks. He spoke at countless events while Trump continued to make news with controversial remarks and American politics just seemed to get uglier and uglier.I wondered whether Khan had not been worn down by it all, whether he now regretted having made the decision to make that electrifying speech. I went to his book signing event at a small church in Raleigh, North Carolina, after meeting him for the first time earlier that November afternoon. For all the power of his words, Khan is a rather demure man and soft-spoken. He rarely raises his voice, though his language about Trump has certainly gotten fiercer over time. I watched people listen to him intently and then tell him afterward they were sorry for his loss and that he had touched their lives. They came carrying copies of the memoir as well as Khan's first book on the Constitution, written for children. By the time I saw him again in Atlanta a few weeks later, his voice had grown hoarse and he was visibly tired. In all, he counted 176 zigzag speaking engagements across the country in 2017. On a December night in San Francisco, he fell ill with pneumonia in his hotel room. But he still had appearances left in Arizona and New York. He popped two kinds of antibiotics and fell on his bed every night. He wanted to keep going. He was a humble man who told me he could not bear to disappoint his audiences.This year has hardly been any less stressful.He spoke at an event honoring Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II. At a diversity festival in Charlottesville, he stood up with Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed after a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally. He jumped into the fray after Trump offended the family of a soldier killed in Niger. He began campaigning for Democrats who are challenging Republicans in the midterm elections. The list of candidates he's supporting has grown so long that he can hardly recite all the names anymore.And in March, he wrote a personal appeal to the Supreme Court to strike down the very policy that propelled him on this life trajectory: Trump's travel ban. He felt compelled to do this by his unwavering, lifelong devotion to the Constitution.In the amicus brief filed in support of Hawaii's challenge of the ban, Khan described his son's service to his country. A room at the Khans' house in Charlottesville is dedicated to the son they lost. For years, they kept their intense grief private.On the morning of June 8, 2004, Capt. Humayun Khan was supervising a checkpoint outside Camp Warhorse near the central Iraqi city of Baquba. A taxi approached the gates, but Humayun wanted to make sure the driver was not confused and did not order his soldiers to put a .50-caliber shell through the windshield. Instead he ordered his soldiers to hit the dirt, and he began to move toward the taxi to try and stop it. He was killed when suicide bombers in the taxi detonated their explosives.Khan and his wife moved from Maryland to Charlottesville after Humayun's death so they could be close to their other two sons. They started a memorial award in their son's name for the University of Virginia ROTC program, where Humayun began his military career.Each year at the commissioning ceremonies, Khan hands America's newest officers pocket-size copies of the Constitution and reminds them to think hard about their oath to defend it, he told the justices in his brief."My son died for that document," he wrote.Khan argued that Trump's travel ban desecrated his son's service and sacrifice as a Muslim-American officer. He argued that it also violated his own constitutional rights."The message," he said, "is that Muslims are unwelcome outsiders." An honor no one wantsOn a Saturday morning in the spring, after Washington's Yoshino cherry blossoms have already peaked and four days before the Supreme Court hearing on Trump's travel ban, Khan arrived at my hotel to pick me up in his 2018 Honda Accord. The odometer had already clocked 25,000 miles, mostly earned from his drives back and forth from his rented apartment in Alexandria to Charlottesville.I was seeing Khan for the first time without his usual suit and tie; he wore a black turtleneck and a tweed jacket. But on his lapel was the pin he always wears close to his heart. It's a pin of honor that no one wants: the Gold Star.Khan adjusted his round spectacles and cleared his throat before beginning our short drive, past the Iwo Jima Memorial and alongside the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery. Khan can see the river from his apartment balcony, and he often walks along it. Gazing out at the water gives him solace.He needs those calming moments. His life was upended when Humayun was killed in 2004. It was upended again when he ascended to national prominence. The attacks on Khan started almost immediately with Trump himself, who belittled Ghazala for not speaking on stage, suggesting she was a subservient Muslim woman. Trump even said that the Clinton campaign had penned the speech Khan so painstakingly wrote and practiced repeatedly.Read Ghazala Khan's response to Donald TrumpKhan addresses activists and reporters at the Supreme Court in April, when the justices heard arguments on the travel ban.Trump adviser Roger Stone added to the fire by saying Khan was part of the Muslim Brotherhood. The far-right Breitbart News said Khan believed the US Constitution was subordinate to Sharia or Islamic law.Khan is acutely aware of all the people out there who might want to hurt him. He has taken precautions such as putting up "no trespassing" signs in his front yard and other measures he did not want to divulge. He said he lives not in fear but with concern."I keep my eyes open," he said. "Those 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence -- they were the real heroes," he continued. "They put their name, their state, their city so that the British could invade their properties, their homes, raid their households. Some were arrested, some were charged with treason. Their properties were confiscated. They did not say, 'Let's leave that anonymous.' They put their names down."He paused for a moment and said, "But I am careful. That's about it."Khan's life got so much more complicated with his activism. I asked him where he draws his strength from, and what he does to relax."Well, I like to read," he said. I assumed he would name Rumi, which he did, or another familiar author, but instead I learned he was engrossed in a history of the Bill of Rights, "Bills, Quills and Stills." Sometimes, he watches television shows other than news. "You know that one about the nerdy science kids," he said, racking his brain to remember the name of "The Big Bang Theory." And sometimes, he drops in at La Madeleine in Old Town Alexandria for a cranberry and pecan salad. He likes their croissants. "They are baked fresh right here," he said.But his activities were interrupted ahead of the Supreme Court's oral arguments on the Trump travel ban. Having written his amicus brief, he wanted to attend -- in case the justices asked him any questions. He spent countless hours meeting with his lawyer. "The outside world doesn't know how much preparation it takes to appear before the Supreme Court," he said. "Judges ask all sorts of questions. I have to be fully prepared."He told me he was nervous; the hearing meant everything to Khan. "Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise. That is why this Muslim ban is being issued," he said. "He has no moral courage."Khan has no desire to criticize a sitting president, he said, unless that president is threatening American democracy. Khan cited Trump's attacks on the media. The first thing authoritarian rulers do is shut down the free press, he said. The second thing is they don't like the rule of law, he said, referring to the administration's prickly relationship with the FBI and CIA. "I have lived under martial law twice," he said of his younger years in Pakistan. "I know how it feels when authorities say, 'I don't like the newspapers, turn them off. I don't like the radio or television stations. Turn them off. Only my voice will prevail.'"I know how it feels to lose these freedoms and liberties," he said.Khan campaigns for Democrat Phil Murphy in the New Jersey governor's race in October. Murphy won with 56% of the vote.We approached the main gate to Arlington National Cemetery. The drill for visiting families became familiar to Khan many years ago. He visits Humayun's grave on special occasions such as the anniversaries of his birth and death. He visits Humayun's grave on ordinary days when he just wants to be near his son.Khan reached over, opened the glove box and pulled out a permanent parking pass that he displayed on the windshield. The guards waved him through.I peered through the windows at the tall trees bursting with buds, signs of new life hanging over the dead. The shadows of the barer branches looked like black lace draping rows and rows of white gravestones. I know several soldiers and Marines who are buried at Arlington. I know wives and husbands, daughters and sons and mothers and fathers, like Khan, whose loved ones found their final resting place here. I glanced at Khan in the driver's seat and suddenly the weight of the cemetery bore down on me.Khan steered the car toward Section 60, where many of the dead from America's newest wars -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- are buried. Not too long ago, he was at Union Station buying a train ticket when the man behind the counter recognized him. He came out and gave Khan a hug. He, too, had lost a son. The man told Khan: It creates a hole in your heart that is never filled. So be strong. Then he issued Khan the ticket.We walked toward Grave No. 7986 -- his son's grave. We passed headstones of soldiers and Marines of all religions and ethnicities, a representation of American diversity.Barun Rai, Michael Yury Tarlavsky, Francis Chinomso Obaji, Alan Dinh Lam, Tulsa Tulaga Tuliau, Nicholas S. O'Brien, Michael Luis Gonzalez, Nicholas Lee Ziolkowski, Brian Anthony Medina, Ayman Abdelrahaman Taha.Latinos, Arabs, Asians, African-Americans. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims. Ziolkowski, a corporal, was 22 when he died. Someone had left birthday balloons for him on the day we visited. Medina, a Marine lance corporal, was only 19 when he was killed in Falluja several months after Humayun's death. Khan reached out to Medina's father.Khan often stops to look at all the things people have left at graves. Laminated letters, medals, photographs, keepsakes and religious objects. He utters the names of the dead out loud."How precious is our freedom," he said, picking up a 5-by-7 color photo of Robert J. Hess next to his headstone. "That's why I pay very close attention to the date of birth and date of death. How young they were. How full of life." A group of young Navy cadets broke our solitude that day at Arlington. They were among the thousands of people who had come to tour America's most hallowed ground. Khan contends Trump has little sympathy for Gold Star families, little respect for men and women in uniform. He has made that point repeatedly in his speeches and television appearances. That morning, as we walked the aisles of Section 60, Khan found it hard to remain restrained."Drag that SOB out of the White House and bring him here." Khan often visits his son's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. When faced with tough decisions, Khan asks: What would Humayun have done?With bowed heads, we finally stood before Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan. Cpt. US Army. Born on September 9, 1976. Killed on June 8, 2004. Interred on June 15, 2004.Khan straightened a small container of canary yellow mums and placed a small stone at the top of the headstone, a sign of visitation and respect. He visits Humayun these days not just as his father but also as an activist committed to doing right by his son. He has no regrets about the direction his life took after his speech at the convention and has fully accepted his role as the activist he has become. But even now, he feels unprepared for the limelight, unqualified to take on his destiny.But here, on this one small patch of American soil, few would dare to challenge him.EpilogueOn April 25, Khan donned a navy blue suit, pinned his Gold Star on the lapel and made his way to the Supreme Court for the 10 a.m. hearing on Case No. 17-965, Trump, President of US v. Hawaii. The justices did not ask him any questions, though he arrived fully prepared. Afterward, he stood on the steps of the highest court of the land and addressed the crowd."Our case was very vigorously presented and we await a positive outcome," he said. "But what was affirmed to all of us is that no one, even the president of the United States, is above the law."Then he returned to his work in support of Democratic candidates across the nation and remained hopeful that the justices would revoke Trump's travel ban. A little over two weeks after the anniversary of Humayun's June 8 death, Khan was campaigning in Minneapolis when the Supreme Court issued its ruling. By a 5-4 vote, the justices upheld the travel ban. It was a huge victory for Trump, another crushing blow for Khan.But he found some comfort in the passionate dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She compared the court's opinion to one issued in 1944 that endorsed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Khan told me he was reminded also of the infamous pro-slavery ruling in the 1857 Dred Scott case. Both those decisions are now regarded as low points for the highest court of the land.They are looked upon now "as a national disgrace and violations of the nation's democratic values under the disguise of the national security," Khan said. "So will this decision."Trump won, Khan said, because the Republicans in Congress successfully torpedoed Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland for the court. Instead, the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, added a conservative voice on the bench."What else I can say?" Khan said. "Trump's judge sitting on Judge Garland's stolen chair gave the majority courage and words to trample upon our constitutional values."Again, Khan's resolve steeled. He was off to Michigan when we last exchanged emails in early July. Republicans, he told me, had abdicated their adherence to the rule of law and this nation's system of governance to line up behind Trump. This made Khan more passionate than ever about dismantling the GOP majority in Congress. It was, he felt, the only way left to preserve American democracy.

Moni Basu, CNN

2018-02-08 22:47:32

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/08/us/nc-muslim-killings-american-journey/index.html

A gunman killed his brother. Now Farris Barakat is on an American journey. - CNN

Farris Barakat began talking tolerance after his brother was killed in what Muslims saw as a hate crime. Three years later, he sees himself as an activist for America.

us, A gunman killed his brother. Now Farris Barakat is on an American journey. - CNN

A gunman killed his brother. Now Farris Barakat is on an American journey.

Raleigh, North Carolina (CNN)On the house that Farris Barakat built, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. wrap around the porch overhang, as though they were protection from the outside world: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." It took his brother's death for Farris to fully embrace those words. In February 2015, Deah Barakat was gunned down along with his wife of six weeks, Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan. News of the triple slaying at a Chapel Hill apartment complex reverberated here and around the world as another instance of hatred toward Muslims. A neighbor was charged with three counts of murder but not a hate crime -- sparking further outrage. The deaths yanked Farris from his life's trajectory and set him on one he had not anticipated. Read MoreAt 24, he abandoned his courier business and everything else to speak out against hate. He devoted much of his time to renovating a 105-year-old rental house his brother had owned in a rundown neighborhood east of downtown Raleigh. Farris named it for his brother. Deah means "light" in Arabic, and The Light House now serves as a center for youth, a gathering place Farris hopes will further Deah's dreams for a more tolerant America.Here, at this house, Farris hopes to find the light that was so cruelly snuffed out.Farris named The Light House for his brother and inscribed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. to serve as hope for a more tolerant America.Farris and Deah, sons of Syrian immigrants, were only 18 months apart in age, a grade apart in school and an inch apart in height. Farris feels his brother's presence most strongly in The Light House -- not through things Deah left behind or memories they shared, but through the ideals espoused here. Farris was certain Deah would be alive today had it not been for his faith, and he felt a religious duty to parlay his brother's story into easing the nation's fears. Strangers probably would never sit and listen to Farris talk about Islam, but they were willing to pay attention in the context of tragedy. Farris focused on turning his grief and anger into something positive. He needed to see a sapling sprout from fire-scorched earth. He allowed The Light House to consume him.Three years passed in this way. All around him, Farris saw his community shattered by the tragedy. He saw the consequences of hatred haunt his Muslim neighbors. But he also saw hope in a city that was proud of its diversity and in people struggling to heal. He found new friends along the way. One, in particular, was most unexpected.Our Three WinnersOne spring afternoon, when it is neither hot nor cold, neither dark nor light, Farris and his mother, Layla, climb into his minivan to make the drive westward to Chapel Hill. It's graduation weekend, and the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry is holding its commencement ceremonies this evening. Deah would have been marching today with the Class of 2017. Farris and Layla agonized over whether to attend. Farris worried their presence would cast a pall on the joy of others; Layla feared it would be too much to bear. In the end, Layla decided she had to go. For Deah.In the afternoon, as she does every Friday, she'd driven to a mosque in Deah's old Honda Accord, his black-and-white checkered keffiyeh still draped over the driver's seat. Then, as she does every Friday, she visited Deah's grave, No. 429, at the Muslim Cemetery in nearby Wendell, and sat, deep in prayer, with her youngest child."Someone was there to visit him today. There were fresh flowers there," she tells Farris as he merges onto Interstate 40. Farris felt compelled to talk peace and faith to drown out the loud chorus against Islam.It's after 5 p.m. and Farris concentrates on driving amid a sea of red taillights. Layla stares at the raindrops on the windshield, rivers shrieking across glass. God's tears.In the morning, she had taken Farris to a Men's Warehouse to shop for suits. He had gained weight in the aftermath of Deah's death and needed a size 46. He had aged on the inside and out. "Did you wear a tie?" Layla asks. She had asked him to wear school colors. That's what Deah would have done.Farris whips out a dotted tie he's wearing with a crisp blue shirt. Some might call it United Nations blue. But around these parts, there's only one descriptor: Carolina blue. Layla nods in approval.They drive past the road they'd turned onto so many times to visit Deah. Layla's husband, Namee, had bought 272 Summerwalk Circle, a ground-level, two-bedroom, two-bathroom condominium in the Finley Forest complex, for his son to live in while he attended dental school. Layla studied architectural engineering as a young woman in Aleppo and had taken great pride in designing her home. After Deah married Yusor, she helped them set up theirs. Just a week before they died, they'd installed a sparkling new stainless-steel sink in their black granite countertop. They beamed with pride like parents with their firstborn. Deah and Yusor's families had worked hard to make it in America. Deah's father, Namee, owns real estate and several small businesses including a convenience store. Layla raised their three children and went back to school at North Carolina State University to earn a master's degree in computer science. Yusor and Razan's parents, Mohammad and Amira Abu-Salha, were Palestinians who lived in Jordan and Kuwait before coming to America. He was a psychiatrist and she, a pharmacist by training, helped him run his practice.Farris, Deah and their older sister Suzanne had attended Al-Iman, the Islamic grade school at their mosque. So did the Abu-Salha children. Deah and Yusor met as kids and became a couple when they were at North Carolina State. Everyone was delighted when they got engaged.In February 2015, Deah was 23 and a second-year star student at the UNC dental school. He dazzled people with his charm. He loved basketball, watched "SportsCenter" and was such a huge fan of Steph Curry that following Deah's death, the Golden State star wore a special pair of sneakers honoring him at the NBA All-Star Game.Yusor, fine-boned with curly hair and big hazel eyes, shared her husband's love of basketball, hung out with her girlfriends and obsessed over playing the video game "Call of Duty." At 21, she was preparing to follow in her husband's footsteps at the dental school and had just received her letter of admission. Razan, 19, was a runner and the creative one, an aspiring student of design and architecture. Her Twitter profile said, "I like buildings and other stuff," and her posts were typical of a bleary-eyed college student downing venti coffees to study. All three were popular and high achievers, known in the Raleigh area for their charitable work with the poor and homeless. Deah traveled to Jordan to provide dental services for Syrian refugees and was raising money for future clinics. Yusor, too, had flown to Turkey on a volunteer mission to help Syrians and was planning to join her husband on a future trip. They were all-American kids who were keenly aware of their Muslim identities.They lived their lives in accordance with Islam. They avoided alcohol and, when they came of age, the women chose to cover their heads. Before they were married, Yusor often visited Deah at his condo. Razan was always with her sister as a chaperone -- it was not deemed proper for Yusor and Deah to be alone together. Yusor looked like a fairy-tale princess in her beaded white gown at her December wedding to Deah. They flew to Mexico for a honeymoon and after they returned home as a married couple, they often invited friends and family over. Just days before they died, Yusor's parents had come over to watch the movie "Selma."This photo of the Barakat family, taken before Deah's wedding, sits in Layla's living room. The 1980s condo complex was filled with graduate students and young professionals and for the most part, life was quiet in the shade of tall Carolina trees. But Deah and Yusor quickly became aware of the man living above them in No. 270.Craig Hicks was a burly 46-year-old white man who was studying to become a paralegal at Durham Technical Community College. His Facebook page revealed a man out of the ordinary. He did not specifically bash Muslims but held organized religion in contempt. A quote he posted said, "People say nothing can solve the Middle East problem. Not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is something. Atheism." Hicks harbored a deep love for guns, and neighbors said he showed "equal opportunity anger." He frequently complained to Deah that visitors to the complex had usurped parking spaces reserved for him and his wife. Deah checked with the management to make sure he was not violating the rules and even sketched out the parking lot for his friends to make sure they never parked in reserved spaces. On occasion, Hicks revealed a gun in his holster. Yusor grew scared. She texted Deah about her fears: Our neighbor is always walking around us with a gun. He's always looking at me. Would he be doing this if we were white? I feel unsafe.They discussed whether they should tell the police about Hicks. But they didn't want to provoke him in any way. Deah assured his wife that their disgruntled neighbor was smart enough not to use his gun. He was wrong.On February 10, a little after 5 p.m., Hicks allegedly found a car belonging to one of the victims in what he claimed was his parking space and went into a blind rage. According to the prosecutor's account, Hicks armed himself with a .357-caliber handgun and walked to Deah and Yusor's condo. When Deah opened the door, Hicks pulled out the gun and shot him multiple times. Farris, left, and Deah were 18 months apart in age, a grade apart in school and an inch apart in height.Yusor and Razan began screaming for their lives. Both were shot in the head, according to the state medical examiner's autopsies. On his way out, Hicks pointed his gun at Deah again and shot him a final time in the mouth. The man who was studying to become a dentist died with his teeth missing and his mouth disfigured. Before the sun had set that Tuesday evening, Deah, Yusor and Razan lay cold in pools of blood. They had been killed execution style. A little while later, Hicks turned himself into law enforcement and was subsequently charged with three counts of first-degree murder. His trial is expected this year, and if convicted, he faces the death penalty. The events of that night burn brightly in Farris' and Layla's minds. They remember receiving texts about a shooting at UNC. Layla called Yusor's father, Mohammad. She was frantic. She'd heard three people had died and that Deah might have been involved. They dialed their children's cell phones. No one answered.They got in their cars and raced to the Finley Forest complex. Mohammad remembers almost crashing his car on the way. By the time they got there, the police were everywhere.They were told by police to wait in the community center. Five and a half hours later, they knew their gravest fears were true."Deah took the bus home from UNC at 4:50," Layla recalls. "He and a friend took a photo on the bus. At 5:08, it was done."These are the kinds of details Layla can never forget.JUST WATCHEDSister of slain Muslim student: We are in shock, denialReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSister of slain Muslim student: We are in shock, denial 03:18In a news conference, police said the three students had been shot because of a parking space dispute, a claim that incensed the families. They felt it trivialized the true nature of what they saw as a heinous act against Muslims: a hate crime. They could not accept that their loved ones, who had been previously taunted by Hicks, were gunned down over a small piece of asphalt. The FBI and Department of Justice launched investigations into whether this was indeed a hate crime, though no determination has yet been made. But for the families and the greater Muslim community here in America and abroad, the official classification didn't matter. They saw the killings as manifestation of a disturbing and rising trend: Islamophobia.People listen during a vigil at UNC Chapel Hill in February 2015.Farris had spent nearly half his childhood in a post-9/11 world and had grown accustomed to phobias, as much as anyone can ever get used to them. He was no longer surprised by the vitriol hurled at Muslims, especially in the aftermath of terrorist attacks perpetrated in the name of Islam. Or by the mosque vandalisms, or by the polls that showed nearly 40% of Americans held an unfavorable view of the religion.But nothing could cushion the shock of his brother's slaying.He returned home that awful night and, still in a state of utter devastation, launched a Facebook page. He offered friends and strangers alike an outlet, a place where they could feel connected to the families. He wanted a space where he could try to control the spread of what he saw as rumors and misinformation. Most of all, he felt compelled to talk peace and faith to drown out the loud, offensive chorus against Islam.He called the page Our Three Winners.A trying dayFarris and Layla approach the Carolina campus for what should have been a celebration. Deah had wanted to be adentist for so long. Today would have been the fruition of his wishes.Instead, Farris and Layla walk into a crowd of people who struggle to find the right words. Some of the students have adorned their tassels with charms bearing the logo of the Three Winners, a silhouetted illustration of Deah, Yusor and Razan.After he buried his brother before a crowd of more than 5,000 people, Farris launched headlong into establishing the Our Three Winners Foundation, which funds humanitarian missions that reflect the ideals of the fallen three. Farris dedicated himself to honoring their legacy by improving relations between Muslims and the community at large. The Class of 2017 at the University of North Carolina dentistry school honored Deah at its commencement ceremony. He began speaking publicly and returned to the house that Deah owned in east Raleigh. He put up new drywall, installed modern kitchen appliances and outfitted the bathrooms with bidets. He purchased a Sonos system so that the sounds from an upstairs prayer room could be heard throughout. There's even a 3-D printer in the office. He hoped people would see The Light House as an example of how to respond to hate; he even dared to hope it would become a symbol for all of America in dealing with the fear and bloodshed that consumed the nation after 9/11. The Our Three Winners Foundation joined a project started by activist and CNN commentator Van Jones to launch a #LoveThyNeighbor campaign. Deah, Yusor and Razan had all attended North Carolina State, and their alma mater set up scholarships in their names. It also sponsored a Run for Razan to raise money and inspire young people. Razan was training for the Raleigh Rock 'N' Roll half-marathon when she was killed.At UNC, Deah's dental classmates set up DEAH DAY, short for Directing Efforts And Honoring Deah And Yusor. Once a year, the school canceled classes for a day of dental and nondental charitable work.At the commencement ceremony, Deah's classmate Kaushal Gandhi, one of the founders of DEAH DAY, shows Layla and Farris her tassel charm. On the stage is a framed portrait of Deah and a mortarboard and sash.Layla stares at them from her seat up in the stands of Carmichael Arena. Pride and grief begin to churn as one.She fiddles with her phone when the emotions become overwhelming. Sometimes, she feels she has nothing left in this life anymore. She dreams of being reunited with all her children again and counts the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years. Time feels like a treadmill to nowhere. She watched from afar as her beloved Syria descended into intractable civil war that ripped apart family back home and razed the places she held dear. Then she lost Deah. And in the months that followed, she felt strain in her marriage -- it's not uncommon for relationships to suffer in the aftermath of trauma. Layla lost the one thing human beings need to feel grounded. She lost her sense of belonging. She tries to find inner peace by surrendering to God. But in moments like this, the rawness takes over.Layla watched as her beloved Syria descended into bloodshed and war. Then her son was killed. She finds solace in her faith.In the middle of the commencement ceremony, Brian Swift, president of the Class of 2017, says a few words about his fallen classmate. "Our class is forever bonded by the tragic and untimely death of Deah," Swift begins. "He led by example and he led by heart. We miss him every day. He is a part of the fabric of our lives."Swift notes the presence of Deah's family and asks Layla to identify herself. Everyone stands as they applaud her. Layla does not know where to look or how to act in that moment. Or how to hold herself together. When the processional ends, she makes a frantic dash for the stage to collect Deah's mortarboard and sash. She accepts a bouquet of roses from the university and clutches her son's photograph. She can no longer keep up the charade or keep her eyes dry.Farris hugs his mother. He had decided long ago that his happiness meant not letting himself feel vulnerable. After Deah died, Farris quit playing basketball for a while because he found it was too easy to explode in a competitive situation. He kept his anger and public grief in check by living the words of Martin Luther King Jr., by doing right by his brother. Tomorrow would test him again. Deah and Yusor had married six short weeks before they were killed, and their wedding would always be indelibly etched in Farris' and Layla's memories.The next evening, Farris and Layla were planning to attend the wedding of Yusor and Razan's brother, Yousef. No matter how hard Farris tried, he knew that sometimes, nothing, not even his honorable actions, and maybe not even his faith, could protect him from grief. The UNC graduation ceremony was one of those moments. Amid the laughter and joy resounding in the convocation hall, mother and son find solace in one another. Together, they let torrents of tears flow. AnxietyIn another part of Raleigh, Hanadi Asad pulls back her long dark hair and dons an apron advertising Cajun Joe's, the chicken franchise her father once owned. She is decorating macaroons and boxing up baklava and other butter and honey-soaked Mediterranean deserts for the weekend farmer's markets. She's also baking a four-tier wedding cake and manages the tasks at hand like a master juggler.Yousef Abu-Salha is getting married, and Hanadi knows the cake, the flowers, the ambience -- everything -- has to be perfect. The Muslim community in the Raleigh area is fairly close-knit, and Hanadi knows both families of the shooting victims."It's a big deal because it's the Abu-Salha family," she says. "You see the happiness and you see broken hearts in their eyes. I wanted to take away some of their stress and let them enjoy their son's wedding."Deah had tapped Hanadi to do the décor for his wedding, and in her smartphone, Hanadi still keeps the last texts she exchanged with him. She told him her daughter Julann had asked for blankets to donate to Syrian refugees in lieu of presents for her sixth birthday.Hanadi Asad, here with her husband, Jamaal, and their five children, is trying to grow her dessert and event business at a time that feels uncertain. "That's beautiful," Deah texted Hanadi.Hours later, he was dead. On this Saturday morning, the texts are from Yousef. He wants to make sure the cream-cheese icing is just right. At first, the Abu-Salha family was not sure whether a celebration would be appropriate so soon after their daughters' deaths. Would people think they were crazy to wear fine attire, eat scrumptious food and dance the night away? But Hanadi understood. How could they allow tragedy to stop their lives? How could they deny their son his moment of joy?Like the Abu-Salhas, Hanadi's family is Palestinian. She was born in Kuwait and was 8 when she arrived in America in 1985 with her parents and siblings. Raleigh was a small Southern city then, still healing from the scars of segregation. There wasn't even a mosque nearby; Muslim families congregated in private homes to pray. But as Hanadi grew, so did the city around her. Immigration soared in the 1990s -- fueled in part by agriculture, universities and the tech companies of the Research Triangle -- and people from all parts of the planet were lured to the greater Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. For decades, Muslim immigrant families settled here largely without incident. Although they only form about 1% of the 2 million-plus population here, as their numbers grew, they established mosques and schools and became a part of the social fabric. Residents took pride in the area's growing diversity and boasted about its inclusivity.These days, signs that say, "Welcome to Raleigh, y'all" in 17 languages plaster walls, bulletin boards and store windows. The campaign was launched by a nonprofit organization called Come Out and Show Them, which previously advocated on behalf of LGBTQ rights after a controversial "bathroom bill" required people to use public restrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates.Come Out and Show Them chose to focus on immigration after it became such a hot-button issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.With their families by their side, Deah married Yusor on December 27, 2014. Six weeks later, they were dead.By then, after Deah, Yusor and Razan were killed, Muslims here were already feeling the same anxiety that threatened to overtake their lives after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. That anxiety heightened with the election of Donald Trump, a president they viewed as being anti-Muslim.One of the most visible signs of discomfort: Some women began uncovering their heads. But others refused to surrender their faith. Shortly before she was married, Yusor had tweeted: "Hijab is my constant reminder that we aren't living for this world...#Perseverance"Those became words to live by for Muslim women like Hanadi. They drew strength, too, from the Our Three Winners logo that sported the hijabs of Yusor and Razan. It's wrong to uncover in public once a woman has committed herself to doing so, Hanadi believed.If Hanadi did not wear the hijab, she might "pass" for white with her fair skin and freckles. She knows she has an easy way out, but she remains resolute."Am I going to fear people or fear God?" she asked herself. Her eldest daughter, Raiyan, is 15 and must decide soon whether to cover. Some of her friends already have. But Raiyan likes to leave her long, thick curls on full display. She fights with her father about clothes -- a pair of leggings had too much see-through mesh on the thighs. JUST WATCHEDSister of UNC victim: Shooter terrorized our familyReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSister of UNC victim: Shooter terrorized our family 07:16Hanadi feels sure her daughter will make the right decisions when she is ready.Without the hijab, Hanadi would be any other 40-year-old wife and mom of five kids. She enjoys chicken salads at Panera, gets pedicures on the weekends and enjoys shopping with her girlfriends. Her big splurge this year was a Louis Vuitton bag.Hanadi studied biochemistry at North Carolina State and for years worked in the pharmaceutical industry. But a few months after the killings, she quit her job and decided to get entrepreneurial with her true passions: baking and design. She named her business Asali, a combination of her and her husband's last names and, appropriately, an Arabic word for honey. Hanadi put herself on hire to bake desserts and plan events.She runs her business from a three-story house in the bedroom community of Apex, just west of Raleigh. It's in chaos with giggling high school girls, cartoons on television and craft projects strewn about the dining table. The pantry and garage are bursting with things for baking and event-planning: cake pans, cardboard gift boxes, powdered sugar, vases, flower cutters, ribbons, table runners, candle holders. She's been hunting for a retail space, one with a commercial kitchen and enough room to host parties. She began growing Asali at a time that felt uncertain. The news of the UNC killings reverberated throughout the Muslim world. Here, women attend a rally in Amman, Jordan.In Hanadi's childhood, people stared at women in hijabs out of curiosity. Now, people stared at her in a way that made her feel unsafe. She wondered how small-town folks who frequented the farmer's markets would react to a Muslim woman. Sometimes, she assumed the worst.One time, a man she described as being "very country" was watching her at the Apex Farmers Market. He listened intently to her conversation with a customer. When she was finished, she asked him: "Do you have any questions?" What she really wanted to ask was: "Are you here to kill me?" That's how it is these days for Muslims in America, she says. But the man was polite. He even gave her $20 for a box of desserts."It's only $10," Hanadi told him.He told her to keep the change.She sighed with relief. Sometimes, she notices Facebook friends ranting against Muslims. It offends her, but she never unfriends them. She feels it's important to know what they are saying. That included posts by her neighbors expressing their support for Trump after he called for the travel ban on Muslims entering the United States.That made Hanadi think twice about living in Apex, but where else could she go? As a Palestinian, she has no homeland. Besides, she is American. North Carolina is home. When Muslims all over America were recoiling, Hanadi refused. She forged forward with Churchillian resolve, determined to prove that Muslims worked hard and wanted the same successes in life as everyone else. She listened to podcasts by entrepreneurs such as Jerry Murrell, the founder of the hugely successful Five Guys burger chain. One day, Asali, too, would be a household name.She knew that she had to step outside the Arab community to be successful. It was one thing to sell baklava on Western Boulevard, where shops named after Mecca and Medina sell halal meat and restaurants brim with falafel and shawarma. It was another thing to have shoppers at upscale North Hills clamoring for more.Giving in to her fears, she felt, meant a victory for the man who killed Deah, Yusor and Razan and for everyone else caught up in what she feels has been a tidal wave of Islamophobia."My mother always says, 'What if Trump bans hijab? What if things get worse for us?' " Hanadi says. "Is taking off my hijab really going to change anything?" she asks. "They will still hear my name. So where do we stop?"A group of students plan a book exchange at The Light House. Farris wanted the house to be a gathering place for young Muslims.It was important for Hanadi, after she began working from home, that she continue to interact with people outside her community. It was key, she believed, to wiping out ignorance, key for her children's sake. She hears questions that serve as proof of how much work is left to be done. Are you a Pakistianian? Why does Islam force women to cover their heads? Do you have to marry your husband's brother if your husband dies?Hanadi has heard these all her life. Sometimes, people are surprised when she first speaks to them. "Oh, your English is so good," they say. Why wouldn't it be? Hanadi thinks. I grew up here.Still, she operates with a dark cloud lingering overhead, suspicious of the world around her.On her desk, she keeps a Mother's Day card her son Idrees made at school: "Even though I annoy you and you annoy me. I still love you."Hanadi is raising five children, and she knows it could be her own family who one day faces a gunman's ire, like Deah, Yusor and Razan did. She tells her own children to emulate the Three Winners in a way that when they die, no one will have anything negative to say. The white dudeOn Fridays at the Islamic Association of Raleigh, one man stands out in the sea of worshippers mainly of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage. He's tall at 6 feet 4, and he's dressed impeccably in khaki trousers, a freshly pressed shirt and bright yellow tie. He's also the only white guy here.The first time Wilson Fowler walked into a mosque, everyone turned and stared. They thought he might be a crazy dude who was going to whip out a gun at any moment. Wilson understands. He would be suspicious of himself, too. Of the world's 1.8 billion Muslims, not too many look like him. Wilson Fowler converted to Islam amid anti-Muslim sentiment in America. He and Farris quickly became close friends.Wilson met Farris through youth groups after he had been introduced to Islam. Wilson is only a year younger than Farris, and the two quickly grew to be the best of friends. Now when he reflects on his past, Wilson laughs, though strangers might not even be apt to believe his story.Until recently, Wilson had led life according to the script handed to him as a boy. He grew up in Indiana and Texas, the son of a music teacher and a pharmacist. He went to church every Sunday and attended every youth camp. His parents split when he was in the fourth grade, and Wilson divided his time between the two before enrolling at Appalachian State University. He joined Lambda Chi Alpha and lived up to every stereotype of frat boy life. He guzzled beer, dated a lot of girls, dabbled in drugs. He skipped classes his first semester, and only after he was placed on academic probation did he start to straighten up. He graduated with a degree in finance and economics and landed a job at a Raleigh bank. Wilson's world had been all white, conservative and Christian. He had never interacted with a black person until his mother moved from Indiana to Fayetteville, North Carolina. He'd never seen Muslims until he saw them on television after 9/11. He got nervous every time he saw someone with a long beard or turban board his flight.Then one day, a friend introduced him to one of her Muslim acquaintances, Sapphira. She in turn asked Wilson to accompany her to a volleyball match. "I was the only white guy there," he recalls. "I didn't know what to say, how to act. I was nervous I would offend someone."Spphira texted him verses from the Quran and soon presented Wilson with his own copy of Islam's holy book. Wilson was intrigued. He liked the morality presented in the Quran. He signed up for a 101 class at the Islamic Association of Raleigh. He began voraciously reading the Quran every night before turning the lights out, just like he had read verses from the Bible as a boy. And he began questioning his entire belief system:If Jesus preached the message of one true God, then why can't there simply be one God and no trinity, no partners associated with God?He felt the power of Islam, he says. He felt it calling.In September 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign when Trump was talking about bans on Muslims, Wilson converted to Islam.He adopted a conservative Muslim lifestyle. He stopped drinking and dating women. He struggled with his job as a banker -- money has no intrinsic value in Islamic finance, and earning interest off loans is prohibited. He doesn't miss alcohol, but it has been hard for Wilson to reconcile his faith with his job. He's still thinking on that one.His conversion affected his politics as well. By the time November rolled around, Wilson could no longer bring himself to cast a vote for the candidate he supported. Though he agreed with Trump's fiscal and social conservatism, he could not ignore Trump's call for a travel ban on Muslims or other comments the candidate made that Farris and other Muslim friends found inflammatory.Wilson's loved ones were crushed by the changes in him.Don't be a terrorist, his father told him, only half joking. On a bulletin board at The Light House are sticky notes posted by visitors. They are meant to be messages of hope and inspiration.His friends and family tried to convince him to come back to their world. But Wilson was sure he had done the right thing.A few weeks before the UNC graduation, Wilson joined Farris at a youth camp Farris organized at Falls Lake state park. It was Deah's dream to support youth and their projects, and Farris believes strongly in giving them a community. Young Muslims gathered for a weekend of fellowship and frivolity. There, they didn't have anything to fear. They didn't have to run from their identity. They grilled chicken, roasted marshmallows and took group pictures of themselves among tall pines with a camera-equipped drone buzzing high above the lake.Wilson was in awe of Farris' dedication to others. He'd met a lot of Muslims who had much to teach him about Islam, but Farris lived it every day. The Prophet Mohammed struggled his whole life, but his followers constantly looked up to him for answers. Farris, Wilson thought, tried hard to emulate the prophet's actions.Wilson saw Farris surrounded by people almost every waking hour. He saw Farris never take a day off, whether for The Light House or the Our Three Winners Foundation or simply to help someone in need. On bad days, when Wilson felt down or upset, he thought of Farris and his altruism after the loss his family suffered. It couldn't be easy, Wilson imagined, to extend a hand to strangers outside his own circles when an outsider had killed his brother. Farris became Wilson's inspiration as a Muslim man, a Muslim American.In turn, Farris recognized the power of Wilson's journey.At the youth camp, Farris asked Wilson to address the crowd. He thought it would be good for the teenagers to hear from someone who had not been afraid to risk all and embrace Islam. In a way, the white dude was the best role model of all.They laughed when Wilson told them how people at the mosque thought he was going to kill them the first time he walked in. They listened intently as Wilson laid out why he chose Islam. And they smiled when they heard him say this: "It's the best thing that has ever happened to me."Though he is open about his faith, Wilson knows he still has to tiptoe his way through life sometimes. He's still the privileged white man on the outside, but on the inside he's become a part of a minority much reviled by many in his circles. At work, he closes the blinds to his office to pray. He's wary of people seeing him lie prostrate or raise his hands and say, "Allahu Akbar."But on Fridays, it's different. He stands among rows and rows of men at the mosque, facing east toward Mecca, bowing together and falling to their knees before Allah. This is the mosque where Farris and Deah and the Abu-Salha women had prayed all their lives. The white American newcomer feels very much at home here. Not just a Muslim but an AmericanOn a November evening, hundreds of people from Raleigh's Muslim community have turned out at the Green Road Community Center to raise money for a new mosque. It will be named The Winners, in honor of Deah, Yusor and Razan.Farris and Layla take their seats at the table nearest the stage, next to Wilson and Yusor and Razan's parents, Mohammad and Amira. In front of them is a model of The Winners complex: 7 acres of land off US 401 that will contain a mosque, community center, soccer field, gymnasium, private houses, commercial centers and streets named after the three slain students. It's a community project not related to FarrMohammad has been asked to say a few words before the fundraising begins."For us as families, life is difficult," he tells the crowd. "It's post-traumatic stress disorder. It's pain every day. It's flashbacks. It's details that you all do not know. It's nightmares. It's insomnia. It's exhaustion. And then all your relationships change. All your perceptions of the world change. And going to work every day is an act of God's will."Zainab Baloch ran for the Raleigh City Council and headquartered her campaign at The Light House. One of her political signs was defaced with a Nazi symbol, the word "Trump" and a derogatory term for Middle Easterners.Farris thought of his own work as God's will. He was determined to create a more tolerant world so no one would have to feel the sting of hate like he did. Over the last few months, he'd been reminded of the importance of the mission he's undertaken.In September, he and Wilson flew to Jordan to deliver supplies to a Syrian refugee camp. From there, they journeyed by road to Jerusalem to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, and see the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven."In the footsteps of prophets and in the footsteps of Deah," Farris wrote on Facebook.Farris found it amusing that he and a Jordanian friend had the most trouble getting through security points and their white friend, who had never stepped foot on Middle Eastern soil, sailed through. But it wasn't really funny. It summed up everything he felt as an Arab Muslim.He saw ugliness toward Muslims in America, even in his hometown. Each time, he took action.When immigration authorities arrested and threatened to deport Mosa Hamadeesa, a Palestinian in Apex whose daughter has a rare medical condition, Farris wrote a letter of support calling Mosa a genuinely honest man. When 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen was brutally slain in what police called a "road-rage incident," Farris drove up to Fairfax County, Virginia, to show his support to the Muslim community there. Just like Farris is convinced Deah, Yusor and Razan were targeted for being Muslim, Nabra's family, too, feared her death was a hate crime. Farris took a photo of police tape at the crime scene, a rainbow spanning the sky above. He believed violent crimes against Muslims were taking place more frequently because they were blamed for societal grievances and being turned into the "other.""Whether it's a mind that is taught to hate specifically Muslims or not, the problem is that it's a mind that is primed with the propensity to hate at all," he wrote on Facebook. "Every murder is hateful." And when Zainab Baloch, the 26-year-old daughter of Pakistani immigrants, announced her candidacy for an at-large seat on the Raleigh City Council, she headquartered her campaign at The Light House.Zainab went to middle school with Yusor and Razan and, like Deah, was president of the Muslim Student Association at North Carolina State. She ran as a millennial, a woman of color and a sweet-tea-loving Southerner. She had a gazillion ideas about affordable housing and making the city more livable. But a few weeks into her campaign, one of her small billboards was spray-painted with a swastika and the words "Trump" and "sand nigger."Farris was hardly surprised, though it brought more disappointment. And yet another reminder that he had to keep going.Zainab did not win, but one of her signs still hangs at The Light House: "The world we live in is a house of fire and the people we love are burning." At the mosque fundraiser, Mohammad ends his speech with words that resonate with Farris."It's not just a building," Mohammad says of the new complex. "We can build hearts and souls and minds and generations that will tell everybody in America that we are all Americans and we are here to stay, that we belong to this land."Farris had never intended to become an activist, but after Deah's death, he devoted himself to creating an awareness of Islam that might help prevent future acts of hate. Of late, he'd given a lot of thought about expanding his efforts, of what it meant to be an American.At Ramadan last summer, he was frustrated that the imams offered prayers for Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma and Syria. But what about prayers for America? What about climate change? Wealth disparity? Health care? Racism?"I get this feeling that now that we are in this privileged country, we are in a position to have to take on the causes of those countries less fortunate than us," Farris wrote on Facebook. "Which is true; but we also aren't all that great nor will we continue to be unless we invest and pray for our own communities."After Deah was killed, a darkness descended on Farris and Layla. Their dog AJ makes them smile.By night's end at the mosque fundraiser, $350,000 in donations pour in and the crowd turns its attention to guest speaker Omar Suleiman, a charismatic young imam from Dallas who's gained fame with his sermons of inclusivity.Suleiman is a big fan of Muhammad Ali and reminds the crowd that Ali was much more than a star boxer, that Ali's moral strength was borne from his adherence to Islam."You need to serve the people around you," Suleiman says. "People will remember how you make them feel."That was Ali's legacy. It is Deah's legacy, too, Farris believes. And now it could be his own.Farris takes Suleiman to The Light House. He wants the young imam to see the culmination of three years of work. Deah, Yusor and Razan are gone from this world but not forgotten, Suleiman says, and The Light House is an example of how Our Three Winners are still winning.Just two nights ago, a small crowd of mostly women had gathered at The Light House to watch "Equal Means Equal," a documentary on gender inequality. They wore skinny jeans, matte lipstick and hijabs of all cloths and colors. Wool, silk, cotton, polyester. Black, blue, taupe. They sprawled themselves on the carpeted floor of the prayer room and passed around a family-size tub of buttered popcorn. Most of the women were affiliated with a nonprofit The Light House supports: Muslim Women For. A table brimming with feminist literature also included hygiene products that made Farris blush.The organization was one of several The Light House project now supports. Another program is called Notable Pursuits, which showcases the lives of young Muslims -- not because they were attacked and made the news, but because of the remarkable work they are doing every day. These days, Farris spends long hours here, in the house he built. It is where he feels safe, where he can be himself. He can cry here. He can run upstairs to pray and submit himself to God. He drives home, to the house in which he grew up with Deah, to rest his head for the night. But The Light House is where feels at his best, his white labradoodle, AJ, by his side. Farris rescued AJ from an owner who no longer wanted him. At first, Layla was aghast; she hails from a culture that does not always tolerate dogs inside the home. But AJ came from heaven. He makes Layla smile when there isn't much to smile about anymore. On this clear and cold night, Farris gazes upward to the heavens, taking stock of his journey. King's illuminated quotation on The Light House shines like a beacon of hope summoning all to enter. More and more, Farris feels compelled to stretch his reach, to be not just an advocate for the few but to address the concerns of the many. In looking ahead, he wrestles with matters that relate to his identity not just as a Muslim, but as an American. That, he feels, is the patriotic thing to do.

John Blake, CNN

2018-08-09 14:17:00

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/us/obama-ten-years-later/index.html

Why some Americans say Trump can't stop what Obama started - CNN

As America remembers Barack Obama's election 10 years ago this year, we explore three reasons why some Americans believe his vision of America is still the future -- even in today's political climate.

us, Why some Americans say Trump can't stop what Obama started - CNN

Why some Americans say Trump can't stop what Obama started

(CNN)Even now, 10 years later, Sher Watts Spooner gets choked up. She remembers dodging through a euphoric crowd of 350,000 in Chicago's Grant Park to stand just 150 feet from the stage when President-elect Barack Obama appeared. She remembers the tears, the fist pumps and the perfect strangers who hugged one another. And she remembers black, white and brown parents pausing to explain the significance of the moment to their children, as teenagers ran through the streets yelling, "Obama won! Obama won!" Even Mother Nature seemed to join in. The temperatures hovered in the 50s though it was a November night near Lake Michigan.Yet she also remembers what followed: "The insults, the backstabbing and the lies" Obama faced during his two terms. The Republican lawmaker who yelled at him, "You lie!" How "Yes we can" segued into "Make America Great Again." But ask Spooner if she's turned pessimistic since that night, she offers a different answer. "I don't think in terms of optimism or pessimism," says Spooner, a freelance writer and editor in Chicago. "I am more determined."Read MoreJUST WATCHED2009: Obama's historic inaugurationReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH2009: Obama's historic inauguration 00:57The term "post-racial" is now used more as a punch line than a rallying cry. Hope and change have been replaced by tweets and tribalism. And millions of Americans with varying political beliefs may wonder if Obama's election in 2008 was not the beginning of an era, but the end of a sense of optimism they may never experience again. Even Obama has voiced his doubts. "What if we were wrong?" Obama asked after the election of President Trump in 2016, according to a recent memoir by one of his closest aides. "Maybe we pushed too far. ... Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe." But talk to Obama supporters like Spooner and they say something else: What Obama started that night Trump cannot stop. As America remembers Obama's election 10 years ago this year, CNN talked to members of the Obama coalition, people who literally had a front-row seat to the beginning of his presidency, as well as those who study such turning points for a living. They gave three reasons why they think that, while Trump is the President, Obama's vision of America is still the future. 1: President Trump gives us hope Shayne Lee is a sociologist, but he was forced to momentarily step outside his professional detachment that night in 2008 and soak in the meaning of Obama's election. He sat in his house and said nothing for a while, trying to figure out what it meant. "It was just surreal to me," says Lee, who teaches at the University of Houston in Texas. "To elect a president, the most visible symbol of what it means to be an American, for that person to be black and for this to happen less than 200 years after slavery -- it still should not be overlooked by pessimistic people," says Lee.Civility is not the highest standard of democratic politics. Justice is.Eric Liu, former speechwriter for President Clinton Obama symbolized a better future, a vision of hope and inclusivity, Lee says. That vision of America was memorably captured by the late historian Vincent Harding, who once described the United States as "a work in progress -- a shadow on the wall of a multiracial, compassionate democracy that does not yet exist." And now? President Trump actually gives Lee more hope that Obama's vision of America will ultimately triumph.How Donald Trump just keeps winningLee cites a sociological term to explain his point. He says his colleagues have what they call a "functionalist theory of deviance" -- that when someone joins a group and violates its standards by raising hell, the interloper can unintentionally build solidarity among the other members as they close ranks and remind the interloper about the "the right way to be," Lee says. Trump has posed a test to American values, and Lee says he's prepared to give Americans an "A-plus" for how they've responded. He cites how aggressive the press has been in covering the Trump administration, including cases of corruption; the universal condemnation that greeted Trump's comments that "some very fine people" marched alongside white supremacists last summer in Charlottesville; the massive Women's March on Washington that followed Trump's inauguration. "I think people are charged up on various levels," Lee says. "Trump has paid a price for his racism, and he may pay an even bigger price in the (midterm) elections. At every angle he's facing the dissent of a nation that's so powerful that he has to come up with terms like 'fake news.'" People who think Trump is going to wipe out everything Obama stood for are forgetting how much the country has changed, he says. "This is the best time to be an American, based on our history and where we've been going. The Trump presidency, as much as what he does upsets me, shows how other people have so many mechanisms to express their anger. It's inspiring." David Litt, a former Obama speechwriter, says polls have consistently shown that most Americans don't agree with Trump's governing philosophy. They don't want to cut taxes on the rich and corporations; they want to keep Obamacare; they accept that climate change is real. "American opinion is not on his side, and it's less and less on his side as time goes on," says Litt, author of "Thanks Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years." "This is a President that most Americans didn't vote for, and he's pursuing policies that most Americans don't want."Trump claims 'better numbers than Obama,' though it's unclear what he meansSome people are even encouraged by displays of outrage directed at the Trump White House, such as officials being harangued or asked to leave restaurants. This public shunning has prompted a debate over civility, with some saying it's gone too far. But Eric Liu, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, is worried about people going too far in the other direction -- and not caring enough to be angry any more.One of the biggest warning signs of a failing democracy is not rage, Liu says, but cynicism."Cynicism is a state where you accept as normal a state of corruption and degradation and self-dealing in our politics and basically throw up your hands," says Liu, who's now an author and founder of Citizen University, a nonprofit group that teaches Americans from all political backgrounds how to cultivate civic power.He says he prefers political disagreements to be civil but, "I'll take rage over cynicism any day of the week," because it shows people haven't given up their belief that they can change their country. "Civility is not the highest standard of democratic politics," Liu says. "Justice is." 2: 'We ain't what we was' Here's a favorite saying from one of Obama's heroes, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When King would encounter some disappointment that threatened to crush the morale of his followers, he would quote this popular expression from the black church tradition. "We ain't what we oughta' be. We ain't what we want to be. We ain't what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain't what we was." That's another reason why some of those who support Obama are still optimistic: The United States might not be "what we want to be" in the Trump era, but they say it will never be what "we was." No one can hit a rewind button on the demographic changes reshaping America, they say. The country is inexorably getting browner. The United States is fundamentally committed to democracy, but my caveat is, democracy for who? If democracy is going to work, it has to be available to everybody.Richard White, historian and author of "The Republic For Which It Stands" White racial tribalism is a sugar high, they say. To quote one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous speeches: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. ... As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Lee says no leader can continue to rally Americans by telling them to fix their gaze in the rearview mirror. "It could only work once in an election; it can't work for four years when you govern," Lee says of Trump's penchant for evoking nostalgia for an earlier time. The Trump administration may be led overwhelmingly by white men. But white men are no longer the default leaders in America because of Obama, says Litt, his former speechwriter. "And I say that as a white man," he says. He points to the mushrooming number of women and people of color running for office. Even Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump offers a ray of hope, he says.JUST WATCHED#MeToo movement drives women into politicsReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH#MeToo movement drives women into politics 03:53 "One of the reasons that women and people of color didn't get nominated for president before is that everyone used to think they could never be president," Litt says. "Between Obama winning the presidency twice and Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote for the presidency, that argument no longer holds water." Litt, who was 24 when he became a White House speechwriter, didn't hesitate when asked if he thought he would ever see a woman or another person of color in the Oval Office: "Absolutely. No question." Some who look at other periods in American history, though, may question Litt's optimism. Here's the alternative scenario for those who think Obama's election in 2008 was the end of an era: They say democracy is fragile and can be corrupted. Demographic changes are overrated. A ruthless minority can hold onto power for years even though they're outnumbered. Look at how long apartheid lasted in South Africa. Many point to a dark period in US history that bears some uncomfortable parallels with the last 12 years. It's called "the nadir," and it ran roughly from the end of Reconstruction -- the country's first attempt to build a multiracial democracy -- to the early 20th century. This was the low point in race relations in post-Civil War America. White supremacist violence, voting restrictions and a racist Supreme Court obliterated many of the civil rights gains won during Reconstruction. Some warn this could happen now. They say Republicans can deploy so-called "countermajoritiarian" tools like gerrymandering and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court to crush the racial progress embodied by Obama. There are few historians who know how a racist backlash can destroy racial progress better than Richard White, author of the widely acclaimed, "The Republic For Which It Stands," which examines how the rise of racism, political corruption and inequality destroyed Reconstruction.JUST WATCHEDAre the lines on racism blurring?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHAre the lines on racism blurring? 02:42 One of the major reasons Reconstruction failed is that the politicians who pushed for black equality didn't protect the right of blacks to vote, he says. "Never underestimate the power of political violence and terror to undo political relations," he says. "What cuts into the black vote is simply torturing and killing people. You read the accounts in the South of the Klan, and they're terrorists. They come in and kill women and children. They torture people in front of their family. It's a ruthlessness that is transparently violent, and it works." But some people overstate the similarities between the nadir and today's political climate, he says. Huge battles over immigration, racism and wealth concentration marked both eras. But he says increased racial diversity among today's citizens and political class might prevent a return to another nadir. The key, he says, is protecting the right to vote. He says Democrats now recognize how critical that fight is; their counterparts who supported Reconstruction in the late 19th century didn't realize it until they lost power. "The United States is fundamentally committed to democracy, but my caveat is, democracy for who?" White says. "If democracy is going to work, it has to be available to everybody. What happened in the late 19th century is that it remained a democratic country, but -- starting with the eradication of black suffrage and other types of voting laws -- the number of people who could vote in the United States declined pretty dramatically between the 1870s and the 1920s. "If we're going to remain a democracy, the critical question is: Who gets to vote?"3: He never said 'Yes I can' Another one might be: Why vote at all if it doesn't make any difference? One of the biggest impacts of Obama's presidency is that he inspired millions of people who don't normally get involved in politics to campaign and vote. Spooner, who wrote eloquently about her experience at Grant Park, says Obama's campaign was the first she ever got involved in. Female war hero leads new wave of veteran candidates Obama convinced many of these people that ordinary Americans could change -- and have changed -- their country. It's a theme he explored in what many consider his best speech, which he gave in 2015 in Selma, Alabama. And it's a belief embedded in his most famous slogan, "Yes we can." The key word, his supporters say, is "we." They never saw Obama as a messiah who would end racism. Nor did he. "He said over and over again that this is not about me. This is about us," says Litt, his speechwriter. "Those of us who took him seriously tend to be very hopeful because we're seeing these huge movements that are now demanding that we change the course we're on under Donald Trump. Most Obama supporters understood that this is a long process." Yet some still haven't absorbed Obama's message, says Lee, the sociologist. Obama's critics say he was too accommodating to his opponents, that he should have been more radical, that he should have talked about race more. But they misunderstood who Obama was, Lee says. Obama was not a civil rights leader taking his people to the Promised Land, Lee says. "Liberals want what they want when they want it. They want you to take idealistic stances regardless of outcomes," Lee says. "I always saw Obama as a shrewd pragmatist. He wants to win, and he understood how to do that. At the same, he didn't let his ideas die." And he never saw winning as a solo effort, says Spooner, who also saw Obama give his farewell speech at Chicago's McCormick Place not long after Trump was elected. There wasn't the delicious euphoria that ran through the crowd in 2008. But Obama's words inspired Spooner so much that, unprompted, she sent me a portion of the speech. "I guess I'm being sentimental," she says, as she shared Obama's words from that January night in 2017. JUST WATCHEDObama: You made me a better presidentReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHObama: You made me a better president 01:09 In the speech, Obama told dejected youths in the crowd to "grab a clipboard, gather some signatures, and run for office yourself" even if meant that sometimes they would lose. "Presuming a reservoir of goodness in other people, that can be a risk, and there will be times when the process will disappoint you," Obama said. But he said that "more often than not, your faith in America will be confirmed." "I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change -- but in yours." Spooner still believes. She keeps an autographed copy of Obama's photo on the piano in her living room. When she thinks of the hope she felt that night in Grant Park 10 years ago, she doesn't say, "Yes, we still can." Instead, she has her own personal slogan, born from that same night in Chicago: "It lit a spark that will never die."

John Blake, CNN

2017-08-18 21:43:28

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/ordinary-white-supremacists/index.html

How ordinary people become 'white supremacists by default' - CNN

It's easy to blame neo-Nazis for violence in Charlottesville. But activists and historians point to four ways millions of ordinary Americans become 'white supremacists by default.'

us, How ordinary people become 'white supremacists by default' - CNN

'White supremacists by default': How ordinary people made Charlottesville possible

(CNN)Blame President Trump for his tepid moral response. Call the neo-Nazis and white nationalists thugs. Fill your Facebook and Twitter accounts with moral outrage.But the tragedy that took place in Charlottesville this month could not have occurred without the tacit acceptance of millions of ordinary, law-abiding Americans who helped create such a racially explosive climate, some activists, historians and victims of extremism say. It's easy to focus on the angry white men in paramilitary gear who looked like they were mobilizing for a race war in the Virginia college town. But it's the ordinary people -- the voters who elected a reality TV star with a record of making racially insensitive comments, the people who move out of the neighborhood when people of color move in, the family members who ignore a relative's anti-Semitism -- who give these type of men room to operate, they say. Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaPeople fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of people demonstrating against a white nationalist rally after police cleared Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, August 12. Hide Caption 1 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaThe vehicle moments before it struck the crowd.Hide Caption 2 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA woman receives first aid after a speeding car slammed into this silver convertible as it navigated through a crowd of counterprotesters. Hide Caption 3 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA man embraces an injured woman after a car rammed into the crowd. Hide Caption 4 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaRight-wing rally members clash with counterprotesters in Emancipation Park, where white nationalist groups gathered for a rally. Hide Caption 5 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA counterprotester strikes a white nationalist with a baton during clashes at Emancipation Park, where white nationalists are protesting the removal of the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee monument. Hide Caption 6 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA counterprotester throws a newspaper box at a right-wing rally member at the entrance to Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 7 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA counterprotester uses a lighted spray can against a white nationalist at the entrance to Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 8 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaCounterprotesters try to burn a Confederate battle flag taken from white nationalist protesters. Hide Caption 9 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaWhite nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the "alt-right" clash with counterprotesters.Hide Caption 10 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA white nationalist is seen with a cut below his eye suffered during clashes with counterprotesters at Emancipation Park .Hide Caption 11 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaWhite nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right movement exchange volleys of pepper spray with counterprotesters as they enter Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 12 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaA woman is treated for exposure to pepper spray during clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters at Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 13 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaWhite nationalists use shields as they guard the entrance to Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 14 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaCounterprotesters line the route taken by white nationalists and neo-Nazis during the "Unite the Right" rally. After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police, the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and people were forced out of Emancipation Park, formerly called Lee Park and home to a controversial statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Hide Caption 15 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaWhite nationalist Richard Spencer and his supporters clash with Virginia State Police in Emancipation Park.Hide Caption 16 of 17 Photos: Violence erupts at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VirginiaRiot police form a line of defense in front of the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park, recently renamed from Lee Park.Hide Caption 17 of 17That was the twisted formula that made the Holocaust and Rwanda possible and allowed Jim Crow segregation to survive: Nice people looked the other way while those with an appetite for violence did the dirty work, says Mark Naison, a political activist and history professor at Fordham University in New York City.''You have to have millions of people who are willing to be bystanders, who push aside evidence of racism, Islamophobia or sexism. You can't have one without the other,'' Naison says.Read More"We are a country with a few million passionate white supremacists -- and tens of millions of white supremacists by default," he says. Many people prefer to focus on the usual suspects after a Charlottesville happens -- the violent racial extremists who are so easy to condemn. Yet there are four types of ordinary people who also play a part in the country's racial divisions, Naison and others say: No. 1: The 'down-low' segregationistsMany of the white racists who marched in Charlottesville were condemned because they openly said they don't believe in integration or racial equality.But millions of ordinary white Americans have been sending that message to black and brown people for at least a half a century. They send it with their actions: They don't want to live next to or send their children to school with black or brown people, historians say.Busing, a nationwide campaign to end school segregation by shipping students of color to white schools, collapsed in large part because of fierce opposition by white parents. "White flight" -- white families fleeing city neighborhoods after people of color moved in -- helped create the modern suburbs. Think only white supremacists oppose integration? These ordinary white Boston parents protested busing in 1974.This isn't the Jim Crow segregation that one reads about in the history books. It's the covert or "down-low" segregationist movement that has shaped much of contemporary America since overt racism became taboo in the 1960s, says David Billings, who wrote about growing up white in the segregated South in his memoir, "Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life.""Across the country, white people withdrew from the 'public' sphere and migrated to 'whites only' suburbs to evade racial integration," Billings wrote. "The word 'public' preceding words like 'housing,' 'hospital,' 'health care,' 'transportation,' 'defender,' 'schools,' and even 'swimming pool' in some parts of the country became code words that meant poor and most often black and Latino. The word 'private' began to mean 'better.'''This white separatism continues today. Whites move out so often when nonwhites move in that sociologists have a name for the phenomenon. It's called "racial tipping."This separation also occurs in the private lives of many white Americans, according to one pollster. In 2013, Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, made a splash after conducting a survey where he found that 75% of whites in the United States didn't have a single person of color in their social circle -- they only had white friends.We are a country with a few million passionate white supremacists -- and tens of millions of white supremacists by default. Mark Naison, a political activist and history professor at Fordham UniversityJones polled a complex subject. Many people of color self-segregate as well, and some American neighborhoods are so segregated that residents never come in contact with people of other racial or ethnic groups.Yet some white Americans are driven by the same impulses that drove some of the white racists in Charlottesville -- racial separation. "White people in the past century and a half have made a conscious effort to resegregate themselves," says Edward Ball, author of "Slaves in the Family," a memoir about coming to terms with learning his family owned slaves."We have to work hard to make our social lives reflect our values, because white people do not choose the company of people of color generally," he says.Ball once wrote that "unconsciously or inadvertently, all of us white folks participate in forms of supremacist thought and activity."The angry white men in Charlottesville were just being open about their white supremacy. Ball says he wasn't surprised by their boldness."Their climate is now better for them," he says.No. 2: Those who say 'yes, but...'President Trump's critics blasted him for not coming out strong enough against the white racists who marched in Charlottesville. Trump initially denounced the "egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides." It was the "many sides" qualifier that infuriated some people. They wanted an unequivocal denunciation of racism from a leader.Trump's "many sides" response, though, wasn't that abnormal in the context of US history. It used to be the norm for white political leaders to draw a moral equivalence between racists and those who suffered from their acts of brutality, historians say. It's the "yes, but" rhetorical maneuver -- condemn racism but add a qualifier to diminish the sincerity of what you just said.White families fleeing people of color helped create suburban America. It's called "white flight."The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ran into this "yes, but" response so much that he wrote about it in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He wrote:"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action...'"President Dwight Eisenhower took the "yes, but" approach when he complained he couldn't move too fast to comply with the Supreme Court's decision to integrate schools because people had to respect the Southern way of life, says Carol Anderson, author of "White Rage" and a professor of African-American studies at Emory University in Atlanta.A recent Washington Post article gave other examples: When Southern governors like Orval Faubus of Arkansas and Earl Long of Louisiana were pressured in the 1950s to end segregation, they called both the NAACP and the White Citizens' Councils, a rabid segregationist group, "extremists."The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said moderate whites who refused to take a stand on racial justice angered him more than the KKK."You get that equivocation," says Anderson, "that trying to make a system that absolutely strips people of their humanity on par with people demanding their humanity."That "yes, but" approach is often used today to discredit the grievances of the Black Lives Matter movement, another professor says. Whenever an unarmed black or brown person is shot by police, some deflect the issue by saying, "Yes, but all lives matter.""When a police officer shoots an unarmed black person, even then it's controversial to say racism is a factor," says Erik Love, a sociologist at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. "We say, 'Why don't we talk about these other issues. What about the crime rate, what police officers need to protect themselves.' And suddenly we're not talking about race anymore."No. 3: Those who choose chaosThere's a famous line from the classic film, "Casablanca." A police officer is closing down a casino, declaring, "I'm shocked -- shocked -- to find that gambling is going on in here!" -- all while pocketing his casino winnings as they're being handed to him on the sly. That line could apply to Trump supporters who say they're frustrated by the President's statements on race since Charlottesville erupted.How could you be shocked?"This is who he is, this is what he does," says Anderson, the Emory University professor. "'Mexicans are rapists and criminals.' That's what he said in his first speech. Their complicity comes in the form of self-denial instead of owning it."For those who say they voted for Trump despite his intolerance, Anderson offers this analogy: Minister Louis Farrakhan.Farrakhan is a leader in some parts of the black community because of his message of self-help and black empowerment. He reached peak popularity in the 1990s, but he also preached anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-Catholic and anti-homosexual rhetoric. And the organization he leads, the Nation of Islam, has taught that white people are inherently evil.Fordham professor Mark Naison says America is at a scary place now where open, communal warfare could erupt."If he was running for office and black people voted in droves for him, the narrative would be, 'They're supporting a racist,''' she says. Ta-Nehisi Coates, an acclaimed writer on race relations, made a similar argument after Trump's election in an interview with Vox's Ezra Klein, where he responded to commentators who said not all white voters who supported Trump endorsed all of his ideas. "As my buddy said, is that what you said to the followers of Louis Farrakhan? No, nobody says that to the followers of Louis Farrakhan. No, they blasted him as an anti-Semite, which he is, and say, 'how can people follow this bigoted message?' That's the ultimate testament -- that you could be Donald Trump and be President. There is no black person who could have the kind of vices Donald Trump has and, hell, be governor. Maybe you could be mayor somewhere."Many voters knew Trump would bring something else to the Oval Office -- chaos. That's why they chose him. He's their first reality TV president, one writer says.Many voted for Trump because they liked the persona he cultivated as the star of "The Apprentice." Reality TV rewards characters who say rude and reprehensible things, characters are often cast as racial stereotypes, and those who provoke the most chaos get the most attention, says Joy Lanzendorfer, author of the Vice article, "How Reality TV Made Donald Trump President.""He would say horrible things about people, act out and break the rules, but people weirdly respected it," she says. "They said he was a winner, and that's how a winner wins."It's not, however, how many would want a nation's leader to handle a racial crisis. No. 4: Those who look the other wayAri Kohen knows something about the cost of hate. When he looked at images of neo-Nazis chanting "Jews will not replace us!" in Charlottesville, he thought of his grandfather, Zalman Kohen. He was living in rural Romania in 1944 when the Nazis rounded him up with the help of his neighbors and sent him to a death camp. This is who he is, this is what he does. 'Mexicans are rapists and criminals.' That's what he said in his first speech. Their complicity comes in the form of self-denial instead of owning it.Carol Anderson, author of "White Rage," on Trump voters who expressed dismay at his conduct after CharlottesvilleHis grandfather survived, moved to the United States and lived until he was 90. But he never returned to Romania, says Kohen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "He could never forgive his neighbors," he says. "These were people who, maybe they didn't love Jews, but these were people who lived next to each other. They knew his family and he knew their family. The idea that they could all stand by while life was completely and forever changed for large portions of their community -- he could never understand it."Many scholars have been vexed by the same question. When they examine genocidal events like the Holocaust, many come to the same conclusion: Never underestimate the ability of ordinary people to look away.Some do it with family members. Kohen says the hundreds of white racists who descended on Charlottesville must have family or friends who noticed their behavior beforehand. He suspects that some refused to confront them."There's this wink and nod, everyone knows that this person is going down a dangerous path and people passively go along with it," he says. "They don't want to rock the boat. This is family or a friend. It's hard to distance yourself from people you care about."When ordinary people refuse to speak out, a country can descend into violence -- as it did in Northern Ireland.This passivity extends to how people react when their country's leaders become intolerant, others say. Once you see it coming, you have a duty to act, says Naison, the activist and Fordham professor. "If you don't speak up when this sort of ideology is being promoted at the highest level, you end up being complicit in the actions taken by its more extreme adherents," Naison says. "Once the demons are unleashed, you've become a co-conspirator."Naison says he doesn't think most Americans realize how dangerous it is in their country right now. He's warned people who voted for Trump. "I told these guys, you can't control this; you're playing with fire," Naison says. "Open, violent communal warfare is scary. You can't control it. Look at what happened in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Israel."There's also evidence, though, that millions of ordinary Americans from all walks of life don't want that kind of America. Heather Heyer, the demonstrator who lost her life in Charlottesville, was a young white woman who marched in solidarity with black protesters. Millions of Americans have since taken to the streets or social media to stand against what happened there.Former President Barack Obama even weighed in with a photo and quote that's become the most liked tweet ever on Twitter.Obama quoted Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who knew something about hate and reconciliation. In his 1994 autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom," Mandela wrote:"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."Yet to get to that place Mandela talked about, it may be necessary to not just look at the usual suspects people condemn when racial violence spills into public view. If you want to know why those white racists now feel so emboldened, it may help to look at all the ordinary people around you, your neighbors, your family members, your leaders.But first, start by looking at yourself.

John Blake, CNN

2017-05-26 00:41:35

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/25/us/too-many-white-men/index.html

What's wrong with too many white men in one place? - CNN

Critics say the Trump's administration is trying to make images of white men wielding all the power seem normal again. If so, can they get away with it?

us, What's wrong with too many white men in one place? - CNN

What's wrong with too many white men in one place?

(CNN)President Donald Trump helped the nation reach a rare moment of racial reconciliation, but hardly anyone noticed.It was sparked by a recent White House photo op, when Trump gathered with Republican leaders to celebrate the House passing a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. The event looked like the board meeting of an all-white-male golf club. Photos from the ceremony showed a phalanx of middle-aged white men heartily congratulating one another, with no woman or person of color in sight. Some photos released later did show some women at the event. But the surplus of white testosterone in the images sparked widespread outrage. One critic tweeted: "Message from another white guy: Yes, this is way too many white men in one place." Another white guy complained about a pattern of "overwhelming white maleness" in Trump administration photos. Someone even started a hashtag: #governmentsowhite.Lost in the criticism of those images, though, was something to celebrate: Many white people now get uneasy about seeing too many white guys in positions of power. The notion that the nation's leaders should look like the people they represent is becoming widely accepted. Read More4 days, 5 moments in race relationsMay 18: A man assaults a stranger for speaking Spanish: Hector Torres was talking to his mother on the phone at the Reno airport, when a man started yelling profanities and assaulted him. May 19: New Orleans mayor delivers a remarkable speech on race. After his city removed a monument to a Confederate Civil War hero, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the Confederacy was on the "wrong side of history." May 20: A white Mississippi lawmaker calls for a lynching. State Rep. Karl Oliver made the comment on his Facebook page while denouncing the removal of Confederate monuments. He later apologized.May 22: Video of a woman's racist rant against a Latino shopper goes viral. The white woman in a Sprint store in Virginia calls the Latino shopper a "f#$$ sp#c." May 22: A Walmart shopper goes after two women of color. The white shopper in Arkansas told a Latino woman to "go back to Mexico" and called an African-American woman the N-word. But could the Trump administration make images of white men wielding all the power seem normal again?It'll never happen, says historian Jerald Podair -- the United States is too racially diverse. The Trump Rose Garden photo bothered Podair but didn't change his view about the nation's future."Whites will not look at an all-white picture again and just take it for granted that it's normal," says Podair, a professor of history and American studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. "The demographic changes in America are continuing and inexorable."But what if the white male throwback optics aren't just annoying, but dangerous?Many people said this country would never return to the days when white people would casually sling the N-word at African-Americans in public; curse out Latinos for speaking Spanish; and openly call for a lynching.But it has. All of that actually took place over the past seven days in America.We've entered an era in which traditional rules no longer apply. Stop blaming all white menThere's a growing belief among some conservative white men that they are persecuted for their skin color. If, say, you're a white, unemployed factory worker in Wisconsin looking for a job, you may scoff at talk of too many white men in one place.John Hawkins, a conservative blogger and columnist, says white men are blamed for everything from slavery to denying women the right to vote.This photo of the president congratulating House Republicans after passage of a bill to replace ObamaCare sparked outrage. Critics said the image looked outdated and tone deaf."We live in the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history and if we're being honest, white men probably deserve 95% of the credit for that," he wrote in a 2016 column entitled, "When Did White Men Become The Bad Guys in America?""That may be unfair because women and black Americans weren't given the opportunity to significantly contribute for most of our nation's history, but it is true."Hawkins says the images coming from the Trump administration look the way they do because the Republican Party is predominantly white. "Republicans have just done a poor job of attracting minorities," says Hawkins, author of "101 Things All Young Adults Should Know.""Part of it is our fault. We've done a terrible job of outreach." Some powerful Republicans defended the White House photo. During an interview with Andrea Mitchell on NBC's "Meet the Press," Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said critics mischaracterized the optics of the event. Mitchell had asked Price why so few women were at the ceremony, particularly since the Republican health care bill would allow insurers to opt out of providing basic benefits to women such as maternity coverage and birth control.Price told Mitchell to look again at the photo."Andrea, come on. Look at that picture. Congresswoman Diane Black, the chair of the budget committee, I was standing next to her. Seema Verma, the administrator of CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services], I was standing right next to her."To which Mitchell responded: "Out of a group of dozens and dozens of people, you can cite two or three women?" How to stage white male powerThe anger generated by the White House photo op is bigger than the debate over health care, though. The photo evoked the experience of millions of Americans for centuries. Countless images in history books, movies and politics sent the same message to women and people of color: You don't matter, but we do. We live in the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history and if we're being honest, white men probably deserve 95% of the credit for that.John Hawkins, a conservative blogger and columnistThat message is still being sent today by the optics of who holds the power in the US. White men make up 31% of the nation's population, yet 65% of its elected officials. They out earn all groups of women -- white and otherwise -- as well as black and Hispanic men. Only Asian-American men out earn white men. Most of the nation's Fortune 500 CEOs and board members are white men. Many people take it for granted that white men should be in charge, studies show. If, for example, you step onto a commercial flight and see two women in the cockpit, is there a part of you that would feel safer with two white men instead? When someone says "doctor" or "CEO," what are the first faces that come to mind?Anyone who says images of white men in power can't be normalized again forget how normal it still is, says Howard Ross, author of "Everyday Bias." Ross saw this normalization in action when he delivered a recent speech on diversity at a meeting of health care leaders. About 75% of his audience was men. When audience members lined up to ask questions after his speech, he noticed an odd pattern."Who gets up to run the microphones? Six women. Not a single man among them," says Ross, who started Cook Ross Inc., a diversity consulting firm. "That's an optic that nobody was paying attention to. That reinforces the notion of who has access to power and who doesn't have access to power."The images of the people Trump surrounds himself with sends the same message, many say. Trump has assembled the least diverse Cabinet in 36 years. Most of his picks are rich, white men. It is the whitest cabinet since President Ronald Reagan's in 1981 and reverses a trend that accelerated under the Obama administration. Former President Barack Obama created the most "demographically diverse administration in history." White men don't just have more seats in Trump's Cabinet; they have more access to the President himself, according to a recent Politico article that tracked public reports of his interactions at the White House and other locations. Whites will not look at an all-white picture again and just take it for granted that it's normal.Jerald Podair, a historian at Lawrence University in WisconsinAnd notice who normally flanks Trump when he signs documents in other White House photo ops. It's usually men who look just like him, says William Falk, editor of The Week magazine, who wrote about Trump's optics in an article entitled, "Too Much Testosterone." "Every time President Trump signs a new executive order, he is surrounded by dozens of grinning aides, congressmen and industry CEOs, nearly all of them white, male and over 50," says Falk, who has joked about being a white man "for as long as I remember." "Is there a message there?" The message is one of power: White men are back to running America and there's nothing you can do about it, says Gordon Coonfield, an authority on visual communication at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.He says the White House photo op with Trump and Republican leaders celebrating the passage of their health care bill wasn't accidental. It's "strategic." "These are not a bunch of bumbling old white guys who don't know better," says Coonfield. "They know exactly what they're doing. It's a certain staging of power. An image of a bunch of white guys seeking to undo health care coverage for millions of Americans sends a strong unambiguous message about whose interests are being represented and whose are not."The message that Trump and Republican leaders are sending subverts the rules of politics and PR: Appeal to the broadest demographic audience, says Andrew Blum, founder of AJB Communications, a public relations firm in New York City."It was horrible optics, but they're getting away with it," Blum says of the White House photo op. "It's an amazing turn." If Trump was a bar of soapThere are those, though, who say that while Trump and the Republicans may be able to pause change, they won't be able to stop it.Most of America will reject any optics that evoke white male dominance, says Podair, the historian and author of "City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles." He points to the narrowness of Trump's electoral victory as evidence. Almost 3 million more Americans voted against Trump than for him in the presidential election. Trump squeaked by only because of the peculiar nature of the Electoral College, he says.The corporate world, for example, is less forgiving than the political one, he says. Companies routinely craft images that appeal to the widest and most diverse audiences. "There are no Electoral Colleges in advertising," Podair says. "If Trump was a bar of soap, the advertising for Trump soap would not have worked -- more people would have not bought his product."Others say the president who preceded Trump doomed any chance of rewinding the clock. Obama, the nation's first black president, made it normal to see people of color -- as well as women, gays and lesbians -- in positions of power, they say.It's strange to suddenly see so much white maleness in the White House, says Lisa Fritsch, an activist and author who lectures on diversity."Obama definitely set a new level of decorum for the office and with that a higher standard for diversity and inclusion," Fritsch says. "He's made this White House seem peculiar and out of place in America."Others point to the wrath of social media. People no longer passively accept images that exclude them. They go on the attack when they spot offensive images.Torch-wielding white men gathered recently in Virginia to protest planned removal of a Confederate statue. "As certain groups got bigger and more educated, we felt like we had the right to complain," says Nancy A. Shenker, founder and CEO of theONswitch, a marketing firm. "Social media allowed for a certain sense of anonymity, and people who felt like they were discriminated against started to speak up."Any optics centered around "a bunch of white guys" won't resonate with contemporary Americans, says Nate Regier, an authority on organizational development and author of "Conflict Without Casualties." "America is diverse, period," he says. "Anyone who denies it or acts as if it isn't true will be left behind economically, politically and socially."There was another recent photo, though, that challenges the idea that certain images are now unacceptable. After the city council in Charlottesville, Virginia, voted to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park, white nationalists mobilized.Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader, led rallies in Charlottesville earlier this month protesting the pending removal of the statue. He tweeted a photo of himself with a torch. A column of torch-bearing white men chanted, "You will not replace us." Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer saw Spencer's photo and took to Twitter to criticize the rally. He was attacked with a torrent of racist and anti-Semitic tweets including one that said, "I smell Jew."Consider those optics:Photos of a group of white men holding torches at a nighttime rally; white men massing to protect the honor of another white man who fought to maintain white supremacy; ominous threats delivered publicly to those deemed belonging to a lesser group. This, too, was an image of white men that was supposed to be consigned to the past.

Story By John Blake, CNN Video by Tawanda Scott Sambou, CNN

2016-12-28 13:12:57

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https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/28/us/lost-cause-trump/index.html

How Trump's victory turns into another 'Lost Cause' - CNN

Here's how Trump's presidential victory becomes another Lost Cause. It starts with "racial amnesia."

us, How Trump's victory turns into another 'Lost Cause' - CNN

How Trump's victory turns into another 'Lost Cause'

(CNN)After President-elect Donald Trump's recent victory, some of his supporters celebrated by flying Confederate battle flags from pickup trucks and waving them at rallies.But Trump's victory may mark the resurgence of the Old South in another more sinister way: The return of "racial amnesia." That's what some historians are saying as they watch a familiar storyline emerge. Trump's triumph is now being roundly described as a revolt by white working-class voters; racism, sexism and religious bigotry had little, if anything, to do with it.People making this argument are following a script first honed by another group of Americans who made history disappear. After the Civil War, "Lost Cause" propagandists from the Confederacy argued the war wasn't fought over slavery -- it was a constitutional clash over state's rights, they said; hatred toward blacks had nothing to do with it.This could be awkwardThis is the first in an ongoing series by CNN's John Blake and Tawanda Scott on race, religion and politics It was an audacious historical cover-up -- to convince millions of Americans that what they'd just seen and heard hadn't really happened. It worked then, and some historians say it could work again with Trump.Read More "It's already happening again," says Brooks D. Simpson, a leading Civil War historian who teaches at Arizona State University. "A lot of people are saying we're going to have to unite behind the new guy and forget what he had to say. People who feel that they are part of those populations targeted by Trump are going to be told by whites to get over it." There are some who say people like Simpson are sticking to another familiar script: Blame everything on racism and oppressive white men. Their counterargument: If America is so racist, why did legions of whites who once voted for President Barack Obama vote for Trump? Trump won not because of race, but because he paid attention to the economic anxieties of Rust Belt Americans, says Matt Vespa, the associate editor at conservative website Townhall.com.Supporters of Trump and the Old South both obscure the relevance of race, some historians say. Trump's win represents a "genuine working-class uprising," Vespa wrote in a piece entitled "When Michael Moore Says Clinton's Loss Isn't About Racism, You Know It's Not. And It Really Wasn't Sexism Either." "One of the reasons why people think 'racism, sexism, and fear of the other' led to Clinton being defeated," Vespa told CNN, "is because that is the default reaction from the left when they lose." How white America became good at forgetting At first glance, comparing some Trump supporters to ex-Confederates may seem absurd, even insulting. But historians say both groups developed an uncanny ability to obscure the role race played in transformative events and to persuade millions of Americans to go along with the charade. You don't have to pick on the South, though, to spot racial amnesia. Racism is embedded in the daily lives of ordinary Americans in ways that many forget. Where Americans live, worship, send their children to school -- much of it is driven by race, says David Billings, a pastor who came of age as a white Southerner during the 1960s.You can't do reconciliation without truth first. We haven't done truth. Eric Liu, author of "The Gardens of Democracy," and a former White House speechwriter After the civil rights movement sparked the passage of laws that banned overt racism in the 1960s, many whites "built another country" in defiance of government dictates, Billings wrote in his new memoir, "Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life." "Across the country, white people withdrew from the 'public' sphere and migrated to 'whites only' suburbs to evade racial integration. ... The word 'public' preceding words like 'housing,' 'hospital,' 'health care,' 'transportation,' 'defender,' 'schools,' and even 'swimming pool' in some parts of the country became code words that meant poor and most often black and Latino. The word 'private' began to mean 'better.' '' Consider a contemporary issue that seems race-neutral -- the movement to give vouchers to public school students for private school. That effort started in the 1950s because many white Americans didn't want their children to attend newly integrated public schools, says Kevin M. Kruse, author of "White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism." Most Americans have forgotten that today, Kruse says. "There's a real reluctance of some to acknowledge the part that race has played in American history," he says. "You cannot understand American history without understanding the fault lines of race. If we turn a blind eye to it, we're going to miss an incredible amount of the picture."A 19th century cover-up The Lost Cause campaign offers the definitive example of racial self-deception. Before there was fake news, the Lost Cause propagandists were creating fake history. What does Donald Trump's stunning White House win say about America? Some say it's another "Lost Cause." Their timing was audacious. They didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and psychological wounds were still raw. A year after the war ended, Edward Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that "slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war "was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution." Confederate veterans' groups started to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees. Why would so many Southerners embrace such a big lie? Part of it was embarrassment. They had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause, historians say. They also wanted to look good to their children and future generations, Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan wrote in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History." "The Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up," Nolan said. Not all Confederates bought into the deceit. Historians often cite what one astonished Confederate war hero, John Singleton Mosby, said in 1902 as the Lost Cause myth spread: "In retrospect, slavery seems such a monstrous thing that some are now trying to prove that slavery was not the cause of the war." One of the reasons why people think 'racism, sexism, and fear of the other' led to Clinton being defeated is because that is the default reaction from the left when they lose.Matt Vespa, associate editor at conservative website TownhallThe Lost Cause myth took hold even though Americans could easily consult the public record. The declarations of secession made by Southern states on the eve of the war cited slavery as the cause. And Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said in a speech in South Carolina in 1861 that the Confederacy was not founded on the "false idea" that all men are created equal. "The Confederacy, by contrast, is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition," Stephens said. The Lost Cause also took root because many Americans were being urged to reconcile with the South so the nation could move forward, says Simpson, the Civil War historian. "White Northerners came to accept it because their own commitment to black equality was never that deep in the first place," Simpson says. "By the beginning of the 20th century, most white Americans began to believe that the war was over economic differences and state's rights, and that it had nothing to do with the issue of slavery or only tangentially with the issue of slavery." The Lost Cause today? The same dynamics that nurtured the rise of the Lost Cause are evident now, some historians say. Those who deny that racism and xenophobia were central to Trump's victory are engaging in another Lost Cause cover-up, they say. "Anybody who says that the recent election is not, at least in part, a racial event is functioning as an apologist, whether they know it or not, for white prejudice," says, Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. There are abundant examples of Trump's explicit racist statements. He didn't campaign in dog whistles; he used a bullhorn. He once called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and proposed a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Even Republican House leader Paul Ryan once said Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage was "the textbook definition of a racist comment." Trump's rise to political prominence was driven in part by a conspiracy theory coated in racism. Trump led the "birther" movement that repeatedly implied Obama was an illegitimate president who was not born in the United States. The president was eventually forced to release his original long-form birth certificate to quell birther rumors. Trump's demands that Obama prove his citizenship evoked the slave era, when freed blacks were often forced to show their "certificate of freedom" to justify moving about in public. After the South surrendered at Appomattox, Lost Cause propagandists started another battle over the war's meaning. While the impact of globalization on white, working-class voters was a factor in Trump's victory, it was not decisive, Ellis wrote in a column for CNN: "Race was the deepest and defining issue of this campaign. It was the coded message in Trump's slogan 'Make America Great Again' and embodied in his stigmatizing of Hispanics as rapists and Muslims as likely terrorists, his dog whistles to white supremacists, his mainstreaming of blatantly racist language previously confined to the margins of American society." Many of those who ignore the role of race in Trump's victory, Ellis says, are following the example of Lost Cause propagandists who said the war was a clash over the Constitution -- whether it gave states the right to secede, just as the Founding Fathers had seceded from the British Empire. "The constitutional interpretation explanation disguised what really happened in the Civil War," says Ellis, author of "The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789." "Similar interpretations of Trump's victory also obscure the unattractive and ugly forces that are now present." The Lost Cause persisted in part because Northern white voters knew they wouldn't pay a personal cost for embracing the myth, some historians say. Some white Trump voters are following the same logic, says Brogan Morris, a political commentator who wrote an essay for Paste magazine entitled, "This Election Was All About Race, But Not the Way We Thought." To overlook racism is an act of racism, Morris says. "If you're a white man, you can overlook Trump's Islamophobia, his Hispanophobia, his sexism, because it's never going to affect you directly," Morris says. "That's voting from a place of privilege, the privilege of being a born a white man."A word from a white voter for Obama and Trump All the Lost Cause analogies evoked by historians like Ellis bump up against one inconvenient question: Why did so many once-solidly blue states go for Trump? Four Northern states that once went for Obama -- Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- flipped to Trump. The margins were razor-thin, but they flipped. "The 2016 election was the revenge of the white working-class voter," Vespa wrote in his Townhall column. "It wasn't due to racism, sexism or misogyny. ... If it was, then millions of Obama supporters became racist overnight, and I don't think that's the case." Others have made the same point. Ramesh Ponnuru, a National Review senior editor, wrote an essay for Bloomberg entitled "Trump Didn't Win Because of Racism." He said claims that Trump voters were motivated by bigotry have a "thin evidentiary basis." In a USA Today column entitled "Trumping the liberal elite" CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers wrote that Trump won because white Americans "feel under constant assault by a cultural elite that treats them with contempt." Mike Rowe, former host of CNN's "Somebody's Gotta' Do It," wrote in a Facebook post that went viral that Trump did not tap into America's "racist underbelly." "The winner was NOT decided by a racist and craven nation -- it was decided by millions of disgusted Americans desperate for real change," Rowe wrote. "The people did not want a politician. The people wanted to be seen. Donald Trump convinced those people that he could see them. Hillary Clinton did not." The mythology of Trump's white working class support One of those white Midwesterners who voted for both Obama and Trump is Drew Domalick, a retiree in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He says he voted for Trump because he promised to renegotiate trade deals to benefit ordinary Americans. "Getting some new blood in with Trump and getting away from the Clintons and the Bushes will do this country a lot of good," Domalick says. Trump's bragging about grabbing women's genitalia, a 2005 moment caught on videotape, was "hyperbolic" talk that Trump apologized for, Domalick says. The President-elect actually has a record of hiring strong women, he says. Domalick likes Trump's immigration policies. Domalick is concerned that mass Muslim immigration to Europe will come to America. "It's basically a form of genocide," he says. "They're trying to breed out the white population -- that's what they say they want to do with Europe. What's happening in Europe is going to happen in the United States if we take on the policies that Europe has taken on." He dismissed the notion that Trump is a racist. Trump signed an agreement with the US Justice Department in 1975 without admitting wrongdoing after he was sued for refusing to rent to black tenants, but that doesn't bother Domalick.The constitutional interpretation explanation disguised what really happened in the Civil War. Similar interpretations of Trump's victory also obscure the unattractive and ugly forces that are now present.Joseph Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian "He saw non-blacks as being more reliable when it came to paying the rent than blacks," he says. "That doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it racist. That's a business decision. "There's not any major event where he was called a racist," Domalick says. "I think he even dated a black girl. She was like a model." Vespa, the Townhall commentator, says some Trump voters may have been motivated by racial resentment, but they were a minority. "We're a nation of over 315 million people," he says. "There are definitely racists and folks with a few screws loose, and sadly some of that was probably a motivating factor for a few voters, but it was hardly the reason why Clinton lost." He says Trump won because he reached out to white voters in the Rust Belt who are fighting stagnating wages, a heroin epidemic and rising health care costs. He doesn't think Trump is racist, sexist or xenophobic. "I'm not going to definitively say he's any of those things at this point," Vespa says. "He has certainly made remarks that were bigoted in nature, but I think a few are blown out of proportion by the media. I didn't see the news media going ballistic over what Harry Reid said about President Obama's lack of a 'negro dialect.' "The wolf at the door There is some evidence, though, that explains how a white voter who supported Obama can still be driven by racial resentment. A recent experiment suggests that even white liberals' racial attitudes shift when they perceive people of color moving into their area. In 2012, a group of Harvard University researchers surveyed Boston-area train commuters about immigration. The views of these mostly white, liberal commuters were neutral, says Ryan D. Enos, who conducted the survey.James Baskette portrayed Uncle Remus in "Song of the South," which perpetuated the Lost Cause stereotype of cheerful blacks living under segregation. Researchers then dispatched pairs of young, Spanish-speaking Latino men to ride the same trains for two weeks. Afterward, the researchers asked the commuters about immigration again. The riders were now "sharply" opposed to allowing more immigrants in the country, Enos wrote in a Washington Post column entitled "How the demographic shift could hurt Democrats, too." A sense of racial threat was activated in the white commuters by the new Latino riders, Enos says. "If you live in a segregated area and all of a sudden a new population shows up, these are the conditions for activating racial threat," Enos told CNN. "Racial threat is a general term that describes when somebody is threatened by the close proximity of an out-group." Some people don't need a Harvard study to confirm the fluidity of racial views. Stories of the white liberal man who believes in racial equality until his daughter brings home her new black boyfriend circulate freely among blacks. A famous 1967 movie, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," was based on this premise. Why diversity initially creates more mistrust It may be that some moderate whites are starting to feel like white Northerners did in the early 20th century. They, too, felt a sense of racial threat because of something called the "Great Migration." By the beginning of the 20th century, millions of blacks had fled the racial repression in the South for Northern cities. The more that whites encountered these migrants, the more their true racial attitudes were revealed, says Caroline E. Janney, author of "Remember the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation." "It's about proximity for white Northerners who had never encountered African-Americans before," she says. "White Northerners could claim the moral high ground when they said they had freed the slaves during the Civil War. But when you're living in the same city and the same town, then ideas about 'freeing the slaves' held no weight. "Instead, they were more concerned with many of the same racial questions as their Southern counterparts -- such as whether their children would attend the same schools."The Lost Cause portrayed the South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise ruined by Yankees, a myth reinforced by "Gone With the Wind." A similar dynamic has been playing out across the country over the last eight years, some observers say. Some white Americans have felt that their physical and psychological space was being invaded by the demographic changes embodied by Obama. It's why one historian wrote a recent New York Times column entitled "Without Obama There Would Be No Trump." Those who say white voters can't be racist because they elected a black president twice are ignoring another inconvenient fact: Obama was elected despite opposition from white voters, political scientist Cornell Belcher told Vox in a recent interview. He said whites didn't put Obama in the White House. Obama grabbed only 43% of the white vote in 2008 and 39% in 2012. "The majority of whites did not elect Obama, and that's the wolf at the door," Belcher told Vox. "The vast majority of whites did not support President Obama and President Obama won back-to-back majorities, and that caused the realization of their power waning. Mitt Romney ran up a higher score among white voters than Ronald Reagan when Reagan had a landslide in 1984."What does true reconciliation look like? Now there's another wolf at the door: How does the country move forward when so many can't agree about what just happened? The Lost Cause was eventually discredited. But it took almost a century for historians to roundly reject the myth. It still persists today among those who fly the Confederate battle flag while claiming it's about "heritage, not hate." The Lost Cause propagandists, though, didn't just make history disappear. They made the humanity of those who suffered vanish as well. The myth paved the way for racial apartheid in the South. It distracted Americans from facing the racist ideology that led to the Civil War and the reign of Jim Crow that followed. When many white Americans thought of the South, they didn't see segregation. They read newspaper accounts of cheerful reunions between Union and Confederate veterans and watched black caricatures like Uncle Remus singing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, what a wonderful day!"If you're a white man, you can overlook Trump's Islamophobia, his Hispanophobia, his sexism, because it's never going to affect you directly. That's voting from a place of privilege, the privilege of being a born a white man.Brogan Morris, political commentator The rush to national reunion enshrined white supremacy, says Eric Liu, who wrote a recent article in The Atlantic entitled "Americans Don't Need Reconciliation -- They Need to Get Better at Arguing." "Reunion meant paying homage to the nobility of the Confederate cause. It meant skipping past moral judgment and moving on to the common endeavor of Gilded Age moneymaking," Liu wrote. That Gilded Age bypassed much of the South, though. The region lagged behind the rest of the nation in economic and educational development for nearly a century after the Civil War -- in part because the South refused to face its own racism. Learn why the Reconstruction of the South ended Unless people today face the country's myths about race -- past and present -- they won't be able to reconcile Trump's election, says Liu, author of "The Gardens of Democracy" and a former White House speechwriter. He points to South Africa as a model. After apartheid was dismantled in 1994, the country's new leaders created a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," encouraging both victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence to come forward in public hearings and testify. "They didn't call them reconciliation commissions," Liu says. "They called them truth and reconciliation commissions. You can't do reconciliation without truth first. We haven't done truth." There are already signs that arriving at some truth about Trump's victory will be elusive. The Lost Cause didn't just make history disappear, it erased the humanity of people like Hattie McDaniel, who portrayed the cheerful mammy in "Gone With the Wind." When Harvard University recently gathered together the leaders of Clinton and Trump's campaign teams to talk about the election, a shouting match erupted. Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri condemned the Trump campaign for hiring as its chief executive a man who ran a news site popular with white nationalist groups. "If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am proud to have lost," Palmieri said. "I would rather lose than win the way you guys did." "Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?" Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, shot back. Expect more of these arguments as Trump takes the presidency. The alternative could be worse. There will be books, movies and commemorative magazines that explain Trump's victory. Commentators will keep talking about Trump shocking the Republican establishment, shaming the "cultural elites" and inspiring white, working-class voters. A dominant narrative will eventually take hold. But what if others continue to say racism "was the deepest and defining issue" of Trump's campaign? Will they be accused of their own mythmaking? Will they be dismissed as politically naïve, even rude? Will facing what Trump's victory says about America be too monstrous to bear? If that happens, Trump's road to the White House won't just be a story about an astounding presidential victory. It could become another Lost Cause.

Story by Moni Basu, CNN Photographs by Cassi Alexandra for CNN

2018-01-29 20:59:11

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/29/health/ending-child-marriage-in-america/index.html

Raped and wed by 11, woman fights to end child marriage - CNN

For many years, Sherry Johnson kept silent about her forced marriage and the abuse she suffered as a girl. But now her plight may bring an end to child marriage in Florida.

health, Raped and wed by 11, woman fights to end child marriage - CNN

Sherry Johnson was raped, pregnant and married by 11. Now she's fighting to end child marriage in America

Tallahassee, Florida (CNN)In Florida's halls of power, Sherry Johnson is somewhat of an anomaly: a black woman who grew up destitute and survived child abuse. Her story is shocking. Raped at 8 and pregnant at 10, she was forced to marry her rapist at 11. She had to abandon high school after the babies kept coming. For years, she kept silent. But now, her voice rings clear in chambers where the state's laws are made. Her unrelenting public pleas to end child marriage are being heard.After a lifetime of struggle, Johnson's time has come. Finally.At 58, she sports a head full of thick, tight curls and a pantsuit that would make Hillary Clinton proud. She navigates the corridors of the Capitol with a black binder tucked under her left arm, a purse slung over her shoulder and a fierce look of determination. Read MoreI struggle to keep pace with her as she makes her way past sepia-toned photographs celebrating Florida in the early 20th century, as though they were glorious times for everyone. Past the rows and rows of framed faces of lawmakers who gained fame within these walls. "All men," Johnson observes, as we dash by.Johnson found an ally in Lauren Book, a Florida state senator who is a co-sponsor of the child marriage bill.On this winter morning, days into the 2018 legislative session, she is on her way to meet with a state senator co-sponsoring a bill to abolish child marriage in Florida. An identical version has been introduced in the House.Johnson has spent the last five years lobbying lawmakers to stop the kind of abuse she suffered in her childhood. An effort to ban child marriage under the age of 16 got traction in the Florida House in 2014 but went nowhere in the Senate. Since then, Johnson's words have fallen on deaf ears. Doors have closed on her. Until recently.As incredible as this may sound, Florida stands poised to become the first state in America to say no, unequivocally, to all marriages of minors. Last year, Texas and Virginia enacted new laws limiting marriage to those 18 and over, but they made narrow exceptions for minors granted adult rights by the courts. The bills before the Florida legislature set 18 as the age for marriage and allow zero exceptions. In Suite 202 of the Senate Office Building, Johnson gets a hug from Lauren Book, a 33-year-old senator from the south Florida city of Plantation who herself is a child abuse survivor and activist. Book has blond hair, a Florida tan and big, bookish glasses. Her walls are blanketed by inspirational quotations from Plato, Shakespeare and even Coco Chanel: "If you're sad, add more lipstick and attack." She displays a brass desk plate that asks: "What would Beyonce do?"Johnson has been testifying about her cruel childhood at the Capitol. Lawmakers say she has been instrumental in gathering support for the child marriage bill."Sherry and I have a lot in common," Book tells me. "Until you put a face on this issue, people don't understand," she adds. "And Sherry has been that face. She has been able to destigmatize the process."Book signed on as co-sponsor of the Senate child marriage bill introduced by Lizbeth Benacquisto, a Fort Myers Republican and rape survivor. The two women legislators embraced the #MeToo movement and have been vocal on sexual misconduct allegations clouding the Florida Legislature. In Book, Johnson sees an ally. If the bill passes, Johnson wants to stage a play based on her 2013 autobiographical novel, "Forgiving the Unforgiveable." She's also compiled a budget for a bus tour to promote awareness. She asks Book to help her brainstorm ways to raise money. "When the bill passes, I want the community to know this has happened," Johnson says. "I just want ideas. This is all so new to me.""You've been working so hard to make all this happen," Book replies. "You have a lot going on. Take a break.""I can't relax right now," Johnson says without hesitation. "I'm on a journey."'I'm coming out'I first spoke with Johnson a couple of months ago and was taken aback that child marriage was still a persistent problem in the United States. A girl gets married every 2 seconds somewhere in the worldChild marriages are legal in every US state because of a hodgepodge of exceptions that let minors get married with parental consent or judicial approval. A majority of these marriages are coerced and involve girls marrying adult men, according to the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit group that tracks child marriage and aims to end gender-based violence.The US State Department considers forced marriage a human rights abuse and, in the case of minors, a form of child abuse. Though child marriages represent a fraction of all US marriages, the numbers remain significant. The Pew Research Center found that in 2014, nearly 60,000 15- to 17-year-olds were in marriages. Few perceive America as a land where child marriage occurs; we think of developing nations like Afghanistan, Somalia and my homeland, India, which ignobly led the world with almost 27 million child marriages in 2017.If the bills before its Legislature pass, Florida will become the first state to ban, unequivocally, all marriages of minors.My own grandmother was the same age as Johnson -- 11 -- when she was married off to my grandfather. My great aunt was 14 on her wedding day. When her husband died soon after, she led the austere life of a Hindu widow, ostracized by society until her death at 90 as though she were somehow to blame. I was drawn to Johnson's story and am even more so now, when increasing numbers of women are feeling empowered to speak out about abuse. The women's movement has been gaining momentum and has helped push forward child marriage bills. Besides Florida, a dozen other states have legislation pending, though not all would set a strict age floor at 18.In Florida, Johnson has been instrumental. She has been vocal about the cruel story of her childhood. She hopes that one day soon, she might be able to stand next to the governor as he signs a child marriage ban into law.That would be the vindication she has so earnestly sought.There has been little opposition to the bill, though critics would still like Florida to make exceptions for minors who are voluntary participants or if their would-be spouses are in the military. Young servicemen and women sometimes want to marry their girlfriends or boyfriends before deploying on dangerous missions.She's only 12, but her father is already planning her weddingTo that argument, Johnson retorts: If you are under 18, you cannot make any other legal decisions. You cannot buy a house, join the military, vote, rent a car or drink alcohol. How is it possible then to make a wise decision about entering into a legally binding partnership, one that is meant to be permanent?Johnson leaves Book's office brimming with excitement. "You know that song, 'I'm Coming Out' by Diana Ross?" she asks as we climb into her car. She starts belting out the lyrics: I want the world to know... There's a new me coming out. And I just had to live. And I want to give. I'm completely positive."This is exactly what's happening," she says. "People are coming out. My soul is so happy right now."She has ambitions to organize a conference for survivors of child abuse and child marriage, so they can express themselves in public, just like she did when she testified before lawmakers. "So they can get it all out," she says. She knows the importance of that firsthand.A mother and wife by fifth gradeAs a little girl, Johnson lived with her mother in Tampa in the back of the parsonage of their church. She was an only child.Johnson and her mother belonged to an apostolic church and went to mandatory service six days a week, sometimes seven. Hats and long sleeves were required for the girls and women; they could not wear pants or jewelry. They behaved in accordance with strict church guidelines, and the elders told them what they could say or do. Johnson's mother spent little time with her. When she did, it was to bake biscuits and fruit pies for the church. There was no television in the house, but her mother would, on occasion, sit down with Johnson with a coloring book and pencils. That is the fondest memory Johnson has of her childhood. Johnson was forced to marry a man who raped her. She was so young she did not know how to act and mimicked the married couples she saw at her church.Each day before school, Johnson sought out her aunt for lunch money because Johnson's mother worked as a substitute teacher and could barely make ends meet. Her aunt lived nearby in the same house as the bishop of their church, and one day, when Johnson was 8, he summoned her into his bedroom.I got your lunch money. Come and get it. He forced her to lie on the bed, used petroleum jelly and penetrated her. He said nothing and then sent her on her way, blood dripping down her legs. Johnson ran to a bathroom to wash herself, but she was a child in the fourth grade. She could not understand what had happened. After that, she was raped repeatedly by the bishop and also a church deacon. But when she tried to talk about it, no one believed her, not even her mother. It happened so frequently that Johnson accepted it as a part of growing up. Her elementary school classmates cruelly told her she smelled like fish.Several months passed when, one day in class, she was summoned to a room where students received their vaccinations. Johnson was confused. She never got shots; her church forbade them.JUST WATCHEDChild bride: 'I was forced to marry my rapist'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHChild bride: 'I was forced to marry my rapist' 02:52She was examined by a nurse and sent back to class. A few minutes later, she heard her name again, blaring through the intercom. She was to collect all her belongings and wait in the office for her mother to pick her up. What had she done wrong? You're going to have a baby, her mother blurted out in the car. Who's been messing with you? I tried to tell you, Johnson replied. But you said I was lying.A doctor examined her and gave her the news: She was seven months pregnant. She did the math and knew it was the deacon's baby.Her mother stood up in church and told everyone her daughter was lying about being raped. She blamed Johnson for bringing shame on the family and sent her away to Miami with the bishop who had raped her. She was dropped off at Jackson Memorial Hospital and left there alone to have her baby.On a February night in 1970, Johnson, only 10 years old, waited in a hospital hallway. She tried to imagine how a baby would come out of her body; no one had explained it to her. The stares burned through her; she felt like an oddity at an amusement park.At 1:54 a.m., she gave birth to her first child. When she returned to Tampa, a child welfare worker came by to ask questions. She figures her elementary school must have tipped off the state. The men who had raped her were adults and if the truth were to surface, they would face statutory rape charges. Instead, Johnson's mother arranged for her daughter to marry one of her rapists, the deacon. She bought a white dress and veil for her daughter and accompanied bride and groom to the Hillsborough County courthouse in Tampa. Johnson was 11. The man she was marrying was 20. Johnson remembers sitting at a long table that seemed bigger than her house. She remembers her mother speaking with the judge. The judge refused to marry a girl so young, even though she had a baby.But a month later, they tried again, this time in neighboring Pinellas County, where Johnson was allowed to sign on the dotted line. The judge was fully aware of her age; the license lists her date of birth.She had not finished fifth grade yet on March 29, 1971, when she became a wife as well as a mother.So began a life of burden, a life she was forced to accept.Johnson's mother took her daughter to Pinellas County to get married to her rapist. She was 11; he was 20.Marriage before adulthood often has crushing consequences, undermining a girl's access to health, education and economic opportunities. Girls and women in abusive relationships often suffer from low self-esteem and can fall into a self-destructive pattern of attracting more exploitation. Johnson was no exception.At first, she returned to school while her mother looked after the baby. But her church prohibited the use of birth control, and Johnson had baby after baby. Her husband abandoned her each time she was pregnant. She had no choice but to take him back when he returned after the baby was born. They lived in the same parsonage house with Johnson's mother and slept in Johnson's old bedroom surrounded by cribs.Girls her age played with baby dolls. Johnson found herself with real babies. She washed diapers, cleaned the house and cooked one-pot stews. Her husband rarely spoke with her; she was just there for sex. They struggled to pay the bills. She was too young to know how to act, so she watched married couples in church and mimicked their behavior at home. She loved studying and even skipped a grade one year. As it turned out, school was the only normal thing in her life. But that, too, was taken from her. She made it somehow to the ninth grade but then could go on no longer. By the time she was 17, she was raising six children. She never knew what it was like to play sports or go to the prom or graduate. Robbed of her childhood, she lost all motivation.Every day when she woke up, she cried.Johnson has become a public speaker on child marriage. Here, she watches a video of herself at a recent panel discussion sponsored by the Tahirih Justice Center.It was her husband who should have been handcuffed, she thought. She felt she was handcuffed instead.She grew tired of her husband's lack of support and sought help from Legal Aid. They wrote her a check for $75 to pay an attorney to file for divorce. But not long after, at 19, she married a 37-year-old man. He, too, hurt her verbally and physically. She bore three more children and was 27 when her youngest daughter was born.By then, Johnson felt the weight of nine children -- five girls and four boys -- and an abusive husband pulling her down. She was frustrated, tired, bitter and, most of all, angry that this life had been forced on her. It began to affect her relationships with her kids. She hollered and fussed at them more often and tried her best to remember they didn't ask to be born. It wasn't their fault. She smiled on the outside, but inside she was always crying.She felt worthless and even contemplated driving her car off the Howard Frankland Bridge that spans Tampa Bay.It was only after she left her mother's church that Johnson was able to start healing. Through a new church, she met a psychologist, Joan Gaines. The two women began talking. It was the first time, really, that anyone had listened to her. It had taken almost half her life for Johnson to find her voice. ForgivenessI listened to Johnson recount her story, but I couldn't fully understand how she was able to heal after such horrific experiences. I called Gaines for her perspective."She was a child with nine children," Gaines told me. "She began to grow up much later in her life."Gaines described Johnson as a smart, resilient woman who was keen on setting herself on a better path. She was like a round-bottomed roly-poly toy: No matter how many times you knock it over, it comes right back up.Gaines, too, was an only child, but she had a happy childhood. Johnson's mother's actions were beyond comprehension. "You don't have to be nurturing to be a mother," Gaines said. "All you have to have is a vagina."Johnson leaned on Gaines and looked inward. She turned to her faith in God, and she learned to forgive her rapists, her mother and, most important, herself. It was time, she realized, to escape the dungeon of bitterness that was sapping her energy. The past was hurting her because she had chosen to hold onto it. For Johnson, forgiveness was the only way to move forward, the only way she could speak freely about what she had suffered so she could save others. Johnson works as a caregiver and visits Tommye Hutto twice a week to help her out at home.'The whole state of Florida failed me'Hours after her jaunt to the Capitol, Johnson makes her way across town to see Tommye Hutto, a 78-year-old woman curtailed by rheumatoid arthritis. Playing lobbyist is Johnson's passion, but her job as a private caregiver pays the bills. She also had been teaching behavior-challenged children at an elementary school but gave that up to focus her energy on the legislative session.Hutto retired as communications director for the California Teachers Union and moved to Tallahassee to be near her daughters. She lives by herself in north Tallahassee, needs assistance around the house and is one of several elderly clients Johnson sees.The day before, Johnson helped a woman in her 90s who can no longer fend for herself. Johnson fixed her a dinner of fish sticks and steak fries and then wrote out a checklist: Make sure the bed rails are up on both sides in the highest position; insert an extra pad in the adult diaper for absorbency; check that her life alert is around her neck; empty the trash; tidy the house.I watched Johnson intently before blurting out the obvious question: "What's it like to take care of people after you did nothing but that all your life?""Well, I have to earn money somehow," she answered.She took this job, she explained, because caregiving is what she's good at. She raised nine children, after all.She moved to north Florida in 2008 after she remarried again. She and her third husband ran a barbecue place together in Tallahassee. But that marriage, too, ended in divorce.Johnson could have returned to Tampa, where all her children were. But that was when she felt a calling. She felt compelled to share her story to make things better so no one else would have to endure what she had. She did not want her obituary to be confined to mother, grandmother and divorcee. She stayed in Tallahassee and launched her crusade. She turned a small third bedroom into a home office and surrounded herself with her achievements. They serve as reminders that her life is no longer broken: a volunteer of the year award, a congratulatory letter on her book from Michelle Obama, a high school diploma from Franklin Academy. Johnson took classes online and at the age of 55, marched in the school's 2015 commencement ceremony. By her desk is a card one of her sons sent her on Valentine's Day. "Of all the moms in the world, you are by far the best the world has seen." Johnson became an advocate for child marriage survivors and wants to make sure others will never have to suffer.Despite her struggles, Johnson has no regrets about having her children."I still feel like I did everything I could do as a parent. I gave it my best shot with what I had," she told me. "I don't feel less than a mother."On this evening at Hutto's house, her motherly instincts kick into gear. She fixes dinner for Hutto and plops down on the living room couch. It feels like a long day after her rounds at the Capitol. Sometimes, the two women watch "Wheel of Fortune" together. Tonight, they decide on conversation instead. They discuss the tribulations of aging and one of their favorite foods: fried chicken from the Publix deli. And, they talk about the one thing they have in common: being an only child."I guess there's good and bad to that," Hutto says."What's the good part?" Johnson asks."Well, you get all the attention. You get to choose what you want. It's fun.""I don't know any fun part," Johnson says, raising her eyebrows.Hutto knows most of Johnson's story and was, like others, in disbelief that such things could happen in America. She's glad to know the child marriage bill is well on its way to becoming law and that it's getting attention. "What caused you to start advocating?" Hutto asks, her curiosity piqued.Johnson mentions her book and a non-profit she launched to support abuse victims after she began speaking at small gatherings and realized the need. Hutto says she knew of one girl in her high school who got pregnant, had her baby and then came back to school. But she didn't get married."Did you know there were over 200,000 child marriages in America in the last 14 years," Johnson says. "Over 16,000 were in Florida.""That's amazing," Hutto replies. "I had no idea. How did we not know?"Johnson brings up her own case."The hospital knew. The school knew. The courts knew," she says. "So plenty of people knew, but nothing was done. The whole state of Florida failed me. "I feel my life was taken from me," she says. "The ones who were supposed to protect me, didn't."No response seems appropriate in this moment, and seconds pass in silence. Johnson looks down and takes a slow bite of fried chicken. In a few days, she will be back at the Capitol, making her rounds -- and hoping that the state that failed her will not fail again.

Wayne Drash, CNN Photographs by Kayana Szymczak for CNN

2018-08-15 08:28:19

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/15/health/cancer-survivor-insurance-denial-battle/index.html

When insurance wouldn't pay, parents funded cancer patient's $95,000 lifesaving treatment - CNN

Kate Weissman's parents paid $95,000 for her cancer treatment after UnitedHealthcare denied coverage. She's now cancer-free. One medical director who denied coverage isn't board-certified "gynecologic oncology."

health, When insurance wouldn't pay, parents funded cancer patient's $95,000 lifesaving treatment - CNN

When insurance wouldn't pay, parents funded cancer patient's $95,000 lifesaving treatment

Boston (CNN)Kate Weissman sits at the edge of the patient table. Her oncologist goes over her medical records and says her most recent scans show no recurrence of cervical cancer."I am remarkably happy," says Dr. Whitfield Growdon, a surgical oncologist who specializes in personalized care at Massachusetts General Hospital. Weissman perks up and claps her hands. "Two years," she says. "We made it two years.""It's amazing," Growdon responds. "It really is."At 33, Weissman is lean, athletic and strong -- a powerful example of cancer survival. Looking at her, it's nearly impossible to comprehend the battle she endured, whether it was her hair falling out or wondering whether she would live. She says she underwent 55 rounds of radiation, 17 rounds of chemotherapy and surgery to remove cancerous lymph nodes. Read MoreJUST WATCHEDInsurance refused to pay for cancer treatmentReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHInsurance refused to pay for cancer treatment 03:03Her battle was twofold: the fight for her life and the fight with her insurance company, UnitedHealthcare. Weissman was diagnosed with stage 2B cervical cancer in October 2015. She was treated with standard chemotherapy and radiation, but by spring 2016, a biopsy confirmed that the cancer had spread to her paraaortic lymph nodes, tucked behind the bowels and lying in front of the lumbar vertebrae. Time was of the essence. After her lymph nodes were removed, her team of doctors wanted to target the cancerous area with a specialized treatment called proton beam therapy. Weissman had six highly esteemed oncologists advocating on her behalf, including five who also teach at Harvard Medical School and a sixth who was once named among America's top doctors by Newsweek. Aides in the offices of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey also pressed UnitedHealthcare about covering Weissman's proton treatment. Her doctors believed that proton therapy would be the most effective treatment in curing her cancer because it could pinpoint the area around her lymph nodes without causing damage to nearby organs. Massachusetts General Hospital has one of the world's most established proton programs, dating to the 1960s. She started her original treatment at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and moved to Massachusetts General solely for its proton expertise.Cindy Weissman fights back tears when she thinks about her daughter's insurance denials: "It makes me crazy." Her doctors at both facilities believed that standard radiation could damage her small intestines, leading to "life-threatening complications later, including ulceration, bleeding, and severe narrowing of the bowel that could cause bowel perforation/rupture, which can be fatal if not treated in a timely fashion," said Dr. Andrea Russo, Weissman's primary oncologist at the time. It could also damage her kidneys and cause long-term bone marrow issues."She was young, otherwise healthy, and had a curable disease," said Russo, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. "Not many patients have a second chance for a cure, but Kate did."The nation's largest health insurance company, though, disagreed. UnitedHealthcare denied Weissman coverage for proton beam therapy after multiple appeals, saying "there is not enough medical evidence to show proton beam therapy is effective for your particular condition." One of the insurance medical directors who twice reviewed Weissman's appeals wasn't board-certified in "gynecologic oncology," according to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, raising troubling questions about why she was involved in a cancer case. The denials put Weissman in a terrible predicament: pay $95,000 out of pocket for what her doctors said was the best chance at a cure or continue with fully covered standard radiation, which could lead to lifelong complications.Her only chance at life is a new liver, but her insurer said no. Then she wrote a powerful plea to the CEOShe and her husband, Matt Eonta, were 30 at the time and didn't have the cash. Through tears, the couple called Weissman's parents and asked for help. Lauren and Cindy Weissman jumped at the chance, raiding their retirement savings and wiring the money to the hospital so she could begin proton treatment immediately. Kate Weissman and her doctor are all smiles on this day, but "there was a time when we were not smiling," Growdon says. In the patient room, he tells Weissman that he understands both sides of the issue -- that, as UHC said in its denials, there is little evidence to support proton beam therapy for cervical cancer. "We don't have a randomized trial, nor, Kate, are we ever going to have a randomized trial for this," he tells her. Finding 100 patients with cervical cancer that spread to their paroaortic lymph nodes, Growdon says, and randomizing 50 of them to standard radiation and 50 to proton beam therapy "is just not plausible or feasible.""We need to be innovative with our care as long as we fervently believe we can do it safely -- that we're not going to hurt you with it," Growdon tells her. Kate Weissman listens as her oncologist, Dr. Whitfield Growdon, goes over her latest results. Her scans have shown no signs of her cancer returning. "It's amazing," he says.Proton therapy is best known for treating pediatric brain cancers, where it minimizes damage to the brain. Growdon says the same rationale applies here. Weissman's medical team laid out what it believed was an effective argument for why proton therapy would work and should be covered, he says. "When your team recommended it," Growdon tells her, "we thought of this as being very reasonable and actually, completely the right move -- and that to not do it would probably be an error."We don't have data that a parachute will save you when you jump out of an airplane," he says, "but we're positive it probably works. In this case, I felt this was our parachute: It made rational sense."We were in a dire situation, and we had resources to be able to offer. From my perspective, it was a no-brainer."Her recovery, Growdon tells her in the examining room, exemplifies why they sought the treatment. Reaching the two-year mark is considered a major milestone because the chance of cancer recurring drops dramatically after that point. "My feeling is, this is a remarkable moment," Growdon says."I like it," Weissman responds.American Medical Association: Denials are a growing problemWeissman's case stands as a microcosm of growing frustrations in the medical community among treating physicians: They say that patients often don't get a fair shake from their insurance companies in the review process and that doctors' recommendations for new therapies often get shot down. "Physicians are increasingly alarmed by reports that their patients are being denied medically necessary care despite having insurance," Dr. Barbara L. McAneny, president of the American Medical Association, told CNN. "Health insurers are making these determinations of non-coverage without any transparency, hiding behind internal, opaque policies and processes. "It is not the insurer role to determine when covered care is needed," McAneny continued. "Those decisions must be made by patients and their physicians, who have critically important medical expertise and firsthand knowledge of the patient's unique clinical situation."Kate Weissman displays her "cancer folder" containing the paperwork involved in her treatment and battle with her insurance company. Dr. Karen Winkfield, associate director of the Office of Cancer Health Equity at Wake Forest Baptist Health, echoed that sentiment: "Much of what we do is oftentimes dictated by insurance companies. In many ways, particularly with respect to oncologic care, what you can and cannot do for a patient can be superseded by the insurance company.""It's ridiculous that we are being relegated to groveling on our hands and knees to ask permission from someone who may or may not understand the technology," said Winkfield, who was not involved in Weissman's care. With only about two dozen proton centers in the nation, Winkfield said, "it's really hard to do prospective clinical trials that can do comparisons, particularly in cancers that are not that common, including cervical." But, she said, there are enough clinical data to support its importance and efficacy in specific cases. "Its principles are proven," she said of proton therapy. "Sometimes, those principles can be applied to newer technologies without having to go through the expense of a randomized controlled trial."Russo, Weissman's oncologist, said "this was a very specific case ... in a young patient with curable cancer.""While a randomized controlled trial does not exist, preliminary peer-reviewed published data does -- and shows that proton therapy can significantly reduce the (radiation) dose to bone marrow, bladder and small bowel" compared with the treatment UHC wanted.Lauren and Cindy Weissman paid the $95,000 so their daughter could get the treatment her doctors recommended. "While she was in the fight for her life, she was having to fight with the insurance company," her father says. "That's just not right."UnitedHealthcare defended its denial of coverage for Weissman's proton therapy."Three independent radiation oncologists agreed that proton beam therapy was not safer or more effective than the proven standard of care," UHC said in a written statement to CNN. "We are pleased that Mrs. Weissman is doing well, and welcome studies that examine the use of proton beam therapy for additional types of cancer."The insurance giant declined to provide the names of those three oncologists and would not answer CNN's questions as to whether they had specialization with proton beam therapy or with cervical cancer.But UnitedHealthcare said that there is "no credible evidence that proton beam therapy is safer or more effective than the proven and covered treatments that are the standard of care for cervical cancer."Pressed by CNN to explain further, UHC offered an additional statement, saying Weissman's doctors asked not just for proton therapy but also a standard radiation treatment called intensity-modulated radiation therapy, or IMRT."While there is no credible clinical evidence that proton beam therapy is safer or more effective than IMRT for treating cervical cancer," UHC said, "there is even less clinical evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of combining these treatments -- and our clinical policy specifically states that the combination of these two treatments is unproven." However, Russo said that the original request was for proton therapy and that once she realized the appeals process would be an "uphill battle," she initiated standard radiation briefly because Weissman needed urgent treatment.Being cancer-free two years later without major side effects, her doctors say, is proof of why they sought proton beam therapy.'It was not a discussion'A recent study by a proton therapy advocacy group found that such battles are not uncommon. Cancer patients whose doctors recommend proton therapy are denied by their insurers more than 40% of the time, and it takes more than five weeks on average to receive a final denial, according to the study by the Alliance for Proton Therapy.Growdon says doctors simply want a "jury of our peers" when they deal with insurance companies, but he believes that was not the case for Weissman: "I think a lot of our pleas were not listened to with the way we would've hoped." He said he was "very surprised" they couldn't persuade UnitedHealthcare to cover the treatment. He said he understands that insurance companies need to be cautious in approving expensive treatment, but he wished UnitedHealthcare had listened more to Weissman's six oncologists.Weissman's husband, Matt Eonta, says his full-time job became fighting with the insurance company -- at a time when he planned to be at her side caring for her during rigorous treatment. "We don't take our charge lightly. We don't want to collapse the health care system," Growdon says. "But we do want to be able to advocate for our patients and feel like our thoughts and rational ideas are being considered."Kate was able to pay for this, but most people cannot," he says. "It's very hard for me to think that the next person I may see won't get what I can do for them because of money."In Weissman's case, one of the UnitedHealthcare medical directors who twice reviewed her appeals was Dr. Gwendolyn Yates, who is a licensed and board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and a medical director with the insurance giant since March 2011, according to her Linkedin page.The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology told CNN that although Yates is a board-certified ob/gyn, she "is not board certified in Gynecologic Oncology (care of women with cancers of the reproductive system)." A closer look at Yates revealed that she co-founded a tattoo removal office in 2014 called A Change of Art Laser Tattoo Removal, according to the Maryland State Board of Physicians.Documents from early 2015 show that Yates was found to have violated the state's medical code for "unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine" by allowing a non-doctor to use laser equipment without a physician present. She was reprimanded by the state board of physicians and ordered to pay $1,000. According to the documents, Yates did not have hospital privileges. The tattoo removal shop closed last year. CNN Exclusive: California launches investigation following stunning admission by Aetna medical directorWhy was an ob/gyn who is not certified in gynecologic oncology and who was disciplined for her tattoo removal business weighing in on specialized cancer coverage?UnitedHealthcare declined to answer CNN's questions related to Yates, and it did not provide a statement from her for this story, despite repeated requests. Attempts to reach Yates for comment were unsuccessful. The only thing UnitedHealthcare would say is that she is a "licensed, board-certified OB/GYN who has direct experience in the diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer." Yates reviewed two appeals for Weissman. In one of the denials, on May 4, 2016, Yates wrote that UnitedHealthcare had reviewed Weissman's file and "also had your case looked at by a doctor who specializes in this type of treatment." "This doctor also spoke with your doctor. Based on the review, there is not enough medical evidence to show proton beam therapy is effective for your particular condition," Yates wrote. "You do not have coverage for treatments that are not effective. The denial is upheld."Russo, Weissman's oncologist at that time, said she never had any communication with Yates during the appeals process. She also said the only peer-to-peer conversation she had was "with a man who was very difficult to understand over the phone."A basket filled with various medications stands as a reminder of Weissman's cancer battle. "He read me the UHC policy, and that was the end of the conversation," Russo told CNN. "I did not have the opportunity to truly discuss the case with him."Patients who are depending on their insurance companies to make such an important life-altering decision on their behalf should have confidence that their decision is in the patient's best interest," Russo said. UHC said that the three independent radiologists were board-certified and that "they spoke with Dr. Russo in the initial clinical review, as well as the first and second level appeals."Russo said she remembers "receiving a final phone call with someone who I was told was a radiation oncologist, and he had told me the final decision was a denial.""It was not a discussion; it was him reading me the final decision," Russo said.The 'sleazy, underbelly moment'Around Weissman's home are reminders of her journey. Her wig, which she named Brigitte. A pillow she embroidered with the message "I've got this."Weissman received this letter three weeks after UnitedHealthcare upheld its denial of coverage. "It was upsetting," she says.She also kept a handwritten note from someone at UnitedHealthcare. The letter came three weeks after the company rejected her coverage and her parents paid the $95,000."Thank you for contacting United Health Care, it was a pleasure speaking with you!" the note says. "I am so sorry to hear about what you're going through! I hope things go well for you & wish you all the best." Her husband took five weeks off from work during the height of Weissman's battle. He planned to do chores around the house and take her to her medical appointments. "But really, fighting the insurance company became a full-time job," Eonta says. He got some of the state's top politicians to advocate for his wife's coverage, not just Warren and Markey but Rep. Mike Capuano. The offices lobbied UnitedHealthcare simultaneously with her husband and doctors."Anything that we could think of to try to get people to put additional pressure on UHC," he says. "It didn't work. It seemed like a sleazy, kind of underbelly moment for me in terms of how this insurance company actually worked."Sitting on a couch in their daughter's home, Lauren and Cindy Weissman express relief she's cancer free. They're proud they were able to help when she needed it most, but they say it should never have reached the point where they had to dip into their retirement savings for her care. Cindy Weissman says she is glad she could help her daughter in her time of need. "You fight the disease, but it's a whole separate job just trying to stay on top of the insurance company," the mother says."There was never any question, because her health was the most important thing," her father says. "It was disappointing, of course, that the insurance company did not support all of the opinions of the doctors. Extremely disappointing. We hope this doesn't happen to anyone else."Her mom fights back tears: "Now that she's better, if I really let myself think about that too much, it makes me crazy." She says the insurance denial created anxiety, angst and disbelief at a time when her daughter needed to be surrounded by "positive thoughts and vibes.""Here was this young woman who had been paying all these premiums, and now she needed them the most, they stepped away from the table," Cindy Weissman says. The parents were sent a refund of $40,000 from the hospital a few months after they paid the $95,000. No explanation was given. Her father jokes that he'd gladly take another refund of the remaining $55,000. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.Weissman recently became active in Cervivor, a group that educates women about cervical cancer so they can be advocates in their communities. She says she hopes to use her experience "so I can help change the landscape for women's healthcare and the disease moving forward."There were times, she recalls, "I'd literally be on the phone with UnitedHealthcare, fighting with them, while I was in the hospital getting chemo administered to me."She knows that she's lucky: She had parents who sacrificed for her. Her new fight is to speak up for those less fortunate.

John Blake, CNN

2018-01-12 23:34:37

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/us/mlk-relevance-today/index.html

Three ways MLK speaks to our time - CNN

Many Americans have turned MLK into a safe holiday mascot, but some say King still speaks to three contemporary issues in America that go beyond civil rights.

us, Three ways MLK speaks to our time - CNN

Three ways MLK speaks to our time

(CNN)"Every hero becomes a bore at last." That's a famous line from the 19th century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it could also apply to a modern American hero: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As the nation celebrates King's national holiday Monday, it's easy to freeze-frame him as the benevolent dreamer carved in stone on the Washington Mall. Yet the platitudes that frame many King holiday events often fail to mention the most radical aspects of his legacy, says Jeanne Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College and author of several books on the civil rights movement. How MLK became an angry black man"We turn him into a Thanksgiving parade float, he's jolly, larger than life and he makes us feel good," Theoharis says. "We've turned him into a mascot."Many people vaguely know that King opposed the Vietnam War and talked more about poverty in his later years. But King also had a lot to say about issues not normally associated with civil rights that still resonate today, historians and activists say.Read MoreIf you're concerned about inequality, health care, climate change or even the nastiness of our political disagreements, then King has plenty to say to you. To see that version of King, though, we have to dust off the cliches and look at him anew. If you're more familiar with your smartphone than your history, try this: Think of King not just as a civil rights hero, but also as an app -- his legacy has to be updated to remain relevant. Here are three ways we can update our MLK app to see how he spoke not only to his time, but to our time as well:No. 1: He's an environmental heroWhen former Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at a King commemorative event in 2011, he described King in an unusual way: King, he said, helped "plant the seeds for what would become our nation's now-thriving environmental justice movement."There's a connection between what King was saying in the 1950s and '60s and this explosion of ecological thinking that emerged around 1970, where everyone was saying it's all about interconnectedness.Drew Dellinger, author and activist, on King's environmental legacyPeople don't think of King as an ecological activist. He didn't live long enough to see the environmental movement take off. He died just a few months before the Apollo 8 astronauts took the iconic "Earthrise" photo over the moon, which is often credited with sparking widespread environmental awareness.. But he still inspires environmental activists because they say he was so eloquent in articulating a core belief of their movement: the interconnected nature of life.One of the most difficult challenges climate change activists face today is convincing political and business leaders to act on behalf of future generations and people in other parts of the world. King, though, offers a great example of how to address this challenge, some say. He constantly talked about the interconnectedness of life. In his "A Christmas Sermon on Peace" just five months before his assassination, King delivered one of his most famous quotes:"All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."MLK was a Republican and other mythsSome even describe King as an ecological hero.Activist and author Drew Dellinger says King's insight is profound."That's the essence of ecology," says Dellinger, who wrote an essay for Common Ground magazine entitled, "Martin Luther King Jr.: Ecological Thinker.""The first law of ecology is that everything is connected."Other environmental activists have noticed King as well. In his essay, Dellinger cites Larry L. Rasmussen, author of "Earth-honoring Faith" and a professor emeritus of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, describing King as "one of the great ecological thinkers of the 20th century."King wrote more about nature and the fragility of life on Earth than people realize, says Dellinger. King once warned that "cities are gasping in polluted air and enduring contaminated water." Dellinger also cites this quote from King: "It would be foolhardy for me to work for integrated schools or integrated lunch counters and not be concerned about the survival of the world in which to be integrated."When he was pouring through King's sermons and books, Dellinger says, he discovered constant references to science and nature. He came across notecards written in King's hand rhapsodizing about "all this galaxy of wonder" and "stars that guide sailors in storms."Some activists concerned by melting glaciers caused by climate change have found an unlikely source of inspiration in King's words."There's a connection between what King was saying in the 1950s and '60s and this explosion of ecological thinking that emerged around 1970, where everyone was saying it's all about interconnectedness," Dellinger says.Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, a former EPA regional administrator who wrote about King's environmental legacy, says King also inspired a generation of activists in the 1970s and '80s who fought to remove landfills that had been placed near communities of color. "If you go back to the beginnings of the environmental justice movement, a lot of those folks were active civil rights advocates at the time," says Keys, now a partner in the DC law firm of Van Ness Feldman. "Even Congressman John Lewis said that environmental justice is one of the modern civil rights issues of our time."No. 2: He was a socialist before it was coolThere was a time in American politics when calling someone a socialist was a slur. Not anymore, at least for many younger Americans who are developing a distrust of capitalism. One of the most popular politicians in recent times is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist who almost captured the Democratic nomination for president. A 2016 Harvard University poll said 51% of young Americans -- 18- to-29-year-olds -- oppose capitalism. And a poll conducted the next year by YouGov and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that most American millennials preferred to live in a socialist country than a capitalist one. Young Americans drawn to Sen. Bernie Sanders' message would find that King shared a similar economic philosophy.The reasons why some millennials prefer socialism have been documented. Lingering scars from the Great Recession; staggering student debt; the greatest economic inequality since before the Great Depression -- all have contributed to an unease about capitalism.King had similar misgivings. Many historians describe him as a "democratic socialist," someone who, according to the Democratic Socialists of America, believes the economy should be shaped "to meet public needs" and "not to make profits for a few." King called for universal health care and education, a guaranteed annual income and the nationalization of some industries. He was a big supporter of unions, and while there was no Fight for 15 campaign to raise the minimum wage during his time, he once said even menial workers should make enough "so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life."Why conservatives call MLK their heroWhen King was assassinated in 1968, he was about lead a multiracial army of poor people into Washington to force the nation's political leaders to address poverty."He saw that changing the laws was important but that was not in itself sufficient," says Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. "There had to be some sort of redistribution of economic power."How radical was King's vision? He spelled out it on many occasions:In 1968, he told a church audience: "It didn't cost the nation a penny to open lunch counters. It didn't cost the nation a penny to give us the right to vote. But it will cost the nation billions to feed and house all of its citizens. The country needs a radical redistribution of wealth."In a 1966 speech to his staff, he said: "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."Today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.In 1964, after traveling to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, King said:"In both Norway and Sweden, whose economies are literally dwarfed by the size of our affluence and the extent of our technology, they have no unemployment and no slums. There, men, women and children have long enjoyed free medical care and quality education. This contrast to the limited, halting steps taken by our rich nation deeply troubled me."Even one of King' s most utopian visions -- a guaranteed income -- is getting serious discussion today because of fears that automation will erase many jobs. There's even a new proposal to give every newborn in the US "Baby Bonds," accounts between $500 and $50,000 that parents couldn't touch until their kids turn 18, as a way to combat inequality.There are those who say King gravitated toward socialism later in his life. But like many Americans today, he saw its possibilities first as a young man.In a letter to his future wife, Coretta Scott, a 20-something King wrote:"I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ... So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes."No. 3: He never let a political disagreement turn nasty"Reverend Dr. Chickenwing." "A religious Uncle Tom." A "traitor" and a "chump."That's how one prominent black leader described King when he was alive.That leader was Malcolm X. While his denunciations of King and other leaders is well known, here's a remarkable fact: There is virtually no record of King making a personal or petty attack against Malcolm X or any other black leaders who criticized him. This could be an important lesson at a time of bitter political divisions, which are often made worse by social media. We turn him into a Thanksgiving parade float, he's jolly, larger than life and he makes us feel good. We've turned him into a mascot.Jeanne Theoharis, author of "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History"Two contemporary leaders in the civil rights movement recently got involved in a Twitter feud that turned personal. The clash between Harvard professor Cornel West and award-winning Ta-Nehisi Coates revolved around political philosophy. But it became so heated that Coates ended up deleting his Twitter account.King received a cascade of petty insults from Malcolm X and other black leaders during his time, but King's faith tempered his response, says Podair, the historian."He was a Christian minister, and he talked about trying to love segregationists, and if you try to have empathy for your enemies, you can also do that with your rivals in civil rights organizations," says Podair , who writes about race in his latest book, "City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles." There was also a pragmatic side to King's reluctance to get pulled into public feuds. It preserved alliances and kept the door open to new allies -- including Malcolm X.After Malcolm broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964, he started reaching out to King and other civil rights leaders. He traveled to Selma, Alabama, in 1965, where King was leading the march to Montgomery, to offer support. A friend of Malcolm once said the former Nation of Islam leader believed King "would be the most responsive" of all civil rights leaders to his efforts to reconcile. "He had come to believe that King believed in what he was doing," A. Peter Bailey told CNN in 2010 "He believed in nonviolence; it just wasn't a show. He developed respect for him. I heard him say you have to give respect to men who put their lives on the line."The respect was mutual.When King later learned that Malcolm X had come to Selma to support him, he was quoted as saying, "Hey, that Malcolm is a beautiful brother." "He always had a deep affection for Malcolm," says Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, a visiting international scholar in international studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania."Malcolm obviously challenged and did say many unkind words about King's philosophy of nonviolence, but their disagreements never turned personal or nasty."The only time King and Malcolm X came face to face was this impromptu meeting in 1964.King's magnanimous nature didn't just help him deal with other black leaders' insults. It also helped him deal with something people today may find hard to believe: He was persistently unpopular during his lifetime, says Theoharis, the Brooklyn College political science professor and author of "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.""One of the things that people erase from history is how unpopular and scared of Dr. King most Americans were at the times," she says. "I'm not just talking about in '67 and '68, but I'm talking about in the early '60s."Theoharis cites King's most transcendent moment: The 1963 March on Washington and his "I have a Dream" speech. Polls showed that most Americans didn't approve of the march, and the following year -- well before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed -- a New York Times poll showed that most Americans thought the civil rights movement had gone too far.The US government thought King was so dangerous they treated him like an enemy of the state. "We now see his March on Washington speech as the greatest American speech of the 20th century," she says, "but we're uncomfortable grappling with the fact that this is the moment that the FBI decided to have wall-to-wall surveillance of Dr. King."Today we have wall-to-wall celebrations about King. He's now on par with American titans like Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Americans write tributes and sing songs about how much King has changed America.But here's one more uncomfortable thought that also explains why King remains so relevant:The country is still divided by many of the same issues that consumed him.On the last night of his life, King told a shouting congregation of black churchgoers that "we as a people" would get to "the Promised Land." That kind of optimism, though, sounds like it belongs to another era.The greatest MLK speeches you never heardWhat we have now is a leader in the White House who denies widespread reports that he complained about Latino and African immigrants coming to America from "shithole" countries; a white supremacist who murders worshippers in church; a social media landscape that pulsates with anger and accusations. King's Promised Land doesn't sound boring when compared to today's headlines. And maybe that's what's so sad about reliving his life every January for some people.Fifty years after he died, King's vision for America still sounds so far away.Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob is now affiliated with Dickinson College.

John Blake, CNN

2015-05-02 23:38:46

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lord-of-the-flies-baltimore/index.html

Baltimore violence and the lack of black men in the city - CNN

It's a surreal to see your old neighborhood go up in flames. But when I returned to Baltimore this week, the rage made sense. The older black men were gone.

us, Baltimore violence and the lack of black men in the city - CNN

'Lord of the Flies' comes to Baltimore

Baltimore, Maryland (CNN)He was a quiet man who once stood watch on his front porch, just three blocks away from where a riot erupted in West Baltimore this week. We called him "Mr. Shields" because no one dared use his first name. He'd step onto his porch at night in plaid shorts and black knit dress socks to watch the Baltimore Orioles play on his portable television set. He was a steelworker, but he looked debonair: thin mustache always trimmed; wavy salt-and-pepper hair touched up with pomade; cocoa brown skin. He sat like a sentry, watching not just the games but the neighborhood as well.I knew Mr. Shields' routine because I was his neighbor. I grew up in the West Baltimore community that was rocked this week by protests over the death of a young black man in police custody. Mr. Shields with his daughters Sandra, left, Linda and Elaine, right, in an undated family photo.It's surreal to see your old neighborhood go up in flames as commentators try to explain the rage with various complex racial and legal theories. But when I returned to my home this week, the rage made sense to me. There were no more Mr. Shields -- the older black men were gone.Read MoreI asked 28-year-old Zachary Lewis about the absence of older men. He stood by a makeshift memorial placed at the spot where Freddie Gray, the man whose death ignited the riots, was arrested. "This is old here," he said, pointing to himself. "There ain't no more 'Old Heads' anymore, where you been? They got big numbers or they in pine boxes." In street syntax, that meant long prison sentences or death. We hear about the absence of black men from families, but what happens when they disappear from an entire community? West Baltimore delivered the answer to that question this week. It's no accident that one of the most enduring images from the riot was a young mother spanking her son as she dragged him away from the protests. Where were the men in his life? As I walked through my old streets, it was filled with nothing but black young women, children and teenage boys. It was as if an alien spaceship had come in the night and spirited all the older black men away.Castaways waiting for rescue I've read and written about big issues like the mass incarceration of black men for nonviolent drug offenses -- what some call "The New Jim Crow." To see it in person, though, is spooky. I felt like "The Lord of the Flies" had taken over my old neighborhood.JUST WATCHED'Lord of the Flies' comes to BaltimoreReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH'Lord of the Flies' comes to Baltimore 04:35"The Lord of the Flies" was a novel written in 1954 by the English author William Golding. It describes what happens to a group of upper-class English schoolboys when their plane crash-lands on a deserted island and all the adults are killed. The kids try to build a society of their own, but with no adult guidance, they descend into tribalism and savagery.William Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the Washington Post, once invoked the book's title in a column to describe what was happening to young black men in inner cities across America. He said that without the civilizing influence of older men to guide them, young black men never develop an internal moral compass. They become castaways. I read Raspberry's essay after college and kept it for years. It spoke so well to what I saw in the 1980s when the crack epidemic first hit my neighborhood.I heard Raspberry's voice again this week when I talked to a 27-year-old black man named Juan Grant. He knew Gray, whose death in police custody lit the fuse in Baltimore. Grant stood no more than a foot from me, but as he talked, he yelled at me in frustration, spittle coming from his mouth. He said Gray's death had convinced him and his friends to stop "ripping and running" the streets. They wanted boys to respect them as men. But they didn't know how to get that respect because their fathers had never been around. He described their dilemma with a bitter laugh: "It's men learning on the job trying to teach young men how to be men."Raspberry wrote his column 28 years ago. Now there are even more castaways like Grant in West Baltimore. Yet here's the twist: They don't just feel abandoned by indifferent white people; many feel ignored by the city's black political leaders. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is black, but I found nothing but disdain for her in West Baltimore. People kept complaining that she called protesters "thugs."Before the Inner Harbor in Baltimore became a haven for tourists, it was a haven for a burgeoning black middle class in the city. "She turned on her own people, calling us thugs," a 16-year-old high school student named Malik said as he waited at a bus stop next to Mondawmin Mall, a flashpoint for the riots. "Pretty sure she ain't perfect. She made some mistakes in her life. I'm pretty sure she did." He doesn't think any of the city's leaders care about him. "They talk about 'We the future,' but they killing us," he said. Now this is the part of the discussion about Baltimore that some conservatives tend to love. Their refrain: It's all about individual behavior; there's a culture of poverty that Big Government programs won't help; Oh God, not Al Sharpton again; just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. My own experiences tell me it's not all about individual effort.What is a working man? Choices, someone once said, are constrained by circumstances. And the circumstances that drove young black men like Grant to the streets this week are getting grimmer. Take Mr. Shields, for example. The reason I saw so many working-class men like Mr. Shields in my neighborhood was because there were blue-collar jobs for them. Before the Inner Harbor in Baltimore became a haven for tourists, it was a haven for a burgeoning black middle class in my city. Mr. Shields worked as a steel rigger at Sparrows Point in the inner harbor. Other black men worked at the Domino Sugar plant. My father was a merchant marine who sailed out of the harbor. These were well-paying jobs with strong unions that fought for good benefits and united black, brown and white working-class people.The old Domino Sugar factory on the Baltimore harbor. Men like Walter Boyd raised families working there.They helped men like Walter Boyd, 76, who sat on his front porch in West Baltimore this week like he was a reincarnation of Mr. Shields -- an impassive Sphinx surveying his domain. He was one of the few older black men I saw around. He had a box of chicken wings attached to his walker along with ice water. Boyd had raised three children working at Domino Sugar. "Best job I ever had," he said. "You didn't get fired. You fired yourself. As long as you came to work and worked, you had a job. It was hard work but I had it made because I knew how to work."Boyd's son, Robert, had just stopped by to cut his father's hair. He chuckled at his father's reference to hard work. Growing up, he said, his father kept him busy to keep him out of trouble. He'd take him to the country in the summer to work in the tobacco fields. He remembers watching his father plow a field one day, sweat pouring down his face, when another man turned to him and said with admiration: "That's a working man." "There was something about the way he said that that let me know that's the way you supposed to be if you wanted respect," said Robert Boyd, who is a truck driver and pastor of the Beacon of Truth Church and Ministries in West Baltimore. Yet boys don't respect men who don't have jobs. And many of those blue-collar jobs that built the black middle class in Baltimore are gone. Even the neighborhood businesses that I remember from youth -- an ice cream factory and a milk company behind my house -- were shuttered when I returned. Unlike Walter Boyd, the old men I did see in my neighborhood this week were broken-down, unshaven. I thought to myself: If you want to destroy a people, first break their men. "Now we as men are fearful when we walk through a group of boys," Robert Boyd said. "When we were boys, when we walked through a group of men, we felt secure. Something is wrong."Taking the city away from us Something else was missing when I returned: places for kids to play or meet the men who could mentor them. Baltimore is a sports-crazy town. I grew up playing Little League baseball, running around the track at the high school across the street from my home, and playing tennis at public courts scattered through West Baltimore. There were public swimming pools, pickup basketball games, and plenty of recreation centers. On some days, I barely ate because I spent so much time outside playing sports. Yet when I returned to my old playing fields, they were overgrown with weeds or barred with locked gates. I heard the same story from residents. The city had closed the pools, removed the basketball goals and, as recently as 2013, closed 20 recreation centers. I didn't see any kids playing baseball or football in the streets. "They've taken the city away from us. We have nowhere to go and nothing to do," says Grant, the young man who wants to be a role model.Men like the author's father were merchant marines and sailed from Baltimore's harbor. The sports venues weren't just for the kids; they were for adults. It's where men mentored kids by becoming their coaches. The tracks and pools were places where families gathered. The school's playing fields were open to everyone in the community. I practically lived on the playing fields at Frederick Douglass High School, which became a focal point for the riots. When I talked to Walter Boyd and his son, I did so across the street from Douglass' track, which was ringed with locked gates. "I used to do my walking there," Robert Boyd said, pointing to the track. "Not just I, but older cats and younger cats would just walk. That's when you saw community -- younger, older people. You see people and say, 'How you doing.' They don't want you on the track now." The youth aren't missing just recreation centers and tracks; the jobs programs are gone as well. When I grew up in West Baltimore in the late 1970s and early 1980s, virtually all of my friends worked. The city offered various jobs programs for youths -- Summer Corps, Youth Corps, Manpower. Some jobs were as simple as sweeping the streets, but we didn't mind. It was like a rite of passage into adulthood. You didn't have to ask your parents for money. I still remember the envy I felt when my friends took their first Summer Corps checks to Mondawmin Mall to buy new tennis shoes. I hear people talk about welfare queens and the "culture of poverty." But most of the kids I grew up with weren't even content to join a jobs program. They hustled for other work. One of the most coveted jobs was riding on the milk trucks during their morning deliveries. At sunrise virtually every day, a crowd of boys would gather outside the loading dock at the Cloverdale milk company. They stood around like the day laborers who hang out today around Home Depot. They wanted a milk driver to stop and say hop on. They'd help deliver the milk, and the driver would give them a couple extra bucks. I still remember the rejection one morning when I woke up early and joined that crowd. One by one I saw all my friends picked up until I was the only one left. Nobody stopped for me. I was too skinny to pick up a milk crate. I went home and threw myself on my bed in despair. I would never be cool like my friends. Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riots Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsPeople help clean up a CVS pharmacy in Baltimore on Tuesday, April 28, the morning after riots broke out during protests on Monday, April 27. The unrest followed the funeral for Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal cord injury he got while in police custody. There were more than 230 arrests, 144 vehicle fires and 15 structure fires, a city official said.Hide Caption 1 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsMembers of the community clean up debris on April 28 from the CVS that was burned and looted in the riots.Hide Caption 2 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsA neighborhood cleanup crew works to clear trash from the streets on April 28.Hide Caption 3 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsCaroline Byrd helps with cleanup efforts on April 28.Hide Caption 4 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsVolunteers help clear trash from a looted business on April 28.Hide Caption 5 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsA man sweeps the street as law enforcement officers stand guard on April 28.Hide Caption 6 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsBaltimore firefighters inspect a burned store on April 28.Hide Caption 7 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsPeople helping clean debris are seen in the reflection of a broken window on April 28.Hide Caption 8 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsJason Park, left, and business owner Sung Kang survey the damage to his store on April 28.Hide Caption 9 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsMen wearing work gloves help clear debris on April 28.Hide Caption 10 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsKailah Johnson, 5, joins her mother in a neighborhood cleanup on April 28. Schools were closed across the city.Hide Caption 11 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsVolunteers help clear the wreckage from damaged stores on April 28.Hide Caption 12 of 13 Photos: Cleaning up after Baltimore riotsEmployee Sam Wirtz, left, surveys the damage to his store that came during the unrest on Monday, April 27.Hide Caption 13 of 13 My interest in journalism also was nurtured by these jobs programs. I interned at the Baltimore Sun and Afro-American newspapers while I was in high school. I participated in journalism getaways for promising inner-city students. I couldn't afford any of it, but if you're reading this now, it's because somebody somewhere was willing to pay money to give me a chance. Today, few of those programs exist. The Rev. Jamal Bryant, a popular Baptist minister in Baltimore, said the city has even closed a quarter of its public libraries. "All of those programs are housed in the Smithsonian Institution," he says of the youth jobs programs. "They are no longer in evidence or thriving today." Yet there is one institution the city seems to find money to invest in, some residents say: law enforcement. Funding for public schools, libraries, jobs programs and recreation centers may lag, but the budget for jails and police never seems to run dry, Walter Boyd and others say. Some wonder if it's deliberate. "If you don't invest in them now, you're just going to have to build more prisons," Boyd says about kids in West Baltimore. "And that just seems like that's what the plan is. They won't educate you. But they'll incarcerate you in a minute."A bittersweet reunion I ended my return by going back to the house where I grew up. I rang the doorbell, but a guy washing his car on the street told me the old woman who lived there wouldn't answer the door because she was "skittish." Bars seemed to cover every window; other homes were boarded up, and those that weren't looked so dilapidated that it seemed as if the residents didn't care anymore. And they don't, because so few are owners now. I ran into one person who was still there from my childhood. I knocked on his door and a big smile flashed across his face. He had not seen me since high school, but he remembered. We all called him "Herb." He was one of the few homeowners left. We sat down on his porch and talked about old times. He said nobody sat on the porches and talked to each other anymore. Of the 38 homes on our block, only seven were owned by their occupants. When his house was recently burglarized, he said it took three calls to 911 and 55 minutes for the police to show up. "I could be mutilated and lying on the street," he said, "and nobody would help or call the police." I said goodbye and left. As I got in my car, I looked at him standing at his door, still smiling as he waved at me. I also looked at Mr. Shields' old porch as I drove away. The paint was peeling and the front looked disheveled. He never would have allowed that. This was my home. This was my family. These were my friends. But they were ghosts now. There were few men looking out for the neighborhood any longer. What's left are boys trying to figure out how to be men -- and how to avoid getting "big numbers" or ending up in "pine boxes." Photos: Baltimore protests People hold hands during a rally at Baltimore City Hall on Sunday, May 3. The death of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody, sparked rioting in Baltimore and protests across the country. Hide Caption 1 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Members of the National Guard board a truck at an armory staging area on May 3 in Baltimore. After a night of relatively peaceful protests, the city lifted a curfew, the National Guard is preparing its exit and a mall that had been a flashpoint in the protests has been reopened. Hide Caption 2 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Medics take a man away after police pepper-sprayed him on Saturday, May 2, in Baltimore's Sandtown neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested in April.Hide Caption 3 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police detain a man on May 2 in Baltimore's Sandtown neighborhood.Hide Caption 4 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters hold signs on May 2 in the Sandtown neighborhood.Hide Caption 5 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters march from the Gilmor Homes housing community, where Freddie Gray was arrested, to City Hall on Saturday, May 2, in Baltimore. Hide Caption 6 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police in riot gear enforce a 10 p.m. curfew and clear Baltimore streets of protesters and media on Friday, May 1.Hide Caption 7 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, helps clear Baltimore streets of protesters on May 1. Hide Caption 8 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Demonstrators celebrate the announcement that six officers were charged May 1 in Gray's death. Hide Caption 9 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Demonstrators march through the streets of Baltimore after the charges against the officers were announced May 1. Hide Caption 10 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police on horseback block a Baltimore street on May 1.Hide Caption 11 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A demonstrator celebrates in Baltimore the charges were announced on May 1.Hide Caption 12 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A member of the National Guard stands outside Baltimore City Hall as protesters gather on Wednesday, April 29.Hide Caption 13 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests High school and college students march from Baltimore's Penn Station to City Hall on April 29.Hide Caption 14 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A community organizer later identified as Joseph Kent paces in front of riot police with his hands up during a curfew in Baltimore on Tuesday, April 28. Moments later, he was seen being arrested by police live on CNN. Kent's lawyer said on April 30 that his client had been released from jail. While some protesters defied the curfew and faced off with police, demonstrations Tuesday were largely peaceful. Hide Caption 15 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests State Sen. Catherine E. Pugh embraces a protester while urging the crowd to disperse ahead of the 10 p.m. curfew.Hide Caption 16 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests People attempt to stop protesters from approaching a police line on April 28.Hide Caption 17 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A Baltimore police captain tries to calm a protester on April 28.Hide Caption 18 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Two women sweep up the streets in Baltimore -- reflected in the broken window of a storefront on April 28. See more photos of the cleanup efforts.Hide Caption 19 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A band plays music during protests on April 28 in Baltimore. Hide Caption 20 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A boy in Baltimore offers water to a police officer on April 28. Hide Caption 21 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Jerrie Mckenny, left, and her sister Tia Sexton embrace as demonstrators hold hands and sing the hymn "Amazing Grace" in Baltimore on April 28. Hide Caption 22 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Demonstrators stand in front of a police line and call for peace after a bottle was thrown on April 28.Hide Caption 23 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Maryland National Guardsmen patrol the streets on April 28.Hide Caption 24 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests The remains of a senior center smolder on April 28. Riots broke out Monday, April 27, after Freddie Gray's funeral.Hide Caption 25 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police retreat from burned-out cars in an intersection on Monday, April 27.Hide Caption 26 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Firefighters respond to a burning building during the riots late April 27.Hide Caption 27 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer walks by a burning building on April 27.Hide Caption 28 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police stand guard on April 27.Hide Caption 29 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters climb on a destroyed Baltimore Police car in the street near the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues on April 27.Hide Caption 30 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A mixture of milk and water rolls down a man's chest after he was pepper sprayed by the Baltimore Police April 27.Hide Caption 31 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A man rides a bicycle through heavy smoke emitting from a nearby store on fire April 27.Hide Caption 32 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A man shouts for calm as protesters clash with police April 27.Hide Caption 33 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police carry an injured officer from the streets near Mondawmin Mall in Baltimore on April 27.Hide Caption 34 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests People carrying goods leave a CVS pharmacy near Pennsylvania and North avenues on April 27.Hide Caption 35 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A demonstrator raises his fist as police stand in formation on April 27.Hide Caption 36 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Armored cars drive down Pennsylvania Avenue as looters break into shops on April 27.Hide Caption 37 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests People lock arms and form a line opposing police at the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues on April 27.Hide Caption 38 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police form a barrier between protesters and a burning CVS being attended to by firefighters on April 27.Hide Caption 39 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests People carry goods out of a CVS pharmacy on April 27.Hide Caption 40 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police vehicle burns April 27.Hide Caption 41 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer throws an object at protesters on April 27. Hide Caption 42 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A man carries items from a store as police vehicles burn on April 27.Hide Caption 43 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer checks on a man who was injured on April 27.Hide Caption 44 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer is carried to safety after being hit in the head with a rock during the riot on April 27. Hide Caption 45 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer uses pepper spray on rioters on April 27.Hide Caption 46 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police officers push back a protester on April 27.Hide Caption 47 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police react during the riot on April 27.Hide Caption 48 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Baltimore police officers in riot gear look toward protesters near Mondawmin Mall on April 27.Hide Caption 49 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts chases away protesters in a parking lot on April 27.Hide Caption 50 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A woman abandons her car in the middle of an intersection as Baltimore Police officers clash with protesters outside the Mondawmin Mall in Baltimore on April 27.Hide Caption 51 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Police handle the protesters during a riot on April 27.Hide Caption 52 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A demonstrator taunts police on April 27.Hide Caption 53 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters stand off with police during a march in honor of Gray in Baltimore on Saturday, April 25. Hide Caption 54 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A protester throws a barricade at a bar near Oriole Park at Camden Yards after a rally on April 25.Hide Caption 55 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters chase after a car as it drives in reverse after the rally on April 25.Hide Caption 56 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A protester breaks a store window after the rally in Baltimore on April 25.Hide Caption 57 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters get into a shoving match with police during a march downtown on April 25.Hide Caption 58 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters and police square off April 25. Hide Caption 59 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Protesters drive through the Camden Yards area on April 25. Hide Caption 60 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Members of the Baltimore Police Department stand guard Thursday, April 23, outside the department's Western District station during a protest.Hide Caption 61 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A police officer films protesters from the steps of the Western District station on April 23.Hide Caption 62 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Empowerment Temple Pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant speaks in front of City Hall in Baltimore on April 23.Hide Caption 63 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Demonstrators put their fists in the air during a protest outside the Baltimore police's Western District station on Wednesday, April 22.Hide Caption 64 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Hundreds of demonstrators march toward the Western District station on April 22.Hide Caption 65 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests People march through the streets of Baltimore on April 22.Hide Caption 66 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests Demonstrators argue with Baltimore officers during the protest on April 22.Hide Caption 67 of 68 Photos: Baltimore protests A woman is comforted during the protest on April 22.Hide Caption 68 of 68

John Blake, CNN

2018-03-31 01:15:07

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/world/easter-metoo-jesus/index.html

How Easter became a #MeToo Moment - CNN

Easter isn't just about a risen savior. The resurrection stories can also be seen as a #MeToo moment, some say.

world, How Easter became a #MeToo Moment - CNN

How Easter became a #MeToo moment

"But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense."-- Luke 24:11The men refused to listen to her story. She was publicly smeared as a whore. And when she emerged as a celebrated advocate, powerful men tried to silence her because she threatened their status. Nevertheless she persisted. The woman we're talking about, though, is not a leader in the #MeToo movement -- the viral campaign raising awareness about sexual assault and harassment against women. She is Mary Magdalene, the first person Jesus appeared to after his resurrection, according to the New Testament, and the first person to preach the good news that he had been raised from the dead. Some of the same behavior that led to the #MeToo movement also shaped the Easter story, some scholars say. For billions of Christians around the world, Easter Sunday is a celebration of a risen savior. Yet what happened to Mary Magdalene shows that Easter can also be seen as something else -- a #MeToo moment, some pastors and biblical scholars say.Read MoreThey say Easter is also a story about how charismatic female leaders such as Mary Magdalene -- and even Jesus himself -- were victimized by some of the same behavior that sparked the #MeToo movement: the sexually predatory behavior of men, the intimidation of women and an orchestrated attempt to silence women who drew too much attention when they spoke up.One of the most obvious links between Easter and #MeToo, some say, is the way Mary Magdalene has been slut-shamed. She has been falsely portrayed in books and films as a penitent prostitute rather than what she really was, says Claire L. Sahlin: "The foremost witness of the resurrection and a visionary leader of the early Christian movement." "The #MeToo movement recognizes that men in authority used their power to sexually abuse women and silence their voices," says Sahlin, an associate dean and professor of multicultural women's and gender studies at Texas Woman's University."Mary Magdalene also was a victim of men in authority who used their power to silence her voice.''Mary Magdalene, as played by Anne Bancroft in the film "Jesus of Nazareth," announces the resurrection to the skeptical disciples. Is it possible to see the Easter story through the lens of the #MeToo movement, or are some pastors and theologians twisting the central story of Christianity to fit a "feminist ideology"? One New Testament scholar captured the tension between interpreting the Bible and seeing it through a modern lens when he wrote about a push to make biblical translations more gender-inclusive."Should we refrain from calling God our Father because some people have had sinful, oppressive fathers?" asked Vern S. Poythress, a professor of New Testament interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania."Should we stop using 'He' to refer to God because some people will think that God is literally of the male sex? If we allow these concessions, will not others enter from the wings, seducing us into an indefinite series of mollifications of the Bible for the sake of not 'unnecessarily' offending modern readers?"Others scholars, though, say they're not inventing scripture. They point to numerous passages in the Easter story and throughout the New Testament as evidence of four ways they say Easter became a #MeToo moment:The men didn't listen to 'hysterical' womenCredible witnesses -- it's what the resurrection stories hinge on, and it's what the #MeToo movement needed to gain traction. In both cases, women are delivering shocking revelations to a skeptical public. The Apostle Paul captured this challenge when he used the Greek word for scandal -- skandalon -- to describe how the Easter message must have sounded to non-Christians. And like many scandals, people have trouble believing the women, some biblical scholars say. They were the last at the cross and the first to get the good news Author Karla D. Zazueta on the role women played in the Easter storiesSkepticism of women was literally enshrined in the law; a woman's testimony didn't count in a Jewish court during Jesus' time, scholars say."In the ancient world, women were thought to be credulous and gullible, especially in religious matters," says Richard Bauckham, a theologian and author of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony." "In the second century, the pagan intellectual Celsus, who wrote a book against Christianity, says of the resurrection: 'Who saw him -- Just a poor fisherman and a hysterical woman.' "This sexist subtext can even be seen in the biblical accounts of Jesus' resurrection, since the traditional Easter story is told in the Gospels through the eyes of men.If Easter were an action movie, the men would have the juiciest parts. There's the crafty villain Judas, who betrayed Jesus for a payday; the blustering Peter, whose bravado quickly melted when Jesus got arrested; and "Doubting Thomas," who spoke for so many when he said he needed proof before he believed.But a closer look shows that women are the real action "sheroes," some pastors and scholars say.They were the ones who stood by a tormented Jesus hanging on a cross when the men had long fled in fear. And they were the ones Jesus first appeared to, not the men, all four Gospel accounts say."They were the last at the cross and the first to get the good news," says Karla D. Zazueta, a discipleship leader at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, and a contributor to an anthology entitled, "Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible."People tend to overlook the women in the New Testament, scholars say. In this painting, women help prepare Jesus' body for burial.Yet they were the last ones the men believed, the Gospels make clear.The Gospel accounts show that the men initially ignored the women's declaration of a risen Jesus because, according to the Gospel of Luke, "their words seemed like nonsense."Some of the stories even take on the undertone of dark comedy.The women tell a meeting of the disciples that Jesus has risen and the men ignore them. Men make the same declaration later and they are literally worshipped as saints.Jesus, though, didn't have a problem sharing the stage with women, according to New Testament accounts. The Gospels are full of Jesus treating women in a way that would have scandalized his contemporaries. They were his travel companions and primary financial backers. Consider an obscure passage in Luke 8:1-4. It says Jesus and his 12 disciples were accompanied by women: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna "and many others.""These women were helping to support them out of their own means," Luke says of the women.A rabbi who traveled with and treated women as spiritual equals was unusual for a time when they were treated like second-class citizens, says Zazueta. "He had a traveling seminary and he mentored women just as closely as his male disciples," she says. "They were worthy of discipleship. You have this picture of Jesus traveling with a coed seminary that was supported by females with men and women learning and working together. He wasn't following the rules of his time."The Easter story itself doesn't follow the rules of its time, Zazueta says. The Gospels make women the most important witnesses to the resurrection at a time when women were literally and legally ignored."It's a huge deal because it also gives credibility to the Gospel narrative," Zazueta says. "No one who invented such a story would have invented a woman as a witness."They pushed women into the shadowsHere's another peculiar feature of the Easter stories: They name many of the women who found the empty tomb of Jesus. In addition to Mary Magdalene, they name Joanna; Salome; Mary, the mother of James; "and the others with them."Naming women isn't a feature of the New Testament, says Sahlin, the Texas Woman's University professor."Women's roles have been downplayed in the New Testament," she says. "When women are mentioned, they are often not named."In the film "Jesus of Nazareth," Jesus, played by Robert Powell, appears to the disciples after his resurrection. Consider some of the most famous New Testament stories. We know the names of many of the men Jesus encountered during his itinerant ministry: Zacchaeus, the diminutive tax collector; Jairus, the heartbroken synagogue ruler; and Nicodemus, the inquisitive Pharisee. But the Gospels name virtually none of the women Jesus encountered. They are instead identified by descriptions such as "the woman with the issue of blood," "the Samaritan women at the well" and the "woman caught in adultery." What does this have to do with the #MeToo movement?One of the difficulties some women face when they come forward today is their tormentors have names, but they don't. Many of them suffered in silence for years because their tormentors had name recognition and wealth. And some of those men used that imbalance of power to intimidate the women into silence.Some men in contemporary churches are accused of similar behavior. Andy Savage resigned from his Memphis megachurch this year after revealing he had assaulted a teenage girl in his youth group decades ago. Rob Porter, a Mormon, resigned as a top aide to President Trump after two ex-wives accused him of abusing them. The incidents left many churches wondering whether they needed a #MeToo movement as well.The early church fathers used an imbalance of power to silence the women of Easter and other charismatic women in the New Testament, some biblical scholars say."When the New Testament was edited and canonized, women's voices like Mary Magdalene were suppressed," Sahlin says. "The New Testament, however, offers clues to women's leadership roles. Women served as prophets, benefactors and as missionaries in the early Christian movement."Christians often hear sermons about prominent men in the New Testament: the Twelve Apostles, Stephen the martyr, men such as Barnabas and Timothy who risked their lives alongside the Apostle Paul. But how many people have heard sermons about female leaders in the early church such as Priscilla, a teacher of the Gospel who was so dynamic that her name was often listed before her husband's when they were mentioned?Or how many people know about Phoebe, whom the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 16:1-2 as a "deacon" in the early church and a "benefactor of many people, including me," according to some biblical translations? And why do people continue saying there were 12 male Apostles when Paul himself says in Romans 16:7 that "Junia," a woman, is an Apostle, asks Bauckham, author of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses."The #MeToo movement recognizes that men in authority used their power to sexually abuse women and silence their voices. Mary Magdalene also was a victim of men in authority who used their power to silence her voice. Claire L. Sahlin, a professor at Texas Woman's University"Paul has no problem calling her that," Bauckham says. "In the passage, Paul says of Junia that she was 'outstanding among the Apostles'" and was "in Christ before I was."But how can that Paul -- who celebrated women as Apostles and declared in Galatians 3:28 that there is neither "male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" -- be reconciled with the Paul who says in other parts of the New Testament that "women should remain silent in churches" and that if they had a question "they should ask their own husbands at home"?That's because they're not the same Paul, says John Dominic Crossan, a New Testament scholar and co-author with his wife, Sarah Crossan, of "Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision."Most biblical scholars don't think Paul actually wrote all the letters attributed to him in the New Testament, Crossan says. Some New Testament passages in which Paul denigrates women were actually inserted later by male church leaders threatened by Paul's radically inclusive vision, Crossan says.Scholars can make that determination because the theology and writing style is so markedly different in some of Paul's New Testament letters, Crossan says."It's like someone producing a letter by someone saying that MLK said, 'If this nonviolent thing doesn't work, we can go for the guns,'" Crossan says.This pattern of powerful men erasing the names and voices of women caused the early Christian church to retreat from the powerful witness of many charismatic female leaders, Sahlin says."Sociologists tell us that when new religious movements start, women and others who may be marginalized in society often assume new leadership roles," she says. "But as the religious movement becomes more institutionalized, women tend to fall back or are pushed back into the shadows."Discrediting women by calling them bad girlsIn the #MeToo movement, some women are ignored, others are pushed into the shadows and still others are discredited as loose women who are the source of their own folly.Mary Magdalene suffered all three treatments, some scholars say -- including a smear campaign that has lasted nearly 2,000 years. Most people know her as a reformed harlot. That's how she's been portrayed over the centuries in books and sermons, and in movies like "Jesus of Nazareth," "Jesus Christ Superstar" and more recently, "Risen."Female followers displayed more courage than men when Jesus was crucified, according to biblical accounts. In "The Passion of Christ," Mary Magdalene watches Jesus die on the cross.But Mary Magdalene was never once described as a prostitute when mentioned in the Bible. She is instead portrayed as one of Jesus' most steadfast disciples, someone who financially supported him and was called the "Apostle to the Apostles" by early church leaders because she brought the news of Jesus' resurrection to the 12 disciples. Bauckham points to the resurrection story in John 20:18, when Mary Magdalene says, "I have seen the Lord!""What Mary says -- 'I have seen the Lord!'-- is exactly what Paul says when he claims to be an Apostle: 'Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen the Lord?' ''he says. "I think it means that Mary Magdalene was regarded in the early Christian movement as an Apostle." Mary Magdalene's spiritual authority, though, was gradually downplayed. By the fourth century, Gnostic texts depicting her spiritual leadership were deemed heretical and excluded from the New Testament canon, says Sahlin. One of those heretical texts, The Gospel of Mary, portrays her as possessing deeper insight than the Apostle Peter. Whether the Gospel is historically accurate or not, it reveals tension over the role of women in the early Christian movement, Sahlin says."We can read it as a historical witness to an actual conflict over women's leadership in early Christianity," she says. "We see in the texts Peter questioning Mary's authority."Mary's spiritual authority in the early church was further eroded in 591 when a powerful Pope depicted her as a reformed harlot. Even in the well-regarded film, "Jesus of Nazareth," Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a fallen woman seeking Jesus' forgiveness. It's a lie that won't die.The writer James Carroll memorably described this ancient version of slut-shaming in a 2006 essay in Smithsonian magazine titled, "Who was Mary Magdalene?"He recounts how Pope Gregory preached a series of sermons in which he described Mary Magdalene as a woman who used to "perfume her flesh in forbidden acts" and turned the "mass of her crimes to virtues." Gregory apparently confused and merged different women in the Gospels into the figure of Mary Magdalene, but his distorted picture took hold for centuries, Carroll says.Citing a book by Susan Haskins, "Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor," Carroll wrote:"Thus Mary of Magdala, who began as a powerful woman at Jesus' side, 'became,' in Haskins' summary, 'the redeemed whore and Christianity's model of repentance, a manageable, controllable figure, and effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own sex.'"The intensity of the smear campaign against Mary Magdalene is revealing, says Crossan."The nasty things said about her is proof that she's important," Crossan says. "You don't bother in a patriarchal society to criticize women who are 'in their place.' The very fact that you have to do a hit job on her proves to me that she's not a little member of the serving staff."Using sexual humiliation as a weaponIt is perhaps the most difficult comparison between Easter Sunday and the #MeToo movement -- what one scholar calls the sexual humiliation of Jesus.The sexual humiliation of women is an integral part of what led to the #MeToo movement. Tales of women trapped alone with powerful men who forced them into sexually degrading acts are some of the most painful stories to hear.Some of those same dynamics can be seen in the crucifixion of Jesus, says David Tombs, a theologian and professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand.As brutal as Mel Gibson's depiction was, even it didn't show one aspect of death on the cross the Romans employed, one scholar says: sexual humiliation.Tombs points to a grim detail about Jesus' death that most people avoid -- he was most likely naked when he died on the cross, not covered with a loincloth.The Gospel accounts make that clear, he says. They describe Jesus as being stripped and exposed naked. In Matthew 27, the writer suggests Jesus is stripped three times. The same description is found in Mark 15. Jesus' nakedness is perhaps clearest in John 19, which depicts soldiers taking Jesus' undergarments to divide among themselves.The Romans normally took away all the clothing of crucifixion victims, says Tombs."The biblical texts offer no suggestion that this was not also the case for Jesus," Tombs says. "We don't have photos of the crucifixion so we cannot tell with absolute certainty, but most scholars would say that Jesus was naked."Dwelling on Jesus' nakedness would be inappropriate at any other time of the year, he says, but during Easter it's important to know why the Romans stripped their victims."Exposing a prisoner was a powerful way to shame and stigmatize a male prisoner," Tombs says. "It was an effective way to attack his identity as a male. It humiliated and undermined his sense of self." The practice of sexually humiliating prisoners or condemned people wasn't confined to biblical times, Tombs says. It happens today. He cites the infamous photos of naked Iraqi prisoners stacked on top of one another like a pyramid by US soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison. Jesus' nudity was not incidental, Tombs says: It was sexual humiliation.In a paper titled, "Crucifixion, State Terror and Sexual Abuse," he explained why:"In a patriarchal society in which men competed against each other to display virility in terms of sexual power over others, the public display of the naked victim by the 'victors' in front of onlookers and passers-by carries the message of sexual domination. "The cross held up the victim for display as someone who had been -- at least metaphorically -- emasculated." While the idea of seeing Jesus as a victim of sexual humiliation is "deeply distressing" to many Christians, Tombs says, it's important at least during Easter to remember the historical reality.Doing so could even deepen the meaning of the Easter message, he says.Classic images of the crucifixion often show Jesus wearing a loincloth. But the reality was probably different, one scholar says.It would show a God who could identify with victims of sexual abuse and torture. It would reveal a God "who is in real solidarity with the powerless and suffers the worst evils of the world.""This is not just a matter of correcting the historical record," Tombs says. "If Jesus is named as a victim of sexual abuse, it could make a huge difference to how the churches engage with movements like #MeToo and how they promote change in wider society." If linking the Easter story with the #MeToo movement is offensive and bewildering to some, perhaps that is fitting. The Easter stories in the Gospels have a jarring, unexpected quality about them as well. Some end abruptly; in others, Jesus appears next to disciples who somehow can't recognize him. One ends with two men saying their hearts "were burning within" after talking to the risen Jesus.The stories are enigmatic and elusive. They continue to yield surprises even 2,000 years later. They are, in some ways, much like the figure of Jesus himself.

Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

2018-04-12 10:58:50

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/us/tennessee-immigration-raid-schools-impact/index.html

After ICE raid, more than 500 kids miss school - CNN

Teachers in local schools suddenly found themselves on the front lines of a crisis after immigration authorities swept through a Tennessee meatpacking plant.

us, After ICE raid, more than 500 kids miss school - CNN

ICE raided a meatpacking plant. More than 500 kids missed school the next day

(CNN)Jessica Bailiff looked out at her class and saw empty desks where her students were supposed to be.The physics teacher's heart sank. She knew why they weren't there. The day before, federal authorities had swept through a nearby meatpacking plant, rounding up nearly 100 people they accused of being in the United States illegally.Immigrant rights groups say last week's operation in eastern Tennessee was the largest workplace immigration raid in a decade. More than 500 students stayed home from school the next day.Read MoreNow, a week later, most are back in class. But the community is still reeling, Bailiff says.Kids who are supposed to be learning about light waves, radio waves and the electromagnetic spectrum, she says, are instead wondering if they'll ever see their loved ones again."There's just fear and sadness written all over their faces," Bailiff says.Teachers become studentsThe impact of the raid rippled quickly through the community, where immigrants have become a growing part of the population. Children sobbed as they shared their families' stories at news conferences and prayer vigils. And teachers in local schools suddenly found themselves on the front lines of a crisis. The massive operation at Southeastern Provision in Bean Station, Tennessee, came months after Trump administration officials vowed to at least quadruple work site immigration crackdowns. But last Thursday's raid took many in the community by surprise. In court documents, an IRS special agent says the plant's owners are under investigation for allegedly evading taxes, filing false federal tax returns and hiring immigrants who are in the country illegally. The owners have not been charged and have not responded to requests for comment.Federal agents arrested 97 immigrants that day, ICE spokeswoman Tammy Spicer said. Most of them face administrative charges for allegedly being in the United States illegally.As rumors flew and fear mounted about what happened at the plant, activists say local teachers stepped in to help. Some rode buses home with students that afternoon, said Colleen Jacobs, youth ministry coordinator at St. Patrick Catholic Church in nearby Morristown, Tennessee."When the students got to their homes, they weren't sure that there would be anyone there to meet them," she said.On Friday, about 530 students didn't come to class in Hamblen County schools, Superintendent Jeff Perry said. That's about 5% of the district's roughly 10,000 students, and nearly a quarter of its Latino student population. A typical day might see around 75 absences. Some of the students who didn't show up weren't directly affected by the raid, said Stephanie Teatro, co-executive director of the Tennessee Refugee & Immigrant Rights Coalition."Other families are afraid that if their kids go to school and they go to work, that maybe they won't see each other again," she said.At a prayer vigil, Esmeralda Baustista holds a photo of her brother Luis Bautista-Martinez, detained in the ICE raid. With her is daughter Yemaya and friend Yaqueline Cruz. Schools are accustomed to dealing with traumatic events, Perry said, such as the sudden death of a family member or an accident with severe injuries.But the scale of the immigration sweep, he said, made the impact even more pronounced."We've never had anything of this magnitude," he said.Officials made guidance counselors available, he said, and did everything they could to make sure kids in the district felt safe.More than 100 local educators gathered at a church on Saturday for a workshop on how to help students through the crisis.At a session led by immigrant rights activists, the teachers became the students.They used brightly colored markers to express their emotions on big sheets of white paper:I feel helpless.I cried Thursday night, wondering which of my students were without parents.Most of these children are US citizens.I do not want to live in a place where people I have known for so long can be taken away from me in a second.Bailiff, the physics teacher, said it has been devastating to see kids she loves grappling with so much pain and fear.But there have been encouraging moments, too, like when she's seen students offer words of comfort to their classmates.Many students are still struggling with their emotions, she says. Some have been in tears. One student shared a message he'd gotten from his mom: If I don't come home from work today, take care of your sisters until we can figure it out. "It's been very tense," she says. "I've tried to make sure and take the time and talk to each one of them and kind of let them vent."An elementary school gym becomes a sanctuaryThe last time Rita walked through Hillcrest Elementary School in Morristown, she felt lost and alone. That was 10 years ago. Her father had just been deported. She was too scared to tell her classmates. She would just stare out the window, holding onto his red jacket and wishing he'd come home.On Monday, she looked out at her old school gym and couldn't believe her eyes. This was where she used to run the mile, where she played basketball and dodgeball with friends. Now it was the site of a prayer vigil for families whose loved ones had been detained in the raid. To Rita, the gym looked just like it did when she was a kid -- with one major difference. It was packed wall-to-wall with people from the community who had come to help.People packed the gym at Hillcrest Elementary School in Morristown, Tennessee, on Monday for a prayer vigil after nearly 100 people were detained in an immigration raid. "I felt like I had the support I needed finally after 10 years," said Rita, who asked to only be identified by her first name out of fear for her family's safety.For days, she says, she's been offering advice to families affected by the raid: Find strength in your pain."When I was little and I was sitting (in those) same exact bleachers, you know what I thought, 'I don't have a voice.' But 10 years later, today, standing here in this exact same gym, I know that my voice is powerful," she told the crowd at Monday's vigil.Behind her, a handwritten sign hung from a basketball hoop, half in English, half in Spanish. "Morristown is 'hogar.' " Morristown is home.Child after child came to the microphone. A boy described how his dad, who was detained in the raid, used to make dinner and play soccer with him."One time," he said, "he even taught me how to shave, even though I don't have the hair yet." A little girl stepped forward, her hair in a ponytail, her head unable to peer above the podium. She handed a letter to a man emceeing the event and asked him to read it:"My uncle takes care of me when I am sick. He always helps me after school. He takes me places like the mall and helps me with my homework. He's a good person. I feel angry and sad they took him away."Another child followed her to the front of the room, reading a letter about his uncle. He paused after he finished and looked out at the crowd. "Thank you," he said, "for hearing me." CNN en Español's Gustavo Valdes contributed to this report.

Moni Basu, CNN

2017-12-19 21:38:29

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/19/us/haitians-lose-protected-status/index.html

The US rescued her. Now it wants to return her to Haiti. - CNN

Dady Jean and her daughter, Schnaika, were brought to the United States after a 2010 quake injured the girl. Now they're among nearly 60,000 Haitians facing deportation.

us, The US rescued her. Now it wants to return her to Haiti. - CNN

America rescued her from Haiti. Now Trump wants to send her back.

Atlanta (CNN)Every Tuesday, Dady Jean brings her daughter to see a physical therapist on the eastern edges of Atlanta. On this afternoon, the animated movie "Up" entertains patients old and young as they wait for their sessions. At the appointed hour, therapist Antonio Pruitt leads Schnaika to a basement room outfitted with brightly colored equipment. He guides her through a series of squats, kicks and steps intended to improve her movement and balance. The pink and white beads in Schnaika's braids bob up and down on her forehead as she does her exercises. Schnaika suffers from weakness in one side of her body, a condition called hemiparesis that constrains her movement. Her left hand dangles at odd angles as though it were broken, and she walks with a noticeable limp. She was only 16 months old when her home in Haiti collapsed in the 2010 earthquake. Slabs of concrete came tumbling down on her. Days later, American doctors treated her and brought her to Atlanta for long-term care. I first met Schnaika when she and her mother arrived here. Doctors were uncertain then about the extent of the little girl's brain damage. She wore a helmet-like contraption to stabilize her head. Read MoreJean told me she was grateful for a new chance in life. She took classes to learn English, got a job and made sure Schnaika saw the doctor regularly. She knew her daughter might have died in Haiti and that her prospects would turn bleak again if she were to go back. Recently, Jean's fears have heightened. The Trump administration has announced that a special provision called Temporary Protected Status, which grants Jean and Schnaika the right to stay in America, is set to expire in 20 months. Nearly 60,000 Haitians must go back to their homeland by July 22, 2019, or face deportation. The date seems like a long time away. But for Jean, the clock is ticking fast. How will she cope in Haiti with Schnaika's increasingly complex medical problems, which have recently included life-threatening seizures? Schnaika, 9, suffers weakness in the left side of her body and sees therapist Antonio Pruitt once a week.Survival in America was never easy for Jean. These days, it is compounded by an uncertainty that permeates every facet of her life. She is more afraid now, she says, than she was immediately after the earthquake. None of her options look good. She can choose to return to Haiti before the termination date or wait to be caught and forcibly sent back. Or she can opt to continue her life in America without legal status and join the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the shadows. Jean tells me she feels as though a raging fire is getting ever closer and all she can do is wait to see if she'll get burned. Protected no moreThe United States granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to Haitians after the catastrophic earthquake in January 2010. More than 200,000 people were killed; another 1.5 million people were displaced from their homes. Haiti was already a crushingly poor country with massive corruption; after the quake, billions of dollars in aid were sent, but the expected rebuilding did not materialize. A post-quake cholera epidemic dealt another blow -- more than half a million people fell ill and at least 10,000 died. Hurricane Mathew in 2016 added to the suffering. For all these reasons, the United States extended TPS for Haitians several times. But it won't anymore. Last month, then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke determined that "those extraordinary but temporary conditions caused by the 2010 earthquake no longer exist." Jean cannot comprehend how that determination was made. She has no home left in Haiti. And while her oldest son and daughter are still there, she doubts she will be able to secure a job that will pay enough to support all four of her children, the youngest of whom was born here and is a US citizen. She doubts her homeland, still reeling from disasters, can absorb so many of its citizens returning home all at once. Jean fills out job applications at a Goodwill near her apartment in Clarkston, Georgia.Besides, Jean has lived and worked in America for the better part of a decade, and roots have taken hold. She even sat down for a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day."It has been almost eight years," she tells me one evening at her apartment in Clarkston, a town just east of Atlanta that is home to a large refugee population. "I have nothing in Haiti. I have nothing to show there." Not that life has been without struggles in Atlanta. Although TPS allows her to work here, she lost her job last summer at a chicken processing plant and is still looking frantically for new employment."What would you like to do?" I ask."I will do anything," she replies. "Anything."On the table before her is a pile of bills, including ones for a hospital visit after an October car accident. She doesn't know how she will pay the almost $10,000 she owes. She visited the career center at a Goodwill near her apartment to apply for an assembly line job at a bakery. She heard about another job at a company that makes lotions and soaps. She hopes she can get hired at one of those places. Maybe before Christmas. Then she will be able to send money for gifts to her sister and children in Haiti. In her dreams, Jean sees her legal status resolved so she can board a plane to Port-au-Prince and touch her loved ones again. She realizes that soon the day might come when she will be doing exactly that, but not by choice. Nor will she be able to return any time soon to the life she made in America. In the last few decades, the United States has granted TPS status to people who have hailed from 22 nations and territories ravaged by war, violence or natural disaster. Besides Haiti, nine other nations have that status: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Nepal. The humanitarian measure, established by the Immigration Act of 1990, was designed to protect people who would otherwise face strong hardship upon return to homelands deemed dangerous, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank. But the White House is taking aim at the program. It has announced TPS will also end for Sudanese in November 2018 and Nicaraguans in January 2019. In January, it will decide whether to extend TPS for Salvadorans, the largest group of recipients. If their status is not extended, nearly 350,000 people in all will find themselves in the same predicament as Jean: living every day in fear. Earlier this year, Haitians marched to keep their protected status at an immigration office in Broward County, Florida.The TPS decisions fall in line with the Trump administration's immigration policy, which also phases out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for so-called "Dreamers." The TPS program, as the name says, was always meant to be temporary. But the problem, say immigrant advocates, is that the United States has repeatedly extended TPS for several nations, including Haiti, allowing hundreds of thousands of people like Jean to settle in America. Is it fair to send someone back home after such a long time? And what if their native land is unprepared to receive them? These questions are at the heart of the controversy surrounding the Trump administration's decisions."I don't see how anyone in good conscience can do this" says Paedia Mixon, CEO of New American Pathways, an Atlanta agency that helps resettle refugees.JUST WATCHEDRestaurant makes asylum seekers feel at homeReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRestaurant makes asylum seekers feel at home 02:06Emmanuel Depas, an immigration attorney in New York, argues the TPS decisions amount to a humanitarian crisis in the making. Ultimately, he says, it's a reflection of the failure of the current immigration system."You can't solve a problem by terminating the program. It's inhumane," he says. "Congress should have acted years ago and provided an avenue for these people to gain lawful status. They have been here for so long. They pay taxes, they pay into the system."Lawmakers in Washington have paid heed. Several bills have been introduced in the House, and while they vary in their stipulations, they would provide avenues for TPS holders to apply for permanent residency as long as they have not been convicted of crimes.But the bills have a long way to go, and lawyers like Depas have their hands full with clients facing uncertain futures."When you give somebody something," Depas says, "it's difficult to just take it away." Jean knows that firsthand. "I miss home a lot but I don't want to go back," she says. "Things are very bad there."Her friends talk about the possibility of deportation. Some have even discussed going to Canada. Immigrant advocates protested the TPS decision in New York, home to a large number of Haitians.Crossing borders and notLong before the TPS decision was announced, Haitians, like other immigrants, began fleeing the United States. It began with candidate Donald Trump's inflammatory campaign rhetoric calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, his pledge to build a wall on the southern border and then, as President, his attempts to enact travel bans against Muslim nations. Many headed for Canada. Others felt trapped behind the southern border. No country in North America, it seemed, wanted the Haitians.Last year, Johnny Ciceron and Emanuela Faustin arrived and met in Tijuana, hoping to cross from the Mexican border city into San Diego. They had abandoned their lives in their homeland separately and for different reasons, and had been on their arduous journeys, sometimes without food or water, for years.JUST WATCHEDPeople leaving US, flooding CanadaReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHPeople leaving US, flooding Canada 03:31Ciceron left Haiti in 2013 because, he said, he feared for his life after being heavily involved in a political campaign for a presidential candidate who lost. He made too many enemies, he says. Faustin left the same year in search of a better job. The two first crossed paths in Ecuador. They both thought TPS for Haitians would offer them a chance to live and work in the United States legally. Ciceron arrived in Tijuana about the time Trump was elected. Almost immediately, he says, rumors started circulating, warning of what Trump's anti-immigrant sentiment meant for Haitians. They heard stories, true or not, of Haitians in the United States being detained, deported or both. The thought of crossing into the United States simply to get deported was enough to make them stay put in Tijuana. As their wait-and-see strategy stretched for months, their romance blossomed. But Mexico is far from ideal. They are not happy there, they say. They also don't know if Mexico will renew their permits to remain. But news of the end of TPS for Haitians was a blow to their motivation, and their hope.They would rather stay in Mexico than be undocumented in America. "My dream died in Tijuana," Faustin says.Mimose Joseph's journey was to the other US border.She and her 13-year-old daughter, Melissa Paul, made their way from their home in Belle Glade, Florida, to Plattsburgh, New York, where they were to board a taxi for the ride just outside Quebec. Joseph came from Haiti to Florida in 2002. Melissa was born there and is a US citizen. But they left because they could not stand the growing stress. They found it difficult to live with the uncertainty. For Melissa, it meant leaving the only country she has ever known."It's kind of shocking and a little bit sad," she says. "But I know it's for the best."They were not alone in their flight north.Thousands of desperate people panicked and have already fled into Canada, hoping to receive asylum there. Canada and the United States signed a safe country agreement that effectively forces asylum seekers to request protection in the first country they entered after leaving their homeland. The intention was to prevent people who were refused in one country to then try in the other.If Haitians enter Canada legally at a border crossing point and ask for refugee status, they will likely be turned back. Instead, they have been taking risks and crossing illegally with hopes of being arrested so they can then make a case for asylum after they are already in Canada.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted 17,000 people from January to October, according to its monthly reports. Among them are about 10,000 Haitians, says Stephane Handfield, an immigration attorney in Montreal. Most came last summer, after the Trump administration first signaled TPS might end. They approached the border in cars, buses and trains and then walked across. They flooded YMCAs, university dorms and even the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. The exodus was buoyed by Canada's reputation as being immigrant friendly. They had heard how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had welcomed Syrian refugees. They knew about his tweet, posted on the day of protests against Trump's first Muslim travel ban. To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 28, 2017 They crossed with few possessions but enormous hope that Canada would let them stay. But Canada hardly offers any guarantees. Those asking for asylum are processed, and if they have no criminal records, they are released to wait for their day in court. The first hearing dates are not until June, Handfield says, because the courts are backed up and there are not enough lawyers or judges to handle the caseload.Their day in court is no easy ride, either, Handfield says.Jean fears having to return to Haiti, and wonders where will she be able to get the medical care for her daughter.They have to convince Canadian authorities of a well founded fear of persecution and death if they are returned to Haiti -- not an easy feat, Handfield says. Or they must prove they have a family member in Canada. "They do not want to go back to Haiti, because they are afraid for their lives. But if they cannot prove one or the other, they will be deported," Handfield says.With that comes the risk of being separated from their US-born children; Canada will insist on returning them back across the border.Canada is bracing for an even bigger crisis. Recently, members of Parliament visited the United States to discourage Haitian and Central American TPS holders from unlawfully entering Canada.If the Trump administration decides not to extend TPS to El Salvador, Handfield expects many thousands to rush to the border."There is nothing we can do. We are obligated to receive them and those cases will have to be heard," Handfield says. "But the situation will get untenable."No good choicesOn that wretched January evening in 2010 when the earth began convulsing in Haiti, Jean was not at home. She raced through the streets of Port-au-Prince, past mountains of concrete chunks and mangled rebar, past bodies, to the two-bedroom house she rented with her common-law husband and their three children. JUST WATCHED2010: Haitian mom's new life in U.S.ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH2010: Haitian mom's new life in U.S. 02:45The house had come tumbling down; Jean's common-law husband was missing. (He lived but has since moved in with another woman.) Jean's two older children, Stephanie and Steve, survived. So did her toddler, Schnaika. But a wall had fallen on her, and she was bleeding badly. Jean searched frantically to find a doctor. The hospitals and clinics had sustained damage, and the ones that were still standing hardly had the resources to conduct the surgery Schnaika needed. Nine days passed in desperation until Jean stumbled upon American doctors who transported mother and child to the USNS Comfort, a Navy ship outfitted with state-of-the-art trauma facilities to support disaster relief around the world. After the ship's doctors operated on Schnaika, Jean had fully expected to be returned to Port-au-Prince. But the United States allowed her to enter on humanitarian parole so that Schnaika could receive the follow-up care she needed at a pediatric hospital. Later, Jean and Schnaika were granted TPS.In Atlanta, doctors diagnosed Schnaika with traumatic brain injury, speech and lung deficits and developmental delays. She also did not have full use of her left hand and leg. Today, Jean takes Schnaika for her 30-minute weekly therapy session. Afterwards, back at her apartment, Jean and I look at photos of her children. Stephanie is 15 now, Steve, 11. Three years ago, she had another boy, Terry, with a Liberian man she met in Atlanta. "He's a Grady baby," she says proudly, using a popular reference to Grady Memorial, Atlanta's public hospital. Being born at Grady identifies a person as a true Atlanta native. In 18 years, when Terry turns 21, he will have the right to sponsor his mother for a visa to the United States. Until then, Jean has few options. The TPS program does not provide a path to citizenship. When she no longer has TPS and has to return to Haiti, she will be separated from Terry, who will likely stay in the United States with his father. But her biggest worry is over Schnaika.Jean learned English and worked hard to provide for her children. Schnaika has no memories of Haiti. But their welcome in the United States is fast running out.She is 9 now and in the third grade at Smoke Rise Elementary. She likes to ride the bus to school and chat with her friends. She also loves to eat macaroni and cheese.Recently, Schnaika started having seizures. Jean took her to the emergency room, where doctors prescribed two medicines -- diazepam and levetiracetam. "Schnaika will not be able to get these in Haiti," Jean tells me. When I first met Jean after the earthquake, she told me she felt incredibly lucky. She had survived. Schnaika had survived. I watched her pray at a Sunday church service, her eyes closed and arms stretched upward.She believed her good fortune was God's way of telling her that life was starting again. She was determined to make the most of that opportunity. And she did.That is why the uncertainty now is overbearing, she tells me. And the prospect of deportation feels like a massive fire inching toward her. I think of a scene in the movie, "Up," that Jean and I had watched in the waiting room of the physical therapy office. Our eyes were fixed on the screen as the main character attached helium-powered balloons to his house and floated over clouds to a place he and his beloved late wife had always dreamed of visiting. Jean wishes balloons could lift her away to her own paradise, where she could be with all her family -- both in the United States and Haiti -- and lead a decent life. But she can see no easy way there.She did not ask to come to America. She did not ask to leave, either. But the choice, it seems, has been made for her. Life has not been easy in America, but Jean refuses to give up. She wants to stay in the United States for the sake of her children.CNN's Mariano Castillo, Alexander Marquardt and Ann Roche contributed to this story.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN Illustrations by India Hayes, CNN

2018-02-27 09:19:18

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/health/functioning-heroin-addicts/index.html

Inside the secret lives of functioning heroin addicts - CNN

They're not slumped over in alleyways. They haven't lost everything. They are the heroin addicts living next door and fooling their families.

health, Inside the secret lives of functioning heroin addicts - CNN

Inside the secret lives of functioning heroin addicts

Story highlightsFunctioning heroin addicts are peers, neighbors and co-workersThey fool their families and friends, managing fixes to avoid withdrawalWhat works now, however, will not last and may kill them, experts say (CNN)They're not slumped over in alleyways with used needles by their sides. Their dignity, at least from outside appearances, remains intact. They haven't lost everything while chasing an insatiable high. They are functioning heroin addicts -- people who hold down jobs, pay the bills and fool their families. For some, addiction is genetic; they're wired this way. For others, chronic pain and lack of legal opioids landed them here. Or experimentation got them hooked and changed everything.What addicts have in common, according to experts, is a disease that has more to do with their brains than the substances they use. About 85% of people can take a pain pill, for example, and never crave it again.This is a story about the others, those traveling the dangerous road of functional addiction. What works for them now, experts explain, can easily and lethally be derailed. Read MoreHanging in the balance are people you may never imagine: peers, co-workers and neighbors. Loved ones, bosses and teachers. Respected members of your community who, for the benefit of everyone's understanding, want to be heard. After CNN gave voice last fall to addicts on skid row, the sorts we think of when we picture "heroin addict," I set out to tell this overlooked part of the heroin story. Being a functioning addict hinges on heroin use staying hush-hush, so we agreed to change the names of those willing to open up. 'All smiles and happiness at work'Loving and successful parents, good schools, a great upbringing in the Midwest: Todd can't point to anything that drove him to drugs. He was a typical suburban high school student who dabbled in weed. Then, at 15, he popped a Percocet his mother left lying around while she was recovering from surgery. "The feeling in my head was, 'I want to feel like this for the rest of my life,' " Todd says. "It was the perfect drug for me."The 11 years since have been a dance with opioid addiction, even as he graduated from college and embarked on a successful career in corporate management. Now 26, he has gone stretches where he's been sober, but the pull is strong and keeps yanking him back. He's done heroin for periods of time and says it's "fantastic," but shooting up isn't his style. His preference, assuming he can find them, is to buy more expensive opioids. For a long time, OxyContin was his drug of choice; now he prefers Opana and, if he can't get that, Subutex. He makes good money, which means he can afford his $350- to $600-a-week habit. 'This is skid row': What two current heroin addicts want you to knowHe's figured out how much to take so he doesn't feel the pains of withdrawal, which is now his goal -- rather than getting a full-on high. His sweet spot: 60 milligrams of Opana. "I don't know how to describe withdrawal. It's like the worst flu you've ever had in your life -- and then multiply that by 1,000," he says. "There's a scraping inside your brain. You're willing to do anything to feel better." To avoid that hell, Todd often lives a lie. He's "all smiles and happiness at work," he says, and he spins tales to guard his secret. He might say he's in one city when he's really in another. That quick trip he says he's taking to McDonald's could be to meet his dealer at Burger King. When he's used heroin, he's explained the bruises on his arm by telling people he has diabetes or an infectious disease. He once told a pharmacist he was a science teacher in need of syringes for experiments. He's invented the deaths of family members to get days off. But death is very much a reality in his life.His last serious girlfriend also used drugs and died from an overdose. Over the past six years, he's lost seven people he cares about to addiction. He'd like to find love, build a relationship and have a family but says, "It would be dishonest, and I never want to hurt anybody. That's the biggest problem."He knows that he has a lot to live for, but he often forgets that and struggles to imagine a future. And because he can't stray far from his dealer, a dream he does have remains on hold indefinitely. "I've always wanted to see the world," he says. "I've never been outside the country because I can't leave. I'm f***ing chained where I'm at. It's a f***ing prison." The sign of an addictThe sensation Todd had the first time he popped a Percocet, that feeling he wanted to hold onto for the rest of his life, was the giveaway. He, like 10% or 15% of people, has the disease of addiction, explains Dr. Stuart Gitlow, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. What offers no special high for most people or may even make them feel queasy became Todd's aspiration. And part of the problem, says Gitlow, is that "you don't know in advance what person you're going to be."Todd may be functioning now, but Gitlow warns that tolerances and doses often change. As an addictive disease progresses, it is also influenced by life events and stressors. What happens if Todd loses his job someday or can't afford his preferred pills?Safe injection sites in San Francisco could be first in the US"They all start out functioning," he says. "The bulk of people taking heroin are probably functioning. It's only in the end stage that they're nodding off in an alley and have a pretty good shot of dying." What Todd needs, Gitlow says, is help from a doctor who is certified in addiction medicine and can treat his disease. The vast majority, or 80%, of those who seek appropriate treatment and adhere to their treatment recommendations do well, he says.Not a unique storyIt didn't start with a pill for Lisa. Her first addiction took hold at 12, when she began cutting herself. Carving into her flesh released dopamine in her brain, giving her a high, she says. The first time she did it, she never anticipated a rush. She was overwhelmed emotionally and simply acting out. But cutting became her way to self-medicate because it offered her solace, easing the emotional pain of living in a household full of screaming.Now, at 23, Lisa opts for heroin. And because of it and other opioids she's used, "I hurt myself a lot less." The difference now is that she, like Todd, no longer seeks a high. When she shoots up each morning, she insists, "I just do enough to stay well" through the day and not feel physical pain. She works hard, always has. She excelled in her college-prep private school, where she was dubbed "gifted and talented," she says. She takes her job as a store manager seriously and enjoys a supportive marriage. No one at work knows that her day begins with a call to her dealer. If she has track marks, a simple long-sleeved shirt hides the evidence.How she found heroin, she says, is not unique. Long plagued by tendonitis in her knees and two herniated discs in her back, Lisa tried everything. Steroid injections gave her migraines, and her stomach couldn't handle anti-inflammatories. Physical and aquatic therapies offered little relief, as did deep-tissue massage. Finally, four years ago, a physician wrote out a prescription for pain pills. She found comfort in those legal opioids. But then came the crackdown on opioid prescriptions, she says, effectively ending her lawful pain management. Once her pills ran out, she turned to buying them on the street. They were hard to find, though, and the cost became prohibitive. An old friend, a heroin user, suggested that she give his drug a try."I can't find pills, I'm in pain, and it's really cheap," she remembers telling herself. "What happened to me is what happened to thousands and thousands of people."Where she lives in Texas, near the Mexican border, the price of heroin can't be beat. One pill might cost her $50, but she can get half a gram of heroin, which is far more potent, for $20. The same product, she says, would cost up to five times as much in other parts of the country. "If I moved somewhere where it was $100," she says, "I'd quit."Her husband doesn't do drugs. He barely drinks. And although he'd prefer she kick the habit altogether, he's committed to being by her side -- so much that he keeps Narcan, the overdose antidote drug, in their home and has watched training videos to learn how to administer it in case she overdoses."He loves me enough that he's willing to stay with me," Lisa says. "That's a key component to keeping me from going off the deep end." Lisa says a small handful of friends know that she uses heroin. Everyone else, her family included, believes she's hooked on "just pills." It's easier that way. Pills and other vices don't come with the same sort of judgment."People drink, and we think nothing of it. You do heroin, and you're the scum of the earth," she says. "People will cut you out of their lives." Everybody's problemHeroin users weren't always "the scum of the earth." In the late 19th century, it was a trademark name for an over-the-counter drug made by Bayer. Today, there are politics behind which drugs are demonized and which aren't, and much of that is rooted in racism, says Dr. Michael Miller, who preceded Gitlow as president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Police officer adopts homeless mother's opioid-addicted newborn White socialites snorting cocaine in an Aspen ski lodge are forgiven, while inner-city blacks smoking crack -- just another form of cocaine -- are vilified and locked away, Miller explains. Heroin was romanticized when musicians used it, he says, but after black kids in coastal cities got hold of it, the perception changed and stuck.Now, with the explosion of the opioid epidemic and the emergence of heroin as a less expensive alternative, it's become everybody's problem -- white or black, rich or poor, on the coasts or in middle America, no matter whether you live in a city, suburb or rural community. That's how Lisa got roped in and learned to keep a secret. She admits that the management of her addiction hinges in large part on her husband being by her side. But what if he leaves? What if life tosses her another kind of doozy? How much heroin would she need to ease her pain then? "She has no coping skills. She's right at the edge," Gitlow says. "What if her dealer gets arrested and her new dealer mixes in fentanyl? Boom. She's dead." 'Like downing a beer'Not everyone I spoke to considers themselves addicts. Enter Matthew. For as long as Matthew can remember, he's battled anxiety and depression. Beyond prescriptions like Xanax or Valium, he began self-medicating at 19 with marijuana and LSD, he says. An arrest for possession of pot and LSD with intent to distribute landed him on probation. Facing regular drug tests that would detect cannabis, he turned to harder drugs that wouldn't stay in his urine as long. That's how Matthew, 28, first tried oxycodone. Later, a doctor would prescribe opioids for chronic stomach pain, a condition he's had for six years. It's the sort of pain, he says, that used to leave him racing to bathrooms so frequently, he couldn't keep a job. Multiple GI doctors have tried to help him. Only prescribed opioids and marijuana have offered relief.Raised in the Eastern US, he now lives in rural Northern California and works as a consultant in the cannabis industry. He doesn't hide his marijuana use or his dependence on pain medications. It's the powdered heroin he purchases on the dark net, the stuff he snorts in the bathroom a few times a day, that he keeps to himself. He says he uses it only when his prescriptions or insurance coverage lapse. He's never used heroin intravenously. Having gone back and forth between pharmaceuticals and illegal supplies, he says he's able to use a milligram scale to carefully measure how much of the powder to take. "It's similar to a dose of Percocet." he says. "The effect would be like downing a beer or a cocktail." He doesn't use a lot and says he snorts only about $5 of heroin a day. He's stopped in spurts and has written down pro and con lists to see whether he can move on. The pros keep winning out."I just don't find sober me is the best me," he says. Having a secret can be isolating, he says, but otherwise, heroin has not hindered his life. Rather, Matthew says, "It's changed my life for the better." Not only does it help with the pain, he says, it constipates him, allowing him to ditch the bathroom and get out of the house. "I'm dependent," he says. "But I wouldn't necessarily call myself an addict." The crippling truthMatthew is kidding himself, experts say."Denial is a crippling component of addictive disease," Gitlow said. "Here we have a well-documented illustration of that deadly component." Lil Peep's death ignites a conversation about the addiction epidemicStarting at 19, the signs were there when Matthew turned to drugs rather than "conventional coping mechanisms," Gitlow explains. Someone without the addictive disease might have tried those drugs for temporary relief but then realized they weren't worth the long-term risk.Matthew's belief that he doesn't have a problem, Gitlow says, is no different from a man with hypertension or diabetes pretending there's nothing wrong with him. Plus, using heroin and other opioids changes brain chemistry, says Siobhan Morse, director of clinical services for the Foundations Recovery Network. The natural way a body manages pain or stress, Morse says, is by producing endorphins."If you're giving it the artificial substance," she explains, the brain thinks it doesn't have to make the real thing. "So when you take away the artificial substance, everything is so painful." And for people like Matthew who have coexisting mental health issues such as anxiety or depression, self-medication with opioids can make those matters worse, Morse adds. She describes the combination as a "moving target."Eventually, she and other experts say, Matthew's drug use will catch up with him."I've never met anyone who's indefinitely held it down being a heroin addict," Morse says. The fall of 'Superwoman'Rebecca has been using for more than three decades -- longer than Matthew, Todd and Lisa combined. She is surprised to still be alive.She grew up in an upper-middle-class household in a tony suburb in the South where she was raised more by the housekeeper than her parents. Her mother was checked out; her father had mistresses and often traveled."I didn't have any boundaries," says Rebecca, 59. "I could do whatever I wanted, which was a recipe for disaster."Starting at 12, she tried every narcotic she could find. At 15, the man who was her drug dealer and boyfriend introduced her to heroin. "I was in love," she says of the drug. "It became the love of my life."One day, she was sleeping on the couch in her family's home when an older sister pinned her down, rolled up one of her sleeves and called out her track marks. "Mom didn't bat an eye," Rebecca remembers. Instead, she shrugged it off, saying, "Jewish people aren't addicts." Her father, when he was around, was more a friend than a parent. He partied with Rebecca and gave her Quaaludes, she says. Rebecca eventually married the drug dealer-boyfriend, and they had a daughter. But the marriage was short-lived.Divorced and 24, Rebecca went into treatment after her daughter turned 3. Rebecca knew that she was unfit to be a parent and feared she'd lose her daughter forever. It was the first of some 20 times she'd check into a treatment facility for help. Along the way, she re-married; husband No. 2 died of a heroin overdose. Rebecca met her third husband in treatment and stayed sober for eight years. They had two more children and a comfortable lifestyle, enjoying the sort of privileges she knew growing up. But when this marriage fell apart, so did she. "That was when I started to spiral down," Rebecca says. "As soon as I started using, it was immediate. ... It was like I never stopped using."Even as Rebecca returned to heroin, spending $100 or more a day, she built a career in corporate travel, working for big-name companies."As long as I didn't run out [of heroin] and get sick, I was like Superwoman," she says of her job performance. "If I had come in and said I was a heroin addict, people would have laughed." Years of use caught up with her. Lunchtime runs to see her dealer grew longer and became lies about flat tires or broken-down cars. She bounced around between five or six companies, taking extended leaves to go into treatment or try to detox at home. She kept overdosing. A $30,000 mistake at work got her fired."People kept saying, 'You're going to die,' " Rebecca says. "The problem with me wasn't that I was going to die, it's that I was going to live." Her kids were mostly raised by other family members and knew her at her worst. They'd see her after overdoses and visit her in the "nasty places" she called home. "It was just awful," says Rebecca, who's still working to repair the relationships she frayed. Today, Rebecca is three years sober. The last time she entered treatment, she says, "something clicked, and I remember thinking, 'I can't do this anymore.' "She was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," she says. "I didn't have it in me anymore to keep doing what it took to stay high." Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.Rebecca is not the only member of her family who's struggled. One relative is an alcoholic, another is also a heroin addict, and a third -- who won't touch heroin because of Rebecca -- is hooked on pain pills. "It's in the genes," Rebecca says. "No doubt."She has seven grandchildren and is determined to be a better grandmother than she was a parent. She lives with a friend in an apartment and works part time for a sober living community. "If there's any regret, it's that I've missed decades," Rebecca says. "I just thought I wasn't going to live, so I never worried about getting old." She is fighting to make the rest of her life matter, all the while knowing -- based on decades of experience -- how easily she could slip again. One lapse, one moment of weakness or overconfidence that she can handle it, and everything Rebecca is building up could come crashing down and, quite possibly, bury her.

Wayne Drash, CNN

2018-03-09 00:48:12

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/health/world-war-ii-medic-anthony-acevedo-obit/index.html

Medic who documented Nazi camp horror dies at 93 - CNN

Anthony C. Acevedo, a World War II medic and one of 350 US soldiers held in a Nazi slave labor camp, has died at 93. His final words: "How life tells a story."

health, Medic who documented Nazi camp horror dies at 93 - CNN

Medic who documented Nazi camp horror dies at 93

Story highlightsAnthony Acevedo was the first Mexican-American to register as a Holocaust survivor"Never repay evil with evil. Remember what my buddies and I went through."Riverside, California (CNN)Two dozen veterans held US flags and stood at attention as they and dozens of family and friends bid farewell to one of the nation's great war heroes.Anthony C. Acevedo's four children and two grandchildren escorted his flag-draped coffin as he came to rest at Riverside National Cemetery before the Prisoner of War Missing in Action Memorial.Acevedo was a World War II medic and one of 350 US soldiers held in a Nazi slave labor camp. His journal proved critical in documenting the deaths and atrocities inside the camp.He would become the first Mexican-American ever recognized as a Holocaust survivor. He kept one brutality secret, though, until the final months of his life.At 93, his final words were: "How life tells a story."Read MoreAnthony C. Acevedo documented the horrors inside a Nazi slave camp."Not only is he a great American, but he's also an icon," Col. Dan Forden, a chaplain at the VA Hospital in Loma Linda, told the crowd. "He's the real measure of a man -- this is the man we want to be."Three rifle volleys echoed across the hushed crowd. A bugler played "Taps" as veterans gave Acevedo one final salute. Each of Acevedo's children were presented with folded flags, including the one from his coffin, before a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace.""If I can describe my father with one word, it would be heart," Acevedo's daughter, Rebeca Acevedo-Carlin, said at an earlier memorial service."What an incredible, genuine man he was," said his son, Fernando Acevedo. "He would always say have faith, care for others and, more importantly, love one another. I saw my father act with love toward everyone."His story is one of bravery, honor and heroism -- one forever etched in American history. Among the 'undesirables'Anthony Claude Acevedo was born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, to parents who had entered the country illegally from Mexico. The young family moved to nearby Pasadena, where Acevedo attended segregated schools with blacks, Asians and other Latinos. When his parents were deported back to Mexico in 1937, he went with them. Acevedo said he had an undying love for his country beginning at an early age, and that he was determined to serve his homeland after Pearl Harbor.But his love for America never wavered. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Acevedo was determined to defend his homeland. At age 17, he crossed back into the United States and enlisted in the Army. He received medical training in Illinois and eventually landed in the European theater in October 1944, where he served as a medic. "Was captured the 6th of January 1945," he wrote in his first journal entry after being taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.The next month, 350 US soldiers -- Jews and "undesirables," including Acevedo -- were separated from other prisoners of war. They were told they were going to a beautiful camp with live shows and a theater. Instead, they were put on cattle cars and transported to Berga, a slave labor subcamp of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany where tens of thousands of Jews died.The US soldiers worked 12-hour days in the final weeks of the war, digging tunnels for a sophisticated V-2 rocket factory. Soldiers were starved and brutalized with rubber hoses and bayonets. Some were fatally shot in the head with wooden bullets. The Nazis forced Acevedo to fill the holes in the heads of his fellow soldiers with wax to cover up the killings. Acevedo used a fountain pen to record the atrocities in a diary, noting every US soldier's death that he saw. About half of the soldiers sent to Berga survived, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.Acevedo kept his medic's band, cross and prayer book after the war. He donated the items to the US National Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. During the next six decades, the US government never acknowledged its soldiers were held in a slave labor camp. But after Acevedo shared his account with CNN in 2008, the story went viral and the public demanded answers. Then-US Reps. Joe Baca of California and Spencer Bachus of Alabama pressed then-Army Secretary Pete Geren to recognize the soldiers.Within months, Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles met with six Berga survivors at a POW event in Orlando, presenting them with flags flown over the Pentagon and honoring them for their sacrifice. One soldier received the Bronze Star, one of the nation's highest medals. "It wasn't a prison camp. It was a slave labor camp," Boles told them. "You were good soldiers and you were there for your nation."Acevedo boycotted the ceremony, saying he felt it should have been held in Washington. A 'moral obligation'In 2010, Acevedo became the first Mexican-American to register as a Holocaust survivor at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, out of 225,000 registered there. Acevedo donated his diary, Red Cross medic's band, cross and prayer book to the museum.The museum recorded his oral history in English and Spanish. After Acevedo came forward, other Berga survivors did the same, recording their testimonies and donating historical artifacts. Previously, the museum only had a handful of testimonies from Berga; now it could add their stories to its permanent collection. "We were able to finally tell their story in our exhibition for the first time because we now had physical evidence that we could show our visitors," said Kyra Schuster, a museum curator.View Acevedo's diary catalogued by the museumAcevedo's story also allowed Mexican-Americans to connect to the Holocaust in a way they never had before. Schuster still travels the country telling the story of Berga, and she says it's always incredible when Latinos learn of Acevedo's survival and courage.When asked why he put his own life at risk by keeping a diary of every US soldier's death he witnessed, Acevedo told the museum, "It was my moral obligation to do so." "That's always stuck with me," Schuster says, "because I think that defines who he is. "He was this man who, despite the odds against him, despite what he was going through and experiencing, it was still important for him to take care of others, to document what was happening, to make sure the world knew what had happened to them."That's why he spoke out later in life. He was always putting other people ahead of himself. That's how I see him, and that is so admirable."Curator Kyra Schuster said Acevedo's story allowed Mexican-Americans to connect to the Holocaust in ways they never had before.Proud of his heritage, Acevedo listened with dismay over the last year as the nation's leaders took a hardened stance toward immigrants. "They don't know shit from Shinola," Fernando Acevedo recalled his father saying. His son said Acevedo, a lifelong conservative, would shake his head and change the TV channel from politics to Westerns. He'd then tell Fernando: "Always remember: Never repay evil with evil. Remember what my buddies and I went through. Never treat anybody like they're below you. We can't turn a blind eye."After the war, Acevedo, then 20, returned home and worked as a surgical technician in an ear, nose and throat clinic in Pasadena. Around that time, he took a trip to Durango, Mexico to visit his father -- who didn't believe his account of being held in a slave labor camp. "You're a coward for allowing yourself to be captured," his father told him. "You should've killed yourself." Acevedo left his father's home the next day with only a duffel bag and set off on his own. The two didn't speak for years. On the train ride back to California he met the woman of his dreams. Eight months later, he and Amparo Martinez were married. Together, they had four children: Tony, Rebeca, Fernando and Ernesto. Acevedo settled into a successful aerospace engineering career, working for North American Aviation, McDonnell Douglas and Hughes Space and Communications, where he retired in 1987 after 35 years as a design engineer.In retirement, the demons of war resurfaced. He would break into a sweat four to five times a day, shaking and trembling as he relived his captivity. At night, he was haunted by nightmares so intense his muscles would constrict and he'd wake up screaming.He'd relive seeing a fellow medic killed by machine gun fire. Germans would shove him with bayonets. A dead comrade would suddenly flash into his mind.To help cope, he volunteered at the VA hospital in Loma Linda. He said he liked spending time with the veterans there because so many died alone. He would share his story with local high school students and was buoyed by his work with the Holocaust museum. "He was the epitome of kindness," Fernando said. "We should all be that way for fellow man -- this power of strength yet gentleness to give to others. That was my dad's mission."'Many of our men died'A corporal, Acevedo served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Surrounded by Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge, he was captured after days of brutal firefights. He saw one of his fellow medics, Murray Pruzan, gunned down.Acevedo said it was his moral obligation to keep a diary cataloguing the atrocities against US soldiers."When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen, God, that's the only time I cried," Acevedo once told CNN. "He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band. "You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall."Acevedo was first taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. He would be known by the Germans as Prisoner No. 27016. One day, he said, a German commander gathered the US prisoners and asked all Jews "to take one step forward." Few willingly did so. Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 US soldiers deemed "undesirables" -- those who "looked like Jews" -- were selected. Acevedo, who was Catholic, was among them. "They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle," he said. "They had us 80 to a boxcar." Acevedo toured the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. He broke down after stepping into this train car, saying it brought back memories of being shipped to Berga.It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The camp was known as Berga an der Elster. The soldiers, Acevedo said, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats. If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. Any who were captured alive would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo said. "Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died," he said. "I'm glad I did it."The names and dates of death were logged in his diary as the days wore on. 32. Hamilton 4-5-4533. Young 4-5-4534. Smith 4-9-4535. Vogel 4-9-4536. Wagner 4-9-45The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But as US troops neared, Nazis emptied the camp and its subcamps of tens of thousands of prisoners and forced them to march. The soldiers held at Berga were no exception."Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot," Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945. "This isn't very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines." The soldiers' death march would last three weeks and stretch 217 miles. Acevedo pushed a wooden cart with the bodies of the dead and sick stacked on top of each other. Toward the end of the march, there were as many as 20 bodies on the cart. "We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children," he said. "You could see people of all ages hanging on barbed wire."On April 13, 1945, Acevedo wrote of the soldiers' patriotism, even as they were being marched to their graves. "Bad news for us. President Roosevelt's death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul." His entry that day ended with: "Burdeski died today."Acevedo said it was worth the risk to document what he witnessed, saying, "I'm glad I did it."Acevedo kept his diary hidden in his pants. He mixed snow or urine with the ink in his fountain pen to make it last.US troops liberated Acevedo and the remaining prisoners from the Nazis on April 23, 1945. Before returning home, Acevedo signed a US government document that haunted him for decades:"You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures," it said. "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action." He had shared his story with students locally for years and had spoken to a couple of authors who wrote books on the Berga soldiers. He decided to speak with CNN in 2008 to make sure the story was preserved in the internet age. "Let it be known," he said. "People have to know what happened."The government said the document wasn't meant to keep the men silent -- that it was meant to protect sources in Germany who helped aid liberating troops. Acevedo had a one-word response to that explanation: "Hullabaloo."'This is how low man can get'The Nazi camp commanders at Berga -- Erwin Metz and his superior, Hauptmann Ludwig Merz -- were tried for war crimes in Germany in 1946.They gave a much different account of treatment at Berga. They said US prisoners ate better than the guards, had comfortable accommodations and that the Nazis tried to help the Americans as best they could. Surviving US soldiers were not called to testify.Merz described inspecting the soldiers on April 19, 1945, two weeks into the death march. "Roughly 200 prisoners were there, all of whom gave the appearance of being well-rested," Merz told the court. "I noticed one sick, who was sitting on the ground, because he could not stand up the entire time it took me to make my inspection."US soldiers had been starved and abused by Nazis inside the slave labor camp known as Berga.Pressed further, he said, "Among those that I saw, there were no sick except the one I mentioned."Acevedo's diary entry from that same day painted a different picture: "More of our men died today, so fast that you couldn't keep track of their numbers." Merz and Metz were found guilty and sentenced to die by hanging. But in 1948, the US government commuted their death sentences, and in the 1950s, the men were set free.In explaining its decision, the War Department said, "Metz, though guilty of a generally cruel course of conduct toward prisoners, was not directly responsible for the death of any prisoners except one who was killed during the course of an attempt to escape." I once asked Acevedo about his feelings toward Metz. He wept for 10 minutes as his muscles tightened and his breathing grew strained, the throes of post-traumatic stress overtaking him. I held him in my arms and told him how much his country loved him. "I'm sorry," he said, gasping. "I'm sorry. I want to say more, but I can't."This past December, Acevedo was hospitalized with heart problems. His son, Fernando, was searching through his father's military records when he found a psychiatric evaluation from 1996. Fernando's heart sank as he read through the file. Suddenly, everything made sense -- his father's tremors, his waking in the middle of the night, his screams. The evaluation detailed a war crime his father could not speak about with his son: "He was raped while the Germans laughed and became sexually aroused," the file said. "He was humiliated and felt violated and infinitesimal, like a toy, not a human being. Veteran had extremely traumatic experiences in combat and in the hands of the Gestapo who were ruthless in their methods."When his father returned from the hospital, Fernando sat him down and showed him the file."Oh," his father said. "I'm glad you found it."Fernando said his father paused before continuing: "I want you to tell everyone what I went through and how I struggled with the nightmares. I want you to tell everybody."Acevedo told his son to include the rape in his obituary so the world can understand: "This is how low man can get." Filled hallways and one final saluteAcevedo took his final breath at 6:28 p.m. on February 11, in the same VA hospital where he'd spent the last two decades volunteering. Acevedo spent his final years preaching a message of peace and love: "You only live once. Let's keep trucking."His body was draped in a US flag and prepared for a traditional honor walk, a way to treat a veteran's death with dignity. Word spread throughout the hospital that the beloved Acevedo -- whose warmth and love cheered up veterans, doctors and nurses alike -- was gone. Hallways overflowed with people standing at attention as Acevedo was accompanied by his four children. Follow CNN Health on Facebook and TwitterSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter."They saluted my dad all the way up and down the hallway as we were walking. Four floors like that," Fernando said. "Nurses, doctors, patients who were able to stand -- everyone was standing at attention saluting my dad.""I tell you, that was really heavy." Acevedo died with a clear conscience, having told the world about the treatment he and his fellow soldiers at Berga faced. His message was one of love and peace. As he was put to rest Thursday, I couldn't help but think of his giant smile and gentle voice. "You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he once told me. A true national treasure.

Story by Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN Photographs by Mike Belleme for CNN

2017-04-30 20:11:39

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/30/us/winston-salem-welcoming-city-immigration/index.html

'Folks don't feel safe' - CNN

In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, people on opposite sides of the immigration debate have one thing in common: fear.

us, 'Folks don't feel safe' - CNN

'Folks don't feel safe'

Winston-Salem, North Carolina (CNN)The protesters chant in English, then in Spanish, as they belt out their rallying cry."The people, united, will never be defeated!""El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!"Winston-Salem's leaders are hours away from deciding whether to declare this a "welcoming city" for immigrants. And at a rally on the steps of City Hall, supporters of the measure are making their case one last time."Now do it in Arabic!" someone shouts. Demonstrators cheer as a woman wearing a hijab approaches the microphone.Read MoreBut then, everyone freezes. A counter-protester paces in front of them, briefly sending a chill through the crowd. Some people laugh. Others look stunned.The woman is wearing a bright red T-shirt that says "TRUMP 2016." She has a matching sparkly flower in her hair.She doesn't say anything. And she doesn't have to. The hand-written cardboard signs she's carrying make her message clear:"President Trump says NO! Obey the Law!""A Sanctuary City is against the LAW of our land."Two views of the futureValeria Rodriguez Cobos glares at the woman in the Trump T-shirt. She's frustrated to see her getting so much attention, even though the woman is far outnumbered by pro-immigrant protesters.Rodriguez Cobos has been coming here for months as part of a group of activists pushing for Winston-Salem to become a sanctuary city. The 25-year-old's mission: using her voice for those who have none.She has a green card, but most of her friends and family don't. And as she stands on the steps of City Hall tonight, she knows she's carrying the weight of thousands of people who need help, but aren't here simply because they're too scared to show up.The neighbors who panicked when they saw a white van circling their apartment complex, terrified that ICE agents were about to swoop in. The children at her church who went running when police neared their playground. The friend who just asked her to take care of her kids if she gets deported.The counter-protester winds her way into the building. A demonstrator waving a sign saying "HUMAN RIGHTS" follows close behind.The crowd resumes chanting, louder than before.A proposed resolution declaring Winston-Salem a "welcoming city" brought a contentious debate to City Hall and drew sharp criticism from state lawmakers.From inside, Joan Fleming can hear them. And it's making her uneasy.She thinks back to riots she lived through as a child growing up in the 1960s. Her father was a police officer then. She thought of him as she came to City Hall today, carrying an American flag tote bag stuffed with petitions. He raised her to respect the importance of law and order.Back then, when violence flared during protests, she'd wait by the door of her family's home in Kinston, North Carolina. Every night she feared her father wouldn't make it back alive.Now as she sits inside the City Council's meeting room, those fears have been replaced by new ones -- growing concerns about what Fleming believes could be just around the corner, and what she feels is lurking in plain sight.She's already warned the City Council about what she fears will happen if they pass the "welcoming city" proposal: Felons will flock to Winston-Salem."There are thousands of chances per month for you or your loved one to be killed by a suspected illegal drunk driver," she told officials at last month's meeting.Tonight she hopes they'll remember what she said.Echoes of a larger fightThis was the scene on Monday, April 17, in one corner of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as a controversial vote loomed.But it could be anywhere in America in 2017, as increasingly divisive debates over immigration expose feelings simmering beneath the surface.President Donald Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a focal point of his administration. He took steps to retaliate against so-called sanctuary cities, vowing to cut off funding to local governments that don't cooperate with the feds. He doubled down on his message that undocumented immigrants can be a danger to communities, creating an office focused on victims of immigrant crime. Critics say Trump is highlighting crime as a pretext for plans to kick out as many undocumented immigrants as possible, regardless of whether they pose a threat.Since he took office, immigration arrests are up and illegal border crossings are down. But so far, Trump also appears to be deporting fewer people than his predecessor. It's too soon to say whether these early numbers will translate into a trend.But spend a day in this Southern city, where the salvos of national political battles echo loudly, and you'll see signs of a deepening shift beyond what's measured with statistics in spreadsheets.Tensions are high. So are suspicions. And there's one thing both sides have in common: fear.Sending a messageAt first, Dan Besse thought his resolution declaring Winston-Salem a welcoming city would sail to approval.The city already prides itself on being a place that's made immigrants feel at home. Industrial, manufacturing and construction jobs, plus a low cost of living, made Winston-Salem an attractive destination.Now the city that once saw race as a matter of black and white is more than 15% Latino -- the largest percentage in any major city in the state. More than 10% of its residents are immigrants. And the Pew Research Center estimates that about 25,000 undocumented immigrants live in the metro area, roughly 4% of the total population.Besse is an attorney who's been on Winston-Salem's City Council since 2001. He thought his proposal wouldn't rock the boat much because it wasn't creating new rules or overturning any old ones. But he'd heard about mounting fears for immigrants in his city -- about parents who were too scared to take their children to doctor's appointments or leave them in after-school programs, about threats to local mosques. And he wanted to send a symbolic message."A lot of folks don't feel safe," he said, "and they really need this kind of reassurance that their local elected representatives are on their side."Dan Besse, a Democrat on Winston-Salem's City Council, saw his "welcoming city" resolution as a palatable compromise. Instead, it became a flashpoint for the national immigration debate.So at a February meeting, Besse unveiled a resolution that he says intended to do just that. It was a compromise move that skirted the word "sanctuary" and some of the more controversial measures activists had proposed, such as a pledge to limit cooperation with federal law enforcement.Among its proclamations: "Whereas, the current national environment of excessive fear and suspicion directed by some toward immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers calls for cities like Winston-Salem to reaffirm our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive community for all."In this left-leaning city with a City Council where seven of the eight members are Democrats, it was the kind of message that sounded like an easy sell.Maybe a few years ago, or even a few months ago, it would have been.Besse's proposal cleared a committee and seemed to be gaining steam among his colleagues. But it wasn't long before it sparked an uproar. First local Republicans rallied against it. Then state elected officials took aim.At a meeting in Raleigh, they told Winston-Salem to bury the welcoming city measure or risk losing funding."There will be consequences if Winston-Salem does this," one state senator warned.'Like a rattlesnake'As she gets ready for the vote, Joan Fleming sits at her kitchen table, staring at her laptop screen.A wood carving of the continental United States hangs behind her, near metal sculpted into cursive lettering that says "Faith" and "Love."A magnet on her refrigerator says, "Friends don't let friends vote Democrat."The lifelong Republican is no stranger to rallying around a cause. Ever since she moved to Winston-Salem in 1990, she's worked for candidates and campaigns, from Sen. Jesse Helms' 1996 reelection battle to North Carolina's 2012 amendment banning same-sex marriage. As she sits at her computer and prepares for a vote she's very worried her side might lose, she glides her mouse across the elephant on her mousepad that says "Grand Old Party."Fleming's phone rings. It's someone she hopes will be at tonight's meeting. And she wants to make sure they've signed her petition."I've put it on my Facebook about 2,500 times. If you haven't seen it, you must be living under a rock," she says. "I don't know how to put it out there any other way."Joan Fleming says she can't understand why anyone would want to label Winston-Salem a welcoming city. "I wonder their real reason for why they want to bring felons into our city and say it's the right thing to do," she says.Beside her, she has copies of several recent arrest reports -- proof, she says, that being too lax about illegal immigration is endangering people in the area.Is it unfair to paint an entire group based on the most severe crimes committed by a handful of people? Fleming doesn't think so. She suspects the amount of crime connected to illegal immigration is under-reported. And even one crime, she feels, is one crime too many."It's a life. It's a rape," she says. "If we hadn't been negligent in letting them in here, it wouldn't have happened."She resents it when critics call her and others who oppose Winston-Salem's proposed welcoming city measure hateful or racist. Fleming says there's nothing hateful about supporting legal immigration and standing firmly against illegal immigration."I might like a rattlesnake," she says, "but I don't want them in my living room. I lock my doors at night."If she were a few years younger, Fleming, who's in her 60s, says she'd head to the Mexican border and build the wall herself.Collecting ammunitionInstead, Fleming is spending Monday afternoon on the road, driving around Winston-Salem's suburbs as she picks up copies of petitions. The vote is only a few hours away, and she knows every signature counts.She heads down a hilly country road, past grazing horses and Baptist churches and an apartment complex called Plantation Place, to collect a stack of papers left for her. The petitions are on top of a Buick parked in a carport with a "Make America Great Again" bumper sticker.She stops in a Chick-fil-A parking lot near a strip mall to get another stack from a friend who's fallen ill and won't be able to make it to tonight's meeting.Fleming doesn't live inside the city limits. Her home is about a 20-minute drive away, near a golf course in Advance, North Carolina. But most of her family lives in the city. And Fleming says anything that happens inside Winston-Salem will spread.Fleming's lived outside Winston-Salem for several years in suburban Advance, North Carolina. But she fears decisions the city makes will affect residents all over the region. "What about the Americans?" she says. "Who's protecting us?"She's heading to City Hall armed with a tote bag full of testimonials from others who share her views:"I will no longer feel safe as a single female if this happens.""The safety of our city and our children is at stake.""Our city is being overrun with aliens. I notice my own neighborhood is being flooded with immigrants. ... I don't feel safe letting my grandchildren play outside unless I am with them. Not the America my children grew up in."Loud and clearAs they chant on the steps outside City Hall, the protesters are sending a very different message:"No ban, no wall, sanctuary for all.""Fund educations, not deportations.""Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here.""Hey ya'll," Valeria Rodriguez Cobos says into the microphone, smiling at the crowd.Rodriguez Cobos was only a year and a half old when her parents brought her to the United States from their home in Oaxaca, Mexico. For 22 years, she was undocumented. Like many of her family members, she lived in the shadows, terrified that the life she was trying to build could dissolve in an instant.But the 25-year-old is a permanent resident now. Several years ago she was able to petition for legal residency under the Violence Against Women Act after surviving an abusive relationship.Today she's wearing a black T-shirt with bold white letters on it that say, "free."Legal immigration status has brought some stability, but she says it's impossible to feel secure when almost everyone you know is still at risk.Valeria Rodriguez Cobos says she's trying to use her voice to help people who are too scared to speak out. "Deportations are happening," she says. "People here in Winston don't talk about that. They're afraid."Rodriguez Cobos chokes up as she tells the crowd how privileged she feels to have a green card."It's something I know my family still doesn't have," she says. "So for me, the fight is not over until we're all safe."A woman who works with refugees describes the harrowing stories they've told her about what happened before they fled their homes. A Wake Forest law professor explains that there's nothing illegal about the resolution the City Council is finally about to vote on. Besse tells the crowd that whatever happens to his resolution tonight doesn't really matter.The important thing, he says, is continuing community activism, standing up for what's right and not letting lawmakers in Raleigh dictate the way the city handles its affairs."We cannot afford to capitulate to bullying tactics and intimidation, telling us not to speak up and out on behalf of those who are marginalized in our communities."Pointing toward homeLori Apple watches from a few feet away, wearing a sparkling American flag lapel pin on her jean jacket. The protesters' words quickly get under the 60-year-old physical therapist's skin.They seem to be fanning the flames of emotions, she says, rather than relying on facts.Apple, the head of a local Republican women's association, says the welcoming city resolution quickly drew fire from many people in her party.It's clear, she says, that the measure is a thinly veiled attempt to turn Winston-Salem into a sanctuary city. That's extremely unwise, she says, given vows by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to yank federal funding from local jurisdictions that don't cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts.And it's not just federal officials who are threatening to fight back against local measures, she says.State lawmakers in North Carolina outlawed sanctuary cities back in 2015. Then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed the measure in nearby Greensboro. And now, legislators in Raleigh are weighing ways to punish local governments that take sanctuary steps.But Apple says the concerns she and others share aren't just about the millions of dollars Winston-Salem could stand to lose.She says she's worried about her family -- about the spots they could lose in college, about extra time they could be stuck waiting in emergency rooms, about the ways crime could go up and terrorists could slip in."I have children and I am concerned with the safety of our community," she says. "The loud voices of a few drown out the quiet voices of good, hard-working Americans who are not in favor of these kinds of measures."Lori Apple says the US should approach immigration the way she handles her home. "It makes sense to have a wall," she says, "because I have a door protecting my house."To sum up her views on immigration, Apple uses her three-bedroom house in Lewisville, about 15 minutes outside Winston-Salem, as a metaphor.There are only so many items in the refrigerator to go around and only so many rooms in the house where there's space to live, she says. And of course, she keeps the doors locked at night and takes other steps, she says, to protect against intruders.Resources are scarce in America, Apple says. And the country needs to do what it can to keep out terrorists and keep its citizens safe.That's all the president and North Carolina's state lawmakers are trying to do, she says."There's a lot of anger among people towards Trump," she says. "But he's trying to protect us."'I show them safety'Across town, Carmen is just winding down her day cleaning houses.The 43-year-old undocumented immigrant can't make it to tonight's meeting. But she's been following news of the proposed "welcoming city" measure closely. And she's hoping the city will pass it."It would be a safer city," she says. "It would be a relief for us."Carmen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her family's safety, has trouble feeling safe these days.She's terrified that Trump will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, putting her three children in jeopardy.She's afraid jobs for immigrant workers are going to dry up.She's scared to go out at night.She senses people are giving her hostile glances in stores.Carmen, a 43-year-old undocumented immigrant, turns to her faith as times get tough. These days, she finds herself spending more time inside her Winston-Salem home. She's scared to be out late at night or go to parks with her family.It wasn't like this before, Carmen says. Trump, she says, has planted seeds of hatred across the country. But Carmen says she's seen love blossoming, too. One day people from a nearby church left signs outside for her church's largely immigrant congregation."Somos uno en Cristo." We are one in Christ."Dios te ama." God loves you."Nos encantan nuestros vecinos." We love our neighbors.Carmen was overjoyed. She snapped photos of her children with the signs and keeps them on her phone.She's afraid of what will happen next, but she doesn't talk about it with her children."I show another face to them. I show them safety," she says. "I don't show them the fear I feel."A tense waitInside City Hall, Fleming is one of the first people to arrive in the City Council's meeting room.It's already tense. There aren't enough chairs. Some people whisper. Others glare suspiciously across the room.Fleming settles on a spot in the middle of the third row, then moves to the other side of the room after a man snarls at her for trying to save a seat.Rodriguez Cobos sits with a few friends on the floor of a room upstairs, their eyes trained on a TV screen.So many people have shown up to tonight's meeting that officials opened two overflow rooms to give them a chance to follow what's happening. View note Rodriguez Cobos' friends are US citizens whose parents are undocumented immigrants, and they're here to make their voices heard. But as they sit inside the imposing government building, Valeria can see that her friends are spooked.She tries to explain what she knows about city government to them. In between her business administration classes at Salem College and her work at a local credit union, she's been coming here regularly for months. The pomp and circumstance of a local government meeting is familiar now. The way the clerk reads out the name of each resolution. The way the council members make motions.She wants her friends to feel like they belong here. This is their city, too, even though sometimes it may not feel like it.As tonight's vote nears, they lean in toward the TV to listen.Caught off guardThere's no fanfare as the clerk announces what's next on the agenda: "Item G-4, Adoption of the 'Winston-Salem is a Welcoming City' Resolution." This is the moment almost everyone in the building is waiting for.But the mayor makes a surprise announcement that catches many of them off guard.Besse, he says, has asked to withdraw the resolution from the night's agenda."He's working on an alternative thought," the mayor tells the crowd.Rodriguez Cobos and her friends can't believe what they're hearing. She wants to run screaming into the meeting room. How can this be happening?Fleming feels frustrated too. Her rush to get signatures for a petition, her push to save seats inside for fellow Republicans who feel the same way she does -- all of it seems like a waste of time.A man rushes to the front of the room, yelling as he heads out the door: "Boo! Cowards!"In the public comment period that ends the meeting, speaker after speaker slams the City Council for letting worries about retribution from state and federal officials stop them from taking a stand."What we heard today," one woman says, "was fear."One man says the move sets a dangerous precedent. "If you allow them to bully you all, then who will they come for next?"Another says he's tired of hearing people focus on crimes committed by immigrants."There's people who look like me who ran people over. There's people who shot up schools who look like me. Should we deport all of them, too? Are we just going to use fear as our guiding principle?"Rodriguez Cobos is the last person to speak. She says she and others won't forget how the City Council backed down instead of standing up."Elections are coming up," she says, "and people are paying attention."It's no coincidence that state lawmakers in Raleigh have tried to block the resolution, says Danny Timpona, who supports the measure. "They're scared of us coming together," he says. "They're scared we're paying attention."As Rodriguez Cobos walks to her car after the meeting, she looks over her shoulder.She's determined to keep speaking out, but she knows it makes her a target.Fleming walks quickly to her car, too.She fears crime is on the rise. And you never know who might be watching.The next battleWinston-Salem's alt weekly doesn't mince words in its headline summarizing the council's move: "Unwelcoming City."But Besse maintains his proposal isn't dead. Instead, he says he's planning to bring it back in a different form. Pulling it from the agenda was a change in tactics, he says, but not a retreat.When he realized the welcoming city resolution wouldn't have enough support to pass, Besse says he withdrew the measure to avoid sending the wrong signal.These days, he's carrying a copy of a new document inside his jacket pocket as he walks around Winston-Salem. He's hoping to convince leaders from across the community to sign on.A joint statement from a broader group touting the city's welcoming nature, he says, will send a stronger message than any City Council resolution would.Rodriguez Cobos and other organizers with the Sanctuary City Coalition of Winston-Salem say their fight has only just begun. They'll be marching in an upcoming "day without immigrants" protest.And they're hoping to take more concrete steps to help protect an immigrant community under siege. One idea: emergency response teams that can report to areas where ICE arrests are taking place.Fleming picked up a "Make America Great Again" sign on a recent trip. She's thrilled Trump won and glad he's made cracking down on illegal immigration a priority. "If I weren't as old as I am," she says, "I would go build that wall."Fleming says she's keeping a close eye on the City Council in case the welcoming city measure comes up again.And she's going to keep canvasing for signatures on her petition opposing it.She's also working on promoting the local Republican women's club's next activity: a self-defense class.A family crisisAt a church Bible study meeting in northern Winston-Salem, Carmen is looking for answers.The City Council meeting was a few days ago. She's still hoping officials will change their mind, and she wishes she'd been at City Hall to see what happened. She went once and loved the part where everyone stood together to say the Pledge of Allegiance.But this week, she's barely had any time to spare. She's overwhelmed with a crisis that's shaken her family.Her brother is in a detention center and could be days away from deportation.His devastated 10-year-old daughter is barely talking or eating. All she does is cry. They're taking her to a psychologist, but Carmen doesn't know what else to do as she waits for word on whether officials will reopen her brother's case."I'm so worried," she tells the church group, tears streaming down her face.Carmen says it's sad to hear Winston-Salem's "welcoming city" resolution hasn't passed. "I don't know why they want to close the doors to us here," she says. The pastor offers a prayer for Carmen and others at the table."God, we put our worries and our anguish in front of you. ... Touch the hearts of the authorities in this country," he says. "Touch the hardened hearts that they seem to have right now."Carmen bows her head.She prays for something she fears only God can give her now.Protection.CNN's Theresa Waldrop and Janette Gagnon contributed to this report.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2018-01-26 22:50:23

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/us/star-wars-religion/index.html

The spiritual message hidden in 'Star Wars' - CNN

Is "The Last Jedi" a warning about the end of organized religion in America, or a parable about spiritual renewal?

us, The spiritual message hidden in 'Star Wars' - CNN

The spiritual message hidden in 'Star Wars'

(CNN)"Star Wars" has always kept its fingers close to America's spiritual pulse. In the '70s and '80s, the interstellar saga explored Eastern traditions, mainly Buddhism and Taoism, just as many "spiritual, but not religious" dabblers were doing the same. At the turn of the millennium, "Star Wars" caught the McMindfulness craze. "The Phantom Menace" opens with two Jedi talking about the benefits of meditation. Riveting, it was not. But the latest film in the saga, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," touches on trends in American religious life in some surprising ways, especially for a franchise that's so nakedly commercial. ("The Last Jedi" was the highest-grossing movie in the United States last year and raked in nearly $1.3 billion worldwide.) "It is very much a movie of this time," said the Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Buddhist teacher, social justice activist and "Star Wars" aficionado who lives Berkeley, California. "It draws on ancient teachings, as well as what is happening in this country right now."Read MoreBut there's some debate about what "The Last Jedi" intends to say about modern religious life: Is it warning about the end of organized religion, or a parable about spiritual renewal? 'Do, or do not. There is no try.' "Star Wars" is, at heart, a story about the rise and fall of an ancient religion. When we meet the Jedis, in Episode I, they're mindfulness-meditating, axiom-spouting space monks who keep order in the galaxy and swing a swift lightsaber. By Episode VIII -- "The Last Jedi" -- the once-great order is reduced to a lone soul, Luke Skywalker, serving a self-imposed penance on a remote island. When Rey, the young heroine, shows up seeking spiritual training, Luke refuses. The Jedi religion is over, he says, a victim of its own hypocrisy and hubris. Luke even prepares to burn the ancient Jedi texts. (In a bit of historical irony, the island on which the scene is filmed, Skellig Michael, was home to medieval Irish monks who "saved civilization" by rescuing ancient Christian books.) But the film hints that Luke might not be the "last Jedi," after all. Even without his help, Rey is remarkably skilled at connecting with the Force, the mysterious energy that pervades the galaxy. This is where some cultural commentators see an argument against organized religion. In previous "Star Wars" films, using the Force required joining the Jedis and spending years learning the "old ways" from established masters. Luke seems to say that none of that matters anymore. "He is making a very modern case for spirituality over organized religion," argues Hannah Long in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. "If all roads lead to the Force, then the dusty tradition and doctrine doesn't really matter."In The Atlantic, Chaim Saiman makes a similar argument. "The Last Jedi" seems to reflect many millennials' ideas about religion, namely their waning interest in "structured religion" in favor of "unbounded spirituality," he writes. But is that the whole story? 'Always two there are: A master and apprentice' George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars," says he wanted to do more than entertain the masses. He wanted to introduce young Americans to spiritual teachings though "new myths" for our globalized, pluralistic millennium."I see 'Star Wars' as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and accessible construct," Lucas has said. "I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery."Overthinking the initiation into 'Star Wars' for our kidsIn this, Lucas sounds a lot like his mentor, Joseph Campbell, a scholar who studied world myths. Campbell argued that all cultures impart their values to the next generation through archetypal stories. He believed the same about organized religion, but said it must "catch up" to the "moral necessities of the here and now." Lucas himself has been called a "Buddhist/Methodist," though it's not clear that he identifies with either religious tradition. "Let's say I'm spiritual," he told Time magazine in 1999.Irvin Kirshner, the director of the "The Empire Strikes Back," says Yoda -- the small but spiritually powerful Jedi master -- was created in part to evangelize for Buddhism. "I want to introduce some Zen here," he said, "because I don't want the kids to walk away just thinking that everything is a shoot-'em-up."Mushim Patricia Ikeda, a Buddhist teacher and social justice activist, said Yoda reminds her of the monks she studied with in Korea: wise, cryptic and a little impish. "I watched those movies and I thought, check, check, double-check," said Ikeda, the community coordinator at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. There's been a lot written about Buddhism in "Star Wars," from scholarly papers to popular books, so I won't go into too much detail here. Suffice it to say, "Star Wars" borrows quite a bit from Buddhist symbols, teachings and practices. One writer calls it "Zen with lightsabers."The name of the Jedi Order itself could be borrowed from Asian culture, said religion scholar Christian Feichtinger. The "jidaigeki," a genre of popular movies in Japan, depict samurai learning to combine swordsmanship with spiritual training, and slowly discovering that the mind is mightier than the sword. (Sound familiar?) Throughout "Star Wars," the Jedi talk often about mindfulness and concentration, attachment and interdependence, all key Buddhist ideas. Two -- mindfulness and concentration -- are steps on the Eightfold Path, the Buddha's guide to spiritual liberation. You could argue that "The Last Jedi," telegraphs its spiritual debts to Buddhism. When Rey is meditating, she touches the ground, mirroring an iconic image of the "earth-touching" Buddha.And, as an astute colleague noticed, a mosaic pool a Jedi temple shows an icon that looks a lot like Kannon Boddhisattva, a large-eared Buddhist being who hears the cries of the world. But there's more to spirituality in "Star Wars" than Buddhism. Like Zen itself, the saga blends aspects of Taoism and other religious traditions. "The Force," for example, sounds a lot like the Taoist idea of "chi," the subtle stream of energy that animates the world. There's plenty about "Star Wars" that doesn't jibe with Buddhism, not least the fact that Darth Vader -- the supreme personification of evil -- is an avid meditator. Even the storylines that borrow from other religions teach Buddhist lessons. Take Darth Vader's narrative. He was born of a virgin, and was supposed to save the galaxy before he succumbed to temptation, all ideas with clear Christian resonances. But the reason for Vader's fall from grace -- the lessons viewers are supposed to take away -- seems distinctly Buddhish. Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi who will become Darth Vader, had been "attached" to the idea of saving his family, Yoda says."Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is." 'Clear, your mind must be'Earlier this month, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, hosted a workshop called "Jedi Insights: A Force For Justice." About 40 people turned out, including several teenagers and new meditators.John Ellis and Mushim Patricia Ikeda with students at a workshop based on "Star Wars" at the East Bay Meditation Center. Ikeda, who co-led the workshop, said many teens are like Rey, the inexperienced but enthusiastic Jedi: looking for mentors to help unravel the mystery of self-knowledge. "They're like, please, please, please, give me that spiritual training," Ikeda said. During the workshop, Ikeda and her co-teacher, John Ellis, discussed "Star Wars" scenes and led guided meditations. Inevitably, a few lively lightsaber battles broke out. Almost as inevitably, because this is America in 2018, the discussion got political. "There's so much going on, from the environment to taxes to education, that it's easy to be overwhelmed," Ellis said. "'Star Wars' help us think about how meditation teaches us to focus on the task at hand, and bring our best self to it." 'A pile of old books' So what is the spiritual message in "The Last Jedi," and what -- if anything -- can it tell us about religion in real life?It's true that millennials may be eager for spiritual training, but they are are increasingly unlikely to identify with a specific religion. Nearly one in three says they have no religious affiliation. But let's take a closer look at why millennials are leaving, or forsaking, the fold. A new study of young former Catholics, conducted by St. Mary's Press Catholic Research Group and Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, found that more blamed their family for the decision to leave the church than the church institution itself. Only 11% said they quit Catholicism because they oppose the church or religious institutions in general.The study also found that nearly half had joined other religious communities, including other Christian ones. So is organized religion really the issue here? It's no secret that we're living during a time of seismic shifts, from technology to politics to spirituality. It's not so much an "era of changes," Pope Francis has said, as a "change of eras." So what's the leader of a 2,000-year-old church to do?The answer is not resurrecting "obsolete practices and forms," Francis says. Some Catholic customs, while beautiful, "no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel." But the Pope is no iconoclast, eager to discard sacred traditions. In fact, he wants Catholics to go back to the roots of their religion, the Gospel. Francis has repeatedly implored Christians, particularly priests, to put Jesus' words into action by caring for the sick, the lame and the poor. He wants shepherds who smell like their sheep, not bookkeepers who smell like sheepskin. Which brings us back to the spiritual message encoded in "The Last Jedi." As Luke prepares to torch the tree containing the sacred Jedi texts, Yoda appears out of nowhere and does the deed himself, cackling all the while. "Time it is," Yoda says, "for you to look past a pile of old books." Some fans were aghast that Yoda would feign sacrilege against the Jedi tradition. But when you look at the scene from a Buddhist lens, the meaning shifts. Zen is full of stories about ancient masters trying to jolt their apprentices from mental ruts. In one ancient monastery, the students paid too much attention to Buddhist images, so the head monk torched them. ("If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha," says a famous koan.) These lessons and koans are not meant to be permanent prescriptions for all Buddhists for all time. They're highly particular, transmitted from master to apprentice, one mind to another. In that light, maybe Yoda's apparent willingness to burn the "old pile of books" isn't really about texts, which he already knows are safely in Rey's possession. Maybe it isn't even about religion. It's just about Luke. Yoda is trying to shock him out of his guilt and shame about the past, and make him focus on "the need in front of (his) nose," the Resistance that could sorely use a little saving. So perhaps the real spiritual message of "Star Wars" isn't about the end or beginning of organized religion. Maybe, like a good Zen teacher, it's a mirror showing us our own minds. Are we preoccupied with the past, concerned about the future, or paying attention to the needs in front of our noses?

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2017-11-17 14:17:35

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/17/us/bible-museum-fakes/index.html

A Bible museum mystery: Are its Dead Sea Scrolls fake? - CNN

Some scholars say the artifacts date to the days of Jesus. But others say they're forgeries meant to dupe Christians, including the new Museum of the Bible.

us, A Bible museum mystery: Are its Dead Sea Scrolls fake? - CNN

Mystery at the new Bible museum: Are its Dead Sea Scrolls fake?

Washington (CNN)Small scraps of parchment inscribed with tiny Hebrew letters. They look like countries cut out of a map, or lost pieces from a jigsaw puzzle nobody could solve.Some scholars say they're fragments from the renowned Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish texts that date to the days of Jesus. Others suspect they are expensive forgeries meant to dupe American evangelicals, including the family behind the splashy new Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.Last week, as the museum prepared for its grand opening on Friday, workers put finishing touches on its five floors of exhibits. They assembled the virtual reality ride through Washington, washed windows with clear views of the Capitol building, and wired the interactive displays that wind through the museum's 430,000 square feet.The museum's exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls hasn't been as easy to nail down. With a price tag of $500 million, the Bible museum represents a heavy investment by its evangelical founders, particularly the Green family. Depending on your zip code, you may know the Oklahoma billionaires best for their chain of Hobby Lobby craft stores, or for their religious freedom battle with the Obama administration.Read MoreEither way, the Museum of the Bible's goal is the same, says Steve Green, its founder and chairman. "I hope that, as people leave here, they will get inspired to get to know the Bible's story for themselves."The Dead Sea Scrolls are an important part of that story, Green says. Nearly 2,000 years old, they testify to the reliability of the Bible, to scripture's timeless truths. But Arstein Justnes, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Agder in Norway, says the Greens' fragments tell quite a different story. This one is about a scandal in the world of biblical antiquities. On his website, "The Lying Pen of Scribes," scholars and scientists have identified more than 70 Dead Sea Scroll fragments that have surfaced on the antiquities market since 2002. Ninety percent of those are fake, Justnes says, including the Museum of the Bible's. If Justnes and other scholars are correct, the Dead Sea forgeries could be one of the most significant shams in biblical archeology since the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," a fiasco that hoodwinked a Harvard scholar and made worldwide news in 2012.Steve Green won't say how much his family spent for their 13 fragments. But other evangelicals, including a Baptist seminary in Texas and an evangelical college in California, have paid millions to purchase similar pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some scholars believe they are all fake. Kipp Davis, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Trinity Western University in Canada, is one of several academics trying to warn Christians, including the Green family, about the forgeries."The evangelical movement is really getting played here."A visitors looks at an exhibit about the Dead Sea Scrolls during a media preview of the new Museum of the Bible.'They were buying everything'It's hard to overstate how important the Dead Sea Scrolls are to biblical archeology."Any reputable Bible museum almost has to have Dead Sea Scrolls," said David Trobisch, the Museum of the Bible's director of collections. Before the scrolls were discovered 70 years ago, the earliest and most complete version of the Hebrew Bible was from the 9th century. But then Bedouin shepherds stumbled on the scrolls, hidden away for nearly 2,000 years in caves in Qumran, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The discovery was so vast, with more than 900 manuscripts and an estimated 50,000 fragments, it took six decades for scholars to excavate and publish them all.The Israeli Antiquities Authority keeps a tight hold on most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, displaying them in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. For decades, it was almost impossible for private collectors to get their hands on even scraps from the famous archeological find. But in 2002, new fragments began mysteriously appearing on the market. The Greens bought their fragments between 2009-2014. At the time, they were deeply involved in the antiquities trade, amassing a collection of some 40,000 artifacts.Some scholars accused the Greens of buying too many artifacts too quickly, without being sure exactly where they came from, or who had owned them in the past."They made it widely known that they were buying everything," said Joel Baden, a professor at Yale Divinity school and co-author of "Bible Nation," a new book about the Greens. "Every antiquities seller knew the Greens were buying everything and not asking questions about anything."Eventually, the Greens landed in the crosshairs of the Justice Department, which said their company, Hobby Lobby, had received thousands of smuggled artifacts.The company was warned that buying artifacts that were likely from Iraq carried risks that they had been looted, the Justice Department said. But Hobby Lobby still bought 5,500 items for $1.6 million from a dealer in the United Arab Emirates.On some customs forms, the smugglers listed the artifacts as "ceramic tiles" and estimated their worth at $1 per item, prosecutors said.Hobby Lobby agreed to pay $3 million and return the artifacts as part of a settlement with the Justice Department. "We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled," said Steve Green, who, in addition to being chairman of the Museum of the Bible, is also president of Hobby Lobby. Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and chairman of the board of Museum of the Bible, speaks during a media preview of the new Museum of the Bible.Green also says the Museum of the Bible was not involved in the smuggling scandal.But at a news conference at the museum last month, Trobisch said some of the confiscated objects had been destined for an exhibit on writing in ancient history. The museum had to borrow artifacts from another collection instead. At the same news conference, the museum unveiled more stringent acquisition policies. But some scholars -- even those hired by the Greens -- still have questions about the items already in the museum's collection, including the Dead Sea Scroll fragments.Dead Sea doubtsAlmost immediately, Kipp Davis had doubts.In the world of biblical studies, the 44-year-old still considers himself a "junior scholar." He occasionally spices conversations with "Star Wars" references. But in addition to his scriptural expertise, Davis also has experience in paleography, the study of ancient writing, which is often used to date manuscripts.In 2014, the Greens hired Davis to prepare their Dead Sea Scroll collection for publication with a top academic book publisher. It was the kind of assignment that comes rarely in a young scholar's career. But as he looked at high-resolution and multi-spectral images of the Greens' collection, something bugged Davis. The leather parchment appeared ancient enough, but the writing looked stretched and squeezed to fit the misshapen fragments. Some had bleeding letters and other markers of a scribe struggling to write on a weathered surface. One fragment had what appeared to be an annotation from a 1937 edition of the Hebrew Bible, an almost unbelievable anachronism. A fragment from the Museum of the Bible's collection of Dead Sea Scrolls. In this fragment, a snippet of text from the Book of Nehemiah, some scholars say they see an annotation from a 1937 edition of the Hebrew Bible, an obvious anachronism. The mark, which looks like a bitten apple, is on the far left of the third line of text.Paleography is an impressionistic science, which is a fancy way of saying that scholars often disagree about how to interpret its findings, and Davis is a careful scholar.But the evidence added up, and he became convinced that at least six of the Greens' 13 fragments are almost certainly forgeries.They reminded Davis of other Dead Sea Scroll fragments he had studied a few years before. After he and other scholars raised doubts about the authenticity of nine, scientific tests confirmed that eight were forgeries. The tests were inconclusive about the ninth. In one instance, the forger had spread table salt on a fragment, perhaps hoping to simulate the sediment around the Dead Sea. Justnes, the biblical scholar from Norway, believes all 13 of the Greens' fragments are modern-day forgeries. Rather than the smooth pen strokes of an experienced scribe, the writing on the fragments is "brutal and hesitant," he says. "They don't look like authentic Dead Sea Scrolls." 'I have not seen the proof'Emanuel Tov, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is perhaps the world's leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Davis calls him one of the most important biblical scholars of the last 50 years. Like Davis, Tov was hired by the Greens to study their fragments and help edit the book about them. Tov says he is not convinced the fragments are fake. "I will not say the Museum of the Bible has no inauthentic fragments," he said. "I will say I have not seen the proof."The handwriting anomalies Davis describes also occur in authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, Tov says. To determine whether the Greens' fragments are forgeries, they need to be compared to a larger sample size of scrolls. "We should not be so fast in thinking that we know everything about the scribe of these little fragments. We need very thorough research on the intricacies of the problems with the handwriting." Like staffers at the Museum of the Bible, Tov also noted that one of the world's leading paleographers, Ada Yardeni, has studied the museum's fragments."She is accepted by everyone as the best paleographer in the world, and she has not raised one issue with the handwriting being non-authentic," Tov said. Yardeni did not respond to emails from CNN requesting comment for this story.But Tov said he still has some questions about the Greens' Dead Sea Scroll fragments. For one, 12 of the 13 fragments bear snippets from the Hebrew Bible. That's an unusually high percentage considering that less than a quarter of all known Dead Sea Scrolls pertain to scripture. "It is a very doubtful situation that most of the new fragments that have come to the market after 2002 are biblical. It is really very fishy." But Tov said he had recently solved the riddle, perhaps. Maybe the fragments do not come from Qumran, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Maybe they come from another spot in the Judean Desert, where biblical texts were more common. Of course, that raises more questions about the Greens' fragments. If they weren't found in Qumran, where were they found? And who found them? "I do not know such things," Tov said. "Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. It's probably not good." Where did they come from?Clean cut and earnest, Steve Green projects an air of calm certainty, like a salesman who truly believes in the product he's selling. But on some matters related to his family's expensive collection of artifacts, Green seems surprisingly uncertain. During a recent interview at the Bible museum, for instance, he said he wasn't sure who sold him the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. "There's been different sources, but I don't know specifically where those came from." The new Museum of the Bible, a 430,000 square-foot museum, dedicated to the history, narrative and impact of the Bible.The question of provenance -- documentation of an artifact's chain of custody -- is crucial to museums and modern collectors, scholars say. It protects against forgeries and looting. A growing number of scholars say artifacts without provenance should not be the subject of academic study or displayed in museums. The Museum of the Bible has dealt with provenance problems before. Trobisch, the collections director, said the museum will not display a fragment of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians because it cannot adequately trace its chain of ownership, including why it showed up on eBay in 2012. But Trobisch says the museum knows -- and will display -- the provenance of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. All but one, he said, can be traced back to the Kando family, Palestinian antiquities dealers who became trusted middlemen between the Bedouins who found the Dead Sea Scrolls and the scholars who bought them decades ago. For years, the thinking among scholars has been: If an artifact came from Kando, it's likely legit. Still, Trobisch said the museum does not know where the fragments first came from. According to Tov, the Kandos listed the fragments as coming from "Qumran Cave 4," one of the 11 caves where Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered. But both Tov and Trobisch question that. "I personally don't think anyone in the world can know where they came from," Trobisch said. William Kando, who runs the family business, could not immediately be reached for comment.Some academics have their own suspicions about where they came from.The world of Dead Sea Scroll scholars is small, and few have the level of skill and knowledge to forge believable artifacts. "Whoever is behind this may be someone who we all know," Davis said. Meanwhile, several fragments from the Green collection were sent to a scientist in Germany for further study. It's the same scientist who found forgeries in the other collection Davis studied. The results could be public as soon as next year. At the Museum of the Bible, they've decided to "teach the controversy," to borrow a phrase from the science vs. scripture fight over teaching evolution in public schools. At a media tour this week, six fragments were displayed in the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, including three that Davis' suspects are forgeries. When the museum opened, a display panel acknowledged some of the doubts about the fragments' authenticity. Here's what the panel says: Are these fragments? Research continuesIn 2002, dozens of previously known "Dead Sea Scroll" fragments began appearing with antiquity dealers. Universities, museums and private collectors acquired many of these "new" fragments. As scholars began to study them, some noted puzzling features and labeled them as forgeries. MOTB (Museum of the Bible) published the initial research on its scroll fragments in 2016, but scholarly opinions of their authenticity remain divided. Scientific analysis of the ink and handwriting on these pieces continues.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2016-10-21 11:11:42

politics

politics

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/politics/trump-religion-gospel/index.html

What are Donald Trump's religious beliefs? - CNNPolitics

Some Christians call Donald Trump a believer, others an "idolater" What does he really believe? His pastor offers some clues.

Donald Trump Religion, Donald Trump Christian, politics, What are Donald Trump's religious beliefs? - CNNPolitics

The guilt-free gospel of Donald Trump

Editor's note: This is the first of two stories on the religious beliefs of the presidential nominees. Read about the faith of Hillary Clinton here. (CNN)Donald Trump was ashamed -- contrite even -- as he spoke to Paula White hours after the video of him bragging about groping women was released."I heard it in his voice," said White, a Florida pastor who, outside of Trump's family, is his closest spiritual confidant. "He was embarrassed." In the video from 2005, Trump admits to hitting on a married woman and boasts that he can wantonly kiss women and grope their genitals because he is a "star." During his phone call with White, the GOP nominee said he regretted his remarks and was grateful for the evangelicals still supporting him. Later that evening, he publicly apologized in a video that was remarkably free from the usual rituals enacted by disgraced politicians. Trump didn't stand beside his wife, Melania. He didn't ask for forgiveness. He didn't lament that he had fallen under sin's sway but that by God's grace and with his family's support he hoped to earn a second chance. In fact, Trump didn't mention faith, family or reconciliation at all.Read MoreJUST WATCHEDSpiritual adviser: Trump more devout than you'd thinkReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSpiritual adviser: Trump more devout than you'd think 04:03"If he suddenly came out all religious, that would seem staged to me," said White, who has known Trump for 14 years. "Donald has never been public about his faith, and when he has tried, it has been futile. It's not his language, but that doesn't mean it's not his heart." For much of the 2016 presidential campaign, religion has receded into the background, mainly because the two major party nominees -- Trump and Hillary Clinton -- rarely talk about their faith. Trump is a professed Presbyterian; Clinton a Methodist. But two-thirds of Americans have said it's important for the president of the United States to have strong religious convictions, according to the Pew Research Center. And nearly 40% say discussion of religion has been lacking in this election cycle. Beyond the policy discussions and ad hominem attacks, it seems, Americans want to know where candidates' moral compasses point. Trump's attempts at public religion have been awkward, at best. He said he does not ask for forgiveness and "does not bring God into that picture" when he makes mistakes. He has tried to put money in the Communion plate and referred to the sacrament as "my little wine" and "my little cracker." He mispronounced a book of the Bible, and when asked about his favorite verse, has either deferred or, in one case, cited "an eye for an eye," an Old Testament revenge scheme specifically condemned by Christ. (Turn the other cheek, Jesus said.) Trump tussled with the Pope and was shushed by a minister in Detroit. He often looks uneasy when pastors lay their hands on him and pray. He says he is proud of his evangelical support but not sure he deserves it. When asked theological questions, Trump often speaks in terms so vague they approach opacity.Asked "Who is God to you?" by the Christian Broadcasting Network, Trump answered "God is the ultimate," then began a brief spiel about how he got a great deal on a golf course before circling back to his original definition. "So nobody, no thing, no there's nothing like God." Trump's broad language often serves a purpose, says Michael D'Antonio, author of "The Truth About Trump," a biography. "Donald keeps his options open. He make things mysterious and unclear so that he can say anything else at another time." Trump's supporters have a different explanation. Trump is a businessman, not a pastor. He doesn't have practiced answers about religious questions, nor should he be expected to, they say. But that doesn't mean he's irreligious. (Trump's campaign did not respond to several interview requests.) "I think people are shocked when they find out that I am Christian, that I am a religious person," Trump writes in "Great Again," a book published during the presidential campaign. "They see me with all the surroundings of wealth, so they sometimes don't associate that with being religious. That's not accurate."Positive thinking Trump's father, Fred Trump, embodied the Protestant work ethic to an extreme. The real estate developer took his children to construction sites, even on Sundays. Life is a competition between killers and losers, he taught them, and you had to be ruthless to survive. Mary Trump, Donald's mother, tried to instill traditional Christian values in her children, her son has said. She shooed them to Sunday school at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. Trump proudly displays his confirmation photo from the church, pulling it out to demonstrate his Christian bona fides. In the mid-1960s, like many upper-middle class families, the Trumps, including teenaged Donald, became attracted to a popular preacher named Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was the pastor at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, whose steeple has soared above 5th Avenue since the 1600s. Peale was far more famous, though, as the multimedia juggernaut who preached the "power of positive thinking." In his books and lectures, Peale married pop psychology with hopeful insights gleaned from the gospel. Sin and guilt were jettisoned in favor of "spirit-lifters," "energy-producing thoughts" and "7 simple steps" to happy living. "Attitudes are more important than facts," Peale said, and he exhorted his followers to bend the world to their will through mental exertion. "Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding," Peale writes in "The Power of Positive Thinking." "Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade."Published in 1952, Peale's "The Power of Positive Thinking" has sold millions of copies and spent 186 weeks atop The New York Times' bestseller list. The famous and affluent flocked to Marble Collegiate. "It was a celebrity church, and its members, in those days, were generally wealthy New Yorkers of the Protestant executive class," said D'Antonio, the Trump biographer. "It was a place to see and be seen." It was also a place to buy Peale's many promotional materials. Long before entrepreneurial pastors like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes marketed their sermons as spiritual self-help, Peale sold record albums and pamphlets with titles like "How to Stop Being Tense" and "No More Gloomy Thoughts." He was also an enthusiastic champion of the free market, writing columns such as, "Let the Church Speak Up for Capitalism." His parables were often about businessmen who had bulldozed their way to the top, not Samaritans who crossed the street to help a stranger. The Rev. Michael Brown, senior minister of Marble Collegiate, said there were two Norman Vincent Peales: One was the motivational speaker who tried to reach all Americans. The other was a pastor who preached the redemptive message of Jesus.7 types of evangelicals -- and how they'll affect the presidential race "Out there in civic centers he would say, over and over, 'You can, if you think you can,'" Brown said. "In the pulpit of our church he would quote Philippians 4, 'You can do all things through Christ.' " But other Christians accused Peale of peddling jingles, not the gospel, worldly success instead of salvation, and simplistic solutions at a time of increasing complexity. "He promises quick, painless, and complete 'solutions' to problems which may be deep and complex, and which may require real discipline and professional treatment," wrote religious studies professor and journalist William Lee Miller in 1955. Nevertheless, Donald Trump loved Peale's preaching, especially his stories about businessmen surmounting obstacles. "He would instill a very positive feeling about God that also made me feel positive about myself," Trump writes in "Great Again." "I would literally leave that church feeling like I could listen to another three sermons." Trump and Peale became close. Peale officiated at Trump's first marriage, to Ivana, and at the funeral services for his parents. "He thought I was his greatest student of all time," Trump said. The businessman credited "the power of positive thinking" for helping him rebound in the 1990s, when his casinos were tanking and he owed creditors billions of dollars. "I refused to be sucked into negative thinking on any level, even when the indications weren't great."Trump's book titles evoke Peale's brand of pop psychology. There's "Think Big," "Think Like a Champion" and "Think Like a Billionaire." In another book, "Never Give Up," Trump gives an example of how he put the power of positive thinking into practice. Scouring the newspapers for real estate deals, he found a rundown property in Cincinnati, which he bought from the Federal Housing Administration. The complex had a reputation for "rent runners," Trump writes, so he hired 24-hour patrols, spruced up the place and hired a "politically incorrect" project manager. When the surrounding area got "rough," Trump sold the complex, reaping a $6 million profit. "Creative, positive thinking can be a powerful source of success," he wrote. Preaching prosperitySome years ago, after services at her Florida megachurch, Paula White received a call from Donald Trump. At the time, White's star was rising. She co-pastored a Tampa megachurch with 25,000 members and hosted a show broadcast on Christian television. White says Trump told her he was a fan from afar and quoted three of her recent sermons back to her. He asked the pastor if she ever traveled to New York. In fact, she led a Bible study for players on the New York Yankees. The pastor and businessman met at Trump Tower and began what White calls a "14-year conversation about God and love and a plethora of things." White hesitates to reveal much about her relationship with Trump, citing the expectation of privacy between clergy and their congregants. She won't, for instance, say whether she "led Trump to Christ," a claim made this summer by some evangelical activists. "This is an ongoing walk in his life," White said. "But he is a Christian, and he is born again."For his part, Trump has called White "a beautiful person both inside and out.""She has a significant message to offer anyone who will tune in and pay attention. She has amazing insight and the ability to deliver that message clearly as well as powerfully."In some ways, Trump's attraction to White seems unsurprising, said Kate Bowler, a historian at Duke Divinity School and author of "Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel." "She's blonde and cute and perky and endlessly optimistic." Like many prosperity gospel preachers, appearance is part of White's appeal. She favors form-fitting, fashionable attire, often stalking the stage in stiletto heels. In the many glamor shots on her social media accounts, she is perfectly coiffed and impeccably made up. Like Norman Vincent Peale, White preaches a message of boundless optimism and has a strong entrepreneurial streak. She encourages adherents to "partner" with her ministry for a monthly fee and sells DVDs of her sermons for $50 a pop. Such endeavors can be lucrative. According to an audit made public by a Senate committee investigating televangelists, White's former church, Without Walls International, took in $150 million between 2004-2006. At one time, White and her then-husband owned an airplane and several multimillion dollar properties, including a condo in Trump Tower. In 2008, Trump appeared on her television show, where he said his secret of success was the work ethic instilled by his father. "That's the principle I teach," White answered. "Find your passion and figure out a way to make money." Like Trump, White has seen her share of personal and financial troubles. She has been married three times. (Her current husband is rocker Jonathan Cain, the keyboard player for Journey and a co-writer of the epic hit "Don't Stop Believin'.")After White's divorce from her second husband in 2007, the church they led together faltered and plunged into bankruptcy. Still, White's sermons remain relentlessly upbeat. Though she rejects the prosperity gospel label, White preaches many of its central tenets on her show "Paula Today" and at her new megachurch in Orlando. White believes the world abides by spiritual laws, Bowler said, one of which is called "seed faith." The idea: By pledging money to a minister, believers sow a seed, and God will reward them with a bountiful harvest, usually in the form of health and wealth. "Every time we give, something supernatural happens," White says in one sermon. Other Christians call this heresy. Faith is not a spiritual investment that guarantees automatic returns, and there is no evidence, anyway, that God wants people to become millionaires. In fact, the gospel famously said it's hard for rich men to enter heaven. Many of the Christians who have criticized White also question Trump's religious commitments. In his personal life, he has owned casinos, been married three times and boasted about extramarital affairs. During the presidential campaign, he has denigrated Muslims, Mexicans and women. Christianity Today, the flagship magazine for evangelicals, called Trump "an idolater" and "the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool." A Christian columnist said Trump's "obsession" with wealth and power "embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one." The Pope himself said that anyone who talks about building walls instead of bridges "is not Christian." Even Richard Land, a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board, says the candidate he's backing may not be a Christian. "When a person says that they have never felt the need to ask for forgiveness, they have defined themselves out of the Christian faith as I understand it," Land said. White says those criticisms miss the mark. Trump isn't perfect, but nobody is, and he is on the right path, she said. "I have seen change in him over the 14 years I have known him. He is a growing Christian." White also said she sees a side of Trump obscured from outsiders. "I remember him calling me up one morning and saying, 'Paula, I know God says to forgive. But how do we know when to turn the other cheek and when to fight?'""If he was coldhearted and had no desire or hunger for God, he would not have asked a question like that," White says. Several years ago, White brought a friend, Debra George, to Trump Tower. George runs a ministry for prostitutes and children in impoverished inner cities. "Aren't you scared to go into those areas?" George recalled Trump asking. She said no, most people are happy to see her, since she comes bearing gifts and asks for nothing in return. George said Trump immediately cut her a check for $10,000 and followed with two more donations of $5,000 each. The two have kept in touch, she said, with Trump asking George to send him her sermons, and George responding with updates on her ministry. "He has shared with me how much he loves God and loves Jesus," George said.Faith vs. works On a conference call with his campaign's evangelical advisory board earlier this summer, Trump earned a trip to the theological woodshed. He joked that repealing an IRS rule that prohibits pastors from endorsing political candidates might be his only route to heaven.It's a line he has repeated often on the trail, but on this occasion he was immediately rebuked, said Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary. (Another member of the board confirmed his account.)"Mr. Trump, with all due respect, the only way to get into heaven is by accepting Christ's atoning sacrifice for your sins, and accepting him as your personal savior," a pastor interjected. Trump quietly agreed and quickly moved on, according to people on the line. Perhaps without knowing it, Trump had stepped into one of Christianity's oldest fault lines: faith versus works. Protestants like the evangelicals on Trump's board stand firmly on the "faith" side. No amount of good deeds will save your soul, they say, if you don't assent to the proper Christian beliefs. Catholics and other Christians mostly agree, but also say that faith without works is dead. Even some evangelicals now say the pendulum has swung too far in the "faith" direction, with many Americans claiming to be Christians while refusing to demonstrate Christian behavior. The Book of Bernie: Inside Sanders' unorthodox faith In the new book "You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit," James K.A. Smith, a Christian philosopher, tries to rescue the ancient notion that we are defined by our daily dispositions, routines and disciplines. Rather than sequester "religion" as something we do on Sunday, Smith argues that our habits -- he calls them "liturgies" -- form "grooves in our soul." "The patterns of your life tell you a lot about your priorities," Smith said. The late writer David Foster Wallace sounded a similar theme in "This is Water," a commencement address he gave in 2005. "Everybody worships," Wallace said. "The only choice we get is what to worship." Smith was reluctant to pass judgment on Trump's Christianity. He suggested, instead, taking a look at Trump's daily routines, something Smith calls a "liturgical audit." As it happens, Trump's book, "The Art of the Deal," published in 1987, opens with a "Week in the Life" of its author. Back then, Trump was 41, mildly famous and unconsumed by the crazy fire of a presidential campaign. Trump writes that he wakes around 6 each day, reads the papers and arrives at his office around 9. From then until midnight he is on the phone or in meetings, mainly making business deals. "It never stops, and I wouldn't have it any other way." It isn't all business, though. Trump offers a friend political advice, takes calls from his children and helps raise money to save a farm from foreclosure -- a generous gesture that lands him on the evening news, he notes with satisfaction. In the book, Trump's week ends at 4:45 on Friday afternoon with a visit from David Letterman. Other than a dinner with the late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, there is no religion, no mention of God nor any hint of introspection. "I don't like to analyze myself," Trump told biographer D'Antonio, "because I might not like what I see." In recent years, Trump has said that he attends church occasionally, on Christmas, Easter and "special occasions," but that he is too busy on most Sundays. He is no longer a member of Marble Collegiate or First Presbyterian in Queens, and it's hard to picture him sitting through a service, or confessing his sins before a congregation, or listening, in quiet hours of Trump Tower, for the still, small voice of God. Trump puts his faith in work, and waits upon the whirlwind.

Victor Blackwell, Wayne Drash and Christopher Lett, CNN

2017-10-20 20:21:43

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/20/health/louisiana-toxic-town/index.html

Toxic tensions in the heart of 'Cancer Alley' - CNN

The EPA says this Louisiana town has the nation's highest risk of developing cancer from air toxins. The plant emitting the toxins says otherwise. Locals are outraged.

health, Toxic tensions in the heart of 'Cancer Alley' - CNN

Toxic tensions in the heart of 'Cancer Alley'

JUST WATCHEDEPA: Plant emits 99% of US chloroprene pollutionReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHEPA: Plant emits 99% of US chloroprene pollution 08:28LaPlace, Louisiana (CNN)Geraldine Watkins sits at the kitchen table in her ranch home, rattling off the names of friends and relatives in her small Louisiana town who've died of cancer over the last 40 years.Her grandchildren suffer an array of ailments, from skin conditions to breathing problems. Her 7-year-old great-grandson's breathing is so labored, she says, "you can feel his heart trying to jump out of his chest."Watkins lives in the shadow of a plant that spews chloroprene -- a chemical so toxic the Environmental Protection Agency says nearby residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from air toxins. "You gotta live here to try to breathe the air, drink the water, see the children so sick and watch people die," Watkins says. "Industry is wonderful to have, but if it's killing the people in the area that they live in, what good is industry?"Watkins is a worthy advocate, a 76-year-old great-grandmother challenging those in power. Her words are often punctuated by folksy aphorisms: "Nothing beats a failure but a try," she says.Read MoreAnd try she will. A town wants answers The town of LaPlace, Louisiana, lies along the Mississippi River, a stone's throw from Lake Pontchartrain and the Maurepas Swamp. It sits in the heart of an area that's become known by locals as "Cancer Alley," a vast industrial stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge where dozens of petrochemical plants dot the landscape. One sign posted by a local advocacy group warns the town's 29,000 residents that they are "more likely to get cancer due to chloroprene air emissions." The warning refers to the Denka Performance Elastomer plant at the edge of town, where a vast network of pipes and valves stand testament to industry. The facility looms over Fifth Ward Elementary School, where children run around the playground oblivious to the toxic emissions in the air. The Denka plant is the nation's sole producer of neoprene, the synthetic rubber used in everything from wetsuits to automotive hoses. It's also at the center of a battle over its emissions.The plant, formerly operated by DuPont, employs more than 200 workers and has been in this spot for nearly 50 years. The facility plays a vital manufacturing role as the nation's only producer of neoprene, a synthetic rubber that's found in everything from gaskets and hoses to fishing waders and wetsuits. But it also emits 99% of the nation's chloroprene pollution, according to the EPA. Chloroprene is the main chemical used in the production of neoprene. In 2010, the EPA determined that chloroprene is "likely carcinogenic to humans," meaning studies showed it likely causes cancer in people. The EPA has not set a legal limit for chloroprene emissions. But according to a May 2016 memo, federal regulators said the "upper limit of acceptability" for cancer risk was an annual average of 0.2 micrograms of chloroprene per cubic meter. Anything more than that would increase the risk of developing cancer, the EPA determined. Pollution linked to 9 million deaths worldwide in 2015, study saysResidents say they were largely unaware of the 2010 EPA finding. But in December 2015, the EPA updated its National Air Toxics Assessment map, which showed an elevated risk of cancer around the plant -- prompting Denka to enter into an agreement with the state of Louisiana to voluntarily reduce chloroprene emissions by 85%. Tensions in the community mounted after Denka representatives and state environmental officials briefed the public on the agreement. The town hall meetings may have been intended to reassure residents, but they only seemed to create more questions: Residents wondered why they weren't warned years before and said their complaints have been ignored. While Denka agreed to the voluntary 85% reduction, it disputes the EPA's 0.2 recommendation and insists its own research shows no connection between chloroprene and cancer. Denka is a Japanese chemical company that bought the plant from DuPont in 2015. Denka officials say the EPA based its cancer estimate on faulty science and have demanded that the EPA issue a correction. The company commissioned and submitted a study that argued chloroprene's classification should be changed from "likely carcinogenic to humans" to "possibly carcinogenic" -- and that the 0.2 guideline should be changed to 31.2, more than 150 times the EPA's recommendation.An EPA spokesman told CNN the agency is reviewing the company's complaint but indicated the science behind the agency's findings was solid.In the spring of 2016, the EPA installed six canisters near the plant -- including at the hospital, levee and two local schools -- to collect air samples. Every three days, the air quality is tested. The daily readings have been jarring -- 10 times, 50 times and 100 times the EPA's "upper limit of acceptability" for cancer risk. On one occasion last November, the reading spiked at the levee and tested 700 times the recommended cancer risk, according the EPA data. At the elementary school, the average concentration from May 2016 to August 2017 was more than 34 times the EPA's recommendation. "Our primary concern is with exposures over a lifetime," the EPA's spokesman wrote CNN in an email. "If the concentrations were to persist at current levels for a lifetime, there is potential for adverse health effects. This is why EPA and the state are working with Denka to reduce emissions."Exposure to air pollution before birth may shorten our lives Residents aren't satisfied with the 85% solution. They've rallied together to form the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish. Many wear T-shirts that read: "Only 0.2 will do."In June, 13 residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the plant, aimed at forcing the company to reduce emissions to meet the 0.2 EPA risk recommendation. Pollution from the facility, the suit alleges, is "sufficient to cause physical discomfort and annoyance to plaintiffs, who must often confine themselves indoors to escape the excess concentration of chloroprene emission.""In addition, the excess concentrations of chloroprene emissions lead to a reasonable and justified fear of cancer," the suit says.Plant manager: There is no cancer risk Sitting inside the facility, Denka plant manager Jorge Lavastida said the company is sensitive to the concerns of residents about air quality. "We want to be a part of this community. We want to be admired by this community. We want to have employees from this community," he told CNN. But he disputed the EPA on almost every point, citing the plant's own study and emphasizing the company voluntarily committed to the 85% emissions reduction plan at a cost of nearly $18 million. "It's our No. 1 priority," he said. The company has already finished two of the four projects included in the reduction plan. He said the company hopes to complete the other two by year's end, although the work is months behind due to unexpected complications. "We are fully committed and fully resourced to the projects," he said. Denka plant manager Jorge Lavastida says the company doesn't believe chloroprene causes cancer, but it committed to a plan to reduce emissions by 85%.Citing the company's own study, Lavastida added this about the safety of the chloroprene being emitted: "There is no relationship between chloroprene and cancer."Asked if that means the company believes chloroprene does not cause cancer, he said simply, "That is correct." He added he is "optimistic" the EPA will revise its 0.2 guideline soon.Lavastida said one of the projects already completed has reduced chloroprene emissions by 62%. "We know they're working," he said. The company maintains six air quality monitors of its own in and around the plant, separate from the EPA's. However, EPA data provided by the state to CNN showed something completely different: The air quality has worsened, not improved, at five of the six government testing sites over the last year. Asked about those readings, Lavistida said, "I don't know if I can explain that."Short-term health effects of being exposed to high doses of chloroprene range from headaches and hair loss to irritability and a rapid heartbeat, according to the EPA. It may also affect the liver, lungs, kidneys and the immune system. Long-term exposure can lead to respiratory problems, skin issues, chest pains and neurological problems, in addition to an increased likelihood of cancer, the EPA says.Statewide cancer rates are not specific enough to capture whether the incidence is higher in the areas around the plant. That's because cancer rates are calculated for entire parishes, not at a more local level.The current data for the parish doesn't show a higher rate of cancer among the parish's 44,000 residents; in fact, it has one of the lowest rates in the state -- a figure that company and state officials use to defend their efforts. But more precise data may soon be available. A new state law requires the Louisiana Tumor Registry to track cancer cases by ZIP codes and census tracts to help determine whether certain areas within parishes are more prone to cancer.'Filling us up with poison' Robert Taylor III grew up near the plant and was in and out of the hospital with kidney problems throughout his youth. He moved away after high school and had no problems for more than 20 years. But six months after moving back, Taylor says, his kidneys failed. Sitting at his kitchen table, he points across the street: "Husband and wife died from cancer." Then, he waves his hand toward another home: "Husband died of cancer. Both of his sons got cancer.""These people are filling us up with this poison," he says of the plant. Long-time resident Robert Taylor has suffered an array of kidney problems since youth. His daughter, Nayve Love, needs an oxygen machine to help breathe several times a week. Taylor is part of the class-action lawsuit against Denka. He joined on behalf of himself and his daughter, Nayve Love, who suffers breathing problems and needs to use an oxygen machine several times a week. His father, who founded the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, is also a plaintiff."We're not just going to sit around and let them push us around," Taylor said. "They don't have any compassion for human life. My little girl is 10 years old. She's innocent." Wilma Subra is a chemist and long-time environmental activist in Louisiana. She's been keeping close tabs on the Denka plant and has helped advise the citizens' group.She said she's appalled at how state officials have seemingly turned a blind eye to the pollution."They have dismissed the issues and concerns of their citizens here in St. John the Baptist Parish," she said. "Meanwhile, the citizens are continuing to breathe the air with chloroprene every single day.""If we do not continue to push the company to put on (additional) control technologies to reduce the chloroprene levels," she said, "the people will continue to be exposed." State environmental boss: Ignore EPA figureChuck Carr Brown, the secretary of Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality, says he tries to straddle the line between industry and the people he's committed to serving. His agency's mission, according to its website, is "to promote and protect health, safety and welfare while considering sound policies regarding employment and economic development."At a heated public meeting last December, he told residents that much of the cancer concerns were overblown and the situation wasn't anything comparable to the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint, Michigan. "It's not like there's a smoking gun somewhere in St. John Parish," he said. Brown praised the plant's commitment to reducing emissions by 85% with what he called the "best available control technology." "We're going to monitor for at least another year, and we should start seeing these numbers start trending downward," he said.Mom: I remember the days when my children couldn't breatheDuring the meeting, he dismissed the EPA's 0.2 cancer guideline on chloroprene emissions. "That's not a standard," he said. "That's just a guidance." Adding to the tensions between residents and his agency, Brown called vocal residents around the plant "fear-mongers." In an interview with CNN, he said, "I don't want to repeat that." "I'm not going to say I regret using the term. I just felt like I could've used a different term," Brown said. He also expressed frustration that "everybody seems to ignore" data put out by his agency. "At this point, there is no reason to believe that there is any undue risk or exposure to the folks in St. John Parish," Brown said. "If that changes, then we'll be the first ones to take immediate action."He again dismissed the EPA's 0.2 guideline. "It never was an enforceable standard," he said, "and it's still not an enforceable standard." He said his agency hopes to use the new technology being installed at the plant to set a standard for chloroprene emissions -- and not be hamstrung by the 0.2 EPA guideline. As head of the state's environmental organization, he said, "I wanted to enter a working relationship with the company in order to install what we call the best available control technology.""That's why I've tried to tell everyone: Detach yourself from that number and let's work toward a solution that involves the best available control technology." "But if that's the guidance," CNN asked Brown, "why not be guided by it?"Brown stood his ground, saying the new technology would be used to set the standard, not the EPA's 0.2 figure. "To artificially target a number that you can't legally enforce," he said, "it actually makes no sense."He rejected suggestions he was following the company's lead. "That's not what we're doing," he said. "It's not like you just turn a valve or are working with LEGO pieces. We're talking about large piping, large tubing, rerouting and engineering."CNN asked Brown why tests of the air quality have shown more toxins this year, rather than dropping as he pledged back at the December meeting. "We'll show you some data that refutes that," he said. "You'll get a spike. But when you start looking at the average over a month, it's really trending downward."His detractors, he said, should look at the data provided by his agency to "see the real facts." He paused and spelled out the word, "F-A-C-T," adding that "everything else is just somebody's theory."CNN did look at the facts provided by Brown's office after the interview, and it confirmed what we already knew: That the toxicity in the air recorded by the EPA was worse in June 2017 at five of the six testing sites than it was in June 2016 despite the improvements at the plant. In her humble ranch home a little over a mile from the plant, Geraldine Watkins bites her tongue when told of Brown's comments. She says some words aren't meant to be repeated.Geraldine Watkins says the plant needs to change its ways: "You gotta live here to try to breathe the air, drink the water, see the children so sick and watch people die.""My tongue gets blue, but I can control it," she says. She was at the December meeting when Brown addressed the crowd. His comments back then filled her with rage: "If eyes could kill, I would have cut him to death that night." Join the conversationSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.She mulls over Brown's latest remarks, thinking about her great-grandchildren's unexplained conditions. "This is horrible," says Watkins, who is not part of the class-action suit. "If you don't live in the area, you can say anything and everybody is supposed to believe that."She wants clean air to breathe, for everyone in town -- and for herself. "Let me live," she says. "Whatever time I have left, let it be decent."

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2016-09-23 22:21:48

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/us/islamerica-secret-costs-islamophobia/index.html

The secret costs of Islamophobia - CNN

Islamophobia didn't start on 9/11. It's rooted in one of America's oldest prejudices -- and it's more dangerous than you think.

Islamophobia, Muslim, Donald Trump Muslims, Islam, us, The secret costs of Islamophobia - CNN

The secret costs of Islamophobia

(CNN)With Adele's song "All I Ask" playing in the background, a Maryland teenager opened her computer and wrote an emotional letter to President Barack Obama. "I am an American, I grew up here. I say the Pledge of Allegiance every day," Aleena Khan told the President. "And yet, I am a Muslim."Which one, she asked, is she allowed to be? IslamericaThis series explores the lives of Muslims in the age of ISIS and Islamophobia.Aleena is 17, with a bright smile and dark hair that sweeps across her shoulders. Her mother is Indian-American, her father emigrated from Pakistan. Aleena and her two sisters have lived in Maryland their whole lives. Last year, as part of an honors research project on identity crises among Muslim-American teenagers, Aleena spent hours online combing through public comments on news articles about Muslims. What she read shocked her. Read More"Kick them all out and put the rest in detainment camps. Enough with the PC feces," said one commenter."The only peaceful and moderate Muslims are the dead ones," said another.The tweet from the man wearing military camouflage was the worst, Aleena said. "Hard to tell what we should build first. A border wall or a gas chamber for Muslims."Aleena sat on the floor of her room, stunned. These people were talking about her mother, her father, her sisters, her cousins, her friends. They were talking about her. If it were just one comment, she could ignore it. But there were so many. "This is what people think about me?" she wondered. "If I go out and say I'm Muslim will my friends still be my friends? Will people like me anymore?"She texted her best friend, Haley, telling her what people were saying about Muslims. People are ignorant, Haley answered.It's difficult to measure a sentiment such as Islamophobia, the word for hatred and fear of Muslims. But it's also hard to escape the idea that living in America today is like watching comment sections spring to lurid life. The anti-Muslim rallies, the vicious hate crimes, the racial profiling, the threats and taunts and questions about divided loyalties.Scholars say Islamophobia seems to surge after attacks by Muslim extremists and during presidential campaigns, when candidates pledge to get tough on terrorists, often by singling out Muslims. This week, a Muslim man was charged with detonating bombs in New York and New Jersey and another was accused of stabbing 10 people in Minnesota. Shortly after, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump urged local police officers to profile "suspicious" people, "like they do in Israel." "Do we really have a choice?" Trump said. "We're trying to be so politically correct in our country, and this is only going to get worse."Even before the recent attacks, American Muslims say they live under a dark cloud of suspicion. In 2014, they surpassed atheists as the country's "least accepted" religious group. An estimated 3.3 million Muslims live in the United States, and between September 11, 2001 and the end of last year, 344 have been involved in violent extremism, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. That number does not include attacks from this year, such as the shooting at an Orlando nightclub by Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people.Still, violent extremists are outnumbered nearly 10,000 to 1 in the United States, which means that Omar Mateen is not the norm. Aleena Khan is. Aleena graduated from Northwest High School in Germantown, where she gave tours to guests, was a member of four honor societies and ran the Green Club with her friend Haley, helping the school earn Green Ribbon environmental status -- "a nationally recognized thing," she says with a smidge of satisfaction. One of the few clubs she didn't join is the Muslim Student Association, though she regularly reads the Quran and attends religious classes and Friday prayers at a local mosque. "I didn't want to separate myself from the rest of my classmates," she said. In her free time, Aleena has tutored young children, interned at a Christian clothing website and volunteered for a company that helps poor and abused women sell handmade wares. This fall, she began her freshman year at George Washington University in Washington, where she plans to study public policy. She hopes, one day, to improve the foster care system, a goal inspired by a recent documentary. But being a Muslim in America hasn't been easy, Aleena says, even before the recent rash of Islamophobia. There's the annual Ramadan challenge, which means skipping lunch with classmates and fasting from water during the dog days of summer. She's doesn't wear shorts, tank tops or bikinis, though many of her friends do. Dating is discouraged, and her parents forbade her from attending the school prom. Friends tried to cheer her up, insisting the dance wasn't that fun, but Aleena saw the pictures, and it sure looked fun.If Aleena were an Orthodox Jew or conservative Christian, she might yield to similar restrictions and feel like she was swimming against a cultural riptide. But few would question her American identity or allegiance. Aleena wrote her letter to Obama on February 3, the day of his first visit to an American mosque as President, a date many Muslims believe was too long in coming. She thanked Obama for his faith in Muslim-Americans. It was like an oxygen tank, she told the President, allowing her to breathe a big sigh of relief. But even with Obama's encouragement, Aleena held some doubts. Will other Americans really accept her, especially when the country seems so anxious and angry?"Muslims live in fear that they will be attacked," she wrote in her honors project. "Americans live in fear that Muslims will attack them." After submitting her letter through the White House website, Aleena felt silly, believing no one would read it. She deleted it from her computer and forgot about it. Aleena Khan presents her research on Muslim American teenagers at a Maryland school fair.'So what? They're Muslim' Most Americans don't actually know any Muslims -- at least, not personally. More than 6 in 10 have seldom or never had a conversation with a Muslim, according to a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute. Most Americans also say they know little (57%) or nothing at all (26%) about Islam. Those numbers have barely budged in 30 years, even after 9/11, two American-led wars in Muslim-majority countries, local and national outreach campaigns by Muslim mosques and organizations, dozens of terrorist attacks worldwide, high-profile congressional hearings and copious media coverage of Islam. All of which suggests that Americans are not just widely ignorant about Islam and Muslims, they are also oddly incurious. Few things are more frightening than ignorance in action, to paraphrase a German poet. Muslims have been shot and killed, execution-style, in their living rooms and outside of their mosques. They have been fatally stabbed on their way home. They have been beaten in their stores, in their schools and on the streets. They have been kicked off airplanes, egged outside Walmart, scorched with hot coffee in a park, shot in cabs and punched while pushing their children in strollers. Their clothes have been set on fire and their children have been bullied. Men have come to their door and told them that they would burn down their house if they did not move away. They have been fired for wearing hijabs and for praying. They have seen their cemeteries vandalized and their Quran desecrated. A Muslim congressman has received death threats, and business owners have posted signs advertising "Muslim-free zones." Heavily armed men have protested outside mosques in Texas and Arizona, arguing that it's their patriotic duty to protect the country from Islam.People have covered the doors of a mosque with feces and torn pages of the Quran, left a severed pig's head outside a mosque, firebombed mosques, urinated on mosques, spray-painted the Star of David and satanic symbols on mosques, carved swastikas and crude drawings of penises into signs at mosques, set fire to mosques, threatened to blow up mosques and kill "you Muslim f****," fired rounds from high-powered rifles into mosques, wrapped bacon around the door handles of mosques, left hoax bombs and fake grenades at mosques, threatened to decapitate congregants at mosques, sent suspicious substances to mosques, written notes saying, "We hate you," "We will burn all of you" and "Leave our country" to mosques, rammed a tractor-trailer into a mosque, thrown bricks and stones through the windows of mosques, pelted Muslims with rocks as they left mosques and stood outside mosques shouting, "How many of you Muslims are terrorists?" Mourners in Raleigh, North Carolina, grieve the shooting deaths of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill in 2015.American Muslims have been told that a mosque, unlike churches and synagogues, cannot serve as an election polling station. Dozens of communities have fought to keep Muslims from building mosques in their neighborhoods, sometimes threatening violence.From 2001 to 2015, there were 2,545 anti-Islamic incidents targeting 3,052 Muslims, according to the FBI. Last year, Anti-Muslim hate times surged 67%, reaching a level of violence not seen since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and many Muslims believe hate crimes are underreported by victims and not pursued vigorously by police and prosecutors. This year, the FBI has begun counting anti-Arab incidents as well. Politicians have claimed that 85% of mosques are controlled by Islamic extremists and that Islam is a political system, not a religion, and thus not protected by the First Amendment. They have threatened to "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line" and pledged to bar Muslim refugees from the country. They have sanctioned spying on mosques without warrants and the racial profiling of Muslim communities. They have accused Muslims of launching a "civilizational jihad" and called Islam a "cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out." They have shut down schools over lessons on Islam and called innocuous school materials dangerous propaganda. More than 30 states have considered bills to "protect" their civil courts from Islamic law, and nine states (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee) enacted the bans. They have said Muslims cannot be president of the United States. They have said Muslims should not be here at all. Challenged about Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, his spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, said, "So what? They're Muslim." A coterie of well-funded pundits and self-proclaimed experts encourage Americans to fear all Muslims and the "creeping" influence of Islamic law in the United States. They cast Muslims as "enemies among us," Trojan horses for an insurgency that will topple the republic and conquer its citizens. Even many liberal politicians, while insisting most Muslims are peaceful, only mention Islam when speaking about national security and countering violent extremism."Islam is not thought of as American religion," said Zareena Grewal, a professor of religious studies at Yale University, "however much Muslim-Americans wish that to be true." In 2011, more than half of American Muslims under 30 said they had been treated with suspicion, called offensive names, singled out by law enforcement or been physically threatened in the preceding year alone, according to a Pew Center report. Asad Tarsin, a writer and doctor, lives in California with his wife and three young children. "I know that they will be integrated in America and fully accept their American identity. My question is whether America will fully accept them." 'The Mohammedan world' Islamophobia didn't start on September 11. It's intricately entwined with America's oldest idea: that this land is, and should always be, a white Christian nation.Well before the Pilgrims landed in "New Jerusalem," Columbus had set sail on a mission to find riches to retake "old" Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. Centuries later, when Colonists sought to unite the states, anti-federalists railed against the Constitution. Nothing in the new document, they fumed, would prevent a Muslim (or a Catholic) from becoming president. The first Muslims to arrive en masse came in chains. Scholars estimate that some 10,000 to 20,000 slaves from West Africa were Muslims. A few were granted preferential treatment because they could read and write Arabic, and looked "whiter" than other slaves. They were paraded across the country like prized pets, until they started advocating for their emancipation. "Such is the bloodthirsty, tyrannical Mahometan negro, who is now travelling himself and suite, up and down through the free states in pomp, with the President's passport in his pocket," snarled one Southern newspaper about a Muslim slave freed by President John Adams.Within a few generations, African Islam was extinguished, snuffed out by plantation owners who converted their slaves to Christianity. In the 1880s, Muslim immigrants from the tottering Ottoman Empire began to arrive. Before they were allowed into the country, they were required to sign oaths swearing that they owed no loyalty to the empire's Sultan. Even then, most were not allowed to become citizens. The United States was committed to the idea that its future depended on its identity as a white Christian nation, said Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, author of "A History of Islam in America." "The presumption has been that all Muslims are considered suspect until proven otherwise."The Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed only "free white persons" to become US citizens. After the Civil War, "persons of African descent" were added to the list. By the classifications of the era, most Muslim immigrants were neither. Laws passed in 1917 and 1924 made it even harder for Asian and Middle Eastern Muslims to immigrate and become citizens.In 1942, a Michigan judge denied a Yemeni man's case for citizenship. Apart from the man's dark skin, he ruled, it was "well-known" that Arabs "are part of the Mohammedan world ... and a wide gulf separates their culture from the predominantly Christian peoples of Europe." Those Christian peoples, of course, trace their religious roots to the Middle East -- the very region the judge deemed irremediably "Mohammedan." By that logic, Muslim immigrants argued, Jesus himself could not be an American citizen. The judge was not persuaded. Even Muslims born and raised in the United States were considered suspicious, especially if they were not white. As thousands of blacks embraced new, Islam-inspired movements such as the Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam in the mid-20th century, the FBI kept a nervous watch."Though it did not produce peer-reviewed scholarship," writes scholar Edward Curtis, "the FBI was by far the most prolific student of Muslim groups in the first half of the 20th century." The FBI's report on the Nation of Islam fretted that black Muslims demonstrate "fearless and outspoken anti-white, anti-Christian attitudes. ... As long as racial inequity continues, the militant and arrogant manner of cult members remains a potential threat of violent action." In 1965, the United States eased immigration restrictions, opening the door to nearly 3 million immigrants, many economic refugees from countries with sizable Muslim populations.Today, no one knows exactly how many Muslims live in the United States. Obama said there are nearly 7 million, then corrected himself and said 5 million. Many scholars estimate between 6 million and 8 million. Most media cite the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's estimate of around 3.3 million.Pew says that number will climb past 8 million by 2050, when Muslims will become the second-largest religious group in the United States, a surge driven by immigration, large families and the relative youth of American Muslims (their median age in 2010 was 23). Even in 2050, though, Muslims will only make up 2% of the US population. Islam is the only American religion without a majority race or ethnic group. Muslims living in the United States come from 77 different countries, according to Pew. About 30% describe themselves as white, 23% as black and 21% as Asian. Likewise, every strand of religious commitment is represented here, from puritanical Salafis to mystic-minded Sufis to Muslims who rarely pray or visit mosques. While many Muslims praise the diversity of their American community, in practice it has made it difficult for them to forge a group identity or rally around common causes and national leaders. More than half of men and 42% of women said no national Muslim group in the United States represents their interests, according to a 2011 Gallup poll. Instead, Muslims have often retreated into ethnic enclaves, hired imams from their homeland and disengaged from the broader culture. Three-fourths of American mosques are dominated by one ethnic group, whether it be Arab, South Asian or African-American, according to a study conducted in 2011. In the last five years, many American Muslims have worked to make their mosques more diverse.Still, even Muslims born in the United States have idealized Islamic institutions and leaders overseas, particularly in the Middle East, viewing them as more authentically Muslim. In a strange way, it's as if they agreed with those who argue that Islam is a faith foreign to America.Even top Muslim scholars and spokesmen have felt the lure of that idea. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is co-founder of Zaytuna College in California, the country's first accredited Muslim college. Yusuf, who is white, converted to Islam in 1977 and soon thereafter left the United States to study with Islamic scholars in the Middle East and Africa. When he returned after a decade overseas, he felt lost, spiritually and emotionally. "I had no context for being an American Muslim," he said. "It was almost like abandoning my American-ness." Living in 'the grayzone' Before he went on his murderous rampage at the Pulse nightclub, Omar Mateen googled Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. He might have been seeking Yusuf's religious guidance; he might have wanted to kill him. In its online magazine in April, ISIS listed Yusuf among 21 "obligatory targets" for its followers to "make an example of." It was the second time the terrorist group had threatened Yusuf's life. Yusuf said he likely angered ISIS by preaching a sermon in 2014 in which he called them "stupid young boys." More than 540,000 people have watched the sermon on YouTube in English, and many more in other languages. ISIS' antipathy toward Yusuf goes beyond any one sermon. It also knows he is one of the few Muslim leaders with credibility to challenge its message to Western Muslims: You don't belong there. Come to the caliphate where you can live as a true Muslim. "This revival of the Khilāfah gave each individual Muslim a concrete and tangible entity to satisfy his natural desire for belonging to something greater," ISIS said in a recent edition of Dabiq. In the same edition, alongside interviews with ISIS fighters, articles praising "martyrs" and gruesome photos of its beheaded and burned victims, ISIS argued that Muslims in the West are living in a "grayzone." The terrorists' goal is to divide the world into two camps: "the crusaders" and "the caliphate." No Christians living in Muslim lands; no Muslims living in Christian countries. "Grayzones" are areas where Muslims practice their religion peacefully in non-Muslim countries. ISIS wants to eliminate these zones, in part by turning non-Muslims against their Muslim neighbors. Each terrorist attack chips away a little more grayzone, as Westerners marginalize Muslims, pushing them, ISIS hopes, into the caliphate's open arms. "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the (caliphate), as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands. ..."Most American Muslims reject that message, but a few are inspired by it. According to a study of 101 Americans charged with ISIS-related crimes, half were born in the country and most were citizens. Most were men under 30, one-third had converted to Islam. The vast majority expressed dissatisfaction with living in the United States, and 90% reportedly said they wanted to join the caliphate, perhaps heeding the call to surrender their lives to a larger cause, no matter how violent or quixotic. "Overall, there is a sense of identity crises and alienation from society across a wide range of cases," the report says. "Anxieties over not fitting in, examples of personal isolation and social anger are frequent." Those anxieties are often exacerbated, if not incited, by Islamophobia, said Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a social psychologist at Stanford University who has studied radicalization among young American Muslims. American Muslims who felt hopeless, rejected and insignificant because of anti-Muslim discrimination were more willing to support extremist groups and causes, according to a study Lyons-Padilla led last year. "ISIS would love to make all Muslims believe that the West is anti-Islam," the psychologist said. "When American politicians and citizens spread anti-Muslim rhetoric, be it through discriminatory policies or online trolling, they send the message that Muslims aren't 'real Americans' and that being Muslim is something to be ashamed of. In other words, they're basically helping ISIS recruit." Counterterrorism officials agree. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, retired US Army Gen. and former CIA Director David Petraeus said he has grown increasingly concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States. "As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive," Petraeus said. "Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable -- a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged."The number of American Muslims who radicalize is small, especially when compared with other Western countries, said William McCants, director of the Brookings Institution's Project on US Relations with the Islamic World. Law enforcement experts estimate that about 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, far fewer than the thousands who have flocked to Syria and Iraq from countries such as France and Belgium. "I would argue that American Islam is doing something right in contrast to these other countries," McCants said. Most American Muslims are integrated and feel content with their lives, in sharp contrast with many Muslims in Western Europe, according to the 2011 Pew Center report. Nearly 90% speak English fluently, and more than 8 in 10 are citizens. Most say they see no conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society. Still, 81 Muslim-Americans were associated with violent plots in 2015, the highest annual total since 9/11, according to the Triangle Center. Omar Suleiman, a popular cleric who lives in Dallas, said he has sparred with young Muslims attracted to ISIS' black-and-white theology. Often, they are first- and second-generation immigrants who have grown up with some discrimination and "a whole lot of other-ness and awkwardness," he said. They are angry young men, frustrated with dead-end careers, irked by clerics who refuse to address controversial topics and incensed about the suffering of Muslims overseas in the Palestinian territories and Syria. "When they find that people aren't addressing their concerns in an authentic way, they fall prey to Internet radicalism," Suleiman said. "They become disconnected from the mosque and disconnected from the American Muslim community." A Donald Trump supporter holds up an anti-Muslim poster near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.Aleena's answer Several months after submitting her letter to the President, Aleena received a call from the White House. Naturally, she thought it was a prank. On the line was Asra Najam, who works in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. She said members of the Obama administration had read Aleena's letter and been touched by her honesty. Najam wanted to know if she could post it on the White House's Tumblr.But there was another reason Najam was calling. Najam's family emigrated from Pakistan when she was 4, moving to a Detroit suburb. She was 10 when the 9/11 attacks occurred. She remembers the comments people made about Islam in the aftermath, how she felt guilty just for being Muslim, how that feeling lingered for years. "I was that 17-year-old-girl, like Aleena. I was lost, confused, unsure of how my identity fit into the broader American picture."But I definitely didn't have the courage to write the most powerful man on the planet about it," she said with a laugh. Najam said she still struggles with her identity as an American Muslim, even though her desk looks out on the White House lawn, the country's most prestigious piece of real estate. She didn't know any Muslim women when she started looking for jobs in Washington, and she was terrified. Now she writes letters on behalf of the President. Aleena's letter led to an invite to an Eid celebration in July at the White House, where she and Najam met in person. They snapped a picture in the ornate East Room and bonded over Adele, whom Aleena mentioned in her letter to the President. Obama himself gave a short speech that afternoon, while Aleena, her mother and a family friend stood yards away, straining for a closer look among the 400 guests and the smartphones craned upward to record the moment.As he had in his visit to the mosque in Baltimore, Obama praised American Muslims, calling them an "essential part of the fabric of our country." But he also said he gets "heartbreaking" letters from American Muslims who tell him that they are anxious and afraid, especially now. He said he had a special message for the young people in the room: "We see you, we believe in you." "And despite what you may sometimes hear, you've got to know that you're a valued part of the American family, and there's nothing that you cannot do."It was an answer to Aleena's question: Which one am I allowed to be? Both, the President said. How can she be both? Aleena says that's a question she -- and all American Muslims -- have to answer for themselves. She offers only one bit of advice: Speak up. You never know who might be listening.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2017-01-24 09:01:32

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/24/health/nebraska-trump-obamacare-aca-eprise/index.html

Where Trump support and Obamacare use soar - CNN

Grant County, Nebraska, has the highest rate of Obamacare enrollees in the US. It also voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. A disconnect? Not to residents.

health, Where Trump support and Obamacare use soar - CNN

Where Trump support and Obamacare use soar together

Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryMain Street in Hyannis, the Grant County seat, features a small handful of businesses, including a grocery store, a bank, a restaurant, a bar and a health care clinic that is open only one full day a week.Hide Caption 1 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryMerla Hebbert, 85, was born into a family that has ranched in Grant County ever since her granddad settled here. As a little girl, she rode her favorite horse, Rat, to school by herself -- as far as 8 miles each way. Hide Caption 2 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryTom White, 71, is a county commissioner. He says younger people are returning to the area. "They found out life on the other side wasn't so sweet after all," he says. Hide Caption 3 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryA couple times a month, people pull into the center of Hyannis with truck beds full of dead coyotes, which are a nuisance to ranchers. A buyer comes in from out of town to inspect and purchase the animals for the fur trade. Hide Caption 4 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryAmanda White, 42, left, and Montica Haney, 44, work at the deli counter in the gas station. Haney's husband is employed by the railroad, so their family insurance is covered, a rarity in Grant County. White says she's on Obamacare only to avoid paying penalties. The government, she says, "feared us into it." Hide Caption 5 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryBill Baker, 59, is the veterinarian in town and focuses as much as 90% of his practice on cows and calves, the rest on horses, dogs and cats. He likes living in a place that's quiet and where residents don't need to be entertained. "People don't mess with you," he says. "You live your life." Hide Caption 6 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryMarilyn Harris, 55, moved to Grant County from Palm Beach, Florida, 14 years ago, after she said she received a God-given vision that she would have cattle. She did, until a recent divorce. She runs a bed and breakfast in Hyannis, where she also feeds seniors. She is paid in flowers to feed a florist's mother. Hide Caption 7 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountrySharline Hayward Haney of Hyannis was the face of a Nebraska beef campaign starting in the late 1950s. This image is on display in the Grant County Museum, upstairs in the county courthouse. Her daughter-in-law is the county clerk. Hide Caption 8 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryPat Keslar is a retired bank president who says he could have left Hyannis to make big money but stayed to pursue his dream of raising hunting dogs and quarter horses. He was a Trump supporter from day one, shows off his vaulted safe full of rifles and ammunition and says, mocking Clinton, "I'm one of those deplorables -- and proud of it." With him is Jaws, a hunter retriever champion. Hide Caption 9 of 10 Photos: Welcome to Cow CountryLisa Jamison, 48, is serving her fourth term on the Hyannis area school board. She won the tittle of Miss Rodeo America in 1991 and competed in barrel racing, pole bending and goat tying. Hide Caption 10 of 10Hyannis, Nebraska (CNN) -- Deep in the Sandhills of rural Nebraska, where a two-lane highway curves between prairies and grass-covered dunes, there is a county full of surprises. It's home to Hyannis, a small village without stoplights, where fresh hot coffee is free, everyone waves and, in 1931, a news report named it "The Richest Town in America." Cattle are king and far outnumber people in this county, small children ride horses as comfortably as they walk, and John Wayne's loyal stunt man grew up here, ranching. Roping competitions and pie socials help neighbors in crisis, and people make extra cash selling truckloads of dead coyotes to fur traders. Life in Grant County, population 641, could not be more different than the gilded Big Apple existence long enjoyed by President Donald Trump. Still, it ranked among the top counties in the country supporting him in November; he got more than 93% of the votes here. And yet Grant holds another distinction: It's the county with the highest percentage of Obamacare enrollees in the nation.Read MoreOne in three residents, or 33% of the under-65 population, bought insurance on Obamacare exchanges, official data from a year ago show. The national average is just 5%, which raises the question: In a place so tied to the Affordable Care Act, why would people back the man who vowed to repeal it? Wouldn't that seem a vote against the community's own interests?"People may think we're slow," explains one man, "but we're not stupid." In their world, one they feel is overlooked by those in big cities or on the coasts, their actions make perfect sense. You can't possibly understand, they say, unless you've lived here. I set out to try. Breaking the newsJust mention politics to a group of men unwinding over gas station coffee and the insults come fast and fierce, political correctness be damned."The black bomb" is how one rancher describes Trump's predecessor. "This guy came out of the sewers of Chicago. How could he be good?" The rancher's not about to give his name to someone with the "Clinton News Network" -- what he calls CNN -- but he and his friends are happy to rail against the former administration. Obamacare is right up there on the list of things gone wrong, they say. The hands they extend for shakes are rough and callused, symbols of how hard people here work. They are self-sufficient and don't like being told what to do any more than they like taking handouts. They take care of themselves, and each other, and don't need government stepping in to muck things up.That their county leads the nation in Obamacare enrollees is news to everyone I meet. "If they're on it, they're not saying," one man theorizes. People are on it only because the government "put a gun to people's heads," offers another. And just because they're on it, they warn, doesn't mean they like it.No other choiceWalking through Hyannis, the county seat, I hear stories of skyrocketing premiums, deductibles that can't be met and brewing resentment. If people don't want to pay the penalty for not having insurance, which is taken out of the tax refunds they rely on, they're trapped. What they tell me might give pause to Obamacare experts, who say the Affordable Care Act is complicated, is hard to navigate and often leaves people misinformed about costs and choices. But these are the experiences and perceptions of how the law has played out in Grant County.Why some Nebraskans hate ObamacareLess choice. Higher premiums. Ideological opposition. These are some of the reasons so many rural Nebraskans may not be happy with their insurance under Obamacare. But there's also evidence the Affordable Care Act has helped rural communities like Grant County -- gains that could be erased with a repeal.READ MORESome have appreciated newfound coverage: With it, they were able to take care of longstanding problems, like the woman with a prolapsing uterus who could finally have a hysterectomy. But most people I meet complain that they're on Obamacare only because they have no other choice. Unless they work for the school, the county, the railroad or the electric company -- and the vast majority of people in cattle country don't -- these aren't Americans fortunate to be covered by an employer's insurance plan. Some might have been so lucky in the past, but that luck ran out when the Affordable Care Act came in, they say.Ginger Fouse curates the Grant County museum in the county courthouse. She's rushing to make a doctor's appointment in Alliance, 60 miles away and home to the closest hospital. Before she goes, she makes her feelings about Obamacare clear: "Nothing but horseshit." Fouse's husband is a ranch hand, and they used to get coverage through the ranch. But once Obamacare hit the scene, she says, the rancher believed everyone could take care of themselves. Only problem is, Fouse says, she and her husband can no longer afford the premiums. So they're now covered by nothing."We're not going to quit eating to pay insurance," she says before heading out the door.Ellen White, a museum volunteer, steps in to introduce me to the area she's always called home. She shows off aged photographs: the old town hall where they used to dance, images from the 1949 blizzard that wiped out cattle and snapshots from the first old-timer rodeo.Ellen White, 69, volunteers at the county museum and speaks proudly of the history and work ethic that shaped her and others. "We've gotten along in this world without anyone telling us what to do," she says. A man's barbed-wire collection is on display, as is memorabilia from the deceased military doctor who delivered White and countless other locals. The highlight, though, is a collection of keepsakes from the late Chuck Hayward, who took his horses to Hollywood and worked as John Wayne's stuntman. Included are action shots, the saddle Hayward used while filming in Afghanistan and wooden stirrups from a shoot in Chile. There's also a saddle said to have been used by Wayne himself during the filming of "True Grit." White, 69, describes a time she wishes younger generations would appreciate. She grew up on a ranch south of Ashby, an unincorporated community just west of Hyannis. She, like so many others, rode a horse to her country school.She had three older brothers, and if they told her she couldn't do something, she proved she could. She was able to drive a team of horses by age 5 and helped milk 12 to 15 cows every morning and night. Life was tough, but it made people who they are. They worked for everything they had.Sometimes she watches HGTV and is stunned by house hunters shopping for $500,000 homes."They'll pay on those houses forever and ever," she says. "We didn't buy anything unless you could pay cash for it." It's that sort of responsibility and practicality that courses through this ranching community's veins. Assessing life hereRoughly 150 ranches dot the county, most of them passed down through families. It's an area where the first homesteaders arrived in the 1880s, tried to farm and failed. The sandy soil worked against them but proved a sweet spot for cattlemen, who snatched up tracts of land. The ranches are private and sit far off the main roads, in some cases miles off, and are impossible to assess by driving past. Ask a rancher about the size of his land or his herd, and he'll keep those numbers to himself. The question is uncouth, explains Dan Vinton, a lifetime rancher and longtime county commissioner; it's like prying into a person's salary. "We have enough grass to feed the cows," says Vinton, 66. "We have enough cows to take care of the grass."Dan Vinton, a lifetime rancher and longtime county commissioner, knows that this life isn't for everyone. "It's pretty hard for the city person to adjust to the country lifestyle," he says. "You can't just jump into your car and go to Walmart." Over chicken-fried steak in the Hyannis Hotel Restaurant, one of a handful of businesses on Main Street, Vinton and fellow Commissioner Tom White -- who worked in the feed business and is married to Ellen, the museum volunteer -- regale me with their own stories of growing up in Grant County.They didn't have electricity till the 1950s, got up and went to sleep along with the sun and like to say they "had running water because you had to run and get it." They took Saturday night baths in the same water used by their siblings."We didn't know we were stinky little buggers because we all smelled the same," White, 71, says with a laugh. Life here has always made sense to them, no matter the challenges. When White needed chemo and radiation to treat cancer a couple months back, he and his wife simply rented an apartment near the hospital in Scottsbluff, more than 100 miles away, for five weeks. They'll travel to Denver for his upcoming surgery.They aren't city folk and don't want to be. Vinton drives that point home when he admits he and his wife have cell phones only so they can find each other when they get separated in the Walmart, which is well over an hour from home. Vinton's son works at the family ranch and is on Obamacare. His folks and the Whites aren't on it themselves, but they look forward to the day when it's abolished. They hear people complain about rates rising and call the program "ridiculous." Not wanting to be dependentA 31-year-old woman sits in the restaurant beside her towheaded boy. To her, Obamacare is maddening, and she unleashes her frustration. She's a college grad who does her research. When she and her husband got married, they picked out a policy and were happy. But then, Obamacare changed everything. They could no longer afford the private plan they liked. The number of companies she could choose from on the Obamacare exchange dwindled; only two choices exist today. They switched to one company only to see it get absorbed by another. They watched their premiums and deductibles increase, along with out-of-pocket expenses. They've been on four plans in two years. She's married to a rancher, and in ranching, it's hard to estimate how much a person will earn each year. When cows sell high, ranchers do well. But, as in any market, the numbers fluctuate. One year, her family might make $20,000; another $50,000, she says. Financial uncertainty makes planning a crapshoot.A stunning thing happened, though, when she got pregnant with her son. Suddenly, she was told she qualified for Medicaid, a notion that made her Republican head spin. "I want to be responsible for myself. I don't want to be dependent," says the woman, who didn't want her name used. "But you priced me out of what I did to take care of myself and forced me into government assistance."Pregnancies only last so long, though, and she doesn't meet the Nebraska Medicaid qualifications for parents. That means she's back to fretting about what this year's premiums will be. "I have to get knocked up," she says, half joking, half disgusted. "Mama needs dental care." Fans turned foesAcross the street in the grocery store, I spot Clarissa "Casey" Sanchez working behind the counter. She was a fan of Obamacare at first.Paying $50 a month for herself was both doable and a source of comfort for the 30-year-old employee.But then she got married. With their combined gross incomes, she says, her monthly premium jumped to more than $600, and they make too much to qualify for Medicaid. Her husband has his own private policy, but she says she can't join it because she's pregnant. He bought the low-premium policy before Obamacare, and it doesn't include maternity coverage. Sanchez is determined to take care of herself but feels punished for trying. She's 13 weeks pregnant, scared and crossing her fingers."I'm going without insurance and hope Trump does something quick," she tells me.Nearby, working at a cash register, Julie Braun, 36, chimes in: "I got married to get off Obamacare." Julie Braun, 36, says she was so disappointed in Obamacare that she got married to get off it.She, too, once enjoyed low premiums -- just $30 a month -- only to see them soar. She needed two ankle surgeries last year, and with a high deductible, copays, therapies, braces and boots -- which aren't covered -- she says she's staring down a $20,000 bill she can't pay. She makes $9 an hour and even with her husband's salary plans to file for medical bankruptcy. Though Braun and her husband had intended to marry at some point, they moved up their wedding date by a couple years. He teaches in the school and has good benefits, and that was all she needed to rush down the aisle. 'A scam and racket'People here say they've had it with Washington and "mealy-mouthed politicians," the sort who speak pretty but say nothing, one local explains. This is why they backed Trump en masse. They like that he has a business record and trust that he can do better by them."The man didn't get rich as he is by being stupid," says one man who refuses to give his name but pulls me aside to tell his own story.He's 50 and has never paid for health insurance. He calls the health care system "a scam and a racket." When he had a cracked tooth not long ago -- the first dental problem he'd ever had -- the dentist told him it would cost more than $4,000 to fix. "For one tooth!" he exclaims. So he looked at the dentist and asked how much it would cost to pull out all his teeth and give him fake ones instead. It was half the price, so he came back with his checkbook and had every tooth yanked.He now says he's facing a stiff penalty for not having insurance, which enrages him. "I pay for my own medical, and now I have to pay for someone else's?" he says. "Don't get me wrong; I want to do my part. But when does my part stop?" 'Garden of Eden'The Sandhills Oil Company gas station -- just "the station" to locals -- is a popular gathering spot where people gab over coffee.Robin Jameson, 56, sits in the corner office. She moved here to oversee the station, one of several in a family business portfolio."It felt like home immediately," she says. She likes how people watch out for one another, donating propane and groceries to those in need, and she gives back in her own way. An old rancher strolls into her office, seeking help deciphering a credit card bill. Retired ranchers down the road visit whenever their grandson competes in out-of-town rodeos, so she can set them up on a computer to watch the live-stream.Woody Thompson sits in the station and over coffee talks about his "Garden of Eden."One of the regulars at a station table is Woody Thompson, 76. He landed in this area more than 60 years ago, when he came out of the Dust Bowl looking for work. He says he was brought here by "a drunk and a horse thief." For decades, he worked on ranches. It's been a life rich in independence and great neighbors, the sort who once kept reselling a white leghorn rooster to raise money for a friend dying of brain cancer. These qualities made even the toughest days worthwhile. Digging harnesses out of snow drifts, riding miles and miles in 30-below temperatures, the winter of '78-'79 when the ground never saw less than 3 feet of snow -- he wouldn't take back his time here for anything. "It might not be heaven, but it's the Garden of Eden," Thompson says.A heart problem eventually took him away from ranching. Twice a month, he drives 70 miles south to see his Denver cardiologist, who meets him in Ogallala -- the nearest town on the nearest interstate. (Locals like that the interstate runs through flat Nebraska, allowing them to keep their hills to themselves.)Thompson, who moved to Hyannis 15 years ago, hands over one of his business cards. He's now a traveling rep for a company that performs castrations. With a couple golf balls in a bag, he demonstrates how they're done.Like so many people in this county, he says that Trump's business know-how spoke to him -- even if he doesn't suspect that he'd like the guy personally."I have three daughters," Thompson says. "If Megyn Kelly had been my daughter, I would have beat the hell out of him."Respecting the lawA couple blocks uphill, in the old courthouse, I find Christee Haney. She's in her second term as county clerk and keeps official records in the same books and logs used by clerks in the late 1800s. When she was elected seven years ago, it was to fill multiple offices. In an area as rural as this, she's more than the country clerk. She's also the county assessor, the registrar of deeds, the clerk of the court and the election commissioner. Party registration doesn't dictate votes here, where 81% of registered voters cast ballots in November. She has 40 registered Democrats, she says, but only 20 people voted for Hillary Clinton. Haney's cousin is one example; she's a Democrat who voted for Trump and refused to back Obama, whom she never trusted. Haney, 54, considers the high rate of Obamacare enrollment in Grant County and offers this: People are abiding by the law, simple as that. "It's a matter of respect out here, and that's what we've all taught our kids," she says. Christee Haney, the Grant County clerk and more, writes in the same logs used in the late 1800s. The K-12 school in Hyannis, which serves several counties and has fewer than 150 students, is a source of pride here. The teacher-to-student ratio is 1-to-9, the principal tells me. Students are more than cowboys and cowgirls: They test above the national average, are given their own laptops, flourish in the arts and play sports that draw the community together. Parents who've raised kids here brag about them getting scholarships; one proud dad says his daughter turned down Stanford, MIT and Yale because she wanted to be a Cornhusker. She graduated from the University of Nebraska with perfect grades. People here may not have what big cities offer, but that suits them. When Haney takes a day to run errands in Ogallala, population 4,570, she finds the traffic and all the people exhausting.She and others here prefer this quiet life with wide-open spaces and fewer stresses. They aren't facing a drug epidemic and don't worry about crime. They leave their keys in the ignition and don't lock their doors. They don't have a homeless problem and don't fret about unemployment. If anyone wants to work, there's work to be had. The folks in Grant County wish people elsewhere would take responsibility in their own lives and stop blaming others for their problems. "People on welfare in big cities make more money not working than we do working," says one woman. She's not the only one I meet who believes this.Not wanting to go withoutIn a small house on the north side of the tracks, where the railroad carries coal from Wyoming and Montana, Terry Keys feeds and burps his 3-month-old son, Deacon. The baby shouldn't be this old. He was born two months early, when severe preeclampsia sent Terry, 34, and his wife, Trish, on an emergency trip to Lincoln at the end of October. Trish and Deacon had to stay there for a month until it was safe to bring the baby home. Terry, who helps drill and service wells, drove more than 300 miles each way to join them on weekends. Trish, the village's 37-year-old salon owner, curls up in the chair beside her husband and son and recounts an odyssey she's still processing. The couple, both Trump supporters, had been uninsured when Obamacare came along. The first year, they paid a penalty of $90. But fearing the prospect of steeper fines, they signed up. With the Affordable Care Act, they could purchase what had previously evaded them for about $150 a month. "It was reasonable, and we didn't have insurance before," Trish says. It helped them, she says, until it didn't.Trish Keys, with 3-month-old Deacon, is fighting to untangle how she ended up with a $104,000 medical bill for her son, who was born two months early. She'd been told their policy would cover Deacon and the exorbitant neonatal intensive care expenses for the first 30 days of his life "no matter what." But she says the insurance company stopped the family's policy without notice. Trish and Terry found out only when they stepped into a pharmacy in Lincoln for flu shots and were told they had no coverage.A panicked phone call later, she was told they qualified for Medicaid and should apply, which meant a flurry of paperwork and bureaucracy. After the trauma of having a preemie and being stuck in a city far from the world she knows, Trish came home to the stress of fighting a $104,000 bill. She still isn't sure who's responsible -- Medicaid or the insurance company -- and only knows she and Terry won't be able to pay it."There has to be a simpler way. I feel like they've overcomplicated everything," she says. "It's mind-boggling to me," she says before turning her gaze to her son, who finally weighs 9 pounds. "Now that this has happened, you don't want to go without insurance."She hopes to still be able to afford it. And like others in this remote heartland county, she trusts that her new president won't let her down.CNN's Sonam Vashi contributed to this report.

Story by Wayne Drash, CNN Video by Roni Selig, Al DiSanti and Priscilla Thompson, CNN

2017-09-07 10:16:46

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/07/health/conjoined-twins-go-home-main/index.html

The journey of bringing formerly conjoined twins home - CNN

Jadon and Anias McDonald, the once-conjoined twins whose separation surgery last year captivated millions, have returned home after nine months of rehabilitation.

health, The journey of bringing formerly conjoined twins home - CNN

The formerly conjoined McDonald twins' amazing journey home

Story highlightsJadon and Anias McDonald, once joined at the head, return homeThe twin boys underwent extensive therapy over the past nine monthsValhalla, New York (CNN)Nicole and Christian McDonald entered their boys' hospital room for a final time. In a corner room of Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, New York, Jadon and Anias had recovered for the past nine months of extensive rehabilitation after the surgery to separate the formerly conjoined twins. The two boys captivated millions around the world when they underwent a 27-hour separation surgery in October. The twins, who were 13 months old at the time, had shared 5 centimeters by 7 centimeters of brain tissue, making the complicated surgery that much more difficult.Jadon and Anias had known the world only from lying on their backs, and the surgery set them back to infancy in terms of speech and gross motor skills. In recovery, they learned how to use muscles they never knew they had. Just sitting up was a monumental task. Doctors feared that Anias might never be able to use his right side. Yet in rehab, he's begun using his right hand almost as much as his left. Read MoreTheir final day at Blythedale is one Nicole and Christian had dreamed of since before the surgery. The family transported their lives from small-town Illinois to New York in February 2016 to prepare for the procedure. The boys had been in the hospital almost constantly since then, first at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center, where the surgery took place, and then Blythedale. They turn 2 years old on Saturday.Gone are the fears of the surgery itself. The hour-long trips to the hospital. The longing to have their family under one roof. Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartAnias, left, and Jadon McDonald were born conjoined at the head, something only seen in 1 out of every 2.5 million live births. They were separated in a 27-hour surgery at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York in October.Hide Caption 1 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole and Christian McDonald talk with Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the family waiting area on October 13 as a team worked to separate Jadon and Anias. "When we sent them off this morning, to me, I felt at peace with it and just ready to handle what comes after," Nicole said.Hide Caption 2 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartDr. James Goodrich Goodrich, left, leads a surgical team as they prepared to separate the twins. "Failure is not an option," Goodrich told the team as they got started.Hide Caption 3 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartHide Caption 4 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartThe twins' surgery was Goodrich's longest craniopagus surgery. It's meticulous, tricky and complex: A single cut too deep can lead to catastrophic bleeding. Hide Caption 5 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartGoodrich's team worked more than 16 hours just to separate the boys, and each continued surgery individually afterward. Hide Caption 6 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNewly separated twins Anias, left, and Jadon in surgery at the hospital. Goodrich informed the family of the successful separation at about 3 a.m. October 14. "Well, we did it," he told them. When it was official, the room burst into spontaneous applause.Hide Caption 7 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartJadon recovers in the pediatric intensive care unit shortly after the surgery.Hide Caption 8 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartAnias returns to his room after his head dressing was changed.Hide Caption 9 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartJadon stretches his arms in his room within the hospital's pediatric intensive care unit. Anias rests in a nearby bed in the same room.Hide Caption 10 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartAnias, left, stares at Jadon for the first time since the surgery that separated them.Hide Caption 11 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald, right, and her mother, Chris Grosso, with Anias in mid-November. Anias had to have his skull cap removed due to infection, but doctors say they are still pleased with his recovery. Hide Caption 12 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartAnias, left, and Jadon lie in a red wagon at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center on December 13 as they prepare for the next stage of their journey, two months after their surgery.Hide Caption 13 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartThe family was headed to the hospital's banquet hall on December 13, where surgical and pediatric intensive care staff members were gathered for a farewell party.Hide Caption 14 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartDr. Oren Tepper, the twins' lead plastic surgeon, holds a thank you gift from the McDonald family presented to him at the farewell party.Hide Caption 15 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald holds Anias as his twin brother, Jadon, sleeps in the bed to the left. The twins' older brother, Aza, watches television at the hospital from one of the boys' beds shortly before they left for rehab.Hide Caption 16 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartJadon, left, and Anias McDonald look up at hospital staff as they leave their room at Montefiore Children's Hospital in New York. Their older brother, Aza, proudly sits at the front of the wagon. It was mid-December and they were headed to rehab.Hide Caption 17 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald pushes a stroller with Anias as her husband Christian pushes Jadon down a hallway on June 14 at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, New York, where the boys have been rehabilitating.Hide Caption 18 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartAnias plays with a toy while laying on a mat in his room at Blythedale Children's Hospital.Hide Caption 19 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartJadon eats small snacks and drinks from a sippy cup on his own, major progress since he first moved to rehab.Hide Caption 20 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald plays with her son Anias as Christian McDonald holds Jadon on a playground outside Blythedale Children's Hospital. Hide Caption 21 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald holds Jadon while looking over discharge information on September 1, as they prepare to leave the rehab facility and head home as a family for the first time.Hide Caption 22 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartNicole McDonald takes Anias into the family's new house for the first time with his older brother, Aza.Hide Caption 23 of 24 Photos: Conjoined twins separated: New life, apartChristian McDonald holds his son Anias as Nicole McDonald checks on Jadon at home with the family dogs, Taz and Tyson.Hide Caption 24 of 24Nicole lifted Anias from his hospital crib. "Are you ready to go?" she asked, cradling him close to her heart. Across the room, Christian picked up Jadon and told him that he'll soon "get to hang out at home.""You get to ride in a minivan," he said. "You get to be a normal little boy."The boys were placed in a double umbrella stroller. Jadon sported a white helmet with a red Velcro strap; Anias wore a helmet with a blue stripe.Dad pushed their stroller down the hall. Mom and their 4-year-old brother, Aza, accompanied them. It was time to go home. Finally.'God works through people' The McDonald home teems with activity. Nicole and Christian purchased the home in foreclosure in the spring. Nestled in New York's Orange County, with views of the Catskill Mountains, it was in need of extensive renovation.Christian worked almost around the clock to get it ready for his boys, ripping off siding and tearing up old carpet. A few weeks ago, four guys from Texas who are affiliated with their church showed up to help. In just 2½ days, they built front stairs, installed siding, replaced windows, refurbished the laundry room and renovated a bathroom. Most important, they ran an electrical circuit to the boys' room to handle all of their specialized medical equipment. Anias will need a feeding tube, as well as a breathing machine and a suction machine to aid in his care. The family will eventually have home nurses for 16 hours a day.Saving the twins: Health scares and rehab for once-conjoined boysLess than 24 hours before the boys' return, the split-level ranch home seemed more like the site of a renovation reality show, with Christian burning the midnight oil to complete the work. Aided by his minister and two church members, he pulled up carpet in the basement playroom and laid tiles. On the wall, a quote from American philosopher and psychologist William James: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude." Upstairs, Nicole prepared a chili feast. She traveled back and forth between the hospital and home so much, it's rare to be able to cook dinner. She had to fight back to tears while slicing onions. The tears, she said with a laugh, are "not from the onions." They're for the overwhelming excitement at the idea of bringing Jadon and Anias home. Earlier, she'd walked through their room. Their newly assembled cribs waited to be occupied. "My kids have never been home separate," she said. "I'm so excited, I can hardly stand it. It feels like it's not even real. We've never been home and each held a kid. It's going to be awesome."Christian joined her in the kitchen to reflect on the monumental journey the family has been on for the past year. He said the boys have been in hospitals for so long -- nearly 1½ years, counting the months before the surgery -- that feels like, in a weird way, Jadon and Anias have been wards of the hospital and less his own children. "It's almost like I get to be a dad to them for the first time," he said. That's not to say he's not appreciative of everything the hospitals have done, from the surgeons at Montefiore who operated on them to the staff at Blythedale who worked tirelessly to get Jadon and Anias to this point. "I'm feeling pretty excited getting to hold my kids sitting on my couch and actually just hold one at a time," he said. "It's like I have my sons now, you know?"Christian and Nicole McDonald load their twins, Jadon and Anias, into the family van as they head home from rehab for the first time.The last time the boys were home, Jadon and Anias were still connected at the head. Any time their parents needed to move them, they had to carry them together in a carefully choreographed way. The family lived in a rental home in the Bronx. Now, they have their own home. They want to push the boys in strollers to the park. They want to take them to the local pizza joint. Simply put, they just want to be a family."I can't wait to show them the world," Nicole said.More than anything else, Christian said, "I'm just so excited for them. I'm sure they just want to come home and be with their family, and we want them to come home."Both parents express gratitude for everyone who has reached out to them and prayed for their boys. Devout Christians, the parents say their faith has sustained them during this arduous journey. "Times like this really shows us that it is God's help," Christian said. "God works through people."Added Nicole, "This strengthened my faith. If I didn't have God in my life, I would not have made it."A member of their church donated their minivan. Strangers generously gave more than $340,000 to the family's GoFundMe account -- money that has supported the family the past year, aided in the purchase of their home and helped pay off huge medical bills. The journey has in no way been easy. The months since the surgery have seen both boys stave off seizures and serious infections that resulted in trips to the intensive care unit. But the parents say they are prepared to handle whatever comes next. "We had miracle upon miracle upon miracle happen with these children to get them to where they are now," Nicole said. "We have our children coming home." 'Motivated' boys ready to tackle the worldThe boys' road to recovery was made possible thanks to the dedicated staff at Blythedale Children's Hospital. In additional to physical therapy, they received speech and occupational therapy five days a week. The boys will still return for three days of therapy a week for the foreseeable future.JUST WATCHEDA 360° look inside the operating room during the boys' surgeryReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHA 360° look inside the operating room during the boys' surgery 06:16Mara Abrams has worked with Jadon as his physical therapist and says his tenacity has been awe-inspiring. He loves books, he loves toys, and he loves life. She said he's learning to pull himself up on furniture and walking sideways along the furniture with a bit of help. He's nearly crawling, too. "The first step in a wonderful life is about to happen," Abrams said. "It's just so great that the hospitalization is over."Jadon's progression is nothing short of amazing, she said. It was difficult and intimidating when he first arrived because he'd only known life from lying on his back. "All of a sudden, the whole world changed for him," she said. "I know it took so much time for him to visually accept that the world wasn't meant for him to lie down, that he had to come into a vertical position and figure out this is what the world looks like."A collection of family photos hangs in the dining room of the McDonalds' home.But with help, Jadon took off. "Every day, he's always been a cheerful, happy guy. He throws his arms out; he squeals with delight. He loves going to therapy. I'm just so happy they're going to have real-life experiences."Her favorite moments are many, like the time he took a few steps toward his occupational therapist and grinned from ear to ear. Or the time he was on a tricycle working on reciprocal leg motion, and he suddenly saw his mom. "We started to go towards her. She squealed with delight, and he did. It was really wonderful."Anias has struggled the most, both before and after the surgery. With twins joined at the head, one tends to be more dominant. In this case, Jadon was the dominant one, whose body worked overtime to keep both of them alive. Anias has struggled with breathing and other issues, compared with his brother. Anias's body also rejected the skull cap that had been placed under his skin to protect his brain, and it had to be surgically removed. He will probably undergo another surgery for a new skull cap when he is 7 years old. Until then, he will wear a protective helmet.But Anias' gains have been tremendous too, according to his physical therapist, Maureen Carroll. Although he is a few months behind Jadon's progression, he has made giant leaps. When Anias first came to physical therapy, Carroll said, he was scared of people and using only his left side. Now, he's kicking both feet and routinely using his right hand to stick his foot in his mouth. He's become social with his twin and older brother. New life, apart: Rare surgery to separate brothers conjoined at headAnias, who eats via a feeding tube, is 4 pounds heavier than Jadon now, weighing in at 28 pounds."He wants to play. He wants to move -- and that's amazing," Carroll said. "The child who was afraid of people at first now wants to interact with the world. He's motivated, and that's huge."What excites her the most about Anias, she said, is that "he's excited to be here, and he's excited to move.""That's what makes my job so easy," she said. "I'm just going along for the ride. He's the one who is the hero and the miracle."Making the family whole The silver minivan pulled up to their home early Friday evening. Mom and Dad got out and prepared for the big moment. On the hourlong ride home, Jadon played with a ball while big brother Aza jabbered for much of the time. Both boys laughed and laughed. Anias was oblivious, asleep in his seat.The family dogs, Taz and Tyson, greeted the minivan to inspect the new arrivals. Taz, a tiny Maltese/toy poodle mix, leaped into the back of the minivan and sniffed around. His tail wagged at the sight of the two boys. Nicole gingerly carried Anias up the front stairs. Christian fetched Jadon and, on their way up the steps, pointed out his renovation handiwork to his son: new siding, stairs and windows. "I put you in a new window, Jadon, so you can have a clear view," he said. "This is it. This is your home."Nicole McDonald comforts her crying son, Jadon, who was frightened by the family dog.Soon, the home buzzed with the hectic life of raising three boys under the age of 5. Aza ran about. Taz began barking. The environment was completely new to the twins. Jadon trembled and cried every time Taz barked. The night before, the parents had talked of how they longed to sit with the boys on the couch. Join the conversationSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.With Jadon screaming, Nicole took a seat on the living room couch and held him. "This is your home," she whispered. "Don't be scared."His tears abated. A few hours later, Anias fell asleep first. Jadon soon followed. Both boys were asleep in their home.As much as Nicole and Christian dreamed of the moment, they said, it was even better than they imagined.Their family was whole again.

John Blake, CNN

2017-02-03 16:55:10

news

us

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/us/bishop-eddie-long-i-knew/index.html

The Bishop Eddie Long I knew - CNN

The late Bishop Eddie Long was a megachurch pastor whose career was derailed by scandal. I saw his rise and fall, up close and personal.

us, The Bishop Eddie Long I knew - CNN

The Bishop Eddie Long I knew

Atlanta (CNN)I was hanging out with Bishop Eddie Long one day when he decided to surprise me.He invited me to watch him work out. Wearing Air Jordans and a black Yankees cap turned backward, he walked into a gym and grabbed two 50-pound barbells. As he curled them, he watched himself in a full-length mirror."It helps in the board meetings," he said playfully, nodding at his bulging biceps. "In the old days the deacons ran everything, so the pastor had to come into the board meeting pretty buffed."I placed that scene at the start of my profile of Long for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was a story about a preacher on the cusp of greatness. It was 1999; Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church would soon swell to 25,000 members, and he would become an internationally known televangelist who would meet with presidents and foreign leaders. This was a decade before his ministry was derailed by accusations that he pressured young men into sexual relationships.But there was an odd encounter in the gym that I didn't include in the story because it was too risqué.Read MoreBishop Eddie Long working out in 1999, just as his church was about to flex its muscles on the national stage.As I watched Long banter with a group of young men in the gym, I spotted a woman who was a member of his church. She was a friend of mine who happened to be there working out as well. She noticed the quizzical look on my face as I watched Long flex with his entourage and approached me with a wry smile."What do you see?" she asked me, nodding in Long's direction. "What do you see?"I didn't know what to say back then, but I do now. I'm not sure how many people would want to hear my answer, though -- not just because of what it would reveal about Long, but about all of us in the pews.I thought of that moment in the gym recently after hearing that Long died. The funeral for the 63-year-old pastor was held last Wednesday at New Birth after he succumbed to what his church called an "aggressive form of cancer." He is survived by his wife of 27 years, Vanessa, and four children.At the funeral, Long was eulogized as "one of the 21st-century generals of the kingdom of God." I remember him another way. He was the pastor I wrote about for close to 20 years. My relationship was an accident of geography. I was a religion reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where I was assigned to cover him. I lived near his church and knew many New Birth members. I talked to him so frequently that he gave me his cell phone number.He was a phenomenally gifted leader: funny, charming, audacious. Only now do I also realize how smart and innovative he was. His generosity was legendary. He bought people homes and cars and steered them through dark patches in their lives. Few people helped as many as he did.It would be a charade, though, to ignore the other part of Long's legacy. Some of his most important lessons didn't come from his victories but from his mistakes.Here is what I saw:He was God's CEOHere's a dirty little secret about so many pastors: They like to preach to large crowds, but they don't particularly like being around them. Most of the pastors I meet are bookish introverts. I recall watching one pastor smile and hug his parishioners -- and then later tell me they got on his nerves and had bad breath.Long, though, was different. I never met a pastor who seemed so energized by being around people. I lived near him, so I would often see him stopping at a gas station or walking through a shopping center with his entourage. I would hear about him speaking at a local high school. He was once a concert promoter for funk groups like Kool & the Gang. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when he once told me that one of his hobbies was "people watching."Yet people loved to watch Long, too. Part of that was because of the distinctive message he preached and the way he embodied it.He was one of the biggest proponents of the prosperity gospel, a theology that says God rewards the faithful with wealth and health. He saw himself not just as a pastor but as the CEO of an international spiritual corporation. And he embodied his message by driving around town in his Bentley and dressing in tight muscle shirts in the pulpit.Wealth, Long said, was a side benefit of "saying yes to God.""It's strange, but when a preacher gets a Bentley, people get mad," Long wrote in his book, "What a Man Wants, What a Woman Needs." "That's why I have two of them. God has launched me into my culture like an arrow, and I'll go to almost any lengths to plant the kingdom in the 'hoods."But when you build your ministry on financial prosperity and physical vigor, what do you do when it's gone?Long's reputation, along with that of his church, had collapsed by the time of his death. New Birth used to hum with energy. Long lines of cars flying New Birth's purple banners snaked outside its entrance Sunday mornings. The church seemed to be everywhere in the community, offering ministries to drug addicts, prisoners and AIDS patients. It was more than a church; it was a movement.JUST WATCHEDBishop Eddie Long's fall from grace (2011)ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHBishop Eddie Long's fall from grace (2011) 03:06Yet when a church is built around a charismatic leader, there's no Plan B when that leader is compromised. That's what happened at New Birth. A series of scandals surrounding Long culminated in 2010, when four young men filed suit claiming he used his spiritual authority to coerce them into sexual relationships. Long denied the allegations and publicly vowed to clear his name. He later settled out of court with his accusers.Church attendance plummeted. Three Sunday services were reduced to one. The televangelists, celebrities and gospel music stars who once clamored for a spot on the pulpit next to Long vanished. People weren't flying New Birth car banners anymore.Then last year rumors began to spread that Long was ill. He lost so much weight that he released a video last August telling followers he was on a new vegan diet. He was shockingly gaunt but tried to project an image of vitality by doing curls in a gym.A month later, the story changed. He admitted through a church spokesman that he faced a "health challenge." The mystery about his health followed him to the very end. When he died, the church refused to be any more specific than saying he had an "aggressive form of cancer."Who am I to say how anyone should face a terrifying illness? Sometimes hope is all people have; let them believe what they want if it helps them get through the night. But there was something undeniably sad about Long not being able to level with those at New Birth who'd stuck by him when everyone else had fled.I suspect some of that inability comes from the prosperity theology he preached, which is pervasive in contemporary churches. I've heard scholars call it a heretical belief that distorted the life of Jesus. I think it fails on another level:It doesn't equip people to deal with loss.If you preach that wealth and health are a sign of God's favor, what do you do when you begin to lose both, as Long did? That's the question one woman explored in a remarkable essay on death and the prosperity gospel.Kate Bowler is a Duke Divinity School professor and author of "Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel." She recently learned she had Stage 4 cancer. When people in the prosperity community heard of her diagnosis, she said, they didn't know how to respond. They had been taught that if they follow certain rules and speak aloud positive thoughts, "God will reward you, heal you, restore you," she wrote in a New York Times column last year entitled, "Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me."Bishop Long with his wife, Vanessa, during the pastor's 50th birthday celebration in New York City. "The prosperity gospel holds to this illusion of control until the very end," Bowler wrote. "If a believer gets sick and dies, shame compounds the grief. Those who are loved and lost are just that -- those who have lost the test of faith. There is no graceful death in the prosperity gospel. There are only jarring disappointments after fevered attempts to deny its inevitability."In some of Long's last sermons, you could see him bravely fighting to live on. He thanked people for calling him to find out if he was ill but told them, "I don't want to rehearse facts." He playfully told his congregation they were just seeing different versions of him: "Big Eddie, skinny Eddie, bald-headed Eddie."I wonder if he ever felt he could appear before his congregation with all of his frailties -- and just be Eddie.He was God's anointedI still remember the day Long glared at me as if he wanted to punch me in the face. It was the angriest I'd ever seen him. My relationship with him would never recover.I was writing a story about a charity he had created. It was nonprofit and tax-exempt, and its biggest beneficiary was Long himself. Formed ostensibly to help the poor, the charity provided Long with the use of a million-dollar home, a $350,000 Bentley and at least a million dollars in salary over a four-year period.It was a sunny weekday when I drove to New Birth to meet with Long about his charity. The church's massive parking lot was empty. I could see Long's Bentley parked in two handicapped spots that were the closest to the church. When I walked into New Birth, I was first greeted by a gargantuan portrait of Long in the church lobby. Long waited for me in a conference room, flanked by two lawyers and two publicists.I soon realized he had devised a strategy. He was not going to say anything. Whenever I asked him a question about his charity, he would motion to an attorney who answered with a torrent of legalese. Long simply sat back in his chair, glared at me and said nothing. I didn't want the story to be a bloodless examination of tax policy, so I asked him: How can you drive around in your Bentley when you have people in your congregation who can't even pay their light bills?That's when he sat upright and looked at me.Did they worship the message or the messenger? New Birth members prepare to hear Bishop Eddie Long."We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," he said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. ... You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."After the story appeared, everyone seemed to talk about that quote and the Bentley. Yet when I interviewed New Birth members for the story, it was clear no one knew about the charity or how Long had used the church's money -- nor did they care.This is what I realized:It's easy to talk about unscrupulous pastors who get rich off of unsuspecting congregations and have absolute power. But we don't talk enough about how some megachurches may be accomplices in that process. Members often don't have a clue how their money is handled or how decisions are made.I discovered this pattern at New Birth and plenty of other megachurches during 20 years of writing about religion. I marveled at how bright, educated people parked their brains -- and their cars -- in the church lot every Sunday morning. They wanted to be herded like sheep.Long exploited that. He was a savvy operator when it came to amassing church power. His father, the Rev. Floyd Long, was known as the "cussing preacher," a pugnacious man who built churches and left after clashing with the deacons -- those members who traditionally ran Baptist churches.Long wasn't going anywhere when he arrived at New Birth in 1987. He conditioned people to not question his authority. Then he got rid of the church's deacon board. He told the church he had received a revelation from God telling him a deacon board was an "ungodly governmental structure."Unquestioning submission to authority became a recurrent theme in his preaching and books. In "Gladiator," Long warned parishioners not to get overly familiar with a pastor who is "God's anointed" because "their insurrection kills their blessing.""A disrespectful or adversarial attitude causes otherwise good people to look for mistakes, weakness and flaws in their human leaders," he wrote.Why do people accept such autocratic leadership in a church? Part of it is fear, a woman whose church imploded after a scandal once told me."There is a suspension of common sense, a refusal to put two and two together," said Sue Thompson, an author and professional speaker. "For a lot of people, [the pastor] is the man who gave them the keys to a whole new way of living. They can't separate the good they received from the man himself, so they feel it would be a betrayal to turn on him now."But I think there's something else going on besides fear, particularly when this type of autocratic leader emerges in the black church.When I grew up in a black Baptist church in Baltimore, my congregation was poor but the pastor drove a Rolls Royce with a water fountain inside. I still remember how my aunt would talk with such pride about our pastor's car.In the black community, the pastor was often the only person who didn't depend on white folks' goodwill for their livelihood. He made his money through the support of his parishioners. Most parishioners felt poor and powerless, so they wanted to live vicariously through their pastor. They wanted that pastor to live large, have a huge ego, occupy the biggest house. I still remember "Rev. Ike," a flamboyant black pastor who used to rule the pages of Jet magazine. He thrilled many poor blacks with his ostentatious lifestyle and declarations like "My garage runneth over." Yet a leader can exploit that type of need. Even when that leader is tarnished by one revelation after another, if he remains defiant in public and displays a little "I'm not perfect" humility, a congregation will stick with him to the bitter end. And nobody will be able to persuade them to leave that church.I remember talking to a woman at New Birth who claimed there was nothing to the lawsuits by the four young men who claimed Long pressured them into sex. Maybe she was right. I then asked her if she would be willing to let her teenage son go on a field trip with Long.She looked at me in horror.Last I heard, she's still a member of New Birth.He was God's scarred leaderWhich brings us back to the encounter I had in the gym with Long years ago. Whenever someone learns that I've written about Long, they ask me about his sexual orientation. Many assure me they already have an opinion. That's what I encountered years ago when I went to the gym with Long. The woman who approached me wanted to share her conclusions on Long's sexual proclivities.I don't know if Long was gay or how he died. Those kinds of questions, though, ignore another important point about Long and sex: The way he talked about homosexuality was destructive, whether or not he was closeted.The Rev. Bernice King confers with Long at her mother's funeral. Lots of pastors preach homosexuality is a sin. Yet they and their churches still find a way to treat with respect those struggling with their sexual orientation. Like many churches, New Birth once offered ministries to "deliver" gay and lesbian people from their "sin."The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, called Long "one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement." The center said Long's message was: "Hate the sin and the sinner." The center quoted from an early sermon Long gave entitled "Back to the Future.""It's the most unattractive thing I have ever seen, when I see women wearing uniforms that men would wear, and women fighting to get in the military," Long shouted to his congregation. "The woman gets perverted to turn towards woman ... and everybody knows it's dangerous to enter an exit. ..."God says you deserve death!"According to the center, Long said gays and lesbians who don't change will go to hell -- and that those who say they were born that way are calling God a liar."Homosexuality and lesbianism are spiritual abortions," Long says. "Homosexuality is a manifestation of the fallen man."In his book, "I Don't Want Delilah, I Need You," Long blamed some women for turning men into homosexuals."In a society where little boys are exposed to grubby, cursing, dirty, cigarette-smoking, road-construction-worker women, is it any wonder they stop chasing women and start chasing men?"In the same book, he wrote that "men can look attractive when they're dirty.""We see sweating, dirty, hardworking men on television all the time and we say to one another, 'There's a macho guy.' But women were not made from the earth. God made women to be lovely, gentle, clean and beautiful on the inside and outside. They are to be strong in character."He did more than use harmful words against gays and lesbians. He invoked the legacy of black America's most revered leader to deny their equality.One of the most notorious controversies Long faced came in 2004, when he led a march in Atlanta calling for a constitutional ban against gay marriage. He carried a torch lit at the gravesite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while accompanied by the civil rights leader's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King.Long was a former concert promoter who knew how to make Sunday morning worship entertaining.The march was widely denounced by those who knew King, like Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Joseph Lowery. They pointed out that one of King's closest aides was Bayard Rustin, an openly gay organizer who King refused to abandon when people pressured him to do so.Consider how many people Long could have helped had he moderated the language he used against gays, says Shayne Lee, a sociologist at the University of Houston and author of "Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace." "Think of all the people who were suffering, who wanted to serve God, who wanted to tap into that spiritual power but were wrestling with their sexuality," Lee told me after Long's death. "Their angst is deepened by the very leaders they respect."Long was not always insensitive in the pulpit. He could be tender toward outsiders and achingly vulnerable. I remember watching him tell his congregation he thought about taking his life after he had experienced so much public condemnation. He once told me he thought of himself as "God's scarred leader," a man who knew rejection by his father and had been through divorce and career failure.Yet it would be another failure on our part if we ignored the scars that Long inflicted on others. He wasn't unique, and neither was New Birth. The religious landscape in America is filled with megachurches, prosperity theology and pastors who continually remind their cowed congregations to "touch not God's anointed."What do I see when I look at the rise and fall of Bishop Eddie Long?I see something that will happen again.

Moni Basu, CNN

2017-06-05 01:28:55

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/04/us/understanding-the-h-1b-visa/index.html

Understanding why a visa can be so coveted and reviled - CNN

The H-1B visa was meant to bring the world's smartest people to America but that's not how it always works. Under Trump, the program faces fresh scrutiny.

us, Understanding why a visa can be so coveted and reviled - CNN

Why the highly coveted visa that changed my life is now reviled in America

(CNN)I did not arrive in America as a refugee or to join family already here. I owe the start to my life in this country to two things: my father's brilliant mind and a very special document. Daddy was a statistician renowned in his field of probability theory, and in 1975, Florida State University offered him a teaching position. We flew across the globe on Indian passports and gained entry into America with a visa called H-1, reserved for people such as my father who possessed distinctive skills.We later applied for permanent residency, my father went on to become a professor emeritus at FSU and in 2008, I proudly became a US citizen.The H-1 visa was designed to attract smart people who were considered the best and the brightest of global talent to fill the gaps in the US workforce. I am a direct beneficiary of that program. Without it, my own trajectory would have been very different.In 1990, the visa was reinvented as H-1B, and it boomed alongside the rise of Silicon Valley. Most H-1Bs are awarded to technology workers, though other fields such as science and medicine also benefit. And these days, almost 70% of the visas are awarded to Indian nationals. Read MoreWithout the H-1B program, argue its supporters, innovation is sure to suffer and America stands to lose its competitive edge. Look at any number of start-ups, and you're sure to find talented folks who reached America on an H-1B. Among that elite group is Mike Krieger, one of the founders of Instagram.But in recent years, abuses and fraud in America's largest guest worker program have surfaced. And now with Donald Trump in the White House, H-1B is facing fresh scrutiny.In April, Trump signed a "Buy American and Hire American" executive order that is part of his ambitious plan to restore 25 million American jobs. The President blames H-1B visa holders for stealing US jobs, and his order takes aim at the program. The visas, he said, "should never, ever be used to replace Americans." The criticism fits neatly into prevailing anti-immigrant rhetoric, even though H-1Bs are not for immigrants. And to be clear, many H-1B opponents say they don't support building walls or taking other measures to keep foreigners out.I read Trump's harsh words and wondered: How could a visa responsible for my own family's success come under so much fire? When did a perfectly legitimate guest worker system become so controversial? Who wins? Who loses? Has it really become bad for America?Intrigued, I decided to learn more about the H-1B visa.My conversations led me to other Indian Americans, and some of their comments surprised me. I reached out to a congressman from Silicon Valley, a CEO of a tech company who refuses to hire H-1B workers, and a technology worker who lost a fulfilling job and is running for Congress to change the system. I even spoke with an H-1B worker from my native India whose story I found heartbreaking.I learned there were no simple answers to my questions. What I do know is the H-1B visa has become a document coveted by thousands around the globe -- and reviled by just as many in the United States.A losing lottery?To understand how the H-1B visa system works, I called one of the nation's foremost experts on the subject: Ronil Hira.Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University, testified last year before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the impact of H-1B workers. He began with his personal story, one that is not unlike mine.He was the son of immigrants who left India in the 1950s to seek a better life. His wife's family also arrived in the United States on the same H-1 visa program as my father.The idea behind H-1B is the same as it was when my father obtained his H-1. It's still employer-sponsored and temporary -- the H-1B is good for three years and is extendable for another three. After that, the holder has to return home unless the employer sponsors him or her for permanent residency -- better known as a green card.Each year, US Citizenship and Immigration Services issues 65,000 H-1B visas to applicants with bachelor's degrees for "specialty occupations." Another 20,000 are set aside for those with master's degrees or higher from a US university. JUST WATCHEDH-1B visas by the numbersReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHH-1B visas by the numbers 01:16Those caps, mandated by Congress, were as high as 195,000 in the early 2000s, and many in the tech industry would like to see them rise again. "The single stupidest policy in the entire American political system was the limit on H-1B visas," Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, recently told an MIT audience. "A properly run company is really about having the best people."The demand for the visas remains high and the competition, intense.This year, on the morning of April 1, the first-come, first-served application process opened like the gates to a horse race. Four days later, it was over. The USCIS had received 199,000 visa petitions from employers -- way more than enough to meet the statutory caps. Because of the high number of applications, the visas are then allotted by lottery. That's where the trouble begins. If the intent is to get the highest-skilled workers to fill "specialty occupations," why is the government using an arbitrary method such as the lottery? Although everyone in the lottery is theoretically qualified, chances are some better-qualified applicants will lose out to those with less skill and experience.Another problem: Employers are supposed to seek a foreign worker only when they cannot find a qualified American for the job. But that's not how it works, Hira tells me.Large firms unfairly snag a chunk of H-1B visas by flooding the application pool. They include familiar names such as Google, Microsoft and Apple, but the biggest recipients are outsourcing companies like Cognizant and Accenture and Indian giants Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, the two top recipients of H-1B visas.Employers must make a good-faith effort to recruit an American worker for a position before seeking an H-1B visa, but they don't have to document their efforts. "The actual rules don't require companies to look for American workers and specialized skills," Hira says. "The definitions have gotten loose. Everything in the system is written in favor of the employers." The big companies have figured out how to play the visa game and take advantage of loopholes, Hira says. And the smaller companies, the ones that are more in need of specialized labor, are often out of luck.The main reason American companies hire H-1B workers through outsourcing firms, Hira says, is to save money. A whole lot of it. Employers are suppopesed to pay H-1B workers a "prevailing wage" based on the job and location. But Hira's research found that employers were recruiting H-1B labor at entry-level wages, not the average wage for specific jobs. Infosys or Tata can save a company up to $45,000 per worker every year, according to Hira's analysis.Read Ronil Hira's analysisIn 2013, for instance, Infosys snared almost 7,000 H-1B visas. The median wage it paid was $70,882, about $20,000 lower than a computer systems analyst in Rosemead, California. That's the home of Southern California Edison, a utility that replaced more than 300 American IT workers with H-1B workers employed by Infosys. Hira cites a compensation study that showed Edison IT specialists were earning an average annual base pay of $110,446.The lower salaries at Infosys and other outsourcing firms are still attractive to thousands of tech workers in India, who average only $6,000 a year and clamor for an opportunity to work in the United States.Neeraj Gupta came from India to America as a graduate student and then was hired on an H-1B by a Silicon Valley firm, which later sponsored his green card. Gupta went on to found his own tech company, which was ultimately acquired by an Indian outsourcing firm. In 2009, after witnessing the offshoring of jobs, Gupta began looking into solutions that would create American jobs in technology services."With respect to President Trump, there is truth in what he is saying," Gupta tells me. "The premise of the visa is accurate. The challenge is how it has been hijacked by the IT outsourcing industry."Hira, too, believes the good intent of H-1B has been overrun by corporations that cannot see beyond their profit margins. He was in favor of H-1B, he told the Senate committee last year. But it was imperative to fix a broken system. "High-skilled immigration has directly benefited my family enormously," Hira told lawmakers. Then, he issued this warning:"Thousands of American jobs will be offshored. Tens of thousands of American workers will have their wages depressed. And thousands of American students will be denied opportunities. That's one lottery American workers and students are guaranteed to lose."Laid off and forced to train his replacementCraig Diangelo lost big to H-1B.At first, he kept quiet, in line with an agreement he signed to not disparage his employer. But he was so incensed by the injustice at his workplace he could not stay silent. Not only did Diangelo, 65, lose his job to a less-skilled, lower-paid foreign worker, but he was forced to train his replacement or face losing his severance.Craig Diangelo lost his job at Northeast Utilities and had to train his replacement, an H-1B worker.He'd worked in information technology all his life, but the sudden job loss dimmed his future considerably. So much so, that Diangelo is now running for office. Frustrated by the inaction of lawmakers to reform America's guest worker program, Diangelo is running as a Republican to unseat Democrat Elizabeth Esty in Connecticut's 5th Congressional District. "I would like the law to change," Diangelo says. "You cannot bring over an H-1B worker to replace an American."Diangelo had always wanted to be a schoolteacher, but after finishing his degree in education in the mid-1970s he couldn't find a job. Instead he went to work for Travelers Insurance Cos. in Hartford, Connecticut. He began as a COBOL programmer, and his career evolved over the decades as the tech industry changed. In his last full-time position at Northeast Utilities in Berlin, Connecticut, Diangelo helped support the company's storage architecture. He made $130,000 a year."It was a wonderful job," he tells me. "It paid me well. I worked with a great group of people."That began unraveling when a merger with a smaller company led to changes in management. In October 2013, the new managers gathered the 220 employees in Diangelo's unit and bluntly announced that their jobs were going to Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services."Why were we not given the first rights to re-apply for our jobs?" Diangelo says. "Why was I not given the opportunity to go to Infosys and say: 'I would like to apply for this position?' "To make matters worse, Diangelo was told he would have to engage in "knowledge transfer" and train his Indian replacement."I was in complete disbelief," he says. "I gave my soul to this company. They had been good to me. It didn't make any sense."He was told his last day would be in December, but that was extended to March and then to May when his employers realized the replacement workers were not ready. They were not high-skilled employees filling a job for which no Americans were available, as was the intent of H-1B."They were lower-skilled workers," Diangelo says. "We had to train them from scratch. My replacement was making half of what I was making. And he had no benefits."I'd met Infosys employees when I visited the company's shiny Googlesque campus in Bangalore, India, several years ago. They told me how IT jobs had opened up opportunities, changed their lives. For the first time in generations, their families aspired to so much more in life. Tech companies are a point of pride in my homeland. The industry is the largest private sector employer in India and constitutes about 10% of the gross domestic product. Technology is a big reason why India arrived as a major player on the global stage.I knew there was a mad rush to apply for H-1B visas at Infosys and other outsourcing firms. But what I did not realize is that these eager Indians were putting Americans out of work.From Diangelo, I was hearing the ugly side of Indian tech. Northeast Utilities employees put up US flags in cubicles after realizing they would lose their jobs to H-1B workers.I contacted Infosys and Tata for comment. Tata did not respond. An Infosys spokesman told me the company was not granting any interviews regarding H-1B visas. He did, however, send me this statement: "We continue to invest in the local communities in which we operate, including hiring local American top talent, bringing education and training to our clients to shrink the skills gap in the US, and working with policymakers to foster innovation within states and across the country. It is our endeavor to help clients leverage the best US talent together with the best global talent."Diangelo says he found it humiliating, depressing even, that he had to stay on -- with his Infosys replacement -- at a job he knew would soon vanish for him. But he and his colleagues were older workers close to the top of their salary grades. He knew it would be hard to find employment elsewhere. He had few options.Diangelo trained his replacement in Connecticut as well as 11 other workers in India. The company, he says, recorded his webinars, and he guesses his training sessions have been used many times since his departure. This is how it sometimes works: Indian H-1B workers are brought in to replace workers here in America, but subsequently many of the jobs are moved offshore to India.Diangelo and his colleagues on the second floor of the Northeast Utilities building put up small US flags on their cubicles. As each completed a last day at work, a flag came down. Diangelo was the last. When he returned after a weekend to turn in his company badge, only his flag remained. Then, that, too, was gone. I asked for an interview with a manager at Northeast Utilities, now called Eversource Energy, and was sent a statement via e-mail:"Three years ago we made strategic changes to our IT department to support the merger of two companies and keep pace with changing technologies to better serve our customers," the statement read. "As an electric and gas delivery business, we did not have the internal capabilities to efficiently meet the growing technology needs of the larger, combined company." Eversource, said the statement, uses Infosys and Tata to perform some of its IT functions, and that employees such as Diangelo who were affected were offered comprehensive severance packages, career transition and training services and extended health care coverage.This has nothing to do with immigration. We have a bill out there that allows foreign workers to take American jobs.Craig DiangeloEversource is hardly the only US entity that has been accused of laying off Americans in favor of cheaper Indian labor. Employees at the University of California, San Francisco, had to train their replacements from an outsourcing firm. So did technology workers at Walt Disney World, New York Life, Toys R Us and Southern California Edison. And these are just the cases that have surfaced publicly because of lawsuits and employees such as Diangelo who risked losing their severance by speaking out.Diangelo says he holds nothing against his replacement worker from Infosys, nothing against immigrants. He blames the system that allows this to happen.This year, he watched as the H-1B application date of April 1 approached. He had counted on Trump to put a moratorium on the visas. But now, he says, 85,000 more foreign workers will arrive in the United States in the coming months."That means another 85,000 Americans will lose their jobs," he says."Every time I talk to my senators and congressmen, they say we need a comprehensive immigration bill," he says. "But these are two separate things. This has nothing to do with immigration. We have a bill out there that allows foreign workers to take American jobs."So he's running for Congress in hopes of making change himself. "The government needs to make changes to the H-1B program," he says. "Even the lawmakers who made this law say it has been hijacked."Diangelo is referring to Bruce Morrison, a former Connecticut congressman who sponsored legislation creating the H-1B visa system but is now a vocal critic.Several bills that aim to reform H-1B have been introduced in both the House and Senate this year. One of the co-sponsors of a House bill is Rep. Ro Khanna, an Indian-American from California's 17th Congressional District in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the heart of Silicon Valley.Again, I thought of my own family as I read Khanna's bio. He was born in Philadelphia to parents who immigrated in the 1970s from India. Because of his background and because he represents so many who work in the tech industry, Khanna has taken heat for his stance on H-1B.Please note: Ro Khanna, an Indian American politician funded heavily by NRIs, is championing restrictions on H1B: https://t.co/glRDDlYtLG— Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) March 3, 2017 Khanna tells me his Silicon Valley voters understand the need for reform. He says that as the son of immigrants, he understands the contributions of people who come from other lands. But their contributions cannot come at the expense of American workers."We need change so you don't have underpaid foreigners taking away American jobs," he says. "This bill is pro-immigrant and pro-American worker."At the end of my conversation with Diangelo, he tells me the Infosys H-1B employee he trained wanted to be his friend. "I couldn't allow myself to do that. I did not have hard feelings against him. But he was taking my job."Diangelo took early retirement; he did not want to transition into a new career so late in life and eventually found contract work in IT. Many of his co-workers, he says, are still unemployed. "We don't go out as much or give to charities," he says of himself and his former colleagues. "It has a downward spiral effect. A long-lasting one. It affects the morale of people."Every time he pumps gas at his local Costco, he looks up at the Eversource compound on a hill and thinks: My job is still there. Employees on the Bangalore, India, campus of Infosys, a tech giant that is one of the top recipients of H-1B visas.Growing demandOn a recent morning, I visit Monty Hamilton, CEO of Rural Sourcing Inc., a technology outsourcing company based in Atlanta. There are no H-1B workers here. It goes against the mission of the company, Hamilton tells me.Hamilton grew up in a two-stoplight town in Mississippi. When he chose vocation over location, he was forced to chase his dreams in a big city. He began his career with Accenture, another big recipient of H-1B visas, before taking the reins at Rural Sourcing in 2008. The company's goal was to find smart IT employees, not in foreign countries but in secondary US cities outside Silicon Valley: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Mobile, Alabama; Augusta, Georgia. "We do need to import some talent, but we need to do a better job in training the US workforce to get into this field that is changing so fast," he says.Though he won't hire H-1B workers, Hamilton says it's folly to think the visas can be done away with altogether.His fifth-floor office overlooks the campus of Georgia Tech. He tells me that all the foreign students who are about to graduate will be forced to go home unless they find employer-sponsored H-1B or other visas. "Why in the hell would we allow that?" Hamilton says. America has 500,000 tech jobs open today, he tells me. And only 43,000 students who graduated with computer science degrees last year, he says, citing Code.org. "How long does it take to fill a tech job? An average of 65 days. That tells me there is a shortage," Hamilton says.Whether or not there truly is a shortage is the subject of much debate, I discovered. It often depends on the interpretation of statistics.I read a petition that entrepreneurs including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook co-signed with educators, nonprofits and governors from both political parties urging increased computer science education. "There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year," the letter said.Read the petitionBut I also read an Economic Policy Institute analysis that found American colleges graduate 50% more students in engineering and computer and information science than are hired in those fields each year. Read the EPI analysisShortage or not, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted the number of technology jobs will rise from 3.9 million in 2014 to about 4.4 million in 2024. Part of the demand for tech jobs is due to the growing "Internet of things," including cloud and mobile computing. "Technology is changing fast," Hamilton says. "We do need to import some talent, but we also need to do a better job in training the US workforce."I leave Hamilton's office and come across a group of young Indian engineering students enrolled at Georgia Tech. They tell me they want nothing more than to stay here for a job. If they don't get one right away, they will go home and try to return with an H-1B visa. They talk about it as though it were a coveted prize, a ticket to success.JUST WATCHEDIndian official says H-1B visas bolster jobsReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHIndian official says H-1B visas bolster jobs 01:31'Techsploitation'For days, I ponder something Craig Diangelo told me. He realized his Indian H-1B replacement was also in a difficult position -- he had no idea he was going to America to take someone else's job. H-1B workers brought over by outsourcing firms often don't know the circumstances they are about to face. They, too, are part of an abusive system, say H-1B critics.The exploitation of Indian H-1B workers essentially amounts to indentured servitude, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting, which exposed what one worker called "an ecosystem of fear." Techsploitation: A True StoryIn a class-action lawsuit filed in California, H-1B workers described staffing agencies known as "body shops" that enticed workers to the United States and filed for their H-1B visas. Instead, when they arrived, the workers were huddled together in cramped "guest houses" and paid no wages until they were placed with a technology firm. H-1B workers described having to pay the staffing agencies, pay for travel to jobs in other states and falling into debt before they even earned a penny.Because H-1B visas are sponsored by companies, the employees are beholden to them. They risk losing their jobs and being sent back to India if they complain too loudly. "It's human trafficking. They are being bought and sold," says Jack "Jay" Palmer, a former Infosys employee who brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the technology giant in 2012 alleging visa fraud. Palmer accused Infosys of illegally using business visitor visas known as B-1 to fill positions in the United States. The B-1 visas are easier to obtain and have lower fees than H-1Bs and are intended for short stays to attend meetings and training sessions. The lawsuit led to a federal investigation, and Infosys eventually agreed to a $34 million civil settlement with the Justice Department.I catch Palmer on the phone as he's driving to the Atlanta airport for a flight to Washington. He says he's meeting with Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and a sponsor of the Senate H-1B reform bill. "I believe in the American dream. I have nothing against H-1B and green cards," Palmer says. "I just want to see the law enforced."India to Trump: America still needs our tech workersA few hours later, I get a call from an Indian man whom Palmer has been helping. He tells me he is from Hyderabad, another technology hub in India, and was sponsored for an H-1B visa by Tata Consultancy Services. He fears repercussions at his job in New York and speaks with me only after I agree to withhold his identity.He says he worked in India for a decade before he came to America on an H-1B and was "body-shopped." He was placed in a job with a published salary of $45 an hour, but after the body shoppers and the outsourcing companies take their share, he only makes about $29.The man is 45 and has a wife and two children -- 8 and 12. His expenses amount to about $5,000 a month, about $1,000 more than what he takes home. He has fallen into debt and no longer has the ability to climb out of it."We cannot save any money," he says. "I have $20,000 in credit card debt, and I owe $15,000 for my car.""Why don't you go back home to India?" I ask him."I do not even have money to buy tickets," he says. He says he feels lucky, though. At least he is not in a "guest house" waiting for work.Life, he says, goes on in limbo. He says he was promised sponsorship for a green card but was asked to pay a $25,000 fee he couldn't afford. I spoke with another Indian H-1B worker in Atlanta who has applied for a green card, but the backlog is so great for Indian citizens that it can take up to 10 years or more. Until then, H-1B workers remain tethered to their employers."My dream was to come to America, but I don't want to stay here with this kind of life," the man in New York says. "But I have no choice. I replaced American workers, but I am a victim, too." The man in New York is not alone. There are thousands of workers like him, Palmer tells me. Palmer and other H-1B reformers want accountability.They say US companies must be required to document their searches to fill positions with American workers. Employers must pay prevailing wages and be prevented from subcontracting or outsourcing H-1B jobs. Reform advocates are pushing for a system of government enforcement and oversight of the H-1B regulations, not one that is reliant on whistleblowers to expose abuse.Technology is here to stay. And it is changing at warp speed. The demand for smart talent is not going away. That's why even the biggest critics of H-1B are the most ardent backers of reform, not elimination.What I hear them saying is the system ought to work the way it used to, when my father obtained an H-1 visa. He was hired for a job he was uniquely qualified for, and he was compensated with a decent wage. No one wants to see Americans lose their jobs unfairly, and if my father were still alive, I know he'd be troubled by what I learned about the current H-1B program.I also know he would be heartened to see that some of the most ardent backers of visa reform are Indian Americans. After all, we are the ones who have most reaped the rewards of H-1B.

Moni Basu, CNN

2017-04-29 03:42:32

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world

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/world/indian-immigrant-nra-convention/index.html

From Gandhi to guns: An Indian woman at the NRA - CNN

Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.

world, From Gandhi to guns: An Indian woman at the NRA - CNN

From Gandhi to guns: An Indian woman explores the NRA convention

This story was first published in April, after the author attended an NRA convention. She reflected again on what she heard and saw this week after learning of the Las Vegas massacre on Monday, which was also Mahatma Gandhi's birthday.Atlanta (CNN)Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel. My childhood in India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things. The Indians may have succeeded in ousting the British, but we won with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.JUST WATCHEDTrump: Eight-year assault has come to endReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHTrump: Eight-year assault has come to end 01:07I grew up not knowing a single gun owner, and even today India has one of the strictest gun laws on the planet. Few Indians buy and keep firearms at home, and gun violence is nowhere near the problem it is in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely than an Indian to be killed by a firearm, according to a recent study. It's no wonder then that every time I visit India, my friends and family want to know more about America's "love affair" with guns. Read MoreI get the same questions when I visit my brother in Canada or on my business travels to other countries, where many people remain perplexed, maybe even downright mystified, by Americans' defense of gun rights.I admit I do not fully understand it myself, despite having become an American citizen nearly a decade ago. So when I learn the National Rifle Association is holding its annual convention here in Atlanta, right next to the CNN Center, I decide to go and find out more. in the exhibitor's hall at the #nraam2017 in #atlanta. #nra #guns @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 9:24am PDT My eyes open wide inside the vast and cavernous Georgia World Congress Center. I take in countless exhibits by the firearms industry and even check out a few guns. Among them are the Mossberg Blaze .22 semiautomatic Rimfire Rifle and an FN 509 semi-automatic 9mm pistol. I've never had the desire to own a gun. I try hard to experience the excitement of others who are admiring these products.Around me are 80,000 of America's fiercest patriots and defenders of guns. Many are wearing American flag attire and T-shirts with slogans like: "Veterans before refugees" and "God loves guns."Few people here look like me. Most appear to be white and male. Many view the media, including my employer, with disdain -- and they do not hesitate to let me know.I walk around with some trepidation, but I'm determined to strike up conversations. I begin with this question: "Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?"The answers are varied, but they center on three main themes: freedom, self-defense and sport. The first type of response is rooted in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows for the ownership of more than 300 million guns in America. How many other countries have the right to bear arms written into their very foundation? It's unique and because of that, foreigners often have trouble grasping it. Chris Styskal drove from #portcarbon, #pennsylvania, to the #nra convention in #atlanta. #donaldtrump is his favorite #president ever because of trump's support of individual rights and liberties including the #2ndammendment. "we don't want #government telling us what we can or cannot do," Styskal says. #nraam2017 #guns @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 8:46am PDT I meet Chris Styskal at a booth set up by the NRA Wine Club. Yes, a wine club for the almost 5 million members of the organization. "Eat, sleep, go fishing. Drink, sleep, go shooting. In that order," Styskal jokes. But then we get into serious talk. Gun ownership, he tells me, has its roots in the birth of this country. "George Washington's army fought off the British with rifles," he says. "They overthrew an oppressive government."His statement gives me pause. The gun laws in India stem from colonial rule, when the British aimed to quell their subjects by disarming them. Perhaps my Indian compatriots should consider the right to own guns from this perspective.Styskal, 41, earned a degree in psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and tells me the prevailing belief that gun owners are not educated is simply wrong. He owns a collection of rifles and pistols at his home in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, and last year he fired 100 rounds every week at a shooting range. He says the Second Amendment is about much more than the right to bear arms. It's about freedom."We don't want any government telling us what we can and cannot do." Brooke Clarke, aka #american #gun #chic, is a staunch defender of the #2ndammendment because "it means i can live my life without anyone overpowering me." #nraam2017 #nra #guns #atlanta #women #americangunchic A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 10:34am PDT It's a thought echoed by Brickell "Brooke" Clark, otherwise known as the American Gun Chic. She has a website by that name and also a YouTube channel. Both are bathed in hues of pink and dedicated to her recently formed passion for guns. I introduce myself to Clark as we await President Donald Trump's arrival at the convention. The darkened room is booming with NRA clips bashing everyone from Hillary Clinton to George Clooney."What would you tell my friends in India who say Americans are infatuated with guns?""I wouldn't say Americans have an obsession with guns," Clark says. "We have an obsession with being free." I ask what the Second Amendment means to her."It means I can live my life without anyone overpowering me," she says. "It makes me equal with everyone else."The great equalizer. I never thought of the Second Amendment in that way. Self-protection, I discover, is a huge reason many Americans own firearms. The #nra comes to the #atl. 80,000 expected. #guns #gun #gunshow #nraam2917 #atlanta #georgiaworldcongresscenter @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 27, 2017 at 6:33pm PDT Take Chloe Morris. She was born in Atlanta to Filipino parents; on this day, she's brought her mother along to hear Trump, the first sitting President to speak at an NRA convention since Ronald Reagan.Morris is 35, petite and soft-spoken, but she's fierce about her opinions on guns. "I'm 5 feet tall and 100 pounds," she tells me. "I cannot wait for a cop to come save me when I am threatened with rape or death." Morris was once opposed to guns. "Extremely opposed," she says.She earned a master's degree in criminal justice from Georgia State University. "I know the law," she says. "For me guns were not the answer."But a few years ago, a dear friend was assaulted in her own home in an upscale Atlanta subdivision. The incident struck fear in Morris. She would never let herself become a victim. She took shooting classes and became a Glock instructor. "I teach for free. I want women to be safe."I own 10 guns. I have a 14-year-old son. I started teaching him to shoot when he was 5. I'm a lifetime member of the NRA."She pauses, and her next sentence surprises me."I don't think I can even kill another person -- except when my life is in danger."In a way, I understand her position. My first real exposure to guns came after I embedded with the US Army and Marines to report the Iraq War. As a journalist I never carried a weapon, though soldiers coaxed me to learn how to shoot an M16. My conversation with Morris reminded me of a night when we came under threat, and the platoon sergeant placed a 9mm pistol on my Humvee seat. I refused to take it but knew instantly what he was trying to tell me. What if I were the last one alive? How would I save myself? Luckily, we were safe that night. But I've always wondered how I might have acted under a dreadful scenario. Scott Long and his wife DeeDee brought their son Brody and twin daughters Brinley and Aubrey to the #nra convention in #atlanta. They live out in the country in #piketown, #ohio, where they say they are 25 miles away from help if they are threatened. So they keep #guns to protect themselves. But they also enjoy #shooting as #sport. #nraam2017 @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 8:57am PDT Other NRA members I speak with also tell me they don't trust the police to arrive in time when they are in danger. Scott Long, 55, lives out in the country in Piketon, Ohio -- 25 miles away from the county sheriff. "The police can't be there all the time," he says, looking at his wife, DeeDee, and their three young children, whom he's brought along to the convention for a mini family vacation. Their son Brody, 9, has been shooting at the pellet range and is excited about his first 20-gauge shotgun. "Where we live, we can shoot in our backyard," says Long, who owns 25 guns and is enjoying checking out all the shiny new weapons exhibited here.Such remoteness, too, is alien to me. I grew up in a city that now brims with some 16 million people on a working day. Firing guns in my grandfather's garden would not have been a good thing. I think about all the space we have in America. So many of us live far from other human beings. Like the Long family. Perhaps isolation adds to the need to own guns. I move forward in my quest to know more. I hear gun proponents express a dislike for big government. They stress individual liberties over the collective. For people who live in more socialist countries, it's another obstacle to understanding American gun culture. there are many walls of #guns at the #nraam2017 in #atlanta. #nra #gun #atl @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 6:25am PDT Near a stairway emblazoned with a giant Beretta, I speak with Derrick Adams. He's a 32-year-old electric lineman from Nottingham, Pennsylvania. He describes himself as part black, part Puerto Rican and part Caucasian. "How many guns do you own?" I ask."Not enough," he replies.He picked up his first Glock when he was 22, and his first shot shattered a whole bunch of stereotypes."People look at guns as this evil tool whose job it is to kill," he says. "They're not at all that. They are about protection."Adams believes that if all law-abiding citizens were armed, crime would drastically go down. He tells me that Chicago would not have such a high gun homicide rate if good folks in the inner cities were armed to fight "thugs and gangs.""Stop looking to government to help us. They are not our parents," Adams says.Liberals in America who want more gun control, says Adams, want to keep minorities and poor people dependent on government. Gun control started after slavery ended and was a way to keep black people disarmed, he says."You idiots," Adams says, referring to all people of color. "It was invented to suppress you."He looks at me as though to say: You should know better.Again, I think of colonialism in my homeland and how the British passed strict gun control to keep Indians from rising up. Jaasiel Rubeck checks out scopes at the #nraam2017 in #atlanta. She is originally from #venezuela and believes strongly in the right to protect herself. She doesn't trust the #police in her #homeland and thinks #citizens should not depend on anyone else for safety. #nra #guns #atl @cnn A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 8:32am PDT Fighting tyranny and oppression is something Jaasiel Rubeck considers, too. The 29-year-old wife and mother from Columbus, Ohio, immigrated to this country from her native Venezuela when she was 6. People who live under authoritarian regimes should all understand the need to own a gun, she tells me.Rubeck's words remind me of a friend from Iraq who wished she could own a gun during Saddam Hussein's rule. After he was overthrown, she slept with an AK-47 under her pillow at the height of the insurgency. She has always spoken of her love-hate relationship with guns. She wants to protect her family, but she is tired of the eternal violence plaguing her land. She wishes now that every gun would disappear from Iraq. #trump addresses #nra supporters in #atlanta. #nraam2017 #guns A post shared by Moni Basu (@mbasucnn) on Apr 28, 2017 at 11:22am PDT What I hear from speakers at the NRA convention, though, is that a peaceful world is a utopian fantasy -- and that the need for guns will always exist. "The NRA saved the soul of America," says Chris Cox, the executive director of the organization.I leave the convention trying to reconcile what I've gathered on this day with the philosophy of nonviolence with which I was raised. I am not certain that vast cultural differences can be bridged in a few hours, but I am glad I got a glimpse into the world of guns. I have much to consider.

Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Sara Sidner and Matthew Gannon, CNN

2016-11-01 14:40:50

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/01/us/standing-rock-sioux-sacred-land-dakota-pipeline/index.html

The sacred land at the heart of Dakota pipeline fight - CNN

Corporate greed and potential environmental disaster are arguments against the Dakota Access Pipeline. But a big issue for the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native Americans is the threat to sacred land.

us, The sacred land at the heart of Dakota pipeline fight - CNN

The sacred land at the center of the Dakota pipeline dispute

"One hundred years from now ... they're going to hear those songs. They're going to hear that memory of what happened here at this camp."Faith Spotted EagleOutside Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota (CNN) -- A prophecy warned that this time would come. A black snake would arrive to destroy the Earth. It is now slithering across this land, disturbing what's sacred and gearing up to poison the water.For the Native Americans who gather in camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, this snake has a name. They call it the Dakota Access Pipeline.In solidarity with allies who've come from all different places and backgrounds, they are determined to stop this $3.7 billion project that would transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day through four states.Corporate greed and the potential for an environmental disaster -- should the pipeline leak or break -- are two arguments against it. But the more complicated issue challenging Western sensibilities is about threats to sacred land. Read MoreWhat's at stake, and what does it even mean to be sacred?The 'grandmother'Faith Spotted EagleSeated in a camping chair, Faith Spotted Eagle, 68, pulls a blanket around her to ward off the cold. Though she lives on the Yankton Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, Spotted Eagle has traveled to these pipeline opposition camps to help women define their roles here. Part of her mission as a "grandmother" -- the term used to describe wise female elders -- is to bring people back to what's sacred.As Spotted Eagle speaks, the smell of campfires hangs in the air and the sounds of chainsaws fade away. When the sun disappears behind the clouds, the temperature plummets. The landscape is brown, the wind biting and the arrival of winter palpable. A small airplane, presumably monitoring the camp, circles from time to time. Men behind her prop up cedar poles. They're constructing a new tipi for a baby she's come here to welcome. A baby girl with a symbolic nameJust three weeks before, in the large army-style tent, a baby girl was born. She signifies hope in an ominous time, and her name reflects that. She is Mni Wiconi -- Water is Life.JUST WATCHEDMeet Mni Wiconi, or Water is LifeReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMeet Mni Wiconi, or Water is Life 00:33It's a name or phrase that long predates this baby's birth. It appears on T-shirts, vehicles and signs all over the camps. It is painted on purple tie-dyed fabric that hangs beneath a large dreamcatcher near a food tent across the uneven dirt road where the sacred fire, lit on day one, is guarded and still burns. Every tribe, Spotted Eagle says, has a story about water being threatened. For this reason, people here say they're not protesters; they are "water protectors."A view of a protest camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.It's not just sacred land at stake now -- it's the water as well. The Missouri River and all the tributaries that flow into it, including the Cannonball River that runs by the camps, are sacred.Water is the "first medicine;" it sustains us in our mother's womb, Spotted Eagle says. It's used in ceremonies to heal people. The steam it gives off in a sweat lodge, for example, purifies. Water can clean a spirit when it's bleeding. It can calm a person and restore balance.Its power goes even deeper, though. Water, she says, also has memory. When people speak or sing to it during a ceremony, it is believed that the water holds on to what it hears and can later share what it learns.So when a group of women gathers on the river's bank next to the crowded main camp and they hold up tobacco offerings while singing prayers, the water is listening. "One hundred years from now, somebody's going to go down along the Cannonball River and they're going to hear those stories," Spotted Eagle says. "They're going to hear those songs. They're going to hear that memory of what happened here at this camp."Echoes with powerNative American protestors and supporters walk along land being prepared for the Dakota Access Pipeline.Oftentimes burial grounds are the sacred sites that are threatened or destroyed. But understanding what these grounds look like, what desecration means, requires wisdom most of us don't have. Spotted Eagle gives an example: What if the Great Sioux Nation decided to build a project through Arlington Cemetery?"The point would be taken that you don't disturb people that have been put to rest," she says.That's easy enough to get.But it turns out, leaving burial sites alone is about more than simple respect. Protection prayers -- those that ensure the deceased will not be disturbed on their "walk to the spirit world" -- are recited over relatives who are buried. If spirits linger, like they might in the case of violent deaths, and are then interrupted, "They're not going to be able to find their way. They'll still roam on this land," Spotted Eagle says."Archaeologists come in who are taught from a colonial structure, and they have the audacity to interpret how our people were buried. How would they even know?" Faith Spotted EagleThen consider this: Who's to say where ancestors are buried? Certainly not Western archaeologists, Spotted Eagle says. She believes they are no more qualified to make these determinations than she would be if she set out to survey a Hutterite cemetery."Archaeologists come in who are taught from a colonial structure, and they have the audacity to interpret how our people were buried," she says. "How would they even know?"Over the course of thousands of years, can they identify the correct stone placements or the specific sorts of vegetation? What's sacred cannot be confirmed through their eyes, she says. Youths ride horses at an oil pipeline protest encampment near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.She says 38 miles of the Dakota Access Pipeline cuts through territory that still belongs to Native Americans, based on a 1851 treaty signed at Fort Laramie in Wyoming. She still holds out hope that through legal channels her people will prevail in shutting down this pipeline. 'They're coming home'Two children walk together in oil pipeline protest encampment near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.Just as water holds memories, so does the earth.In this same place in 1713, there was a Sun Dance -- a tribal ceremony featuring dancers, songs and the beating of a traditional drum. If you listen carefully between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., Spotted Eagle says, you "can hear eagle whistles [used in ceremonies]. You can hear people kind of mumbling and talking and praying."Those echoes from the land have a power that draws people, allowing them to connect with their roots. And you can see that across the camp.Flags representing supporters and ideas line the road and dot the landscape. Ones for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and the Tulalip tribes fly next to an RV bearing the sign, "Muslims Standing with Standing Rock Sioux." There's a gay pride rainbow flag, a POW/MIA flag and an American flag hung upside down. Flags of Native American tribes from across the US and Canada line the entrance of the camp.Some are living in an old school bus painted with blues, greens and purples. There are high-end tents, campers and tipis, and failed structures with tarps blowing in the wind. One open tent offers winter jackets hanging on metal racks. Another advertises with its bright yellow sign: "Free feminine hygiene & baby" products. A man with a microphone announces a training in "direct action principles," the rules to live by in camp that include being "peaceful and prayerful." An upside-down American flag seen inside the camp in North Dakota.Many of the Native Americans who have come here in recent months, Spotted Eagle says, are arriving from urban areas around the country.Whether they know it or not, they likely carry an ancestral suffering they've inherited from generations past, says Spotted Eagle, who also works as a PTSD therapist serving veterans and tribes. Protestors march to a construction site for the Dakota Access Pipeline.It's important for people to face and know who they are.By building relationships on this sacred land at this crucial time, "they're coming home," experiencing ceremonies like many haven't before, Spotted Eagle says.They signal a "rebirth of a nation."Like an umbilical cordThe new women's lodge has been completed for the baby girl.Like all tipis, this one has 13 poles -- the 13th being the woman's pole. Attached to it is the canvas, which wraps around like a skirt, enfolding the tipi "just like the woman enfolds her family," Spotted Eagle says.The rope hanging down inside anchors the tipi to Mother Earth, much like an umbilical cord.Spotted Eagle helps pass on sacred understanding, but she's also a longtime activist. She railed against the Vietnam War, helped develop the first Native women's shelter and was on the front line with other grandmothers in the battle against the Keystone XL Pipeline. The people behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, the capitalists who she says cannot seem to get enough, make her think of one of the gifts the new baby, Water is Life, will receive.After birth, baby girls are given beaded turtles. Inside, tucked away and sewn in, they keep their "belly buttons," meaning their fallen-off umbilical cord stumps. It's a custom that reminds Native Americans of their connections, and perhaps it explains what is wrong with the forces behind the pipeline, Spotted Eagle says."When people don't know where their belly buttons are, they don't know where they belong," she says. "So they keep digging all their lives."Water is Life shouldn't have that problem. It will be hard to forget the sacred place from where she came.

Moni Basu, CNN

2017-01-22 23:23:55

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/world/mh370-husband-speaks-out/index.html

Halted MH370 search is not an end for one man - CNN

K.S. Narendran is disappointed the search for MH370 was suspended, but his personal journey to live life without his wife continues.

world, Halted MH370 search is not an end for one man - CNN

Search for missing plane ends but a grieving husband's journey goes on

Story highlightsK.S. Narendran's wife, Chandrika Sharma, was one of 239 people aboard MH370He's deeply disappointed the search for the plane was suspendedHe struggles to go on with life without knowing what happened (CNN)This time, the terrible news came in an email.At least it wasn't a text, like the hasty, solitary line that exploded K.S. Narendran's world almost three years ago: "We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived." His wife of 25 years, Chandrika Sharma, was one of the 239 people aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014. RELATED: Relatives of MH370 victims to appeal to Malaysian minister over searchOn Tuesday, Narendran learned the search for the missing plane had been suspended. He saw the email a little before noon at his home in the southeastern Indian city of Chennai. Read More"An email is an improvement over an SMS message," he posted on Facebook. "So, small mercies in an otherwise difficult period."K.S. Narendran is no closer to knowing what happened to his wife, a passenger on MH370.Then came the media requests for interviews. India Today, BBC, The Guardian, Deutsche Welle, NPR. He had become a spokesman for the MH370 families. After a group statement on the search suspension was made public, every journalist wanted to know Narendran's reaction.He expressed deep disappointment that the search was over. Anger that the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia had not followed a recent recommendation to search another 25,000 square kilometers north of the last search area. And betrayal: Those governments, he said, had made a commitment to the families of the lost passengers, and now they were reneging.JUST WATCHEDThe search for MH370 ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHThe search for MH370 01:11"I sensed my faith in the search and investigation erode precipitously, indeed faith in the entire gamut of institutional arrangements in place globally to keep us safe and secure, reassured that the journeys we undertake will indeed take us to our chosen destinations," he wrote on Facebook. "MH370 didn't make it to Beijing. And we may never know why it didn't. We can never be sure that there will not be another tragedy."The day seemed not to end. A flurry of emotions led to many moments of futility. Suspending the search was in part a message that the world was asking him to move on. As though he could.The next morning, he boarded a plane for a business trip to Mumbai on India's west coast. After MH370, Narendran developed a dread for planes. Sometimes in his seat, he role-plays and goes to a dark place. What was the experience like for his wife? Narendran met his wife in college and the two were married for 25 years.The question consumes him to the point where he, an articulate man with considerable language skills, finds himself at a loss for words. He has to virtually kick himself out of that state and force himself to sleep. It's his only way out. "I don't even wait for the plane's doors to close," he tells me. "I just try to sleep."I first spoke with Narendran a few days after MH370 vanished from the skies. I reached out to him after a mutual friend showed me his Facebook posts, and we have been in touch ever since.RELATED: One man's quiet reckoning on Flight 370This time, we talk two days after he learned of the decision to stop the search. I want to ask him many things, but first he analyzes the mystery of the missing plane. He doesn't understand why the search was called off when debris -- confirmed to be from MH370 -- had been found off the coast of southern Africa."Common sense would suggest they would be hurrying to go and look there," he says. "It is really puzzling. I have wracked my brain all this time on why then have been such a laggard on this front."That leaves him wondering whether there is truth to conspiracy theories that suggest a cover-up."Maybe they know more than what was said and they want a closure to this investigation," he says.I can hear the frustration in his voice. I can hear the exhaustion.I ask him about a difficult question a radio interviewer posed the day before: "Have you been able to have any kind of ceremony for her -- funeral?"He attempted to answer: "We have had no ceremony. It's hard to think of one when you don't know ... when was the end? Where was the end?"Narendran and I have discussed this several times in our many conversations via phone, Skype, email and even in person at a Bangalore coffee house. He said in the past that his family and friends suggested some sort of memorial to help him let go, move forward, bring closure and all those clichéd things we say after loss. RELATED: Missing plane mystery: A hole in the clouds, an empty space on earthThe truth is he doesn't take kindly to rituals and besides, he wouldn't even know how to begin planning such a ceremony. It would drain his energy, he tells me. And for what?How do you say goodbye to the person you loved most -- without knowing? JUST WATCHEDHusband: 'She was fantastic person' ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHusband: 'She was fantastic person' 03:35In the summer of 2015, he initiated the process of obtaining a death certificate for Chandrika. The pragmatic part of him said it was needed to settle insurance policies, bank accounts, property matters and other assets his wife held. All he really had was a message from Malaysia Airlines confirming Chandrika was a passenger on the missing plane. A death certificate would provide documentation. But it has to be issued by a court in Kuala Lumpur, and he is still waiting. One of his unsavory chores is to keep writing to ask about the status, and it adds to a host of other reminders. They include the daily walks he used to take with Chandrika. After she was gone, he often imagined conversations with the woman he met in college and had shared life's joys and disappointments with.Where have you been, Chandrika?Oh, many places. All at the same time. Can you believe that?When will you be back?Your guess is as good as mine.For good. That is.What if I am gone for good?He fantasized about new facts being unearthed that might provide incontrovertible evidence. Then he could say: Case closed, like the ending of a Sherlock Holmes story. Time to move on. RELATED: Dear Chandrika: Conversations with my missing wifeBut those facts never came, and for almost three years now, Narendran has lived life with crushing uncertainty. There were days that were more jarring than others: when the missing plane was in the news, when debris was found, when the first anniversary came and then the second. And now, the end of the search.But to him, day 364 was the same as day 365. It was another day without her.I sense that perhaps Narendran has begun to move on, however slow the progress. I ask him if he still speaks with his wife."My conversations lately have been with myself," he says. "What I wish to do with my life. And I don't think I have answers yet."Nor has the uncertainty abated as much as he would have liked.One reason, he surmises, is his role as spokesman for Voice 370, the support group for families of the missing."That role travels with me 24 hours a day," he says. "It has a way of keeping alive the questions and continues the agonizing. I think the questions about finding answers, finding an explanation that is credible enough, sufficiently substantiated, remains very important. "Why? I have often asked myself the same question. And I don't think I have a very clear answer. The sense of incredulity about all that's happened doesn't just go away. That something like this should ever have happened where there is neither a trace nor understanding or explanation of how this might have happened is very deeply disturbing." Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370There is still no way to know for sure why Flight MH370 ended, but we are learning more about the lives of those on board. CNN is remembering them through snapshots shared with us. Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Rodney and Mary Burrows were looking forward to becoming first-time grandparents after their return home to Australia.Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Australians Catherine and Robert Lawton were traveling with friends on vacation when the flight disappeared.Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Paul Weeks was traveling to Mongolia for a new job as an engineer. His wife says Paul left behind his watch and his wedding ring before the trip, in case anything happened to him while he was away. Anderson spoke with Paul's brother & sister who said they are coping by spending time together as a family.Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Chandrika Sharma, left, was on Flight 370; her daughter Meghna and husband K.S. Narendran wait patiently, trying to manage their anxiety and longing for her return.Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai had been vacationing in Vietnam and were on their way home to their two young sons in Beijing.Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH37076-year-old Liu Rusheng, an accomplished calligrapher and one of the oldest passengers on the flight, was in Malaysia to attend an art exhibition with his wife.Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Teens Hadrien Wattrelos and Zhao Yan are shown in a photo on Wattrelos' Facebook page. The photo is captioned, simply, "I love you," in French. Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Firman Chandra Siregar, 24, studied electrical engineering in Indonesia and was on his way to Beijing on board Flight 370 to start a new job at an oil company.Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Patrick Francis Gomes, center, was the in-flight supervisor for the missing plane. His daughter describes him as a quiet person with a sense of humor.Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370Ch'ng Mei Ling, a Malaysian citizen who lives in Pennsylvania, is a process engineer at a chemical company.Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: Remembering the passengers of MH370We do not have photos of all 239 passengers, but we wanted to remember that there are loved ones around the world missing them right now. View CNN's complete coverage of Flight 370.Hide Caption 12 of 12Then there all the relatives and friends who constantly ask him questions or want an update. "Tell me what is happening," they say."There is always this underlying assumption that the families know something more than the rest of the world. And we don't," he says. So it remains unfinished business."I also frankly believe there are larger questions of fairness, justice, accountability that can't be so easily put away," he says. "There are levels of agitation and I tell myself: I can't just let this pass. I can't get on with life. I have not flushed my system of MH370."These are the sorts of things Narendran is often not asked about in the myriad interviews he gives. How do you even begin in a 5-minute radio or TV segment? But I have learned about him over the course of our acquaintance.From the beginning, I felt his strength in the quietness of his voice and the power of his words. He is someone who doesn't always emote outwardly -- I've never heard him cry, although on several occasions he has brought tears to my eyes.He tells me that writing about MH370 and his life without Chandrika has helped him enormously. It has forced him to learn about himself.People who suffer great pain or sorrow often find refuge in prayer and hope. Many of the families of MH370 held onto the hope that everyone on that plane was still alive. That included some of Narendan's relatives.But Narendran was not one of them. He found comfort in his writing. It helps him gain insight on how he has been dealing with life after tragedy.The eye cannot see itself, he tells me, quoting Shakespeare. "I need to hear from others on how they see me and then reflect back on what resonates with me."We end our conversation there. What I don't tell him is that I can see he has already done a lot of reflection; that he's already come a long way in his recovery. The search for the missing plane may have ended Tuesday, but what continues is Narendran's quest to find himself again.

Story by Wayne Drash and Max Blau, CNN Photographs by Maddie McGarvey for CNN

2016-09-16 19:45:52

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/index.html

Heroin in America: The scarring of the next generation - CNN

Heroin's shattering force hit Huntington, WV, in a span of 5 hours: 28 overdoses, 2 deaths. Here is the story of the day when "all hell broke loose."

health, Heroin in America: The scarring of the next generation - CNN

In America's drug death capital: How heroin is scarring the next generation

Huntington, West Virginia (CNN)Sara Murray tends to two dozen babies in the neonatal therapeutic unit at Cabell Huntington Hospital. They shake. They vomit. Their inconsolable, high-pitched screams pierce the air. The symptoms can last for hours, days or months.Graceful and soft-spoken, Murray is a seasoned nurse tirelessly defending the innocent. But even she gets worn down. On difficult days, she seeks a moment of refuge behind her desk and wonders: How did we get here? These babies -- her babies -- are the youngest, most vulnerable victims of a raging epidemic.They are heroin babies, born addicted.Her third-floor unit, a calm and quiet space with dim lighting, is meant to accommodate 12 babies, but it's been two years since the numbers were that low. One in 10 born at the hospital endures withdrawal from some type of drug -- heroin, opiates, cocaine, alcohol or a combination of many. Read MoreThat's about 15 times the national average. The figures reflect a startling reality about this Appalachian town of 49,000 on the banks of the Ohio River: One in four residents here is hooked on heroin or some other opioid, local health officials say. That's a staggering 12,000 people dealing with opioid addiction, in a state with the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation.Patrolman Jacob Felix collects dirty needles at Marcum Terrace. Two officers, three firefighters and two EMS workers respond to every overdose.The truth is nearly everyone in Huntington is a victim of this epidemic: parents whose children lie about their habits and steal from their homes, fathers and mothers who outlive their daughters and sons.Most devastating is the impact on the youngest generation growing up in this toxicity: children who witness their parents' descent into a living hell, or are abandoned, or born addicted. "It's frustrating, it's sad and it's heart-wrenching," says Murray, a nurse for the last 26 years. "My personal passion is for the baby and that they have a voice." On this day, August 15, Murray and her staff of eight nurses are particularly concerned about one baby boy. The mother won't reveal the name of the dope she's on, which makes it unnerving for the nurses trying to treat him.Most of the infants' parents are absent, and the possibility that they are somewhere shooting up lingers like the babies' screams.The first overdoseIt's about 3:30 p.m., the heat nearing triple digits, when Lt. David McClure pulls his blue-striped ambulance SUV to a crash near the West Huntington Bridge. First on the scene, the senior paramedic with Cabell County EMS finds a compact car stuck on a curb in the median. The hum of the engine grows louder as he walks toward the vehicle. Through a rolled-down window, McClure sees a 21-year-old woman hunched toward the steering wheel. Her chin touches her chest. Drool dribbles out of her mouth. Her breaths are few and far between. Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonThe highway: Police say the heroin epidemic in Huntington, West Virginia, has left virtually no place in town untouched. Here, tire marks remain on a concrete median where a car crashed near a bridge on August 15. The 21-year-old driver overdosed with her engine still running.Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonAn apartment: Paramedic Lt. David McClure rescued a father and son, ages 47 and 26, who overdosed in a bathroom on the second floor of this house. McClure used the opiate blocker naloxone to revive them.Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA gas station: First responders say they are frequently called here. On August 15, they found a man and a woman, 36 and 35, on the bathroom floor.Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonAt the top of stairs: Capt. Rocky Johnson, head of the Huntington Police Department's special investigations unit, said his team was poised to make a drug raid at Marcum Terrace but changed plans when the August 15 outbreak occurred. There were five heroin overdoses at this cluster of two-story public housing units, including one at the top of these stairs.Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA home: Paramedics responded to the house on the left, where they said children's toys dotted the living room floor as they tended to a 28-year-old woman.Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA courtyard: Capt. Derrick Ray found three women, ages 23, 27 and 32, here. Two lay unconscious in the grass. The third crawled on the ground with her arms raised like a zombie from "The Walking Dead." Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA recovery center: Billy Joe Farmer, 54, was found dead in his apartment at Prestera Center, the largest behavior-health service provider in West Virginia. He was seven months into a recovery program. A police report said he was found in the bathtub, a needle on the floor and a spoon beside his body.Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA restaurant: Paramedics found a woman overdosed in her car in the parking lot at this Burger King. She was in critical condition and later placed on a ventilator at the hospital.Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Heroin in HuntingtonA home: Huntington police officer Sean Brinegar, 25, found four people overdosed in this location. He injected naloxone into the thighs of two who appeared dead. Both revived. The two others also survived.Hide Caption 9 of 9"Can you hear me?" he yells near her face. "Can you hear me?" After shifting the car into park, McClure lifts her eyelids and shines a penlight into her pupils. Both are the size of pinpoints -- a sure sign of an opioid overdose. When he looks down, he spots a syringe in her lap.McClure has grown accustomed to drug overdoses -- his crew responds daily to such calls. You name it, he's seen it: Moms passed out with their kids still seat-belted. Dads sprawled on floors, their toddlers within an arm's reach of heroin. Never once has a heroin user thanked McClure for saving his or her life. Sometimes they complain about the interruption of their high.With minutes left to save the woman on the bridge, another paramedic sets up a bag-valve mask to squeeze air into her lungs. Together he and McClure place her on a stretcher and roll her toward an ambulance. They search her left arm for a decent vein and, after finding an unscarred one, pierce her skin with a needle containing an opioid blocker called naloxone. The drug, known for reversing overdoses, can save heroin users on the brink of death.Within two minutes, she blinks her eyes, wincing with discomfort from the stark lights in the back of the ambulance. Outside the window, a Cabell Huntington Hospital billboard towers over the crash scene with a foreboding offer: "No appointment necessary." By the time she's transported there for treatment, the next message from dispatch reverberates across town."They're just showing up and dying."'All hell broke loose'Tragedy has defined this town before. In November 1970, a plane carrying members of Huntington's beloved Marshall University football team smashed into a mountainside, killing 75 players, coaches and supporters. Huntington lost more than 25,000 residents in the last several decades as factories tied to coal mines closed.The terms "before the crash" and "after the crash" became part of the town's legacy. The movie "We Are Marshall" captured Huntington's spirit in the crash's aftermath as the community came together and healed. Today Huntington must rally against a very different and relentless foe. Heroin use has grown so prevalent that a new catch phrase has emerged: "Narcanned," the brand-name for the opioid blocker that reverses overdoses. As in, "How many times have you been narcanned?"It's not uncommon to hear an addict say 3, 4, 5 times. A new number will emerge from this day: 28 overdoses in a five-hour span. The ordeal will stretch every resource in Huntington, clogging the emergency rooms in the town's two hospitals, testing the resolve of the most hardened medics and prompting a manhunt for the peddler of a batch of heroin laced with an unknown substance.The victims' ages will range from 19 to 59. They'll turn up in homes and alleys, a Marathon convenience store bathroom and a Burger King parking lot. They'll include a father and son shooting up together. A husband and wife. A recovering addict who relapses.It's the moment "all hell broke loose," Huntington Mayor Steve Williams will say later.The moment everyone knew was coming. The moment no one knew how to stop. Nine overdoses within minutesCapt. Derrick Ray with Cabell County EMS gets out of his ambulance at the "showing up and dying" scene. Authorities treat it like a "mass casualty" event. Ambulances, police cars and fire trucks line Sycamore Street. Local TV crews set up too, cameras rolling. It's shortly after 3:30 p.m.Ray knows the neighborhood well. He's responded to calls there many times. Residents here tend to cuss him, then ask for his help when their lives need saving. Today is one of those days. A police officer enters a small ranch house and injects naloxone into the thighs of two users who appear dead. Both revive. Two others are groggy, but not so far gone they need to be narcanned. Ray heads next door to a tiny low-income apartment complex.In a shady narrow courtyard, he finds three women, ages 23, 27 and 32. Two lay unconscious in the grass. The third crawls on the ground with her arms raised like a zombie from "The Walking Dead." Acting fast, paramedics pump oxygen into the victims' lungs and administer naloxone to all three. A supervisor with two decades of experience and dough-boy looks, Ray catches a breath when his phone rings. It's McClure, who has finished treating the woman who crashed her car on the bridge. He wants guidance: Where should he go next? A dirty needle lies on the ground in Huntington.In just 20 minutes since the first call, emergency crews have treated eight overdose victims. The day is far from over.Dispatch relays yet another emergency. McClure points his ambulance to a pink cinder-block apartment building off Jefferson Avenue.McClure came to Huntington six years ago from an Ohio town of nearly 2,000. The pace was so slow in his home county that he handled only five medical calls a day. He admits he wasn't prepared for this, but he's adjusted. Still, he worries about the day someone has a heart attack and dies because the medics are all dealing with overdoses. McClure hustles up a flight of stairs to a second-floor unit. Two women guide him to a bathroom where two men -- a 47-year-old father, tall and slender, and his 26-year-old son -- lie unconscious after using what a relative says was a $20 dose of heroin. The dad is in a bathtub, where the women have tried to revive him. The water is still running. Across from the toilet, McClure spots the son slumped against the wall. McClure makes rapid-fire assessments: Are they breathing? Do they have a pulse? Can they be saved? The women scream. McClure instructs them to leave the room. If the men are dead, he doesn't want anyone to see what comes next. There's no use in yelling at the two unconscious men. He knows they won't respond to his voice. The son is breathing, ever so slightly, at a rate of about two breaths per minute. But the dad isn't, his face turning blue. McClure bags both men to get air to their lungs and sprays naloxone up their noses. Because he's alone, McClure has no time to search for veins. Two more saves. The mayor's nightmareHuntington Mayor Steve Williams snaps awake to the sound of a deluge of text messages. The 60-year-old politician returned home from vacation and hoped to squeeze in a power nap this afternoon. But a real-life nightmare disrupts his slumber.Mayor Steve Williams wonders what else he can do to fight the epidemic. "If you define the problem, you can own the problem," he says. "If you own the problem, you can defeat it."Williams stares at his iPhone. Heroin overdoses have occurred in almost every location imaginable: dining rooms and drivers' seats, parking lots and in the arms of paramedics. No place seems safe. Nowhere is sacred.Has heroin laced with fentanyl, the painkiller at least 50 times more potent than morphine, arrived? What about carfentanil, the elephant tranquilizer up to 100 times more potent than fentanyl? Over the past year, Williams has read about both spreading across the country. While fielding the texts, he silently prays for Huntington. The mayor knows rebirth can emerge in the wake of destruction. He moved to town two years after the 1970 plane crash and played for the Young Thundering Herd squad that rebuilt Marshall football. The teams were awful in those days, but they represented something more important than winning. They provided the community with a rallying cry in the face of despair. But recent decades have been unkind to Huntington. Factories that made supplies for West Virginia's coal mines shuttered. Jobs grew scarce. From 1970 to 2010, the town lost more than 25,000 residents. Block after block of once beautiful two-story craftsman homes have fallen into disrepair, the porches leaning, paint peeling from clapboard siding and "Beware of dog" signs peering from broken windows.Drugs arrived here in the form of crack toward the end of the 1980s. Then came prescription pills. In a town with a median household income of $28,673 -- where nearly one in three live in poverty -- heroin has flourished over the past decade, particularly as officials cracked down on pill mills and supplies dried up. The heroin, officials say, made its way from Mexico's coastline to the Midwestern heartland to the Appalachian Mountains. By 2013, the year Williams became mayor, opioid abuse had spiraled so far out of control that Cabell County's fatal heroin overdose rate rose to nearly 13 times the national average. Officials have responded with a series of progressive policy initiatives, from a needle exchange program to help curb hepatitis outbreaks to landing a donation of 2,200 naloxone auto-injectors (worth $1.5 million) to be given away to residents. Williams also took the unprecedented step for such a small town of appointing a drug czar, responsible for getting everyone -- paramedics and pastors, judges and jailers, cops and community leaders -- on the same page to combat the opioid epidemic.Unlike other drugs that came to West Virginia, Williams says, heroin doesn't discriminate, affecting both men and women, white and black, homeless and lawyers, grandchildren as young as 12 and grandparents approaching 80. The mayor never knows who might overdose, so he carries a naloxone injector everywhere he goes. On days like today, the priorities shift from running heroin out of town to saving lives. The mayor hopes residents can be spared the coffin.'God's star in heaven'It's been nearly a decade since Teddy Johnson buried his 22-year-old son. News of the overdose outbreak hits hard, but he's not surprised given heroin's takeover. Teddy Johnson polishes the grave of his son, Adam, who died of a heroin overdose in 2007. Why has the problem only worsened? The 65-year-old father has warned of the scourge the last nine years, long before heroin reached historic levels in Huntington. He's stared down his son's dealer in court and an undocumented immigrant connected to a Mexican cartel responsible for distributing black-tar heroin in the region. Neither dared return his glare.Every week Johnson visits his son's gravestone in Spring Hill Cemetery. He trims the grass with a hedge clipper and weed whacker. He polishes the stone with a rag and granite cleaner. He outlines the engraved letters of his son's name with a black Sharpie.Then he steps backs and takes a look at the inscription: "Adam Tyler Johnson: Our star on earth, God's star in heaven."The father runs a plumbing shop founded by his grandfather 78 years ago. He's expanded the business to make showcase bathrooms, designer kitchens and dynamic outdoor patios. Adam, who was a history major at Marshall University, was in line to become the fourth generation to carry on the family business. Instead, visitors to the showroom are greeted by memorials to Adam.Police chief: Find the heroinShortly before 4 p.m., Capt. Rocky Johnson, commander of the Huntington Police Department's special investigations unit, prepares to lead a drug raid at Marcum Terrace, a cluster of two-story, red-brick public housing units that dot a hill on the city's east side. The neighborhood is home to the town's poorest folks, a place where fistfights get posted on YouTube and scores are settled with knives. A preacher says baby's shoes hanging from telephone wires indicate drop-off sites for drug dealers.The complex is within a stone's throw of where first responders earlier treated seven overdoses. Johnson's phone rings. It's the chief, Joe Ciccarelli."Are you monitoring the radio traffic?" Ciccarelli asks. "We're having all these overdoses."Patrolman Jacob Felix prepares to go out on a call. More than 50% of his job, he says, is responding to heroin overdoses.When Ciccarelli joined the force in 1978, Huntington only had about a dozen known heroin addicts. Officers chased after those few users and monitored parking lots for people smoking weed. Now, the addicts have multiplied. Though the drug has origins south of the border, the chief says the dealers here are "so far down the chain, they can't spell Mexico."He orders Johnson to abandon the raid. There's a new assignment: Find the source of today's heroin. JUST WATCHEDThis is your brain on heroinReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHThis is your brain on heroin 01:51Dressed in jeans and T-shirts, Johnson and his nine undercover officers break cover and shift gears. If the spread of this particular batch isn't reined in quickly, dead bodies will be found all over Huntington. Johnson and his officers begin conducting interviews. They're told an out-of-towner, a man about 6 feet 4 inches and built like a middle linebacker, cruised through the neighborhood about an hour before the first overdose occurred. His nickname was Benz, though he drove a white Chevy Cruze. Some residents say he handed out free samples; others say he sold a new product.When he stopped and took a stroll, witnesses tell police, scores of people followed. It was like he was the pied piper.A mother needs her fixAndrea has followed the lure of the high for a decade now. She shoots up twice a day regardless of costs. Addiction has robbed her of her job, friends and family. She agrees to be interviewed and photographed on the condition that her last name be withheld. She says paramedics saved her life twice. She sought refuge in rehab once -- attending a 30-day treatment center. She stayed clean for more than eight months -- 264 days to be exact. She shook her habit but kept her friends, staying in a circle that led to relapse.Andrea trades dirty needles for clean ones at the health department's exchange program. The 36-year-old former nurse says her three children -- ages 18, 14 and 11 -- live with her grandmother. Her own mother and father refuse to speak to her. Her oldest son, she says, hates her. Her daughter, the youngest of the bunch, found her on the bathroom floor two years ago. The girl cries and prays for her mother. In spite of today's overdoses, Andrea chases her fix and chooses to shoot up anyway. Prayers be damned.Never again"The devil has come to Huntington," Sara Murray says. It's as simple and complicated as that.Newborns in the nurse's hospital ward weren't just exposed to heroin; the pregnant addicts have often downed alcohol, taken prescription painkillers or dabbled with the latest fad, the anti-seizure drug Neurontin. Most babies in the unit will likely suffer long-term neurological problems. Nearly 1 in 10 can expect to suffer from Hepatitis C in their lifetime. When babies are born with drugs in their systems, state child protection workers are notified. Murray recalls one shattering case where doctors and nurses believed a fussy baby boy would be in danger if sent home with his parents. She says they shared notes with child protection services about the family's behavior and pleaded on the child's behalf.Murray rarely knows the outcome when a child leaves her care, but this time the case made headlines in the local paper. The father was arrested, accused of killing the boy. She and her fellow nurse, Rhonda Edmunds, made a pledge: "That will never happen on our watch again."They lobbied the hospital to open a neonatal therapeutic unit. As heroin use climbed, so did the number of babies suffering from withdrawal. Their fussiness disturbed the care of others in the neonatal intensive care unit. The therapeutic unit opened a year later. Sara Murray is a registered nurse and co-founder of Lily's Place, a facility for addicted babies.The two continued their dedication by opening a separate facility, called Lily's Place, to provide a homier environment for babies exposed to drug use before birth. Each newborn has a separate room, and young mothers are taught skills for dealing with their babies. Most of the moms want to learn; some do not. Nearly all the children get sent home with a parent. Most of the time it's their birth mom or dad. Once in awhile, they go to foster care or are put up for adoption, but that's a rarity. One mother confided to Murray that she finally got help when her child was 4 months old and she couldn't recall if she'd fed her baby at all one day. The mother asked a relative to care for the child while she went into treatment. Murray worries about the addicts who don't feed their babies and don't call someone for help. She empathizes with their chemical dependency but says it's difficult to hear parents prioritize their fix over their family with a simple justification: "I like being high.""We have generational addiction and that's their normal. It was their mother's normal. It was their grandmother's normal," Murray says. "And now, it's their normal."A normalcy that is completely abnormal.Overdoses everywhereLt. McClure marches up a footpath that cuts through brush behind Marcum Terrace. The next victim is splayed out beneath a hollowed out area of bushes, amid needles and a heap of sticks and water bottles piled up like a campfire. Time for naloxone.Less than 20 feet away, on the other side of the path, Capt. Ray comes across an overdosed man lying on a bed of brush. Another life saved. Sweat drips from beneath the bill of Ray's brown EMS baseball cap. The oppressive heat won't let up. Neither will the overdoses. Capt. Derrick Ray takes naloxone out of a first-responder's kit. Many residents carry the opiate blocker in case they encounter an overdose.A commotion erupts outside an apartment. People scream for a medic. As Ray makes his way down the narrow sidewalk, distrustful bystanders pull out cell phones and record his every move. He can't let the cameras faze him. Another man is down, clutching groceries in one hand, a bag of needles in the other. The overdose count nears 20.'They can't unring the bell'It's nearly 5 p.m., closing time at the Cabell County Courthouse, as Family Court Judge Patricia A. Keller wraps up another day of child support cases. Within the hour, the 58-year-old West Virginia native is home and flipping on the news in her living room. She stands there in shock, unable to focus on preparing dinner.How many overdose victims are parents, she wonders. Will those families fracture?Keller never thought drugs would consume her court. Fifteen years ago, she was mostly setting visitation schedules for alcoholic dads. Now at least a third of the cases she sees involve protecting children from the havoc wreaked by opioid addiction.Every week Keller decides whether moms and dads who have lost custody, like the ones at Lily's Place, can see their children again. Whenever possible, she prefers to create avenues for heroin users, including mothers like Andrea, to regain visitation rights. First, they must typically meet with a counselor and submit to random drug tests.Far too often, addicts aren't willing participants. In some cases, parents show up high to her chambers, if they show up at all. Sadly, some parents lose their children for good."When people have been in the madness of their addiction, being a good parent is the last thing on their minds," Keller says. "When they start to become clean, they can't unring the bell."Diapers with parents' notes hang on the wall at Lily's Place, which cares for newborns suffering from withdrawal.Likewise, Keller never thought her job would also mean being a counselor. But she can't ignore the fact that about three of every four parents in her court are so poor they can't afford a lawyer. She's encouraged dads struggling with heroin addiction to get clean needles at the exchange. Other times, she's offered moms literature about recovery programs.Keller also presides over a local drug court that's one of West Virginia's largest. Founded in 2008, it gives nonviolent criminals with a high risk of reoffending or relapsing a chance at treatment instead of incarceration. Half of the participants drop out, leading them back to prison. For the other half who graduate, 9 out of 10 don't commit another crime, Keller says.But the drug court has limitations: Addicts can only get help once they're in the criminal justice system, a point where families have already suffered the consequences. For those who want assistance before that point, it can be hard to find."A lot of people want to get help," Keller says. "But we don't have enough treatment beds. It's so frustrating. You've got to get it for them as soon as they're ready."Resurrected in recoveryWhile the 6 o'clock news airs, Will Lockwood sits in a crowd of about 70 at the Expression Church of Huntington, a refuge for recovering addicts sandwiched between Cabell Huntington Hospital's emergency room and Spring Hill Cemetery. Photos: Faces of recoveryWill Lockwood, 25, overdosed four times in a three-year period. He's stayed clean the last two and now works as a peer coach for The Lifehouse, a faith-based recovery center that helped him get sober.Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryRocky Meadows was 21 when his addiction led to his first arrest. He'd be arrested 36 more times, leading to 10 years behind bars. Meadows has been sober for nearly eight years and started The Lifehouse to help addicts like him.Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryJay Turley, 33, and Will Lockwood sit in one of The Lifehouse's recovery homes. The Lifehouse serves 60 men and 35 women in Huntington. Lockwood mentors men like Turley who desperately want to quit.Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryChristian Weaver, 22, sits outside one of The Lifehouse facilities. Weaver was among those who overdosed on August 15. Homeless, he sought Meadows' help four days later. He wants to get clean but struggles with heroin's grip.Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryJohn Witlatch sits on the porch of a Lifehouse home. He is in the second month of recovery. Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryWitlatch shows off a tattoo he says signifies his hatred toward his addiction: a syringe piercing the head of the devil. Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryJames Blevins, 28, has "Game Over" tattooed on his eyelids. Blevins has been sober for four months and lives in one of The Lifehouse recovery homes in Huntington.Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryThe rates of heroin addiction affect men and women equally in Huntington, health officials say. Here, women gather in the kitchen where they prepare dinner for each other at a Lifehouse facility.Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Faces of recoveryPregnant with her second child, Ashley Bowen strives to kick her addiction. In the early stages of recovery, she lives in a Lifehouse center for women.Hide Caption 9 of 9Tim Hazelett, an administrator with the county's health department, takes the stage and acknowledges the string of overdoses that have occurred this afternoon. Then he uses the pulpit as a teachable moment.The people who are overdosing, he says, are in need of help. Put out the word, he tells the crowd. There's a batch of heroin laced with something that can kill you -- so stay away from it. He dives into a PowerPoint presentation, 37 slides in total, that describe how to recognize the signs and symptoms of an overdose, how to administer an intranasal form of naloxone and what to do if a child overdoses.Lockwood, who helped organize this session, relates to every word. The 25-year-old overdosed four times in a three-year period. He's stayed clean for nearly two.Two summers ago, he embarked on a mission to end his life by means of a lethal fix. The motel where recovering heroin addict Will Lockwood had his last overdose.He holed up in room No. 216 of the Coach's Inn, a dingy pink motel where passersby can see walking skeletons stumble from room to room. Lockwood overdosed for what he hoped would be the last time. When he awoke, his drug dealer pounded his chest in a bathtub, cold water running down his face.He stood and, as he came to his senses, glimpsed at his reflection in the mirror. His body-builder frame had withered by more than 60 pounds. "You are worth more than this," he told himself. "You have a son. You have a family. You know exactly what you need to do."Now Lockwood works as a peer coach for The Lifehouse, a faith-based recovery center that helped him get sober. As part of his job, he mentors men who are desperately trying to quit."I empathize with the people of this community," he says. "A lot of them don't want to be in this situation. Truly, what it boils down to is fear."Fear of rejection. Fear of judgment. Tonight, everyone learns the value of life-saving intervention. When the naloxone course ends, worship begins. Lockwood and the rest of the congregation proclaim their commitment to God, to one another and to themselves. Many of his fellow worshippers have skirted death -- in biblical terms, resurrected.The falloutJust blocks away, as the church service continues, a man stiffens in the bathroom at the Marathon convenience store. His legs, contorted, stick up straight in the air. His pupils are dilated. A woman lies sprawled on the floor, beneath the sink.This is one of Lt. McClure's final stops -- almost exactly 12 hours into a shift that began at 7 a.m. His clothes are drenched in sweat and the stench of a hard day's work. Two more get narcanned.A man and woman overdosed in this Marathon gas station bathroom. Almost two hours later, as darkness falls, Mayor Williams' phone buzzes once again. He swipes his screen. It's an update from Huntington Fire Chief Carl Eastham. The victim of the final overdose -- a 19-year-old woman just outside the city limits -- has made it alive to Cabell Huntington Hospital. "There have been no OD deaths that we can find at either hospital," Eastham texts a few minutes before 9 p.m."Thank heaven for that," the mayor replies, before firing off another text: "Obviously carfentanil has arrived." "Appears that way," Eastham writes.How to get helpStruggling with addiction or know someone who is? Here are several organizations that help addicts beat back their habits and regain their lives.The overdose count stands at 26 -- none are fatal. A handful of victims refused a ride to the city's two hospitals. Everyone taken to the facilities, authorities say, declined offers of long-term treatment that day. Lt. McClure ends his shift, exhausted but thankful no other major emergencies arose during the hectic five hours. Judge Keller, after spending the evening worried about the victims, goes to bed grateful the men and women enrolled in her drug court program have been spared.Rocky Johnson, head of the special investigations unit, tells his officers to mentally prepare for the next day and the likelihood of finding dead heroin users -- people who shot up alone. At Sara Murray's neonatal unit and at Lily's Place, 36 heroin babies live to see another day.The nurse and her staff work late into the evening, feverishly making calls to find the mothers and fathers of the babies in their care. Murray is nearly 14 hours into her day when word comes that none of the parents has overdosed. A wave of relief washes over her. It's a minor victory, in a war where there are few. More than a dozen heroin overdose victims were treated at St. Mary's, one of two hospitals in Huntington, on August 15. Six were dumped out of cars in front of the ER.EpilogueA day later, Chief Ciccarelli confirms a man who died of cardiac arrest at St. Mary's hospital on August 15 had heroin in his system. The time of death makes him the first fatality, raising the overdose count to 27. Lt. McClure narcans one of those overdose victims again three days later. On August 20, Ilena Perry, a 76-year-old mother from Wayne County -- the rural countryside where the Marshall University plane crashed in 1970 -- lays her 54-year-old son to rest. How this story was reportedCNN's Wayne Drash and Max Blau spent six days in Huntington, West Virginia, recreating the heroin overdose outbreak of August 15. This story is based on interviews with emergency workers who were on the job that day, including nurses, a doctor, paramedics, firefighters and police. The reporters also spoke with the city's mayor, health department officials, a family court judge, residents who've lost loved ones to addiction, as well as several current and reformed addicts. The documents they reviewed include police reports, county emergency services records and federal court filings.Billy Joe Farmer was found on August 18 -- three days after authorities say he died. He was seven months into a long-term recovery program. He was the father of two.Huntington's final tally for that five-hour window: 28, with two fatalities.After pulling surveillance footage of a man matching the description of the pied piper, police worked with multiple agencies to arrest Bruce Lamar Griggs, a 22-year-old man from Akron, Ohio. Griggs faces federal drug charges for his alleged role in distributing heroin in Huntington on August 15. The drug continues to torment Huntington. Paramedics have plowed forward at a blistering pace of more than seven saves a day. In one case, a mother lost custody of her toddler after overdosing with the kid in the car.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2017-04-14 10:41:15

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/health/provoice-abortion-stories-eprise/index.html

'I had an abortion': 'Pro-voice' replaces judgment with conversation - CNN

Forget about the politics of abortion and labels like "pro-life" and "pro-choice." The "pro-voice" philosophy says the divide has kept people from listening, and it's time to change.

health, 'I had an abortion': 'Pro-voice' replaces judgment with conversation - CNN

'I had an abortion': 'Pro-voice' replaces judgment with conversation

Story highlightsCasting abortion politics aside, the "pro-voice" philosophy encourages storytelling and listeningAn anonymous after-abortion talkline and a pastor who shares her own story serve as examplesSeattle (CNN)One woman raised her hand to share her 40-year secret, something even her 46-year-old son doesn't know. Another spoke up to say she feared that God would no longer love her. A third wept in the back of the room, quietly grieving for those around her.They were among the dozens of people who gathered on a February evening in a Seattle church parlor to hear from the Rev. Susan Chorley.The Boston-area pastor had come to talk about abortion -- her abortion. By speaking about a subject so many deem unspeakable, she'd empowered others to come forward. She says it's always this way. Chorley, 44, bared her soul about the gut-wrenching choice she never thought she'd have to make. She was a stressed-out new pastor with a 2-year-old son and a crumbling marriage when she had her abortion a dozen years ago. Read MoreFar more painful than the procedure, she says, was the isolation she felt afterward. A woman in the ministry who feared being cast out, she suffered in silence.Trump privately signs anti-Planned Parenthood lawNot anymore.Since June, Chorley has been visiting churches across the country to share her story. It's part of a recent effort by a group she helped found years ago to support women and men after abortions.Called Exhale, the group creates safe spaces to talk about abortion without letting politics intrude. It's a "pro-voice" philosophy that shuns the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" labels society foists on this hot-button issue. Instead, it encourages compassionate listening and storytelling through various efforts -- including a free and anonymous talkline, the sharing of a viral TED Talk, a 2015 book and Chorley's tour of churches. A documentary film about the mission, "Navigating the Divide," is also nearing completion. "We try to put people in boxes, and it hasn't gotten us anywhere. It's just caused this huge divide," Chorley said. Whether we like it or not, "abortion is happening among us, and it's time we looked at it and talked about it."In the middle of a warChorley was attending seminary in Berkeley, California, years ago when she met a woman who wasn't afraid to speak up.At a class for rape hotline volunteers, Aspen Baker said something that left Chorley gobsmacked. "She said, 'I had an abortion, and I'd like to start a talkline. I'm here to learn how,' " Chorley remembered. "I had never heard someone say that." Mom at center of 'wrongful birth' debate: If lawmakers cared, they would have calledChorley had a similar dream; she imagined building a ministry to help women tell stories people don't want to hear. She was immediately on board.Along with a few others, the pair helped found Exhale in Oakland, where it is still based. Chorley is on the board of directors; Baker serves as the executive director. Now 41, married and the mother of a 2-year-old boy, Baker was 24 when she had her abortion. She was "born in a trailer on the third anniversary of Roe v. Wade" and grew up in Southern California "in the middle of the abortion wars."She was raised in a Christian community, which she described as "conservative but also very compassionate," and didn't believe that it was anyone's job to tell others what to do with their lives when it came to abortion. But she also knew she'd never have one herself. And then she found herself pregnant. She was a recent college grad in a new relationship, and what had seemed such an obvious choice in theory felt profoundly different in practice. The decision to have an abortion threw her into a moral crisis about who she was and what she valued.Aspen Baker, executive director of Exhale, speaks at TEDWomen 2015 about her mission and her abortion. After the procedure, she assumed the clinic would offer a resource for emotional support, but it didn't. So she was left to search for help on her own. Anti-abortion religious support services were readily available, but she couldn't find anything that was politically neutral."I'd had a naïve perspective of the world about the kind of choices you face in life. They're not always simple," she said. "Those overarching values that I originally learned from being Christian -- acceptance, love ... and forgiveness -- those things need to be practiced and not just spoken." Since 2002, Exhale's talkline has offered an anonymous place for people to express their feelings without judgment. It's there for the feminist who is haunted by regret, the Catholic who's overwhelmed with relief and anyone else who needs an ear.Whether callers dub themselves "pro-life" or "pro-choice" is simply irrelevant."Our callers already made their choice," Baker wrote in her book, "Pro-Voice: How to Keep Listening When the World Wants a Fight," which came out in 2015 -- the same year her TED Talk caught fire. "Our job isn't to decide whether or not theirs was the right or wrong decision but to make sure that they get the unconditional love and support they need to move forward and have healthy lives." Convincing others of this motive wasn't easy. Roe v. Wade, one of the most controversial SCOTUS cases When Baker started sharing her vision, people would immediately ask, "Are you for or against abortion?" It's a question she wouldn't answer then and won't now. Those who support abortion rights were sure Exhale was secretly anti-abortion, while opponents were equally convinced it was an undercover organization for the abortion rights movement. Exhale never showed up at rallies or protests, which further fueled suspicion. "To do something different felt like an attack," she said of those early years. Today, many abortion providers give patients a pamphlet about Exhale. It's a free service that meets a need they don't have the time or money to offer themselves. Exhale also no longer exists on an island. Like-minded efforts have sprouted up more recently, including Connect & Breathe out of New York. Abortion doulas, who provide emotional support to women during and after abortions, also have stepped onto the landscape.The pro-voice model, Baker says, is something that extends beyond abortion itself. It's a nonjudgmental approach to living, she says, that can help people grapple with any number of tough topics.Sharing secretsAs the daughter of a minister, Chorley grew up believing that "God loved me all the way, no matter what." But when she had her abortion, she was no longer sure. Today, Chorley knows that plenty of people sit in pews weighed down by their own feelings of shame or pain -- not just about abortion. Perhaps they're hiding family secrets of addiction or domestic violence. Maybe they fear being open about their gender identity, sexual orientation, a disability or mental illness.Before Zika: The virus that helped legalize abortion in the US Chorley and others who subscribe to the pro-voice philosophy want this to change. She believes people should feel safe bringing their whole selves to church -- and to life. That's why she agreed to be featured in June in a Parents magazine article about moms who've had abortions. And that's what sparked the "Pro-Voice Tour" that landed her in this Seattle church. When Chorley and her husband became pregnant the second time around, she says, the word "divorce" hadn't been raised yet -- but she suspected it would come up. She and her soon-to-be ex, she told the crowd, agreed that it was no time to bring another child into the family. But just because the decision felt right at the time doesn't mean she didn't struggle. Sometimes, she still does.She always thought she'd have a second child and has moments when she grieves over the fact that she didn't. The sight of a bumper sticker that reads "Abortion stops a beating heart" can still catch her breath, as do signs held by protesters who call what she did "murder.""They don't know anything about you," she said of those who publicly judge a decision she never thought she'd have to make. "They feel this privilege to put this in your face." When her son Franz, now 14, asked her what an abortion was four years ago, she had to be honest with her only child. They'd just driven past an abortion clinic, where protesters screamed and waved signs outside. Franz asked what an abortion was, so she told him."Why in the world would anyone do that?" he asked.She took a deep breath and answered, "I made that decision once," before telling him how hard it was.Franz sat in the church as she shared this story and weighed in with how he felt upon learning this.Each time the Rev. Susan Chorley visits a church to share her own abortion story, other women are empowered to talk about theirs. "It took a while to process it," he told the crowd. But then his mom told him about Exhale, and he began to realize, "It's not something I can judge people about, especially my own mother."Each time Chorley visits churches to share her abortion story, she says, at least a few women come forward afterward to reveal their own.She describes one woman, nearly 90, who pushed her walker to the front of a church while sobbing."I had an illegal abortion when I was 20," she told Chorley. "I never told anyone, and I never thought it would be talked about in a church."Those gathered in Seattle First Baptist Church are men and women, young adults and the elderly. Several hands go up during the discussion. "I have this 40-year-old secret, and no one in my family knows," says one woman, who describes her family as "right-wing conservative." The surprising history of abortion in the United States"It's amazing the energy it takes to keep that stuff inside," she continued. "There's so much guilt and shame." "I have a very conservative friend who's had a couple abortions," a younger woman says. "She didn't have any support after she went through it." "I was on the pill and got pregnant," says a woman who, already a mother, had her abortion in the early 1970s, when it was still illegal. "I went through a lot of agony. Will God love me? Am I an OK person?"On a couch in the back of the parlor, a woman weeps."I can't imagine having to make that choice," she says. "God's will is our will, and even when we make mistakes, He's there to lift us up."There was a time, during her darkest days, that Chorley worried that she might go to hell. But she is now kinder and gentler with her herself. An ordained American Baptist minister, she serves as the associate director of an urban ministry where she, among other things, is the director of a domestic violence shelter. She accepts that we all fall short and that she was never alone. "Why did I grow up not knowing that anyone had been through this experience?" she asked. "Why is that so hidden?"Being thereIn a downtown Oakland conference room, eight women are being trained as Exhale talkline counselors. Several say they wish they'd known about this service when they were struggling after their own abortions.One said her provider told her to keep it a secret, so she did -- and moved 3,000 miles away from where it happened. It took alcohol abuse and being sexually assaulted, she said, to realize that it was OK to feel pain.The commitment these trainees have made over six consecutive Saturdays will help ensure that others aren't left to suffer in secret. On a wall hangs a long sheet listing several dozen "myths about abortions." Included are phrases like "Women who have abortions can't be pro-life," "only non-religious people have abortions" and "men aren't affected." Their trainers guide them in conversations about cultural sensitivity, how to be there for men who reach out and the importance of open-ended questions. They explore ways to highlight the strengths of callers and encourage self-care.During role-playing exercises, they practice best ways to validate feelings and try out their pseudonyms, which all counselors use.It's about compassion, and we all need that.Nina, Exhale after-abortion talkline counselorTo the one who's confused: "You don't have to have all the answers right now." To the caller who's wracked with regret: "It sounds like you made the best decision you could with the resources you had at the time." To the one who's steeped in sadness: "It doesn't mean you'll feel this way forever." Volunteer counselors are expected to work eight two- or three-hour shifts a month in their first year, and they receive the calls at home after being connected through an answering service.One of the trainers uses the pseudonym "Nina." She works full-time in reproductive health and has been taking calls for Exhale for more than four years. These days, depending on her availability, she takes on one to four shifts each month.Before getting involved with Exhale, she said, she'd never had a good conversation about abortion. It had always felt too politicized, and she wanted to connect with people who'd had the experience and "get grounded in their reality" -- as she's never had an abortion herself. The reality for callers runs the gamut. Nina remembers the woman who came from a family opposed to abortion and who was against it herself but found herself in an abusive relationship when she became pregnant and had her abortion. She describes the mothers and fathers who call, wanting to know how to best support their daughters who aren't ready to call themselves. She recalls the woman with bipolar disorder who blamed herself for being sick; she'd desperately wanted the baby but feared that if she went off her medications to continue the pregnancy, she would have killed herself. She talks about the ones who can't stop crying and the others who feel guilty for feeling relieved. Faith comes up maybe 10% to 15% of the time, Nina says. To the one who worries that God won't forgive her, Nina might ask, "What does forgiveness look like in your faith?" or "Is your God a forgiving God?" Then, she might say, "Do you feel like you can forgive yourself?"Join the conversationSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.The longest and toughest call she's had? The boyfriend who, three years after the fact, couldn't shake the guilt he had over persuading his girlfriend to get an abortion. Nina used to see herself as a "rescuer," she said, someone who had to "fix things." But this work has taught her to let go of that inner voice and accept that her job is to simply be there for people. In giving this way to others, she's helped herself."It's enriched my life, how I treat my family members and my friends and how I am toward myself," Nina said. "It's about compassion, and we all need that."And in today's climate, where the world often seems so divided, actively choosing to not pick sides and honor people's stories feels more important than ever, she says."There are very few spaces to feel supported in hard conversations. When we give people that space, it feels like a hug, and that's super powerful," Nina said. "I don't have to have a stance; I just have to be present."

Story by Moni Basu, CNN Video and photos by Matthew Gannon, CNN

2016-03-07 12:14:04

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/07/world/canada-welcomes-syrian-refugees/index.html

How the Syrian crisis came home to small town Canada - CNN

A small city in Canada welcomes Syrian refugees with open arms.

syria, canada, refugees, world, How the Syrian crisis came home to small town Canada - CNN

How the Syrian crisis came home to small-town Canada

Lethbridge, Alberta (CNN)Muna Ali adjusts the hijab covering her wavy brown locks as she pushes a cart at the Walmart Supercenter. The big day is almost here and all at once, time is racing and standing still. First on today's "to do" list: a crisp white shirt and clip-on tie for her son Mohammed. She wants him to look smart for the moment she has dreamed about for so long. But Mohammed is 6 and has other ideas. He's drawn like a magnet to the "Star Wars" display."Can we get this?" he asks, showing his mother a pair of Darth Vader slippers. "No, habibi," she says, using an Arabic term of endearment but then gives in to a Darth Vader hoodie. He's her only son and has been by her side throughout her ordeal.Muna wants everything to be perfect for her family's arrival in Canada. She knows they will cross the Atlantic with little, perhaps a small bag of clothing. They have nothing left of their life in Syria.Read MoreShe picks up underwear for her nephews and then wanders into the men's section. Her cheeks turn pink. "There are pictures," she says of the Fruit of the Loom packages. "I am too shy."She comes from a conservative Islamic world, one of modesty. Buying briefs for her brothers proves too embarrassing. She looks at clothing for her mother and sister. "I don't even know what they like anymore or what size to buy."When Muna said goodbye to everyone she loved in Syria in 2010, it was not meant to be for long. But as the uprising against Bashar al-Assad turned violent and civil war engulfed her homeland, months turned into years. Six long years. The past few have been the hardest. Her loved ones were forced to flee the fighting and take refuge in other countries: Lebanon, Germany, Turkey, Sweden. They were a close-knit family suddenly splintered by war, unsure whether they would ever be reunited.Muna Ali was desperate to find sanctuary for her parents and siblings who were forced to flee Syria when civil war erupted.At 32, Muna never imagined she would not see again her childhood home in Damascus, the backyard lined with walnut, lemon and olive trees and fragranced by sweet jasmine. It was so close to the Canadian Embassy that Muna could see the red and white maple leaf flag flutter in the wind as she waited for the bus every day.It seemed improbable in her youth that Canada would be her new home. She knew only what the country's flag looked like and that winters were polar bear cold.When she arrived in Lethbridge six years ago, it felt every bit as alien as it was distant. On this afternoon in late January, Muna is the only woman in the store with her head covered. She has slowly adjusted to being different in Lethbridge, a small southwestern Alberta city that is not at all cosmopolitan like Toronto, where it's possible to hear a dozen languages on the subway. Muna didn't even register in the most recent Canadian census of immigrants in Lethbridge. The column for Syria says 0. But it is safe here, and Muna has been trying feverishly for years to bring over her parents and siblings who belong to the terrible club of nearly 5 million refugees created by the Syrian conflict.Muna's myriad pleas for help had gone nowhere -- until one fateful day last fall. Because of a mood swing in her adopted country and a chance meeting with a Christian man, Muna's life is about to change. By year's end, Lethbridge's Syrian population is expected to rise to 300 or more. Muna is hoping that number will include several members of her own family.JUST WATCHEDCanadian city welcomes Syrian immigrantsReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCanadian city welcomes Syrian immigrants 03:44She pays for her things at Walmart and walks toward her electric blue Honda Fit. The Chinook winds gusting off the Canadian Rockies are foreboding this afternoon, at hurricane force. Muna's mind is spinning even faster.What if there is a last-minute glitch with paperwork? What if her parents and her brothers lose what might be their last chance at freedom?She keeps her phone by her side, just in case her brother calls and also because it contains her most precious possession: family photographs. She is almost afraid to look at them. One is a close-up of her father wearing a navy knit cap. She stares at his face, grainy and yet so clear. He looks old and tired to her, but not because of his age. She also stores a video that a sister in Germany compiled with images of everyone in happier times. It's set to an Arabic song that roughly translates as "I miss my mother's smile." Muna has only been able to watch it three times, even though she has had it for months, and every time, tears well in her eyes. "Mama!" says Mohammed to his mother. He has seen her cry like this so many times.Muna has a large family -- eight siblings -- and she realizes it will not be possible to bring them all here at once. When she told them this harsh truth, her brothers and sisters had the same reaction: "Leave me here. Take the others."These are the kind of choices that must be made when there is nothing but despair all around. Each wished for the other a better future.Muna knows it will be toughest of all for her mother. A journey to Canada means leaving behind a son who has not been heard from since he was detained in Damascus. It will be hard to get her mother to the Beirut airport.Muna pinches herself to make sure she's not dreaming. It doesn't feel real at times. She has pictured a reunion so many times in her head. She has so many questions. But first, she will hold onto her mother and father. And not let go.Lethbridge pastor Ryan Dueck says the scale of human suffering in the Syria conflict propelled him to take action.'What if this were my family?'For Ryan Dueck, Syria was just one of those faraway and troubled Mideast nations that occasionally made the news. He didn't take real notice until the war began producing horrific numbers: There were already 2 million refugees by the end of 2013; 1 million of them, children. That bothered Ryan, a husband, father and pastor.He is the son of a Mennonite farmer who grew hay, grain, peas and canola and raised hogs and cattle in the prairies that lie in the shadows of Alberta ski resorts. He instilled in Ryan a strong Christian conviction. Ryan, 40, studied philosophy and theology and practiced as a Mennonite pastor in Vancouver before heading back home to Lethbridge almost five years ago with his wife, Naomi, and their adopted twins. Nicholas and Claire are Ojibway Indians; through them, Ryan learned for the first time what it means to be different. He saw his own kids feel the sting of racism.He saw it, too, in the reactions of North Americans to the Syrian refugee crisis. He understands concerns about terrorism; Canada has seen its share of plots and attacks. In 2006, authorities arrested 18 people who were inspired by al Qaeda and allegedly plotting to seize hostages and behead the Prime Minister. In 2014, a gunman's attack on Parliament made Canadians think again about beefing up security measures.Ryan was all for vetting refugees entering Canada, but he couldn't understand how anyone, especially Christians, could oppose giving safe haven to people fleeing war. He winced when he saw Christians posting cartoons of a Trojan horse outside the gates of Europe with a sign that said "refugees" on the front and "ISIS" on the back. Jesus was not at all ambiguous about loving one's neighbors -- or one's enemies, he believed. He liked to remind his fellow citizens of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He saw the headlines about escalating violence in Syria and thought: "What if this were my family?" In January 2015, Ryan and his parishioners at Lethbridge Mennonite Church decided they could no longer stand on the sidelines of the Syria conflict. The scale of what was happening there had become impossible to ignore.Church members split into six groups and brainstormed ideas. What could they do to help? They knew that their actions would not make a dent in the crisis, but perhaps they could relieve the suffering of one family. Many of the Syrian families arriving in Lethbridge have young children.A newly arrived Syrian family finds help at Lethbridge Immigrant Services.Ryan knew sponsoring refugees would be a huge undertaking. They would have to raise about $30,000 to support one family for a year. Beyond the financial backing, they would have to commit to helping the family settle in Lethbridge. That meant setting up a home, driving the newcomers around, taking them for medical checkups, getting the kids enrolled in school and the adults in English classes and other activities that make up the rhythm of life in Lethbridge.Last spring, Ryan's sponsorship group launched a Facebook page, "From Syria to Lethbridge," to raise visibility of his group's efforts. A Syrian Orthodox priest who came to speak at the church as part of a peace program knew two brothers, Feras and Fadel Aljaber, who had fled the besieged city of Homs with their families. They were in Lebanon, waiting for a new home. Suddenly, the church had their families.Donations came in at a steady pace. Some gave thousands of dollars. Others wrote a check for whatever they could afford -- $20, $50. The money increased exponentially after the global publication of a photograph of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed ashore on a Mediterranean beach. The photo moved Canadians to act and Ryan's group became the focal point of goodwill in Lethbridge. Ryan recalls 40 people showing up at the next meeting. The same kind of organizing was going on all over Canada, and the pace picked up significantly after the conservative government of Stephen Harper lost October's parliamentary election to the Liberals. There were many reasons for the defeat, but one was certainly Harper's hard line on accepting Syrian refugees and his opposition to the wearing of a niqab, or facial cover, by Muslim women at citizenship ceremonies. Many Canadians, including Ryan, saw that as just plain mean.New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in early November. He intended to make good on a campaign promise to take in 25,000 government-sponsored Syrians by the end of February. Many more could come through private sponsors. South of the border, the governors of 30 American states said they would not resettle Syrians after President Barack Obama announced plans to admit up to 10,000 refugees. Meanwhile, in Canada, things began moving forward at an extraordinary pace. Canadian DNALethbridge took the cue and oiled its refugee welcoming machine. The city formed a formal steering committee that included health workers, police officers, immigrant services staff, the mayor and private sponsors, like Ryan, who were growing by the day. One group was formed by local doctors; another was a university-led effort. Mayor Chris Spearman says Lethbridge is the only city in Alberta that has been meeting with community groups on a weekly basis. He anticipates about 350 Syrians will settle in Lethbridge -- more than 145 had arrived by the end of February. That's a sizable population for a city that is small and without a significant Arab community. Things every immigrant should know about Canada Everything you heard about the brutal winters is true. Bring long johns. Canadians are generally pretty polite people, eh? They take a lot of pride in not being "American." They obsess over hockey. They eat a lot of poutine (French fries smothered in cheese curd and gravy). A LOT. Everything is in English and French, even when you are not in Quebec. There's more to the national anthem than "Oh, Canada!" Yes, Justin Bieber is Canadian. So is Celine Dion. If America is a melting pot, Canada is a mosaic. "These families escaping Syria are attacked by terrorists and are being attacked by their own government," says Spearman, himself an immigrant from Britain. "The measure of a community is how it treats the people who have the least."Spearman often drives down to Sweet Grass, Montana, just an hour south of Lethbridge, to buy lottery tickets. He says he doesn't understand why governors and mayors in America are so hesitant to welcome Syrian refugees. Their fears, he thinks, are "unfounded."Sarah Amies, director of Immigrant Services, knows the integration challenges will be plenty in Canada. A large number of the Syrians are arriving through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and are the most vulnerable of a vulnerable population. Many were poor and uneducated before the war and are even more so now. And they have large families."We have at least three pregnant mums and lots of kids under the age of 5," says Amies, overseeing a mass immunization organized by her agency. But this is not the first time Canadians have stepped up for people in crisis, and community leaders are banking on experience. In 1979, the government announced it would take in 50,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia or "boat people" as they came to be known. By the end of 1981, 60,000 such refugees were settled in Canada. Even back then, many were sponsored by private citizens.Refugees can enter Canada one of three ways: they can be sponsored by the government or by a private group or receive a little support from both. Canada requires private sponsorships to consist of at least five individuals to ensure a yearlong commitment to the refugee family. Sarah Aimes oversees various services that are available to Syrians settling in Lethbridge.Chris Spearman, the mayor of Lethbridge, led a citywide effort to help welcome newcomers from Syria.Private sponsorships were a big reason the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in 1989 awarded the people of Canada its Nansen Refugee Award, given for extraordinary service to the forcibly displaced. Recipients have included Doctors Without Borders and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. Canada is the only country to have ever won.Naomi Alboim, who spearheaded the Southeast Asian refugee effort for the government of Ontario, co-founded Lifeline Syria in June to help with the current crisis in the Toronto area. In Alboim's mind, there is no question that Canada is doing far more per capita to help Syrians than any other country."Are we a gentler people? Yes, maybe. It's almost in Canadian DNA," Alboim says. Certainly, there has been opposition to opening Canada's borders. Canadian media have cited polls that show Canadians are divided on how many refugees to accept. There has also been backlash. Syrian refugees were pepper-sprayed at a January welcoming event in Vancouver, and in Calgary, just two hours from Lethbridge, graffiti sprayed at a school said: "Syrians go home and die" and "Kill the traitor Trudeau." But those incidents have been isolated and for the most part, Trudeau's ambitious goal of resettling refugees has proceeded smoothly. Trevor Harrison, a Lethbridge sociology professor who studies Canadian society, says his city represents the very best of what he views as quintessentially Canadian. If the United States is a melting pot, then Canada, he says, is a mosaic. By that he means Canada welcomes immigrants and embraces their "otherness" perhaps more than America. Multiculturalism has been policy here since the 1970s."Our sense about fear and the threat of being different," he says, "isn't the same as in the States."That's what both Muna and Ryan are counting on.'Please, if you can help me fast'A few weeks after Canadians first saw the photo of Alan Kurdi's body, Muna stumbled upon the "Syria to Lethbridge" Facebook page. She copied and pasted her appeal, one that she could recite from memory by now, and hit the return key to send."Hello, I am Muna Ali from Lethbridge. I have been living here 6 years. I am from Syria and I have family members there and in Lebanon. I'm wondering if you help bring Syrian refugees. I have gone to many places to seek help but nobody could do anything for me. ... Please if you can help me fast that will be very appreciated because my brother is planning to go to Europe in the famous dangerous way."Muna was shocked when she heard back right away. She and Ryan exchanged messages and on the first day of October, they agreed to meet.Ryan Dueck, second from right, stops in at a language center for a coffee and conversation with members of the Syrian family his church sponsored.Ryan went to see Muna with Syria weighing heavy on his mind.The day before, he'd read about the latest bombing in Homs, the Syrian city that was the cradle of the uprising, and texted the Orthodox priest he met to make sure he was alright. Ryan sat on a tractor at his father's farm, taking in the crisp fall air. He knew he would later go home and take his kids to volleyball and youth group at church. His Syrian friend, meanwhile, would be surrounded by the terrifying booms and blasts of war. He thought, too, about the Aljaber family his church was sponsoring. They were in a temporary shelter in Lebanon wondering: Where will we go? When will we be safe? Now at the cafeteria of the University of Lethbridge, Ryan was about to meet another desperate Syrian.Muna came with her son, Mohammed. Muna was not accustomed to being alone in the presence of an unknown man. That was new to Ryan. He'd never been exposed to Muslim culture in southwestern Alberta. She told him her story. She had a degree in business administration and was a teacher at a middle school in Damascus. She and her husband, Hasan, a native of Iraq, met online, married and shortly after their son was born in Syria, Muna boarded a plane to Lethbridge. Years earlier, Hasan had escaped war in Iraq and settled here, earning a living as a truck driver.Muna said her son does not know his grandparents or his uncles and aunts. Mohammed came home from a pizza party at school once and asked his mother: "How come my friends' grandparents come to the party but mine don't?"As Muna spoke, Ryan looked at the university students coming in and out, talking and laughing. They reminded him of his younger self when he was enrolled here. Now, the mundane seemed maddening. In that and subsequent conversations, Muna's sorrows came gushing out. She told Ryan about how her father sold his farm after the war ignited. He knew that peace would not come to Syria for a long time, maybe even 50 years. The whole family understood that things would never be the same.Erin Phillips, an Anglican pastor, spearheaded the effort to bring Muna Ali's family from Lebanon to Lethbridge.One brother was arrested by men who shoved him into a white van in downtown Damascus. He has not been seen since. Her brother-in-law also went "missing." Two other brothers escaped conscription into Assad's army by fleeing to Lebanon, then to Qatar, Sudan and Libya, where they were able to get on a migrant boat to Italy. From there, they managed to cross Europe and made it to Sweden. Yet another brother is in Turkey, and a sister made it to Germany. Left in Lebanon was the part of the family Muna was trying to bring to Canada: two more brothers, Abdul and Osama, her sister, Waffa, whose husband is missing, and her parents, Hassan and Thiba, who fled Syria in 2013.Muna described the uncertainty that war brings; how she lies down at night not knowing whether her brothers and sisters are still breathing. She has sometimes been so consumed with worry that she can't work, study or sleep. It is all she can do to take care of her son. Sometimes, she feels overcome by guilt. Why should she enjoy such a comfortable existence while her parents and siblings struggle? She thinks of her brothers when she eats baklava and other sweets made from rice and milk."Has it been hard?" Ryan asked about her life in Canada."Not really," she replied. "The people are so nice here. You walk down the street, and people smile at you. We sit here, you and I, in a cafe, and nobody bothers us. If this was my country, people would be very suspicious."Muna told Ryan her family was considered illegal in Lebanon. As refugees, they could not renew their documents without returning to war-torn Syria, but they couldn't continue living in Lebanon either. "They can't stay, but they have nowhere to go. The borders are all closed. Nobody wants them," Muna said.One brother tried to pay smugglers to take his family across the Mediterranean, even though he knew thousands had perished when their boats capsized in the deep waters. The smugglers took all her brother's money but failed to secure passage. They've lost their homes and their possessions, Muna told Ryan. To feed their families, her brothers work under the radar in Lebanon, doing odd jobs here and there. "They are good workers, and they want to do anything," she said. "It's hard. Very hard."Ryan kept looking at Mohammed, wise beyond his 6 years. He had seen his mama cry too often and wanted so much to stop her tears. He tugged at his mother's arm and spoke to her in Arabic: "Will this man help us?""Shhhh," Muna said. She didn't want to overwhelm Ryan.In that moment, Ryan recalls, the abstractions of Syria vanished. He was looking at a woman scarred by the war.He told Muna he would try to help, though the truth was he was brand new to the intricacies of the immigration process."I don't know the words to say," she said. "You are the first people to ever even listen to my story."No place to call homeA few weeks later, Ryan sat down with Muna at his church to finalize the application forms for her family. It took an hour and a half to go through the bureaucratic maze."What can I put here?" Muna asked, pointing to the "address" line.Ryan knew from his few dealings with immigration experts that Syrian refugees are often told to walk to the nearest intersection that has a street number and write it down. Or they're asked to go to the nearest post office. Or told to find someone who has a house and ask to use that address. Any application without an address is tossed.What must that feel like, Ryan thought. To not belong anywhere. To feel unwanted. Discarded. To be constantly drifting across borders, searching for a welcome, a home.Then he saw Muna staring at her phone. "So, any news from Damascus today?""Actually, my friend died this morning. Her husband, too. They lived in our neighborhood." Muna showed Ryan a Facebook photo. "This was their car," she told him. "The bomb fell while they were driving home from work. They have two children." No wonder she didn't think she could ever return home to Syria. Death was everywhere; there would be reminders of the horror for years to come.Lethbridge feels alien to many of the Syrians. But they are happy to be safe.A different but safe landOn a bitterly cold and foggy afternoon in early January, Muna and Mohammed drove down Highway 5 to the Lethbridge airport. They waited for two brothers and their families to arrive from Lebanon. But they were not Muna's loved ones.Even before she met Ryan, Muna decided she would volunteer to translate for other arriving Syrian families who spoke little or no English. She felt it was her responsibility. There were so many Syrians who were in worse predicaments than her own family. Besides, she wanted to give back to Lethbridge, especially after private groups sponsored her family.She felt grateful to Ryan and Erin Phillips, an Anglican pastor who spearheaded the groups sponsoring Muna's family. It was inconceivable to her that she, a Muslim woman, had befriended a man who was a Christian pastor. He was the first Canadian friend she made, the first she invited over to her house for dinner along with Erin and Ryan's wife, Naomi.She accompanied Ryan to the airport to welcome and translate for the Aljabers, the family from Homs.Church members waited with toques and mittens in the compact arrivals hall for the Air Canada propeller plane from Calgary. Muna imagined it was her family climbing down the stairs on the tarmac and walking through the glass doors. Soon, she thought. Inshallah. God willing.It was heartening for Muna to see distressed compatriots arrive in the place she had made her home. She visited Lethbridge Immigrant Services, where the Syrian families received guidance on how to restart their lives. She knew it would be an uphill climb for many of them to stand on their own. Even with her English skills and a husband already established here, it had been hard for Muna. It would be that much harder for those who had no family in their new country.But at least they were safe in Canada, Muna thought. She yearned for the same sanctuary for her family.Tears, hugs and the maple leafThe winds pick up even more as Muna drives back from Walmart to a rented suburban split-level house in West Lethbridge that will be her parents' new home. Behind it is a housing complex where her brothers have each been given an apartment. She learned just a week ago that Canadian officials had called her parents and brothers for interviews and health checks in Lebanon. Things move quickly after that. Erin, the Anglican pastor in charge of the private sponsor groups, told Muna her family could be on their way to Canada any day now."What about my sister?" Muna had asked Erin. "She didn't get a call yet. I am very worried about her being alone."Muna knew there was little Erin could do to hasten the process for her sister. When you are a refugee, you have no say in when and how you travel. Muna's family has learned patience in the most difficult of ways.One night, Muna got so wound up that she sat alone in her pajamas in the living room. She didn't even hear her son calling her to come lie down with him as she always did at bedtime.She called her brother Abdul in the morning, and he complained about the enormous amount of paperwork. "I will kill you if you lose any of those documents," she said. She had helped set up three households for her parents and brothers. The call had gone out for donations for refugees, and the list was long: Sofas. Beds. Dining tables. Kitchen appliances. Big pots. Shoe racks. Television sets. Soccer balls. Toys. Towels. Even decorative items such as flower vases and artwork to make the rooms feel cozy.Muna helped assemble and arrange furniture and made bed after bed. In her parents' bedroom, she and church volunteers unfolded purple and white embroidered sheets from Bed Bath & Beyond. Muna joked her mother and father might have a second honeymoon here. It had been so long since they had a joyful night together. Muna Ali is reunited with her parentsNow it's nearly all done, she thinks as she sinks into an oversized couch, also a gift from a stranger. "Thank God," she says of her Arab friends who have volunteered to prepare platters of kibbe and grape-leaf dolmas for the big day. That makes cooking a special meal one less worry. A few minutes later, Erin bursts through the door carrying locally roasted bags of coffee in one hand and ice skates in the other. "We're going to turn these boys into Canadians yet," she says about Muna's nephews.She flashes a smile the breadth of her entire face and announces Muna's family will start arriving in two days. The scenes in Muna's dreams are at long last unfolding. On the first Sunday of February, Muna finds herself at the Lethbridge airport once again. This time, she is here for her own family. "Finally," she tells everyone gathered around her. She is laughing and crying at once. The anticipation is thick, as though a lifetime of separation is coming to an end. War has made six years feel that long.Ryan and Erin are here along with several other sponsors. So are the al Jabber brothers and their mother. Muna was there for them, and they wanted to reciprocate.Ryan looks at Mohammed, dressed in his just-out-of-the-packet Walmart shirt and prancing about the arrivals hall with balloons for his cousins. How different this feels than their first meeting a few months ago when Mohammed asked whether Ryan would help his family. Ryan will never think of Syria the way he used to. It has now become a place where a friend is from.Air Canada Flight 7215 lands just after 2:15 p.m., 15 minutes early. "It's happening," Muna says, excited and quickly ending a call with a friend.She presses her cheek against the glass door and strains to see the tarmac. Her brother Abdul and his family are the last to deplane. Muna can wait no longer. She rushes through the security door, unable to contain herself. The guard doesn't try to stop her. Everyone in the airport is watching. All have tears in their eyes.The scene is repeated again several hours later, when Flight 7221 brings her parents and her other brother, Osama, to Lethbridge. Muna looks at the faces of her loved ones, every line deepened by war. It's a reunion made bittersweet by the absence of brothers and sisters spread across continents and the memories of a homeland they may never see again. But in this moment, Muna is beaming. She holds onto her father and mother -- and she does not let go.In her youth, Muna didn't take much notice of the maple leaf hoisted at the embassy near her house in Damascus. Now, she is thankful for Canada. On this day, it has given her the most precious gift of all. Voices from the heartland: fear and hope in a city where Syrians settledFollow @MbasuCNN

John Blake, CNN

2017-02-10 17:26:12

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https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/us/first-time-white/index.html

The first time I discovered I was white - CNN

People of color traditionally told stories of suddenly discovering they were different, of not fitting in. Now white people are telling the same kind of stories.

us, The first time I discovered I was white - CNN

The first time I discovered I was white

Dancin' and singin' and movin' to the groovin'And just when it hit me somebody turned around and shoutedPlay that funky music white boyPlay that funky music rightPlay that funky music white boy-- Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music"(CNN) -- The first time I realized white people are people too is when I heard the song "Play That Funky Music."It was a monster hit in the summer of 1976, especially in my neighborhood, an all-black community in West Baltimore. The song blasted from car radios and TVs tuned to "Soul Train." As soon as my friends heard the opening guitar riff, someone would shout, "Oh, that's my jam," and people would start bopping their heads and singing along.I thought the band behind my summer anthem was black. Then one day I turned on the TV and experienced what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance." My jaw dropped when I saw "Wild Cherry," a bunch of skinny white guys with permed afros, tear into my song. I remember suddenly feeling guilty for liking it and wondering if some racial boundary had been crossed. I had never heard white people talk about being white before.I hear plenty of it today, though. There's been a rise of racial consciousness among white Americans. "Whiteness studies" programs are popping up at colleges across the US. Rural white Americans are the focus of popular books like "Hillbilly Elegy" and "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America." Whites now believe they suffer more from racism than blacks, according to a recent study. Some political pundits even attribute President Donald Trump's election victory to an "uprising" among rural white voters. Read MoreBasically, white has become the new black.This could be awkwardThis is part of an ongoing series by CNN's John Blake and Tawanda Scott on race, religion and politics This is a flip of the traditional racial script in America. Being "American" traditionally meant white. It was the norm. "If you're white, you're alright," one popular expression went. Whiteness, according to author Toni Morrison, was the "definition of 'Americanness.'" People of color were the ones who traditionally told stories of suddenly discovering they were different, of not fitting in. These are the painful stories heard in CNN's new video series, "The First Time I Realized I Was Black."Now white people are telling the same kind of stories. Here are three people talking about the moments they discovered they are white. One says it was triggered by a simple question on a school test; another points to an innocuous question from a girl; and a third cites an encounter that ended with him bleeding and confused. 'My parents knew I'd eventually figure out I'm white'A Sunday School teacher once asked Dani Fitzgerald's mom: "When are you going to tell her she's white?"Her mom, Debbi, laughed it off."We don't talk about people's color, ever," she told the teacher.Sometimes we hear people say they don't see color, that their family taught them to ignore racial distinctions. But Fitzgerald's story illustrates how raising someone in a racial cocoon presents risks as well as rewards.Today, Fitzgerald is a 23-year-old teacher with cherub cheeks, blue eyes and, occasionally, a tiny silver nose ring. Her racial cocoon was a predominately black church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's where she spent most of her childhood.The Pentecostal church was led by her grandfather, and the only white people in the church were members of her family. Homeschooled by her parents, she says they never talked about people's races, including their own.Dani Fitzgerald's parents raised her not to see color, a decision that initially confused their daughter."As a child my parents never made a distinction between races -- ever," she wrote in an essay titled "I Didn't Know I Was White," which was published by her college newspaper two years ago. Black people weren't "those people" in her world. They were her people. They were the people she prayed and sang with in the pews and laughed with at church picnics. Even today the songs she sings to lift her spirits are drawn from the black experience. She loves black spirituals like "Have a Little Talk with Jesus" or "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." Around the age of 10, though, she started sensing she was different from her church family. Her parents invited white friends to their church, but they rarely accepted. When they did, they were visibly uncomfortable. Only later would she learn that her parents were criticized for having black friends."I can remember the tightened faces and widened eyes of our white friends as my church family embraced them with a hug and wet kiss on the cheek," said Fitzgerald. "It was little moments like that where I noticed something different about my church family and my white friends. It was confusing."The confusion intensified as she got older. Though her parents attended a virtually all-black church, they lived in white suburban neighborhoods. When she became a teenager, her parents let her attend a public high school. There were about 2,000 students in the school; only about a half dozen were black.Still, she said, her church held such a powerful hold on her that she was unsure of her racial identity. Then one day in 8th grade she had to take a standardized test that asked her to check a box for race."That was one of the first times I can recall having to put down my race for anything," said Fitzgerald. "Seeing the races lined up like that, I had no idea what to put."The First Time I Realized I Was BlackIn "The Souls of Black Folk," W.E.B. Du Bois talks about the first time he realized his skin color made him different. We asked celebrities, CNN anchors and reporters, and others to tell us when they first realized that being black affected how people treated them. Share your own story with #realizediwasblackWATCH ALL 20 VIDEOSShe looked at the kid next to her and saw he checked "Asian." She did the same thing. It wasn't until a year later that she realized her mistake. She overheard a group of white students talking about how odd the word "Caucasian" was because they only used it on test forms. "It hit me like a flashback," she said. "It was then that I remembered I put the wrong race. ... That was difficult because at my age, I should've known that I was white. When my friends were talking about being 'Caucasian' I felt really stupid. How didn't I know that?" Later, Fitzgerald would see another disconnect: Some of her white friends' descriptions of black people didn't match what she knew about her black church family.Once she was in a car with her white friends when they entered a black neighborhood."I remember their parents saying, 'Lock the doors! Lock the doors!' And when I looked outside, I saw black people."When she started dating a black guy -- now her fiancee -- some of her white friends were bewildered. Some still are. They ask her how her parents reacted."When I give a quick explanation of my parents' love for all people, the reply is usually, 'Yeah, my dad would kill me if I brought home a black guy.' And they give me an explanation for how 'totally not racist' their father is." Fitzgerald was so shaped by the black church she attended that she didn't really know she was white until she was older.I asked if her mother ever sat her down to tell her she was white. It never happened. "My parents knew I'd eventually figure out I'm white," she said. "They just didn't want to have an influence on that. They wanted me to grow up in an environment where I'm loved by all people, some white, some black."Her family's attitude toward race is rooted in their faith. Jesus ignored racial, cultural and gender distinctions. So should his followers, she said. One of her favorite passages comes from Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."Those are beautiful sentiments. I wonder, though, if Fitzgerald will retain her parents' optimism when she has children. She is currently teaching English as a second language in Thailand. When she returns to the US, she plans on marrying her fiancee, who is studying criminal justice, and starting a family.What racial box will she tell their children to check?Or will she, like her parents, not "talk about people's color, ever"?"They shouldn't have to pick one race because they will be as equally black as they are white," said Fitzgerald. "But how does that look practically? I'm not so sure."'I have never fully grappled with my own race'Whitney Dow once thought he knew what being white was all about. A bespectacled filmmaker who talks passionately about race, he's given speeches on the subject, appeared on television and made films for PBS on civil rights -- including "Two Towns of Jasper," a critically acclaimed documentary about the murder of a black man in Jasper, Texas. But it was a simple question from a 7th grader that made him realize he was white, he said.It didn't really hit Whitney Dow that he was white until a girl posed a question, which inspired the filmmaker's next work.He'd been invited to a fundraiser to talk about the making of "Two Towns of Jasper." A group of middle school students came to hear him speak; afterward a young girl asked about his experience working with his black filmmaking partner, Marco Williams."What did you learn about your racial identity working with Marco?"Dow's response was instinctive: "I don't have one," he told her. "I'm an individual."But then he thought back to his experiences in Jasper and had what he calls a "racial epiphany." He realized he was more than an individual. He was white, and there was a huge difference between understanding this intellectually and experiencing it emotionally.While filming in Jasper, he'd gone into a black-owned auto shop to talk to workers and customers about the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., who had been chained by the ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death by a group of white men.Dow said he felt like a crusading filmmaker getting the true story. But then Marco later went to the same shop and filmed his own interviews with the same people. When he and Marco compared footage, Dow was stunned.The black people in the shop had given Dow false names and an entire set of false stories. His good intentions didn't matter. They didn't see an individual; they saw him as a threat, a white man in a town where other white men had tortured and murdered a black man.JUST WATCHEDKendrick Sampson: When I realized I was blackReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHKendrick Sampson: When I realized I was black 00:59Dow was 14 when he met Marco, and he thought they were similar. But it wasn't just their footage that didn't jibe; they clashed over certain goals and scenes in the film."We got to the point that we couldn't agree on reality," he said. "We left the film feeling that there were certain gulfs that could not be bridged."By asking her question -- and triggering his memories of Jasper -- that 7th grader changed how Dow saw himself. "I had never fully grappled with my own race," he said. "I had never really understood that this was an active, dynamic component that impacted every moment of my life." I heard about Dow because he's become an authority on "whiteness." His latest work for PBS is an "interactive investigation" called the "Whiteness Project." Dow travels the country asking people who identify as white or "partially white" to talk about what being white means to them. Two installments have aired so far.When Dow approached potential donors for the "Whiteness Project," some thought he was joking. It's easy to understand why. At first glance, defining whiteness seems so elusive. People tend to think of it in extremes."Whiteness is on a toggle switch between 'bland nothingness' and 'racial hatred,'" author and historian Nell Irvin Painter wrote in a New York Times essay, "What is Whiteness?"But the evolution of whiteness is so much more complex. It was invented; not inherited. Some race scholars say it was created around the 17th century as a legal term to confer certain protections and privileges on Americans of European descent. It was also used to reinforce the notion of a superior white race -- and to justify slavery. Dow gives some of this historical context in the "Whiteness Project" in between interviews with his subjects. But I think the most fascinating part of his project is seeing white people grapple with their racial identity. Some people denied their whiteness. Others were apologetic. One young white man said "I'm not happy that I'm white," citing the historic oppression associated with his people. Another guy wondered why black people still get hung up on "the slave thing." One interview stood out above the rest. I could see the moment a young man discovered he was white.JUST WATCHEDMontel Williams: When I realized I was blackReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMontel Williams: When I realized I was black 01:23He was a white millennial in Dallas, Texas, who looked like he could be a J. Crew model. He was clean-shaven, square-jawed and broad-shouldered. He was also a former drug dealer who sheepishly confessed he had been arrested at least 20 times, but that the only mark on his record was a public intoxication charge. He said he knew if he got a lawyer, the judge would go easy on him because of how he looked."I basically did whatever I wanted to, knowing that there were absolutely no consequences," he said. "I would be in jail if I wasn't white."Dow asked him if he ever felt guilty about his past. He paused to consider the question. A look of confusion on his face gave way to realization."Me talking about it," he said, "is making me realize: Damn, I'm pretty lucky." Dow, 55, said he understands why more white people are talking about being white today. Some have a sense they are being left behind. They might not see more people of color in their personal lives, but they see them in movies, on newscasts and throughout popular culture."It's almost as if you're a person of color, you are on the trajectory up," he said. "It's a positive narrative. It's against oppression. Things are getting better. It's not a straight line, but the narrative is we're working for equality and freedom."Dow is still working to understand what being white means. He said the 7th grader's question inspired him to start the "Whiteness Project.""I don't think she realized that she changed my life," he said.In that moment, she also inspired him to change his answer. After he told her he had no racial identity, Dow thought about his experiences in Jasper and decided to answer again."Of course, that's not true," he told her. "I have the most powerful racial identity in America. I'm a white male." 'I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness'Editor's note: The section below contains language that could be offensive to some.What if racial categories aren't set in stone but stretch like taffy? That's the analogy I thought of when I considered the story of a black man who discovered he was white.That man is my younger brother, Patrick.I don't normally write about family. But my brother and I belong to the "partially white" category Dow explores in his "Whiteness Project." We are biracial. When I told my brother about this story, he told me about the day he discovered he was white. Patrick Blake saw himself as black, but being biracial meant others in his community saw him as an enemy.It was one of the saddest and strangest tales I've ever heard him tell.Our mother is Irish and our father is black. But we didn't see ourselves as white. We grew up with our father's family in a black community. We didn't meet our mother or her family until we were young men.When we were kids, being biracial wasn't cool or exotic. It was the 1970s and early '80s in inner-city Baltimore. Our world was all black. Whites were viewed with disdain. The only whites we saw were police officers or bill collectors. They were so vilified that I never told anyone my mother was white. It was a badge of shame.And it could get you hurt. That's what happened to my brother one day when he was 13. He was walking home alone on a deserted stretch of railroad tracks when he heard a chorus of voices behind him."Hey white boy! White boy! Hey you honky," a group of boys shouted.At first, my brother didn't know they were talking to him. Then he realized he was the only other person on the tracks. He heard their footsteps quicken. They were coming after him. He started running.Then they started throwing rocks -- not small ones but those big, jagged rocks that line railway beds. One hit him on the side of his head. It made a strange "thwack" when it hit his skull. He started bleeding. He finally outran the boys and arrived home trembling."I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness," said Patrick. "They were mad at me because of the color of my skin. I remember walking home, tears coming to my eyes, not because of the physical assault but because these were my own people. But they didn't see it because of the color of my skin."I knew how he felt. I would lash out whenever kids called me "white boy." I got in so many fights because of those two words. I can still remember the taunts from the boys in my neighborhood as I rolled on the ground fighting my latest accuser: "It's a fight, it's a fight; between a nigger and a white." My brother told me his whiteness made him feel like a person with a disability. If he walked outside, he would immediately attract second looks because of his fair complexion and hair texture."I thought of myself as black," said Patrick, now 51, "but I understood myself to be white in my neighborhood." Neither of us had the understanding of race to articulate what we were going through then. Only later would I learn that "whiteness" is actually elastic. The Irish, our mother's ethnic group, were once not considered fully white in 19th century America. The same with Italians, Jews and Greeks. They had to work their way into whiteness, often by conspicuously hating blacks.Those kind of appeals to racial solidarity wouldn't have made any difference to the boys I tangled with in my neighborhood. They saw me and my brother as the enemy. But then, years later, my brother had his white credentials revoked. It happened during a dinner date with a white woman. After moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, my brother joined a church where he was one of four blacks in a congregation of 1,500. There was a young German woman who had her eyes on Patrick, so he invited her to dinner. As they ate in his apartment, she asked him where was he from. Not satisfied by his answer of "Baltimore," she asked another question: "What's your race?""Oh, I'm both. I'm black and white," my brother told her.The woman's eyes widened and she dropped her fork. Then a look of fear appeared on her face."I have to leave," she told him. "I don't believe in the mixing of races."My brother said he was too stunned to get mad. Patrick Blake says he knew his black identity was secure when a group of white men called him by a racial epithet.Then one day he had an experience that should have made him even angrier -- if it hadn't been comforting in an odd way.It happened in college after he got a job working at a home improvement store. He was using a forklift to unload a truck when he heard some voices behind him in a car yell, "Hey nigger.""I thought they were talking about the truck driver," he said. "He was black. I'd never been called nigger before."He ignored them until one of the voices said: "Hey you nigger on the forklift."He shrugged as the white man in the car flipped him the bird and drove off."I kind of felt relieved," he said. "I had arrived. It was comical. I remember smiling, saying, 'Damn, I'm black now.'''As time went on, he embraced the racial whiplash. Sometimes he checked the box for "white" on job applications; sometimes "African-American." But he's always seen himself as African-American because that's how he's viewed by most people he meets.Does he miss being white?"Hell no, because I'm more comfortable in my skin now," he said. "If somebody calls me a white boy, I'm not offended, and we can deal with it if necessary."One crucial moment made us both comfortable with our "partial" whiteness: when we first met our mother. I was 18, he was 17.JUST WATCHEDVan Jones: When I realized I was blackReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHVan Jones: When I realized I was black 01:33We knew the reason for the separation. Our mother's family had disowned us because of our father's race. Our mother was an unwed teenager when she gave birth to us, and she was forced by her family to keep away from her children. Interracial marriage was illegal when we were born.My brother still remembers how he felt at that meeting. I felt the same way: whole. For the first time in our lives, the circle was complete. Until then, we hadn't felt like we belonged anywhere; we'd felt victimized by racial prejudice from both blacks and whites. "When she came out to greet me, I didn't see any hesitation over whether I was black or white," said Patrick. "She was a sweet, loving person who loved her boys 100%. It really helped me be comfortable and not be ashamed of the whiteness in me. I don't really give a flip about people who say I look too white or black, because I have two loving parents."And because I'm both."I worked out my racial identity a little differently: Meeting my mother drove me to read books about race. When I read about the Irish, I see similarities with African-Americans. Both peoples had their culture and language usurped by a more dominant group. Both were looked down upon; the Irish used to be called "white niggers."Few use that derogatory term today because the Irish are now considered white. Others may soon join the club. People talk about the browning of America, but already more Hispanics are identifying as white, according to a study of census forms.It no longer surprises me when white people talk about being white. Nobody gives a second look at white boys playing funky music -- or grappling with the different ways of being white.My ultimate hope, though, is for another day -- when we learn not that we're white, black, brown or something else. We'll discover that we're all human, and race no longer divides us.

John Blake, CNN

2015-09-02 12:18:49

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https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/us/admitting-racism/index.html

Go ahead, admit you're a racist - CNN

No one is ever a racist, judging by a parade of public apologies. But what if a person said: "What I did was racist, and there's no other excuse. I was wrong."

African Americans, Apologies, Celebrities, Civil rights, Discrimination, Hulk Hogan, Language and languages, Minority and ethnic groups, Population and demographics, Racism and racial discrimination, Societal issues, Society, us, Go ahead, admit you're a racist - CNN

Go ahead, admit you're a racist

Story highlightsNo one is ever a racist, judging by a parade of apologies from celebs, politiciansBut what if someone called out for such behavior said, "What I did was racist"Part of the problem, some observers say, is that the word "racist" hasn't evolved (CNN)A group of women were chatting and laughing together like old friends when the subject turned to race.One of them said she was amazed that Donald Trump, while running for president, could get away with describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "killers." "If you kick every Latino out of this country," another chimed in, "then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?"Someone gasped and there was an awkward pause. One of the group was of Puerto Rican descent and two others were African-American. They were all panelists on the ABC show, "The View," and their conversation before a studio audience was being broadcast live. The woman whose comment derailed the perky talk-show banter was reality TV star Kelly Osbourne, who is white. She later took to Twitter to "take responsibility for my poor choice of words," but added, "I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT."Read MoreNo one is ever a racist, judging by the parade of apologies from celebrities, politicians and even police officers caught acting in apparently racially offensive ways. But here's a thought: What if a white person called out for such behavior instead said, "What I did was racist, and there's no other excuse. I was wrong."Is the American public ready for that? Has any public figure ever successfully made such an admission?"I'd be relieved if anyone would admit that, but I'm not holding my breath," says Brit Bennett, an African-American journalist and author who writes about race. "People get more upset at being called a racist than the injustice of racism." A year after racial protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, Americans are talking about racism in more sophisticated ways. More people now use terms like "racial bias" and "systemic racism." Yet the way many people use the word "racist" has not evolved. It is still stuck in a bygone era when the only racists were people burning crosses, say some civil rights activists, commentators and historians.American history doesn't offer many examples of public figures admitting to racism, but George Wallace came close in 1982 when he admitted he was "wrong" about race."When you use the word 'racist' today, it's always all or nothing -- either you is or you ain't," says Jerald Podair, an American studies professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. "It's like that line about being a little pregnant: You are or you are not."Perhaps it's time to rewrite script, some say. If you get accused of being a racist, skip the instant denials and do a little "self-interrogation," says Mark Naison, a civil rights activist and author of "White Boy: A Memoir." If it's true, publicly own your racism. Naison is a white man who says he's done that -- and the process has been liberating. He has stricken the phrase, "I am not a racist," from his vocabulary."If you say, 'I'm not a racist,' that's the best way of saying to me I can't trust you,'' says Naison, a history professor at Fordham University in New York City. "Because everybody internalizes all these racial stereotypes that are a part of our culture and our history, and that includes people of color."The evolution of the R-wordPart of the challenge of admitting that one is a racist is a lack of role models. Few, if any, public figures have made such an admission in contemporary American culture, some observers say. A politician can confess to an extramarital affair; a CEO can admit to a disastrous product launch; and individuals can stand up in 12-step meetings and admit they're addicts or alcoholics. But there's no "Racists Anonymous" or "racism rehab," they say. For most people, being called a racist is like being called a communist during the height of the Cold War, says Podair, the American studies professor."When the word was used, it stuck to you," Podair says. "You couldn't get it off of your shoe."The R-word is such a weaponized term that it's easy to forget it acquired its power only relatively recently. Racist rhetoric was the norm in America until the civil rights movement made it taboo in the 1960s, Podair says.Now the word "racist" can be deployed as the rhetorical version of the nuclear option. It can end friendships, careers and earning potential. Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendKelly Osbourne tried to call out Donald Trump on ABC's "The View" over his comments about Latino immigrants, saying: "If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?" But her comment was not well received by the show's other co-hosts. She later went on Twitter to "take responsibility for my poor choice of words" but added, "I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT." Click through this gallery to see other celebrities and public figures who have apologized after being caught out for offensive behavior.Hide Caption 1 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendA transcript released by the National Enquirer detailed racist remarks wrestler Hulk Hogan made about the dating life of his daughter, Brooke. Hogan issued an apology, saying, "It was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologize for having done it."Hide Caption 2 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendWhen Paula Deen was being sued for racial discrimination in 2013, she admitted to using the N-word -- and the celebrity chef's career derailed. Deen tried to make amends with two different videotaped apologies, but the execution just made matters worse.Hide Caption 3 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendOscar-nominated star Benedict Cumberbatch has apologized for referring to black actors as "colored" during his interview with PBS' Tavis Smiley about the lack of diversity in the British film industry. Cumberbatch said he was an "idiot" and "devastated" at his choice of words. Hide Caption 4 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendJulianne Hough is such a fan of "Orange Is the New Black" that she thought it would be fun to dress up as one of her favorite characters, "Crazy Eyes," for Halloween in 2013. Yet Hough went too far when she combined a prison orange jumpsuit with blackface, prompting outrage and a swift apology from the dancer-actress. Hide Caption 5 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendJustin Bieber took responsibility for using racial slurs as a teen. In two videos that surfaced in June 2014, a younger Bieber can be seen using the N-word on two separate occasions -- instances that he says were the result of his own ignorance. Hide Caption 6 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendMel Gibson was being interviewed about his film "Edge of Darkness" in 2010 when a reporter asked him asked about various scandals, including an anti-Semitic rant in 2006. "That's almost four years ago, dude," Gibson said. "I've moved on. I guess you haven't." The actor could be heard calling the reporter an a**hole at the end. After the 2006 incident, Gibson issued an apology and appealed to the Jewish community to help him recover from his alcohol addiction.Hide Caption 7 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendIn a 2014 Playboy interview, Gary Oldman waded into controversies involving remarks by fellow actors Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin. Oldman's comments were slammed by Jewish groups, prompting a letter from Oldman apologizing and saying he was "deeply remorseful." Hide Caption 8 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offend"Seinfeld" star Michael Richards went from beloved comic actor to persona non grata after he erupted during a standup performance in November 2006, screaming racial slurs at an African-American man in the audience. After video of his tirade went viral, Richards appeared on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" to say that he was "deeply, deeply sorry."Hide Caption 9 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendLeaked audio recordings of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racially charged remarks led to him being forced to sell the NBA team. Sterling told CNN's Anderson Cooper that he had been "baited" into making what he called "terrible" remarks. Sterling repeatedly apologized and denied accusations that he's racist.Hide Caption 10 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendJohn Mayer's controversial 2010 interview with Playboy magazine brought so much heat for the singer-songwriter that he ended up crying during his apology. Mayer, who used the N-word in the interview and claimed that he has a "white supremacist" penis, first gave a Twitter apology and then a tearful, public one during a concert in Nashville. Hide Caption 11 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendPhiladelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper apologized after being caught on video uttering a racial slur at a concert. "My actions were inexcusable. The more I think about what I did, the more disgusted I get. ... I'm going to be speaking with a variety of professionals to help me better understand how I could have done something that was so offensive."Hide Caption 12 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendCharlie Sheen apologized in 2012 for a homophobic slur he made. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sheen was emceeing the opening of a bar at a seaside restaurant in Mexico when he used the offensive word. "How we doing?" Sheen says in a video that TMZ posted. "Lying bunch of (slur)...how we doing?" Sheen very quickly issued an apology. "I meant no ill will and intended to hurt no one and I apologize if I offended anyone," he said in the statement.Hide Caption 13 of 14 Photos: Apologies: When celebs offendDuane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman's reality show was briefly suspended in 2007 after his son recorded a profanity-laced conversation in which Chapman repeatedly used the N-word. Chapman issued an apology, saying, "I am deeply disappointed in myself for speaking out of anger to my son and using such a hateful term. ... I should have never used that term."Hide Caption 14 of 14WWE recently fired former wrestler Hulk Hogan after he was caught on tape using the N-word and complaining about the prospect of his daughter being intimate with a black man. The Food Network fired celebrity chef Paula Deen in 2013 after court documents revealed she used the N-word and made anti-Semitic jokes. Both Hogan and Deen apologized. During a tearful interview on NBC's "Today" show, Deen said she was not a racist. And Hogan apologized, saying the racial epithets he used were "inconsistent with my own beliefs" and "is not who I am."At times, such claims of racial innocence anger people as much as the offensive words themselves, some African-Americans say. "The constant denials are insulting," says Saptosa Foster, a black woman who is managing partner at the 135th Street Agency, a public relations firm that represents Hollywood clients."I'm disappointed when I hear someone say that [they're not racist] when they are caught on tape or a recording blatantly spewing racist beliefs," Foster says. "Either they don't realize they're racist and don't understand what racism means, or they're unwilling to confront the issue head-on."The white 'anti-racist' pioneersSo what would happen if a white person decided to admit he's been a racist? Would there be a way to do it and not court widespread contempt? How would racial minorities react to such honesty?American history doesn't offer many answers to those questions. Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace came close to such an admission in 1982 when he said he had been "wrong" about race. In the 1960s, Wallace had been a sneering opponent of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and an enemy of the civil rights movement. He was confined to a wheelchair after surviving an assassination attempt in 1972. Later in life, while running for a fourth term as governor, he publicly apologized for his segregationist views and asked civil rights leaders for forgiveness. Yet some people wondered whether his actions were sincere, or if he just needed the support of black voters for political survival.Before he died, former Republican chairman Lee Atwater apologized for comments about Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Republican strategist Lee Atwater had a similar moment while dying of a brain tumor. In 1988, Atwater had helped create the infamous Willie Horton television ad that some say played on racial fears while helping elect George H.W. Bush as president. Horton was a black Massachusetts prisoner who, while on prison furlough, raped a white woman and stabbed her husband. Atwater deployed a menacing portrait of Horton during Bush's campaign and vowed he would make Horton the "running mate" of Bush's Democratic opponent, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.In 1991, Atwater apologized to Dukasis for the "naked cruelty" of his statement, saying "it makes me sound racist." But, like with many apologies since, Atwater added: "I am not."Some private individuals, though, have taken a path that public figures declined to take. They are white pioneers, pushing our national conversation on race in new directions. Some call themselves "anti-racists." Jennifer Louden, a self-help author and blogger, recently wrote a painfully honest essay entitled "Yes, I Am a Racist." In it, she describes unwittingly absorbing racist attitudes from her mother. Even today she says she sometimes feels discomfort around people of color because she says she is "routinely, consistently, profoundly biased.""Yes, we all have unconscious biases, but white people's biases support a racist system," she writes. Naison, the civil rights activist, says he took a similar step years ago when he confessed his racism to his then-girlfriend.He says he was in a relationship with the woman, who was black, in the mid-1960s when he came across an essay she had written for a college course. He was shocked as he read it -- because it was so well-written.Here was a white man who thought he was beyond racism because of his relationship and his civil rights activism. But his shock turned to shame when he realized why he was so surprised -- he had somehow assumed his girlfriend was intellectually inferior."I thought, 'Holy s**t, this s**t is in me, too,'" Naison says. "I not only have to struggle with this on the outside world but struggle with what's inside of me."He says he confessed his racism to his girlfriend and they went on to have a six-year relationship. Today, he makes that practice of ruthless self-interrogation a habit. He asks his black friends and colleagues to confront him if they hear or see him acting in a racist way.And sometimes they do, which he says actually builds trust. "People trust me to be honest," he says. "They don't always trust me to be right. They trust me to be open to criticism. When it's time for struggle, they can count on me. Even if I say stupid s**t, they know I'll be in the trenches with them."He says he hasn't been shunned by a single black person when he's been open about his internalized racial biases."People are shocked that a white person is honest and trusts them enough to put that s**t on the table," he says. "I've never had a black person pull away from that."The dangers of 'racist rehab'Foster, the black publicist, says she wouldn't shun a public figure who admitted being a racist after getting caught in the act. "It would be so remarkable and probably be an example for not just other public figures," she says, "but for the general population to start to look at racism as almost a sickness and as a series of beliefs that can be unlearned." She says black people have a deep capacity to forgive. She cited the reaction of black churchgoers who publicly forgave the white racist who recently killed nine worshippers, including the pastor, at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina."Black people would understand," she says. Putting on a public relations hat, Foster says most human beings would understand, because people like it when others are upfront about their mistakes.Individuals purging their souls and admitting their racism -- worth very little. Corporations and our government admitting their racism -- priceless.-- Doreen E. Loury, director of Pan African Studies at Arcadia College in Pennsylvania"When people come out and say I'm a sex or drug addict and lay it out there, people tend to gravitate toward them for owning up," she says. "It can start a turnaround."Bennett, the black journalist, once wrote in an essay entitled, "I Don't Know What to Do with Good White People," in which she quoted her mother saying something that some black people only admit privately: It's easier for them to deal with an avowed racist than someone who denies it."'It was a lot simpler in the rural South,' my mother tells me. 'White people let you know right away where you stood,'" Bennett wrote. A little more racial honesty could heal, not just hurt, she says."If we could think of interpersonal racism as something that people do -- rather than something that they are -- it would actually be a lot easier to correct," she says. "You could challenge someone's racist speech, for example, without condemning them as a person but in hopes of encouraging them to think more carefully about their language and its implications."Perhaps people could treat someone who admits to being a racist like someone who admits to having a drinking problem, says Podair, the American studies professor. "In Alcoholics Anonymous, you're supposed to stand up and say, 'I'm an alcoholic' -- it's a catharsis,'' Podair says. "People don't turn their back on you. They say we're here to accept you. Let's work through this. It's nonjudgmental and nonconfrontational."Others, though, warn that taking a therapeutic approach to racism threatens to reduce racism to what one person feels about another.In its most destructive form, racism is a system of advantage based on race where institutions -- prisons, banks, corporations - wreak more havoc than bigoted individuals, says Doreen E. Loury, director of Pan African Studies at Arcadia College in Pennsylvania."Individuals purging their souls and admitting their racism -- worth very little," Loury says. "Corporations and our government admitting their racism -- priceless."Loury says treating racism like an addiction could lead to a situation where people rationalize their racism instead of trying to change it, she says.The self-confessed racist would be like the crying sinner who never changes, she says."The so-called sinner who drinks all week, beats and cheats on his wife and gambles all his money away and says, 'Lord forgive me' on Sunday lasts until Wednesday and then starts with the same behavior all over again, knowing he can ask the Lord for forgiveness on Sunday because he's only human and born into sin," she says. Looking for a step forward on the issuePodair, the historian, concedes that giving people permission to publicly admit to their racism is risky. South Africa created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995 to help reconcile victims and perpetrators of apartheid, but nothing like that exists in the United States. "It has a genie-in-a-bottle quality about it where we don't even know where it goes," Podair says. "If you give whites free rein to say, 'I am a racist,' God knows where that could lead."He says racial minorities will ultimately be the "gatekeepers" who decide if and when public and private figures can admit they're a racist. Whites will take their cues from them."It would be a step forward to create an atmosphere where a Hulk Hogan could say, 'Yes, I have racist thoughts, racist ideas, but that's not all of me and not everything I think about race,' " Podair says."We need to find that language, something that allows you to do that," he says.We don't seem to have it now. That was obvious in the panicked expressions that spread across the faces of the panelists on "The View" after Kelly Osbourne tried to explain her Trump statement. One of the co-hosts quickly changed the subject to fashion, and then the show went to a commercial. One day, however, someone may rewrite that script. She's not going to say, "I don't see color," hire an army of publicists or tell everyone she has biracial grandchildren. She's going to say, "Whoa, I'm a racist.""One brave person, if they were to step forward, that would be a banner step," says Foster, the publicist. "I'm not saying it's going to solve our problem, but it would be such a huge step forward in addressing race relations in this country." At the least, it'll make for great television. And who knows -- it might make for a better conversation on race.JUST WATCHEDThis joke about Aboriginal women has Trevor Noah under fireReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH (9 Videos)This joke about Aboriginal women has Trevor Noah under fireRoseanne Barr apologizes after racist tweetsYouTube star cut from film over racist remarksHulk Hogan heard saying the N-word on tapeKelly Osbourne's Trump slam backfiresDeen apologizes for 'hurtful' languageSterling: I'm so sorry; I'm so apologeticJustin Bieber apologizes for N-word joke2010: Mel Gibson's alleged racist rant

Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

2016-05-31 11:38:17

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https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/us/border-cuban-migrants-el-paso/index.html

Surge in Cuban migrants crossing U.S.-Mexico border - CNN

Thousands of Cubans who say they're fleeing a repressive government and searching for economic opportunity are taking their first steps in the United States.

us, Surge in Cuban migrants crossing U.S.-Mexico border - CNN

The last flight and first steps: 'Historic' surge of Cubans crossing into U.S.

El Paso, Texas (CNN)Rubén Lorenzo Peláez circles the chair like a ninja, silently shifting from one foot to the other.For a moment, the snip-snip-snip of his shears is the only sound in the room.The scissors won't close all the way. His vision is blurry. And he's nearly 2,000 miles away from the loyal clients who once got bobs and buzz cuts at his barber shop in central Cuba. But this is the first time in months he's felt at home.It's been just a day since Lorenzo sat in an airplane's aisle seat, shaping his thumb and index finger into an "L" for "libertad" as a friend snapped his photo.Read MoreThe chartered jet was one of dozens that shuttled stranded Cuban migrants from Panama to Mexico this month in what officials described as a humanitarian airlift.Its aim: help Cubans reach the United States after several Central American countries closed their borders to the surge of people pushing north.Lorenzo made it onto the last flight. Now he -- and thousands of others who say they're fleeing a repressive government and searching for economic opportunity -- are taking their first steps in the United States. As America's newest immigrants search for places to put down roots, refugee agencies say they're struggling to deal with the influx, and politicians are sparring over whether this group of immigrants should be here in the first place. It's a familiar refrain, but one with a twist: Because they're Cuban, these immigrants are in the United States legally the second they arrive, regardless of how they get here. And unlike the Central Americans who've flooded across the border in recent years, they have little reason to fear deportation. Lorenzo, 47, has been sleeping in a church pew since his arrival in Texas. And the bald and bespectacled barber says he's not going anywhere."Here," he says, "is where I'm staying."Yadira Lozano Odio is overcome with emotion thinking of friends she left behind in Cuba.Risks and rewardsFlashy photos of models strutting in a Havana fashion show and smiling tourist snapshots from new Cuba-bound cruises are a stark contrast to the scenes playing out as Cubans flood into this U.S. border city.Families sleep on rows of cots that stretch wall to wall in a community center gym. New arrivals rifle through boxes of used clothing, searching for something that might fit. A little girl looks shocked as a volunteer hands her two Barbies.Alianise Valle Paloma, 10, smiles as she tugs on one doll's yellow shirt and runs her fingers through its brown hair."We haven't had toys for years," says her mother, Yadira Paloma Fombellida. In Cuba, she says, the family of four struggled to make ends meet. So they, like many Cubans, left for the promise of a better life in Ecuador, where they wouldn't need a visa to enter the country. But the family's efforts to make a living there didn't work out. "They didn't pay us. ... It was worse than Cuba," says Paloma's husband, Julio Cesar Valle Hernandez.That's a common thread in many of the stories shared by Cubans streaming into church-run shelters in El Paso, where they swap details of their harrowing journeys north:The financial hardships they faced in Cuba. The low wages they earned working as undocumented immigrants in Ecuador. The South American country's threats to deport them. The dangers of hiking for days through the Colombian jungle, facing rough terrain, armed groups and extortion by authorities. The fear they'd never make it out of Panama, where many of them were stranded for months after Nicaragua and Costa Rica closed their borders.Experts say several factors are fueling a spike in the number of Cubans to brave this dangerous journey to reach the United States. Chief among them: fear that U.S. policies that put Cubans on a fast track to legal residency could be repealed as relations between the two countries improve.For El Paso residents who've stepped up to help the arriving immigrants, the conversations have been eye-opening."It's been a roller coaster," says Veronica Román, executive director of the Houchen Community Center, the first stop for more than 1,700 Cubans who arrived in the past few weeks. "It's a lot of mixed emotions when you hear their stories. ... You say, 'Wow, I'm taking my freedom for granted.'" As his daughter plays with her Barbies, Valle says the journey to the United States was far more difficult than he'd expected. But the trip was worth it, he says, to give his children a future. And still, he says, it was better than what his brother went through, trying to leave Cuba on a boat -- only to find himself stranded at sea for five days on a rickety raft, rescued by the Coast Guard and deported back."At least in the mountains," Valle says, "there is earth under your feet." Photos: What they broughtYordanis Garcia Milian, 28, knew he couldn't leave Cuba without a snapshot from his surprise 15th birthday party. The photo shows his parents smiling that day. "This memory, wherever I am, will go with me, because I can lose everything, but not the hope of fighting for them and fighting to have them here with me," he said. Milian is one of more than 3,000 Cubans who flew from Panama to Mexico and crossed into the United States in May. Here's a look at some of the things they carried with them. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: What they brought"When she gave me the bear, she told me she would always be with me," Yadira Lozano Odio, 31, said, her eyes welling up with tears as she described the moment she said goodbye to her best friend in Santiago de Cuba. Lozano keeps a necklace wrapped around the small stuffed panda -- a gift from another close friend. The necklace, she said, was blessed by a priest in her friend's church.Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: What they broughtOsdaisy Calaña Bujol, 31, wore a necklace her 8-year-old son made for her before she left Cuba. He told her it would bring her good luck. "It's already green," she said, "but it's the most important thing I have." Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: What they broughtWrapped in clothes in a backpack he carried from Ecuador to the United States, Julio Cesar Valle Hernandez keeps small statues of the Virgen de la Regla (Our Lady of Regla) and San Lazaro (Saint Lazarus). "It got broken on the way," he said, "but I couldn't leave it behind."Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: What they broughtIt's heavy, but Angel Bornell Batista, 27, didn't think twice about packing a sacred Eleguá stone when she left Cuba a year ago, or bringing it along on the three-month journey from Ecuador to the United States. "I asked him to clear the path for me," Bornell said.Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: What they broughtEdgardo Nuñez Cobas, 43, used to work as a cook at a five-star hotel in Cuba. He brought a certificate that shows his hospitality training with him to the United States and hopes it will help him land a job. For now, days after he arrived in America, he's cooking food at a shelter where Cubans who've just crossed into the United States are staying in El Paso, Texas.Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: What they broughtNuñez also brought a beaded necklace with him that he's had since he was 18 years old.Hide Caption 7 of 7An unlikely locationAs Lorenzo sweeps the floor, the Rev. Karl Heimer leans back in the church office chair that's become the center of a makeshift barbershop. He doesn't have much hair left, but the Cuban barber has found a way to trim it."How do I look?" the 75-year-old pastor asks him. "Can't you add a little hair on the top?"Heimer has spent decades working at this Lutheran mission less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border.He brings Bibles to jailed Central American and Mexican immigrants and hosts mission groups who build houses just across the border in Ciudad Juarez."Never did I think I'd be helping my own people," says Heimer. The pastor left his home in Guantánamo, Cuba, in the 1950s to study in the United States; after Fidel Castro came to power, Heimer applied for refugee status. Now, the mission he runs has become a shelter for dozens of Cubans who've just arrived in El Paso and have nowhere else to go. "I'm loving it, (but) it makes me feel like crying sometimes, because of my mother," Heimer says. A proud Cuban from the coastal city of Cienfuegos, she came to the United States in the early 1960s and lived with him in Texas before she died in 1997. He knows she would have gotten a kick out of the arrival of so many Cubans in such an unlikely place. "The sad thing about it is she couldn't be here to see it." For many years, it would have been unthinkable to see a wave of Cuban immigrants walking across pedestrian border bridges that stretch across the Rio Grande and into this land-locked city. But times have changed. While the U.S. Coast Guard says it has seen a spike in the number of Cubans trying to reach the United States on boats, far more are coming to the country on land.More than 35,600 Cubans have arrived at U.S. ports of entry since October 1, nearly three-quarters of them at the Texas border, according to U.S. figures. More than 4,700 crossed in El Paso alone, according to a CNN tally using numbers from U.S. and Mexican immigration officials. And the numbers show no sign of slowing.It's a blessing, Heimer says, to have so many skilled immigrants arriving. Lawyers, doctors and engineers are among the Cubans who made it to Texas this month."They will add to our society," Heimer says.The Rev. Karl Heimer left Cuba for the United States in the 1950s; the recent wave of migrants has taken him by surprise.Washington weighs inThe papers stapled into their passports are stamped with words that give Cubans a leg up the second they step foot in the United States: "Paroled to pursue adjustment of status under public law 89-732."While immigrants from other countries seeking asylum in the United States often struggle to make their case in court, Cubans don't have to jump over the same hurdles. The Cuban Adjustment Act, passed in 1966, gives any Cuban who sets foot in the United States permission to enter. After a year and a day in the country, they're eligible to apply for a green card.Other government policies grant them benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and work permits soon after their arrival.Snapshot: Cuban migrationPrompted in part by fears that thawing relations with Cuba will end favorable U.S. policies, thousands of Cuban immigrants are trekking through Latin America on their way to the United States. Here's a snapshot of other countries involved:Ecuador was once a magnet for Cuban migrants because the South American country didn't require entry visas. That practice ended last year, and many Cubans are leaving with the threat of deportation looming. Nicaragua in Central America closed its border to Cubans heading north last year, leaving thousands stranded to the south in Costa Rica.Costa Rica struck a deal in January to begin airlifting Cubans out of the country, then closed its borders to stop more from coming in. That left thousands stranded to the south in Panama.Panama began humanitarian airlifts this month that sent more than 3,100 stranded Cubans north to Mexico at the U.S. border. Now Panama's borders are closed, too.Mexico gives Cubans arriving on flights from Central America temporary papers and shuttles them to the U.S. border.In recent months, a number of U.S. lawmakers have slammed the Cuban Adjustment Act, claiming it gives Cubans an unfair advantage and allows scammers to exploit the system."There's no logical reason to give preference to Cubans over immigrants from other countries around the world. ... The Cold War is over. We're normalizing relations with Cuba," says Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat who represents El Paso in Congress.It doesn't make sense, O'Rourke says, for Salvadorans, Hondurans and Mexicans fleeing violence to get turned away from the United States while Cubans are welcomed without question."I want to make sure that this country treats all people who come to our shores and come to our borders with dignity and respect and helps those who are in the greatest need," he says. "We shouldn't, for political purposes, help one group of people over another."Speaking on the Senate floor last week, Sen. Marco Rubio said the issue "needs to be re-examined.""We have a significant migratory crisis that's building," the Florida Republican said of the "historic increase" of Cubans crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.Rubio, whose parents were Cuban immigrants, said he's proposing a measure that would let Cubans keep some privileges but crack down on abuses of federal benefits by ending "the automatic assumption in U.S. law that all Cuban immigrants are refugees.""You'll be legal in this country," Rubio said, "but you're going to have to prove that you are actually coming because you fear persecution before you automatically qualify for refugee benefits."Cuban officials also criticize U.S. policies, saying they encourage Cubans to risk their lives on harrowing journeys and expose them to criminal exploitation. Obama administration officials have repeatedly said they have no plans to push for policy changes toward Cubans who arrive on U.S. soil.No matter what lawmakers decide, many of the Cubans arriving in El Paso this month say it won't make a difference. "The policy could change," says Cleyzak Muñoz, 34, a merchant from Havana who just arrived. "But what is not going to change is the immigration, because I don't think that Cuba will ever change."Julio Rojas Rubio, a 33-year-old computer engineer who arrived in El Paso earlier this month, says politicians weighing whether to change U.S. policies toward Cuba should go live there for a few months."They would see that most people are leaving Cuba because of a problem with the regime," he says. "Economically, I wasn't doing badly in Cuba. I took care of my family. I lived well. But the regime didn't let me live. ... They repress you. Everything is controlled."Julio Rojas Rubio was a computer engineer in Cuba; he's been volunteering as a cook at a shelter since arriving in El Paso.Two journeys, one destinationBy day, Lorenzo cut hair at his shop, Barberia El Estilo, in the central Cuban city of Camaguey.But outside work, he says, he participated in groups that opposed Castro and brought food to jailed political prisoners.Authorities, he says, threatened him and detained him for days at a time. Lorenzo says political persecution, not economic necessity, forced him to flee to Ecuador, then head to the United States."In this country," he says, "there is freedom of expression." As Lorenzo describes his run-ins with Cuban authorities, Alexi Fernandez del Risco nods in agreement. The 35-year-old welder also hails from Camaguey, where Lorenzo started cutting his hair when he was just a toddler.Things got so bad, Fernandez says, that he tried to leave the island 11 times by boat. Once, he made it as far as Grand Cayman before he got sent back.Lorenzo and Fernandez left Cuba and headed to Ecuador separately. The old friends ran into each other by chance this year in Panama, long after Lorenzo last gave Fernandez a haircut. "I arrived dying of hunger and I saw him and I couldn't believe my eyes. We hugged there in the street," Fernandez says. Together, they made it onto the last plane out of Panama."We arrived together and we're going to stay together," Fernandez says.But now that they've made it to the United States, they've been sparring over where to go next.Lessons learnedNorberto Lázaro leans on the cafeteria table and rubs his forehead.It's only been an hour since he arrived in the United States. He was on the plane that landed in Ciudad Juarez this morning. But it took all day to make it through the U.S. checkpoint. By the time he met volunteers standing outside the Customs and Border Protection facility, the sky was already dark."I feel like I'm dreaming," he says.Rick Vielma interrupts the reverie, asking him whether he has a plan now that he's made it to the United States.Lázaro says he's ready to start working."I want to go up," he says. "I want to go to Alaska."Vielma tells him he might want to wait before making such a long journey."A lot of people when they get here, they're very cold, because of the air conditioning," he says. "It's even colder there."Vielma speaks Spanish with a Mexican accent. Lázaro asks him if he's from the United States. "I'm a first-generation American, the first in our family born in the United States. My father is from Aguascalientes and my mother is from Ciudad Juarez. I can't imagine everything you've gone through," he says. "That's why I'm here. ... My sympathy and my heart are with you."For weeks, Vielma and his 10-year-old son have been stopping by the center to serve food, answer phones and help Cubans figure out their next steps.Vielma says some of his acquaintances have criticized their efforts. "They say, 'Why the f--- are you helping the Cubans? You've got family in Juarez.' But people are desperately in need of sleep, of showers, of someone to talk to," Vielma says. "You can't just turn away from this kind of thing."It's a lesson he hopes his son will never forget."I want him to see that it's OK to give," Vielma says, "to see what people are really made of." 'Are you happy?'The voices of dozens of students repeating their teacher's words bounce off the classroom's concrete floors."I am ... you are ... he is ... she is ... we are ... they are ...y'all are.""You're in Texas," the Rev. Steven Massey tells his class, "so we're going to try to be good Texans.""Y'all," he says again."Y'all," they parrot back.Just over one-tenth of 1% of El Paso's population is Cuban, according to 2010 Census figures, which show 737 Cubans living in the border city. This month, more than 3,100 Cubans were flown from Panama City to Ciudad Juarez and bused to the U.S. border, Mexican immigration officials said. Many of the Cubans say they plan to make their way to bigger cities like Miami and Houston. But local officials estimate hundreds may stay in El Paso. Massey came to El Paso from his home in St. Johns, Michigan, to help start English classes for them.His immediate goal: teach them a few words and phrases they can use right away as they start to find their footing.From pronouns and conjugations, Massey moves on to questions."Where are you?" Massey tells them. "You say, 'I am in El Paso, Texas.'""Why are you here?" he continues. Then he pauses for a moment. "I know it's not a simple answer. You start with saying, 'I am here because ...'""Are you happy?" Massey asks over and over, calling on students around the room. All of them say yes.At the back of the class, Daiye Naranjo Sánchez turns toward her husband and smiles sympathetically.She can tell he's frustrated. He's looking toward the white board with a blank stare. "For him, it's like there's a wall inside," Naranjo says. But she's doing everything she can to persuade him not to get discouraged. She hopes he'll become as determined to learn English as she is. It's a tool she knows will help her, no matter what happens next. "I'm about to face a new life," she explains, "and I don't know what's coming."Ideal Rodriguez Rivas poses proudly with an American flag someone gave him shortly after he arrived in the United States.A new beginningOn a breezy spring evening just a day after he first stepped foot in the United States, Lorenzo stands stunned beneath the bright fluorescent lights of an El Paso strip mall.Heimer brought him to a beauty supply store here to buy him new shears -- ones that will close all the way. He hopes Lorenzo can start working soon as a barber in the United States, and he knows he'll need new tools to do it.Lorenzo picks out a pair of shears and a package of razor blades, then darts to the back of the store to find a new neck duster. His eyes well up as he looks at the shelves. He thinks about how much money the new supplies cost, about the pastor's kindness, and about the lies he heard for so many years about evil people in the United States."This isn't easy," he says. "In my country, they don't do this."The store clerk sees him wipe away a tear."The difficult part is over," she tells him. "You're here."Back at the mission, Lorenzo's phone rings.He laughs as he answers the call from a friend and shouts, "I made it to the United States!"Now El Paso, he says, is home.CNN's Polo Sandoval contributed to this report.

John Blake, CNN

2016-10-14 11:52:08

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https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/14/us/toastmasters-champions/index.html

Stop texting and start speaking - CNN

We're in a post-verbal world where people tweet and text more than talk to one another. Yet a subculture of storytelling is thriving at places like Toastmasters.

us, Stop texting and start speaking - CNN

Stop texting and start speaking: The Olympians of storytelling show you how

Washington, D.C. (CNN)The darkened ballroom is hit by a barrage of flashing lights and a thunderous musical score that sounds like a call to battle. "ARE YOU READY TO WITNESS THE BEST? THE BEST OF THE BEST?" a caption flashing across a jumbo screen asks the audience. The crowd roars approval. "LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!"It's the finale of the 2016 World Championship of Public Speaking, but it feels more like fight night in Vegas. Ten finalists warm up backstage like boxers psyching themselves up for the ring. Some bop their heads and shimmy to dance music on their headphones. Others pantomime dramatic hand gestures while rehearsing their lines out loud. They've come halfway around the globe to get on a stage and do something most people find frightening. They're the renegades in an increasingly mute society where people prefer to text and tweet than actually talk to one another. They've emerged from a field of 30,000 contestants from countries as far away as Australia, South Korea and Zimbabwe. Their seven-minute speeches draw laughter and gasps of surprise. They reduce the audience to silence with heart-tugging confessions. Then something happens that causes an awkward silence to fall on the festive crowd. One finalist, a boyish-looking man with a mop of black hair, walks out to give his speech -- and pulls on a pair of white cotton Calvin Klein underwear over his pants.Read More"Oh, no," someone mutters as nervous laughter spreads across the Marriott Marquis ballroom.The world championship of public speaking is about to take a strange turn. Talking out loud in a post-verbal worldLook around: Couples on dates stare at their texts instead of gazing into each other's eyes. Smart phone zombies shuffle mutely along sidewalks, their eyes fixed on their screens. Some companies say they can't find enough young workers who know how to talk to customers.We're moving toward a post-verbal world."I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked," Sherry Turkle wrote in an essay. Turkle is author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other." "Not long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices."We don't talk anymore. How can we? Devices have taken over, but the need to hear someone talk to us is primal.Yet we still hunger for the human voice. Amid this post-verbal landscape, a subculture of storytelling is thriving. TED Talks, StoryCorps, the Moth Radio Hour and National Public Radio's "Snap Judgment" -- all are popular shows built around people telling stories. Even American politics is still shaped by the spoken word. The next president of the United States may well be determined by who is deemed the best public speaker during the presidential debates.But it is the improbable success of this international speaking competition -- and its 92-year-old sponsor, Toastmasters International -- that offers striking evidence for the durability of the spoken word.Toastmasters is one of the oldest public speaking groups in America. Its name evokes images of nerdy men in bow ties giving corny speeches at retirement dinners. But Toastmasters is flourishing. Its membership has doubled in the last two decades; it has almost 16,000 clubs worldwide. According to Forbes magazine, Toastmasters is "growing like crazy" at Fortune 500 companies such as Google and Apple. Executives realize it's not enough to be brilliant -- you have to be able to communicate. Whether you're trying to sell yourself at a job interview, lead a meeting at work, return defective merchandise to a store -- everybody eventually becomes a public speaker.Even the investor Warren Buffett, who once hated public speaking, says learning how to talk is invaluable. "One of the things you would want to be sure to do is, whether you like it or not, get very comfortable ... with public speaking," Buffett once told a young woman who asked for career advice. "That's an asset that will last you 50 or 60 years, and it's a liability if you don't like doing it."But what happens when public speaking is transformed from a necessity into an art form?That's what can be seen and heard each year at Toastmasters' "Olympics of Oratory." Who are these contestants? Why do they do it, and what can they teach people who can barely mumble through an order at a drive-thru restaurant? To answer those questions, we must go back to round one of this year's competition.'Please humiliate me'It's 8 a.m., and the first round of speakers is set to take the stage. It's going to be a long day -- 98 speakers will compete in 10 separate contests held throughout the hotel. The winner of each group advances to the finals. Each group gathers in a dimly lit meeting room that looks like a movie theater. People scramble to get the best seats near the front. Others take out pads to scribble notes. In each group, nine voting judges are scattered anonymously in the crowd with their own scorecards. They'll grade the contestants on everything from grammar to body language and the flexibility of their voice. An emcee stands behind the podium, peers into the audience and announces the name of the speaker and the title of her speech: "Please Humiliate Me."Not long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devicesSherry Turkle, author of 'Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other'Julie Miyeon Sohn has traveled here from Seoul, South Korea. She shakes the emcee hand, turns to face the audience and announces:"Hi, my name is Julie and I have a confession to make. I have a fetish for humiliation."It's not how one might expect someone to open a "speech." But nobody in this contest gives speeches in the traditional sense anymore. People want to hear a story.Sohn tells a rollicking one about how her biggest humiliations led to her greatest periods of growth. She mentions her fumbling attempts to master English and the advice she received one day to get an American boyfriend. "But my mother told me a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," she says as the crowd erupts in laughter.Next up comes Richard Hardon, an engineer from Georgia. He has a shaved head, a goatee and a megawatt smile. Hardon has his own fetish -- Superman. He wears Superman belt buckles, cuff links, even Superman underwear during competitions. He tells the audience, in a speech about resilience called "Up," how he survived a mid-career malaise after his company was bought out by another."Now under a public disclosure agreement, I'm not supposed to say the name of the company that bought out my company," Hardon says. Then he leans toward the audience as if he's whispering a secret. "But the company's initials are IBM."Every speech is a story because the best speakers know that people don't remember information; they remember stories, especially funny ones. A study by Jennifer Aaker, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into stories "up to 22 times more than facts alone." Ryan Avery, who won the contest in 2012 with a speech called "Trust is a Must," cites a Native American proverb:"Tell me a fact, and I will learn. Tell me a truth, and I will believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever."The subculture of storytelling is thriving at places like TED Talks. Obama impersonator Dion Flynn speaks at a recent TED event.Even in an age of texts and tweets, there's a primal need for people to hear stories."Stories are how we learn," Avery says. "Every value that you have learned was learned through a story, whether through the Bible or the Quran or from your grandmother. We are hardwired to want to experience and feel stories."But it's not enough to tell a story; the best speakers relive their stories on stage. They transform their bodies into storytelling instruments. They vary their vocal pitch at dramatic points and engage the audience with provocative questions. They never linger in one spot but position themselves in different locations to connect with the audience.Most of the stories are inspirational -- Toastmasters likes to call them "secular sermons." One doctor tells a story about getting a new perspective on life after holding an emaciated baby who died in her arms. A man tells a story about a deathbed reconciliation with his emotionally distant father. And another shares how he learned to accept himself after going through a divorce.It's all heavy stuff, but there are some unwritten rules to lighten the rhetorical load. A speaker can choose any topic, but conventional Toastmasters' wisdom says don't dwell too heavily on religion or politics. Never say the word "cancer" in a speech. And be wary of "body count" speeches that focus on death. Despite those suggestions, being constantly inspired is, well, exhausting. Hearing about one life-changing moment after another, the neurons get fried. You feel like you're being pummeled by inspiration.But the emotional fatigue evaporates when someone special takes the stage. At 6:16 p.m., near the end of the first day of competition, the emcee announces the next speaker: Darren Tay. Tay bounds onto the stage and shakes the emcee's hand. He turns and faces the audience with a big smile. Though he's dressed in an elegant business suit, he looks like a teenager who crashed the party with his boyish face and wiry build. He's actually a lawyer from Singapore. The name of his speech is "I See Red."Stories are how we learn. Every value that you have learned was learned through a story, whether through the Bible or the Quran or from your grandmother. We are hardwired to want to experience and feel stories.Ryan Avery, 2012 Toastmasters world champion of public speakingTay opens by telling a story about a high school English teacher who often used colors to describe people's emotions. If they saw green, they were envious; red, they were angry."As I grow older, I tend to see red most of time," Tay says. "I don't know why."Tay says he was constantly irritated by other people's shortcomings: his nosy neighbor who always asked him the same question every morning as she watered her plants; his mom who pestered him about learning how to use the internet; his demanding boss. Then one day a psychology professor visited his law school and showed Tay's class a white legal paper with a red dot in the corner. He asked them what they saw. Everybody saw the red dot. The professor told them he was looking for another answer. No one mentioned the pristine whiteness that dominated the page."And I came to see the light," Tay says.It's easy to see the blemish in others but not their good, Tay says. So he tried an experiment. He began to praise those who made him see red. He praised his mom and boss for taking an interest in his life. And he thanked his nosy neighbor for her interest and offered to buy her dinner. Tay crouches and asks the audience: Do you think my neighbor stopped asking the same annoying question every morning -- "Going to work, Darren?""The next day she asked me the same question," he says, his voice rising in exasperation as the crowd laughs. Then he pauses and softens his voice to add: "But this time instead of watering her plants she came over to my house to water the plants for me."The audience sighs at the twist to Tay's story. He steps back and scans their faces. "My friends, do you see red in your life? My challenge to you is the next time you see the rainbow, don't just focus on the red, look at the beautiful spectrum of the seven colors because you may find your pot of gold at the end of the day."The audience sends him off with whoops and cheers. A delegation from Singapore whistles and waves their national flag.Investor Warren Buffett once was a terrible public speaker but learned how; he says the skill is vital in the business world. The emcee then asks for quiet as the judges add up their scorecards. A big smile spreads across the emcee's face."Let's give a big drum roll for the winner. And he is none other than ... Darren Tay." A woman squeals in delight from the crowd. Tay jumps onto the stage with a smile and bows twice as he accepts the trophy. This is his first international championship finals. He took a 24-hour flight from Singapore to attend the contest. "Yesterday was my birthday," he says. "And this is the best birthday present I could have had." The emcee turns to the audience. "Let's all sing 'Happy Birthday' to Darren."The crowd serenades Tay as he stands on the stage holding his trophy. He bows again and smiles to acknowledge them. Then his smile crumples and he dabs at his eyes. He lowers his head and starts to cry.The grind behind the wordsThe morning after winning his individual group, Tay explains what's behind those tears. He sits in the lobby of the Marriott, glancing at a menu, and tells his own story, one of years of grinding practice and a quest to overcome self-doubt. He wonders aloud whether he's practiced enough for the speech he'll give the next day in the finals. One of the quirks of the Toastmasters' contest is that the winner of each individual group must give a different speech for the finals. Tay is thinking about going to a local Toastmasters' club tonight to get feedback. He's thinking of calling his speech "Outsmart; Outlast."He's completely different from the animated performer on stage. He's quiet and reserved, but it's clear he's passionate about public speaking. He arrived a week before the contest began so he could practice at local Toastmasters clubs. The son of an engineer and entrepreneur, he's been participating in public speaking and debating since he was a teenager. Josephine Lee won third place in the 2016 Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking with a touching tribute to an old friend.Tay approaches public speaking like an athletic contest. He studies great speeches like NBA players study the moves of leading scorers. He keeps a library of 300 speeches and a mental vault of 10 speeches he's memorized that he can produce on any impromptu occasion."Even at this level, I still feel anxious when I'm on stage," he says. "You're always going to have butterflies; you just have to learn how to get the butterflies to fly in formation."Tay is such a student of public speaking that's he's opened a speaking academy in Singapore and written a book on the subject called "Express to Impress." In it, he explains why he chose to become a public speaker. He cites the impact of Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr."Learning the art of public speaking is not about winning trophies and accumulating accolades. It is about influencing the lives of others for the better," he writes. First, though, he had to overcome his shyness. One of the oddest revelations about the Toastmasters' contest is that many of the best speakers say they are introverts. Tay wouldn't even make eye contact with his teachers in class because he feared being called on. Others tell similar stories. The winner of last year's Toastmasters championship, Mohammed Qahtani, says he couldn't even speak for a period in his life. He won with a speech called "The Power of Words.""I was mute until I was 6," he says. "I used to be the laughingstock at school because I stuttered."Speaking champions offer themselves as public speaking myth busters. In his book, Tay writes: "One of the great myths of public speaking is that you will need to be a natural talent before you can speak well."There are other perks to public speaking. When you find your voice, you find yourself, says Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, the 2014 world champion. Hettiarachchi used a rose as an ingenious prop in his winning speech, "I See Something in You But I Don't Know What It Is," which has been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube.He is now a motivational speaker, a public speaking coach and the author of a forthcoming book entitled "Storytelling for Leaders." He says he was a "thug" flunking out of school before he joined Toastmasters.One of the things you would want to be sure to do is, whether you like it or not, get very comfortable ... with public speaking. That's an asset that will last you 50 or 60 years.Warren Buffett, investor"I walked into a Toastmasters club and what it really gave me was an outlet to speak at a difficult time in my life," he says. "I discovered I was good at something. And the more I grew in confidence, the more I was able to transfer that confidence to other areas." The youngest finalist at the world championship is Dan Martin, a 20-year-old from Veracruz, Mexico. Like all the others who compete in the finals, he had to go through five rounds of local and regional contests before he made the final 98 contestants in Washington. Martin joined Toastmasters because he was trying to meet a cute girl but ended up falling for public speaking instead. He's now a professional storyteller and public speaker."It was the strangest experience of my life," he says of his first Toastmasters meeting. "People sitting down, listening to the one with the mic. And no matter if you got it right or not, they would clap."There are also potential financial rewards for entering the contest. A champion can snag lucrative gigs on the corporate speaking circuit or charge $300 an hour or more for consultations. Some go on to write books, offer online courses and sell how-to DVDs to fans around the globe. Avery, the 2012 champion, recently quit his job to become a full-time professional speaker and speaking coach. "It's not like it's going to change your life like you don't have to work anymore," Avery says of winning the championship. "But there are about three or four former world champions who are doing this full time. It can get pretty lucrative."A good speaker doesn't even have to win the championship to get a bounce, says "Superman" Hardon, the speaker from Georgia. Every speaker who makes the final will be in demand -- and can charge, he says."You will fill out your calendar for the rest of the year," Hardon says. "There's a difference between speaking for free and speaking for fee."Yet there's something special about being called the world champion of public speaking for the rest of your life. But first, you have to win.A champion is crownedA crowd gathers outside the Marriott ballroom before the doors open for the finals. The atmosphere is festive, like a family reunion. People rush to their seats, chatting excitedly and dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way [I Like It]" pumping over the loudspeakers.There's plenty to like as the 10 finalists take to the stage. Virtually all of the speeches are gems -- inspirational stories that somehow avoid sounding like Hallmark greeting cards. Most are flat-out funny.Aaron Beverly, a finalist from Philadelphia, gets one of the biggest laughs before he even takes the stage. Speech titles are expected to be short and punchy; the emcee reads out the title of Beverly's: "Leave a lasting memory using as few words as possible and strive with every fiber in your being to avoid being the type of person who rambles on and on with no end in sight more likely than not causing listeners to sit and think to themselves oh my goodness can somebody please make this stop."The crowd roars and Beverly walks onto the stage in silence. He scans the crowd before breaking into a huge smile and asking: "Be honest, you enjoyed that didn't you?" Aaron Beverly came in second at the 2016 Toastmasters championship with a speech that began with an audacious title.He then proceeds to tell a charming story about the power of using fewer, not more, words. He cites the shyness that kept him from saying much as a child; the incredulity his friends experienced when he joined Toastmasters ("Wait a minute. Aaron can talk?"); and how he learned from one woman's stammering tribute to her mother that it's what you say, not how much you say.The crowd gives Beverly thunderous applause. He seems to be the favorite. Then the underwear man strikes.The emcee announces the speech's title, "Outlast; Outsmart." The speaker is Tay, the lawyer from Singapore. He takes center stage and smiles. Then he reaches into his right pants pocket, pulls out the Calvin Klein underwear, and slips it over his slim frame.The audience titters nervously as he scans the crowd in his underwear, his hands resting on his hips like a gunfighter.Tay jumps right into his speech by giving voice to his childhood tormenter, a school bully who once draped a pair of underwear over his head. "Hey loser, how do you like your new school uniform now?" He's off and running. Tay recounts how he was a small kid trying to "outsmart and outlast" the bully. But then, Tay says, he encountered a bully he could never run from or outsmart -- the one inside him. He beat himself up for not being good enough.Tay takes his audience on a journey. He prowls the stage acting out characters, moving his story in unexpected directions and weaving poetic analogies -- all while wearing underwear over his elegant suit. He ends the speech by saying he has learned to vanquish his inner bully by acknowledging its existence and stepping back from it to gain perspective. That's why he can now talk to an international audience in his tighty-whities."I'm not afraid anymore," he says. "I'm in control. Because I'm acknowledging it. I'm stepping out of it." And then he steps out of the underwear, holds it up and tosses it aside. "My friends, let us all not run away from our inner bullies anymore."Speakers don't usually open speeches in their underwear, but Darren Tay made it work to become the 2016 Toastmasters World Champion.He salutes the emcee. The crowd whistles and applauds.The finalists all file back onstage for a chat as the judges count their scorecards. It's a version of a Toastmasters' practice called "table topics," in which speakers are asked to improvise on an impromptu topic. The finalists keep charming the audience even after the contest has ended."Where do you get ideas for your topic?" the emcee asks one finalist. "Where everyone does -- the shower," she answers. Another is asked why he joined Toastmasters. His answer: "To win an argument with my wife."Then the moment comes. The judges have a winner. The emcee announces the third- and second-place winners. He presents each a trophy and poses with them for photographs. Now comes the world champion."And the winner is ... Darren Tay."Tay jumps from his front-row seat and pumps his fist. As he walks onto stage, he high-fives an usher and -- pulling his smart phone out of his pocket -- takes a selfie as he accepts the trophy.He thanks his supporters and speech coach before turning to a camera that will beam the event back to Singapore and says:"And Mom, Dad, and my younger brother" -- he holds up his trophy -- "I'm the world champion of public speaking."Tay is whisked backstage for a news conference. Flanked by Toastmasters officials, he accepts the congratulations of well-wishers.But he no longer looks like the poised speaker who commanded the stage these past two days. His eyes widen and his chest starts to heave. He looks petrified."This is surreal," he mumbles. And for a brief moment, just before he steps in front of the cameras to take questions, Tay leaves his audience with one last surprise.The 2016 world champion of public speaking is speechless.

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

2017-05-12 08:26:16

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/health/soundtrack-mothers-day-allyn-ravitz/index.html

Honoring the soundtrack of my mother's life - CNN

As my mother lay dying last September, we surrounded her with song. Music had filled her life and often our household. Now it became our way to connect with her, when her deteriorating brain allowed for little else.

health, Honoring the soundtrack of my mother's life - CNN

Honoring the soundtrack of my mother's life

(CNN)As my mother lay dying last fall, we surrounded her with song. Music had filled her life and often our household. Now, it became our way to connect with her when her deteriorating brain allowed for little else. A mother of three, she was brilliant, sharp-witted, strong and creative. A longtime Detroit-area attorney and activist, she fought on front lines and danced circles around courtroom opponents. She advocated for abortion access, rallied for the Equal Rights Amendment and marched for civil rights on behalf of many, including the LGBTQ communities. She won the first sexual harassment jury trial in Michigan (some say the country), helped organize a fundraiser for the defense of two women who'd killed their rapists in self-defense and was included in a book about feminists who changed America. CNN's Jessica Ravitz with her mother and older brother in the early 1970s. Allyn Carol Ravitz was a force to be reckoned with, until she wasn't. A rare progressive neurological disease chipped away at her memory, cognition, balance, speech and muscle control. Before it killed her, the disease stole who she was -- with one exception: her love of music and song. It stuck when little else did, and my siblings, her husband and I clung to it like a security blanket.Read MoreDepending on who was nearest the CD player or quickest to call up songs on a laptop, the selections by her bedside varied. We jumped from Miles Davis to Motown to Elton John, whose iconic album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" spun on our home's turntable the day it came out. We were her personal jukebox, flipping from Bill Withers to Cat Stevens, Itzhak Perlman to Carole King, Stevie Wonder to Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole. My brother cranked up Traffic's "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" and later wept beside her as Simon & Garfunkel sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Her husband of almost 10 years rocked in a chair, eyes closed, humming along to Ol' Blue Eyes as well as her favorite arias like "Casta diva" from Bellini's "Norma." My little sister and I caressed her hands and sang "You Are My Sunshine," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and lullabies she once offered to comfort us.Until about a week before her death, my mother, too, had been singing -- and her songs told a story. She belted out Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," a nod to the city she grew up near, the one she always held dear even though Michigan was her home for half a century. She sang old standards like "Side by Side," which her father had crooned to her and her sister when they were growing up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Sometimes she'd go with little ditties from our childhoods like "The Eensy Weensy Spider." On one of our last outdoor walks with her as a family, we pushed her down the sidewalk in a wheelchair as she led us in rounds of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." It was at once absurd, heartbreaking and wonderful.And in the moments when this lifetime activist connected with her fighting spirit, my mother sang Helen Reddy's 1970s feminist anthem, "I Am Woman" -- a song I screamed out from the bathtub, thanks to her, before I was old enough to go to school.Studies have shown that music has the ability to activate the brain and its memories even as it fades. In my mother's case, it was as if each selection her brain called up represented a chapter in her 74 years. Collectively, those songs, and the music we played, bound us together as her end drew near. They helped form the soundtrack of my mother's life and history. Nurturing a giftMy mom and her sister, Marilyn Gallant, were raised by a father who dreamed of being a professional singer. On tour buses and in South Florida club houses, Bill Biener gravitated toward microphones whenever he could. He sang to his two girls each night before they went to sleep in their shared bedroom, never mind if his choices weren't always appropriate. One of his favorites, and by extension one of theirs: "Just a Girl that Men Forget."Share your storyDo you have a song that will forever remind you of someone you lost? Share your story with @CNN using #OurSong and your post could be featured on CNN.com.Aunt Marilyn, who was older by a couple of years, and Mom sang and harmonized in the back seat during car rides. They were in the same advanced glee club in high school, and these two Jewish girls entertained commuters with Christmas carols in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York each winter -- dressed in "black sweaters, black skirts and pearls," Marilyn said. They'd go into the city to see Broadway shows for $12. While Marilyn bought lipsticks, my mom saved up her allowance to buy records.My mother in 1953, when she was 10.They came of age in the '50s, and my mother loved to dance. She once won an Alan Freed Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party contest and traveled to Philadelphia to be on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," Marilyn said. The two sisters also took piano lessons, though my aunt recently told me Mom failed them. It was a revelation that made me, a piano lesson dropout, laugh."All she wanted to do was improvise," Marilyn explained. "She did not want to play the songs we had to learn." It was a fitting story, given who my mother would become. Mom in 1966, the year she had Jason, her first child. Mom never did learn how to read music, but she had a gift. She could play almost anything by ear, and her improvisation skills soared. Family lore says during breaks from bucolic Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, she waltzed into Manhattan jazz clubs, sat down and played. Often she was the only white person in the room. A huge fan of Ray Charles, she even wore sunglasses.My little sister, Dr. Elizabeth Eaman, recalls how Mom pounded out "Under the Sea" from the film "The Little Mermaid" minutes after they returned home from seeing the movie for the first time.My older brother, Jason Ravitz, has played keyboard in bands throughout much of his adult life. He remembers our mom teaching him the blues scale. They'd jam together -- "She'd do the left hand and I'd do the right," Jason said -- but not as often as he now wishes they did.He marveled at her skills. We all did. Every year after our family Passover Seder, which was like a reunion for her side of the family, she'd dazzle us with favorites like "Blue Skies." "She had incredible independence between her hands and could do things with her left hand I still can't imagine doing," Jason said. One of the first signs that she was seriously sick came when her left hand grew rigid. The hand that for so long amazed us could no longer perform.Even as she fadedOur whip-smart mother, in her last six years or so, had become slow, loopy, off. I often wondered if retirement had done her and her brain a disservice. For a while, we thought she'd had a mini stroke or several of them, but scans proved us wrong. A doctor gave us hope at one point when she opined that mom had autoimmune encephalitis, a condition in which her immune system was attacking her brain -- an illness that can be treated.In the end, she got a diagnosis with no chance for a cure: corticobasal degeneration.Mom combined two of her other loves, travel and animals, while in the Dominican Republic in 2005.She and her husband left their house on a lake with multiple staircases and moved into a senior community in Novi, Michigan. Their piano sat in the new apartment, gathering dust. During their first meal at Fox Run, they sat in the dining room with other couples and were both tapped to be in the chorus."She looked absolutely radiant when she sang," her husband, Dr. Charles Schmitter, said. "She absolutely loved it. It was like the sun came out." The last time he took her to chorus practice was about three months before she died. He led her there slowly by the hand, which was how they managed to move through the world. She could no longer read lyrics and needed help getting into position. Once the music started, she joined right in. That enthusiasm for song, her ability to lock in on it the second she heard it, stayed with her even as she became progressively more sick and the joy was harder to see. One person who became a bright light in her life and ours was Michael Krieger, a singer and songwriter who's been playing for seniors in the Detroit area for nearly two decades. Through music, Krieger finds connections with those who've become disconnected, a way to help people light up and communicate who they are. The memory care facility at Fox Run where Mom spent her last months is a regular stop on his circuit. He strolls into Rose Court with his guitar and takes a seat at the piano anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a month. Our powerhouse of a mother, who'd become so fragile and meek, stood out. "I can't think of anyone who's interacted with me the way she did," Krieger said. "There was such an intensity."As soon as he got the last note of a song out of his mouth, my mom would blurt out her next request -- often "New York, New York" or "Side by Side" -- which could very well be a repeat of the request she'd made just minutes before.And the songs she didn't request, she knew them, too, and sang along. When she couldn't speak and barely ate, she'd still find the music. We'd often weep as we watched her, wondering where she was."She didn't have the neurological connections to have a meaningful conversation, to speak to you and listen to you and respond, but she could sing," my sister said. My brother saw it as her "comfort zone." It was the one thing she could still grasp, and it was as if she were announcing to the world, "I've got this." A puzzle with no specific answersThough her brain prohibited her from saying much, she comprehended everything happening around her, said Dawn Doyle, the social worker at Rose Court who observed my mother closely."Music allowed her to feel emotion," Doyle said. "In the beginning, I could see that she was enjoying it. It gave her rhythm, it gave her movement, and some kind of memory was being triggered. I could see it in her eyes."Maybe that's why she chose the songs she did -- one about her beloved New York, one from her father, songs that connected her to her kids and her activism."It's like a puzzle. There's no specific answer," Doyle said. "But the fact that there was a connection showed she had some cognitive ability. It was her way of trying to connect with you."JUST WATCHEDMusic opens a 'back door' to the brainReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMusic opens a 'back door' to the brain 03:24CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, sat down with me to explain why music stuck with my mom when most everything else did not. He said studies have shown that music fires up the brain like nothing else. It's hard to prove why, but one possible explanation is that music "harnesses surrogate emotions" and has the power to transport a person.Listening to music is therapeutic on its own, but singing does even more, Gupta explained. It's why music can be so effective in rehabilitation. It's why musicians like Krieger see people come alive. First a person must remember a song, and that memory -- activated in the central part of the brain -- is tied up in emotions, Gupta said. Then, expressing or speaking the lyrics stimulates the brain's left temporal area. To speak those lyrics in the form of a tune taps into the right parietal lobe. And if you throw in a rhythm, say the stomping of a foot or clapping, that draws in the cerebellum. Singing crosses the mid line of the brain, Gupta said, and not much else does this."It's really remarkable to watch," he said. Indeed, in her final chapter and up until a week before we lost our mother, we gazed at her in wonder.Saying goodbyeThe end for my mom came quickly. The final morning she was able to sit up, my sister and my mom's best friend sang with her one last time. Among Mom's swan songs: "I Am Woman."I am woman, hear me roar,In numbers too big to ignore ... If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman. By the time my brother and I got there, she was tucked into bed.Against all odds, she made it to my wedding in Atlanta less than six months before she died. Her eyes never opened again, but she clung to my hand the night I arrived, as Hillary Clinton debated Donald Trump for the first time on the television she couldn't watch. She was now on hospice care, and with the next round of morphine, her hand let go. She'd been refusing food and drink, but she took the scheduled syringes of morphine willingly. Our mother was ready.During her final days, which extended longer than seemed medically possible, we floated in and out in shifts. Krieger visited daily, playing her usual requests. If she was agitated, his voice always soothed her -- and us. He provided comfort with one of her favorites, "Wonderful World," which he'd later play at her funeral. The other song he performed at the ceremony, one she specifically requested years before she was even sick: "Wind Beneath My Wings" from the tearjerker film "Beaches." These songs, and so many others, will forever bind us to our mother. She sang to us in our beds, as her father had to her, as she did for him in his last days. And as she lay dying, it was our turn. We stroked her hair, kissed her cheeks, whispered in her ears our gratitude for everything she'd given us. And the songs that filled the room as we said goodbye, the music that defined her life, became ours, too.Explore more on the ways music impacts a significant moment on the CNN Original Series "Soundtracks: Songs that Defined History," now streaming on demand and CNNGo.

Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

2017-03-19 00:47:41

politics

politics

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/18/politics/neil-gorsuch-religion/index.html

What is Neil Gorsuch's religion? It's complicated - CNNPolitics

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic but attends an Episcopal church. Would he be the court's sixth Catholic justice or its only Protestant?

politics, What is Neil Gorsuch's religion? It's complicated - CNNPolitics

What is Neil Gorsuch's religion? It's complicated

Story highlightsNeil Gorsuch's Senate confirmation hearings begin this weekGorsuch was raised Catholic but worships at an Episcopal church No Protestants sit on the Supreme Court Washington (CNN)Earlier this month, the Trump administration summoned two dozen religious leaders to a private meeting. The mission: to rally support for Neil Gorsuch, Trump's Supreme Court nominee.According to several participants, White House staffers emphasized Gorsuch's robust defense of religious rights as a judge on the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. In one prominent decision, Gorsuch argued that the government should rarely, if ever, coerce the consciences of believers. Eventually, the conversation turned to Gorsuch's own religious background. He was raised Catholic but now worships with his wife and two daughters at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. Like the city, the congregation is politically liberal. It bars guns from its campus and installed solar panels; it condemns harsh rhetoric about Muslims and welcomes gays and lesbians. And its rector, the Rev. Susan Springer, attended the Women's March in Denver, though not as a form of protest but as a sign of support for "the dignity of every human being." Springer says St. John's is carrying out the covenant Episcopalians recite during baptisms: to strive for justice and peace among all people. Her congregation, she added, includes liberals, conservatives and all political points in between.Read More"What binds us together as one body is a curiosity and longing to encounter and know God," she wrote in an email to CNN, "a willingness to explore our own interior selves, and a desire to leave the world in some small way better for our having been in it."As Gorsuch's Senate confirmation hearings began on Monday, some hardline conservatives have raised concerns about his choice of church."Be advised," blared a tweet from Bryan Fischer, a host on the American Family Radio Network. "Gorsuch attends a church that is rabidly pro-gay, pro-Muslim, pro-green, and anti-Trump." "Is Gorsuch a secret liberal?" asked an op-ed in The Hill, a Washington newspaper. Another columnist argued that if conservatives complained about Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, shouldn't they also grumble about Gorsuch's?At the meeting in Washington, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House, administration officials encouraged the religious leaders to push back against such questions. St. John's is one of only two Episcopal churches in Boulder, and the other caters to students at the University of Colorado, they said, according to people who attended the meeting. Anyway, Gorsuch should be judged on his judicial opinions, not his pastor's politics, they argued. Many Catholics and evangelicals agree, pointing to Gorsuch's sterling conservative credentials. He is a lifelong Republican and a member of the Federalist Society, a leading conservative legal organization. He has written a scholarly book arguing against assisted suicide and openly admires the late Antonin Scalia, the justice he would replace, a hero to the conservative intellectual elite. But in the black-and-white world of partisan politics, Gorsuch's writings and religious life show several strands of gray. He studied with an eminent Catholic philosopher but attends a progressive Episcopal parish. He has defended the religious rights not only of Christian corporations but also of Muslims and Native Americans. He has thought deeply about morality, but says judges have no right to impose their views on others. He is hailed as the fulfillment of President Trump's pledge to pick a "pro-life" justice, but has no judicial record on abortion itself. Even Gorsuch's own religion is somewhat of a gray area. If confirmed by the Senate, would Gorsuch be the high court's only Protestant justice, or its sixth Catholic? His close friends and family offer different answers to that question. A quiet faithGorsuch's father was not conventionally religious, preferring the outdoors to church pews, family members say."He showed me ... that there are few places closer to God than walking in the wilderness or wading a trout stream," Gorsuch said at his confirmation hearing in the Senate on Monday. His mother, Anne, meanwhile, came from a long line of Irish Catholics. Rosie Binge, Anne's sister and Gorsuch's aunt and godmother, said her parents ferried their seven children to Mass every morning, and dinner was followed by a family recitation of the Rosary. "I think religion is a big factor in Neil's life," Binge said. "When you grow up with someone so devout, it has to rub off on you." The three Gorsuch children -- Neil, Stephanie and J.J. -- attended Mass most Sundays and were enrolled in Catholic schools for much of their early educational lives, family members say. In his speech accepting Trump's nomination to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch briefly alluded to his faith, saying it had lifted him through life's valleys. That was especially true during the early 2000s, said Gorsuch's younger brother, J.J., when their father, David, suffered from an aneurysm and later died, closely followed by his twin sister. Their mother, Anne, died in 2004. "It was a tough time for the family," said J.J. Gorsuch, who worships at a Catholic church in Denver. "I know that prayer, and group prayer, helped sustain him as well as the rest of us."After his parents' death, Neil Gorsuch grew close to his uncle, the Rev. John Gorsuch, an Episcopal priest, who died February 15. On a group call following Neil's nomination, family members say, the pastor joked that some of the people on the line were Democrats, but all were proud of his nephew.At his Senate confirmation hearing on Monday, Gorsuch called his uncle "a hero of mine," and choked back tears as he said, "He gave the benediction when I took my oath as a judge 11 years ago. I confess I was hoping he might offer a similar prayer for me this year. As it is, I know he is smiling."When the family moved to Washington, where Anne Gorsuch led the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1980s, Gorsuch attended Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit school in Maryland.Michael Trent, who has known Gorsuch since they were 14, remembers his close friend as studious but affable, equally at home in the library stacks and outdoors. He kept most of his opinions, including his religious views, private. "It's important to him, but in the times we've spent together it has not been a big part of the conversation," said Trent, who lives in Marietta, Georgia. "It's just one those quiet things you understand about a person." Gorsuch is godfather to Trent's two sons, whom he spoils with presents on birthdays and Christmas, Trent said. Neil Gorsuch with his godson, Matthew Trent. After college and law school, between stints clerking at the Supreme Court, Gorsuch studied legal philosophy at Oxford University in England, where his dissertation was supervised by John Finnis, a giant in the field and a former member of the Vatican's prestigious International Theological Commission. Among laypeople, Finnis may be best known for his expositions on natural law, an often-misunderstood area of legal and moral philosophy. At its heart, natural law refers to a body of norms that adherents believe are not created by humans, but instead are revealed through the application of reason, said Richard Garnett, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where Finnis now teaches.Because philosophers like Finnis have employed natural law to argue against abortion and same-sex marriage, the field has become controversial, especially among liberals. In 1994, protesters interrupted an address by Finnis at Harvard, calling him a "hatemonger" and "homophobe." In a speech at Notre Dame in 2011, Gorsuch spoke fondly of Finnis, saying, "I have encountered few such patient, kind, and truly generous teachers in my life." Some conservatives celebrate Finnis' influence on Gorsuch. But others worry that natural law will become an unwelcome distraction during Gorsuch's Senate confirmation hearings, as it was during those of Robert Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas, both of whom expressed their appreciation for the field. Gorsuch himself drew on natural law while writing his 2006 book "The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia." In it, he argued that "all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong."Conservatives who have read the book say it not only offers indications of Gorsuch's views on assisted suicide, but abortion as well. "It is impossible to come away from this rather remarkable book with any conclusion other than that this is a man who has a very high regard for the sanctity and the dignity of human life," said Timothy Goeglein, vice president for external relations for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family. "I am confident that he will be a pro-life justice," said Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. Despite Trump's pledge to pick a "pro-life" justice, Leonard Leo, who advised the president on Supreme Court nominees, said the issue was never explicitly raised during their discussions. Gorsuch's key opinions on religionIn Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners, Gorsuch dissented from a decision that forced an Oklahoma town to remove a 10 Commandments monument from the lawn of its courthouse.In American Atheists v. Davenport, Gorsuch joined a minority opinion that argued that a "reasonable observer" would not necessarily view crosses erected on public property in honor of Utah state troopers as a government endorsement of religion.In Abdulhaseeb v. Calbone, Gorsuch argued that a Muslim inmate can claim that his religious rights were violated by an Oklahoma prison that refused to provide halal food.In Yellowbear v. Lampert, Gorsuch argued that a Wyoming prison violated a Native American prisoner's religious rights by refusing to grant him access to the prison's sweat lodge.In Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, Gorsuch wrote a lengthy defense of a Christian family business who said the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate impinged on their freedom of religion.In Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, Gorsuch joined the dissent in siding with an order of nuns who likewise refused to comply with the contraception mandate, arguing that it violated their religious consciences."Judge Gorsuch wasn't asked about it, and he's not going to make a commitment on it," said Leo, who has taken a leave from his job heading the Federalist Society while he shepherds Gorsuch's nomination through the Senate.Gorsuch himself cautioned senators against reading too much into his work in moral philosophy when he was nominated to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006. "My personal views, as I hope I have made clear, have nothing to do with the case before me in any case," he said. "The litigants deserve better than that, the law demands more than that." In that regard, Gorsuch said he closely follows the man he would replace on the Supreme Court. In a speech shortly after Scalia's death last year, Gorsuch said the "great project" of the late justice's life had been to argue for a strict separation of powers between judges and legislators. Lawmakers may appeal to public and personal morality, Gorsuch said, but judges never should. Their job, he said, is to interpret the law, rendering decisions based on what the text says, not what they believe. Other legal scholars say that's unrealistic. No matter how hard judges try, their personal passions and partisan leanings always seep, even unconsciously, into their decisions. Episcopalian or Catholic? When Neil Gorsuch returned from his studies in Oxford, he came home a married man. His British-born wife, Louise, was raised in the Church of England. As the new family settled in Vienna, Virginia, they joined Holy Comforter, an Episcopal parish. According to church records, the Gorsuches were members of Holy Comforter from 2001 to 2006, when they moved to Colorado. But on membership forms, Neil listed his religion as Catholic, and there is no record that he formally joined the Episcopal Church, said the Rev. Lyndon Shakespeare, Holy Comforter's interim rector. That's not unusual, Shakespeare said. The Catholic and Episcopal churches may differ on politics, but their worship services can be quite similar, and a number of Catholics worship at Episcopal parishes without formally changing their religious identity. The churches recognize each other's baptisms and marriages, but the Catholic Church does not regard celebrations of Holy Communion at Episcopal services as valid, experts say.When the Gorsuch family moved to Colorado, they joined St. John's, where they have been active in Sunday services. Louise is a lay reader, the couple's two daughters likewise assist in the liturgy as acolytes and Neil has been an usher. Friends and family say Louise Gorsuch has an affinity for the liturgy and music at St. John's, finding in it an echo of her upbringing in the Church of England. "Many of the hymn texts and musical settings are centuries old, some dating to the earliest centuries of Christianity," said Springer, the church rector. "For people who have been life-long Anglicans, this music ties back to childhood." Springer declined to speak in detail about the Gorsuches, but in a recent church newsletter she praised Neil as "a broad-thinking" and thoughtful man. In a statement, the congregation of St. John's echoed that sentiment: "We know Neil as a man of great humility and integrity, one eager to listen and thoughtful in speaking. These qualities are ones we pray all public servants in any leadership role in our country might possess. We care deeply for Louise and the girls and know them as people of solid faith. We give thanks to God for the presence of this family in our midst."Springer said she doesn't know whether Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian. "I have no evidence that Judge Gorsuch considers himself an Episcopalian, and likewise no evidence that he does not." Gorsuch's younger brother, J.J., said he too has "no idea how he would fill out a form. He was raised in the Catholic Church and confirmed in the Catholic Church as an adolescent, but he has been attending Episcopal services for the past 15 or so years." Trent, Gorsuch's close friend, said he believes Gorsuch would consider himself "a Catholic who happens to worship at an Episcopal church." Rosie Binge said her family was surprised to see media reports calling her nephew an Episcopalian. "I think once you're a Catholic, you're always a Catholic," she said, before adding with a laugh, "At least he's going to church!" Binge is right about the Catholic Church. Once baptized Catholic, a person enters an unbreakable theological communion, even if he or she later worships in a different church, said William Daniel, a canon law expert at Catholic University in Washington, DC. "We would say that fundamentally such a person is still Catholic, even if they are living out their life as a Lutheran or Episcopalian. We wouldn't confront the person, but if they asked, we would say: Yes, you're still a part of the Catholic Church." Daniel emphasized that he was not speaking specifically about Gorsuch. Gorsuch could also call himself an Episcopalian if he meets the church's minimum standards for membership: Being baptized Christian, receiving Holy Communion at least three times a year and supporting the church through prayer and financial donations. "The intent here is key," said the Rev. Thomas Ferguson, an Episcopal priest and an expert on its relationships with other churches. "If he intends to be an Episcopalian he could certainly be considered one."This may seem academic, but the religious composition of the Supreme Court is closely watched by many believers. There has not been a Protestant justice on the Supreme Court since John Paul Stevens retired in 2010, and many Protestants eagerly anticipate Gorsuch's confirmation as a religious milestone. Currently, there are five Catholics and three Jews on the high court. "In the interest of pluralism, it's about time we had a Protestant on the Supreme Court," said Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board."Would I be happier if he were going to a more traditional Episcopal Church? Yeah, I'd be happier for him," Land continued. "But I'm more concerned with his views on the Constitution than where he goes to church."

Story by Moni Basu and Wayne Drash, CNN

2016-09-06 10:11:07

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/world/children-of-terror-camp/index.html

Finding peace in a world of terror - CNN

It's a summer camp with a distinction: participants are young people touched by terror. This year 55 gathered together and found solace in their common bond.

world, Finding peace in a world of terror - CNN

A camp for young people touched by terror

Philadelphia (CNN)Inside the group's sacred circle, a young Muslim visitor adjusts her salmon pink hijab, clears her throat and asks the question that could shatter trust: "Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?" It is a prevailing belief in her native Indonesia, she says, that Americans despise Islam.The question is directed at 19-year-old Robbie Hayes, whose father was killed in the September 11 attacks on America. "Not at all," Hayes answers. "I have many friends who are Muslims. The people who were involved in killing my father were extreme radicals. Any group can have radicals who believe they are the only ones who are right. That's when it becomes dangerous."Read More9/11 Town HallCNN's Brooke Baldwin interviewed 10 of the 9/11 children, now ages 14 to 29, in a televised Town Hall. They spoke about their loss, the last 15 years — and why the terrorists failed.Hayes tells the group he was too young to process everything that happened when he lost his father. He and his younger brother, Ryan, grew up in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and were the only two children in their community who were directly affected by the 2001 attacks."I was sort of like the oddity," he says. "But when I came here, I felt like this was a place I belong."This is a camp for young people touched by terror, their lives interrupted and altered by a sudden and brutal force. Participants are the now-grown children of men and women who perished on September 11 and the loved ones of people across the globe whose lives were cut short by acts of violence.There are 55 of them this year. They've come to the campus of Bryn Mawr College from more than a dozen countries separated by oceans and continents.They come here because, like Robbie Hayes, they belong.Campers and counselors ride a bus headed for Outward Bound, where they will participate in trust-building exercises.'Don't give up'They are strong and fragile at once. They don't want anyone's pity. They recoil every time there is news of another bombing, another massacre; in recent months, there have been so many. They weather each attack with empathy and wisdom. And a visceral desire to build a more peaceful world.The camp is part of Project Common Bond, a program begun in 2008 to bring together young adults the world over who've lost a family member to terrorism, war and extreme acts of violence. The gathering unfolds over seven days in late July at this idyllic campus of majestic oaks and collegiate gothic. It's a safe harbor, a place to escape the tensions of the world. The participants admit plunging to a soul-shattering place of darkness before they clawed their way back to light, emerging as the teenagers and young adults they are today. Maybe it took many months. Maybe it took every single year of childhood. They learned it was OK to shed tears, to ask for help. They grew up much too fast, made wiser by the void in their lives. Coming of Age in the Age of TerrorWhat can the 9/11 children teach us?More than 3,000 children lost a parent on that awful day. Fifteen years later, in a world rocked by terror, this group has hard-won wisdom to share. Here, in their own words, is a glimpse into their journeys.The Palombo 10First they lost their dad on 9/11. They were ages 11 months to 15. Then they lost their mom. Meet the Palombos: Anthony, Frank Jr., Joe, Maria, Tommy, John, Patrick, Daniel, Stephen and Maggie -- a family that's the epitome of true grit.Bound by terror: 'I've got you'She faced al Qaeda militants in a courtroom. He put Osama bin Laden's image on a punching bag and let loose. She's from France; he's a "child" of 9/11. They're two strangers who share a tragic bond: Each lost a father to terrorism.They can never undo their loss, but at this camp, they find comfort among others who grew up like they did. The friendships forged here helped save them.There is music, dance and art. Basketball, capture the flag and Outward Bound. But when they are asked to name their favorite activity, many choose the daily morning event that immediately follows food hall breakfasts of blueberry pancakes, bagels, eggs and bacon. It's called a dignity session for good reason. In it, the campers disperse into small groups, sit facing one another in a circle and bare their hearts. They speak of the memories and moments that can trigger pain. They unearth their deepest fears and aspire to their highest hopes. They find it transcending.An Israeli faces a Palestinian in the circle and says: "You killed my father.""I didn't kill your father," comes the response. "I'm so sorry that that happened to you. And we have to both figure out a way to stop this from going forward."In another session, a war-weary participant from the Middle East says: "I want to work for peace, but I don't ever see it coming." "Don't give up," says a peer from Northern Ireland. "You know, we've gotten there. It's not perfect; we didn't think it was going happen but it did."Therapist Monica Meehan McNamara has led the dignity sessions for the last eight years and pushes participants to better understand one another by simply sharing their stories and seeing across cultural divides. "How do we live our lives in a way that sets a different example?" she presses them."Getting to know the other begins to break down that cycle of anger and violence. It's like, 'Wow, if I understand you better, then I have to think differently about you. And, oh, you are also going to understand me.' Those are powerful antidotes."These campers see themselves as normal young people, albeit with an extraordinary exception. They speak with a maturity beyond their age. Many were forced to take on adult responsibilities before they could even fully understand their loss. Maggie Smith, 18, consoled her mother after Maggie's father, Jeffrey, died in the south tower of the World Trade Center. "I would be the one to tell my mom to calm down and stop crying and count down from 10 so that by the time I got to zero, she would take some deep breaths and calm down."And she helped raise her younger sister Charlotte, who was only 10 months old in September 2001. "To me, that forced me to step up in my household and forced me to kind of become the man of the house, I guess, just because I'm looking out for my sister and my mom."Campers and counselors play the Person-to-Person trust-building exercise at Outward Bound.In this camp, the pain is still there, but there is no need to explain. Everyone feels the emptiness.They long for Dad at graduation or at the baseball diamond or the after-dinner living room conversations during tough teenage years. They yearn for Mom on prom night. They wish they could feel her touch, hear her voice. What did it sound like? They try hard not to forget.Javier Aparicio, 18, lost his mother, Nuria Aparicio, in the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people. "I always have that question: How would my life have changed by having a mother around? When I go to my friends' houses, it's so normal."About this seriesCNN worked with Tuesday's Children, an organization formed after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, to interview young people who lost a parent on that awful day. Reporters also attended a summer camp sponsored by the group's Project Common Bond in which 9/11 youths were joined by peers from around the world who've also lost a family member to terrorism, war or extreme acts of violence. Not a day goes by when they don't feel a pit in their stomachs thinking about someone they cherish but never got to know. Time has yet to change that. It likely never will.Their faces light up when asked: Do you try to make your parent proud all these years later? Their body language shifts from one of uncertainty to confidence. Brendan Fitzpatrick, 17, shows off a bracelet that hugs his wrist: "Thomas J. Fitzpatrick 9-11-01 Daddy WTC IN MY HEART FOREVER.""I try to stay positive to keep everyone around me happy, because I want to be a light that shines and helps everyone else stay bright," he says. "I try to live my life in a way that would make (my father) proud."He paints two tiles in art class. In one, the sun shines amid gray skies. In the other, the sun beams against blue skies. "One is just a happy sky," he says. "The other is dark and cloudy. But in both the sun shines through."The campers begin the week by engaging with each other on a very personal level and then stretch themselves to discuss the political. They yearn for an end to violence and bloodshed."It's kind of disheartening to see that even after 15 years, there's still acts of terror that go on all around the world," says Pierce O'Hagan, 16, who was just over a year old when his father was killed. Thomas O'Hagan, a New York City firefighter, climbed the stairs of the north tower of the World Trade Center that day. He gave his life to help others, a tragedy that motivates Pierce to aim high in life. Patrick O'Hagan makes a friendship bracelet using a technique he learned from a fellow camper."I want him to be proud of me up in heaven," he says. "Like kind of not let him die in vain. I want people to be like, 'Oh, Tom O'Hagan's kids, they were great. They did really well in school and they got into a great college and they went on to be very good people.'"He clings to the images of his father in home videos. The first thing his dad always says when he walks through the door: "How are my two good boys?"Even as terrorist attacks have ramped up, these campers don't hate. They don't call for vengeance. Even as they see their own grief reflected on the faces of victims in Iraq, Turkey, Bangladesh, Belgium and France, they remain committed to peaceful solutions.They brainstorm different ways of responding to conflict. They learn to listen to those who are unlike them and to suspend judgment. Deep inside, they still wonder: "Why me? Why did they target my father, my mother, my sister?" How to helpCongress has designated September 11 as an annual National Day of Service. See various ways you can volunteer or contribute.Astrid and Margrethe Boeyum Kloven were inseparable until the day in 2011 when gunman Andres Brevik unleashed a hail of bullets in Utoya, Norway, and killed Margrethe and 68 others. "I loved her. Like a lot," Boeyum Kloven, 17, says of her older sister."We live in a violent world, but we should probably try to stand together and try fighting back -- but not with violence," she says. "Everybody wants to seek revenge, but take a step back and take a deep breath. Evaluate whether taking revenge will really help."You won't get better by hurting anybody else, because the pain will still be there."In art class, Boeyum Kloven bobs her head and sings aloud to Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." Her hair is dyed the color of an emerald sea and her lips let loose a smile. She catches the eye of Zoe Jacobs, 16, sitting across the table. They point at each other and sing the lyrics together. Zoe's father, Jason Kyle Jacobs, worked in the World Trade Center. "My loss is no excuse for someone else to be mean or terrible to others," she says. "I don't believe you should try to destroy someone else's society, someone else's reality because some people -- a very small amount of people -- did something terrible."That's important, they say, because an act of terrorism reverberates through families, through generations.Zoe Jacobs is embraced by a teammate after climbing to the top of a tall log with a rotating platform at the top.Anna Rose Taggart, 16, of Northern Ireland lost her uncle in the 1998 Omagh car bombing carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army. It was the deadliest attack in the long-running feud between Roman Catholics and Protestants, leaving 31 dead and 200 others wounded.Taggart's uncle was killed before she was born, and yet, she saw his absence wear down her mother and grandparents. They realized they had to celebrate one another each day. Northern Ireland was able to carve out a framework for a fragile peace deal in the attacks' aftermath. As terrorism spreads globally, she wishes those seeking harm would stop the killings."It will be beautiful," she says, "if everybody could find a way to accept each other despite race or religion or gender."Reason for optimismOn the penultimate day of camp, 17 young Indonesians have joined a morning dignity session. They traveled from Jakarta through a State Department youth leadership program and visited the September 11 memorial in Manhattan. Though terrorism is no stranger in their land, they have not suffered loss like the camp participants. But they draw inspiration from this place.In the sacred circle, Robbie Hayes continues his story. He was only 4 when his father boarded American Airlines Flight 11 at Boston's Logan International Airport for a routine business trip to Los Angeles. That flight was hijacked by five al Qaeda members who crashed it into the north tower of the World Trade Center. When he hears news of another terrorist attack, he immediately thinks of the victims and their families. "It makes me sort of want to reach out to them," he says. "It's sort of an empathetic link through a long distance."Mastin Annisa, the young Indonesian woman who posed the question about animosity toward Muslims, looks Hayes in the eyes, digesting a response that surprises her. She had expected anger, maybe even hatred. Campers at the retreat roast marshmallows over a fire together.How can someone who experienced grief almost all his life be so forgiving? Maybe if all the world's terror victims, like Hayes, did not seek revenge, there could be reason to see the future with optimism. On a billboard in one of the dormitories, the campers post messages. Some are personal; others state pithy truths. "Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart." When their week comes to an end, the participants of this special camp go their separate ways -- back to New York, New Jersey, France, Spain, Northern Ireland, Norway, Kosovo, the Palestinian territories, Kenya, India, Sri Lanka. They leave with the customary smiles and tears that accompany goodbyes. But they know that this place, in many ways, goes with them. They will be challenged in the years ahead to practice what they have learned, to carry themselves non-violently in an often-violent world.They leave knowing this is a place where they will always belong.Video produced by Melody Shih, Jon Reyes, Paddy Driscoll, Curtis Brown, Claudia Morales and Madeleine Stix.

Story by Wayne Drash, CNN Video by Claudia Morales, CNN

2016-09-06 10:08:28

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/us/palombo-10-siblings-from-9-11/index.html

10 siblings lost their dad on 9/11, then they lost mom to cancer - CNN

The 10 Palombo siblings lost their father during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. When their mother died several years later, they agreed to raise each other.

9/11, Palombo, FDNY, terror attack, September 11, 2001, 10 siblings, resilience, God provides, faith, Frank Anthony Palombo, Tommy Palombo, Joe Palombo, Maria Palombo, us, 10 siblings lost their dad on 9/11, then they lost mom to cancer - CNN

The Palombo 10: How losing Dad on 9/11 and then Mom turned suffering into strength

New York (CNN)"Am I loving you enough? Are you feeling loved? Is your faith strong?"Those are the questions Jean Palombo asked her 10 children in the years that followed 9/11.Her eight boys and two girls ranged in age from 11 months to 15 years when they lost their father on that fateful day. Frank Anthony Palombo was 46, a firefighter, and the family rock. Jean's worst fear was that someone would question her ability to raise her children by herself. That they would be split up, placed in separate homes, if the state deemed her inadequate. How could a grieving widow stand up to such an enormous task? But Jean had grit. And she had faith. She relied on all of that, and then some. She thought of the love she and Frank shared for 19 years and the lessons learned. "God provides," he always said.Read MoreJust days before he was killed, she told him: "Everything's easier together."9/11 Town HallCNN's Brooke Baldwin interviewed 10 of the 9/11 children, now ages 14 to 29, in a televised Town Hall. They spoke about their loss, the last 15 years — and why the terrorists failed.Together, she and her 10 children forged ahead. There were others who pitched in: relatives, firefighters and church members. But everyone says it was Jean's steely resolve that kept her children on a good path. Eight years later, the family took another blow: Jean was diagnosed with colon cancer. Excruciating chemo treatment and multiple surgeries followed. When her cancer was in remission, the family jetted off on vacations. The Turks and Caicos. California. Disney World. Life was too precious not to enjoy the moment.She became even more loving as the cancer worsened. She told her older children not to feel sorry for the youngest "because they had a better mom.""Look what we've been through together," she told them all. "You'll be fine. Be grateful. Sometimes things go wrong. Love life, and do the best you can."This time, they got to say goodbye.Coming of Age in the Age of TerrorWhat can the 9/11 children teach us?More than 3,000 children lost a parent on that awful day. Fifteen years later, in a world rocked by terror, this group has hard-won wisdom to share. Here, in their own words, is a glimpse into their journeys.A place to belongIt's a summer camp with a distinction: Participants are young people touched by terror. This year, 55 of them -- from a dozen countries -- gathered on a campus in Pennsylvania, where they found renewal and hope in their common bond.Bound by terror: 'I've got you'She faced al Qaeda militants in a courtroom. He put Osama bin Laden's image on a punching bag and let loose. She's from France; he's a "child" of 9/11. They're two strangers who share a tragic bond: Each lost a father to terrorism.On August 8, 2013, the children gathered in their mother's bedroom. Nearly 100 friends from church crowded their Jersey home and sang hymns. At 53, Jean mouthed a Psalm before taking her last breath. Her oldest child was 27 then; her youngest, 12. The Palombo 10 rallied. Again, they weren't about to allow themselves to be separated. From the oldest to the youngest, the siblings agreed to raise one another. A party of 10. Anthony is the oldest and studying to be a priest. Frank Jr. is the only married one in the bunch, with three children and now living outside the house. Joe, the third child, is the accountant who helps keep everyone on budget. Child No. 4, Maria, is an oncology nurse, driven to help cancer patients after witnessing her mother's decline. She's the mother of the house, known to raise her voice amid the cacophony. Tommy, the fifth child, has followed his father's footsteps to become a firefighter and lives with an aunt in the city to be closer to his firehouse. The loud child is the sixth, John, who was recently accepted into the fire academy. Patrick serves as the house chef and has begun working as a cook at an Italian restaurant. No. 8, Daniel, is the hyper competitive brother who dominates backyard volleyball and will soon head off to his freshman year of college. The last of the boys is Stephen, the family jokester, starting his junior year of high school. The youngest child is Maggie, a high school sophomore with her dad's Brooklyn spunk.Their two-story home is nestled along a shady cul-de-sac in Ridgewood, New Jersey.The Palombo 10 in 2000. From left, in front: Anthony holding Stephen, Tommy, Joe and John. Behind them is Frank (with skateboard), Daniel and Maria holding Maggie. Patrick is in back. On a recent day, Joe, Maria, Tommy and Patrick flip through family photographs at the kitchen table. One shows the 10 of them by themselves at their old Brooklyn home. Another of clean-shaven Dad in his FDNY uniform. Of Dad with a vintage 1970s mustache. Of Mom with a mesmerizing gaze. Of their young parents on their wedding day."If we had all separated, we'd be a mess," says Maria, now 26."Yeah," Tommy, 24, agrees. "I feel like if we were all to just go our own ways, I don't know." He pauses, then cracks a joke: "Who knows what Joey and Maria would be doing? I'd probably still be good."Joe, 27, says he'd work around-the-clock at an accounting firm "if I didn't have my family pulling me home."The deaths of his father and mother "affected us all in different ways," he says. "Having that bond, no matter how different we are and how many different personalities we have, I think it keeps us together."Their parents, says 21-year-old Patrick, "instilled in us the importance of being together, eating together, praying together. Those three things in particular."Frank and Jean Palombo wed in 1982. The first of their 10 children was born in 1986.And that tradition lives on. Eight of them live in the five-bedroom home. They moved there in 2006 from Brooklyn for better public schools. No one is allowed to sleep in the room that became their mother's. The master bedroom houses four of the boys, now grown into young men. On Sundays, all 10 gather here for morning prayer. It's not all serious. They bicker and fight and argue as siblings tend to do. "Every day when I wake up," Maria says, "I realize what a miracle it is that we're all here. Nobody's thrown anybody out the window yet.""It's definitely a lot of fun," Joe says. "We don't have parents, so there's a lot of: 'What would you like to do?'" Their father used to weep at the dining table and thank God for blessing him with so many children. And here they are retelling the tales and wisdom of their father and mother, 15 years after 9/11. What would Dad think of it all?"He'd be crying," says Maria. "For sure."The room fills with laughter.'What's the meaning of your life?'Frank and Jean didn't share a love-at-first-sight story. He was the best friend of one of her brothers. She was 9 when they met; he was 14. But he always talked with her, asked how she was doing.A spark grew in her high school years. He had deep inviting brown eyes and the handsome looks of an older gentleman; she had straight auburn hair and a coy, Hollywood-esque gaze.On her 18th birthday, he came to her and confessed "he had strong feelings for her and that he wanted to date her," says Shelly Hogan, Jean's older sister. About this seriesCNN worked with Tuesday's Children, an organization formed after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, to interview dozens of teens and young adults who lost a parent on that awful Tuesday in 2001. "She was so happy. As a young girl, she had a big crush on him."He was in seminary, studying to become a priest. Their romance changed those plans. He switched gears and became a New York firefighter in 1979. He and Jean got hitched three years later, in 1982."They just really loved one another. It was a beautiful relationship."Yet early on, the young couple struggled. He was a devout Catholic, active with the youth. She wanted nothing to do with the church. He wanted 12 children. She wanted none. She was a special education teacher. She hoped to form a special needs school and be the principal. Those would be her children. With so much suffering in the world, she wondered, why would anyone want to bring a child into it? That would soon change. One afternoon in 1985, Frank heard an announcement at church about classes that would explore the topic, "What's the meaning in your life?" He was so moved by the first session, he came home and begged his wife to attend.She reluctantly agreed. "This is the last thing I'm ever going to do in the Catholic Church," she told him.It turned out to be transformative, as if she'd been touched by God. A couple from Italy expecting their fourth child was there. They were smiling and happy, basking at the power of giving life. "God loves you," the woman told Jean. She wondered: Is something wrong with me? Why can't I love like that?After losing their father and then their mother, the 10 siblings keep their parents' memory alive through family photographs.The priest's words from that day resonated: "Do you think, perhaps, that God is a monster that you do not allow his will to be done in your life?""He opened my life," Jean said of that moment.The couple didn't look back."Knowing that God loved her gave her the strength to live her life -- to be free, to not be scared of the suffering," her daughter Maria says. Jean and Frank built the foundation for their children's lives. Making money didn't matter to them -- loving life did. What they couldn't provide financially, they made up for in time spent with their kids. Frank wrestled with them. He took them to the firehouse. He played football with them across the street in Prospect Park, drawing up plays in the huddle on their bellies. He'd throw passes to Maria. She'd reel the ball in and run for touchdowns. Out of her earshot, he warned his boys: "Don't you touch her!"During youth hockey games, Dad watched from the stands as Tommy and his older brother Joe competed on opposite teams. He got worked up when Joe knocked Tommy over. "Hey, calm down! Calm down!" he shouted. Frank made dinner, too. Pizza, pasta marinara and barbecue were his specialties. He worked with the children on homework. He told them to always try their hardest. "If you get a B in class but don't try, then I'll be upset."Jean was the nurturing type who showered her kids with kindness. She was a mother-of-all-trades: She got her 10 kids to and from school, whisked them off to their games and practices, instilled in them a strong faith. Frank was so active in the church he took a group of young people every three years on overseas missions. While he enjoyed going into burning buildings to save lives, he said it was more satisfying saving a young person's soul from eternal flames.At the Dean Street firehouse, Frank read his Bible and prayer book while others poured their efforts into studying for the lieutenant's test. "You're never going to get promoted reading the Bible," his fellow firefighters said.His response: "You're never going to get to heaven reading the lieutenant's book."He was known as a straight shooter. He spoke his mind and wasn't afraid who he might upset. His word was so highly respected that he could change a union vote just by speaking up. He could've retired with a full pension in 1999. He started a second job as a handyman instead and felt he needed a few more years to build up the business. Jean had finished her master's degree and hoped to teach again, to bring in extra income. By September 2001, Frank had his goal in sight. He planned to retire by the start of 2002. Just three months to go. 'I'll always help you'On the morning of September 11, 2001, Jean awoke thinking she was pregnant. Child No. 11 wasn't in her plans. "Frank, what are we going to do," she told her husband. "I'll go crazy.""Don't worry about that," he said. "But we need to think of a name."Both laughed. They scurried around the house, getting the children ready for school. He helped load everyone in the car, and she carted them off. Before they parted, he said, "I'll always help you."She would never hear her husband's voice again. Frank left with Ladder 105 shortly after they got the call to head to the World Trade Center. He was somewhere in the south tower when the 110-story building collapsed at 9:59 a.m. Six others from his firehouse also died.When Jean picked up her children from school, she described what had happened at the twin towers. "There was a terrorist attack. Do you guys know what a terrorist attack is?" she asked. Maria, then 11, mistook the term terrorist for tourist. "Yeah, it's the people on 42nd Street with the cameras," she said.Jean didn't watch the news. Her husband had told her to ignore television reports and newspapers when anything bad happened involving firefighters -- that it would only cause undue stress. But by the end of the evening, she sensed the worst. "That night, I understood that something had gone wrong, as he had not called and nobody knew where his team was," she told the Italian weekly newspaper Tempi. The next morning, she woke each child and told them: "They didn't find Dad." She felt it important to relay the news to each of her children individually, even her 11-month-old."That was the hardest: Waking up and crying hysterically with my mom," says Joe, who was 12 at the time. Adds Tommy, who was 9, "I didn't even know what terrorism was. I was in fourth grade."The range of emotions varied with each child. Tommy Palombo became a New York firefighter in May, to help others while honoring his father.Tommy told one of his friends a couple of weeks later, "I just want to be able to say goodbye."Patrick was 6. He hadn't been able to find his shoes the morning of 9/11 and had argued with his dad. He told his father he hated him and never wanted to see him again. "Then, I never saw him again," Patrick says. "That was very difficult to deal with, and still is."Maria refused to believe her father was dead for months, even years. She thought maybe a brick hit his head, and he had amnesia. To this day, she has dreams in which he comes back and "we're all angry at him for being gone so long."Amid the family's devastation was an outpouring of love. People who'd traveled on church youth trips with their father reached out, saying their dad changed their lives. Strangers wrote letters, sent hand-stitched quilts and gave them envelopes with money. Jim Fassel, then the head coach of the New York Giants, was so moved when he heard a firefighter left behind 10 children that he gave the Palombos free rein. They got VIP treatment when they went to practices and games. They once were honored on the field before the national anthem. When Tommy didn't put his hand on his heart, Giants star defensive end Michael Strahan smacked him on the head and told him, "Get it together." Behind closed doors, there was a huge void. In a family built on faith, the children questioned, "How can God allow this? How can God let us go without a father?""A part of me died that day, too," says Joe.Tommy says simply, "Growing up, Dad was my best friend. My hero."Their mother worked tirelessly. Financially, the family had the support of their father's firefighter pension, the 9/11 compensation fund and donations of strangers. It allowed Jean to focus on her most precious asset -- her children.She made sure whatever doubts her children might have about God's love were tended to. She even forgave the terrorists. "God's love has exceeded this evil," she said.Friends from church pitched in. So did firefighters from their father's station. They fixed dinner, changed light bulbs, gave the boys rides on the trucks and played football with them at Prospect Park. They even joined the Palombos on vacations in the decade that followed. At the Dean Street firehouse, a memorial with oak paneling now lines a back wall. It showcases framed images of the men lost that day. Seven jackets hang on an adjacent wall, including one bearing the name Palombo on the back. One firehouse slogan reads, "But my sons have sons who are as brave as their fathers." In the firehouse: a 9/11 'legacy'Tommy Palombo stands at attention on a stage lined with American flags. It's a moment 15 years in the making. "Legacies," they're called. Those sons and daughters who follow the footsteps of fathers and mothers who perished on the job; 343 firefighters died on 9/11 alone.Tommy was so close to his father he was known as his dad's "tail," because the boy was always right behind him. If anyone ever needed Tommy, the family joke was: "Find Frank and you can find Tommy."The 9-year-old boy who lost his dad is 24 now, resplendent in his FDNY dress blues on this day in May. The epitome of how far the department has come. A sign of rebirth from the tragedy that struck with devastating force. Tommy Palombo is assigned to Engine 69 in Harlem. His fellow firefighters say he's one of the best newcomers they've had.Graduating into the ranks of New York firefighters are 310 men and women -- known as "probies." They are called to the stage row by row. The brass recognize each probie for their 18 weeks of hard work that will result in a lifetime of sacrifice."Probationary firefighter Thomas Palombo," says Assistant Chief Michael Gala, the emcee of the ceremony.Tommy's right wrist snaps off a salute to FDNY Chief James Leonard, and Tommy steps forward. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro hands him his diploma.Tommy's status as a 9/11 "legacy" isn't lost on the more than 1,000 people gathered in the auditorium. The crowd erupts with applause. "That's awesome," brother Joe says softly in the crowd.This moment is the culmination of Tommy's dream: to honor his father and to give back to the department that helped his family. "That's what I want with my life," Tommy says. "I want to be surrounded by guys who were always there for us."How to helpCongress has designated September 11 as an annual National Day of Service. See various ways you can volunteer or contribute.He is stationed at the firehouse known as the Harlem Hilton. His first call to a fire came a few weeks later, in the early hours of Memorial Day. Flames shot out of a hardware store in the bottom of a high-rise building in Harlem. People in apartments crowded the windows and had to be plucked to safety by the ladder truck. Tommy was with Engine 69 and had the lead nozzle position on a hose. His heart raced. In the moment, he didn't think about his father. He had a job to do. The flames reached more than 25 feet in the air. But when he got back to the firehouse, he turned more reflective. "How special is this," he thought.His fellow firefighters will never replace his siblings, but they are part of his new extended family. The veterans praised the new probie at a recent firehouse lunch over heaping bowls of pasta with baked chicken and sausage. The best probie they've had in years. Eager to learn. A guy who understands the culture. "We don't see him any different," says firefighter Mike Davidson. "It's just, ya know..."When your father was one of the 343 firefighters lost that day, the "ya know" doesn't need explanation. Tommy carries on his father's legacy in another very real way. On his helmet, he wears badge number 10871 -- the same number worn by his dad.Five of the Palombo siblings sit on the patio of their New Jersey home. From left: Joe, Tommy, Maggie, Patrick and Maria.A home brims with lifeThe footprint waterfalls at the 9/11 Memorial mark the place where the twin towers stood. The steady sound of trickling water provides a soothing, peaceful contrast to the horror of that day.The site feels almost majestic. The names of the nearly 3,000 men, women and children killed in the terrorist attacks are stencil-cut into bronze parapets surrounding the pools. During the day, you can see through the letters and into the water below. At night, light brightens the names. The name Frank Anthony Palombo lies on panel S-21, facing the new Freedom Tower that stretches a quarter mile into the sky. Twelve miles away, Jean Marie Palombo rests in St. Peter Cemetery in Belleville, New Jersey. The gravestone carries the names and images of both husband and wife. Not far away, the family home brims with life. The backyard hosts intense 5-on-5 volleyball games. The boys lift in the weight room. At dinner, everyone has their duties, from preparing the meal to doing the dishes. There are signs, of course, of their parents' absence: old photographs, their mother's empty bedroom. On the piano sits the music to C.D. Gibson's "A Widow and Her Friends."Daughter Maria finds comfort knowing that the young woman who feared having children suffer in this world gave them an enduring love -- and the knowledge that their suffering has made them stronger. "That's something our parents passed down to us," she says. "When there's suffering, there's joy at the end of it."Together, they overcame.

Story by Moni Basu and Wayne Drash, CNN Video by Claudia Morales, CNN

2016-09-06 10:12:53

news

world

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/world/terrorism-camp-friendship/index.html

Bound by terror: 'I've got you' - CNN

The friendship between an American teen and a young French woman is unlikely except one thing: they both lost their fathers to terrorism. And their bond is deep.

world, Bound by terror: 'I've got you' - CNN

Bound by terror: 'I've got you'

Philadelphia (CNN)She faced her father's killers in a courtroom, and realized the al Qaeda militants held no power. He put Osama bin Laden's image on a punching bag and let loose.She has vivid memories of the years spent with an adoring father. His recollections of Dad are limited. She grew up in southern France and reaches out to him on September 11. He was raised in New Jersey and made sure she was safe after last year's Paris attacks.They're two strangers who've become friends over their unique and tragic bond: Each lost a father to terrorism. Anaële Abescat was 11 when her father, Jean-Claude Abescat, 42, was killed in front of her in a 2007 al Qaeda attack in Saudi Arabia. He was a schoolteacher who had taken a job at the French International School in Riyadh and moved his family there.Read More9/11 Town HallCNN's Brooke Baldwin interviewed 10 of the 9/11 children, now ages 14 to 29, in a televised Town Hall. They spoke about their loss, the last 15 years — and why the terrorists failed.Kyle Maddison was 4 when his dad, Simon Maddison, 40, was killed in the September 11 attacks on the United States. He was a software consultant for a division of Cantor Fitzgerald and worked in the north tower of the World Trade Center. Kyle and Anaële first met five years ago at Project Common Bond, an annual camp that brings together children who lost a parent on 9/11 with young people from other nations who've lost loved ones to terror. They arrived as struggling teens who had plunged to dark places. They were still trying to grasp the magnitude of their loss and asking the unanswerable question: "Why?"They were quiet and at first frightened to bare their hearts. But they found one another and bonded. They could speak about the tragedy they'd experienced. They could talk about other things. Or just remain silent together. Each knew the other understood.For Kyle, the camp quite literally saved his life. It brought him love at a time when he'd grown isolated and alone. Weeks before his first camp, the loss of his father grew too much, too unbearable. A decade hadn't eased his pain. He slipped a rope around his neck."I don't like talking about it," he says, "but if I do talk about it, I have the chance to get the message to someone else who is in that place -- to just keep going."Kyle shows Anaële the tattoo he designed in memory of his father, who died on 9/11. Anaële's story: 'I couldn't do it on my own'Anaële Abescat's mother was visiting her in Paris last November when a Friday night out turned deadly: ISIS shootings and bomb blasts in restaurants, a soccer stadium and the Bataclan concert hall killed 130 people.Anaële began reliving her own horror; she was thankful her mother was there.She couldn't stop watching the news. Images of victims and their families unearthed so many memories: how she felt the day her father died, the look of utter grief on her own mother's face nine years ago.She knew what the world's newest victims of terrorism would have to live through."I know what it feels like," she says. "This kind of thing brings you back."This picture of the Abescat family was taken days before Anaële's father was killed in Saudi Arabia.Back to the day in February 2007 when her family and some friends set out on an excursion in the Saudi desert near the city of Medina. They'd picked a shady spot on the side of the road for a picnic when suddenly men carrying Kalashnikovs encircled them and unleashed a hail of bullets. Anaële threw herself under a car. She still doesn't know how she, her mother and her brother Adrien survived. Her father was gone. She would never sit on his lap or hear him sing Stevie Wonder's "For Your Love" again. (She has it on her smartphone now and still cries when she listens to it). Suddenly, a scrapbook he made for her when she turned 10 became a most precious possession.She suffered through flashbacks. On many nights she could not stop crying and felt as though people were whispering: "There is something wrong with you." She found it difficult to accept her 17th birthday, the age her friend Romain was when he, too, died in the attack along with two other French nationals. "My mom has always been a support for us," Anaële says. "But then it was complicated because she raised two kids on her own. She had two roles, both Mom and Dad. We fought a lot. It was hard."When Anaële began college, everyone knew she was a victim. She didn't want to be treated like a helpless little bird. She did not want anyone's pity; she just wanted to be like everyone else. And when she did talk about her father, she could tell her friends did not know how to react. She found help through therapy. And she found this camp, which she credits with changing her life. "I couldn't do it on my own," she says.Recently, a dark cloud has sometimes returned to hover over her. Some of her depression was related to all the carnage around her: the Charlie Hebdo killings, the Paris and Brussels attacks and, most fresh, the deaths in Nice when a truck plowed through a crowd of people gathered for Bastille Day fireworks. A few days after the Nice tragedy, Anaële arrived at this year's camp in Philadelphia. And she saw Kyle again.That's the beauty of Project Common Bond. A year had gone by, and yet she and Kyle were back to where they left off. It's not that Kyle is Anaële's best friend. He could never take the place of her bestie or the girlfriends she likes to hang out with at outdoor cafes. The two don't talk on the phone often or text throughout the day. Maybe months pass without any contact. But even then, they know the other is there, if the need arises. Anaële finds that comforting, like a cozy blanket on a frigid night. Kyle designed a tattoo with a rose that symbolizes love and hurt and a clock tepresenting the time he had with his father.Kyle's story: 'I want to keep going for him'The tattoo on Kyle's upper right arm has two roses with a clock in between. "Good times," it says. The clock is stopped at 3:28, signifying his father's birthday on March 28.Kyle designed the tattoo himself and had it inked onto his arm three days before college began last year at the University of Hartford. "The roses symbolize love and hurt," he says. "The clock represents the limited time that I had with my father and the limited good times that I had with him -- and to always remember that there will be good times ahead."When he wants to feel closer to his father, Kyle looks at a photograph of himself with his dad and his grandfather. Other times, he slips on headphones and listens to his dad's punk rock cassette tapes. His favorite contains the Descendents on one side and The Offspring on the other."Listening to it makes you feel just a little bit closer."An artist, Kyle hopes to become a sculptor one day. He also plays with writing. A constant theme of his work, he says, is "the idea that the good die young, but the great live on forever in our hearts and we carry them with us everywhere we go."What do you do when you're so young and you lose your hero? When your dad leaves for work one day and never returns?Those were the issues a young Kyle faced. His mother, Maureen Maddison, made sure her three children got therapy. His older sister, Caileigh, was 7 on 9/11; his younger sister, Sydney, was 1.Kyle was only 4 when his father was killed. The magnitude of Kyle's loss became clear as he grew older."My mom really tried," he says. "It was basically like any other kid's life -- but I didn't have a father."There were strange moments. When he'd walk down the street, he'd find little hearts everywhere. In cracks in the street. Randomly, lying around. He wondered: Was it a sign from his father?Once when his mother struggled, the young boy looked up at the nighttime sky. One star shone brighter than all the others. "It's like Daddy's shining straight through to my heart," he told her. The magnitude of his loss became clear as he grew older. Depression took hold his freshman year of high school. He didn't want to eat or go out."I didn't want to do anything," he says.He survived his suicide attempt and received counseling. He has managed to keep his depression in check. His advice to others struggling with suicidal thoughts is this: "You'll learn to deal with it and you'll learn to cope, and you just have to hold on and eventually you'll be OK."One fact kept him motivated: Kyle is the only boy in his family and the only one left to carry on the Maddison name. He realized ending his life would tarnish his father's legacy. "I want to keep going for him," he says. "When I was in such a dark place, I was like, 'Alright, I can't let this end here. I have to keep going.'" Anaële and Kyle met five years ago when they first arrived at a camp for the children who have lost parents or loved ones to terrorism. They became close friends.'Finding a different meaning' In the quiet of a college dorm room during their week at camp, Anaële and Kyle reflect on their lives -- and their friendship.Anaële recalls when she and her family traveled back to Saudi Arabia for the first time since her father's death. In January 2014, they were in court to hear the verdict for two of the al Qaeda gunmen. Anaële couldn't anticipate how she would feel if or when her eyes met those of her father's killers. Anger? Hatred?At first, she was frightened. But then she realized that mostly she felt unimpressed. She felt distant from these men, as though they were not even from the same species. But she could not embrace the idea of putting them to death for what they did. What if they had children? Coming of Age in the Age of TerrorWhat can the 9/11 children teach us?More than 3,000 children lost a parent on that awful day. Fifteen years later, in a world rocked by terror, this group has hard-won wisdom to share. Here, in their own words, is a glimpse into their journeys.The Palombo 10First they lost their dad on 9/11. They were ages 11 months to 15. Then they lost their mom. Meet the Palombos: Anthony, Frank Jr., Joe, Maria, Tommy, John, Patrick, Daniel, Stephen and Maggie -- a family that's the epitome of true grit.A place to belongIt's a summer camp with a distinction: Participants are young people touched by terror. This year, 55 of them -- from a dozen countries -- gathered on a campus in Pennsylvania, where they found renewal and hope in their common bond."Killing those men would do the same thing to their children as they did to me," she says. "I've been through this pain. I would not wish it upon anyone."Kyle recognizes his friend's inner strength. "Her being against the death penalty for those who killed her father, I guess, it really represents what (this camp) is about -- bad things happen to us, but it doesn't mean bad things need to happen to others," he says. "It's about finding a different meaning. It's about finding a peaceful way to accomplish your goals."Kyle, of course, will never be able to face his father's killers. They died carrying out the murders. But when he was 12, he pinned a photo of Osama bin Laden on a punching bag."I kind of had to figure out a way to deal with my anger, because I couldn't be angry at my sisters. It wasn't their fault. I couldn't be angry at my mom. It wasn't her fault."Instead, he beat up the photo of the man who launched al Qaeda."Didn't last long, tore it up pretty fast," he says.When bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, Kyle thought, "Yes, finally. I'm glad that he can't do it anymore."Still, the next day was no different than any other. He had to get through it without his father. Every September 11, Anaële reaches out to the American friends she met at this camp."The 11th of September is now a difficult day for me," she says. "I think of all my friends and I feel so much for them. I try to send my love and my support, because I know the feeling."Despite the recent spate of attacks at home in France, Anaële says she is determined not to let fear take control of her life. "It's what they want to do -- instill fear," she says. "It's their way of controlling a population. I don't want these people to forbid me from doing anything. I don't want them to win."So she will return to the Bataclan for a concert or to Belle Equipe for a candlelight alfresco dinner. "I'm actually very sad when I see people who are afraid, who keep their kids inside, who don't travel," she says. "No. We have to keep on living the way we want."Kyle and Anaële help each other through an exercise deigned to build trust and overcome fears.Together, 'we can do this'Kyle and Anaële climb ladders up to a tightrope that spans tall white oaks in the Pennsylvania wilderness. It's part of a camp exercise designed to build trust and confidence, to help overcome fears. They get on separate lines and inch their way toward one another. Above, gray skies peek through thick branches. Below, the earth seems a mile away. Kyle doesn't like heights.About this seriesCNN worked with Tuesday's Children, an organization formed after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, to interview young people who lost a parent on that awful day. Reporters also attended a summer camp sponsored by the group's Project Common Bond in which 9/11 youths were joined by peers from around the world who've also lost a family member to terrorism, war or extreme acts of violence. How to helpCongress has designated September 11 as an annual National Day of Service. See various ways you can volunteer or contribute."Don't look down," Anaële tells him. "Stay with me."The wires come to a point, and the two arrive face to face. They lock onto one another's wrists. They must walk the remainder of the line together. "We can do this," she says."I wouldn't do this with anyone else," he tells her. They teeter on the wire, their bodies swaying as they focus on keeping their balance. "Re-grab my wrist," he tells her. "I got you."Together, they feel strong. They gingerly approach their end point and finally make it to safety. Then they let go of each other and float on safety ropes in the sticky summer air, seemingly free of the burdens they've carried in their young lives.

By John Blake, CNN

2014-06-21 11:01:59

news

living

https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/21/living/movement-dull/index.html

Why I'm tired of hearing about civil rights - CNN

Here's a dirty little secret about the civil rights movement:. A lot of Americans don't want to hear about it. Ans why should they?

living, Why I'm tired of hearing about civil rights - CNN

Why I'm tired of hearing about 'that' civil rights movement

Story highlightsWhy I grew tired of hearing about the civil rights movementI hated singing "We Shall Overcome"Three myths damage the movement's appealWhy some whites don't want to talk about the movementHere's a dirty little secret about the civil rights movement: A lot of Americans just don't want to hear about it anymore. They find the subject dull or it makes them angry. Some African-Americans don't want to hear stories about their parents getting hit upside the head while singing "We Shall Overcome." And some whites don't want to feel guilty. The result? We treat the movement like broccoli: It's good for us, we're told, but we shove it aside on our plates when no one is looking. I know. What I've just said is blasphemous. But I say it not out of scorn, but concern. I was once a civil rights apostate who sneaked out of rooms early to avoid holding hands and mumbling along to "We Shall Overcome." Then I experienced a conversion. I eventually wrote a book about the movement, and spent years talking about the subject to interracial groups.JUST WATCHEDRep. John Lewis: 'Get in good trouble'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRep. John Lewis: 'Get in good trouble' 02:17 I was reminded of my conversion when I heard that a new civil rights museum was opening in Atlanta on June 23, and that this month activists would commemorate the 50th anniversary of a dramatic civil rights campaign called Mississippi Freedom Summer. I wish them well. I've learned through experience, though, that civil rights museums and commemorations have a tough task. During the years that I spoke publicly about civil rights, I encountered three myths that do more damage to the movement than "for white only" signs ever did. No. 1: It was a black thang I didn't go to a historically black college. I went to a hysterically black school. I attended Howard University in Washington, where the struggle of black America was drilled into students' heads. When I was on campus, I used to see students wearing T-shirts that unwittingly reflected a huge myth about the movement. The T-shirts read: "It's a black thang -- you wouldn't understand."Images from the civil rights movement inside the new National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. A quick word association test. When you hear the words civil rights, what kind of faces do you see? Only black? As I talked to various groups about the movement, I gradually realized that it was primarily seen as a black struggle instead of an American movement that helped all sorts of people. It was a simplistic perception of the movement that someone on National Public Radio recently described this way: "Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, then the white folks saw the light and saved the day." It took me awhile to realize that white people were actually part of the movement, not just as racists or rescuers. White labor unions helped pay for and organize the 1963 March on Washington. White federal judges in the South risked public contempt to deliver crucial decisions on behalf of the movement. Ordinary white citizens like Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit housewife, and Andrew Goodman, a Jewish man from New York, died alongside black activists. I saw how durable the bonds were between white and black activists when I covered a Mississippi Freedom Summer reunion years ago. I was stunned to see so many white activists hugging their black colleagues like long-lost brothers and sisters. And, in a way, they were brothers and sisters. The movement represented one of those few moments in U.S. history where many whites and blacks were able to come together as Americans and not clash as racial antagonists. The Rev. James Zwerg, a white man who was savagely beaten with black activists during the Freedom Rides, once told me that he never experienced anywhere else in his life the bond he felt with other Freedom Riders. "When I heard King say in his last utterance, 'I've been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land,' I know those of us who were in the movement can say we were there, too," Zwerg told me. People like Zwerg were giving us a sneak preview of a post-racial America before the term was even invented. But how many people know about him today? As long as we reduce the movement to a "black thang," that T-shirt will be right: People will never understand.No. 2: We can talk openly about race now I was talking to a pastor who was a member of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle one morning when he asked me, "Do you want to know how I define integration?" He said that integration was a solitary black person sitting inside a school cafeteria filled with white people constantly coming up to his table to tell them that they don't hate black people "when all he wants to do is eat his damn lunch." He grinned, and my jaw dropped, but I got it. Ever watch a black person and a white person talk about a delicate racial issue? It's like watching a bull circle a matador; there's so much tension. I feel that tension at work. I'm surrounded by journalists who are encouraged to embrace controversial issues. But when I talk to some of my white colleagues about race, I can practically see word bubbles forming over their heads: "Now if I say something bad about Obama, is he going to say I'm a racist? If I tell him I had a black girlfriend in college, is he going to report me to human resources?" I don't blame them. Say something foolish, and you can be labeled a racist. Best to avoid the subject altogether. Perhaps that is why, during my book talks, I occasionally ran into white people who would invariably say, "Why do we have to always talk about race? Can't we just be Americans?" Some whites have felt so bruised by the perception that they are racists that an increasing number now say that whites have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination, according to a 2011 study conducted by Harvard and Tufts universities. "Whites have now come to view anti-white bias as a bigger societal problem than anti-black bias," the authors, Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, said in their study, I've even witnessed this discomfort over race in my own family. I am the son of an interracial couple. When my father courted my Irish Catholic mother in the 1960s, interracial marriage was illegal. Her father called the police on my father, telling them he didn't want a "nigger" visiting his daughter.Volunteers listen to racist taunts endured by sit-in protesters at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. My mother's family disowned her after she gave birth to me and my brother. My father's family took my mother in, and I never heard from any of my mother's relatives until her sister contacted me out of the blue one day when I was 18. She asked for a meeting. It was awkward but I eventually grew to like and respect my aunt. As the years rolled by, we exchanged letters and photos, and she told me how proud she was of me and my brother. But then one day I asked her a question over the phone that had long been on my mind: "Why didn't you contact us earlier?" I asked. "Did it have anything to do with race?" There was a brief silence before my aunt finally answered. She said her family's refusal to get in touch with us when we were kids had nothing to do with race. "It was because you weren't Catholic," she said. I dropped the matter. I haven't talked about race with my aunt since. She just can't go there -- it's too uncomfortable. Could the same be said for other white Americans? I wonder if all of us are so uncomfortable talking about race that we've tacitly agreed to talk about the movement in a certain scripted way: Stick to the "I Have a Dream" speech, sprinkle in a little Rosa Parks. But stay away from the rest. We may avoid the uncomfortable conversations when we stick to that script, but it makes the rest of the civil rights story boring.No. 3: It belongs to the past I remember the night I read an article that sparked my civil rights conversion. I was a college junior who thought King was dull. I changed the channel whenever I saw the old black-and-white footage of dogs attacking civil rights demonstrators on TV. Then I read a sentence about King that jarred all the civil rights clichés lodged in my head. The author was Roger Wilkins, a former civil rights leader who worked in President Lyndon Johnson's administration. He was writing a review of a new book entitled "Testament of Hope," which contained King's major essays and speeches. Wilkins described a King who was more like a Malcolm X: a restless thinker whose vision became even more daring as he became more isolated in the last years of his life. King wasn't afraid to evolve. He talked about poverty and war when critics said these had nothing to do with civil rights, Wilkins said. "He was a man who couldn't abide the status quo -- even in his own mind," Wilkins wrote. I bought "Testament of Hope," and I quickly realized that I had only seen the movement in the past tense. But many of the issues that King and his followers grappled with are ones we still face today. How many people know that the last campaign King planned was designed to fight income inequality and would utilize tactics later used by Occupy Wall Street? For the "Poor People's Campaign," King planned to bring an interracial army of poor whites, Latinos, Native Americans and blacks to Washington to occupy the heart of the city and force leaders to do more for the growing number of poor. Thomas Piketty, a French economist, is the author of a current mega-popular book called "Capital in the Twenty-First Century." He argues that economic inequality is wired into the machinery of capitalism. King was making similar arguments in 1967 when he delivered a speech declaring that "the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society." "Why are there 40 million poor people in America?" King said. "And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you began to question the capitalistic economy." It's good to commemorate the movement, but anytime you encase a historical event in a museum, it implies that the movement is an artifact, like a T-Rex. I discovered that young people's eyes light up when you show them how the movement was bigger than separate drinking fountains. That's why I was impressed when I took a preview tour of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the new museum in Atlanta. I was struck by how relevant the curators made the movement seem today. They tied it to human rights struggles all over the planet: the movement to abolish child labor, the Arab Spring uprising, the campaign to stop the rape of women in the Congo. At the end of my tour, I saw a handwritten manuscript of King's 1967 speech opposing the Vietnam War. King was roundly criticized by black and white leaders for the speech, but I noticed that he was apparently prepared. In the margins of his speech, King wrote in his sloping cursive: "I refuse to play it safe." Neither should we when we talk about the movement. If you want to talk to me about the broccoli version of the movement -- superhuman leaders giving great speeches about issues that don't upset anyone because they belong to a bygone era -- well, I'm tired of hearing about that civil rights movement. But tell me a story about a movement that matters to me today, and I'll be ready to listen.Retracing a summer of terror -- and freedomThe rise of the civil rights museumJohn Blake is the author of "Children of the Movement."

Stories by Jessica Ravitz and Wayne Drash, CNN Videos by Matthew Gannon, CNN

2016-08-12 11:55:22

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https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/12/health/gun-violence-forgotten-victims/index.html

The forgotten victims of gun violence - CNN

When children are killed by guns, the voices of the young brothers and sisters left behind are seldom heard. Theirs is the untold story of this American tragedy.

health, The forgotten victims of gun violence - CNN

The forgotten victims of gun violence

JUST WATCHED'It never really goes away'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH'It never really goes away' 03:23'Too afraid to ask'A brother's death at Columbine, 1999Left alone with her parents, Christine Mauser worked hard not to fall apart. If she had to, she tried to do it alone. She couldn't have them worrying about her.Sometimes she'd overhear them losing it in the next room. She didn't have the words to comfort them and feared that anything she'd say would make matters worse. So she sat frozen, wracked with guilt for ignoring their cries. On occasion, though, she allowed herself to turn angry. She was holding it together, why couldn't they?Christine was only 13 when the quiet and exceedingly normal life she and her family enjoyed in Littleton, Colorado, shattered.Read MoreOn April 20, 1999, two heavily armed students went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School. They murdered 13 people and wounded two dozen others before killing themselves. Among the dead, gunned down in the school library, was Daniel Mauser, Christine's older brother, at the time her only sibling. He was 15. Nearly two decades have passed. Christine, now 30 and living in Beaverton, Oregon, struggles to remember the sound of Daniel's voice; their shared moments and conversations only come to her in snippets. But the memories surrounding the school shooting that robbed her of her innocence? Those will never go away.Seventh-grade Spanish was letting out when an administrator at her middle school herded Christine and her classmates back into their classroom. It had to do with something that was happening at the nearby high school, though no one would say more."We were entering something they called 'lockdown,'" she says. "I don't recall any of us having any idea what that meant." The longer they waited, the more questions the students had. Eventually the teacher turned on the television. With the rest of America, Christine and her classmates watched the breaking news with confusion. She saw students being escorted out of the high school. The details from inside were still a mystery.Christine Mauser says she and Daniel loved each other despite their differences."There could be up to 20 fatalities," Christine remembers her mom saying hours later, when she was picked up at school. "I didn't know if fatalities meant deaths or injuries, and I was too afraid to ask." The house filled with neighbors and family friends. She remembers her father making repeated drives to the high school, desperate to pick up his son. Returning from one of his last trips, he dissolved into screams and tears. A terrified Christine was whisked off to stay the night two doors down. The neighbors set out to distract her. They ordered pizza and turned on movies. Though it became harder to do so as the hours passed, she tried to convince herself that Daniel was just hiding in a closet, too afraid to come out. Daniel was the more introverted of the two Mauser children. He was a voracious reader who loved science and math. He ran cross-country and was in both the debate and chess clubs. He was "coming into his own," Christine says, and at the time of his death was earning straight As. Unlike her brother, who didn't like to be filmed or photographed, Christine was into acting and enjoyed being on stage. She surrounded herself with a bigger group of friends than he did. They bickered, as siblings do, and she admits she could be the annoying little sister. She laughs remembering the time she recorded him talking to friends, and then passed over the evidence so her parents could hear him saying bad words. No matter their differences, they loved each other. Photos from their childhood reveal two towheads, laughing beside one another. Reality hit the next day around noon, when officials showed up at the family home."They told us my brother was among the dead," Christine says. "I don't really remember anything they said after that." In an instant, she became an only child. It was a role she hated, not least of all because she couldn't bear to see her parents in so much pain. For a while, she insisted that a friend sleep over every night. "It sounds horrible, but you almost don't want to be alone with your parents," she says, "because watching them go through that is the worst thing in the world." Her father, Tom Mauser, doesn't remember how he and his wife spoke to Christine during this time, but he knows they struggled."It was a major problem for us," he says. "It's not something you're prepared for. ... I don't think I had the words or knew how to counsel her."Plus, they felt like the world had crashed on their shoulders. They had a child who was still alive, thank God, and turned their focus to their grief. At first the kids in school showered her with kindness -- even stuffed animals. But they couldn't really look her in the eye. Truth is, she didn't want them to. She had changed overnight."I remember just how awkward I felt, and how different I felt," she says. And in middle school, being different can mean trouble.There were students who stared, watching her every move. If she cracked a joke or laughed in a desperate attempt to feel human, they looked at her stunned. On field trips, if the school bus rolled past Columbine High, their heads whipped around to monitor her reaction. She refused to be a mess in front of them, but the more she tried to act normal, the weirder she seemed -- which only increased the gawking, her anxiety and, eventually, their bullying. She withdrew from others and gave up the stage. After Columbine, the last thing she wanted was to be the center of attention. It wasn't that she was "all sunshine and rainbows" before her brother's killing, but she emerged someone else. Irrational fears consumed her, as did an obsession with death. Like many children who lose a sibling, she convinced herself she wouldn't live beyond the age her brother died.'Concentric circles of pain'The trauma of losing a sibling to gun violence can arrest emotional and physical development. It can also complicate or delay grief. One expert describes how surviving siblings are affected -- and how friends and family can help. She knew her concerns were illogical and didn't want to alarm anyone, so she kept her dark thoughts to herself. Still, rumors circulated at school that she was going to kill herself. Christine couldn't articulate what she needed and wanted. Sometimes she felt like she and her parents walked around their house on eggshells. Her mother, an introvert like Daniel, often retreated. Her father became an activist, rallying for better background checks and protesting the National Rifle Association. While she was proud of his work, it brought new forms of unwanted attention. She answered the phone when the first hate call came in and was cussed out by a stranger. Some kids at school lectured her about the Second Amendment and told her what her dad was doing was wrong. "I was so taken aback I just didn't know what to say." Near the end of middle school, when being there became unbearable, she was pulled out and home schooled for the rest of the year. There was no way she could attend Columbine High, so she was given a special provision to attend high school outside the district. She craved anonymity. She needed people to know her for who she was -- and not for what her family had been through. By 17, she says she began to find her footing again.A big part in helping Christine and her family was Madeline, the 11-month-old baby they adopted from China a little more than a year after they lost Daniel. When her parents first proposed the idea of adoption, Christine was immediately on board. Madeline proved a bright light in the darkness, a needed bundle of pure joy."We still felt a lot of the same pain and heartache and everything like that, but she was kind of just a different force," Christine says. "I was so grateful to have her there and to be a big sister." They told us my brother was among the dead. I don't really remember anything they said after that.Christine MauserNo matter the positive forces and the years, however, Columbine doesn't go away. A book by one of the gunman's mothers was released this year. Random Facebook friend requests pop up from people she calls "Columbine groupies." She ignores them all, but feels sickened by those who use images of the killers as their profile photos. Though married and a stepmother, she recalls those awkward moments from her single days when dates -- having Googled her -- would bring up Columbine. This piece of her past also resurfaces in a flood of emotions every time there's another school shooting. After the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, she couldn't eat for days. When her stepdaughter, Bethany, mentioned having "intruder training" at school, she held her tongue. The 9-year-old explained it was done in case "a robber comes to your school." Christine didn't have the heart to tell her the truth.Christine still holds onto Daniel's copy of J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." It's stamped in the back with "English Resource Center Columbine High School." She didn't go to that school, nor does her sister Madeline, who's now 16. All these years later, her parents still can't bear to pick up a child there.Her brother has been gone longer than he was here, and Christine feels as if she's lived two lives. She's not who she was when she lost him. When she sees adult siblings being best friends, she can't help but feel a bit bitter. She can't help but wonder what might have been had Daniel lived. -- Jessica Ravitz, CNNJUST WATCHEDBrooklynn was 'the bridge' between usReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHBrooklynn was 'the bridge' between us 03:08'She never fell in love'A sister's accidental shooting death, 2013 Upstairs, Madisson "Madi" Mohler sits in her new room, the very one that belonged to her big sister, Brooklynn. She only moved in a few months ago and around her are reminders of who she lost. Barbies Brooklynn once collected line shelves above the bed, right near her dangling dream catcher. There's the poster of puppies the animal-lover wouldn't leave Target without owning. Butterflies, wind chimes and pompoms are strung across the ceiling. And by the window is Brooklynn's bulletin board, crowded with a collection of inspirational sayings she jotted down not long before she died."Add life to your days, not days to your life," reads one. "Don't give up," says another. "I'd rather have a life of 'oh wells' than a life of 'what ifs,'" reads a third. These notes, most now faded by the sun and time, turned out to be a gift to her family. It was one they desperately needed because nothing could have prepared them for what took Brooklynn away. Three years ago, Brooklynn was at her best friend's house when her friend began messing with an unsecured 9 mm Glock. As Brooklynn walked away, a response she'd been taught, the gun fired. A bullet tore through her spine before puncturing her lung and then her heart. She died soon after. She had just turned 13. "I looked up to her like she was a hero," says Madi, who was only 9 at the time. Levi and Madi Mohler say Brooklynn, left, was the bridge between them. Brooklynn often played teacher in their Henderson, Nevada, home, and Madi was happy to be her student. She remembers being schooled on vowels and similes. Her big sister liked Carrie Underwood, so she did, too. They competed with each other in the Wii game "Just Dance." Both gymnasts, Brooklynn insisted Madi do conditioning exercises during TV commercials. Madi did as she was told, launching into quick workouts or dropping into splits. Madi was with her dad and one of his friends when they went to pick up Brooklynn from her friend's house. She knew something was wrong; her father went inside, which was strange, and then an ambulance pulled up. A police officer arrived and told her dad's friend to take Madi away. She thought someone had broken an arm or something. A while later, her aunt took Madi to the hospital. "I remember going into the lobby and my dad had to tell me and [my brother] what happened," Madi says. "My mom was in a separate room called 'the quiet room' and my aunt ran in there and I just heard crying and screaming."The house then filled with family and tears. She was overwhelmed and not sure what to make of it all. An uncle bought Madi a cake pop maker to keep her occupied. When she ran out of ingredients, someone screamed to go buy her more. So she dutifully kept making those cake pops. Madi, now 13, laughs, saying she made "too many to remember." Too old to be distracted by cake pops was Levi, the only son. He was 16. Now 19 and in college, he still struggles with blaming himself. "I always felt it was my job to keep her safe. And when that happened, I just felt destroyed," he says. "I could've prevented it."When some boys were picking on Brooklynn in middle school, Levi showed up to escort her home and scare them off. When she once wanted to walk to Taco Bell with a friend while wearing a swimsuit, he was quick to shut that idea down. She never got in trouble, and he jokes that he "set the example of what not to do."More on Guns in AmericaThe other gun lobbyThey are, sadly, growing in number: Americans devastated by gun violence. The connections they've forged are strong. But can they defeat the NRA?The loneliest clubThey are survivors of gun violence. But they also share a conviction: to use the worst days of their lives to make America a safer place.The massacre that didn't happenThe case against 11th grader John LaDue looked like a slam dunk. Bomb-making material in a storage locker. A confession. An arsenal in his bedroom. But the case would turn out to be anything but simple. Can cities stop the bloodshed?Savannah, Georgia, and Richmond, California: Two cities on opposite sides of the country, each with a history of homicides and different approaches to ending the violence. See what's working and what isn't in this two-part series.The story in charts and graphsGuns per capita by country. Background checks by month. Deaths by terrorism vs. gun violence. See the visual story of gun violence in America. Levi didn't like Brooklynn's friend, the one who accidentally fired the gun. From the moment he met her, he says, there was something about that girl he didn't trust. Maybe, instead of going to her house after school that day, he could have insisted Brooklynn come home with him? When he heard she'd been shot, he thought to himself, "Oh, we're going to joke about this 10 years from now." On the way to the hospital, he imagined showing his kids Aunt Brooklynn's little scar from that crazy time she took a bullet.But after his trot into the hospital turned into a run and he rounded the corner to see his father, he backed against a wall and sunk to the floor. The last time Levi had seen his dad cry like this was after they put down their German shepherd, Baron.Back home, he remembers their mother holing up in her bedroom as people streamed in and out to see her. He retreated to his own room, where the thought of food or drink made him sick.When he emerged, he says he felt like he had to be strong for his mom and Madi. Sometimes he'd just hold his mom as she wept, fighting to hold back his own tears."I tried to be strong for her," he says, now crying. "It was really hard." With his father, he says, he was able to "go out back and kind of hug it out." Jacob Mohler says he'd be lying if he said he was the best father he could be in the first six months or even year after Brooklynn died.He had walked into the house where Brooklynn was shot minutes after it happened. He held her as she struggled to breathe."It was a blessing and a curse," he says. "I got to be with my baby in her darkest hour, but the things I see when I close my eyes -- I wouldn't wish on anybody." Today, he likes to say, "Deal with your grief or your grief will deal with you." It's a philosophy shared by his wife, Darchel, who knows too well what it's like to lose a sibling. Her younger sister Tessa died in a car wreck at 17. But Darchel not only lost her, she also lost her mother to grief."I thought at the time that would be the worst thing I'd ever have to go through," says Darchel, who was 26 and pregnant with Madi at the time. "I can empathize with my children. ... And I understand my mother more now." She was determined to be present for her kids, even if emotionally she had checked out, and to make this house a safe space to cry and feel. Madi goes to a grief group with other kids her age. The first day they met, they wrote down what made them mad and then set those words on fire -- before making s'mores. They do crafts "dedicated to our lost one," she explains. She's made a Valentine's card for Brooklynn, decorated candy canes and made a new dream catcher. Down the hall, in her mother's office, there's a painting by Madi. It features two girls, side-by-side, with tears running down their cheeks. Atop one are the words, "I miss you Sissy." The other girl, almost identical, wears angel's wings. Sometimes relatives will say things like, "You'll grow up to be just like Brooklynn," Madi says. And while she'd like to be like her sister, she says, "I'm not like her. I want to be my own self." Levi balked at the idea of counseling in the beginning. He was sure he could handle it on his own. He played on the football and lacrosse teams and channeled his feelings onto the field. He'd look for big hits, he says. He got concussions but never told anyone. He played a whole football season with a broken wrist. Even on his violin, an instrument Brooklynn took up so she could be like him, he poured his heart into his music, using that same broken wrist. I always felt it was my job to keep her safe. ... I just felt destroyed. I could've prevented it.Levi MohlerToday, he's not ashamed to see a counselor. He's even thinking he might become one himself. When he needs a good cry, he often turns to music. Cole Swindell's, "You Should Be Here," helps bring up lots of stuff, he says. Sometimes he'll even listen to Brooklynn's playlist, including her "stupid little boy band artists" -- the very music that used to make him scream, "Turn that off!" when he heard it through the wall between their bedrooms. About a year after her death, the family established the Brooklynn Mae Mohler Foundation. Its mission is to push for responsible gun ownership and encourage parents to ask other parents if they have unsecured firearms in their homes. In Brooklynn's name, they host runs and set up tables at community events to raise awareness. It's a mission, Levi says, that helped bring the family together, offered them purpose and allowed them to really talk about Brooklynn. "It was probably the best thing that we could've done," he says. The scars, however, still run deep. Darchel, who was already plenty overprotective before Brooklynn died, is an even more nervous mother. Just ask Madi. "I don't have as much freedom as I would like," she says. "I can't really go over to other friends' houses because of my mother's anxiety. But it's cool because my friends get to come over here, and personally I think it's more fun over here. I feel safe in my own house." And Levi, who never suffered from anxiety before, says he now suffers from it "like crazy." A glass half-full guy before, he's now prone to fixating on worst-case scenarios. His worrying, he thinks, helped drive a girlfriend away. He needed to know where she was all the time and that she was safe."She didn't quite understand it and I didn't expect her to," he says, as he wipes away new tears. "I did love her, and it would kill me if something happened to her. ... It would kill me to lose someone again." He understands his mother's overprotectiveness. When other friends were getting their driver's licenses, he held off until he was 18. His mother couldn't handle the thought of him driving off."I'll take the bus. It's OK. Don't worry," he remembers saying. "I'll get my license when you're ready for me to." Such milestones make him think of Brooklynn. Moments that should be joyous carry a sting. "She never fell in love. She never got her driver's license. She didn't graduate high school," he says. "She never got to go play a varsity sport, never got to go to prom." When his thoughts turn to Madi, though, his words carry a different weight. Levi says he and his younger sister grew distant after Brooklynn was gone. "I don't know if that's normal," he says, "but this is what happened."Madi has no illusions about this either. "There's such a big age difference. We don't really talk a whole lot," Madi says. "But I kind of want that to change because I don't like not talking to my brother." With Brooklynn, they had a bridge that bound them. She was the consummate middle child. She was, as her parents describe, the hub to their family wheel. Now, three years after a bullet took her away, her two surviving siblings must find their own connection. -- Jessica Ravitz, CNNJUST WATCHED'It just never felt the same'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH'It just never felt the same' 03:19'He was my role model'A gang prank and a brother gone, 2006Tre Bosley holds a blue candle and walks in silence with more than 100 others protesting the violence that plagues Chicago's South Side. Tre is an impressive young man, a high school basketball star with a stellar GPA who leads an anti-violence youth group. Beneath his bright smile and optimistic outlook is a teen who knows the despair of the city's mounting death toll. Tre was just 8 when his older brother, Terrell was killed in a gang prank a decade ago. Terrell was 18, a motivated young man who shunned the gang life for church choir.Pinned to Tre's chest is a button bearing his brother's image. A reminder of why he keeps fighting. "He was my role model -- truly a role model," Tre says. Saving lives has become Tre's mission. He has known about a dozen people who've been killed, from his brother to a cousin to a special needs teacher.Tre takes his message -- and his button -- everywhere he travels. Earlier this year, he was far from his South Side neighborhood, standing face-to-face with President Barack Obama during a town hall on gun control. "My question to you is: What is your advice to those growing up surrounded by poverty and gun violence?" Tre asked at the end of the event. Obama looked at him. "When I see you, I think about my own youth because I wasn't that different from you -- probably not as articulate and maybe more of a goof-off, but the main difference was I lived in a more forgiving environment."The President told Tre not to give up hope, to keep being a role model, to work hard, to strive for great things through education. "But what I also want to say to you is that you're really important to the future of this country."The President's words touched Tre in unexpected ways. "He kinda told me that I'm the future -- not only me, but the youth are the future of this country," he says. "It really inspired me."Terrell Bosley with brothers Terrez, left, and Tre. "He was my role model," Tre says of Terrell.Before his brother was killed, Tre used to dream big. Like of becoming the president of the country or heading up a major company. But in the years after, he says, "I kind of diminished my goals."It was more about surviving day to day. There were few African-American role models in his neighborhood. His mother became more protective. He wasn't allowed to leave his block. She drove him to school. A nearby basketball court was off limits. "She doesn't let us walk there or go play or nothing," he says. "We really stay on that one portion of the block all the time." Even there, playing basketball in an alley, he can hear gunshots.Tre remembers everything "very clearly, actually" from April 4, 2006. How could he ever forget that day?He was studying math with his father in the front room of their home. His mother took a phone call, then screamed: "Terrell's been shot!" His books fell to the floor and everyone ran from the home. They hopped in the car and rushed to Terrell's side. Terrell sang in a community choir and played the bass at various churches around Chicago. He was helping a friend take drums into a church when shots rang out. He was hit once in the shoulder. A friend was hit multiple times, but survived. The family was later told that one gang member had played a prank on another, saying Terrell was a member of a rival gang. "When he shot them, the other guy said, 'I was just kidding,'" mother Pam Bosley says. "You mean to tell me my son is gone because of some joke?!"Tre watched his brother get loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital, sirens blaring. His mom was crying, so were he and his other brother, Terrez, then 13. "My mom was telling us to pray -- just keep praying, make sure that you keep praying."At the hospital, he and Terrez watched from a waiting area as a doctor told their parents Terrell had died. The room filled with wails and tears. Their dad "came and told us, and we started crying."Tre thought about the time Terrell beat him in checkers. He had promised he'd beat his older brother one day. "Just knowing I'd never be able to do that -- at first, it hurt."At that moment in the hospital, I didn't truly know what was going on. It just felt like a dream."Terrell had been his idol. He kept the talkative, overconfident young Tre grounded. Told him not to be so boisterous with his smack-talk. One of Tre's favorite memories was sitting with Terrell in his car listening to music. Tre didn't have much rhythm, so Terrell tried to demonstrate: "He was like, 'Look you should bob your head like this. Not like that! It's got to be on the beat."Tre laughs. All these years later, that memory brings a smile. "I'll never forget the moment he taught me how to bob my head."Other memories race back, like when they'd drive together to school. "We used to pray in the car on my way to school. We'd pray that no one else would get harmed. We prayed every day to keep our family safe and that no one gets shot and killed in our family."That was before he got killed. Then, I started to pray by myself."Terrell was killed just before Easter. For years after, the family stopped celebrating holidays. They'd stay in a hotel for Christmas because the grief at home was too overbearing. Terrell had loved Christmas; he'd go over the top with decorating the house, inside and out. Only in the last couple of years has the family been able to celebrate Christmas at home. Tre had begged his mother to allow them. "We just started putting a tree back up," he says. For now, it's the only decoration. "On Christmas, when you're getting your gifts, you just know that there's supposed to be somebody else getting their gifts," he says. "I always feel like something is missing. You never feel like the holidays are complete."His mom has filled some of the void of Terrell's absence -- thrusting him into activism and making sure he kept up with his studies. Now 18, Tre graduated with a 4.2 GPA and will attend college on scholarship.Tre also credits his pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the fiery priest of Saint Sabina who has been a community activist for decades. Pfleger says all too often parents turn to alcohol or drugs after losing a child -- and surviving siblings get lost amid the grief. He praises Tre's parents for keeping him on the right path, and he says Tre's perseverance and positive attitude played a major part in shaping who he is today. "He's got a great blend of a strength and a sensitivity that I've always admired," Pfleger says.I need to go out and make a change so that other people won't go through what I went through.Tre BosleyIt would have been "easy for him to become either angry or bitter after losing his brother, or to turn to the streets or live in fear after that. Instead, he made a decision to join with his parents ... and put his emotional pain, hurt and trauma into trying to be a voice for other young people."Tre serves as the president of The BRAVE Youth Leaders, an anti-violence organization that goes into the community, delivering a message of peace. They also help with mentoring and voter registration. BRAVE stands for Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere.He likes the Black Lives Matter movement and appreciates its efforts, but he wishes it would "address black on black crime as much as they do police brutality.""I mean: How can they expect to give us justice for those killings when we don't even expect justice for our own killings?"His brother's killer has not been caught. Still, meeting Obama has inspired Tre to fight even harder for change and for equality for all. "Knowing that your role model is gone and I'm still trying to follow his footsteps," Tre says, "I know (my brother) would be proud of me for what I did and what I said."He pauses. "I think that's my response to everything that happened to me after my brother. My response was I need to go out and make a change so that other people won't go through what I went through."Terrell would be proud in other ways, too. On what would've been Terrell's 28th birthday, Tre played in a high school basketball game. Under his jersey, he wore a T-shirt commemorating his brother's life. On the court, Tre couldn't be stopped. He caught fire, hitting five 3-pointers. "I know I played well because he was looking down, and he helped me out that game."Again, Tre lights up.-- Wayne Drash, CNN

Story by John D. Sutter, CNN Video by Matt Gannon and Frank Fenimore, CNN

2016-06-16 12:49:11

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opinions

https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/16/opinions/sutter-orlando-shooting-tree/index.html

Orlando shooting: 'I knew 17' who died - CNN

He's 6-foot-9 and built like a redwood. Everyone calls him "Tree." On Tuesday afternoon, he tattoed the names of eight fallen friends on his arm. He knew 17.

opinions, Orlando shooting: 'I knew 17' who died - CNN

'I knew 17' who died in Orlando

John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion who focuses on climate change and social justice. Follow him on Snapchat, Facebook and email. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. Warning: This column contains language some may find offensive.Orlando, Florida (CNN)He's 6-foot-9 and built like a redwood. Everyone calls him "Tree." On Tuesday afternoon, as storm clouds prepared to gather over this embattled city, Tree walked into a tattoo parlor and scribbled eight names on a sheet of paper. Amanda, Mercedez, Deonka, Peter. Stanley, Angel, Enrique, Shane. He almost can't say them aloud.The eight are only the very closest friends that Eric "Tree" Rountree lost this week after a shooter opened fire on Pulse, a gay nightclub here in Orlando, killing 49. Read MoreTree knew 17 in all.But he'd known these eight the longest. He met them during the six years he spent as a security guard at another gay bar in town. The eight and others welcomed Tree, who is straight, into their family. They loaned him a car for nine months when his broke down, gave him a place to crash when he needed it, fronted him money to help with the bills. Eric "Tree" Rountree, 31, at an Orlando tattoo parlor this week.They taught him their history, too. "Since I can remember, we've only had each other," said Giovanni Nieves, a hairstylist and friend of Tree's who lost five friends of his own in the massacre. "We're the only ones we cling to because we face so much rejection from all the other communities surrounding us."He heard their stories of being harassed, understood the LGBT community had seen too many of its young people thrown out on the street by ignorant parents, seen too many of its brothers and sisters committing suicide because people called them faggot or sissy.This was a group -- the eight, and so many more -- who accepted Tree for exactly who he was when others hadn't. They saw past the ink and the nose ring and the size 19 shoes. They didn't tease him about his weight or his height -- didn't make him feel like a freak or an ogre. They didn't care when he told them that he stole cars at age 13 for money. They understood this gentle giant had changed. They'd been judged unfairly, too. All this helps explain why this tragedy is felt with such piercing depth in parts of Orlando. Pulse was more than a bar. It was a family and support network. It had to be. "Latin night (at Pulse) was like church to us," Nieves told me.Within segments of the LGBT community and its allies here, the question sadly isn't, "Did you know someone." Instead, it's "How many someones did you know?"Two. Ten. Seventeen.As I kept asking the question this week, the numbers only grew larger.'I can take a lot of pain'Tree is 31, and he started working security at bars at age 16. At first, he just wanted to drink, and he figured it would be hard to use another person's ID when your name is Tree and you're NBA-tall. He soon realized, however, that protecting people was his calling. It's a role that seemed obvious. He'd always been big. He weighed 8 or 9 pounds at birth, he told me, and by age 5 or 6 he was nearly 5 feet tall. So he became the big-little brother, first using his stature to defend his older sister, then turning it into a profession. He worked private security, a job that would see him stabbed twice, he told me, once in the side and once in the butt cheek. "I can take a lot of pain at once," he said. Rountree knew 17 people killed in the Orlando mass shooting.Then he started working security at Revolution, a now-closed gay bar in Orlando. Right away, he knew that he was needed. There weren't the vicious brawls he'd encountered at straight nightclub jobs. But there was always the chance of a looming threat, the people who hated this community's love. Tree knew his presence made people feel safer. And he liked being the feel-safe guy. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the news of the gay club massacre -- the deadliest mass shooting in American history, the largest terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 -- left Tree not only with a staggering personal void but also with a nagging sense of guilt. He knows that's misplaced. He didn't work at Pulse, never had. But he was the protector. He'd trained for the worst. Knew how to respond. What if he had been there the night of the shooting? Could he have saved that friend whose smile lit up any room? Could he have saved the eight, the 17, the 49? Probably not. He knows that. But he wishes he'd had the chance. 'Everyone get out'News that the eight had died came in spurts, an IV-drip of misery flowing from Facebook, text messages and phone calls. "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running," the nightclub wrote on its Facebook page at 2:09 a.m. Sunday. In four hours, dozens would die. A marriage plan would be replaced with funeral arrangements for a young gay couple. A son would lose his mother, and a mother would lose her son. Amanda Alvear, inside the club, posted a video of the shooting on Snapchat. In it, you hear dance tracks, then gunshots, then silence. "Two more wonderful women I had the pleasure of knowing are now gone," Tree wrote on Facebook at 4:16 a.m. Monday. "Mercedez and Amanda were two wonderful people."Two of his eight.I met Tree on Monday afternoon at a memorial for the victims outside the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando. He brought two flowers with him, one blue, one red; one for friendship and another for love, not that he knows how to separate the two anymore.He'd driven back from a family reunion in Kentucky to be there. Rountree worked for six years as a bouncer at a gay bar.He couldn't stay away. The other family needed him. He arrived on Sunday and knew he had to help, had to do something. He tried to donate blood but the sign-up sheet was full. So he picked up a bunch of ice and snacks and started delivering them around town. He figured people would need ice on a blistering Florida day. He wasn't sleeping, trying to stay busy. Later Monday night, Tree went to a public vigil for the victims even though he wasn't sure he could do it. He stood in a crowd of thousands holding candles, thinking not about himself and the 17 friends he lost but about other people in this adopted community and how much deeper their pain must be. What about the mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters? The number of people a person loses doesn't tell the whole story, doesn't elicit the depth of the anguish. Still, Tree is certain others lost more friends than he did. His girlfriend, Elizabeth Velez, 24, told me Tree spent much of the service hugging other people and asking if they needed help. What about you? she thought. Don't you need help, too? "I don't know how to comfort someone who deals with knowing that 17 people are no longer here in this world, and in their lives, at the drop of a dime," Velez said."You would never wish that on your worst enemy." Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victims Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsPeople light candles during a vigil one day after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, marking the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsAttendees make signs with messages like "#OrlandoStrong" and "We Stand Together."Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsMourners embrace at the vigil, which took place in front of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando.Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsFamily and friends of shooting victims Leroy Valentin Fernandez and Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado attend the vigil. They were wearing matching "RIP Eman & Roy" shirts. Learn more about the victims.Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsA flower is placed on a long sheet of paper adorned with heartfelt messages.Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsThousands of people attended Monday night's vigil in Orlando.Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Orlando vigil for shooting victimsThe crowd holds up candles during a moment of silence for the victims.Hide Caption 7 of 7At the vigil, the names were read over a loudspeaker. Then a church bell tolled 49 times. One for each of the fallen. Tree got emotional and had to walk away from the crowd. Like a shovel dumping dirt on the grave, he told me. The eight were really gone. Related: One Pulse: Reactions to a tragedy'Am I bleeding?'Tree talks about the friends he's lost as a collective -- the eight, the 17 -- because remembering them one by one, toll by toll, is still too intense. In an interview, he wasn't able to say the 17 names aloud. Please don't ask me to do that, he asked me gently. I just can't go there right now. The day after the vigil, as soon as he got out of class (he's studying to be a radiologist), Tree drove to Ink Spot Tattoos and wrote down eight names on that piece of paper.Tree is a towering person covered in tattoos, and he's quick to tell you the ink is for him, not you. So maybe that's why he turned the names of the eight into a personal code.AA, MF, DH, PO.SA, AH, ER, ST. Eight sets of initials. The Orlando massacre is inked into Rountree's arm.In the tattoo, the letters encircle a symbol that includes a heart and an EKG line. Like their blood was coursing through him. One pulse. It was still sunny outside, but thunderclouds would darken the sky in a matter of hours. Storms so intense they knocked out power in parts of the city.Inside, I listened to the rattle of the tattoo needle. Tragedy etched into forearm. "Am I bleeding?" Tree asked, not aware of the symbolism. No, the artist said. "Your skin is way too thick for that."It's sometimes hard to see what's just beneath the surface.

Story by Wayne Drash Video by Tawanda Scott Sambou, CNN

2015-11-03 15:29:13

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us

https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/us/minnesota-foiled-school-massacre-john-ladue/index.html

The massacre that didn't happen - CNN

A landmark case in Minnesota probes what happens when a school massacre is foiled, and the legal system wrestles with what to do next.

school plot, John LaDue, Waseca Minnesota, The massacre that didn't happen, foiled plot, us, The massacre that didn't happen - CNN

The massacre that didn't happen

Waseca, Minnesota (CNN)John David LaDue cradled the homemade bomb in a tree not far from school. It was summer 2013, and classes were out -- the perfect time to test his explosive.He lit the fuse.Nothing. The teen had used hot glue for his sealing agent. He switched to auto body filler. The next time, his bomb exploded. Read MoreAnd the next time, too.The rush grew addicting. Over a span of nine months, he exploded more than a dozen homemade bombs around this small town in southern Minnesota. At a church. A skate park. A shooting range.The 11th grader was practicing for his master plan: to carry out one of the worst school massacres in U.S. history. "I had fun entertaining the thought of actually, like, injuring and maiming people," he told police, "and, like, showing people that I am dominant over them."His explosives were known as crickets, made from emptied-out CO2 cartridges and filled with gun powder. Police say it's not unusual for teens in rural areas to play around with them. Yet those who study mass killings know their significance: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried dozens of crickets with them when they entered Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.LaDue had done his homework. He purchased a black duster jacket so he could dress like Harris. "Kinda want to pay tribute to him," he would later tell police. He hoped to time his attack to the Columbine anniversary, in honor of his idol. He'd studied the Boston Marathon bombers. He thought their attack weak because they killed just three.He planned to fill two pressure cookers with 6,000 ball bearings, as well as buckshot and screws. Each bomb would have cans of WD-40 strapped to it to magnify the blast. He would use flash powder, instead of black powder, to create a more powerful explosion than the ones in Boston. John LaDue enjoyed playing the guitar before his arrest.He believed Adam Lanza was a coward for killing first-graders. "I wanted to target people in my grade who I knew."He named five students at his high school who he wanted to kill for specific reasons. Two were classmates who talked too much in German class and "got annoying." A third called him queer on the school bus in seventh grade. He also would target the school resource officer.So meticulous was his plan that LaDue told authorities he chose a bolt-action Soviet-style SKS rifle to use in the attack -- a weapon without a large magazine like Lanza's AR-15 or other semi-automatic rifles used in shooting sprees. That way, he said, people lobbying for gun restrictions after his attack would have a weaker argument. "I kinda wanted to prove that wrong."The pressure-cooker bombs were to be hidden in recycling bins in the hallways at Waseca Junior & Senior High School. LaDue planned to detonate them remotely. He'd use his SKS rifle and a sawed-off shotgun to mop up the rest, before getting killed in a shootout with police.He hoped his assault would leave at least 40 dead -- more than triple the 13 killed in Columbine. His plot was thwarted on April 29, 2014, when a 911 caller reported seeing someone she suspected was breaking into a storage locker. The case looked like a slam dunk. Bomb-making material in the storage locker. A confession. An arsenal in his bedroom.And a diary he kept to "explain after I was dead why I did it."But the case would turn out to be anything but simple. And the judicial system would wrestle with this question: What is justice in a case like this -- a massacre that never happened?Where does preparation end and a crime begin?Every few months, you read it or hear it on the news: a "Columbine-style plot" is foiled. The suspects are almost always white male teenagers who have studied the Colorado high school massacre or cite the killers as inspiration. In the 16 years since the attack in Littleton, Colorado, more than 40 people have been charged with Columbine-style plots, according to searches of news accounts. Of those, more than a half dozen have come since LaDue's arrest in April 2014. Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Columbine, says Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, is its allure to disaffected youth. "Eric Harris presented himself as an anti-hero, not as a crazy man. He is easy to associate with if your life is going nowhere," says Torrey, a research psychiatrist, best-selling author and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which advocates for timely treatment of the severely mentally ill. "They're attracted because [Harris and Klebold] went after the people who were most bothersome to them at that time -- and that's their peers who are not appreciating their 'greatness.' It's not just parents. It's not just society. It's actually getting back at the girls who won't go out with them, the boys who exclude them from peer groups."JUST WATCHEDTeen who plotted to blow up school to get treatmentReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHTeen who plotted to blow up school to get treatment 02:17In 2013 alone, the FBI said its Behavioral Threat Assessment Center prevented 148 mass shootings at schools, workplaces and other public spaces -- up 33 percent from the previous year.Experts say the public has gotten better at notifying authorities of suspicious activity.In Waseca, police Capt. Kris Markeson held a news conference two days after LaDue's arrest and praised the resident who called police. "This case is a classic example of citizens doing the right thing when things seemed out of place. By doing the right thing," Markeson said, his voice cracking, "unimaginable tragedy has been prevented."In places like Newtown, Connecticut, and wherever schools have been violated, traumatized families would do anything to trade places with the people of Waseca. Yet the truth is that after the plots are foiled and the arrests made, the legal system struggles with how to deal with the accused, especially juveniles. Often, the public never learns their names -- or the outcome of their cases. The information is shielded in juvenile court. When children under the age of 18 are charged as adults because of the seriousness of the threats, punishments range widely from state to state. Courts must decide where preparation ends and a crime begins. The outcomes often depend on whether a prosecutor holds a tough-on-crime stance or is sympathetic to defendants suffering from mental disorders. A 17-year-old boy with underlying mental health issues was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a 2009 plot on Landstown High School in Virginia Beach, a foiled attack that was timed for the 10th year anniversary of Columbine. The prosecutor in that case was outraged over what he felt was a lenient sentence.That same year, a 15-year-old boy in Monroe, New York, had a plan to attack his school; he got 18 months in a psychiatric center. LaDue was 17 but prosecutors vowed to try him as an adult. He faced 12 felony charges: four counts of first-degree attempted murder, six counts of possessing explosives and two counts of attempted criminal damage to property. If convicted on all charges, he faced more than 60 years in prison.Stephanie LaDue collapsed shortly after her son's arrest: "We were taken from this idyllic little world we'd been living in to just complete utter chaos."'This was his little surprise for us'A photograph of a smiling young John and his sister, Valerie, rests on the center of the mantle in the living room. A framed print of the Last Supper stares down in the nearby dining room. A white basket contains more than 60 letters from strangers who wrote to lend their support to the family. David and Stephanie LaDue have read every note. Each brought solace in the face of Facebook posts from people calling for their son to be dismembered or people who drove by to gawk at their home. One man banged on their door and screamed, "Not in my f----ing neighborhood." "We were taken from this idyllic little world we'd been living in to complete utter chaos," says Stephanie, who works as a substance abuse counselor. Within a week of their son's arrest, she collapsed under the stress and checked into a psychiatric facility. She literally had to learn how to walk again. Feeling alone, she called the mother of one of the Columbine killers. She doesn't want to say which one, but the conversation helped her cope and gave her strength. Yes, her son harbored terrible thoughts, but he didn't harm anyone -- and he was still alive. The LaDues found themselves facing the question asked repeatedly after mass shootings: How could two parents active in their son's life not know he was plotting such destruction? David wracks his brain for missed clues. "If you just start from here, it sounds like a kid who never should've been born. The fact that he kept it from us and that this was the way we discovered it was real painful."This was his little surprise for us."Adds Stephanie: "One of the things I remember him telling me in those first weeks was: 'I just felt like something was pressuring me to do it.' I'll always remember him saying that."She flips through photo albums that capture life "before." Here's John at a zoo. In a baseball uniform. Perched with his sister on their father's back, riding "horsey." He was a good student in high school; he made As and Bs. He wasn't the most popular kid, but he wasn't the most aloof, either. He was never disruptive or violent.A photograph of John LaDue and his sister, Valerie, rests on the mantle in the family's living room.At home, he got along with his parents, and his sister. "They're good parents," he told police.Yet he planned to kill all three. He would then set a fire in town to distract authorities before carrying out his massacre at the school.Behind bars, John was diagnosed for the first time with a highly functional form of autism spectrum disorder, with violent ideations. Psychologists found that it didn't manifest until late adolescence, and that he was able to conceal his troubles from family, friends and classmates.Research has shown that people with autism spectrum disorder are no more likely to be violent than the rest of the population. A 2008 review found that 84% of violent offenders with autism also had an underlying psychiatric disorder at the time they committed the crime.The LaDues don't believe their son was capable of carrying out the attack.Says his father: "What would you do if you got caught in the darkest moment of your life and thinking the most hideous thing possible -- and everybody knew about it?" If anything, they believe their son was prevented from killing himself. "I don't think he could've killed us, though he says he wanted to," David says. "I don't ever see that he could've done that."He does not deny the seriousness of his son's plot, but he's frustrated by how events played out. Police questioned John for three hours before notifying the parents. They'd been texting him for hours, worried something bad had happened. When police arrived, their hearts sank: They thought John had been killed in a car accident.Police found seven guns in John's bedroom: two near his bed and five in a safe in his closet. All but one of the guns belonged to his father.David had taught both his children how to hunt and took them to gun safety courses. He trusted his son with guns to protect the family while he worked the overnight shift at a steel plant. He had no idea that John had purchased a gun; he got it through a friend's dad by forging his own father's signature. John's sister, Valerie, knew about her brother's fascination with explosives, but she viewed it like any big sister might: My brother is such an idiot. She says she didn't know about his plot. He bugged her about getting a storage locker, saying his room was getting crowded and he wanted to move some stuff. She thought it was a weird idea and refused to help him. A friend's mother did.Valerie LaDue remembers her brother as her math tutor and the guy who carried her around on piggy back. Valerie was a senior at the high school and had to return to the very building her brother planned to blow up. What was her reaction when she heard about his plan, beginning with her assassination?"It's kinda like, 'Come on, John.'"Looking back, she believes her brother was crying out for help. "He was trying to put his hand up and say, 'Notice me. Somebody stop me.'"In his recorded police confession, John LaDue told police he believed he was mentally ill. "Like when would be the best time for me to see a psychiatrist?" he asks toward the end of his second major interrogation. Moments later, he adds that he thinks he might be a sociopath. "I don't know," he sighs.David LaDue describes what he now realizes was a sign of trouble in his son in the months leading up to the arrest. He calls it "The War Within John." His son had questioned the validity of God and proclaimed himself an atheist. The father sat him down and spoke about the mysterious ways in which God works. He told his son that he too struggled to believe in a higher power when he was young."I got there the hard way," he told his boy.He prayed for God to intervene in his son's life.Resting in the recliner where he sat the night police raided the home, David recalls a dream he had just days before the arrest: John was a little boy. Father and son sat beside each other on the ledge of a five-story building. Dad sensed something wrong. A dark force tugged at them. His son asked to climb in his lap, even begged, but Dad told his boy to sit still. To stay put. Dad looked around to gauge what was happening. Suddenly, his son fell. Down, down, down. The father watched. Helpless. He sprinted down a stairwell. John smashed onto a patio. He was still breathing, but his body shattered. David LaDue weeps. He has seen his son shackled over the last 17 months, his family humiliated, the town of Waseca embarrassed. But he believes his prayer was answered. That God intervened."Divine."That's his one word explanation for all that has transpired.The case falls apartIf there was a "war within John," as his father says, there was a war about John going on in the legal system.The prosecution lost the first battle when a judge threw out the charges of attempted criminal damage to property and the toughest charges: attempted murder. There was no proof, he ruled, that LaDue would act on his plans to carry out a bloodbath -- a decision upheld by the state appeals court. "He did not engage in anything more than preparation for the commission of the crimes," the state appeals court ruled earlier this year. "The law in Minnesota does not prohibit [LaDue's] conduct. We cannot invite speculation as to whether the acts would be carried out."David LaDue says too much time has been spent on his son's comments, which were ruled not criminal. Suddenly, it seemed, the boy who dreamed of becoming infamous, like the Columbine shooters, was instead a mere footnote, an asterisk to a foiled plot. He turned 18 behind bars while lawyers, judges and psychologists tried to figure out what to do.The prosecutor wanted to try him as an adult on the six remaining counts of illegal possession of an explosive device. On June 30 of this year, a hearing was held on the matter. Three psychologists testified.One had met with LaDue at the request of his parents. Dr. Mary Kenning said the young man scored a 99 percent "amenability to treatment" rating, and that he was at low risk for violent re-offense.He also received high marks from the detention center for doing "anything we ask without hesitation.""He has been very steady and stays on track very well," wrote corrections program director Brad Bengston in a June progress report. "He has had no outburst or any disciplinary room time. He has had appropriate behaviors and kept his attitude as upbeat as possible." That assessment stood in stark contrast to the conclusions of two court-appointed psychologists. They agreed that LaDue would need years of intensive treatment to ensure he's no longer a danger to society.Beginning around 2013, they said, he had begun fixating on violent images of death, spending about five hours a week watching videos of murders, autopsies and other gruesome scenes. They also said he showed no remorse for his plot.Dr. Katheryn Cranbook expressed concern over his "lack of insight into the seriousness of his issues and his need for intervention." Without years of specialized treatment, she said, LaDue "would likely return to his prior fixated interest in violence and would be at significant risk for engaging in acts of serious violence."Dr. James Gilbertson described five important risk factors that LaDue needed to work on in therapy: how to get along with others; deal with his grievance-oriented thinking; abandon his focus on violent retribution; cope with his inflexible and rigid thinking; and address his secret, isolationist lifestyle. If those issues are not dealt with, Gilbertson said, then LaDue "represents a substantial probability of being at risk for future violence." If the court were to treat LaDue as a juvenile, Cranbrook and Gilbertson noted, there wasn't enough time for him to get appropriate treatment even if it were to continue to age 21 under Minnesota's extended jurisdiction juvenile program.JUST WATCHEDWhy high school bomb plotter didn't get jail timeReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWhy high school bomb plotter didn't get jail time 03:13In weighing the matter, Waseca County district court judge Robert Birnbaum noted the Catch 22. If LaDue were considered an adult, the judge determined, he might not get any mental health counseling while in prison because it is voluntary. He "would likely finish his time and not have his therapeutic needs met," Birnbaum wrote after the hearing. "He would also be at risk to come out of prison with hardened anti-social beliefs and attitudes as a result of exposure to other inmates."Lost amid the legal arguments was LaDue.He did not testify during the hearing, and he declined through his attorney and his parents to speak with CNN. But his family shared hundreds of pages of journal entries he'd made while in detention. In an entry dated June 27 of this year, he broached the subject of his arrest."The choices I've made that got me in the justice system were based off of selfish and lazy choices. They were also the result of lack of concern for what may go wrong," he wrote. "I have made a decision to act responsibly and to stop engaging in illegal behavior. I am finished with an irresponsible lifestyle. I'm ready to make my plan for action."I believe that if I stay as I currently am that I will be able to have a very productive lifestyle and accomplish things I've always wanted to." His hope: to become a mathematician.A chance at redemptionThe young man stands in the courtroom and raises his right hand. With his black-rimmed spectacles, he looks more like a schoolboy from Harry Potter than the shooters at Columbine High School.John David LaDue is escorted to the Waseca County Courthouse for his sentencing hearing.On this September day, 17 months since his arrest, LaDue pleads guilty to a single felony count of illegal possession of an explosive, closing the books on a criminal case more notable for what it is not. All other charges have been dropped in a plea deal the prosecutor and defense believe benefits both LaDue and the public. By accepting the plea, LaDue avoids prison time and will receive up to 10 years of court-ordered treatment for autism spectrum disorder. If his treatment is successful, he will move into a halfway house or transitional treatment facility before being reintroduced to society under intensive supervision.He cannot have contact with his old school. He must be "law-abiding and of good behavior in all respects." The goal is to get him as much treatment as possible until he turns 25, the age at which psychologists say the adult male brain fully matures.Waseca County Attorney Brenda Miller stands by her prosecution, saying in a written statement that the original charges "best reflected the planning and actions he undertook in anticipation of his final goal: killing his family, killing the school liaison officer, bombing the Waseca Junior & Senior High School and killing as many students as possible."When the most serious charges were thrown out, Miller said, "gone also was any possibility of a long prison sentence." "It is our belief that this plea offer is the best outcome possible, under the circumstances, to ensure public safety." After a year and a half, this is what justice looks like in a foiled plot for a disaffected youth in Minnesota. The hearing ends and the court clears. Escorted by bailiffs, LaDue begins to walk out, then pauses and leans against a banister. Looking at him, I can't help but remember one of the letters of support his family shared with me. It was addressed to John, and written by a 22-year-old woman from Russia named Victoria."I was just like you in my teenage years," she wrote. "I don't have a lot of feelings that most people have." She felt isolated and studied the Columbine killers. "By the age of 16, I knew the name of almost every person who committed similar crimes that Eric and Dylan did..."But she turned a corner and never acted on her darkest thoughts.The thing that distinguishes you from the Columbine shooters, she wrote, is "the fact that they committed gruesome crimes and they can't change that."You're really the lucky one. You have a chance they never had. And you should use this chance."LaDue recently earned his high school degree, finishing with a 3.3 GPA at the detention center where he was held for most of the last year. He was valedictorian of his class of 13.His next stop is a treatment facility in suburban Atlanta -- if Minnesota figures out how to pay for his care and Georgia accepts his transfer.If he meets the court's demands, the single felony charge to which he plead guilty will be knocked down to a misdemeanor and wiped from his record.As if this never happened. Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesParents wait for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, February 14. At least 17 people were killed at the school, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, the sheriff said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.Hide Caption 1 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesInvestigators at the scene of a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5, 2017. A man opened fire inside the small community church, killing at least 25 people and an unborn child. The gunman, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, was found dead in his vehicle. He was shot in the leg and torso by an armed citizen, and he had a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, authorities said.Hide Caption 2 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesA couple huddles after shots rang out at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, October 1, 2017. At least 58 people were killed and almost 500 were injured when a gunman opened fire on the crowd. Police said the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, fired from the Mandalay Bay hotel, several hundred feet southwest of the concert grounds. He was found dead in his hotel room, and authorities believe he killed himself and that he acted alone. It is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.Hide Caption 3 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesPolice direct family members away from the scene of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire inside the club, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 50. Police fatally shot Mateen during an operation to free hostages that officials say he was holding at the club.Hide Caption 4 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesIn December 2015, two shooters killed 14 people and injured 21 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, where employees with the county health department were attending a holiday event. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, were later killed in a shootout with authorities. The pair were found to be radicalized extremists who planned the shootings as a terror attack, investigators said.Hide Caption 5 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesPolice search students outside Umpqua Community College after a deadly shooting at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015. Nine people were killed and at least nine were injured, police said. The gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, committed suicide after exchanging gunfire with officers, a sheriff said.Hide Caption 6 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesA man kneels across the street from the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, following a shooting in June 2015. Police say the suspect, Dylann Roof, opened fire inside the church, killing nine people. According to police, Roof confessed and told investigators he wanted to start a race war. He was eventually convicted of murder and hate crimes, and a jury recommended the death penalty.Hide Caption 7 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesPolice officers walk on a rooftop at the Washington Navy Yard after a shooting rampage in the nation's capital in September 2013. At least 12 people and suspect Aaron Alexis were killed, according to authorities.Hide Caption 8 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesConnecticut State Police evacuate Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Adam Lanza opened fire in the school, killing 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Police said he also shot and killed his mother in her Newtown home. Hide Caption 9 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesJames Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a July 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and dozens were wounded when Holmes opened fire during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises." He was sentenced to 12 life terms plus thousands of years in prison. Hide Caption 10 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesA military jury convicted Army Maj. Nidal Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder for a November 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people died and 32 were injured.Hide Caption 11 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesJiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, before turning the gun on himself in April 2009, police said. Four other people were injured at the immigration center shooting. Wong had been taking English classes at the center.Hide Caption 12 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesPallbearers carry a casket of one of Michael McLendon's 10 victims. McLendon shot and killed his mother in her Kingston, Alabama, home, before shooting his aunt, uncle, grandparents and five more people. He shot and killed himself in Samson, Alabama, in March 2009.Hide Caption 13 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesVirginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree on the school's campus in April 2007. Cho killed two people at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and, after chaining the doors closed, killed another 30 at Norris Hall, home to the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. He wounded an additional 17 people before killing himself.Hide Caption 14 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesMark Barton walked into two Atlanta trading firms and fired shots in July 1999, leaving nine dead and 13 wounded, police said. Hours later, police found Barton at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where he pulled a gun and killed himself. The day before, Barton had bludgeoned his wife and his two children in their Stockbridge, Georgia, apartment, police said.Hide Caption 15 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesEric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold brought guns and bombs to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999. The students gunned down 13 and wounded 23 before killing themselves.Hide Caption 16 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesIn October 1991, George Hennard crashed his pickup through the plate-glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, before shooting 23 people and committing suicide.Hide Caption 17 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesJames Huberty shot and killed 21 people, including children, at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in July 1984. A police sharpshooter killed Huberty an hour after the rampage began.Hide Caption 18 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesPrison guard George Banks is led through the Luzerne County courthouse in 1985. Banks killed 13 people, including five of his children, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in September 1982. He was sentenced to death in 1993 and received a stay of execution in 2004. His death sentence was overturned in 2010.Hide Caption 19 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesOfficers in Austin, Texas, carry victims across the University of Texas campus after Charles Joseph Whitman opened fire from the school's tower, killing 16 people and wounding 30 in 1966. Police officers shot and killed Whitman, who had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day. Hide Caption 20 of 21 Photos: Worst mass shootings in the United StatesHoward Unruh, a World War II veteran, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949. Unruh barricaded himself in his house after the shooting. Police overpowered him the next day. He was ruled criminally insane and committed to a state mental institution.Hide Caption 21 of 21

Wayne Drash and Tawanda Scott Sambou, CNN

2016-05-19 11:10:17

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health

https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/health/cash-for-criminals-richmond-california/index.html

Richmond, California: Paying kids not to kill - CNN

Richmond, California, has seen a dramatic drop in homicides after a program was introduced that offers violent youth a $1,000 monthly stipend to stop their ways.

gun violence, cash for criminals, Richmond, California, health, Richmond, California: Paying kids not to kill - CNN

Paying kids not to kill

Story highlightsRichmond, California, has seen a dramatic drop in homicides since a fellowship beganThe fellowship invites hardened teens and young men to change their waysIf they show good behavior, fellows can earn a stipend of up to $1,000 a monthRichmond, California (CNN)The four teens kick back and talk openly with their mentor. They discuss job opportunities, the need for support and the possibility of a trip out of state.They're relaxing in the lobby of a city agency, one outfitted with a couch and wing chairs to make it feel homey. Anything to provide relief from the hard streets of Richmond, California, once known as one of the most violent cities in America."What can I do better?" the mentor, Kevin Yarbrough, asks."Help us get out of Richmond and stuff," one teen mumbles. "Get us far away."The conversation sounds like one any mentor might have with a group of inner-city teens in America. Read MoreCan cities stop the bloodshed?Savannah, Georgia, and Richmond, California: Two cities on opposite sides of the country, each with a history of homicides and different approaches to ending the violence. See what's working and what isn't in this two-part series:Southern charm, deadly streetsPaying kids not to killBut this is no ordinary group. The mentor is an ex-con working for the city. The teens are suspected of the worst types of crimes but haven't faced prosecution, for lack of evidence. The mentor's job: Get them to put down their guns, stop their violent ways and transform their lives beyond the streets."They're babies growing up in a war zone," says DeVone Boggan. "But the police would tell you they're killers. 'Serial killer' is what a police officer might call some of these young men, because of what they're suspected of doing."Boggan helped found the innovative city agency, the Office of Neighborhood Safety or ONS, in the fall of 2007 after gun violence spiraled out of control in Richmond, a city of about 100,000 just north of Berkeley.Fueled by gang violence, neighborhood rivalries and large-scale unemployment among black youth, the violence led to 47 homicides in Richmond in 2007 -- a record for the city and a rate more than eight times the national average. By comparison, Oakland saw 30 killings per 100,000 residents that year; Chicago had nearly 16 per 100,000. A drastic approach was needed to turn the tide. There was so much violence, the city even considered bringing in the National Guard to restore calm.The next year, Boggan saw the killings drop to 27 -- a 40% decline -- as he began his strategy of hiring reformed ex-cons and sending them into the most violent neighborhoods to keep the peace. But those gains were followed in 2009 by another spike of 47 killings. They had put too much emphasis on "hot spots" and not enough on individuals. "We learned that focusing on hot spots [is] important, but they're not more important than hot people," Boggan says. "Why? Because hot people make hot spots."Richmond's approachThe San Francisco Bay Area city of Richmond, population 108,000, saw a record 47 gun homicides in 2007. In response, the city started hiring ex-cons and sending them into the worst neighborhoods. The next year, the killings fell to 27 but then spiked again to 47 in 2009. This time, the city invited some of the most hardened youth into a fellowship, where they would be mentored by ex-cons and offered a cash stipend. Police were left out of the picture. By 2014, gun homicides had fallen to 11, although they were back up to 21 last year after a staffing cut. Of the 68 youths who've been through the program, 94% are alive, and 79% have not been suspected of a new gun crime.And so Operation Peacemaker was born. Loosely based on an academic fellowship, the ONS program invites some of the most hardened youth into the fold: often teenage boys suspected of violent crimes but whom authorities don't have enough evidence to charge criminally. These fellows must pledge to put their guns away for a more peaceful life. They are hooked up with mentors -- the reformed criminals-turned-city workers -- who offer advice, guidance and support to get jobs. If the fellows show good behavior after six months, they can earn a stipend of up to $1,000 a month. Since the fellowship started, the city has seen dramatic results, including a low of 11 gun homicides in 2014 -- the fewest number of people killed in Richmond in four decades. The program has caught the attention of cities hoping to model programs with similar success, from Sacramento, California, to Toledo, Ohio, to Washington.In the media, the fellowship is often dubbed "cash for criminals," which makes Boggan's eyes roll. He laughs because, although it's true, the program is so much more. And it's predicated on the most basic of human elements: "We harass them with love and kindness."To understand the hardships these young men face, he says, you must know that each has had family members, friends and neighbors killed -- that it's not uncommon for a 15-year-old to have known a dozen people killed in his young life. "You grow up with that experience," he says, "and it creates a great deal of hostility, anger, untreated vicarious trauma in your life."Of the four teens discussing job possibilities with their mentor, Yarborough, when CNN visited, one's mother died when he was a young boy; another had a brother killed. Two are already fathers. The way it worksThe ONS relies on Yarborough and five other mentors, known as "neighborhood change agents," to keep the pulse of hot-spot neighborhoods and the fellows within their program. The mentors, along with a few other part-time workers involved with street outreach, monitor police scanners for shootings and have neighborhood contacts who let them know when they sense that something bad is about to happen."Like if something's going down," says Yarborough, "somebody will call me and be like: It ain't cool."He then touches base with his fellows to make sure they're alive and confirm that they haven't returned to their old ways. The mentors, Boggan says, are not naive: They've all served time in local or federal facilities for some type of gun offense. One served 18 years in San Quentin State Prison for second-degree murder. Neighborhood change agent James Houston served 18 years in San Quentin State Prison. He says it's important to help the youth not make the same bad choices he did."It's been cool knowing that I got some back-up help," says T.K. Sykes, one of the fellows being mentored by Yarborough. "There's a lot of stuff they've been through that I don't want to go through. I'm glad they get to share those kinds of situations with me."A graduate of UC Berkeley, Boggan began his career in Oakland with Safe Passages, which works to break the cycle of violence through an array of programs. When he moved his work to nearby Richmond, he says, he "decided to dedicate my life to reducing gun violence." The Office of Neighborhood Safety, he says, was formed solely "to reduce violent assaults and associated deaths." Boggan studied and borrowed from other programs, most notably one created by David Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Kennedy's model, which has been implemented in dozens of cities, targets those individuals believed to be the most violent and brings them together for "Call Ins."Those sessions are headed up by law enforcement, who issue stern warnings and threaten harsh punishment. Often, the people invited are on parole, and their attendance is mandatory. Boggan focused his program not on parolees but on teens and young men known to be active in gun violence who've escaped doing serious time. And Boggan took law enforcement out of the equation. He wanted to shower these youth with positivity, not threats of prison. "So many approaches to these young men are uninformed and don't take into account who these young men are and where they come from," he says. With the distrust between the black community and police, Boggan adds, having police try to persuade young men to stop their ways is not a long-term solution. Scaring people might stop violence for a short period, he says, but it won't last. His approach, Boggan admits, has led to "healthy tensions" between the ONS and local police."Our relationship with law enforcement is not perfect, but it gets better each day," he says. "It's important that we not have an adversarial relationship but clear separation and respect of those necessary lines."Richmond Police Chief Allwyn Brown says his department welcomes all efforts to reduce gun violence. "The police, the justice system can't do this whole thing," he said. "There has to be multiple interventions. We get it."Since the program began, he said, more residents have come forward with information about shootings. That's led gang rivals to take their grievances -- and shootings -- out of neighborhoods and onto the city's interstates.Still, Brown credits the agency with helping young men who are involved in "potential criminal activity" and "living outside the law" with choosing an "honest approach" instead. A decado ago, Richmond, California, was one of the nation's most violent cities. Boggan believes the vast majority of youth in rough inner-city neighborhoods are inherently good and need to be exposed to new opportunities. With ex-felons as his change agents, he says, the teens are more likely to respond. "That translates into trust on the street," Boggan says. "And trust is a major commodity with what we do." At one point, he employed seven full-time mentors, but cutbacks reduced his staff to four full-time and two part-time mentors. 2015 saw gun homicides nearly double to 21, from the low of 11 in 2014. Boggan says staffing cuts may have played a role. "Less people touched, and the people touched are not being touched as often," he says. "That's certainly an impact."How it startedThe most controversial part of the program -- fellowships offering monthly stipends -- began after gun violence jumped in 2009. Boggan says he was sitting in a room with local, state and federal law enforcement discussing the root cause of the violence. They believed that 17 suspects were responsible for 70% of the 47 homicides that year. "I began to see just how simple the problem was, albeit tough work," Boggan says. "If we could find our way towards those 17 people in a more focused, intentional, deliberate way, then change could happen."It turned out the number was actually 28. He and his team of change agents put all of their efforts into reaching out to them within three months. He rolled out the red carpet, inviting them to meetings like he would anyone else he wanted to do business with. His premise: "This city will not be healthy unless these young men are healthy."Three of the 28 young men were killed before the ONS could even get to them. That left 25. Of those, 21 -- ranging in age from 16 to 26 -- showed up. Each was receptive to change.Unlike the "Call Ins" from the Kennedy model, the agency simply asks the youths to hear them out. It's part of showing them a form of respect. "We have no authority to 'call in' anyone," Boggan says. "We ask these young men to join us. We ask them to partner with us. We ask them into the family."Thus, the fellowship began. Boggan describes the 18-month program as similar to most any post-graduate work, but this one is "designed specifically for active firearm offenders who've avoided sustained criminal consequences." Each fellow commits to promoting peace in his community and to a life without guns. They get hooked up with jobs and anger-management experts. A life map is provided, detailing the barriers they face and what they must do to overcome them.Six months into the fellowships, the young men can apply for the monthly stipend, which can go up to $1,000 depending on their participation and achievements. Most earn about $300 to $750 a month. They can make money for up to nine months. He bristles when asked whether it's a good idea to use tax dollars to pay people to stop committing violence. "That's nothing compared to the cost of gun violence in this city," Boggan says.During the fellowships, the young men meet with mothers whose children were killed by gun violence. They visit colleges and meet business leaders. With the help of private donations, they've traveled to places like the nation's capital and Chicago, as well as outside the country to spots in Mexico and South Africa. Gang rivals get paired on trips so they can talk with one another and see each other as human beings. "To share their stories," Boggan says, "is part of the healing process for these young men."Mentor Houston talks with Richmond residents; the city has seen a dramatic reduction in homicides since the program began. A total of 68 fellows -- "the most lethal young men most likely to be killed in our city" -- have been through the program since June 2010. Ninety-four percent are still alive, and 79% have not been suspected of a new gun crime, Boggan says. Of the other 21%, one has been convicted of a gun homicide, 12 have been convicted of firearm possession, and eight have been suspects in shootings.Some fellows who successfully complete the program are allowed to reapply for another 18 months. Most move on into the world. "They are no longer the person we met on Day 1 of the fellowship." Even after they leave, the ONS stays in contact with them, if for no other reason than to lend support when they might struggle. The city has experienced a 76% reduction in gun homicides since the fellowship began in 2009, the agency says. The program can't take all of the credit for the reduced crime, Boggan says; police work and an improved economy also play a part. But he adds, "I would give the credit to the young men. When you actually focus on the very people involved in gun violence, I think you can't argue that they're not contributing to the safer environment happening in this city."Boggan recently stepped down as ONS director to form a nonprofit organization called Advance Peace. He remains contracted with the city of Richmond to help advise the office but will also work with other cities to build pilot programs similar to the one started here. His life mission is to provide hope to troubled youth to "change the reality ... of this epidemic facing our nation.""America's gun violence," he says, "is a national disgrace. We should be ashamed of ourselves."He will keep pushing for change.

Wayne Drash, CNN

2016-05-19 11:15:11

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health

https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/health/savannah-georgia-high-murder-rate/index.html

Savannah, Georgia: Southern charm, deadly streets - CNN

The city of Savannah, Georgia, has seen a surge in gun violence. And despite a new initiative to stop the killings, the shootings have not abated.

Savannah, Georgia, gun violence, health, Savannah, Georgia: Southern charm, deadly streets - CNN

Southern charm, deadly streets

Story highlightsIn 2015, there were 53 homicides in Savannah, the city's most violent year in a quarter-centuryA new citywide initiative to end the violence has done little to curb the shootings The mayor says 100-plus new officers will make a dent in reducing the crimeSavannah, Georgia (CNN)Shoppers happily stroll the sidewalks of Savannah's open-air City Market. The sweet smell of freshly made pralines provides an inviting aroma across the historic district, and horse-drawn carriages amble down streets carrying tourists to antebellum homes and manicured gardens. Known as the Hostess City, Savannah appears like a postcard of idyllic Southern charm. Linda Wilder-Bryan looks around and shakes her head. "You can't walk like this in other neighborhoods," she says. "Please share our tale of two cities. This is the Hostess City with bloody underwear. ... Nobody wants to air their bloody drawers."Then, she cries. Read MoreCan cities stop the bloodshed?Savannah, Georgia, and Richmond, California: Two cities on opposite sides of the country, each with a history of homicides and different approaches to ending the violence. See what's working and what isn't in this two-part series:Southern charm, deadly streetsPaying kids not to killIn August, her 23-year-old son, Lawrence Bryan IV, was shot and killed in a Savannah neighborhood where homicides are frequent. Two months later, the genteel safety of City Market was shattered when a 24-year-old man who Wilder-Bryan considered her second son was gunned down in the early hours. Police have said Frank Wilson was stalked and targeted.Wilson's killing stoked fears that Savannah's escalating violence was moving from outlying neighborhoods into the tourist district. By year's end, 53 people -- a majority of them black -- had been killed, a 66% jump from the previous year and the bloodiest year since 1991, when the city recorded 60 homicides. Wilder-Bryan admits that her son was no angel and had made mistakes in life. The night he was killed, he was playing cards and gambling at a home where police had responded to gunshots on prior occasions. In 2014, her son also had been charged in connection with a gunfight. "I'm consumed with death," she says. "It's my norm now."Determined to push for change, Wilder-Bryan, 58, ran for a City Council post in November on the slogan "I'm gonna kick up dust and get rid of rust." She lost to the incumbent by about 3,600 votes but says the effort was worthwhile.Linda Wilder-Bryan, whose son Lawrence was killed in a shooting in August, prays during a "die in, lay in" protest this year."Instead of grieving, I fought."She and a group of mothers have formed a group called CHAOS, or Change Helping Agents of Savannah. They hold monthly die-ins and rallies across the city to raise awareness about the violence plaguing its black communities.She once served as a state corrections officer and as security sergeant for the local sheriff's department and knows the inequalities of the justice system.A whirlwind of energy, Wilder-Bryan makes city leaders nervous. She's edgy, vocal and determined. But don't tell her that her son passed away or that she lost him.There's no reason, she says, to sugarcoat a killing. "My son wasn't lost. He was stolen."Calling in the paroleesConcerned by the increased killings, the city of Savannah launched an ambitious initiative with a straightforward title: End Gun Violence. The program is modeled after one developed by David Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, whose practices have been implemented in dozens of cities across the country. Savannah's high murder rateWith a population of about 236,000, Savannah-Chatham County saw 22.4 killings per 100,000 residents in 2015. That would have been the 10th highest murder rate among cities over 200,000 using 2014 figures, the last year for which national data is available -- higher than the 2014 rates for Oakland, California; Miami; Cleveland; Washington; and Chicago.The number of killings in Savannah this year is 23: nearly double the 13 as of this time last year and the same as for all of 2012.Criminologists have found that a fraction of hardened criminals are responsible for a disproportionate amount of serious violent crimes. In a city Savannah's size, they say, the number of people committing the most violent offenses would be limited to just several dozen people. The Kennedy model targets those individuals believed to be the most violent and brings them together with police and prosecutors for "Call Ins." Savannah's first Call In was December 15 at a local church."If we can get a message to those people to reduce their gunfire exchange, then we will definitely impact the overall number," says Maxine Bryant, the project manager of the End Gun Violence initiative. Critics of the Kennedy model say cops are poor messengers given the black community's distrust of police. Supporters argue that there has to be a balance: police and community members working in conjunction. To that end, the Call In featured a who's who of Savannah law enforcement, including Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin and District Attorney Meg Heap, along with a federal judge, preachers and other community members.Their audience: 16 parolees who ranged in age from their late teens to their 30s. Two were women. Everyone was black. Each had served time for an array of drug and firearms offenses. Law enforcement delivered a stern message: Clean up or we're coming after you. And not only will we come after you, we'll go after your friends and anyone who knows what you're doing. If the parolees aren't actively engaged in shootings, the thinking is, they know people who are and will carry the message into their communities.One man sat slouched in his chair texting for much of the time. The young woman next to him followed his lead, rolling her head and acting as if she had better places to be. Others snapped to attention when told that federal authorities would come after them if they don't change. They know there's no parole in federal prison.They were given a phone number for social services and told that help was available should they choose a new path.But perhaps the strongest message came from Pam Abraham: one delivered from the heart of a grieving mother. Pam Abraham's son Sean, 25, was killed over his cell phone in 2004. (Courtesy Abraham family)Her 25-year-old son, Sean Abraham, was a manager at a fast-food restaurant in West Savannah. He'd graduated from Alabama State University and was the epitome of America's talented youth: optimistic, humble and proud. He'd talk with friends and family about his dreams of setting up a foundation to help at-risk youth. He believed most troubled youth just needed proper mentors to help steer their anger and rage. But on February 7, 2004, her only son was shot in the head, killed over his cell phone. Before she began speaking, she told the texting man to put his phone away. She showed a photograph of her son in a bright gold shirt, his face beaming with a smile that radiates all these years later. The picture was taken before Christmas in 2003. She buried her son two months later, on Valentine's Day. Time doesn't heal such pain, she said. She reminded the group that her son's killer got three life sentences, plus 105 years. A man who was with him got two life sentences, plus 50 years. "Three young men died that day."This time, everyone sat upright, even the texter and the head-roller.Change your ways, she implored the group, because "it's either prison or the grave."When she finished, two of the men hugged her. One told her he'd never thought about the pain he caused his mother. "It was almost like a light bulb went on for some," she recalled. "I always tell people: Yesterday, it was at my door. Tomorrow, it may be at yours. You need to step up and be part of the solution."Despite the new citywide initiative, the shootings have not abated. There have been 23 homicides this year, the same as for all of 2012 and nearly double the 13 at this time last year. The next Call In is slated for later this month.Mayor Eddie DeLoach, who came into office in January, said that he believes the program is making progress but that it's too early to judge its overall effectiveness because crime reduction is "not going to happen overnight." He said another new program is offering 500 jobs to rising high school seniors "so they can pick something else other than trouble" during the hot summer months. He also said the police force has been hiring officers to fill a shortage that's existed for the past 16 years. By June, the mayor said, 127 new officers will be on the streets. "We should have an opportunity there to put some pressure to bear on the malcontents that are causing problems in our community," he said. "We're looking forward to a reduced crime rate. ... We're optimistic on our end."Getting people to talkRonald Williams keeps 58 pencils bound together by one rubber band as a symbol of the city he loves. Each pencil represents one of the 58 neighborhoods of Savannah, including his predominantly black neighborhood of West Savannah."You can't break it when they band together," he says.But infighting for too long has been the city's reality, resulting in too few solutions and too many killings. "I'm doing everything I can to tell people, 'Hey, we've got to live together.' "Walk the streets with Williams, president of the West Savannah Community Organization, and you immediately see the inequities of two vastly different areas. About a mile from historic downtown, there are no pristine brick sidewalks in West Savannah. Here, dirt footpaths and cracked sidewalks -- barely wide enough for one person -- press up against the roads. Instead of giant live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, there are run-down bungalows and shotgun shacks set amid working-class ranch homes. One tattered sign warns, "No dumping -- This area is being monitored. Violators will be cited." Trash tossed from cars lies within feet of the post. Community leader Ronald Williams says the city needs to band together to stop the violence. Around the corner from his office, he stops and points to the pavement where two people were gunned down last summer. "Two young men laid dead right up in here," he says.He'd come across the scene while police were sealing off the area, the bodies still in the street. Williams talked with onlookers and put the word out: If you're afraid to talk with police, come to me. Within two hours, he helped get leads on the suspects. "That's what we've got to do: Get people to start speaking out," he says. Williams is a foot soldier in this raging war. He's not armed with a gun. He's armed with knowledge, a broad smile and a friendly handshake. He walks the neighborhood constantly, to let people know about weekend get-togethers and other events.At 69, Williams is a straight-talker. He gets upset when people discuss police shootings of African-Americans but don't talk about everyday crime destroying neighborhoods like his."Black-on-black crime is there. Why not talk about it?" he says.He's known to stop mothers with errant kids and tell them they need to buy insurance on their children "so you don't have to go to GoFundMe to bury that child.""When they're out there dealing drugs and other things, they've got two options: They're either going to die, or they're going to go to jail."His criticism goes both ways: Too many police, he says, "are not going to give me the respect that I deserve because of the color of my skin.""Every black person is not a criminal, but that's what some young white police officers think."As he walks through the neighborhood, residents wave from their porches. A local barber ushers him inside his shop and shows off a renovation project for a new nightclub in the back. Martha Holmes, left, hugs Janie Smith, older sister of Charles Smith, who was shot and killed on Augusta Avenue by police in 2014. The vast majority of residents, he says, are like anywhere else: law-abiding, family-loving folks. But the drug trade, he says, is fueling the gun violence, and residents are largely powerless to stop it. "The two biggest money-making trades in this city are tourists and drugs."Augusta Avenue serves as the main street through West Savannah. The mile-long stretch is bookended by two reminders of life here, one from the present and one from the past. Two crosses stand as a makeshift memorial to mark the spot where a 29-year-old black man was killed by police in 2014. Just up the road, a plaque reads "Largest Slave Sale in Georgia History: The Weeping Time." "If you don't know your history," Williams says, "you don't have a future."Williams hopes for a brighter tomorrow. That if he and others can make inroads within the community, get people to speak out about crime, improve the education system and get youth to buy in, then change will come.But it won't happen overnight. "These are my people, and I love them," he says at the end of his tour.By night's end, gunfire rings out. Another person dies.

John Blake, CNN

2015-10-15 16:19:35

politics

politics

https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/15/politics/defy-gun-lobby/index.html

This is how the NRA loses - CNNPolitics

The NRA may seem unstoppable, but four examples from American history show that even seemngly invincible political groups can suffer stunning defeats.

politics, This is how the NRA loses - CNNPolitics

This is how the NRA loses

Story highlightsThe NRA may seem unstoppable but history says otherwisePolitical pressure groups that seemed unbeatable have lost beforeHistorians cite four examples, two from recent events (CNN)He was a frail, silver-haired man with thick glasses who sold limes on a corner in Miami's Cuban community. But passers-by knew that Orlando Bosch was no ordinary vendor. Some stuffed $100 bills in his shirt pockets without taking a lime. Others waved Cuban flags and honked their horns as they drove by. Bosch had been linked to at least 50 attacks targeting Fidel Castro's communist regime in Cuba. He once fired a bazooka at a freighter he thought was headed to Cuba. His unyielding hatred of Castro made him a hero to many in Miami's Cuban-exile community. Bosch's veneration served as a warning to any politician or public figure who ever thought of crossing the "Cuba lobby" -- a group of anti-Castro zealots -- by hinting at normalizing relations with Cuba, says Benjamin Bishin, a political science professor at University of California, Riverside. He recounts Bosch's story in his book, "Tyranny of the Minority." "Julio Iglesias once said at a Miami night club that he wouldn't mind visiting Cuba, and people booed him off the stage and rioted," Bishin says. "A woman called Castro a great educator, and her office was bombed."Then, last December, the Cuba lobby faced an unexpected turn of events: President Barack Obama announced that, after 50 years of hostility, the United States would normalize relations with Cuba. It was a stunning defeat for a group that once seemed invincible.Read MoreFidel Castro, left, with Che Guevara, gave rise to one of the most powerful groups in U.S. politics: the Cuba lobby. "You couldn't forecast it because you didn't know it was going to happen, but it happens much more than people think," Bishin says of powerful political groups that suffer sudden downfalls. Could the National Rifle Association ever face a similar fate? Most Americans probably don't think so. When a gunman murdered nine people at a community college in Oregon earlier this month, the President seemed to express what many Americans were thinking when he said, "Somehow this has become routine. ... We have become numb to this." There's a pervasive belief that any attempt to tighten gun laws would be futile because too many politicians are afraid to defy the NRA. But there are at least four examples from American history -- including two snatched from recent headlines -- where ordinary people and unforeseen events defeated a seemingly invincible lobbying group, and hardly anyone saw it coming.The other gun lobby The Cuba lobby's defeat was one such example, Bishin says. After Castro took power in 1959, Cubans who fled to Miami were so passionate about his overthrow that no public figure could propose reconciliation for half a century. This small group of Cuban Americans dictated U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. But demographics eventually trumped passion. Older Cubans like Bosch were replaced by a younger generation of Cubans who wanted closer economic and travel ties to their ancestral home, Bishin says. Such a stunning reversal of fortune doomed another organization that was even more powerful than the NRA is today -- a group that one commentator said perfected the art of "political retribution." It was called the Anti-Saloon League.The first political 'pressure group' Cheers erupted across America. People staged rallies and praised God during church services. The Rev. Billy Sunday, a popular evangelist, told a crowd of 10,000 people gathered at a church in Norfolk, Virginia: "Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."They were the most powerful pressure group in history.-- Author Daniel Okrent on the Anti-Saloon League Americans were celebrating congressional approval in 1919 of the Volstead Act, which enforced Prohibition. The temperance movement helped make Prohibition possible. But the group that pushed through passage of the 18th Amendment was the Anti-Saloon League, or the ASL. The ASL was led by Wayne Wheeler, who coined the term "pressure group." Under Wheeler, the ASL pioneered lobbying tactics now routinely used by groups like the NRA, says Daniel Okrent, author of "The Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition." "I'm convinced that they were the most powerful pressure group in American history," Okrent says. "They brought about a constitutional amendment." Part of its power came from its singular focus. The ASL was interested in only one issue: making America dry. Wheeler forged alliances across party lines, as well as with clergy, populists and the Ku Klux Klan. The group even supported politicians who drank -- so long as they voted for dry laws. "They didn't care if you murdered every third child or started a war with Cuba," Okrent says, "if you're on their side against alcohol, they're with you." The ASL used money to control politicians. It raised funds through a network of churches and distributed the cash to any politician who supported anti-alcohol legislation. At its peak, the ASL had an annual budget that topped $50 million in today's dollars, wrote Bryan Alexander in a 2010 article for Mutineer, a magazine for the fine beverage industry. A look at the money behind the NRA "Wheeler donated so much to campaigns that for decades he was the largest single campaign supporter in the United States," Alexander wrote. "He could make or break presidents and hand-pick senators. In any given campaign season, the Anti-Saloon League would contribute as much money to Senate and presidential races as any 12 donors combined." The ASL was formed for one purpose, according to its founder, the Rev. Howard Hyde Russell -- "administering political retribution." The ASL was able to say to any politician: "Are you with us or are you against us? And if you are against us we will defeat you. And if you are with us we will elect you," said Okrent, whose book formed the basis for Ken Burns' PBS documentary, "Prohibition."America went dry in 1919 with Prohibition. Authorities poured liquor into the sewers of cities like New York. In 1903, Wheeler gave a ruthless display of public retribution. The ASL targeted 70 Ohio lawmakers who defied the group -- and swept them all out of office in elections. It then successfully mobilized voters to boot Ohio's popular but anti-Prohibition governor, Myron T. Herrick, from power. It was said that, whenever politicians across the country contemplated crossing the ASL, they would warn one another with, "Remember what happened to Herrick." Even the powerful liquor industry couldn't stop the ASL. Brewers and distillers fought back by bribing politicians, creating lobbying groups that called the temperance movement "fanatical," and surreptitiously paying newspaper editors to run anti-Prohibition articles. But Okrent said they couldn't beat the ASL's singular focus, its coalition-building ability and the religious fervor of its base: churchgoers scattered across America who saw their crusade against alcohol as an "apocalyptic battle." The ASL could control politicians, but not the unintended consequences of Prohibition, which spawned organized crime and the rise of gangsters such as Al Capone. Fed-up Americans opened up "speakeasies" across the country. Pharmacists stocked "medicinal liquor" and sold Old Grand-Dad and Johnnie Walker by prescription, while many Americans brewed alcohol in their homes. Even President Warren G. Harding was rumored to keep bootleg liquor in the White House. What really hurt the ASL, though, was the onset of the Great Depression. "The Depression came on and there was no more tax revenue for the federal government," Okrent says. "People were saying, 'Where are we going to get the money to keep the lights on?' The primary tax revenue before Prohibition was alcohol." Prohibition ended in 1933 with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. And so did the ASL. "By the middle 1930s, it was a toothless organization," Okrent says. Wheeler died of exhaustion at age 58 in 1927. When Prohibition was passed, people predicted he would be remembered as one of the most important people in America's history. Yet who remembers Wheeler or the ASL today?Big Tobacco gets smoked If the rise and fall of the ASL seems so long ago, there's another example from recent history where a lobbying colossus took a sudden fall. Remember Big Tobacco? If you think the United States is filled with guns, it was also once filled with smokers. Check out old Hollywood movies -- the country was once enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. The U.S. was a nation of people happily puffing away, and much of that was due to the power of the biggest cigarette makers, known collectively as "Big Tobacco." They were sitting in front of Congress looking them straight in the eye and saying tobacco doesn't cause cancer and Americans said, 'You're crazy.'-- Matt Hale, Seton Hall political scientist on Big Tobaccco executives Scientific evidence that smoking harmed people's health started to surface as early as the 1950s; some even trace the first hint of trouble back to a German medical student's theory in the late 19th century. But Big Tobacco launched a lobbying campaign that encouraged cigarette consumption through product placement in movies, clever advertising, even marketing cigarettes to children through the infamous "Joe Camel" ads. Big Tobacco insulated itself from science for as long as 50 years. It funded massive advertising campaigns that denied that nicotine was addictive and created "filtered" or "low-tar" cigarettes that purported to be healthier. The industry even formed a tobacco research council that cast doubt on scientific studies that concluded cigarettes were harmful. Their advertising tactics may have changed over the years, but one constant remained: Big Tobacco executives consistently refused to admit that cigarettes were a health hazard. Money and deceit, though, can only bend reality for so long. In 1964, the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health released a report that concluded cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer in men. Congress subsequently required a health warning on cigarette packages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later issued numerous reports documenting the harmful effects of smoking, and the CDC sponsored gruesome television commercials featuring emaciated smokers warning others not to take up cigarettes. "Eventually medical knowledge and proof became so overwhelming that no narrative Big Tobacco could come up with could counteract that new narrative," says Kathleen Marchetti, a political science professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Big Tobacco lost because opponents were able to "reframe" the meaning of smoking, Marchetti says. It was no longer a cool, lifestyle choice; it became a deadly habit. States and cities instituted smoking bans for offices, bars and restaurants. Federal officials started raising taxes on cigarettes. Some say that stigmatizing smokers is one of the few socially acceptable prejudices left in America. "People began to realize that by smoking, they weren't just affecting their own health, but people around them that they cared about," Marchetti says. Once upon a time everyone in America seemed to smoke, as portrayed in shows like "Mad Men." Another tipping point came in 1994. It was a riveting scene carried live on cable television. The top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies stood before Congress, raised their right hands as the cameras clicked, and testified they did not believe cigarettes were addictive.And, asked if smoking caused cancer or emphysema, R.J. Reynolds CEO James W. Johnston said, "It may." Asked if he knew that cigarettes caused cancer, Lorillard CEO Andrew H. Tisch said, "I do not believe that." For some observers, that was the moment Big Tobacco's deceitfulness became evident to millions of Americans. "They were sitting in front of Congress looking them straight in the eye and saying tobacco doesn't cause cancer," says Matthew Hale, a political scientist at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. "And Americans said, 'You're crazy.'" Some even predict smoking will eventually vanish in America. In 1964, about 42% of adults in the United States smoked. Today that number is under 18%, according to the CDC. Big Tobacco has adjusted, though. It's taken its techniques overseas, and sales are growing in Africa, Asia and Latin America. "They're selling cigarettes in Thailand instead of Tennessee now," Hale says.Why this man gives 10% of his income to the NRALessons for today Some may argue that lessons from Big Tobacco and the ASL don't apply in a post-Citizens United landscape where money rules in politics. But some observers cite current events as well. After Cuba, Obama scored another huge foreign policy victory by taking on another political lobbying group that seemed unbeatable. AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that has been compared to the NRA for its effectiveness, mobilized to scuttle Obama's recent nuclear deal with Iran. Pundits confidently predicted that it had no chance of surviving a congressional vote. Yet Obama prevailed in what may be his crowning foreign policy achievement. Commentators say AIPAC was defeated as much by its own hubris as by Obama's tactics. The administration outmaneuvered the deal's opponents by getting Congress to agree it could only pass a resolution of disapproval subject to the president's veto -- leaving supporters with the much easier task of needing only 34 Senate votes. But AIPAC also misjudged public opinion on the deal, not realizing that most American Jews did not see it as an existential threat to Israel. And AIPAC overreached when it tied itself to the Republican Party, observers say. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner's invitation and denounce the deal before a joint meeting of Congress backfired. It transformed the deal into a partisan issue, giving Democrats more cover to support it, some commentators said.AIPAC failed to block the nuclear deal John Kerry negotiated with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif. No one, though, is predicting Obama can outflank the NRA. Its leadership has repeatedly beaten back politicians and public opinion. Americans appear to want at least some changes to gun laws. A poll conducted in July by the Pew Research Center showed that a large majority of Americans -- 79% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats -- favor background checks for gun shows and private sales. But when asked which is more important -- controlling gun ownership or protecting gun rights -- Americans are more evenly divided. According to the Pew survey, 50% favored control vs. 47% for rights. Meanwhile, a CNN/ORC poll in September showed that most Americans think current gun laws are about right or too harsh and doubt that expanded background checks would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill or convicted criminals. Overall, 41% say existing laws make it too easy for people to buy guns, down from 56% about a month after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. About half, 49%, say current laws are about right, and 10% say they make it too difficult to buy a gun. The NRA has successfully opposed calls for changing gun laws. Pessimism about any hope for change seems pervasive. One British commentator, referring to the 20 children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook, tweeted: "Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over." Maybe. Yet history and even current events suggest that change often comes in unexpected ways.The business of guns The ASL couldn't anticipate the Great Depression, or that Prohibition would spawn the rise of organized crime. Big Tobacco and the Marlboro Man couldn't stare down critics once smoking became reframed as a public health hazard. People like Orlando Bosch slid into irrelevance in Miami's Cuban community as a new generation arose. Perhaps some of the same forces that brought down Big Tobacco and the Cuba lobby will one day check the power of the NRA. "American politics is constantly changing," says Hale, the Seton Hall political scientist. "Things are always moving; it's never static." Some have suggested that the NRA will lose power if guns are reframed as something uncool, like cigarettes. Others say driving a wedge between the NRA's leaders and members may work. Meanwhile, some gun rights supporters say no change in laws will ever stop a mass shooting -- that only a good guy with a gun beats a bad guy with one.The prospect of any check on the NRA's power may seem unrealistic when mass shootings take place with numbing regularity and big money rules politics. But then again, the notion that Wayne Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League would be reduced to anonymity a dozen years after the passage of Prohibition seemed far-fetched to Americans of another era.

Story by Moni Basu, CNN Video by Nick Scott, CNN Photographs by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Reportage for CNN

2016-04-23 11:37:27

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/23/health/nepal-earthquake-anniversary-one-girls-remarkable-recovery/index.html

Nepal quake: One girl's remarkable recovery - CNN

The April 25, 2015, quake in Nepal changed the life of 10-year-old Maya Gurung. A few days later, a second quake altered her life's trajectory again. This time, in a way no one could have imagined.

Nepal, earthquake, anniversary, Maya, health, Nepal quake: One girl's remarkable recovery - CNN

From the darkness of disaster, a ray of hope for one girl in Nepal

Story highlightsA year ago, the Nepal earthquake changed the life of 10-year-old Maya GurungDoctors amputated her left leg; life looked bleak for the village girl Then a second quake altered her life again, in a way no one could have imaginedCNN's Moni Basu returns to Nepal to find a ray of hope in a nation still in despairKathmandu, Nepal (CNN)On this hot April day in the Nepalese capital, Maya Gurung wears black tights under a striped knee-length dress. She is trying not to be conspicuous, but other details give her away.At 4 feet 10 inches, she towers over classmates barely out of toddler stage. At lunch, she is the only one who doesn't need a bib. And all the other children call her Maya didi, using the Nepali term of respect for an older sister. Maya will be 11 soon and only recently made it to kindergarten. Still, it is a triumph she has come this far.Maya is not from this bustling city, which lures mountaineers aiming for Everest and tourists mesmerized by the Himalayan kingdom's rich history and culture. She comes from a remote and rugged place not frequented by outsiders. She is one of six children in a family that lives off the land and livestock in Kashi Gaon, a village in Nepal's mountainous Gorkha District. Maya helped her mother with cooking, cleaning and fetching firewood and water. She was destined to be married at a tender age and grow old within the confines of her birthplace.Read MoreShe knew little of the world outside. Life's possibilities escaped her. But a year ago, on April 25, the earth shook violently for a minute, and in those 60 devastating seconds, Maya's life was forever changed.Her left leg was crushed and could not be saved. Several days later, a second quake rattled Nepal, bringing down more buildings, ending more lives. On that day, Maya's trajectory changed again, but in a way no one could have predicted. The second quake gave her a rare second chance at life in a nation ravaged by nature's cruelty.Ten-year-old Maya Gurung lost a leg in the earthquake a year ago but gained something else: a chance at a new future. Nearly 9,000 people died in Nepal in the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and the 7.3 aftershock; millions of lives were shattered. Recovery has been so slow that some people here say their country will never be the same. Centuries-old buildings and temples lie cracked or in ruins, like festering national wounds. In many areas, the rubble remains. Thousands live under makeshift shelters fashioned from plastic, bamboo and corrugated tin. Maya might have been one of them.I first met her just days after the first quake in the Kathmandu hospital where her leg was amputated. She was confined to a bed; thick bandages covered her fresh wound. I visited her several times and when I left, I carried with me an image of a frightened little girl, traumatized and howling in pain.A year later, I returned to the Nepalese capital to learn if anything good had blossomed from the horror. A new beginningI arrive at a large house on the outskirts of the city, eager to speak with Maya. My first glimpse of her on this trip is vastly different. She is sitting on a sunny porch, amid pots of pink geraniums and pinwheel petunias. The garden is lush with flowers and organically grown vegetables. She has been on holiday during the Nepali new year break and has just returned from a short trip home to see her family in Kashi Gaon. The next day, she will return to Angel's Garden, the kindergarten she has been attending for almost a year.She gets up from her chair, and I can see she looks healthier. She has traded the cement-like millet porridge that filled her belly in the village for finer fare like rice and chicken curry.Except for her limp, it's hard to tell she is missing part of her left leg, her prosthetic concealed on this day by yellow pants and dark socks. There are few hints of the tragedy that befell her.She plays with Luna, the dog that belongs to the owners of this house, a family that has embraced her as their own. She speaks very little, but I attribute that to timidity. She is a quiet, reserved girl.In this part of Kathmandu, in this house, there are no telltale signs of the events a year ago that splintered thousands of lives -- except in the kitchen. There, a white board is filled with family scribbles and these words:"Great Earthquake of 2015. April 25. May 12."Maya recites phrases in English in her kindergarten. She will soon turn 11 and hopes to catch up to children her age. A bleak futureApril 25 last year fell on a Saturday, and that morning Maya had no school. She woke up and walked up the hill to carry back drinking water for her family, like she did every morning. There was no indoor plumbing or potable water at the family's home. The dirt paths in Kashi Gaon are steep, uneven and laden with rocks, pebbles and boulders. Maya has grown adept at navigating them. Everyone gets accustomed to walking long distances in Gorkha; it's a way of life in Nepal's mountainous districts, the only way to get around.Maya's father, Bhim Bahadur Gurung, is an uneducated man who worked the fields growing barley and maize or tending goats and cattle. The prize of his hardscrabble life: his house and wife and children.Maya's baby sister was only 3 months old and her mother, Mukni, depended on her elder daughter as a vital extra set of hands. Though Maya walked 50 minutes to school on weekdays and had made it to the fourth grade, education was not the family priority. Almost 40% of the women in Gorkha District are illiterate. That Saturday morning, Maya finished her chores and set off with her uncle Dami and his 5-year-old daughter, Manisha, to graze cows. They made their way to lower ground and drifted far from Maya's home. At 11:56 a.m., the earth rumbled under Maya's feet. Her entire world was moving and it felt as though the Himalayas would swallow everyone whole. A storm of boulders, rocks, parts of houses and other debris came hurtling down the mountainside.Dami gathered the two girls and began running for shelter. He tried to dodge the rocks but could not. A boulder crushed Maya's left foot and lower leg. She screamed in pain as her uncle, also injured, carried Maya and his own badly bruised daughter, trying to get back to their village.Maya's parents did not know where she was. Her father returned from the fields to an apocalyptic sight. Almost every house in Kashi Gaon, including his family's, lay flattened or badly damaged. Gorkha was one of two districts that were hardest hit.Bhim Bahadur searched frantically until he finally found his daughter, wrapped her leg in rags and tried to find help. The few medical facilities in Kashi Gaon that are equipped to treat earthquake injuries were reduced to rubble. JUST WATCHEDNepal then, and now ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHNepal then, and now 02:33It took time for rescue helicopters to navigate Gorkha District's hilly terrain. Maya's mangled leg remained untreated. Finally, on Sunday, Bhim Bahadur hopped aboard a Nepalese army chopper with Maya. But when it stopped to pick up more of the injured, he was ordered off. He watched the helicopter lift to the sky, carrying his daughter away, thankful for the aid she would get but anxious that she would face her darkest moments alone.He hitchhiked, boarded buses and walked to Kathmandu. He searched hospital after hospital until he finally found Maya four days later. She was at Tribhuban University Teaching Hospital, where many earthquake victims were receiving free or low-cost care.Hot tears streamed down her dust-caked cheeks. A green woolen blanket covered her from the waist down on bed number 41. She grabbed her father tight. Bhim Bahadur's relief was short-lived. He soon saw the bandage on Maya's leg, with a date scribbled on it. Doctors told him they were forced to amputate from the shin down, that it would have been much worse had they taken her leg above the knee.It didn't matter. He knew instantly what the future held for his daughter.Nepal's steep and rocky land would show her no mercy. She would no longer be able to help out at home and would have to be carried everywhere. And when she grew older, who would take care of her? No man would want her as a bride. Life in Nepal is filled with uncertainties for poor people like Maya. The earthquake made lives even more ominous.Maya, who towers over classmates, otherwise tries to blend in by wearing tights over her prosthetic even when it's warm. The Good SamaritanJwalant Gurung shares a last name with Maya, common to Nepalis who belong to the Gurung ethnic group. But he might as well be a foreigner. His life is that different from hers. Jwalant, 40, grew up in Kathmandu, the son of a former soldier in the British Army's famed Gurkha Regiment and a pioneer in Nepal's trekking industry. His father, Dinesh Gurung, worked in the nation's first trekking company and then launched his own, Crystal Mountain Treks, in 1990. Jwalant earned an MBA from the University of Washington and worked a few jobs before he returned to his true love: the mountains. He took over his father's business after he retired and now competes with about 1,700 other travel agencies that help guide the thousands of foreigners who flock to Nepal each year to hike and climb in the Himalayas.Jwalant, the city slicker, is as adept at traversing the terrain of Gorkha District as the villagers. But he is more than a mountaineer.For his MBA project, he organized a fundraising climb of Washington's Mount Rainier to further rural education in places like Kashi Gaon. Since then, his charity, 3 Summits for Nepal, has built six schools and is in the process of finishing two more. He believes in the power of education. He's seen it in his own home, where his parents, over the years, have taken in children from disenfranchised families and given them a chance to improve their lots in life.A year ago, on April 25, Jwalant was on a scouting trek on the Kopra Ridge, a route in the shadows of the snow-capped Annapurna range. When the Earth began convulsing, Jwalant ran for his life and made it back safely to Kathmandu, where he began helping earthquake victims. Singla, a village near the epicenter, was home to one of his guides and several of his porters. The disaster had become personal.By May 12, Jwalant had walked for two days and reached the village of Rumchet with tarps, medicine, blankets and rice. That was when the second quake, a massive 7.3 aftershock, struck.More homes crumbled or stood precariously on ledges, waiting for a landslide to take them down. In the chaos, Jwalant spotted a girl traveling with her family. She was missing her left leg and one of her brothers was carrying her on his back. Jwalant wanted to help.His friend, Bibek Banskota, was an orthopedic surgeon whose father, also a doctor, had returned to Nepal from America many years ago to treat underprivileged children from remote villages. Jwalant knew Bibek would agree to examine the girl.It wasn't easy to convince Maya's father, but Jwalant assured him he would take care of his precious daughter. He brought her back to Kathmandu, where she was treated at the Banskotas' nonprofit Hospital and Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Children, which specializes in pediatric orthopedics. In the weeks that followed, Maya settled into Jwalant's house and was fitted with a prosthetic. Outside the hospital, rows and rows of tents provided shelter for earthquake victims desperately needing care. Inside, Maya's life had taken an unexpected turn.Maya gets ready for school. Because she is still growing, she must periodically be fitted with a new prosthetic. City life for a village girlThe house with the garden where I first see Maya again belongs to Jwalant's parents, Dinesh and Anita. Maya is spending her last day of vacation there before returning to Kathmandu and the start of the new school year.Two of the children Anita and Dinesh have taken in over the years are also here on this day. Ashmaya is 15 now; Nirmala, 25.Ashmaya fell ill with meningitis as a child, and it left her completely blind. Anita, a retired teacher, pays for her education at a nearby boarding school.Nirmala is the daughter of a rickshaw puller who was sponsored by an Italian tourist to attend Anita's school. But after three years, he vanished and Anita took Nirmala under her wing. She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and works for Crystal Mountain Treks. "Nirmala has become like my own daughter," Anita tells me, looking with pride at the young woman dressed in jeans and a North Face shirt.In Nirmala, Anita sees what Maya could be one day. But the transformation won't be easy. The village schools in Nepal are often crowded and lack resources and good teachers. Maya was in the fourth grade, but her knowledge and skills were on nursery level when she arrived at her new school in Kathmandu. She didn't speak much. She didn't know any English or even Nepali -- she communicated in the Gurung dialect.Jwalant's world was alien to Maya. She was plucked from a poor village in one of the poorest countries in the world and suddenly exposed to a lifestyle of upscale restaurants, gyms, private cars and shopping malls.And it was not just the shock of leaving Kashi Gaon for Kathmandu. Maya was still coping with her own earthquake trauma. "It will take time," Anita says. "Maya is not very open with us. When she first came here she knew nothing. But she has learned many things -- to stay neat and clean, wash her hands before eating, combing her hair. She has learned the alphabet and is speaking a little bit."Anita pats Maya's shoulder and continues: "Had Jwalant not met her, what would have happened to her? She is the luckiest girl." Later in the day, the family gets ready for a friend's wedding. Anita has decided to take Maya with her, as part of her education.Weddings in this part of the world can be extravagant events, lavish displays of wealth. At the rented party hall in central Kathmandu, men are in suits and women in expensive silk saris. Maya wears a simple cotton kameez (a long tunic) over black jeans and socks to cover her prosthetic. She follows Anita around. In the receiving line, she cannot take her eyes off the bride, resplendent in a coral sari with gold brocade. Maya is not always able to express her hopes and fears. But I can imagine her thinking about the day she might become a bride, about looking like a princess. Perhaps now there is a chance to realize those dreams.The wedding, Anita tells me, is a good life experience for Maya. Maya thinks so too, especially after two servings of ice cream. But everywhere she goes are reminders of who she is and where she came from. Two teenage girls sit next to Maya and ask what grade she is in. Kindergarten, Maya answers. The girls look surprised and size her up. Nirmala feels compelled to explain. "She came from a village."Maya washes her clothes outside the home of a family that has given her a new life in Kathmandu. A winnerThe next morning, Maya returns to Jwalant's house in the city. It's where he was raised. The trekking business consumes the ground floor; Maya sleeps upstairs in the room that once belonged to Jwalant's sister. Maya's kindergarten, Angel's Kingdom, is a 10-minute walk from the house. Anything longer than that becomes too painful. When she went home during the break, she walked eight hours to reach her parents' place, the prosthetic leg chafing her skin until it was bloody. Jwalant takes Maya to see her orthopedic surgeon every three months. Because she is still growing, she has to be fitted with a new leg periodically. When she reaches adulthood, Jwalant hopes to get her a high-tech prosthetic, perhaps titanium.At school, Maya smiles and plays with the innocence of her 5-year-old cohorts. She rarely talks about the earthquake; she says she doesn't remember everything that happened. Who could blame her if she has willed her memory to be fuzzy? In the heat of summer, her teachers encourage her to remove the prosthetic, but Maya refuses. She wants to look normal.Jwalant enrolled her at Angel's Kingdom because the small school emphasizes creativity and uses alternative ways of teaching. (Learning by rote tends to be more common in Nepal.) The children are encouraged to draw, sing and interact. Maya, says Jwalant, was starving for all these things. He shows me her first-term report card -- a series of As and only one B for spelling. "She is very talented," wrote a teacher, "but needs to improve her speaking ability."The grades are no doubt lenient, but Jwalant says Maya has changed during the past year. She is no longer the scared little girl he ran into on a rugged mountainside. Underneath Maya's fragile facade, Jwalant sees a quiet strength. "A child that age to have lost a leg like that, to have gone through all that trauma, she's definitely a winner," he says. "I've not seen her sit in the corner and cry, or cry for her parents. I know if I had lost my leg I'd be angry at the world ... but you don't see that in her."Maya's father says he is content to have his daughter live with Jwalant in Kathmandu. He recognizes the constraints on her if she returned to the village, and he has come to understand the value of schooling."I will let her stay as long as she can stay," he says. "She has to be happy."But caring for Maya isn't always easy for Jwalant, who is not married and does not have children of his own. Maya calls him "Dai," the Nepali term for older brother. I ask if he thinks of Maya as a daughter."I think I'd say I'm like a godfather because she does have parents, and I don't want to take that from them," he says. "I do love her."Joyful moments like this seemed unattainable just a year ago as Maya lay wincing in pain in a hospital bed. Luck -- and fateIt's instinctive to think of Maya as a lucky girl, especially in the greater context of Nepal. In some places I visited on my return here, the earthquake feels fresh, as though it struck yesterday. That's how slow the recovery process has been. Hundreds of thousands of Nepalis, including those in Maya's village, are living in temporary or unsafe housing, desperate for assistance so they can get their lives back on track. "I definitely think she was lucky to run into me that day," Jwalant tells me one evening. "But on the other hand, she lost a leg. I don't know how you weigh one against the other."From disaster, he says, came a chance for one little Nepali girl, a chance to learn, to grow, to lead a full life that may have been denied her had she remained secluded in her village, mired in a life of poverty.But as much of a dreamer as Jwalant may be, he is also a pragmatic man. He acknowledges that saving Maya in a moment of utter despair is not enough. Success requires a toughness on Maya's part. She will not succeed, he tells me, if she doesn't have a will of steel. I look at Maya as she plays with Jwalant's puppies. They crawl over her back and on top of her head. She smiles and giggles like any young girl. I could not have imagined this scene the first time I saw her wincing in pain on a hospital bed.The earthquake a year ago threatened Maya with lifelong misery. The second tremor created a twist so fortuitous that it made hope possible amid destruction and despair. But her fate in post-earthquake Nepal remains undetermined. Ultimately, only Maya holds the key.

Story by Nick Thompson, CNN Photographs by Jerome Sessini/Magnum Photos for CNN

2016-03-26 03:24:17

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world

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/25/world/tale-of-two-brussels/index.html

A tale of two Brussels - CNN

The deadliest terrorist attack in Belgian history has turned the spotlight on a city at odds with itself. The mood in Brussels is one of defiance -- and fear.

world, A tale of two Brussels - CNN

A tale of two Brussels

Brussels, Belgium (CNN)Every time Haroun Zamouri leaves his house, there's a chance he will be searched. It's getting to him, and when he's finished with university, he's gone. Inga Skaara moved to Brussels recently from the West Bank because she was fed up with the violence. But it feels like the bloodshed followed her here. Alicia Gabam was expecting this to happen, she just didn't know when. Now she is wondering if it will happen again.It was Brussels' darkest hour -- three explosions heralding the arrival of pure, unbridled terror in the heart of Europe. Photos: Portraits of BrusselsKhadija Zamouri was born in Molenbeek. She says people forget that the Muslim community is also a victim of the bombings.Hide Caption 1 of 8 Photos: Portraits of BrusselsLike thousands of parents across the country, Jonathan Williams is struggling to find ways to explain to his young daughter what happened on Tuesday.Hide Caption 2 of 8 Photos: Portraits of BrusselsJoelle Scott was in her office when the bomb went off. "I don't think it's finished. They're everywhere in every land," she says. "The politicians didn't do enough before -- and now it's too late."Hide Caption 3 of 8 Photos: Portraits of BrusselsNohaila, 21, was born and raised in Molenbeek. "Yesterday I was in the Place de la Bourse (where people gathered to mourn the victims) and a man spat on my foot. He said, 'Get out! Everything that has happened is because of you Muslims.'"Hide Caption 4 of 8 Photos: Portraits of BrusselsMoumen Hamdouch, a French expat who has lived in the suburb of Ixelles for a decade, says he thinks the government needs to do a better job of unifying troubled communities.Hide Caption 5 of 8 Photos: Portraits of Brussels"I have a 7-year-old daughter named Acelya," Dogan says. "She's so young, she can't really feel the impact of what's happening. It was far from her school. I try not to tell her all about this monstrous world."Hide Caption 6 of 8 Photos: Portraits of BrusselsHalima Abdelkader has known Salah Abdeslam since he was a little boy, she says. "I've known his family for decades. We started our families at the same time, and they're certainly not radical people."Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: Portraits of Brussels"Brussels is good -- or it was good before all of this," Jose, 40, says. "It's still good, but there are religious tensions now. Some neighborhoods aren't so easy for the police." Hide Caption 8 of 8The fear of a homegrown attack had been building for months, accumulating in the collective psyche of the Belgian capital like gray clouds in the sky. And when the storm finally hit on Tuesday, 35 people lost their lives, killed in suicide attacks on an airport and a rush-hour subway train by a group of young men who grew up here.Read MoreRiding the mood of Brussels commutersThe deadliest terrorist attack in Belgian history has turned the spotlight on a city at odds with itself. Brussels is at war in peacetime, the beauty of its medieval cobblestone streets marred by the ugly presence of green military trucks on seemingly every corner. The mood is one of defiance, mixed with the fear that another attack could happen at any minute. And while everyone in this shell-shocked city is grieving and searching for answers, not everyone is asking the same question.In the glimmering glass high-rises of the European Quarter, the country's leaders are asking themselves how security forces that blanketed the city for months still let the bombers slip through the cracks.In the tranquil district of Anderlecht, parents are wondering how to explain the horrific events of the past few months to their young children -- and whether their children are safe at school.And in the worn-out working class neighborhood of Molenbeek, mothers don't know if their children will come home at all -- and are asking how long they will have to continue to pay for the sins of a few. Young men play cricket in the streets of Molenbeek.If the Berlaymont is one of the most recognizable buildings in the city, the most notorious is a gray and redbrick three-story building in Molenbeek. It was here that Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was captured by Belgian authorities in mid-March after four months on the run, hiding in an apartment not 500 meters from the house where he grew up.In the four months since the Paris attacks, this immigrant neighborhood -- just a 20-minute drive west of European Union headquarters -- has become synonymous with jihadism. But the community here tells a different story, one of hard-working people who feel angry and disconnected from a society that doesn't seem to want them. 5 reasons why terrorists struck BelgiumAt the Bienvenue Café, football banners hang from faded pink walls. Old men sip coffee and play cards as the latest news bulletins emanate from a corner TV. The apartment building where Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in mid-March.A man named Said is eating lunch at the next table over. Like many others in the neighborhood, he declined to give his last name. "The people here are as nice as anywhere," he says. "It's a community -- we know each other and help each other out."He says men like Abdeslam are giving Molenbeek a bad name. "These explosions are not in our culture. Terrorism is not in our culture, and they're making our culture look very bad."The weary expression in Said's voice betrays the general exhaustion of the people in Molenbeek. They are tired of the media, tired of having to apologize and tired of living in fear in their own community.Unraveling the web of the Brussels attackMolenbeek may be the most heavily patrolled neighborhood in Europe. Soldiers and military vehicles are parked on nearly every corner. Anti-terror raids at all times of the day here are a fact of life now. Children play cricket in the streets, but their parents are sometimes too scared to leave their homes.At the Thursday market, men argue over the price of apples as women peruse the stalls, dragging their shopping carts behind them. It could be a scene from any city. This woman's 21-year-old daughter, Nohaila, was spit on at a vigil for the victims.Halima Abdelkader is a mother of four who has lived in Molenbeek most of her life. She says people are close here, that everyone knows everyone -- including the families of the neighborhood's most notorious men. "I've known Salah Abdeslam since he was a little boy. I've known his family for decades," she says. "We started our families at the same time, and they're certainly not radical people." But Abdelkader has seen a shift recently. Molenbeek is trying to maintain its unity, she says, but the space is growing between different communities in Brussels. "In the '80s, Molenbeek was like Marrakech. Now it's like Kabul. It's like a war here," she says. "People in other parts of the city don't see the reality of the situation -- but here we're living in it."When I cross the road I am afraid. It's my country and I'm scared to go out."We're also suffering from these attacks. One woman in our neighborhood went to work and never came back." The regular Thursday market in Molenbeek's Place Communale.Kamal, 35, owns a butcher shop not far from the market. His 7-year-old son Bilal is too young to understand most of what's transpired here in the past four months, and Kamal seems grateful for that. "I don't speak to him about the situation here, and I don't let him watch the news on TV. He's too young. He has other occupations." As the years go by, Kamal says, he feels more and more like a stranger in his own country. "The situation here has gotten bad over the past four months. All Belgian people see Molenbeek as a problem. We are Belgian, but many see us as strangers." It's the same old narrative, says Khadija Zamouri, a member of Parliament who was born in Molenbeek. "It's putting everything together in one pot and saying, 'It's the fault of the Muslims,' and they expect us to apologize for that. And for me, I don't want to apologize for something I'm not part of." Zamouri says people forget that the Muslim community also has been traumatized by the bombings. And although the country is united in grief, she says, the social integration of Belgium's minority communities has fallen short. Ahsan grew up in Molenbeek. He says he knew the attacks would bring more trouble to his neighborhood."It touches our lives," she says. "My daughter is in the third grade, and one of her classmate's aunts is missing. She was on the metro on Tuesday, and that hits really, really close to us." Zamouri's sons also know what it is to feel like strangers in their own hometown. "My two boys look very Arab, and Haroun, the younger of the two, always gets stopped by the police, even before the (Paris) attacks. Whenever he goes out, it's one or two times a week he is checked," she says. "He even has a chain on his trousers so he can get his pass out to show to police. And that's getting to him. He's now studying at university and he says, 'When I'm finished with my studies, I'm gone.' And his older brother is already saving money so he can afford to leave the country."That's really disturbing," she says. "If even my children -- who have had everything, who are not in need -- are looking for a way to get out of here, what about children who have no chances, no parents behind them to guide them?" A woman rides a train on Line 1 the morning after the attacks. 'She can feel the fear around us'On a normal day, the courtyards surrounding the Berlaymont building would be filled with diplomats and professionals, rushing back and forth between lunch and the glistening towers that represent the center of European democracy. But Thursday the European Quarter was mostly empty. Schuman, the train station that serves the "heart of Europe," as a nearby sign says, was closed to the public -- although the escalator was still running. Faces of fear and hope in BrusselsJonathan Williams works nearby but lives in Anderlecht, just south of Molenbeek. Like thousands of parents across the country, he is struggling to find ways to explain the attacks to his daughter. "She's still young, but she can feel the fear around us," he says. "Her teachers try to find the right words to explain what's happening without traumatizing her. But still, you can feel fear. "So we try to put some words on it without being too dramatic -- we don't want to worry her. We try to explain the probability to her. ... There are many metros. For a child you have to generalize so they don't get worried." The grounds of the Berlaymont — headquarters of the European Commission — were almost empty on Thursday.What worries Williams is the world's inability to stop these kinds of attacks from happening. "New York, Paris, Brussels -- it's saddest for the children, the world that they're going to grow up into. And it seems so difficult to find a solution to this problem. These people don't care about living, and you can't control everything."My partner and I were saying yesterday that we'd like to move to an island and grow tomatoes," he says, laughing. "But we have to live with it, with love. It can bring out the good side of people when this happens."'Now it's too late'Five minutes down the road, the entrance to Maelbeek station, where 20 people died Tuesday, is still closed. A small group of people lay flowers on the ground outside, some too upset to speak.Brussels terror attacks: Deceased and missingJoelle Scott was in her office around the corner when the bomb went off. The mother of three looks visibly shaken as she recalls the helplessness she felt. Army trucks are now a frequent sight in most areas of central Brussels."We were locked in our building," she says. "All day we heard the sirens of the police, and the ambulances taking people away. We couldn't do anything besides watch out the window and see and hear these people who died on the streets."On Sunday my daughter was at the airport, heading to Stockholm for a school trip," she says. "Every day she takes the train through Maelbeek. Even though I knew she was in Stockholm, I kept thinking she was in the metro. If she hadn't been in Stockholm, it could've been her."Scott, 53, lives out by the airport, but even there she doesn't feel safe anymore. She starts to cry as she continues."In the past four months things have changed," she says. "I am afraid. I am afraid to leave my house. I am afraid to walk my dogs. When I go outside I'm looking everywhere -- maybe (terrorists) are over here, or over there."I think I want to say to my family and my friends every day that I love them, you know? Because maybe this is the last day you'll be able to say that to them."I don't think it's finished. They're everywhere in every land," she says. "The politicians didn't do enough before -- and now it's too late." Aldona lives in Ixelles. She's worried about paying her bills after the school where she works was closed for the week.'Something heavy in the atmosphere'It's only another a 20-minute drive from Molenbeek to Ixelles in the east, but the two districts seem worlds apart. Regal brick townhouses line the ponds that run through the affluent residential part of this area. Parents pick up their kids from music school, and well-heeled couples drink coffee in the nearby café.The blaring of police sirens, ever-present elsewhere in the capital, doesn't seem to reach here. But the fear does. For Lisa Croonenberghs, a pensioner who has lived her entire life in Brussels, the biggest change has been the military on the streets. It may be the new norm in the so-called "croissant pauvre" -- the crescent of poor neighborhoods to the west, including Molenbeek -- but it's a jarring sight in a prosperous neighborhood like this. The tunnel to a metro line is closed at Gare de l'Ouest the morning after the attacks."You (might) feel more secure in Molenbeek," she says with a laugh. "It's possible that the security there is better than it is here."Aldona, a 26-year-old model who lives in the area, has grown accustomed to seeing soldiers patrolling the streets. But she says some of the security measures are excessive -- and she's worried about paying her bills after officials closed the school where she freelances for the week."It's been a big shock to me -- I'm a very sensitive person," she says. "I'm hurt by people's suffering, but I'm also hurt personally because of my finances. I was really counting on that money. For some people it's nothing when they lose some money, but for some other people it's important."It's insane. They let the terrorists win doubly -- some people get killed, and others get poor."Inga Skaara moved to Ixelles recently from Bethlehem because of violence in the West Bank. But it's as if she cannot escape the bloodshed."I came here because I wanted to leave a similar situation," she says. "Not because I was terrified of my daily life, but it wasn't easy. I have a little boy, and with him it was really stressful. "I came here to get away from that and now I'm thinking, where am I going to go now?" Lisa Croonenberghs, right, worries that her grandchildren's school in Ixelles could be attacked.Her partner, Pablo Avendano, says life has become less spontaneous since the Paris attacks. "In the past four months, life has shrunk," he says. "Less movies, concerts, going to the park ... we don't do that as much. There's something heavy in the atmosphere that started in November when the (terrorism) alert level went up."The street less crowdedMoumen Hamdouch works for the European Commission and heard the bomb rip through Maelbeek station. A colleague's husband was on the platform when the train exploded, but survived. "People don't have confidence that the state can keep them secure," he says. "If I have to choose between walking down two streets, I will always take the one that's less crowded, and I won't be in the commercial and pedestrian areas where there are tons of people."Hamdouch, a French expat who has lived in Ixelles for a decade, thinks the government needs to do a better job of unifying troubled communities. Well-wishers scrawl messages on a wall at the Place de la Bourse on the day after the attacks."When I turned up in this country I always thought that, compared to France, Belgium had much better integrated its minorities," he says. "I still think it's true, but the security services and the police have made a mess of it and not done their jobs for years."Some of these authorities in communities like Molenbeek have turned a blind eye to what is happening. They have no clue who's living in their own city, so if you have no clue about who rents what, the basics aren't there in terms of intelligence gathering."Hamdouch, like almost everyone else in Brussels, has been rattled by the attacks. But he's determined not to give in to fear. The evening of the bombings, he saw people filling the city's restaurants and bars, appearing to carry on as normally as possible. "That's what I've done. It was a friend of mine's birthday and he wanted to cancel his party -- but I told him no, don't cancel."He relishes the reaction of the people of this city who are "giving the finger to these guys and continuing to live." Photo editing by Elizabeth I. Johnson and Brett Roegiers.

CNN's Bryony Jones in Paris and Wayne Drash in Atlanta

2015-11-20 22:50:25

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https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/world/paris-attacks-terror-inside-bataclan/index.html

Inside the Bataclan: A night of terror, a tale of love - CNN

The band's fans had always been a tight-knit crowd -- and now never more so. They are bound by one awful night and determined to tell a story of love.

world, Inside the Bataclan: A night of terror, a tale of love - CNN

Inside the Bataclan: A night of terror, a tale of love

Paris (CNN)Lead singer Jesse Hughes scanned the crowd. "When I look around, only two words come to mind: nos amis."Our friends. The band's friends clapped their hands overhead, screamed with delight and hopped with the beat as the drums kicked in and Hughes started to croon. Eagles of Death Metal didn't want to disappoint the sold-out crowd in the Bataclan -- considered by Rolling Stone magazine to be one of the greatest small rock-n-roll venues in the world.In the crowd on this night in November were Pat and Maria Moore, who had followed the band to 14 countries with a group of loyal friends. Maria had injured her ribs in the mosh pit at a concert in England about a week before, but nothing could keep her away from this Friday the 13th performance.Friday night interrupted: Paris survivor storiesHélène Muyal-Leiris danced with one of her friends from childhood. It was a night off for the mother of a 17-month-old boy. Her husband was home with their son, happy to see his wife enjoy what she loved: literature, movies and music. She was a free spirit, always talking about the need for the world to get along. The funky American band seemed to her a combination of her passions.Read MoreIsobel Bowdery grooved on the main floor with her boyfriend, Amaury Baudoin. The young lovers soaked in the atmosphere. The place pulsated. Up on the balcony, Denys Plaud spun and shimmied to the beat with his shirt off, his torso bare as the music roared around him. He'd moved upstairs to have more room to enjoy his two passions: rock-n-roll and dance.Hughes was aglow in red and yellow spotlights, and the mosh pit grinded along with the singer. After about 30 minutes, the band moved to do its latest tune, a remake of Duran Duran's smash hit "Save A Prayer."The bands had sung the song together in London recently. Now Eagles of Death Metal would do it solo:Don't say a prayer for me nowSave it 'til the morning afterAnd on the morning after, prayers were being said all over the world, for Paris and its people.Resilience amid griefAt least 130 people were killed in seven locations in the city. More than 350 were wounded. The coordinated attack was the deadliest in France since World War II. ISIS claimed responsibility.So much has transpired in one short week: French air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria. An international manhunt for terrorists with raids in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Turkey. The killing of the man considered the ringleader of the assault on Paris.And a warning from ISIS: It has its sights on New York, Rome and Washington.But for many, thoughts keep returning to Friday night, November 13. To those moments in two restaurants, two cafes, a bar, the city's main stadium and the Bataclan. Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPresident Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, second from right, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo arrive at the Bataclan, site of one of the Paris terrorists attacks, to pay their respects to the victims after Obama arrived in town for the COP21 climate change conference early on Monday, November 30, in Paris. Hide Caption 1 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksThe Eiffel Tower in Paris is illuminated in the French national colors on Monday, November 16. Displays of support for the French people were evident at landmarks around the globe after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13.Hide Caption 2 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople hold hands as they observe a minute of silence in Lyon, France, on November 16, three days after the Paris attacks. A minute of silence was observed throughout the country in memory of the victims of the country's deadliest violence since World War II.Hide Caption 3 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksFrench President Francois Hollande, center, flanked by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, right, and French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, center left, stands among students during a minute of silence in the courtyard of the Sorbonne University in Paris on November 16.Hide Caption 4 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA large crowd gathers to lay flowers and candles in front of the Carillon restaurant in Paris on Sunday, November 15. Hide Caption 5 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA man sits next to candles lit as homage to the victims of the deadly attacks in Paris at a square in Rio de Janeiro on November 15.Hide Caption 6 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople light candles in tribute to the Paris victims on November 15 in Budapest, Hungary. Hide Caption 7 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople gather outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on November 15 for a national service for the victims of the city's terror attacks.Hide Caption 8 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople write messages on the ground at Place de la Republique in Paris on November 15. Hide Caption 9 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople pray during a candlelight vigil for victims of the Paris attacks at a church in Islamabad, Pakistan, on November 15. Hide Caption 10 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksFrench golfer Gregory Bourdy passes a peace symbol for the Paris victims during the BMW Shanghai Masters tournament November 15 in Shanghai, China. Hide Caption 11 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA man offers a prayer in memory of victims of the Paris attacks at the French Embassy in Tokyo on November 15. Hide Caption 12 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman holds a candle atop a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower during a candlelight vigil Saturday, November 14, in Vancouver, British Columbia.Hide Caption 13 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksFront pages of Japanese newspapers in Tokyo show coverage and photos of the Paris attacks on November 14.Hide Caption 14 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksAn electronic billboard on a canal in Milan, Italy reads, in French, "I'm Paris," on November 14.Hide Caption 15 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksThe Eiffel Tower stands dark as a mourning gesture on November 14, in Paris. More than 125 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday. People around the world reacted in horror to the deadly terrorist assaults.Hide Caption 16 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksLithuanians hold a candlelight vigil in front of the French Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, on November 14.Hide Caption 17 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksThousands gather in London's Trafalgar Square for a candlelit vigil on November 14 to honor the victims of the Paris attacks. Hide Caption 18 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman lights candles at a memorial near the Bataclan theater in Paris on November 14.Hide Caption 19 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA man places a candle in front of Le Carillon cafe in Paris on November 14.Hide Caption 20 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman holds a French flag during a gathering in Stockholm, Sweden, on November 14.Hide Caption 21 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksNancy Acevedo prays for France during the opening prayer for the Sunshine Summit being held at Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Florida on November 14.Hide Caption 22 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksFrench soldiers of the United Nations' interim forces in Lebanon observe the national flag at half-staff at the contingent headquarters in the village of Deir Kifa on November 14.Hide Caption 23 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA couple surveys the signature sails of the Sydney Opera House lit in the colors of the French flag in Sydney on November 14.Hide Caption 24 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman places flowers in front of the French Consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 14.Hide Caption 25 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksCandles are lit in Hong Kong on November 14 to remember the scores who died in France.Hide Caption 26 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman lights a candle outside the French Consulate in Barcelona, Spain, on November 14.Hide Caption 27 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksBritain's Prince Charles expresses solidarity with France at a birthday barbecue in his honor near Perth, Australia, on November 14. Hide Caption 28 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksThe French national flag flutters at half-staff on November 14 at its embassy in Beijing.Hide Caption 29 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte after a speech on November 14 in The Hague following the attacks.Hide Caption 30 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe becomes emotional after his speech on the French attacks during the opening ceremony of a Japanese garden in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 14.Hide Caption 31 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksA woman mourns outside Le Carillon bar in the 10th district of Paris on November 14. The attackers ruthlessly sought out soft targets where people were getting their weekends underway.Hide Caption 32 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople lay flowers outside the French Embassy in Moscow on November 14.Hide Caption 33 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksMourners gather outside Le Carillon bar in the 10th district of Paris on November 14. "We were listening to music when we heard what we thought were the sounds of firecrackers," a doctor from a nearby hospital who was drinking in the bar with colleagues told Le Monde. "A few moments later, it was a scene straight out of a war. Blood everywhere."Hide Caption 34 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople attend a vigil outside the French Consulate in Montreal. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered "all of Canada's support" to France on Friday, November 13, in the wake of the attacks.Hide Caption 35 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPolice show a heightened presence in Times Square in New York on November 13, following the terrorist attacks in Paris. Hide Caption 36 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople light candles at a vigil outside the French Consulate in Montreal on November 13. Hide Caption 37 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas, fans observe a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris before a basketball game November 13.Hide Caption 38 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksThe house lights are shut off and scoreboard dark as Boston Celtics players pause for a moment of silence for the Paris victims before an NBA basketball game against the Atlanta Hawks in Boston on November 13.Hide Caption 39 of 40 Photos: World reacts to Paris attacksPeople light candles at a vigil outside the French Consulate in Montreal on November 13.Hide Caption 40 of 40By the time police cleared the concert hall, 89 were dead there. Many were 20-somethings, university students or young professionals enjoying the start of their careers.Those who survived live with two competing emotions: gratefulness and grief. Eagles of Death Metal fans have always been a tight-knit crowd -- never more so than now, bound by one awful night and determined to tell a story of love. 'We are here to kill you'Three gunmen came in through the front door. Two wore masks. They were dressed in black and armed with AK-47s and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They said they were retaliating against France's bombing of ISIS in Syria. "We are here to kill you," one shouted. They were calm, acting with precision as they sprayed the concert hall with bullets. One would shoot while the other reloaded. Then, repeat. The gunfire seemed to last an eternity. Scores of fans rushed toward exits. Others jumped on stage and hid behind massive speakers. Many dropped to the ground, struck by bullets, dodging them or paralyzed by fear. Forty-nine-year-old Pat Moore, and his wife Maria, 50, were there with about 10 English and French fans who they'd bonded with over the music. The Moores had witnessed terror before. A decade earlier, they'd been preparing to see another band when suicide bombers struck London's transit system, killing more than 50.JUST WATCHEDMemories of Bataclan concerts go viralReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMemories of Bataclan concerts go viral 01:23The Moores were standing toward the left front of the hall, near the stage. They saw people diving onto the ground and band members running for cover.JUST WATCHEDParis survivor describes hiding in Bataclan bathroom ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHParis survivor describes hiding in Bataclan bathroom 03:01Pat grabbed his wife's arm and pushed her toward a nearby exit. Hélène Muyal-Leiris, 35, fell to the floor amid the hail of bullets. So did her friend Nicolas Strohl, who she'd known since they were both about 12. They lay still as the gunmen executed anyone who showed signs of life.In the balcony, Denys Plaud ran for the stairs to the third floor -- and kept running, up and up, followed by a growing crowd of fans desperate to escape the carnage. They found sanctuary in a tiny room and used a refrigerator to barricade the door.Isobel Bowdery, 22, and her boyfriend, Amaury Baudoin, 24, had gotten separated in the crowd shortly before the shooting. Isobel dove to the ground, blood and bodies all around. She held her breath, trying not to cry. She listened as a wounded couple said their goodbyes. She closed her eyes and pictured everyone she'd ever loved. Amaury was near the stage and struck by shrapnel. Pain shot through his leg and neck. He saw the silhouette of a gunman and hopped onto the stage and kept running. He searched for an exit, then ducked into a bathroom. Others joined him. Soon, more than 50 were inside.Gunfire continued to rattle the hall. He feared for his girlfriend. Was she alive?Huddled in the room, he thought about death. Death at the age of 24. Faces of family and friendsPat and Maria Moore fled toward the exit. They turned back when they realized a friend wasn't with them. He'd been trampled in the crush to escape. He had a broken collar bone and other injuries. He got to the door just as they did.Husband and wife grabbed him. "I'm done for," the friend said. He wanted to sit down. They hoisted him up and made their way down the street.Lead singer Jesse Hughes sprinted past with his girlfriend. "Run, baby, run," he urged her. Upstairs, crammed in a room with at least a dozen others, Denys Plaud could do nothing but sit in the dark and listen to the gunfire -- at first far below, then alarmingly close. The shooting went on for over an hour. Shots. Silence. Then, more shots. Bullets hit the wall. He wondered if it would hold up.In the bathroom backstage, Amaury Baudoin felt a desperate optimism take over. Strangers, huddled together, tried to reassure each other. If the gunmen found them, they decided, they would overpower them."All the while, I was thinking of Isobel."Isobel was amid the carnage on the main floor. But she did not move. She did not flinch. She did not want to alert the killers that she was still alive. She was curled into a fetal position. A wounded man shielded her body. "Don't run," he told her. "Just stay."What do you do when death is at hand?Isobel pictured the faces of her family, her friends. And she whispered over and over: "I love you." Makeshift memorials have popped up outside the Bataclan to honor those killed and wounded inside. 'I just wanted to be with her'Antoine Leiris received a message from his wife's sister. "How are you?" it said.He had not heard Paris was under siege. He turned on the television. He kept thinking anything was possible when he saw the Bataclan was targeted. Then, worry consumed him. He couldn't reach Hélène. He thought of their 17-month-old son growing up without his mother. Married and a mother to a young son, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, was shot inside the concert hall.He spent the next 24 hours searching every hospital in Paris and its suburbs. Hélène was nowhere to be found.Finally, Saturday evening, the medical examiner's office called; his wife's body was there. He went straight to the office. It was closed. He tried to force his way in, but couldn't. "I felt really bad to have left her alone for two nights," Antoine told CNN. "Dead or alive, that was not the point. I just wanted to be with her." 'Overwhelming love'The Moores made their way to a friend's apartment. Still in shock, they drank a bottle of wine and sipped hard whiskey. Four comrades had been shot but survived. They nicknamed one of them "Two Bullets." "We've had so much support," Maria Moore said. "There's been an overwhelming amount of love and even laughs in the past few days."Laughter, even amid the tears. The friends had decided to meet up at the Paris show in honor of a woman in their network, a rock photographer, who had committed suicide last year. "We think she was looking after us all in there, because we all made it out."Maria paused. "I don't know if I believe in that stuff. But it's a comforting thought." Maria Moore, second from right, with friends.The terror won't prevent the group from doing what they love. They'll still dance at rock gigs. They'll still visit Paris. "We'll go back the first chance we get."Denys Plaud was evacuated by police from the balcony. He was shaken up "in a bad way" and took shelter in a nearby courtyard where local residents offered him clothes to keep warm and a bed for the night.But like the Moores, he remains committed to his beloved music. Reflecting on his decision to move from the lower floor to the balcony because there was more room to dance, he said, "That's probably what saved my life."Hélène Muyal-Leiris died in her friend's arms at the Bataclan. Her husband Antoine was reunited with her body on Monday. He penned a Facebook post that went viral. "On Friday evening you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son," he wrote, "but you will not have my hatred." He later elaborated on why he felt it was important to write such a tribute. "I didn't have a choice," he told CNN, "if I wanted my son to grow up as a human being who is open to the world around him, like his mother, to grow up as a person who will love what she loved: literature, culture, music, cinema, pictures."JUST WATCHEDHusband to terrorists: 'I will not succumb to hate'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHusband to terrorists: 'I will not succumb to hate' 03:35He sat with his son. They talked about how much they miss her. They listened to music she would play, and together they cried."My son is only 17 months old, but he feels everything. He knows everything," Antoine said. "The grief is here and we keep it as a 'treasure' -- it is a souvenir of her. We don't pretend we're not sad, that we're not devastated. "No, we are -- but we're still standing."Isobel Bowdery and Amaury Baudoin weren't sure if the other had survived.Amaury doesn't recall how much time he spent in hiding. When at last he and the others were escorted out of the hall, police told them to keep their eyes on the ceiling. But Amaury glanced around."My eyes swept the room, my stomach churning at the thought of finding Isobel sprawled in the center of this disaster," he wrote on Facebook."There were bodies everywhere. ... It wasn't a war scene. It was a slaughter house."Isobel had been taken to a police safe area. She worried about Amaury's fate. It had been hours since they last saw one another. She heard a voice crying her name. "Isobel! ISOBEL!" It was distant at first, but grew closer. She ran toward Amaury and leapt into his arms, draping herself around his neck. JUST WATCHEDCouple shares their story of escaping Bataclan ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCouple shares their story of escaping Bataclan 05:57They were alive. They thought of all the others who perished, especially the 20-somethings, revellers of music.It is for them they now live."As much as the terror and the anguish that was in that room," Isobel told CNN, "there was a lot of love. There was a lot of positivity in such a tragic, tragic place." The terrorists, she was determined, would not win. "I didn't want them to have their horrible actions determine the end of my life. I wanted the people that I loved to win -- to know that they blessed me with an incredible life. "It was important that if I was going to die -- if the next bullet was for me -- that I left saying I love you. And in that way, it felt OK to die, because I had love in my heart."It is the feeling she carries with her now, in the city known as an international symbol of love.That's the best way, she said, to defeat terrorism.CNN's Anderson Cooper, Poppy Harlow, Hala Gorani, Lauren Moorhouse, Saskya Vandoorne and Florence Davey-Attlee contributed to this story.

Story by Mariano Castillo, CNN Photography by Fernando Decillis for CNN

2016-04-12 22:54:38

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world

https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/12/world/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration/index.html

Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Faces of a divided island - CNN

How centuries of racism shaped the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- and continue to echo through a modern-day immigration crisis.

world, Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Faces of a divided island - CNN

Faces of a divided island

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (CNN)The anti-immigrant rhetoric on the radio, in shops and in the streets is familiar: The influx from our poorer neighbor is overwhelming. They steal jobs. They are dangerous. They take advantage of our laws. So is the counterweight: They are seeking better lives. They do the labor-intensive jobs locals won't. They contribute to the economy. This isn't about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or deporting undocumented Central American immigrants. It's an argument taking place 700 miles off the coast of Miami on the island of Hispaniola, home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti -- two nations divided by history as much as a border.Read MoreIt's an uneasy coexistence for countries whose intertwined histories of colonization, conquest and racism over the centuries have left deep wounds. In recent years, controversial court rulings and laws have renewed tensions in the Dominican Republic. Hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent were stripped of their citizenship and forced to prove they were born here. Hundreds of thousands more who are undocumented immigrants have been forced to register with the government. In a political fight with arguments similar to the debate in the United States, the immigration hard-liners won. Last year I traveled across the Dominican Republic and Haiti to see the fallout from that battle. Among the people I met: A soccer player who left the Dominican national team because she couldn't prove her nationality, a law student fighting for Haitians' rights, and a woman who saw her town divided along racial lines. Here are their stories amid scenes of life on the island.Raquel Aristilde de Valdez, a Dominican of Haitian descent, is a business owner in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.Foreigner in her own countryStanding in front of her flower shop in Santo Domingo's Pequeño Haiti, or Little Haiti neighborhood, Raquel Aristilde de Valdez introduces herself as Haitian, though she was born here, in the Dominican capital. She belongs to a slice of the Dominican population -- about 2.5% of 10.4 million -- born in the country with at least one immigrant parent. I ask her how she sees herself, and she says "Dominico-Haitian. Fifty-fifty."There is pride evident as she explains how easily she shifts between Dominican Spanish and Haitian Creole, fluent in the languages and cultures of the two countries."I speak Spanish perfectly well, I speak Creole perfectly well," she says. "I eat Haitian food, I eat Dominican food." That between-two-worlds feeling is familiar to children of immigrants.Despite her comfort inside Dominican society, Raquel considers herself an outsider. And she is treated as one. "My skin color, my race, my physical features don't say I am Dominican," she says. To her, the only things that make her "Dominican" are her birth certificate and her national ID card, or cedula. For a time, even those things were stripped from her, when a lawsuit accusing the government of discriminating against people like Raquel backfired. In the suit, another Dominican-born woman of Haitian descent alleged that authorities denied her a cedula because her parents were immigrants. For decades, the Dominican Republic's Constitution had bestowed citizenship on anyone born on Dominican soil, just like in the United States. That ended in 2010, when the Constitution was rewritten to exclude children of undocumented immigrants. The lawsuit sought to validate the citizenship of those born to immigrant parents before 2010. Instead, the country's highest court ruled in 2013 that all residents born to immigrant parents dating back more than 80 years were not entitled to citizenship.In a flash, approximately 210,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent, including Raquel, were made stateless. Human rights groups sounded the alarm over the population of noncitizens that was so suddenly created. International pressure mounted, including from the country's Caribbean neighbors, and the Dominican government provided a "fix": a law creating a path to restore citizenship. "No one born in the Dominican Republic will be deported, and no one who holds or is entitled to legal Dominican nationality will be deprived of it," Dominican Ambassador to the United States Jose Tomas Perez wrote in an op-ed in July. The ambassador is partly correct. The mass deportations that many feared have not come to pass. But fear may have been enough. Heightened racial tensions and the idea of deportations caused tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent to leave on their own. It reminded me of the anti-illegal immigration laws some U.S. states have passed, and the talk of "self-deportations" in the 2012 presidential election. Raquel was among the fortunate who didn't have to fear for long. Her birth in Santo Domingo had been recorded in the civil registry at the time. With proof of her Dominican birth, she quickly reclaimed her citizenship under the new law. Dominicans who bristle at accusations of xenophobia point to this legal remedy. But less than a third of the estimated 210,000 left stateless successfully reclaimed their citizenship. Figures provided by the Dominican government last year show about 64,000 people benefited from the law. About 70% of those who qualified to have their citizenship restored didn't or weren't able to seek a legal remedy. The more common situation, I learned through dozens of interviews, is that children of immigrants are not recorded in the civil registry at birth. The reasons are many -- fear of deportation if the parents are undocumented, births outside of hospitals, or language barriers. "For me it was easy," Raquel says, "but others had more complications." An immigration issue cost Cherlina Castillo Pierre her spot on the Dominican national women's soccer team.Born to play soccer Cherlina Castillo Pierre was raised in Baraguana, one of the Dominican Republic's many bateyes -- slums that sprang up during the 20th century as Haitians were brought in to work the sugar cane fields. Baraguana is in the northern Dominican town of Imbert, close enough to the coast to feel the full force of the sun but not the salty breeze. Cherlina grew up playing soccer in the batey. "I learned by playing with the boys," she says. "I was the only girl playing." She started playing competitively at age 12, and three years later was selected to the Dominican national women's under-17 team. Her future looked bright. Soccer would open doors for Cherlina, who was born in the Dominican Republic, the child of undocumented Haitian immigrants. She played halfback for the national team because, she says, her Haitian roots made her stronger than her teammates. Her toughness and attitude surely was reflected on the field; records show that Cherlina played in five games representing the Dominican Republic, drawing a red card in one match and a yellow card in another. The dream began unraveling when she had to renew her Dominican passport to travel with the team. She had been issued a passport as a child, but now that she was no longer a minor, she needed a cedula to renew it. Although this was before the 2013 court ruling, it was not uncommon for authorities to demand proof of a person's birthplace before issuing a cedula -- let alone a passport. Because her birth had not been recorded in the civil registry, she faced an uphill climb, and had to forfeit her dream. Children play soccer in a dirt lot in Ouanaminthe, Haiti.She wore the Dominican jersey on her back, but the country it represented considered her a foreigner. It confounded her. She is proud of her Haitian heritage but considers herself a proud Dominican as well. "If I had a chance to play for the national team again, I would," Cherlina says. "But I didn't get my hopes up because I know I don't have a cedula, and with no cedula I won't be able to play anywhere."An official at Fedefutbol, the Dominican Republic's governing body for soccer, told me that Cherlina's name didn't ring a bell and that the Dominican team would never have a Haitian on it. "She's Dominican," I explained. I sent the federation the records of Cherlina's matches and asked for more details, but got no response. Cherlina now works at a restaurant in Imbert and, since 2013, has been among the stateless. Because her birth was not recorded in the civil registry, the law to "fix" her status would require multiple identification documents, notarized testimonies of Dominicans to vouch for her birthplace, and a two-year wait to apply for citizenship. Her father passed away, Cherlina says, and she has no idea where he kept the documents that may prove her identity and place of birth to the satisfaction of Dominican authorities. Bernard Teillon is an undocumented Haitian immigrant who has lived in the Dominican Republic for decades. A wheelbarrow and a dreamBernard Teillon says he has lived in the Dominican Republic for 50 years. And he wants to go back to his native Haiti, as soon as he can afford it. A long-time laborer in the fields -- sowing and harvesting crops -- Bernard would qualify for legal work status under a recent Dominican law to address the population of undocumented immigrants. The National Regularization Plan was the government's answer to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants already living in the Dominican Republic, some for decades. A 2012 census of migrants found that about 460,000 Haitian immigrants live in the Dominican Republic. More than half, about 61%, were undocumented. The requirements to get right with the law sound reasonable enough:Prove your identity and provide evidence of how long you've been in the country, your ties to Dominican society, and your work and socioeconomic condition. It's an invitation to "come out of the shadows," to borrow a phrase from the U.S. immigration debate. These apparently simple requirements, however, proved for many to be a bureaucratic nightmare, a hell brimming with red tape.Bernard, for instance, struggled to get a copy of his Haitian passport or birth certificate to prove his identity. He said he couldn't afford the time or money to put together the required paperwork. It is not impossible to get legal status without a birth certificate or passport. Some 20,300 undocumented immigrants registered without them, according to the Dominican Interior Ministry, but the alternate routes are not easy. It might require Bernard getting seven sworn statements from Dominicans who would attest to his life in the country. Bernard found it too daunting. His neighbors are mostly Haitian. What Dominicans would vouch for him? Do the Dominicans he has worked for or interacted with remember him or know him well enough to write a testimony on his behalf? The immigration controversy is red hot, so many Dominicans might not want to put their name as a reference for an undocumented immigrant.Bernard rents a small room in the Hato Mayor neighborhood of Santiago, the country's second-largest city. Immigration raids have snared neighboring tenants, and he knows it could happen to him. "I confide much in God, so I have confidence I will be all right and that nothing bad will happen to me," Bernard says. Timeline: A brief history of Hispaniola Still, he wants to leave. "Not so much out of fear, but out of respect and dignity," he says. "To see so many of my countrymen fighting so hard to get a simple identification card, and they still face so much discrimination in this country. All this has taken me to a place of consciousness to go back to my country."He wants to depart the Dominican Republic on his own terms. But he says he is too poor; even saving money to pay for transportation to the border is out of reach. Next to his room, a wheelbarrow is locked to a post with a chain. It's an old wheelbarrow, and it is the one asset Bernard owns that helps him earn money doing small jobs. "Haiti is also hard," he says, recalling why he left decades ago. Bernard remembers it as a place of permanent persecution during the rule of strongman Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.Though times have changed in Haiti, it made me wonder about the effects of trying to solve a country's immigration problem without talking to the nation of origin. Can taking a unilateral, hard-line stance against Haitians work if there is no future in Haiti either?Bernard says his health is failing. The stress makes him feel that his age has caught up to him. "I will go to Haiti," he says. "My future is uncertain." Mirlande Saint Jean waits to get her national ID card after sleeping in line on the sidewalk.Long lines -- and longer waits The sun was past its highest point in the sky in Puerto Plata, the historic port city on the Dominican Republic's northern coast, when I met Mirlande Saint Jean. She was outside the city's main government office, waiting in line to try to get her immigration status "regularized." She had been waiting since before the sun came up -- actually, since before the sun went down the day before. But Mirlande says she really has been waiting for much longer. "The thing is that every time I come to get my cedula, something happens," she says. The authorities tell her she is missing this document, or that document. This is her fourth trip to city hall."I spent the night outside, sleeping on the street. Everyone slept on the street," she said. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Mirlande says the Dominican Republic has been home for 20 years. In the city of Santiago, the line of immigrants waiting at city hall stretches for blocks.There was no dire situation that pulled her to emigrate, she just felt too closed-in in Haiti. She wanted to be somewhere with more possibilities. She settled in Puerto Plata, working first in a restaurant and now at a villa. Politically, she is not opposed to the government's immigration controls. Every country needs to have its residents documented properly, she says. "For me, this is better, so that I can live my life in peace," she says. "But everything they ask for is too much."Technically, the process doesn't cost money, but Mirlande and others have had to hire attorneys to help sort through the law. "All I want is to live in peace," she says. "All I want is to be left alone like I leave others alone."'I'm still struggling'The scene in Puerto Plata is repeated in other cities around the Dominican Republic. At dawn the next morning in Santiago, a line of migrants stretches around the block containing city hall and continues across the street along a park. "I came here looking for a better life, a life I couldn't find in Haiti," says one man who didn't give his name. He says that better life never materialized. He has a job as a doorman, he says, but "I'm still struggling. My job doesn't pay well."The man, a native of Gonaives, Haiti, doesn't hold much hope that his life will improve with legal status, but after 14 years in the Dominican Republic, it's home now. Surprisingly, many of the immigrants I meet in line aren't opposed to the idea of registering the undocumented. It's only fair, they said, that a nation should know who is living within its borders. But this isn't the way to do it. The laws, they say, need to be carried out fairly. It left me wondering: How can a nation tackle the issue of illegal immigration -- by asking migrants to trust the government's proposals -- when the same government has not addressed its own legacy of racism? Prejudice on Hispaniola dates back to the first colonies and intensified as Dominican leaders portrayed Haitians as inferior to those with Spanish and indigenous roots. How can immigrants give the government the benefit of the doubt that there are no ulterior, xenophobic motives behind the new policies, when they have suffered discrimination from the same government for generations?A Dominican taxi driver contends with Santo Domingo traffic. Immigration seemed to be on everyone's mind.Hate on the radio wavesIt's early morning, and we're on the road between Santiago and Puerto Plata. The drive is longer than an hour, and because we're tired, the small talk subsides and it's silent in the car.Except for the radio. Two hosts are talking about immigration. They are discussing a campaign by groups supporting Haitian immigrants to boycott Dominican exports to Haiti. "The Haitians say they want to boycott Dominican products. So they will eat dirt, since you know the Haitians eat dirt," one host says. The other host agrees: How are Haitians going to eat, since they don't produce anything? "They are ungrateful."Dominican President Danilo Medina's restrictive immigration policies are good for the country, the hosts say, praising him for sticking to his guns. One of the hosts suggests Haiti is trying to discredit the Dominican Republic in the eyes of the international community. "I think this is the only country in the world where migrants aren't mistreated," he says. "Here, everyone is supportive." We turn the dial and hear more of the same on another station. Haitians "are unappreciative of this country," this host says. Everything the international media has reported about the mistreatment of Haitians is wrong, he says. "We are not the abusers of the Haitians; we are their saviors," he says. The rhetoric is hateful and racist. "(Haitians) lack hygiene, they're not sanitary," the host says. We turn the radio off. Men play dominoes on the sidewalk of Santo Domingo's Little Haiti neighborhood.How the dominoes fallFour men are playing dominoes on a sidewalk in the capital's Pequeño Haiti neighborhood, taking turns placing -- or slamming -- their game pieces on the specially made table. This barrio may be called "Little Haiti," but three of the men don't hesitate to share their views of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. "They are ungrateful, they're traitors," one of them says. Another refers to one of this country's darkest chapters, the 1937 massacre of thousands of Haitians by orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. "I, like Trujillo, would send them all to burn," the man says as he makes a double throat-slashing gesture. All the while, one of the domino players is not speaking. He is younger and darker-skinned than the others. The same man who said he would burn Haitians nods toward the younger man and says, "We treat them better than anyone else." The Haitian man says nothing, keeps his head down and plays the next domino. The fear of violenceRamona Ramirez runs a food kiosk in the Ortega neighborhood of Moca, a city just east of Santiago. Dominicans and Haitians lived in Ortega peacefully for years, she says.Until a year ago. That's when her relative, 18-year-old Carlos Jose Nuñez, was kidnapped and found dead two days later, his body tossed by a bridge. Ramona Ramirez's relative was kidnapped and killed in Moca, sparking violence and international condemnation.His face was swollen from an apparent beating. His legs were bound. Witnesses told police that two Haitians who lived in the neighborhood had killed Nuñez, a Dominican who also lived in Ortega, according to local press reports. When the news of the killing reached the neighborhood: "Oh my, if you saw a Haitian they would have stabbed him to pieces -- stabbed him to bits," Ramona says. It just about came to that. Dominican vigilantes armed with sticks and machetes assaulted their Haitian neighbors, shoving a woman to the ground as she screamed and grabbing a man with dreadlocks and cutting off some of his curls with a pocketknife. The mob broke into Haitians' homes, destroying belongings with baseball bats and hoes and removing personal items and setting them ablaze. The incident, which came to symbolize the severity of the tensions between Dominicans and Haitians, was captured on video and shared widely by human rights groups. After the attacks, all the Haitians in Ortega fled. The Diario Libre newspaper reported that some 300 Haitians left the neighborhood. "They were scared, of course," Ramona says. "I wouldn't stay, either. Why? So they can stab me?"I met Ramona several months after the attacks, but it was immediately clear upon approaching Ortega that tensions had not subsided. This house was among those raided in attacks on Haitians in Moca.There were four of us in the car as we approached the neighborhood -- myself, a photographer, a Dominican driver and a Haitian guide. Our guide rolled down his window and asked two Haitian workers for directions. The Ortega neighborhood starts there, one of the workers said, pointing across the street. But you can't go there, he added, motioning at our Haitian guide. No Haitians allowed, the worker said. If you enter, you risk getting attacked. There was a tense moment inside the car. Our guide insisted on going, suggesting the risk must be exaggerated. But our driver feared a possible attack, saying the risk was legitimate. The workers persuaded our Haitian companion to stay with them and chat while the rest of us crossed the street. Down an unpaved road, another local resident, Elpidio Nuñez, led us to one of the homes the vigilantes ransacked. "We are good people here," he says. "When Haitians come, we give them a hand up."It was a mixed neighborhood and everyone got along, he adds. "Now, (Haitians) don't enter the neighborhood at all," he says. "Because of fear."We stood at a barbed wire fence; on the other side was the house Elpidio was showing us. There was some junk out front, but it didn't seem abandoned. There was a radio playing inside and a motorcycle in the gravel driveway. Elpidio asked us not to cross the fence and would not tell us who, if anybody, was living inside now that the Haitians were gone. Wendy Osirus is among those who have organized campaigns to help immigrants gain legal status.Fighting for himself and othersIn Batey Baraguana, an impoverished sugar worker's village near Santiago, Wendy Osirus makes the rounds with the skill of a politician, asking about each resident's immigration status. He congratulates those who gained legal status and patiently answers questions for the others. "You have to organize yourselves," he tells them.Wendy moved to the Dominican Republic from Haiti when he was 4. Now 29 and studying law, he created an organization to teach people how to apply for legal status and avoid scams.The NGO he created is called the Ministry of Dominican-Haitian Orientation, or MONDHA by its Spanish acronym. His small team has helped restore citizenship or get legal work status for thousands of immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent. "There are people who don't understand or comprehend the immigration plan," says Antoine Raphael, one of the organizers at MONDHA. The government passed the new immigration laws, he says, but didn't create a campaign to explain how to benefit from them. Given the history of racism in the country, Antoine says, it is hard not to consider that the laws were set up to fail the migrants. "In my opinion, the government doesn't want to help the people," he says. It was the economic and political uncertainty after a coup in Haiti that pushed Wendy's family to leave Cap-Haitien and move to the Dominican Republic in 1992. Inside the offices of MONDHA, the organization created by Wendy Osirus to help immigrants in the Dominican Republic.Growing up in Santiago, Wendy recalls other students in his public school feeling pity for him because of the unrest in Haiti. That view changed after the devastating 2010 earthquake, which killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and displaced more than a million others. "The attitude toward Haitian migrants changed because their numbers multiplied, and so did their desperation," Wendy says. As Haiti's sole neighbor, the Dominican Republic was forced to absorb some of the costs associated with the disaster, Wendy says. In Santiago, Wendy showed me the remains of what was once a boarding house for Haitians. Before the immigration crackdown -- before Dominican landlords were hesitant to rent to undocumented Haitians -- this building had maybe 10 small rooms divided by a narrow hallway. The rent for each room was about $23 a month, split among the four or five tenants who crammed into each room. All the tenants shared a single bathroom at the end of the hall. The building was gutted for a carpentry shop. The landlord, Juan Mata, recalls at least four immigration raids on the property in the past few years. He hated how the immigration agents would knock down the doors to the boarding house each time. "The Haitians who lived here were peaceful," he says. "They are hard workers."The new immigration laws mean added scrutiny for Dominican landlords who rent to Haitians. "I'm not racist. I treat Haitians just like Dominicans," Juan says, "But I follow the law. If they don't have documents, I can't rent them a room." Gallery: Creating a home away from home Photos: Creating a home away from homeBuilding a school in Jacmel, Haiti, isn't what David Palmer had in mind when he started teaching children across the border in the Dominican Republic five years earlier. Palmer, not pictured, studied in the Dominican Republic while in college and was struck by the children he saw living in poverty. The Bloomfield, Michigan, native returned and set up the Joan Rose Foundation to teach and provide meals for students. But he soon found himself and his school caught up in the country's immigration crisis.Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homePalmer, seen at left overseeing the Jacmel construction, named his foundation after his grandmother. When it opened in Esperanza in the Dominican Republic, it was about half-Dominican, half-Haitian. Over time, Dominicans withdrew -- partly, Palmer suspects, because the school was mixed. Many, he said, would rather see their children miss the one meal a day the school assured than be associated with "the Haitian school." Even the Haitian children adopted that worldview, he said: If they get in an argument, they're likely to call each other "maldito Haitiano" -- a "damn Haitian."Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeAs the immigration controversy grew in the Dominican Republic, so did tensions around the school. Haitian immigrants felt threatened, as did their Dominican-born children, says Catherine Serrano, the foundation's director. Some were deported. With harassment interfering with their mission, and uncertain what consequences the crackdown could bring, she and Palmer made a decision: Close the school in Esperanza and move it to Haiti. Families who had come to depend on the foundation were invited to move, too.Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from home"Jacmel has something going for it," said Palmer, who sports several tattoos. When CNN visited the construction site, some of the school's 16 planned houses were close to completion, with roofs being hoisted atop cinder-block walls. Nearby, other workers shoveled and pick-axed dirt where new foundations would be laid. Palmer recently said he made the right move. The school is up and running, the families who came from Esperanza now live in the new homes, and the foundation has started a microloan program. Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeFathers of students went to Jacmel and joined locals building the new school. For some men, it was a homecoming; for others, a new beginning. "This is my first time working in Haiti," said Heriberto Martinez, born in Esperanza three decades ago. Wensly Dalembert, 23, says he feels like Haiti is his country even though he, too, was born across the border. "We lived a life of humiliation in the Dominican Republic being black and Haitian," he said, recalling being stopped at a checkpoint and showing a Dominican officer his Dominican birth certificate. "You are not Dominican, you are Haitian," he said the officer told him. "Even if we don't know how to speak Creole or don't know anything about Haiti, they refuse to recognize us and say we are Haitians and don't belong." Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeThe Joan Rose Foundation was still operating in Esperanza when CNN visited last year. Here, two students are in the foundation's dining room. Virtually all of the foundation's students are Dominicans of Haitian descent; that is, children born in the Dominican Republic to immigrant parents. The school is where they come for education, food and sanctuary.Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeOutside, the Esperanza schoolyard was still alive with children shouting, running and kicking up dirt as they stomped around a rectangular dirt lot where they played baseball and other games. Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeA student shows off crawfish he found in a canal by the Esperanza school. Jacmel, on Haiti's southern coast, is very different from what the school's families know in Esperanza, a rich agricultural region where Haitian immigrants often work in the rice fields or on tobacco and banana plantations. Some 25 families -- about 170 people -- later moved to Jacmel, which many consider Haiti's cultural capital. It's a place of artists and beaches where tourism is the biggest draw. Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeAmong those who moved is Yancy, whose three daughters -- one of whom is seen here -- attend the foundation's school. In Esperanza, Yancy showed her children's birth certificates, which state the girls were born in the Dominican Republic. Nonetheless, she says, they are considered foreigners. "They won't recognize (their) citizenship because I was born in Haiti," she said. Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeYancy left the Haitian border city of Ouanaminthe looking for work in the Dominican Republic after her parents died 16 years ago. She ended up in Esperanza, seen here. "I didn't find the life I was hoping for," she said. For her, the foundation was a godsend: In addition to school for her children, it gave her a job through GoodThreads, which employs women to design and make needlepoint belts for export. Yancy quickly decided to move to Haiti with the foundation. "My daughters are getting older," she said, "and we don't have a future here." Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeGladys also has a child at the foundation's school. She was born in the Dominican Republic, but like hundreds of thousands her citizenship was annulled because her parents were immigrants. The government passed a law for people like Gladys to reclaim her citizenship, but she'd rather move to Haiti than try to win back her rightful place in a country where she's never felt truly at home. "I was born here, but I'm undocumented," Gladys said in Esperanza. "I feel 100% Haitian."Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: Creating a home away from homeMen from Esperanza head to the beach in Jacmel on their first day off from the construction site. There was a lot of laughter, singing, drinking -- and one epic rap battle in the sand. Wensly Dalembert recalled a similar beach trip four years ago in the Dominican Republic: He and his friends, all Dominicans of Haitian descent, were playing soccer when a group of Dominicans of Spanish descent told them to give up their spot. "You are not in your country, get out of here," he remembers one of the men saying. That won't happen in Jacmel. He feels at home here, but the cost of finding peace was self-exile from his country of birth. Hide Caption 12 of 12Juan calls himself apolitical, but based on what he knows, he says, the immigration measures sound fair. "I'd like to live in New York, but if they catch me there without papers, they would return me here," Juan says. On our way out, Wendy spots a group of about seven Haitian workers across the street. He walks over and asks whether they have submitted their paperwork to apply for legal status.No, the men say. Get your documents in order or risk deportation or raids on your homes, Wendy tells them. The men don't want to hear about paperwork. If my house is raided, one says, "I would kill an immigration officer."The threat hangs in the air. After a moment of silence, Wendy responds just as forcefully: "No violence. The only fight is the fight for legal status."While Wendy has helped hundreds get their papers, he was still working on his own immigration status when I left. He tracked down records from his elementary school and found seven Dominican witnesses who testified to his 24 years in the country, but he was still searching for some older bank records. In the meantime, Wendy is in this country on a Haitian passport and tourist visa. He must drive to the border every 30 days, cross into Haiti, then cross back to extend his visa for another month. "Culturally, I feel (the Dominican Republic) is my country, but I also have some hesitance to embrace it because of the discrimination for simply being Haitian, which puts me in a place of emotional instability," he says. "I don't know which country is mine."A Dominican soldier stands guard near the Dominican-Haitian border. Crossing the borderFor many Haitian immigrants going home, the border crossing at Dajabon offers their last view of the Dominican Republic.I wanted to follow their path, so we took a local bus, or guagua, to the border. It dropped us off in front of a green sign pointing toward the international boundary, and the town of Ouanaminthe just on the other side.Twice a week, this crossing turns into a binational market where Dominicans and Haitians can mingle and buy and sell goods in what is essentially an open buffer zone.It's a clattering, disorienting scene of people hawking goods, offering rides, asking questions -- a flow of humanity in all directions, all happening right at the border crossing, which continues to function.Navigating customs isn't easy in a crowd where it is hard to tell government officials apart from everyone else. The soldiers, though, are easy to spot. A Dominican in uniform stood next to us as we leaned against a wall to fill out the exit paperwork.Being posted at the customs building, which provides a sliver of shade, is better than being stationed in the middle of the market, he says. I wasn't curious about why a soldier was standing at the customs office until I caught a glimpse of a legal pad in his hands. "Voluntary deportations," it read. The scene at the binational market on the border is chaotic.Reliable numbers about how many Haitians have voluntarily left the Dominican Republic are hard to come by, but on this day I see evidence that an attempt is being made to keep count. By the outset of 2016, the number had topped 113,000, according to the Dominican government. The government said more than 288,000 undocumented immigrants had registered for the "regularization" plan by late last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. But it is unclear how many of these immigrants have completed the process and have their identity documents. A spreadsheet on the interior ministry's website dated September 2015 lists about 200,000 names of undocumented migrants who were yet to pick up their paperwork. More detailed immigration statistics -- deportations, estimates of undocumented immigrants living in the country, the number of people affected by the immigration laws -- were never provided, despite repeated requests and government assurances.Authorities pointed me to a speech Dominican President Medina made last year at a summit of Central American leaders in Guatemala, where he called the criticisms of the immigration policies a campaign to discredit his country. "I understand that this is a complex reality, with various legal elements, diverse groups of the population and many statistics," Medina said. "It is possibly not a great media story, since it does not lend itself to big alarmist headlines, nor a prefabricated narrative of persecutors and the persecuted." His bottom line: If the United States and European Union can regulate and enforce their immigration laws, why can't the Dominican Republic do the same?Sister Marleny Gomez, left, says both governments are flirting with a potential crisis. The view from HaitiAcross the border in Ouanaminthe, Sister Marleny Gomez helps new arrivals find their way back home.Marleny, a Catholic nun from Colombia, has been based here for four years, at Our Lady of the Assumption Church and school. "The voluntary deportees, the ones who are choosing to leave the Dominican Republic on their own, are the ones who have family here and who know where to stay," Marleny says.The most needy are those who were deported. "They've spent so many years in the Dominican Republic that when they arrive, they say they have some distant cousins or a grandmother somewhere," she says. "This is where the confusion arises, because they don't know how to get to those cities, they don't have money, they don't know where they are."The flow of returnees and deportees has been manageable here, the nun says, but both governments are flirting with a potential crisis. I crossed the border here thinking that a high-traffic crossing like this one might overwhelm the Haitian side. But I found Oauanaminthe to be functioning normally. (A crisis has indeed developed near the border, but not in the north. In Anse-a-pitre, in southeastern Haiti, tent cities sprung up as returnees flowed into unprepared municipalities.) As we talk in her office, my gaze floats behind her to a painting on the wall. It shows two boys -- one black, one white -- sitting together on a rock between two palm trees. Arms around each other, they're looking toward the ocean. Above them are two flags flying from the trees -- one Haitian, the other Dominican.It's a vision of hope shared by many on both sides of the border, including those in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's major port city in the north. That's where I found Jean sitting with several others on the steps of a shop. Just a few weeks ago, Jean says, he came across a fellow countryman walking on the highway, having just returned from the Dominican Republic. The man didn't have money to buy a bus ticket to get to his hometown, so Jean helped him out. "I want our countries to work together," he says. "There's no work here either."We exchange good-byes, and I ask him for his last name. "Kerry," he replies. I jot it down in my notebook, and then pause after reading it aloud. "Jean Kerry?" My attempt to pronounce "Jean" as the French would say it -- something akin to "John" -- is the punchline.The entire group of men chortles. Wilmar Innocent, former mayor of Cap-Haitien, says Haiti and Dominican Republic share one destiny.Further down the street I run into Wilmar Innocent, a former mayor of Cap-Haitien, who was holding court with his supporters. "The Haitians and Dominicans are two neighboring peoples on the same island," he says. "There are many problems, but we share one destiny."He wants the international community to speak up and play a more direct role in bringing Haiti and the Dominican Republic closer together. Every Haitian has a relative living in the Dominican Republic, he says. The two countries are too intertwined to try to segregate now. "Politics tears the two countries apart," he says, "But we have to do everything we can to bring the two nations together, like the wings of a dove." Mariano Castillo is a writer and editor for CNN Digital. Fernando Decillis is a photographer based in Atlanta. Mariano was awarded a fellowship to promote excellence in global news coverage through the International Center for Journalists, which funded the trip. CNN maintained editorial oversight of the story.

Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Anne Lagamayo, CNN

2016-09-08 10:11:28

health

health

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/health/rubella-house-zika-babies-future/index.html

Can forgotten rubella children of the '60s hold clue for Zika babies? - CNN

Pregnant women infected with the rubella virus, or German measles, during a 1960s US epidemic, gave birth to babies with multiple birth defects. More than 50 years later, their children still need care.

rubella, German measles, Zika, congenital rubella syndrome, health, Can forgotten rubella children of the '60s hold clue for Zika babies? - CNN

Can forgotten rubella children of the '60s hold clue for Zika babies?

Story highlightsBabies with multiple birth defects were born to US women infected with the rubella virus in the 1960sWhat these families have needed may signal what's in store for Zika babiesBrooklyn, New York (CNN)One side of the bedroom is an explosion of pink, from the hair accessories and dangling trinkets to the stuffed animals and laundry hamper. The other, starting with the fuzzy pillows and puffy comforter, is an ode to purple.Kim Woodford is the pink aficionado in this well-kept townhome in Brooklyn. She's 51 and believes in Santa. Her roommate, Darvena Idlet, is the same age; they've lived together for about 45 years.What bound these women together so long ago was an illness that struck while they were in their mothers' wombs. It robbed them of their hearing and much of their vision, and it damaged their brains.They have congenital rubella syndrome, which they acquired during an outbreak of the rubella virus, or German measles. The epidemic swept across America from late 1963 into 1965, infecting an estimated 12.5 million people. And though the symptoms of the virus are generally minor, if detected at all, it takes its harshest toll on the unborn babies of infected pregnant women.The story of Kim and Darvena, and thousands of others like them, has largely been forgotten in the United States. But the threat posed by a new virus, Zika, has those intimately familiar with the 1960s rubella outbreak asking pointed questions. Read MoreWho is going to take care of the babies irreparably damaged after being born to Zika-infected women? What resources will be available to their families, whose lives will be forever changed? Who'll step in to help those mothers left alone after fathers walk away? And what will become of these children when they are adults still in need of around-the-clock care?What happened more than a half century ago, they say, should serve as a warning now.Kim Woodford, who stared at medical entries in encyclopedias as a child, might have been a doctor, her family says. Hoping for the bestFlorence Woodford knew her baby might be harmed when she contracted the rubella virus early in her pregnancy. A doctor with the health department who paid a visit to her Brooklyn home told her as much. If her child survived, he said, she or he could be saddled with a long list of disabilities.Though it was largely illegal at the time, the doctor suggested Florence consider having an abortion. The US medical community was finding ways to work around restrictions; ultimately the rubella virus helped make abortion legal. Before Zika: The virus that helped legalize abortion in the United States But abortion wasn't an option for Florence, a devout Catholic. She chose to hope for the best and believed by keeping her baby she'd be rewarded. When Kim was born with cataracts, she rejoiced. "Oh, that's wonderful. That'll be OK. We could fix that," Florence, 76, remembers saying about her second born. "And then as time went on, we found out it was a lot more than that."Kim was among the 20,000 US-born babies harmed by congenital rubella syndrome in the mid-'60s. They faced a lifetime of defects including deafness, blindness, heart disease, neuromuscular tightness and spasticity, intellectual disabilities, autism and more. During the same period, there were 2,100 neonatal deaths and 11,250 abortions and miscarriages, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kim "looked different," Florence recalls. She was unable to roll over or sit up. She couldn't hear. When Florence held her, Kim threw back her head as if she were struggling to see. She cried more than other babies.The challenges Kim and her family faced would only grow as she did. Some of the earliest doctors who saw her said she'd never walk or be toilet trained. But then a social worker showed up, first prodding and later insisting that Florence take Kim into Manhattan, where Dr. Louis Cooper headed up the Rubella Project, a long-term research and care effort he founded at Bellevue Hospital. Florence wept the entire ride there. She was sure Kim would be taken away from her. Instead, with the doctor's help, she found hope. Desperate for answersCooper was a medical student in the 1950s when Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine. That discovery ignited a new sort of excitement about the field the aspiring doctor was entering. "It proved we could keep people healthy," he says. Rubella virus todayRubella has been eradicated in the Americas thanks to vaccinations, but it still affects other parts of the world. A pregnant woman infected with rubella may lose her baby or give birth to a child with multiple defects resulting from congenital rubella syndrome, a condition that may require lifelong care. Some 100,000 babies across the globe are born with congenital rubella syndrome each year.Women who have been vaccinated against rubella don't run that risk. It only costs $1.50 to vaccinate a child against both rubella and the measles in low-income countries. Source: Measles and Rubella InitiativeHe wanted in on that euphoria and, after completing his military service, pursued a fellowship to work on a vaccine for staph infections. But then a friend isolated the rubella virus, not long before the epidemic started in the United States. Cooper turned his focus toward rubella.While scrambling to develop a rubella vaccine, he and others became overwhelmed by what pregnant women were experiencing. Mothers, with heir babies in their arms, began showing up in Cooper's Bellevue Hospital lab, desperate for assistance and answers. "My temperament is not just to do research on people; you have to serve them," Cooper says. "And so the Rubella Project was created to help these families."That's how Cooper, a trained internist, transitioned into becoming a pediatrician. He assembled a core team of 25 people, including doctors, social workers, educators and therapists. With more than 300 congenital rubella syndrome children in their care -- and hundreds of other families looking for guidance -- the team set out to give them a chance in life. A search for independenceThere were schools for the deaf. There were schools for the blind. There were programs for the "mentally retarded," as they were known in the 1960s. But schools for all of the above -- and then some? There was nothing like that.The most severely disabled children with congenital rubella syndrome were often destined for a lifetime of institutionalization. So were those whose parents couldn't bear this kind of child-rearing responsibility or couldn't find an alternative.Cooper and his team believed they could do better by these kids and their families. One of the educators on his team -- whom he'd later marry -- ran the Rubella Project preschool to help children like Kim get started. Cooper also lobbied hard to expand the scope of specialized schools and earn entry and adequate resources for his young patients and the people caring for them. "You didn't have to say a lot," Cooper remembers of his visits to lawmakers, policy leaders and education officials. "You just had to show them the pictures and describe the disruption to families." He watched families fall apart. Kim's family clung together, but still they were tested. Darvena Idlet has been Kim's roommate for about 45 years. They are like sisters and look out for each other.Kim is legally blind, completely deaf and nonverbal. A heart defect required surgery in her early years. She's intellectually disabled and has behavior disorders, as well as obsessive compulsive and autistic tendencies. More and more, as she's aged, she suffers from mobility issues and often relies on a walker.At first, teaching Kim seemed impossible. First glints of progress appeared while she was in the Rubella Project preschool. Then when she was almost 6, thanks to Cooper's advocacy, Kim, Darvena and a small group of others headed off to the Bronx to attend what was then the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. At the state-run school, where she lived Mondays through Fridays for the next 16 years, the instructors managed to do things for Kim her family couldn't accomplish. She began to read, write and sign. She learned to ride a horse, row a boat and use a toilet. She found, in the safety of her school community and living with peers, a sort of peace.The family learned sign language, but still, when Kim was home on weekends or breaks -- by then, the family had moved to Staten Island -- she was enormously difficult. "I wouldn't wish it on anybody with what she was like," her mother says. "There are not a lot of happy memories." Dr. Louis Cooper was Kim Woodford's pediatrician. He established the Rubella Project to serve children like her, support their families and advocate on their behalf. Kim could not be disciplined or managed. She was an escape artist who figured out every lock they put on the front door. When she was about 6, police officers showed up in the middle of a winter night with Kim. She'd been spotted walking down the road barefoot, wearing only a nightgown. Another time she strolled into a neighbor's kitchen at 2 a.m., looking for ice cream. A third time she barged into an Orthodox Jewish home in the middle of a religious service. On car rides, she'd throw things out the window, strip naked or try to get out while the car was moving. The family learned to suspend their Christmas tree from the ceiling because otherwise she'd knock it over. If a light was broken in a restaurant, she'd freak out, which meant on the rare occasions when the family dared to eat out, they'd first have to case the place to make sure it was "safe."Her frustrations would sometimes bubble over into rage -- and, at times, violence. Making matters worse, her tolerance for pain was otherworldly. Three times in one month, when she was 8, she crashed her head through a window in the family's home. By the third visit to the ER, Florence feared she and her husband would be accused of abuse.Florence, who had a total of five children, absorbed the brunt of Kim's anger. Kim was smart enough to know she was different from her siblings, and in her limited understanding, mothers were supposed to fix things. Kim would motion to her ears and demand that they work. She blamed Florence when they didn't. Kim pushed, hit and tossed her mother around. She didn't know her own strength. Her three brothers wouldn't invite friends over when Kim was around. They feared she might embarrass them by taking off all her clothes. Jill Taylor, Kim's younger sister by 15 months, shared a room with Kim when she was home. As the older sister, Kim struggled to understand why Jill was taller, had friends and got to drive. A couple of times Kim stole car keys and had to be stopped before trying to take the wheel herself.She, too, wanted to be independent.Jill's heart breaks when she thinks about what her parents went through -- and what Kim's future might have looked like if not for congenital rubella syndrome. As a little girl, Kim used to open up encyclopedias and stare at medical entries. Jill is sure her sister would have been the brains of the bunch."You can't help but wonder," Jill says through tears. "What would Kim have been?"The best life possibleWhile she was in school, Kim's family took solace, knowing she was cared for, calmer and being given the best life possible. As she approached graduation at 22, they worried: What was supposed to happen next? Moving Kim home full-time was a terrifying proposition, and it wasn't what she wanted, either. From the moment Kim donned her blue cap and gown, she sobbed the entire day. She didn't want to leave. The Woodford family was not alone in needing a plan. They banded together with other families whose children were aging out of the system. Cooper's example, and years of raising children with congenital rubella syndrome, taught them how to fight for services. In 1983, these parent-activists in the New York metro area established Advocates for Services for the Blind Multihandicapped, a private nonprofit agency to develop small group homes where their children could live and age with dignity. Today, the organization runs six residential programs in the Bronx and Brooklyn serving 53 individuals, 22 of them with congenital rubella syndrome.'This is your home'Kim eats too fast and needs someone to watch her during meals so she won't choke. She clenches her fists and smacks them against her mouth when she becomes agitated. Her cupboard holds cake mixes and frostings, as she loves to bake -- but is less keen on sharing. She can't start her day without a cup of coffee, which she makes scalding hot with heaping spoonfuls of sugar.Darvena loads every game app she can find onto her smartphone, but she only likes to play bowling. Like clockwork, every weekday late afternoon, she can be found on the couch watching her soap operas. No one believes she understands the storylines, but the ritual comforts her. It reminds her of time she used to spend beside her mother, who religiously watched these same shows. When the two play a children's card game, Darvena knows to reach out and wave her hand to remind Kim when it's her turn. Michael Blake grew up with Kim and Darvena. For years, several days a week, he's worked at Kohl's department store. Always near in their first-floor Brooklyn home is Michael Blake, who these two have grown up with since the 1960s. He sits before his laptop, playing "Wheel of Fortune." He might guess random letters, but mainly he just likes hitting the button to spin the wheel. Beside him is his growing collection of key chains. He likes to relax on his bed with his headset on; he can't hear the music but enjoys the vibration.Along with a fourth, more recent addition, they are family. They respect each other's space. They vacation together, go to Broadway shows and enjoy the same recreational activities. Bowling is a favorite.Five people who are less independent live on the floor above. Of the nine residents here, seven have congenital rubella syndrome. They have 24/7 help, including staff who are also deaf, to manage residents' schedules and medicines and attend to their needs -- helping them be as independent as possible."We come into their home as guests who are here to support them," explains Nick Hassan, the coordinator for Advocates for Services for the Blind Multihandicapped in Brooklyn. "We make sure that they know, 'This is your home, and you decide how it works.'" Part of their jobs is making sure the residents get where they need to go each day. "To me, there's nothing wrong with them," says Tanya Rodriguez, the residence manager. "They've overcome what wasn't expected of them. I just want people to see them the way I see them." Michael looks at his watch, anxious for his ride to Kohl's department store. He's worked there for years, doing jobs that include tagging jeans. Kim and Darvena aren't employed, but they go to other day programs that keep them busy. What they deserveThe Woodfords visit Kim and her housemates regularly, but not every resident of these group homes is so lucky. Parents who are still alive are in their twilight years. Some have moved away or are otherwise physically unable to visit. Having Kim there means the world to Florence, who, despite the difficulties, says her daughter has been her greatest life teacher. Kim has taught the family perseverance, patience, unconditional love and kindness no matter life's adversities. The journey also has given Florence a mission -- to make sure her daughter, and others like her, get what they deserve."It's a tremendous source of comfort," she says of Kim's home. "It means she has a better life, that we have a better life. ... She is always on the move. It's given her a lot of freedom."The day will come, though, when Kim and her housemates won't be as active. What will happen when they're not able to spend as much time out in the community? In coming years, how will their needs change?"It's always a fight to keep funding now," says Jill, Kim's sister, who is the vice president of the agency behind these group homes. "We're just starting to think about when they age."What Zika babies needWhat Kim, her peers and their families have been up against the past 50 years may foreshadow what's in store for babies born with the effects of the Zika virus."It's not just when they're babies. What's going to be there for them? Do they have a support system in place?" asks Jill. "Are there going to be the right kind of people to teach them? How teachable will they be? It's all a big question mark. It's frightening, and it's just so devastatingly sad." These are the same questions Cooper, 84, hopes communities and politicians are asking. The fact that US lawmakers are still squabbling over emergency Zika funding frustrates him beyond measure."Congress needs to stop fooling around," he says. "Every day we fail to put resources to work means more misery." Join the conversationSee the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.The families he came to know in the New York area found power in numbers, were unique in their activism and benefited from resources available in a big city. He can't imagine what life would have looked like for his former patients if they'd been born in rural America or, say, a remote area of Brazil. "We're just learning what the Zika babies are going to need, but what's clear is they're going to need a lot and they're going to need it for a long time," he says. "And their families are going to need even more. ... The stress is enormous."The clock is ticking to mobilize on behalf of those babies and their families. The best he and those he's helped over the years can do, they say, is sound the alarm: It's time to wake up.