Terrorism struck in the heart of Paris on Wednesday, Jan. 7, when three masked gunmen killed 12 people at the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Media reports rushed to describe the crime as “an apparent militant Islamist attack” because the paper had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohamad, even though the suspects, who fled the scene of the massacre, were still at large.
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From a bombed NAACP office in Colorado to the decimated town of Baga, Nigeria, acts of terrorism against black people and institutions have failed to generate much attention in the United States this past week.
Most of the Western world and its political leaders have, instead, turned their eyes to No. 10 rue Nicolas-Appert, Paris, France—the location of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. As most of the world now knows, an al-Qaida-led terrorist attack left 12 people dead there last Wednesday. And in a separate, related terrorist attack on Friday in Paris, four hostages were killed by a gunman at a kosher supermarket.
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LOS ANGELES, CA — Directors Alfonso Cuarón and J.J. Abrams, actor Chris Pine and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards® today (January 15). For the first time, nominees in all 24 categories were announced live.
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My mom was a great mother. She cared for my three brothers, my sister and me, and gave us lots of love, but she made the decision to remarry, leaving us with my grandma and uncles. After she left, I would [often] cry myself to sleep. My grandma would always say, “Stop crying! If your mother loved you then your mother would never have left you to live with another man.” Sometimes my grandma would hit me because I was crying too much. I missed my mom so much that one day I ran away to stay with her, but the next day my grandma and uncles took me back.
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The opening of the movie Selma this weekend has rekindled vivid memories for New America Media editor Paul Kleyman, who in 1965 was one of thousands of students who joined the last part of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Fifty years later, Kleyman recalls his experiences of the march and of that summer, when he returned to the South as a civil rights worker.
At age 19, I was a sophomore in journalism at the University of Minnesota and member of Students for Civil Rights. I joined the roughly 25,000 others who bused to Selma to join the last part of the march, two weeks after Dr. King led the first and bravest group into bloody confrontation on the Edmund Petus Bridge.
DetailsI think of myself as a staunch supporter of freedom of expression but I realize the disquieting truth that I could never publish some of the cartoons Charlie Hebdo did. It would go against every fiber of my being. But I will defend their right to exist and condemn what happened to them with every fiber of my being as well. But I just cannot say #IAmCharlieHebdo.
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Sony Pictures’ comedy “The Interview” is about two celebrity American journalists involved in a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Screenings for the film, which was set to be released over the holiday season, have been cancelled after threats of violence to moviegoers from a group suspected to be linked to the government in North Korea. This follows the recent assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also believed to have emanated from the communist country. The film’s cancellation has sparked a nationwide debate over whether or not it should be shown, and that debate has now spilled over into South Korea. NAM intern Yeojin Kim spoke to several young South Koreans about their thoughts on “The Interview.”
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Standing in front of a group of wide-eyed Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) students, Polish-born artist Ania Gilmore coddles a book that starts on both sides called a dos-à-dos book. It’s constructed of envelopes that serve as a painful reminder to Gilmore and her family of the era of martial law that took place in Poland during the early 1980’s.
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Michèle Montas, still remembers her conversation with the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon when he invited her to become his spokesman “I know your story and that’s why I have chosen you,” he told her.
Montas, an award-winning Haitian radio journalist, and her husband, also a journalist, vocally fought for justice, human rights, and democracy. The couple was forced to flee the country twice to briefly live in exile in the U.S.
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With Brazilian presidential elections swiftly approaching, three Massachusetts-based Brazilian activists sat in the tiny studio of Radio BTTV in Somerville, Mass. to represent the candidates in a debate. The announcer opened by asking all three, “What can the growing population of Brazilian citizens living abroad expect from candidates?”
“Unfortunately, the present government is not remotely interested in helping those who live outside of their nation,” argued Dario Galvão, an activist from Stoughton, Mass, representing Brazil’s Socialist Party candidate, Marina Silva.
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