Time to tune out the rhetoric and tune in compassion

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Monday January 10, 2011 · 9:20 AM PST

2011/01/10 · 09:20

Everyone in my parents' generation knows where they were in the moments they learned that President Kennedy was killed and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They will recall these dark days for our nation with remarkable detail. On Saturday afternoon, I was eating vegetable noodle soup in a Chinese restaurant in downtown DC, waiting to see "The Fighter" film, checking my Twitter account, when I read that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and many innocent bystanders had been brutally attacked. In a rapid succession of Tweets, I also then learned that right wingers had their "crosshairs set on Giffords" and she had been threatened in her office. The crosshairs language was all over websites, campaign ads and media coverage. I felt sick. Could it be that some delusional person had been influenced by this rhetoric? It seems that nightmare vision is coming true. On Saturday, our generation experienced political assassination.

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Saturday January 23, 2010 · 12:13 PM PST

2010/01/23 · 12:13

The real "risk of instability" that the politicos are talking about in Haiti is political prisoners freed by the earthquake. The news media continues to report on so-called security concerns, focusing on what they call "looting" but what should be called emergency requisition of resources. And they'd like you to think that so many troops are needed to keep people from fighting over resources. But all accounts on the ground seem to indicate that Haitians have been overwhelmingly peaceful, with perhaps a few scattered incidents. The instability they're worried about is not the people fighting over resources, it's a pro-democracy political movement that they'd like to suppress. The news media is harming Haiti by misrepresenting this security concern, and is allowing politics to get in the way of aide.

By Lacy MacAuley

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Friday January 22, 2010 · 11:28 AM PST

2010/01/22 · 11:28

The NY Timesfront page today reads like a playbook of failure:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay. ... The Supreme Court decision (campaign finance) will increase the power of lobbyists and interest groups at the expense of candidates and political parties. ... Lawmakers are weighing a pared-back approach on healthcare ...

I mean a failure for justice, health care as a human right, and democracy. Read More

Newsworthy but not sexy

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Monday June 15, 2009 · 2:02 PM PDT

2009/06/15 · 14:02

If you are a reporter and reading this, try this exercise: you’re a single parent; you have two children, ages two and seven; you have a high school diploma. Write yourself a budget: give yourself a job in line with your qualifications (with a typical salary), then figure out how much a typical apartment in the L.A. basin area costs, how much to budget for food, health care, child care, transportation. The assignment serves a purpose: to bring home the fact that it is impossible to support a family on minimum wage. The numbers simply cannot work. You can make up relatives to take care of the children while you’re working, you can make up a second or even a third job, you can pretend that L.A.’s public transportation works well enough that you won’t spend hours commuting, you can discover the holy grail–a minimum wage job with health insurance!–but no matter how many miracles you make up, you’re going to be relying on credit cards and getting deeper and deeper in debt.

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Friday June 12, 2009 · 11:11 AM PDT

2009/06/12 · 11:11

Abandoning emerging economies to the assistance of the International Monetary Fund is like assigning a child to a tutor who is not only failing, but bullying other children and selling drugs on the side. However, leaders at home and abroad have failed to realize the disservice they are committing and have promised the IMF 1.1 trillion dollars.

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Thursday June 11, 2009 · 7:55 AM PDT

2009/06/11 · 07:55

As South America wakes up this morning, Peruvians will decide whether to engage in strikes to stand against "free trade" and support indigenous people of the Amazon who were tragically attacked last week by their government. The official death toll from last week's police attack on indigenous people in Peru is 30 lives lost, though it is estimated that many more have died. They died while protesting the harmful impact of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement on their forests, their families, and their ancestral lands.

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Thursday June 04, 2009 · 8:24 AM PDT

2009/06/04 · 08:24

One of the first things I did upon arriving in Washington was to locate the nearest bookstore. Being an English major, I needed a literary fix, and being a nerd, I wanted my reading to be thematically appropriate with the location. After nearly an hour of bending up and down, crawling around, and generally scouring the American history section, I struck gold with Eric Burns’ Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism.

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Tuesday May 26, 2009 · 10:54 AM PDT

2009/05/26 · 10:54

When viewed from outer space, one might say that the main objective of the human race since the Industrial Revolution has been to develop. "Development" is a sacred word to your local town hall, the sounding floor of the UN, and micro-financiers from Ghana to Sri Lanka.

And we've been very good developers. We've built everything to make us go faster, longer, and stronger, from malls to missiles to microchips. The standard of living of the average person in the US has increased to include all the standard comforts that may have been afforded by your typical feudal lord from England or Japan. Yet, if you take a more nuanced view of humans, and actually ask one of us, "What is the goal of your life?" The answer you usually get is something that boils down to "I just want happiness."

Do our developments lead to happiness?

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Wednesday May 20, 2009 · 10:10 AM PDT

2009/05/20 · 10:10

People and planet should come before profits, but the proposed Panama trade plan would mean greed rules. The Senate Finance committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Top trade negotiator Ron Kirk is trying to ram through this agreement by July 1, when the Panamanian head of state Martin Torrijos leaves office. But this is just another free trade agreement that is bad for the people of Panama, it’s bad for the planet, and it’s no good for people of the US. We should call upon Congress to stop it now.

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Monday May 11, 2009 · 9:59 AM PDT

2009/05/11 · 09:59

For the last two weeks, I have been pitching important stories about protecting voting rights and turning around America's economy. To my dismay, I am finding that my calls to some long-time media contacts are not answered because they have been downsized or shut-down. News & Notes on NPR was one of the most intelligent pieces of coverage of the black community, in my opinion; unfortunately it has been discontinued. Neil at the Affinity Lab saved me a pitch call that wouldn't get answered when he told me AJC's opinion page editor Cynthia Tucker is moving to DC. What does this signal? Just now, an old contact at AP's email bounced back. Is he gone, too?

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Thursday May 07, 2009 · 11:56 AM PDT

2009/05/07 · 11:56

Massey Media is sponsoring the Women Who Tech telesummit next week; because, as a woman-owned business, we are aware of the challenges faced in any area of professional life as a consequence of gender. What I didn't fully appreciate is just how behind the times the tech industry is in terms of not appreciating or sometimes not even including women.

Statistics vary, but estimates of the percentage of female industry professionals range from five to 20 percent. In the 21st century, these numbers would make me laugh if they weren't so tragic. What's worse is that there are still debates out there over whether these numbers reflect nature or nurture. The truth is that technology is a field that continues to sideline women, to its own detriment. Tech culture plays its own part. For example, a recent presentation at the Ruby on Rails conference in San Francisco is an appalling illustration of the kind of attitude women in the industry have to deal with every day.

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Tuesday May 05, 2009 · 12:33 PM PDT

2009/05/05 · 12:33

Two years ago, when SARS bird flu fears caused people to kill off flocks and stop eating meat, I was living in San Francisco, at that time considered a hot spot for the virus to reach the US. At that time, I took a zen attitude, made sure to get plenty of rest, fruits, and vegetables, and didn’t worry, even in Chinatown.

Now I’m living right down the street from the workplace of one of the confirmed swine flu patients, an Energy Department staffer who had traveled with Obama recently to Mexico, came home and spread it to his family. But am I wearing a surgical mask? Nope.

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Time to tune out the rhetoric and tune in compassion

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The Time for Media Activism in NOW

Newsworthy but not sexy

The IMF: International Monetary Failure?

The violent face of free trade: Government forces kill indigenous Peruvians defending the Amazon

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Happiness in the midst of collapse: Something to smile about

An agreement that isn't good for anyone: The Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

A Lab To Save Journalism

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