"Too terrifying for words," says one who escaped; racial gap persists among kids who read and are read to; William Worthy, 92, defied U.S. government, traveled world; liberal media called out again on lack of diversity; Unity names executive director after nearly two years; NAHJ creates "Media Watch" after Cinco de Mayo segment; Michael Sam's kiss is business as usual for networks; Chinese Americans star in Take 2 of iconic photo; unsafe to relocate journalists to refugee camps, groups say (5/12/14)"Too Terrifying for Words," Says One Who Escaped
Chinese Americans Star in Take 2 of Iconic Photo
"East finally met West 145 years ago on America's first transcontinental railroad,"Hansi Lo Wang wrote Saturday for NPR's "Code Switch" blog.
"The symbolic hammering of a golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, completed the connection between the country's two coasts and shortened a cross-country trip of more than six months down to a week.
"Much of the building was done by thousands of laborers brought in from China, but their faces were left out of photographs taken on that momentous day." A photo caption noted, "The original photo commemorating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 did not include Chinese laborers. . . ."
Wang continued, "So, in 2002, [Corky] Lee gathered a group of Chinese-Americans at that same location in northern Utah to re-create the historic shot, and he did it again on Saturday with some descendants of those Chinese laborers.. . ."
- Randall Yip, AsAm News: Corky Lee stages "an act of photographic justice" for Asian Americans
Unsafe to Relocate Journalists to Refugee Camps, Groups Say
"Today, CPJ partnered with Reporters Without Borders and Rory Peck Trust in a joint open letter calling on Kenya's Cabinet Secretary of Interior, Joseph Ole Lenku, to provide clarity on the government's refugee policy and to exempt journalists from forced relocation to the refugee camps," the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday.
"On March 25, Lenku ordered all urban refugees to relocate to one of two refugee camps in a bid to tighten security amid continuing violence, including an attack on a church in Mombasa. His order came despite the fact that a similar government directive in 2012 was ruled unconstitutional by the High Court.
"Collective research by our three organizations shows that exiled Somali and Ethiopian journalists are not safe in Kenya's refugee camps, where Ethiopian security agents and Somalia's Al-Shabaab militants operate — the very same threats that most such journalists fled in the first place.
"Meanwhile, life for refugee journalists in Nairobi has been made even harder than usual. Kenyan police conduct nightly raids on the homes of Somali refugees, demanding bribes to avoid forceful relocation to the camps, local journalists say. . . .
