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6 year old Milan and 3 year old Sascha Saravia love their huge stuffed Woolly Mammoth.
They were given it and another huge toy dinosaur as a gift from a family friend a few years ago.
But they decided to give it away to one of their favorite places, Brockway Memorial Library in Miami Shores so that other kids can enjoy seeing it too.
Brenda Holsing, the Youth Services Librarian at Brockway said that the mammoth has been a hit with the scores of children who see it each day since it was donated a few months ago.
The mammoth that the Saravia boys donated to Brockway Memorial Library in Miami Shores.
Their dad Adrian Saravia said that the decision to give away the mammoth was a joint venture between the two boys.
“They visit the library at least three times a week and it’s a place that they enjoy a lot,” Adrian said. “And it just seemed like a nice thing to share with other kids.”
The boys are in the library’s summer camp program and also attend a monthly science program there during the regular school year.
From left to right: Adrian Saravia and his two sons Sascha and Milan on the wholly mammoth they donated to Brockway Memorial Library in Miami Shores.
So they spend a lot of time in the small, community run library.
“We feel very safe and comfortable and feel that they’re in a nice environment where they can meet people in the community,” Adrian said. “We’re very lucky to have a library so close and to have such a good group of people who care for the kids.”
Adrian said that the boys intend to eventually donate their giant toy brontosaurus to the library too.
The mammoth is now found on top of a book shelf opposite a longtime Brockway Library resident, the dragon.
——Here’s Something Completely Different: ——
The TV Weatherman Who Is Trying To Save Miami From Drowning
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It Is Actually Not Conservative To Defund Planned Parenthood
For conservatives, the issue of defunding Planned Parenthood is not actually as easy as it sounds from 30,000 feet. From an economic standpoint, Planned Parenthood is actually a smart way to save money for the government. Yes you read that right. Funding Planned Parenthood is actually the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Of course, some conservatives refuse to admit this fact.
In a recent Huffington Post article, Jeffery Young explains that Republicans claim cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood “wouldn’t harm women’s health, because other medical providers would pick up the slack”.
First of all, if the goal is to continue providing medical care, and many Republicans are hoping or rather, banking on another health care provider to “pick up the slack”, why even impede the crucial role Planned Parenthood plays in health care in the first place?
Secondly, not to get into semantics, but “other medical providers” dictates that these Republicans deem Planned Parenthood a legitimate healthcare facility.
So is this attempt to defund the organization because of abortions, (something that comprises two percent of what Planned Parenthood does) really what Republicans are prioritizing?
Abortion and Planned Parenthood have become synonymous. Unfortunately, this misrepresentation of the organization has created an ideological controversy that has sent socially conservative Americans into a fit of resentment and disapproval for the healthcare organization.
Strange, considering the fact that Planned Parenthood is one of the most fiscally conservative organizations in this country that the government subsidizes.
Journalist Amanda Marcotte explained in Slate just how cost effective Planned Parenthood really is. It actually provides a solid return on investment:
“Planned Parenthood cost the government an average of $148 for a patient’s contraceptive care in a year, while other clinics spent $215 a year per patient. Just pushing contraceptive care for these patients from Planned Parenthood to other clinics would thus cost the government an additional $174 million a year”.
So it is clearly not about the money, right?
A man holds up a pro Planned Parenthood sign at a rally in New York City in 2011. Photo Credit: Women’s eNews/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
If it were, there is no way that these Republicans would want to do away with Planned Parenthood.
After all, the organization treats around 2.5 million men and women in a year, and there is no way any small clinic would have the capacity, or the desire to treat such an influx in patients.
Here is a segment from a letter the director of the non partisan Congressional Budget Office Keith Hall’s letter to former House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy about the repercussions of defunding Planned Parenthood:
“Because the costs of about 45 percent of all births are paid for by the Medicaid program, CBO estimates that additional births that would result from enacting such a bill would add to federal spending for Medicaid. In addition, some of those children would themselves qualify for Medicaid and possibly for other federal programs.”
The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that obstructing patients access to health care at Planned Parenthood would cause a 35 percent decline on Medicaid from using “the most effective methods of birth control and a dramatic 27 percent spike in births among women who had previous access to injectable contraception”.
Blocking women’s access to Planned Parenthood does not make a stand against abortion; it stands against providing and protecting women’s bodies.
This ideological debate does not consider the repercussions for a large percent of the population. It does not consider what will be taken from American citizens, and it does not reflect fiscal evidence that proves the economic downsides to defunding Planned Parenthood.
Most importantly, it will not even accomplish what it is set out to do, and that is preventing abortions.
Starting in 2014, The Atlantic published a shocking series of articles about “DIY” (Do It Yourself) abortions in Texas.
By 2015, Texas had shut down twenty-four abortion clinics; and is expected in 2016 to be closer to thirty-one clinics.
The purpose of these shut downs was to eliminate the possibility of having an abortion in Texas.
A woman would have to travel what New York Times reporter, Kim Soffen projected as 111 miles outside the average Texas county to get an abortion. These shut downs led to a severe increase in self-induced abortions.
The Atlantic, also found that “Between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women between the ages of 18 and 49 have tried to end a pregnancy by themselves”, from a survey done by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas.
Women were inducing abortions by taking the drug, Misoprostol, taking illicit drugs, using alcohol, and getting punched repeatedly in the abdomen; all because they did not have access to an abortion clinic.
When women’s access to contraception is obstructed, the rate of unwanted pregnancies increase. When abortion clinics that are equipped to safely perform the procedure are shut down, self-induced, unsafe abortions are performed.
Defunding Planned Parenthood will not stop abortions, if anything; it will cause unsafe attempts to harm the woman.
This impact is not limited to Texas.
In Utah, for example, defunding local Planned Parenthood clinics would cause 4,400 men and women to go without STD testing according to the state’s Department of Health– while 3,725 people with chlamydia or gonorrhea and their partners would not receive treatment at all.
In a recent New York Times column, Nicholas Kristoff reports that “American kids have sex as often as European kids but have babies three times as often as Spanish kids and eight times as often as Swiss kids.”
A lack of access to contraception is not going to keep individuals from having sex, it is solely going to cause individuals to have unprotected sex and result in possible pregnancies, possible STI’s, and if these clinic shut downs continue, possible self-induced abortions.
Abortions are going to happen whether we want them to or not.
Therefore, safe abortion clinics must stay open, access to contraception and health care must be available to everyone, and women’s health needs to be a priority.
And on the whole, Planned Parenthood is actually a pretty economically sound investment for the government to make. Budget hawks should be championing it and not trying to tear it down.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Sarah Mirk/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Woah. You Have To Read What Christiane Amanpour Had To Say About Press Coverage Of Trump
Christiane Amanpour is one of the most respected and well-known journalists in the world.
Her reporting is an impressive mix of depth and clarity, and it has been for decades.
As a result, when Amanpour speaks out on a topic, people in the media tend to listen.
That is why her speech at the recent International Press Freedom Awards was powerful.
In short, Amanpour believes that many in the media treated Donald Trump differently than Hillary Clinton during the general election.
But more troubling than that is what she had to say about her fears of press freedoms being taken away in the United States.
Citing her experience in reporting on crackdowns of journalists by despotic regimes from around the world, Amanpour said that “First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating–until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison–and then who knows?”
Photo Credit: Sodexo USA/ Flickr (CC by 2.0)
“I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home,” Amanpour said in the speech. “I actually hoped that once president-elect, all that that would change, and I still do. But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about “professional protesters incited by the media.”
She went on. Oh boy, did she go on.
Here is the full text of Amanpour’s speech. You really should take a couple minutes to read the whole thing:
“I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home.
Ladies and gentlemen, I added the bits from candidate Trump as a reminder of the peril we face.
I actually hoped that once president-elect, all that that would change, and I still do.
But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about “professional protesters incited by the media.”
He walked back the part about the protesters but not the part about the media.
We are not there but postcard from the world: this is how it goes with authoritarians like Sisi, Erdoğan, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Duterte, et al.
As all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well:
First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating–until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives.
Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison–and then who knows?
Just to say, Erdoğan has just told my Israeli colleague Ilana Dayan that he cannot understand why anyone’s protesting in America, it must mean they don’t accept–or understand–democracy! And he thinks America, like all great countries, needs a strongman to get things done!
A great America requires a great and free and safe press.
So this above all is an appeal to protect journalism itself.
Recommit to robust fact-based reporting without fear or favor–on the issues.
Don’t stand for being labelled crooked or lying or failing
Do stand up together–for divided we will all fall.
The historian Simon Schama, in the house tonight, told me early on that this was not just another election, and we cannot treat it as one.
And he says if ever there’s a time to celebrate, honor, protect, and mobilize for press freedom and basic good journalism, it’s now.
At the start of this campaign, a network news president said this phenomenon may not be good for America but damn good for us.
During an interview on my program this summer, the film-maker and historian Ken Burns asked me what would Edward R. Murrow do?
First, like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate.
It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth.
We cannot continue the old paradigm–let’s say like over global warming, where 99.9 percent of the empirical scientific evidence is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers.
I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences.
I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.
And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: post-truth.
We have to accept that we’ve had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we’ve so slavishly been devoted to.
The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever–the tsunami of fake news sites–aka lies–that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard.
One of the main writers of these false articles–these lies–says people are getting dumber, just passing fake reports around without fact checking. We need to ask whether technology has finally outpaced our human ability to keep up.
Facebook needs to step up
Advertisers need to boycott the lying sites.
Wael Ghonim, one of the fathers of the Arab Spring, dubbed the social media revolution, now says:
“The same medium that so effectively transmits a howling message of change also appears to undermine the ability to make it. Social media amplifies the human tendency to bind with one’s own kind. It tends to reduce complex social challenges to mobilizing slogans that reverberate in echo chambers of the like-minded rather than engage in persuasion, dialogue, and the reach for consensus. Hate speech and untruths appear alongside good intentions and truths.”
I feel that we face an existential crisis, a threat to the very relevance and usefulness of our profession.
Now, more than ever, we need to commit to real reporting across a real nation, a real world in which journalism and democracy are in mortal peril, including by foreign powers like Russia paying to churn out and place false news, and hacking into democratic systems here and allegedly in upcoming crucial German and French elections too.
A quick anecdote from out there: in the 1997 Iranian elections, the reform candidate won and the establishment ayatollahs were caught totally off guard. One of them asked me later how I was so sure and when did I know that Khatami was going to win. I told him, as soon as I got on the ground and started talking to people! Just saying.
We must also fight against a post-values world.
And let me hit back at this elitist backlash we’re all bending over backwards to accommodate.
Since when were American values elitist values? They are not left or right values. They are not rich or poor values, not the forgotten-man values.
Like many foreigners I have learned they are universal. They are the values of every American from the humblest to the most exalted. They form the very fundamental foundation of the United States and are the basis of America’s global leadership. They are brand America. They are America’s greatest export and gift to the world.
So yes, like so many around the world, I was shocked–very few ever imagined that so many Americans conducting their sacred duty in the sanctity of the voting booth, with their secret ballot, would be angry enough to ignore the wholesale vulgarity of language, the sexual predatory behavior, the deep misogyny, the bigoted and insulting views.
Gov. Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Perhaps the opposite will be true this time around.
If not, I will fight as a journalist–as we all must–to defend and protect the unique value system that makes these United States–and with which it seeks to influence the world.
The conservative radio host who may be the next White House press secretary says mainstream media is hostile to traditional values.
I would say it’s just the opposite. And have you read about the “Heil, victory” meeting in Washington, DC this past weekend?
Why aren’t there more stories about the dangerous rise of the far right here and in Europe?
Since when did anti-Semitism stop being a litmus test in this country?
We must fights against normalization of the unacceptable.
A week before the heated Brexit referendum in the U.K., the gorgeous, young, optimistic, idealistic, compassionate MP Jo Cox, a remainer, was shot and stabbed to death by a maniac yelling “Britain first.” She was particularly sensitive to the plight of Syrian war refugees.
At his trial, the court was told the accused had researched information on the SS and the KKK.
Just a few weeks ago, her husband, Brendan, now raising their two tiny toddlers, expanded for me on an op-ed he’d written:
“Political leaders and people generally must embrace the responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Unless the center holds against the insidious creep of extremism, history shows how quickly hatred is normalized. What begins with biting your tongue for political expediency, or out of social awkwardness, soon becomes complicity with something far worse. Before you know it, it’s already too late.”
So now the solutions!
Somehow, the war of attrition in this country has to end. You’ve all seen the results of this election. It’s very close. The nation is very divided, and angry.
Are we in the media going to keep whipping up that war–or are we going to take a deep breath and maybe have a reset?!
It matters to us out there abroad too.
For better or for worse, this is the world’s only superpower. Culturally too.
The political example, the media example set here, are quickly emulated and rolled out across the world.
We, the media, can either contribute to a more functional system or to deepening the political dysfunction.
Which world do we want to leave our children?
In the same way, politics has been driven into poisonous partisan and paralyzing corners, where political differences are criminalized, where the zero sum game means in order for me to win, you have to be destroyed. What happened to compromise and common ground?
That same dynamic has infected powerful segments of the American media.
Like it has in Egypt and Turkey and Russia, where journalists have been pushed into political partisan corners as we see here tonight–delegitimized, accused of being enemies of the state.
Journalism itself has become weaponized. We have to stop it.
We all have a huge amount of work to do, investigating wrongdoing, holding power accountable, enabling decent government, defending basic rights, actually covering the world–Russia, Syria, North Korean nukes.
Can’t we have differences without killing each other off?
As a profession, let’s fight for what is right.
Let’s fight for our values.
Bad things do happen when good people do nothing.
In the words of the great civil rights leader, Congressman John Lewis:
“Young people and people not so young have a moral obligation and a mission and a mandate to get in good trouble.”
So let’s go out and make some.
And especially–let’s fight to remain relevant and useful.
Perhaps contemplating the long weekend ahead,
Let’s resolve not to be turkeys voting for Thanksgiving!
Happy holidays, everyone.”
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: AIB (Association for Intern
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