For the twenty-seventh consecutive week, the Ball State University Center for Peace & Conflict Studies (www.bsu.edu/peacecenter) has compiled a list of acts of kindness and peace, as a response to COVID-19 and the racism pandemic. Please share these stories. If you have stories of positive acts people/organizations are taking in the midst of our pandemics and you would like to share them, please email them to Brandon Miller at peacecenter@bsu.edu. All the stories starting from week 1 are available online. Additionally, you can follow the Peace Center on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) at bsu4peace.
Journalist continues reporting local news after being laid off
Robin Kemp, a journalist, has a beat in that suddenly became the focus of national attention following the election. She lives in Clayton County, Georgia, in the heart of the late Rep. John Lewis’s district, and one of the counties that was key in flipping Georgia’s vote tally toward President-elect Joe Biden. However, Kemp’s situation was complicated. She had been laid off from her job as a journalist earlier in 2020, two years after re-entering the field following a long hiatus during which she pursued an MFA and PhD. She had found her passion in journalism, though, and she was undeterred. So she simply continued reporting local news. The day she was laid off, she began setting up the website and a Kickstarter for a nonprofit news organization she had dreamed of starting for some time. “I just grabbed whatever I could grab and immediately just kept shoveling out news because there’s nobody else doing it,” Kemp said. Months after being laid off, she was still committed. In fact, she was the only reporter who covered the entire process of her county’s vote tabulation following Election Day. She continued reporting for 21 hours between Thursday and Friday of election week as Clayton tabulated votes that eventually erased President Trump’s early lead in the state. During her late-night coverage of the ballot counting, she reported on the vote-tallying firsthand as well as on the crowd of Republican observers who came to watch. In her story, she observed that many of the onlookers were white men who alleged that the workers, mostly black women, were breaking the law. But the workers continued counting, Kemp reported. Within a week of Election Day, the balance in the Kickstarter that Kemp had created grew from $2,000 to over $18,000, and she had come to the attention of millions of new readers and social media followers. Kemp is now in the process of setting up her nonprofit and selecting its board of directors with the assistance of a former vice president of CNN.
Source: The Washington Post – https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/clayton-county-reporter-local-news-election-georgia/2020/11/10/c88d7d3c-2317-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html
Donations saved a restaurant that served free meals to the DC homeless population
Before the pandemic, Sakina Halal Grill – a Pakistani-Indian restaurant in DC – provided up to 80 free meals per day to homeless people in the city. Its owner, Kazi Mannan, had been doing that for years subsidized exclusively by the profits from sales. Despite offers, he never accepted donations from others. That philanthropic spirit has defined the place since its opening. On its first day in business in 2013, Mannan brought dozens of homeless people from a nearby refuge and provided free meals. But the pandemic crippled his sales, reducing the restaurant’s monthly income from $80,000-$90,000 to less than $20,000, which only covers a fraction of his expenses. With no other option, he took the advice of a friend and set up a GoFundMe page. As Mannan’s story began to spread, he was featured in local news coverage and caught the idea of a human rights lawyer, Arsalan Iftikhar. Iftikhar was inspired by Mamman’s work and decided to help keep him in business. Once Iftikhar began a social media campaign to raise awareness of Mamman’s story, donations pouring in. Within days Mamman’s GoFundMe reached its $250,000 goal. “I was sharing my love, kindness and joy with others, and now… I’m receiving the same love, kindness, and joy,” he said. The donations will help Mannan pay his expenses and rehire some staff. His goal is to return to the “old ways” where he can feed anyone who cannot afford a meal. With the assistance of kind strangers and Iftikhar’s assistance, Mannan said “not it looks like that dream is coming into reality.”
Source: The Washington Post – https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/11/19/covid-restaurant-homeless-gofundme-donations/?utm_campaign=wp_the_optimist&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_optimist
Kindness of Strangers and Determination Saves a Sick Swan in NYC
A couple weeks ago, Ariel Cordova-Rojas had her Thursday afternoon, the day before her 30thbirthday, all planned out: she was going to ride her bike to a wildlife refuge in Queens where she would spend the day hiking, bird watching, and enjoying the fall foliage. Things did not go as planned. At the refuge, Cordova-Rojas spotted a swan that was behaving strangely. Her training as an animal care manager at the Wild Bird Fund rehabilitation center in Manhattan had equipped her with the knowledge to recognize that the swan was in distress. Swans are normally aggressive and territorial, but this swan did not react as she approached. So decided to help despite being over an hour from her old workplace, where she knew someone would be able to assist. Thus began a journey involving three car rides and a trip on the NYC subway – spanning 23 miles, all with a swan in tow. Several people on the way helped Ms. Cordova-Rojas. A couple at the refuge where she started the day offered to drive her to the subway. When they could not fit Ms. Cordova-Rojas, her bike, and the swan in their car, the couple called a friend with a larger vehicle, who drove them all to the subway. At the station, the kindly strangers helped Ms. Cordova-Rojas lug her car and the swan onto the train. A former coworker at the Wild Bird Fund took over from there, giving the pair a ride from the station to the rescue facility, where they turned over the swan for testing. The Wild Bird Fund employees discovered that the swan had ingested lead fishing weights and contracted lead poisoning. A few days later the swan began receiving treatment. Despite the turn her day took from her initial plans, Ms. Cordova-Rojas looks back favorably on the strange series of events: “That was kind of the perfect culmination of my 20s. It was the perfect birthday present to be in nature and be able to save a life.”
Source: New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/nyregion/swan-jamaica-bay-rescue.html