Saturday, August 22, 2009

Saving The World's Women










Despite the fact that it looks like newspapers, the kind you can hold in your hands, are on their way out, my grandmother reads all her local papers daily. At 79 years old, she can’t imagine reading her news online. When my mother and uncles were young, my grandmother would buy the Philadelphia Bulletin just for one journalist-his name was Claude Lewis. She would also buy the Philadelphia Daily News because of another journalist named Chuck Stone. These two journalists were African-American and they gave my grandmother an example for her to show her three children how words can influence change and how ideas can influence behavior.

My mother remembers vividly reading, as a 9 or 10 year-old, Claude Lewis’ columns. She said thought they came out every Tuesday/Thursday or Wednesday/Friday in the Philadelphia Bulletin. Her mother insisted that her children read each column. My grandmother, a migrant from the South, was so proud of the fact that these men were African-American and real examples of success for her children to consider.

Nicholas Kristoff, of the New York Times, is a journalist my mother likes me to read. He consistently writes about people, places and problems that most other journalists and newspapers could care less about. I know I am and my readers will change the world for the better, but first we have to know what is happening in it.

Read this article by Mr. Kristoff. It’s about the need to uplift women if we are going to improve the lives of most people of the world. What I really like about this article is that Mr. Kristoff shows examples of women who have empowered themselves with the help of others. Here is the link to the Women’s Crusade; Saving the World's Women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?_r=1#

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