----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Sree Sreenivasan <ss221@columbia.edu>
To: SAJA E-mail Discussion List <saja-disc@lists.jrn.columbia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 3 September, 2008 11:27:35
Subject: DESI SPOTTING: Abu Taher at the DNC
Abu Taher of Bangla Patrika is featured prominently in this piece. In
fact, the print edition headline is:
"Ms. Chau, Mr. Taher, Ms. Gervais and Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska Go to Denver"
a press release about the 10 journos who attended is at
http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/09/prez-race-abu-t.html
NY Times
August 31, 2008
With an Assist, Minority Press Sends Reporters to Democratic Convention
By SAKI KNAFO
Denver
A DAY before the start of the Democratic National Convention, on an
airplane somewhere over the Midwest, The New Yorker's esteemed political
essayist Hendrik Hertzberg was spotted eating a sandwich. About 10 rows
behind him sat a group of reporters from lesser-known New York-based
publications: The Irish Echo, The Haitian Times, Sing Tao Daily, The
Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Polish-language newspaper called Nowy Dziennik
and an Arabic-English paper called Aramica.
"Our outlets never send people for events like this," said Ewa
Kern-Jedrychowska, the reporter for Nowy Dziennik, as the plane soared
above farmland, shopping malls, bowling alleys, used-car lots,
megachurches and other fixtures of American life. "We always cover it
through other agencies or media because we don't have resources to,
like, pay for a flight ticket."
In New York, some 300 papers in more than 70 languages make up what is
commonly known as the ethnic press, and over 50 such publications are
members of the New York Community Media Alliance, a nonprofit group
whose small, overworked staff had arranged the journey to the convention.
"They are like an umbrella organization that is, like, fighting for us
when we are just too small players for the big shots," Ms.
Kern-Jedrychowska said.
During the convention, she and her traveling companions would be staying
together in two modest houses in a remote part of Denver, where they
would be joined by a bureau chief for The Indian Express and a
Pakistani-American journalist who owns a gas station in Florida. Some of
the reporters would sleep on the floor. None of them had received the
coveted "floor passes" that allow journalists to interview delegates on
the floor of the convention hall.
Such adversity is nothing new for these journalists.
"Last time, when the convention was in New York — the Republican
convention — some of us were denied credentials," Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska
said. She added that the Independent Press Association, a precursor to
the New York Community Media Alliance, had intervened on their behalf.
"They started bombarding the people giving credentials, and eventually
we got credentials."
Standing with his hands on the back of Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska's seat was
Abu Taher, the executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Bengali
paper headquartered in a one-room office above an auto-body shop in Long
Island City, Queens.
"The reason we came to cover this convention," he said, "is to get the
idea of what is the roles of the people who have immigrant background
and the ethnic people, and how they can get involved, how they become
the delegates, and how they are feeling."
Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska added: "Part of our mission is to encourage people
to be part of political process because a lot of people are completely
lost. People from countries like mine, who could remember communists —
sometimes they are really reluctant to even participate in politics."
Lotus Chau, a veteran reporter for the Chinese-language newspaper Sing
Tao Daily, looked up from her BlackBerry.
"We are in the front lines, so we observe by our eyes," she said. "The
wires or A.P. or all the media agency take care of the mainstream, but
they don't understand minority."
Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska smiled. "The role of the ethnic press is growing,"
she said. "Both candidates are trying to appeal to minorities.
"America," she added, "is kind of changing."
•
To a great extent, the story of ethnic newspapers in America is the
story of New York's ethnic enclaves, which in the early 1900s gave rise
to publications such as The Jewish Daily Forward, The Amsterdam News and
La Prensa.
In more recent years, as growing numbers of immigrant communities have
sprung up outside big cities on the East and West Coasts, a number of
New York's ethnic newspapers have expanded their distribution networks
to reach readers in places like Michigan and Ohio.
During the same period, owing in part to the nation's immigration boom,
the number of ethnic publications in America has increased, as have the
circulations of many individual newspapers. At least 18 newspapers serve
New York's Pakistanis alone, and more than a dozen newspapers are
printed in Bengali.
To appreciate the significance of these numbers, consider the recent
woes of the mainstream press: The nation's daily newspapers have
reported an accelerating decline in readership over the past two decades.
MS. KERN-JEDRYCHOWSKA and her colleagues arrived in Denver with agendas
that in general bore little resemblance to those of their mainstream
counterparts.
For example, Darlie Gervais, an employee of the Brooklyn-based Haitian
Times, was determined to spend the better part of a day reporting on
Kwame Raoul, a second-generation Haitian-American state senator from
Chicago.
About 11 a.m. on the first day of the convention, Ms. Gervais, whose
duties include reporting, editing, taking pictures and selling ads, sat
in the lobby of the Denver Marriott waiting for Mr. Raoul to show for
their appointment. She checked her cellphone: It was 15 minutes past
their scheduled meeting time. "Maybe he had some other meeting with his
fellow Democrats," she said gloomily.
Another 15 minutes passed. Ms. Gervais checked her phone again. She then
put it back in her purse, and for the umpteenth time that morning she
tested her tape recorder.
To most of America, Mr. Raoul is scarcely known despite the fact that in
2004 he succeeded Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate. But to readers of
The Haitian Times, he is a star and an inspiration, an example of what a
son of Haitian parents might achieve. Much of his fame in the Haitian
community is derived from The Haitian Times; before the convention, the
paper published a profile and two other articles on him. Ms. Gervais
checked her phone once more. "Maybe if it was The New York Times," she
said, "he would be downstairs more quicker."
All told, Ms. Gervais waited for more than an hour before Mr. Raoul
finally emerged from the elevator, a gleaming campaign pin shaped like
Illinois on his lapel. After apologizing to Ms. Gervais for his
tardiness, he suggested that they find a quiet place to talk.
Ms. Gervais had something else in mind: She wanted to follow him while
he went about his business so that she could explain to her readers what
being a delegate entails.
"That's going to be hard," Mr. Raoul said. "I don't know if you can get
into the places where I'm going."
WHILE Ms. Gervais tried to persuade Mr. Raoul, Abu Taher, the
40-year-old executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, was in a
different hotel, enjoying a lunch of halal chicken. That morning he had
received a phone call from the Bangladeshi president of Local 1407 — the
New York City union for accountants, statisticians and actuaries. "He
told me there is a Muslim caucus meeting," said Mr. Taher, who has the
endearing habit of touching the arms and knees of anyone who spends time
in his presence. "I think, I don't know what is a caucus. Maybe I will
learn something and what it is about."
It was the first time in history that a Muslim caucus convened at a
national convention, and among its goals was convincing Muslim-Americans
that Mr. Obama deserved their votes.
To spread this message, the delegates needed all the help they could get
from publications with Muslim readerships — publications like The Bangla
Patrika. But first, staff members of those publications had to find the
delegates, and for Mr. Taher, that had not been so easy.
Although most of the week's caucus meetings took place in Denver's
convention center, the Muslim delegates gathered in a hotel basement so
deep underground that cellphones were useless. Given that some Muslims
have criticized Mr. Obama, who is a Christian, for engaging in what they
see as an effort to disassociate himself from their faith, the meeting's
obscure location was heavy with significance for some participants.
Mr. Taher had roamed the hotel grounds until he spotted a woman in a
headscarf who led him into the bowels of the Sheraton. For the next few
hours, he sat beside a political leader from Bangladesh and listened to
a cavalcade of Muslim speakers, who reassured the audience that the
Democratic Party valued its Muslim supporters.
Later, as Mr. Taher left the hotel, he spoke of "the beauty of American
politics," a theme he planned to highlight in his article on the event.
LIKE many members of the ethnic press, Mr. Taher believes that a good
community newspaper is one that encourages its readers to embrace
American life. In consequence, and by Mr. Taher's own acknowledgment,
his publication tends to reflect the sort of sunny outlook a mainstream
paper might dismiss as boosterism.
But Mr. Taher is not incapable of delivering bad news. He spent eight
years at a newspaper in Bangladesh, and he says that he was subjected to
intimidation more than once because he reported facts that seemed to
cast the government in an unfavorable light.
In Bangladesh, he said, his goal was "to print everything which fit to
print." Here, he said, his aims are very different. "We have to create
the hope," he said. "Our future generation, they are growing up here.
They have to have the hope in this country."
A few hours after the Muslim caucus meeting, Mr. Taher strolled into the
media gallery of the Pepsi Center, an arena where the first major
speeches of the convention were getting under way. It would be hours
before Michelle Obama addressed the crowd, and the prized front-row
desks were still empty. Affixed to many of them were signs marked with
the words "New York Times."
Mr. Taher made his way toward the front of a balcony, passing desks with
labels marked "Washington Times," "Dallas Morning News," "Providence
Journal" and "Riverside Press-Enterprise." There weren't any desks
reserved for The Weekly Bengla Patrika, but that didn't matter. Mr.
Taher sat down at an unoccupied table labeled with a single word: "Hearst."
It was almost midnight when he returned to the rented house that he was
sharing with Ms. Gervais, Ms. Chau and a reporter from Pakistan. Ms.
Gervais sat at the kitchen table, writing a triumphant memo to her boss,
Garry Pierre-Pierre, who founded The Haitian Times after leaving The New
York Times in the late 1990s. Mr. Raoul, she wrote, had allowed her to
shadow him.
Mr. Taher opened his laptop and typed a summary of what he had seen.
Afterward, he translated some of the words that appeared in Bengali on
the screen. When Senator Edward Kennedy spoke, he said, "it was very
emotional scene and many people teared." He did not mention that he was
among those who had wept.
LOTUS CHAU, 47, is the chief reporter for the New York office of Sing
Tao Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper with many overseas branches. When
she was 3, her father died of cancer, and her family moved from mainland
China to Hong Kong, where her mother worked as a school janitor.
"If my father didn't die, I don't move to Hong Kong," Ms. Chau said a
few days before the trip. "If I don't move to Hong Kong, I don't go to
good school. If I don't go to good school, I don't go to university. If
I don't go to university, I don't work for newspaper.
"You see?" she said, cracking a smile. "I don't complain."
Ms. Chau is barely five feet tall. She has a pronounced underbite, which
seems to suit her personality; it is as though years of stubborn
reporting have molded her features into an expression of fierce
determination.
Her favorite phrases include "Dig harder!" and "Empty talk!" Her
consuming ambition is to be the best reporter in Chinatown, and it has
occurred to her that if she knew English as well as she knows Chinese,
she might put a mainstream reporter out of work. "I don't wear sexy
dress, I'm not pretty, I'm short, my English no good," she says. "But I
work hard."
Last Sunday evening, Ms. Chau walked at an astonishingly brisk clip into
the ballroom of a Denver hotel where a party of New York delegates had
assembled. Like many reporters for ethnic newspapers, she doubles as a
photographer, and a camera bag hung from a strap around her neck.
Ms. Chau streaked past tables laden with plates of corned beef (the menu
had apparently been designed to make the guests forget that they had
ever left New York) and planted herself in front of Ellen Young, an
assemblywoman from Flushing, Queens, and an old acquaintance of Ms.
Chau's from the Chinatown political scene.
Ms. Young, temporarily condemned to silence by a mouthful of deli meat,
listened helplessly as Ms. Chau unleashed a torrent of demands, among
them "Can I sleep on your floor?" Ms. Chau, who lives in fear of being
scooped, explained that she wanted to be as close as possible to the action.
As she pressed her case, a slow, tired voice resonated from the
loudspeakers. "Sheldon Silver!" Ms. Chau exclaimed.
Mr. Silver, a New York assemblyman whose district includes part of
Chinatown, is running for re-election. Ms. Chau had seen him deliver a
campaign speech in Chinatown a week earlier, and she had not been
impressed.
"Empty talk," she had said after watching him promise an older Chinese
audience more social-service programs. "Ten years ago he wouldn't do
this, but all these old people, they become citizens." Now, halfway
across America, Mr. Silver was once again engaging in political oratory.
Ms. Chau disappeared into a mass of reporters and photographers from The
New York Post, The Daily News and The New York Times. When she
reappeared a moment later, she was standing directly in front of the
stage, camera in hand. All the other photographers were in back of her.
She snapped picture after picture, first of Mr. Silver, and then of the
next speaker, Gov. David Paterson of New York. As soon as the governor
left the stage, a score of reporters surged after him. Ms. Chau stood
off to the side with her camera, studying the images she had recorded.
She didn't look happy.
•
Shortly afterward, the crowd that had been surrounding the governor fell
away; it seemed that Mr. Silver was leading the governor back to the
stage. The press corps looked on as the two politicians climbed onto the
stage and turned to face the ballroom. Standing below them was Lotus
Chau. She snapped a picture.
While the governor had been answering questions, she had told Mr. Silver
that she wasn't satisfied with the pictures she had taken.
"Whatever Lotus wants, Lotus gets," Mr. Silver later explained. "She's
the best."
------------------------------------
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From: Sree Sreenivasan <ss221@columbia.edu>
To: SAJA E-mail Discussion List <saja-disc@lists.jrn.columbia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 3 September, 2008 11:27:35
Subject: DESI SPOTTING: Abu Taher at the DNC
Abu Taher of Bangla Patrika is featured prominently in this piece. In
fact, the print edition headline is:
"Ms. Chau, Mr. Taher, Ms. Gervais and Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska Go to Denver"
a press release about the 10 journos who attended is at
http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/09/prez-race-abu-t.html
NY Times
August 31, 2008
With an Assist, Minority Press Sends Reporters to Democratic Convention
By SAKI KNAFO
Denver
A DAY before the start of the Democratic National Convention, on an
airplane somewhere over the Midwest, The New Yorker's esteemed political
essayist Hendrik Hertzberg was spotted eating a sandwich. About 10 rows
behind him sat a group of reporters from lesser-known New York-based
publications: The Irish Echo, The Haitian Times, Sing Tao Daily, The
Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Polish-language newspaper called Nowy Dziennik
and an Arabic-English paper called Aramica.
"Our outlets never send people for events like this," said Ewa
Kern-Jedrychowska, the reporter for Nowy Dziennik, as the plane soared
above farmland, shopping malls, bowling alleys, used-car lots,
megachurches and other fixtures of American life. "We always cover it
through other agencies or media because we don't have resources to,
like, pay for a flight ticket."
In New York, some 300 papers in more than 70 languages make up what is
commonly known as the ethnic press, and over 50 such publications are
members of the New York Community Media Alliance, a nonprofit group
whose small, overworked staff had arranged the journey to the convention.
"They are like an umbrella organization that is, like, fighting for us
when we are just too small players for the big shots," Ms.
Kern-Jedrychowska said.
During the convention, she and her traveling companions would be staying
together in two modest houses in a remote part of Denver, where they
would be joined by a bureau chief for The Indian Express and a
Pakistani-American journalist who owns a gas station in Florida. Some of
the reporters would sleep on the floor. None of them had received the
coveted "floor passes" that allow journalists to interview delegates on
the floor of the convention hall.
Such adversity is nothing new for these journalists.
"Last time, when the convention was in New York — the Republican
convention — some of us were denied credentials," Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska
said. She added that the Independent Press Association, a precursor to
the New York Community Media Alliance, had intervened on their behalf.
"They started bombarding the people giving credentials, and eventually
we got credentials."
Standing with his hands on the back of Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska's seat was
Abu Taher, the executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Bengali
paper headquartered in a one-room office above an auto-body shop in Long
Island City, Queens.
"The reason we came to cover this convention," he said, "is to get the
idea of what is the roles of the people who have immigrant background
and the ethnic people, and how they can get involved, how they become
the delegates, and how they are feeling."
Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska added: "Part of our mission is to encourage people
to be part of political process because a lot of people are completely
lost. People from countries like mine, who could remember communists —
sometimes they are really reluctant to even participate in politics."
Lotus Chau, a veteran reporter for the Chinese-language newspaper Sing
Tao Daily, looked up from her BlackBerry.
"We are in the front lines, so we observe by our eyes," she said. "The
wires or A.P. or all the media agency take care of the mainstream, but
they don't understand minority."
Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska smiled. "The role of the ethnic press is growing,"
she said. "Both candidates are trying to appeal to minorities.
"America," she added, "is kind of changing."
•
To a great extent, the story of ethnic newspapers in America is the
story of New York's ethnic enclaves, which in the early 1900s gave rise
to publications such as The Jewish Daily Forward, The Amsterdam News and
La Prensa.
In more recent years, as growing numbers of immigrant communities have
sprung up outside big cities on the East and West Coasts, a number of
New York's ethnic newspapers have expanded their distribution networks
to reach readers in places like Michigan and Ohio.
During the same period, owing in part to the nation's immigration boom,
the number of ethnic publications in America has increased, as have the
circulations of many individual newspapers. At least 18 newspapers serve
New York's Pakistanis alone, and more than a dozen newspapers are
printed in Bengali.
To appreciate the significance of these numbers, consider the recent
woes of the mainstream press: The nation's daily newspapers have
reported an accelerating decline in readership over the past two decades.
MS. KERN-JEDRYCHOWSKA and her colleagues arrived in Denver with agendas
that in general bore little resemblance to those of their mainstream
counterparts.
For example, Darlie Gervais, an employee of the Brooklyn-based Haitian
Times, was determined to spend the better part of a day reporting on
Kwame Raoul, a second-generation Haitian-American state senator from
Chicago.
About 11 a.m. on the first day of the convention, Ms. Gervais, whose
duties include reporting, editing, taking pictures and selling ads, sat
in the lobby of the Denver Marriott waiting for Mr. Raoul to show for
their appointment. She checked her cellphone: It was 15 minutes past
their scheduled meeting time. "Maybe he had some other meeting with his
fellow Democrats," she said gloomily.
Another 15 minutes passed. Ms. Gervais checked her phone again. She then
put it back in her purse, and for the umpteenth time that morning she
tested her tape recorder.
To most of America, Mr. Raoul is scarcely known despite the fact that in
2004 he succeeded Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate. But to readers of
The Haitian Times, he is a star and an inspiration, an example of what a
son of Haitian parents might achieve. Much of his fame in the Haitian
community is derived from The Haitian Times; before the convention, the
paper published a profile and two other articles on him. Ms. Gervais
checked her phone once more. "Maybe if it was The New York Times," she
said, "he would be downstairs more quicker."
All told, Ms. Gervais waited for more than an hour before Mr. Raoul
finally emerged from the elevator, a gleaming campaign pin shaped like
Illinois on his lapel. After apologizing to Ms. Gervais for his
tardiness, he suggested that they find a quiet place to talk.
Ms. Gervais had something else in mind: She wanted to follow him while
he went about his business so that she could explain to her readers what
being a delegate entails.
"That's going to be hard," Mr. Raoul said. "I don't know if you can get
into the places where I'm going."
WHILE Ms. Gervais tried to persuade Mr. Raoul, Abu Taher, the
40-year-old executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, was in a
different hotel, enjoying a lunch of halal chicken. That morning he had
received a phone call from the Bangladeshi president of Local 1407 — the
New York City union for accountants, statisticians and actuaries. "He
told me there is a Muslim caucus meeting," said Mr. Taher, who has the
endearing habit of touching the arms and knees of anyone who spends time
in his presence. "I think, I don't know what is a caucus. Maybe I will
learn something and what it is about."
It was the first time in history that a Muslim caucus convened at a
national convention, and among its goals was convincing Muslim-Americans
that Mr. Obama deserved their votes.
To spread this message, the delegates needed all the help they could get
from publications with Muslim readerships — publications like The Bangla
Patrika. But first, staff members of those publications had to find the
delegates, and for Mr. Taher, that had not been so easy.
Although most of the week's caucus meetings took place in Denver's
convention center, the Muslim delegates gathered in a hotel basement so
deep underground that cellphones were useless. Given that some Muslims
have criticized Mr. Obama, who is a Christian, for engaging in what they
see as an effort to disassociate himself from their faith, the meeting's
obscure location was heavy with significance for some participants.
Mr. Taher had roamed the hotel grounds until he spotted a woman in a
headscarf who led him into the bowels of the Sheraton. For the next few
hours, he sat beside a political leader from Bangladesh and listened to
a cavalcade of Muslim speakers, who reassured the audience that the
Democratic Party valued its Muslim supporters.
Later, as Mr. Taher left the hotel, he spoke of "the beauty of American
politics," a theme he planned to highlight in his article on the event.
LIKE many members of the ethnic press, Mr. Taher believes that a good
community newspaper is one that encourages its readers to embrace
American life. In consequence, and by Mr. Taher's own acknowledgment,
his publication tends to reflect the sort of sunny outlook a mainstream
paper might dismiss as boosterism.
But Mr. Taher is not incapable of delivering bad news. He spent eight
years at a newspaper in Bangladesh, and he says that he was subjected to
intimidation more than once because he reported facts that seemed to
cast the government in an unfavorable light.
In Bangladesh, he said, his goal was "to print everything which fit to
print." Here, he said, his aims are very different. "We have to create
the hope," he said. "Our future generation, they are growing up here.
They have to have the hope in this country."
A few hours after the Muslim caucus meeting, Mr. Taher strolled into the
media gallery of the Pepsi Center, an arena where the first major
speeches of the convention were getting under way. It would be hours
before Michelle Obama addressed the crowd, and the prized front-row
desks were still empty. Affixed to many of them were signs marked with
the words "New York Times."
Mr. Taher made his way toward the front of a balcony, passing desks with
labels marked "Washington Times," "Dallas Morning News," "Providence
Journal" and "Riverside Press-Enterprise." There weren't any desks
reserved for The Weekly Bengla Patrika, but that didn't matter. Mr.
Taher sat down at an unoccupied table labeled with a single word: "Hearst."
It was almost midnight when he returned to the rented house that he was
sharing with Ms. Gervais, Ms. Chau and a reporter from Pakistan. Ms.
Gervais sat at the kitchen table, writing a triumphant memo to her boss,
Garry Pierre-Pierre, who founded The Haitian Times after leaving The New
York Times in the late 1990s. Mr. Raoul, she wrote, had allowed her to
shadow him.
Mr. Taher opened his laptop and typed a summary of what he had seen.
Afterward, he translated some of the words that appeared in Bengali on
the screen. When Senator Edward Kennedy spoke, he said, "it was very
emotional scene and many people teared." He did not mention that he was
among those who had wept.
LOTUS CHAU, 47, is the chief reporter for the New York office of Sing
Tao Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper with many overseas branches. When
she was 3, her father died of cancer, and her family moved from mainland
China to Hong Kong, where her mother worked as a school janitor.
"If my father didn't die, I don't move to Hong Kong," Ms. Chau said a
few days before the trip. "If I don't move to Hong Kong, I don't go to
good school. If I don't go to good school, I don't go to university. If
I don't go to university, I don't work for newspaper.
"You see?" she said, cracking a smile. "I don't complain."
Ms. Chau is barely five feet tall. She has a pronounced underbite, which
seems to suit her personality; it is as though years of stubborn
reporting have molded her features into an expression of fierce
determination.
Her favorite phrases include "Dig harder!" and "Empty talk!" Her
consuming ambition is to be the best reporter in Chinatown, and it has
occurred to her that if she knew English as well as she knows Chinese,
she might put a mainstream reporter out of work. "I don't wear sexy
dress, I'm not pretty, I'm short, my English no good," she says. "But I
work hard."
Last Sunday evening, Ms. Chau walked at an astonishingly brisk clip into
the ballroom of a Denver hotel where a party of New York delegates had
assembled. Like many reporters for ethnic newspapers, she doubles as a
photographer, and a camera bag hung from a strap around her neck.
Ms. Chau streaked past tables laden with plates of corned beef (the menu
had apparently been designed to make the guests forget that they had
ever left New York) and planted herself in front of Ellen Young, an
assemblywoman from Flushing, Queens, and an old acquaintance of Ms.
Chau's from the Chinatown political scene.
Ms. Young, temporarily condemned to silence by a mouthful of deli meat,
listened helplessly as Ms. Chau unleashed a torrent of demands, among
them "Can I sleep on your floor?" Ms. Chau, who lives in fear of being
scooped, explained that she wanted to be as close as possible to the action.
As she pressed her case, a slow, tired voice resonated from the
loudspeakers. "Sheldon Silver!" Ms. Chau exclaimed.
Mr. Silver, a New York assemblyman whose district includes part of
Chinatown, is running for re-election. Ms. Chau had seen him deliver a
campaign speech in Chinatown a week earlier, and she had not been
impressed.
"Empty talk," she had said after watching him promise an older Chinese
audience more social-service programs. "Ten years ago he wouldn't do
this, but all these old people, they become citizens." Now, halfway
across America, Mr. Silver was once again engaging in political oratory.
Ms. Chau disappeared into a mass of reporters and photographers from The
New York Post, The Daily News and The New York Times. When she
reappeared a moment later, she was standing directly in front of the
stage, camera in hand. All the other photographers were in back of her.
She snapped picture after picture, first of Mr. Silver, and then of the
next speaker, Gov. David Paterson of New York. As soon as the governor
left the stage, a score of reporters surged after him. Ms. Chau stood
off to the side with her camera, studying the images she had recorded.
She didn't look happy.
•
Shortly afterward, the crowd that had been surrounding the governor fell
away; it seemed that Mr. Silver was leading the governor back to the
stage. The press corps looked on as the two politicians climbed onto the
stage and turned to face the ballroom. Standing below them was Lotus
Chau. She snapped a picture.
While the governor had been answering questions, she had told Mr. Silver
that she wasn't satisfied with the pictures she had taken.
"Whatever Lotus wants, Lotus gets," Mr. Silver later explained. "She's
the best."
------------------------------------
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<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm
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VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
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