Archive for May 1st, 2016
Hamdi Ulukaya, a Muslim Kurdish immigrant and CEO of multi-billion dollar, Gifts 10% to employees
Posted on: May 1, 2016
Hamdi Ulukaya, a Muslim Kurdish immigrant and CEO of multi-billion dollar, Gifts 10% to employees
Hamdi Ulukaya, a Muslim Kurdish immigrant and CEO of multi-billion dollar yogurt business, Chobani has surprised his 2,000 full-time employees by giving them a 10% stake in the company.
Ulukaya founded the company which sells Greek yogurt in 2005 and it has rapidly grown in the last 10 years
Noor Al-Harmasi Al-Hajri shared this link. ·
“The company has been valued between $3-5 billion which means the average payout for each employee will be $150,000 with some employees potentially receiving shares worth over $1 million.”
The company has been valued between $3-5 billion which means the average payout for each employee will be $150,000 with some employees potentially receiving shares worth over $1 million.
In a letter to his employees, Ulukaya wrote:
“My dream, from day one, was to share our success with this entire family—for us all to have a stake in our future, working together to grow Chobani and furthering our mission as a modern food company,”
Ulukaya has employed a diverse range of staff including refugees fleeing war. In 2014 Ulukaya pledged to donate $2 million to provide immediate relief for those being persecuted in Iraq and Syria.
This just goes to show despite the anti-immigrant rhetoric being spread by some politicians, people like Ulukaya are making a positive contribution to American society, both economically and to people’s lives.
The Sisterhood of the Easter Rising
AROUND 12:45 p.m. on April 29, 1916, Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell left 15 Moore Street in Dublin to deliver the surrender message that would end the Easter Rising.
Inside the house, where the division of Irish rebels under the command of Padraig Pearse had retreated, her comrades in arms watched her walk away through the bullet-riddled streets, fearing she would be shot down.
But as she neared the British military outpost, the firing eased and Ms. O’Farrell accomplished her mission without injury.
Constance Markievicz was second in command at the rebels’ St. Stephen’s Green outpost in Dublin. Credit National Library of Ireland
Ms. O’Farrell’s act of bravery has become one of the iconic moments of the Rising, not so much for the act itself, but for how it was documented.
In a photo of the surrender taken later with Pearse and two British officers, only Ms. O’Farrell’s boots were visible. When the photo was first published in a British newspaper, even the boots had disappeared.
Ms. O’Farrell claimed later that she deliberately stepped out of sight. But rightly or wrongly, “that photo” has come to symbolize the airbrushing — or “Eire-brushing,” as some have said — of women out of Ireland’s history.
Now, as the centenary celebrations of the Easter Rising get underway, a determined effort is being made to reinsert the lost stories of female heroism into the male-dominated narrative of the struggle for Irish independence. As these stories come into focus, the doctored image could be said to represent something more that has consequences to this day: the removal of women from a public role in the republic they helped bring into being.
Aside from a few stars like Constance Markievicz, who was second in command at the rebels’ St. Stephen’s Green outpost in Dublin, or the schoolteacher turned sniper Margaret Skinnider, most of the estimated 260 women who took part in the 1916 insurrection never found their way into the history books.
In recent decades, several historians, mostly women, have worked to change that. Among them, as part of a government-funded commemorative effort, Mary McAuliffe and Liz Gillis have unearthed a wealth of information on the 77 women who were imprisoned for their role in the uprising.
The picture emerging from this research is one of women who were not just committed nationalists willing to die for Ireland, but also longtime campaigners for social justice who had been fighting inequality on many fronts: land reform, labor battles and women’s suffrage.
These women wanted a fairer society in which they would have an equal say. In 1916, they had reason to believe that the republic they chose to fight for was the surest means to that end.
According to the historian Margaret Ward, Ireland “did something quite unique in 1916” to advance equality “that wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of the women before the Rising.” On a speaking tour in 1917, Ireland’s foremost suffragist, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, told audiences that “it is the only instance I know of in history when men fighting for freedom voluntarily included women.”
The progressive leanings of the Rising’s leaders were evident in the language of the Proclamation of an Irish Republic read aloud by Pearse on the steps of the General Post Office. Addressed to “Irishmen and Irishwomen,” it guaranteed “equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.” At a time when women in most of the world had yet to secure the right to vote, this guarantee was no trivial thing.
It took six days for British troops to quell the rebellion. Sixteen rebel leaders were executed soon after, among them Pearse and the movement’s greatest champion of equality, the socialist leader James Connolly. It would take six more years and much more bloodshed before Ireland won limited independence in the form of the Free State, in 26 of the country’s 32 counties.
Although activism by women expanded rapidly during this tumultuous period, with membership of Cumann na mBan, the Irish nationalist women’s paramilitary organization, growing from between 650 and 1,700 in 1916 to as many as 21,000 in 1921, they were not rewarded for their efforts.
The equal rights language of the Proclamation did make its way into the 1922 Constitution, and Irish women over 21 achieved full voting rights that year. But with the progressives dead, the Free State government, heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, began rolling back these rights almost as swiftly as Elizabeth O’Farrell’s boots were erased from that photo.
Laws in 1924 and 1927 largely excluded women from sitting on juries. In 1932, a marriage ban was introduced that forced women who worked as teachers or civil servants to retire upon marriage. The 1935 Conditions of Employment Act limited women’s ability to work in industry.
But it was the 1937 Constitution, drafted under Prime Minister Eamon De Valera’s leadership, that sealed women’s fate for decades. As commander of the Boland’s Mill outpost in 1916, De Valera had been the only leader to refuse women’s participation in the Rising. Now with Article 41 of the Constitution, which reads “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,” he closed the door on women’s progress in a more definitive way.
So, it is not surprising that just as Ireland is reckoning with the erasure of its first wave of feminism, a new one is surging, propelled in part by the commemorations. In November, when the Abbey, the national theater of Ireland, released its centenary lineup of plays, all but one of which were written by men, an “Estrogen Rising” erupted. The ensuing furor highlighted women’s underrepresentation in Irish theater, film, media and politics.
Even before that, reproductive rights activists struck a new note of militancy when they chained themselves last April to the pillars of the General Post Office to protest a 1983 constitutional amendment that equates the right to life of the unborn with the right to life of the mother. Dressed as suffragists, these women read out a revised version of the proclamation declaring the “right of all people in Ireland to ownership of their own bodies.”
In the same streets where Elizabeth O’Farrell walked through gunfire almost a century ago, these modern-day activists forged a link between their struggles and the unfulfilled hopes of sisters from another era. What women did for Ireland, and what Ireland has since done for women, deserve a fuller accounting.
During WWII, European refugees fled to Syria.
Here’s what the camps were like.
This story is a part of
Andrew Bossone shared a link.
Refugees crossed these same passageways 70 years ago. But they were not Syrians and they traveled in the opposite direction. At the height of World War II, the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration (MERRA) operated camps in Syria, Egypt and Palestine where tens of thousands of people from across Europe sought refuge.
MERRA was part of a growing network of refugee camps around the world that were operated in a collaborative effort by national governments, military officials and domestic and international aid organizations. Social welfare groups including the International Migration Service, the Red Cross, the Near East Foundation and the Save the Children Fund all pitched in to help MERRA and, later, the United Nations to run the camps.
The archival record provides limited information on the demographics of World War II refugee camps in the Middle East. The information that is available, however, shows that camp officials expected the camps to shelter more refugees over time. Geographic information on location of camps come from records of the International Social Service, American Branch records, in the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.
In March 1944, officials who worked for MERRA and the International Migration Service (later called the International Social Service) issued reports on these refugee camps in an effort to improve living conditions there. The reports, which detail conditions that echo those faced by refugees today, offer a window into the daily lives of Europeans, largely from Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia, who had to adjust to life inside refugee camps in the Middle East during World War II.
Upon arriving at one of several camps in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, refugees first had to register with camp officials and receive camp-issued identification cards.
These identification cards — which they had to carry with them at all times — included information such as the refugee’s name, their camp identification number, information on their educational and work history and any special skills they possessed.
Once registered, recent arrivals wound their way through a thorough medical inspection.
Refugees headed toward what were often makeshift hospital facilities — usually tents, but occasionally empty buildings repurposed for medical care — where they took off their clothes, their shoes and were washed until officials believed they were sufficiently disinfected.
Some refugees — such as Greeks who arrived in the Aleppo camp from the Dodecanese islands in 1944 — could expect medical inspections to become part of their daily routine.
After medical officials were satisfied that they were healthy enough to join the rest of the camp, refugees were split up into living quarters for families, unaccompanied children, single men and single women. Once assigned to a particular section of the camp, refugees enjoyed few opportunities to venture outside. Occasionally they were able to go on outings under the supervision of camp officials.
When refugees in the Aleppo camp made the several-mile trek into town, for example, they might visit shops to purchase basic supplies, watch a film at the local cinema — or simply get a distraction from the monotony of camp life. Although the camp at Moses Wells, located on over 100 acres of desert, was not within walking distance of a town, refugees were allowed to spend some time each day bathing in the nearby Red Sea.
Camp officials maintained a log that recorded the identification number, full name, gender, marital status, profession, passport number, special comments, date of arrival — and eventually, their date of departure.
Naturally, food was an essential part of refugees’ daily lives. Refugees in MERRA camps during World War II typically received a half portion of Army rations each day.
Officials acknowledged that when possible, rations should be supplemented with foods that reflected refugees’ national customs and religious practices.
Those who were fortunate enough to have some money could buy beans, olives, oil, fruit, tea, coffee and other staples from canteens in the camp or during occasional visits to local shops, where in addition to food they could buy soap, razor blades, pencils, paper, stamps and other items.
Camps that weren’t pressed for space were able to provide room for refugees to prepare meals. In Aleppo, for example, a room was reserved in the camp for women to gather and make macaroni with flour that they received from camp officials.
Some, but not all, camps required refugees to work. In Aleppo, refugees were encouraged, but not required, to work as cooks, cleaners and cobblers. Labor wasn’t mandatory in Nuseirat, either, but camp officials did try to create opportunities for refugees to use their skills in carpentry, painting, shoe making and wool spinning so that they could stay occupied and earn a little income from other refugees who could afford their services.
Meanwhile, at Moses Wells, all able-bodied, physically fit refugees were required to work in a variety of occupations. Most worked as shopkeepers, cleaners, seamstresses, apprentices, masons, carpenters or plumbers, while “exceptionally qualified persons” served as school masters or labor foremen. Women performed additional domestic work like sewing, laundry, and preparing food on top of any other work they had.
Some camps even had opportunities for refugees to receive vocational training.
At El Shatt and Moses Wells, hospital staff was in such short supply that the refugee camps doubled as nursing training programs for Yugoslavian and Greek refugees and locals alike.
In an article for the American Journal of Nursing, as well as in several reports she issued to the International Migration Service, a prominent nurse practitioner named Margaret G. Arnstein observed that students in the program were taught practical nursing, anatomy, physiology, first aid, obstetrics, pediatrics, as well as the military rules and regulations that governed camps.
Because most had no formal education beyond grammar school, Arnstein noted that nursing curriculum was taught “in simple terms” and emphasized practical experience over theory and terminology.
The head nurses of the training program hoped they could eventually garner formal accreditation so that anyone who finished the program would be licensed to practice nursing after leaving the camps — at the time, nursing students in refugee camps were only able to treat patients because they were “emergency nurses” operating by necessity in wartime.
MERRA officials agreed that it was best for children in refugee camps to have regular routines.
Education was a crucial part of that routine. For the most part, classrooms in Middle Eastern refugee camps had too few teachers and too many students, inadequate supplies and suffered from overcrowding. Yet not all the camps were so hard pressed.
In Nuseirat, for example, a refugee who was an artist completed many paintings and posted them all over the walls of a kindergarten inside the camp, making the classrooms “bright and cheerful.” Well-to-do people in the area donated toys, games, and dolls to the kindergarten, causing a camp official to remark that it “compared favorably with many in the United States.”
When they weren’t working or going to school, refugees took part in various leisure activities. Men played handball and football and socialized over cigarettes — occasionally beer and wine, if they were available — in canteens inside the camp. Some camps had playgrounds with swings, slides and seesaws where children could keep themselves entertained, and camp officials, local troops, and Red Cross workers hosted dances and put on the occasional performance for camp residents.
Brief, handwritten meeting minutes reveal the issues that concerned camp officials, including refugees’ lack of privacy and “lack of freedom,” whether or not families should be separated from single refugees, whether refugees of different ethnic and national backgrounds should be separated, and so on. In their oversight of refugee camps, officials hoped to make camp life resemble regular life as closely as possible.
Credit: Courtesy of International Social Service, American Branch records in the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota
Like today’s refugees, Europeans who found themselves in Middle Eastern refugee camps sought a return to regular life. The people who ran the camps wanted the same.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are almost 500,000 Syrians registered as refugees in camps today. Almost 5 million people have been displaced by the conflict there.
This story was produced with the help of Linnea Anderson, archivist of the University of Minnesota’s Social Welfare History Archives, who provided special access to and permission to reproduce the International Social Service, American Branch records that serve as the documentary basis for the accounts of refugee life. It was produced in partnership with the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.
Note 1: Click on the original post to see the pictures. US Army General Allen Gullion and Fred K. Hoehler, Director of the United Nation’s Division of Displaced Persons, stand before a map predicting the movement of European refugees of World War II. Many Europeans would find a haven in refugee camps in the Middle East.
Are the children paying the ultimate price of parents fears?
Massad‘s post. ·
How safe is it to be Arab in the USA right now?
Misplaced fear creates more fear and we all end up afraid..
And children again end up paying the ultimate price.
One of my Save the Children donation boxes for the children of Syria had to be removed from a local family-run Lebanese deli after its presence sparked multiple customers on multiple occasions to direct anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slurs at the deli owners who in turn became afraid for their safety and the safety of their family.
Breaks. My. Heart. Is this who we have become?
Is this who we want to be?
Time to check ourselves, America. We are better than this.
If you are a business-owner in the Tulsa area and would like to keep a donation box reach out to me here or at tulsansforhumanity@gmail.com. #notofear #yestolove
