JINN MAGAZINE

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

Issue No. 3.24

11/17/97 - 11/30/97

CONTENTS

VOICES: First-Person Essays Linking the Private to the Public

A Native American View-- Thanksgiving, Hope, and the Hidden Heart of Evil
By Jacqueline Keeler

Thanksgiving is the truly American holiday, celebrating the romantic history of arrival in the new world and cooperation with its inhabitants. For a Native American, the story is a much less happy one -- yet PNS commentator Jacqueline Keeler finds some occasion for hope. Keeler, a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux works with the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in Winds of Change, an American Indian journal. This is the first of several commentaries presenting unique views of the holiday.

Thanksgiving for the Children of the New Pilgrims
By YO! Staff

Ask most Americans what Thanksgiving is "about" and they'll probably answer "turkey," but young Americans from immigrant families offer more complex interpretations (not to mention menus). Learning to observe this holiday is for many a passage into American culture -- though they may transform it. we asked three young, second-generation immigrants to describe their Thanksgiving table. The writers are on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area teens produced by Pacific News Service.

A Refugee Remembers His First Thanksgiving
By Andrew Lam

More than twenty years later, Andrew Lam reflects on his first Thanksgiving as a refugee boy recently arrived from Vietnam. But it was neither American history lessons nor Puritan cuisine that taught him the meaning of the holiday.

Drug Family-- Latino Families' Dirty Little Secret
By Barbara Renoud-Gonzales

For people in the Latino community, illegal drugs and the drug trade are woven into the pattern of life -- affecting relatives, friends, loved ones at every level. The reality of these connections, writes commentator Barbara Renaud-Gonzales, should serve as a reminder that we are all connected, even if we would rather not admit it, and this connection carries a special burden for those in the middle. Barbara Renoud-Gonzales writes widely on Chicano life. She is a columnist for the San Antonio Express and commentator for National Public Radio.

A Tale of Two Families
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The first recorded birth of sextuplets to an African American couple occurred in Washington, D.C., on May 8 of this year. But unlike the massive media attention that attended the "miracle birth" of septuplets to an Iowa couple, the story of Jacqueline and Linden Thompson's new family went almost entirely un-noted until the Sisters of Touch, and word of mouth in the black community, brought it to light. PNS commentator Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of The Assassination of the Black Male Image. (email: ehutchi344@aol.com)

CALIFORNIA COLLAGE: California as Trendsetter for the Country and the World

New California Ethnic Media Digest
Edited by Sandy Close and Franz Schurmann

What would the world look like if at least part of your daily diet of news came from the ethnic media -- which now has more readers than the mainstream press in some California metropolitan regions? Every other week PNS, in collaboration with members of the New California Media network of ethnic media organizations, digests news and commentary from this rapidly growing but largely invisible segment of the news media.

MOVEMENTS: Strategies For Survival, Identity and Direction by People on the Margins

Why Graffiti Artists Aim to Keep the City Seedy
By A. Clay Thompson

As rents skyrocket and cities pretty themselves, graffiti artists are doing their best to keep the city landscape looking seedy. PNS associate editor A. Clay Thompson hangs out with Grease and Solid to explain the logic behind this nocturnal campaign to curb property values. Thompson lives in San Francisco and writes widely on cultures and movements from the margins of society.

CIVIL CONFLICTS: Interpretive Reports on Ethnic, Religious, and Inter-National Conflicts Worldwide

Drug War in Columbia-- US Aid Will Support Death Squads Once Again
By Andrew Reding

A $50 million aid package, ostensibly marked for the Colombian military in the "war against drugs," is in reality part of a program to suppress the oldest and largest insurgent group in Latin America. Talk of "narcoguerrillas" and charges that the insurgents are antidemocratic, writes PNS associate editor Andrew Reding, are deliberate distortions to win support for a program that threatens the credibility of the Clinton administration's stance toward Latin America. PNS associate editor Andrew Reding directs the North America Project of the World Policy Institute in New York.

UN Sanctions-- Weapon of Mass Destruction Against Iraq
By Ramsey Clark

The American people hear very little about the suffering of Iraq's civilian population caused by UN sanctions, in part because the Security Council has imposed a travel ban on Iraqi officials. But seven visits to that country by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark have revealed a mounting human disaster from malnutrition and deteriorating sanitation -- both directly attributed to the sanctions. Clark's latest trip occurred just before the latest confrontation over U.S. personnel on UN weapons inspection teams.

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