i just did a lot of laughing. and i have a headache
This is some serious bedroom mosh.
Last April, Walid El Khatroushi (In White) was just a midfielder for the Libyan national team, at a training camp in Tunisia with his team-mates.
Then he visited a friend who had lost an arm fighting for the rebel forces against Colonel Gadaffi. Struck by a pang of conscience, he decided to leave his team-mates, unlace his boots and pick up a gun.
From that moment on, Walid El Khatroushi was no longer just a midfielder. El Khatroushi joined the rebel troops, fighting on the front line, before finally being persuaded to rejoin the squad.
On Saturday night he took to the field against Equatorial Guinea in the opening match of the Africa Cup of Nations.
“For us, this is much more than a football tournament,” he says. You believe him.
Why do footballers play? For enjoyment, for glory, for riches? This Libyan team are playing for their country’s freedom.
Already they have discarded their old strip in Gadaffi green and replaced them with white shirts emblazoned with the nation’s new flag.
Defender Mohamed El Mounir says: “Many of the team had family members killed during the war, so the stakes are high when we wear the colours of our nation.”
El Khatroushi is one of two players in the squad who fought against the Gadaffi regime – goalkeeper Juma Gtat is the other. “Everybody is afraid of dying at a young age, but we had to do something,” El Khatroushi says.
“I’m proud of what we did, but that’s not why we fought. We did it for our country.”
But the whole squad bear the scars of the carnage that has wrecked the nation’s streets and wracked its soul.
All domestic football has been suspended since fighting began. Benghazi players were banned from the national team until the regime was toppled (it is said that the club’s training ground was burnt to the ground on Colonel Gadaffi’s orders).
The team were forced to play their final home qualifying match in Egypt, to which the coach, Brazilian Marcos Paqueta, had to buy his own plane ticket. “Just being here represents success for us,” El Mounir says. You believe him, too.
Wow.
(Source: nasty-like-nas, via thedg3fvk)
By Guest Contributor Esther Choi, cross-posted from Some Thoughts …
Tonight was the march and vigil for Private Danny Chen, who was killed in the army on October 3, 2011. We don’t know how he died. The army is withholding all evidence, which it owes to the family, that could answer this question. What we do know is that he did not die in combat. We know he was constantly harassed and discriminated against by his fellow soldiers for being Chinese. We know some really twisted, violent hazing was committed against him by his superiors, right before he was found dead. We decided to hold a march and vigil because the army is currently carrying out an investigation, and we have to show them that the public is watching and that they cannot get away with another cover-up.
Just yesterday, board members of OCA-NY along with Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and Council Member Margaret Chin went to the Pentagon to meet with high-ranking army officials, where they made demands that may fundamentally transform the way that hazing and bias crimes are dealt with in the military. We need them to know that the public and the media are watching, and that if they do not meet our demands, we will redirect our campaign to focus on our young men and women who are thinking of enlisting. These young people need to know before they enlist, the Army will not protect them from harm by fellow soldiers.
Before the vigil, we reached out to many organizations to support, and 36 signed onto our cause. We also reached out to Occupy Wall Street because justice and government transparency are in its mission, and we thought we could use the numbers and networks in OWS to bring out more support for our vigil, and we also wanted to show our solidarity with OWS.
So imagine my surprise when protesters from OWS showed up with OWS signs, not to stand with others lining up for the march to Columbus Park in support, but to stand in front of everyone, trying to direct them. These people, who had not, until that very moment, put in one bit of effort into organizing this action, who had no idea what the plan was, who had no idea who we were or who the family was, decided that they were going to make this an OWS event.
Conflict erupted when one of the OWS-affiliated protesters came with a giant Communist Party of China flag. This white man decided that he was entitled to represent us, at this protest for an American soldier, with a flag that has been used by this country to vilify the Chinese American community. When people began asking him not to demonstrate that flag because it was not the purpose of the event and we were in no way representing China or political parties, he began screaming at us about how we were ANTI-COMMUNIST and trying to take away his first amendment rights. We told him that Danny Chen was an American soldier and we wanted to respect the family and their wishes, but he continued screaming violent accusations at us at the top of his lungs and disrupting the event, until one of Danny Chen’s family members, on the verge of tears, finally convinced him to leave.
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Then I overheard another OWS protester, who had earlier been trying to direct the protesters, give a video interview, and heard him saying, ever so solemnly, “They don’t want me here.” My question is: who are we and who are you? How do you expect to be welcomed as one of “us” when you have, from the beginning, made every effort to set yourself apart? Why do you think that you as an individual should be primary in this march for Private Danny Chen and his family? Why are you here giving video interviews?
Another white OWS protester began trying to use the human mic to direct the protest, and told me that I shouldn’t be using the blowhorn because the cops were going to take it away. I told her that, no, we had a parade permit and sound permit, which was why the police were there clearing the streets for our march. She looked confused and stopped yelling.
OWS protesters often make it seem like they are the birth of social justice activism, that they are here to teach us how to protest because none of us know what the fuck we are doing and need their wealth of experience to help us out. I was not at all surprised when that woman so naturally assumed that she, as a white woman, knew better than me – she thought that I had found a blowhorn somewhere and decided to play around with it. It didn’t occur to her that we had been planning this for weeks and thinking critically about every step, that it was led by a civil rights organization that has been at work for decades, that we had applied for 4 different kinds of permits so that our event could safely and effectively achieve its purpose.
(via injuryreport)
