Daily Archives: July 4, 2012

David Nyuol Vincent: 'While most of Australia is overwhelmingly not racist, there are certain elements of racism in the community. And it's enough to make you feel sometimes like this isn't your home.'

David Nyuol Vincent survived a childhood in war-torn Sudan and 17 years in a refugee camp. Now he continues the struggle for peace as an Australian.

DAVID Vincent was eight when he and his father fled Sudan. Over most of two decades, he endured training as a child soldier for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, bomb raids, starvation, land mines and cholera. He came to Australia, aged 26, in 2004. Vincent settled in quickly, gained a degree in political science and criminology from Melbourne University, and became a community leader.

In this extract from his memoirs, published to mark the first anniversary of independence for South Sudan, he reflects on life in Australia.

IN SEPTEMBER 2007, Sudanese teenager Liep Gony was bashed to death in Noble Park. Twenty-four-year-old Clinton Rintoull pleaded guilty to murder and is serving 20 years in jail. Throughout that year, stories had appeared in the media about so-called Sudanese gangs being violent and anti-social and causing trouble. It is true that some Sudanese kids get intoxicated with alcohol, get into fights and can be disengaged. But this can be said about youth of all ethnic backgrounds.

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Mostly they were just kids hanging out in groups. When people saw them together, they made the assumption that they were a gang. I could be hanging out with my soccer boys in a peaceful gathering, but someone would see 20 black men together and conclude that we're a gang.

Liep was not a troublemaker; he loved playing basketball and hanging out with his friends. His funeral reinforced the senselessness of a teenage boy's life lost. A boy who had escaped the horrors of war-ravaged Sudan and come to a country that was meant to value freedom and security - only to die a brutal death.

In the camp in Africa and as a child soldier, I had buried my own friends over the years without shedding a tear. But that day I cried for Liep. And for the first time since I had arrived in Australia, I wished that I was back in Kakuma, the refugee camp in Kenya. I felt that I hated Australia the way I had been taught to hate the northern Sudanese.

I thought I had seen everything in Africa. I thought I was now incapable of being shocked by anything. But Liep's death shocked me. Violent death was normal in Africa. I struggled to comprehend how this could happen in Australia.

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Freedom fighter's new frontier

Posted at: 07/04/2012 1:56 PM By: KOB.com staff

Vendors at Balloon Fiesta Park are hard at work with only a few hours left until Freedom Fourth gets underway.

And despite hints that it might rain - organizers say the show will go on - rain or shine.

The city of Albuquerque says Freedom Fourth is a family-friendly event that will start at 4 p.m. and culminate in a fireworks display right after dusk.

Supervisor Bree Ortiz says gates will open at 3 p.m. and people should expect to see everything from a car show to a beer garden to a kid's playland - and of course, lots of yummy food.

"We do funnel cakes. we've been around forever," said Rich Lamb of Funnel Cake of New Mexico. "We make them fresh. if there's a hundred people in line, each person in line will get a fresh funnel cake."

The main music stage will first feature local talent - and then Grammy-winnning country group Diamond Rio.

And finally, the sky will become the stage as the fireworks show will take place around 9:15 p.m.

The city says it's made sure that there's not another small fire like the one that happened during the display last year.

"There's a thousand foot radius to make sure that the fireworks are safe,'" said Ortiz.

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Freedom Fourth is set to launch, rain or shine

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CORPUS CHRISTI A fight over freedom has landed in one Corpus Christi woman's front yard this Fourth of July.

Elizabeth Pavich spreads the message of freedom each July by decorating her lawn in The Lakes neighborhood with American flags, pinwheels, a 6-foot-tall inflatable Uncle Sam as well as red, white and blue spotlights.

In October, she decorates with witches and ghosts. In December, it's Christmas lights. At Easter, it's bunnies and eggs in baskets.

But some neighbors don't like her year-round showy displays for nearly every holiday and want her to tone it down.

Eight years ago, Pavich was passed the decorating tradition from her mother after she died. She said when her mother decorated her home for the holiday, the neighborhood families would frequently stop by and admire it. Pavich said she now tries to do the same for her neighbors on Pontchartrain Drive.

Jeffrey Cannon respects his next door neighbor's right to express herself but feels that Pavich's decorations are overdone and nonstop. Once one holiday ends, she starts decorating for the next, he said.

"It doesn't go with the neighborhood," he said. "It definitely hurts our property value."

The Lakes is a gated community with a swimming pool, tennis court and five private, man-made lakes. The homeowner's association requires residents to maintain their lawns and regulates landscaping.

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Freedom rings? Neighbors want one Corpus Christi resident to tone down year-round decorations

CORPUS CHRISTI Family and freedom can be a perfect mix on the Fourth of July.

It's found in backyard barbecues, festive parades and poppin' fireworks displays.

Family tends to bring out a deeper meaning to the day, a group of eight children from the Boys & Girls Club of Corpus Christi said.

"You get to celebrate with your family," said Jordan Ramos, 8. "You get to see your uncle that you never see."

Jordan also may see his parents who live in Dallas today.

He said he loves America because it gives him the freedom to travel places and to play football and to hit baseballs at a batting range.

In addition to family, the children said the day usually means savoring some good eats, such as barbecue ribs, menudo and sausage.

But it also allows for reflection on what the day means independence.

"We are free, and we get to do whatever we want," said Chloe Rodriguez, 9.

"Well, not whatever," her friend, Selena Willis, chimed in.

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Fourth of July brings together family, freedom for Corpus Christi youths

On Jan. 18 of this year, the Internet went dark. In protest against overreaching copyright legislation that endangered the open architecture of the Internet, online services like Wikipedia and Reddit, along with 115,000 other websites, participated in an Internet-wide "blackout" to educate Internet users about the threat to net freedom. Thanks to the joint efforts of free speech advocates, online innovators and everyday Internet users, Congressional offices were flooded with calls and emails, and within days, the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) were shelved in response to the massive online uprising.

Now, half a year later, many of the people and organizations that helped make that Jan. 18 protest a success including my own, the Center for Democracy & Technology are ready to try something different. We're ready to move from defense to offense; ready to support something, rather than just oppose something; ready to transform that powerful moment, where Internet users rose up as one to oppose online censorship, into a lasting movement for Internet freedom. We're ready to try and harness the energy of January's tsunami of online activism, a shock wave whose effects continue to be seen in the privacy debate over cybersecurity legislation in the U.S. and the protests over the ACTA treaty in Europe.

That's why this July 4, instead of blacking out the Internet, we wanted to shine a light and share a positive vision of the Internet and its future, and beta-test a set of principles that can help serve as a rallying cry for Internet freedom fighters both in America and across the globe principles that are broad and universal enough to speak to all political persuasions yet specific enough to serve as a benchmark against which future Internet legislation can be judged and around which future Internet movements can organize.

We're proud to be publishing those principles today in the form of A Declaration of Internet Freedom, joined by a diverse group of Internet innovators and advocates drawn from the loose but wide-ranging alliance that defeated SOPA and PIPA, including companies like Mozilla, individuals like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and advocacy and activist groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future.

We are publishing our declaration on Independence Day to echo the American founding fathers' publication of the Declaration of Independence, though we believe these values can and should apply globally as befits a global network. And what we declare, simply, is that:

We stand for a free and open Internet.

We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:

Expression: Don't censor the Internet.

Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.

Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.

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A Declaration of Internet Freedom