How a Texas Soccer Club Helped African Refugees Feel at Home

Umoja ni nguvu. Unity is strength.

For a soccer squad of African refugees, this Swahili phrase has been a powerful rallying cry. Many of the players constructed their direction to Houston, Texas, after years spent in refugee camps, knowing very little English except for a few words, such as” How are you ?” and” Where is the food ?”

Although adapting to their new lives was difficult, the players have found familiarity and relationship through their football crew, the revise Football Club.

” They are like my brothers ,” Iluta Shabani, a high school honor student who grew up in a refugee camp in Tanzania, said of his teammates.” When I don’t have something, they give it to me. When they don’t have, I give it to them .”

The players worry about President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, but even in the face of racial epithets from resisting musicians or spectators, they’ve kept going–even rising up to defeat a former commonwealth champ last-place month.

Charles Rotramel, who runs a nonprofit that patrons the team, credits the team members for build this community.” They were looking for a safe place and discovered it in each other ,” he told USA Today.

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Courage, remembered. When North Carolina tried to impose a restrictive voting rights law in 2013, Rosanell Eaton fought back: In her 90 s, she became the make plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the measure–and eventually helped strike it down. Eaton, who died on Saturday, has been fighting for voting rights since 1942, the year she outwitted three white mortals in order to referendum. Those humankinds told Eaton she couldn’t register to vote unless she recited the preamble to the US Constitution from memory. Eaton had no problem doing so.

Said former President Obama in a 2015 note:” I am where I am today merely because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality .” Thanks to Mother Jones’ Ari Berman for proposing this story.( New York Times) Helping the hungry. For years, renowned celebrity cook Jose Andres has been helping feed kids and families in need with his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen. While the cook first began his nonprofit in response to event of natural disasters, he has now expanded his efforts to help families stranded on the south perimeter by the Trump administration. His crew has been serving about 3,000 meals per day. It’s” the human thing to do ,” said the cook. Paraphrasing John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Andres said:” Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people may eat, I will be there .”( Washington Post) The dog that waited. During California’s deadly Camp Fire, Andrea Gaylord wasn’t able to get home in time to retrieve her puppy, Madison. When the removal order was lifted days later, Gaylord returned–and located the Anatolian shepherd mingle steadfastly guarding the little which continues to be.” You are the best puppy ,” she told Madison.( Washington Post) A feast for your eyes. An Jewish-orthodox Easter, a Korean reunion, and a deluge rescue in North Carolina–check out some of “the worlds largest” hopeful images from 2018.( The Atlantic)

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