I would like to see media shifting its focus from all-politics to all-society, because politics is just one step to shape society for the good of the people but is not the only game available in our lives. Instead of spurts of news about education and a few disparate discussions, why not ….
Many new voices that we hear more and more today in politics, business and art and culture were not heard as recently as fifty years back. Colonialism, slavery and economic repression never let these voices surface and come onto the world stage.
I was the fourth child, a son, born to parents that fought every evening as if it were a ritual without which they couldn’t go to bed. My father left us when I was seven. My mother did her best to make ends meet, but it was obvious that three jobs, paying minimum wage, were killing her. When I was twelve, my two older brothers were killed—One by a rival gang and the other by police. The grief soon killed my mother. My elder sister, who had been paying the bills with some help from the state, disappeared a year later. Some says she was a victim of sex trafficking, but I never came to know what had happened to her. There was nobody to pay the bills so I came to live on the streets. Every night, I took the last green train and slept on it; then I went to my ‘hood in the morning.
Imran Omer 