This is a photo from the USHMM Archives showing some Danish rescuers on a boat in 1943.

The Polar Bear Problem

Watch this video and see how global climate change is effecting the Polar Bears!!!!
https://youtu.be/_nKkrXxLMnA 

United States to classify the Armenian genocide a genocide.

This is my petition for the Untied Sates to officially classify the Armenian genocide a genocide. The link is below and I would like you to check out the link.

https://www.change.org/p/hillary-clinton-the-united-states-to-classify-the-armenian-genocide-an-official-genocide

Now What

Now What?

By- Jacob Greene

Another day in Baltimore

Cars honking

People talking

Dogs barking

Buses stopping and going

Just another day

Walking home from school

Per usual, alone

I stopped

The corner store

Where my dad worked

I bought doritos and gatorade

And stepped outside

Police cars honking

Police Dogs barking

Police yelling

Sirens loud as M&T bank stadium

Why, what’s happening

What's going on

I see a black man

Police around him

Beating him

Viciously

Police yelling at him

Stop resisting!

He's not!

A man says

Dad?

It was my father

And being beaten

My uncle

I pull out my phone

I record

Police say stop

I am now the victim

They push me down

Take my phone

My dad try's to help

There gone in a flash

My uncle on the ground hurt

Police driving away

My phone they have it!

Now what?

Future President Syrian Refugees

Dear Future President,

The news has recently highlighted the civil war in Syria and the fleeing Syrian refugees. There are a lot of different opinions as whether the United States should let some of the refugees into the country or not. I think that we should do our part and let the Syrian refugees into our country. As Hillary Clinton said, “We cannot allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values and humanitarian obligations.” America was built as a beacon of hope, so why are we turning our backs on these people who need our help? Since the war began in 2011, about 13.5 million Syrians have fled their homes. About 4.8 million have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. 6 million have been internally displaced in Syria. At least 386,000 have been killed. The Syrian economy has been destroyed. The environment is no longer suitable to live in, and it has many health risks not to mention violence. We need to do our part as a nation and help the Syrian people fleeing from danger, displacement, and economic hardship.

The main argument in opposition to letting refugees in, is that it will make us vulnerable to ISIS and other terrorists. Hillary Clinton also said, “Remember, many of these refugees are fleeing the same terrorists who threaten us.”Some Americans think that refugees have links to terrorists or even are part of a terrorist group themselves. Bustle studies show that since September 11, 2001, only 3 out of the 784,000 refugees American has taken in, have been linked to terrorism. The American security process is very intensive, and there is no way nor no reason that terrorists could get past it.

I have a relative that is housing a Syrian refugees family living in their garage apartment and will tell you their story. They are a family of four, with a mother, father, 12-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. They lived a nice life in Syria. The father was a manger. They were a middle class family. When the war broke out, they were forced to leave, so they walked for six hours at night, and they arrived into Jordan. They stayed in a camp in Jordan for four years. They applied to be placed in the US and waited four years and then were granted asylum. My aunt and uncle heard about the family through their church. Since my aunt and uncle have a garage apartment, they decided to help them out. As I was talking with my aunt, she was getting a little choked up when I asked her why she took in the family. She was expressing how when they were considering housing the refugees, she thought what if these events could happen to her own family.The Syrian family came in July and is staying with my family for a year. This is an inspiring story. This shows that we need to help the refugees. They are everyday people that are just trying to have a good life and they need our help.

In conclusion, many American families were immigrants who fled their country to come to America as a place of new beginnings. We should allow refugees into our country because they are innocent families that need the United States as a place to escape the violence of their home country.

Sincerely,

Maggie Baum

Lose the Ivory

If you had,

One shot,

Or one opportunity,

To seize a small elephant in your enclosure,

Would you take his ivory?

Or just let him live.

His trunk is sweaty

Life's bleak elephants heavy

There's a sniper aimed at his head already

Mom’s upsettin'

The park service

They nervous

But they looking calm and ready

To enclose

But the enemy is revving

When they shot down

The forest just goes so loud

They open their mouths but the words won't stop now

Revoking now

Everyone's revolting now

The trunks are out

Elephant down over plow

Snap back to reality

This is brutality

Animals are animals

What happened was a tragedy

It's been three years,

But it's the 100K that's been shedding all of these tears

Now these elephants are in heaven,

All go up to heaven

It's the enemies' collection that is very upsettin'

And that we should not support the enemies' terrible selection

Now all these elephants are gone

That's why I’m singing this song

So we can all get along…

You better lose the ivory,

The jewelry,

The moment

You better never let it go.

You only have one shot

Do not miss your chance to go

This poaching's bad and it

Kills many lifetimes.

-Max Berman

Living in Jeremie

Living in Jeremie

Owen Wood

I remember before the hurricane hit.  I was with my mother.  The government in Jeremie said that there was a storm coming, and we should evacuate.  But at the time it meant nothing to me.  We got those reports all the time.  The only time something had ever happened was when I was younger.  A big earthquake struck that no one could predict.  But that never affected me because that happened near the capital, far from my parents and me in Jeremie.  But the next day after we heard the warning, my father and my mother were selling food to make money as usual.  I was outside with my friend James.  It started to rain but not too hard, and we were laughing because we thought this was the storm we had been warned about.  But then the wind began to pick up, and it started raining a lot harder.  

We had to shout to each other over the now whipping, wind and we both sprinted to our homes.  When I arrived home, the door was blown open and there was water at least a foot deep in the floor of our house, just like in the street.  I managed to keep the door closed by propping a chair against it.  I grabbed another chair and sat on it in the middle of the floor with my feet up.  I don't know how long I sat, there listening to the wind howl, but it felt like hours until I heard the banging on the door.  I sprung off my seat and pulled away the chair and my parents came rushing in soaking wet.  My mom made sure I was okay, and then we all stood in a huddle,  feeding off of each other's body heat and praying that this would end soon.  The next thing I remember was a terrible noise as a piece of a tree near our house came smashing through our roof, destroying it completely.  My parents both jumped on me to protect me from debris.  After they thought it safe, they got up and stared at our hole in the top of a house.  From there, we waited the storm out, standing there and letting the rain pour down onto us.  

After what felt like days the wind started to slow and the rain turned into a drizzle. My mom hugged me, and we both cried and cried for a while.  Then we went outside and looked at what used to be our street. The water was very murky from the dirt on the road and floating in that water was people's smashed up houses.  It was an awful thing to look at, but I was just glad we were all alive.  We spent the day constructing a makeshift roof from what we could find on the street and whatever was just lying around.  At night, when I went to fall asleep was when, I realized how hungry I was.  

The next afternoon trucks and other vehicles came into our district in Jeremie.  The people handed out a little food, but mostly they just had medical supplies that thankfully none of my family needed. For the rest of the day, I just sat there and watched them hand out supplies for those who needed it.  The next day, they left to go get more supplies because Jeremie’s situation was worse than they thought.  We knew that leaving was a bad idea because Jeremie is a very remote location and hard to get to.  They were gone for a week before we saw them again,  and when we did, we were not happy.  In the week we all had little to no food and many people had died.  When those people came, they brought very little food but they did bring a lot of toothpaste.  Toothpaste, when they saw we were upset they said it was all they could bring to us.  I mean I probably should be thankful that they came at all, but right now we do not need toothpaste.  Things similar to this happen every week and every week it gets a little better in terms of food.  Now I need to get used to my new life and forget about the old one that looking back on it seems like a privileged life even though we had very little before.