The founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) is on a mission to end child trafficking and slavery. For a decade, Tim Ballard worked in the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force as a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security. He has successfully dismantled dozens of trafficking organizations and rescued countless children from sex slavery. To formulate his business plan, he bought every history book he could find on American slavery.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. They were used by African American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies sympathetic to their cause. The original Underground Railroad was a group that acted and infiltrated, and that’s precisely what Ballard is inspired to do today.

In the past six years, OUR has rescued more than 3,800 victims and assisted in the arrests of more than 2,100 traffickers worldwide. Through partnerships with like-minded organizations, they have collectively rescued more than 10,000 survivors who were enslaved, exploited, or at risk.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing,” says Ballard, quoting 18th Century statesman, Edmund Burke. 

“The original Underground Railroad saw people of all colors and creeds coming together to rescue people. Some of these people would pose as slave catchers to learn who was being sought and then devise plans to throw the slave owners off their trails. It’s one of the most inspiring stories of history I have ever heard,” says Ballard. Today, Ballard is doing just that, using similar covert operations to put sex traffickers and pedophiles behind bars. Slavery is not only part of history, either. According to Sean Reves, Utah’s Attorney General, there is more modern-day slavery than at any other time in history. 

“You have to make a decision,” says Ballard. “The world is in turmoil in so many ways, and it’s sometimes easier to crawl into a fetal position and ride it out. But that’s not what we should do — indecision is also a decision. It’s important to stand up for what you believe in and do something that benefits society. Stand up to the evils that hurt people.” 

Ballard reckons that many of us aren’t paying attention when our calling comes. He thinks we should keep our minds open to significant events that move us; it could signal the start of a whole new journey. For Ballard, that moment happened 10 years ago, while still considering a career in fighting crimes against children. “We were rescuing a little boy who had been kidnapped from Mexico,” he recalls. “During the investigation, he gave me a necklace on which was written, “Man of God.” It was a necklace his sister had given him, who had also been trafficked. I found power in that symbol and still wear it today.” 

Despite the horrific things he has seen, Ballard believes that through all the darkness, there are still more good people in the world than bad. “Humanity is good by nature, and most people want to improve their lives continually,” he says. “I focus on the light that I can see in people around me, and I have seen more light this year than ever. 

“A leader must be optimistic and bring hope; a plan that inspires others to be confident,” he concludes. “Leaders can’t always have the right answer, but surround yourself with people who have great ideas and empower them — it doesn’t always have to be about you.” 

Former CNN correspondent Isha Sesay planned to begin her new role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with a visit to Nigeria and Haiti — canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, the British journalist and author listened remotely to stories from women and girls, from midwives to abuse survivors, in Yemen, Ukraine, Somalia and Sierra Leone.

“We did a global virtual tour,” she said from her home in Los Angeles. “It’s not the same as being there and sitting side by side but …. it will have value.”

UNFPA, the U.N.’s sexual and reproductive health agency has warned of COVID-19’s catastrophic impact on women and girls, with a surge in domestic violence, child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).

“In this moment of COVID and the pandemic, and seeing its impact on women and girls, there’s really a need to amplify efforts to draw attention to gender-based violence and harmful practices,” said Sesay, who was announced as ambassador on Wednesday.

“I think we can achieve a great deal together.”

Sesay has a strong record as a girls’ rights advocate, leading CNN’s Africa reporting for more than a decade and winning the Peabody Award in 2014 for its coverage of Boko Haram’s kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in Chibok. In a welcoming statement, UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem called Sesay “a gifted storyteller who has used her platform to elevate the voices of some of the world’s most marginalized women and girls”.

Sesay left CNN in 2018 and wrote “Beneath the Tamarind Tree”, a book about her experiences reporting on the Chibok girls, and founded W.E. (Women Everywhere) Can Lead, a non-profit supporting girls’ education in Sierra Leone.

The newly minted U.N. ambassador grew up in Sierra Leone, where her mother Kadi Sesay was a government minister, as well as an FGM survivor, and one of her grandfather’s wives was a traditional cutter. FGM, which affects 200 million girls and women globally, involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia and can cause bleeding, infertility and death.

Gender-based violence is growing exponentially as the pandemic stretches on, Sesay said, with UNFPA estimating that every three months of lockdown could result in 15 million more cases of domestic abuse than would normally occur.

“It’s really important for people to understand that the scale and impact of COVID is so much greater than what we can see at first glance,” she said. “There is an urgency to this moment.”

By Ellen Wulfhorst. Editing by Katy Migiro.

Voice computing will profoundly reshape the way humans relate to machines. Rather than allowing a sense of alienation to creep in, some organizations have appropriated the technology to capture fading stories and bring them back to life for future generations. Instead of writing a letter or recording a video for your great-grandchildren, you may one day leave a digital replica of yourself behind.

The emergence of voice computing interfaces represents the biggest technological disruption since the smartphone. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming the new universal remotes to reality, upending multibillion-dollar business models in Silicon Valley and beyond. Today, though, most of what people do with voice devices is fairly prosaic — setting timers, playing music, and asking basic, factual questions.

In the future, however, one of the most dramatic applications of voice technology will be to enable what’s known as “virtual immortality”— the creation of digital replicas that live on after the real people who inspired them have died.

For a glimpse of this future, consider a groundbreaking project called New Dimensions in Testimony. A joint effort by the Institute for Creative Technologies and the USC Shoah Foundation, the project aims to memorialize Holocaust survivors.

In 1943 the Nazis captured a 10-year-old boy named Pinchas Gutter and his family and imprisoned them in concentration camps. Gutter’s sister and parents were killed in the gas chambers before he could even say goodbye. He would go on to be beaten, shuttled between different labor camps, and put on a death march before finally being freed by the Red Army in 1945.

Gutter, now in his 80s, has devoted himself to sharing these horrors, giving talks and answering questions. But like all of the remaining Holocaust survivors, Gutter will not be around much longer. Testimonies like his have, of course, been captured in print, audio, and film. But telling a story in person has unique power. As Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, once explained, “There’s nothing like the human witness who can look you in the eye and say, ‘Look, this is what happened to my husband. This is what happened to my children. This is what happened to my grandparents.’”

Targeting the immediacy of in-person storytelling, the New Dimensions team interviewed Gutter and more than a dozen other Holocaust survivors, asking them hundreds of questions in multiday sessions. The interviews took place on a soundstage inside of what looked like a giant geodesic dome. Mounted on the inside of the dome were thousands of tiny LED lights and 30 cameras recording the survivors from every angle.

Using visual-effects technologies that were originally developed for military training simulators and movies such as Avatar, the project’s scientists transformed these recordings into movie clips, which, when projected onto a special screen, appear to be three-dimensional. As holographic display techniques continue to improve, the scientists will be able to create even more lifelike holograms. They could project Gutter or another survivor into any room, illuminate him as if by the ambient lighting of that space, and allow people to walk around him. Paul Debevec, a professor of computer science at USC, says that the goal is to make it “seem like they are sitting in the same room as the audience.”

ICT’s conversational-AI experts, in turn, created a natural-language system to interpret what people were asking about
and retrieve an appropriate answer in the digital version of the survivor’s brain. Those answers might be short but often are many minutes long. The system is currently being displayed in museums around the United States.

David Traum, an ICT computer scientist, says he believes that interactive preservations of the dead will become widespread in the future. If the price of the technology comes down enough, ordinary people may keep versions of their late relatives around.

Fritzie Fritzshall, another Holocaust survivor who participated in the New Dimensions project, is a believer in the technology. Most of Fritzshall’s family perished in concentration camps, forever silencing their voices. Fritzshall, too, will die before long, and she says she is glad that her digital double will continue to share her narrative. “I have passed it on to my twin, so to speak,” Fritzshall told a journalist. “When I’m no longer here, she can answer for what’s asked of me. She will carry on the story forever.” 

Monday, 21 September, is International Day of Peace. To mark the 39th anniversary of this United Nations-sanctioned holiday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres held a Peace Bell ceremony at the UN headquarters in New York. Here are some highlights of his speech.

Peace is never a given. It’s an aspiration that is only as strong as our conviction, and only as durable as our hope. It can take decades, even centuries, to build peaceful, stable societies.  But peace can be squandered in an instant by reckless, divisive policies and approaches.

Seventy-five years ago, the United Nations was founded with the overriding goal of preventing war and promoting peace. Since then, we have deepened our knowledge on how to fulfil that noble mission. We have solid evidence that human rights, respect for the rule of law, access to justice and opportunities for all are the building blocks for peaceful communities and societies. This is why the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is above all an agenda for peace.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic is expanding risks to peace everywhere. It poses an enormous threat to people caught up in conflict, which is why I made an immediate appeal for a global ceasefire. I will repeat the call during the General Debate next week.  We need to silence the guns and focus on our common enemy: the virus. Beyond war zones, the pandemic is highlighting and exploiting inequalities of all kinds, setting communities and countries against each other.

This ceremony in the Japanese garden is an annual moment of calm before high-level week; a moment that brings us back to our founding purpose of peace. I thank Japan for its contributions to the United Nations, including the Peace Bell, a symbol of unity, cast from coins and medals donated by people from all over the world.

Japanese culture has a deep appreciation for natural imperfections and flaws. This is reflected in the art of kintsugi — putting broken pieces of pottery together with golden lacquer to create a stronger, more beautiful whole.  The result is a piece that is not “good as new”, but “better than new”.

As we mark the International Day of Peace, let’s apply this principle to our fractured world. Let’s address the fragilities and inequalities that work against peace so that we emerge from the crisis stronger than before. Let’s push for peace wherever conflict is raging and wherever there are diplomatic opportunities to silence the guns. Let’s prioritize peace and build a safer future for all.

Transforming Police culture and reforming the Judicial system is a complex problem rooted in systemic issues that dredge up rage, hate, and suffering. These emotional states of mind prompt people to cast blame and erodes our ability to use logic and reason to unify everyone to solve this cancer eating away at our nation.

First, we need to outline the problem. We have a policing problem that is disproportionately deadly for people of color, but it is also one that puts every American at unnecessary risk. According to The Washington Post database, law enforcement has killed 4,890 individuals since 2015. Whites account for 60.4% of the US population and have experienced 2,473 law enforcement fatalities since 2015. Blacks and Hispanics make up 31.7% of the population, yet experienced 2,198 fatalities over the same period.”

Another critical aspect of the database is that 352 of the casualties were unarmed. The irony of the debate over this issue today is that by solving it for black Americans, we will also save more whites than every other race combined. 

If race isn’t the only defining factor, then what else is at play here? The Prison Policy Initiative (2014) revealed that the incarceration rates of people ranging from 27-42 years-old were directly related to an individual’s income level. About fifty-seven percent of men were at, or below, the poverty level, with an additional 21% low income under $37,499 annually. Women’s incarceration rates were more drastic, with 72% at or below the poverty level, with an additional 13% were low income under $37,499 annually. It is clear to me that the Judicial system judge’s lower-income individuals differently than everyone else. It makes you wonder how much you could save in policing and incarceration by raising the minimum wage, so fewer working people were being denied a living wage and still living in poverty.

Spanning more than a decade, the “warrior” mentality training from law enforcement has instilled fear in their interaction with communities. This fear has escalated situations, eroded trust, destroyed the perception of law enforcement, all while creating a vast divide between law enforcement and communities they are supposed to serve. 

But, that’s enough about the problem; let’s look at how humane policing addresses this complex issue with innovative solutions that can transform police culture, while not ignoring the judicial system.  

My approach to humane policing is already recognized as an effective approach. Similar methods have been adopted by Seattle-based Procedural Justice, who design programs to “slow down” police officers thought processes during encounters with citizens, and The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, that has activated programs in six sites across the US and extended their scope to include interventions between police and victims of domestic violence, youth issues, and the LGBTQI community.  

Our collective efforts are putting community first, with interactions that focus on respect and empathy. Our work can facilitate corporate crisis management, too. When Starbucks closed 8,000 stores in 2018 for several hours of racial bias training, humane policing was perfectly positioned to advise on staff training, and could easily become a future resource that goes beyond law enforcement.

Australian social science research professor, Lorraine Mazerolle, in her book Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy, offers a systematic review from 15 different research studies done in Australia, the UK, the US, Israel, Trinidad & Tobago, and Ghana; that show an improved perception of police from interventions that focus on a more humane approach to policing.

However, my approach to humane policing goes further and creates systematic change within agencies to be accepted and valued by their communities.

First, we need to remove the fear from law enforcement training and replace it with additional communication training. When personal safety is not an imminent threat, we need to promote compassion, empathy, and understanding. After determining the lack of an imminent threat (which there typically isn’t), a peace officer’s first question to themselves should be, “How am I going to help this person?” Asking this question alters the dialogue of the conversation, and drastically affects the outcome of the situation. Removing fear removes the likelihood of an officer going into “fight or flight” mode.

Funding for law enforcement has to change. Written citations for by-laws should never be utilized for the budgets of law enforcement. It creates ulterior motives for law enforcement to enforce the law and promotes a community mindset that they are “out to get them.” Revenue generated by law enforcement needs to be allocated toward improving education, housing, community outreach programs, health care, and other programs looking to improve the community. Law enforcement is a service industry, and as such, the salary raises of law enforcement officers should be based on a community approval rating system. Even before the George Floyd incident, major metropolitan Police Departments’ approval ratings ranged between 40-60 percent — which is not even remotely acceptable. It clearly illustrates a lack of trust and a drastic need for reform.

Law enforcement currently enforces the negative behavior of people when enforcing the law. This can be seen in the reports of most agencies. Reports routinely include an individual’s negative behavior to justify using force or adding additional charges of resisting arrest. 

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela

Reports rarely include the positive behavior of people — such as how honest or cooperative the individuals were. My organization, Humane Policing, has spoken to numerous district attorneys with the idea of promoting the positive behaviors of people. This would be done with a quantitative scale of how cooperative an individual is when facing arrest. The DA will reward collaborative individuals with a better plea deal than those who are uncooperative. Some types of crimes would be excluded from the plea scale, like sexual assault and other violent crimes. Cooperation has to be the goal, and forcing compliance should be a last resort.

Mental health is a massive issue in law enforcement, from officers dealing with the mentally ill, to the mental health of themselves. Most mental health calls occur when a caregiver has lost the ability to control the individual in their care, and law enforcement officers need to expect the unexpected. Most mental health issues become law enforcement issues by default because we lack the proper health systems to address them adequately. But, firmly placing mental health back into the confines of healthcare (where it belongs) will be a good start in avoiding potential flashpoints.

The primary law enforcement training is reactionary: “shoot or don’t shoot.” This training puts an over-dependence on an officer’s firearm. Law enforcement needs more reactionary training on the use of less-lethal options and to have them ready to use at first contact. This will immediately improve the preservation of life and allow better choices for a Peace Officer. A Peace Officer’s mental health is strained by dealing with traumatic situations. The current negative perception of law enforcement as a whole has forced many of them to internalize the burden. It explains the all-time high rate of suicide among law enforcement personnel. 

Humane Policing wants to create a partnership between law enforcement and local children’s hospitals. This partnership would allow officers to volunteer at hospitals when on modified duty — from an injury, administrative inquiry, or just being burnt-out. This will enable peace officers to reevaluate their self-worth and restore purpose to the community and change their outlook from negative to positive. This approach is already a consideration for combat deployments in the military, where the number of active months are considered against soldiers under unusual stress. A similar approach for law enforcement officers could be based on the intensity of situations, or length of time in areas of high crime.

Humane Policing is committed to improving the relationship between Law Enforcement and the communities they serve because our children and grandchildren deserve a more united country.

www.HumanePolicing.com

Today, nearly 9 in 10 Americans say this is the most divided our country has felt in their lifetime. The division is political — much more than it is racial, generational, or class-based — and as the 2020 election nears, the animosity is likely to reach a crescendo.

The political debate has also expanded, sprawling into the domains of entertainment, religion, and commerce. Together, these dynamics create an environment where business leaders will be increasingly drawn into the fray.

Executives may be tempted to try to keep their heads down and avoid political entanglements, but such a strategy is unwise and unworkable — regardless of sector or market. Instead, business leaders should proactively take action to reduce political conflict within their organizations, with their customers, and among the broader public. Although daunting, there are clear steps business leaders can take to play such a role. 

 The first step is to anticipate and prepare for political conflict emerging from internal sources. More in Common’s research on polarization in the United States, documented in our Hidden Tribes report, describes how politics has become a clash between differing worldviews and deeply held moral identities. As evidenced most visibly by the high-profile walkouts in several tech companies, employees are bringing these identities into the workplace. Internal protests are not mere disagreements over details; they are motivated by a broader pursuit of values such as justice and equality. Beyond skirmishes between staff and senior management, tensions will rise between employees, especially as political discussions become more frequent via social media. These moments will become more frequent in 2020; business leaders need to address them intentionally as a leadership and culture challenge.

 A best practice for leaders is to engage employees in conversations about the election year proactively, noting that it will be tense and emotional for many. It is crucial not to allow the loudest voices to dominate any particular conversation, but rather to nurture spaces for constructive engagement. Avoid minimizing or dismissing employees’ views and instead focus on identifying shared values within the organization. Monitor effects on employee well-being and morale by using internal surveys and other resources to spot the emergence of intimidation or hostile dynamics that may not be immediately visible. 

 A second source of political conflict is external parties, such as vocal consumers and online activists. Pressure campaigns from across the ideological spectrum are not new. However, the emerging trend is that such campaigns are less about a single product or company decision and more about which political “side” the company is on. The intense judgment and high visibility of such campaigns create substantial tension for employees, leadership, and partners.

 Responding to external groups will be more complicated in 2020 because the traditional tools — PR, communications, and public affairs — may have less reach in the crowded media context and less impact against the tide of sentiment. Best practice for 2020 includes preparing for and actively communicating with your teams and leadership about how you plan to respond to potential pressure campaigns and emphasizing that responses will be consistent with the values discussions you are leading internally.

Business leaders need to be wary of overreacting: one of More in Common’s key findings is that those most politically active on social media represent narrow, more ideologically extreme viewpoints. The majority of your external stakeholders are likely not participating in any activist campaigns, and you do not want to lose sight of this in the heat of the moment. Successfully avoiding polarizing actions will add credibility to your effort to demonstrate a consistent set of values, internally and externally. 

 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, another key source of conflict to consider is yourself. How are you, as an individual and leader, navigating this polarized moment? Whether you are politically active in your personal life or not, too often leaders fail to appreciate the stress that our national conflict places on their own psychology. This can lead to situations where impulsive decisions undermine the trust and confidence of your team, customers, and other partners. Reflecting on how you, as an individual, can best manage the myriad sources of stress the political situation creates for you in this polarized moment is just as important as planning your organizational approach to these challenges.

 There is a storm coming in 2020. Weathering the storm will require prudent planning and thoughtful leadership. Emerging sounder and stronger after the storm, however, will demand business leaders seize on opportunities provided to engage their teams, their customers, and other stakeholders in a dialogue about values, character, and aspirational norms. It will require attention to one’s health and that of your teams and partners. This is a demanding set of challenges, but also an opportunity for leaders to steward their teams — and potentially our country — toward calmer, better shores.  

Stephen Hawkins is director of research at More in Common and leads studies on polarization and division in the United States and across Europe. Dan Vallone is director of More in Common USA.  www.MoreInCommon.com

My vision of journalism wouldn’t be shared by my American colleagues. In fact, when I explained what drives me and what my aims are to my professors while completing a Masters program at Columbia University, they told me I had probably chosen the wrong career. To me, being a reporter isn’t just a quest to find the truth!

In my work as a journalist, I feel a strong responsibility to be objective and unbiased, to communicate the most complete information to my audience. But this is not all about me. I see journalism as a tool to impact the world around me, to make it fairer, to give a voice to those who don’t have? and to force the guilty — whether it’s a mafia affiliate or a corrupt or unethical politician — to be held accountable.

Growing up in Berlusconi-led Italy, for me, was very seminal. I remember protesting against the corruption of the first Republic when I was 9 years old and getting very frustrated at seeing the same behavior happening over and over again throughout the years as if no preceding scandal was unbearable enough. My frustration came to an end when I joined a team of brave reporters in 2006, at the age of 20, and I had a chance to become active on all types of injustices.

I started traveling Italy, telling the stories of people that were forced to live in houses infested with asbestos and getting sick because of it. I investigated the lack of safety measures that killed seven people in the 2007 ThyssenKrupp fire. I chased after politicians who were colluding with the Italian mafia (such as Marcello Dell’Utri, a former senator who funded Berlusconi’s party and now serving a 7-year jail sentence). I kept working with one thing in mind: Since I understood that not much happens in Italy, even after scandal surfaces, I decided I would persist — again and again — until I could find some justice for the victims of the stories on which I was reporting.

If you can’t fix a situation with a news story, try again, and then again, until it works.

After working for AnnoZero, the most followed and controversial political talk show ion Italian State television, I became part of a group of 12 reporters who started a newspaper in 2009, Il Fatto Quotidiano, today among one of the best-selling in the country. Once again, I was working in an atypical context, since my boss’s orders were simply to do our job, without any regard for the powerful people that could have (and did) make our lives very difficult with lawsuits and intimidations. This may seem normal to some — a journalist being a watchdog of the powerful rather than a pet — but in Italy, it’s often not the case. As great as it was to work for my newspaper, I started feeling a need to go deeper, to find more time to research and produce stories with the potential of having a more significant impact.

I started working on my first documentary when I was studying in New York, with the help of Newsweek magazine. It focused on the women behind the mob; those who run the clans in the most powerful and wealthiest crime organizations around the world, the ‘Ndrangheta. Spending time with these women, exploring the drug trade between New York and Milan, getting hold of telephone tapings and surveillance videos in which they order murders with electric saws, made me realize that there was another aspect to my job that I valued. It was the fact that I got to explore and experience many realities that I would otherwise know nothing about.

I worked on many more projects, but it was only when former editor in chief of Vogue Italia, Franco Sozzani (who passed away in 2016) asked me to become a Special Envoy for global social change platform Fashion 4 Development (F4D), that I decided to focus more on human rights.

I decided that what had always driven me — the desire to fix injustices — could now become the core of my work. I spent much time figuring out the best way I could help as a special envoy and honor the important job that F4D founder Evie Evangelou and Sozzani had given me. I decided to dedicate my skills and time to tell stories of human rights violations, and making them so widely known that people would have a tough time ignoring them.

After exploring many topics, I found one worth telling. Interestingly, I didn’t need to go to a developing country, nor to a place afflicted by wars or extreme poverty to see the worst violations of human rights.

The story took place less than 60 miles south of Rome. After journalist Robert Saviano wrote a book called “Gomorrah” in 2006, that had attracted much attention and made doing business for the mob much more difficult, most of the drug trade had moved from Scampia in Naples to a small town called Caivano, 15 miles north of the city. Parco Verde, the biggest drug dealing “piazza” in Caivano, is impenetrable. Eyes are watching all the time to ensure nobody gets in, and very often, it’s the job of local children. I was interested in finding out what life was like for the almost 600 kids living there.

In this town, where local bosses (according to police records) rent each street for about 100,000 euros a month to drug dealers, with the guarantee that no police will bother the drug market, kids are very aware of who’s in charge.

As one example, 14-year-old Carmen explained to me how the Camorra (Mafia) is helping her and her mother now that her brother — a Mafia affiliate — went to prison. She knows who deals and who kills, especially since the age of six, when a man was shot dead in front of her.

Her classmate, Mario, also witnessed an execution 10 years before that of his father. While we were filming this story, Mario asked a friend of his older brother, who had also died, to help him beat up a kid who was “disrespecting me.” Just like all the characters in this documentary, the kids are at the age at which they need to choose a path: either join local gangs or stay in school. In fact, it was the local school, or more accurately, the headmistress, who is at the center of this story.

Her name is Eugenia Carforo, and for the past 10 years, she had been fighting a personal, daily battle: bringing kids to school and keeping them there as much as possible. When they are not in class, most often, they are on the streets learning a very different, and dangerous, job. Even when kids want to stay out of trouble, trouble seems to find them.

The only playground in town, for instance, is surrounded by junkies walking around 6-year-olds with syringes protruding from their arms. One of the kids’ favorite games is to mock the junkies: walking like them, imitating facial expressions, and counting how many blood-encrusted syringes they can find. When Carfora started working in her school, it was dirty, with dead birds in the bathrooms and guns buried in the school’s courtyard. Years later, it became an example to the whole region, with computer laboratories and courses on languages and arts. Carfora’s dream was to create a school filled with opportunities, and one that was extremely understanding of the issues of kids who often have one or both parents in jail.

“I promise, you don’t have to stay in class. Just come to school today, and we’ll take it from there,” I heard her saying to a young girl. There was only one problem: Her efforts started paying off, kids were attending classes like never before, and the local mobsters became increasingly frustrated by the absence of their young soldiers.

What probably scared the people who rule Caivano more, was that Carfora’s work was generating hope and it was spreading. In one example, there was a square alongside the school that was used for drug trading, where cages with guard dogs were used to scare off intruders. She managed to get rid of the dogs and the dealers and repurpose it as a playground for kids.

Then, the day of the new mayor’s inauguration arrived. People watched from their windows, clapping and unrolling white sheets as a sign of support. It was a turning point when, in Carfora’s opinion, it was decided that the school was too dangerous and had to be closed. And so, it happened.

The new mayor — a man whose office had pictures of dictator Mussolini and a vast collection of fascist symbols —informed Corfora that she didn’t maintain the minimum number to keep the school open (she had 593 students, the minimum was 600). With that, the school was closed and the kids scattered among other facilities nearby. Except, no other principal would check to see if the students were in class, as Carfora had done every morning, calling the parents or driving to their homes to collect those who didn’t show by 8 am.

This documentary was meant to tell a positive story: that of a teacher who was saving kids one at a time in a very troubled place. A place where 36 children had died from Mafia conflicts, drugs, accidents, and a nest of pedophiles rooted in the area. But while filming, it became yet another example of how easily wrong decisions continue to be made in Italy — where everybody knows what’s going on, but nobody intervenes. The former Minister of Education, told of this situation, granted me an interview, and said that the closing of the school signaled that the Mafia had won.

I know my film may not change the lives of these kids, but I do believe that bringing awareness — as F4D teaches — is an excellent place to start. And forcing people to open their eyes might accomplish some little miracle — reopening that school in an area with no hope. It could be just what these kids need to realize that not every scandal goes unpunished. It can give them a chance to be the ones who write their own future.

This article written by Charles Krauthammer originally appeared in his syndicated column on January 17, 1986, three days before the first national holiday honoring the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1987 Krauthammer won the Pulitzer prize for commentary and this was his winning entry:

The accepted wisdom in South Africa, Lionel Abrahams, a literary critic, told Joseph Lelyveld of The New York Times, has it that “nothing will do but that hard black men come to grips with hard white men, to which end the soft men between must clear out of the way.”

If you like this, subscribe here for more stories that Inspire The Future.

In revolution, the soft men between must always clear out of the way. Revolution is not for moderates. From Alexander Kerensky to Arturo Cruz, nothing changes: the man of qualms, of balance, of ambivalence is lost.

Bishop Desmond Tutu — Nobel Peace Prize winner, anti-apartheid activist and leading spokesman for nonviolence in South Africa — is not a hard man. “I am the marginal man between two forces, and possibly I will be crushed,” he admits. “But that is where God has placed me, and I have accepted the vocation.”

The miracle of Martin Luther King, Jr., what set him apart even from Desmond Tutu, was the militance of his moderation, the steel will with which he insisted not just on his ends but on his means.

In a revolution, unwavering pursuit of ends is no great distinction. Everyone has an idea about destination. But only great, hard men are sure exactly of the path. Men like Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. (The list is depressingly long.)

Or like Gandhi, who believed with religious certainty that satyagraha, truth-force, was the way to freedom. And like King, who never wavered in his commitment to nonviolence, and who understood that for the moderate to survive in revolutionary times he must stick as hard by his means as the hard men at the extremes do by theirs.

Tutu is also deeply personally committed to nonviolence, and has shown extraordinary personal courage in its service. At least twice he has risked his life to save a suspected informer from a murderous mob. Last August in Daveyton, he stood alone between black demonstrators and heavily armored South African troops and negotiated a solution that averted certain violence.

Tutu’s nonviolence, however, seems more a personal choice. “I wouldn’t, myself, carry guns or fight and kill. But I would be there to minister to people who thought they had no alternative.” Asked two days ago whether there is any justification for violence, he replied, “If I were young … I would have rejected Bishop Tutu long ago.”

Personal choices are not forced on others. Instead, says Tutu, tactics are not even his domain. “I am an idealist. It is unfair to ask an idealist how he will move toward a utopian goal.”

King was forever telling people how to move. His means were as inseparable a part of his being and his message as his ends. King made nonviolence the cornerstone of his philosophy of social action. Tutu’s two books, “Crying in the Wilderness” and “Hope and Suffering,” are a passionate, prophetic call for reconciliation and negotiation. But of the books’ 62 speeches, sermons and writings, not one is devoted to the theory and practice of nonviolence. For Tutu, nonviolence is a discipline, a matter of conscience. For King, it was that and more: a weapon, a matter of hard political strategy.

Tutu is King’s natural heir. On Monday, the first annual holiday commemorating King’s birth, that kinship receives ratification from King’s living memorial, the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change. It will award Tutu its 1986 Non-Violent Peace Prize.

To compare Tutu to King is therefore inevitable, though it is perhaps unfair. First, because King was a great political leader and Tutu does not pretend to be one at all. “I am just a religious leader standing in for the real leaders of our people who are in jail and exile,” he says. “If I am a leader it is only by default.”

But more important, because South Africa is not America. There is no Kennedy, no Johnson. No franchise. No white public ready to be galvanized to action by scenes of Southern violence. South Africa is all South, old South.

Tutu knows that well. “Nonviolence presupposes a minimum moral level. And when that minimum moral level does not operate, I don’t think nonviolence can succeed.” The oppressor society must be capable of “moral revulsion.” It happened in Gandhi’s Britain and King’s America. “I don’t see that happening here,” says Tutu.

The Pretoria regime won’t talk to him. And the young black militants want him out, says Tutu, so they can “get on with the revolution” without him. The hard men want the soft men to move.

King would not be moved. True, he was more fortunate than Tutu in his choice of birthplace. America had the capacity for shame that is the necessary condition for the success of nonviolence. But it is also a sufficient condition. The ground needs a figure. Nonviolent revolution needs a hard man to lead it. America was even luckier than King for his choice of birthplace. Monday, we give thanks for that good fortune.

If you like this, subscribe here for more stories that Inspire The Future.