northwessed

Merry Christmas! Yesterday we raised nearly $500,000 in financial assistance for the refugee families we met during the month of December. As of now, this is enough to provide each family with about $40,000. That is a large amount for anyone, but when you are starting from zero, it is all the money in the world. These families lost everything in the war. Most have multiple children and significant medical needs, so our assistance will significantly ease the stress of starting over. Thanks so much to everyone who gave yesterday. The fundraiser will run for one more day, so anyone else who would like to donate may do so here:

There is so much fear in the world right now. And politicians know that they must win the votes of frightened people. And with their rhetoric, they are condoning prejudice in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Since September 11th, forty-five people have been killed in the United States by Islamic extremists. This includes the recent attacks in California. Even though these attacks were carried out by only a handful of violent individuals, they are being used as a license to vilify millions of Americans. That is wrong and that is dangerous.

And Aya, who is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known, had to absorb a good deal of that hatred this week. I’m sure this added to the trauma she’s already been through. But every step of the way I gave her the option to stop telling her story. And at every step, she gave me permission to continue. And I thank her for that.

And I want to thank all of you. Because I noticed something this week. I noticed that the comments on Aya’s story always began very positively. But as some of the posts were shared thousands of times, and began to reach newsfeeds beyond the HONY community, the tone of comments deteriorated. They became much more judgmental and prejudiced. And that made me realize how special this community is. The people who follow this page did something very important this week. You allowed a traumatized young Muslim woman to share her story in a supportive environment. There aren’t many places right now where that is possible. So in your own way, you provided Aya with a place of refuge.

Thank you for that.

And thanks to everyone who stood up this week to tell Aya: “I’m not afraid of you.” For anyone who still wishes to sign Aya’s petition, you may do so here:

Pixar animator and director Peter Sohn told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross how he helped inspire the character of Russell in Up:

“I did a lot of the scratch voice for Russell in the early production of that film, and I was in early development with them doing storyboards and I remember that there are these sessions when you’re sitting around a table and you are coming up with ideas [and] a lot of artists will draw each other all the time and caricature each other. We would call [it] “jacking each other” — where you would flip a drawing at someone and your nose is huge or something. They kept drawing me like a giant thumb with a hat and these kind of little Asian eyes, and somehow that shape kept recurring until it became Russell, this Asian-American kid. I got to tell you, I’m so proud that there’s this Asian-American kid in an animated movie.”

His new film, The Good Dinosaur, imagines a world in which the dinosaurs did not go extinct and people and dinosaurs now live together. At the center of the movie is Arlo, an 11-year-old dinosaur who becomes separated from his family during a flash flood and must find his way home with the help of a feral boy named Spot. 

More about the film and Sohn’s life in this interview: 

There will be like 8,000 people doing awful drunken renditions of the Tchaik and Mendelssohn concerti but everyone loves them

That one tuba player who can somehow play the flightiest woodwind music

Someone who randomly shows up with a slide whistle and makes you cry over their performance of Barber’s Adagio