THE WORLD - It's long been a tradition of The World's Magazine to publish a "Bottom Ten" list of the people we considered the most heinous of the previous year. That list normally comes out in January, and our editorial staff determines who made the world the most awful in the preceding year.
This year, our Esteemed Editor decided that we should try getting POSITIVE and take nominations from our Mailing List Members (the creme de la creme of our readership) as to people they believed deserved recognition for making our world a better place. The Plan was to determine whether G21 would do a Person of the Year for the first time ever.
Below find the results of this experiment in seeking out Goodness.
From Mwara K'u, (No City or Country Provided);
Joe and Connie Mitchell, CEO of Vartec and his wife. Good guys. Extraordinary - American businesspeople with integrity.
Mwara
From Ric W., Austin, TX, USA:
krugman [Paul, the New York Times economics OpEd writer - Ed.]
zell somebody who gave his kidney away [Our factcheck team is still working on this reference -- Ed.]
all the countries who said no to Bush [We assume this a reference to participation in the "Coalition of the Willing" to attack Iraq -- Ed.]
From Kathy P., San Francisco, CA, USA:
jimmy and roselyn carter [Former President and First Lady of the United States -- Ed.]
From Brad B., New York, NY, USA:
jonathan lethem
greg palast
michael caine
norah jones
susan sarandon
oprah
my mom
more to come
From D.C.S., Tampa Bay, Fl, USA:
Rod,
I'd like to nominate Michael Robertson, the honcho of Lindows. He's been a one-man band marching against M$ and offering a choice in OS and app software.
His name should be familiar to you. Was the founder of MP3 -- or whatever the hell the name of the audio site is/was.
cheers
dc
From Gaynor Paynter, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA:
Dear Rod
Off the top of my head I would have to say one of our local radio stations 94.7 Highveld Stereo for their annual Christmas wish list (an initiative whereby listeners can nominate people they think should qualify for the Wish List via email - you have to give a fully comprehensive email of wny, wherefore, contact details, circumstances surrounding the person benefitting from the list, etc.) The Wish List runs three times a day for two weeks in December - let me give you a few examples of some of the things Highveld have done together with their sponsors:
1) This morning a deaf three year old girl's grandfather (the parents are also deaf) was told that the little girl is going to get a cochlear implant and twelve months of treatment to teach her how to interpret the sounds. This is worth approximately $18,000. The grandfather was in tears and so was I.
2) A lady who suffered from polio as a child and who is wheelchair bound is going to get a new wheelchair.
3) A lady who was attacked by armed robbers in her own home about seven years ago decided that it was because of the bad childhood these people have had that they turned to crime. She gave up her day job and opened her home to abandoned and sick children, relying on donations from the public. The house is now in need of plumbing, work done to the roof, and other odd jobs. She is going to have a bunch of contractors coming to her house to sort it all out.
There are many more instances (which you could probably see on www.highveld.co.za), so I hereby nominate the whole team from 94.7, who include Simon Parkinson, Jeremy Mansfield, Samantha Cowan, Harry Sidiropolous, and all the others behind the scenes. The same team also just ran a Carols by Candlelight to get donations for children over Christmas time. It's also a great opportunity for me to draw international attention to all the good work done by these people - all to often Americans only hear the bad news about South Africa.
That's all that springs to mind at the moment.
Gaynor
From Kathi P., San Francisco, CA, USA:
Medina Benjamin from Global Exchange
From Tapas R., Calcutta, INDIA.,
Sorry, I could come up with only four names. I must have become really
cynical, as you say. There can be no other explanation for failing to come
up with the names of ten people out of six and a quarter billion, who have
worked to make life better on earth. However, I will give you more names if
I can think of them before today's deadline.
Tapas
1. Aung San Suu Kyi [Dissident and Human Rights Activist - Ed.]
2. Satyendra Dubey (a young Indian engineer murdered for whistleblowing)
http://us.rediff.com/news/dubey.htm
3. Bill and Melinda Gates (the foundation)
4. Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation). For his work on free
software. My nomination has nothing to do with his political views.
http://www.stallman.org/
http://www.gnu.org/
http://www.free-soft.org/
From Harrison C, III, San Francisco, CA, USA.:
I nominate
your attorney as good person of the year....people I talk to about your
situation are still amazed.
From Sue W., (No City Provided,) SOUTH AFRICA:
Zacky Achmat (I'm not sure of the spelling here) - South African AIDS
activist, I think a Nobel nominee for his amazing work.
Robert Fisk for trying to counter the weird, weird world of CNN et al and
head for a little sanity with his middle eastern reporting.
John Pilger for the same thing.
Margaret Legum and her SANE economists who are trying to teach us that
there is another way to live and we can still save ourselves and our planet.
The Israeli Army soldiers and pilots who are saying no to Israel's behaviour
towards Palestinians and braving labels like 'traitor' and 'coward'.
And the most important of them all is ...
The unnamed 'ordinary' yet extraordinary people who take AIDS orphans into
their homes, start orphanages in slums with no funding, and find a million
ways to make life better for people in need, who don't let the overwhelming
problems get them down or cause them to retreat but do something every day
that helps. I truly believe that without them the world would grind to a
halt completely and yet we do not even know their names.
A thought - perhaps it is harder to find those 10 good people not because
there aren't any good people but because unlike the baddies they do not seek
fame and fortune, nor do they earn huge publicity for terrible acts.
Ummm ... (I'm scratching here)
[The following came in later from Sue. - Ed.]
Also Michael Moore for writing serious stuff so it's funny and getting
through to lots of people that way. I hope he keeps going. He makes activism
accessible.
Comments from (selected members of the) G21 Staff and Editorial Board
After reviewing the nominees, we were presented with a conundrum. Again, our readership, as represented by the Mailing List Members, proved themselves an eclectic and non-mainstream group. Besides picking a few "computer geeks" (in the common view) and any number of AIDS activists, they chose people who are doing good works QUIETLY.
That last fact again goes against the "Person of the Year" concept, we decided in our private chats about the exercise.
Our Esteemed Editor was unusually pleased with the results, while some of the consulted writers were less than enthusiastic. As you might expect with the crew, a heated argument ensued as to whether we were in a position to attempt a POTY cover in 2004 at all.
The second conundrum was that some of the respondents were fellow contributors to the magazine and what weight we would give their nominations,
The last concern was whether we should ourselves poll and nominate candidates. Rod nixed that idea out of hand.
Where did that leave us?
- NO to the idea of a G21 Person of the Year for 2003.
- YES, to continuing the experiment next year.
- YES to the idea of doing feature stories on next year's nominees (and perhaps this year's if Rod doesn't just walk on us at any moment.)
So, generally, the selected staff and editorial board were pleased and looked forward to a more forward-looking and POSITIVE spin around this joint. That's a victory of sorts.
Stay tuned.
