street roots
May 27, 2011
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WITNESS, from page 8
won’t always believe a story’s words, but
most of the time they’ll believe the pictures.
had been fired upon and lawfully returned
fire. Not to muddy the waters, but it could
have been a balloon popping that sounded
like a shot. A newsreel cameraman from a
major station got a picture of a
demonstrator with a pistol in his hand, and
that lent support to the government’s
version of events. But it was not unusual in
Central America back then to carry a pistol.
The government had a press liaison
person come to see me at the Camino
Royal. He wasn’t at the massacre, but he
tried to tell me what happened. He told me
that perhaps I didn’t hear correctly. I was 25
yards away. I heard correctly.
S.B.: What are you working on now?
K.H.: I started two websites: 52Selects.
com and EverySecondChild.org. 52Selects is
a collection of affordable, original prints
from lots of great photojoumalists.
EverySecondChild spotlights the efforts of
committed photojournalists around the
world who document the issue of child
poverty. We’re frying to be a visual catalyst
to help tackle that number.
S.B.: What inspired EverySecondChild.org?
K.H.: I was in Guatemala in the mid-
1970’s when an earthquake killed about
24,000 people. When I got there, they were
still digging through the rubble. Many of the
survivors were children because they are
small and resilient and could fit in the
cavities of walls. Many of the children were
orphaned. There was one little girl who was
rescued by her neighbors and the drily thing
she had was the shirt on her back. The
neighbors were trying to find other
survivors, and the girl kept crawling away,
so they put her in this wooden box. And
there she was, half-dressed, crying her eyes
out, covered in dirt, and condemned to a life
of poverty. I often wonder what happened to
her.
S.B.: Are you looking forward to going back
to San Salvador for the memorial event?
K.H.: It will be a chance to close some
doors arid open others. We will be opening a
museum Saturday, May 28, to
commemorate arid memorialize political
struggle in Central and South America.
S.B.: So many foreign news offices have
shut down. Do you think a reporter would
have been on those steps in San Salvador
today?
K.H.: If the massacre had happened
today, there would have been bloggers from
both sides and then a reporter to report
what the bloggers were saying. That’s the
way it is, but it’s unfortunate for the Truth
with a capital “T” because bloggers can’t be
expected to hold up the same kind of ethical
standards. Everybody has opinions, but the
idea of professional reporting is to manage
that opinion and a great majority of btoggers
do not.
Even though there will never be a clear
cut version of the San Salvador massacre,
the fact that international journalists were
there was probably enough to tip thefruth.^
That picture of a Semonstrator w ith a p is to i^
could have defined the story, but we were
there to share our side.
S.B.: The San Salvador demonstration and
the others during that period bring to mind the
democratic, youth-led protests in Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya and Jordan. What similarities do
you see in this Arab Spring?
K.H.: The Arab Spring has proven that
bloggers are better than no reporters at all.
Bloggers are catalysts prompting
international media to stay on the stories.
What I don’t like is how international media
offices are just quoting bloggers, instead of
having a reporter on the ground. But that’s
the economy now.
The Arab Spring is also a young
revolution, just like Central America was.
That was a time when-revolutionary kids
were feeling their oats, and it s happening
now in the Middle East.
S.B.: Describe your experience covering
Jonestown, the cult ‘Kool-Aid’’ mass suicide led
by Jim Jones.
K.H.: I werit in with a team from
Newsweek the evening after th e suicides.
All I was told was that a congressman had
been murdered in Guyana. I didn t even
know where Guyana was. As ittu rn s out,
I I besides Congressman Leo Ryan, two of my
photographer friends had been killed - Bob
Brown of NBC and Greg Robinson of the
San Francisco Examiner. It was horrible.
Some of the people had been shot. Some
had hypodermic needles hanging out o
their arms and legs. Jonestown was not a
mass suicide. It started o ut as an induced
. suicide, but when people saw that others
were actually dying', many tried to get away
and were stopped by security forces, ome
were able to hide in the jungle, Y^cm
Thrash was an African-American lady tha
met who had gone to the bathroom,
en
S.B.: What is your mission of
EverySecondChild.org?
K.H.: My hope is to present folks,
especially in various faith communities in
North America, with a way to engage in the
issue of child poverty around the world.
Photojournalists put up their images and
stories, and then there are links to vetted
charities, like Doctors Without Borders,
where people can help with money or
p ra y e rs o r anyw ay they c h o o s e . The
lr f ip c a K n tilin g is T O D ieco m eacq u am tecl
ine year old Santiago Dominguez returns to the shambles of his family home outside of La
2sca Tamaulipas, Mexico, after his impoverished family survived a category two humcane.
intiago left his home to try to find some o f the family’s eighty chickens winch had been blown
way by the high winds. Two dead laying hens were all he returned with. This is one o f the
tany photos on display atEverySecondChild.org
asleep and woken up to everybody dead. You
can’t make that kind of Stuff up.
We took photos of the bodies, photos of
the People’s Temple in Georgetown and
photos of Jonestown. When I saw Jim
Jones’s body in the pavilion, he had one
small caliber bullet behind his ear. That
couldn’t have been self-inflicted (as the
coroner eventually
concluded). -
For years, I didn’t realize that I had post-
traumatic stress disorder.
Adrenaline plays a big part. Camaraderie
with friends. You’re sitting around at home
and people you know are reporting in the
Middle East and you just want to be there?
You want to be ift the action. It’s perverse to
crave conflict, but I was drawn to i t Readers
. S.B.: Journalists,
like you, risk their
lives all the time
reporting in protests
and conflict zones.
What kind of toll does
that take?
K.H.: It’s a.noble ,
thing: conflict
journalism. Day after
day of finding the
truth with cameras. I
was short-lived. I
don’t know how
career conflict
journalists handle it.
American GIs in
Saigon “process”
Vietnamese
orphans.
P H O T O BY KEN
H A W K IN S
Missed A story? Check out wwwsbrèeM
with the problem and try to-find a way to
help.
Another thing I want to do is connect
photojournalists with nonprofits. There are
amazing PR photographers who want to
help NGO’s present their missions. We want
to bring corporate and faith-based
communities into the mix to help fund these
photojournalists go into the field and get
stories for these NGOs.
We just want to get everybody thinking
about the subject of child poverty. They ,
might be somber stories, but we think it’s
important that everybody do a little bit and
help get the word out about this enormous
issue.