Private Lunar Lander Blue Ghost Aces Moon Touchdown With Special Delivery for NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth’s celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.

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Confirmation of successful touchdown came from the company’s Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away.

“You all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon,” Firefly’s Will Coogan, chief engineer for the lander, reported.

An upright and stable landing makes Firefly — a startup founded a decade ago — the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan.

Read More: Do You Need to Worry About an Asteroid Hitting Earth?

A half hour after landing, Blue Ghost started to send back pictures from the surface, the first one a selfie somewhat obscured by the sun’s glare. The second shot included the home planet, a blue dot glimmering in the blackness of space.

Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.

Blue Ghost — named after a rare U.S. species of fireflies — had its size and shape going for it. The squat four-legged lander stands 6-foot-6 (2 meters) tall and 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide, providing extra stability, according to the company.

Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.

Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said the lander skipped over hazards including boulders to land safely. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to figure out the lander’s exact position, but all indications suggest it landed within the 328-foot (100-meter) target zone in Mare Crisium.

The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.

It carried a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10 feet (3 meters) below the surface. Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust — a scourge for NASA’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.

Read More: Asteroid Bennu Samples Contain Building Blocks of Life

On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of the home planet. The lander continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the moon’s gray pockmarked surface. At the same time, an on-board receiver tracked and acquired signals from the U.S. GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers.

The landing set the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.

Another lander — a tall and skinny 15-footer (4 meters tall) built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is due to land on the moon Thursday. It’s aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. That’s closer to the pole than the company got last year with its first lander, which broke a leg and tipped over.

Despite the tumble, Intuitive Machines’ lander put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972.

A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing. It shared a rocket ride with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 15, taking a longer, windier route. Like Intuitive Machines, ispace is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.

The moon is littered with wreckage not only from ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.

NASA wants to keep up a pace of two private lunar landers a year, realizing some missions will fail, said the space agency’s top science officer Nicky Fox.

“It really does open up a whole new way for us to get more science to space and to the moon,” Fox said.

Unlike NASA’s successful Apollo moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own, said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.

Kim said everything went like clockwork.

“We got some moon dust on our boots,” Kim said.

source https://time.com/7263386/private-lunar-lander-blue-ghost-moon-touchdown-nasa-delivery/

David Johansen, Singer From Seminal Punk Band the New York Dolls, Dies at 75

NEW YORK — David Johansen, the wiry, gravelly-voiced singer and last surviving member of the glam and protopunk band the New York Dolls who later performed as his campy, pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75.

Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City, Jeff Kilgour, a family spokesperson told The Associated Press. It was revealed in early 2025 that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor.

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The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band’s style — teased hair, women’s clothes and lots of makeup — inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands like Faster Pussycat and Mötley Crüe.

“When you’re an artist, the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that, it’s pretty gratifying,” Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011.

“Mutant children of the hydrogen age”

Rolling Stone once called the Dolls “the mutant children of the hydrogen age” and Vogue called them the “darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels.”

“The New York Dolls were more than musicians; they were a phenomenon. They drew on old rock ‘n’ roll, big-city blues, show tunes, the Rolling Stones and girl groups, and that was just for starters,” Bill Bentley wrote in “Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen.”

The band never found commercial success and was torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the decade. In 2004, former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums.

In the ’80s, Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single “Hot, Hot, Hot” in 1987. He also appeared in such movies as “Candy Mountain,” “Let It Ride,” “Married to the Mob” and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray-led hit “Scrooged.”

Johansen was in 2023 the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” which mixed footage of his two-night stand at the Café Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through his wildly varied career and intimate interviews.

“I used to think about my voice like: ‘What’s it gonna sound like? What’s it going to be when I do this song?’ And I’d get myself into a knot about it,” Johansen told The Associated Press in 2023. “At some point in my life, I decided: ‘Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.’ To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I’m in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially.”

Named after a toy hospital

David Roger Johansen was born to a large, working class Catholic family on Staten Island, his father an insurance salesman. He filled notebooks with poems and lyrics as a young man and liked a lot of different music — R&B, Cuban, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding.

The Dolls — the final original lineup included guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan — rubbed shoulders with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol in the Lower East Side of Manhattan the early 1970s.

They took their name from a toy hospital in Manhattan and were expected to take over the throne vacated by the Velvet Underground in the early 1970s. But neither of their first two albums — 1973’s “New York Dolls,” produced by Todd Rundgren, nor “Too Much Too Soon” a year later produced by Shadow Morton — charted.

“They’re definitely a band to keep both eyes and ears on,” read the review of their debut album in Rolling Stone, complementary of their “strange combination of high pop-star drag and ruthless street arrogance.”

Their songs included “Personality Crisis” (“You got it while it was hot/But now frustration and heartache is what you got”), “Looking for a Kiss” (I need a fix and a kiss”) and a “Frankenstein” (Is it a crime/For you to fall in love with Frankenstein?”)

Their glammed look was meant to embrace fans with a nonjudgmental, noncategorical space. “I just wanted to be very welcoming,” Johansen said in the documentary, “’cause the way this society is, it was set up very strict — straight, gay, vegetarian, whatever… I just kind of wanted to kind of like bring those walls down, have a party kind of thing.”

Rolling Stone, reviewing their second album, called them “the best hard-rock band in America right now” and called Johansen a “talented showman, with an amazing ability to bring characters to life as a lyricist.”

Decades later, the Dolls’ influence would be cherished. Rolling Stone would list their self-titled debut album at No. 301 of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, writing “it’s hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.”

Blondie’s Chris Stein in the Nolan biography “Stranded in the Jungle” wrote that the Dolls were “opening a door for the rest of us to walk through.” Tommy Lee of Motley Crue called them early inspirations.

“Johansen is one of those singers, to be a little paradoxical, who is technically better and more versatile than he sounds,” said the Los Angeles Times in 2023. “His voice has always been a bit of a foghorn — higher or lower according to age, habits and the song at hand — but it has a rare emotional urgency.

“Dirty angels with painted faces”

The Dolls, representing rock at it’s most debauched, were divisive. In 1973, they won the Creem magazine poll categories as the year’s best and worst new group. They were nominated several times for The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but never got in.

“Dirty angels with painted faces, the Dolls opened the box usually reserved for Pandora and unleashed the infant furies that would grow to become Punk,” wrote Nina Antonia in the book “Too Much, Too Soon.” “As if this legacy wasn’t enough for one band, they also trashed sexual boundaries, savaged glitter and set new standards for rock ‘n’ roll excess.”

By the end of their first run, the Dolls were being managed by legendary promoter Malcolm McLaren, who would later introduce the Sex Pistols to the Dolls’ music. Culture critic Greil Marcus in “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century” writes the Dolls played him some of their music and he couldn’t believe how bad they were.

“The fact that they were so bad suddenly hit me with such force that I began to realize, ’’I’m laughing, I’m talking to these guys, I’m looking at them, and I’m laughing with them; and I was suddenly impressed by the fact that I was no longer concerned with whether you could play well,” McLaren said. “The Dolls really impressed upon me that there was something else. There was something wonderful. I thought how brilliant they were to be this bad.”

After the first demise of the Dolls, Johansen started his own group, the David Johansen band, before reinventing himself yet again in the 1980s as Buster Poindexter.

Inspired by his passion for the blues and arcane American folk music Johansen also formed the group The Harry Smiths, and toured the world performing the songs of Howlin’ Wolf with Hubert Sumlin and Levon Helm. He also hosted the weekly radio show “The Mansion of Fun” on Sirius XM and painted.

He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.

source https://time.com/7263313/david-johansen-dead-singer-new-york-dolls-tributes/

Federal Workers Start to Get a New Email Demanding Their Accomplishments

WASHINGTON — Federal employees are starting to receive another email requiring them to explain their recent accomplishments, a renewed attempt by President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to demand answers from the government workforce.

Originally expected to go out Saturday, the new request began landing in the inboxes of some employees late Friday. The plan to send a second round of emails was initially disclosed by a person with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

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Read More: Elon Musk Draws Ire Telling Federal Employees to Justify Their Jobs Over Email or Resign

The first email, which was distributed a week ago, asked employees “what did you do last week?” and prompted them to list five tasks that they completed. Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been empowered by Trump with a mission to downsize agencies and eliminate thousands of federal jobs, said anyone who didn’t respond would be fired. Many agencies, meanwhile, told their workforces not to respond or issued conflicting guidance.

The second email was expected to be delivered in a different way, according to the person with knowledge of the situation, potentially making it easier to discipline employees for noncompliance.

Instead of being sent by the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as a human resources agency for the federal government but doesn’t have the power to hire or fire, the email was to come from individual agencies that have direct oversight of career officials.

A version of the email received late Friday by some employees at two separate agencies — with the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II” — came from “hr@opm.gov,” the same OPM address that sent the first version. Employees at a third agency received the email from an internal department address.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the message read, adding that going forward, employees would be expected to submit a response each week by the following Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

It’s unclear how national security agencies will handle the second email. After the first one, they directed employees not to write back because much of the agencies’ work is sensitive or classified. Less than half of federal workers responded, according to the White House.

Read More: White House Says Musk Part of Trump’s ‘Unified Team’ as Agencies Undermine Him

The version viewed late Friday by the Associated Press reads in part: “If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write, ‘All of my activities are sensitive.’” That may not eliminate all security concerns given that sending an email creates a digital footprint regardless of the message’s content.

A spokesperson for OPM did not immediately respond to a request for clarification Friday night.

On Wednesday, at Trump’s first Cabinet meeting of his second term, Musk argued that his request was a “pulse check” to ensure that those working for the government have “a pulse and two neurons.”

Both Musk and Trump have claimed that some workers are either dead or fictional, and the president has publicly backed Musk’s approach.

Addressing people who didn’t respond to the first email, Trump said “they are on the bubble,” and he added that he wasn’t “thrilled” about them not responding.

“Now, maybe they don’t exist,” he said without providing evidence. “Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist.”

In addition to recent firings of probationary employees, a memo distributed this week set the stage for large-scale layoffs and consolidation of programs.

The Education Department offered employees a $25,000 buyout and warned of looming layoffs. An email sent to all agency workers gave them until the end of Monday to decide on the offer, which was touted as coming “in advance of a very significant Reduction in Force.”

It was sent from the department’s chief human capital officer. The agency did not immediately offer comment.

—Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Collin Binkley and Cal Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7263263/federal-workers-get-new-email-demanding-their-accomplishments/

Meet The People’s Union USA, the Movement Behind Today’s ‘Economic Blackout’

U.S. consumers have been encouraged to participate in a 24-hour buying boycott today, targeting all economic activity—especially major retailers—as a way to show politicians that everyday consumers can control the economy.

The blackout was organized by The People’s Union USA and is the movement’s first action, described as “a symbolic start to economic resistance, a day where we show corporations and politicians that we control the economy,” per the group’s website.

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Consumers wishing to participate were instructed to not shop online, or in-store, and not to spend money on gas and fast food. They were also advised not to use their credit or debit cards for non-essential spending. The People’s Union USA website made a point of noting that consumers can buy “necessary” essentials including food and medicine, while maintaining the key aim of supporting small, local businesses.

Here’s everything to know about the movement behind the “economic blackout.”

What is The People’s Union USA?

The People’s Union USA is a “movement of people” organized to show consumers that they are “stronger together,” according to the group’s website. 

“If you believe in taking back power, breaking free from economic control, and building a future where the people ‘not corporations’ decide the direction of this country, then join us today,” the website reads in a call to action.

The People’s Union USA has also planned more 24-hour boycotts in March and April, as well as specific and targeted boycotts in later months, including an Amazon-focused boycott in early March, a Néstle-centric boycott in late March, and a Walmart-aimed boycott in April.

The movement has reportedly fundraised over $80,000 as of Friday morning, according to the GoFundMe page linked on its website. The People’s Union says the money will go to “legal fees, organization development, web development, outreach, marketing, event organization, and more.” On the “Your Donations” tab of the movement’s website, they break down their expenses so far.

The group’s goal is to “unionize the people,” which would eventually include establishing a nonprofit organization and legal representation, and organizing membership in order to “establish the infrastructure necessary for a functioning nationwide union or citizens.”

Is The People’s Union USA affiliated with a political party?

The movement specifies on its website that it is not affiliated with any political party, but rather aims to “transcend political labels.”

“We are a movement for ALL people, regardless of race, gender, religion, or political affiliation,” the movement states on its Frequently Asked Questions page. “We fight for fairness, economic justice, and real systemic change, something neither party has prioritized.”

Though they are not affiliated with a political party, they still have political stances publicized online.

Under a question about whether they support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which has come under fire by the Trump Administration, the movement reiterated their firm support. 

“We stand firmly for equality and freedom for ALL people, regardless of race, gender, background, or identity,” their position reads. “The idea that companies and institutions should abandon diversity and inclusivity is regressive and unacceptable.”

Other political stances on the website include advocating for no more federal income taxes for American citizens, making basic goods affordable, term limits for Congress, universal free healthcare, and more.

They also state that they are not against any one specific individual—President Donald Trump and new DOGE Administrator Elon Musk included: “This movement is not about one person… Our focus is systemic change, not political drama.”

Who is the founder of The People’s Union USA?

The People’s Union USA was founded by John Schwarz, according to its website, a Queens-born musician and meditation teacher.

“I am not a politician. I am not a corporate backed activist,” he said in his bio. “I am just a man who has lived through struggle, seen the truth, and decided to do something about it.”

Schwarz describes the struggle throughout his life, and how that showed him that “the system wasn’t built for people like ‘him.’” 

“It didn’t matter what religion, spiritual belief, or political affiliation someone had,” his bio reads. “The system is designed to keep all of us trapped.”

When was The People’s Union USA founded?

The People’s Union does not have a founding date on its website, but Schwarz began posting about his idea for the movement and the economic boycott in late January and early February, 2025.

“The People’s Union is here and our website is live.” Schwarz said in an Instagram post on Feb. 5. “This is no longer just a moment, this is truly a revolution of the people.”

source https://time.com/7262796/the-people-union-usa-movement-behind-economic-blackout-consumers/

Personal Trainers Share the No. 1 Tip That Has Changed Their Lives

Considering a new workout routine? A new yoga practice? Determined to use your recumbent bike for something other than hanging your clothes? Whatever the case, it never hurts to reconsider whether your fitness program is best suited  for you, given the many options all claiming to being your surest route to better health. 

To make things easier, we tapped eight personal trainers for their best bits of wisdom on how to level up your workout. 

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Focus on mobility first

One piece of fitness-related advice that has changed the life of Ackeem Emmons, coach at Tonal, an interactive home gym system, is the power of mobility. For years, the New York City-based personal trainer focused solely on strength and speed—his only metrics of success. “It was not until I matured, started training others, and kept getting injured that I learned to appreciate mobility,” he says. “When I started to incorporate mobility, stretching, and improving my flexibility, I saw major improvements in how I felt, coached, and looked.”

These days, Emmons’ dynamic pre- and post-workout routine includes moves like the “World’s Greatest Stretch,” squat to stand, and scorpion stretch, which have boosted his well-being and fitness. “The obstacle to our strength goals,” he says, “[is] the lack of mobility and body awareness.”

Ignore your fitness tracker  

This tip comes from Laura Thomas, a holistic movement coach in Cleveland. “Sometimes, we must not listen to our fitness trackers and do what feels good right now,” she says. “Even if your Fitbit barks at you to do more cardio, you know your body better than anyone else.”

Read More: Why You Should Change Your Exercise Routine—and How to Do It

Check in with yourself before a workout about your stress levels, how you slept, and what you ate that day. “Should you push through a challenging workout when you feel fatigued? Most likely not,” Thomas says. Instead, consider if mobility work or gentle yoga will fill your cup that day.

Stay open-minded to new research and workout approaches

Kaleigh Ray, an exercise physiologist  and staff writer for Treadmill Review Guru in St. George, Utah, warns clients not to get trapped in fitness fads and to be open to new research. For instance, she was “really into” minimalist and barefoot shoes for a long time, but upon reading research on running-shoe construction, she came to believe her preconceptions were false. “I still think barefoot shoes and minimalist shoes are great, but I’m also open to the benefits of maximalist shoes,” she says.

To that point, Ray strongly recommends that you incorporate multiple training techniques into your routine. “Believing one method is beneficial doesn’t mean you have to exclude all others forever. What serves you at one point in your fitness journey may not be what you need later,” she says. “Often, clinging to one fitness principle forces you to ignore an entire body of research.”

Start with just five minutes

“When the weather is awful, my schedule feels packed, or my motivation is low, my go-to advice is: commit to just five minutes of movement,” says Sarah Pelc Graca, owner and head coach at Strong with Sarah Weight Loss Coaching in Novi, Mich. “Whether it’s a quick warm-up stretching session, a walk around the house, or five minutes of lifting weights, the key is starting small. “ More often than not, she finds five minutes turn into 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or even a full workout.

Read More: Does Face Yoga Really Work?

Pelc Graca learned this lesson a few years ago as a new mom juggling her business and caring for her newborn, when the idea of squeezing in a workout felt impossible. “I quickly realized the hardest part was getting started,” she says. “Once I began moving, I wanted to keep going because it felt so good.” She still uses this mindset, whether it’s a quick few minutes of jumping rope or squeezing in body-weight squats while waiting for her coffee to brew.

Remember: There is no finish line when it comes to your health and fitness

This motto comes courtesy of personal trainer Tami Smith, owner of Fit Healthy Macros in St. Augustine, Fla. “Your journey is ongoing: there’s no rush, no end date, just a continued commitment to show up in the best way you can daily,” Smith says. 

Too often, she adds, we get caught up in wanting to achieve a certain goal, like losing an amount of weight by a specific date. . Rather, though, embrace the idea that these efforts will continue for the rest of your life, even though there will be ebbs and flows. This, Smith says, “leads to better adherence, less stress, and improved results.”

Befriend heavy weights

This advice applies especially to women, who often shy away from greater weight loads at the gym or home, says Michelle Porter, a personal trainer and yoga instructor in Hoboken, N.J. “Lift heavy, and don’t stress about your heart rate or calorie burn while strength training,” she says. “Focus on form, challenge your muscles, and the results will come.”

Read More: How to Stop Checking Your Phone Every 10 Seconds

Porter first became acquainted with this “lift heavy” principle in 2011 at a CrossFit class. “As a personal trainer at the time, barbell strength training and Olympic-style lifting were entirely new to me,” she says. “Like many women, I worried that lifting heavy weights would make me ‘bulky.’ But it didn’t — it helped me lean out and define my muscles.”

Stop comparing yourself

Bill Camarda, a personal trainer and owner of Limitless Fitness in Epping, N.H., never forgets the humbling moment of being told that somewhere in the world, there’s always going to be someone doing better than he is in the gym. “There’s always someone lifting more weight. There’s always going to be someone in better shape. There’s always someone who can run faster, jump higher, do more push-ups,” he says. “When someone pointed this out to me, it helped me to realize that the only person I needed to compare myself to was myself.”

Recognizing this not only helped Camarda check his ego at the gym door, but also do what was best for his body rather than trying to keep up with others.

Pick the right music 

Or podcast, or audiobook. Emily Abbate, a personal trainer in New York City and host of the wellness podcast Hurdle, is all about finding “the right soundtrack for your sweat,” as she puts it. 

Research shows that upbeat music or other audio fare can help you work both harder and for longer. “So when your motivation may be lacking, seek out something sweet for your headphones that inspires you to get up and out,” she says. “You may be surprised at what happens next.”

source https://time.com/7262048/personal-trainer-fitness-tips/

Ida B. Wells Taught Us That Care and Justice Go Hand in Hand

Upon returning to the White House, President Donald Trump launched a sustained assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the nation, dismantling programs in the federal government and emboldening corporate leaders to cut their own diversity and inclusion initiatives. The Trump administration’s reinvigorated attack on DEI has brought renewed scrutiny to Black History Month and the celebration of Black ideas, culture, and people in American politics.

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It is tempting to insist that our contemporary moment is exceptional, but assaults on the lives and stories of Black people are hardly unprecedented. Telling the stories of people like Ida B. Wells provides essential lessons about how to perseverance against against such attacks. For Wells, care for her community was central to an enduring practice of political resistance to racial injustice.

Born in 1862, Wells was an influential Black journalist and anti-lynching advocate. Today, she is renowned for being a principled and brave advocate for racial justice who was willing to make enormous sacrifices. She was not naïve to the potential consequences of her anti-lynching advocacy. To condemn lynching and the American political institutions that perpetuated it, she understood, would risk inviting violence against herself, a risk that she anticipates and reflects on in her autobiography. While willing to sacrifice her own life for the cause, she refused to ask her Black neighbors, friends, and colleagues to do the same when her anti-lynching advocacy put the broader Black community in Memphis in danger.

In May 1892, Wells published her first anti-lynching editorial, just months after three of her Black friends and neighbors—Thomas “Tommie” Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry “Will” Stewart—were brutally lynched in Memphis. Unfortunately, Wells was right to anticipate hostile retaliation. In the days following her editorial, many white journalists called for her lynching and a white mob ransacked and destroyed her newspaper office.

Wells was not in Memphis, by happenstance, when her editorial was published. Instead, she was traveling to a conference in New York. She learned of the many threats made against her life and the destruction of her newspaper from her friend, T. Thomas Fortune, upon her arrival up North. When confronted with the difficult choice of staying in New York or returning to Memphis, Wells’s first thought was not of the cause but of the safety of her colleague, J.L. Fleming, down South.

Read More: I’m Ida B. Wells’s Great-Granddaughter, and I’m Still Fighting Her Fight for the Vote

On a busy train platform in New York, Wells also considered the well-being of the Black community in Memphis. Many of her friends begged her to stay up North, lamenting the enormous loss of life that would ensue if she returned to Memphis. Not only would she surely have been lynched, but her colleagues at the newspaper would have been killed. Many of her Black male friends offered to fight off her white assailants, but Wells believed this would only mean more Black widows and fatherless children. In the end, she chose to stay up North and continue her anti-lynching advocacy in New York and eventually Chicago. She would never return to Memphis and described herself as “exiled” from the South.

While willing to make unimaginable sacrifices to try to awaken the conscience of white Americans to the injustice of lynching, Wells also took great care to protect her Black community, knowing full well that her efforts to confront racial injustice would incite violence against them. She thought of her colleagues, embracing a model of political resistance that centers care for her Black neighbors and friends. This care, in and of itself, was an act of political resistance to racial injustice.

Wells offers us a model of political resistance to racial injustice that implies the complex negotiation of principles when confronted with sustained pressures, in practice, by the institutions and norms that perpetuate white supremacy and racial oppression. Even Wells, one of the most extraordinary advocates of racial justice in American history, refrained from directly confronting white supremacists when her advocacy would mean more Black loss. She was deeply committed to her anti-lynching advocacy, but she was equally committed to caring for Tommie Moss’s widow, Maurine, and their children, Betty and Thomas, Jr.

This is the Wells, I want to suggest, that we must fastidiously celebrate this Black History Month as she affords us enduring insights into what it means to be a crusader for justice. In the continued fight for racial justice and amid reinvigorated efforts to erase Black contributions to American history, Wells would urge activists to be steadfast in speaking truth into the world and advocating relentlessly for a more racially just America. Yet she would also remind us of the importance of caring for one another in the fight against oppression.

Wells died while writing her autobiography, leaving the manuscript unpunctuated and unfinished. In the final line, she reiterates the famous adage that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Wells may have been right about the unending demands of freedom. In many ways, we continue to fight her fight against the erasure of Black history in American history. She was also right that it is a heroic act to care for our fellow humans while we pursue a more just world.

Dr. Amy Gais is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Comparative Literature and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of The Coerced Conscience (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and is writing a book on freedom and resistance in African American political thought.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/7260784/ida-b-wells-care-and-justice/

Israel Bids Farewell to a Mother and Her Two Young Sons Killed in Captivity in Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel — Holding flags, orange balloons and signs saying “forgive us,” tens of thousands of Israelis lined highways as the bodies of a mother and her two young sons, killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip, were taken for burial on Wednesday.

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The plight of the Bibas family has come to embody the profound sense of loss and grief still permeating Israel after the militant Hamas group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war.

Footage of a terrified Shiri Bibas clutching her two redheaded sons — 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel — as they were taken to Gaza by militants is seared into the country’s collective memory.

Israel says forensic evidence shows the boys were killed by their captors in November 2023, while Hamas says the family was killed along with their guards in an Israeli airstrike.

Their bodies were handed over earlier this month as part of a ceasefire deal that paused the Israel-Hamas war. Israelis endured another moment of agony when testing showed that one of the bodies returned by Hamas was identified as someone else. Shiri’s body was returned the following night and positively identified.

Yarden Bibas was abducted separately and released alive in a different handover last month. His wife and their two children will be buried in a private ceremony near Kibbutz Nir Oz near Gaza, where they were living when they were abducted. The three will be buried next to Shiri’s parents, who were also killed in the attack.

People — lined up on the side of the roads as far as the eye could see — sobbed and embraced each other as the casket made their way along the 100 kilometer (60 miles) route from central Israel to the cemetery.

Hundreds of motorcycles, each with an Israeli flag and orange ribbons, rode solemnly behind the convoy. In the city of Tel Aviv, thousands gathered to watch a broadcast of the eulogies, many dressed in orange.

Kfir was the youngest of about 30 children taken hostage. The infant, with red hair and a toothless smile, quickly became well-known across Israel. His ordeal was raised by Israeli leaders on podiums around the world.

The extended Bibas family has been active at protests, branding the color orange as the symbol of their fight for the “ginger babies.” They marked Kfir Bibas’ first birthday with a release of orange balloons and lobbied world leaders for support.

Family photos aired on TV and posted on social media created a national bond with the two boys and made them familiar faces.

Israelis learned of Ariel Bibas’ love for Batman. Photos from a happier time showed the entire family dressed up as the character.

On Wednesday, many people dressed up in Batman costumes and saluted as the caskets passed.

Yarden Bibas eulogized his family.

“Do you remember our last conversation together? In the safe room, I asked if we should fight or surrender. You said fight, so I fought,” he sad, speaking directly to his wife. “Shiri, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you all. If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have fought.”

Then he spoke of his elder son, Ariel: “I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute.”

“I’m sure you’re making all the angels laugh with your silly jokes and impressions,” he added, envisioning the boy in paradise. “I hope there are plenty of butterflies for you to watch, just like you did during our picnics.”

He also addressed his youngest son. “Kfir, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better,” he said. “I miss nibbling on you and hearing your laughter.”

Dana Silberman Sitton, Shiri’s sister, said she had tried to prepare herself for over a year to bury her sister alongside their parents, but the moment was still overwhelming.

She begged people to remember Shiri full of light and laughter — not just the photo of her terror-stricken face as she was being kidnapped.

She also asked forgiveness on behalf of Israel’s government and military because it had taken so long to bring them home.

Yarden’s sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, one of the most active voices in the fight to bring the hostages home, said “our disaster as a nation and as a family should not have happened, and must never happen again.”

“Forgiveness means accepting responsibility,” she said. “There is no meaning to forgiveness before the failures are investigated, and all officials take responsibility.”

During the release of the bodies in Gaza last week, Hamas militants displayed coffins on a stage labeled with Shiri’s name and those of her two boys as upbeat music blared. Behind them hung a panel where their pictures hovered beneath a cartoon of a vampiric-looking Netanyahu.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the delayed release of Shiri’s remains a “cruel and malicious violation” of the ceasefire agreement.

Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war in Gaza and 251 were taken hostage. More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

source https://time.com/7261875/israel-bids-farewell-to-shiri-bibas-children-hostages-hamas-war/