On September 11, 2001, a day thousands of lives were lost. For their grieving families, the world as they knew it would never be the same.
Susan Retik and her college sweetheart, Dave, settled into the life of their dreams—happily married with two children, and a third on the way. Tragically, one moment would change Susan’s life forever.
Dave Retik was on American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center.
“In the blink of an eye, everything changed,” says Susan. “We lost our story.”
Susan saved the last phone message her husband left her. “Hi. It’s me. I was just calling to say hello and that’s it. I just called to say I love you. Love you. I’ll call you a little bit later. Bye.”
–Oprah, “Making a Difference”
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I couldn’t sleep last night. My teenage daughter was at a sleepover, as was my 7 year-old son. My teenage son was making too much noise with his buddies during the Kansas-OSU game and then afterwards (who orders dominoes at midnight?). I smoked a cigar, read a bad crime novel and ended up at my computer responding Nicholas Kristof’s piece about Goldman, the Village Voice, and sex trafficking. I finally got sleep somewhere around 2 pm.
When I got up I was glad to see that Kristof at least had retweeted my piece. Before heading off to church I forwarded my rebuttal of Kirstof’s attack to two classmates at Wesleyan, where I went to college. One is a Goldman employee and the other managing partner at Alta Communications, which was also called out in Kristof’s piece as owning a chunk of the Village Voice and, therefore, being guilty of participating in sex trafficking because Village Voice in turn owns an on-line classified website that allows adult advertisements.
When I got home from church I got a very disturbing message.
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Dave Retik was a junior partner at Alta Communications where my classmate was his boss. In 2000 Retik bought a 5% interest in the Village Voice, a leading alternative newspaper for over a generation with an editorial stance that spoke out against the sex trade among many other things, for Alta Communications.
A year later Retik was dead.
There were plenty of tragedies that day, none more worthy than another. But let’s just say that Retik’s story, the impact his loss had on family, friends and his firm was something that no one who was even indirectly involved in it, as I was, is ever going to forget.
One of the things Alta had to do was pick up the pieces and eventually take over the investments that Rehik, and another Alta colleague lost that day, had made.
The Village Voice was one of those. That investment was a small and passive one. Over the course of time the business changed strategies and was undoubtedly challenged by the move to the web and social media. I have no idea if Alta was consulted on the 2006 Back Page investment which is the topic of Mr. Kristof’s column. But I highly doubt it. And even if they were with a 5% stake there is absolutely nothing Alta could do about it even if they were asked.
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So here we are on a Sunday morning with an investment made 12 years ago by an amazing young man lost on 9/11 in a company he believed in then, with a reporter looking to tie Goldman to sex trafficking with no real concern for the unintended consequences of his actions.
Is this story really important enough to drag Alta Communication, and the memory of such a great human being, through the mud?
“I applaud Kristof for his focus on this issue, there are side affects to his article,” my friend emailed me.
Amen.
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In just one more twist of fate, I just got an email from Mr. Kristof’s ast, with whom I have struck up a friendship for unrelated reasons. She alerted me that Mr. Kristof is very aware of the David Retik story. He in fact has written about him before, on the anniversary of 9/11 in fact.
This weekend, a Jewish woman who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks is planning to speak at a mosque in Boston. She will be trying to recruit members of the mosque to join her battle against poverty and illiteracy in Afghanistan.
The woman, Susan Retik, has pursued perhaps the most unexpected and inspiring American response to the 9/11 attacks. This anniversary of Sept. 11 feels a little ugly to me, with some planning to remember the day with hatred and a Koran-burning — and that makes her work all the more exhilarating.
In the shattering aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Ms. Retik bonded with another woman, Patti Quigley, whose husband had also died in the attack. They lived near each other, and both were pregnant with babies who would never see their fathers.
Devastated themselves, they realized that there were more than half a million widows in Afghanistan — and then, with war, there would be even more. Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley also saw that Afghan widows could be a stabilizing force in that country.
So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.
The organization they started, Beyond the 11th, has now assisted more than 1,000 Afghan widows in starting tiny businesses. It’s an effort both to help some of the world’s neediest people and to fight back at the distrust, hatred and unemployment that sustain the Taliban.
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Published: September 8, 2010
It’s a wake up call to see what you have invested in. The point isn’t to smear – just a request to have “eyes wide open”. As to there being “nothing wrong with prostitution”… It is hurtful to women and to men to have the human need for closeness be tied to money (whether in a marriage or on the street). Until women earn the same as men, until a woman or girl can walk down the street and not get surveyed like a piece of meat, until it’s okay for men and boys to be close without being ridiculed,… Read more »
I guess this argument is moot, GS sold all their shares today.
Wait, if Retik died in 2001 and Backpage was acquired in 2006, how is Kristof’s article taking Retik to task? How does it drag his memory through the mud?
Retik made the investment in Village Voice for Alta. Atla did pretty much nothing with that investment for the last 12 years. Yet, Kristof points his finger at Alta by name in today’s piece saying they are tied to sex trafficking as a result of the investment Retik made.
Tom, I would think someone at Alta tracks all their investments, so it’s hard for me to see that they’ve been hard done by in Kristof’s piece. As to what one does as a minority shareholder in an investment that no longer meets your investment criteria? Sell!
Who said it no longer meets their criteria? Are you talking about risk and return?
Point well made…however, the question remains: Armed with the knowledge GS’ shareholders are profiting off of prostitution, however small, and inconsequentially acquired, what will they do next?
GS shareholders are not profiting from prostitution. that is crap. the private equity fund (not GS itself) made a tiny investment in 2000 in Village Voice. They own 16% and could not control anything VV decided to do. VV, not GS, decided to acquire BackPage, an online classified company. Kristof goes crazy trying to tie BP to a specific case of sex trafficking which turns out is flat wrong. Honestly I am all for going after sex trafficking. But going after bulletin boards where pimps and johns communicate is not the place to start. There are too many and frankly… Read more »
“Point well made…however, the question remains: Armed with the knowledge GS’ shareholders are profiting off of prostitution, however small, and inconsequentially acquired, what will they do next?”
Nothing because there is nothing wrong with prostitution.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with prostitution per se, but the negative consequences on workers of this being a back-alley trade is the issue. I’ve said it before on the GMP and I’ll say it again, vehemently: Why not legalize and regulate prositution? Legitimize the trade, take it off of shifty corners of the internet and the street, make it a taxable profession. Oh, and regarding negligible amounts of stock held by dimestore shareholders: I agree with you, Tom. The same came up with GIS stock recently. After the Pretty Little Liars debacle, I was quick to dump… Read more »
“I’ve said it before on the GMP and I’ll say it again, vehemently: Why not legalize and regulate prositution? Legitimize the trade, take it off of shifty corners of the internet and the street, make it a taxable profession.”
Here, here!