instruction:
Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
question:
I survived the Bhopal gas tragedy. I was born in July 1984 and I was only five months old when the disaster struck my community . I was too young to remember anything from the night of December 2, 1984 , but , throughout the years, I have heard many stories from the people who were there and saw it happen . My sister would sometimes tell me things about that night , though we generally avoided bringing it up , as we knew that it would only hurt us to talk about it . After the disaster, some of our relatives, who had heard about it on the radio, came and took us to Lucknow, around 600km from Bhopal . We stayed with them for a few months , but they started treating us badly , as if we were a burden to them and their families , so it was our brother Sunil, another survivor from our family of 10 - aged 13 at the time of the disaster - who decided to bring us back to Bhopal . Subsequently, we were sent to an orphanage in Bhopal, called The SOS Children's Village . Sunil refused to live with us in the orphanage, and got involved with the anti-Carbide campaign . He created an organisation called Children Against Carbide . Most of the members of this organisation were children from the community we were from - Jay Prakash Nagar (JP Nagar), right across the road from the main Bhopal plant . I was happy with my life at the orphanage in Bhopal , I had almost everything: cricket bats, skates, football, good education etc . But ,  at the same time, I did not know anything about our parents . In middle school, we would have parent-teacher meetings at school ; my classmates had their parents next to them for the meeting , but I had no one next to me . It was around that time that I started asking my sister about our parents . It was then that my sister first told me about the Bhopal gas disaster and what had happened that night . Until then, I never fully understood that I was growing up in an orphanage and didn't really know the meaning of the word "orphanage" . My sister Mamta told me that there were four brothers and four sisters in our family . Our father was a carpenter , and I was the youngest in the family . We lost three sisters and two brothers along with our parents that night . I then asked her,"How did we survive?" She told me that she wrapped me in a blanket, and ran away along with our brother Sunil . When they were running, Sunil had to go to the bathroom, and fainted . The streets were so crowded as people were running and shouting , my sister was forced by the crowd, and couldn't wait any longer for my brother Sunil to come back . He succeeded in 2006 when he hung himself . So, now it is just Mamta and I - the only survivors from a family of 10 . Mamta lives in Lucknow with her husband and two children , and I live here in Bhopal on my own . She would often complain about severe headaches and eye problems . It has been almost 30 years now , and Bhopalis are still fighting for their basic rights . The disaster took so many lives, and is still killing people, as the abandoned factory continues poisoning our soil, water, and air . I started learning more about the disaster when I saw people of different ages chanting slogans in the streets of Bhopal when I was a child . In 2004, Greenpeace flew me to Paris to participate in a demonstration outside Dow's shareholders meeting . I got involved with the campaign in 2004 partly because of my brother's participation in the campaign . It was better to die fighting for our rights than succumb to depression over what had happened . I had a stroke in 2005, and started taking an aspirin everyday . I also had a pulmonary embolism in the US last year . Now I no longer take an aspirin , because now I have to take 7.5mg of warfarin, a blood thinner , which is also used as rat poison . In 2008, I was one of a number of Bhopal survivors in New Delhi who fasted for 21 days, only having water . We were asking then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to set up an empowered commission to look into the issues related to Bhopal . We also wanted clean water to be supplied to the people who were living in the affected communities and were forced to drink contaminated water . Everyone on this earth should feel this anger and frustration . It has been 30 years and justice continues to elude the people of Bhopal . We, the people of Bhopal, believe that the whole world has transformed into a Bhopal in a way : If you look around , you see multinational corporations being allowed to do business without accountability, poisoning the world and placing profits over people . If justice comes to Bhopal , then it would be justice for the whole world . It would set a precedent and ensure that in the future, corporations committing such crimes are brought to justice .
answer:
I was born in July 1984


question:
Peace on Earth? There are a whole bunch of people who simply don't like Christmas and are fighting to get rid of it any way they can . And, there are a lot of people on the other side who are angry at those efforts . And so, this whole battle over whether to say Christmas or Happy Holidays misses the point . I suppose it may be hard to be a non-believer in the religious themes around Christmas and live in our culture . You are confronted daily with the religious symbolism of Christmas in the books you read, the friends you have and the movies you watch ; and , above all ,  you have to stay away from religious stuff...like Christmas celebrations . I'm a believer, but not without a modicum of compassion for those who don't share my religious beliefs . I can imagine how irritating Christmas must be for those whose whole worldview is built on the belief that Christmas doesn't matter because it points to what is spurious at best and dangerous at worst . I get that, too . I must admit, though, that I get irritated sometimes when a group of people bring a lawsuit to get rid of the town creche or when someone wishes me "Happy Holidays." It bothers me when universities remove Christmas trees or Christmas concerts are canceled because it offends those who aren't religious or Christian . Frankly, I listen to a lot of stuff from the other side all the time . Fair play suggests that it wouldn't hurt for the other side to abide some of mine . I decided that I'm just not going to fight the Christmas war . I'm an old guy and old people are already irritated about being old . As someone said, it takes very little to tick us off . Instead, I'm just going to sing as loudly and as publicly as I can a Christmas carol---a Christmas carol about love and a God who went to a lot of trouble to express his love for us . You see , in my belief system, Christmas doesn't mean that God came to destroy us or to kick posteriors . I believe that the reason he came was to tell us that he isn't angry . And when we make obscene gestures or get mean with those who disagree with us, it kind of misses the point . It becomes a disconnect between what I believe and what I do . And if I really believe(and I do) that the King came , it kind of changes my perspective . I have a friend whose family takes playing chess very seriously . It gets so "hot" sometimes that they end up throwing chess pieces at one another . As you can imagine , they lose a lot of pieces . One Christmas when they were playing chess, my friend took the baby Jesus from the small creche under the Christmas tree to replace one of his lost pieces . My friend then began to move all over the board, going after his brother's pieces . "You can't do that," his brother said,"that's illegal." "Oh, yes I can," my friend said."This is Jesus and he can do whatever he wants to do." Jesus does as he pleases and he does it right well . At Christmas he decided to love and, then, clean up the mess later . So I think I'll opt out of the war . The King was doing fine before I came along and will do fine long after I'm gone . He doesn't need my defense . So, Merry Christmas or...uh .... Happy Holidays . Whatever .
answer:
There are a whole bunch of people who simply don't like Christmas and are fighting to get rid of it any way they can And, there are a lot of people on the other side who are angry at those efforts


question:
Religious Freedom Day 2015: What our Founders understood about freedom of faith. Friday, January 16 is Religious Freedom Day, a celebration of one of the powerful and unique freedoms within our nation's founding and fabric . In 1992, the House and Senate joined together to pass a resolution designating January 16th as Religious Freedom Day . This day is based on the anniversary of the 1786 passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, originally authored by Thomas Jefferson . Congress formally recognized that the "Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom inspired and shaped the guarantees of religious freedom in the First Amendment." President George H  W  Bush issued the first proclamation in 1992 , noting that "American law and institutions have been shaped by a view of man that recognizes the inherent rights and dignity of individuals." For the last 24 years, each president has made an annual declaration and encouraged Americans to "observe this day through appropriate events and activities in homes, schools, and places of worship." To better understand the Founder's intent for this precious right, we must return to the actual text of the 1786 statute . Most notably, it reads:"... no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced ...in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The Founders understood that there is a direct connection between the prosperity and health of a nation and its respect for human rights and religious freedom . Individual faith grows when people live free of government coercion and control . In America, any person can live their faith or choose to have no faith; in many parts of the world that simple truth is revolutionary . This fundamental right at the core of our nation allows the United States to champion religious freedom around the world . Our own State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom appropriately reinforces this value by saying, "Given the U.S  commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to: Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries." Over the last few years, there have been many heated conversations in our own country about the role of religious freedom in our society, like pubic prayer, abortion, college campus organization, religious symbols, and many others . Last summer's Supreme Court decision affirming the right to live and work in accordance with one's convictions was contentious , but the High Court reinforced the right of Americans to not just have a faith, but to actually enter the marketplace and practice that faith as well . Religion that is contained only within a church building is a weekend hobby, not a personal faith . Our nation's Founders fled from a regime of religious persecution , sacrificing their lives to birth a new place of liberty . They not only believed that religious freedom was fundamental to shape this new nation, but that religious freedom was a fundamental human right for all . As we celebrate and recognize religious freedom today , let us reflect and remember that it has served as an important pillar of this nation from the start . For America to maintain its greatness, Washington must honor and prioritize religious freedom in public policy, as well as in culture . Our nation has not grown past freedom of faith, in many ways we have grown because of our freedom of faith .
answer:

Friday, January 16 is Religious Freedom Day, a celebration of one of the powerful and unique freedoms within our nation's founding and fabric