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.

Ex Input:
If je ne suis pas Charlie, am I a bad person? Nuance gets lost in groupthink. In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris last week, many people in France and elsewhere have declared, Je suis Charlie ("I am Charlie") after heavily armed gunmen broke into the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine, and killed eight staff members, two police officers, a building maintenance worker and wounded several others . On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people including a number of world leaders such as Angela Merkel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and David Cameron gathered in Paris for a unity rally, to stand in mourning, in defiance . There were cries of Je suis Charlie, Je suis Ahmed(I am Ahmed, the Muslim police officer who lost his life in the attack), Je suis juif(I am a Jew) . These declarations were a display of solidarity with those who lost their lives and those who survived . They allowed people to try and place themselves in the lives of others by using the power of language . We have seen this kind of remembrance before in the face of tragedy : I am Troy Davis ; I am Mike Brown ; I am Eric Garner ; I am Renisha McBride . But we are none of these people . We can and do empathize with the plights of the dead, the survivors and their loved ones . We can and do empathize with how fragile we all are, and with how we cannot be ruled by terror, but why the rhetorical urge to take the place of the fallen? What does it bring them? I, too, have ached since hearing the news of what happened in Paris but je ne suis pas Charlie et je ne suis pas Ahmed et je ne suis pas juif . There are times when silence equals consent, but is the loss of someone else's life really such an instance? Is it reasonable to assume that if je ne suis pas Charlie, I tacitly endorse terrorism? I believe in the freedom of expression, unequivocally - though , as I have written before , I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence . I find some of the work of Charlie Hebdo distasteful , because there is a preponderance of bigotry of all kinds in many of their cartoons' sentiments . Still ,  my distaste should not dictate the work the magazine produces or anything else . The cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo - and writers and artists everywhere - should be able to express themselves and challenge authority without being murdered . Murder is not an acceptable consequence for anything . Yet it is also an exercise of freedom of expression to express offense at the way satire like Charlie Hebdo's characterizes something you hold dear - like your faith, your personhood, your gender, your sexuality, your race or ethnicity . Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink , making it difficult to express nuance . It puts the terms of our understanding of the situation in black and white - you are either with us or against us - instead of allowing people to mourn and be angry while also being sympathetic to complexities that are being overlooked . It has been disheartening to see calls for the Muslim community to denounce terrorism . It has been disheartening to see journalists highlighting the stories of "good" Muslims , as if goodness is the exception to the rule of an entire people . We will continue to see discussions of satire, the freedom of expression and its limits . We will see speculations as to how such a tragedy can be avoided because it is easier to speculate than it is to accept that we cannot prevent terrorism . We cannot sway extremists with rational thought or with our ideas of right and wrong . Life moves quickly but , sometimes, consideration does not . And yet ,  we insist that people provide an immediate response, or immediate agreement, a universal, immediate me-too  - as though we don't want people to pause at all, to consider what they are weighing in on . We don't want to complicate our sorrow or outrage when it is easier to experience these emotions in their simplest, purest states . The older(and hopefully wiser) I get, the more I want to pause . I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel . I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption . The demand for response from all of us through the means available to us, most often our social networks, rises in part because we can feel so impotent in our day-to-day lives . We are people with jobs and families and our quotidian concerns . It is easy to feel impotent in the face of terrorism in Paris or hundreds of girls being kidnapped in Nigeria or a bombing at an NAACP building in Colorado or an unarmed black man being killed by a police officer . Within our social networks, we can feel less alone . We can feel less impotent . We can make these gestures of solidarity . Je suis Charlie . We can change our avatars . We can share our anger, our fear, or devastation without having to face that we may not be able to do much more . But we still feel impotent and we still feel inadequate . When we see people not participating in our expressions of solidarity-- not showing their awareness of their own impotence-- we see something we can possibly change . That is why we demand allegiance .

Ex Output:
These declarations were a display of solidarity with those who lost their lives and those who survived In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris last week, many people in France and elsewhere have declared, Je suis Charlie


Ex Input:
Welcome 2015: It may be two steps forward, one step back, but here's what matters. Today, January 1, 2015 is the very first day of a brand new year . And for many that means renewed efforts at a fresh start . New Year's resolutions, we call them . This is the year . It all starts now . We resolve to turn over a new leaf - and this time we're serious . This time we're really going to try , we're not going to quit . We promise ourselves that we're going to quit bad habits and start good ones . We're going to get in shape, eat better, be more content, more disciplined, more intentional . We're going to be better husbands, wives, fathers, mothers . We're going to work harder, serve more, plan more, give more, read more . We're going to finally be all that we can be . No more messing around . Well ... I say try . Seriously, try . You might make some great strides this year . I'm hoping to . There are a lot of improvements I'm hoping to make over the next 12 months . But don't be surprised a year from now when you realize that you've fallen short... again . For those who try and try, year after year, again and again, to get better and better, only to take three steps forward then two steps back, one step forward then three steps back... I have good news for you : you're in good company! Everybody I have ever talked to sounds just like me over the years . Try and fail . Fail then try . Try and succeed . Succeed then fail . Two steps forward. One step back. One step forward. Three steps back . Every year I get better at some things, worse at others . For example ,  this past year I've become more patient with my children -- more tolerant of their mishaps . Therefore ,  I've been enjoying them more and micromanaging them less (one step forward) . But ,  due to a lack of discipline on my part, I've also allowed myself to be stretched too thin this past year and as a result, those I love most have suffered (one step back) . Furthermore ,  no matter how hard I try--no matter how serious I am about resolving to change-- I still get frustrated by the same things that frustrated me 20 years ago: traffic jams, unexpected interruptions, long lines, feeling misunderstood, and so on and so forth . You get the idea . In some ways we get better . In some ways we get worse . And in other ways we basically stay the same . Whoever told us that the experience of life was one of escalating progress lied to us . Most of the time it feels rather static, doesn't it? New Year's Resolutions are a burdensome attempt to fix ourselves and make ourselves more lovable . But (and here's the good news), God loves us as we are, not as we should be . God's love for me, approval of me, and commitment to me does not ride on my resolve but on God's resolve for me . The good news that gets me through bad times is that God's devotion to me is not dependant on my devotion . Knowing that God always meets my messes with his mercy, my failures with his forgiveness, and my guilt with his grace, helps me survive my daily disappointments with me . The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news to those who've been crushed by unmet expectations of life -- it announces that because Jesus won for you, you're free to lose ; because Jesus was strong for you, you're free to be weak ; because Jesus was extraordinary, you're free to be ordinary ; because Jesus succeeded for you, you're free to fail . So , as this new year gets under way, I'll still going to try and get better at things , but it's so much more restful to know that I live my life from love rather than for it . Thank God! Happy New Year!

Ex Output:
For those who try and try, year after year, again and again, to get better and better, only to take three steps forward then two steps back, one step forward then three steps back... I have good news for you New Year's Resolutions are a burdensome attempt to fix ourselves and make ourselves more lovable


Ex Input:
Children in our towns and cities are being robbed of safe spaces to play. Where do the children play? Where can they run around unsupervised? On most of the housing estates I visit, the answer is hardly anywhere . A community not built around children is no community at all . A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors . As Jay Griffiths argues in her heartrending book Kith, children fill the "unoccupied territories", the spaces not controlled by tidy-minded adults, "the commons of mud, moss, roots and grass" . But such places are being purged from the land and their lives . "Today's children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and enclosed in rigid schedules of time." Since the 1970s the area in which children roam without adults has decreased by almost 90% . "Childhood is losing its commons." Given all that we know about the physical and psychological impacts of this confinement , you would expect the authorities to ensure that the remaining 10% of their diminished range is designed to draw children out of their homes . Yet almost everywhere they are designed out . Housing estates are built on the playing fields and rough patches children used to inhabit, and offer almost nothing in return . In the government's masterplan for England, the national planning policy framework, children are mentioned only twice: in a catalogue of housing types . In parliament's review of these plans, they aren't mentioned at all . Young people, around whom our lives should revolve, have been airbrushed from the planning system . I spent Monday wandering around the new and newish housing developments on the east side of Northampton . I chose this area because the estates here are spacious and mostly built for families : in other words, there is no possible excuse for excluding young people . In the places built 10 or 20 years ago, there is plenty of shared space , but almost all of it is allocated to cars . (You can see the photos on my website .) Grass is confined to the roundabouts or to coffin-like gardens , in which you can't turn a cartwheel without hitting the fence . I came across one exception - a street with wide grass verges . But they sloped towards the road: dangerous and useless, a perfect waste of space . This land of missed opportunities, designed by people without a spark of joy in their hearts, reifies the idea that there is no such thing as society . Had you set out to ensure that children were neither seen nor heard, you could not have done a better job . On the last day of the holidays, which was warm and dry, across four estates I saw only one child . By comparison, the Cherry Orchard estate just completed by Bellway Homes is a children's paradise . But only by comparison . Next to the primary school, with plenty of three- and four-bedroom houses, it is designed to appeal to young families . But in the middle of the development, where a village green might have been, there' s a strange grassy sump, surrounded by a low fence . It's an empty balancing pond, to catch water during exceptional floods . Remove the fence, plant it with trees, throw in some rocks and logs, and you'd have a rough and mossy playground . But no such thing was in the plans . Other shared spaces on the estate have the charming ambience of a prison yard : paved and surrounded by garden fences almost nine feet high . There were a few children outdoors but they seemed pressed to the edges, sitting in doorways or leaning on fences . Children don't buy houses , so who cares? Throughout the country, they become prisoners of bad design, and so do adults . Without safe and engaging places in which they can come together, no tribe forms . So parents must play the games that children would otherwise play among themselves , and everyone is bored to tears . The exclusion of children arises from the same pathology that denies us decent housing . In the name of market freedom, the volume housebuilders, sitting on their land banks, are free to preside over speculative chaos , while we are free to buy dog kennels priced like palaces in placeless estates so badly designed that community is dead on arrival . Many want to design and build their own homes , but almost no plots are available , as the big builders have seized them . In Scotland the government is considering compulsory sale orders , which would pull down prices - essential when the speculative price of land has risen from 2% of the cost of a home in the 1930s to 70% today . A national housing land corporation would assemble the sites and supply the infrastructure, then sell plots to community groups, housing associations and people who want to build their own . It goes far beyond England's feeble community right-to-build measures , which lack the muscular facilitation that only public authorities can provide . But it's still not far enough . What if people were entitled to buy an option for a plot on a new estate, which they would then help to plan? Not just the houses, but the entire estate would be built for and by those who would live there . The council or land corporation would specify the number and type of homes , then the future residents - including people on the social housing waiting list - would design the layout . Their children would help to create the public spaces . Communities would start to form even before people moved in , and the estates would doubtless look nothing like those built today . To the Westminster government, this probably sounds like communism . But as countries elsewhere in Europe have found, we don't need volume house builders, except to construct high-rises . They do not assist the provision of decent, affordable homes . They impede it . What is good for them is bad for us . Bellway, its brochure reveals, asked children at the neighbouring primary school to paint a picture of a cherry orchard, and displayed the winning entries in its show home . "Why not pop over to say hello, view our wonderful development and sneak a peek?", it asks . That's the role the children were given: helping the company to sell the houses it had already built . Why can't we shape the places that shape our lives?

Ex Output:

A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors