Posts

Citizens and Climate Change

No, climate change is not fake news. While the Earth does have a natural recycling process of Carbon Dioxide, the amount of carbon present in today’s atmosphere is too much for Earth to recycle it as an efficient rate. Climate change is causing draughts, wildfires, melting glaciers, colder winders, and animals are migrating to the north more. Our actions are preventing the environment from remaining sustainable in the long run. My stance on climate change is that it is our duty to ensure that people work more or do what they can to create a better environment. The smallest little bit helps and it will likely take-off if more people decide to follow your example. If a community is stronger and works together to create a safer, more clean way to keep the environment healthy. Our communities are able to promote the idea that nature is also an important factor, and being a good citizen means taking care of it. I want more people to challenge information about false climate change t
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How my Keyterms Created my Gavel

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What you see is a WordCloud of KeyTerms I used throughout my time in the Citizens! course. The colors, as you can most likely tell, are a connection to the American Flag and the colors we associate with the United States. I wanted to use a gray background for this image because I believe words can be defined by each person a little differently, and each word means something different depending on the person hearing or saying it. The gray represents the gray area created by how words have different effects on people, but I also want it to represent the gray area that’s been created when you try to answer “What does an American look like?” Americans don’t have a specific “look” to us, but we have our freedoms and equalities, but also struggles and painful pasts. Those experiences are what make us American, but since each person has different experiences, the area is still gray. You’re probably wondering why I chose to use the gavel as my shape. Well, I really wanted to incorporate
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Post Essay 3 and Asylum

After already being so passionate about a topic, it’s probably hard to think that I could get more involved in asylum. Well, you’re wrong. While I had followed asylum closely in regards to how it has affected Syrians specifically, I never really followed the path of asylum seekers from Central and South America. After doing more research during Unit 3, my eyes were opened to the fact that Hispanic and Latino/a asylum seekers are being treated the same way as Syrian asylum seekers. After learning about this, I decided I would more closely follow what’s happening to the asylum system. As of a few weeks ago, President Trump decided to order for more restrictions on asylum seekers, like making them pay for the application process and preventing work permits. This gives me a lot of frustration because, as global citizens and fellow human  beings, it should be our job to help asylum seekers find safety and aid while their homes are too dangerous to live in. However, there is not a desire
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OU's Blackface Incident (2019)

You read the title. I’m sure your first witty response will be “Which one, considering there were two in one month.” And yes, there were two blackface incidents, and yes there was eventually Neo-Nazi vandalism which fueled racial slurs and hatred later this semester, but I don’t want to talk about what specifically happened, because I’m sure you know. I want to talk about the responses from the community, and my own personal experiences after the blackface incident in particular. After the blackface video was posted to Twitter and I saw it for the first time, I felt shocked, disgusted, and repulsed that there were two young women who believed this was a good idea, or that they wouldn’t get in trouble or found out. Growing up in the Chicago area, my parents taught me very quickly that not everyone will look like me, but that’s okay. I was taught to embrace the fact that I grew up with diversity around me, because a lot of children in America don’t see this amount of diversity. I didn
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Political Cartoons

Something that I thoroughly enjoy looking at is a political cartoon. Is it because they can be funny and make caricatures out of political figures? Is it because they’re short and easy to understand? Well, no and no. I like political cartoons because I think it’s a good way for people to speak their opinions about political issues, and it also has the look of being simple, but is likely more complex. For example, Thomas Nast drew his cartoons to look realistic and reflect his political opinions and how they would be in a realistic world. A specific cartoon about Chinese Exclusion Act shows Columbia, a symbol of America, defending a Chinese man who is on the ground shriveled up away from an angry mob of white men. Behind Columbia and the Chinese man are derogatory phrases about the Chinese that media had published. While it seems self explanatory as to what Nast is trying to convey, he plants a lot information in the background of the cartoon. This cartoon in particular shows a colore
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A Family Divided

As I have grown up, I noticed more and more that my maternal side of the family is very different than my paternal side, at least politically. I realized I had to be much more careful about what I would say in regards to politics at the risk of making one of my Uncles or my Grandma upset. I also noticed how uncomfortable visits were when my parents and I visited my dad’s parents during the Presidential Election. There, of course, was news about politics all over and naturally there were comments, but I never much realized until then how much I had to be careful about what I would say next. While I dreaded those moments originally, it helped me develop the skill of talking about different points of view respectfully. Learning how to talk tension through rather than run away from different opinions in fear of arguing has also helped me recognize that we as a society must continue to have those difficult discussions to make communities feel stronger. Because there had always been so m
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How Learning About American History During The 2016 Election Changed My Views

My junior year of high school was during the 2016-2017 school year, which meant I was learning about American history while the 2016 election was occurring. I had learned about most of American history growing up in grade schools, but since my peers and I were older, we learned more about the horrors minorities faced during the course of American history. Before then, I had also never considered voting as such a big priority in my life, considering I wasn’t able to vote until the summer of 2018. When we learned more about how much discrimination was present and the duration of discrimination, I began to realize that voting is much more important that what I’d thought. Fighting for and eventually receiving voting rights for women and eventually men and women of color to better voice their opinions and introduce more views about an issue which may be more inclusive and better for multiple groups within the United States rather than the one group being represented. My classmates and I
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