Problem Frame: Letter to Dissatisfied Young Voters

After Trump's upset on November 8, the people of the United States have been thrown into a state of chaos and unease.The public remains deeply divided given the nearly even split between voters during the race, and Democratic voters remain unsure about where to proceed moving forward. The widespread response from Hillary voters is that in response we should take action by being politically active and conducting peaceful protests while remaining nonviolent and neutral in rhetoric. However, such an approach does not dissuade fascists who only respond to displays of strength, and thus would not slow down the surge of neonazi fascism following Trump's election. In response, Democratic voters should not only keep up political activity but work on a local scale to create a strong communal front that is willing to suppress fascism through any means necessary, including physical violence. It is their duty as members of their communities to suppress fascism wherever it may rise, and do whatever they can to prevent Trump and his like-minded brethren from doing damage to those communities by any means necessary.

Audience Description Post

1. My typical audience includes 'millennials' of voting age (18-29) in the United States, who voted Democrat or otherwise have left-leaning political views, and encompass any and all races, genders, religions, etc. This is a diverse pool of readers to target.

2. My imagined reader is a poor white college student, who feels anxious and unhappy about the results of the presidential election. They voted for Hillary Clinton, who they thought had a guaranteed victory, and are stunned and betrayed by Trump's upset. They want to do whatever they can to minimize the damage of a Trump presidency and protect themselves and more vulnerable friends, but aren't sure how.

3. This person and I both feel nervous about a Trump presidency, and want to do something to take action. We have friends of variously demographics that we want to protect from Trumps policies as well as emboldened fascists. We agree on taking action on the principle that we band together, and create solidarity across demographics in order to present a stronger united front.

4. We disagree about the degree of action that needs to be taken to prevent harm; while my viewer may solely support peaceful dialogues, outcries and protests falling within the lines of social acceptability, I support a mix of public pressure through those avenues and more direct actions, such as forming local organizations to strengthen communal resistance and direct physical suppression of fascists given the precedent of fascists only bending under the threat of organized, heavy backlash.

5. My attitude toward use of violence may prove insurmountable to my audience, and as such I will tailor my argument to present those tactics as methods of self defense against fascism, rather than senseless bloodshed. I will more strongly draw on historical precedent to move audiences past a "fighting evil violently makes you bad as the evil' rhetoric and consider how the failures of the current system (see: the election) are also inevitably meant to doom a resistance based solely in societally paved avenues of protest (police-coordinated marches, for example).

6. We will find common ground in our need to stand together, and prevent the tide of fascist neo-nazi rhetoric currently surging in the United States.

7. I will not concede to the listeners on the principle that suppression of fascism can be achieved without instilling visceral fear in fascists; I too strongly believe that simply adhering to 'safer' forms of protest is too weak to have any effect on emboldened fascists.

8. I will acknowledge and respond to objections directly after I outline my goals for change and plans for methods of direct action against fascism, towards the middle of the paper.

Paragraph Style

I want to write letters to the girl whose work I reviewed in my creative writing workshop, as a way of coming to terms with the fact that we live in the borderlands (hi, Gloria Anzaldúa). I also want to write poems in order to detail how much I have grown as a person, thinker, activist. I guess then my goal is to help justify the pain I have gone through to myself, to help me be able to say that college was worth it. In terms of artwork I am still not sure what I want to draw. I can envision smaller, elaborate pieces in my mind's eye but I still don't know what I actually want to focus on in terms of subject matter. I was thinking that maybe I could draw the maturation of my racial identity throughout my college career? I don't know how I would conceptualize that in a visually representational format though. Maybe I could focus on the theme of "in between", drawing intersections where I am both lost and found as a person. Then my theme could be 'borderlands' and remain cohesive between both my written and visual works. Overall I think that my greatest development to focus on would be race, and how complex it has grown over the years as I have taken on new knowledge about both my place and my fluidity of position within a Western racial hierarchy. This is a rich topic, and could be addressed via documenting my responses to discussions/comments about race, my own discussions with my family and friends on my racial identity, and how I personally have struggled with seeking community in Latinx spaces as someone who just never quite feels like enough.

Yellow highlight is nominalizations, blue highlight is characters
Main characters: speaker (myself), race?

1. 2
2. The speaker (I), the speaker's race
3. The paragraph is a chained topic string, meant to explore the relation between the speaker and their race.

4. I want to write letters to the girl whose work I reviewed in my creative writing workshop, as a way of coming to terms with the fact that we live in the borderlands (as said by Gloria Anzaldúa). I also want to write poems in order to detail how much I have grown as a person, thinker and activist who lives in these borderlands both personally and geographically.  Logically then my goal is to help myself cope and justify the pain I have gone through, and thus be able to say that college was worth its troubles. In terms of conveying this concept through artwork artwork I am still unsure about what kinds of artistic subjects I can use I never order to effectively convey my message. My current line of thought is to draw how my racial identity matured throughout my college career through a chronological set of pieces increasing in complexity. This can be accomplished through a focus on the theme of "in between", drawing intersections where I am both lost and found as a person. Then my project theme could be 'borderlands' and remain cohesive between both my written and visual works. Overall I think that I should focus strongly on how my concept of race has developed, and how complex it has grown over the years as I have taken on new knowledge about both my place and my fluidity of position within a Western racial hierarchy. This is a rich topic, and could be addressed via documenting my responses to discussions/comments about race, my own discussions with my family and friends on my racial identity, and how I personally have struggled with seeking community in Latinx spaces as someone who just never quite feels like enough.

5. Everything is in the correct position.

6. (Rewritten) For my senior capstone project I wish to center my discussion on the topic of race, and how I have grown into a realization of my place within a Western racial hierarchy.

Discussions: Theoretical Sources

Identity and Action

Opp, Karl-Dieter. "Collective identity, rationality and collective political action." Rationality and society 24.1 (2012): 73-105.

The article focuses on the relationship between identity and collective political action and the factors that influence that relationship – what makes it causal. It was initially thought that identity strengthens the protest and instigates more action. However, it’s apparent that the solidarity of a group’s identity decreases the amount of political action (Opp). When there is a protest, there is usually an end goal. The collective is fighting for that end goal, one way or another. The article drafts a key term – “identity-proposition” – that simply states identity being an important factor for protest behavior.

The article sets up an experiment to test this theory of identity decreasing the amount of action from a protest. Participants (who share the identity with a collective) are more likely to contribute to the group in a direct way (with donations or motivational support) than support indirectly (with their own exhibition of body rhetoric). It’s argued that the initial motivations of the protest pave the susceptibility of the execution portion of the protest. A protest initiating mostly for the sake of change will not be influenced so much with identity than another protest that aggregated for the sake of the identity. 

According to this article, a collective placing focus on the identity will hinder achieving their end goal because there will be lack of physical action. The collective must focus on increasing political action in order to make the change that is desired.

Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Thought and Action
Bandura, Albert. Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Thought and Action. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. University of Kentucky. Web. <https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/Bandura1991HMBD.pdf>.

The piece "Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Thought and Action", written by Albert Bandura in 1991, speaks to an academic audience with the argument that a combination of cultural influences, self-regulation and universal standards form the instruments by which moral judgement is conducted in an ultimately internal process, thus creating a larger complexity in the process of parsing morality. I chose this source as relevant to my project because the tactics and priorities of the mothers protesting Los Desaparecidos in Mexico, mainly their usage of moral shock through their public grieving as 'good mothers', are intertwined with the moral judgements of Mexicans and Mexican culture, thus making it beneficial for me to include an examination of moral judgement as a conceptual framework.

Political Parties: The Iron Law of Oligarchy

Michels, Robert. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Kitchener, CA: Batoche Books, 2000. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 23 October 2016.

The theory The Iron Law of Oligarchy was created by Robert Michels in Germany in 1911 and outlined in his book "Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy". This theory states that rule by an oligarchy (i.e. an elite) is inevitable, the iron law, in any large or complex democratic group as a result of the organizational demands. Therefore, even though a group may start out as purely democratic, as it grows and develops it will become an oligarchy. Michels is speaking to other scholars, particularly those interested in political party organization and structure.

This applies to my protest group (Students for a Democratic Society in the anti-war movement against Vietnam in the 1960s) because they believe in participatory democracy, the participation of all members within the organization and the ability to make contributions and participate in the decision-making process. This worked extremely well when the group was small enough to discuss with one another in the living room, however, when their numbers swelled to over 30,000 in 1968 a participatory democracy was no longer a possibility and an oligarchy formed, despite attempts to maintain a democracy.

precis

1. Steven Schwarze, published November 24th 2006 online. Thesis is that melodrama is useful in the right context in the execution.

2. Shwarze gives an example by tallking about the Asbestos victims in Libby, Montana

3. His purpose is to bring new light to Melodrama and show how it can be a useful rhetorical tool in analysis.

4. Critics of melodrama and also people invested in researching protest methodologies. He establishes a relationship with the audience by giving multiple examples.

Los Desaparecidos Research Question

How has the involvement of mothers in protests about Los Desaparecidos in Mexico, and their formation as a distinct identity within those protests, transformed the trajectory and focus of those protests?

Topic Exploration- Mothers of Mexico's Disappeared Women

1. The protests in Mexico as a whole are focused on human rights abuses both by drug cartels and Mexican authorities who are often in bed with said cartels. I am focusing only on protests specific to the phenomenon of 'disappeared women', women who are kidnapped and suffer horrific abuses before being killed, often in remote graves where the chances of discovery are slim. Within this protest I am focusing on mothers, because their identity is one that can be distinguished within protests about disappeared women, and serves as a point for rich discussion about the practices and goals of the protests as a whole.

2. Mothers are tied to the disappeared women in a significant way not only by blood ties, but as a faction of protesters that can and has shaped the moral landscape of the protests surrounding disappeared women; they are significant not only to the victims are their living kin and voice, but to Mexican society as the face of the toll disappeared women have on the social fabric of Mexico.

3. The group I'm looking at (mothers) participated in the protest of disappeared women mainly through use of appeal to pathos; one preferred tactic is to march in large numbers while holding pictures of their deceased relatives so as to personalize their grief and stimulate outrage at the inaction of Mexican authorities on their disappearance.

4. I am concerned about gathering enough research material that is relevant to this assignment; while the sources I do have show a strong enough link between the identity of mothers and the protest movement against disappeared women as a whole, I am still apprehensive about how my search for scholarly sources that relate specifically to moral and ethical issues surrounding the mothers' forms of protest and their effect on the movement as a whole may be harder to come by.

Mothers of 'Disappeared' Women in Mexico

Who/What: With the widespread corruption of authorities in Mexico due in large part to the influence of drug cartels, women have often been disproportionately caught in the crossfire as victims of kidnapping, trafficking and murder. This topic involves mainly young women and girls as victims, usually but not always younger than 30. Older women are also involved as the protesters of these crimes, having formed a coalition based upon their identities as mothers.

When/Where: The movement is currently ongoing, having gained strength in recent years, but it first began to gain traction following the 'dirty war' in Mexico in the 1980s in which people began to be 'disappeared' on a larger scale. These protests are mostly if not completely situated in Mexico.

Why: These mothers focus upon their identities as mothers in order to appeal to the Mexican consciousness, which views young women who are perceived to be 'immoral' (such as sex workers, who are often victims of the aforementioned crimes) unfavorably and mothers more positively. This has created a complex dialogue about morality and protest, with protesters weighing the effectiveness of mothers' protests versus the perpetuation of the attitudes about gender which made it necessary to protest in the first place-- as well as potential abandonment of victims who may not have mothers willing to protest for them.

Proof of Identity: The book Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera by Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Georgina Guzmán goes into mothers' involvement in protests against the epidemic of womens' deaths in Mexico in detail, as well as the analysis surrounding their involvement. 

Symbolic Realignment

Definition:

Symbolic realignment is when a movement fundamentally shifts its key vocabulary, symbols or images, so as to clearly emulate the movement's changes in goals and ideals.

Example:

One example is the creation of the acronym "LGBT", which signified the emergence of a real coalition between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people rather than a collection of individual movements.

Passages:

From the Stewart reading:

"Carmichael created a symbolic realignment within the movement by replacing words such as Negro, Negro people, ghetto, segregation and integration with black, black masses, colony, colonialism and liberation that altered how audiences saw the ghettoes of large American cities and American institutions and linked the civil rights movement with the African movements for independence from colonial powers." (page 496)

"Carmichael understood the importance and power of words, that whoever controls language controls the world." (page 496)

Spectacle

Definition

In the context of protest rhetoric, 'spectacle' refers to something draws the public eye in order to create a visual impact; this can be utilized both by established powers and protesting groups as a rhetorical tool when navigating the public eye.

     

Example

One example is the use of the 'die-in' by gay rights movements when protesting AIDS; the images of 'dead' bodies on the steps of powerful lawmakers and places of government served as striking implications of guilt on part of those people and institutions due to their inaction on the AIDS crisis. 

Passages to help define/contextualize this term:

From Deluca and Peeples:

"On today's public screen corporates and states stage spectacles (advertising and photo ops) certifying their status before the people/public and activists participate through the performance of image events, employing the consequent publicity as a social medium for forming public opinion and holding corporations and states accountable. Critique through spectacle, not critique versus spectacle." (page 190)

"The telespectacle [spectacle through television], for better or worse, is the center of public politics, of the public sphere" (Gronbeck, ctd in Deluca and Peeples 191)

Popular vs Scholarly

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/08/simpsons200708

This link comes from Vanity Fair magazine, which makes profit and has simple language throughout. It also features glossy photos.


http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/hatred-and-profits-under-hood-ku-klux-klan

To begin the article is in PDF format. It also has citation and is slightly current. It comes from a reliable source, Harvard University, and the author is credible. He is the professor of economics.

Stokely Carmichael

1. He talks about how 250,000 people showed up for the "I Have a Dream" speech and the support that other historical leaders showed for it. He provides a list of other major contributors to the movement without delving in too far into their own rhetoric. It serves to outline the exact range of dates in the movement that are being observed.

2. He writes that he identified a fundamental cause of the evolutionary struggle within the social movement. He goes on to say that dissatisfaction found within the movement from newer generations who grow impatient are a major cause in the evolution of rhetorical movements. e.g how Stokely Carmichael took a more aggressive stand and assertive rhetoric out of his dissatisfaction of the lack of results gained through a more gradual, peaceful rhetoric.

Ethical

Definition: Concerning matters of morality and practical uses of said morality in various context. Adhering to a moral standard set by those who have come before us.

Example: Carmichael not only going after white supremacy but directly attacking moderates and liberals even within the movement, often on a personal level, in order to push a more radical front.

From the text: Haiman states, on page 14, that protest is not justified if it constitutes the invasion of privacy of others. 

Citizen Discussion 9/28

Q: Where on the line are you?

A: 6 + 3.1415926535897932384626...

Q: How did you decide?

A: The book itself instills the experiences of racism into the readers point of view (in most passages). Each story is someone's experience. Someone's life. To be treated based on the amount of melanin in one's integumentary system to a degree that forces Rankine to implement such crude, hurtful, and vulnerable diction. 

The images direct the blame. The rhetorical atmosphere establishes a claim. The audience holds all the pressure to connect the dots how living that life is not okay. It's not right.

Q: Evidence:

A. Page 43 - "What did you say?"

     page 91 - image of lynching

     Page 159 - It wasn't a match. It was a lesson.

"THE WHOLE EXISTENCE OF THE BOOK", Lisa

Thoughts on Citizen

I found Citizen to be an arresting work from the very start- it toys with prose very much like a creative nonfiction work, and very effectively so, to portray a multimodal collage of the Black American experience. Each piece stands out as a powerful story all on its own, but they still seamlessly thread together as a narrative of oppression, quiet and unquiet, which can go unaddressed in the microcosms of the stories but, when lain out on the pages of the book, becomes a list of grievances, a protest in its own right.

One particular passage that stood out to me was the soliloquy on “I” Rankine gives on pages 71 to 73— “You said ‘I’ has so much power; it’s insane” (71) is a concise yet powerful analysis of how white and black people differ both as narratives and as people in the public crowd. White people have the power to be an ‘I’, a subject, as expressed through that powerful pronoun. White people control their own stories by getting to speak in first person, navigate and choose in real time. However, Black people in America do not have that luxury, and thus become objects, which we see demonstrated throughout Citizen as we move through anecdotes scripted for us in the second person.  This is eerily reminiscent of Frantz Fanon’s work on the gaze (Black Skin, White Masks), and how different gazes (namely the white gaze and the Black gaze) shape our sense of being; in both Black Skin, White Masks and Citizen, the white gaze is shown as the actor, with the black gaze being acted upon.

                We do see an important subversion of this dynamic in the edited lynching photo on page 91. With the brutalized Black subjects erased from the photo, we can no longer put a pitying white gaze on their suffering; instead we are forced to confront the white gazes, casual as they are in the face of grotesque brutality. This ‘flips the script’, and places the burden on white readers to be gazed upon—we are gazing at our own implicit role in a system which used to that particular type of carnage, and even now endorses a new type of public slaughter via execution by cop. It is a quietly powerful statement, a challenge, which I believe defines the tone and dialogue that Citizen lays out for us.

"The Battle in Seattle" analysis

1. The authors believe violence is a crucial way to be visible on the public screen. Since everyone with access to the public screen(s) are always distracted, those individuals habituate to the distractions where everything is almost tuned out. Violence would act as a spectacle to sensitize everyone and put focus on the protest.

2. Specific evidence for how violence is crucial to be on the public screen would be with the WB/WIMF protests. There wasn't coverage about the event when there wasn't any violence (195). In another instance, Doha, Qatar was chosen as the site for WTO meetings in order to decrease the likelihood of violence about the meetings. "Consequently, there was absolutely no TV evening news coverage" (195).  For the Seattle protests, the coverage escalated when the violence broke out in comparison to more modest coverage about the protest in the beginning.

3.  The evidence suggested above seems legitimate because the amount of violence positively correlates with the amount of coverage that protest event receives. Showing the escalation of coverage vs violence contributes the most to this conclusion because it shows how violence puts the protest out there and makes it a focus that most screens want to broadcast.

4. Violence is necessary to disseminate the arguments of the protest for people to see it and understand what is actually happening. It's also noted in the section is that it's not just the violence that is being broadcasted, but the protestor's opinion and why they are actually protesting. This would make the violence not be in vain.

5. The group mostly agrees with the claims and conclusions.

"Give Ireland Back to the Irish"

Song link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaO4XeHhwo8

Paul McCartney's "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" was one of the most famous protest songs centered around the Troubles (the conflict over Northern Ireland in the 20th century). The lyrics appealed to a British audience, pleading them to see the issues with British occupation of Northern Ireland; the song created a firestorm of controversy, and was largely banned in the UK. It remains a staple among circles favoring Irish unity and independence.

"One Man, One Vote"

Song Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivrY3o-GaY
Lyrics (includes translation): http://www.metrolyrics.com/one-man-one-vote-lyrics-johnny-clegg-savuka.html

Johnny Clegg & Savuka released this song as part of their album "Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World" in 1989. An interracial music group based in South Africa, Clegg & Savuka challenged apartheid through both the makeup of their group and the protest rhetoric included in their songs. "One Man, One Vote" is a more outspoken example of this, with an introduction that directly calls out other Western countries that had historically ignored South Africa's situation. Even its title itself is a common slogan in countries where voting rights are an issue, aligning itself with protest rhetoric right out of the gate. "One Man, One Vote" is an encapsulation of Johnny Clegg & Savuka's goals, and the rallying cries of their era as pressure mounted on South Africa to finally dispel the system of apartheid for good.

Sinead O' Connor Ripping A Photo of the Pope on SNL

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dKdBlKgquw

Sinead O'Connor's a cappella performance of Bob Marley's "War" for SNL in 1992 culminated in this moment, with a completely silent audience- after changing the song to refer to child abuse rather than racism, she sang the word "evil" while tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II, one of the most beloved figures of her era. This was her protest against the then largely unknown widespread child abuse- emotional, sexual, or otherwise- that occurred in the Catholic Church (mainly in schools), especially in her native Ireland. It was a moment that nearly killed her career, and became largely misunderstood due to a number of factors relating to public view of the church and her personal public image. However, now it has become a topic of discussion given the scandals surrounding child abuse in the Catholic Church that began to surface in recent years, leading many to either lament that her protest fell on deaf ears or that her protest was "before its time." It remains an intriguing case study on implementation of protest, and what can make a protest a success or a failure.

Farid Ghamsari and Aline Diaz, Who we are

Hi, My name is Farid Ghamsari!

I am a Senior Neuroscience Major. I'm taking this class as a pre-med requirement, but I am excited to learn about protest rhetoric. I am from California. I went to Spain this summer which was bomb.

Hello, my name is Aline Diaz! I am a senior year Gender and Women's Studies major, and I am taking this class as part of my thematic minor which focuses on expanding my writing portfolio. I am from Chandler, Arizona, and I love to swim. I used to do synchronized swimming for years and had gotten to nationals. One time, ASU called me Airline in an email and it was hilarious.

We both have one brother. But Farid's is older and Aline's is younger. Her brother is now going to ASU, while my brother went to UC Riverside. We both speak Spanish, because she's Puerto Rican, and I went to Spain. We both have difficult names that people mess up on a lot.