In Conclusion

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear ~ Joan Didion

This journal has helped me understanding what I'm thinking, what societal faces we are facing, and what it means. I have come to make realizations about what I want for my life and how I want to contribute to ending this massive divide not only between society and law, but society and everything. Society is fed ideology upon ideology, and I believe that we need to become more realistic about what our society actually practices compared to what it advertises.  
At the beginning of this course, my goal for the blog was "to use the elements of thought and apply them to classwork and readings in order to get a better understanding of the system of law as it relates to society." I have definitely fulfilled this goal and got even more out of the class than my original goal states.

I have concluded that in order for our society to evolve, our government needs to loosen the reigns and allow progression and change for the betterment of the majority. In order to do this, we must let go of our bigoted attitudes, learn from our mistakes, and use other forms of government as examples. For instance, Holland has embraced a liberal, non authoritarian system of law. Instead of pretending that they can prevent problems such as drug abuse and prostitution, Holland realizes that these things are going to happen. People will do drugs and people will pay for sex, whether it is legal or not. However, they look out for the best interest of their people by providing assistance such as needle exchange programs for drug users and healthcare and STD tests for prostitutes. As a result, their people are healthier and drugs and sex are not as negatively stigmatized. Unlike the United States, Holland does not take it upon themselves to discriminate against people of different races, classes and genders.

The United States is clinging so tightly to the falsity that this is "the land of the free." Once politicians and corporations let go of this ideology, there can begin to be true equality in our country. However, it can be seen through recent events that the government and the corporations that are controlling it are not going down without a struggle. Through peaceful revolution and determination, I can only hope that the majority will gain back their individual rights and regain control over this country.

On a personal level, I feel more compelled each day to fight for equal rights in this country. As I become more informed about our society, it is easier and easier for me to feel overwhelmed by the problems that myself and the rest of this country are up against. However, I will continue to inform myself and others while working to create a more democratic society. I'm not sure what the next step will be for me.. a non-profit, public service, or social justice? I'm not sure. But I do know that whatever I am led to next, I will be able to use my knowledge acquired in Law and Society as well as other courses that I have taken.

Overall, I give myself an A-. I think it is hard to give myself an A because nothing is ever perfect. Given the circumstances, I think my journals demonstrate the learning that this course aimed to provide. 

Journal #1 Revisited

Looking back at this entry, I find a lack of emotion and interest. Despite the fact that I was very interested in the discrepancies in hiring and treatment in Walmart, I apparently could not find the words to describe my thoughts. I will revisit this entry and create a more thoughtful entry.

"Undergraduate students overwhelmingly described sexism as a less serious problem than racism. Despite the fact that those same students were more likely to have experienced, observed, or heard about acts of sexism than of racism on their campuses, and despite the fact that the sex-based ones were far more likely than the race-based ones to involved physical acts including violence, from men grabbing and groping women to raping them, the majority of our participants said that they find racism more upsetting and consider it more of a problem that needs to be dealt with than sexism. Sexism, some even suggested, is only natural" (Flanders).

The previous quote was taken from the article "Walmart: Too Big to Sue?" from CommonDreams.org. I find this quote interesting because before reading it, I would have agreed with the fact that racism is more of a problem than sexism because it is easy to simply observe society without asking critical questions and "WHY?"
However, after asking myself why this is happening, I can conclude that sexism and racism are socially stigmatized. Racism has been stigmatized as the most prevalent problem concerning equality in our society, whereas sexism has been underplayed. There are multiple reasons for the stigmas attached to racism and sexism, but there is clearly a problem with the way sexism is dealt with among undergraduate students, as was displayed in the previous quotation. University education is supposed to produce enlightened and critical thinkers, aware of the world around them. It is interesting that schools, including Eastern, offer an array of gender-based courses in the realms of Sociology, Psychology and more, yet sexism is still not being taken seriously. So perhaps this comes down to the old saying "practice what you preach." Professors and faculty at Eastern may be teaching all of the right material, but students might not be learning how to transform classroom material into a skill set for life.
So to conclude, the issue of sexism is not unique to the Wal-Mart corporation, but rather our society as a whole. Just as we have discovered the multiple divides between law and society, I have also realized the massive gap between education and society. I'm seeing a trend!

Occupy Wall Street & the Media

As stated in Notes on the State of America, “the media has little to do with providing useful and relevant information on important issues of the day so that Americans themselves can come to well informed decisions” (173). It is expected that corporate media would paint such a negative picture of Occupy Wall Street because the enemies of OWS are corporations. I find it interesting the way corporate mass media portrays the Occupy Wall Street movement. An article in the New York Post states that the NYPD has sent “elite Manhattan homicide detectives and a deputy chief to the raucous Occupy Wall Street protest in response to a rash of sex attacks, thefts and vandalism – including graffiti scrawled on the nearby 9/11 Memorial.” The previous quote is loaded with words that create a negative mental picture of OWS and the protestors. Keywords  and phrases include “racous,” “rash of sex attacks,” “thefts and vandalism,” “elite homicide detectives,” and “graffiti scrawled.” This article is clearly biased and wants its readers to believe that OWS is a bad movement. The article goes on to describe the movement and the people involved with it and paints them in a very negative light. And just to be clear, the graffiti that was “scrawled” on the memorial was apparently “a heart etched near a name” and “a drawing of a skull.” Furthermore, the NYPD has detectives investigating this so-called “vandalism.” I have a few issues to bring up about this situation. The first is that they have even called an etched heart near a name vandalism. This is clearly not a malicious act. Next, the NYPD is blaming this very slight problem on Occupy protesters. Finally, the NYPD has actually assigned detectives to investigate this case. I find it very interesting how the media and the NYPD find ways to deter from the actual societal problems that we are dealing with today. For instance, instead of writing a constructive article about Occupy Wall Street and how it relates to our society, it focuses people’s attention on very small, insignificant problems. This is only one of the many instances of how the media distracts us from what is really going on in our world.

What I find even more interesting about this article is that it does not even take into consideration what the movement is about and what it promotes. Any informed individual would be able to tell you that Occupy Wall Street is a famously peaceful protest. This is not to deny that there has been sexual harassment, theft or vandalism occurring at OWS. However, these instances are few and far between and do not encompass what this movement is really about.

Bradley Manning & War Crimes

Now that I think about it, the War on Terror is an appropriate name for our occupancy in the Iraq and Afghanistan because the people of those countries are attempting to protect themselves from the terror that the United States has brought upon them. However, our government doesn’t want us to be aware of the horror that we are causing overseas, and when someone tries to inform the public about what is actually happening, they are severely punished. Bradley Manning is a serviceman who has been put in jail because of a violent and shocking military video that he released. What our legal system is doing to Bradley Manning is cruel. It is interesting that he was accused of a crime, but never convicted, yet he is forced to be in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day. His sentence could be decades long, and all he did was post a video on the internet. Do you think our country embraces freedom of speech? Think again. The information that Bradley Manning posted should always be readily available to the public!

We can see a similar situation in the case of Albert Melise, who dedicated half of his life to the military. However, because he leaked classified information about Guantanamo Bay, he is no longer allowed to serve.

Let’s take a look at the difference in punishments between Manning and Melise. Why did Bradley Manning get locked up and condemned to almost continuous solitary confinement? Is it because he is a gay male? Is it because he is younger, and therefore more easily taken advantage of and less respected? Or maybe it is because Manning’s video got more attention. Nonetheless, the disparity between the law and what happens in our society is evident. Neither Manning or Melise’s punishments are in line with what the law states. The upsetting part is that this is not the first time this has happened, and it is definitely not the last.

Drug War

The war on drugs has cost the United States $1 trillion and nothing has improved. Why? A critical article on the war on drugs assesses the situation by stating that “We’ve never worked the drug problem holistically. We’ll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction.” This statement not only explains the faults of the war on drugs, but also the faults of the government in general. For example, look at our welfare system. This welfare system does not really help its victims. It provides them with food stamps and sometimes shelter, but it leaves the problem. Despite the fact that those in poverty are receiving aid, the issue of poverty will continue to exist because the government is not fixing the problem, it is fixing the symptoms. Furthermore, we can look at the issue of discrimination in the United States. Our society is clearly prejudiced and discriminates against people who aren’t white, who aren’t straight, who aren’t men, etc. In order to “solve” this problem, the government has put many laws in order, such as affirmative action, in order to ensure that discrimination does not negatively affect people. However, this is once again taming the symptoms, rather than tackling the underlying problems that create discrimination in our society. Despite the laws that are put in place to reduce discrimination, our society is clearly biased and prejudiced and will continue to be until the problem is fixed from the roots up.

To go back to the issue of the war on drugs, it can be argued that the war on drugs is just an excuse to oppress minority races. It can be seen that blacks are among the most targeted groups in the United States. In Law and Society, Kitty Calavita states that “54 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession from 1997 to 2006 were black and only 14 percent were white” (100). What we can understand from this statistic is that there is a very clear divide between the law and what actually happens in society. As Calavita states, “laws that are neutral on their face are applied disparately” (100). Calavita goes on to explain that laws are “pliable” and that they can be skewed for or against certain populations. Now that this is understood, we have to ask ourselves if laws were constructed this way purposely by our government. My answer to this is yes. If you look back to when our country was founded, the tagline was “liberty for all.” But this was a boldfaced lie! If you were black, you had almost no liberties. If you were American Indian, you had almost no liberties. If you were a woman, you had almost no liberties. It all came down to the white man. And so, maybe the tagline should have read “liberty for white men” because after all, this is what our country ended up practicing. And after all, has much actually changed? In my opinion, this still seems to be a white man’s world.

Occupy Wall Street and Yachts

An article from the Montreal Gazette states that the popular narrative of the United States is “thickly populated with unscrupulous corporate titans, greedy bankers and insidertrading hedge-fund managers.” It then goes on to say that the Occupy Wall Street movement “ignores the fact that many of the wealthy are sports stars and entertainers, and that their ranks include professionals such as doctors, lawyers, consultants and even some of our favourite progressive economists. In other words, the rich today are more likely to be working than idle.” This article bothers me to no end because the author is clearly quite ignorant about what Occupy Wall Street is actually protesting. I would challenge the author to read an article on an alternative media website or even go to a demonstration and talk to the protesters to see what they really want. One protester even stated they do not oppose the rich. They don’t oppose extravagant lifestyles because it is none of their business what you spend your money on. If you’re a rich person who worked hard for their money and bought a yacht just because you want one, good for you! Give me a ride! However, if you are a corporate moneyed CEO, and you are stealing money from people, you DO NOT deserve to be rich. And you definitely do not deserve a yacht.

This article goes on to become even more annoying by saying that “something other than plutocrat-friendly policies is largely responsible for the growing [income] inequality. That something is education and skills… To acknowledge the fact that the broken educational and skillsbuilding system is responsible for much of the growing inquality that ordinary people experience would, however, detract from the larger populist agenda of rallying the masses against the very rich. It has the inconvenient implication that the poor have a role in pulling themselves out of the morass.” My first reaction to this paragraph is that the author is really digging deep to find a reason to hate Occupy Wall Street. But that’s just me. Taking a look at how the author argues that the broken education system is the reason for inequality, my response to this is that he has the whole issue twisted. If there was less inequality, then more money might be able to go to funding for education. The 99% would pay less taxes, struggle less with money, not have to take out loans to get an education. Maybe the high school drop-out rate would be less if money was more spread out and used for education reform. Maybe the college dropout rate would be lower if students were better prepared during high school and got the support and fulfillment that they need.

Furthermore, the author takes a stab at the “poor” and ultimately insinuates that they are lazy by saying that “it has the inconvenient implication that the poor have a role in pulling themselves out of the morass.” Let’s see, does the author really think that the “poor” who camped out in Zuccotti parked really enjoyed sleeping in the cold, not having hot water, not being able to sleep on a mattress, etc? Occupy Wall Street has evolved out of necessity. It is the last resort for the “poor.” These people are not lazy. The “poor” did not create this situation for themselves. Many of the 99% are struggling due to the oppressive nature of our “democracy.” In conclusion, I would ask the author to reevaluate his position on Occupy Wall Street after researching more about this movement through alternative media sources and direct interaction with those in support of and involved with the movement.

Malcolm X/BPP & Occupy Wall Street

“You will never get real freedom and recognition between black and white people in this country without destroying the country, without destroying the present political system, without destroying the present economic system, without rewriting the entire constitution. It will be a complete destruction of everything that America supposedly stands for.”

When we watched a documentary about the Black Panther Party, I was enchanted by this quote by Malcolm X because I think was right. Has anything changed since 50 years ago when this statement was made?

I will have to argue that nothing has changed substantially. We can relate the Black Panther Party to the current Occupy Wall Street movement. Another quote from the documentary on BPP stated that the “government moved in when efforts showed a little bit of success.” Looking at Occupy Wall Street, the government is making attempts to disband Occupy movements around the country. This can be characterized by the recent dismantling of the Occupy camp at Zuccotti Park. 50 years ago when Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party were fighting for their rights as citizens of the United States, the government moved in and made attempts to disband the BPP. Currently, United States citizens all over the country are once again fighting for their rights and the government and law enforcement are doing their best to hinder their efforts.

They weren’t lying when they said history repeats itself. When will we learn from it?