Kanye 2020

A New Civil Rights Revolution

The civil rights movement for African-Americans, most commonly placed between the years of 1950-1970, has been in review a lot lately as issues about the subservient treatment of African-Americans has again come to the forefront of social issues. Although the period of social mobilization for the freedom and equal access to the basic human rights…

USA can learn from….the Nazis?

http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/07/01/germany-compensation-ww2 Despite the painfully parsimonious narrative of race politics in the United States, where the media focuses on the looting of property rather than on human suffering, the riots were not created in a vacuum. Ta Nehisi Coates and Donna Murch both sift through the decades of oppression, peeling back layers of history and rewritten…

Don’t Call it a Comeback, Been Here for Years

Back when the protests broke out in Ferguson, and then later in Baltimore, I would find myself in arguments with a few of my friends who believed the rioting and looting undermined the efficacy and legitimacy of the the actual cause, rendering it meaningless. While I was frustrated, I ultimately realized that they were viewing…

Sin of Omission

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Donna Murch both explore the historical foundation of state sanctioned violence and how it continues to impact African Americans. The Ferguson and Baltimore pieces explore how the United States has not learned from its history. James Baldwin is quoted as saying, “One of the things that has always afflicted the American reality…

1984 was NOT supposed to be an Instruction Manual

The government has always been afraid of upsetting the status quo. From the red scare of the 1950s, where Senator McCarthy used symbolic vilification to target communists as anti-American, to the new left protests of the 1960’s and 1970’s, to the 21st century, where Black Lives Matter has become the newest social…

Gaps in Intelligence Programs

The effectiveness, and legality of intelligence programs are a topic of discussion following the terrorist attacks that transpired in several countries, the largest number of fatalities occurring in Paris, France. The article, “Birth of the Surveillance state” by Michael Hirsh discusses the difficulties that the United State intelligence programs face as technology progresses and becomes…

Free Pass: Whisper the Word “Terrorist”

The three readings for today discuss the U.S. Government’s surveillance in regard to both the tangible actions as well as the possible underlying political purposes. Cunningham analyzes data collected from FBI COINTELPRO memos against the “New Left” between 1968 and 1971 in order to glean patterns of repression against protest groups. He concluded that this…

Batman Predicted This

After reading the articles surrounding surveillance and the NSA I couldn’t help but think how Gotham City, where Batman (The Dark Knight Rises) takes place encountered similar problems. Without getting too into the plot, Batman asks one of his peers Lucius Fox (aka Morgan Freeman) to take control of a system that would be capable…

#ThisHistoryMajor Will Help Address the Grievances of Black Lives Matter Protesters

As a history enthusiast, I am constantly confronted with people inform me that history is “completely useless”. These assertions have multiplied since the Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio began publically attacking a liberal arts education. Bush and Rubio have both advocated pushing students away from liberal arts degrees and toward vocational training or majors that…

National Security TRUMPs the Right to Assemble and Privacy?

Surveillance and repression of law-abiding people and peaceful organizations has had a long history in the United States. The way that agencies of the federal government monitored New Left groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years, and the phone records, photos, and internet usage of law-abiding…