The #MeToo movement emerged after allegation of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein, a head of the Weinstein production company, were finally being recognized in mid 2017. It seems like forever ago that the movement began but its effects have been great. Hundreds of women, and men, have spoken out against their experiences with sexual assault and have been able to share their stories and feel a sense of relief from the guilt and shame they had been carrying after their assaults. The CNN article titled “How #MeToo could move from social campaign to social change” encapsulates the early proceedings of the moment, actually in an ironic twist they used a SNL skit as a reference to the idea of an ‘armchair movement’ that starred Louis C.K. a comedian who was later in the movement admitted to exposing himself to several women. The article compares the #MeToo movement to the civil rights movement, but says that it lack substance. The author claims that there needs to be some sort of whistleblower to make this a full blown social change, but arguably everyone actively participating in the movement already at the time this article was written, in 2017, was actively being a whistleblower. The article ends with saying that in order for this movement to make a real social change organizations need to get involved and people need to do more than just press ‘like’ on a tweet. The author of this article compared the #MeToo movement at its early stages to other ‘fad’ movements that had come before it like #ItsnotOkay which began in 2016 after an Author shared her sexual assault story or that of the ALS Icebucket challenge that took over the internet a few years ago but has since lost much traction and the ALS foundations people were supporting lost much of the donation support they had earned.
This article is an interesting way to discuss social change in its modern form. For the article top bring in the necessity of real life action is interesting for a movement like #MeToo because it tackles such a difficult topic. One could easily argue that the movement wasn’t made to make a huge change and to lock up these people who have been accused of sexual assault, while that would be ideal, it’s just not going to happen because there is still much stigma around reporting an assault to the authorities and pressing charges against the accused. What the #MeToo movement was doing in 2017 at this point was really just trying to reduce the stigma that lead to so many assaults being left unreported. The twitter platform that was both public but in its own way private, gave these victims a voice to share their stories and allowed them to help others understand that the stigma that exists around being a victim of sexual assault is something that needs to change. While the #MeToo movement more recently has made huge strides in getting high ranking men, and some women, out of power and facing real life consequences, the most important thing it has done is make sure that victims had the support and they needed to speak out about their experiences.

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When the Salmon Run Dry is a documentary made by KIRO News in the 1990s about the effects of dams in the Pacific Northwest on the lives of salmon. This documentary discusses a lot of things beginning with what happens when a salmon reaches the dam? So the dam thought about how the salmon returning from the ocean to lay eggs in fresh water would get back, as they built fish ladders for this, but they didn’t think about the young salmon who needed to get from the freshwater rivers to the ocean once their bodies matured. These 5-12 month old baby salmon have a genetic marker in them that tells them when it is time to migrate down to the ocean because their bodies can no longer survive in the freshwater environment, but the issue is that they are still immature and not strong enough to survive going through the dams huge rushes of water, so when they try to travel through these dams towards the ocean they are killed by rushing waters. The documentary estimates that each dam on the Columbia river kills about 15% of these migrating fish, which is a lot of fish considering there are over 20 dams just on the Columbia alone, not to mention dams located on other Washington and Oregon rivers. This killing of salmon with dams has lead to the pink sockeye salmon to be put on the endangered species list and the documentary theorizes that the other couple types of native salmon may follow soon.

The sociological impact of this is great because it has a lot of conflict with the good that dams are doing for the people in the Northwest communities, but it has negative effects on the salmon that will eventually have negative effects on the communities. Beginning with the dams, obviously they keep the production of electricity clean and inexpensive, but they also have huge amounts of things that are terrible for the communities of people that live near them. With many Northwest dams the people who were living on the rivers they were built on were pushed off of their land by the government so that these dams could exists, I know that in my own hometown of Wenatchee Native Americans in the region were pushed off of their lands when the dam was built because the space was about to be flooded by the new water track the dam created, a couple years ago when the dam was shut down the land where the Native Americans used to live was dry and you could just walk around on the top layer of dirt and easily find artifacts and remnants of the old Native American settlement. The issue of salmon also has negative effects on Native Americans in the Northwest region because many ceremonies are performed around the salmon and if these dams keep depleting the population it’s going to become more and more difficult for these Native Americans to perform these celebrations and rituals that center around the salmon. The creation of dams and the recklessness of their existence and operation in relation to the salmon population have had severe negative effects on the populations of regions, especially the Native American population that had historically already suffered from environmental projects created by the National and State governments.

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In the Documentary For the Bible Told Me So, there is a lot of discussions of people’s interpretation of the bible. Especially the verse of Leviticus 18:6 “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination”, this came into play a lot because it is one of the few verses that explicitly condemns homosexuality. The big discussion was people’s interpretations of the Bible, whether they were a more literalist interpretation or a more general and relative interpretation. The documentary showed the more literal interpreters having the more ‘bigoted’ and conservative views on homosexuality because they were taking the words that the bible was saying and then applying that their modern lives. The other people in the documentary that took the more general and relative rout to seeing the bible were those who were able see homosexuality as something that isn’t necessarily bad because they understand that the bible was written in a time that is different from the time that we are currently in and that as time progresses the meanings of things change. These same people see the Leviticus verse as being about reproduction and its necessity at the time, whereas the literalist see this verse as being solely about homosexuality being wrong without any other context. These different views show the big relationship between an active interpretation of media and its effect on how people chose, or choose, to form their views around this interpretation.

The views in this documentary are important because they show how important ones own views and the way that something is presented to them can change the way people think. One big point from the documentary that showed this was an interview in the documentary of a woman on a street who was talking about Christians and their views on homosexuality. In this interview, this woman said that most Christians hadn’t even read the whole bible, but rather chose to just listen to what other Christians who had supposedly read the Bible were saying. This issue with this is that people don’t get the chance to actually see for themselves what the bible says, but instead are told what they should think because the people who are telling them this are the ones who are perceived as these beacons of god and god’s word and if they didn’t listen to these people they would be seen as going against god. This goes a bit with the encoding/decoding idea because some of these people are able to understand the concept that these preachers and ministers are going to preach different things according to what their specific church believes and these people who choose to continue to go to these churches where things are like this need to be able to decode what these ‘beacons of god’ are saying and then choose if its made to radicalize them, or if it’s actually meant to teach them a real and important message.

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In an article by The Nation entitled How Unequal School Funding Punishes Poor Kids the author very broadly discussed the inequality of schools in more wealthy districts have these better resources and better teaching conditions, while students in poor regions are left to just fend for themselves in a way and rely on older textbooks and less technologically advanced classroom. Very specifically the article talked about these poorer districts and the class sizes that teachers are expected to handle, and the classes aren’t large because there are too many students in the school, but rather because the school did not have enough funding to hire the number of teachers needed to instruct these students effectively. The article also discusses equality vs equity because many educators argue that poor students need more resources inside of the classroom because they have less access to these resources at home, so the funding of schools should have more equality to it, but the equity and need of students should also be taken into account when funding is discussed. The author also discusses racial issues in terms of this funding discrepancy as a direct cause of this, because it is so disproportionally based around the district the students are located in, so the students who live in the neighborhoods that are lower class tend to be people of color who have been negatively affected by the racist rhetoric of America’s economic history.

This article relates very well to the video we watched in class about the two teenagers who came from similar economic backgrounds but ended up going to different schools and having different chances in life because of the different resources offered by these schools. Specifically, the documentary talked about the availability of a school counselor to students at each school and at the under-funded school there was only one guidance counselor and for the student to get an appointment he had to wait for a ridiculous amount of time. This specific part of the documentary fits very well with what the article was saying when talking about the class sizes and the ability of teachers to properly help all students in the way that they need. The article specifically said that in poor schools the ratio of students to teachers was 25% lower in poor schools per 100 students, meaning that these lower class schools have about 25 students extra to distribute teachers in classes which increases class sizes and negatively effects students performances because they aren’t able to get the specified and individualized help from their teachers that they need.

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This weeks video was quite fun to watch as it was a music video for a song that is not completely terrible. The song is OOOUU by Young M.A. which is a song in which the rapper discusses what they would like a woman to do to them and what they would also like to do to a woman. The music video starts with a few friends hanging out and eating Chinese food around a table that is covered in money and alcohol as a sort of ‘flex’. The song starts with M.A. talking about how they’re drunk and just chilling, but they’re looking for ‘hoes’ around trying to find a girl to give some ‘head’ but is still classy. As the song goes on and there’s a shift where Young M.A. begins to in a way gloat and assert dominance by saying that they “always keep the hammer next to me” and “if she your girl, why she texting me?” and “Why she call me on the phone speaking sexually?”. Overall, the song eventually just a way for Young M.A. to ‘flex’ on the people listening about how many girls and how much money they have as a way to assert dominance and gain some amount of respect.

So this description of OOOUU sound very similar to a lot of rap videos and songs, especially from a few years ago as more modern rap has tried to shit away from this very aggressive objection of women’s bodies and sexuality. So, even though this song seems normal from just a text description, it’s actually quite a lot different as Young M.A. is actually a woman who is saying all of this stuff. It’s a bit jarring to think about that we so often will judge male rappers for objectifying women in their videos, but what do we do if a woman does it? Do we hold women to the same standards, even though their hypersexualization of women in music videos is inherently much less predatory as there has not been an extensive history of women on women objectification and assault the same way there has been male? So, is Young M.A. allowed to do this, or should she take a step back from objectifying women in this way as it perpetuates hypersexualization of women in the media? Honestly, M.A. is just copying common rap culture but she’s using her femininity/sexuality to her advantage because she is a woman talking about women, even though what she is saying is inherently problematic it doesn’t carry the same weight with is as it would if a man said it, so arguably she should be able to continue what she is doing because the circumstance is different since she is a woman and the history of women is different. On the other hand, it is perpetuating a negative trend in rap and hip-hop and if she does it and gets popular other people may see her doing it and want to follow suit, which is the opposite of what we would want as there has been so much progress recently in the rap genre and its portrayal of women.

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This week a show I really like on Netflix called One Day at a Time covered a few pretty heavy topics, but the main one that stood out was the topic of certain races being treated differently when it comes to crime and punishment. In the episode titled “Nip it in the bud” the mother, Penelope, gave her son Alex permission to go to a concert festival called Bud E. fest, the issue was that she didn’t know the festival was a marijuana-based music festival. In the episode, she finds out the information and she talked to Alex about using marijuana and he tells her that that was the first time that he had ever tried it and that he didn’t like it and Penelope seemed to accept this information and punishes him in a normal way. Later in the episode, however, we see Penelope go to her women veteran mental health group and they tell her that he was most likely lying about the marijuana and tell her that she should search his room just in case he had any more that he was planning on using. She searches his room and finds some weed in a fake body spray can and she confronts him and they have a real conversation about the negative effects of drug use. Alex chooses to defend himself and say that it’s legal and he only does it sometimes, and Penelope retorts that he’s only 15 and the marijuana is something that can hurt him a lot at the stage of development his brain is at. Penelope goes on to talk about how there is also the added issue of race in this because Alex is Latino and will have a higher chance of being charged than the white friends he was smoking with; here Penelope goes into a story about how she and her friends were caught smoking weed on a beach and the officer that arrested them let her white friend go while still arresting her and the only reason she was let go was because there happened to be a Latino cop around to help her out. The episode ends in a very wholesome family sitcom manner where Alex and Penelope talk about the keeping this information away from ‘Abuelita’ because they know they would get in serious trouble if she found out, but you really get from this episode that Alex learned a lesson from Penelope’s story and he is genuinely rethinking his choices.

This episode played more into more of the topics of chapter six a little, but all in all, it turned itself into a good topic or this weeks blog post. The way that Penelope had been treated when she was younger and was caught smoking weed by a police officer was completely unfair and was entirely based on her race because she was not white. Her white friend got off of the same charges she had to get saved from and it was all because of racial discrimination. This wasn’t discussed in this episode but in past episodes, there has been a lot of talk about how Alex is not a white-passing latino and how he has faced discrimination and bullying for that in the past which would most likely make the situation worse if he had been caught. There has also been talk of how Schnider, the families landlord and friend, had previously had drug problems, but they never talk about him having any real legal repercussions because he is white and comes from a rich family, but had he been a not white male he might have not of fared so well. The point is that Alex could have had some serious negative legal effects because of his race because systematically people of color are punished more frequently than white people for the same crimes

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Below freezing temperatures and inadequate help is given to those in need in Chicago this past week. A polar vortex overtook much of the midwest and had people huddled inside for warmth, but what happens to those who don’t have a home to go to in order to warm up in this bone-chilling cold? This article by the New York Times talks about just how bad the conditions are for the homeless populations in the winter and how they plan on surviving this aptly named ‘polar vortex’. This article begins with a reporter in Chicago talking to Tony Neely a homeless man who was trying to raise 45$ so he could rent a hotel room for the night so he didn’t freeze to death outside. The interviewer asked Mr. Neely why he didn’t just go and stay in one of the homeless shelters that were open all around Chicago, and Neely replied that there was no point in staying in one because the conditions of those federally funded homeless shelter were so low it wouldn’t make much difference if he went there or stayed outside. At this point of the polar vortex, there had been a public emergency issued and many businesses and schools had shut down because of the below zero temperatures and the threat of medical issues that go along with them. The article stated that there were around 80,000 homeless people in Chicago, many of who would be stuck out in this polar vortex with no place to go. Many of these people were trying to raise enough money to pay for a night in a motel just so they were able to be in a warm place with at least a blanket. Many Chicago schools, libraries, police stations, and community centers opened up as warming centers for the homeless in the area as an effort to save as many of them as possible from the cold. The director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless made an interesting point in saying that many donations had come in during this time because people were actually seeing that people were under these conditions, but he also feared that once these conditions were over and everything went back to normal people would once again forget that these people existed in these circumstances and would quit helping out.

This article and the issue it discussed was eye-opening, I had been aware of the polar vortex and the extreme temperatures it brought with it but until the other day I hadn’t thought about the effects the cold would have on the homeless population of the areas. It genuinely makes you think about the people in your own state, we have the out of sight out of mind ideology in this country so we generally have no care for this issue unless it benefits us, or until there is an emergency like this one. A few things stood out in this article, the first being Neely not wanting to stay in one of the shelters because the conditions were so bad he would rather risk it out on the street than worry about bed-bugs or theft in one of the Chicago shelters. The fact that a federally funded shelter has such bad conditions is insane; one would assume that we don’t want there to be homeless people so why would the government not allow enough money to these shelters to make them even slightly inhabitable? A second thing that stood out to me was what the director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless said about donations and supplies coming in for this short period of time, but then stopping once the extreme temperatures went away. The idea that people are more willing to give to these people when their lives are at risk is interesting just because had there been support earlier perhaps there would be fewer people in this situation in the first place. I’m not saying that people giving now is a bad thing at all, in fact, it’s wonderful that people are willing to help out at times of crisis, but these people helping now need to remember that these people who are living on the streets are still experiencing the temperatures outside even if it isn’t during a polar vortex and it’s still cold and these people still need to be able to warm in order to survive.

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Marijuana has been illegal on a federal level in the United States since 1937, but recently in several states across the U.S. has become legal, so what are lawmakers doing about the many people in prisons who are still serving a sentence for misdemeanor marijuana possession? In Seattle since around 2010 minor drug charges involving marijuana have been in a way ignored by criminal prosecutors because of the lax idea of it by the local lawmakers. In 2012 marijuana was legalized in Washington state, so laws about possession of the substance were reduced saying that a person who is at least 21 years of age may possess around 16 ounces of marijuana in a non-liquid form. So if this much marijuana is now legal to possess, why are people still in jails in Washington for charges of possession for less than the now legal amount? This is what Seattle was working on in the middle of 2018, the people of Seattle believed that it was unfair for people convicted to still have to serve sentences for something that is now legal all around the state. The Seattle lawmakers in doing this will release thousands of people from jail who are serving time for these types of crime and this article in the Seattle Times hopes that this gesture will help mend the relationship of Seattle and those who were affected by the huge crackdowns on drugs during the height of Washington’s ‘War on Drugs.’

This article is really important to the entirety of the U.S. society because it is redefining the perceived deviance of marijuana users and distributors. One of the biggest things the Seattle government is doing is making up for the war on drugs that took over Seattle for several decades. This is important to society because it’s recognizing that the war on drugs had a negative impact on society and there were consequences that now need to be remedied. The war on drugs in Seattle, as well as the whole of the U.S., had large and lasting negative effects mainly on POC, more specifically black Americans. Laws like stop and frisk in places like New York were largely racially based to try and arrest and charge as many people as possible for drug possession. The Seattle Times in this article addresses that there was/still is a large racial issue with drug arrests because POC were targeted more by the majority white police force who were essentially told that the easiest targets and the easiest busts were with people of color. The movement to vacate prisoners with these types of drug charges is a good start for Seattle, but does it make up for the large scale racist agenda police forces had during the height of the ‘war on drugs’?

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Genetic Sexual Attraction, under this name many may be confused about the nature of this concept, but by its other name of incest, many may have a visceral reaction to its concept. The documentary, Brothers & Sisters in Love, explores the relationships of three genetically related couples and what it means to be in an incestuous relationship. Following the three couples is something that is done very carefully so that they do not offend these people who they are documenting, much care is placed in the questions they ask and how they treat these people who are committing a huge cultural taboo. The siblings and one mother-son relationship, in this documentary, are ones who did not grow up together, but rather met through genetic tests or through adoption records. This later meeting in life is what the specialists in this documentary state as the reason for these taboo relationships, the idea of wanting so desperately to be close to someone you were apart from for so long that you share so many similarities with can drive some people to do something that is unthinkable to most. Although incest is actually illegal in many countries, most of these couples are able to evade legal repercussions by not disclosing their sexual relationship, as incest is only illegal if the nature of the relationship is sexual. One couple in this particular documentary is actually unable to avoid legal consequences because they decided to have children and the male in this relationship was sentenced to jail time because of his sexual relationship with his sister. Towards the end of this documentary one of the subjects, an elderly man who had previously felt a onesided attraction towards his recently discovered biological sister, discusses that the seeming subculture that he belongs to is a group that experiences genetic sexual attraction and not incest because the term of incest has so many negative connotations that don’t necessarily pertain to people who experience genetic sexual attraction.

Obviously, this documentary followed a taboo that makes everyone react in a hugely negative way, but what this doc also does is raise an important question. That question being, if this documentary is following so many people who deal with this condition, and has mentions of several others, what do we call this ‘community’? Would this community of people committing this taboo be considered a subculture or a counterculture? To me, it’s not an easy question to answer because it has elements for both. If you’re arguing for a subculture you can say that they live with a different value in life than people who do not experience ‘genetic sexual attraction’, one of the couples in the doc has created a whole online community of people who experience these feelings and actively try to support others who also experience this. On the other hand, these people are committing a huge taboo that exists in so many countries, they’re going against the general idea that incest is bad, and rejecting the rules of not committing incest. So what is it? Realistically, it’s more of a counterculture because they do openly reject the norms of society in committing incest. There is also the added factor that this is just brothers and sisters, which is awful to think about, but the definition of incest includes parent-child relationships which are much more of a taboo would emit an even more visceral reaction to the idea. So, if it’s possible to do this, the online community created by the two siblings in this documentary is solely comprised of brothers and sisters and potentially cousins could potentially be the ones who are considered more of a subculture while other forms of incest would be considered part of a counterculture. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that any form of incest is arguably awful, but is it fair to lump all forms together into one idea if there are forms of it that are arguably worse?

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A hot topic for many weeks now has been the Government shut down, but just how does this shut down affect the lives of the people all across the United States? In the New York Times article “What Is and Isn’t Affected by the Government Shutdown” there is an alarming connection between approximately 800,000 U.S. employees, and what is now almost the longest government shutdown in the United States. Of the 800,000 government employees around half of them are working without pay and the other half are just flat out not working at all, and with no definite end in sight for this shutdown, these government employees have no idea when their next paycheck may be coming in. The article further discusses who exactly is affected by this shutdown. The main concerns here are for food and public safety. The Department of Agriculture remains checking meat, eggs, and dairy products for any anomalies, but it leaves seafood, fruits, and vegetables unchecked, which could easily lead to a bacteria outbreak, endangering thousands of Americans. There is also the concern for public safety brought up in this article because many law enforcement agents are currently working without pay…which makes one wonder, how long are these people willing to work before they receive a paycheck? Overall, this article raises more concerns about the current state and the future of our country.

How does this affect society? Within the concept of public issues, this is about as public as it can get! Not only does this affect the government/federally sanctioned employees, but it also affects everyone living in the U.S. This shutdown has halted the work of several power plants, oil refineries, and water treatment facilities according to the New York Times, which puts our health and safety as citizens at risk. This shutdown has also halted the inspection of seafood, fruits, and vegetables by the Agricultural department and coming off the back of an E.Coli breakout less than a month ago we can see that the health of our nation is not something that seems to be of high concern to our public officials. There is also the concern for public safety with the F.BI. the Coast Guard, and the Customs and Border Protection all having to function without any pay coming in. Hilariously the Customs and Border Protection agency is being affected, even though a main reason for this shutdown is the “Wall” that is meant to protect our borders. If this shutdown continues for much longer these government employees might get tired of working without pay and decide to stop working until the shutdown is over, which potentially puts all of our safety at risk. This government shutdown has a huge effect on the lives of all Americans, this issue falls heavily under the definition of a public issue, and it is a public issue that can only be remedied by those who are in charge.

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